Graham mentally kicked himself for not thinking of asking the ufo people for a ride back to America. He had felt so much in awe of the magnificent spaceship and its unique occupants, though, that it had never entered his mind to ask a selfish favor of them. He now regretted that feeling. After all, the two aliens had made it obvious that they meant to serve him and help him to learn. Surely they would never have considered it a selfish request on Graham’s part had he simply asked that they drop him off in America on their way to wherever they might have been headed. But it was, alas, a little bit too late to cry over spilled milk. Instead, Graham had far more important matters to attend to. He had, after all, come into a very strange land where the physical laws he was used to no longer seemed to apply. Not only that, but his presence would be missed before too long, and he did not want to cause undue worry back home. But even more immediate: he had a powerful and very wicked Witch to deal with who would soon catch on to his lies, and she was not going to be at all happy with him. Had Graham been a lesser boy, he might have broken down and cried. But Graham decided instead to make the most of the grave situation. He continued to walk past the area where the UFOlanders had been. His main concern now was to get as far away as possible from the awful old Witch’s castle. He was wondering in which specific direction to go when he heard a noise in the trees. At first he could not identify the sound, although it was a familiar sound. Because it was so far out of place in Oz, it did not register at first. But, yes! Now he was certain. It was the sound of a television set. That is to say, the sound of human voices that could only be coming from a radio or TV. It is a sound you simply cannot mistake. Now the sound was getting louder. It was coming toward him. What on earth could a television set be doing here? Graham thought. And how could it be moving toward him? The answer immediately became known when out from a clump of trees walked a robotic looking creature. He had triangular shaped legs and arms and body. In place of a face he had a portable television set. Not only that, but the channels kept changing. First Channel Two with the evening news. Then Channel Four with a basketball game. Then Channel Seven with Jeopardy! Then Channel Eleven with a program about UFOs. Then Channel Thirteen with a commercial for Head and Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo. And so on, and so on. Well, this was the strangest sight to behold. A walking television set. It walked right up to Graham and stopped right up against his face. Then the screen went blank for a moment and a face appeared. That is to say, not a human face exactly, but sort of a cartoon type of face with large, bushy eyebrows; big, expressive eyes; a prominent nose; and a mouth in the shape of a big grin. “Howdy doody,” said the mouth as the thing’s hand shot out and grabbed Graham’s hand in a vigorous handshake.

“How How How ” stammered Graham.

“HowHowHow?” inquired the voice. “That’s a funny word. I never heard it before.”

“Ah ... eh ...” said Graham, his voice still a bit shaky. “I was actually trying to say, ‘How do you do?’”

“Oh, I see,” replied the being, “but how do I do what?”

“No. I mean I’m trying to say, er ... ‘howdy doody’ to you.”

“Oh. Now I understand. I’m sorry for being so dumb. But you see, my entire vocabulary comes from TV shows. I never actually went to school, so some things I do not know. I beg of you, forgive me!” he shouted as he bent down on one knee and held Graham’s hand.

“There’s no need to be so dramatic,” said Graham. “I forgive you.”

“Oh, thanks a bunch,” the creature said. “Is there anything you’d like to watch? You can watch any television show that’s ever been recorded in television history. Just say the word.”

“Well, nothing right now,” Graham answered. “But I’m really curious as to how you came into being.”

“HOW! I! CAME! INTO! BEING? Hmmmmm. Oh, you mean how I was manufactured. Well, originally a tinsmith made me. But then I lost my head over a girl. Then one day an electrical genius from Mars came to Oz to discuss a contract to build satellite dishes. They wanted to bounce signals from Mars to earth in order to relay Martian soap operas in exchange for some earth programming to Mars. Their favorite earth programs are reruns of Mork and Mindy and Star Trek. They’re even more popular than their prime-time blockbuster, My Favorite Earthling. Anyway ... as I was saying ... Let’s see ... I had lost my head, and

“Now, wait a minute!” Graham interrupted. “There are no people on Mars. Besides, the environment there is too hostile to support life.”

“Oh. You mean that they have too many harsh TV critics?”

“No. I mean that For one thing, the temperature would be too harsh. It’s way too cold on Mars to support life. Not to mention the atmosphere, which is mostly carbon dioxide.”

“Oh, my dear boy,” smiled the face. “You don’t know anything, do you? Oh, you know your scientific facts all right but, according to my memory banks, there is life all over the universe that your scientists’ crude observation methods cannot even detect.”

“You’re beginning to sound like the UFO people I talked to,” Graham answered with a tone of disapproval in his voice.

“Well, nevertheless, life exists simultaneously on many different frequency levels that are undetectable from one to the other an analogy would be the many TV channels that are in the air simultaneously, but you can only tune in to the one frequency that your tuning device is locked into.”

“Well, I’ve heard that before,” answered Graham.

“Yes. And people are tuning devices in themselves. That’s why some people are sensitive to the vibrations from Oz and can see what is going on there. Mr. Baum was the first person in America who was able to tune into Oz, and he wrote many history books on this land. Well, that is to say, they were recordings of current events at the time he wrote them, but they are now history. And as much as he wrote, he was only able to record a tiny fraction of our history. Since then, many people have contributed. Some more than others.”

“I wonder why no one in America was able to tune into Oz before L. Frank Baum,” Graham said.

“Because there are millions of frequencies, but he happened to hit the right one one day when he was telling stories to the children. He was very lucky to hit it because of the tremendous odds against him. But once he did, it was easy after that. And it was easy for other people to follow him because they knew it could be done and kept persevering until they were able to tune in themselves. The secret is not to give up if you are truly interested, because once you lock into it, you become better attuned as time goes by. I heard a good example of this sort of thing on my sports channel just the other day. They were discussing Roger Bannister and how he broke the four minute mile in 1954 and that no one in earth’s history up until that time believed it could be done, so no one did it. But once Mr. Bannister ran the mile in three minutes and fifty-nine point four seconds, other people broke the record because now they knew it was possible after all. They had never really tried hard enough before that, because they simply did not believe. This just shows that you can do anything you set your mind to do as long as you believe it’s possible. Let me recite a poem I heard once on my Public Television channel. This poem, if my memory banks serve me right, is by a gentleman by the name of C.W. Longenecker:

The Victor

If you think you are beaten, you are. If you like to win but think you can’t, Its almost a cinch you won’t If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost. For out in the world we find Success begins with a fellow’s will. It’s all in the state of wind. If you think you are outclassed, you are. You’ve got to think high to rise. You can ever win a prize. Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins. Is the one who thinks he can.”

“That’s very inspirational,” said Graham. “I must remember that. But doesn’t it apply equally to girls?”

“Oh, of course!” the TV responded. “But the poem was written a long time ago, before non-specific gender language was in vogue.”

“You seem rather wise for a manufactured person,” said Graham. “Where did your brain come from?”

“Oh, I haven’t really got a brain in the traditional sense of the word. My brain is largely electronic and preprogrammed from a lot of things I’ve seen and heard on TV. There are lessons to be learned, even from the poorest of shows.”

“Do you have a name?” asked Graham.

“Well, most of my friends call me Telle. My full name is Telle Visionary. But you can just call me Telly.”