Once upon a time, there was a small chick who had been named Chicken Little by very unimaginative (though kind) parents. And one day as that chick scratched in the dirt, pecking for seed, she felt a tremendous thump on her skull.
“OW DAMNIT SHIT” said Chicken Little. She looked up, up, up and saw that she’d been pecking under an oak tree.
“Ah!” said Chicken Little. “Must’ve been an acorn.”
Then she looked back down and on the ground before her little feet was a frozen, gnarled chunk of what looked for all the world like solidified water vapour.
“Well,” said Chicken Little, “that’s one hypothesis shot down.”
Chicken Little had been told by her parents to come to them if she ever encountered a problem.
So she did, with her little frozen bit of… stuff.
“And where did this happen, dear?” asked her mother.
“By the ol’ oak tree,” said Chicken Little.
“Seems pretty straightforward to me,” said her father. “Acorn whacked you on the noggin.”
“It’s out of season for acorns, and what was this doing on the ground next to me then?” asked Chicken Little.
“Out of season happens. What else do you think it could be? And this thing is probably just an icicle that someone’s kids kept in a freezer for a midsummer snack. You worry too much, Chicken Little. Go back outside and goof around.”
Which Chicken Little did do, because she listened to her parents. But she kept an eye on the sky. That bump had really hurt.
Time moved on and Chicken Little was forced to move with it. She grew up and got bigger, yet somehow remained small – and therefore, Chicken Little. The burden was shouldered with as much stoicism as she could muster. In the meantime she spent her days wandering around the farm pecking seeds with her coworkers.
“OW DAMNIT SHIT” screamed out Henny Penny.
“What’s wrong what’s wrong?” asked Chicken Little.
“This thing bounced off my head!”
And lo and behold, there in Henny Penny’s palm lay another chunk of cold, frozen vapour.
“That’s not an acorn,” said Chicken Little.
“No shit Sherlock,” said Henny Penny. “Who told you?”
“My parents,” muttered Chicken Little. “Listen, I’ve seen this happen before. Why don’t we get it to a meteorologist? They know about things that drop out of the sky.”
“You do it,” said Henny Penny. “I’m finding a damned aspirin.”
So Chicken Little took the chunk of stuff to the local meteorologist, Ducky Lucky, and was told that they were a bit busy but in a few years they’d get around to publishing a study.
“Alright,” said Chicken Little. “I can wait.”
Chicken Little didn’t mean to be a liar; her parents had raised her to believe that just wasn’t nice. But when two more bits of…whatever it was almost hit her…
…and three more bounced off the coop while she was sleeping….
…and a really nasty sharp one almost brained poor Cocky Locky…
Well.
What could she do but bring them all in?
“You’re filling up my fridge,” complained Ducky Lucky.
“Sorry,” said Chicken Little. “But this is starting to look a little concerning.”
“Right, right,” said Ducky Lucky. “Point made. I’m working on it.”
“Right, right,” said Chicken Little.
“Right, right,” said Ducky Lucky.
“Right,” said Chicken Little.
And a chunk of the stuff bounced off Ducky Lucky’s head.
It looked different these days. Bits of weird…blue were tangled up in it, like flies in spiderwebs.
They were getting more common every week. People didn’t even save them anymore, and nobody went outdoors without umbrellas. Turkey Lurkey had found a good thick hard hat, making him much the envy of the farm.
Chicken Little’s phone rang as she was home, shaking splinters off her umbrella.
“Hello?”
“It’s Ducky Lucky. Listen, I don’t want to alarm you, but this looks like a solid chunk of cumulus, mixed with big honkin’ lumps of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen and also odd swathes consisting of nothing but robins-egg-blue.”
“Say again?”
“Bits of the sky are falling off. Within the next little while the whole thing’ll be gone”
“Uh. Should we do something about it?”
“Seems likely. We could go tell the king.”
“What’s the king going to do about this?”
“Maybe turn off the giant laser he’s been pointing at the sky for the past decade?”
“Oh. Yes.”
So Chicken Little and Ducky Lucky went door to door throughout the farm with Ducky Lucky’s completed research paper, asking for support and maybe some signatures on a petition or something or anything at all, really.
“This isn’t so bad,” said Turkey Lurkey.
