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Once upon a time, in the old old old fashioned days, when most animals were sort of large blobs, there lived one animal that was a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot.

But they weren’t happy.

“I’m not happy,” they said. “I am a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot, but I’m not happy. I wish I were more distinctive than being a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot, because since most animals are sort of large blobs and being a very large blob and pretty wrinkly to boot makes me very similar to them, as they are sort of large blobs.”

So the animal roamed up the land and down the land and up the land and down the land and then it got dark and they walked into a tree and the tree broke and stuck in their nose and that’s where rhinoceroses come from.

***

“That was pretty bad.”
“What?! Was not!”
“No, she’s right. That was pretty bad. You spent most of the effort on reiterating basic established facts until our eyes crossed, and the denouement was a complete anticlimax.”
“And you didn’t use the rule of three.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t use the rule of three.”
“Well, I’d like to see YOU guys do any better!”
“Nah, nah, we believe in you. Keep trying, you’ll get better.”

“Yeah sure what he said. G’wan.”
“If you promise to be fair. And I’m going to use the rule of three this time, so you’ll have to not be unfair about that either.”
“Fair as a fine fresh breeze.”
“As fair as a carnival ground.”
“Fine. Fine. Fine.”

***

Back when everything made sense and kids did too, there was a creature that lived in the bottom of the bog. He stayed down there for the night and for the day, for the summer sun and the winter frost, for the good times and the bad times. Nobody saw him, but everyone that passed by heard him mutter and mumble from deep down inside.

“You should come out sometimes,” said a passing chickadee. “Make some friends.”
“I am happy in my bog,” said the creature, in his deep solemn bog voice. “It is warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s warm. It hides me and protects me, feeds me and waters me. Why would I ever leave?”
“Make some friends,” said the chickadee.

“Well I don’t know about that,” said the bog creature. And the chickadee flew away.

“You should come out sometimes,” said a roaming muskrat. “And see some sights.”
“I am happy in my bog,” explained the creature with tepid boglike patience. “It is what I see and what I want, what I know and what I expect, what I wish and what I receive. Why should I stop looking at it?”

“You might like it up here,” said the muskrat.

“I’m not quite sure,” said the bog creature. And with no response to that, the muskrat departed – in some haste, for a fisher had come prowling by the shore.

“Hello, bog person,” said the fisher in a very polite and dapper little murderer’s voice. “Why not come up here and try to eat someone new?”

“I enjoy consuming bog matter,” said the bog creature. “It is all I have ever eaten, and I am not tired of it.”
“Maybe you’d enjoy blood and liver, if you tried it,” said the fisher.

“Taking the chance sounds risky,” said the bog creature. And the fisher bared her teeth at that politely and departed.

At last up to the pond stomped a big fat bear, already heavy with fat at only halfway through summer and riddled with laziness. “Hoi, bog fellow,” he belched sleepily into the water as he drank. “Still down there?”
“Yes,” said the bog creature.

“That’s fine,” said the bear. “I spent half the year wandering and doing things, and half the year doing nothing. And believe you me, the first half makes the second half feel like a dream picnic. G’bye.”

And the bear stomped off.

The bog creature fermented in the day’s juices, steeped in the thoughts of the conversations he’d had, burbled and bubbled with concept and conceit and nerves and nervousness. And then at last he rose from the bog, hoof by hoof, limb by limb, joint by joint, unfolding himself under the calm blue afternoon sky taller than the bear, taller than some trees, all muddy fur and flaring nostril and startlement, and he stood trembling in horror or delight. Then he bucked up just a little higher, to see if anyone was watching, and whacked his head into a nearby tree whose branches got stuck in his skull.
“OW!” he yelped.

And so he dove back into the bog, but his new crown was much too wide and broad and awkward to let him fit comfortably back into the bog. He left it the next day in exhaustion after a poor night’s sleep and a neck-crick that wouldn’t quit, and although he visited the bog for food and for comfort everafter, he found himself stuck outside of it by and large from then on. That’s a moose. That’s what it was. It was a moose.

