I found myself standing in the middle of a windowless classroom with a white-tiled floor, white walls, recessed fluorescent lighting, and several aisles of desks with IBM PC ATs on them. The floor was littered with crushed paper cups. A Terry Pratchett sat at every terminal and typed at a furious pace. Each one identical, at least at first glance, with the writer's trademark white beard, black clothing, and black hat. I turned and examined one of the Pratchetts to my left. From a distance, it would have been hard to tell the difference between the imposter and the original, but up close, it was easy to see the examinee was actually a middle-aged woman from Kingston, Ontario (where facts are scarce, my imagination provides). I turned to my right and discovered that Pratchett was actually a college-aged man from New Delhi, India. I suddenly noticed that none of the Pratchetts looked at their monitors while writing. It seemed a little bizarre. Instead, they all stared straight ahead at a poster covering the front wall. It showed a disc-shaped planet resting atop the backs of four large elephants standing atop a much larger turtle swimming through the universe. The Pratchetts stared at it with enamored expressions. The entire room was alive with the sound of typing, but it was off somehow. I listened more closely. It wasn't vibrant or chaotic, but rather mechanical and repetitive. And it was in unison, as though the keyboards were chanting. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something hurrying my direction. A silver serving tray, with hundreds of paper cups on top and hundreds of tiny bare feet underneath, skittered towards me. The cups were overflowing with what looked like orange juice or perhaps cough medicine. In any case, I stepped aside to let it pass. As the tray scampered by, the Indian Pratchett grabbed a cup, gulped down the liquid, crushed the cup, and tossed it on the floor. The tray continued down the aisle, made a sharp turn at the end, and scurried up the next aisle. The scene I was witnessing suddenly made sense (in a convoluted, nonsensical way). Everybody was writing under the influence. In the front corner of the room was a writhing pile of green and white striped paper. I went over to inspect it. Every page was covered with dot matrix text. Beneath the pile, I could hear the muffled sounds of the printer firing pins against the paper. I ripped off a sheet and read it. It was horrible, every line of it, and hard to read (and not just because the ribbon had been reused). What I held in my hand was a dreadful imitation of Pratchett's writing, a cheap knockoff of the original. I couldn't believe it. I grabbed another page and read it. And then another page. And another. With each page, my disbelief slowly turned into anger. Parodies abounded. There were parodies of wizards, witches, and watchmen. These were followed by parodies of the parodies. I tore through the pile and discovered that everything eventually degenerated into an endless cycle of parody and counter-parody. And that wasn't the worst of it. There were footnotes. Everywhere. Entire pages of footnotes. In some cases, footnotes spanning enough pages to constitute chapters unto themselves. It was all too much for me to bear. I threw down the pages and wailed, "What is wrong with you people?!" And that's when I noticed the tears streaming down my face and into my beard. I froze. Wait, I thought. I slowly raised my hand to my chin. I had a beard? With a start, I ripped it off and yelled in pain. It had been attached with duct tape. Alarm overcame me. I looked at my sleeves. They were black. So were my pants. So was the hat I pulled off my head. I stood at the front of the room, paralyzed with shock. Okay, I thought, don't panic. I looked around the room. None of the Pratchetts had noticed me. They kept typing and drinking the orange liquid. If I had the clothing and the beard, I quietly reasoned, I must have a computer, too, right? I rapidly scanned the aisles and spotted a terminal with an empty seat. I rushed over to it, nearly slipping on the paper cups strewn across the floor, sat down, and read the words on the monitor. Everything I had seen before paled in comparison to the horrid mimicry displayed on the screen. I was just like everyone else in the room. I, too, had been writing under the influence. It seemed I lacked that certain something - the awareness, the creativity, the skill - to help my writing escape the influence of the author I admired. That's when a terrible fear grabbed me with its clammy hands and yanked me from the desk, toppling the chair in the process. The fear looked exactly like King Kong, except it was yellow, scaly and had purple slime oozing from the corner of its eye sockets. In passing, I also observed it wore a black hat. "Even if you managed to escape this author's influence," said the rather articulate fear with a growl and a gust of breath that smelled of wet socks and garlic. "What will prevent you from being sucked in and writing under the influence of another author?" Before I could answer, it slammed me against the far wall. I sagged to the ground and winced. "I don't know," I said in a voice barely above a whisper. The fear snorted and loped towards me. I felt the rising urge not to be around to find out what it would do next. I looked everywhere, but saw no way out. The fear was nearly on top of me when I yelped and squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that my cheeks turned red and my head started to quiver from the strain. The pervading smell of garlic and wet socks suddenly became the smell of coffee. I slowly opened my eyes and found myself sitting in front of the computer with the browser open to the NaNoWriMo forums. I let out a halfhearted, "Yatta," and sighed, the fear of writing under the influence still haunting my thoughts. It would linger a while longer. I closed the browser, took a sip of coffee (still hot, thank goodness), and decided a bit of fresh air would do me good.