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By a pond, in a pit, under the dirt, lay ten eggs, soft and small and filthy.

They were dug up and eaten by a skunk, along with two other nearby batches of eggs.

Another nest was unearthed and eaten by two crows.

Two OTHER nests hatched successfully into coin-sized little turtles that struggled free of the suffocating earth, only to be devoured by a very lucky passing fox.

One more nest hatched and saw all of its turtles make it to the water, where nine-tenths of them were consumed by fish. The only surviving turtle dodged fish for years, grew to adulthood, mated, and on its way to dig its nest crossed a road and was hit by a car.

This is how many troubled species work, most of the time.

***

In a tree, in a bough, in a woven basket, sat five eggs, speckled and small and relatively secure. The whole world lay ahead of them.

One came out slightly crushed and began to smell bad before very much time had passed. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few sharp flicks of her head.

One was doing very well indeed until a hungry raccoon came upon the nest just after sunrise and stuffed it into its face before being bombarded eyeball-first by Mother forced it into a hasty retreat.

One hatched and died right away for some reason. Mother ejected it from the nest with a few flicks of her head.

One hatched, grew, thrived, and became covered in feathers. It then left the nest to practice flight further and was devoured by a cat in a moment of inattentiveness.

One hatched, grew, thrived, fledged, and in the great dawning day of its new life, was picked off by a hawk while trying to find twigs to make its own nest.

This is how most successful species work, most of the time.

***

In a puddle, in an old tire, in a junk yard, sat a hundred eggs.

Half of them were wiped out by overflow caused by a light storm.

Half of them were devoured by dragonfly larva

Half of them were consumed by a passing swallow on leaving the water and taking flight.

Half of them were eaten by bats that evening.

And half of the leftovers from THAT were eaten on the wing by adult dragonflies.

Of the remaining three, one never managed to lay any eggs, one almost did but was eaten by a duck while laying, and the last one laid a hundred eggs.

This is how most very successful species work, most of the time.

***

In a bassinet, under a blanket, in a home sat a baby.

It grew up and learned to talk.  It grew up and learned to walk.

It got bigger and learned math and reading and writing.

It got bigger and learned about society and grades.

It got bigger and learned about owning a vehicle and a home and making money.

Then it designed, planned, constructed and sold a swathe of suburban sprawl that consumed the tree and the pond and the house it had grown up in, necessitating and encouraging as aspirational an increasingly-unlikely and unattainable lifestyle organized around and devoted to the personal use of inefficient single-family carbon-emitting vehicles. This was rewarded.

This is how at least one species works. So far.

***

The junk yard got a lot more tires and those tires got a lot more puddles though. So it wasn’t all bad for everybody.

“This is an island for you,” he was told. “It’s everything you’ve ever wanted, and everything you’ve ever needed, and all of it is on it and around it and under it and for you. There are books and wooden floors and walls; there are ferns and moss and stones; there are plums and secrets and cliffs. And it’s for you.”

So he stood on the docks for a while, looking up at it. At the stone cliffs and the green forest and the twitter and cheep and whistle of birds he didn’t quite recognize. At the gently roaring splash of the water on the rocks, and the lip-lap slap of it underneath the wooden dock, which was grey enough to feel proper and not so old as to be rotten.

There was just enough sun to be warm, and just enough of a breeze to keep cool. A gull yelled something insulting in its beautifully horrible voice.

And he walked off the dock and into the island.

***

There were ancient ruins, crumbled enough to be even more beautiful but not so far as to fall apart. Plants and moss and lichens coated them like damp green jewels.

He looked at them, and he walked through them, but he didn’t go inside and he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering away, like nothing he was looking at was quite real. Running a thumb over the surface of an old, old stone brought it a bit closer – yes, that’s stone, that’s real, that’s right – but kept its significant so very far away. Just a stone.

He looked at the carvings. They were complicated – so complicated his eyes twisted away from the details – and pretty, if crumbled. Maybe if he were more clever or enjoyed puzzles he would learn something from them.

So he walked through the ruins one more time, wandering mind and all. And he left.

***

The ocean was wide and blue and beautiful. The sky was nearly so, but with a smattering of exactly enough clouds for comfort. A little fish jumped some ways away, pursued by a dolphin. It was over half the planet and it was snuggled into a cove that hugged the island’s coast as deeply and reassuringly as a mother.

It was also a little too cold. He could dip his feet in, and they got used to it, and he could wade in, and he got used to that, but everything above his belly button hated it, absolutely hated it when the cold reached. He tried dipping his arms in first, fooling himself into thinking he was already swimming, but it didn’t work, and he was wondering what he’d do if he went into the water, or where he’d go, or what he would see. Besides it was awfully frightening to be anywhere deep enough to swim by himself.

So he waded back out again, and put his shirt back on and looked at the cove. And he left.

***

On a hill made of old, old, old rock and shaded by conifers that were the sort of deep green you can never find anywhere else, there stood a cottage of ambiguous size. Its outside was weathered greys; its roof was faded green tiles; its insides were the deep, worn, warm browns of wood that had been varnished a long time before anyone now living had been born.

In a corner of the building, in shelves built into the walls and onto the walls and anywhere they’d fit, were books. Some were ancient and yellowed and well-cared for; some had been printed on paper scarce better than newsprint and were falling apart at the seams; some were disconcertingly glossy with untattered jackets and looked to have been bought even less than a year ago. They were crammed into every shelf and when the shelves could hold no more they’d been stacked on top of them like cordwood. There were old old comic collections and new new bestsellers and pulp fiction and nonfiction and local history and histories of the world and everything and anything but in a very specific way and shape and texture that made it all boil down to being there, right there, in an old corner of an old building with a giant and frail glass window that didn’t quite fit right, so you could smell the pines and see them tremble in the breeze.

There was also a thing that was either a bed or a couch or not, which had large cushions.

He sat on the couch-or-not and he looked at the books. The very, very, very old books he remembered from when he was very, very, very young, and he felt fearfully ancient and distant from them just thinking of it, so badly his teeth hurt. The new and fresh books made him wary – he didn’t know names, or thought maybe he did and had forgotten – and when he opened one the thought of how long it had been since he’d done this nearly made him cry. The pages seemed to take forever, and sometimes he simply stopped in a sentence and couldn’t move.

When he was almost halfway done, he realized he might be enjoying himself, and he wanted to tell someone, but there was nobody there and the rest of the plot was making him anxious and when he looked at the author he felt old and frail and stupid.

The breeze had died down a little. The pines weren’t moving. He put the book back, page unmarked, and he left.

***

The kitchen was mostly windows and screens and an awful lot of counters, no two of which seemed to be alike and all of which had been used and cleaned very thoroughly until the cuts and chips had turned into a texture all of its own. There was a little open cupboard with big glass jars, fixed at a jaunty angle by their flattened sides and filled with flour, with sugar, with – inexplicably – little cheesy crackers. There was a small table stuffed haphazardly in the corner, in case someone didn’t want to go find where they were meant to eat and wanted to look down the island over the rocks and the trees and all the way out over the water.

The fridge was full of things, the cupboards were full of things, the freezer was full of things, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them or for how long or if the stove was cleaned or how to clean it or if anything was being saved for some special occasion or how to tell if meat was thawed or if they had plums.

They did have plums, fat little black ones like he remembered. They cut cleanly, like he remembered. They were juicy, like he remembered.

He wasn’t sure if they tasted like he remembered. Maybe a little too sweet, or a little too bitter, or maybe the flesh was too flaky. And the memory was frustrating, because he knew he’d been too young and stupid to pay that much attention or care as hard as he seemed to, so he finished the plums while he looked out the window and watched the sunlight make the waves sparkle. And he left.

***

There were two doors; the heavy inner one, wooden and seamless and strong, and the thin metal one with a big mesh screen and a carefree clatter that came every time it swung open and clanged shut. It was loud and brief and bright as he walked down the paths in bare feet, eyes on the packed needles and soft moss and old, old stone and startlingly prickly little sprouts and shrubs. The water left him by sight, but its sound stayed softly with him. The trees took away the sun, but left the afternoon light. The air smelled like growing things and moving water, and as he walked aimlessly down narrow trails made by repeated footsteps he saw and heard furtive and fleeting scurries, of small bugs and things with fur.

