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“C’mon.  Do it.”
“Uhhh…”
“What’s the matter, shy?”
“No.  No!”
“Oh, is it your first time?  That’s okay, you know.  Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s-”

“Don’t go lying to me right now.  Look, just do what comes naturally.  Bite me right about here, where my skin is ten times thicker than yours.”

The blue shark would’ve blushed if he were physically capable, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t.

He did, however, sink his teeth directly into the other blue shark’s side.

“Oww.  Oww.  Ouch.  Ouch ouch ouch.”
“Fowwy.”
“No ouch ouch that’s ow fine that’s ow how it’s ack meant to ow feel.  Argh.  I’m extremely turned on now ow ow ow this is actually very hotaaaaaaaaagh.”
“Fokay.”

There was a very prolonged pause filled with several awkward things.

“My cloaca’s farther down.”

“Fowwy.”
Goddamned virgins.  Ignorance was okay, but never asking questions?

***

“What light through yonder web breaks?”
Good, good.  He was getting her curious.

“It is the east, and you are the sun!”
Oh, now she saw where this was going.

“Impossibly huge and powerful, ravenously gorging yourself upon the universe!  I am a trapped gnat before you, humbly serving no purpose save to feed your divine flame!”

Okay that was enough.  “Come here you little dirty-talking slut,” she told him, and pounced.

“Thank you very much, my lady,” he said as she started working on his relatively tiny and feeble extremities.
“Less talk more action, loverboy,” she said, halfway through his first leg.  “I’m absolutely not slowing down after that intro.”

Tragically he only got to sixth base before she chewed through his abdomen.  Damn her weakness for smooth talkers; they never lived up to their own hype.

***

Solitary the Komodo dragon sat, ten feet long and hundreds of pounds, strong-tailed and scaly-backed. Her mouth was closed, her tens of serrated surfaces tucked away beneath bloody gums and firmed lips, backed by idle muscles that could tear flesh from bone and limb from life.

Stomach half-full of yesterday’s deer, body warmed by the afternoon’s heat, spine pleasantly supple with the relaxation of a day spent doing nothing in particular, there had been few more happy times in her life.

She stared at the sunset’s sea and thought about things that had nothing to do with life or death or self or other, and then something inside her ovaries went ‘plunk.’

“Aw fuck,” said the dragon.  “Not again.”

This was her THIRD YEAR IN A ROW undergoing parthenogenesis.  Damn her stupid biological clock.

At least maybe this time she wouldn’t eat all of them.

***

The flight was beautiful – loops, twirls, drunken corkscrews, spinning through a sky far above the ant colony.  The tunnels and the workers and her fat flightless mother all suddenly so far away that she could’ve blotted them out of her mind just like that – like THAT – they were so small and pointless.

This was what she wanted to do!  What she wanted to do was fly!

She also wanted to do someone, and so convenient it was that the air near her was thick with drones.  One of the tastier looking ones was looping around her right now, and the attraction was looking very much mutual.

A bit of petting in the air, but that was nothing at all – just a touch that made her want more.  She wanted to fly and fuck and nothing else, a little squeeze wasn’t going to cut it. 

So they went down to the rain-damp ground where there was more leverage and then it started and was immediately over.

“Well, bye,” said the drone, and took off again. 

“Excuse me?” she asked. 

“Job’s done.  Gonna go starve to death now,” his voice echoed faintly back at her. 

“Excuse ME?” she asked.

Then her wings fell off and landed in the mud.

At that moment she finally, completely, and fully understood why her mother had always seemed so crabby.

***

“New guy today.”
Lisa blinked.  “Huh?  Didn’t hear about that.”
“It was late last night; you were out swiping that hyena kill with Lottie.  He popped up early morning, swatted Leo stupid and sent him whining off.”
“Oh.”  Lisa rolled over and aimlessly pawed at the steaming savannah air, her fluffy tummy rippling in the breeze.  “Is he hot?”
“If you like older guys I guess?  Looks like someone ate his ear though.”
“Kinky.”
“Like, a crocodile.”
“Oh.  Less kinky.”

“Yeah, it’s not a clean bite.”
“Gross.”
“The ol’ twist-n-tear.”
“Gross gross.”
“Like, that thing where you’ve got a good grip on a gazelle’s leg and you just give it a turn and a YANK and-”

“Gross gross gross.  Hey, is that Lenore?”
“Aw fuck it is.  Don’t make eye contact.”
“Too late, here she comes.  What’s eating HER?”
“Not her, her cubs.  And it was new guy.”
“Oh right.”
“God, she will NOT shut up about it though.  You’d think she’d never had her offspring killed to stimulate her reproductive readiness before.”
“I know, right?  Queen, please.”
Lenore sat down right in front of them.

“All my cubs are dead,” she said. 

“Yeah, we heard.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
“He just offed ‘em!  The little shits had finally stopped nursing!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yep.”
“And NOW I get to go through that ALL OVER AGAIN.  Teething and everything!”
“Sucks.”
“Ayuh.”
At least the sun wasn’t the most tedious part of midday anymore, Lisa guessed.

“Orders came through!” shouted the sergeant over the not-actually-distant thunder of artillery shells turning the ground into mud pies. “Seize the hill!”

“Aw hell,” said McClunksy, spitting theatrically.  “Why we gotta?”
“Do it or you’re a buttmunch.”
“You take that back you son of a bitch!”
“Seize the hill or you’re a buttmunch.  Buttmunch.  Butt.  Munch.  Butty butty buttmunche-”

McClunksy snarled in fathomless rage and hate, snatched up his rifle, and began eeling his way up the hill, choosing each tuft of grass and clod of earth with care to block the sight of his round little helmet advancing upwards, towards the enemy. 

“And that goes for the rest of you!” said the sergeant.  “Stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking.  Peck!  Dobson!  Clarke!  Get your rears in gears and go kill those dumbasses.”
“My leg’s tired and I peed myself,” whined Clarke. 

“You can pee yourself when you’re dead!  Get up that hill, you dope!”
“I’m NOT a dope!”
“PROVE it!  Dobson, I just TOLD you to stop trying to sneak off when I’m not looking!  Just for that, you can go first!”
“McClunksy went first.”
“Then you’re second.  What are you, chicken?”
“I’m NOT chicken!”
“Prove it and get out there!”

And so, after much cajoling, threatening, taunting, and peer pressure, the squad started their journey into hell, because none of them wanted to be chicken, babies, or big fat losers. 

Worse had been done for less cause. 

***

“Throw the damned grenade, Peck!” roared the sergeant. 
“My arm hurts.”
“It can hurt when it’s dead!”
“You’re ALWAYS telling me to do things when I’m dead!” pouted Peck.  “I don’t wanna!  Why not make Clarke throw the grenade?”
“Clarke’s pinned down under enemy fire, you get to throw the grenade and by every devil and demon in hell you are going to do that right now damnit!”
“Don’t wannnaaaaaaa-”

“CORPORAL PECK IF YOU START A TANTRUM RIGHT NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ASSAULT I WILL PUT YOUR ASS OVER MY KNEE DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Peck turned his back to the sergeant and kicked viciously at a rolling fragment of what had once been a man. 

“Look.  Throw the grenade, and when we get back, you can have an extra MRE.”

Silence. 

Then: “One of the beef ones?”
“Yes, one of the beef ones.”
“…okay.  But just this once.”
“Good.  Here’s the grenade.”
Peck wound up threw it and turned a gun emplacement and five men into a jumbled mess. 

“Fuck yeah!”
“Language!”

“Eat shit!”
“LANGUAGE OR NO MRE!”
“Dickhead!”
“Acceptable!”

***

They attained the summit at long last, delayed by a vicious fight between Clarke and McClunsky over whether or not Spider-man or batman would be a bigger help right now.

“We’re here.  Good job, men.”
“Uggh,” said Clarke, bellyflopping. 

“Tiiired,” whined Peck, sprawled out like a beached seal. 

“Are we done?” yawned McClunsky.  “I wanna go home now.”
“We have to hold it first.  C’mon.  Peck, you’re on sniper duty; McClunsky, unship the flamethrower.”

“Oh boy!”
Clarke frowned.  “McClunsky ALWAYS gets the flamethrower.  Why can’t I have the flamethrower?”
“Knock it off, Clarke – you know damned well the flamethrower’s McClunsky’s responsibility.”
“Why does HE get to be responsible!  I’m responsible!”
“Yeah you are.  You’re responsible for the first aid supplies.”
“Those are boring stuff for GIRLS,” said Clarke, stomping his feet.  “I want to use the flamethrower!  McClunsky never shares the flamethrower, and you said sharing is good!  He’s being a selfish asshole!”
“Language, Clarke!  Don’t you dare talk about your squadmate that way.  LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU.  Thank you.  Now you stop giving me sass and you apologiz – look, never mind.  Just stop trying to take McClunsky’s stuff.  How would you feel if we took your stuff?”
“Good.  Bandaids are stupid.”
“They aren’t bandaids, Clarke.”

