To the untrained eye, this might appear to be the most unassuming of SCABs. In reality, this is actually a highly-coordinated experiment into the nature of writing, genre, and the meaning of life.

Our series tells one story across six chapters and six different genres. We start with a randomly generated title. Then, each student afterward must write the following chapter of the story in their selected genre which represents them as a writer. There is no consulting or planning allowed, just one big mess.

The Cucumber who Knew too much part 2 

His laboratory became the stuff of legend. An environment only referred to in hushed tones. The whispers of torchlit midnight tales in darkened tents. Oh, but what experiment did this poor over-encumbered soul become engulfed by? 

With a world of knowledge and discovery at his green slimy fingertips, what concoction was he brewing in that cauldron?

Was he convening with the dead souls of forefathers long wilted in the hope of juicing out their wisdom? Was he turning pith into gold by means of an alchemical process? Oh no, not that! He was making a love potion. 

How disappointing you may say, but even this cerebral vegetable was not immune to matters of the (artichoke) heart.

And who was this inamorata, the apple of this yearning lad’s eye? Why no other than Alexandra Aubergine. She of the gleaming skin of a midnight hue. Unfortunately, our hero wasn’t the only one entranced by her bulbous contours. The edible enchantress had entire fields worth of admirers just waiting to be freshly picked for a date. 

So how does this plucky cucumber approach this onerous task? With a bit of help from some esoteric forces, of course. After all, you can know too much about life and quantum mechanics but when he considered mysteries of the heart, he was a novice.

Luckily the green ghosts that he summoned, his satsuma spirit guides, his orange oracle were on hand to offer advice.

“Alas,” they said, “the potion you have been brewing for 40 days and nights is potent indeed but to the extent, it’s now become strong enough to poison. One spritz of that and she’s Baba Ganoush. In order for it to reach its desired effect, you’re lacking one fundamental component.

He demanded to know what that was “Oh, it’s only the mythical breath from a dragon fruit captured at the dawn of a new moon within a coconut shell. Are you willing to undertake a voyage of such peril to obtain such a thing?” After all with your intellectual prowess, you can stay where you are and use that great brain of yours to achieve great things for all of vegetable kind. 

Unfortunately, for our hero, being a cucumber who knows too much, means being a cucumber whoever thirsts to know more. His desire for knowledge and experience was insatiable. “A quest” he cried, I must go on a quest and hopping into his cucumber-mobile he set off to obtain this vital ingredient…

To be continued by the next lucky guinea pig