But the thing he saw didn’t have six legs or fur at all. It was small, and bipedal, and feathered, and had a keratinous beak and bright, beautiful big eyes in its skull. It was a dinosaur, of modest but not tiny size, and it was as curious to see him as he was it.

He looked at the dinosaur. It tilted its head to the side at an improbable speed to look at him too, and it made a small dinosaur sound. It was so close and didn’t seem to mind, and the thought then came too him that unlike anything he’d seen when he was small, he now had a camera in his pocket right there, so he took it out and took a picture, then another picture because his hand was shaking, then changed his brightness settings so the picture would be visible, then another picture because he’d missed the dinosaur and taken a picture of the tree behind it, than another picture because he’d been zoomed out too far, and then one more picture as the dinosaur hopped, skipped, and fluttered into the air and out through the branches and into the rest of its life.

The photos were quite blurry. Then he realized that he’d been so busy taking them t hat his memories were blurry too, so he’d have to treasure the moment as it had been. Thinking about how to do that or if he could do that or whether he’d ever done that made his stomach uneasy and his footsteps sluggish, and so after only a little ways farther he stopped, then he turned, then he left.

***

The sun was low and the sky was somewhere between purple and blue with all the beautiful of both and the sureness of neither. His legs were slow but his path was downhill and well-worn, and it took him down to a small stretch of beach with more sand than gravel and less gravel than stone and a circle of rocks that had plainly been selected with a lackadaisical if enthusiastic eye for shape and size. They were slightly smeared with carbon from use, and they were in use, and the little red flicks of fire were only just making their way out of the tinder and filling up the kindling, yet to set to work on the half-seasoned logs and big dead dried branches.

Around the sticks sat those stones, and around those stones sat people, on big logs and big rocks and at least one or two very old and sort of beaten to hell folding chairs that had clearly been designed for a flat porch or a lawn or at least a different beach, one with a parking lot. They were bent and warped and creaky and bad and that made them very good indeed, especially for slouching, and slouching was good for stories, which was what all the people were doing, in between laughing, and drinking from a cooler, and eating things from various bags. Someone had produced a guitar and was making suspicious motions that kept indicating singing might happen.

He sat down on a rock and listened, and he ate some chips from a bag. But they talked too quickly to each other about too many things he didn’t understand, and after eating too many slightly-dew-dampened chips he felt a little sick in his stomach, so he said goodbye to someone or anyone or nobody and he left.

***

After he left he went to the dock again, and he sat on it and watched the moon without looking at anything and waited for the stars without anticipation.

Sound came to him from over the water from everywhere, turning into nothing but calm. Branches and breezes and waves and a cautious owl feeling out the start of the evening for itself. Every breath tasted of water and plants and life. Every step rubbed against his bare feet, sent vibrations up his leg, curled into his spine and gave notice of where he was and what it was and none of it remained with him. He’d just sat down and already it was all something that had happened far and forever away.

Closing his eyes made it better, because he couldn’t see, and worse, because he could hear everything. When he did it hard enough he couldn’t think, but the things that troubled him were too simple and big to be thoughts.

The island was everything he’d ever wanted and he didn’t want anything else and he didn’t want it and so he waited there, his feet dangling just above the water, and did nothing, and thought of nothing useful in particular, and watched for someone to take him back again.

Greetings, most august and charitable readers, and a most enthusiastic welcome to the sixteenth column of our biannual series featuring the residents of Uncle Amblefaster’s Home for Unusual Beasts. Today we’ll be taking a look at our most famous resident, Krystalwing the Merciless.

Krystalwing seems to have come out of the egg with a somewhat rare recessive trait that left her upper thorax and main flight wings partially para-mineralized – and more rare still, the invasive mineral in question was adamant-232. This lucky set of advantages gave Krystalwing the edge she needed to survive her matriculating broodflight; when many of her slower siblings would’ve been caught and devoured by her mother; Krystalwing would’ve been a very unpalatable mouthful indeed. Unfortunately it also made her an obvious target in the wild and made camouflaging herself to hunt difficult, particularly from anything that can detect even basic levels of ambient riadioarcana. This made her both a visible target for faerie sport-hunters and relatively simple to capture alive due to long-term malnourishment.

Krystalwing spent the subsequent sixteen years of her juvenile instar in the care of the infamous Uncle Moonlovewingbranchdoveskystarmoontwilightshinemoon’s Mystical Beast Experience (which you may have heard of in recent documentaries). After the incident was over and the authorities came in to recapture the exhibits and arrest the surviving management, Krystalwing managed to slip the net and go ‘on the lam’ into the fertile and deeply-populated half-oxen valleys of the Barsoon Lowlands. Here she thrived for more than six years completely undetected by dint of consuming every single witness to her nocturnal predations on farms, ranches, and pastures, down to the last bone, thread of cloth, and drop of blood. Clever rascal!

At last Krystalwing was located when she ate a shepherd who was sufficiently stubborn and vengeful to leave a spectroplasmic entity, which haunted the roadside where he was consumed for six months until a passerby was able to alert nearby law enforcement. Their subsequent investigations and corresponding disappearance were made a matter of record, as were the animal control squad, the emergency riot team, and the first three military griffin-copters, and so after two and a half weeks of blood, death and fire Krystalwing was subdued with an ultracandescent hap-arctic missile to the jugular.

Adapting Krystalwing (who’d by then adjudicated to merit ‘merciless’ peerage after killing at least sixty different sapients without prejudice as to age, social status, or infirmity) to the new life afforded her at Uncle Amblefaster’s Home for Unusual Beasts was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, we only had a single ultramaximum-security enclosure available at the time, and it was occupied (see column 1: Qxxrjhjdsah the Barely-Containable), so suitable quarters would be costly due to both their necessary scope and the speed required. For another, her food requirements were unusual: due to the complex invasion of much of her digestive systems and upper book lungs by adamant supergeometrine masses (which began due to careless medical support by unlicensed handlers at Uncle Moonlovewingbranchdoveskystarmoontwilightshinemoon’s Mystical Beast Experience), Krystalwing now required flesh and blood from specifically sapient creatures to prevent much of her remaining body from fully transmutorphing into adamant and then rupturing with sufficient force to detonate every ley line and fairy circle in a million-cubit radius. This would not be an ideal outcome.

Initial care was provided by the kindly and motivated staff at Kercepholon’s Grasp leviathan-mending hospital, who provided the expertise needed to keep Krystalwing subdued in slumber and nourished on an intravenous diet of liquefied medical cadavers. Meanwhile, a state-of-the-art compound was created by a substantial charitable effort from Glormfoot Brobdingpants’ Extra-Large ‘Giant-Sized’ Constructions, which did necessitate Glormfoot himself working four sixteen-hour shifts in a row and the emptying of several quarries-worth of mettlemarble and aurichalcum for the fencing, substrate mesh, and ‘finite-sky’ aviary blindscape. Finally a sacrificial colony of mnenemical worm-people was installed in the location and given a careful selection of rich inner lives and subjective experiences to ingest and assume as their own so as to provide a suitably renewable, nourishing, and affordable faux-sapient food source.

Two years on and we’re proud to say that all the difficulties and hardships have been worth it: Krystalwing is as healthy and happy as she’s likely to ever be, although she will never be releasable due to her over-habituation in prior captivity and the strong likelihood of a class IIX Armageddon if she’s ever uncontrolled for more than sixty minutes. She will spend the rest of her four-kalpa lifespan in our care where she receives ample food, dedicated medical attention, and a safe home that can withstand the unnamed energies radiating from her every heartbeat.

I’m somewhat light on personal anecdotes involving Krystalwing myself, as I only began working with her last year after her principal caregiver quit to spend more time with his grandchildren. I can, however, confidently report that any rumours regarding her internal autocatalysis spinning up out of control are completely false. Instead it thrums steadily and smoothly, like a heartbeat. If Krystalwing the Merciless ever suffers a catastrophic humour imbalance that spins her and this entire care center into a catastrophic neogenesis – resetting the land itself back to the primordial youth of this plane, when matter was a suggestion and space a novelty –  it will definitely not be by happenstance.

