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Professor Tiana Pilkin’s Biannual List of Most Obnoxious Teeth

Some of my younger readers will have grown up reading this column, and to them I say thank you, and welcome.  Some of my older readers will recognize some of its contents, and to them I say ‘some things never change.’  Some of my crabbier, more opinionated older readers will complain about repetition and to them I say they can take a long walk off a short dock and play count-the-dentition with a crocodile.  If you’re so smart, you can do better.

Anyways, here’s the damned list. 

Anything in a Crocodile’s Mouth

This is the problem with being an expert in your field: you get invited to do all kinds of experimental procedures.  No, measuring a crocodile’s mouth for dentures is neither ‘trivial’ nor ‘perfectly safe.’  Especially if you cheaped out on the anesthetic.  Thank you very much, Sogelvale Turnpike Zoological Gardens.  I miss you, but not nearly as much as I miss that settlement payout.  Or my right pointer. 

Chompsticks

Chopsticks are perfectly valid utensils that are not improved at all by having human dentition attached to them, or by being surgically implanted into the jaw.  I have testified against Dr. Mervin Plonc sixteen times under oath to say this and I have no doubt I will do so again quite gladly. 

The Crooked Left Canine of Joshua Semaphore Ulysses

Possibly the only case of non-Euclidean AND non-hyperbolic anatomy I have ever encountered in my career.  Cameras break.  X-rays jam.  My assistant’s eyes boiled in their sockets.  All attempts to manually correct the tooth have failed either manually or mechanically due to the sudden and violent introduction of 3-4 unfamiliar dimensions into the patient’s mouth along with the removal of at least 2 familiar ones.  I’d recommend it as a site of global importance if it weren’t impossible to observe it without causing gratuitous harm to the observer. 

Elephant Dental Batteries

These are closer to cobblestones than teeth, and they’re almost impossible for me to replace without my patient chewing my head off.  So what if they’re going to die without them?  I’ll die without my head.  If they don’t like dying they shouldn’t try to kill me.  Thank you very much AGAIN, Sogelvale Turnpike Zoological Gardens, and you’re very fucking welcome.  

Fangs

Classic look is offset by inadequacy of human lips, resulting in long-term dental decay via long-term unprotected exposure to air.  ‘Dracula with cavities’ is nobody’s idea of impressive, to say nothing of the odour.  And let’s be honest: the version of Dracula you’re imagining is either inspired by Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, not the original hairy-palmed paranoid British metaphor for a terror of being infiltrated by evil eastern Europeans. 

Fingers

Keep them out of your mouth.  If someone’s fingers must go in there, they should be mine.  I know what I’m doing and it’s unlikely you’re remotely qualified. 

Giant Bony Shears

Not actually teeth.  Leave these in the mouth of Dunkleosteus, where they belong.  If it only worked once for one dead fish it isn’t worth doing twice. 

Giant Keratinous Beaks

Seem multipurpose and simple to maintain – and they are – but result in unfortunate ‘turtleface’ syndrome and occasionally self-severance of fingers and/or tongue.  Also they aren’t teeth. 

Giant Mangling Dental Mats

See: giant keratinous beaks.  Although they tend to grind, rather than sever.  And they are teeth. 

Giant Metal Gnashing Plates

Actually, you can just put down the entire catalogue of Dr. Morbidia Von Stecklehommer here.  Or should I say, “Lauren Peck.”  That’s right, LAURIE.  I remember you.  Couldn’t make the big grades so you ducked out of dental school early and set up shop as a common back-alley mad dentist, eh?  I knew you were a failure.  Always did. 

Inscissors

Fly in the face of the actual use of incisors – to nip, to slice, to cut – by adding a wholly unnecessary dimension to the cutting face.  Also present a tremendous slicing hazard to the nose. 

K9s

Excessive.  Most people barely get full use out of their K2s.  Typically the extra K7 end up crammed in and around the front of the mouth, but in some cases they end up sort of vertically-stacked and invade the nasal cavity, resulting in unique forms of self-mutilation when sneezing occurs. 

Lead Teeth

Yes, they’re historic.  No, they’re not a good idea.  So what if the romans used them?  If the romans invaded all their neighbours and had civil war as a national sport, would you do that too?

