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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.

On a warm Wednesday morning, safely on its way into midspring, Paul McGuinty woke up early, had some coffee, and descended into his garage to talk to his dragon.
It was waiting for him, and hungry. It must’ve smelled the air.
Paul walked around it clockwise, stopping here and there to touch a fender, to examine a speck of dust, to flick a fleck of froth from the windshield. He never quite stopped talking even when he inhaled; no words, just a constant stream of syllables and murmurs, baby words, for a great fire-gutted iron-skinned smoke-belching baby that he loved more than anything that could say ‘dada.’
“Good!” he said at last, and slapped the hood affectionately. “Good!”
Then he went upstairs, had more coffee, got dressed, and got behind the wheel. He turned the key and it growled, he pressed the pedal and it roared.
“Time for some treats, goo’boy,” he crooned. “Time for some treats.”

It balked at the first stop. Dragons, as a rule, are not fond of water unless they own it. Paul was confident it would relax by the time he was done at the register.
“Will that be express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without scented soap?”
“Nonscented, extra soap.”
“Superscrub on or off?”
“Superscrub on, extra extra soap, with turbo premium and extra premium. He deserves the best.”
The woman smiled the quick and easy grin of someone being paid far too little to think of any questions and punched it up. She rattled off some nominal fee and Paul gave her twice that and told her to let it run twice as long as usual.
Into the waterfalls went the dragon, cautiously, nudging at the pipes and hoses with its snout, distrust making it grumble and lurch at movement.
“Easy, easy, easy m’ goo’boy, whoosagoo’boooooy,” said Paul, as the jets began to thunder and descend, panting furiously at the sight of grimed skin. “Gotta scrubbadubbdubb. Goooooooo’boy.” And other things like that, that calm down dragons.

It roared louder when they took to the road again – maybe hoping to vibrate loose the last few drops of water from its hide. It was fiercely clean on a dirty street and maybe that was what made all the cars shrink back from it.
Besides, it was very large. Didn’t quite fit in its own lane. Not quite a proper vehicle at all, really. But a very good dragon.
And very good dragons got very good service.
“Tires?”
“Yes. And oiling.”
“Express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without uberspraying?”
“With, and pump extra into the seams.”
“Relaxing music or no relaxing music?”
“Ultra premium, uberspraying – heavy on the seams and every crevice – and double that ultra premium. No music. It puts him to sleep.”
The boy smiled the nervous and slightly rigid grin of someone who still cared about the sanity of the general public and punched it up. Paul gave him a few handfuls of bills without counting and told him to put the entire staff on it.
The dragon lay there, quiescent. It glowered at the approaching hoses in helpless pride.
“Ittabeefiiiine, ittabeefiiiiiiiine,” soothed Paul. “Goooooooo’boy.”

When the sun came to touch the dragon again, it shrank back at the rivalling glare. The dragon was a light source all its own now. It glowed with oils, its plating seethed, it had gone from impenetrable to unpenetrable in a single stride and the dirt simply gave up and died against its sides in handfuls, the road shrinking away from the grip of its summer claws.
Its roar was steadier now. Earnest, not thirsty. It knew this was its time a-coming. It knew it would be out and around from now on, not shrinking from the cold. It knew that it would be on the highway soon, shouting down small and quailing vehicles, bullying fat slow transports, calling from overpasses.
It knew things. It was a dragon.
Paul knew things too, mostly that there was one last stop to be made. This time there were no words, no questions, only buttons.
Regular, premium, super premium, ultra premium, ultra deluxe premium, ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory.
Paul selected ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory and held down the nozzle for what seemed like seven years while thinking about what kind of chocolate bar he wanted. After far too much time he wandered indoors, paid up, and walked out with a reddish wrapper that had seemed the least likely to contain peanut butter.
He was incorrect.
Paul was annoyed. He kicked at the dragon’s pedals, and it snorted defiance at him. It was tense, he was tense. Things were thrumming, things were hissing.
It was time to go.
It was time to go NOW.

The dragon LEAPT out of the gas station, darted onto the road, slipped into the on-ramp, and shot onto the highway so fiercely that it almost ran a car half a kilometre away from itself off the road, purely from shock.

The roar was around Paul now. He was in its teeth, after all.
Air screaming at his ears. The drip and trickle of its innards underfoot. Hot breath whooshing. And inside, fire, hot fire, screaming to come out.
Paul stamped the pedal harder and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He was laughing so hard that he didn’t hear or see the police car until it pulled in front.

Paul pulled over. Slowly. Grudgingly. Seething.
Inside he was swearing. Outside, he was merely hissing.
He pulled the keys out of the dragon, and kicked it savagely as it grumbled its complaints.
How dare they. How DARE they. Didn’t they know who he was? Didn’t they CARE? How dare they!
He swore, he hissed, he nearly spat, and he turned a friendly smile to the man outside his window.
“Good afternoon officer! What seems to be the problem?”
“Just a friendly reminder, sir,” said the cop amiably.
“Oh! How kind of you!” said Paul. He kicked the dragon again. “What is it?”
“Your gas cap seems to be open, that’s all.”
“Well isn’t that nice to know,” said Paul’s mouth while his brain turned itself on and off three times so fast he almost didn’t notice what was happening.
Oh. It must’ve been while he was thinking of a chocolate bar.
And then it was far too late.

The dragon pulled itself out nose-first, flames and smoke billowing in its wake like a runaway blockbuster. Its oiled scales shone brighter than mirrors in the noon sun; its claws and teeth were purest white and its eyes a red that could make rubies crack. It was clutching the policeman in its rearmost talon, and as it flew out of sight as fast as imagination Paul never saw the cop so much as twitch or scream.
Mind you, he made up for it himself.