She could almost certainly do it on purpose, mind you, but I doubt she will. She REALLY likes it when I give her backskritches.

It wasn’t two pm. Two pm was when the bottle under the desk came out, at least on Fridays. It was one forty-nine pm and there was one patient left and they were just leaving and Dr. Madeline Skoggard, PhD, was just about to take a ten minute break a bit early when the phone rang.

“It’s two pm,” she lied to the secretary.

“It’s urgent,” he said.

“I’M urgent.”
“Your mom’s urgent, pick up the damned phone. I already told her you’d talk to her.”
Madeline sighed out forty years of disappointment over three seconds – with a little rasp of phlegm for good measure – and picked up the phone. “Dr. Skoggard speaking,” spoke Dr. Skoggard.

“Oh thank you, listen, it’s Jean, Jean Lyman from down the way, and I’m really sorry to be bothering you, it’s just that there’s this thing, this thing that’s happened with Sara, and I’m not sure what’s wrong, but it’s very urgent, and I need to tell you, and”

“Breathe,” commanded Dr. Skoggard. And it was so.

“It’s Sara,” said Jean, having breathed. “She’s, she’s JUMPING everywhere. Constantly. And it’s getting worse. This morning she was jumping on her bed; by lunch she was jumping onto the kitchen counter; and I swear to god heart in hand doctor I phoned you because ten minutes ago my little Sara, aged nine and three-quarters, jumped onto our roof. Standing start. Standing start! And you KNOW we never tolerated pole vaulting in this house, so I don’t have the faintest idea where she’s gotten it from.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Well, this is pretty straightforward. Your daughter’s got a case of video game.”
“A what?

“A case of video game. Classic platformer by the sound of it. These things are pretty mechanically straightforward and burn themselves out reasonably fast, and indirect transmission is very rare, particularly once symptoms emerge – she probably picked it up off a schoolfriend directly by handling an oily controller or something. Just keep her away from colourful mushrooms and jewelry so she doesn’t get any powerups and it should burn out overnight.”
“But what if she’s on the roof when it happens?”
“No, it’s a very gradual descent. She’ll be as good as new by tomorrow. Listen, you want something to do? Take some photos to embarrass her with later, okay? Family memories are priceless. Phone me back if anything other than what I’ve described happens, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you so much, it’s just that”

‘”Goodbye,” said Dr. Skoggard to the phone.

“Hello,” said Madeline to the bottle in the desk drawer.

And she gave herself an extra glass for being so damned professional.

***

“I packed your lunch,” said mom. She handed her a bag of snakes.

“Your hair is very pretty and Paul shouldn’t judge you like that,” they told her. Then they turned into an eagle and Madeline was flying away on it before her phone went off in her ear.

“Flrgr,” she answered.

“Oh thank GOD listen doctor I’m so so so so sorry, I just had to phone you, I know it’s only ten am on a Saturday but listen, it’s about Sara, it’s gotten worse, and gotten different, and gotten weird, and, and, and, and, and”
“Breathe,” commanded Dr. Skoggard.

“Oh right I’m so sorry I’m so”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Now, what’s Sara doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Jean in tears. “She – she left the house this morning! She packed up every object in reach, put them in her pockets – I have NO idea how they all fit – looted all the drawers and cabinets, asked me the same six questions twice in a row, then walked next door and did it all again!”
“Uh,” said Dr. Skoggard. “Wait – did she pick up anything outside?”
“Half our herb garden, the neighbour’s prize begonia, and three interesting rocks,” said Jean. “Why?”
“She’s gathering materials. No need to worry, it seems my initial diagnosis was a little off, that’s all. She doesn’t have video game, she’s got video GAMES. Compulsive looting, checking for new dialogue, and hoarding of crafting materials are all classic triple-A open world rpg syndromes. Tell me, did you see her jump?”
“Only a little, and it seemed, well, normal height or so.”
“Yes, then her case is still progressing. This is rare, but not unheard of, and it should still run its course without treatment. Typically it’ll burn itself out inside a few hours before the patient even leaves their immediate starting position. Too many options, you see. When she gets bored she’ll come back home.”

“Oh so she’s safe?”
“Did she take some sort of ‘starting equipment’ with her?”
“I think she took one of the butter knives.”
“Yes, that’ll do nicely. She probably can’t kill anyone with it, so don’t worry. Goodnight.”
“It’s ten in the m-“

The dream did not come back.

***

This time the phone rang well after the bottle had come out. But it was a nicer bottle – Madeline kept the good stuff at home for easy-access – and so she was entirely at peace with her phone and the universe.

“Go,” she said.

“I’m sorry?” said Jean. This was funny. Jean wasn’t meant to be phoning her right now.
“Lemme hear it. You. It. You.” She giggled. “You’re it. Tag.”
“Well, I just wanted to thank you. For everything you helped with.”
“Right?”
“Yes. Sara’s been fine all day. Nothing unusual whatsoever.”

“Goooooood.”
“And as soon as I find this danged credit card, I’ll be sure –”

“Wha?”
“-to pay you back appropriately, I know I need better insurance but-”

“Hol’ up. Just lose. The card? Or a whole thing, a wallet. A purse.”
“Well, it must just be the card. My wallet hasn’t left my bedside table since this morning and the only ones home are me and Sara.”
Terrible doom seeped in through the warm runny edges of Madeline’s reality. “Jean,” she said carefully, “has Sara said anything about currency tonight? Deals? Bargains? Bonuses? Weekend sales?”
“Well, I thought she was talking about her math courses, but”

“CANCEL THE CARD!” screamed Madeline down the line, her lungs leaping into her mouth and mushing her tongue. “For the love of god; she isn’t in remission yet! She’s stillillil VIDEO GAMES she gachaing, she’ss full-goddamned-gachaing! Cancel the card ten minutes ago and then lock her indoors twenty! Don’t listen to anything she says or she’ll get you tooooo and then you’ll spend all your savings on premium royal crystals or some shit DO IT NOW NOW NOW NOW!”

“But!”
“FUCK!” shouted Madeline. Then she threw her phone in the sink with the dishes.

Then she regretted that.

***

This time the phone call came after three pm, which meant the bottle under the desk had just been and gone and Dr. Skoggard felt basically at peace and happy with the world even if it was a Monday, so she was happy even though it was –

“Jean again, sorry to bother you, but I wanted to thank you again, everything’s fine, it’s wonderful, Sara is back to normal.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Dr. Skoggard, who wasn’t technically lying because she was pretty glad about everything right now.

“No, not one thing! As a matter of fact, she hasn’t even looked at a screen once since this morning!”
“Wonderful,” said Dr. Skoggard with genuinely adequate enthusiasm.
“And she said she wanted to play board games! She was so excited; it was SO hard to ask her to wait until later. Such a sad little face!”

“Superb.”
“Why, she used to HATE Risk!”
“Excellewait sorry, what?”
“Risk. The board game? She used to HATE it, but I’ve never seen her so fixated on something as she was that little world map. Wants to invade Australia, I expect!”
Madeline considered the window. She considered on whether cardboard was too big a leap for a virus to make from silicon. Surely if this had happened before someone would have written about it. Surely.

“Doctor?”
Madeline considered the horizon. Was that a siren, drifting from just over it? How far was the nearest air force base? Was that red natural? Was that glint of sunlight manmade? Was she being paranoid.

“Doctor?”

How far away were they from the nearest army bases? Air force installations? Missile silos.

“Doctor? Is everything okay?
“If it isn’t, it’s not your problem,” said Madeline. “Gotta go, bye.”

Then she finished the bottle. Because why not, if it’s Monday?

Gail finished Tuesday at around ten PM. This was a greater achievement than it sounded, mostly because halfway through it had turned into Thursday, then Monday.

She surveyed her apartment, considered her fridge, turned her head to the stove, then the sink full of the morning’s dishes and last night’s dishes and last morning’s dishes.

“Fuck all of this,” she mumbled, and she took an anonymous frozen lump from the freezer and was just about to feed it into the microwave when sixteen very large police piled through her door and fanned out tactically through the apartment shouting “CLEAR” and shooting her neighbour’s dog.

