Chain Letter Cake This is a red alert! Three years ago I came home one day to find a sickly sweet and mysterious brew fermenting on our kitchen table. It had bits of fruit floating in it and it was the pinkish color of something that was trying to be red but failing. It went by the innocent seeming name of: 31-Day Friendship Cake. It started as a pint of viscous liquid in a thick glass gallon-jar with a clasp-and-seal lid. You couldn't seal the lid of course, the building pressure would be too dangerous. You would end up with a small fruit bomb (rumored to be in the 1 megaton range). So you just place a small plate upside down on the rim. The idea was that each few days you had to feed this demanding concoction some new fruit sacrifice, which it instantly devoured. We fed it pineapple chunks, and cling peaches, and maraschino cherries, and raisins, and coconut shavings, and walnuts and pecans. We threw in megadoses of sugar. After a few days it began to gurgle and bubble and burp; steam started to fog the inside of the glass. The jar began to shake, rattling the plate on the top, sending throughout the house the warning sound of porcelain clattering on glass. Late at night the countertop would start to rumble, and I swear, I could hear the mixture chanting: "feed me." "Feed Me." "FEED ME!" After 31 days you had enough of this "stuff" to make three cakes, with three batches of the brew left over. Now here's the catch: you were supposed to eat one cake, give two away (that's the friendly part), use one batch of brew to start another set of 31-day cakes, and give two friends the other batches so they could start their own brew, which in turn would yield two extra batches, which they would each give to two of their friends, and so on. Every 31 days you had to start another batch of brew. We couldn't stop. We ate cake as fast as we could, but it just kept coming! There was always 31-Day Friendship cake in the house. Everywhere I looked I saw this cake, looking back and me and laughing; a wicked, haughty laugh. One day, I "accidentally" dropped a massive object on the glass jar containing the brew. The pink blob spilled out all over the countertop, oozing over the dishwasher onto the floor. We had to call in the EPA, but at last we were free. But I was a little worried about all those other batches of brew we had loosened on an unsuspecting world. By my rough calculation, at the end of two years there would be over 282 billion Friendship Cakes spread out across the planet. By the end of three years, nearly every household in the galaxy would be invaded by a Friendship Cake. Now guess what: It's baaaack! I came home yesterday and there it was! That jar of pinkish liquid sitting there, grinning at me. We have to stop this before it's too late!