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"Will you cut that out?" Startled, Eric turned around to find his roommate, John, standing behind him. "That tapping sound you keep making is keeping me up!" yelled John, his fists curled up. "Whatever it is you're doing, stop it! I'm trying to sleep!"

"Oh... sorry," said Eric, grinning sheepishly. "I... didn't realize that I was being so loud." Frowning, he turned back to his computer. "To be honest, though, I'm not entirely sure how you heard me. All I was doing was typing something at my computer."

"Well, you're a very loud typer then!" said John. "I don't know how you make such a racket with that thing, but you have got to keep it down! I can hear it all the way from my room upstairs! Isn't there a way to turn the typing volume down on it?"

Eric sighed. Typical technophobe John. "I'm sorry, but there isn't," he said. "Your ears must be pretty sensitive if you can hear me from all the way upstairs. Maybe you could try closing your bedroom door?"

"I'll have you know that I need to keep that door open!" retorted John. "Seeing that hallway keeps my mind very calm! And my ears are perfectly normal, thank you very much!" He walked over to the computer, bending over next to Eric. "What exactly are you writing about, anyway?"

"Oh, it's... just a program for my computer," said Eric, looking back at the code he was writing. "I'm just trying to write a script for email automation."

"A script? Let me see." John knelt down, squinting to read the computer screen. He frowned. "Well, that's got to be the worst script I've ever seen! I can't even read it! How's anyone going to know what the plot of your play is if they can't even understand what people are saying?"

Eric groaned. "It's not a play, John," he said.

"It doesn't matter whether it's a play, a movie, a show, or some stupid video project! It still isn't going to make sense to anyone!" John leaned in again, squinting harder. "How would you even read this? I can't even pronounce most of this stuff! What does that even say at the top? Import..." He leaned in further. "...something... plib?"

"It's not that kind of script!" yelled Eric in annoyance. "It has nothing to do with acting or anything like that! It's a program that I'm coding to send emails automatically!"

"Oh... it's in code? Well, I guess that explains why I couldn't read it." John chuckled. "But I suppose the people you're sending it to will be able to decipher it, right?"

"I'm not sending it to anyone." Eric groaned again, shaking his head. "It's completely internal." He turned his attention back to his computer. "Basically, I write up the code using Python, then I write up what I want the email to be and-"

"Hang on a minute." said John. "You write up the code using what?"

"Um... Python," replied Eric. "It's a programing language. It's pretty simple to use, if you're interested in learning about it."

"And why would I want to do that?" demanded John. "I already know plenty about Pythons, you know! They're large snakes, usually found in Africa, Asia, and Australia, and they use constriction to kill their prey! Everyone knows that!"

Eric lowered his head, covering his eyes. There were days when John's absurd lack of technical knowledge could really get on his nerves, and today was one of those days. "John, it's not that kind of Python," he said. "The programing language is called Python, but it isn't the same thing. It was developed in the Netherlands by-"

"There are no pythons in the Netherlands! Weren't you listening?" yelled John. "Africa, Asia, and Australia are the three locations!" He sighed. "And I know that there are plenty of different environments where Pythons can live, but a computer room is definitely not one of them! If I recall, many of them live in rainforests, as well as swamps, grasslands-"

"We're not talking about those kinds of pythons!" yelled Eric back. "Why aren't you listening to me? Python is a programing language! Obviously it's going to be best used in a computer room!"

"Really?" said John. "Then I suppose you'd like to explain why we're in a rainforest right now?

"Why we're... what?" Eric looked up from his computer, examining his apartment. The walls had completely changed, having gone from plaster to rough, unrefined wood. The carpeting had also been replaced by rough wood, the kind that you would find on a tree stump. All of his belongings looked the same, but the apartment itself looked far more rustic, more naturalistic... like they were inside a very large tree. But that wasn't the most shocking part: upon looking out the window, Kuro discovered that all of the surrounding buildings were gone, having been replaced by large trees covered with glassless windows. The roads had disappeared as well, long forest trails having taken their place. And instead of the bustling sounds of morning traffic, he heard the cries of various native birds and bugs. John was right: they'd somehow gone from being in the middle of the city to the middle of the rainforest.

"Well?" said John smugly. "Is this proof enough for you? Is this indication that pythons of any type are more suited to rainforests than computer rooms enough for you to wrap your small, pretentious little mind around?"