“You have failed to appreciate the value of food,” said the largest of the police, putting a handcuff on each of her wrists and two on their own out of sheer overexcitement. “You are hereby sentenced to snaxecution!”
“Do I get a trial?” asked Gail. Her neighbour’s dog was still barking, and therefore still being shot.

“Trials are for people that don’t need to be snaxecuted,” said the largest of the police, cuffing Gail’s microwave. “Now start perp walkin’ or get perp dragged.”
Gail walked.

***

The waiting room was mechanical and round and filled with round mechanisms. Strange acidic smells eeled through the air. Two hours in, Gail asked for water.

“No water for you,” said the largest of the police. “Only colours. You want blue, green, red, or purple?”
“Blue,” said Gail. She got a bottle with blue in it, which tasted like blue. The big metal doors on the far side of the chamber slammed open when she was trying to swallow and she inhaled blue until the largest of the police held her upside down by the ankles and shook the blue out of her. Upside down, light-headed, she saw a wretched husk of a crumpled figure being wheeled away in a gurney.

“You’re next,” said a serious man in a serious jacket with a serious mouth. He looked like someone had replaced his head with a mailbox and put NO FLYERS above his eyebrows.

“Can I finish my blue?” managed Gail eventually, after the largest of the police remembered to put her back down.

“You won’t need to,” said the serious man.

So they took her through the big metal doors and put her on a sofa and put a bowl of Cheetos in front of one hand and a bowl of chips in front of the other.

“Choose,” said the serious man.

“What flavour are the chips?” asked Gail.

“Salt and vinegar.”

Gail picked up a chip.

“Trick question!” shouted the largest of the police. “You get both!”
“Shut up,” said the serious man, seriously.

“Sorry. I get excited.”
“You get both,” said the serious man, to Gail. “It was a trick question. Now watch this.”
The serious man turned on a screen and filled it with a deeply inadequate Netflix original.
“It was cancelled on a cliffhanger due to poor viewership,” he explained. “Goodbye.”
Then he dragged the largest of the police out by their ear and left Gail alone.

There were no windows. The door was locked. There were no controls for the screen.

So Gail watched, and as she watched, she ate.

***

The serious man came back after an unbearable amount of time with more bowls and a tub of ice cream and a terrible, terrible threat.

“Would you like to watch the last five episodes of the series you just watched, OR see three made-for-tv movies recorded before 2008, determined at random?” he asked, consulting a tablet.

“Bwuh,” said Gail.

“That was a trick question,” said the serious man. “You will watch both. This bowl has party mix made of adequate cheese puffs, terrible pretzels, crappy corn chips, and excellent tortillas. This other bowl has popcorn with too much cheese powder. This ice cream isn’t a flavour that actually exists but it doesn’t taste like anything you want right now. Goodbye.”
Gail felt very strongly that she was meant to feel very strongly about this situation, but she was full of congealed sodium food colouring, and grease and it filled her throat like old dirty socks. Instead she croaked, and coughed, and watched.

***

The next visit brought two more choices: a procedurally-generated playlist of youtubers reacting to videos of youtubers reacting or a video documentary on why the earth was definitely flat; and a 24-pack of expiration-discounted store-brand half-stale cinnamon buns or a previously-opened plastic vegetable tray with half-eaten ranch dip that had a soft carrot lodged in it.

“These are both trick questions and you will receive both of them,” explained the serious man. “In addition, you will also experience an internet outage sometime in the next hour. It will last between twenty and twenty thousand minutes. Have this pack of mint gum.”

“No,” managed Gail. The serious man ignored her.

***

“Now you will watch this livestream of a room full of puppies. The puppies are all asleep and one of them knocked the camera around to face the wall. There are six people in the chat and none of them like each other. There is no moderator. Here is a full Halloween-sized bag of gummi worms.”

***

“This Korean drama is subtitled until the last two episodes. Take this bag of stale mini marshmallows.”

***

“This is a recording of someone’s wedding. There are six more after this. None of them are edited. Here’s a store-brand cake that someone ate half of, asymmetrically, without using a knife.”

***

“This is just TikTok. And here’s something that’s legally not a box full of pizza pockets. They are still frozen.”

***

“Can I leave?” managed Gail. It had taken her several trillion years to make this thought, and it arrived frail and flat and already-defeated.

“Anytime you want,” said the serious man. “Let me unlock the door for you.”

Gail stood up and felt like she could never do that or walk or move or think ever again.

“Really?” she asked, because she wanted to be disappointed.

“Really,” said the serious man. “But just do you know, you’re not done.”
“What?”
“This will happen to you once or twice a weekish for the entire rest of your foreseeable life,” said the serious man. “Snaxecution is not a procedure. It is a practice. And once you’re checked in, you can never check out.”

***

Gail went home.

She surveyed her apartment, whose door was still hanging on a thread from a boot, whose neighbour’s dog was still yapping angrily about having been shot, whose fridge was still judgemental, whose microwave still tempted, whose sink was still full of dishes.

She had no idea what day of the week it was and wasn’t sure if any of them could possibly be told apart.

There was just one question left. One thing to consider. One obstacle between her and bed.

Dinner.

“I’m ordering pizza,” she said.

Because of course that had always been a trick question.

It’s too damned hot. Should’ve worn a t-shirt. Oh well, let’s get to work.

There’s a lot of early flowering plants here, and we have absolutely no idea about the potential pharmaceutical benefits. Get the pollen, get the nectar – hell, get the smaller ones entirely intact and we can talk limited-scale experimental farming back home. Very limited. Don’t want the prices to drop. Shit, look at the water run off those ferns – we’ve got ferns for days, cycads for weeks, conifers for decades. The flowers yeah yeah yeah they’re photogenic but we can’t forget this stuff. Even if any or all of this is no good for medicine we can make them prestige ornaments, especially if they’re fragile enough. Maybe they’ll need specific soil nutrients, maybe they’ll die without good clean air.

Smell that air. That’s good, fresh air -no pollution, no smokestacks, no exhaust. We can bottle that, sell it as a cure-all. Prehistoric Pure? PureHistoric? We can let marketing figure out the brand name later. What do you mean, ‘historically high levels of volcanism?’ We can put that in the fine print c’mon what did I just say, leave that shit to marketing. We’re here for the big picture.

Like that skyline – yeah, that’s a big picture. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. You read those articles about how the sky used to be a different colour? We can sell prints of this shit. ‘The sky you used to have.’ Nice, real nice. Hey maybe we can get special editions using pigment from real Mesozoic organisms, get some premium product out there. Sunsets are different colours too nowadays, right? Chemical composition of the atmoblah blah, we can do a sunrise and sunset run too. That’s money. Pocket money, but it builds the brand.

Listen to the sounds – hear that? Those are animals nobody’s ever heard before, making noises in ways we’ve never been able to know. That’s entire fields of ASMR audio never before imagined, let alone explored. Fuck making a niche, we can make a whole genre. And sound effects – decades, for DECADES we can kill off the very notion of paying someone to make a fake monster noise or an imaginary bird call. Almost everything on this planet doesn’t just have a value attached to it, it produces value simply by moving around and being listenable. Now THAT’S a freebie.

There’s another smell in the air. That’s salt. We’re near the sea, aren’t we? You know what sucks? Fishing. Fishing sucks. There’s no more goddamned fish and we can’t fish any more of them or we run out entirely. I bet we can get some good work in here with that. Bring in some trawlers – hell, build a port – and the expense’ll pay for itself so fast we’ll have people bankrupting themselves to get in line for a construction bid. And that’s to say nothing of the prestige meats. People pay good money for tuna steak, what do you think they’ll fork over for a filet of mosasaur? Everyone loves sea serpents!

And of course, we can’t forget the landbound economy. Look at that triceratops family there – we’re talking animals the size of HOW many cows? All over the place? And the environment already suits them pretty well? Fuck, it’s a planet that’s an open-range farm. All we need to do is find out which ones taste better and try to encourage them along. And you know what, if the most readily-available stuff tastes like shit we can always turn it into hot dogs – sufficient sodium solves all flavours. ‘Dino dogs,’ c’mon, look, we don’t even NEED marketing for some of this stuff.