***

“You can’t just repeat your story’s point over and over in case the audience didn’t get it!”
“Yes I can! I want to make sure they get it!”
“You can’t or it sucks!”
“It doesn’t suck!”
“No, she’s right. It sucks. You belabored the conclusion; you created an animal by having a tree get rammed into its skull for the second time running-”
“People run into trees all the time, it’s very plausible and realistic!”
“-and you spent the whole story building up to explaining how people get stuck in a rut for fear of change and how sometimes it takes more than just arguing to get them out, but then you back out at the last second and go ‘well trying something sucked completely and they wished they’d never tried changing but they were stuck forever never mind.’”

“And you didn’t use the rule of three again.”
“Right. And you didn’t use the rule of three again.”
“I did so! I made the story beat four times!”
“That’s not three.”
“Yes it is! It’s three and one more!”
“The rule of three implies three, not four, or three and one more.”
“But four has three in it!”
“If you divide it enough ways four has EVERYTHING in it, quit dragging your heels. God you’re obnoxious.”
“Stop being mean!”
“Stop being a brat!”
“It’s alright, everyone calm down, calm down.”
“You always take her side!”
“No, EVERYONE calm down, okay? Okay. Okay. Right. Want to give it another try?”

“Fine. But you have to promise to be fair, okay? Both of you. And REALLY fair, not fake fair. This was NOT fair criticism.”
“I promise that I will be as fair and unbiased and true as any one person can be.”
“I promise I’ll only say it sucks if it sucks.”
“No, be fair!”
“Doesn’t get fairer than that.”
“You-”

“Go on, then. We’re listening.”
“Fine. But you’d BETTER be fair. And I’m using the rule of three this time for real, you’ll see.”

***

A while ago – but not too long – there was only one tree. Everything that needed shade to survive, everything that needed greens to eat, everything that ate fruit or nuts or made nests from twigs or built homes from sticks or buried itself under fallen leaves and needles depended on, and lived around, that one tree.

But it was very old, and very tired. So one day it shook itself for attention, and it told the animals and plants that lived around it “the one who takes this branch from my head-”

***

“Agaub?!?”
“FUCK YOU IT’S NOT THE SAME FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. She didn’t mean anything by it. Go on.”
“She meant it! SHE MEANT IT!”
“No she didn’t. Right?”
“Mrrnnmmph!”
“See? Right. Now go on.”

***

“-the one who takes this branch from my head to those hills and plants it in the naked soil there will have fruit for the rest of their days.”
So a bird grasped the branch – which was very thin and high and tricky to get to – and flapped and leapt and shot and skittered across the long, shadeless, treeless miles to the far hills. And when the hills were all around and the bird could go no further, the branch was placed in the soil and sprouted and grew and grew and grew into groves of every fruit-bearing tree you could imagine.

Back at the one tree the animals saw the hills turn green, and then the tree shook itself again and spoke.

“Whoever takes this branch from my back to those valleys and plants it in the cold earth there will have nuts for the rest of their days,” said the one tree.

This time there were many volunteers. A squirrel ran for miles, wide-eyed with fear alone on the open ground, but oh the oaks and walnuts and almonds blossomed at the end of that terrible journey.

“This branch from my side will bring sweet sap,” said the one tree, and the beaver swam the wide and blisteringly-sunburnt rivers alone before waddling ashore and placing the prize.

“This branch, mild bark,” said the one tree, and porcupines waddled for days under cloudless skies, undaunted.

“This branch, relief from pain.”
“This branch, gentle shade.”
“This branch, useful twigs.”
“This branch, shelter from fire.”
“This branch, hollows for nests.”
“This branch, warmth in deep winter.”
And so on and on and on and on went the branches and the animals, and the world turned green and the ground was spared from the sun and the one tree was lost all alone, for it was all but bereft of its mass from its many gifts and it was surrounded by forests.

“Can I help?” asked the one remaining animal, the antelope.

“Maybe,” said the one tree. “But it’s a bit tricky to get at, and I can’t promise much in return because I’m just about out of gifts. Take the branch from my hand if you can, if you wish.”
“What, NOTHING?” asked the antelope in disbelief. “Not even some tender tasty buds or green shoots?”
“I’m fresh out,” said the one tree, who was now just an individual tree rather than the only tree.

