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“Bergatroyd, m’boy, do you know what the easiest thing in the world is?”
“No, sir. I don’t know anything that you haven’t told me.”
Lloyd Robertson smiled the happy smile of someone explaining something that their conversation partner already knew. “Yes, right, that’s in your contract. Thank you for elucidating as such. It’s money. Money’s dead simple. Bergatroyd, I have one hundred zillion dollars, and if I wish it I could extend my hand and the world would hand me two hundred zillion more. It’s pretty much a snap.”
“Wow, sir.”
“Look, I’ll prove it. Come with me.”
So they walked out of the greenhouse, through the wine fountains, past the marble zoo, through the under-hanger, down the acceleration tubing, and out the front door into the shameful squalor of the world, where Lloyd had Bergatroyd procure a small child.
“Lemme go ya palooka,” said the small child.
“Shut up, small child, and let me do you a favour,” said Lloyd kindly. “I see you have a little piece of straw in your hand. Would you mind trading me that?”
“Sure,” said the child, eyes narrowed with the glint of someone who’d been burned before. “One hundred zillion biggos.”
“Fifty,” said Lloyd.
“One hundred zillion biggos and all your assets.”
“Deal!” said Lloyd, happily. He snatched up the straw quickly before his dupe could change her mind. “Now Bergatroyd, watch how I can make back my fortune with just this piece of – hey, where are you going?”
“He works for me now, Bubba,” sneered the small child. “Now get the hell off my property.”
Lloyd got the hell off her property. A lesser man would’ve been perturbed, but not he! He had a piece of straw, and he knew how to get what he wanted. All he had to do was start small and think forwards.
There, in the park, amongst the stray winter-hardened dog turds and salt-eroded grass. There. There! Opportunity was lurking.
“Hello friend!” said Lloyd to opportunity, grabbing her shoulder and giving it a good friendly shake. “How’s tricks? Say, would you like a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to trade a piece of straw for that sandwich of yours?”
“Mmmfphlg,” said opportunity, through half her sandwich. “Mmmpplgh! Gllrf!”
“Ah, I see, I see. Good move! A wise investment. Here, if you’ll just take this I’ll get that out of your esophagus in a pinch, no worries.”
“HHHHRRRORK!”
“Hey, stop wriggling!”
“HRLP!”
Across the park, on a sunny bench, a policeman pricked up its ears. It stretched, yawned, turned around a few times, then lightly bounded to the pavement and casually strolled over to Lloyd, whereupon it separated him from opportunity by batting at his nose over and over.
“Now, what seems to be the problem here?” it purred, rolling over and over and showing its soft, furry tummy.
“A simple business transaction, we’re all friends here, no need to trouble yourself officer,” said Lloyd, tickling the policeman’s stomach.
The policeman grabbed Lloyd’s hand and rabbit-kicked his arm raw. “I wasn’t talking to you!” it hissed.
“He tried to take my sandwich and give me straw,” said opportunity. “I don’t like straw and the last quarter of my sandwich has his fat dirty fingerprints all over it.”
“I see!” said the policeman, rubbing its side against her leg. “Well, have no fear of that! We’re going to put this creep in the system.”
So the policeman created a criminal record for Lloyd and chased him out of the park with mock charges and a constant, terrifying moaning sound.
“Balls!” said Lloyd four blocks later, once he’d got his breath back. “I dropped my grass! It’s going to be a real pickle recouping my investment without it. I’d better harvest some recoupment stocks to refundate my assetitudinals. Well, that lawn looks good enough.”
It was very good enough. Lloyd decided it was so good enough that he could afford to be choosey, and had picked and discarded seven bushels (‘too short…too long…too coarse…too fine…too dry…too damp…too exuberant’) when the door opened and someone screamed at him for twenty minutes.
“Feel better?” asked Lloyd when they paused for breath.
“Yes,” said the homeowner. “Much. Geez. Thanks. I’ve been really stressed out lately. The mortgage, you know. Still, if you don’t buy now, you’ll be priced out. I’d have been a fool not to invest in a home.”
“Great!” said Lloyd. “I owned a house.”
“How’d that work for you?”
“I traded it to a small child as part of proving a point about how easy it is to make money with a single piece of straw,” said Lloyd. “Which is why I’m taking this straw from you, as soon as I find one I like.”
“How ‘bout that one?”
Lloyd looked. “It DOES look charming. Thank you.”
“Good luck too, seeing as it’s the last one on the lawn.”
“Yes, that was a little closer than I’d like.”
Sirens were roaring. A car pulled up next to the lawn and four or seven policemen fell out, lazily swatting at each other and never making contact.
“I called them before I came out,” said the homeowner. “Woopsy daisy.”
“No harm done,” said Lloyd, just as the policemen all grabbed a different part of his anatomy each and one of them broke his wrist.
“Stop resisting,” the policeman murmured softly into his ear as it put him in a sleeper hold with one arm and broke his wrist with the other.
“Ah!” said Lloyd. “My wrist broke!”
“Stop resisting,” said the policeman who had broken his wrist, who was still holding his broken wrist.
The policemen knocked Lloyd around until he got stuck under the back seat of the squad car. After a few moments spent trying to dig him out they seemed to lose interest and drove back to the station, where they sauntered in and ignored the commissioner making a big fuss over them.

Lloyd woke up the next morning to someone screaming at him again.
“H’lo?” he articulated.
“Oh, ICK, it’s still alive!” said the commissioner. “I can’t believe they left that in my shoe! Ugh. UGH UGH UGH UGH ugh.” He picked up Lloyd in a newspaper and threw him out of the station, back into the world.
“Am I being detained, or am I free to go?” asked Lloyd.
“Don’t come back!” shouted the commissioner, and slammed the door shut. The world was once against Lloyd’s oyster, and he was the sandy irritating grit in its guts.
But when Lloyd set foot on the street a free man once more, he was befuddled greatly. Every lawn was ablaze, the park was an inferno. Firemen were standing by with dry nozzles and empty hoses, expressions as flat and disinterested as Garfield strips.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
A firefighter turned to him. “New rules. No more straw within forty miles of city limits. It’s a very legitimate law that was purchased through legal means today, by a very rich small child who bought the entire city council a new pool.”

Lloyd never did find that straw he needed; Bergatroyd retired in three weeks; the small child nearly lost it all in the recession until they petitioned to receive more money from everyone else; the homeowner foreclosed; and the policemen lived happily until their kidneys failed due to poor diet, at which point the commissioner had them sent to a nice farm out in the country.

Blurt followed the trail.
It was heavy in the gut and wide in the leg; slung-backed and thick-limbed. It crushed through cinderblocks like cinders and waded through crunchy fields of broken wires and rust alike, and it ended up in a tangle of rubble at the bottom of a death-pit filled with broken bones and dead dust.
“Hey, sis” she called down into the tiny opening at the base. “What’s going on?”
“Reading,” came the voice. It was thick with phlegm and vexatation and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, and it was unmistakable in any way for anyone but Blurt’s sister, Clot. “Go away.”
Thus offered her invitation, Blurt nudged her way inside the gutted basement. There was very little light, but Heloderma spectacular – or the Greater Western Gila Monstrosity – was mostly nocturnal anyways and had pretty decent night vision.
Blurt’s told her that her sister was hunched over a big pile of dead plant matter, most of which had been thrashed into pulp then lightly singed and buried.
“Books?” she said. “You found books?!”
“Oh, a lot more than that,” said Clot. “I’ve found the answer.”
“The what?”
“The answer to all of it,” said Clot, and oh boy was that smugness in her voice thick now. “I know what happened to all of the people.”
“What, you mean uncle Blue and aunt Bop out west? I thought they got eaten by a buffalo.”
“Not US people, dumbass,” said Clot. “I mean the OLD people. HUMAN people.”
That set Blurt hissing for a moment. “Wow,” she said. “Really?”
“Really.”
“All of them?”
“Think so.”
“What d’you mean ‘think’?”
“Alright smartass, you think you know it better than me, you can look at it yourself. Take a peek.”
Blurt accepted a handful of tattered pages, squinted carefully, and began.