Beyond the meat, there’s the hide. Let’s bring back hats. Remember beaver fur hats? Remember how that single item of clothing coming from one specific animal drove a corporation to exploit half of north American for massive profits for two hundred years? Imagine that but every animal in our eyesight and beyond is a beaver-in-waiting. Fuck hats, we can make anything from these motherfuckers and we can and we will and there’ll be an entire new GENRE of substances you make leather out of. ‘Cow’ will be for very old and very poor people.

Can’t forget the soil, of course (all those farms that have tired earth and need to chug fertilizer by the bucketful to grow one more field of corn). And the rock (quarries sitting right at the surface, unharvested). And the stuff underneath (do I need to spell it out?). All we have to do is find out where the deposits we already HAVE grabbed are and we can take open season on the rest. Oil. Coal. Ore. Anything that’s eroded away or subducted into the mantle or buried under a craton or just plain GONE by the present? In this here and now, that’s free real estate. Nobody has more money than fossil fuel companies, nobody. And we’re holding the keys to making their wildest dreams come true.

Speaking of free real estate, since we’re going to be spending some time here setting up operations, we’re also going to be setting up some housing. And once we’ve done that for the workers, why not also do it for the people with actual money? Find a nice little isolated lagoon on an island in Europe or along the coast of the American interior seaway and put up some fences and maybe a SAM battery and hey, the world’s most prestigious mansion – and one generously outside of most legal jurisdictions. Can you even BEGIN to imagine how many billionaires would happily feed people to sea monsters right this second if they could film it and tell everyone without getting arrested? What about if the sea monsters were fifty feet long?

Or shit, what if they weren’t even sea monsters? The biggest thing you can kill someone with these days is a grizzly or some shit, maybe an elephant if you want to train it to. What about having a pet t-rex? Bet that’d make all those fuckos who brag about their tigers or horses or yachts shut up, huh? And it’s not like that’s the only available option here; we’ve got worldwide megafaunal ecosystems, untouched. So many choices, so many options. You could have pit fights that make dogfights look like ant wrestling.

And of course there’s the benefits to spectacle in general. Film crew needs a pristine wilderness? A fantasy forest? A reef that ISN’T dying of climate change and may or may not be made largely of weird prehistoric clams? Why spend money on burning a CGI studio or three to the ground when you can just pay some meatheads ten bucks a day to lug the cameras over here? Why ask an artist to imagine an exotic bird when you can pull four of them out of that bush over there? Why ask an artist to imagine a BUSH when you’ve got that bush over there? Imagination costs money, and we’ve got a fresh new world to use instead of working that particular mental muscle.

The clouds are getting heavier. That’s water, that’s good clean fresh water. No microplastics, no heavy metals, no acid rain, no ‘toxins,’ no phosphates no lead all-natural organic AND fresh. Every single word I just said in that sentence was an extra 10% price hike per bottle. Multiplicative.

Now let’s go back before that cloud breaks. I don’t care how much the water costs, I’m not squeezing it out of these pants.


***

Charge paleontologists for trips? I thought we were looking for ways to make money.

Gary was so little he could barely walk and he hated being wet and cold and he hated being dry and hot and he hated being on the beach and he was expressing all of this very loudly when his feet encountered the worst thing yet, so horrible that he swallowed his screaming with a sharp HUHP, like a stray bug.

“What’s that?” asked his father, a tiny bit of relief seeping in when he didn’t see blood. He was holding Gary upright in the water with his giant hairy hands, and his head must have been ringing by then. “Oh I see – no, that’s okay little guy. That’s just seaweed. It’s harmless.”
Gary shrank backwards from the harmlessness. The squishy soft wet sand of the lakebed was the one soothing texture he had, but now it was gone and being replaced by plants that looked like spiders. A floating strand – snapped free by his father’s giant stomping feet – drifted by in front of his stomach and almost touched him, making him hiccup in horror.

“It’s not gonna hurt you,” said his father, and to Gary’s horror he proved it, he picked him up and proved it by moving him forwards into the deeper water, up to Gary’s armpits and with the seaweed around him and underfoot and everywhere.

“See?” his father said, as he stood there in the water, scratchy scrapy slimy weedy tendrils brushing against his feet. “It’s not so bad, not so bad, not so bad at all.”

“Okay,” said Gary. He tried to wiggle his toes, then tried to never do that again. “Okay.”

***

Gary had too many pimples and not enough money and no clue whatsoever, and the deep fryer had taken offense at his deep frying fries and had spat upon him very vigorously. He swore and wailed all at once and dropped things and waved his arms around and didn’t know where to put his face.

“What was that?” asked the manager, who’d been doing something involving an unpleasant device and the plumbing, and then “oh fuck me, that’s a bad one. Christ kid, what’d you DO never mind, never mind, come with me right now.” She grabbed Gary in one hand and the kitchen sink’s taps in the other and pulled them together despite everything he could do and she turned them both into position.

“There, see?” the manager said as the cold, cold water poured over his crispy arm hair and turned to liquid nitrogen over the burn welts. “That’s not so bad. Probably won’t even scar.”
“Okay,” said Gary. He watched skin turn red and white and white and red and blotch in and out, like a heartbeat. “Okay.”

***

Gary had no time left and an endless amount of questions and he was sitting at a table in his parent’s old house looking at the schools, at the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and the brochures and the websites and inside his head was nothing and he was screaming at the nothing but invisibly, because if he made a real noise it would come out very horribly.

“Just pick something,” someone had told him – everyone was awfully smeared together right now, it was difficult to sort out which someone this had been or who it was or if it had been himself. “It’s okay as long as you pick something.”

He’d been picking something for years. And now it was finishing.

So Gary picked one and felt terrible, and then put it back. And then he picked one and felt terrible, and he put it back. And he did that for two hours until he picked one up and felt a sort of exhausted relief and he didn’t put it back.

“Okay,” said Gary. And he meant it, maybe? It felt alright. “Okay.”

***

Gary was finished.

He hadn’t failed. He’d taken too long and hadn’t felt the passion, but he’d had a little fun and he hadn’t failed and his teachers had encouraged him and told him he had a future and he’d worn a stupid hat and gotten a stupid paper and he’d said something stupid to the person who shook his hand and now he was going to a restaurant with the pieces of his family that lived near him and they were happy, and he was happy, and he started the right turn off the overpass just as there was a ten-year-old in front of him and he slammed on the brakes like they were red-hot-scorpions underneath steeltoed shoes.

The kid stared and then scampered, frightened.

Gary waited a long half-moment before he finished the turn, too filled with icy terror to even be nervous about making the people behind him wait.

“Okay,” he said to himself, dry and squeaky through his throat. He swallowed and tasted everything. He hadn’t hit anyone. He had NEARLY hit someone, but he hadn’t. And that wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Everything was fine. Nothing had been ruined.

“Okay.”

***

Gary was still moving, but he was standing still. Maybe everything else was moving.

He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his job, but he worked at it. He wasn’t sure if his schooling helped with it, but he didn’t think about it. He wasn’t sure if he knew how to do it, but he did it. He wasn’t sure if it was enough, but he didn’t look because the idea of an answer was frightening. He wasn’t sure if there was something else he’d missed and it was too late or if he was being nervous. He didn’t like being nervous or unsure, and that meant he didn’t like a lot of things and mostly those things were pieces of himself which he was suspecting might actually be the foundations of his entire being.

So he worked, and then he went home and didn’t move. He put words in front of himself on screens and papers and when those ran out he used videos and when those ran out he looked for more and then he went to bed and did them all over again and it was fine. It was acceptable and sustainable.

The days off were harder because he wasn’t still moving on those days and he spent more of it painstakingly aware of his immobility. He should try things, probably. He should’ve tried things already, maybe. He knew he’d regret it if he didn’t. But he regretted the things he’d done as much as the things he hadn’t done, and if he was very very careful not to do anything in the correct way maybe he wouldn’t think about any of that and would simply feel fine instead. Which would be alright.

“Okay,” he said to himself. A lot of the things he said he had to say to himself. “Okay.”