“Well then never mind,” said the antelope, who gave the one tree a kick for its irritation. And at that the branch slipped from the tree’s frail hand and smacked straight into the antelope’s skull, thereby creating the pronghorn antelope.”

***

“You did it again.”
“Shut up. How was it.”
“Well, you did it again. That wasn’t great.”
“Shut up. How was it.”
“I also think maybe you shouldn’t have-”

“HOW WAS IT?”
“You didn’t use the rule of three – you had one-and-a-half pattern-setting incidents and one pattern-breaker interspersed with a bunch of papered-over pattern-setters.”
“And you did it again.”
“And you did it again, yes.”
“You know. The thing with the branches and the skulls. It’s pretty fucked up.”
“Maybe a little.”

 The storyteller kicked the campfire over before they left. It was pretty smoky.

“Good riddance,” said the one critic some five minutes of quick work with dirt and water later. “And thanks for the backup, by the by.”
“It’s in all our best interests that we run him out of this hobby, the sooner the better,” said her colleague. “The platypus was my friend, you know. Before he started talking about them.”
“Half my relatives are elephants, the other half are walruses,” said his friend bitterly. “At least we kept the damage minimal this time. I don’t care what stories you’re telling on your own, but nobody deserves to have branches cosmologically inserted into their skulls without their consent. Hey, did you bring any marshmallows?”
“A few.”
“Then let’s unfuck this fire. I think we still have some coals.”

And so, under the night sky and free from any explanations whatsoever as to their respective anatomy, the two nameless non-tellers of stories celebrated the quiet death of the imposition of meaning upon one’s existence.

For at least that one night.

Welcome, welcome, nice to see you all, children are our future and so on and so on and on! Hah hah hah, you know, you’re nearly as big as some of the line workers! Don’t tell Eddie I said that, he’s touchy about his height.

Welcome! To the Isomorphics Industries primary human factory! You’ve all had a chance to get your water bottle, you’re all now getting your last chance to get your water bottle, and soon we’ll be going inside, where I hope you’ll have brought your water bottle because we’re going on a bit of a stroll and being thirsty sucks.

Questions? No? Yes? Maybe? You!

Why yes, this is the original human factory. Sort of! Ship of Theseus and all that, right? The old buildings have been renovated right down to the foundations something like four times – the last was just a little while ago – and thank goodness for that because man, this was NOT a big operation when it started. Back in the day it was just some crazy kids who left the australopithecine shops behind with big dreams and stupid ideas and no way to tell one from the other! Back in the day we could barely keep a population stable through a minor ice age! Back in the day… ah, but we’re not here just to talk about that. We’re here to talk about the now, the new stuff!

So let’s get into it!

***

This is the main factory floor. It’s a little overwhelming on first glance, but remember, everything here has been refined systemically over the entire lifetime of Isomorphics Industries. There’s no casual whim to the layout, and a lot of hidden meaning! See, if you look down there – just down there, right, no no, to the left, I meant ‘correct’ when I said ‘right’ – you can see the culture vats.

That’s the most important part. And if you’re familiar with other organism production models, you might be raising your eyebrows – and rightly so! What about the genetics? What about the cells? What about the biology? And yeah sure, that’s important, without it you don’t have any humans. But without culture you don’t have any humans either, you just have some really sad and useless apes with really sad and useless hair.

So yeah, that’s why you can see an entire full-steam full-scale biological matter facility all the way over THERE….but the central factory floor is culture vats. We cook up human bodies the same way we did all the way back then, from toenail to brainstem, but the culture is where the real magic happens. It burbles and boils and bubbles over itself and under itself and through itself and by the time it’s done it isn’t.

That’s why we’ve got a few zillion varieties and all of them are works in progress. You can never tell when you’ll be just standing there checking a perfectly tepid pool of mainstream so-and-so and then it belches out a little offshoot and instead of falling back into the blend like the last sixteen thousand did it heaves itself out of the pod and starts trying to run away. And as you can see by the scoops and nets, we believe in preparing for being unprepared.

