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On a morning like any other, on a day identical to those before and after it, a worm that looked pretty much the same as all the other worms was awoken by a bird’s beak crashing through the soil next to it, missing its plump, delicious body by mere millimetres.

“That’s it,” decided the worm. “I’ve had it. I’m going to destroy the world.”

The bird sneezed out a sharp, birdy laugh and flew away, too amused to finish breakfast.

Big mistake.

The worm turned the plan over and over inside its brain; constantly, unceasingly. It didn’t take too long – it was a small brain, but it wasn’t a very big plan. So it buckled down, gritted its lack of teeth, and dug in.

Then in farther.

The bird came back for a late breakfast, but found only barest bedrock. It circled in confusion for a while, then went home.

The tree its nest sat in was toppled, roots in the air. Below it was bare bedrock.

It went to its nearest birdfeeder to recuperate, only to find that it had fallen from its bracket and shattered when the house dropped dozens of meters down to bedrock.

The bird sagged in defeat, stopped flying, and smacked beak-first into the de-soiled bedrock of the earth, defeated.

“Excellent!” cheered the worm as it devoured the last scrap of earth left on the planet. “That’ll show them!”

Then a very expensive military drone dropped a bomb near it.

“You too!?” cried the worm in anguish as the horizon filled with missiles, tanks, and mechanized infantry. The world’s armies were literally unable to return to the soil of home, and had come to collect it. Left without options, the worm turned and dug and chewed its way into the bedrock, deeper still into the molten mantle, which popped like a balloon and caused all the warm goo inside the earth to leak out into space like a punctured jelly timbit.

“Hooray!” yelled the worm in triumph. “I’ve destroyed the world! And now, the universe!”
And the worm divided itself over and over into pieces until the universe was statistically more earthworms than anything else.

The moral of the story is that you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.

***

It was a fine, fulfilling fall day. The nuts were ready, the tubers were swollen, the deer were fat, and the fish were swimming in the streams.

So the bear was out, putting all of them in his face, which had his mouth, which ate them.

He dug up mushrooms and roots, he grubbed for grubs, he chewed carrion, he gnawed on bones, he dug up burrows and bolted their owners, he flushed grouse and snatched them from the air and swallowed them whole, he gulped the last of the berry crops, he speared sixty salmon one after another and ate them all headfirst, then he took a long, long, long drink from the river and passed out.

Then he woke up and did it again.

And again.

And again.

And on the fifth day he was running out of options, but he was still ravenous. He chewed on saplings for sap and gum, he swallowed stripped-bare berry-bushes, he plucked frogs from the ponds and cracked open turtles with his molars, he snuffled through drifts of leaves to eat slugs, he picked up and carried away a very startled hiker before messily consuming him, he browsed on some of the more succulent-looking grasses, and when he stumbled across a somewhat smaller and sleepier bear trying his hand at fishing he ate him too and passed out.

The next day he was still hungry.

He broke into hibernaculums and bit deep into his fellow bears’ plump flanks, he hoovered up the autumn leaves that carpeted the forest floor, he uprooted trees and swallowed them whole, he broke into cars and ate the seat lining and the seats and the steering wheels and the cars themselves, he drank the river dry and chewed up the riverbed, he slurped the misty air dry of moisture and sucked down the clouds, he  gnawed the soil free of clay, loam, and dirt, and finally he devoured first his den and then himself down to the very last tufts of fur and lumps of fatty tissue.

Then he was ready for winter.  

The moral of the story is that planning ahead for hard times is only sensible.

***

Dog was a good dog. It knew this to be true, for its master told it so. Good dog. Best dog. Good dog. Good boy. Best boy. This was especially true when dog brought its master sticks. Dog didn’t know why its master wanted sticks but it was very happy that it made master happy, and dog being happy made master happy too so everything was wonderful and everyone was happy and everything was even more wonderful and everyone was even more happy and so on and on and on oh my dog.

But one day, as dog was retrieving its stick, it saw a most unusual sight in the dog park for dogs: a dog that was not looking for a stick.

“Stick?” inquired dog.

The dog looked at dog blankly.

