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As it wrapped its limbs around the decapitated stump of what had once been the Chrysler building, an unnamed technician – sliding hopelessly towards its maw – pulled the emergency backup release switch, sending a few zillion volts and ohms and other things crashing through the skyscraper’s superstructure and directly into its skull, which exploded. 

It was still there the next morning, slumped yet upright, oozing yet unmoving.  The sun shone dazzle-bright on half its scales; the other half were blotted and blackened from the smog of its vaporized cranium. 

After the expenditure of three hundred sixty five trillion dollars, one billion lives, and the frying of the entire electrical grid of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, it was dead. 

That was the first mistake they made.  The second was building the plaque. 

***

It was a very tasteful little plaque, appropriately somber yet not dour.  It mentioned the scale without getting lost in the numbers.  It honoured the many rather than the few, bringing the unnamed technician to mind without elevating her above the other billion dead people.  It did not nationalize a global tragedy.  It praised human ingenuity and selflessness without diminishing the costs.  Its font was somber but not oppressive.  It did not have any pictures. 

It was well done as far as plaques go, but there was a dangerous amount of thought going into it that maybe should have been put somewhere else. 

Though really, who could blame anyone for being distracted?  An awful lot of the world had been stepped on, and all the parts of it that hadn’t been stepped on were finding themselves in need of food, since so much of that had gotten stepped on, radiated, or atomized too.  It was amazing anyone had the brainpower to pull together a plaque, but then again plaque-making committees are a specialized and often-ignored group of people, and they did what they could when they saw the need for it.  And in other circumstances this would have been very admirable, save for what the existence of the plaque implied. 

The implications were as follows:

The problem had been here.  The problem had been solved.  This was evidenced by dint of the fact that there was now a plaque.  It was now part of history, and thus safe to ignore forever as the blissful future arrived by way of the important present. 

This is not to say that perhaps things would have gone differently without the plaque.  But it was definitely a mistake. 

***

Their third and largest mistake was assuming brain death was of great significance to any and all complex organisms.  The unnamed technician could’ve told them otherwise – she had grown up on a chicken farm – but she was dead now along with a billion other people, and so an ass was successfully made out of u and me, as was proven on the fiftieth day after the decapitation when it jerked bolt upright out of its slump and walked through the rubble of the Chrysler building into the side of three separate skyscrapers one after another, pirouetting like a titanic ballerina. 

It did not step on the plaque. 

***

Remobilization took time.  A long time.  The armed forces were in a much reduced state, were being rallied from a considerably more jumbled and confused world, and were being called to arms with the fully-earned knowledge that they were almost wholly ineffective against their enemy.  This made things slower than they had been before, as did the knowledge that they were trying to kill something that didn’t seem to respect the realities of being dead.  It was striding across the countryside at full tilt now, barrelling through and over and occasionally across (when it stumbled) any obstacle that could exist, leaving footprints up and over Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and both sides of the Grand Canyon before falling into the Pacific Ocean by mistake.  This was a tremendous relief to the armies, who went home to any homes that hadn’t been crushed. 

It emerged three years later in Melbourne, which it removed from existence before tripping over Uluru and toddling its way into the South China Sea.

And a year and a half past that it was in Tokyo. 

It only took a week to get to Beijing. 

Clearly there had been some sort of learning curve at work here – insofar as something now lacking a brain could learn – and it had been successfully scaled.  Projections were looking alarmingly similar to the initial rampage, with the obvious difference being that it no longer roared, merely made low wheezing and gurgling sounds from its neck-stump.

Besides the obvious, there were some worrying changes.  It moved truly erratically, moment to moment, month to month.  Directions reversed, spun, curved, and re-reversed on a dime, penny, or quarter.  It no longer grappled and bit and blasted; its whole body was a blind weapon wielded against a planetary soft target. 

Sometimes it got stuck, like when it walked on its forelimbs for six months before falling on its side on top of London. 