***

Gary was much older than he thought he’d be, and not nearly as old as he’d hoped he’d be, and exactly as old as he’d always feared. Everything surrounding him was years out of date but still terribly, terribly, terribly expensive and delicate, and he had no idea how he’d replace any of it if he sneezed or coughed or curled up in a tiny ball the wrong way, so he lay recumbent not just because he couldn’t do anything else but because he was very frightened of making something happen.

His cousin, who was somewhat younger than Gary (the last person Gary knew, but not all that well), was there with him. This was a relief.

“It’s okay, Gary,” said his cousin. “It’s okay.”
At this, Gary’s brain and eyes blinked three times very quickly. He opened his mouth.

He was sure there was something he’d just realized, something else that he was sure he should’ve been doing, something that wasn’t quite what he’d always had, but he was just a little bit la

Hey there!

I’m Jim-Bob, and this is my orb! This little ominous round ball floats around six inches behind my right ear, and if I begin a train of thought that leads only to despair and hopelessness, it smacks me in the head. It works great! C’mon, I’ll show you!

I need to go get groceries anyways. I’ve been putting it off a bit because I’m at the computer and distracting myself– ow!

See, it works like that.

So let’s get going. Wallet, keys, mask (don’t want to catch it twice! The first time led to all – ouch!), grocery bag, and phone! Phone’s not finished charging, but that’s okay, better to lose a bit of battery efficiency than to sit around here longer because I’ve already wasted the OW.

Bit harsher there, but repeat offenders get smacked twice as hard and in the same spot. The sting steers you safely!

It’s nice out today, isn’t it. A bit too warm, but that’s livable with the breeze (warm breeze, ah well). And since the road’s shut, we can head through the park. See the few folks out and about on Wednesday, what with days off or some such or being part-time over the age of OW.

Let’s count those seagulls. There’s sixteen. That’s a lot of seagulls.

The other nice thing about walking like this is it gives you a chance to think about stuff. I come up with most of my story ideas while I’m walking, always have – something about the legs moving and letting the world go by in the background help. It lets you brain drift but the tricky part is when it settles on useless things or troublesome thoughts. I remember wondering if it was harder to be creative on antianxiety meds but hooooo boy let me tell you that beats the HELL out of being unable to be creative because your brain won’t stop thinking about OW OW OW.

Triple shot. Deserved, but jeez.

Anyways, it’s great to see the people in the park, especially when there’s lots of them. The background noise is comforting – I like putting streams on in the background when I’m at my desk too just for that sort of ambient humanity. The funny part is I’m far too terrified to OW.

So we’re going to walk down by the boardwalk and look at those rocks. Hey maybe I can do a story about stuff you find in the rocks! Old beer bottle, old pop can, wrappers, seaweed, ducks, ducklings, stray goose fluff, seagull-devoured crayfish… mmm. Maybe not as long a list as I’d hopped. I’d have to pad it out with childhood whimsy, which I mean I could TRY it’s not like I haven’t been walking up and down these same rocks and this same boardwalk for over thirty years, which means AH.

It’s nice seeing the families though. People using time off, taking holidays, just taking the kid down to the beach to stick their feet in the water. Some of those parents and partners are my age and they’ve been doing this sort of thing for ten years and I will never OW OW OW OW OW OW.

So it’s a bit of a pity the fry stand isn’t open this year what with the construction because damnit I could use something crispy and warm and salty. I guess I can get some potato chips. I was sort of probably going to get those anyways but now it’s more formalized.

Man, it’s way too warm once you’re away from the lake. Going to suck coming back this way, but it’s faster and the less time milk and sandwich meat is out in the sun with me the better. Let’s go into the store and do a little Purell (why the moist cloth dispenser this seems so much less efficient than the liquid), and now let’s get what we’re getting which is like two stopgap not-really-meal components like cereal, milk, sandwich meat and pita for work, and… not sure what else because I can’t make myself put effort into anything including making foo OW.

Right. Some baking potatoes, some sour cream for those baking potatoes, no lettuce because I’m sick of salads and I’ve still got enough for my sandwiches at home, maybe some baked goods? Yeah these donuts are like 30% off that’s fine I’ll take them – wait, 30% off 5.25? That’s still a bit much. I don’t need those donuts. To hell with you, donuts. Pick up some milk, go to the chip aisle, let’s get chips. All the non-store-brand-stuff is like 10$/2 deals, this is pathetic, I remember when those were two for six because time is moving and I’m frozen OW.

So. We get the store brand, because those are perfectly acceptable and like literally half the price. Which flavour?
I’m not sure I want salt and vinegar, I think I got sick of those last time.

I don’t want barbecue, they’re too sweet.

I don’t think I want cheese and onion, I think they’re always not as good as I’m certain they’ll be.

I don’t think I want those all-dressed chips because the bag is too big and I always eat too many of these chips. I always eat too many of all of the chips.

Do I even want chips? I’ve been eating them as treats since I became a somewhat functional somewhat-independent adult before I stopped being able to OW

Do I ever want chips? I just eat them until I start disliking them. Do I really enjoy this? I mean, do I really enjoy MOST of what I claim I ‘want’ or is it just distractions from OW OW OW.

We’ll get cheese and onion.

One lane open, and all the self-checkout. Self-checkout it is. Boop da doop de doop beep beep. Hey it would be REALLY stupid if I’d forgotten my wallet and just now found out after I had everything here and ready, would I have to put everything back or could I ask the till people to hold onto it for me I mean a bunch of this needs refrigeration would I even be able to talk to them or would I just freeze up and stand here OW.

I should probably use my new credit card so it registers properly but these groceries are overpriced and what if I fuck up and forget to check my credit OW.

Debit’s fine, we’ll fix whatever that was later. Now let’s aw dang the potato fell out. Get back in the bag, potato.

Yeah, the streets are hot and long and the shade is all a little off. Pity about that, but it’s the shortest way around the construction, even with the detours. Woops, wrong street ahah. You’d think I’d know better, since I was born here and I’ve lived here half my life and now I can’t leave here and I’ll die here OW OW OW OW OW OW OW
Anyways it’s fine and none of that matters because none of these problems are real and I should be able to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH FUCK FUCK FUCK OUCH DAMNIT

JESUS.

That’s my street. That’s my stop. Indoors, nice and shady, up the stairs, food in cupboards and fridge, easy-peasy, everything breezy, maybe the five or six websites I endlessly refresh for new content will have had someone say something even though it’s a workday and all the adults are busy OW.

And we’re done!

Yes sir, I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d do or how I’d live without the orb here.

I mean, I guess I’d have a couple more molars.

***

fuck i forgot the cereal

It had been a wretched, straggling storm; a thing with rain that fell in stringy sheets all day and all night but with no force behind it beyond dogged persistence. The earth had turned to mud and then muck; the plants had gone from lush to drowned; the sky was a tired grey-blue muddle of exhausted maybe-clouds, and Lemm had gotten up early and been kicked out of the house because a full day and a night trapped indoors with a teenager was more than a reasonably loving family could bear. She accepted this and was standing by the river, which was usually a stream. Things came down it when it was like this; odd rocks from up the mountain; old coins from hill barrows; helmets from dead bandits; all sorts of stuff.

This time it was a sword, pristine despite the rotting scabbard. Excited beyond all belief, Lemm stirred it closer to shore with a stick and plucked it from the riverbed, where she realized it was attached to a few stubborn bones of some guy’s arm.

“Gross!” she said happily, and she took it home to her parents for perusal.

“It was attached to some guy’s arm,” she said proudly.

“Gross,” said her mother.

“Tricky,” said her father. “That’s probably grave goods, and grave goods mean ghosts and curses and goodness knows what. And it costs money and we aren’t meant to have swords. Give it here.”

So Lemm reluctantly gave the sword there, and Lemm’s father took it to his simple forge where he made nails and horseshoes and took his simple hammer that he used to make knives and shovels and he put in an unreasonable amount of fuel and made Lemm stay much longer at the bellows than she’d have wanted to and one zillion years later he pulled out a hoe, a good sturdy hoe, with a sliver-sharp edge.

“There,” he said. “Now it’s useful, and now it’s your turn: the field is absolutely walloped right now. Get back there and put it into recognizable shapes.”
“Ugh, FINE,” said Lemm, taking the hoe.