***

The counter-attack was fierce and furious. 

“Woooo!” shouted McClunsky cheerfully, piping molten death into the faces of his fellow humans.  “Eat it!  Hahahah!  Owned, bitches!  Owned!  Owned!  Owned!  Noobs!”
“Language, McClunsky,” said the sergeant.  “Peck, there’s one downslop-”

“I KNOW, okay?  Stop telling me what to do!”
“I’m just making sure you do it right.”
“You don’t trust me!  You never trust me!  You don’t trust anyone but McClunsky because he’s your favorite!”
“I don’t have favorites, I love you all equally.”
“You’re lying!”

There was a little ‘spang’ sound and a bullet smacked into the sergeant’s backpack. 

“Peck?  Do your chores.”
“Ugh.  Fine.  This is abuse.”

“All done!” shouted McClunsky brightly from downslope. 

Then a shell hit him and he went away. 

***

The lieutenant looked like a visitor from some strange other world, picking his way through the smoke and smouldering ashes and burnt metal.  A heron wading through the reeds. 

“Sergeant.  Well done.  Victory is ours, and your men deserve congratulations for their part in it.”

“Not all of them, sir.  McClunsky is gone.”
The lieutenant followed the sergeant’s pointing finger to the physical evidence that was all that remained of McClunsky’s mortal presence on this earth and threw up a little in his mouth.

“I can’t….I can’t believe he’s gone!” he gasped out, once the retching was done.  “He was going to go home, start a family-”

“Asked him yesterday, sir; he still thought kissing was gross.”

“-go home, rejoin his family.  And now he’s just been turned into a meat crater by some half-awake dork at a little console miles away.  What kind of death is that?”
The sergeant shook his grizzled, pube-chinned thirteen-year-old head.  “It’s the kind we’re given, sir.  War is a young man’s game.”

“So, how have you heard the song?”

Sixteen times I’d heard that question today.  I wanted to smack, punch, kick, and swear at the brightly cheerful face asking me the question six miles into a ten mile hike.  The bus driver wouldn’t take us to the Inglevale stop. 

That didn’t deter anyone else packed on there with me.  They’d all heard a song, you see, and what was a little walk compared to that?  And besides, it gave them a chance to compare notes.  Constantly. 

So I smiled and I lied and I spun my little story about how it had been.  Every bit of it was true, but not all the bits were from the same place.  God only knows we’d had enough choices back at the bureau.  Half the hitchhiking traffic in the country was Inglevale-bound. 

“Great!” said the cheerful idiot when I was done waxing earnest at her.  Her face was half freckles and half grin and all mad.  “Not far now!”

And it wasn’t.  Inglevale town limits were ahead, just on the lip of the hill. 

***

Up until six months ago, the most noteworthy thing Inglevale produced was dirt.  Gravel, to be specific.  Decent stone there for that, and not much else. 

Then the bottom of a gravel pit opened up and dropped a bulldozer down it, and the man inside – dragged out after six breathless hours of the first actual excitement the place had ever known – says he saw god. 

Fair enough, that happens sometimes. 

Then the whole town listened to him. 

That’s a little rarer. 

And now there’s whole busloads and roving vans and train cars packed full of pilgrims, all moving across the country in bands of one to forty, following the song that Bowser Fenton told them would come. 

That’s downright rare.  Who the fuck names their kid ‘Bowser’?

***

I’d expected a little less… purpose, I admit. 

Cults have enthusiasm.  They don’t necessary have know-how.  No matter how earnest and fervent the loonies are, once everyone’s busy diving the will of the universe they tend to let toilets clog and streets fill with trash. 

Inglevale was an anthill.  A proper, functioning anthill, not one overturned by a careless shoe.  The streets were full and they were churning; bodies going every which way, people hurrying eagerly from task to task, moving metal, moving timber, clearing away garbage, and laughing, talking, chattering constantly, always about that damned song. 

Was this a religion or a construction crew?

What were they building?

And what was the fastest way for me to answer those two questions, so that –

“So, how have you heard the song?”
– I would never have to hear that one again?

***

Work answered some of my problems.  I grabbed onto a repurposed dump truck laden with shiny new parts along with half the crowd around me, took it down to the construction site. 

It was by the lake.  Made sense, I suppose, since it’s the one thing Inglevale has that’s noteworthy.  Big ol’ gravel pit that flooded out and they just shrugged and put up some beaches. 

What made less sense was what they were building.  At first I thought it was obscured by a cloud of scaffolding; then we got closer and I realized it was nothing BUT scaffolding.  Some kind of lunatic antenna? 

“The song swells!” called down a worker, sweaty and smiling and forty feet in the air. 

“So it does!” chorused the truckers. 

Work wasn’t too bad.  People did what they were comfortable with; welding, hauling, assembly.  I’d seen worse safety setups on certified and monitored construction sites, frankly, which was all the more impressive given there didn’t seem to be any foremen.  Nobody giving any instruction at all, actually.  Made finding out what I was meant to be doing all the more troublesome; people just went were they were needed which – against all reason – always seemed to be the right place.  I felt like a blind cat in a rocking chair factory, only all the chairs were full of other perfectly happy blind cats that wouldn’t stop yowling encouragement at me.

And asking me about the damned song. 

Rest for the night was surprisingly comfy.  The out-of-towners were being put up across town in a patchwork of spare rooms, Inglevale’s singular hotel, and the many motels scattered along the fringe of its desolate highway – I scored an empty room in the latter, where I spent the night making notes and trying to ignore someone noisily having bad but enthusiastic sex next door. 

I must have looked bad in the morning; I stumbled outside into a parking lot that had been turned into an emergency breakfast buffet, and by the time I made it out the other side I’d had four brownies and a waffle stuffed into my arms.

The waffle was buttered.  Wonder if the song told them to do that. 

***

The report was due in three days and I still wasn’t learning anything new besides how to be a perfectly adequate and safe high-rise worker. 

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  I’d gotten several more unanswered questions. 

How the hell did the town get swept up in this so…fully?  Everyone was in on it.  EVERYONE.  No cult’s that good.  No sign of expulsion of the unbelievers or mass graves in the woods.

What was the thing we were building?  Progress was lightning-fast, but the structure itself still looked like a pylon and a radio tower fucked and had one hell of an ugly baby. 

Who was in charge?  Bowser Fenton, maybe – still hadn’t tracked him down – but he wasn’t giving orders.  Nobody was giving orders. 

How did that even WORK?  How was anything working?  There was no chaos, or if there was it was the purposeful and planned kind.  Everyone knew exactly what they were doing.

Well, except me.  But I was good at improv, and a convincing liar.  All I had to do was follow a line. 

Which everyone refused to feed me.  Just the song.  The song, the song, the song. 

I’d shared my fictional account of the song a hundred times.  Never once seen a hint of disbelief.  These people were infants.  Naïve, born-again-yesterday hopefuls, thinking they were truly in at the ground floor of the Most Important Thing Ever. 

That was pretty much the only thing about them that made any sense at all. 

“The song swells!” sang the woman next to me. 

“The song swells,” I replied, but she wasn’t listening.  Instead, she was clambering down the side of the antenna, leaving only a trail of liquid from the open, pulsating glands dotting her exposed and muscled forearms. 

Suddenly, I had another question. 

***

I had no idea how I’d missed them until then.  They were EVERYWHERE. 

Old men with soft hands, glistening with eternal dew. 

Construction crew that were covered with more than just heavy perspiration. 

One of the guys serving lunch had a blue throat.  Just the throat.  Whenever he laughed – which he did often, they all did so damned often – it pulsed and jiggled. 

It was odourless, which didn’t surprise me but did unsettle me. 

I wasn’t a doctor, but I hadn’t heard of anything like this.  Some kind of mass poisoning?  I felt like an idiot for eating the food without even a cursory inspection, but I stayed up all night running basic checks on a smuggled dinner roll and found nothing.  No radiation, no obvious additives.  Whatever was doing this, either it was something really unusual or it wasn’t in the food.  Or both. 

Still stayed up too late worrying about it, which meant I was really in need of the breakfast I didn’t get when I opened my door and found about twenty happy faces waiting for me. 

“Hello, Agent Tabitha!” said Bowser Fenton.  “We’re just finishing up!  Want to see?”