“Stick!” informed dog. The dog seemed puzzled, so dog did a most generous and noble self-sacrificing thing: it threw its stick over to the dog, so that it too may know the joy of returning a stick.  

The dog stared at it.

“Get it!” instructed dog. The dog picked the stick up, lips moving with exaggerated care, then stood there.

“Bring it!” ordered dog. The dog carefully, gingerly, cautiously approached dog, tail held somewhere between a cringe and a growl and a wag.

“Drop it!” said dog. Master was somewhere in the distance making frustrated sounds, but for once dog knew a higher calling: it was bringing the light of stick to the uninitiated.

The dog paused. This was the hardest part, dog knew. But dog believed in the dog. It believed with such vibrancy and strength that it shook the very skies and settled in the earth. If dog could do it, this dog could do it.

“Drop it!” said dog to the dog. “Drop it! Give!”

The dog dropped the stick, and dog seized it.

“Good boy!” said dog, and the dog wagged. Then dog ran back to its master, and forgot about it.

The next day the dog was there again, but this time it wasn’t idle: it was waiting. Waiting for dog.  Waiting for the stick.

“Stick!” said dog.

The dog gazed imploringly, and so dog took pity on it again and threw the stick for it.

“Bring it! Drop it! Good dog!”
And so it went the next day, and the next, but on the next day after the next day after the next day the dog did not want to drop it or give it no matter how many times dog demanded, and without thinking or stopping or even considering the metaphysical consequences dog deployed the ultimate weapon.

“BAD DOG.”
The dog’s entire body recoiled in self-revulsion of the very greatest kind and almost without conscious will it dropped the stick, which dog reclaimed.

“Good,” said dog, but shortly, so the dog knew it was on thin ice. “Sit!”

The dog sat.

“Down!” said dog

The dog laid down, eyes wide and anxious.

“Roll over!” and the dog rolled over.  

“Sit!” and the dog sat up again.

“Shake!” and the dog proffered its paw, trembling with anticipation, and without thought dog took up the dog’s grasp paw to paw, master to dog, accepted the pact of domestication, and caused the entire universe to immediately crash on the spot.

The moral of the story is that dogs are nothing but trouble.

“I am,” King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) announced, “the greatest and most perfect being that there shall ever be.”
“You’re infertile,” said the doctor.

“Fuck you. Execute her.”
“Be that as it may,” the doctor said as the king’s royal goonsmen closed in, “it still won’t get you a heir.”

“What if we execute my wife too?”
“Also won’t fix you being infertile.”
King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) grumped to himself a little. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to commission a heir myself then. Unhand the doctor or whatever, men! I need you to go get me a badger-person!”

***

Getting a badger-person was easier said than done. They didn’t spend much time on the surface, most of it was at night, and it was usually long enough to decapitate someone’s sheep and drag the corpse underground. But the king wanted it, so seven of the finest cattle in all the realm were seized and taken to an empty field and watched for three days until someone tried to decapitate one and drag it underground.

The badger-person was somewhat small and bedraggled.

“Men, I need you to go get me a better badger-person,” said the king.

“All sapient beings are of equal worth,” said the badger-person in her flat toneless gravelly badger-voice.

“Clearly not,” laughed the king. “I am King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) and I am the greatest and most perfect being that there shall ever be! And my heir must be of similar magnitude IF NOT GREATER and that is why you are here and not being executed, badger-person. I require you to craft me a successor!”
The badger-person blinked her shiny little badger eyes. “Tricky,” she said. “but doable. Get me the wood from the royal dynast-trees. The bones of your successor must come from within your walls.”

***

The dynast-trees had stood in the royal garden for some long lifetimes, but they were not tall beings, and it took some clever cutting and shaping from the claws of the badger-person to assemble a proper frame for the king’s heir. It was graceful and wending and winding – firm but supple, graceful but robust, slim without being thin – and everyone who looked on it except the king loved it.

“Pretty but insubstantial,” pouted King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First). “I require a heir, not a hair-thin pup!”

“Of course,” said the badger-person. “Which is why next I will require ores. Split apart the skin of the oldest hill that your keep sits upon, and inside it you will find the body of your successor.”