Molar Bears

Good for grinding tough matter, calm, authoritative, inquisitive but can become nuisances if habituated by garbage and are currently facing extinction via anthropogenic climate change. 

Needles

These aren’t teeth.  And if your teeth are like them, please contact me as soon as possible so I can assist you.  Or laugh. 

Open Cavity in the Skull with No Jaw or Teeth or Esophagus

I’m still not sure why this patient was referred to me.  And I will likely never know, since I fired that receptionist immediately afterwards. 

Postpremolars

Too damned confusing, spatially speaking.  And to make matters worse, in commonwealth countries they come AFTER the premolars, while in the states they come BEFORE the premolars.  I’ve seen a lot of poorly-aimed surgical procedures thanks to that little terminological gap. 

Quasincisors

Powerful tools for shearing through tough plant matter, but the plant matter is required to exist in an extra four dimensions, two of which render it invisible.  Impractical, fancy, high-maintenance, and frequently disintegrate standard matter on contact, which isn’t great if you like having a tongue. 

Turkeys

They are not teeth but they irritate me so. 

Tusks

Leave them to the walruses, elephants, and other creatures that are used to navigating spatial environments with two giant protrusions jutting out of their faces.  For humans, this is the facial equivalent to running with untied shoelaces. 

Tyrannosaurus rex teeth in general

They’re not razors.  They’re more like bananas, or maybe railroad spikes.  Everyone calls them razors, but they’re possibly the least razor-like objects you could find in a predator’s mouth.  Murder bananas are a perfectly acceptable kind of tooth but everyone seems embarrassed about them. 

‘Wisemouth’

An interesting effect to observe but not a pleasant one to deal with.  Plenty of people don’t need the paltry amount of wisdom teeth they’re born with; dealing with them slowly multiplying and pushing out your existing teeth in a ghastly parody of exfoliation is something in even less demand.  And they’re not wise.  If they were wise, they wouldn’t pull this crap. 

Wolverines

Again, not teeth.  No matter how carefully you’ve trained them, or how ambitious your plans for miniaturizing them are.  Cheap sensationalism is a lousy replacement for effort, thought, or care.  Isn’t that right, LAURIE? 

Professor Tiana Pilkin is Dentist Emeritus and Dean of Enamel at Wurblemass’s Institute of Highest Dental Learning.  She has seven degrees, countless awards, and one-and-three-quarters fingers. 

Smokewater Drive was a good street.  Quiet.  Expensive.  Covered with millions of gallons of grass. 

On that day it also had a squad car.  Empty, like a snailless shell. 

It sat in front of 148 Smokewater Drive, and that was most certainly NOT empty.   Stuffed, cramped, overflowing, bulging, crammed, those were the words for the dining room.  Everyone from the corner of Smokewater and Clarence on, all squished into every chair and every corner and Mr. Wallthroose was sitting on the table.  Mrs. Chinbone and Mrs. Wallthroose had tried very thoroughly to persuade him to move, but he was feeling deaf at the moment and wasn’t budging. 

This minor drama aside, all focus was on the man of the hour, of the plan, on Mr. Burton Q. Benthic.  He was short and moustached and astonishingly bald.  He didn’t gleam; he somehow exuded light from every dead would-be-follicle, every pore.  If the power had blown out in the house, Benthic’s skull would have lit the room quite comfortably and indefinitely. 

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today,” he said. 

“It’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington. 

“Yeah,” said Mrs. Wallthroose. 

“Obviously,” said Edith Goose.

“Yes, yes, get ON with it,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “Come ON, Mr. Wallthroose!”

“Can’t,” said Mr. Wallthroose serenely.  “Waiting for the murder.”
“There’s already been a murder!”
“Exciting part’s already over then.  Not budging.”
“OFF!”
“Alright, alright, alright, settle down,” said Benthic.  “Fine.  I’ll tell you.  It’s about the murder.”
“Knew it.”
“OFF THE TABLE!”
“No.”
“Yes, it’s about the murder,” said Walburt Heddington, peevishly.  “We all knew that.  Shut up and get on with the damned thing.  What’s the news and who did it?”

“I’m here to reveal that I know who committed this crime, the killing of local garbageman Henry P. Floss, on his Thursday route, on this very street!”
“Yeah, yeah, put up or shut up,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.  “Get talking!”

