jamieproctor.ca

“I’ve got a story.”
“Oh? What kind of story?”
“A big one.”
“Oh yeah?”
“As big as the world.”
“I bet I heard it before. I’ve heard every story about the world and all its bits. Tell me, is this the one about the flood?”
“Nah.”
“Is it the one about the giant?”
“Nah.”
“Is this the one about the old man with the whole world in a sack?”
“Nah.”
“Don’t you tell me this is the one about that one god all by himself that decided to make the universe by ja-”
“Nah, nah. It’s none of those stories. This isn’t a creation story. This is a uhh….unmaking story.”
“Y’mean like an apocalypse?”
“No, not quite. See, it goes like this…”
Now, in the beginning, something happened. Doesn’t much matter what. Could’ve been a flood, could’ve been blood, could’ve been an old man with a sack –
“Could’ve been a lonely god with nothing better to do jac-”
Yeah, sure, whatever. Doesn’t matter, that’s the important bit. Doesn’t matter. Okay?
“Okay.”
And now by and large, the world was as it was. Stuff happened on it. Y’know. Births, days, ragnaroks, punch-ups, dust-offs, extinctions and exaptions and all that does as it do.
“As we do.”
And after a while of this, along came the only smart one. She popped up the way most of us did.
“How’s that?”
Dumb luck. And as she looked at everything around her, she went ‘wow. WOW. This whole PLACE is nothing but dumb luck. It’s a mess, a tangled web a drunken spider would be embarrassed of. Who in their right mind would do all this crap?’
“Was it the one bored god with a free hand and a har-”
Doesn’t matter. And the only smart one looked at all this crap, and she wasn’t happy with all this crap, and she said ‘I think I’d better tidy up all this crap.’
So she started on it.
She wrapped up species and put them in tidy shale boxes. She shelved reefs and packed up forests. She re-filed continents back in their original places. She mopped up all the god snot, blood and spit that was lying around.
But you know what it is about cleaning? The damn place just gets dirtier after you’ve tidied.
She finished putting away all the shells, out came new shells.
She glued a supercontinent back together, it fragmented all over again.
She plunked a meteor down to keep life distracted, it just oozed all over the place like month-old mayonnaise.
So the only smart one was getting pretty beside herself. The world was a mess, and worse yet, it was self-perpetuating.
“Sounds like my laundry.”
Even worse.
Okay, so the only smart one was having a bit of a moment here. Things got so bad she had to sit down and swear for a while. But she was smart – the only one who was, like I say – and she thought as she swore, which I know for a fact you’ve never done properly. And as she was thinking and swearing a little furry moron took a piss on her leg.
She snatched up that little furry moron and said ‘you little furry moron, don’t you know I’m the only smart one? Why aren’t you helping me out here?’
And the little furry moron hissed at her and bit her, and she was so surprised that she dropped it and it broke its neck.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s amazing. That little furry moron was so stupid, so dense, so unbelievably dumb, that it got me to kill it for no good reason. That’s impressive. I know I’m the only smart one, but that’s dumb even for…anything. Wow.’
Then she thought a bit and went ‘hey.’
So the only smart one followed around the little furry morons for a while, making sure they had plenty to eat. Plenty of places to hide. Room to stretch and grow and bulge and leap and totter and tumble and eventually, walk around upright. They were amazing creatures by then. They had the biggest brains on all the planet and that made them the dumbest animals to ever live.
And the only smart one sat back for a rest and said ‘aw hell, they’ll take it from here.’ And she picked up the stray threads of the planet and started teasing them back together, spooling them up. Nice and tidy.
That’s it.
“The end?”
“No. Weren’t you paying attention? It isn’t the end yet. She’s still got a lot of world to spool in. But we do our part to straighten it out, and it won’t take so long.”
“So…those burgers we just ate…”
“Yeah, that helped a little.”
“Kind of you to give an old lady a hand like that.”
“Well, I do my part. Someone’s gotta fix this mess we’re all in. Now you drive me home; I can’t stand up straight anymore and if I go tonight then who’s going to work overtime at the refinery tomorrow?”