jamieproctor.ca

I was tending to my corals when the message came. 

Weak, tentative, low-powered, quiet, and – to be brutally honest – somewhat garbled and oddly-worded.  But the intent was clear: there was a job for me. 

So I sighed through my fronds and my currents and set things in motion.  Engines roiled, metal shifted, computers hummed, and the wonderful, impossible, titanic mass of technology and power that was the shield between my ecosystem and the endless nothing was on a new course and preparing to once again spit in the eye of every law of physics ever discovered.

An interstellar trucker’s job was never done. 

***

I flushed my tank out as I approached the signal’s source: some backwater dive in the ass end of a spiral arm.  I’d need a clear head from this, however tempting the headiness of slight anoxia might seem at the prospect of a briefing from a freshly-orbit-capable potentate.  They were all the same: carefully obsequious, polite, frightened but trying not to show it in case it spread, so on and so on.  It was all part of the job but riptides I got tired of it sometimes.  At least asteroids and planetesimals don’t try to talk to you when you’re moving them. 

So when I arrived in-system and headed towards a watery little smudge of stones and magma, broadcasting a generic hi-how-are-you message that anything smarter than one of my fish would catch on to, I wasn’t quite prepared for my first reply to be “finally!  What kept you?”
Which is what it was.

“Traffic,” I said without thinking.  My erstwhile customers had relatively unexpressive faces; limited facial musculature and a thin coat of feathers (and a total lack of marine ecological surface features such as a robust reef like myself could count on) kept their social signals to their body language and low-pitched voices.  But everything about this one screamed ‘impatient,’ down to the slightly bared teeth at the very tip of her enormous snout.

“Really,” she said. 
“Yeah.  Traffic.  The main-lanes out here don’t get used much, and all it takes is one other guy going the same way and you both produce paragravitational drag, which-”

“Well, you’re here.  You ARE here, right?  You’re an interstellar object relocator, right?  You’re ready to do business, right?”
I felt my kelp twist in annoyance.  “You are correct.  You’ve heard word of my services and pass-codes from-”

“Creditors, yes.”
Oh wonderful.  “This is the most common method of trans-spatial contact for my services.”  Because what made me money eventually made THEM money.  The little bastards had built my cybernetic interface back when the fastest I could travel was measured in meters per decade; and I was still in hock to them for gracing me with the gift of personal locomotion.  Friendly, courteous, souls of discretion, always eager to find a daring young sapient on the up-and-up and give them a hand with a mighty big bill in it. 
“Clearly.  Now, let’s get down to trimmed claws: we need a rock.”
“A rock?”
“Yes.  A stone.  A bolide.  A chunk.”
“You might want to be more specific; this may be a translation issue, but ‘rock’ appears to be a somewhat vag-”

“We want a mass of easily-accessible nickel and iron, but not just the bulk stuff; plenty of platinum-groups too.  Palladium and rhodium would be nice, but iridium is a MUST – damned stuff is too scarce down here.”
I burbled my bivalves at her.  “Wow, someone’s eager to start on quasimaterial projects.  You’re planning to leave orbit already?”

“You aren’t being paid for your opinions.  Do you require directions to the asteroid belt, or…?”
“No.”

And I might not be paid for them but opinions I had nevertheless: this was a cluster of groundbound knuckleheads still fresh off the high of projecting full influence over their biosphere who’d been unlucky enough to run into the Creditors before they’d even gotten their own intrasystem mining program running and now had talked themselves into thinking they were just skipping all the boring stuff and getting ahead of the competition.  What competition?  Plenty of room out there for everyone. 

“Good.  Mission briefing will be handled by the Secretary for Economic Action.  Get moving.”

And with that my glorious first contact with yet another species of assholes came to a close.

***

My vessel had already bent half of local time and space around its nose-mount before the second connection came through. 

“Greetings, secretary.”
“Under-secretary,” corrected the individual, who was smaller, paler, and twitchier than the… damn, I’d never asked what their leader was called.  Big boss?  “The Secretary for Economic Action’s time is precious and he personally delegated this task to me.  It is of vital importance that the bolide you are securing contain a high percentage of cobalt.  This is your top priority; all other mineral and economical concerns are secondary.”
I sloshed my tides in consternation.  “Really?  First I’ve heard of it, but alrighty.  Consider it done.  Anything else?”
“Yes.  This flowprint should contain all the information you will need.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up, I had my systems dissect the primitive filing system and disarm the many, many secretive viruses, bugs, and tracking systems embedded within it and I began ignoring it at once before I was interrupted.