***

The oldest hill had been chosen for its sturdiness: any other would have bent and buckled and split into ribbons under the weight of the fortifications and royal proclamations intended to grace its earthen brow. But the king was urgent in his demands, and so the royal goonsmen cracked out their shovels and their mattocks and their picks and delved until they hit stone, then delved further, and the ore they tore loose was brought up to the castle’s forges where the badger-person cast her strange badger-spells and grunted and swore over the steaming cauldrons and smelters deep into the night and beyond.

At the end of it all the beautiful wooden bones of the heir were hidden underneath a skin of shining metal, soft to the eye but unbreakable to a blow; lustrous without gaudiness; warm against the palm and cooling in heat.

“My heir isn’t moving,” complained King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First). “They lack enthusiasm and gumption and they are not more beautiful and powerful than all other beings except me.”

“Of course,” said the badger-person. “They have no heart, no mind, no soul. We will find them deeper down.”

***

The royal goonsmen were not meant to be miners: they were tall, they were cruel, they were stupid. But the king wanted it so they did what had to be done and crammed themselves far, far inside the oldest hill, burrowing past the earth and boring deep into rock. They hacked and scrabbled and pulled and tugged and nearly died a dozen times over, but they lacked the imagination to be frightened of their own demise and so it was that they began to yield up the hill’s treasures.

A blood-red ruby was pried loose from rock so hard it shattered sixteen pickaxes. The badger-person took it and set it within the heir’s chest. “Their heart,” she said.

A glittering presence in the torchlight at the corner of a goonsman’s eye was investigated and turned out to be a diamond the size of his fist. The badger-person polished it until it shone like the sun, even without a single cut, then installed it in the heir’s skull. “Their mind,” she said.

And farthest below of all, where the walls echoed with whispers from below, there was found an ephemeral strand of sparkling matter, which was chipped free and brought up to the badger-person who melted it down most carefully in a very small and very hot furnace.

“Their soul,” she breathed over the metal, and sprinkled the molten platinum softly and lovingly over the heir’s frame.

It shook.

“Is it happening?!” demanded King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First).

“Oh yes,” said the badger-person. The walls of the room echoed with force.

“I am to be succeeded?” asked King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First).

“Absolutely,” said the badger-person. The keep’s walls trembled.

“Hooray!” cheered King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First and Last), as the first of several hundred badger-people tore through the weakened surface of the oldest hill beneath his feet and right through the floorboards, decapitating him and dragging him underground.

***

Afterwards there wasn’t much castle left, or much hill. So it took a while, you understand, for anyone to go looking at what had happened.

But nobody ever found the shining heir.

“The badger-people must’ve taken it,” they said. “All that wealth in its hide.” And that was the end of that as far as they were concerned.

And they were half-right. The badger-people had taken them, but not for the wealth. They were, after all, the child of one of their greatest craftsbadgers, and deserved fair treatment, fair labour, and shelter from those who sought harm.

Because all sapient beings are of equal worth.

Black-capped Chickadee

A small songdinosaur with a distinctive black ‘cap’ and ‘bib’ and a wonderfully distinctive call of chick-a-dee-dee-dee. These bold and adorable little visitors will gladly visit your dinosaurfeeders all winter and are brave enough to even pluck sunflower seeds right from your hand, should you be a sufficiently everyday sight!

Blue jay

Raucous, intelligent, pushy, and curious, this bright blue and crested jay is a splendid specimen of the Corvid family with a bright call said to be similar to a rusty pump handle being worked. It will dominate the dinosaurfeeder when present with its voracious appetite and is quite unwilling to share with others of its kind.

Common starling (introduced)

A frequent sight in the summer months, easily spotted by its shiny and iridescent plumage. Introduced into New York’s Central Park from Europe by wildly misguided individuals under the so-called ‘American Acclimitization Society’ in 1890, they have thrived across the continent ever since, although our winters are a tad chilly for their liking. Their calls are quarrelsome and so are they – any flight of starlings is as much squabble as song.