In addition, it could no longer functionally be distracted, lured, dazzled or blinded, lulled, confused, or tricked.  Several very earnest and only slightly poor-taste research papers were crafted on the possible potence of the autonomic nervous system in the absence of the somatic around now, but everyone who would’ve frowned at the timing was too busy panicking so they went almost unnoticed. 

Fifteen years later global civilization became functionally deceased as a concept and the papers were even less noticed. 

***

The plaque was still in one piece, mind you. 

The bells sang, sang, sang in the attics and the steeples and the courtyards, and they could barely be heard for the cheering.  Terrum rejoiced, and even the very oldest said they’d never heard tell of any time more gleeful – remarkable if true, for the people of Terrum were great tellers of stories, and their expertise grew with age.  The war was over, all men and women and children could walk without fear and know that all others were their friends.  At last the world was united, at last it was one and peaceful.  The people of Terrum danced in the streets, in their houses, at their workplaces, and nobody stopped to make fun of anyone’s footwork their joy was so great. 

Particular joy surrounded the great bonfire of wicker-and-wire cages in which all of the anti-citizens of un-Terrum were heaped, screaming in agony and pleading for mercy.  This inspired extra mirth among the citizens, for it was well known that all outside of Terrum were mere homunculi in the shape of people and had no souls minds or actual bodies, being merely composed of cunningly arranged twigs and dirt that lived to plot against all the free beings of the world. 

The people of Terrum were indeed great tellers of stories, and better still at believing in them. 

***

With the whole of the world (now safely renamed Terrum, for Terrum was indeed all that remained in it) now attended to, the attention of the great minds of Terrum now turned to corners that until now had remained unexplored. 

The far jungles and deserts of places that had once been various un-Terrums were explored, and found to contain somewhat exotic but not particularly imaginative creatures that acted much as beasts of that size would, rather than the unicorns, dragons, and men with heads in their torsos that had long been sought after. 

The deep sea was plumbed with bathyscaphes and ROVs, but alas, not one kraken or sea serpent was found, merely pretty large squids and some fossilized (long-extinct) shark teeth. 

Under the ice sheets at the very ends of the earth were found great sleeping submerged lakes, absolutely none of which housed any life forms more malevolent or alien than novel strains of bacteria. 

In desperation the many explorers and discoverers of Terrum turned to the skies, only to report that the heavens appeared to be populated primarily by nothing and secondarily (FAR secondarily) by big fat balls of burning gas with some scattered chunks of rock. 

A citizen with the appropriately heroic name of Roff Yelter was promptly launched into orbit to personally examine the nearest of these chunks of rock, in hopes of extracting something more expectedly exciting. 

“This is the farthest any citizen of Terrum has ever been from Terrum,” he announced heroically as he exited his ship of space, “and proof that it can extend its reach to cover the whole of this abyssal void.”

Unfortunately the rock was featureless and dull.  Roff took some bits of it aboard for souvenirs, but a tiny and immeasurable fault in the ship of space’s engine exploded while he was heading home, sending him spiralling out into absolutely nothing interesting for the rest of eternity. 

It was duly announced to all of Terrum that Roff had discovered and befriended a space-puppy before heroically sacrificing his life returning it to its parents, but there wasn’t much heart put into believing it, even from the Editors. 

***

It was beginning to appear to the citizens of Terrum that the universe was a singularly poor environment for narrative to grow in.  This displeased them, and it was decided that this should be rectified as immediately and forcefully as possible. 

The task of finding a means of this correction was given to their greatest and most powerful scientist, Queltel Binmarc, who was absent-minded, smoked a pipe, AND possessed outrageous hair.  He stayed up the requisite all day and all night and at precisely and exactly the wee hours of the morning he came up with a theory based on a careless and passing observation that he almost didn’t write down, which was duly announced the next day to the Grand High Editor. 

“We will build a giant and bizarre machine that will rebuild the universe to be more satisfying to our personal desires.  It’s a risky and daring and bold plan, but it’s the only one we’ve got,” he informed him. 