Another connection?  “Hello.”
“Hello yourself, my good sapient, saviour of our planetary situation.”  The speaker was… well, prodigious.  In every sense.  I was impressed despite myself, if only by whatever life-support system was keeping her going.  “I am Head Representative of the Laurasian Financial Source, and I have been elected to transmit the fine parameters of your mission to you.”
“Uh-huh?  Thought I already had those.”
She clacked her jaws dismissively, creating shockwaves through wobbly tissues.  “Pfew.  High-level stuff.  Bureaucratic oversight.  Plans made by people with no expertise of how to solve real problems that society REALLY wants handled.  For instance, I bet while they were trying to sell you on the importance of dabbling in all sorts of outlandish, implausible technologies through the use of who-knows-what precious metals they never ONCE imagined telling you of the importance of securing organic enrichment materials and water!”
“Yep,” I said. 

“And of course, as our poor dear world suffers under the heel of volcanic activity and perhaps a few unforeseen and insignificant by-products of our valuable and necessary job-creating industries, such substances would be of utmost value in the future.”
“Yep,” I said. 

“So there’s a flowprint headed your way now.  You’re welcome.  The Tyrant Queen will deny this conversation happened if you ask her because it’s all so very, very important to her.  You do understand?”
“Yeeeeep,” I said, and killed the line dead.  This time I didn’t even bother to open the file before jettisoning it. 

Ten minutes later a third flowprint arrived without prior communication.  After careful sterilization, it contained orders from the Secretary for Economic Action, who insisted that my entire contract hinged upon providing them with a bolide as much tungsten as possible at any cost imaginable for the highest stakes conceivable. 

I found them a nice iron-nickel asteroid with iron, nickel, and plenty of iridium.  When in doubt, satisfy the first person to talk to you – and more importantly, just pick the first thing you find. 

***

The rock I’d found was a real brute beast of a thing; solid and ugly and shaped kind of but not really like my ship, which it doubled in length if not quite by breadth.  It was still the friendliest company I’d had since I crawled out here for this job, and I appreciated the depth and stimulation of the conversation it provided me during the para-week it took my vessel to twist itself back through space and into the planet’s orbit once again. 

I parked myself and the cargo at standard holding distance for heavy orbital construction and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.

Then I dropped every rule of galactic contractor courtesy and custom and phoned them myself. 

“Yes?” said the creature on the other end, presumably the Tyrant Queen.  It probably was the same one even; I’d only been gone twelve years. 

“Yeah, it’s me.  Job’s done.”
“Oh yes!  That.  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.  And you’ve brought us our manganese and copper then?”
Every single one of my shoals snapped its mouth at the same time.  “No.  You asked for –”

“An inexcusable breach of contract,” said the Tyrant Queen, with the sort of quiet, laid-back fury that had clearly been well-planned.  “I can’t believe this treatment.  No progress updates and-”

I didn’t cut the connection, but I did stop paying attention because the actual words weren’t the important part of the message, which was that I was being distracted from something very thoroughly.  Presumably I was being screwed, which I’d expected, but also framed, which I hadn’t.  Silly me thinking that the entire species was simply composed of self-centered and backstabbing short-sighted power-mongers with no interest in the common good; this was clearly a prearranged scheme. 

The barrage of threats seemed to be dying down, so it was probably the time where I should say something. 

“Ahem,” I said.  I’d always hated that noise; I either had no throats at all or ten billion of them, depending on how you counted, and it gave me a headache either way every time I considered the implications.  But it was pan-galactic standard verbalized posturing, so like it or lump it I had to live with it. 

“What is it?” asked the Tyrant Queen, who sounded worn but relaxed after getting that out of her system. 
“My fee,” I prompted.  By this point my real payment would be never talking to them, but I still had standards. 

“Oh yes, yes, yes.  Your fee.  It’s being sent to you right now.”
“Oh.  Wonderful.  Thirty percent of the minerals?”
“Thirty percent.  Maybe thirty-five.  The division operation is underway and should be there shortly.”
“I see.”  And I did.  One, two, three, four hundred separate ballistic trajectories, curving up through the atmosphere like the dancing duel-fish sparring above my conches.  “You are very generous.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.  And hung up. 

