On Mondays I walk to work by the long way. It’s prettier than the short way and it’s not THAT longer, so why not? And there’s the meerkats, of course.
Today they were acting strangely, all of them clustered around a stone with heads down. As I stopped and looked, one of them carefully picked up another stone, smacked them together, and caught the chip. It squeaked and held it triumphantly.
Then they saw me watching and all scurried away.
I shrugged, put it out of my mind, and spent the rest of the day selling unhealthy food from a cart, as was my job.
***
On Tuesday I broke custom and walked to work by the long way, out of curiosity. I’d looked it up and I was pretty sure Meerkats using flint knapping was unusual, and the idea of writing a research paper while working a greasy concession stand cart seemed pretty good to me.
The meerkats were absent from aboveground at first, and I looked in vain for further signs of stone industry – discarded cores and flakes, reworked scrapers, etc. – until I realized I was being watched with narrowed eyes by a single, dedicated sentry.
“Hey big guy,” I told him. He shook his tiny bronze spear at me and chittered angrily. “No, don’t worry. I’m not here for trouble.”
The meerkat shook his tiny helmeted skull and pointed fiercely at a small monument nearby, chiseled with shapes that reminded me a little bit of cuneiform script.
“I’m sorry,” I explained. “I’m a passing foreigner, unlearned of your laws and customs.” This reasonable explanation earned me a spear through the shoe (just between my big and second toes) and I beat a very very hasty retreat.
***
On Wednesday I broke custom yet again by walking to work by the long way with a pocketful of loose change. Yet when I walked by the meerkat burrows, I found them obscured and lost under the sweeping majesty of a humble three-field crop rotation. Amidst the very heart of the meerkat lands rose a majestic keep that rose about chest-high on a human adult, constructed with fitted stones and with battlements and parapets fit to repel any advance force.
There was no one present.
“Hello?” I called hesitantly. Yes, I’d been decidedly unwelcome last time, but curiosity killed the meerkat. “Is anyone there? I brought the toll this time.”
Silence.
I knocked on the drawbridge and almost got my knuckles skinned off as it slid down on greased chains, disgorging a balding meerkat in elaborate robes who shouted invectives at me while brandishing a tiny but beautifully-carved holy symbol of indistinguishable sect. At her rear scuttled a host of angry worshippers in simple peasant clothing, wielding the requisite torches and pitchforks.
I left before a repeat of the toe incident and had a pretty distracted day at work considering the theological ramifications. They were large.
***
On Thursday I went to work by the long way and found it shortened. Some tremendous force had levelled the land and paved the path and diverted a small stream, reshaping it into a highway. Tiny meerkat vehicles shuttled along the ground at dozens of kilometres an hour as tiny meerkat voices traded chittering abuse and thumbless rude gestures at one another through their windshields. I stuck to the left lane as best as I could, but when even that began to produce choruses of honking I was forced to trudge along the roadside as passing motorists shook their fists and raised their squeaking voices at me. A head-sized helicopter circled me with cameras on, and I began to walk faster. Military jets followed at a distance as I left the long way behind, and I spent much of my shift keeping a cautious eye on the horizon, sure that at any moment I would be impaled by a frankfurter-sized warhead.
***
On Friday I stood between the long way and the short way and stood for a moment, strumming my fingers on my belt.
A strange light glimmered on the edge of perceptibility in the distance and I felt something buzz gently against the rim of my brain, a force a little bit beyond my comprehension. There was a faraway noise like breaking glass mixed with an atom bomb.
I went to work by the short way, went through my shift as fast as possible, then went home and hid under the bed without sleeping all night.
***
When I woke up on Saturday and the world hadn’t ended I stayed home all day eating my favourite takeout foods one after another while I still had time
***
When I woke up on Sunday and the world STILL hadn’t ended, I found my feet moving without my input. I walked the road to work, untroubled by traffic. I looked to the sky and saw it shimmering with possibility, I looked at the earth and felt it steady beneath my feet, I looked ahead at the long way and I took a deep breath and stepped onto it and walked and walked and then at some point I was walking through the finely-macerated pieces of what had once been asphalt now overgrown and tangled in greenery, stepping through the potholes of desolate foundations, witnessing the rubble of buildings that had collapsed not through violence but through simple neglect and abandonment, watching the dust of once-fertile fields blow away in erratic new winds, and seeing amongst all the unheaval and annihilation not one meerkat face, hearing one meerkat voice, smelling not one whiff of meerkat but only the faint nigh-undetectable odour of desolation on the breeze.
I walked to work by accidental habit, stood awkwardly at the usual spot, then went home by the long way. Then I spent much of the rest of the afternoon regretting my choices of Saturday meals.
***
On Monday, I walked to work by the long way, and it was a normal walk on a normal path with normal stones, and trees, and grasses, and shrubs, and every other normal living thing. And I saw the meerkats by their burrow, grazing for insects, standing guard, chirping warnings at my presence.
I waved at them. They glared at me with wary meerkat contempt. I departed.
***
After that week I walked to work by the long way every day for the rest of the year, and I never saw them so much as try knocking two rocks together again. They weren’t that smart, but they weren’t insane.