“First, I will explain how I came to my conclusions, in excruciating detail.”
“Boring,” complained Mr. Wallthroose.  “Hurry up!”
“My first suspects were you and your wife, Mr. Wallthroose,” said Benthic, twinkling smugly in his own balding incandescence.  “You had the motive: an overflowing recycling bin, obviously caused by Mr. Floss refusing to accept your recycling last week-”

“Bullshit we did NOT put the cardboard and plastic together, he was lazy and-”
“-and you most certainly possessed the means, in the form of Mr. Wallthroose’s collection of antique haberdashery blades.”
“Originals,” said Mr. Wallthroose proudly.
“But you lacked that most crucial of elements: opportunity.  You are known snorers according to your neighbour, and never awaken before 10 AM on a weekday.”

“Jackass,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.

“Hey now!” said Walburt Heddington.

“Poltroon,” said Mr. Wallthroose.

“Look, I’m just saying!”
“So it can’t have been the Wallthrooses.  Of course, what of Mr. Heddington?  Unlike the Wallthrooses, he is an early riser – as a peeping tom, he has to be, in order to set up his camera network that peers into your bedrooms and bathrooms every morning.  That kind of complex system costs money to maintain, update, and operate.  And of course, they could be used to memorize Mr. Floss’s route, memorizing the exact moments at which he might let his guard down to scratch his groin or eat a snack or urinate on someone’s lawn.  Such as he did every week to Mr. Heddington’s lawn, as verified by the small patch of dead grass next to his driveway.  Motive and opportunity both!”
“Hey, I never-”

“But not only is Mr. Heddington lacking in firearms, he is a noodly person with feeble arms and no grip strength, while Mr. Floss was a robust specimen at six foot three inches with arms like a gorilla.  No, Mr. Heddington lacks method, or at the very least, proper armaments.  His rage must remain fully impotent.”
“Hahahahahahaha,” said Edith Goose, politely. 

“Oh my goodness, tee hee,” said Mrs. Chinbone.

“Heh heh heh heh,” observed Mr. Wallthroose.  “What’s so funny?”
“He’s IMPOTENT,” said Mrs. Wallthroose into his ear.

“Oh.  But what’s the joke?”
There was a very brief and very simple and sad struggle to keep Walburt Heddington from violence until he got tuckered out. 

“Right,” said Benthic, mopping his radiant scalp with a handkerchief that came away shining as if it were diamond-laced.  “Where was I?  Oh yes, Walburt Heddington is impotent.”
“Heh heh heh he-”

“Shut up, Mr. Wallthroose.  So what of Edith Goose?  She’s young and strong and the provincial shot-put champion, and has a clean line of fire from her bedroom window to her garbage pickup location.  Furthermore, Mr. Floss’s skull was crushed by a large, heavy object!  Furthermore, she is a known early riser due to the demands of her training!  Furthermore, she has been repeatedly ogled and cat-called by Mr. Floss!  Method, motive, and opportunity!”

“Three ‘furthermores’?” said Edith.  “Really?”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic crossly, “but I’m trying to dramatically implicate you.”
“Yes, but come on.  Three?”
“Shut up,” said Benthic.

“Make me.”
“Alright, alright, alright.  Fine.  Anyways, yes, Ms. Goose does indeed possess all three essential qualities to any good murderer, but in addition to having his skull crushed Mr. Floss was also electrocuted, stabbed, strangled, and shot.  Although I’m certain Ms. Goose has knives and rope in her home, this all seems a bit excessive for one murderer.  Speaking of which, we come to Mrs. Chinbone.”
“Oh wonderful!” exclaimed the lady in question.  “This is so exciting!”
“Indeed,” said Benthic. 

“Not you.  You’re sort of boring.  And you smell funny, like skulls and oil.”

“Be quiet.  Now, Mrs. Chinbone.  You have despised Mr. Floss for years: the garbage department has no less than sixteen annual complaints on record from you for the past three years, all of them relating to Mr. Floss and his conduct.  You took an instant dislike to him for picking his nose and wiping it on his pants, fumed when he stepped on your lawn, and got into an argument about him about whether Batman could beat Spider-man.”
“Batman doesn’t have radioactive blood.  The whole idea is nonsense, and I told him as much.”
“Indeed.  Motive, you are not lacking in.  Opportunity?  You have time on your hands to spare.  But method?  Mrs. Chinbone, you are – permit me to be blunt – as frail as a clay pigeon.  You couldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Mr. Floss.”

