PAT:  “I will be signing autographs . . . God knows why . . .”  (Laughter)

JEAN (to Pat):  “Don’t laugh.  You will be signing autographs.”

WINSTON:  “Oh, yes, and that’s the weirdest part.  You never know what to write . . . other than ‘You have good taste!’”

PAT (to Winston):  “Yes, I remember.  I asked you to sign my copies of PROBE.  You were the first author I’d met.  And you were psyched out, like ‘What am I going to do with this fool who wants a signature?’”

WINSTON:  “I didn’t say that . . .”

PAT:  “No, but you were thinking it.  And my viewpoint is ‘I’m starting this mess.  Why am I doing it?’  You started out with a short story, I can beat that — I started out with a gag.”

WINSTON:  “Huh?”

PAT:  “My first universe . . . actually, I’m writing two universes, one of which I told you about many years ago, about Uhura and Scotty.”

WINSTON:  “Oh, yes, that one!  The punchline story . . .”

PAT (to audience):  “It was all one buildup to one hideous gag—”

WINSTON:  “It was a pun.  An outrageous pun.”

PAT:  “—which I have dropped.  And now I’m actually writing the story, in which I get to play with experimental theology.”

WINSTON:  “Yeah.  He was doing a good story about what the nature of a clone is:  a soul-less creature.  And the ending of the story — since he’s not putting it in now — had a situation where you don’t know what happened to the original person that the clone is based on.  And there are two characters in the story, both Starfleet officers, nicknamed Big Adam and Little Adam.  And so Little Adam asks Big Adam, ‘What happened to the original person?’  And the answer was, ‘That, Little Adam, is another story!’  . . .  Anybody here remember that old science series on television, ‘The Big World of Little Adam’?  (Groans of recognition from some audience members) Every episode would end with the line ‘That, Little Adam, is another story!’  So Pat goes through this big, long dramatic story and the final line is ‘That, Little Adam, is another story!’ whereupon I beat him into the floor!”