Ordinarily, Eric would have been too preoccupied with his home's sudden change in venue to give John's words even a second thought. But he was angry; something about John's snarky, know-it-all attitude had pushed him over the edge. "We're still in a computer room, you know!" he said. "I know we're inside a tree too, but that doesn't matter! I still have my computer, my printer, my desk, and everything else I need here! None of that's going to change just because our apartment looks different!"

"Oh, don't overcomplicate things!" retorted John. "You know as well as I do that you can't have a computer room in the rainforest! There's no internet, no electricity, and no way to get in contact with other people! Everyone knows that you can't have a run a computer room from inside a tree! You need a proper building to do that!" As he spoke, he absentmindedly scratched an itch on the back of his hand, not noticing the yellow and white scales sprouting there. Nor did he noticing his fingernails turning black as they grew, becoming long and pointed.

Eric turned back towards his computer, scratching his own hand as he did. "Well, it seems like my computer is working perfectly fine anyway!" he said. "So I guess I can have a computer room in here after all!" He mockingly gestured with his hands, both of which were now covered in blue and white scales, long black claws having sprouted from the tips of his fingers. "Oh, and I'm not trying to overcomplicate things at all!" he added. "I feel this whole deal is very simple and straightforward, just like the Python language itself!"

"Ha! Well, you're right about the straightforward part," said John, that smug grin still strung across his face. "Pythons do move in a rather straightforward fashion, unlike most other snake types." As he spoke, he suddenly noticed that his legs felt much shorter than before... like they were shrinking into his body. But he refused to let that distract him. "But calling them simple would be completely ludicrous! Why, they're anything but!"

RIP! The sound of tearing fabric could be heard throughout the room. As it did, Eric felt a tremor run through his body, along with the feeling of something major about it having changed. His backside felt exposed, and... longer? He cautiously reached behind him, feeling... some kind of long appendage sticking out of his bottom. Like a tail. He looked up, his eyes widening upon seeing John. He too had grown a tail, long and serpentine and covered in yellow and white scales just like his hands. But Eric only stared for a second before shaking his head. He couldn't let trivial matters like that distract him, he had an argument to win! "Well, the LANGUAGE of Python is very simple!" he said. "The actual syntax is very easy to read, since it looks so much like English. And that makes it pretty easy to learn about too, since you don't have to worry about figuring out what all the different symbols mean once you-"

"Oh, will you stop saying that!" said John, his frustration levels rising. "I can't stand you spewing this constant drivel that pythons are easy to learn about! Why, it wasn't even that long ago that scientists figured out that they actually kill their prey by cutting off its blood flow and causing cardiac arrest, instead of suffocating it!" His legs were starting to shrink faster and faster, making it more and more difficult to stand. Meanwhile, his tail was doing the opposite, growing longer and longer as it stretched out into the hallway behind him. It wasn't long before John simply gave up on using his legs, lifting them both into the air as he rested on his thick, heavy tail. It felt more natural to him, anyway.

"Cardiac arrest! How sick!" By now, Eric had given up using his legs as well, simply leaning back on his long, thick tail just as John was. He barely even noticed as they withered away into nothing, his socks and pants falling to the ground in front of him. "This just goes to show how much better my version of Python is than your stupid animals!" he said, cracking his neck as the blue and white scales spread up it. "It's even portable, you know! You can transfer all your programs between all your different operating systems and platforms, and you don't even need to change anything about the code! You can bring it into Windows, Mac, Linux, you name it! Can your stupid little pythons boast about that!"

"Why, how dare you!" cried John, flexing his slightly longer neck. "Do you know nothing about invasive species? About pythons being sold as pets and then being released into the wild? What about pythons escaping from zoos? There are still Burmese pythons that are living in the Florida Everglades, you know! They upset the balance of the those ecosystems and make life even more difficult for the other animal species living there! It makes my blood boil just to think about it, and you have the nerve to make fun of it? You absolute pig-headed blundering buffoon!" As he spoke, he began feeling slightly lightheaded as the yellow scales spread up to his face. He felt his entire snake-like body shake with rage as his face began to stretch forward, the scales encompassing it as it formed into a reptilian snout. He reached up and pulled a clump of black hair from his head, letting it fall to the ground. He didn't need it, he thought: he'd be better off without it anyway. He was more focused on giving the man in front of him a peice of his mind!