***

He looked just like the photos, besides the blue, glandular skin.  Big shaggy beard, intense eyes hidden under massive eyebushes.  He looked a lot happier now, though.  The lines on his face weren’t built for the cheery grin he sported; the wrinkles made him look older. 

“We thought you would appreciate a familiar face for this,” he explained.  “Just understand, I’m not in charge around here.  None of us are.”
I had a good poker face. 

“Not like THAT, Tabitha,” he said, pulling a face.  “I assure you, someone is in charge.  Just not one of us.  Don’t you wonder how we found you out?”
“I fucked up.”
“No, no, goodness no.  But you haven’t heard the song.”
“I-”

“Please, no need to repeat yourself.  We know you hate it.  And don’t feel so guilty about feeling so relieved.  It sours the song, you know?”
“No.”
“Right, sorry.  I’m very clumsy with my words; most of our important work nowadays doesn’t use them.  Which is what I’m here to explain to you – our work, that is – and why you need to listen carefully, despite my muddling.  There needs to be a message, you see, and since you aren’t one of us you’re the ideal messenger.  A sort of unprophet.”

“Of what?  The song?”
“Oh no.  The song just told us how to do this.  Which we’re getting to.  Here we are!  Thank you for helping build it, by the way.”
The antenna had acquired a pronounced tilt in the past two days, like a skeletal Tower of Pisa.  Overnight a large and complicated cross between a clock and a radar dish had been attached to the pinnacle. 

“What does it do?”
“This,” said Bowser.  “The song swells!” he and everyone else cheered, and then there was a teething-achingly enormous SNAP and the entire thing toppled over into the lake with that particularly slow motion giant disasters have.

“There,” said Bowser.  “All done.”
I laughed, I admit.  Against all self-control and reason, I laughed.  I laughed despite my best efforts and Bowser and the others laughed too and that was when I felt it tunnel up from the dirt, through the soil, through the water, up to the top of my head and escape into the broader atmosphere. 

I didn’t scream, but it took effort. 

“I did warn you,” said Bowser sympathetically. 

“Is that the song?” I wrenched out.  It felt like my body was being used as a bass string. 

“No,” he said.  “Not quite.  Or at least, not the one we’ve been hearing.  This is a little bit bigger, and it’s not instructions.  Our song was to tell us how to make this.”
“What is it?”
“Orders.  To tell the world to be mended.  Breath, Tabitha.”
I breathed.  The air hissed in my lungs like angry cockroaches. 

“Can you feel it?  It’s changing.”  Bowser was watching me carefully, and for the very first time he wasn’t smiling.  He looked like the old man he was, probably in the middle of telling me some bad news about my fuse box.  “It’s all changing now.  It tried to warn us, but nobody was able to hear it until I fell.  And by then it was too late.  We’d already made quite a mess of the atmosphere.  But this?  There’s still time for this.  Tabitha, LISTEN.  Go to them.  Tell them not to touch this.  Tell them not to touch us.  We’ll do what we can to protect this while it’s working, but it’d be easier if we can expect nobody to try and wreck it in the first place.  Easier still if they can help.  Are you listening, Tabitha?  Tell them that.”
I nodded. 

“Tell them that.  You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and his face slid back into a sort of smile, but a distant one.  “Now you can go.  Louise’ll drive you out to where the bus usually stops.  Take some butter tarts.  And no, there’s nothing in them.  This-” and he rubbed his fingers over the soft, slipper surface of his face – “just happens when you work a bit too close and long with the stuff we put in the receiver.  It’s why we never put you too high up it, if that makes sense.”

The next bus rolled in an hour after Louise dropped me off. 

“I haven’t heard the song,” I told the head of the procession as we passed each other by.
“Yeah,” she said.  “We knew.”

***

I told them everything.  I’m not sure if we’re sending messages or missiles.  I’m not sure if the missiles will work.  I’m not sure what happens if they work. 

I’m not sure what Bowser Fenton found under the gravel pit. 

I’m not sure if it’ll make things better or worse. 

The armies drew up.  On the side of Very Evil stood ten million goblins, four million orcs, a million trolls, and ten thousand assorted wraiths spectres and general nuisances.  Almost all of them were heftily informed by racist stereotypes in what the author would avow to his grave was a meaningless coincidence. 

On the side of Incredibly Good were sixty nameless goons an (attractively yet not actually) injured protagonist and a gormless sidekick.

“Oh no oh dear oh gosh,” wailed the gormless sidekick, comically doing a little jig of dismay.  “We’re doomed and I’m very frightened because I’m here to express the audience’s less-than-flattering feelings towards themselves aw shuuuuucks.”
“Fear not, small, stupid creature, whom I lower myself to call ‘friend’ and thereby express humility (one of my many virtues),” extolled the protagonist.  His leg was bandaged but this functionally did not matter, and he would never suffer sepsis in a million years.  “Right is on our side.  We’re doomed, but only in a way that will never actually present consequences to us and only makes our cause sexier.  Chin up, you’ll see your pointlessly mundane home and marry a not unreasonably attractive spouse before the book’s done.  Look!  Already the enemy has begun their futile assault!  See how they swarm and gnash their teeth in a frenzy of despair.  We’ve got them right where we want them: two chapters from the epilogue.”

“Oh nooooo,” whined the gormless sidekick.  “I wish I could shit myself.”
“Bodily functions beyond bleeding are Not Allowed,” said the protagonist.  “Don’t be gross.  Now let’s nobly charge into battle!  Forget about my leg, it’s not important anymore and doesn’t exist.  FOR INEVITABLE VICTORY!”
“FOR HIS INEVITABLE VICTORY,” shouted the nameless goons, and they all sallied forth and the fury and passion of their writing was such that they each killed a hundred thousand enemies each before totally dying in an abstract and unspecified way that was undoubtedly very heroic yet completely unworthy of note, leaving only the protagonist and the gormless sidekick.

“Golly jeepers,” shrieked the gormless sidekick, tripping over a sword and accidentally murdering a troll eight hundred times their body weight, “I’m so relatably terrified and powerless!  This is definitely how someone who doesn’t know how to fight would acquit themselves,” they added, waving their sword frantically and spitting four goblins at once on it. 

“No fear!” shouted the protagonist heroically, somehow having the lungpower to enunciate clearly while fighting an arbitrarily large army all by himself.  He coughed lightly and a hundred orcs exploded into giblets.  “We’re all alone, but that just means our mandated triumph shall be all the sweeter in our mouths and our audience’s minds.  Gird your loins a little; I’m about to suffer a cliffhanger.  Aaaargh,” he said, as a single, cowardly, repulsive, verminous, wretched, pathetic, worthless, foul, awful, treacherous foe snuck up on him and unfairly and actually hit him, the cur. 

“Oh noooooo,” screamed the gormless sidekick.  “Now I’ve got no choice but to become arbitrarily competent for thirty seconds, a thing which I will foreverafter deny!  Rar!  Hurr!  Arr!” they snorted, and with a brief onflux of temporary drama butchered foes for a good five minutes straight without rest over the heroically swooning and prone form of the protagonist, whose helpless yet spirited defensive posture gutted a hundred thousand more. 

“I have excellent news,” said the protagonist, engaging in a futile duel against the wizard-emperor of all dead things with one hand and slapping away all his lieutenants, servants, and bodyguards with the other.  “We’re on the brink of defeat and death!”
“Criminy!” whinged the gormless sidekick. 

“Yes!  Our triumph is most definitely imminent now.  Watch as I seem to be in actual danger!  Look, look, his sword’s almost touching me!  It’s almost touching me!  Look how brave and stoic I am as it appears that I am almost overcome!  I bet you’d be pissing yourself if you were allowed to, wouldn’t you?”
“Yesssssssssssss,” hissed the gormless sidekick, legs frantically scissoring like fucking mantises. 

A giant and horrible sound smacked the eardrums of everyone present. 

“Ah, there’s our dues ex machina,” said the protagonist with satisfaction.  He sheathed his sword.  “Now we just have to watch!  Will they dissolve into vapour or crumble into stone and dust or simply run around like chickens with their heads cut off?  Who knows!  Who cares!  Men, execute them all.  From this day forwards only people that look like me – and by me, I mean the author – are permitted to exist.  Kill ‘em all and let the editors sort ‘em out!”

“Yes sir!” said the nameless goons, or maybe they didn’t.  Who cared about them, and if they were alive or dead or said anything or nothing at all? 

Anyway they killed every last member of the species opposing them or maybe they didn’t who the hell knows.  But the important thing was that they wiped them away as a threat. 