The origins of Risbit are shrouded in history’s thickest fog. It’s unknown if they were from the Rockilees or the Hollow; if they served Immish or Talgo; or even if they were male or female. Nonetheless, the legend has a straightforward shape.

One day, Risbit was hunting prongnose on the middle heights, far above what passed for the highest villages of the time. The Peak was thinly settled, but the prey had already learned what to expect from the bipeds with pointy bits in their hands and glints in their eyes, and was predisposed to nervous flight.
It went down from blood lose somewhere up the Trundledowns. Uneven terrain, but clearly above their houses. From there they could see every twinkle of light, every flicker of movement, almost close enough to touch.
It made the knowledge of the five-mile downhill stomp with whatever bits of a five-hundred-pound piece of meat they could rip off even more depressing.
And then Risbit spoke The Words. And, as The Words were so very wise and important, they are known with a precision that no other detail of this story can be sure of. Much else fades, but they remain, seared from brain into the stone of the Peak itself.
Risbit spoke The Words, and The Words were: “Why don’t we just roll it down there?”

Ten minutes later the slightly battered corpse of the prongnose slid off a last slope and pinwheeled into Risbit’s house, denting the wall. It is for this reason that the Peakward face of all houses constructed to this day contains a slight indentation.

There were consequences beyond the dreams of any.
First, there was now incentive for hunters to walk the higher slopes. Now that they knew of The Words, there was no true problem with killing a fat beast far from home. As long as the distance was vertical, it was, for all intents and purposes, insignificant.
Second, there was an innovative explosion in packaging, along with an exploration of material properties. The right kind of padding in the right place could keep a prongnose or bulkhead from exploding – or losing limbs – for an extra half-mile. Once the foragers got interested, baskets were designed that could safely deliver first sturdy tubers, then delicate berries – and weighted just so, so that their momentum was sustained until they reached home.
Third, Risbit was titled ‘the Poly’ by the general acclaim and agreement of their peers.

Some centuries later, after Risbit the Poly was safely buried, their home village became embroiled in a dispute. It seemed that another, younger clan had built their own village directly Peakward of the pre-existing settlement, and the manner in which this blocked off the necessary access to rolling resources was deeply resented. The accused maintained they had done nothing wrong, and in fact that the deeply Flatward positioning of the prosecution gave them unfair title to an unnecessarily large strip of the Peak. This was disputed with sharp objects, and a bloody battle ensued until the smaller, Peakward village, on the verge of defeat, heaved a large boulder down on a shale scree and triggered a very sharp and sudden avalanche.
To this day, the exact location of Risbit the Poly’s tomb and village is unknown.

So, another factor came into settlement. The lower the village, the more Peakward slope it could lay claim to for transport. But the higher the village, the less likely it would be that some upstart rival would claim its Peakward land and threaten its Flatward neighbour with burial by rock. War went from vanishing scarce to a constant threat; every person kept an eye on higher ground and slept with their shoes on. In vocabulary, ‘Peakward gaze’ went from referring to clear-headed planning to creeping paranoia.
At length, the fate of the Peak in general came to rest in the uppermost of its denizens: a council of four headsfolk whose settlements were placed so highly as to be unassailable by rolling, yet deathly impoverished – all of their foraging had to be done downslope, and hand-toted back. Above them was only a little cap of summer frost. As none of them could hurt the other, they talked as equals without fear for the first time in several generations, largely to complain about their problems.
It must’ve been then that some had the idea of extortion, which wafted around like a bad smell until – as many bad smells do –everyone grew accustomed to it and decided it wasn’t so bad. If the Four on the Peak couldn’t roll their own resources, they could profit handsomely from the rollings of their Flatward tributaries. Larger, more prosperous villages were forced to yoke their bounty and drag it upslope by rope (later chain) and by hand. It is believed this wearying vassalage led directly to the domestication of the stupid-but-tractable bulkhead, which spent a lot of its time wandering up and down the Peak anyways and didn’t mind carrying an extra quarter-ton or so of food and supplies as it did so.

For some time the Four on the Peak prospered. Unassailable from below, unrivaled above, at last the most obvious problem reared its head: what to do about those beside you. It was such an obvious thought that all four of them had and executed it at about the same time, leading to a mathematically unlikely quadruple ring ambush. So great and obvious was the hubbub and confusion at the summit that several of the larger, bolder Flatward vassals armed themselves and stole up to the heights. Hardened and embittered, they overpowered the weakened and reduced forces of the Four, although several emergency avalanches were deployed before defeat was obvious. The villages of the Four on the Peak were razed and their supplies of deadly boulders and shales depleted by the expedient measure of dropping them down empty slopes.

A time of relative peace blossomed. The Peak’s heights were now depopulated, and the strategic benefits of their position were now known and defended against. Walls were sculpted around settlements to both ensnare rolling goods along specific paths and (in wary preparation) to deflect barrages from above. In truth there were now few enemies from within; the shared suffering inflicted by the Four had forged a small bond of commonality. Rather than competing for rollzones, most codified and elaborated upon their own pre-set roll-routes.
This mutual pacifism was well-timed, for it was not longer after this that those strangers, the Flat, came to the Peak. They had interesting and exotic goods and metal weaponry. The first they bargained with, the second they threatened with, and if the Peakers hadn’t been wary from the get-go things might have ended very badly – conquered first from above, then below. As it was many of the most Flatward settlements were razed, but the newcomers didn’t know of The Words, and thus were wiped out in vast numbers when they sought to climb higher Peakward into the waiting stone rain.
The Peak solidified in friendship at this defeat of a common, alien foe, and the proto-Peak Republic was formed in the loosest sense of the term.