“Oh, leave off,” said Henny Penny. “The king believes in his giant sky laser and I trust him. Anyways my sister works at the giant sky laser.”
“Maybe a big chunk of falling sky hit me on the head,” said Cocky Locky, “but then again, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just an acorn after all. I want to hear both sides out.”
“Never heard of it,” said Goosey Loosey, “sounds nuts.”
“I’m far too busy providing for my family to care about this even a little,” said Drakey Lakey.
“You’re very enthusiastic, dear,” said Chicken Little’s parents, “but maybe you should just stop worrying about this.”
“Hell with it,” said Ducky Lucky. “I’m going home. I’ll get more data and then we’ll prove this.”
“I’m going to go see the king directly,” said Chicken Little. “Petition or no. Lend me a copy of your papers.”
“Your funeral,” said Ducky Lucky. “And mind your head. It’s really coming down out there.”
It very nearly was Chicken Little’s funeral after all – Ducky Lucky had not exaggerated. The sky was coming down in sheets, and by the time Chicken Little knocked at the door to the king’s palace her umbrella had more holes in it than a pub dartboard.
“Heya,” said Gander Lander. “What do you want?”
“An audience with the king,” said Chicken Little.
“Sure, why not,” said Gander Lander. “Nothing going on right now anyways with all this lousy weather.”
“It’s sort of about that,” said Chicken Little. “The sky seems to be falling.”
Gander Lander rolled his eyes. “Right. Great. Go on in.”
So Chicken Little came into the castle of the king and was escorted to the throneroom and bowed before the chair which the king was dozing on, half asleep, with one hand gripping tightly to the controls of his giant sky laser. The furry scarf around his neck fluttered with his wheezing breath.
“Hello,” said Chicken Little. “I’m here about the sky.”
“The sky is fine.”
“I’m sorry?”
A small little sleek furry head popped up besides the king’s, and Chicken Little saw that his fur scarf wasn’t a scarf after all.
“The sky is fine,” said Foxy Loxy. “There’s no proof at all that anything is wrong with the sky.”
“Bits of it are falling off,” said Chicken Little.
“Nonsense.”
“Here’s one.”
“That’s not real.”
“Yes it is.”
“Is not. Look, we’re at an impasse here, so I say we compromise and say it MIGHT be.”
“It is, and I’ve got forty more and a compiled research study back home.”
Foxy Loxy sighed. “Okay, fine. Maybe the sky’s falling a little. That’s normal. To all things a season, and the sky must occasionally flake bits of itself off. You didn’t think that was the same sky out there all the time, did you? You didn’t think that one sky could last all the way from the beginning of the earth to the dinosaurs to you without a little wear and tear and polish and refurbish, did you? How naïve! Clearly you don’t understand the way the world works.”
“This isn’t normal,” said Chicken Little. “Within the next little while the whole thing’ll be gone.”
“It’s normal.”
“It’s not normal.”
“It’s NATURAL.”
“It’s because of the giant sky laser.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The giant sky laser the king installed, which his hand is currently resting on, which is, at this very moment, actively carving out bits of the sky.”
“Oh, that giant sky laser. I don’t think so.”
“I think so, because this chart shows that we went from no sky falling four years ago to nothing but sky falling right now, and you installed the giant sky laser four and a half years ago.”
“Correlation is not causation,” said Foxy Loxy.
“Yeah, but if you watch the laser you can see chunks of sky fall out at its focal point.”
“Look, what do you want from me?” asked Foxy Loxy in a very cross voice. “Okay fine, it looks like the sky MIGHT be falling; and yes it seems like this MAY have been caused by the king’s sky laser whichIsoldhim, BUT it’s way too late to do anything about it. The sky’s already falling. We might as well just roll with it and reap the benefits of this majestic giant sky laser.”
“There won’t be any sky left by next March,” said Chicken Little.
Foxy Loxy shook his head slowly. “You know,” he said, “I really tried. I really did. But you’re just completely unreasonable, uncivil, and unwilling to compromise. Gander Lander!”
“Yessir?”
“Please politely show her out and totally ignore her.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
As Chicken Little left, the king’s eyes fluttered open. “She gone?” he whispered.
“Yes,” said Foxy Loxy.
“Good. God that was boring. Now, what was this you were saying about TWO giant sky lasers?”