“I’m exultant, yet nobly concerned over the fate of my men,” said the protagonist, archly furrowing his brow but not in a way that didn’t make him look sexy.  “This means I get to wear the crown next chapter.  Gormless sidekick, I’d like you to be the token member of the crowd I pretend to defer to as a show of my good faith and kindness.”
“Aw shucks,” said the gormless sidekick.  “I was really hoping to just go on back to my quaint little hovel that reminds the author of the lower classes of his childhood, when people showed you a bit of respect.  I’m far too simple and stupid to ever want anything more.”
“And so it shall be,” the protagonist said, tousling their hair.  “Don’t worry: nothing is allowed to change from this point onwards.  There’s some mopping up and a coronation and so on, but there aren’t allowed to be any more problems ever again.  The right person’s in charge now, the evil monsters that pretended to be people who didn’t look like me (and who I assume our reader to be) are totally exterminated to the last child-who-doesn’t-actually-exist-to-avoid-the-implications, and the vague spectre of a monstrous tyrant who desires to control everyone is now dispersed, allowing the happy beaming sunshine world of a noble leader who wisely guides everyone into the future where everything is as he pleases to assert itself.  Now pucker up and kiss my ass.”
“Mmm!  Tastes like cherries, your highness.”
“That it does, gormless sidekick.  That it does.”

It was Eld Bartimas’s Day, High Prayer was six minutes away by the sun’s position, and the prayer book was nowhere to be found, no matter how many cupboards the priest ripped open and ransacked. 

And his goddamned cat wouldn’t stop complaining at him. 

“No no no not here damn double damn damn triple damn damn damn.”

“Mow.”
“Shut up.”
“Mowwwwww.”
“Maybe in the kitchen?  No no no I already checked there.”
“Mrrrrreeeaaah.”
“Shut up!  On top of the bookcase?  No, I can’t even reach there.”
“Aaankk.”
“Shut up shut up shut up!”
“Brreeeaaaow.”

The priest picked up the nearest object and spun to throw it at his cat, then saw that it was sitting on top of the prayer book. 

Well, the half of the prayer book it hadn’t torn out and eaten, from the ink stains on its face.

“You little bastard if you weren’t technically thirteen percent holiness by weight I would skin you so much right now.”
“Mow.”

He read High Prayer from memory, and if there were a few more portentous silences than usual nobody in the congregation caught on. 

***

Late August was scorching, blistering, soul-sweating weather, and that was when the church caught fire. 

It was a good time for it, if such a thing could exist.  It happened when nobody was present; it happened the day a torrential rainstorm finally broke the weeks-long desiccation of high summer; it happened when there was plenty of spare lumber and manpower available to repair and restore it; and best of all the priest hadn’t seen the cat since it happened. 

Not that he’d wish harm on any of the creator’s children, of course.  He just hoped the fuzzy jackass had been scared off and would live out the rest of his days in peace, very far away somewhere. 

Autumn’s footsteps were fast coming, and the reconstruction had been completed just in time.  The priest could still finish this last big warm cup of tea and smear the myrrh over the threshold before the equinox of the evening. 

Another sip, long and slow.  Oh lovely, mint.  Such a fine thing.  Funny how his heart was racing, though.  Pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat-THUD CLUNK. 

The priest put down his mug and hurried to the threshold.  There he found his cat, a toppled vessel of myrrh, four myrrh-coated cat feet, and a lot of complaining noises. 

“Fuck you,” he told the cat. 

“Mrrrrrow.”

It did not listen to him.  Then again it was at least thirty-three percent holiness by volume now, so perhaps it outranked him.  Not that he’d tell anyone about it. 

***

Fletcher was a big, big man.  Hope was a big, bigger woman. 

Their daughter, Charity, was somehow bigger than both of them despite being still daisy-fresh to the world.  It was times like this the priest was glad the baptismal font was extra sturdy. 

Everything was ready, and not a moment too soon – a glance at the window put the happy family almost at his doorstep.  He was glad he’d blessed an extra-large decanter; that baby was going to need it. 

“Mow.”
“Not now you little shit.”

The silence that followed was perhaps the most dreadful thing the priest had ever experienced in fifty years of life.  It was as if gravity had stopped working, or the sun had been switched off.  The cat DID NOT listen to him. 

Then there was a slight scraping sound. 

He turned around with the slow weight of a man who knew he was going to meet his own execution and met the eyes of the cat, who was perched on the edge of the font, one paw carefully touching the decanter of holy water, eyes round and full of nothing but total, perfect, perpetual innocence. 

“No.”
“Mow?”

“No, no, don’t do that.” 

“Mreeah.”

The priest began to sidle forward, hands extended, tongue clucking like a nervous chicken.  “No, no, you don’t want to do that.  You’re a good kitty.  Goooood kitty.”
“Mowwww.”

“Gooooood kitty.  Gooood miserable little bastard.  Goood DON’T DO THAT DON’T NO YOU LITTLE FUCKER-”

The door opened, the priest leaped, the cat slipped, the decanter spun around and did three flips in the air, and that was that. 

The priest turned around, soaked cat clutched in his arms, and met the eyes of Fletcher and Hope.  And Charity, who seemed very pleased by all of this. 

“Did you see that?”

They nodded.

“Are you CERTAIN you were witnesses to that?”
The parents nodded again, very slowly.  Charity gurgled happily. 

The priest sighed, the bone-deep, soul-weary breath of a man discovering atheism.  “Well, that’s that then,” he said. 

***

Saint Little Fucker the Fuzzy, Patron of Those Who Suffer Sociopaths was, to the church’s immense displeasure, very, very, very popular. 

The micro-island nation of Blip has only one dock.  It only needs one dock, and there isn’t much space for more anyways. 

Currently the dock is a little overstuffed.  A large, bulky chickenwire box is occupying most of it.  There is a man in it, and a woman leaning back against it, dangling her feet in the sea.  A second man is fishing nearby, poorly. 

There is no other land within two hundred miles.  But if someone were passing by – or if one of the gulls were uncommonly gifted with languages – this is what they’d hear:

“Hey, Claire?”
“Yep.”
“Let me out.”
“Nope.”
“Oh come on!  I’m the president!”
“Deposed president, Tom.”
“That was illegitimate action and unjustified.”
“The gull cage.”
“Oh, this?  It was for the gulls!  For making nests, where Tim’s cat couldn’t get at them.”
“You locked Tim in it until the gulls ate him.”
“THAT was a temporary punishment for insubordination that went horribly wrong due to an honest mistake.  How was I supposed to know the gulls would eat him?”
“You smothered him in fat from Paul’s deep fryer.”
“I didn’t want him to catch chill overnight.  Just ask Ben, I’m very concerned with the health of my subjects.  Right Ben?”
“Right what?”

“Don’t listen to him.”
“I was just saying to Claire that I’m very concerned with the health of my subjects.  Remember when you felt poorly and I gave you those pills that made you throw up?”

“Yes…” 

“Everyone said that was cruel, but you felt better afterwards, didn’t you?”
“Well, that IS true.”
“You were in a coma for three days and we had to nurse you back from the brink.”
“Oh, you’re exaggerating.  He was fine!  He was perfectly fine.”
“I don’t know Claire, are you sure you’re not being too harsh on him?”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Woah jeez.”
“Yeah Claire, don’t be aggro on Ben.  He’s just raising alternative points of view.”
“Shut up.”

“Does he have to shut up?  He’s just-”

“Yes.  Literally everything he’s ever said or done has been awful.”
“Oh come on, really?  What about the wells?”
“Oil wells.  Which you dug all over the hills, ruining our one actual, drinkable water well.”

“All we needed was one successful oil well and we could’ve had bottled water flown in daily.  It was an honest gamble and we lost.  Sometimes that happens.”
“That seems legitimate.”
“Ben?  Shut up.”
“What, I’m just saying.”
“Alright.  Into the gull cage with you.”
“What?  Why?!”
“Sedition.  You love your terrible president so much, you can be caged with him.”
“No!”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Alright, alright.  Fine.  Fine!”

“You can have that corner, Ben.”
“Thank you.”
“You chose a good time to get locked up, you know.  Here comes lunch!”
“Oh hey Paul!”
“Hi guys.  Wait, there’s two of them now?”
“Ben was seditious.”
“I saw him bathe just this morning.”
“Whatever.  You got the fat?”
“Well, I had it ready but then I thought…y’know, most people don’t actually LIKE pure fat.  So I made some onion rings instead.”
“Paul for fuck’s sake we weren’t going to feed Tom the fat.  We were going to coat him in it so the gulls ate him.”
“Woah, woah, woah!  Why?”
“It’s what he did to Tim!  Poetic justice, Jesus H. tapdancing Christ on a cracker don’t you know ANYTHING?”
“I know onion rings are a lot tastier than fat.”