What followed was not unimportant, but was devoid of dramatic shifts. The Peak Republic solidified. The roll-routes were formalized into the rollways, which were deep, broad, and required the relocation of much of the Peak’s good stone into their surfaces. Agriculture – practiced initially at the behest of the Four on the Peak for greater tribute – was refined. The prongnose went extinct. Erosion became a concern, and sculpting of the slope beyond its use for rolling became more common.
This was referred to as the Combing.

The Peak Republic fell in the end not to infighting among peers, but friendship between strangers. Numerous kinds of Flat came to trade at the bottom of the Peak, and in time some of the Flatwardmost settlements came to enjoy a nigh-monopoly on exotic goods and luxuries, from which they profited handsomely. Jealousy grew in those consigned to the Peakward heights (who paid the greatest sums for the smallest tastes of these indulgences) and in the end quarrels grew into denunciations grew into embargoes grew into incitement grew into deliberate disruptions of the rollways. Shielded well from stone, the protecting Peakward walls of the Flatward settlements were not proof from stink and sickness – the Peakward settlements beset them with rotting and diseased carcasses and sewage, choking their fields, forage, and rollways with murderous bacteria. In the end every settlement Flatward of the Rockilees was emptied, either driven into the arms of their Flat allies and friends or eradicated by plague.
This was the second great redistribution of the Peak’s population. Now both the extreme heights and the farthest lows were relatively devoid of habitation. The Peak was girdled with life, and by history, inclination, custom and practicality, this range did not change greatly from that point onwards.

At some point, something had to be done about the trees.
Wood wasn’t what you built a house out of in most of the Peak, but it was needed for an awful lot of tools and smaller-scale projects. The Peak had been forested thick to the treeline in the old days, but toward the mid-life of the Peak Republic that coverage had been thinned thoroughly. Now, with the concentration of population in the Peak’s midsection, competition for timber began to grow. Each settlement also now needed more cropland – Peakward, preferably.
Nobody was above them. Nobody could sneak up on them from below.
So, once again, precautions grew into paranoia. War against one of your neighbours risked an ambush from your other, so it was safest to fortify and content yourself with sabotage and mending the effects of the sabotage of your rivals.
There was plenty to mend. But it was a lot harder than the sabotage, so nobody ever put quite as much effort into it.

At length, a problem emerged. The rollways were wearing awfully deep, and some of the oldest and most-used were collapsing inwards. Alternate routes were found, but they were less stable to begin with (being in less preferable terrain).
There were several summits. During the course of these, it was determined that
(1) rollways were necessary for a Peak life. Existence without The Words was, fundamentally, not thinkable.
(2) without noticing, it appeared that a point had been reached by which rollways were no longer sustainable at the scale necessary to sustain Peak society.
(3) the individuated benefits of ceasing to crumble the Peak with rollways were basically non-existent and if any given Peak settlement did so its neighbours would simple take its belongings.
So, having determined that they couldn’t possibly fix anything, the people of the Peak resigned themselves to merely enlarging and refurbishing the rollways as much as possible as fast as possible.

Some time later, Flats came to the Peak again. Not as conquerors, not as traders. There wasn’t much anymore to conqueror or trade with, so they had to settle for being explorers, and complained a good deal about their lack of fortune. Nothing but crumbled, buckled rocks, ruts, bumps, and dirt – very poor dirt at that.
“This is the ugliest hill I’ve ever seen,” decreed Abideel Gutchen, and those words were written in her journal and remain true to this day, centuries later.
Mind you, the years have taken their toll on the Peak since her day.
It was probably a whole sixty foot high when she saw it.

Sleeping people, somewhere.
“Psst!”
One less, now. But pretending.
“Psst!”
Still pretending.
“HEY!”
Ow that was the ribs never mind, up they go.
“About time! I’ve been poking you for hours and ages and forevers.”
“Why. I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired. You can be tired later. I have something very important to do! I am a hero, and a hero needs a story, and a story needs an adventure!”
“Ah.”
“And I need you to come with me for it.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve got things that need lugging. Luggage. You can be the luggee. The lugger, even.”
“Those sound like bad things to be.”
“You can be the luggage then, come on, come on. Time’s a-wastin’.”
Luggage would have protested, but The Hero had a maniacal endurance that wore away mere discomfort like a waterfall ate cheese, and soon he was prodded upright, packed with supplies, and placed on the trail.
“It’s important we sing as we walk,” said The Hero, “to show our fighting spirit. Also, to bid our loved ones farewell in case we all succumb on this desperate journey.”
Luggage waved at his friends and family. They waved back.
“Not good enough. Do re mi fa so la get going.”
Luggage didn’t know the words. That was okay – he could hum, and The Hero didn’t seem to know the words either. Or the tune. And sometimes when the path went rough the lyrics dipped into swears.
It was a good song, though.