The Editor licked his lips; this was better than he’d ever dreamed.  “And what are the odds of it working?” he asked. 

“A million to one,” said Queltel, with tremendous satisfaction. 

The Audience that followed the Grand High Editor about constantly to record and witness the living story of Terrum gasped. 

The project was announced the following morning, and every man, woman and child of Terrum rejoiced at the news of completely certain success. 

***

Building the great device was a labour of years, and one whose every step was conducted according to the most exacting requirements. 

Blood and sweat and tears were duly extracted from the few un-Terrum anti-citizens that existed and mixed into its foundations to meet all safety standards. 

Top men laboured day and night in specially designed airplanes that kept them on the cusp of twilight twenty-four hours a day. 

Every factory in Terrum burned with furious energy, often forging and reforging the same parts over and over again so that it could be so. 

And the Terrum Children’s League went door to door selling apples to raise funds for the production of parts, thereby keeping thousands of doctors away for months and resulting in several deaths from chronic illnesses. 

***

When the day came, half of all of Terrum watched it live from their television sets, half of it listened to it from their radios, and a tiny and unmeasurable quantity of them were about to turn on the machine. 

“Ready?” asked the head foreman, a specially-grizzled and majestic sort of man who hadn’t spent a moment in his adult life without a cigarette chewed in one corner of his mouth. 

“As ready as it’ll get,” said Queltel.  “It’s a million to one chance.  Here goes nothing.”

The whole thing could’ve been designed to boot with a button, but a lever had been chosen for gravitas, one with just enough resistance and heft to it to make the scientist’s spindly arm flex as he heaved against it mightily.  A shove, a click, and a satisfying thunk emerged, and the machine roared like a farting titan. 

“It’s working!” screamed the Audience in perfect harmony. 

The machine belched, grunted, and then every light in the building dramatically flickered as it sputtered and died exactly as planned. 

“Damnit.  DAMNIT!” shouted Queltel with precise timing, and then, trembling with a carefully-chosen degree of rage and grief, he thumped a particular spot on its side with his fist. 

The machine turned on. 

***

The machine turned off. 

“Did it work?” asked the Grand High Editor.  The words were expected of him, but something about them felt… odd.  Greasy in his mouth.  Even the ellipses of his internal monologue seemed reluctant to flow. 

“How should I know?” asked Queltel Binmarc.  “I don’t know a damned thing about machinery.  I’m just a man with funny hair and a pipe.”

“But…but…” said the Grand High Editor, and he felt the words die in his mouth.  “Yes, of course, that makes sense.  Why WOULD having funny hair and a pipe make you good at machinery?”

“No idea,” said Queltel.  “I’m not a scientist, and even if I was, a scientist isn’t an engineer.  Why am I in charge of anything in this room?”

“Don’t ask me,” said the head foreman.  “I’ve got two left thumbs.  Hell, I’ve almost put my eye out six times just replacing this cigarette – which is plastic, by the way.  I’ve never smoked.  Why am I in charge of putting together complicated machinery?”
“Why am I in charge of anything at all?” asked the Grand High Editor aloud.  “I have a soothing rich voice and good posture, but I don’t understand the first thing about people.  I should be a singer or something.”
“Sing WHERE?” demanded a member of the Audience, suddenly making herself known as a distinct individual.  “All the good choirs are in the cathedrals to the glory of Terrum Forever, and we know that’s bunk now.  What the hell IS Terrum anyways?”
“A fabricated identity designed to unite a broad spectrum of enserfed and assimilated peoples across the greater Terrum seaboard that then embarked upon a genocidal spree of conquest across first Terrum proper and then the world at large, spurred on by a series of obviously self-serving beliefs and myths about their own rightfulness and power and the wicked and malevolent nature of all foreigners, most of whom shared more in common with the citizens of Terrum than those citizens did with their own leaders,” said another suddenly-distinct member of the Audience, all in one breath. 

“Oh,” said the former Grand High Editor. 