Craig Larggcoc sneered down at the undead filling the city through eyes of purestrain chipped blue granite. Greyed flesh, senseless moans, and the meandering will of the mob filled the streets. Not a single human life remained in the city – in basically all the world. In his incredibly accurate and flawless judgment, not much had changed.
The wind was rising; the storm was brewing; the window of opportunity was slowly sliding shut. Garth was whimpering again – his shrill, trembling voice nearly drowned out by the sonorous moans of the zombie hordes – something about going back to search ‘for others.’
“There are no others, Garth,” said Craig, coolly.
Garth stared at him with watery-eyed bewilderment. “What?” he said, vacantly.
“There are no other people,” said Craig, with a sigh. “Those are just cattle. Sheep. Wannabes. Real people? Those are scarce. The shambling mess out there weren’t real even before they started trying to eat us. They always wanted to do that, deep down. They’re just finally being honest about it.”
“But… but people’s lives matter,” whinged Garth, blubbering like the hideous little rat Craig had secretly always suspected him to be.
Something clicked inside his head like the trigger weight on a Messenschole No. 92 (one of the late run models).
“Garth,” said Craig, as rock-steady as the Rockies, “what’s the difference between a clip and a magazine?”
“What?” snivelled Garth.
“Garth, listen to me,” said Craig, voice still steely-calm. “For once in your noxious, wasteful, pointless little ‘life,’ say something useful: what is the difference between a clip and a magazine?”
Garth’s knees knocked together, tick-tock; a clock counting down to inevitability. “I…I…I…don’t knooowww,” he howled senselessly, like the maddened animal he was.
Craig pulled out his gun, which was both his best friend and his lover and he had named Stacy after that no-good bitch that had dumped him in high school for some scumsucking jock named Mel who was doubtlessly dead and drooling down there with the zombies that fucking prick. Stacy was a modified Glorfengummer ’07 with an elongated, silenced barrel and an underslung grenade launcher; a laser scope; camouflage patterning; tactical mesh webbing mesh webbing; an extended magazine; a tactical grip; and a self-lubing barrel for when he was lonely.
“Dumbass,” he sneered. Then he shot him a bunch.

“So… the guns killed people?” asked Blurt.
“No, no, no,” said Clot. “Zombies. See, right at the start – they killed people. All the people. Aren’t you jealous? Mom spent years wondering, and I’ve figured it out. The whole end of humans, all in one book.”
“I mean, sure,” said Blurt. “But you’re being sort of reductive, aren’t you? This is just one book. There must’ve been at least a hundred in here back in the day. Even if not ALL of them were about what killed people, there must’ve been more than just one. Can’t we cross-reference?”
Clot was annoyed. She’d dug through the ruins of half a city block, pulled out untold ancient treasures of what very well could’ve been human knowledge, and now her obnoxious sister was naysaying all her discoveries. “Knock yourself out,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Blurt, deliberately ignoring all context, and she settled down in front of another bookcase, which she immediately began excavating with her powerful forelimbs.
I hope it takes you a hundred years, thought Clot silently. I hope all you find are those little boxes of cereal that taste like Styrofoam gone bad. I hope that
“Found one!” said Blurt.
“Like fuck you did,” said Clot.
“Nope, seriously! Look! Look! It’s a bit slim, and half of it’s fallen out, but there’s a good chunk right here, that’s all about it. Here, read it yourself.”
Blurt picked up the new book with the slow care of a bomb disposal expert and began to read.

“The new fleet’s on schedule,” said Toby.
Peter examined the microscope and saw that it was so. The second-gen nanobots were seven times more powerful than the first batch. It was all down to a childishly straightforward application of Boolean Bayes-frames, immersed in a hyperquantum shell and exposed to nanorelative particles. This unstable mix of physics and chemistry was then probed relentless by Toby with great patience and tiny tools, smaller than an atom’s sneeze. The resulting nanobots were synched to each other’s will using a deceptively simple AI routine based on that of the common cold, which allowed them to piggyback on each other using whip physics like whip scorpions. The upshot of this entire paragraph was that Toby was very smart and that the nanobots would be able to tolerate surface temperatures of over seven trillion parsecs above Kelvin, transforming the hell-surface of New Earth into perfectly tranquil custom-landscapes, adjusted to their every whim and fleeting desire. At least, once they were released into the wild using the delivery system that Peter had developed from scratch. Injected deep into the magmatic chambers of neighboring volcanoes, the ash clouds that belched death into the skies of New Earth would instead sow sweet seeds of man’s genius and innovation.
This procedure was only possible due to the sensathump, a remarkable machine that could, by belching hypersonic signals, probe the interior of the planet much as a bat might an insect in mid-air. It was a very complicated and impressive idea and it was ideas like that which had put Peter in charge of the tiny survival colony of far-thinking people living in what had once been his prudently-constructed bunker before the exploding nebula had turned Earth into New Earth. Vision, that was what separated the real men from the simps and wastes of genetic material. That and a willingness to get your hands dirty. And speaking of which…
“You’ve done frapping good work,” Peter told Toby warmly, “you’re a real trebb, you know that? Hey, stick around for a minute. As you’re well aware, our survival will require a lot of eugenics described in intense yet matter-of-fact detail, and I can’t help but make you aware that your extremely nubile daughter is

“What’s a ‘nebula’?” asked Clot.
“A kind of thing in the sky,” said Blurt. “I think. Mom had a book with pictures once.”
Clot checked the book in her claws. It didn’t have pictures, although the cover had some human’s name on it in incredibly impressive font. “Huh. So… a nebula exploded and killed everyone. That doesn’t make much sense; where’d the zombies come from?”
“The nebula?”
“That’s stupid. Zombies are people, and people are too heavy to fly unless they’re birds. Humans aren’t birds. Probably.”
Blurb thought a little harder. “Maybe the nebula exploding killed a lot of people, and then turned most of the survivors into zombies. That’d make sense.”
“That’s too complicated,” said Clot.
“Real life is usually complicated. Like, remember when we used to think buffalo were good to eat? It seemed really simple for years and years and forever and ever, then the deadwinds changed and it turned out those were just larvae. Boy were we surprised.”
“There’s more-complicated-than-you-think,” said Clot, “and then there’s complicated-to-make—you-feel-clever. And this is that.”
“Which?”
Clot smacked her sister between the eyes and heaved her stunned body across the room. It took Blurt a few minutes to right herself, which Clot spent burrowing in the bookcase.
“Huh,” she said.
“Oh?” asked Blurt, somewhat upright and very breathless. “What is it?”
“Uh. Huh,” said Clot.
“Oh, one of THOSE. Well, am I right or are you?”
“Huh,” said Clot. And she handed Blurt the book.