By afternoon they ran out of trail.
“We’re leaving the Lands We Knew,” said The Hero. “That’s important. Here’s where the adventure kicks in. Keep your eyes open.”
“What’s the adventure, anyways?” asked Luggage. His feet hurt. They’d packed on the side of better-safe-than-sorry, which was making his spine extremely sorry.
“We’re going to find a ravening monster.”
“That sounds very dangerous.”
“Of course! And then we’ll risk our life and limbs to kill it!”
“That sounds even more dangerous. Why?”
“Because it’s a ravening monster. It needs to be stopped for the good of us all.”
“If it’s this far out it’ll get pretty tuckered trying to raven at us. Are you sure you can’t carry some of this?”
“I need both hands free for my weapon. Anything can happen right about…..now!”
And The Hero put his foot off the beaten trail.
Four hours and a lot of dirt, branches, twigs and leaves went by and ended at a camp, with a small fire and some foods. The Hero stood ramrod stiff next to the blaze, weapon in his hands, eyes darting.
“It’s not quite dark yet. We can see for a little ways. Would you like some?”
“Constant vigilance,” said The Hero. “I can hear something out there. We’re not alone.”
“You want first watch then?”
“I’ll stay up all night if I have to. They’ll seize any moment of weakness.”
“That’s yes?”
“There – there! You see that?”
Luggage hadn’t. Then it happened again.
“There….right ahead.”
“Yes. That’s a bat.”
The Hero shushed him and slowly and menacingly raised his weapon, eyes narrowed and face scrunched in devastating power.
Luggage went to bed. When he woke up, nothing had changed.

They didn’t sing on the second day. The Hero said it was because nobody was there to listen, so it didn’t matter. That and The Hero was extremely tired and kept tripping on things and yawning.
“Too many…..rocks. Jagged rocks. Around here, that is,” he mumbled angrily. “This is….un’atral. Must be a draaaaaa—aagon. Mmph. Around here. That is.”
“We’re hunting a dragon? That’s pretty dangerous. Why are we doing this?”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” said The Hero. “You’re loud.”
Then it started raining.

The second night was a lot quiet and simpler. No bats. No campfire. No watch, even, because The Hero demanded first watch again and fell asleep before waking up Luggage.
Just the trickle and hiss of soft, insistent rain against the river.
Breakfast was leftovers from the attempt at dinner. It was mostly enough, and it was mostly crumbs. It took a lot of concentration to eat, and so when The Hero grabbed Luggage’s arm and pointed, bug-eyed, most of Luggage’s attention was diverted to rescuing his next mouthful.
“LOOK.”
Luggage looked.
There, farther down the riverbank, lay a thing of scales and hide and teeth, mouth wide open against the dawn, embedded amidst the reeds and dirt and snoring just a little bit.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Are you sure it’s it? It looks like a crocodile.”
“An alligator. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure it’s an alligator? Its snout looks a little narrow.”
“That doesn’t MATTER. Listen, this is all very metaphorical now. It’s both an alligator-”
“A croco-”
“-AND a dragon. We’re making things realer than real here. What’d we have for breakfast last week? You remember?”
“No…”
“But it was real, right? What was that story your aunt told us last fall when we wanted to go nutpicking after dark?”
“You mean the one about the headless ghost with teeth the size of –”
“Exactly my point. Thank you. So! It’s an alligator. It’s a dragon. I’m a hero. These are all the things that matter right now, and so I say: this is it.”
The window bustled in a low-key sort of way.
“This is it,” said The Hero.
“This is it, I guess, okay,” agreed Luggage. “So, do you want me to distract it from the front, and you come up and –”
“No!” said The Hero, passionately. “I don’t want you hurt! This is my fight! My fight, using my rules, and for my reasons! A hero doesn’t risk other’s lives like that! I’ve got to do this selflessly, purely, and profoundly! You can sit behind this rock and worry about me.”
“Well, I’m very good at that,” said Luggage. “Alright. But please, be careful. And you still haven’t told me why we’re doing this!”
“It’ll all become clear,” said The Hero. “It’s all something meaningful. A Hero makes a story, Luggage, and stories always make sense. We’re at the denouement. The dragon is in our sights. All is to be revealed. If I die, remember the story. You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“Get ready…get set….don’t do anything!”
And The Hero charged.

Forty feet of empty shore lay ‘twixt monster and man. It was mostly mud, and deeper than it looked. The Hero’s charge foundered, but his weight sustained it, and he ploughed through marshy grass and slopping sludge with weapon held firm. His battle cry DID taper a bit, but he needed his breath for bigger things.
The crocod – the alligator, the monster – turned its head a bit. Its mouth was still open, but it didn’t really move much, right up until the point where The Hero took a flying leap and landed right on top of it.
For a single, shining moment The Hero’s arm and weapon were framed against what would’ve been the sky if there hadn’t been trees there. Instead they just sort of stood out against the leaves. A bit.
Then it came down, quick as lightning. THUNK.
The monster grunted – more of a snort, really a puff of air if anything – and went limp.
Luggage realized in the sudden silence that he’d been holding his breath. Also, clenching his toes. He could hear the twitch of his tendons as they relaxed.
NOW came the roar, erupting from the chest of a human rather than the beast. Huge and great and guttural with emotion and joy over a death evaded, a death embraced, came the call of The Hero, the climax of the saga.
“HOLY SHIT,” he yelled at the world as he leapt to his feet, arms wide, mouth agape. “LOOK HOW BIG MY DICK IS!”
And the alligator spun about, grabbed him by the pelvis, and pulled him under.

Luggage ran over to the water. He thought about doing something, but it was as thick and clear as mud on a warm morning. All he could see was six no three no one not one ripple. Smooth as a weed-clotted plate.
So instead Luggage picked up the leftovers of breakfast and put them in his stomach for safekeeping, and he walked home.
The bats didn’t bother him.
The rain didn’t bother him.
The rocks didn’t bother him.
The night didn’t bother him.
His feet were a bit sore by the time he got home, all alone, and with the most attention he’d ever seen.
“Where’d you go?”
“What happened?”
“Where’s your friend?”
“What happened?”
“Did anything happen?”
“Something happened.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“Yes, tell us a story about what happened. Tell us a story.”
“Tell us a story.”
Luggage thought of all the things he’d been told to remember and they all clotted in his mouth and the words he couldn’t imagine jumped out of him instead.
“An allegory ate him.”

