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The reports from the front were in. 

They were very bad.

The reports from the backlines were also in.

They were extremely bad.

The reports from the President were in but General Gleen just put those in the trash as always.  But there were more of them than usual.

That was very annoying, which was its own kind of bad. 

In light of all those new and extremely annoying developments, there was only one course of action. 

“Hold my calls,” said Gleen to her secretary.  “I’m going to visit R&D&D.”

***

There were eighteen locks on the door.  Seventeen of them were incredibly intricate and powerful and entirely for show; one of them was actually a disguised biometric scanner that would vaporize the door on both sides in a half-kilometer radius if anyone other than General Gleen opened it.  It moved around and swapped places with the others without warning, and had been one of R&D&D’s earliest accomplishments. 

Research and Development for Destruction wasn’t, strictly speaking, a department.  For one thing it only had one employee, and ‘employee’ was an iffy word to apply to someone who wasn’t being paid. 

Still, she WAS being compensated. 

“Hello, professor,” said Gleen. 

“Hello, general,” said Sadcollop.  She was seated at her window, staring at the nothing outside it.  “How’s my family?”

“Completely unharmed.”
“Well, isn’t that nice.”

“It is.  And speaking of which, I had a request.”
“Wonderful.  Fantastic.  Stupendous.”
“No need for sarcasm.  We’re losing the war.”
“Again?  What would you ever do without me?”

“Lose two years ago.  It’s the proton-shift torpedoes.  They’ve figured out how to counter them with targeted phase-”

“Oh, quit parroting jargon you read in a report.  We both know you hate it because it makes you feel stupid.”
“I don’t feel-”

“Really?  Oh dear.  My apologies.  So your big bad beatstick of a weapon isn’t working anymore and all your strategies and tactics and whatnots are falling apart.  Again.  Right?”
“Right.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day.”
“You say that every time.”
“Every day’s a lucky day when you’re talking to me.  I’ve had something ready for about a week.  You want to see the math first?”
“You’ll just make fun of me again.”
Sadcollop clucked her tongue.  “Spoilsport.  Anyway, it’s the plans for a mass accelerator.  Abuses space and time, works at a distance.  Accelerate your enemies into the nearest star.  Accelerate your troops to the border worlds.  Accelerate rocks at lightspeed into border worlds.  Whatever makes you happy.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen.  And she meant it.

“Go fuck yourself,” said Sadcollop.  And she definitely meant it. 

Gleen shut the door behind herself with unnecessary softness.  She knew it pissed the professor off.

Sadcollop counted to forty, shut her eyes, thought about her family, then started to think about teradeaths. 

***

This time there was a knock. 

“Six months,” said Sadcollop.  She was at her desk, looking at a sheet.  She didn’t bother changing her view to Gleen when she entered; the general was substantially less interesting.  “That’s a new record.  Did you get sloppy with the accelerators?”
“There was a surprise raid, and-”

“You didn’t destroy them before they could be captured, therefore you got sloppy with the accelerators.  So they’re accelerating your toys into stars and now it’s not as funny as it was when you were doing it?”
“We’ve had some success in countering the transmission signals, but-”

“But they’re better at it than you are.  Because their research teams are actually competent.  So now here you are again, come back to ask for another superweapon.”

“You make it sound so evil.  We’re the underdogs here, professor.”
“Only because you finally pissed off someone bigger than you.  I don’t remember my planet voting to join up with your little stellar empire.”
“There was a vote.”
“Yes.  Which you rigged.”
“It was conducted with scrupulous fairness.”
“In your military outposts.”
“To ensure no vote tampering.”
“And I wonder what sort of outcomes that led to?”
General Gleen ran a hand through her hair.  Was it thinning?  Damnit, it was thinning.  “Professor?  Fewer politics, more weapons.”
“Weapons are tools used for war, and war is diplomacy by other yadda yadda yadda,” sang Sadcollop.  She threw the tablet at the general, who caught it both by reflex and one corner.  “There you are.  Have the blueprints for a carbon annihilator.  Instantaneously renders all carbon in a targeted area incapable of forming molecular bonds, dissolving all substances it comes into contact with.  Make it, load it into warheads, fire it everywhere, liquefy people and spaceships and planets and pat yourself on the back until your spine goes concave.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen, mild as milk. 