“It was kind of you to meet with me on such short notice,” said ‘Old’ Nick, warmly. But the coldness in his eye belied the fire in his grin.
“Anything for the Supreme Ruler of the United Nations, Mr. nataS,” said Bradley.
“Ah! You pronounced my name correctly!” said Nick. “So many of you Americans cannot do that, you know. It’s very foreign.”
“I respect the names of all peoples, American or heathen, on God’s green earth,” said Bradley. He saw Nick flinch, and could not hide his own smile.
“Ah,” he hissed as with the forked tongue of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). “It seems the game is up, Pastor Blandford. Behold! I am the Antichrist, and as you are a man your will is now mine! Believe my lies about the dating of igneous rocks using isotopic decay!”
“No I won’t,” said Bradley, nobly. “I believe in my Father, who protects me from that sort of thing. Your cunning disguises avail thee not, tempter! I name thee – ‘Old’ Nicholas Infernus Lucifermaximus nataS – by thy title true: Satan!”
At this Nick nataS roared terribly and turned into a dragon with seventeen heads and each head was wearing a whore and each whore was wearing Babylon, and he vomited up such fire and fury that the whole earth was consumed and every man and woman and child died in that Armageddon.
But Bradley Blandford believed, and so he was okay.
“Take the wheel!” he yelled, and he slapped the Antichrist, and it was the backhand of Christ Slapping Through Him (Revelations 371:0.28). The great dragon yelped in unholy agony as if every Darwinist had screamed at once and

They sat there for a little while, unmoving.
“How’s THAT fit into your theory?” asked Clot.
Blurt tried to talk, realized her tongue was hanging out of her slackened mouth, and tried again.
“So…. It was the sky explosion, which was caused by the Antichrist…dragon…thing, which made zombies,” said Blurt. “The multicausal hypothesis, we can call it? Maybe. Possibly?” She shrank back from her sister’s expression. “Look, it’s a start.”
“I think it might’ve been people,” said Clot at last. “People did it to each other.”
“What? Why?”
“Because if I had to sit around all day looking at this crap, I’d kill someone too. Books are for nerds.  Come on, let’s get going. I stashed half a dead deer next to the river yesterday.”

Duke Robswaffle raised a fork to his mouth, chuckling lightly over the thought of finally landing the foreclosure against the Bluebits. His chuckle rattled in his gullet, and he coughed. Then he wheezed. Finally he choked, gasped, gurgled, and fell down face-first in his own breakfast, all his wicked deeds not even affording him the time to panic. The chambermaid screamed.
Outside, Tolb the sub-under-gardener was running the lawnmower and didn’t hear anything. Five minutes later he finished the lawn, put away his tools, and left the estate just before the officers of the law arrived, completely unaware of any ruckus.
He went to a pub down the way, drank a pint of something, lost five bits on a game of cards with a local pal of his that he’d originally won from her anyways, drank a pint again (this time of something larger and meaner), lost ten bits he probably couldn’t afford, said goodbye as politely as he could, and went home.
Home was small and dirty and cramped and shared with a rotation of others. Tolb had a shot of something in an effort to chase away the sure-to-come hangover, ate a dirty biscuit and surly bread, and fell asleep wishing he had some cheese.
The next day he came to work at the Robswaffle estate and found its gates barred.
“What’s going on?” he asked a passerby.
“The Duke is dead!” they told him. “His vile deeds caught up with him!”
“Oh,” said Tolb. “I guess I’d better find other work.”
And he did, at some point.

Lady Whibsy-Herringbone, fifth knife of her line, missed. She missed with grace and skill. She missed with great alacrity. She missed with élan and panache and maybe even vivacity. But the most important part of all of that was that she missed, and so her stubby little blade thunked past Lord Basil Tonington’s nape and smacked into the bark of a nearby tree instead.
“Aha!” said Lord Basil. He drew his own tiny knife and darted around the tree’s fat, firm trunk.
“Aha!” said the Lady, retrieving her knife and pursuing him about the tree. She caught sight of his heel for an instant, a petty instant, and then he was gone again ‘round the trunk, and she was faced with a dilemma.
Clearly Lord Basil would expect her to double back counter-clockwise around the tree and ambush him. Therefore, he would double-back counter-clockwise and ambush HER. Unless he expected her to expect that, and therefore he would NOT double-back and would ambush her clockwise as she attempted to ambush him clockwise. Unless…
Lady Whibsy-Herringbone shook her head as the implications became clear. There was no end to the implications of this tree, either in logic or real circumference. Therefore it would be simplest to keep chasing him in the same direction – to save time turning about – and trust in chance. She thanked providence for her expensive and elite education, and redoubled her pace.
Lord Basil Tonington, of similar stature, wealth, and schooling, expressed much the same thoughts. And so the pursuit stalled.
Three months later the tree, fatally undermined by the trench their circuit had worn about its roots, fell over and crushed them both.

“I’m afraid to tell you this, ma’am,” said the storysage, “but your daughter was born under an evil sign. She’s going to be very evil. Extremely evil.”
“O!” said the queen, who knew how to pronounce solitary letters. “Storysage, please help this cruel fate come not to pass! Raise my daughter so that she becomes an upstanding and beloved queen, rather than a tyrant! Do this for me.”
“Okay,” said the storysage. But the queen was already dead, so really it was a promise made to nobody in particular.
Still, she stuck by it. It gave her something to do.
The queen’s daughter grew older, became extremely evil, and ravaged the land with her mighty armies and mightier sword. Eventually a handsome princess came to defeat her, and – with the secret aid of the queen’s son, a most beautiful prince – she was cast down through the careful exploitation of her secret weakness: a fondness for almonds.
The storysage realized she’d really fouled up that promise, and was pretty glad nobody had heard her make it. She hung around the court making general predictions and so on for many years, but tried not to volunteer aid in dealing with the situations she warned of. “I just tell ‘em as I see ‘em,” she told them. Eventually she retired and passed on the duties to her apprentice, an undistinguished and straightforward young man that had nearly become a cheesemaker instead.

Sam and Robin looked at each other, surrounded by the ruin of their ambitions, and suddenly realized something important.
“Well, despite how much I hate you, my vengeance wasn’t worth it after all, and seems to have left nobody the victor,” said Sam.
“Yeah. You’ve got that right,” said Robin. “Seems correct, if unsatisfying”
“Indeed.”

Ted sat down. “Boy, I’m glad THAT’S over,” he said.

Herman was stooped. His hands hooked like claws – ugly claws, claws from a half-eaten chicken, not the stout, strong nails you’d find on something like a wolverine or a hawk or anything. His back was a bunch of frightened vertebrae huddling together for shelter and warmth in the shadow of his destroyed spinal column. His arms shook like a dead tree in a high wind, and when he coughed there was real venom and spittle behind it, the kind you find in a plague ward. Each lungful warned the body that there might not be another getting in for a few minutes.
But hey. The driveway was clear.
“A pox upon shovelling!” shouted Herman. And then he bent over, wheezing.
“Fie upon shovelling!” he yelled upon getting his breath back, and so immediately lost it again.
“If I had my ‘druthers, I’d never shovel another flake of snow in my entire life, and if there was a way – any way! – to do so, I’d make a pact with the devil himself and gladly shake his hand!”
“Hi,” said the passerby who’d stopped to hear all of this out of polite interest. “Want to see a trick?”
Herman’s death-rattle indicated acquiescence.
The passerby bent over to the roughly-scraped asphalt, picked up a few odds and ends of loose snow, and rolled them around a little, muttering in something that didn’t sound French.
“Here you go.”
Herman looked at what was being offered. It was a snowball.
“Get thee hence, snow,” he said.
“This one’s special. It doesn’t melt.”
Herman screamed.
“No, listen. Shut up. There, your lungs are empty again. Listen while they fill up, okay? Okay. Whatever temperature this thing’s at? That’s the temperature of your driveway. Presto. No more shovelling. I’m leaving before you start up again. You’re welcome.”
The passerby left. Herman still screamed a little once he’d gotten his breath back, just on principle.
He looked at the snowball, unmelting, sat squat on the ground. It filled him with horror. It filled him with fear. He knew it shouldn’t be, shouldn’t even be dreamed of.
But what if.

