Up to this point, Dyer felt that he had done quite well, and thus was extremely pleased with himself. He had set out to destroy the letter 'c', as it was a most useless letter that simply was not needed. And in his mind, at least, he had. After years of promoting his arguments against the letter, he had deluded himself into believing that he had really triumphed in his endeavor and that the letter was no longer present in the world.
Phonetically, the letter 'c' is useless. In a word like create, the hard sound of k would be substituted for the harder c sound, Dyer argued. And in a word like disturbance, the soft sound of s would be substituted for the softer c sound. And in a word like touched, the the sound of tsh would be substituted instead of the ch.
He took these points and began telling people about them -- quite loudly, it should be noted -- but on the whole people thought he was just loony. And really, he was in his way. He developed the delusion that he had triumphed. In his reality, the letter no longer existed, and this made him terribly happy and relieved a great number of people as they no longer had to deal with his rantings and funny spellings.
For some amount of time, nothing was brought up around Dyer about his delusion, and even if someone slipped near him and mentioned it, his delusion had established a mental barrier that buffered reality and made sure that nothing got to his mind able to shatter his delusion.
One dark and stormy night a person dared defy Dyer. It was a dark and stormy night for the sake of the narrative at hand, and really it was somewhat hot and muggy. And it wasn't really all that dark either, as all the lights got in the way. But dark and stormy is the assumed setting that is the forbearer of bad news, and so a dark and stormy night it was.
The person who walked toward Dyer now, for those interested, was extremely plain and ordinary. This person only serves two roles in this story, and both of these are about to unfold.
The person's first purpose was to illustrate the power of a person who doesn't know any better than to listen to the good opinions of those gone before him. The person did this, as it were, by merely assaulting Dyer's mental barrier, a thing that no other person would ever dared have done, believing it foolish or perhaps immoral.
The other purpose the person served was to say a single statement to Dyer, and that statement was merely "The façade you have built will be your undoing."
It was at this point that a banana flew between Dyer and the person, merely for the sake of making the alert reader ask why.
The alert reader will observe that Dyer, who is normally quite argumentative and would have responded to an assault like "The wall you have built will be your undoing" by immediately spewing forth many well thought out yet polar and valid arguments, did not do so.
The alert reader will also question why the word used was not "wall," but rather "façade."
To understand the situation, we must adjust our view point slightly and peer into Dyer's mind and through his eyes and reexamine the series of events that just transpired.
Dyer saw the person in front of him and heard the person say "The fasade."
It should be pointed out that upon hearing the word façade, Dyer's awareness shut down. He didn't even hear the rest of the statement that would have more likely stimulated the protest from Dyer.
The person was grinning smugly, but Dyer was quite unable to know this.
The word, as it traveled from the person's mouth to Dyer's ears was most definitely "façade." The mental barrier greeted the word and altered the soft c sound into an s, so that the word Dyer heard was "fasade". This routine transpired before the person had even finished saying the word.
Dyer understood the word, but that point is not relevant. As Dyer digested the word, he remembered how the little swirly thingy on the bottom of the c in the word fasade had always puzzled him.
From another point of view, it was at this point that Dyer's delusion began to shatter.
Dyer's dam had broken, and he saw many things simultaneously. The purpose of the letter c was now quite apparent. It had existed so that the harmless little parasite that lived on the c in words like "façade" had a home. Dyer, or so far as he knew, had destroyed the letter c, thereby destroying the parasite's home and the parasite itself.
No one ever asked the parasite how it felt about this. For that matter, no one ever asked the parasite how it felt about anything. The parasite had been largely overlooked and ignored. The parasite, were it ever asked it's thought's, would more than likely have relatively little to say, but that is not really the point. The point is that no one had thought to ask.
No one in their right mind, at least, had though to ask. A lonely man who had lived alone with his fish had spent several months questioning the parasite in hopes of finding out the meaning of its life, but the man died alone after he had forgotten to eat. The fish died four days later.
Dyer realized why the c had been so prevalent in English words. Many uses had been devised for the c so that it didn't seem so useless, and Dyer had singlehandedly destroyed it as it had seemed useless in his minds eye.
Morality had never been a very integral part of Dyer's personality, and while this realization would have been enough to turn the most devout person who worshiped a religion to the antithesis of said religion, morality was not about to take root in Dyer's mind now. However, the realization that he had inadvertently annihilated an entire group was rather disturbing, and would more than likely haunt even the most torpid individuals.
This weight, blended with the realization that he had erred and the horror he felt at the plot that had masked the c's true purpose would more than likely have resulted in a total shutdown of his mind.
It was at this point that the banana flew in front of him, and the juxtaposition of a banana with millions of little parasites trudging to death was enough to jolt him away from his self examination.
His mental barrier was busy hiding what he had learned. If he remembered anything, his reality would bend in upon itself.
Dyer thought of the letter c, and a flood of grief washed over him, and he did not know why. He looked at the person before him, fighting away tears and tried to think of something at least witty to say, but all that was at his lips was a meek "doubtful."
Dyer turned and slowly walked away, deep in thought and attempting to rationalize a slight hostility he was feeling towards the banana on the ground in front of him.