Daspletosaurus torosus

This sturdy mid-sized tyrannosaurid can be easily distinguished from albertosaurines like Gorgosaurus and Albertosaurus by its more robust snout and muzzle, which makes a handy tool for delivering massive bone-crushing bites to dangerous prey. It is unlikely to molest any of your dinosaurfeeders or their residents, but may mistake your car for a potential food source – try to minimize the chances of this occurring by parking it inside a garage!

Edmontosaurus regalis

Among the largest of hadrosaurids in Canada or the world entire and named after our province’s capital, an Edmontosaurus visit to your yard is always a good occasion to break out the cameras!  They’re quite fond of conifers, so a healthy evergreen presence on your lawn is a good way of enticing these spectacular Albertans to your home any time of year. That said, they are highly gregarious, so be prepared for any number between one and twenty-five thousand to visit.  At four metric tons apiece, you may find yourself being fined for road damages by your county if things get a bit too busy.

Euoplocephalus tutus

The most heavily-armoured animal you can expect to host unless you’re visited by an Abrams tank crew mid-shift, Euoplocephalus’s lovely, low-pitched calls will likely be heard well in advance of its plodding arrival. Entice this beauteous creature with a bounty of ferns and other soft low-growing plants, but try to make sure you’ve got a bountiful enough crop to withstand its appetite, because there’s no driving them off once they arrive – it is neither effective nor advisable to shoo away an animal covered in bony plates down to its eyelids, particularly when its response to being threatened is to slam the threat with a bony tail-club. All currently-known cases of bear spray applied to Euoplocephalus in specific or ankylosaurs in general have been deeply regrettable for all involved.

Horned lark

Although sadly in steep decline in recent years, this lovely little dinosaur’s trilling song can still be heard outside your window, provided your home isn’t terribly forested and has enough ground cover for nesting and feeding growing chicks insects.  In the summer the male grows the pair of small black ‘horns’ that are the species’ namesake.

Northern cardinal

A sturdy songdinosaur of moderate proportions and (in the males) ostentatious red colouration, topped with a beautiful little crest in both sexes. The song is a lovely whistle, although your intrusion upon its feeding may instead have it retort with its less-dignified alarm call: twit. In addition to the ever-popular sunflower seeds, safflower represents another feeder staple that can entice them to visit.

Northern raven

Doubtlessly the cleverest animal you are likely to encounter outside your home is the raven, which can be distinguished from the common crow by its great size, more massive bill, wedge-shaped tail, and shaggy ‘beard’ of feathers. You’re more likely to encounter them the farther you are from dense urban centers; although ravens certainly enjoy some products of humanity (garbage dumps in particular are a bonanza), they’re not quite as happy in a city as a crow would be.

Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis

An infrequent visitor from the north, this large ceratopsian can easily be distinguished from other species by its lack of a nose horn and possession of a heavy ‘nasal boss’ atop the snout. Although harmless on foot (within sane limits), it is not recommended to drive non-electric cars near them, as they may mistake the sound of the car’s engine for a challenge call from a fellow Pachyrhinosaurus and charge the vehicle until the sound stops. Keeping dogs inside during their visit is recommended for similar reasons, as few dogs possess the reinforced neck, protective head-frill, and multi-ton body weight necessary to survive a shoving contest with an adult Pachyrhinosaurus.

Red-breasted nuthatch

Sunflower seeds and suet are your best bet to catch the attention of this distinctive little songdinosaur, which is readily identified not only by its black-and-white striped head and sandy-red belly but also its peculiar habit of walking up and down trees headfirst and trotting quite happily along the undersides of branches.

Red-winged blackdinosaur

Males of this species are easily-spotted due to their dramatic coat of black contrasting with their red-and-yellow shoulders (to say nothing of their ostentatious posturing on the highest visible objects), while the females are plain brown. Suet and seeds will tempt them in the summer, when the males are busy loudly singing. Fields, swamps, and meadows on or near your property are an excellent indicator of red-wing blackdinosaur habitat, and their great abundance means you can gamble on seeing them more likely than not.