“There you are, then,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “And you aren’t too swole yourself, young man, so kindly watch those stones you’re casting from your glass home.”

“I undergo the same physical training as the rest of the department.  But that is neither here nor-”

“Lifting donuts, perhaps.”
“Shut up,” intoned Benthic gravely. 
“Make me, you impudent little scamp.”
“ANYWAYS, what Mrs. Chinbone does have interests me a good motive.  Everyone in this room has a good reason – well, a reason, anyways – to want Henry P. Floss dead, although some of you lacked the means and others lacked the opportunity.  But you all would have wanted him a corpse.  And now we must return again, to the curiously mutilated nature of the body.”

“Are you going to accuse us of pulling a murder on the orient express?” demanded Mrs. Wallthroose.  “Because frankly, I’d rather be dead than cooperate with that Walburt creep on anything.”
“Hey!”
“Same,” said Edith Goose.  “And no offence, but I don’t think I’d need that much help to kill someone.”
“Kill someone?” inquired Mr. Wallthroose with interest. “Who?  The detective?”

“Christ no,” said Benthic hastily. 

“Excuse me,” inquired Mrs. Chinbone, “but I’ve never read ‘murder on the orient express.”
“He’s insinuating we all murdered Henry together,” said Edith Goose. 

“Oh.”

“More implying, more implying,” said Benthic.  “But now we must consider a final clue: the piece of porcelain embedded in Mr. Floss’s left sole.”

Everyone sat there. 

“Well?”
“Stop screwing around,” said Mrs. Wallthroose flatly.

“Yeah, get to the point,” said Walburt Heddington. 

“Fine,” said Benthic.  “Look at this piece of china: does it look familiar?”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Chinbone.  “It’s from my favourite teapot!  I broke it last week.  Such a pity, I was enjoying a nice cup and then there was this awful noise from outside-”

“That was me,” interjected Edith Goose.  “I’d crushed one of Walburt’s cameras between my hands and was screaming at him.”
“Oh my.  I thought it was cats making love.  Anyways, I dropped the teapot.  Had to junk it.”
“Just so.  Mrs. Chinbone, how much garbage do you produce in a week?”
“About a ha’-pound, after holidays.”
“I see.  And in your experience, is Mr. Floss a cautious man?”
“Goodness no.”
“So we might presume that Mr. Floss might carelessly heavy your bag onto his shoulder, expecting little to no resistance, and suffer incisions due to his laissez-faire attitude?”

“Oh why not!” said Mrs. Chinbone cheerfully. 

“Quite so!  He cut his shoulder, then dropped the bag on his foot and suffered further injuries.  Vexing, and likely deeper than he suspected, but not enough to keep him from his duty.  So he proceeded to Mr. Heddington’s residence, where he emptied the trash in a bad mood, as can be seen by the violence with which he threw it in haphazardly, in these photos of the dump truck.  After that came the Wallthrooses, and here is where things begin to go awry: Mr. Wallthroose, do you recognize this gun?”
“Never seen it,” said Mr. Wallthroose, very quickly. 
“Wait a sec,” said Mrs. Wallthroose.

“No, put it away.”
“Wait a sec.  Wait one cotton-fucking second.  Herman, you piece of shit – you threw out my elephant gun!”
“No I didn’t!”
“You did!  You threw out my grandmother’s rifle!  This is an antique!  You can’t get ‘em like this anymore!”
“Said you’d shoot me with it!”
“It was a joke!”
“You don’t joke six cups in!”
“I’m HILARIOUS six cups in!”
“Not where I’m sitting!”
“Excuse me,” said Benthic, “but I’m solving a crime here.  Now, see how it’s been fired recently?”
“You threw out my grandmother’s rifle fully-loaded?!”
“You kept it loaded?”

“Just in case!”
“Case of what?  Elephants?”

“Shut up,” said Benthic politely.  “Now, Mr. Floss was hasty in his pain, and as he stuffed the Wallthroose household’s garbage away, he seems to have inadvertently fired this gun into his left shoulder.  The pain sent him staggering backwards – even though it missed any large veins or arteries by some miracle, it shattered his bones quite badly – and he put his foot into Ms. Goose’s trash, where it crushed the already-mangled remains of Mr. Heddington’s surveillance camera.”
“That’s his fault, legally, right?” asked Edith Goose.

