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It was the time!
THAT time!
The good time! The best time! Or at least the most exciting time!
The cold rain was coming in!
So many things to be done before that. So many chores turned into games of do-it-the-fastest. So many pets to be bid fare-thee-well-forever to. So many vistas to be gazed at, filled with the subtle understanding that they would never more be seen. So many names to be screamed with such force and urgency.
What a hoot!
And my hoot was loudest of all, because it was getting pretty late on and everyone else had crammed themselves into the tiny squished place.
“GAAAAALEEEEEEE. HEEEEEEEEY GAAAAALLLLEEEEE. GEDDOVERHEEEEEEREEEEE GAAAAAAALEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
And on and on and on like that, until I tripped over something, which was Gale.
“Ooops.”
“Ow.”
“Sorry bout that.”
“You hit my leg.”
“Real sorry.”
“It’s gonna bruise.”
“Aw, I’m super sorry.”
“What do you care so loud about today anyhow?”
I stared at Gale, checking just to be sure she hadn’t been replaced by someone dumber in the night. “Because the cold rain’s coming in,” I told her very carefully, “and it’s time to go into the tiny squished place.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “No.”
“Right,” I said. “C’mon along and we can maybe find a nice spot to what the hell in a hot sauce are you talking about.”
“I’m not going,” said Gale. “I’m going to escape.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is! Where’re you gonna go, huh? North? It’s flat and dead. South? It’s rocky and dead. West? Nothing but the big empty sea. And east, of course, is filled with giant angry monsters. You’re going to get smooshed into ooze. Come on back and I bet I can elbow us a nice spot at the entrance, where we can watch the cold rain fall and very nearly not die. Will that make you happy?”
“No,” said Gale. “I’m going to leave. You can stay here and dodge the cold rain forever and ever if you’d like to, but I’m going to go east, over the hills, and find a place where the cold rain never falls. It sure beats this. See you late, or never, or whenever.”
And she was gone. Well, functionally. It’d take her another good while to run up over those first hills and out of sight, but as far as all of us were concerned she was gone.
I watched Gale be gone for another precious little minute or so, just out of surprise. Then I turned tail and ass, hauled both down to the tiny squished place like they were on fire, and just barely fit my entire self into the opening before the first angry drops came hammering down.
That was one of the worst nights I’d had, and I’d made a few of them for myself. Hours and hours of my backside being six blips from eradication, and chilly to boot. It didn’t endear me a lot to Gale’s memory.
Memory, not Gale herself. Gale herself had undoubtedly been beaten to bony bits by now on some ugly and empty slope. I thought so, and so did the other six or seven people who were crammed up against my face that I asked about this sort of thing, who all seemed very confident of it.
“Seen it happen a dozen times before,” said Eddy, the widest man. “Someone turns quiet-crazy and says ‘I can change everything!’ and then hey, they get themselves whacked. Best to know when you’re trying to do something impossible.”
“What happened to the other dozen people?” I asked Eddy.
“Dunno,” he said. “Never found ‘em again.”
“Do you think any of them made it?”
“Aw, not you too.”
And that was that.

When the cold rain ended, I wandered pretty high and pretty low, looking for Gale. But not super hard, because I didn’t really want to see any bony bits. Guess I got my wish because I sure didn’t find anything.
That was the disappointment, for sure. I didn’t find anything. And that made me worry.
It made me worry all day long digging up the good roots.
It made me worry all evening long brewing down the jellies.
It made me worry through a week solid as we went rockhunting through the Old Crumbles, and found some pretty good rocks to whack things with.
It even made me worry all through the Big Catch Day, which was dangerous because that was when the fresh jellies came in from the Net Guys On The Sea and if you don’t pay attention when you’re untangling those they sting the bejeezus out of you. As it was I lost my bejeezus three times to inattention.
But I couldn’t stop worrying, because I was worried that Gale was right. She’d had a habit of that, sometimes, when she could be bothered, and if it cropped up again boy would I be pissed off. It’d be just like her, to be right like that and then rub it in my face by never mentioning it. Just infuriating. Enraging. Damnit I hated when she did that, and now every day was filled with it.
So the next time the weathervane screeched I hollered my dues, waved bye to everything, and ran for the hills.

