Episode Twenty-Three

http://www.ndbag.com/story/comic/23.html

My friends, I must apologise. It has taken long months to escape from the dread dungeon in which I was imprisoned, being forced to tunnel out using nothing but a rusty spoon, and bolstered only by the song in my heart. "A song?", I hear you wonder. Yes, friends, a song. For I knew that I would escape. I had righteousness on my side, a spoon in my hand and a song in my heart. But the joy of my inevitable escape was tempered by the knowledge that I must apologise not just for the delay in returning to the bosom of the internet, but for the lapse that occurred in these pages. I must, of course, apologise to you, the reader, but also to Ndbag, he whose words I seek to interpret, and who can only be disappointed in what was, after all, a lapse in security that allowed the dread, slavering hordes that comprise the minions of ZK to infiltrate the mountain-top château where these words are penned.

I also apologise for the previous sentence, which was far too long and contained no fewer than nine commas.

I should, I suppose, also apologise for 'mountain-top', 'château' and 'penned', none of which is strictly accurate.

Finally, I apologise for the inordinately high number of apologies.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, gentle reader, I can finally address the questions that are obviously foremost in your mind: why now, and why your humble servant?

Alas, I have no answer. The entire computing power of this underground lair has gone into analysing the input of a myriad custom-made sensors scattered worldwide. The results? Nothing. Oh, I have theories. And what theories! But evidence? None. I have gadgets and gizmos aplenty; whosits and whatsits galore. And they tell me nothing that couldn't be gleaned from a carefully-crafted RSS feed and a moderately-priced satellite. The motivations behind ZK's actions are as impenetrable as ever.

Ultimately, though, one has to ask oneself: is the question futile? Are we attempting to ascribe logical motivations to one who has none? Ndbag is the source of rationality, of reason, of logic. Should we not infer, then, that his opposite is unreasoning chaos? ZK is, after all, the yin to Ndbag's Clyde. In attempting to fathom the illusory logic of ZK, we find ourselves attempting the impossible. We must be content with our lack of understanding in this case; everything is defined by its opposite, and in this case the chaos of ZK serves only to remind us how fortunate we are, in this tiny instant of cosmic time, to have the ephemeral order of Ndbag. As ZK says, he'll be back.