So Herman brought the snowball inside, put it in a little dish on his counter, and went to sleep with the roar of the storm coming in outside his window. He ground his teeth a lot that night, and when he woke, he was halfway dressed and out the door, shovel in hand, before he’d even opened his eyes.
The driveway was half-empty. The snow that remained had a sullen, sulky, half-melted look to it. It collapsed into slush at a nudge of his boot.
“Wow,” said Herman. “Yikes. Yippee!” He took off his toque and threw it in the air, and then took off his boots and threw them in the air, and then he ran in circles three times around his driveway laughing and drove to work after spending thirty seconds shoving slush out of the way while whistling.
“Boy!” he said to his co-workers and also everyone else he met all day, without pausing for their input, “I sure do love shovelling now! Never been better! Never been easier! Yes, now I can ignore it! It’s great! I love that a bunch! Yay!”
Then he went home, shoveled the driveway for thirty seconds again, and went to bed.
But he stayed up a little. Half out of excitement, half out of worry.
“What if,” he said to himself, “what if this keeps up? Thirty seconds in the morning, thirty seconds in the evening. That adds up. That’s a minute a day. That’s an hour every two months! That’s a lot of wasted time, oh no no no.”
He frowned, and pursed his lips, and whined a little, and fidgeted.
Then he had an idea and went into the kitchen, put the snowball in the oven on a little baking sheet, turned it on, and went to bed again (a major fire hazard by the way; don’t do this).

The driveway steamed wetly in the feeble grey mist that passed for light on a winter morning. Herman danced the dance of those who care nothing for dignity, the glee-jig, the cackle-flip, the hoky-gloaty.
“THIS is what it’s all about!” he yelled, “THIS! THIS RIGHT HERE! THIS!”
Then he went to work, sang loudly the whole day, and came home.
And it was still clear. His neighbours were toiling, their shoulders were hunched, their minds bent around bent plastic, metal, wood. And HE, HERMAN, was going indoors for hot chocolate and smugness.
In the kitchen, he put on the water to boil and paused for a moment.
It was awful warm in there. And hey, what was that smell?
“Ugh,” he said, and opened the oven. Something crusted to the baking sheet had been burning away by degrees for the past fourteen hours. “Gross.”
He cleaned it off, went to bed, and stayed up late.
Thinking.
Well. Twenty four hours a day, with the gas on. Singeing anything that ever got into the oven. Good lord, the gas bills. They’d take his money, they’d take his life! He’d be crippled and hunched again, this time by fearsome debt.
What could he do? What would be warm enough, what would be consistent enough, what could.
“AHA!”
So Herman walked into the kitchen, turned off his (groaning) oven, removed the snowball, and gently, carefully, patiently tossed it into his furnace.
Then he went to bed happy for the last time in a decade.

When Herman woke up again, he was very surprised. Someone had come in while he was asleep and painted his room white, taken away all his belongings, changed him into a sort of backless gown, strapped him into an IV machine, and then put his bedroom inside a hospital.
Then a doctor came into his house, quite uninvited, and asked him how he was feeling.
“Annoyed,” said Herman. “Is it snowing? Will I need to shovel? Oh god, please tell me I won’t need to shovel.”
“Herman,” said the doctor, “your house burned down. This is your fourth day in the hospital.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Do I need to shovel?”
“See this graph? It looks like your car had its tires melt when your driveway became superheated. The rubber spilled onto your lawn, which then also became superheated, which ignited your house. It kept the firefighters busy for forty hours.”
“Oh NO!” said Herman. “Forty hours! Does this mean it snowed again? I bet it has. The forecast was pretty bad, you know. Brr. Shoveling.”

The snowball was never found again, even when Herman moved back in – not that he could remember it, then or ever. He was more or less in one piece, but a part of him was always a little boiled after that.
Never got cold shovelling again, mind you.

In the month of October, on the proper day, a man wearing a strange hat sat in the middle of a dusty old side-road and sang an even-stranger song five times.
Then he left a little bit of folded paper on the road and walked away.

Ten minutes later, a dragon stepped on the paper and stopped cold.
“Oh fuck,” it thought. “Not AGAIN.”