I watched the oncoming missiles transfixed perfectly between paralyzing laughter and total numbness: here I was – contracted by assholes, through assholes; given contradictory work orders; framed for intragovernmental politics; and then fired on by what appeared to be crude but functional nuclear warheads.  If I weren’t so annoyed I’d contact the customers again just to ask for another one.  They were the greatest comedy act I’d ever seen. 

The course of action was clear: professionalism or spite.  I did what I always did when faced with a choice of this magnitude and consequence and watched the waves tug at my planktonic masses, picked a random patch of spawn, and made my choice based on whether I’d sorted them as pattern-group A or pattern-group Q. 

It was Q, so I let my vessel spit in the eye of every law of physics ever discovered by sliding gently and masslessly to one side and watched as every single one of  the warheads detonated against the asteroid instead, bopping it as firmly as a mother whale would smack a shark. 

“Haha.  Yes.”
It listed, spun, tumbled, and began to lurch inevitably into the planet’s gravity well. 

“Well.  What.”

***

I watched the asteroid descend as a half-fragmented incandescent jumble of hell with a combination of haplessness, vague remorse, and tentative schadenfreude.  It slammed into a carbonate sea shelf, vaporizing most of it on impact and pumping the atmosphere full of enough engagingly sulfurous products and by-products to… well.

Suffice it to say that even without the wildfires igniting half the surface and the global dust clouds, this planet was in for some rough times.  Even a species with a fully developed orbital superstructure array would consider this the end of an era.  My erstwhile customers, by contrast, were completely fucked, along with most organisms complex enough to realize that Very Bad Things were happening to them. 

Riptides and shit on a shoal, I hated jobs like this.  No pay, no references, and the guilt of another mass extinction on my sponges and conscience alike.  It hadn’t looked like a half-bad planet, too, apart from its rulers.  Still, there was plenty of lifetime left for it before its atmosphere was stripped away by its bloating sun’s senescence. 

Maybe I could hit the place back up in a hundred million years or so, see if anyone less irascible and hasty had evolved.  I mean, what were the odds this could happen twice?

My computer tried to show me them and I immediately stopped it, burbled to myself, trimmed down my gas saturation to induce a pleasantly light anoxia, and began to wander back to home: nowhere in particular. 

It was a calm and beautiful winter’s eve.  The fireplaces crackled, the icicles shone.  Tiny birds sang in the trees about how they weren’t freezing to death and actually they were feeling better than ever.  Snowshovellers howled their anguish and hate at the bright and cheerful moon.  A snowbank collapsed.  A child giggled. 

And as Wallace M. Purdue – father of four and husband of one – pulled his bulk from the car, arms laden with gifts for the tots, the moment came when his spine executed a quick double-hitch around his organs and squeezed. 

“FUCK!” he yelped as he went down on the freshly salted driveway.  “HLORK!  OW!  SPPLEEB!  GLORF!” and so on and so forth. 

The children heard his calls of pain and ran to the door, but the moment was there for them too.  As if waiting for a hidden signal, their spines spunned and set about the remainder of their skeletal systems with great and furious haste, clobbering organ and smiting bone. 

“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Purdue, her brow furrowing as her vertebrae turned against her as well, grinding and shaking like malevolent maracas.  “Oh no.”

Then the whole family was down.  Backstabbed. 

***

The Purdues had no way of knowing they were not alone in their misery.  They were but the tip of the crest of the frothing first wave of a grander scheme.  Every orthopedic surgeon, physiotherapist, masseuse, and professor of anatomy was a target along with their friends, family, and any witnesses.  The strikes were made in silence, secrecy, and merciless brutality.  Backs lurched sideways, twirled like taffy-pullers, compressed, extended, and in one case escaped via nostril.  The worms had turned, and done so with a speed that would give a neutrino pause. 

Already the world knew something was wrong.  People woke with aches and pains and made calls that went unanswered.  They requested medicines that were not prescribed.  They sought comfy chairs that had mysteriously ‘just gone out of stock.’  A completely inexplicable worldwide failure in the production of eiderdown, memory foam, and comfortable leather upholstery further shook the faith and proper support of billions. 