“It’s not a problem at all.  And yes, it’s thinning.  Find a surgeon.  And while you’re at it, see if they can do something about that way you suck in your cheek when you’re thinking.  It makes you look like you’ve been through a lobotomy.”

Gleen left. 

Sadcollop marked her calendar and sat down to wait.  Four weeks, it should be.  Maybe a day late, maybe a day early.

***

 It was a day early. 

“Total disaster,” said Gleen accusatorily.  “They never committed a full force, they had maximum security forces orbiting their home systems, whole STARBASES moved overnight.  They knew it was coming for them, and as of last night they’ve found a way to remote-detonate the payloads in our holds.  How’d you leak it, professor, and how did you come to care so little about what happens to your family?”
“Go to hell,” said Sadcollop.  “They knew something was coming because you’re as subtle as a one-eyed heffalump in a helical heliosphere, AND because you’ve used six superweapons over the last four years.  They expect the unexpected, and they prepare for it too.  Which is precisely the sort of planning you’ve never had.  If I were on the other side and had no morals whatsoever we’d have won first week.”
“’I will protect my family at any cost’ isn’t a moral code, professor,” said Gleen. 

“No, no it isn’t,” agreed Sadcollop.  “Have you tried giving up?  You keep telling me how smart a choice that was.”
“Giving up is not an option.”
“Oh come on, what have you got to lose?”
“We’d sooner lose everything.”

“Mmm.  So you want a new new superweapon.”
“Yes.  And-”

“And it needs to be idiotproofed so you can actually get mileage out of it no matter how stupidly you deploy it.”
“That’s-”

“And it needs to not be easily countered by someone with a functioning brain when stupidly deployed.”
General Gleen said nothing. 

Professor Sadcollop said nothing. 

“So-“ began Gleen.

“So here it is,” said Sadcollop.  She stood up and handed a small data plug over.

“Can’t I-”

“No.  You cannot.  We’re done here.  Go turn this on and end the war.”
“What-”

“It’s a rounder.”
“That-”

“Look, you know how most of the universe is empty space?”
General Gleen waited. 

Professor Sadcollop waited. 

“Ye-”

“Matter is scarce.  Absence of matter isn’t scarce.  Energy is scarce.  Absence of energy isn’t scarce.  This device will round an arbitrarily large volume to the universal average density of… everything.  Which works out to almost nothing.”
“It disinteg-”

“No, disintegration implies something lost integrity.  This removes everything.  Well, nearly everything.”
General Gleen glared. 

Professor Sadcollop smiled. 

“Goodb-”

“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

For the first time, General Gleen slammed the door. 

Professor Sadcollop permitted herself the first smile of over half a decade. 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to go. 

***

“Well, that’s scary,” said Professor Bunrs, turning the little data plug over and over in his hands. 

“Scary or not, we can use it to win,” said General Gleen.  “Absence of evidence doesn’t give them anything to counterengineer.  And we’ll be going big with it – first use should be the last.  I want a suicide run at the homeworld with this.”
“Once we build it,” said Bunrs, opening the data port on his computer. 

General Gleen had a little less than two seconds to think of some extremely and consistently precise wording Professor Sadcollop had used when referring to the object in Bunrs’s hands. 

General Gleen had a hair under half a second to say something. 

General Gleen got out “Don’t-” before Bunrs plugged in the rounder and she was interrupted for the absolute last time ever, along with everything else within fifteen lightyears.

***

The singular atom that was all that remained of Professor Sadcollop’s entire extended family understood.  On average. 

On the eve of his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was eaten by spiders.  Torn apart and liquefied and slurped up down to the bones. 

He had it coming though.  There was a perfectly good reason for it. 