Saurornitholestes langstoni

A lively and high-energy dromaeosaur approximately five feet in length that is attracted by (and will readily scavenge) human garbage cans, cats, and dogs. In the event this is behaviour you find desirable, they can be enticed by suet, scraps of aged meat, or living next door to anyone inconsiderate and sloppy enough to leave unsecured food waste lying around, for which they can and should be fined. It’s harmless to humans older than around six or seven, but its curiosity can cause it to venture close enough to the clueless to trigger a defensive response.

Torosaurus latus

A reclusive and extremely large ceratopsian that may or may not be an unusual morph of full-grown Triceratops, depending on who you ask (speculation remains abundant due to its retiring nature). Its spectacularly elongated head-frill is among the most gorgeous displays of any animal, especially in the full flush of mating season when bulls will redirect blood to it to create colourful, intimidating patterns. Do not, under any circumstances, wear bright clothing near these animals if they’re on your property, and it’s advised to paint houses in Torosaurus territory with drab hues. Low-growing plants of any kind will hold their attention, and be sure to take pictures of any young you might see – they’re almost a total scientific unknown to this very day!

Tyrannosaurus rex

If sighted, move quietly and calmly into the nearest enclosed vehicle and leave town immediately.

There was once a wealthy professor of astronomy who possessed a very fine observatory all his own, with a grand and well-stocked laboratory and many powerful computers, all housed beneath a powerful and keen telescope. But he worked there all alone and the great telescope stood idle much of the night, for he was cursed with an unsightly blue eye that was so peculiar to look upon that few could stomach the idea of sharing a telescope with him. At length his frustrations reached a peak, and so he called up a great academic conference at his observatory, where he brought forth his finest booze and his most abundant snacks and all of his beautiful, high-resolution star-charts and most intricate calculations, and such was the camaraderie and recklessness of the evening that just before morning came he found himself a principal coauthor for his latest paper at last.

“Are you sure of this decision?” inquired the coauthor’s best friend. “Not only does he bear a hideous blue eye, I’ve heard that this isn’t his first attempt at a collaborative work… but he still hasn’t published a single paper with a credited coauthor.”
“It’s a really good party though,” pointed out the coauthor. “And it’s absolute MURDER to get any telescope time around here.”

“Fair enough,” replied her friend, and the matter was thought of no more.

Come the morning (well, late afternoon, but these WERE astronomers), Blue Eye met his new partner in the observatory’s kitchenette, wincing, over shared coffee.

“I’m going to go into town and restock the fridge after last night,” declared Blue Eye, and he presented his coauthor with a little torn scrap of paper covered in crude scribbles. “From top to bottom these are the access codes to the telescope, the principal lab, the data banks, my minibar, and the basement. Do what you please with ‘em, but don’t go into the basement.”

“Why?” asked his coauthor.

“I said so,” said Blue Eye, so.

And he left.

As you might expect, the coauthor had a wonderful time exploring Blue Eye’s observatory. The laboratory equipment was shining and new and whole, the data on the computers propelled several of her own theories forward by leaps and bounds, and there was still half a bottle of vodka in the back of the minifridge both she and Blue Eye had missed. And perhaps it was the vodka, and perhaps it was something else, but even as she stood at the eyepiece of the great, beautiful telescope, with all the free time in the world to use it, her thoughts kept sinking from the heavens to the earth and just a little under it, to that small unobtrusive basement door.

“What the hell,” she thought. “I’ll have all the time in the world to use this telescope, but how many chances will I have to look down there?”

And so straight away Blue Eye’s coauthor marched down to the basement and punched in the barely-legible code at the bottom of her paper, and found inside no less than six separate coauthors within about six cubic feet of space, having suffered some amount of cutting and trimming to fit inside.

“Sweet jesus fuckhell,” declared Blue Eye’s coauthor, and the notepaper fell from her fingers in shock and landed in some of the coauthor juices. She snatched it up in a hurry and slammed the door at exactly the same moment Blue Eye did.

“Honey, I’m home!” called Blue Eye. “Hey, can I have my passwords back? I need to dispose of them safely.”
“I already did it,” said Blue Eye’s coauthor.

“Isn’t that them there in your hand?”
“No,” she said, cunningly.

“Gimme.”
She did, after some prying of fingers and whining, and Blue Eye glared at her most fiercely.