“Seems right,” said the first member of what had been the Audience. 

There was a long and decidedly unrehearsed silence.  Then all present and viewing committed suicide in a series of awkward and fumbling ways. 

***

And soon all was quiet all across the whole world that had been Terrum, save for the cheerful hail-and-well-mets exchanged in the streets by the roving packs of depressives who had left their rooms for the first time in years. 

The lock opened underneath my fingertips with the willing smoothness of oiled salmon, soft and smooth and buttery.  Not a creak not a clink not a thunk squeaked loose from the defeated metal, and all that was left now was a flimsy wooden door that was there to stop indecent eyes, not a ruthless predator of the night. 

Which I wasn’t.  I was just a criminal.  The former come in adventure stories, the latter are naturally occurring. 

I opened the door.  It was the least exciting thing I’d done all night, but the most anticipated.  My target lay within, trapped in its useless shell.  Beneath the covers it turned and shifted and snored, and I reached out with one (untrembling!) hand, grasped tightly, and pulled smoothly. 

Done.  Like smoke against my palm, languid and smooth. 

There was a snort, a twitch.  Eyes roaming quicker beneath shuttered lids; body beginning to shake off the paralysis of the night.  He was waking up. 

“Mine now,” I said happily, aloud. 

And I left for home and for a bed of my own.  I’d taken what I came for. 

***

It was a fine fat one; it put me under for twelve hours.  Dreamless.  The good shit. 

Yes, that was among the smoothest and clearest sleeps I’d ever stolen.  Its owner had been possessed of a good mattress and soft pillows and a conscience untroubled by anything he had or hadn’t done.  Most people would wake up from a sleep like that too pleased to even be resentful over its conclusion. 

I woke up hungry. 

No, it hadn’t been enough.  Of course it hadn’t been enough.  That had been a good sleep, and I’d been stealing good sleeps for over a decade now.  ‘Good’ was no longer good enough.  I had my pride, I had my talent, I had my skill, and thanks to my insomnia I had plenty of time to consider the application of all of them. 

I phoned Jed. 

“Wusszat?”

“It’s me.”
“Besssss?  Whi.”
“I need names.”
“’s ungoddleeour.”

“It’s noon.”
“Nuuuh.”
“Pour some coffee in your ears, Jed.  I need names, and I need them now.”
“Wha’ kind?”
My fingers were itching.  I wished my phone still had a cord; I needed something to twine between them. “The impossible kind.”

***

The hardest part was getting into the base.  After that I just had to get into a janitorial supply closet and all of a sudden hey, that lady has a mop bucket and coveralls, who cares what she’s doing. 

Okay, getting onto the launch pad was a little tricky, but even if everyone there WAS very attentive they were busy being very attentive to the ten thousand things that each of them had to prevent going wrong, so that helped. 

T minus three hours.  All the initial work putting you in is done, you’re flat on your back, you’re ready to do something but have nothing to do, your body wants to tense up but you’re too well trained for that, so you relax.  And you rest. 

And you’re juuuust within arm’s reach if I climb the scaffolding far enough and lean next to the cockpit. 

Making it out was much easier, even if I had to stop myself from skipping. 

“Six out of ten,” I told Jed. 

“Well, nobody said a dozy astronaut would be the most restful-”

“Oh no, the sleep was lovely.  Controlled yet loose, ready for anything, better pick me up than a tankerful of coffee.  But the challenge was shit.  Six out of ten was GENEROUS.”
“C’mon, sneaking into a rocket launch wasn’t tricky?”

“I said I wanted impossible, not tricky.”
“Look, I was half asleep, alright?  I gave you something that would be a huge pain in the dick off the top of my head and went back to bed, whaddaya want from me?”
“Well, you’re awake now, so I want something impossible.”

***

Now, I could have made this one easier on myself.  Could’ve taken the long way in, subtle insertion by surreptitiously slipping off the side of a cargo ship, crawled my way mile by mile inland, so on and so forth. 

But I was in a hurry.