And they had to be as happy as they could be with that, because that WAS that.

“Look at the light.”
“Look to the right.”
“Look to the left.”
“Look to the ceiling.”
“Look at the floor.”
“Now look straight ahead and read the letters until you can’t see them.”
I squinted.
“Q….P…R….C…G….F….T….M…S….Z….”
I squinted harder. Oh, there it was.
“Splon.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Splon. The last letter on the chart is splon. I almost couldn’t see it.”
“There’s no splon there.”
“Yes there is. It just took me a moment. I didn’t expect it.”
“There’s no such thing as splon.”
“Look at the chart.”
“I can’t see a splon.”
“Well, then talk to the manufacturer. Because there it is. Fairly clear, too, now that I know it’s there. Splon.”
“Wait here.”
I waited here. Some time and more here later, along came the optometrist again, this time with a relaxed woman in a suit.
“Hey,” said the woman. She was so relaxed her eyelids were barely open. “Do me a favour. Open your mouth and say om.”
“Ah?”
“No. Om.”
“Ommm.”
“Hah! Thought so. He’s got third eye. See? Right in the middle of his forehead.”
The optometrist squinted. “I don’t see it.”
“Exactly. Right, come into the room next door. We’re going to run a few more tests. It’s not a common condition.”

“Breathe in, breathe out, visualize yourself, yadda yadda. Okay, you meditating?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now meditate at the light.”
“Okay.”
“Shh! Meditate to the right. Now the left. Meditate waaay up high at the ceiling. Now meditate at the floor – down, down, a little more – there! Now meditate and look at what I’m holding in my hand.”
“It’s hard and black and cold and stained with the guilt of failing to clean the coffeepot before you left home this morning.”
“What?”
“It’s the fifth time you’ve done that this month. You’re sorry but you don’t know how to make it better. It’s all your fault. You’re the worst.”
“Weird. That’s not normal third-eye behaviour. I figured you were going to see this die in my hand and tell me what number it came up from. Wait here a second.”
I waited a second. When the woman in the suit came back, it was with a man in a bathrobe.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Bend over.”
I bent over.
“What do you see?”
“A wasted life. A hollow existence. A failed marriage. Three resentful children that will not come to your funeral.”
“Yep. Sounds about right. Classic fourth eye. It’s lodged up your backside, and you’re seeing the backside of all humans with it. Ah well, whatcha gonna do.”
“Is there a cure?”
“Hell no. Why would there be? We’ve all got something like it, yours is just abnormally acute. Now, bend over and look at this picture.”
“Hollow longing for immortality, a desperate anxiety to make a mark.”
“You betcha. Now look ahead. Now look left. Right. Up. Down. Ahead. Now, concentrate as hard as you can on what’s in my pocket.”
“It’s fuzzy. And impossible to get ahold of.”
“You kidding? It’s my alimony cheque. They stick like glue.”
“It’s a cheque? I can’t see a cheque. Just an uncertain mass of…stuff.”
“Huh. Hold on a tick.”
The man in the bathrobe left. When he came back, it was in the company of a woman in a coat and a full-sized scanning electron microscope.
“Hello,” said the woman in the coat. “Do me a favour and tell me what this machine is looking at, without checking the display.”
I had to squint pretty hard. “I can’t tell, sorry. All I can see are stringy bits.”
“Well shit,” she said. “Looks like you’re sub-sub-sub-atomic. Or something. Hell if I can tell. Any alternate universes down there?”
“Let me look.”
I looked.
I looked REAL hard.
And when I was done looking, I looked around some more and found I was all alone in the room and they’d tied me down pretty good.
There’s an argument outside the door. Pretty energetic. Not sure what’s going to happen when it’s over. There’s ethical quandaries, and political ponderings, and some sort of abstract angles.
If I’d looked ahead a little bit harder, I bet could’ve seen this coming.
Oh well. My hindsight’s always been 20/20.

The nest wasn’t much. A clump of down and some pebbles, crammed in the crutch of what must’ve been a nice tree a hundred years ago, and had probably had leaves up until the last decade.
No twigs. Hadn’t been any twigs for ages.
Still, a nest was a nest, and that’s why its occupant slammed beak-first into Alistair’s eyeball, popping it like an overripe grape.
“Fuck!” said Alistair. And he fell over backwards, nest in hand, grasping, flailing, wailing, and he bumped down ten feet head over heels and somehow missed landing on his neck, which was quite a feat.
“Fuck,” concluded Alistair. His eye throbbed. His back ached. The wad of feathers and tiny frail broken things that had been a bird was mashed against his collarbone, and that hurt too. “Fuck.”

The bunker wasn’t much either. Concrete, steel, earthworks. And a lot of forethought and hope. It had been camouflaged at one point, back when that might’ve served a purpose. Time had scraped that smug look off its face.
Inside was a light, surly and shrunken in the face of the incoming dawn. It was a big day. They could afford to use the last matches.
At the light was a fire, and beside the fire was Barbara, and under Barbara was a chair, which was placed at a table, which was covered in objects.
“This is way too complicated,” said Alistair.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Hey, what’s up with your eye?”
“Bird,” said Alistair.
Barbara raised an eyebrow.
“A fucking bird,” corrected Alistair. “But I got the eggs. One of them. It’s a little cracked. But it’s an egg.”
“Oh that’s nice. Should we boil it or fry it?”
“I thought you said you’d scramble it.”
“You need milk for that, properly.”
“You need water to boil it.”
“Well, that’s for the drinks. We’d better fry it.”
“We need butter for that.”
“Maybe if we boil it with the bad water and get rid of the shell?”
“That sounds dangerous. Oh well.”
The bad water took a while to boil, thick and truculent as it was. Alistair poured the good water into the two glasses. Barbara rooted through the metal box that had been a refrigerator when it had power, and a coldbox when it had insulation, and was now basically a cupboard with odd smells and creaks.
“Where’d you put the rat?”
“I minced it up and put it in the old butter container.”
“The becel?”
“That’s margarine. I put it in the old BUTTER container.”
“Margarine’s basically butter.”
“No it isn’t. Vegetable oils. Very different.”
“Tasted the same.”
“No it didn’t.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
The argument ended there. Most of them did. Barbara found the minced rat inside an old tuna tin.