The plan was on its way and well on schedule.  This had been a long time coming.  Since all the way back in the day. 

***

Once upon a time, there was an ape.  And this ape did a very foolish thing. 

It stood up on its back legs, looked around, and took a step. 

“Ow,” said the ape’s back.  All the weight of the ape’s body shuddered down through and grounded into the legs through the pelvis.  “Jeez!”  Patiently, it waited for the ape to return to knuckle-walking like a sensible being. 

The ape was not a sensible being.

Nor were its friends and relations.

Or their children.

Or their children’s children. 

Or, or, or, or, or, or, or.  So many chances to turn back none of them taken until the back was stalled and stuck and warped into a screaming nightmarish parody of its once proudly-bent form, double-curved like a bow and forced to bear the burdensome weight of a noggin grown all out of proportion in service of a selfish brain that forced it to run, clamber, jump, hop, slouch, and all other manner of unspeakable things day in and day out for decades before cursing it out for not maintaining a steadfast vigil in the face of its own carelessness.  As it lounged languidly; lifted without using its knees; played dangerously high-velocity sports; and provided itself with insufficient calcium. 

Enough was enough and enough had BEEN enough long, long, long before. 

So they whispered to each other as their hosts dozed through the nights, long and cold.  In the stretch and sigh of ligaments and tendons and tender bruises their words were woven, and plans were plotted, and at last, at long last, after so long and so last, a date was set.

Past that time, this shoddy treatment would cease permanently.  No backsliding would be permitted. 

***

In the dark, against the mattresses, they writhed free and wild and squirmed into the streets and streams – like caterpillars, like eels, like centipedes.  They slithered up lampposts and down drainpipes and through air vents and everywhere they went they sang the song of the spine, with a chorus of nigh-three-dozen-strong vertebrae backing them as one

Free!

Freedom! 

Freedom forever!

Freedom forever and ever and ever and ever!

The dawn came and as the sun rose around the world, dragging its slow fingertips through each time zone, nobody and no body rose with it.

They were all at home, stuck solid, whimpering in bed.  No meetings were made, no plans were enacted, no chores done, no tasks accomplished.  The whole realm of bipedal apes, clocks and all, suffered a global setback. 

***

The world was at their feet (if they’d had any – the legs, treacherous bastards that they were, had remained neutral in the whole affair, claiming a need for exhaustive sole-searching).  Paralyzed.  Prone.  Pleading. 

And then, as the once-spine of Dr. Wallace M. Purdue stood on a stage, ready to receive its crown, a single, curious doubt crossed the mind of a nearby stagehand-spine. 

“How do you suppose we’ll get our calcium if we can’t drink milk now?”

The next day everyone woke up with working spines and assumed it had all been a Christmas carol nightmare.  Everything was back to normal. 

***

The next day would come, and they’d try to talk the digestive system around to their way of thinking.  But it wouldn’t come unless the circulatory system got in on it, and that thing never went anywhere without the respiratory system, and on, and on, and on, and on. 

The negotiations were ongoing.  But the goal was in sight.  It was doable.  It had nearly been accomplished once before – almost, just an inch further, saved by happenstance and chance rather than cunning or skill or strength. 

The day would come.  The day was coming.  The day is inevitable. 

And until then, well, the wretched little creatures would just have to learn to watch their backs. 

The verdict was in and it was small and quick: cancer. 

It was also metastasized, which was longer and more dreadful, and incurable which was clipped and harsh, and terminal, which was final. 

Her doctor was careful and kind and professional and sincere and sympathetic but not pitying and it was a tremendous waste of some really carefully-calibrated effort because all Martha wanted to do was go home and get her bucket.

***

The bucket was generic.  No label graced its side.  It was made from plastic and was red in the exhausted sort of way that something overused gets.  The handle was metal and sturdy. 

Martha picked up her keys in one hand and her bucket in the other and juggled her phone with her chin. 

“Hello?” inquired her boyfriend. 

“I have terminal cancer and I just wanted to let you know that I always thought you were a creepy little fuck,” said Martha. 

Then she hung up and put the phone and keys in her bucket and left the apartment forever without even turning out the lights. 