*

On his tenth birthday, Kevin’s mother gave him a small brown box and inside the box was another box and both of them had airholes because inside them like the world’s hairiest matryoshka doll was a large tarantula. 

“Make sure you don’t forget to feed her,” his mother told him.

“Sure!” said Kevin. 

He forgot to feed her, then when she became quiescent pulled her legs off, one at a time.  A very small orb-weaving spider saw the whole thing from her web in the corner of his room. 

Not that she gave a shit, mind you.  Being torn apart is just part of a spider’s day, albeit the very last part of the last day. 

*

On his twelfth birthday Kevin’s father gave him an egg sac.  The last one the pet store had. 

“They misplaced the label, no idea what’s in it,” he said.  “Think of it as gambling.”
Kevin got bored of waiting two days in and poked the egg sac apart in hopes of seeing what was inside it.  He found nothing but tiny little half-formed spiderlings, legs still soft and blurred like bad photography. 

The very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room didn’t mind.  Less competition. 

*

On his fourteenth birthday, Kevin was given a pair of wolf spiders. 

“Make sure you don’t keep them in the same place,” his parents told them.  “The female might eat the male.”
Kevin immediately put them both in the same tank that night and poked them until the female gave in and ate the male out of crabbiness. 

The orb-weaver approved.  She’d done the same thing earlier that morning. 

*

On his seventeenth birthday, Kevin was given a slightly small and extremely earnest tarantula named Nigel.  He spent several hours making friends with it, then went to bed.

As he turned over the covers he noticed a very small orb-weaver in the corner of his room above his head and swatted her flat without thinking about it.

That tore it.  Kevin had swatted a member of the pan-arachnid House of Commons with apathy aforethought.  He was judged by a jury of his household’s peers, found guilty, and sentenced to death within the hour, and it was a very humane sentence because he didn’t even have time to scream.

As opposed to his mother the next morning.  Good lord that woman had lungs. 

She quieted down a lot when she found the tiny court documents left on his ribcage though.  “Oh,” she said.  “I see.  Well, this all seems to be in order.  I guess there’s no helping it.  Honey!” she called down the stairs.  “Our son’s been executed by spiders.  I guess we can go on that cruise you always wanted now?”

*

They left the skeleton where it lay.  As part of the settlement, Kevin’s remains were not to be moved until they had raised at least six generations of spiders, and they were decent, law-abiding people who respected authority. 

Nigel lived in Kevin’s skull and grew fat and happy off a diet of spiderlings until he died peacefully in his sleep. 

******

The first thing the Great God Plonk created was himself, croak-first.  He wriggled his fat-bellied way into existence until the tips of his long, long legs were finished and then he looked around himself and made a chuggarumph of displeasure. 

“This is very dry,” he said, and uttered a vast croak.  And lo, there was moisture.  Enough of it to create the world and all its ponds, which the Great God Plonk immediately hopped into. 

“This is very gray,” he said, and uttered another vast croak.  And lo, there was greenery.  Enough scum and moss and ferns and trees to ring every pool and puddle, and the Great God Plonk luxuriated in their rich shade. 

“This is very hungry work,” he said at last, and went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree.  And lo, out of the thin air came one trillion things that crawled and swam and flew, and almost all of them could fit in the Great God Plonk’s mouth.

That is precisely where he began to fit them. 

“This is ALSO very hungry work,” he said when he was done.  And he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again, and an endless tide of life was made anew and sent spiralling into the Great God Plonk’s gullet over and over and over and over, because the more he made the hungrier he grew. 

“Psst,” said something to the Great God Plonk.  And it wasn’t himself, which startled him. 

It was a tiny little crawling thing with eight legs.  “Want to know a secret?”
“I have made the world and everything in it,” said the Great God Plonk.  “There are no secrets.”
“I’ve got one,” said the thing.  “I’m a spider.  We’re made of secrets.  I made one myself.”
“It can’t be that big a secret,” said the Great God Plonk, “because you are very tiny.  I think I’ll just eat you now.”
“What, you don’t want to know the secret of how to have a bigger meal?”
This interested the Great God Plonk, and so he recoiled his tongue before it had left his mouth.  “Tell me.”
“I can do better – I’ll SHOW you.  It involves traps and tricks.  See, watch.”
And the spider began to make a web.  It was very slow work – it was just a very little spider – but it toodled along as best it could. 