The sorcerer did a little dance. He’d planned it since the night before and so it both lacked spontaneity and showed (unflattering) insight into his character. Especially the little shuffle at the end with the rapid clapping.
“Ha-hah!” he cackled.
The dragon waited.
“Ha-HA!” elaborated the sorcerer.
The dragon waited a little more.
“Ah-HA, HA HA HA, BWA AHA, HA HA, HA. HEH,” concluded the sorcerer. “Right. Dragon!”
“Yes?”
“Beast of the fiery pit!”
“Sure.”
“Fiend of the higher air!”
“Okay.”
“I command thee-”
“Yeah, if you must.”
“-I command thee to grant me wishes three!”
“Three wishes. You don’t have to be fancy about it. Sure. Release me.”
The sorcerer squinted at the dragon down his nose, which was tricky because it was pretty small and somewhat adorably button-like. “Do you – do thee think me a fool, wyrm? Thine confabulations and deceit shall find no purchase within me! Swear to me by the fire, by the air, and by the blood that make up yourst bits!”
The dragon held up a claw. “Right. I swear. Done. Let me out.”
“Did thou-”
“Cross my hearts and hope to die, pull off my wings just like a fly. And please stop saying ‘thou’ ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ and anything else like that.”
This seemed to annoy the sorcerer.
“Fine, you’re bound. Three wishes are mine! For my first wish I desire…dominion over men and women!”
“’Dominion?’” asked the dragon.
“What?”
“Oh, forget it,” said the dragon, and it flapped its wings and launched from the ground with all four limbs at terrifying speed, kicking up a windburst that sent the sorcerer’s pants over his head and his ass over his teakettle.
An hour later, it returned.
“Climb aboard,” it told the sorcerer. And he did, and it launched again and this time he was there to see the explosion of force from the other side, to gawp in surprise as the whole world became as small and unreal and far away as a picture in a child’s book of bedtime stories.
Then they landed, and he fell off.
“This is Stebs Hill,” said the dragon. “I asked around town for the deed, here it is, you now possess a dominion over the six hundred twenty five men and seven hundred fourteen women of the visible horizon from this point. It was pretty cheap; the soil up here’s garbage and there’s no prospects for mining or quarrying. No wonder everyone else around here lives in the valley.”
“Barf,” said the sorcerer.
“Yes. Barf indeed.”
“You twisted my words!” yelled the sorcerer, hastily scrubbing the bitter juice from the corners of his mouth.
“Me?” asked the dragon. “No. Not really. I just misinterpreted them. I mean, I assume I did, since you’re so angry. Unless you wished for something you hated?”
The sorcerer paced seven mystic circles into the summit of Stebs Hill, chanted some ominous words that sounded suspiciously like swears, and made elaborate, thaumaturgical gestures in the direction of the dragon and the dragon’s friends and family.
“Dragon!” he shouted.
“Well, yes, we already-”
“Worm with wings!”
“It’s got a ‘y’ in i-”
“Carrion-thirster, goat-fucker!” said the sorcerer, with more spittle than words.
“What? And that was just o-”
“DO AS I SAY AND COMMAND,” shrieked the sorcerer, “and GRANT ME WEALTH BEYOND MORTAL UNDERSTANDING!”
The dragon shrugged and took off in the same instance, an economy of motion only available to a very lucky subset of vertebrates. The sorcerer coughed his lungs out for the duration of its absence, a hardship shared by many smokers.
“Climb on again,” said the dragon.
The sorcerer climbed on again. This time he shut his eyes for the entire flight, out of principal, spite, and the suspicion that he was within rights to demand a refund.
Thump.
The sorcerer opened his eyes again. They were standing on the (slightly smouldering) remains of a pea garden, outside a university.
“Their philosophy classes were all fully occupied, and you have no accreddition,” said the dragon, “but I removed a few of the excess students and a few officials and now they’re open to you staying until your degree is complete.”
“wealth,” said the sorcerer, blankly. “grant.”
“It’s SORT of a grant,” said the dragon. “Or maybe more like a fund. Or insurance. Incineration insurance. I guess protection money’s less oblique.”
“Stop,” said the sorcerer, recovering a part of himself that had slipped from his body. “Go. Go away. With me. Now.”
This time the sorcerer watched the clouds in the sky. They looked like faces. They looked like they were laughing at him.
“Why?” he asked the dragon.
“Why what?”
“Why have you done this?!” screamed the sorcerer into the wind. “I’ve asked nothing that wasn’t within your power! I’ve asked only what you could gran – GIFT me, with the barest of efforts! Less effort than your idiotic games have cost you! Why torment me thus – are you so depraved, so wicked, so perverse?!”
“Look,” said the dragon, “here’s the thing: if we’re having problems, it’s because I can barely understand most of this language I’m using – I learned my first when I was eight hundred and nine. I’d never understood the idea of anything else having thoughts. I’d never understood the idea of communicating anything, to anyone, ever. Frankly, it’s amazing I haven’t eaten you yet in a fit of solipsism, spell or no spell. Me and you communicating at ALL is more than you should ask for, and you’re just quibbling over the wording.”
The sorcerer opened his mouth, shut it, opened it, made a hissing sound like a kettle, puffed up like a toad, twittered like a songbird, and slumped over like a man who’d just had his every dream skewered with a sharpened steeple.
“Take me home,” he said.
“Sure thing,” said the dragon. And it dropped him over a volcano.
The sorcerer tried to make a wish on the way down, but the screaming made it very difficult to concentrate and besides it was his fourth anyways, and therefore null and void as all fourth wishes are.
The dragon then made a wish for a nap, settled into the volcano, and worked on fulfilling it. Which it did, although there were a few uncomfortable twists into the second decade, when its leg fell asleep.

“Health card, please.”
The man had been in line for three minutes. The man had seen six people hand over their health card. The man was completely astonished to learn so suddenly that he, too had a health card – and what’s more, somebody might ever want to see it. He scuffled through all his pockets one after another, pulled out a big wad of mashed Kleenexes, checked all his pockets again, pulled out his keys and dropped them and picked them up again, checked all his pockets a third time and found his health card in his wallet in the first pocket he looked, and did all of this while keeping up a running commentary of ‘ohh,’ ‘ahh,’ ‘err,’ ‘sorry,’ and ‘I’m sure it was…’
The assistant gave the man a friendly, patient smile that had nothing to do with reality, took the health card, scribbled in a folder, and handed it back carefully instead of throwing it at his head. “Down the hall, to your left. The Waiting Room.”
“Oh, the waiting room.”
“No, the Waiting Room.”
“Oh. My second left?”
“Your first.”
“My left or your left?”
“Yours.”
“Right now, or the way I was when I was facing you?”
“Right now.”
“Right now or left now?”
“Health card, please,” said the assistant to the next person in line.
The man stood there for a little while until he realized he wasn’t getting any more attention, then wandering off. It was on his first left.

It, of course, was the Waiting Room.

The Waiting Room was coloured in beige and boredom, and decorated in soft ‘80s numbness. The air tasted like it hadn’t moved since the 40s, and the floor grumbled angrily when used. A big wooden door at the far end sealed away the doctor, behind oaken sternness and a big overhead bell that looked capable of summoning a most foreboding DING.
There was also a clock, which ticked with the wet, rhythmic firmness of an epiglottis.
The man didn’t notice any of this because he was busy gawping at the room’s inhabitants. Most of them were people like him, except the ones that weren’t.
There was a woman biting her nails. Her hands moved, even as she chewed, so it looked a bit like she was wrestling with her own head.
There was a man with a tie and a truly tremendous amount of sweat, which he was furiously adding to every second. Fresh droplets beaded on his face as if from a shower-head. His flesh appeared to have compensated for all of this by sucking itself as close to his bones as possible, maybe in hopes that it could cling on as the rest of its mass was sweated away.
And there was a small child inside eight layers of blankets, in a basket, screaming. Its parent had submerged their entire face into the basket, and was as invisible as the child itself, if a good deal quieter.
“Gosh,” goggled the man, eyes wide and mouth half-open. His lips glistened, his tongue half-protruded. “Woah,” he said loudly, just to be sure everyone in the room understood where they stood with him and his opinion. “Jeepers!” he said with the fierceness of a curse, and then he sat down in the nearest chair with violent force.
Then he got up, took off his coat, put it on three separate coathangers, and sat down again twice as hard. He made a little tune up in his head and hummed it, in precisely the reverse of that order.
But it couldn’t last.
“Hi!” he said to the sweating man.
The sweating man nodded. This tiny motion caused about half a cup of moisture to splash off his neck and drench his tie, changing every single colour on it to something dank and hideous. He turned pale – even paler.
“Boy! What’re you in for?”
The sweating man mumbled something that included the word ‘fever.’
“Boy that’s tough! Gosh! You know, I had a fever one time. Ate a big salad. Old home remedy. NEVER fails. Ever. You know, it’s because it’s full of vitamins. Good for you, vitamins. Vitamin A’s the best one, a cousin of mine’s a doctor and he did a paper that said-”
The bell above the big wooden door went DING. It sounded like schools and amusement parks and forgotten stovetop timers. It was very foreboding.
The sweating man stood up, mumbled something furiously, and ran away. Every footstep squelched and turned into a sucking, lamprey-tinged gasp.
There was a quiet three seconds.
“Hi!” said the man to the woman biting her nails.
She paused for a moment in her chewing.
“How’re you doing?”
She began again, then accelerated.
“Nervous eh? You know, I was nervous once. But my momma told me a special old family secret. You have to peel an orange and put it in your eyes. Then you blink as hard as you can for five minutes. It gets the vitamin Cs where they should be, you know.”
The woman biting her nails stuffed both hands into her mouth and began to grind her teeth furiously.
“Vitamin C isn’t as good as vitamin A of course – or even vitamin B! – but it’s in the top three. Obviously, since they’re alphabetical. And it’s not all THAT weak either – I remember I drank way too much orange juice once and I got too much vitamin C and I almost poisoned myself, although the doctors said it was water poisoning. They were just trying to keep me calm because I was so little; vitamin C poisoning is scary stuff, my mom told me. That’s why you’ve got to make sure it gets in your eyes and not your ears. Otherwise it can leave you numbed and frostbitten and anti-social, which is bad for anyone – not that I’ve not heard a complaint directed at chatterboxes, mind you! Once I went on for a while and it drove my poor old dad so nuts he had to spank me three ways, one for each cheek and an entirely new one all of his own invention. A bit harsh, but I learned my lesson, and I only talk to strangers now, or at least mostly. Common in my family. Anyways, I tend to go on like that, pardon me for not giving you a word in edgewise. Hey, what’s your favourite colour?”
The woman biting her nails was up to her elbows.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll wait ‘till you’re through. Don’t want to make you talk with your mouth full. So my aunt once-”
DING.
The woman biting her nails lurched upright, fell over, and furiously rolled through the big wooden door.
“Good luck!” called the man. Then he leaned back and sighed. Then he snorted. Then he started humming again, whistled for a few seconds, hummed some more, yawned, stretched, started to snore, jolted violently awake again (knocking over half a table of magazines) and stared at the parent and their child for four minutes hoping they’d take their head out of the child’s carry-basket for a second and make eye contact.
At last, he didn’t care.
“H-”
“We’re contagious,” said the parent.
“W-”
“One more syllable and you’ll catch it.”
The man shut his mouth. “Golly!” he thought loudly. Then he started to clean his nails by picking them off. Some of the pickings he ate – maybe to see what the woman biting her nails had been up to, experimentally – and some of them he simply flicked to see how far they would fly.
One of them flecked off the bell above the big wooden door, which went ‘ding.’ The parent stood up, grabbed their child, and ran through the door so fast the man had no time to see their face. From somewhere in the distance, someone (the doctor?) shouted something rude.
For want of else to do and absent witnesses, the man began to explore, chart, and conquer the rugged interior of his nostrils. This went on for ten million years.
And then, in the distance, hollow as an empty grave.
DING
The man got up, checked the entire room to make sure he hadn’t forgot anything, and very slowly walked through the big wooden door, accidentally shutting it way too hard and making the paintings on all the walls jump.