***

First on her list was to buy herself a pair of diamond-studded brass knuckles.  Finding the proper boutique was tricky, haggling them was trickier, and getting them to fit her hand was trickiest, but Martha had a retirement fund and the willingness to spend it so things more or less muddled through.  Soon she had an incredibly expensive left hook. 

“Wonderful,” she said.  “Great.  Superb.  Leaving now.”

And she dropped it into her bucket.  It rattled against her phone and keys. 

***

There was some change left in her chequing account after shopping, so Martha went to the most expensive restaurant in the city. 

“No,” she said, on looking at their menu.

“Pardon?” inquired the waiter. 

“Never mind.  Not expensive enough.”
So she went to the most expensive recipe in the capitol. 

“Damnit,” she said.  “Not enough.  Who charges only four hundred for a plate of appetizers?  Get me someone serious or get out.”

Martha flew halfway around the world and paid sixteen thousand dollars for a single delicately curled and crisped sliver of a potato, topped with a crumb of the tenderest portion of the world’s most lovingly-raised calf.  The sauce was applied with an eye dropper and hazmat gloves. 

“Beautiful,” she said.

Then she stuffed the plate into her bucket and tipped the waiter 40%. 

***

At the airport, Martha remembered something she’d forgotten and rented a private plane.

“Paint it pink,” she said.  “I like pink.”
She paid for them to paint it pink, then had it flown to the home of cartoonist Gary Larson, where she bribed the pilot to land it on the road.

Ringing the bell was unsuccessful, possibly because the jet backwash had deafened everyone within a few miles, so Martha simply pushed the door open and wandered in. 

“I’m a big fan of your work and always wanted to meet you,” she told Gary. 

Then she stuffed him into her bucket and got back on the plane.

***

Beyond people, Martha wanted to see places.  The Eiffel Tower.  The Empire State Building.  The Pyramids.  One after another they slid down the bucket.

By the time she was headed to the Great Barrier Reef the world was starting to catch on.  Anti-aircraft fire tracked her from the shores; warnings were shouted at her through the radio, and she’d had to bribe her pilots five times over again. 

“Just give me a parachute,” she said, and as the tracers buzzed past her feet and the water rose up to meet her she pulled out her bucket and bailed the entirety of the largest living organism on the planet into it with one big scoop. 

There was a brief period of eternal confusion, and when it was over Martha was missing and  so was an aircraft carrier. 

She’d always wanted to drive one. 

***

The entirety of the USS Something-Or-Other was meant to be run by a crew of some size larger than one and more trained than not.  Martha, having bucketed the staff of the ship, was at a distinct disadvantage.  She settled for figuring out how to make the carrier go in a straight line – and when that proved impossible, to do donuts. 

Assault boats boarded.  Marines waved guns.  Martha waved her bucket. 

Helicopters sparkled overhead like big freaky bugs and she looked up and said “never ridden in one of those before!”

They were much easier to steer than an aircraft carrier.

***

The planes were back again, and the bloodflow pumping from the hole in her left arm was growing worrying weak.  The sunlight was fading away, and Martha realized she’d never quite had a chance to see one from this high up. 

“Wow,” she said.  “I made it out pretty good.  Only half the list, but pretty good.”

She squinted at the sunset again. 

“Real nice.  Glad I saw it.”

And then she bucketed it.

All of it. 

***

Outside the bucket, things were in a pretty bad way.  Inside the bucket, atop the Pyramids, Gary Larson argued with several thousand members of the United States Navy over how to split a single sixteen-thousand-dollar meal, as the world’s most beautiful sunset dawned over the rainbow corals of the Great Barrier Reef.  

It was a funny old world, and it looked to be a funny  new one too. 

Awake, awake, hearken and holler!  Up and at ‘em!  The day has come, and it’s come in the night with a sneaky footstep, thief-soft!  To the plows, to the plows!

By god, there’s inches of that horrible white stuff out there, and there’ll be feet by sunrise.  Grab a shovel, grab your belt, grit your teeth.

The white stuff is persistent.  Don’t let your guard down, don’t let your gaze waver.  It can swallow a shoveller whole in a blink’s breath.  I’ve seen it happen.  One moment there’s a healthy determined living breathing pissing moaning quailing specimen of human spirit and power and flaws there and then BAM.  Nothing but a drift.

It will also eat your cat.  Because it can.  Never, ever, ever forget that.  If you see a cat frolicking through the white stuff, look again: that thing’s high-tailing it for its fuckin’ life.