Which wasn’t enough for the Great God Plonk.  “I’m bored,” he said.  “Maybe I should just eat you now.”
“Ah, but then you’ll never learn how to have a bigger meal,” said the spider.  “Maybe if I had more sisters to help this would go fast.”
This made sense to the Great God Plonk, so he went cree-cree-cree-cree-cree-cree again and made many many other spiders, who all helped.  The web grew bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until it was big enough to cover the whole pond. 

“Is this the bigger meal?” asked the Great God Plonk. 

“Taste it!” said the spider. 

The Great God Plonk tasted it.  It was tough and bitter and it stuck his tongue fast, and the harder he tried to yank it free the more tangled it grew.

So he used his arms. 

Then his legs.

Finally all the Great God Plonk could do was bobbled and gurgle. 

“THAT’s a bigger meal for all of us,” said the spider happily.  And she and her many many many other sisters descended, fangs-first.  

*

The Great God Plonk’s descendants never did learn the trick of having a bigger meal.  But they are still very, very good at eating anything that fits in their mouths. 

******

Once upon a princess castle wicked stepmother yadda yadda yadda YADDA locked in a tower. 

One day, as the princess sat in her room, her one remaining loyal servant came knocking at her door.  “Princess!” he whispered.  “The queen wants you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made for your father’s birthday – by tomorrow!”

“What?” cried the princess.  “But she gave me no warning, and I’m a middling weaver at best.  If my father’s present isn’t ready by tomorrow he will surely execute me!”

“That’s the idea,” said the one remaining loyal servant.
“Please, please, give me some advice,” begged the princess.

“My mother told me of an old old story: the finest weaver in the world is the great spider, Aroch.  She can weave anything out of anything into anything.  Sneak out of your tower through the window, and seek her out.  She dwells in the far away and dusty hills, where the sunlight never stirs or sleeps.”
So the princess snuck out of her tower through the window – it was a very short tower, she barely needed one bedsheet, torn in two – and crept through the slumbering castle town and into the wide wilds of the woods, where she became lost for hours and hours. 

“Oh no,” she sobbed.  “How will I ever find the far away and dusty hills by morning?”

“Why do you want to go there?” asked a tiny voice.  It was a very small spider on the treetrunk above her head.  “It’s dangerous.  Aroch lives there.”
“I need her to do something for me,” said the princess.

“Your funeral,” said the spider.  “But if you really want to find her, head for where the light is faintest.  It will turn red.  It is always sunset in the far away and dusty hills.”  And the spider tucked itself into the bark of the tree again and hid. 

The princess was not accustomed to following advice from spiders, but nor was she accustomed to seeking favours from them either, and so she swallowed her pride and her fear and sought out the faintest light and followed it through hill and dale and twist and turn and up into the very heart of the glowing red sunset that lurked eternally at the rim of the far away and dusty hills. 

“Hello?” she called. 

“Hello,” whispered Aroch. 

She was right above the princess, straddled between two hilltops.  She was very fast and very quiet for something so big. 

“I need you to weave the most beautiful tapestry ever made by tomorrow, or my father will execute me,” she said. 

“Sorry,” whispered Aroch.  “I do not weave.”
“But you’re a spider!”
“I’m a hunter, not a weaver.  See my large eyes and powerful legs and massive mandibles?  I hunt down my prey and bite it to death.  I don’t really weave things with my silk.  You’re thinking of my sister, Arach.”
“Oh,” said the princess, feeling very foolish.  “Drat.  My one remaining loyal servant’s mother must’ve been a little senile.”
“All part of life,” whispered Aroch.  “Speaking of which, I am going to eat you now.  Anything you need to do first?”
The princess’s body froze, but her mind raced, and her mouth opened just as Aroch’s did.  “Actually…yes.  I would like to do you a favour.”
“How?”

