"When the big day came, they even shut down radar center. Everybody had to stand inspection. No exceptions.

"Colonel Fenderson and the top sergeant walked down the isle, inspecting one cubicle at a time. It was junk on the bunk," he added, indicating the most thorough inspection there is - with every piece of gear spread out neatly on the bunk. "Only one bunk with bedding on it was empty. Only one man was missing.

"They wanted to know who Ravenhurst was and, more importantly, where he was. Nobody knows, but the other guy in his cubicle reminds the top sergeant than Ravenhurst is a malingerer.

"Then they ask if anybody has ever seen this Ravenhurst. Private Monty Cantsin pipes up. Every afternoon Ravenhurst sits right there on his bunk.

"Well then, what does this Ravenhurst look like? Cantsin stretches out both arms and says, 'Oh, he's a big mountain of a man!' But just then the top sergeant bends over and picks up these little size six shoes.

"They call up motor transport. 'For the hundredth goddamned time,' the captain tells the top sergeant, 'there is nobody named Ravenhurst in motor transport.' So the brass huddle together and decide Ravenhurst must have mustered into squadron without checking in with his assigned work station - so he could just fuck off all the time. So they are ready to hang him - as soon as they find him."

A futile base-wide manhunt was conducted before Sergeant Karen Elliot heard they were searching for Ravenhurst. Somehow - perhaps by examining the basic training files - he discovered that Ravenhurst was a hoax earlier and now he spilled the beans in exchange, I'm sure, for many points.

A few days later a letter of commendation, dictated by Colonel Fenderson, appeared on the squadron bulletin board - congradulating Private Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst for outstanding conduct.

In 1968, when Robert Anton Wilson and I decided to form a conspiracy with no purpose - so that investigators would never be able to figure out what it was doing - I told him about Ravenhurst and invited him, or anyone else he recruited, to do anything, anywhere, any time under the already- ubiquitous name. We decided to call that conspiracy, however unoriginally, the Bavarian Illuminati - a caper that culminated eventually in the Illuminatus! Trilogy.