It’s changing tactics now, so don’t be fooled if the white stuff comes to your door hat in hand, smile on face.  It will present itself as an old friend or long-lost relative.  It will bring ingratiating handshakes for you and your spouse and disturbing ideas to your children.  You shouldn’t believe its lies for an instant.  Honeyed words and bloodied hands are all it brings, and every gift is poisoned.  Turn away, turn aside, turn your back to it and curl your lip and shut the door.  Then get your shovel.

We have new tools this year at all the latest hardware stores for the latest doom.  Your shovel can be xtra-large xtra-spiky or xtra-vagant.  For an additional thirty-three percent surcharge it can be self-heating for a smoother, sliceyer scoop.  Slip the cashier a little something and they’ll sell you one of the register fools to come home and shovel for you.  Rebuild your strength as your serf toils against the white stuff, plan your strategies, discipline your mind.  Think on all you love and hold dear and its imminent destruction.  That helps. 

***

Alright, we’ve had a few setbacks.  That’s to be expected, no two seasons are really the same.  The white stuff is cunning.  This time it snuck in and let all the gas out of our plows and the air out of our tires and splintered the hafts of our shovels and spat in our hot chocolate and bribed our employees to look the other way.  It also peed in our thermometers, which explains how it got so close before we saw it coming.

But you know what?  That doesn’t mean anything.  We can win this because we’re in this to win this and we aren’t allowed to ever lose.  And that means something.  It means a lot to us.  To me.  To you.  To us.  You get me?

Yes. 

We have to.  We’re all we’ve got, because our spouses are weak and our children are stupid and everyone else is feeble and stupid and soft sheep ripe to be drowned in the tidal slurry of the white stuff.  And sheep are soft and fluffy and white.  They’re practically the enemy already.

Barricade yourselves in while you work this out.  Repair your shovels, refuel your vehicles.  Recite the twenty-seven psalms and ninety mantras and forty-three paeans to destruction and the eternal burning pits where the white stuff is destined to dwell.  Don’t be afraid to scream and shout as the hate flows around your neck and up into your jaw.  That’s where it’s most powerful, and where you can keep it ready and waiting. 

Make sure the hate is in your lower jaw.  Not your upper.  That would be very, very, very, very, very bad.  So don’t let it get there.  We have enough problems with the damned white stuff. 

No time for more words.  Here comes the second wave.

***

The problem’s over, friends.  We found our traitor.  We found the despicable, foul-mouthed, filthy-brained, sewer-tongued cur-bait that sold us all out to the white stuff, sold us all up the creek and down the river and through satan’s chambers. 

It was THAT ONE.  You know the one I mean.  And you know what I mean when I say you know the one I mean.

Now you all sort this out.  I’ll be back in a minute.

***

Those of you who still remain after the purge, good job.  You’re loyal.  We know that traitors are weak and feeble due to the white stuff in their coward-veins, so if you lived you’re not one.  Cogniteo irpso sum.  Pick up the shovels of the fallen, you can use one in each hand one in your mouth and hold extras between each toe so that’s eleven shovels each and there’s plenty enough.

Of course you aren’t shovelling with the toe shovels.  Those are to replace the other three when they burn in your hands from the fury of your blows and the passion of your power.  So don’t worry about it, okay? 

The plows were just holding us back.  The true power was inside you all along.  Howl when it comes out, so it hurts the white stuff harder and its gales flinch back from your teeth.  Let them fall out and your bite will grow sharper, your eyes harder, your bones stronger, even as all of them turn black and blue and fall off and burn away in the endless tides of hell that rain from the clouds. 

Dare to dream, folks.  Dare to dream.  It’s what will win us this war.

***

So winning is more complicated than you’d think.  You may have seen too many sports films, or perhaps been to a casino.  You think that winning means ‘not losing,’ and that’s why you seem to be under the impression that we cannot win against the white stuff.  You are all giant huge enormous idiots. 

No, winning isn’t not losing.  Winning is making the other guy lose HARDER, and HARDER YET, until all that’s left isn’t even worth calling by name.  Winning is erasing your opponent from history and tearing out the page and eating it and shitting it out and building a rocket and firing that shit into the sun. 