“Hey!”
“Shut up, creep.”
“Anyways, he then spasmed his way into the back of his truck, where an item of Mr. Heddington’s trash – a USB cable, I believe – was dislodged and became tangled around his neck.  In his thrashing, oxygen-deprived, electrically-shocked state, Mr. Floss lost all sense of balance and reason and half-choked himself to senselessness before falling over and smashing his brains out on the sidewalk.  An act of god caused by negligent trash disposal.  Quite rare.”

He smiled at the room.  

“So the murderer is….nobody?” asked Edith Goose.

“Quite so.”
“What’s that, a reverse orient express?” asked Mrs. Wallthroose.

“Maybe!” said Benthic. 

“Are we going to be charged with anything?” asked Walburt Heddington. 

“Oh, the garbage department will send along some small fine or something,” said Benthic.  “And now I must bid you all farewell.”

“Excuse me, young man?” inquired Mrs. Chinbone.  “Do you mean to say that you stressed us all out and wasted a whole street’s time just to inflate your own ego?”
“Quite so,” said Benthic.  “Quite so.”
With a quick tip of his hat, he covered his glowing cranium.  And as the light left, so did he. 

Behold the Struthiomimus. 

The ostrich mimic, but it does a poor job of it – not only is it over ten feet long, even in this immature state, but it’s got a great big tail and its eyes aren’t fixed in their sockets and it lives millions and millions of years ago so it can’t mimic the thing it precedes.  Its feet are fast and its movements are darting and its toothless keratin-sheathed bony beak is opened just wide enough for it to breath a tiny bit harder, because it’s been running for a while, picking its way through dense thickets in the highlands as it descends through growing forests and fallen trees.

Its name is Billy.

***

Behold Billy. 

He looks both ways at the intersection, just like his mother told him to.  It’s a busy time of day down in the valley where the river runs wide, and the traffic is thick and plodding.  Great big thunderingly slow hadrosaurs are on the move from hither to thither; heavy-skulled and pointy-browed ceratopsians are ambling down for their noon drinks.  They’re swapping filthy stories as they go, telling the tall tale about the titanosaur that sat on a cycad. 

Billy tries to pay them no mind.  He’s on a mission.  His mother told him he needed to do something important for her today, and he’s a good boy. 

***

Behold the good boy. 

He’s headed downtown, where the new monkey puzzle trees have grown in fast and furious and thunderous, towering up and up.  His mother complains about them, says they’re a gentrifying blight on the landscape, but Billy isn’t sure whether or not she’s talking about something real or just griping, like when she bitches that mammals are taking all the jobs that used to go to good honest saurs, which his father has told him is total bullshit and not to be listened to.  She’s not that bad on most days though, now that the news is off the air.  Real tragic what happened to that anchorman though, but silver linings and it’s an ill wind that blows good for nobody and so on and so forth and etc and the like. 

Billy stops for a drink.  His mother gave him money for that, it’s okay.  He sips from a cheap little rivulet, but it’s strongly sweet and just what he wanted.  He watches a couple of cute coelurosaurs sipping from the other side of the brook, wishes he knew what the hell you were meant to do in circumstances like this, and shakes it off.  He has an errand. 

***

Behold the errand.

The corner volcano lurches into view, surrounded by pale plastic palm trees.  Billy scurries inside past the obese caveman at the entrance, cheap faux-leopardprint loincloth adorned with his last meal – and the meal before that, and the meal before that, and so on and so on. 

“No browsin’” he belches out, scratching himself somewhere unthinkable, unimaginable, and unspeakable. 

Billy is not here to browse.  Billy is here for a purpose.  He scurries past the shelves of pet rocks, the bins of home hardware rocks, the boxes of jelly rocks (takes effort, that one – oh, he’s loved those ever since he hatched), and finally he stands at the rock racks.

His mother wants a rock magazine about home and shale.  Billy is looking for it very honestly, of course he is, but his eyes wander and bobble trying to find it, and what should they rest upon – quite accidentally! – but the hard rock section. 

Wow. 

He’s never seen a tail quite that thick before. 