Sever their limbs and drink their blood, said the hoe.

“Pardon?” said Lemm.

“Scoot,” said her father. He was already working on something else.

***

So Lemm took the hoe to the back field – which was a mud flat – and she started tilling the soil. Rows were reshaped, plants retrieved, formlessness removed, order restored, and it was so drear that she wanted to die.

“This SUCKS,” she said aloud.

You are being watched, warned the hoe.

Lemm jerked her head upright, saw a small rabbit freeze among the greens she’d just cleared, and swung all in one smooth, efficient motion, immediately decapitating the animal.

Eat its heart, eat its heart, said the hoe.

“The hell? That is gross as all get out,” said Lemm. But she was sort of responsible and liked food, so she picked up the rabbit and got ready to tell mom when the hoe vibrated in her hand again and she turned and saw an inscrutable-yet-round bird at the other end of the field, picking at the soil.

This time she threw it. Very successfully.

“Oh jeez,” said Lemm, as the number of birds in the field became divisible by two. “I’m gonna run out of pockets.”

***

Lemm didn’t run out of pockets by the time she came back home, but she didn’t have many to spare either. “Here’s dinner,” she said to her mother, holding up the rabbit. “Oh and here’s breakfast. And, uh, a snack? And another dinner. It was busy out there.”
“Looks like you were busy too,” said Lemm’s mother. “But maybe not as busy at the field, from the look of it. Were you stabbing these with the hoe? That’s not what it’s built for.

Silence the doubters and mockers with their own blood, said the hoe.

“It’s a noisy and evil instrument, mom,” said Lemm. “But I did finish the field.”
“Great going, kiddo,” said Lemm’s mother. “Now go down the way and help the millers do their garden.”
“Shit.”
“Hazi’ll be there. She came back from town to help out this morning”
Lemm left with her mother laughing at her.

***

It wasn’t that Lemm liked working with Hazi, it was that she was very bad at working with Hazi for enjoyable reasons, like Hazi’s legs, eyes, lips, and everything else, and that Hazi found this funny and wouldn’t make fun of her too hard when she tripped over things, said ‘bwuh?” instead of full words, or forgot what she was holding.

So when Lemm walked into the little overstuffed garden behind the mill – which was even more rainwashed than their field had been, and frankly astounding that it hadn’t been taken by the river – and saw Hazi there in all her glory in full fury with a shovel, up to her calves in mud and saying every filthy word that had ever been dreamed of and whispered into a pillow before waking, she maybe stopped and looked a little longer than necessary until a flying weed hit her in the eyeball and made that impossible.

“Augh fuck,” articulated Lemm.

“Shit, sorry,” said Hazi.

Avenge this slight immediately, said the hoe.

“Aw no, I’m blind, I’m blind,” said Lemm. “Please, pour water into my wounded eyeball and tend to my wounds for the rest of my days, it’s only fair.”

Hazi came over and pulled the weed off Lemm’s nose and counted all her freckles twice to make sure they were there and then pushed her over into the pile of dismembered weeds she’d made instead.

“I’m blind and now I’m dead,” said Lemm.

Destroy all that she holds dear, said the hoe.

“Shore up the fence, you complete dumbass,” said Hazi with fondness.

And so Lemm did, and so the afternoon passed very agreeably with only one or two breaks where nobody got anything important or useful done, and so when the job was done and she picked up the hoe from where she’d leant it against the fence it took Lemm a moment and Hazi swearing very earnestly to notice that it had chopped the fencepost clean off from crown to base.

Vengeance is ours, cried the hoe.

“Oh COME ON,” said Lemm.

“Well, guess you owe us a new one,” said Hazi. “See you tomorrow?”
“Oh absolutely yes,” said Lemm.

***

Lemm got up and found the hoe next to her bed. She put it away. Lemm finished breakfast and found the hoe leaning on the bench next to her. She put it away. Lemm got dressed and ready to go and explained to her parents that it WAS NOT HER FAULT that she had to go and replace a fencepost and was very patient with her mother laughing in her face and slapping her back repeatedly and when she was at the threshold the hoe was there, leaning across it casually with its haft over the doorknob.

So Lemm took the hoe with her, because at least this way it wouldn’t suddenly appear under someone’s foot or someone’s head.

“My field is already tended, but thanks for the community spirit,” said Jur, the forestry man, from somewhere behind a pile of timber and hairy muscles and a very large saw.

“Aw okay,” said Lemm. “Mind if I go looking for a fencepost for the mill?”
“Only as long as you don’t beat Hazi to it,” said Jur, in a flurry of sawdust and beard. “She’s got dibs.”

So Lemm said ‘thanks’ or something else she didn’t pay attention to and went among the trees and found Hazi and they had a long, serious, productive hunt for a replacement fencepost that only veered off-topic for very important things, like checking Lemm’s biceps or trying very hard to figure out PRECISELY what shade of brown Hazi’s eyes were most like or having to stop and fix Lemm’s shoes for her because bending over would be so very hard on her back with all that she’d been working and so on and on and on until at last they had bad luck and found a tree that would make a damned nice fencepost.

“Oh well,” said Lemm. “Right, let’s get to it.” And she lined up her stroke, tensed her back, and let her fly.
“That’s not an axe,” said Hazi.
“Bwhn?” inquired Lemm.

Death to the foe, said the hoe.

‘shrip,’ went the tree’s trunk. Followed immediately by a large crash and a lot of swearing from those present.

***

“Tree fell on her,” said Hazi when Lemm was delivered home to the raised eyebrows of her parents. “But it’ll be fine. Just don’t let her run around like an idiot.”
“This will be impossible,” said Lemm’s mother, and they all laughed at her and while they were doing that Hazi kissed her so casually that nobody noticed except Lemm who was probably going to remember that for a few thousand years and then she winked and left.

“How did you manage to fell a tree on yourself?” asked Lemm’s father.

“The hoe doesn’t like me using other tools or not stabbing or cutting things or being put aside for a moment,” said Lemm. “I’m starting to think it might have been easier to leave it as a sword.”

“Nah, swords are pushy too,” said Lemm’s mother. “They always want to be used, and they’ll never shut up until they get the fight they want.”

“Oh shit,” said Lemm, “I just thought of something. Dad, can we go out to your forge?”

***

The next morning Lemm turned up bright and early to the mill with her father’s hammer and a basket of bright, shiny, fresh nails. By midday the fencepost was replaced, the entire rest of the fence was repaired and reinforced, food was ready, and there were some very serious idle conversations happening indoors.

And from the new fence, a hundred tiny battle cries rang in permanent exaltation as the foe was bitten deep and true.

Once upon a time, in the old old old fashioned days, when most animals were sort of large blobs, there lived one animal that was a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot.

But they weren’t happy.

“I’m not happy,” they said. “I am a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot, but I’m not happy. I wish I were more distinctive than being a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot, because since most animals are sort of large blobs and being a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot makes me very similar to them, as they are sort of large blobs.”

So the animal roamed up the land and down the land and up the land and down the land and then it got dark and they walked into a tree and the tree broke and stuck in their nose and that’s where rhinoceroses come from.

***

“That was pretty bad.”
“What?! Was not!”
“No, she’s right. That was pretty bad. You spent most of the effort on reiterating basic established facts until our eyes crossed, and the denouement was a complete anticlimax.”
“And you didn’t use the rule of three.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t use the rule of three.”
“Well, I’d like to see YOU guys do any better!”
“Nah, nah, we believe in you. Keep trying, you’ll get better.”

“Yeah sure what he said. G’wan.”
“If you promise to be fair. And I’m going to use the rule of three this time, so you’ll have to not be unfair about that either.”
“Fair as a fine fresh breeze.”
“As fair as a carnival ground.”
“Fine. Fine. Fine.”

***

Back when everything made sense and kids did too, there was a creature that lived in the bottom of the bog. He stayed down there for the night and for the day, for the summer sun and the winter frost, for the good times and the bad times. Nobody saw him, but everyone that passed by heard him mutter and mumble from deep down inside.

“You should come out sometimes,” said a passing chickadee. “Make some friends.”
“I am happy in my bog,” said the creature, in his deep solemn bog voice. “It is warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s warm. It hides me and protects me, feeds me and waters me. Why would I ever leave?”
“Make some friends,” said the chickadee.