Also note the protective suits. Cultures are fascinating things, but sudden immersion without adequate preparation and study can be something of a shock. That’s why all the hair on my right arm is prematurely grey.

Is everyone still good? Need more water? I mean it’s too late for that, , but do you need more anyways? No? Maybe? Yes?
Good! On we march!

***

This is the baking area. After you’ve gotten some good generic human biology and steeped it in whatever culture you’ve got to hand, you don’t want it coming out half-baked. You want to make sure it soaks down there and spreads evenly, without crusting or puddling or forming reactionary clots – that sort of thing can shut down the whole system. Ideally you want a smooth, flowing texture that is firm while retaining malleability. The elasticity WILL fade over time, but a proper mix is the difference between losing it when the human’s forty and losing it when the human’s fourteen. Nobody likes a forty-year-old teenager.

You like the lights? So do they. Baby humans love to look and reach at things, so we give them some stars to reach for. It seems small and silly, but when we removed it we got all kinds of weird outcomes and it made things a bit worse so we brought it back. That’s the difference between a mature, sophisticated industry like human production and more fringe stuff: we’ve had time to try all the crazy stuff and find out what was and wasn’t crazy and which crazy was good crazy or bad crazy. You don’t have to have crazy for it to work, but it helps.

Do you need water? You can’t have water in the baking area. It’s okay.

Look at this little fella, bubbling away. You can see he’s just about ready to go; his eyes are following trains of thought around the room and he’s got robust enough knees and elbows to crawl around and explore implications. Soon he’ll be replicating his own memes! Adorable, just adorable when they’re this size. Don’t put your fingers too close; they bite.

***

This is shipping. Not shipping and receiving, just shipping. Like most earth industries we’re working with old material here; it’s not quite a closed system but we don’t import much that isn’t sunlight and that more or less runs itself.

I see a raised hand. You’re about to ask a question about solar senescence, aren’t you? You think that’s clever, don’t you? Well, we know about it, and look, it’s not as big a deal as you think it is. You know how long it took the bottom to fall out of the nonavian dinosaur industry? Two hundred million years. You know how long we’ve been working on humans here? Couple million or so, I forget. Point is, we’re not going to go worrying about far-fetched sun-swallows-the-planets doomsdays when those doomsdays are a couple dinosaur-spans away from us, okay? Okay? Stop looking at me like that!

Sheesh.

Anyways we load ‘em up and take them down to their habitats from here. As you can see we’ve gotten pretty good at space conservation. It’s all down to the elbows; nobody really thinks about the elbows. You gotta make the elbows fit and then everything else follows.

Don’t bring water in here. Human reproduction already involves a lot of water and mess at the far end; we don’t need to add to it. Please. You can’t have more water.

What d’you mean ‘they all look the same’ first of all wow that’s pretty bigoted and second look, I TOLD you we were using culture as a driver here. The basic biology is a bit inbred; I think the farthest related any of these guys can be from each other is something like eighteenth-cousin-removed. We had a small operation at the start, I told you that too! Quit being so picky! Are you plants? If you are, that’s illegal – you can’t work as a secret shopper when you’re underage and this isn’t even shopping this is a school tour group!

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

Okay I’m feeling better. Sorry about that. I could use a drink. Not water. You can’t have any water.

One last thing

***

Gift shop time!

Here, you can have a mug! You can have a bottle! You can even fill them with complimentary water, you can have water again, isn’t that nice? And all products in this gift shop are made with recycled atmospheric human carbon, so in a way you’re helping maintain a viable biosphere for them – not that they need it right it’s just a rough patch, little bumps and jolts that mean a system’s healthy and working fine hah hah hah. No you can’t put your hands up, too late, should’ve done that during the tour! No more questions! It’s all fine!

Thank you for visiting the Isomorphics Industries primary human factory! If any of you are reporters I hope that some of you are cops because that would have been illegal trespassing and we’ve got lawyers! There are no problems here, and we are responsible, serious, careful stewards of a single small segment of the biomass on a living planet whose parts all work in harmony by far-sighted industry regulation  and careful regulation, AS WE HAVE REPEATEDLY TOLD YOU ALL.