There is a distant belch and Billy is overcome with impossible and inescapable shame at the mere idea of anyone knowing he glanced at that part of the rock rack, let alone thought about it.  He hunts frantically, digs through the back issues, and there it is: home and shale’s top ten picks of the burgess. 

Those long slender hands are good for grabbing; it’s snatched up and dragged to the front of the store before you can say ‘non-pronating forelimbs.’ 

“Thirteen pebbles,” says the caveman, exploring his nose with the hairiest of his fingers. 

Billy puts down what his mother gave him.

“That’s ten,” says the caveman.  And sonuva b-word he’s right; mom must have slipped Billy two fives instead of a ten and a five.  “Gimme three.”

“I don’t have it,” says Billy.  And he doesn’t; he’s a good boy, but now and then he feels temptation – the dark urge to blow his money on candy.  So he left it at home.  All he’s got is ten pebbles from his mother. 

“Tough luck,” says the caveman.  “Beat it.”

***

Behold the beating of it. 

Billy walks home slow, dejected, one slow foot at a time, uphill into the suburbs where the homeless are forbidden and the fern-coated lawns are perfect and hideous.  The concrete is hot beneath his sneakers; it’s a boiling day in Laurasia and even the rain that starts falling feels pre-fried before it hits the ground, hissing away into nothing as soon as it listlessly spatters against the old red sandstone road. 

It’s about then that he remembers that he forgot to take his pebbles back from the caveman.

“Fuck!” says Billy, for the first time without premeditation.  It feels hot and spicy in his beak, and he looks around guiltily, sure someone is about to tell him not to do that.  But there’s nobody around except for an elderly tyrannosaur across the road, dozing at the bus stop, and it clearly is going to take a lot more than some spontaneous profanity to get them to move or give much of a shit about anything ever again.  He wonders if they’re dead.

Billy sort of wonders if it’d be better to be dead or to have to explain to his mom that he doesn’t have her home and shale magazine.  This makes him feel shame, for what seems like the hundredth time that day.  It’s almost as hot as the air, and he’s thirsty again.  Oh no.

Oh no.  Oh no no no no no no no he stopped for a drink!  How much did it cost?  Did it cost three pebbles? 

He thinks it costed three pebbles. 

“FUCK!” yells Billy, loud enough to wake up the elderly tyrannosaurus with a snort and loud enough that he can’t even be embarrassed about it.  “Fuck!”  He screwed up!  He had a drink and he ruined everything!  His mother’s going to be furious with him!  “Fuck.”  He should’ve just given up and bought more garbage and claimed he dropped the magazine in the river.  “Fuck…” now the caveman has the rest of the money and he’ll deny it if Billy goes back and all he has to show for it, all his mother has to show for it, is a sort of tepid drink in Billy’s stomach and a lot of regret. 

***

Behold the regret.

It’s scorched into the sandstone and into Billy’s soul as he trudges up the steps to his house, a little split-level slab that gets paid for by alimony and desperation.  His palms would be sweaty if he could sweat. 

There’s movement from inside the curtains.  His mother is awake.  Probably waiting for her magazine. 

Fuck, thinks Billy, because this close to home he sure as hell isn’t going to say it aloud.  Fuck.  Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fucklestein fuck fuck fuckosaurus rex fuck me fuck you fuck everything. 

He wishes the ground would rise up and swallow him.  He wishes the seas would rush in and wash him away.  He wishes the sky would fall down and pop him out of existence, and it catches him by the most surprise anyone’s ever had when it does just that.

It’s a big bright flash to the south. 

“Woah,” he says, as the shockwave ripples closer, evaporating trees and soil and dinosaurs and cavemen and buildings and knocking over the Bronto-Burger down the street and kicking its sign towards him at one thousand miles an hour, the cheerful stupid grin of Buddy Bronto the last thing he knows he will ever see. 

Behold: a wish granted.

Finally, the time had come. 

But there was no sense rushing to meet it, so she poured herself a cup of coffee and selected a single cookie and ate it and chewed every mouthful and forced herself to taste every bite and she put her thoughts in order.

Her long, arduous graduate work refurbishing polar bears under Dr. Hammerneck, the unbearable old asshole. 

Her years spent barely able to afford breakfast every other day.