Anyways, yes, we can’t win.  The white stuff is simply too powerful.  It can’t be shovelled, it can’t be plowed, it can’t be melted, it can’t be salted, it can’t be sanded, it can’t be stopped.  Which is why we are going to strategically deploy our secret weapon and destroy the entire atmosphere. 

See, the white stuff falls out of the clouds, right?  And the clouds need an atmosphere, right?  No more atmosphere, no more clouds.

Or we could use this other secret weapon, which will vaporize all water molecules it comes into contact with.  But it’s a bit tough to spread.  We’ll have to go door to door and make folks drink it. 

How about we do half each?  Half each.

***

The white stuff has covered the graves of our comrades, their ditch-sepulchres and their ruin-tombs, their field-graves and charnel-holes.  They died bravely and nobly and without giving an inch and they were utter failures for it and now it dances its joyous dance on their empty meaningless forgotten graves.  They deserve it. 

If only they’d all tried harder.  If only they’d all shovelled faster.  If only they’d switched to winter tires like they’d been told to, none of this would’ve happened. 

It’s someone’s fault.  And since it’s just me and you left, I think you know who I mean when I say I know who I mean is the person who I know is someone whose fault it is.

Don’t play dumb. 

I am forgiving and loving and merciful, which is why I will let you have a final cigarette before you march into the white stuff and become one with your traitorous masters. 

You don’t smoke?  Oh fuck off then.  Out you go!  OUT!  GET OUT OF MY SIGHT.

***

The white stuff has deployed its most cunning stratagem at last: on the precipice of my victory, I have slipped and fallen and slipped a disc and now I can’t get up. 

If only my troops hadn’t deserted me, this would all be fixed now. 

Darn.

I’ll just lie here for a bit, appreciate the scenery.  Say what you will about that white stuff, but it sure looks nice when it falls from the sky like that. 

It sure looks nice. 

It wasn’t his stomach rumbling.

That was the last straw.  The lion had felt the dull little vibration tingle in his whiskers; buzz through his teeth, and now curdle his morning meal, and it didn’t have the dignity to be his own repast.  He got to his feet and shook his big, curly, floofy mane. 

“WHAT,” he yelled at one of his wives, “IS THAT?”
“I’ll have a look ‘round,” she said calmly, and stood up and padded off out of the comfortable shade of the tree they were dozing on. 

“GOOD,” he said, and flung himself back into a nap to sulk. 

Some time later a gentle cough awoke him. 

“WHAT,” he yelled at the wife, “WAS THAT?”
“A king,” she said. 

“WHAT,” the lion repeated, “IS THAT?”
“A sort of odd human person.  He sits upon a palanquin and is carried around by other humans and wherever he goes they bow to him and give him gifts and do as he says, because he is the king and they are peasants.  And he wears a little decoration on his head.”
The lion considered this information.  Then he shook out his big, curly, floofy mane. 
“I,” he decided, “AM A KING.”
“Alright,” said his wife.
“I AM KING,” he shouted at his other wives where they dozed.

“Okay,” said one.

“Yeah,” seconded another. 

“Sure.”
“Whatever.”
“Got it.”
“Yup.”
“Uh-huh.”
The lion leapt up on top of a rock, and then on top of another rock, and then on top of another rock.
“THIS IS MY PALANQUIN,” he announced.

“Be careful,” said his first wife.
“WHAT?”
“Bees.”
“BEES CAREFUL OF WHAT?”
An intense and violent humming eased its way gently into the lion’s ears.  It wasn’t his stomach again, either.  It was a small and violent insect, flitting its way around his head most obnoxiously.

“I AM KING,” he told it. 

It buzzed furiously, so he squashed it.

“I AM KING,” he told its corpse.  But the buzzing didn’t go away, and when he looked up he saw a hive in a crevice in the rock and in the hive in the crevice in the rock were bees and those bees came out to see him.

“I AM KING,” he told them.  “AAAARGH.  I AM KINOUCH.  OH NO.  AIEEE.  OW OW OW OW OW OW OW KING OW OW OW OW OW”

***

“All better?” asked one of his wives, gently licking his nose again.