Though perhaps "man" wasn't the best term for Eric, who was looking just as snake-ish as John was. He opened his long mouth to laugh at his roommate, sticking out his long, forked tongue as he did. "Are you saying these pythons actually cause problems if you try to move them somewhere else?" he laughed. "How utterly pathetic is that? If the Python language had those problems, it wouldn't be nearly as useful! In fact, I've barely scratched the surface of all the things MY Python can do! It's completely open-source, for one thing! If you know how, you could download the source code, give it a few tweaks, and make it even better for yourself! Not that you would know how to do something that complicated, of course. Oh, and you don't even need to compile it to run it! It's internally converted and goes line by line when it's run, so you can fix mistakes easily! Again, not that you'd know what any of that means..."

"That does it! Your endless babbling has gone on for long enough!" Immediately, John reached forward, grabbing Eric by the shoulders and throwing him against his tail. Immediately, the tail began to wrap around Eric's body, tightly squeezing and constricting him. "It's a shame I can't actually make you suffocate like this," lamented John as his tail continued to wrap around Eric. "I would take so much joy in making you suffer for as long as possible."

"Well, I say that two can play at that game!" cried Eric. Lifting his own massive tail off the ground, he slowly began to wrap it around John, until it was constricting him as well. "How do you like that?" he said, squeezing as tightly as he could. "Perhaps this will teach you to keep your ears open every once in a while and-"

"What in the blazes is going on here? Are you two trying to kill each other?"

Both John and Eric suddenly released their grips around each other as they turned towards the voice. They knew who it was, of course: it belonged to Graham, another roommate of theirs. But they got quite a shock upon looking at him: like them, he had also transformed into a human-like python, only his scales were dark gray instead of yellow or blue. "I woke up to hear the two of you bickering about God-knows-what, so I thought I'd come down to see what it was all about," he said. "And then I find that our appartement looks like some kind of hollowed-out tree, and I look like some kind of long snake-man hybrid abomination! I spent about fifteen minutes just trying to figure out how to move in this body, you know! And then I come downstairs to find you two wrapping your coils around each other like you're trying to suffocate each other! If you two have some kind of explanation for this, I'd like to hear it now!

"Well... you see, we weren't trying to suffocate each other," said John, releasing Eric from his coils. "We were actually trying to cut off each other's blood circulation so that-"

"Oh, shut up already," said Eric. Lifting himself up onto his tail, he turned to face Graham. "Look. I was just over here minding my own business, trying to do some programing, when he shows up and starts berating me for no reason whatsoever! And then he begins going on and on about pythons or something, and then he suddenly attacks me! I don't know how this whole python transformation thing happened, but he must have something to do with it! I'm certain of it!"

"What? This isn't my fault!" said John. "I was just coming down here to tell him to keep his typing down, and he refused to listen to me! And then he starts rattling on about his own pythons, but the facts he was spewing were so irredeemably inaccurate that I simply felt the need to correct him! But then he begins going on and on about how much better his pythons are than mine, and I couldn't just let him keep talking to me like that! I had to do something!" He looked down at himself, then back at Graham. "But again, I have no idea how this whole transformation thing happened! Not a clue!"

For a moment, Graham just stared back at them, frowning. "Alright, then," he finally said. "I have no clue what exactly is going on between the two of you, but whatever it is, it needs to stop! The way you two are acting is completely unbefitting of pythons such as yourselves! Why, do you have any idea how little the Pythons would have accomplished if they'd constantly been fighting amongst themselves! Do you think they would have gone on to become one of the greatest surrealist comedy troupes in all of Great Britain if they'd constantly been wrapping their coils all over each other and trying to cut off each other's blood circulation or whatever?"

John and Eric looked at each other, then back at Graham. "Sorry, what?" they both said in unison.

Graham shook his head with a sigh. "Listen," he said. "All I'm saying is that you two are being far too silly for your own good! I don't want to have to enforce this kind of thing, but I absolutely will if I must! Now, separate yourselves from each other and get on with whatever you were doing before! Get on with it, I say! Get on with it!" With a yawn, Graham turned around and began slithering back upstairs to his room, leaving the two confused snake-men behind.

After a beat, John suddenly turned to Eric. "Do you think we're in one of those surrealist comedy sketches right now?" he asked.