It was a spur of the moment thing. The problem with that kind of thing is that once you’re off the moment it just seems stupid.
I ignored that and concentrated on running. There was plenty to be done there.
The rocks weren’t my friends. The rocks were nobody’s friends, ever. But they seemed cooperative enough for the moment for me to live in, running full-tilt uphill and trying to guess what shade of green the clouds were and where exactly I’d seen her run, where she’d run to, and how fast.
Maybe it was here, just above here, that was where Gale had sheltered overnight. Maybe it was there, right there, in that hollow. Maybe it was “Aww, mince,” I said.
The skeleton was in pretty rough shape. The cold rain had beaten its limbs to bits and cracked even the big solid skull and pelvis. But yeah, that looked Gale-shaped to me.
“I DID warn you,” I told her.
She didn’t listen. Well, sometimes things don’t change.
The sky was starting to hiss. Somewhere behind me, the cold rain was starting. The sea was getting smashed to sloppy chunks.
I ran again. Hell, why not?

I didn’t have a plan as to WHERE, mind you. And never you mind why, or what.
But boy did I run.
Behind me, the cold rain came down. Spiked, thorned, thicker than a fist, faster than mother’s forearm. Cracking into stone and sending up little geysers of dirt.
I won’t lie to you. I felt pretty dumb right about then.
I wished I’d never listened to Gale, or at least put more than a half-second’s worth of thought into any of her arguments.
I wished I’d paid more attention to anyone else, who knew anything.
I wished I’d spent more time running so I could run faster right this minute.
It’s just that in the meantime, I couldn’t do any of those things.
So I ran.

Boy, did I run!

In the early morning of the first day of the third year of her tutelage under the philosopher of garbage, the student Surk was rolled out of her bed, into her coat, and out the door, which was immediately locked behind her.
This was, by now, very normal.
“Come back when you have an answer to my question,” said the philosopher of garbage.
“What question?” asked the student Surk.
And she took her answer and went to the first place she could think of.

The fry shop was packed tight with people picking up coffee and donuts. The student Surk’s elbows were bruised from the ribs of her opponents by the time she reached the counter, and the less said about where her knee had been the better.
“Order up, order up, order up, order up,” yelled the fry cook into her face in incoherent despair and utmost professionalism.
“What is the nature of humanity?” asked the student Surk.
The fry cook blinked seven times in half a second and replied: “To consume endlessly and never be satisfied. Get out of here or I’m shoving this spatula up your urethra.”
The student Surk thanked the fry cook, caught the donut that was hurled at her head, and left.

Half the donut got her past the lobby, the other half got her an audience. The computer technician wore no tie, shaved no cheek, and suffered no fools. His eyes were squinted and his hair was thinned and his mind was pared down to a thin blade of acid.
“Hi,” he said. “This isn’t jelly. You aren’t Rosemary. What the hell are you doing in here?”
“What is the nature of humanity?” asked the student Surk.
“Wow,” said the computer technician. “Wow. Seriously? Who cares. Only morons think about that stuff. If you were smart you’d make enough money to not give a shit about that question. English major over here.”
The student Surk thanked the computer technician, then flipped him off with both hands and left.

From there, the next target was obvious.
The pass-badge from the computer technician’s desk and an authoritative series of lies led the student Sark from room to room to room to working on ‘repairing’ a small camera in a corner of the press gallery of the Highest Courtyard. Ingenuous use of coffee breaks did the rest of the work for her, and before long the ruler entered the room.
“Hey!” shouted the student Sark, as the crowd of scribes settled down and placed pens to tablets. “What’s the nature of humanity?”
The ruler sighed. “Obviously, asking stupid questions, doing stupid things, and generally getting themselves killed without proper guidance from the qualified. Guards, seize her and do something fatal.”
But the student Sark was already gone.