They sat down. The plates were ready. The dishes were ready. The water was still clear, untouched by the faint haze of the air.
Forks up. Dish uncovered.
“Oh lovely,” said Barbara. “Where’d you find them?”
“Under an old shed. Must’ve been used to store fertilizer and seed.”
“Is it crabweed? Looks like crabweed.”
“I don’t know. What’s crabweed look like?”
“I’m not sure. My mother used to call anything that she didn’t want in her garden crabweed.”
“Huh.” Barbara put some of it in her mouth and chewed. “Tastes like crab.”
“Huh. Really?”
“No, I’m fooling you. It tastes like weeds.”
“Gosh.”
And it did.
“What’s the dressing?”
“Oil.”
“What kind?”
“I squeezed whatever I saw lying around.”
“Oh. What’re the little gritty black flakes?”
“What little gritty black flakes? I can’t see with this eye.”
“They’re little. And gritty.”
“Well –”
“Oh, and they’re black. Almost forgot.”
“Could be anything. Maybe they were part of the crabweeds.”
“Eh.”

Salad was finished. The plates were flipped over, for cleanliness’s sake.
“Minced rat. What’d you do to it?” asked Alistair.
“I browned it over the lamp. Then I seared it over the lamp. Then I fricasseed it over the lamp. Then I sautéed it over the lamp. Then I roasted it over the lamp. Then I pan-fried it over the lamp. When I couldn’t see any more red bits I figured it was done. Deglazed the pan with water to produce the sauce.”
“So it’s a sort of rat sausage, is it?”
“Those are stuffed into the intestines. The intestines are part of this. I think it’s more of a haggis, maybe. Maybe?”
“That needs oats. And it uses sheep.”
“Salads don’t use crabweeds. Beggars can’t be choosers. There’s not many more fish in the sea.”
“None at all, I think. Couldn’t find one last week. Just jellies.”
“Not bad for rat though, is it? At all, I mean.”
“I’ve had better rats. But this is the best rat I’ve had since I haven’t seen any in months.”

Finally, the main course. The egg. Pale, off-white-blue. Creased and folded even before it cracked. Twisted on both sides. With the sludge of the bad water wiped away.
Inside, it was deep brown.
“Is that normal?” asked Alistair.
“I can’t remember,” mused Barbara. “Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever had an egg that looked like this before. What kind of bird was it?”
“Here it is,” said Alistair. He peeled the bird out of his collarbone and held it up for inspection.
“Flatbird. Not very informative. Could be a redwing blackbird no no those aren’t wings, that’s its insides. Nasty.”
“Good egg, though.”
“Yes. Surprisingly sweet.”

The daytime fog was coming in, thick and rancid-hot.
“Dessert?” said Alistair, raising his glass.
“Dessert,” confirmed Barbara.
“Have you got your pill?”
“Always do, for twenty years.”
“Well then. Bottoms up.”
“Here’s to the future.”
Gulp. Chug. Chug. Clink.
Ahh.

At the chime of the town clock – helpfully provided by an earnest youth with a big mallet – they gathered for Sunday council, the aldermen and the mayor.
“I have an important announcement,” said the mayor. “I’m about to bite it.”
“Oh nooooo,” said the aldermen.
“Oh yeah,” said the mayor. “I’m going to bite it big time. It’s been a good life, or I think so, but it’s almost over. I’ll croak before the week is out.”
“Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” said the aldermen.
“I have just one, tiny, simple, eensy-weensy, microscopic dying wish,” said the mayor. “I’d like a burger, the way I had when I was a boy, back before the bombs fell and the streets cracked and the grass grew. I have in my possession an ancient map dating back to the old days, showing the path to a fabled McDonald’s, and I entrust this most sacred and holy of tasks – my last burgin’ before my next life – to two carefully-selected individuals. One is my good for nothing, scheming, malevolent, capricious, selfish, backstabbing, good-for-nothing, atrocious, abominable, wretched, snivelling, gormless, heartless son, Jason.”
“Meheehehhehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe,” said Jason, as his fingers tango’d wildly.
“Right on, my boy. The other is Brad, our neighborhood’s most wholesome and obvious protagonist in twenty years.”
“Gosh!” said Brad, manfully.
“And they can each bring along as many nameless sidekicks as they need. This could be dangerous.”
“Jeepers!” said Brad, eagerly.
“And some food. Lots of it. It’s hard travel.”
“Golly!”
“Save it for the road, Brad.”

The valiant duo (and a few dozen nameless sidekicks) departed from The Neighborhood that very afternoon, under the august blessing of the mayor, the frenetic, off-kilter chiming of the town clock, and a fat red haze in the sky.
“Farewell!” called the mayor, aldermen, and townsfolk.
“Bye folks!” said Brad, in passing.
“Hehehehheheheheheheh,” said Jason.
The sidekicks probably said something too, but whatever. The important things were the banners and the cheers and the tears and the sobs of joy. An adventure as big as this hadn’t happened in years! They couldn’t wait to sit at home until someone told them how it’d gone.