*

“I already have an ale mug,” said the king.  “Decapitate him.”

The executioner sighed inside his mask, but quietly.  His arm was starting to cramp up, and they were only halfway through the court’s gift supply. 

“Where is my daughter?” shouted the king.  “I demand to see my tapestry!”
“No doubt lollygagging,” said the queen.  “I knew she would never finish it, the lazy gadabout.  She’s had all year to make clean on her boast.  No doubt that’s her screaming in the distance right now, wailing at her bad choices.”
“She’s screaming awful loud,” said the king.  “Will someone go and fetch her, so we can execute her and silence that racket?”
The ceiling came off the throne room, lifted between two furry legs. 

“Hello,” whispered Aroch. 

“He’s the one in the hat,” said the princess, from her perch between the largest and fiercest of Aroch’s eyes.  “And she’s the one with the best marbling.”
“Fabulous,” whispered Aroch. 

“Aieee!” shrieked the king. 

“Guards!” shouted the queen.

Snap went the spider. 

*

The princess wasn’t interested in ruling, and Aroch was a solitary being. 

But on the whole the former kingdom only improved for neglect, and enjoyed many prosperous years from then on out. 

If a little less trade than before, mind you.  Word of the giant spider living in the ruins of the castle got around. 

The crash had been grisly.  The captain was dead, and the first mate, second mate, third mate, all the way down to the ship’s cat, also called Mate. 

But there was still life!  Life in the face of a hostile universe.  For in the back seats of the ship there had lurked a Competent Man, and when his keen senses had detected the turbulent descent of the spaceship through the atmosphere he had immediately leapt to his feet, seized his two seatmates – a naïve boy and a nubile waif – and stuffed them all inside the luggage compartment for safekeeping, which he naturally knew would work thanks to his nigh-innate and extensive knowledge of everything. 

Yes, it was thanks to the Competent Man that they were all still breathing, and he intended to keep them that way as long as possible as long as they understood that it was so. 

“First things first,” he said, heroically surveying the landscape with his thumbs tucked into his belt like nobody’s business, “we need to locate a source of fuel.  Those trees over there look likely.  Naïve boy, you start clearing the rubble away from the engine compartment – the nubile waif can help by moving the tiny pieces, as her biology prohibits light work or creative thought.  I’ll make an axe with these hull fragments and then go timbering.”

“Should we-” began the naïve boy, and the Competent Man punched him square in the nose as hard as humanly possible. 

“We’re in an emergency situation and I’m in charge because I am the most competent of you all,” said the Competent Man extremely calmly while wiping blood off his knuckles.  “It’s the only reasonable course of action.  Now get going while I work on keeping us all alive.  I have a plan.”

And so they did what the Competent Man had told them to, because it was clearly the only reasonable course of action because he was so competent.  By day’s end the engine compartment was nearly accessible and there was a tidy supply of firewood, which the Competent Man ordered built into a great bonfire. 

“Boyo I’m bushed,” said the Competent Man, stretching out.  “Nubile waif, cook us dinner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Wow, you didn’t expect to do that?” asked the Competent Man, shaking his head in disbelief.  “Obviously since you haven’t done anything worthwhile all day you’ve got energy to spare and can be put to labour now.  And besides, your brain is developed to give you the satisfaction from housework that you don’t get from sex.”
“I didn’t do much all day because you told me not t-”

The Competent Man sighed loudly and broke a piece of firewood over his thigh.  They stopped questioning him in the face of his incredibly reasonable argument. 

The meal wasn’t that good.  The nubile waif didn’t know how to cook, as the Competent Man helpfully pointed out. 

***

“Alrighty then.  It’s a new day, we’re safe from predators because we have fire – proof of man’s mastery over nature, and nobody is more man than I – and now we can make a furnace.”
“Why?” asked the nubile waif. 