Now get out of here. And don’t you take that water with you without paying!

No, we aren’t going fishing.

Yes.  Yes, it’s a beautiful day.  I can see that.  Yes.

But no.  We aren’t going fishing.

Fine.  Sit down; this won’t take a second.  Want a puff?  No?  Good, this is the expensive shit.  Now listen carefully, because I’m not telling you this twice.

***

Fifteen years ago, there was a beautiful day.  Big, blue sky.  Soft, warm breeze.  Friendly currents, singing birds, nice soft morning light.

Yes, it looked a lot like it does now.  Congratulations, you’ve found my point.  Now shut up. 

And on this beautiful day three fishers set their sails and went out, onto the big banks.  And they were in good spirits, because it was such a beautiful day and they were young and all their skeletons still worked properly, and so they boasted and bragged and they made a bet.  Whoever caught the finest catch that day would receive the aid of the other two in wooing Botty Trugrard.

One to write the poetry and the other to pick flowers. 

None of your damned business, that’s how we court around here.  Who asked you?  LISTEN.

So they all spread out a bit on the banks, so’s nobody could claim the other was stealing their catch, or using their good spot, or whatever and what not.  Just on the edge of the horizon – which was a nice big horizon, it being a beautiful clear day.  Where they could keep an eye out in case of trouble, or sneaking off to spike your catch with a friend’s haul, or somesuch like that. 

In theory.  In practice once the nets started weighing and the lines started pulling and the sweat flowed as free as the cusswords there was no time to be spared or mind to be paid to the others, not more than there would be to the flight of passing birds.

Then at day’s end, when the sun dipped down, one of the fishers looked up and the other two boats weren’t there no more. 

Credit where credit’s due, she did the right thing.  Blamed herself, sailed over, searched and hunted and combed for a scrap of flotsam or jetsam or anything, went home, told everyone, and the whole town turned out and looked all the night.

It was a beautiful night too.  Calm waves, smooth soft moonlight.  But they didn’t find a thing.  Not one, solitary thing. 

***

So the fisher who’d done the right thing was sad, and was cheered up, and one of the people cheering her up was Botty Trugrard so they got married after that and had three kids and everything was just peachy until thirteen years later, when the sun climbed over the horizon nice and smoothly and shone on the most beautiful day those three kids had ever seen, and the second-most-so their mothers had noticed. 

It also shone on the second fisher, who was bobbing in the surf just off the dock.

It took six days of feeding on bread and fish and water before that second fisher’s eyelids cracked open.  Six months before her mouth worked.  And a year after that before the whole story came out. 

***

It had been a beautiful day, and the second fisher had felt good about her chances.  She’d found this spot the week before, she’d come up with the bet around then, she’d dropped it into conversation that morning. 

Never start a bet that isn’t a sure thing, that’s what she said. 

So she was whistling a lot, and because she was whistling a lot she didn’t hear the sound until it was too late, which was just as well really because there wasn’t one thing she could’ve done about it when the line came down from the sun. 

It flickered, the light splashed, and she was being hauled up, into the light, faster than thinking, surer than breathing, water dripping down past the clouds off the hull of her boat as she was whisked up into the air and the hands of the sun closed around her boat, too bright to look at and impossibly huge. 

The sun pulled her off the line and threw her into the bottom of its boat, which was the sky.  From up here the clouds were still soft and fluffy, but they were also iron-hard and held the second fisher’s boat as surely as iron. 

The sun turned away, then whisked up its net and with a slosh the third fisher’s boat fell into its burning palms.  It weighed it carefully, shook its head, and then snapped the boat in half with a quick jerk. 

This was when the second fisherman slid out of her boat and began to run, and it was just in time too because not five big gulping breaths later the sun reached down and snapped her boat in half like the third fisher’s. 

She counted them, from the shadow of the bilge.  Very carefully.  Five breaths exactly. 