It was a nice day in the botanical gardens. Quiet. Clear skies. A breeze. And not too dry. You could practically hear the plants growing.
The head gardener was not a whistling woman, but she did indulge herself in loud humming when the times merited it. And so they did. Good weather to be alive in. Good weather to work in. Good weather to turn the compost heap in.
The compost heap yelped under her shovel, then disgorged the student Surk.
“Jeez,” said the gardener. “What were you doing in there?”
“Long story,” said the student Surk. “I’ll cut it short: what is the nature of humanity?”
The gardener hummed that one over for a moment. “To grow,” she said. “And while you’re at it, to tend. Hey, do you hear a siren?”
“Absolutely. Can you lend me your hat?”
“N-”
“Thanks,” said the student Surk. And she left over the nearest wall.

Six miles between the palace and her was the safe zone, and a good time to stop and be someone else. Always easier than most people thought. Turn your clothes inside out, clean the dirt off your face, walk higher in the shoulders, there you are, you’re a stranger.
“You done?” asked the plumber. “Sink’s clogged.”
“I know,” said the student Surk. “I just clogged it.”
They sighed. “Great. Thanks. The hell is this? Compost.”
“Absolutely.”
“Wonderful. Anything else I can help you with?”
“Sure. What’s the nature of humanity?”
“To produce shit, naturally. That be all?”
“Yes. You’ve been immeasurably helpful.”
“Don’t sweat it,” said the plumber.
And then two minutes later: “Hey. Wait a second.”

The walk back, as it so often is, was much longer. The sun helped by setting on her halfway through, and the frost was thick on the doorknocker of the garbage-hovel.
“Go away,” said the philosopher of garbage.
“It’s me,” said the student Surk.
“Did you find an answer for me? Need to pay your yearly rent with something, and you know it.”
The student Surk nodded. “The nature of humans, my teacher, is utterly blinkered self-absorption.”
“About time you got it,” said her teacher. “Now come in and close the door. You’re letting in cold air, and I’ve got a kettle waiting for us.”

See the rocks.
Red hot and boiling with potential; brimmed with enthusiasm and cheer.
They are all so new, and they already harden with age. Huge sheets and cratons, cores and ridges, spread across the planet – a skin thin enough to make an apple envious, but miles deep. Below they run together in a liquid that turns from slush to pure flow, but here they are craggy and proudly solid, or as near as a thing can be to that. All children of the sun’s scraps, congealed like over-done scrambled eggs. Scraps made whole.
See the rocks. See them grow stiff and solid and endless.
Now, let us watch them dance.

See the rocks dance. It is a special technique.
The ponderous grind of tectonics; the smooth slippage of the mantle greasing the way. The surface of the planet puckers and dimples as water arrives and winds its way around the continents. They are crashing together, they are splitting apart, they are one and divided.
Nowhere else yet seen knows this dance. Affable little Mars is silent. Twin sister Venus is still. The giant moon above hangs cold and empty, though its stones are the old cousins of those below. They will grow ever older, and never shift an inch.
Below all this, and utterly alone, the rocks dance.

See the seas dance. It’s hard to find anywhere else they ever will.
A little colder and they will freeze forever. A lot hotter and they will boil away into the atmosphere.
It will be a lot hotter, someday, when the sun gets too old and angry.
But for now they are free to surge, and they are making the most of it. The rocks may comprise the planet, but it is the seas that cover it. Only the piddling nubbins of the continental crust dare raise a peep of their mass above the waterline.
They flex, they bob, they weave up and down as the planet tips and spins and wobbles and the atmosphere curdles and coughs.
A lot less patient than rocks.

See the little things dance. They do so in desperation.
They want to continue – they must, all of them that didn’t care are gone. The survivors are passionately afraid, and will stop at nothing to continue. Every movement is calculated, every angle eyed, every opportunity exploited to throw a tiny fragment into the future. Again. Again. Again!
Some of them have discovered a trick of turning sunlight into food. This is an excellent trick and begins to become more widespread.
Unfortunately, it’s not as clean as it could be. After the feast comes the relief, which produces a small but noteworthy quantity of an angry little thing.
For a long time, there will be no consequences.