Inside the door was a hall.
Inside the hall was another door.
Inside the door was the doctor.
He was a small, furious man with large teeth and a stare that made you flinch. Aside from these traits, he was very unlike a squirrel.
“Hello. Sit down.”
The man was a bit like a dog, and turned around three times before doing so – he wanted to make sure he had time to read all the charts on the walls first. One of them had what looked like a cross-section of an eyeball on it, and he was curious as to what it was.
“Hey, doc, what’s that thing that looks like a cross-section of an eyeball over there?” he asked.
“That’s a cross-section of an eyeball,” said the doctor. “Sit down.”
“Wow. Which side?”
“Left. Sit down.”
“Is it blue? My uncle said blue eyes are built backwards from green eyes.”
The doctor gently but firmly gripped the man’s shoulders and pushed him slowly until he was seated.
“Stick out your tongue.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“Breathe in.”
“Breath out.”
“Look at my finger.”
“Keep looking at my finger.”
“Stop looking at my finger.”
“Any problems eating?”
“Well –”
“Any problems sleeping?”
“You kno-”
“Wonderful. You’re healthy,” said the doctor. He checked his watch. “And my assistant just went home, so, uh, bye. Last one out’s a rotten egg, eh?”
“Y’know, that reminds me of a thing my grand-”
“Excellent. Well, nice to see you, see you later, etc, goodbye, good luck,” said the doctor. His handshake was almost a quick slap, and he left at a dead sprint without putting on his coat.
The man raised an eyebrow. Well, sometimes these things happen. Doctors were busy after all. He shrugged, put on his coat, stepped back into the Waiting Room, and was wholly caught by surprise when it pounced and disemboweled him. He didn’t even manage a yelp before he was swallowed.

The room shook itself three times, like a dog. It curled itself back up into a comfortable three-dimensional space.
And then it went back to waiting. It usually took a few weeks before it was hungry again.

There was a little king. A very little king. A king so little that in normal times he ought to have been a prince, but there had been an accident and an operation and a funeral and somewhere in the chaos his princedom had been amputated and buried.
So there he was. On the throne. And while he was there things were brought to him. Treaties and proclamations and promises and threats and pleasantries and all the colours of the paperwork rainbow (which is beige) passed under his nose and he even signed some of it, when he had to.
He could spell his own name, almost.
But that gets tiring, and a little king’s attention span is no longer than a little prince’s. So now and then, and again, and again, he would dismiss his business and cancel his court and call in the storyteller he knew from his youngest years.
The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then she’d cough, and cough, and say “once upon a time…”
The hall filled with wolves, and bears, and wizards, and dragons. Princes, too.
And everything would be happy again.

The years wore.
They tore down the mountains inch by inch; they threw up the trees and chopped them to stumps; they ripped the wool off sheep and sewed it back on again. And that’s to say nothing of the weather.
But they beat in vain against the little king. For although they took his youngest teeth – and one of his elder ones, to an unfortunate peach-pit – and they yanked him up to the sky, and they rubbed raw hair and hide all over his little face, they couldn’t keep his mind. And that was as little as it had been the day he was crowned.
The borders were shaky. The neighbours were aggrieved. The queen hadn’t seen him in three months and his children not since the day they were born.
That didn’t concern the little king much, but his storyteller had died recently, and that made him very cross.
So the men went door to door, and they asked around, and they brought up men and women and although none of them quite pleased the king as much as his old storyteller had, they WERE a lot more numerous, and that was of all the pleasure he could ask for, and he went through them like some people went through clothes. A few changes a month.
One would stand there, to his left. One would stand there, to his right. The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then the first in line would clear their throat and say “once upon a time…”
Lions and tigers, snakes and sorcerers, giants and princesses.
And he’d smile, and remember being happy again.

Years, given time, form decades for mutual protection and defense. They’re human creations, it’s only fitting that they do this. And it works well for them, gluing together time in blocks that stand firm even as mere matter crumbles and rushes against them.
There were no more little kings. There were a half-dozen old princes and princesses, though. Older than the little king had been when he fathered them, the eldest almost the age of his old storyteller back in the days he remembered.
He didn’t remember much else. If it was real, he didn’t want to hear it. Messengers left empty-handed with nobody bothering to even shoot them. Trade had given up and gone home. By and large the country outside the castle ran itself, save for those grim nights when the grey-faced men with halberds came down into the towns to interrogate anyone who might be hiding scraps of narrative. A children’s fable, a hearthside tale, a bedtime story – anything, anything at all. The elderly in particular were beset, and many an older man and woman was short a few fingers; the result of an earnest effort to make sure they weren’t shirking in their duties.
The king’s throne saw in the middle of his hall now. No story was new to him, not in whole nor in part. He’d made up for it for years with stereo, now he’d had to take it a step farther.
A nervous, throat-clearing storyteller at each hand, and one before him.
The little king waved his hand, like this.
And they said, all together and at once, “once upon a time…”

And it was true that once upon a time was a fancy.
It seemed likely than twice upon a time was pleasantry.
Thrice upon a time? That was more than could be held in just one place.