Her sixteen total revisions on her thesis from ground zero, transforming it from a modest piece on reticulating koalas into a greater Oceanic GUI into a thoroughly radical yet eminently well-grounded hypothetical blueprint on the long-term reinsertion and patching of urban megafauna. 

Dr. Nomann, PhD.  It had a ring and a necklace and a whole damned bracelet to it.  And now, after all those years, the first jewel was about to be added to them.

She opened up the document, cool white and blank as a baby’s face, and typed:

Fern 2.0

Then she stared at it for a while, sipping her coffee. 

***

Reimagining an entire group of this magnitude was a hell of a first project, but she had heavenly credentials and the hellish scars to prove them.  Her word was trusted.  Her mind was wanted.  Her expertise was needed. 

So.  First draft.  What did ferns really need?
She tapped her thumb against her forefinger five times, gulped the last bit of coffee, checked her hands for crumbs, and typed for six hours. 

Then she got up and stretched, walked back over, deleted half of every other sentence, resorted everything, turned it into a blueprint, turned the blueprint into a proof, turned the proof into a certainty, formatted it, inked it, blotted it, licked it, sealed it, and sent it. 

Then she had dinner and went to bed and slept the sort of weighty, reassuring dreams shared only by cats and infants and murderers. 

She woke up the next morning, had a nice breakfast, opened her mail, and read the follow criticisms of her design:

‘Inadequate.’

Ten minutes later, after ten thousand years of internal screaming, she had changed everything in her head and prepared herself to spend the next twenty hours reconfiguring reality to match it. 

***

This time it said ‘Undirected.’

***

Four complete redrafts later she phoned her workplace.

“Oh!  That’s the spam filter!” said the helpful, eager young man at the desk.

“Thank you,” she said.

“We’ll take you off that.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a nice day.”

“Thank you.”

***

“Too technical,” was the reply.  “No vision.  We don’t want to just have ‘fern, but better.’  Fern 2.0 must appeal to all that the public has come to expect in a fern while also opening entirely new avenues of the fern paradigm.  We want it to be familiar, but novel.  Surprising, yet welcoming.  Bold and comforting.”

Seven days of intense meditative autotrance sing-a-longs later, inspiration struck her with the force of a thunderbolt in a magazine and she worked through two nights and three days before editing and submitting her draft. 

It was a very small fern.  It was a very small fern that contained many organelles that were themselves very small ferns down to the subatomic level, and could link together itself to form very large ferns up to the size of redwoods.  She called it the fernctal, and attached a small 20-page annotation suggesting possible use cases for it, ranging from children’s playgrounds to designing planets. 

‘Too ambitious,’ came the reply.  ‘And the redwood department really doesn’t like your attitude.’

The next day’s mug of coffee was bigger, and the day after that she just took the pot. 

***

She submitted a fern that adopted the characteristics of any environment; hues, shades, texture, and almost the very essence of  the landscape in miniature, sublime in every detail.  It was rejected – ‘no practical applications.’

She submitted a fern that was robust enough to withstand freshly-cooled lava indefinitely, and could grow on any substrate.  It was rejected – ‘not sexy enough, no appeal to the customer base.’

She submitted a fern that was as hearty and filling as roast potatoes and as smooth and delectable as the finest gelato.  It was rejected – ‘too appealing to animals, would be eaten into extinction.’

She submitted a fern that came with its own accessories and a powerful grip and a small air-powered dart launcher.  It was rejected – ‘unsafe, might put someone’s eye out and contains choking hazards.’

She submitted a fern that was as soft and plush as a teddy bear’s soul.  It was rejected – ‘not machine washable.’

She submitted a fern that could absorb sixty times its mass in water and retain it flawlessly until wrung out.  It was rejected – ‘too expensive to manufacture.’

She submitted a fern.

Then she got up to put away her fern 1.0 control group and realized she was holding her latest project: a fern that could survive on less energy than a single-celled bacterium, and she’d just turned in the wrong plant. 

Ping, went her mailbox. 

It took half an hour for her to muster the courage to walk back to her computer. 

“Excellent work!  Fern 2.0 is approved.  Very creative.  We’ll keep your resume on file.”

Dr. Nomann, PhD, read the letter exactly once, carefully and slowly, cross-checking sentences and verifying each word.  Then she nodded, closed her files, threw the computer out the window, and ran away to New Zealand.

There were a lot fewer people there.  But there were plenty of ferns.