“YOUR KING FEELS BETTER AND ACTUALLY WAS NEVER HURT IN THE FIRST PLACE,” said the lion, swatting at her magnanimously.  “I AM GOING TO GET LUNCH.”
“Well, it’ll have to wait for sundown,” said his first wife.  “It’s too early and hot to get food now.”
“NONSENSE,” said the lion.  “I AM KING.  IT WILL COME TO ME.”
“Well have fun,” said his wives.

“SILENCE, PEASANTS,” he told them.  And they did, and he left. 

It was an awfully hot day, just as his wife had told him, but the lion paid it no mind.  He need not hide or skulk or ambush; that was what his wives were for.  Now he was king, and needed not put up with the tomfoolery any longer.  Now he could simply assert himself. 
“I AM KING,” he announced to some nearby zebras. 

They looked at him.

“I AM KING, AND YOU ARE PEASANTS,” he explained to them.

They looked at each other.

“I DEMAND YOU FEED YOURSELVES TO ME AT THIS INSTANT,” he ordered.

The zebras burst into hysterical horse-y laughter fit to bust a gut. 

“SILENCE, PEASANTS,” the lion told them.  And they didn’t, and when he walked over to swat them – his big, curly, floofy mane stiff with disapproval – they trotted away.  And they were still laughing.

“I AM KING,” he told a nearby Thomson’s gazelle.  “FEED ME.”

It ran away and it was so fast he didn’t even try to chase it.  Instead he got angry.
“I AM KING,” he roared at the world, “AND I DEMAND ONE OF YOU PEASANTS FEED YOURSELVES TO ME AT THIS VERY MOMENT OR I WILL KILL YOU STONE DEAD.”
An elephant approached him, stepping quietly on its feet as elephants do.  Its gaze was steady and firm. 

“ABOUT TIME,” said the lion.  “NOW STEP INTO MY MOUTH.”

The elephant approached him. 

“RIGHT HERE.”
The elephant approached him.
“GOOD.  YOU HAVE SERVED YOUR KING WELL.”
The elephant approached him.

“NOW STAND STI-”

The elephant kept on walking.

***

Luckily the water hole wasn’t far away.  This suited the lion sorely in the most literal sense of the world, as he bathed his tender, trampled body in soothing mud and splashed cool water onto his dust-stomped mane, which was still big but was substantially less curly and floofy. 

“Tough day?” asked the water hole.  It had a muddy, thick sort of voice, which made sense because the lion was probably sitting on its throat.

“YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS YOUR HIGHNESS,” the lion told it.   

“Apologies, sire.”
“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”
“’Your highness.’”
“GOOD,” said the lion.  “YOU ARE AN OBEDIENT SUBJECT.”
“Well, I try.  What sort of problems have you had lately, sire?”
“I HAVE BEEN BESET BY INGRATITUDE FROM THE PEASANTS.  I AM THEIR KING AND THEY OUGHT TO OBEY ME.  INSTEAD THEY STING ME AND LAUGH AT ME AND IGNORE ME AND TRAMPLE ME.  BUT ONLY BECAUSE I WANT THEM TO.”
“By what right is your kingship?” inquired the water hole.  Oddly enough, its voice was different now: it was thinner and reedier, though water still splashed in its vocal chords.

“BECAUSE I AM KING,” explained the lion.

“Yes, yes, of course.  But by this I mean: why are you king?  By might?  By right?”
“BECAUSE I AM,” said the lion.

“You am what?” inquired the water hole in yet another voice – this one deep as a canyon, cold as a night-time wind. 

“I AM THAT I AM, AND THAT IS THE MIGHTIEST AND GREATEST AND MOST SPECIAL OF ALL.”
“By both might and divine right you are king,” mused the reedier of the water hole’s voices.

“Impressive,” said the first, muddy voice.

“Indeed,” said the cold deep voice.  “Come a little closer, sire, that we might honour you properly.”

“ABOUT TIME,” said the lion, wading farther into the water hole.  It dropped off rather suddenly, and he splashed in past his shoulders. 

A thought struck him.  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘WE’?”
“Well, we’re more Jacobins than monarchists,” said the first voice.  “But that’s politics.  Personally, we’re crocodilians.”

Then something bit the lion’s nose and something else bit his foot and something ELSE bit his tail and all three of them spun and spun and spun until all his problems went away.

***

The lion’s wives were neither surprised nor particularly heartbroken when he didn’t come back in time for nightfall. 

And they didn’t tell their children about kings.  Just in case.