See the consequences come storming in. They’re furious and ready to tear up the place.
Oh-oh, oh times two. It’s oxygen. And it’s ready to kill.
Sets its sights on all those rocks, gets sucked in like spaghetti and shreds them, tears them, rusts them. Oxidation everywhere, all the where. Minerals popping up like zits on the double, and the seas and skies a deathly soup as all the little things that prefer their homes still and safe choke to death on poison.
Some of them live. Some of them get real messed up and even decide they LIKE it. They like this shake-up.
Take a deep breath. Keep dancing.

See the little things grow fat. It takes a long time.
Little things taking little things inside them to make them into bigger things which multiply themselves into bigger things that eat little things that change into bigger things that get bigger.
It’s not a great solution, and it’s not for everything, or even most things, or even SOMEthings. Almost all of the little things…stay little. They’re endlessly busy, but they’ve got plenty of space.
Some of the poor little things grown fat think they’ve gotten an easy time of it. Gotten too big for their predator’s britches. Boy are they annoyed when their fellows turn on them.
Underneath the little things, the older dances continue. But they’re too big and too slow for their nervous and self-absorbed little heads. Except when some of the rocks sneeze and turn the seas anoxic, or somesuch. THAT gets their attention, at least until it’s over.

See the little things sprint. There’s no art to it, but you have to admire their frenzy.
Up! Up! Up! Into the macrosphere!
Out! Out! Out! Across the planet!
Fill the seas! Surge onto the shores!
Grow taller! Grow thicker! Grow greener!
Grow bigger! Grow hungrier! Grow fewer!
If the rocks belch and you all die, well, roll with it and get back up in a mad scramble. If the sky spits a stone from the beginning of time onto your head and blots out the sun, them’s the breaks and the lucky ones have no time to shake it off. It’s a race! It’s THE race! Get going, going, GONE!
And this too is a dance, even if it’s a little bit tasteless.

See the ape dance.
It’s hard, but if you squint you can make them out.
It’s one of the little things. No, not that one. That one. Not that one. THOSE ones. Yeah, there. No, over there. Trust me.
Silly creatures – they’re strutting along bolt upright, waving tools in the air and stuffing everything into their mouth that’ll fit. Hollering and jumping, hopping and spinning. Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
That’s no way to conduct yourself in public. There outta be a law… but of course there isn’t. Everyone’s been more or less making this up as they go along.
Things tend to work out, in the long run.

Once upon a time, there was a diligent and hardworking beaver. All day long the beaver toiled at his dam, cutting down trees and dragging them to the place where his tiny little brain told him the sound of rushing water was loudest. It was just a very little stream, but it was what was there, so it’d have to do.
“What’re you doing?” the other animals asked him.
“Dunno,” said the beaver. “Feel like it. I like this.”
“You don’t know why you’re doing it?” they said. “That’s silly.”
The beaver grumbled at the laughter of his friends and neighbors, but continued to work hard. Day and night, sun and rain, down came the trees and up came the dam. Plastered with stream-mud, built on tree-bones, higher and higher.
“Silly,” said the mice and the voles and the grubs and the spiders and the millipedes. “Silly!”
And the beaver grumbled some more, but with his mouth full. There was work to be done.
None too soon, either. The rain was coming.

It came in fast and hard and in sheets, accompanied by a wind that could shred treetops and tear teeth from mouths.
The beaver’s teeth were safe inside the beaver’s mouth inside the beaver’s nest under the bank, where he listened to the chaos and madness for two days. On the morning of the third day, the beaver came above the waterline and looked around.
His dam had worked beautifully. The rainwater had channeled itself into the stream, and now the forest was a lovely beaver meadow, comfortably drowned.
“Hah,” said the beaver, as he watched the corpses and homes of his friends and neighbours bob in the froth. “Who’s silly now?”
Then he gnawed down a funny-looking tree, took a big bite out of the weird-looking branch hanging off it, and fried himself to death.
Several of the brighter woodland creatures could’ve told him that was a power line. But they’d all left or drowned by then.