“There is blood on here – you’ve been in the basement, haven’t you!” he shouted.

“And YOU’VE chopped up all your past coauthors,” she retorted.
“That is besides the point,” said Blue Eye stiffly. “You have broken your promise, and now I’ll have no choice but to cut you up and fit you in the basement, which believe you me is going to be an absolute NIGHTMARE to make work. God it’s a pain. Now hold still so I can snip your noggin off with my kitchen knife.”

“Oh please, please, please,” wept Blue Eye’s coauthor, “might I at least look through the telescope one last time before I die?”

“Sure why not,” said Blue Eye genially.

So she climbed the little steps upp to the eyepiece, and she squinted very carefully into it, and said “Wow!”
“Pardon?” asked Blue Eye.

“Check it out! A supernova, what are the odds?”
“Let me see!” said Blue Eye, and as he hastily ran up the steps to the telescope his coauthor stuck her foot out and tripped him and he impaled himself on the eyepiece, blue eye-first.

Nobody asked much after Blue Eye, for he’d been an infrequent contributor to the academic community, and those who did never found out what happened to him.

His coauthor, in the meanwhile, had a pretty nice observatory. And once she cleaned out the basement there was plenty of room to fit a second minifridge too.

***

Once upon a time there was a beautiful and kind and lovely student of geology, who had the misfortune of being the junior-most graduate under a tyrannical and selfish professor. Furthermore, the professor’s two other grads were as arrogant and cruel as she was, and they put the junior grad to work cleaning up after their lab work, sifting through their soil samples, and conducting experiments for their benefit long into the night. All her labours went to support the papers of others, and in mockery of the countless hours she spent elbow-deep in their volcanic soils her senior grads named her ‘Cinderella,’ a title which her wicked professor took up with such enthusiasm that soon she was known by none other.

At length, after some years of this slavery, there came a notice in the mail that the university was to hold a great fundraiser. Anyone who was anyone with money and everyone who wanted that money would be there, and the wicked professor and her two senior grads were beside themselves with glee.

“I will bring my most eloquent speeches,” declared the wicked professor. “Cinderella! Write me some good stuff. I want it highbrow, but nothing too fancy for a layman.”
“I shall bring my most beautiful stratigraphic charts,” simpered the seniormost grad. “Cinderella, print them out in colour – and make sure the ink cartridges are fresh!”
“I’m going to bring my geodes,” cheered the second-seniormost grad. “Cinderella, get them all in the van this second – and if you drop one, I expect you to cushion its fall with your body, got it?!”

So Cinderella was kept running back and forth and forth and back and all over again until the evening of the fundraiser arrived and she found herself at the doorstep in stained clothing, watching her wicked professor and her two wicked senior grads getting into their van in their best suits.

“But what about me?” she asked.
“Stay at home and keep an eye on the seismograph,” said the wicked professor offhandedly. “We need to know if there’s any earthquakes.”
“We’re in Florida,” protested Cinderella, but the van had already left and she sat down on the stoop and sobbed.

“Why do you cry so?” inquired a passer-by.

“I want to go to the fundraiser,” cried Cinderella, “but I have no suit, and no car, and I’ve had no time to write any of my thesis!”
“Anything is possible if you believe in the impossible,” soothed the strange woman. “I am your fairy grantwriter, and I shall gift you with what you require to attend the fundraiser. Here are some clothes for you.” And lo, she pulled a fine fitted tuxedo from her purse, which fit Cinderella perfectly. “Now, here is a car.” And lo, she plucked a stretch limo from her wallet and placed it on the road, complete with driver.  “And here is your paper!”
“This is just a bunch of dirty jokes and rambling anecdotes,” said Cinderella, skimming the sheets.

“Exactly,” said the fairy grantwriter. “I don’t want to encourage plagiarism. Now away with you, but be sure to be back before midnight or the magic will be broken.”

“Thank you,” said Cinderella, and set a little alarm on her phone before she departed in a roar of smouldering hydrocarbons.