Six minutes out of the Neighborhood, Jason tripped Brad into a lawn of quicksod, where he immediately sank.
“Nuts!” said Brad, in a bubbly manner.
“BWA-hahahahahhahahahahhahahaha,” said Jason.
The sidekicks rolled with it.
They had a lot more to roll with by the time that day was out. First came the heat waves, sweeping across the trail in scorching white sheets as the cloud cover thinned, pan-frying flesh and crisping hair. Those who couldn’t reach shade withered in the open, left to stagger home as sunburnt cadavers.
Jason shielded himself under the charred surfaces of three of his more expendable sidekicks, while giggling.
Then after that came the great haze – the seeping morass of mist and leftover ground-sludge that coated everything with a fine orange ooze, rusted skin and burned metal. Into the trees they went, and the laggards were turned unceremoniously to gloop.
Jason climbed up on top of two of his tallest sidekick’s shoulders and waited until the mist was passed, upon which they fell over.
There were also large feral dogs, but those only made a fuss for a few seconds before Jason threw the meatiest sidekick at them and the rest of them all ran away.
Finally, that evening the expedition came upon the Valley of the Highway, and even from that great distance, in that dim light, they could see the gap in the tree-cover, where the corpse of the road lay. And glittering in the distance – half-visible between leaf and leaf – was it? Truly?
“An arch,” proclaimed the head flunky of the sidekicks. “A golden arch.”
“Meheheheheheheh!” cheered Jason. And he pushed the head flunky over the embankment.

The night at the valley’s edge was quiet, deep quiet. The kind of quiet that makes neighbours nervous. Not a raccoon at the garbage pail; not a noisy stupid dog; not even a neighbour and her husband engaging in ritualistic murder or sex or both.
It was….TOO quiet.
Until the rogue ultrafox circling the camp’s perimeter picked up its third victim by their leg instead of their neck, at which point all hell broke loose.
“Get it!” yelled an unnamed hero, who it savaged.
“Run for it!” screamed an unnamed coward, who tripped over the embankment and fell forty feet onto old cracked asphalt.
“HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH!” commanded Jason, and the rest followed him down, down, down the swirling madness of the on-ramp into the night and the rust-choked debris of the Valley of the Highway, where tetanus scurried underfoot with the rats.
And where the rats scurried, so too did their predators. You could fit a lot of feral cats comfortably inside a single broken car, and here there were hundreds. They’d grown fat and wild and even crazier than usual, and to add to their consternation they’d been invaded by a host of what smelled like squeaking extra-large rats.
It got so ugly it shouldn’t be mentioned.

Dawn found a reduced expedition, fortified atop the rotten hull of an old transport truck. They breakfasted; the sidekicks upon old beans, Jason upon chortles and the sidekick with the weakest heart, who’d stopped moving during the night.
“The arches,” pointed the new head flunky.
Indeed, there they were, just across the way. Dawn had put the cats to bed, and the rest of the crossing was without incident until they had reached the deserted temple of the McDonald’s, brown-walled, red-roofed, vine-choked and silent.
The doors were locked. Someone had crashed a car through the larger windows.
“Hehehehehheheehhehehehe,” commanded Jason, who knew much of the old world through the tales of his father, the mayor. And he was correct: the drive-in window was still unblocked, although very small. The largest sidekick had to come in, after a lot of tugging, as three separate pieces.
Inside was dark and heavy dead. Not a rat’s-breath had moved the air inside since the days before. Vats had idled. Griddles curdled. Fryers fizzled.
“Heh-heh. A-hah. A-heh, hah, HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA!” said Jason. And so it was.
By his word, the sidekicks searched what had been a freezer, for what had once been meat.
By his word, the sidekicks assembled what could be a bun, burned against the surface of what could be a pan.
By his word, the sidekicks minced, chopped, ground and pummelled the meatiest of the three separate pieces of the largest sidekick, inserted it into an ancient meat-forge, then turned it on and discovered it was a half-working furnace.
The second-meatiest piece of the largest sidekick went onto the actual griddle, and it worked much better, which was a good thing because after it was finished the furnace’s gas leak finally found a spark.

Out of the inferno they rose, the last five of the expedition, Jason bearing the burger from the temple’s depths in a gory fist. Across the dread Highway they fled, Jason cackling them onwards, too scared to sleep or pause lest he put his lips to their ears and chuckle them awake. Through the fetid parklands they ran in the dead of night on dying legs, two falling, never rising, until at last in the eyeblink of dawn they stumbled, more-or-less-corpses, past the gates of The Neighbourhood.
“Ahahahahahhahahahahahah!” roared Jason, and all the neighbours came out into the streets and marvelled at what they saw. So did all the neighbours. \
“They return!” cried the neighbours.
“They return!” replied the neighbours. And the cheers rang high.
“To the mayor!” cried the neighbours.
“To the mayor!” replied the neighbours. And through the happy throng the expedition was led.
“Here they are, mayor!” cried the neighbours.
“Here they are, mayor!” replied the neighbours. “And by mayor, we mean Brad, who returned heroically two days ago after you were all eaten by wild and dangerous beasts and the old mayor died in his sleep of a heart attack!”
The neighborhood politely put the cheering on hold for a moment to let everyone figure out what was going on.
Brad was indeed the mayor. He waved at the expedition.
“Heh?” said Jason.
“Hi sport! Stake them all out in the sun for the buzzard-flies!” said Brad, warmly.
And it was done, and so for many, many more happy years, The Neighborhood remained a safe, clean and wholesome place to raise your 2.5 children and dog.
Bit light on burgers though.