The castle didn’t vanish. Most people were very clear on that. The castle wasn’t gone. It hadn’t been spirited away.
But it wasn’t there anymore.
That isn’t the sort of thing people question. Good fortune was what it was. People shrugged, and peopled moved on, and when the neighbouring kingdoms came together and gently muddled their borders across the fields and towns nobody made a fuss.

And somewhere, far away, locked inside the crushed hours of a thousand compacted daydreams, there is a little king – not really a prince, not really himself – trapped somewhere on an edge, poised above a hundred dragons, a thousand princesses, a million witches. About to fall in, but holding his balance.
With no idea when he is.

On July 12th, 4:00 PM EST, the Trans-Canada Highway wheezed three times, choked, and died.
Nobody noticed for a few minutes. Then a doctor pulled over. 911 was dialed and CPR was attempted – to no avail. A few helpful Samaritans offered assistance, one was hit by a car, and soon emergency services were hard at work and half the traffic was slowing down to gawk and the other half was honking at them.
The cause of death was unknown – old age, cancer, a virus, choking to death – though seemingly pneumonic. Whatever it was, it spread fast. By the next morning the Autobahn was out, and come lunchtime it was official. The roads were dead.
The obvious thing to do was the decent thing. They had to be buried.

Ten million bulldozers, two billion shovels, seven hundred million wheelbarrows, and a trillion frothing sweats later, the corpses of the world’s roads were interned with love, and with care, and with sore backs. Some priests were located to say a few words here or there of some kind or another, but when it came down to personal testimony nobody had much to say. There were billions of acquaintances and work colleagues, but not a single friend, and no family.
“I knew them, but I didn’t KNOW them,” was the refrain. “And god, they were such a pain on the way to work,” was another. So was “traffic.” A lot of gawkers, fewer mourners.
Part of that might’ve been the problems. They started up fast.

First of all was getting around. It was a tricky business, and suddenly was based almost entirely around legs, which most folks deeply distrusted. There were few manuals for that sort of thing, and the manufacturers were irresponsible and legally untouchable.
To begin with people started relying heavily on the sidewalks, but they were just WALKS now, not beside anything at all, and it wasn’t just walking. There were joggers, running, strollers, and on occasion maniacs that drove on them, desperate for a road rush and caroming their cherished four-wheel-drives down four feet square of cement. The police chased them with red cheeks and flapping pants, caught up to them at hydrants, at telephone poles, at other cars. They’d book what was there if it was still breathing and tag it if it wasn’t.
All of this made the walks tricky, and a lot of folks renounced them, or walking altogether, or both. They took to beds and chairs and couches and sulked there, dreaming of tires.

When the despair was too much to bear, some people took the obvious way out. They’d dig a pit, drive their vehicles into it, and their friends would bury them both alive in the manner of ancient Sumerian kings. Several celebrities entombed themselves with entire fleets in this manner, that they might drive in the next life. The Tomb of Seinfeld was a wonder of the world within the week, and looted by grave robbers, treasure-hunters, explorers, and amateur archaeologists before it hit September.

At some point the question of food arose. None of it was moving anywhere, except maybe by ship, or plane. And neither of those could move anywhere once the fuel itself stopped moving.
Some of the farmers would be okay, but most of them needed supplies, and those couldn’t move anywhere, and so on, and so on, and so everyone realized pretty fast that this was going to be it for a lot of humanity, or at least anyone living in an industrial setting.
It was at this point – or near enough – that several people tentatively proposed replacing the roads. They were shouted down almost instantly. “Oh, they’ll just die again, what’s the point,” was the refrain, closely paired with “waste of taxpayer’s dollars.” Everyone who advocated nonsensical arguments against that sort of thing was shut up very firmly and soon everyone was free to get back to more pressing matters, like starving to death.

After the question of food came the question of graves. A lot of people were starving to death, and the ones left over to bury them were fairly weak and spindly. Cannibalism was a natural solution to both problems, but the nourishment on an emaciated skeleton person is pretty scarce and besides nobody really had the energy for that sort of thing.
The obvious solution, discovered in good time, was to bury the bodies with the roads. This was embraced by all, with some even bumping themselves off a few days in advance so they could be reunited with their beloved vehicles on the byways of the infinite just a little bit faster.
Nobody had the energy to chisel rocks anymore. Luckily, a half-buried tire made a wonderful headstone.

And after the question of graves came not much at all, because everyone left was awfully busy and couldn’t spare the time.

The roads waited a few years until they were sure everyone had forgotten, then snuck off.

Lightning crashed. Thunder boomed. In the bunker, under a cold caged bulb, four figures sat in silence, pouring over a tangle of papers and blurred photography.
At last they sat up, one by one, each making solemn eye contact.
General Goreblit lit a cigar. He ran a hand through his crew cut and confirmed that it was still precisely angled, and breathed a sigh of relief. “So. What is this we’re dealing with?” he asked.
“Ah uh um, eh, the uh, technical term for it is a Borborislich zerblinnia, as referred to by Linnean classifaction schemes, ahem,” said Doctor Wirms, pushing his giant spectacles a little farther up the enormous nose that almost disguised his entirely missing chin. “In uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh layman’s terms, it’s a MONSTER.”
“A monster?” asked the woman.
“Good god, man,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Speak English, American English. What’s this thing’s capabilities? What are its motives? What can we do about it?”
“I’ll tell you this thing’s capabilities,” said Captain Tom Johnson, whose chin shone diamond hard in the electric glow of the room. “It’s dangerous. I’ll tell you this thing’s motives: it’s a menace. And I’ll tell you what we can do about it: we can blow this monster to kingdom come through good old know-how and hard-work and can-do spirit and me making this face where I squint a little bit.” And Tom Johnson made that face where he squinted a little bit. .
“That’s the spirit!” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Doctor, you heard the man, it’s all taken care of.”
“Right,” said the woman. “So… what kind of monster is it?”
“I think the question right now, of course,” said Tom Johnson, “is exactly what kind of monster we’re dealing with here?”
“Hard to say,” said Doctor Wirms. He pointed at the incredible large metal box that filled half the room with itself and the other half with its grinding hum. “We’re still uh crunching data, uhm, er, uh. But it’s a monster. It could be uhhhhhh almost anything. Anything, that is to say, viz, dangerous, per se.”
“One thing’s for sure, egghead,” said Tom Johnson, “it’s not from around here. It’s a stranger. It’s from out of town. And that, doc, makes it the nastiest peace of work I’ve ever heard of. We’ve gotta stop it before it kidnaps our woman.”
“What?” said the woman. “Where’d THAT come from?”
“With all due respect,” said Doctor Wirms, “the Pythagorean Theorem suggests that it’s uhm, the result of uh. Careless yet quirky use of lab materials. One of my err colleagues must uh have ipso facto left dangerous SCIENTIFIC MATERIALS somewhere and caused MUTATION or, quid pro quo, UNCONTROLLABLE ROBOTS.”
“What kind of problem we looking at there, doctor?” asked General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Give me the worst-case scenario.”
“Oh, they’ll eat power plants or something. Or build more of themselves, Carthago delenda est, perchance to uhn, ahem, RULE THE WORLD.”
“By god, I won’t let that happen,” said Tom Johnson. “Count on me, doc. Give me the straight-shooting solution to that sort of mess.”
“If it’s robots, uh, ahem, asking them to solve for uh…love will do it, the lorem ipsum effect. If it’s mutants, it gets uhhh…trickier. Lots of guns or something.”
“What if you’re WRONG, doc?” asked Tom Jonnson, planting his knuckles firmly on the table and leaning over the doctor like a testosterone-flush mountain over an emasculated anthill. “What if this monster isn’t from earth at all….but from SPACE? I flew jets once. I know about space. It could be an alien, the worst kind of stranger, which is the worst thing of all! And I know those suckers REALLY love kidnapping our woman.”
“Who is this ‘our’ here?” asked the woman. “And did anyone just hear that?”
“It is scientifically impossible for extraterrestrial organisms to be the source of this problem,” said Doctor Wirms. “The Fermi Paradox prohibits it! No sophisticated alien would visit as anything more than a robot probe, due to Asimov’s Three Laws. Although uh, I guess it could be an uhm, unsophisticated organisms, such as err…. A large, ravenous goop, constantly consuming all matter.”
“It sounded like a knock,” said the woman.
“Disgusting,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. He lit a cigar and squinted through the massive haze of smoke in front of him. “Well men, I won’t lie to you. This monster has to be stopped here and now, or it means nothing less than the extinction of the human race and by that I mean a few cities in this country, which is much more important. Good luck, godspeed, and give ‘em hell.” He lit a cigar, shook both their hands, and lit a cigar. “Honey, get the door, will you?”
The woman sighed, got up, dodged a pinch, and opened the door to the bunker.
“Hi. Who is it.”
“The monster.”