So I snuck my way into the wheel well of an airborne troop transport with an oxygen tank and thermal insulation, exfiltrated the airbase, smuggled myself into overland cargo, then took a six mile hike into the crumbling and eviscerated heart of the city until I found the forward command post’s radio room, where one man was sleeping next to another one screaming over the sound of rocket fire. 

I propped him up a little on his pillow, kissed his forehead, and walked off as he sat up and started swearing at his friend. 

“Blissful as a sleeping baby,” I told Jed.  “But not impossible.”

“You got shot at!”
“I got shot AROUND.  Very different, and very easy to take care of if you’re well rested.  Which I was.”
“You’ve had high-security, you’ve had high-danger, what the hell else do you want from me?”
“Use your imagination.”

***

Well, I HAD asked for it. 

But goddamned, that was the longest voyage of my life.  And I’d listened to entirely too many goddamned propellers through the hydrophones before I started hearing the songs. 

Tracking them was another matter, another few impossibly long days.  And then I had to dive –  shallow dive admittedly, but still a dive – while muzzed on a combination of exhaustion and sleeping pills. 

Luckily I landed on top of the whale’s head, which shortened my search time considerably.  And as my arms pinwheeled like a cartoon clown, one palm slapped its way over that ancient scarred brow and peeled half-a-hemisphere’s-worth of tranquil sedation right out of it. 

“Weird,” I said.  “But boring acquisition.  And a little too dull.”
“Weird?”
“It literally put me half asleep.  Half of my brain, not half of my body.”
“Everyone’s been half asleep.”
“Not like this we haven’t.  Holy fuck my…everything… still feels weird.”
“Weird, weird, weird.  You’ll gripe at everything.”
“I didn’t say BAD weird.  But god, that was dull as hell.  Marine biology is not my thing.”
“You asked for impossible, whales are pretty rare.”
“Pretty rare isn’t-”

“Impossible, YES I GET IT, Jesus.”

“You don’t have to send me after him, no.  But like, something close to him.  Difficulty-wise.”

***

This was very much not close to Jesus in any way except difficulty-wise. 

Sneaking into the white house had been hard. 

Finding a secret service guard who was willing to doze on duty was harder. 

And finding food to keep myself alive while I waited was hardest of all.  I could only steal so many sandwiches from the employee fridges before someone put two and two together, so I spent a lot of my time emulating an alligator: remaining absolutely still and conserving energy for a final strike. 

But I’m not patient when I’m hungry, or when the last nap I’ve had was half a nap coaxed out of a drowsy whale’s brain in the mid-Atlantic a week ago, so in the end I finally decided what my problem was. 

I was aiming at something that wasn’t impossible enough. 

So I dove off the roof, missed the first secret service member with my fists but hit him with my stomach, flopped aimlessly on the floor like a dead fish, kicked the second secret service member’s gun loose with my feet, and hurled myself through the Oval Office doors. 

Just as I’d gambled: the lazy fuck was asleep in his chair. 

“AHA!” I shouted, and he woke up. 

Oh. 

Shit. 

***

“So, would you say that fulfilled your expectations?”
“No.”
“C’mon Bess.  You said you wanted impossible, and what’s more impossible than something you failed at?”
“I didn’t fail at it!”
“You punched your target in the skull and ran off with his semiconcussed blackout.”
“I got him, anyways.”
“Hah!  And how well rested do you feel?”
“Zero out of ten.”
“And the challenge?”

I sighed and rubbed my aching forehead, where the imprint of my knuckles still pulsed.  “Eight.  Or so.”
“Good enough?”
“No.”
“You’re unsatisfiable.”
I hung up, I looked at the ceiling, and I thought about impossible things. 

Then I fell asleep.  But I DIDN’T enjoy it one bit. 

“I’m more of a harsh kick in the nuts,” she replied. 

“Well, that’s weird,” I said.  Then she kicked me harshly in the nuts. 