***

Once upon a time, there was a poor and miserable family of two: Jack and his mother. All they had to live in was a shack made of two boards nailed together, all they had to eat was old dry dirt. The one thing they had left in all the world was his father’s old bare-boned stock portfolio.
“Jack,” said his mother, “take that damned thing into town and sell it, would you? We can’t eat paper, and believe me we’ve tried.”
Jack nodded and walked to town and walked back and walked back into town with the stock portfolio this time and sold it off and was almost all the way back home with the proceeds when he ran into a mysterious stranger about five hundred feet tall.
“Psst,” said the stranger. “Want to buy some beans?”
“No,” said Jack.
“C’mon,” said the stranger. “They’re magic.”
“No,” said Jack.
“Plant them and they’ll carry you up into the magical cloud-realm of the giants, where you can steal all the loot your tiny arms can carry.”
“No,” said Jack.
“Aww, c’mooonnn.”
“No,” said Jack.
“Tell you what,” said the stranger. “Pay me just five bucks and you can buy this mystery bag that contains a randomized number of beans with a chance to contain a magic bean of rare, super rare, epic, legendary, or mythical qualities, each exponentially more potent than a regular magic bean.”
“I will buy every single one of them,” said Jack.
And that was how Jack came home with no money, a cartful of painted navy beans, and ten thousand dollars of bean debt, which kept him miserable and enserfed until his grandchildren died without descendants after decades of back-breaking labour and hardship.

***

Once upon a time, there was a king who loved two things: his family, and making numbers go up. His principal means of doing the latter was logging, for his kingdom was well-timbered. Many trees were felled, many logs were hauled, many numbers were delivered to the king, and with these he purchased fine things for himself and his children. This pleased him so much that he would order more trees to be felled, and so it continued for some time, until the kingdom’s landscape was much troubled by erosion. The peasants complained, but they were only peasants and as such irrelevant.
At length came a warning, delivered by an ancient crone who stepped through the castle’s guards as if they weren’t there. She walked through the king’s court and touched each courier, and as she touched them they were stricken dumb, until she stood before the king in a true and deep silence.
“I am of the deep and rotten woods,” said the witch. “I am of the swamp and bog. You’ve wrecked your lands, and now you wreck mine. Leave it be or suffer the consequences.”
“Pish to threats,” said the king. “I will not accede to such boorish behaviour. Nuts to your nonsense, alarmist upstart.”
“Very well,” said the witch. “Until the day you cease to destroy my home, I curse you thus: for every hundred logs taken, one of your children shall fall into an everlasting sleep. Only by returning the landscape to what it once was shall you see them ever wake again.”
“Fuck you,” said the king.
“I’m sorry?” said the witch.
“Fuck you,” said the king. “You think I care? I love two things: my family and making numbers go up. You want to make me choose between them? Easy. Numbers. Fuck you, and fuck my children too. Let the little bastards rot in their beds, I’ll console my grief with luxury. I’ll chop logs just to watch ‘em burn! To hell with you, to hell with them! To hell with this metaphor – I DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT TREES! ALL I NEED IS OIL!”
The king ripped off his robes to reveal an expensive and well-fitted suit and screamed in pride and despair, as if someone had stuck a lightning rod up his urethra.
“I LOVE IT. I LOVE IT SO MUCH I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT. I LOVE IT AND THE NUMBERS. BY GOD, DAMN YOU AND ALL THIS EARTH!”
Then he hurled himself out the window and ran off into the wilds, on all fours, like a beast. He was never again seen as he was, although an unidentifiable and mashed mass of flesh was pried out of the moving parts of the largest pumpjack in the kingdom some weeks later. It looked to have been trying to mount it.
The witch, the king’s children, the loggers, and the rest of the kingdom perished due to famine as their crops failed and local trade networks dissolved in a furor of paranoia and starvation.