“We don’t feed onion rings to the condemned.”
“What, no last meal?”

“No!”
“I didn’t sign up for this sort of behaviour.  It’s downright unethical.”
“He fed Tim to the gulls!

“Yeah but… I never really LIKED Tim.”
“Right, that’s it.  Into the cage.”
“Really?”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“Aw c’mon.”
“In.  Now.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”

“Welcome.  You can have that corner.”
“Eugh, it’s full.”
“Nah, it’s mostly decomposed by now.  Tim weathered fast.  Must’ve been that big storm we had last week, eh Ben?”
“Tell me about it.  Blew my roof off.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if a certain someone hadn’t decreed all the trees be chopped down to build a gull cage.”

“Nobody asked you to butt in, Claire.”
“Yeah Claire!  I didn’t ask for you to butt in!”
“Good standing up for yourself, Ben.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re all hopeless.”

“Who’s hopeless?  Woah, Claire, what the fuck?”
“What?”
“Is EVERYONE in the gull cage?”
“No.  You and me are out here.”
“Hi Brianne!”
“Hi Ben.  Why are they all in the gull cage?”
“Sedition and treason.”
“Wasn’t that exactly why Tom had Tim fed to the gulls in the first place?”
“He made that shit up.  These guys are all on record.”
“I did NOT make that shit up!  Tim challenged my authority in public, and left me no other legal recourse!”
“He said drilling oil wells was stupid and you sentenced him to ‘a slow, lingering death.’”

“What else was I meant to do?”

“Anything at all!”
“Seriously Claire, why don’t you let these folks out?”
“They’re with Tom.”
“Let them out.”
“No.”
“I’ve got the knife.”
“No, I’ve got the – hey, when did you do that?”
“While you were screaming at Tom.  Into the cage.”
“Fuck you.”
“Into the cage.”
“You can have the last corner if you’d like.”
“Shut up, Ben.”

“Why does she get the corner that doesn’t have Tim all over it?”
“Because that’s the one the gulls left the rest of Tim in.”
“Tom, if you don’t stop talking I’m going to turn you into a smear that makes this corner look like a posh hotel.”

“Says who?   You don’t have the knifffffuuuuurghhacjkdhghhghurgh.”
“Woah!”
“Claire, what the hell?”
“I got hands.”
“Cllllrf.”
“Break it up!  Break it up in there!”
“Make me!”
“Hllk.”
“Ben, Paul, get her arms!”
“Ben?  I’ve got two hands.”
“Paul, get her arms!”

“No I’m good thanks.”

“Aaaaag.”
“Okay, break it up NOW or I’m coming in there to break it up myself.”
“Bllloo.”

“I WARNED you!  Drop him!  Now!  Now!  Okay, now!”
“Fine.”
“Hweeeeez.”

“Good.  Damn, you’re like toddlers fighting over the same toy.  Listen, we’re all in this together, and if you’d all been able to accept that earlier this cage never would’ve been built.”
“We’re all very in this together.” 

“Huh?”

“The door shut behind you.”

The island of Blip is currently uninhabited, but it’s got a long and full life ahead of it.  Someone will presumably come along and tidy things up. 

It was a hard sun. 

Flat like a rock table, bright like a banker’s smile, cold like a glacier. 

Charity had never seen a glacier, but she could sure use one right now.  Only a complete moron would travel under this burning torch of a sky, and lordy, lordy, lordy she had run the last six miles in a dead heat.  If it weren’t for her hat the light from above and the blaze underneath would have liquefied her skull.  As it was, her brain had merely boiled inside of it, like a softboiled egg. 

But time wasn’t on her side, so she had no choice. 

This?  This shit was what happened when you got involved with young people.  They got up too early, they had too many big plans, and then just when you thought you knew what they were thinking they did something damned foolhardy, like shooting you in the side in the town square and leaving you with an angry mob closing in fast. 

But hey!  Charity’d had a good feeling about her!  She had no style because she knew style was superfluous!  She had no manners because honesty was a blunt club that could smash through those, so why not wield it!  She had no compunctions about shooting first and not bothering with stupid questions!  She reminded her of herself at that age! 

And if that hadn’t been the big warning sign, Charity didn’t know what would be. 

Lordy, lordy, lordy, this sun, this bastard of a sun. 

She was almost there, she reckoned.  Not like she’d gotten a particularly great look at the map, but Charity had a photographic memory for money and a decent sense of the landscape and most importantly a keen understanding of how someone’s mind worked when it was drunk on cash. 

If SHE were a crazy-ass rapscallion of an officer who didn’t mind burying some surplus mint-fine-metal somewhere, then shooting his co-commander in the spine for it, then sneaking out to make a withdrawal every few months for boozing money, where would she have gone?

Somewhere easily accessible, because she wanted to get her booze on sooner rather than later.  So, through the valley, not through the hills. 

Somewhere easily visible, because when the thirst’s on who has the time to count out paces and remember unmarked stones.  So, at the big ol’ cactus patch. 

Somewhere not QUITE at the easily visible landmark, to make her feel like she was cunning and clever and not terribly, awfully predictable.  So in the big hollow behind it. 

“Hey,” said June. 

***

She still looked tall even at the bottom of the hollow, and there was barely any sweat on her.  Pretty good trick for someone who’d just finished prying a trunk of ingots out of the dirt.  One boot tapped thoughtfully on its lid, the other remained firmly rooted and carefully planted, which meant the gun pointed directly at Charity’s bad eye was rock-steady. 

She really wished she hadn’t told her about her bad eye. 

“Hey,” said Charity, because if you’re going to die and there’s only one person around to hear your last words they don’t matter all that much. 

“Should’ve figured you’d make it.  Metal plate under the shirt?”
“Yep.”
“Classic.”
The gun was still pointed at her bad eye, but it hadn’t killed her yet.  This seemed odd. 

“So.  Got a solution to this situation?”
What situation?
Oh.  Charity’s gun was out and pointed at June.  When the hell had she done that?  Forget her own head next. 

“Well, way I see it, there’s three ways this works out.”
“Go on.  I got time.”
Damned young people.  “One: we both try and shoot each other.  Probably both die, maybe one of us makes it out.”
“Seems likely.”
“Two: we agree to split it fair and square, we go our separate ways.  Half the cash, but that was the plan before you got all persnickety on me.”
“Seems unlikely.”
“Three: we agree to split it fair and square and only one of us tries to shoot the other.  They get everything and a good story.”
“Hmm.”

“Hmm.”

The sun really was awful. 

“June?”

“Yeah.”
“I can’t help but notice you’ve kept your gun and gaze aimed pretty square at my bad eye the whole time we’ve been stuck like this.”
“I know about it.  And it doesn’t have a metal plate on it.”
“Fair.  But it means you aren’t watching my good eye.”
June’s eyes weren’t good or bad.  June’s eyes weren’t anything.  Little chips of something much older than her or Charity or anything that had warm blood and a heart that beat more than twice per minute. 

But they narrowed just a little at that. 

“Speak up.”

“My good eye.  If you’ve got a bad eye, you’ve got a good eye.  It’s just how it is, right?  Everyone knows that.”

“You never mentioned it before.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned my bad eye either.”
“Yep.”  The smile was big.  Was she getting happier?  Young people were crazy.  It was a million degrees outside and she was a finger-twitch and a sneeze from death or murder or both.

“Well, my good eye is on you, and it’s noticing something it likes that you won’t.”
“I like ‘em younger, sorry.”
“Smartass.  But not smart enough.”  Charity’s own smile was a lot smaller, but there was no strain in it.  Her whole face relaxed.  “I’m sorry, y’know.”

June’s little chips opened wide in the blazing sunlight, her muscles shifted, and she settled her foot just a little on the trunk, which sent it crashing right through the lid. 

It had been twenty years since Charity had aimed with her good eye, but she put out all six at once and trusted in volume. 

She knew what was in the trunk.  But she looked anyways.  Both eyes. 

Nothing but dust and June’s trapped boot. 

“Twenty years,” she said aloud.  Twenty years with a terrible thirst, a powerful paranoia, and a cloud of guilt all wrestling over the man’s soul.  The trunk had probably been empty for more than half a decade. 

Ah well.  Plenty more time to strike it big.  She wasn’t young; she was in no rush. 

The walk back was still godawful though. 

The reports from the front were in. 

They were very bad.

The reports from the backlines were also in.

They were extremely bad.

The reports from the President were in but General Gleen just put those in the trash as always.  But there were more of them than usual.

That was very annoying, which was its own kind of bad. 