“Listen up, dipshit,” I heard through the ringing sound and horrific tunnel vision.  “Rent’s due.”

***

The first thing I did after the gasping, moaning, and crying was – wait, I guess that made it the fourth thing I did. 

So the fourth thing I did after the gasping, moaning, and crying was phone up my best friend and best partner, ‘Johnny’ Doesmurders.  He’s been with me through thick and thin; even forgave me after I falsely accused him of being the Murderkiller, on account of all the murdering and the killing that he loves to does.  Now that’s a pal and a half and half again. 

“Hey,” said ‘Johnny,’ as he picked up the phone.  His voice was rough, tough, and gruff, like the noises badgers make when they’re fucking, or the sound of rocks falling downhill into a big pile, or like, some kind of big burly guy working out and maybe spraining his arm a little but trying not to make a big deal about it because his friends’ll think he’s a wuss or something.

“Boss?”
“Huh?”
“Boss, you’ve just been sitting there on the line breathing heavy for like six minutes.  You stuck on similes again?”
“No,” I said, truthfully.  I was just considering them thoughtfully.  “I was just considering them, thoughtfully.  Now getcher ass over here, Doesmurders.  We’ve got some cases to solve.”
“What cases?”
“I’ll let you know when I find them.”

***

“Damnit,” I said.  “I can’t find a single case in here.”
“That’s the crossword, boss.  And you’re holding it upside down.”
I flipped it on its side.  “I KNEW something was off here.  We’ve got a case.  Let’s head over the crossword offices and find out who paid them off to print this thing upside down and sideways.”

“You think there’s someone behind it?”
“Could be, ‘Johnny,’ could be.  Maybe a Mr. Big involved here.  Or even a Mr. Huge.  Or…” I swallowed, the world tightened across my chest.  “…maybe even a Mr. Colossal.”
“Sounds heavy.”
“The heaviest.”  My heart palpitated inside my chest like an octopus playing the bongos with badminton rackets.  “Now drive me over.  You know I’m not allowed to anymore, not since the… incident.”
“I don’t know that, boss.  Because every time I ask about it you just say ‘the…incident’ or occasionally ‘…the incident’ instead of informing me as to what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I ran over sixteen people in my car in pursuit of a suspect and only fifteen of them were poor.”
“Ah, I gotcha.  Who was the rich guy?”

“The suspect.  Now let’s get driving – and be sure to stop by Bob’s Burgers on the way.  I’ve gotta craving.”

***

“Okay, you can come in now, boss,” said ‘Johnny’ from inside. 

I took two steps into the newspaper office and froze like a spider monkey trapped in maple syrup. 

God, what a mess.  Bodies strewn across the floor.  Someone’s head thrust through their computer monitor.  A man had been force-fed his own notebook. 

“Mass suicide,” I said to myself.  “A terrible site.”
“That’s ‘sight,’ boss,” said ‘Johnny.’

“I said what I said and I meant what I said,” I snapped at him.  “Now help me search their pockets for evidence.”

Just as I’d suspected, they’d all had money in their wallets.  We confiscated the motives, but we were still coming up emptier on clues than a pregnant wallaby’s pouch on mother’s day.  Or a bird’s nest in late December.  Or a lumbermill in a desert.

I squinted manfully at the nearest monitor, then jabbed my finger at it.  “There!”
“Where?”
“Right there, clearly legible.  But it’s written in that damn stupid text I can’t read.”
“Cursive, boss?”
“No, Arial.  Times New Roman or nothing, ‘Johnny.’  Now translate the thing.”
“Looks like they were typing up a headline.  Says here that the night-shift smuggling at the docks was getting out of hand, called on the cops to do something about it.”

“The cops,” I muttered.  The wheels in my head were greased up and spinning faster than ballerinas on hot tin roofs coated in butter and a bit of salt and pepper. 

“’Johnny,’” I said, seriously, “we need to go and get breakfast.”

***

The eggs slid across my plate like a swimming snake, aiming straight for my heart by way of my arteries. 