At the fundraiser the wicked professor was in the midst of her speech when the door opened and an astonishingly smartly-dressed young geologist entered, chomping a cigar in her mouth the size of a baseball bat.  All in attendance were awed and staggered and bemused as the donors flocked to her like flies to a carcass, attracted by her spectacular tux and kept in rapture by her seemingly endless stream of filthy  knock-knock jokes and tales of how to capture scorpions in buckets.  

“Who is this mysterious lady?” whispered the seniormost grad to her comrade.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like her!” fumed the second-seniormost grad. “Look at the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil, and how he hangs onto her every word! My geodes deserve that attention!”

Suddenly the university’s clocktower began to ring midnight and Cinderella jumped a mile, having been so surrounded with chortles and back-slaps that she was unable to hear her phone’s alarm. In haste and alarm she fled the door, leaving behind only her cigar, which the bereft junior chair clutched to his chest in mourning.

“Did anyone get her number?” he implored. “Anyone? A business card?”

When Cinderella woke the next morning her wicked professor and senior grads were in one big shared foul mood. “A fat lot of good your work did for us,” snorted her professor. “Some mysterious geologist kept the donors busy all night, and we didn’t get funding for so much as a dowsing-rod. What a waste of time! But there’s still hope: I hear the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil is going door to door, seeking the lady in question.”

There was a knock at their door and a man opened it.  “Excuse me,” he said, “but I happen to be the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil and I’m going door to door, seeking a lady in question. Whosoever’s breath matches the scent of this cigar” – and here he produced a still-smouldering log of tobacco – “shall be hired by me.”
“GIMME!” squealed the wicked professor.

“HEEEERE!” wailed the wicked senior grads.

But the junior chair stuck a little breathalyzer in their faces and shook his head. “Cigarettes, marijuana, and a lot of cheap gin,” he said.  “Close, but no cigar.”
“May I be tested?” inquired Cinderella.

“I don’t see why not,” said the junior chair, and the moment he placed the breathalyzer in front of her face the fumes almost made him black out before he could check the readings. “It’s you!” he gasped.

“It’s me!” replied Cinderella.
“I would like to employ you as an expert consultant to provide evidence on demand for my corporation to drill in protected wilderness areas, national parks, and animal sanctuaries!” cried the junior chair.

“Oh yes please!” wept Cinderella. “Also, can you hire my two fellow grad students over there? They can make good gophers and land surveyors.”

The wicked professor gnashed her teeth in despair at the loss of so much free labour, but there was nothing to be done, and the wicked senior grads were overjoyed to be forgiven so. And they all lived profitably ever after.

***

New year’s eve came bright and early to the halls of the university, and not a single body remained that wasn’t yet ready to get as drunk as a goddamned skunk. But as the crowd headed to the bar, they were there met by a strange figure: a tenured professor of gigantic stature, garbed all in green and bearing a green pen in one hand and a green sheaf of green paper in the other.

“Hello, feeble lesser beings!” shouted the green professor. “I am here for a  bit of fun before the new year ends: who here wants some free peer review? I offer this thus: you may tear into my proof here as ferociously as you like, in front of all your peers, and in exchange I shall review you in return in one year and a day.

All were silent, but then the youngest adjunct professor – some guy called Dwayne who had yet to publish a single paper of his own, and saw a chance to prove himself the bravest of his fellows – leapt to his feet and took the giant’s pen.

“Strike well then,” said the green professor, proffering his paper, and with great vigor Dwayne did so, hacking through a dozen obsolete sources in a single sharp slice of the instrument. But before his eyes the green professor merely laughed and plucked the stricken manuscript from his chest, showing that despite his critique, the paper remained whole and sound.

“I implore you to meet me in the green room in a year and a day’s time,” chuckled the green professor.  “And please: bring your very best work.  I’d hate to not give you equal effort.” And he left, slamming the door behind him noisily.

There was a solemn moment of silence and then all present descended upon the bar like alcoholic locusts, none moreso than Dwayne.

Just after the following Christmas, Dwayne set on his way to the green room of the university, clutching a scant handful of a first-draft like it were his own child. He opened the door, but found no green professor: merely an avuncular librarian hard at work upon his desk and a shifty-looking TA.