In light of all those new and extremely annoying developments, there was only one course of action. 

“Hold my calls,” said Gleen to her secretary.  “I’m going to visit R&D&D.”

***

There were eighteen locks on the door.  Seventeen of them were incredibly intricate and powerful and entirely for show; one of them was actually a disguised biometric scanner that would vaporize the door on both sides in a half-kilometer radius if anyone other than General Gleen opened it.  It moved around and swapped places with the others without warning, and had been one of R&D&D’s earliest accomplishments. 

Research and Development for Destruction wasn’t, strictly speaking, a department.  For one thing it only had one employee, and ‘employee’ was an iffy word to apply to someone who wasn’t being paid. 

Still, she WAS being compensated. 

“Hello, professor,” said Gleen. 

“Hello, general,” said Sadcollop.  She was seated at her window, staring at the nothing outside it.  “How’s my family?”

“Completely unharmed.”
“Well, isn’t that nice.”

“It is.  And speaking of which, I had a request.”
“Wonderful.  Fantastic.  Stupendous.”
“No need for sarcasm.  We’re losing the war.”
“Again?  What would you ever do without me?”

“Lose two years ago.  It’s the proton-shift torpedoes.  They’ve figured out how to counter them with targeted phase-”

“Oh, quit parroting jargon you read in a report.  We both know you hate it because it makes you feel stupid.”
“I don’t feel-”

“Really?  Oh dear.  My apologies.  So your big bad beatstick of a weapon isn’t working anymore and all your strategies and tactics and whatnots are falling apart.  Again.  Right?”
“Right.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day.”
“You say that every time.”
“Every day’s a lucky day when you’re talking to me.  I’ve had something ready for about a week.  You want to see the math first?”
“You’ll just make fun of me again.”
Sadcollop clucked her tongue.  “Spoilsport.  Anyway, it’s the plans for a mass accelerator.  Abuses space and time, works at a distance.  Accelerate your enemies into the nearest star.  Accelerate your troops to the border worlds.  Accelerate rocks at lightspeed into border worlds.  Whatever makes you happy.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen.  And she meant it.

“Go fuck yourself,” said Sadcollop.  And she definitely meant it. 

Gleen shut the door behind herself with unnecessary softness.  She knew it pissed the professor off.

Sadcollop counted to forty, shut her eyes, thought about her family, then started to think about teradeaths. 

***

This time there was a knock. 

“Six months,” said Sadcollop.  She was at her desk, looking at a sheet.  She didn’t bother changing her view to Gleen when she entered; the general was substantially less interesting.  “That’s a new record.  Did you get sloppy with the accelerators?”
“There was a surprise raid, and-”

“You didn’t destroy them before they could be captured, therefore you got sloppy with the accelerators.  So they’re accelerating your toys into stars and now it’s not as funny as it was when you were doing it?”
“We’ve had some success in countering the transmission signals, but-”

“But they’re better at it than you are.  Because their research teams are actually competent.  So now here you are again, come back to ask for another superweapon.”

“You make it sound so evil.  We’re the underdogs here, professor.”
“Only because you finally pissed off someone bigger than you.  I don’t remember my planet voting to join up with your little stellar empire.”
“There was a vote.”
“Yes.  Which you rigged.”
“It was conducted with scrupulous fairness.”
“In your military outposts.”
“To ensure no vote tampering.”
“And I wonder what sort of outcomes that led to?”
General Gleen ran a hand through her hair.  Was it thinning?  Damnit, it was thinning.  “Professor?  Fewer politics, more weapons.”
“Weapons are tools used for war, and war is diplomacy by other yadda yadda yadda,” sang Sadcollop.  She threw the tablet at the general, who caught it both by reflex and one corner.  “There you are.  Have the blueprints for a carbon annihilator.  Instantaneously renders all carbon in a targeted area incapable of forming molecular bonds, dissolving all substances it comes into contact with.  Make it, load it into warheads, fire it everywhere, liquefy people and spaceships and planets and pat yourself on the back until your spine goes concave.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen, mild as milk. 

“It’s not a problem at all.  And yes, it’s thinning.  Find a surgeon.  And while you’re at it, see if they can do something about that way you suck in your cheek when you’re thinking.  It makes you look like you’ve been through a lobotomy.”

Gleen left. 

Sadcollop marked her calendar and sat down to wait.  Four weeks, it should be.  Maybe a day late, maybe a day early.

***

 It was a day early. 

“Total disaster,” said Gleen accusatorily.  “They never committed a full force, they had maximum security forces orbiting their home systems, whole STARBASES moved overnight.  They knew it was coming for them, and as of last night they’ve found a way to remote-detonate the payloads in our holds.  How’d you leak it, professor, and how did you come to care so little about what happens to your family?”
“Go to hell,” said Sadcollop.  “They knew something was coming because you’re as subtle as a one-eyed heffalump in a helical heliosphere, AND because you’ve used six superweapons over the last four years.  They expect the unexpected, and they prepare for it too.  Which is precisely the sort of planning you’ve never had.  If I were on the other side and had no morals whatsoever we’d have won first week.”
“’I will protect my family at any cost’ isn’t a moral code, professor,” said Gleen. 

“No, no it isn’t,” agreed Sadcollop.  “Have you tried giving up?  You keep telling me how smart a choice that was.”
“Giving up is not an option.”
“Oh come on, what have you got to lose?”
“We’d sooner lose everything.”

“Mmm.  So you want a new new superweapon.”
“Yes.  And-”

“And it needs to be idiotproofed so you can actually get mileage out of it no matter how stupidly you deploy it.”
“That’s-”

“And it needs to not be easily countered by someone with a functioning brain when stupidly deployed.”
General Gleen said nothing. 

Professor Sadcollop said nothing. 

“So-“ began Gleen.

“So here it is,” said Sadcollop.  She stood up and handed a small data plug over.

“Can’t I-”

“No.  You cannot.  We’re done here.  Go turn this on and end the war.”
“What-”

“It’s a rounder.”
“That-”

“Look, you know how most of the universe is empty space?”
General Gleen waited. 

Professor Sadcollop waited. 

“Ye-”

“Matter is scarce.  Absence of matter isn’t scarce.  Energy is scarce.  Absence of energy isn’t scarce.  This device will round an arbitrarily large volume to the universal average density of… everything.  Which works out to almost nothing.”
“It disinteg-”

“No, disintegration implies something lost integrity.  This removes everything.  Well, nearly everything.”
General Gleen glared. 

Professor Sadcollop smiled. 

“Goodb-”

“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

For the first time, General Gleen slammed the door. 

Professor Sadcollop permitted herself the first smile of over half a decade. 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to go. 

***

“Well, that’s scary,” said Professor Bunrs, turning the little data plug over and over in his hands. 

“Scary or not, we can use it to win,” said General Gleen.  “Absence of evidence doesn’t give them anything to counterengineer.  And we’ll be going big with it – first use should be the last.  I want a suicide run at the homeworld with this.”
“Once we build it,” said Bunrs, opening the data port on his computer. 

General Gleen had a little less than two seconds to think of some extremely and consistently precise wording Professor Sadcollop had used when referring to the object in Bunrs’s hands. 

General Gleen had a hair under half a second to say something. 

General Gleen got out “Don’t-” before Bunrs plugged in the rounder and she was interrupted for the absolute last time ever, along with everything else within fifteen lightyears.

***

The singular atom that was all that remained of Professor Sadcollop’s entire extended family understood.  On average. 

On the eve of his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was eaten by spiders.  Torn apart and liquefied and slurped up down to the bones. 

He had it coming though.  There was a perfectly good reason for it. 

*

On his tenth birthday, Kevin’s mother gave him a small brown box and inside the box was another box and both of them had airholes because inside them like the world’s hairiest matryoshka doll was a large tarantula. 

“Make sure you don’t forget to feed her,” his mother told him.

“Sure!” said Kevin. 

He forgot to feed her, then when she became quiescent pulled her legs off, one at a time.  A very small orb-weaving spider saw the whole thing from her web in the corner of his room. 

Not that she gave a shit, mind you.  Being torn apart is just part of a spider’s day, albeit the very last part of the last day. 

*

On his twelfth birthday Kevin’s father gave him an egg sac.  The last one the pet store had. 

“They misplaced the label, no idea what’s in it,” he said.  “Think of it as gambling.”
Kevin got bored of waiting two days in and poked the egg sac apart in hopes of seeing what was inside it.  He found nothing but tiny little half-formed spiderlings, legs still soft and blurred like bad photography. 

The very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room didn’t mind.  Less competition. 

*

On his fourteenth birthday, Kevin was given a pair of wolf spiders. 