“Use your fork, boss,” said ‘Johnny.’  “Or at least your fingers.”

“Shut up, ‘Johnny,’” I said carelessly, like a man trying to eat a fried egg with his teeth and nothing else, which I was.  “And turn off that TV, will you?  I’m sick of hearing about how the newspaper crew was wiped out by unknown criminals.  Puts me off my breakfast.”

“Me too,” said ‘Johnny.’  “I hear tell they were going to write a big expose about the docks where some of my coworkers hang around for legitimate reasons.  A crying shame.”
“Me too,” chimed in a mysterious man swathed in a giant trenchcoat and enormous fedora in the booth next to me.  “But for other reasons.  Hey, did you know that the mayor’s life is in danger?”
I blinked like a turtle being asked for an autograph by Britney Spears or whoever it is the kids like these days.  “Huh.  No?”
“Oh yeah.  Within the hour.  If you hurry, you can stop it.  I’d help myself but I can’t move because of this giant fedora.”
It all added up. 

“’Johnny,’” I said, “grab the silverware and follow me.  We’ve got a nuclear missile to stop.”

“That’s the mayor’s assassination, boss,” said ‘Johnny,’ retrieving his butter knife from the stranger’s throat, where it had mysteriously appeared. 

“Whatever.”

***

I kicked in the door like a grown man knocking over a child’s sandcastle only to find the sandcastle was actually a cementcastle and then swore a lot as my foot hurt like crazy so I fired my gun a few times to take the edge off the stress. 

“Okay, nobody move!” I shouted in a friendly way. 

The mayor coughed and wheezed and fell over with a damp thud.  I shot him a few times to show I hadn’t been kidding. 

“Aw man, the mayor’s been assassinated,” called someone hiding under a desk.
“Shit, we’re too late,” I muttered.  “’Johnny,’ question the suspects for clues.”
“They don’t know anything, boss,” he said.  “They’re all unpaid interns.”
Damnit, this workplace was too topical to be relevant.  The trail had gone cold, colder than a box of fish sticks inside a refrigerator inside a freezer on Antarctica, if Antarctica were on Pluto, the exoplanetary object located at a phenomenal distance from the sun. 

“You okay, boss?”
“Huh?  Oh yeah, I was doing similes again.”
“It’s okay.  By the way, the radio says there’s a hostage situation down at the bank.”

“What!?  When?”

“Oh, in about ten minutes.”

“Good thing it’s only ten minutes away,” I said.  “We’re on the case.  Or next to it.  Or under it.  I don’t care where the hell we are relative to it as long as it’s close, but not too close, or too far.”

***

The bank was crammed full and bustling.  Clearly the  hostage-takers had instructed the poor bastards to act naturally.  There was only one way to handle THAT.

“NOBODY MOVE OR I’LL FUCKING SHOOT EVERYONE AND ANYONE I’M NOT AFRAID TO DO ANYTHING EVER,” I said calmly and authoritatively.  I fired a few rounds into the air and the bank manager to emphasize my point. 

“I’ve already searched the vault, boss,” said ‘Johnny,’ appearing at my elbow with some giant sacks of money.  “There was nothing in there but all this money that the crooks left behind.  It’s probably covered in poison or ants or something.”
“Good evidence-gathering, ‘Johnny,’ I said.  I fired a few more rounds into the air and also accidentally my elbow in my excitement.  “Ah, fuck.  Let’s go home now.  It’s been a tough day.”

***

A tough day calls for a tough drink.  I like my drinks tough, like jerky beaten with a brick.  I like my drinks mean, like a rabid dog chained up in a home for angry people.  I like my drinks nasty, like your mother telling me I’m a disappointment that won’t amount to anything ever when I was twelve which hurt my feelings a lot.