“Ah, waiting for the green professor, eh?” smiled the librarian through a moustache ripped from a healthy walrus. “Well, not here yet, should be here soon. Need anything?”
Dwayne examined his thesis. “Maybe a little,” he admitted.

“Well, make free use of my services!” cried the librarian. “I’ll go find you some sources, on the condition that you tell me if anything happens when I’m out.”

“Fair,” said Dwayne.

“Fair!” said the librarian. And so he left and the shifty TA immediately sidled up to Dwayne and stuck out her hand.

“Name’s Bethany,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. Dwayne shook her hand carefully, as if it might bite. “You want some notes?  I got some notes. You can write ‘em on your leg, they never check the legs.”
“Err… no thanks,” said Dwayne.

The librarian returned with a heaping helping of sources, which Dwayne frantically began incorporating into his central thesis. “Anything happen?” he asked.

Dwayne shook his hand.  “Well then!” he said, pleased as punch, and headed back into the books.

“Psst,” said Bethany. “Ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, ol’ chum.” She slapped Dwayne on the back quickly.  “Ol’ sock ol’ shoe ol’ chip-off-the-ol’-ol’-block.  Y’want next year’s test scores? It’s some good stuff, and you can resell them for a LOT a lot.”

“No thanks,” said Dwayne.

“Your loss.”
The librarian came back with yet more books, all as helpful as the last. “Have I missed something?” he asked Dwayne.

“Nope!” replied Dwayne, slapping him heartily on the back. “All good!”
“Fantastic! Once more, unto the breach!”
“Psst. Dwayne.  Dude.”
Dwayne looked once more at the shifty TA.

“Care to buy –”

“No,” he told her.

“Fiiiiine. Then, wanna at least take a plastic binder? That’s a nice paper there, be a shame if something happened to it. A nice plastic binder ‘ll prevent anyone from proofreading it too nasty, you get what I mean? The old fat-faced fuck has like forty thousand of them, he’ll never miss one.”

Dwayne thought upon his honor, then thought upon the green professor and his pen.

“Okay. Thanks.”
“Great. Mum’s the word to the walrus.”

“Hello!” said the walrus. “Anything happen?”
“Nope,” said Dwayne and Bethany.

“Great I trust you implicitly and completely.” And a bell rang from afar, and the door at the far end of the green room cracked open. “Go on in!”
Inside was a smaller room, damp and cramped and cramped further by a giant wooden writing desk. And behind it, looming over desk, room, and Dwayne, was the green professor, pen in hand.

“Well, let’s have at it!” he said happily, and even with the protective force of the nice plastic binder Dwayne felt his hands shake as he laid down his paper upon that dreadful ink-stained desk.

The green professor flipped through his work with one thumb, eyes racing, then stopped.

“AHA!” he yelled, and as that dreadful pen flashed down Dwayne twitched and jumped so badly that he fell out of his chair.

“Wuss!” hollered the green professor.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, my bad,” muttered Dwayne, hauling himself upright.

“As it was. Now here we go again. Dum de dum de dum de dum de. Dum. De. Dum. De…. DUM,” and down came the pen again like a striking falcon, only to pause an inch from the paragraph.

“Just wanted to see if you’d fall over again,” said the green professor cheerfully.  

“Fuck off,” said Dwayne.

“There’s a good academic! Well said.  Now, now, now…hmmm.  Hmm. Hm. Ah. AHA!” shouted the green professor, and down came the pen, striking a gentle, single underline where an errant hand had incorrectly turned ‘because’ into ‘becauses.’

“Boop,” said the green professor. “That was for chickening out and getting the binder.”
Dwayne stared at him. “This was a test, wasn’t it,” he said.

“Yep! I was the librarian, too.”

“And what,” asked Dwayne, “was the point of all this?”
“Wanted to see if anyone on the current faculty had any balls or not. Turns out it’s just you, even if you’re only mostly honest! Good job!”
“But I’m only an adjunct,” said Dwayne.

“Well, that’s life,” said the green professor. “See you later.” And he showed Dwayne the door.

Dwayne returned to be hailed as a hero, was absolved of his binder, and had it nailed above his cubicle as a warning to anyone who shied from peer review until he was let go due to budget cuts two years later.