“Well I don’t know about that,” said the bog creature. And the chickadee flew away.

“You should come out sometimes,” said a roaming muskrat. “And see some sights.”
“I am happy in my bog,” explained the creature with tepid boglike patience. “It is what I see and what I want, what I know and what I expect, what I wish and what I receive. Why should I stop looking at it?”

“You might like it up here,” said the muskrat.

“I’m not quite sure,” said the bog creature. And with no response to that, the muskrat departed – in some haste, for a fisher had come prowling by the shore.

“Hello, bog person,” said the fisher in a very polite and dapper little murderer’s voice. “Why not come up here and try to eat someone new?”

“I enjoy consuming bog matter,” said the bog creature. “It is all I have ever eaten, and I am not tired of it.”
“Maybe you’d enjoy blood and liver, if you tried it,” said the fisher.

“Taking the chance sounds risky,” said the bog creature. And the fisher bared her teeth at that politely and departed.

At last up to the pond stomped a big fat bear, already heavy with fat at only halfway through summer and riddled with laziness. “Hoi, bog fellow,” he belched sleepily into the water as he drank. “Still down there?”
“Yes,” said the bog creature.

“That’s fine,” said the bear. “I spent half the year wandering and doing things, and half the year doing nothing. And believe you me, the first half makes the second half feel like a dream picnic. G’bye.”

And the bear stomped off.

The bog creature fermented in the day’s juices, steeped in the thoughts of the conversations he’d had, burbled and bubbled with concept and conceit and nerves and nervousness. And then at last he rose from the bog, hoof by hoof, limb by limb, joint by joint, unfolding himself under the calm blue afternoon sky taller than the bear, taller than some trees, all muddy fur and flaring nostril and startlement, and he stood trembling in horror or delight. Then he bucked up just a little higher, to see if anyone was watching, and whacked his head into a nearby tree whose branches got stuck in his skull.
“OW!” he yelped.

And so he dove back into the bog, but his new crown was much too wide and broad and awkward to let him fit comfortably back into the bog. He left it the next day in exhaustion after a poor night’s sleep and a neck-crick that wouldn’t quit, and although he visited the bog for food and for comfort everafter, he found himself stuck outside of it by and large from then on. That’s a moose. That’s what it was. It was a moose.

***

“You can’t just repeat your story’s point over and over in case the audience didn’t get it!”
“Yes I can! I want to make sure they get it!”
“You can’t or it sucks!”
“It doesn’t suck!”
“No, she’s right. It sucks. You belabored the conclusion; you created an animal by having a tree get rammed into its skull for the second time running-”
“People run into trees all the time, it’s very plausible and realistic!”
“-and you spent the whole story building up to explaining how people get stuck in a rut for fear of change and how sometimes it takes more than just arguing to get them out, but then you back out at the last second and go ‘well trying something sucked completely and they wished they’d never tried changing but they were stuck forever never mind.’”

“And you didn’t use the rule of three again.”
“Right. And you didn’t use the rule of three again.”
“I did so! I made the story beat four times!”
“That’s not three.”
“Yes it is! It’s three and one more!”
“The rule of three implies three, not four, or three and one more.”
“But four has three in it!”
“If you divide it enough ways four has EVERYTHING in it, quit dragging your heels. God you’re obnoxious.”
“Stop being mean!”
“Stop being a brat!”
“It’s alright, everyone calm down, calm down.”
“You always take her side!”
“No, EVERYONE calm down, okay? Okay. Okay. Right. Want to give it another try?”

“Fine. But you have to promise to be fair, okay? Both of you. And REALLY fair, not fake fair. This was NOT fair criticism.”
“I promise that I will be as fair and unbiased and true as any one person can be.”
“I promise I’ll only say it sucks if it sucks.”
“No, be fair!”
“Doesn’t get fairer than that.”
“You-”

“Go on, then. We’re listening.”
“Fine. But you’d BETTER be fair. And I’m using the rule of three this time for real, you’ll see.”

***

A while ago – but not too long – there was only one tree. Everything that needed shade to survive, everything that needed greens to eat, everything that ate fruit or nuts or made nests from twigs or built homes from sticks or buried itself under fallen leaves and needles depended on, and lived around, that one tree.

But it was very old, and very tired. So one day it shook itself for attention, and it told the animals and plants that lived around it “the one who takes this branch from my head-”

***

“Agaub?!?”
“FUCK YOU IT’S NOT THE SAME FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. She didn’t mean anything by it. Go on.”
“She meant it! SHE MEANT IT!”
“No she didn’t. Right?”
“Mrrnnmmph!”
“See? Right. Now go on.”

***

“-the one who takes this branch from my head to those hills and plants it in the naked soil there will have fruit for the rest of their days.”
So a bird grasped the branch – which was very thin and high and tricky to get to – and flapped and leapt and shot and skittered across the long, shadeless, treeless miles to the far hills. And when the hills were all around and the bird could go no further, the branch was placed in the soil and sprouted and grew and grew and grew into groves of every fruit-bearing tree you could imagine.

Back at the one tree the animals saw the hills turn green, and then the tree shook itself again and spoke.

“Whoever takes this branch from my back to those valleys and plants it in the cold earth there will have nuts for the rest of their days,” said the one tree.

This time there were many volunteers. A squirrel ran for miles, wide-eyed with fear alone on the open ground, but oh the oaks and walnuts and almonds blossomed at the end of that terrible journey.

“This branch from my side will bring sweet sap,” said the one tree, and the beaver swam the wide and blisteringly-sunburnt rivers alone before waddling ashore and placing the prize.

“This branch, mild bark,” said the one tree, and porcupines waddled for days under cloudless skies, undaunted.

“This branch, relief from pain.”
“This branch, gentle shade.”
“This branch, useful twigs.”
“This branch, shelter from fire.”
“This branch, hollows for nests.”
“This branch, warmth in deep winter.”
And so on and on and on and on went the branches and the animals, and the world turned green and the ground was spared from the sun and the one tree was lost all alone, for it was all but bereft of its mass from its many gifts and it was surrounded by forests.

“Can I help?” asked the one remaining animal, the antelope.

“Maybe,” said the one tree. “But it’s a bit tricky to get at, and I can’t promise much in return because I’m just about out of gifts. Take the branch from my hand if you can, if you wish.”
“What, NOTHING?” asked the antelope in disbelief. “Not even some tender tasty buds or green shoots?”
“I’m fresh out,” said the one tree, who was now just an individual tree rather than the only tree.

“Well then never mind,” said the antelope, who gave the one tree a kick for its irritation. And at that the branch slipped from the tree’s frail hand and smacked straight into the antelope’s skull, thereby creating the pronghorn antelope.”

***

“You did it again.”
“Shut up. How was it.”
“Well, you did it again. That wasn’t great.”
“Shut up. How was it.”
“I also think maybe you shouldn’t have-”

“HOW WAS IT?”
“You didn’t use the rule of three – you had one-and-a-half pattern-setting incidents and one pattern-breaker interspersed with a bunch of papered-over pattern-setters.”
“And you did it again.”
“And you did it again, yes.”
“You know. The thing with the branches and the skulls. It’s pretty fucked up.”
“Maybe a little.”

 The storyteller kicked the campfire over before they left. It was pretty smoky.

“Good riddance,” said the one critic some five minutes of quick work with dirt and water later. “And thanks for the backup, by the by.”
“It’s in all our best interests that we run him out of this hobby, the sooner the better,” said her colleague. “The platypus was my friend, you know. Before he started talking about them.”
“Half my relatives are elephants, the other half are walruses,” said his friend bitterly. “At least we kept the damage minimal this time. I don’t care what stories you’re telling on your own, but nobody deserves to have branches cosmologically inserted into their skulls without their consent. Hey, did you bring any marshmallows?”
“A few.”
“Then let’s unfuck this fire. I think we still have some coals.”

And so, under the night sky and free from any explanations whatsoever as to their respective anatomy, the two nameless non-tellers of stories celebrated the quiet death of the imposition of meaning upon one’s existence.

For at least that one night.