“I’m not crying,” I told ‘Johnny.’  “I’m just leaking tears from my eyes.”
“It’s okay, boss,” he told me.  “But it’s not all bad.  Sure we failed to stop the smuggling, the mayor’s assassination, or the bank robbery, but my business associates just came into some cash, the mayor’s gonna stop hassling us, and we have all this criminal money from the bank.  So your rent’s not a problem anymore!”
“’Johnny’ Doesmurders, you are the truest, bluest friend I’ve ever had,” I said.  “And that ain’t no lie.”
“It’s no problem, boss,” he said, and slapped me on the back.  “Also, someone’s put a ‘kick me’ sign on you, so I’m gonna need you to turn around and bend over.”
“Aw heck.” 

Third time this week, but rules are rules. 

The sun had filled his entire world, spreading out from the center of the sky to eat the ground and sea and his own flesh.
Except for one little black speck smushed underneath his arm where it stretched on the searing rocks.
“Hello,” said the king.
“Hello,” said the ant.
“What are you doing here, ant?”
“The same thing as you, I think. Dying.”
“Good eye.”
“I mostly find my way about by smell, actually.”
“Hmm. How do ants smell?”
“TERRIBLE.”
They laughed for a while about that.
“I’m out of my mind, I think. The sun’s eaten me up, and soon my heart will stop. The ungrateful peasants have turned against me. And now I’m talking to an ant.”
“Why not talk to ants? We’re much easier to find than humans.”
“True, true,” said the king. “But I’m a king. I didn’t talk to ants. I talked to humans. Well, I talked at humans, and then they did things for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was a king. If they didn’t do what I said they’d end up in trouble because I knew best and everyone knew it. Don’t you have queens?”
“Yes, but they’re basically egg factories.”
The king thought about some of the more bitter arguments he’d had over the course of his marriage. “I think my wife would have agreed with you, but wouldn’t have appreciated it.”
“What did YOU do if you weren’t an egg factory?”
“I told you: I reigned. I told people to build high walls and they built them; I told them to till the soil and they tilled it; I told them to stab my brother’s army to death and they stabbed them good and proper and I got to put his head on a pike.”
“What did you do with it after that?”
“I think I threw it out once it was down to the bone.”
“Wasteful.”
“It could’ve been any old head by then, there was no point to it anymore. What would YOU have done?”
“Eaten it,” said the ant. “It’s every member’s duty to feed the colony.”
“Then why are you sitting here?”
“You sqooshed half my abdomen with your elbow. I can’t move under my own power.”
“Oh.” The king had never felt the urge to apologize in his entire life, and he didn’t feel it now. But he was a little embarrassed.
“Why’d you do that, anyways?”
“I didn’t really want to sit out here. I’ve been couped, you see. My wife poisoned half my cabinet and persuaded the peasants to rise up against the other half. Said I was a blithering incompetent.”
“Are you?”
“No idea but it doesn’t matter much, does it?”
“Suppose not.”
“It’s impious to spill divine blood though, so they’ve staked me out on the stones here to bleach until the world does for me instead. After that they’ll probably crucify my remains over the castle gate until they get too raggedy.” He sighed, and wished for a breeze. “So, what did YOU do with yourself?”
“I dug a lot of tunnels and I helped murder and consume many caterpillars and I reared countless eggs to adulthood and I battled valiantly against the evil and perfidious Other Colony and in a few minutes when my sisters follow my scent trail to your elbow I’ll probably be repurposed as food for the young, so that I may continue on as part of the colony amongst the stomachs of my infant kin.”
The king squinted at the ant, or thought he did. His eyes weren’t really working as they should anymore. A curious sensation was worming about inside him, a very unkingly one.
Oh. Shame. Yes, he’d heard of this. How bizarre.
“You know…” he managed, “on the whole, you’ve probably been a lot more useful than I was.”
“Thanks,” said the ant. “But don’t be too hard on yourself. Your life is hundreds of times more valuable than mine.”
“Really?” asked the king, voice wobbling.
“Really,” said the ant, with deep sincerity.
And it was telling the truth, because even bleached-out by two days of exposure there was an awful lot of protein left on the king by the time the ant’s colony found them both six minutes later.