There was a man who almost had everything.

He was almost the richest person of all.
He was almost the most famous person of all.
He was almost – ALMOST almost, but not quite – the meanest person of all. But not quite.
And his most famous, treasured, and coveted almost was his house, his mansion, his tower, his eyesore, which had almost a thousand rooms. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine rooms. Of almost every kind you could ever imagine.
He had a stone room, where every surface was cold and sun-warmed and gray and red and sandy and sooty and solid as eternity.
He had a wood room, with paneling, and floorboards, and rafters, and branches, and roots.
He had a song room, whose walls were speakers and whose roof was scrolling sheet music and whose walls were insulated triple-thick.
He even had a sun room, where ten hundred hundred gems reflected and trapped and cajoled the light from dozens of windows, keeping it aglow no matter what the hour.
But there was one room that was missing, one room that wasn’t there.
He didn’t have a rain room.

Almost anyone else would’ve decided nine-hundred and ninety-nine rooms was enough. Certainly enough for one person. Especially enough for one person who only ever slept in one room and did business in another three or four ninety-nine days of a hundred. But not this man. His house had been under construction for decades, his hair had turned grey and fallen out, his teeth were loose and yellow, and his eyes were watering. He almost knew exactly what people thought of him, and it made him half-mad to think of what they’d say when he was gone.
No, he had to have one thing wholly. He had to have his house complete. He had to have his rain room.

He asked sages, scientists, philosophers, pundits, and plesiosaurs.
“You can’t put rain in a room,” they told him. “It’s the most fickle and fluid of all things. If you let it stand, it’s a puddle. If you let it flow, it’s a stream. If you let it boil, it’s vapor. It’s out of everyone’s grasp and yours too.”
The man cursed them all roundly and threw them out of his nine-hundred and ninety-nine room house, where he spent the night trying to think and falling asleep, in that eerie zone where an hour is a second and a minute lasts five months. It’s a strange place to be in. Things can find you there. Like you.
Whatever it was that bumped him in the night, it left a mark. The man woke up sore-backed, stiff-necked, and bright-eyed. A spark had found him, and it leapt into his fingers, his keyboard, his commands.
People with iron rods and beards were set to work. People with sunglasses and carefully-chosen suits were told to walk. Money moved soundlessly under the world like a fat-bellied, dainty-toed rat.
Construction resumed on the man’s home for the first time in twenty years. Some of the blueprints hurt your eyes, some of them hurt your head, and all of them made a little knot twist behind your backbone, like something invisible and important was being pinched, or maybe filched.
But enough money can make someone do almost anything.

On May 23rd – a Thursday – the rain stopped.
It was in the sky, and then POP it was gone and the sky was empty. Bleeding a little, but empty.
It didn’t actually go POP but it looked like it should have.
When the sky went POP, the man was standing in his home, in his thousandth room, and he was waiting. He’d been waiting for hours. If he hadn’t fallen asleep ten minutes ago, he would’ve been able to see the first drops fall, as opposed to feeling them run down his nose. It made him cough and run down the hall for a tissue.

/In the rain room there are ten trillion droplets a thousand thunderheads and one billion gentle showers. There is nothing underfoot but ripples and there is nothing overhead but grey./

It didn’t take long for somebody to panic, and that’s the sort of mood that always attracts hanger-ons. People need crops. Mists. Clouds. Downpours. They’re the bread and butter of a good sky.
So the people came to the thousand-room house of the man, and they asked, demanded, begged, and requested that they receive rain, that they see rain, that maybe one person shouldn’t have all the rain in the world in one room.
And the man answered their pleas with the carefully-chosen proverb, aphorism, koan and keystone of the oldest philosophy of all, which was “I don’t care about you.”

/In the rain room there are places where you can wait and fill yourself up again. Stand there and let the cold and warm and wet beat into you and slide through the skin and sluice the sludge out of every vein and let it run clean and calm again./

In the weeks that followed, the world did a lot of things. It strained seawater, filled bathtubs, drained reservoirs, and a lot of other things. It almost did a lot of other things too.
The man didn’t notice any of it. He was too busy walking through his house, his thousand-room house. Opening every door. Checking every room. Some of them hadn’t seen anything but cleaning staff since he was a young man. It was very peculiar for him to have something, instead of almost having something, but he didn’t feel any different at all. That made him a little nervous.
He was saving his rain room for last. In case that helped.

/In the rain room there are no taps or faucets. Nothing can be turned off or closed. Open-ended only./

On the first of June – a Saturday – the man dressed himself in a waterproof grey coat. He picked up a black, ivory-hilted umbrella. He put on rubber boots.
And then the man stepped into the rain room, which was bigger than he expected. And damper, too. He sneezed.
He looked around in every direction he could name, and he heard the endless pit-a-pat and felt it on his clothing.
“Dull,” he said. And he reached for the doorknob.
It wasn’t there. This is the sort of thing that happens when you try to fit a closed system in a close space.
The man shouted for a bit, but the rain drowned him out.

/In the rain room there is no talk of chance. There is no risk. It is, and it is, and it continues to is. No tenses permitted beyond the present./

For a while the rest of the world looked pretty dire, and it almost seemed like things were going to get bad. The rain was wedged pretty tight into that house, and it wasn’t coming out.
Then the obvious solution presented itself: why not bring the world in after it?
It took a lot of shovels, and a lot of boxes, but by August 4th – a Sunday – the world had moved in to the Rain Room, and the rainwater puddled and streamed and vaporized as it should again, where it should again, when it should again.

The rest of the house fell down but almost nobody noticed.