The monster was a smiling, sober gentleman in a tidy and respectable suit, the kind you’d find on a really earnest – but not overeager – middle manager, or a thoughtful executive who’d earned his keep through hard work and loyalty. His hair was parted perfectly. His eyes were filled with kind wisdom. He was the size of a five story building and his shoes were well-cared-for.
“Now,” he said warmly, “why don’t we all just have a little sit-down and talk about all this? Man-to-man.”
“Right then,” said the woman. “I’ll just…. go.”
“That’s right, doll, just siddown somewhere,” said Tom Johnson, elbowing her to one side. “Sir! Captain Tom Johnson, ex-pilot, but just call me Tom. What can we do for you this fine day, sir?”
“Ah, a no-nonsense sort of man,” said the monster. “My favourite kind. You know, I was in the army when I was younger. Gave ‘em hell. But that was a simpler time, eh?”
“Over here,” said the woman, edging around the corner of the bunker.
“General Goreblit,” said General Goreblit, giving the monster a firm and honest shake with his right hand and lighting a cigar with his left. “Call me Harold. What can we do for you today, citizen?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said the monster. “This is just a social call. Well, maybe a bit of business, but that’s nothing personal. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. You know, you remind me a lot of my brother. A good man, he was. He got shot down in ’41. His radio was dead.”
“For a while,” called the woman, as she turned the keys to the jeep.
“In point of fact,” said the monster, “there’s one very important thing that needs to be done around here. I’d like to step on your whole town, starting with you. It seems harsh, but I think you’ll agree it’s fair and practical. Let’s not get fuzzy-headed about this, we all knew what we were getting into when this business started. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.”
“Logically speaking, you make perfect sense!” beamed Doctor Wirms, adjusting his comically enormous bowtie. “Oh my goodness, I haven’t been so excited since…err…Los Alamos! Gee whiz!”
The woman honked the horn once as she went ‘round a curve in the road, and was gone.
“Fantastic,” said the monster. He gave them a fatherly smile as he raised his enormous shoe. “Now, just remember, this is going to hurt me a lot more than you.”

Once upon a time there was a monkey.
It was a hungry monkey. And hey, it was all alone on this little island. And there was so much delicious fruit to eat, on so many trees! Enough for dozens of monkeys, surely.
And so the monkey ate all the fruit in one week and starved to death.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the monkey, shrivelling up in the sun. “What could have been done differently? Nothing. Urrh. Ah. My kidneys.”

Once upon a time there was an expert.
One of several experts, mind you. A whole band of them. They’d found out that if you took a stone you could hit a flint to chip a flake to fashion a tool to cut a branch to sharpen a point to embed in a pit to really make a mammoth’s day go very poorly indeed to get a nice lunch and also some mammoth byproducts like ivory and bone and fur and so on. A lot of the mammoth would end up smelling bad and rotting but oh well.
And so the experts hunted all the mammoth at full speed at all times as hard as they could and all the mammoths died, which made an awful lot of them hungry, cold, and devoid of shiny objects.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the experts, counting their fingers to see which digits had fallen off last night when the wind came extra-frosty. “What could have been done differently? Nothing at all. Oh dang, that’s seven.”

Once upon a time there was a tiller of the soil, salt of the earth, practical level-headed sort of person.
There were a LOT of them. Takes bodies to keep a farm running. A lot of bodies growing a lot of crops to feed a lot more bodies to grow a lot more crops to feed a huge amount of bodies to grow a huge amount of crops to feed an insane amount of you get the idea I think, don’t you.
Problem was, you ran out of room for those crops. So there was nothing to do but dredge out wetlands, chop forests, and denude hillsides. Cram those crops wherever they fit, and if they didn’t, fit them anyways. If it was too hot? Irrigate. Still too hot? Irrigate more. A little too hot oh well irrigate it.
And so the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people suffered from foul water, rain-stripped soils, and seasonal flooding that washed away many of their livelihoods and also their livelilives. Famine and so one were pretty common, and their towns fell apart.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people. “What could have been done differently? Absolutely nothing at all. Dang, the fields are a saltpan again. Better eat rats.”

Once upon a time there was a great and mighty ruler.
Alas, one of many. And the problem with being one of many great and mighty rulers is that none of your fellows is ever quite willing to admit the obvious truth of your being the greatest and mightiest. This gets especially galling when one of them has a nice bit of land, or a lovely port, or are friends with someone you don’t like or think you like more than they do.
So for simple reasons such as these, it’s expedient to commit some kind of diplomacy or war or whatever. Eventually the greatest and mightiest of rulers achieved the finest truth – a domain larger than any had seen before.
And so it split apart from the inside within their lifetime, held together by spit, self-interest and varnish as it had been.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the great and mighty ruler from their deathbed, a bit muffled by fourteen sharp blades and a pillow held firmly over the face. “What could have been done differently? I can see absolutely nothing at all. Hey, I think I gave that dagger to you on your birthday. Can’t you write more often?”

Once upon a time there was a wise and far-thinking entrepreneur.
It turns out that there was a source of heat and power greater still than that imagined by the age-old means of flammable rocks: flammable liquids. Drag them up, burn them up, blow your mind. Soon everywhere that was anywhere had dozens of rigs lining the landscapes, sucking for their quick fix. At some point it was brought to the attention of several of the wisest and farthest-thinking entrepreneurs that flammable liquids might be curdling the entire planet’s atmosphere very quickly, and this was astutely deemed impolite to broadcast. After all, what was life worth living for, if not for flammable liquids?
And so the whole world burned on together, some furiously, some hesitantly, only to run into a somewhat nasty shock a little less than a hundred years later.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the wise and far-thinking entrepreneurs, as they considered their stock options, checked their golden parachutes, and bought land in New Zealand. “What could have been done differently? I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine, it’s impossible to imagine anything being changed but nothing at all.”

Once upon a time there was a New Zealand.
New Zealand does not contain monkeys. It has some nice and very patient birds.
New Zealand’s patient too. It can wait. It doesn’t have any other choice, but that’s okay, it’s at peace with that.
Because it knows that when it comes down to it, nothing really ever gets done differently.