Time became hard after that.  The hours were too bright, the minutes too harsh.  There was a day and it was One Day and it hung overhead like a hammer as the second fisher slipped, inch by inch, footstep by footstep, cower by cower, towards the gunwales. 

At last it was one jump.  Just one jump, but it was a little too fast, and the sun’s hand almost quick enough.  The burn sank deep into the bone, and then the fall came, and the gentle wash of waves at the edge of the docks.

***

And that’s why we don’t go fishing on beautiful days.  Because I told them all about it.  Now be a dear and fuck off; it’s too nice out to put up with you. 

Timothy couldn’t move.

The bear was looking right at him and he couldn’t move.  Its eyes were dead red; its body was iron hard; its mind was cold and flat and simple and set straight upon him.  Its mouth was just a little open, just a hint of tooth showing, and it made a noise he couldn’t understand that he felt climb up and down his backbone until it shook the building down around him and washed away the world in screaming light.

Then he woke up in his bed, in his dormitory, in Mister Clarke’s Orphanage, too terrified to even scream.  And he still couldn’t move.

It gave him time to think, and what he thought was that he finally knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. 

***

Timothy had only been an indifferent student before that night, and the transformation was sudden enough that even the tired and apathetic creatures that taught at Clarke’s couldn’t help but notice.  He read ahead of the class, and when that didn’t suffice he stole books, and when those too were exhausted he spent his tiny stipend of an allowance on building a small personal library, which he kept hidden in a broken heating duct.

Machinery was his chief preoccupation, although he also showed interest in anatomical studies that bordered on disturbing. 

***

Timothy was adopted at age nine, by the Duke of Bedlam – a surprising turn of events, but the old man admired his studiousness and needed a heir who was both politically unconnected and probably the bastard of someone passingly important, as was the manner at Clarke’s.  The two of them got along like a house that wasn’t on fire, and that polite dispassion suited both of their interests admirably. 

Then Timothy turned eighteen, the Duke passed away from an unknown and brief illness, and he had no choice but to shoulder the heavy and unwanted burden of his inheritance. 

Any suspicious questions Society may have had were deterred somewhat by the young man’s obvious disinterest in his new wealth.  All he did was hole up in his studio, leaving the Bedlam estate to rest idle under the hands of clerks and attorneys while he purchased alloys, chemicals, and carcasses from the national zoological gardens. 

***

When Timothy was thirty one of the servants escaped and made it to one of the few constables he hadn’t bribed, and things became awkward.  Questions were raised, but the men who were en route to ask them were stymied by the Bedlam mansion being razed to the ground in a tragic and totally inexplicable fire. 

He went abroad, to study new animals, and sketch them, and take them apart and put them back together all steel and still.  Some of the animals were two-legged, but he was more careful now, and tried to use bodies whose occupants were done with them already. 

***

Timothy returned home at age fifty-three, with new wealth and a new name, as a respected surgeon and anatomist.  The papers he’d published abroad furnished him with established respectability beyond reproof, and the money he’d made gave him a modest apartment, and the time he had he put to work with feverish pace and utmost subtlety. 

Only one of his experiments escaped, and nobody connected it to him after it was brought down, at the cost of sixteen lives and half of the harbour.  It had been a disappointment, but nothing he couldn’t learn from. 

***

When Timothy was seventy, it woke.

It was an accident.  He only meant to rouse its limbs, to stir its guts. 

But the fire he’d put in it was steady and furious and it moved like a snake from toe to eye to mind and before he knew what was happening its mind was open and blossoming and it was looking right at him and he couldn’t move. 

Its eyes were dead red and furiously alive; its mind was flat and spiralling open and he couldn’t move. 

Its mouth opened just a little, just a hint of tooth showing, and it made a noise like “mrurff?”

Then it licked him like a nine-hundred-pound  pupyp and he burst into the world’s most frustrated tears. 

***

No matter how hard he tried it wouldn’t leave, and eventually he stopped trying to kick it out.  At least he never wanted for fish from the harbour, and it kept the rats away. 

But oh, but oh, but the damned cost of the honey he went through!