“Make sure you don’t keep them in the same place,” his parents told them.  “The female might eat the male.”
Kevin immediately put them both in the same tank that night and poked them until the female gave in and ate the male out of crabbiness. 

The orb-weaver approved.  She’d done the same thing earlier that morning. 

*

On his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was given a slightly small and extremely earnest tarantula named Nigel.  He spent several hours making friends with it, then went to bed.

As he turned over the covers he noticed a very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room above his head and swatted her flat without thinking about it.

That tore it.  Kevin had swatted a member of the pan-arachnid House of Commons with apathy aforethought.  He was judged by a jury of his household’s peers, found guilty, and sentenced to death within the hour, and it was a very humane sentence because he didn’t even have time to scream.

As opposed to his mother the next morning.  Good lord that woman had lungs. 

She quieted down a lot when she found the tiny court documents left on his ribcage though.  “Oh,” she said.  “I see.  Well, this all seems to be in order.  I guess there’s no helping it.  Honey!” she called down the stairs.  “Our son’s been executed by spiders.  I guess we can go on that cruise you always wanted now?”

*

They left the skeleton where it lay.  As part of the settlement, Kevin’s remains were not to be moved until they had raised at least six generations of spiders, and they were decent, law-abiding people who respected authority. 

Nigel lived in Kevin’s skull and grew fat and happy off a diet of spiderlings until he died peacefully in his sleep. 

******

The first thing the Great God Plonk created was himself, croak-first.  He wriggled his fat-bellied way into existence until the tips of his long, long legs were finished and then he looked around himself and made a chuggarumph of displeasure. 

“This is very dry,” he said, and uttered a vast croak.  And lo, there was moisture.  Enough of it to create the world and all its ponds, which the Great God Plonk immediately hopped into. 

“This is very gray,” he said, and uttered another vast croak.  And lo, there was greenery.  Enough scum and moss and ferns and trees to ring every pool and puddle, and the Great God Plonk luxuriated in their rich shade. 

“This is very hungry work,” he said at last, and went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree.  And lo, out of the thin air came one trillion things that crawled and swam and flew, and almost all of them could fit in the Great God Plonk’s mouth.

That is precisely where he began to fit them. 

“This is ALSO very hungry work,” he said when he was done.  And he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again, and an endless tide of life was made anew and sent spiralling into the Great God Plonk’s gullet over and over and over and over, because the more he made the hungrier he grew. 

“Psst,” said something to the Great God Plonk.  And it wasn’t himself, which startled him. 

It was a tiny little crawling thing with eight legs.  “Want to know a secret?”
“I have made the world and everything in it,” said the Great God Plonk.  “There are no secrets.”
“I’ve got one,” said the thing.  “I’m a spider.  We’re made of secrets.  I made one myself.”
“It can’t be that big a secret,” said the Great God Plonk, “because you are very tiny.  I think I’ll just eat you now.”
“What, you don’t want to know the secret of how to have a bigger meal?”
This interested the Great God Plonk, and so he recoiled his tongue before it had left his mouth.  “Tell me.”
“I can do better – I’ll SHOW you.  It involves traps and tricks.  See, watch.”
And the spider began to make a web.  It was very slow work – it was just a very little spider – but it toodled along as best it could. 

Which wasn’t enough for the Great God Plonk.  “I’m bored,” he said.  “Maybe I should just eat you now.”
“Ah, but then you’ll never learn how to have a bigger meal,” said the spider.  “Maybe if I had more sisters to help this would go fast.”
This made sense to the Great God Plonk, so he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again and made many many other spiders, who all helped.  The web grew bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until it was big enough to cover the whole pond. 

“Is this the bigger meal?” asked the Great God Plonk. 

“Taste it!” said the spider. 

The Great God Plonk tasted it.  It was tough and bitter and it stuck his tongue fast, and the harder he tried to yank it free the more tangled it grew.

So he used his arms. 

Then his legs.

Finally all the Great God Plonk could do was bobbled and gurgle. 

“THAT’s a bigger meal for all of us,” said the spider happily.  And she and her many many many other sisters descended, fangs-first.  

*

The Great God Plonk’s descendants never did learn the trick of having a bigger meal.  But they are still very, very good at eating anything that fits in their mouths. 

******

Once upon a princess castle wicked stepmother yadda yadda yadda YADDA locked in a tower. 

One day, as the princess sat in her room, her one remaining loyal servant came knocking at her door.  “Princess!” he whispered.  “The queen wants you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made for your father’s birthday – by tomorrow!”

“What?” cried the princess.  “But she gave me no warning, and I’m a middling weaver at best.  If my father’s present isn’t ready by tomorrow he will surely execute me!”

“That’s the idea,” said the one remaining loyal servant.
“Please, please, give me some advice,” begged the princess.

“My mother told me of an old old story: the finest weaver in the world is the great spider, Aroch.  She can weave anything out of anything into anything.  Sneak out of your tower through the window, and seek her out.  She dwells in the far away and dusty hills, where the sunlight never stirs or sleeps.”
So the princess snuck out of her tower through the window – it was a very short tower, she barely needed one bedsheet, torn in two – and crept through the slumbering castle town and into the wide wilds of the woods, where she became lost for hours and hours. 

“Oh no,” she sobbed.  “How will I ever find the far away and dusty hills by morning?”

“Why do you want to go there?” asked a tiny voice.  It was a very small spider on the treetrunk above her head.  “It’s dangerous.  Aroch lives there.”
“I need her to do something for me,” said the princess.

“Your funeral,” said the spider.  “But if you really want to find her, head for where the light is faintest.  It will turn red.  It is always sunset in the far away and dusty hills.”  And the spider tucked itself into the bark of the tree again and hid. 

The princess was not accustomed to following advice from spiders, but nor was she accustomed to seeking favours from them either, and so she swallowed her pride and her fear and sought out the faintest light and followed it through hill and dale and twist and turn and up into the very heart of the glowing red sunset that lurked eternally at the rim of the far away and dusty hills. 

“Hello?” she called. 

“Hello,” whispered Aroch. 

She was right above the princess, straddled between two hilltops.  She was very fast and very quiet for something so big. 

“I need you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made by tomorrow, or my father will execute me,” she said. 

“Sorry,” whispered Aroch.  “I do not weave.”
“But you’re a spider!”
“I’m a hunter, not a weaver.  See my large eyes and powerful legs and massive mandibles?  I hunt down my prey and bite it to death.  I don’t really weave things with my silk.  You’re thinking of my sister, Arach.”
“Oh,” said the princess, feeling very foolish.  “Drat.  My one remaining loyal servant’s mother must’ve been a little senile.”
“All part of life,” whispered Aroch.  “Speaking of which, I am going to eat you now.  Anything you need to do first?”
The princess’s body froze, but her mind raced, and her mouth opened just as Aroch’s did.  “Actually…yes.  I would like to do you a favour.”
“How?”

*

“I already have an ale mug,” said the king.  “Decapitate him.”

The executioner sighed inside his mask, but quietly.  His arm was starting to cramp up, and they were only halfway through the court’s gift supply. 

“Where is my daughter?” shouted the king.  “I demand to see my tapestry!”
“No doubt lollygagging,” said the queen.  “I knew she would never finish it, the lazy gadabout.  She’s had all year to make clean on her boast.  No doubt that’s her screaming in the distance right now, wailing at her bad choices.”
“She’s screaming awful loud,” said the king.  “Will someone go and fetch her, so we can execute her and silence that racket?”
The ceiling came off the throne room, lifted between two furry legs. 

“Hello,” whispered Aroch. 

“He’s the one in the hat,” said the princess, from her perch between the largest and fiercest of Aroch’s eyes.  “And she’s the one with the best marbling.”
“Fabulous,” whispered Aroch. 

“Aieee!” shrieked the king. 

“Guards!” shouted the queen.

Snap went the spider. 

*

The princess wasn’t interested in ruling, and Aroch was a solitary being. 

But on the whole the former kingdom only improved for neglect, and enjoyed many prosperous years from then on out. 

If a little less trade than before, mind you.  Word of the giant spider living in the ruins of the castle got around. 

The crash had been grisly.  The captain was dead, and the first mate, second mate, third mate, all the way down to the ship’s cat, also called Mate. 

But there was still life!  Life in the face of a hostile universe.  For in the back seats of the ship there had lurked a Competent Man, and when his keen senses had detected the turbulent descent of the spaceship through the atmosphere he had immediately leapt to his feet, seized his two seatmates – a naïve boy and a nubile waif – and stuffed them all inside the luggage compartment for safekeeping, which he naturally knew would work thanks to his nigh-innate and extensive knowledge of everything. 

Yes, it was thanks to the Competent Man that they were all still breathing, and he intended to keep them that way as long as possible as long as they understood that it was so. 

“First things first,” he said, heroically surveying the landscape with his thumbs tucked into his belt like nobody’s business, “we need to locate a source of fuel.  Those trees over there look likely.  Naïve boy, you start clearing the rubble away from the engine compartment – the nubile waif can help by moving the tiny pieces, as her biology prohibits light work or creative thought.  I’ll make an axe with these hull fragments and then go timbering.”

“Should we-” began the naïve boy, and the Competent Man punched him square in the nose as hard as humanly possible. 

“We’re in an emergency situation and I’m in charge because I am the most competent of you all,” said the Competent Man extremely calmly while wiping blood off his knuckles.  “It’s the only reasonable course of action.  Now get going while I work on keeping us all alive.  I have a plan.”

And so they did what the Competent Man had told them to, because it was clearly the only reasonable course of action because he was so competent.  By day’s end the engine compartment was nearly accessible and there was a tidy supply of firewood, which the Competent Man ordered built into a great bonfire. 

“Boyo I’m bushed,” said the Competent Man, stretching out.  “Nubile waif, cook us dinner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Wow, you didn’t expect to do that?” asked the Competent Man, shaking his head in disbelief.  “Obviously since you haven’t done anything worthwhile all day you’ve got energy to spare and can be put to labour now.  And besides, your brain is developed to give you the satisfaction from housework that you don’t get from sex.”
“I didn’t do much all day because you told me not t-”

The Competent Man sighed loudly and broke a piece of firewood over his thigh.  They stopped questioning him in the face of his incredibly reasonable argument. 

The meal wasn’t that good.  The nubile waif didn’t know how to cook, as the Competent Man helpfully pointed out. 

***

“Alrighty then.  It’s a new day, we’re safe from predators because we have fire – proof of man’s mastery over nature, and nobody is more man than I – and now we can make a furnace.”
“Why?” asked the nubile waif. 

“We’ll build it out of the scrap you two cleared out yesterday.”
“Why?” asked the naïve boy. 

The competent man casually backhanded him.  “Don’t question my decisions.  We’re going to smelt down ore from the hill we crashed on and use it to start rebuilding the engine.  Obviously.”
“But how do you know that’s the right place to find ore, or the right kind of ore, or-” asked the nubile waif. 

“Naturally I’ve got vast knowledge of geology and chemistry,” chuckled the Competent Man, waving away her objections with one hand and grabbing at her ass with the other.  “A simple eyeballing of the landscape allows me to pinpoint that this hill is obviously a rich source of chromium-94, which we can smelt with the copper undoubtedly mingled with it straight into a hyperfloom alloy that will be IDEAL for shipwork.  Now go pick some berries for lunch; me and the naïve boy need to make a smelter from scratch using scrap metal, which of course I know how to do because I have a penis and am confident about that.”

The smelter was up and running before day’s end, and their first wiring components were being drawn out with freshly-forged tongs by the time dinner was served. 

The berries gave the naïve boy indigestion, which the Competent Man said was no doubt due to his soft and effete upbringing. 

***

And so the rhythm of survival was set.  Each morning the naïve boy and the nubile waif awoke and learned of a new marvel to be commissioned at the hands of the Competent Man. 

“Today we make batteries,” he said.

“Out of what?” asked the nubile waif. 

“Naïve boy, follow me.”
“Where?”
The Competent Man smacked him one affectionately.  “To harvest the local pitcher-plants!  Obviously their gullets are full of a substance at the exact PH to be used as acid, and we can repurpose their structures as hulls for the batteries anyways.  Simple work.”
“How do you possibly know that’s true?” asked the nubile waif. 

“Afterwards we can get working on booting up a generator.  Nubile waif, that grove on top of the hill looked like it’ll provide edible nuts.  Don’t forage too far afield or you might be attacked by wild beasts.”

The nuts were delicious, but the nubile waif didn’t crush them into a flour for pancakes, which the Competent Man said would’ve been the most obvious way to prepare them. 

“Today we grind lenses,” he said. 

“How?” asked the naïve boy. 

The Competent Man sighed and punched him in the gut.  “Lifeboat rules, you follow my lead.  Nubile waif, tear up your clothing for tinder, we’re running low on fire materials.”
“Why is it just m-”

“Onwards!” said the Competent Man, and by day’s end they had made some simple lenses with which to recalibrate the laser spectroflexor, which was already being put to use in repairing the damage to the inner hull. 

The nubile waif had torn up some spare jumpers she found inside the cargo compartment for tinder.  “These aren’t nearly as worn and flammable as your clothing would’ve been,” said the Competent Man disapprovingly.  “Honestly, I don’t know how these ideas get into your silly little head.”

“These didn’t fit any of us and I didn’t want to be naked.”
“Adorable,” he chuckled, and he patted her on the head with one hand and grabbed at her ass with the other. 

“Today we will rebuild the starchart,” he said.  

“You know how to program?” said the nubile waif. 

“Naïve boy, you’re in charge of recording all the stars the moment they come out using this tablet I’ve crafted from the clay pit just south near the pond.  Nubile waif, you can check on him every half-hour to make sure he’s paying attention.  Just bat your lashes at him and he’ll wake right up.”
“I don’t really know much about astrono-” said the naïve boy, as the Competent Man slugged him one. 

“Honestly, just use your brain and your gut and your penis and your ineffable power of being correct,” he admonished him gently.  “I’ll be busy calibrating the ship’s computer to accept the new data.  Oh, and nubile waif, no hanky-panky beyond batting lashes.  As the senior male here it’s biologically unsound for me to permit you two to mate.”
The star-tablet turned out surprisingly well.  The nubile waif said that was because her graduate dissertation had been on xenoastronomy; the naïve boy said it was because she did it instead of him and really he should be the one cooking since he was a chef; the Competent Man said it was because the ship’s computer didn’t need any of the data and he’d just wanted both of them out of his hair while he did the real and important work in peace and quiet. 

“Today we hunt,” he said. 

“What?” said the naïve boy.  “Why?  We don’t need more food, the forage provides us with plenty of-”

“To make sure we don’t lose our edge,” said the Competent Man, smacking him idly on the head.  “A man is a hunter, and a hunter must hunt.  If we just live off flowers all day we’ll lose the vigour and rigour needed to escape this planet.  Grab a spear and follow me and do everything I say or you’ll mess this up.  Nubile waif, stoke the fires for us.  Don’t use the big axe if you want more fuel, just pick up sticks or something.  Would hate for you to hurt yourself.”

They spent all day and didn’t kill anything bigger than a sparrow.  The Competent Man pointed out it was because the naïve boy was louder than an elephant and as subtle as a spaceship take-off. 

***

Thirty-one days after the spaceship had crashed to the ground in a ball of molten metal and broken hopes, it stood heroically intact once more, ready to seize the skies and hurl itself home. 

“All tests are good, and by all tests I mean I know it’s done and done properly, because I’ve done it,” said the Competent Man.  “It’s like I’ve always said: the universe always gives you back exactly what you put into it, and nobody puts more into it than me!  Now let’s get the hell out of here and sell this place’s mineral rights for a staggering fortune, of which I will generously gift a small stipend to you both.”

“Lead the way, I guess,” said the naïve boy.

“Ladies first,” said the Competent Man, gesturing at the gangplank with one hand and grabbing at the nubile waif’s ass with the other, and as she danced away from his grip a nearby tree – surprisingly untouched by the rigorous logging that had occurred nearby for the past month – finally gave up the ghost and toppled over on top of the spaceship, crashing straight through its center and annihilating the engine utterly. 

“Urk,” said the Competent Man. 

“Well, it’ll be okay,” said the naïve boy.  “I saw a nice place to build a cabin back there near the lake.”

“Aglfgl,” said the Competent Man.  His lip bulged, and a thin trickle of mixed drool and blood slid over it. 

“Maybe we can repair it?” suggested the nubile waif.  “I mean, we’ve managed to handle this so far.”

“GLORT!” screamed the Competent Man, and he picked up the nearest fragment of debris and set about clobbering the ship, the ground, himself, and the other survivors in that order. 

Thankfully it wasn’t the sharpest fragment of debris. 

That was the one within arm’s reach of the nubile waif. 

***

It wasn’t such a bad planet, not really.  Oxygen, carbon-compatible yet not overly-hostile forms of life.  Plentiful water. 

And it helped that they had a food supply to keep them going while they got started.  The Competent Man had been a bit gritty but he was still fairly digestible, as long as you were willing to overlook the nasty bits.