“We’ll build it out of the scrap you two cleared out yesterday.”
“Why?” asked the naïve boy. 

The competent man casually backhanded him.  “Don’t question my decisions.  We’re going to smelt down ore from the hill we crashed on and use it to start rebuilding the engine.  Obviously.”
“But how do you know that’s the right place to find ore, or the right kind of ore, or-” asked the nubile waif. 

“Naturally I’ve got vast knowledge of geology and chemistry,” chuckled the Competent Man, waving away her objections with one hand and grabbing at her ass with the other.  “A simple eyeballing of the landscape allows me to pinpoint that this hill is obviously a rich source of chromium-94, which we can smelt with the copper undoubtedly mingled with it straight into a hyperfloom alloy that will be IDEAL for shipwork.  Now go pick some berries for lunch; me and the naïve boy need to make a smelter from scratch using scrap metal, which of course I know how to do because I have a penis and am confident about that.”

The smelter was up and running before day’s end, and their first wiring components were being drawn out with freshly-forged tongs by the time dinner was served. 

The berries gave the naïve boy indigestion, which the Competent Man said was no doubt due to his soft and effete upbringing. 

***

And so the rhythm of survival was set.  Each morning the naïve boy and the nubile waif awoke and learned of a new marvel to be commissioned at the hands of the Competent Man. 

“Today we make batteries,” he said.

“Out of what?” asked the nubile waif. 

“Naïve boy, follow me.”
“Where?”
The Competent Man smacked him one affectionately.  “To harvest the local pitcher-plants!  Obviously their gullets are full of a substance at the exact PH to be used as acid, and we can repurpose their structures as hulls for the batteries anyways.  Simple work.”
“How do you possibly know that’s true?” asked the nubile waif. 

“Afterwards we can get working on booting up a generator.  Nubile waif, that grove on top of the hill looked like it’ll provide edible nuts.  Don’t forage too far afield or you might be attacked by wild beasts.”

The nuts were delicious, but the nubile waif didn’t crush them into a flour for pancakes, which the Competent Man said would’ve been the most obvious way to prepare them. 

“Today we grind lenses,” he said. 

“How?” asked the naïve boy. 

The Competent Man sighed and punched him in the gut.  “Lifeboat rules, you follow my lead.  Nubile waif, tear up your clothing for tinder, we’re running low on fire materials.”
“Why is it just m-”

“Onwards!” said the Competent Man, and by day’s end they had made some simple lenses with which to recalibrate the laser spectroflexor, which was already being put to use in repairing the damage to the inner hull. 

The nubile waif had torn up some spare jumpers she found inside the cargo compartment for tinder.  “These aren’t nearly as worn and flammable as your clothing would’ve been,” said the Competent Man disapprovingly.  “Honestly, I don’t know how these ideas get into your silly little head.”

“These didn’t fit any of us and I didn’t want to be naked.”
“Adorable,” he chuckled, and he patted her on the head with one hand and grabbed at her ass with the other. 

“Today we will rebuild the starchart,” he said.  

“You know how to program?” said the nubile waif. 

“Naïve boy, you’re in charge of recording all the stars the moment they come out using this tablet I’ve crafted from the clay pit just south near the pond.  Nubile waif, you can check on him every half-hour to make sure he’s paying attention.  Just bat your lashes at him and he’ll wake right up.”
“I don’t really know much about astrono-” said the naïve boy, as the Competent Man slugged him one. 

“Honestly, just use your brain and your gut and your penis and your ineffable power of being correct,” he admonished him gently.  “I’ll be busy calibrating the ship’s computer to accept the new data.  Oh, and nubile waif, no hanky-panky beyond batting lashes.  As the senior male here it’s biologically unsound for me to permit you two to mate.”
The star-tablet turned out surprisingly well.  The nubile waif said that was because her graduate dissertation had been on xenoastronomy; the naïve boy said it was because she did it instead of him and really he should be the one cooking since he was a chef; the Competent Man said it was because the ship’s computer didn’t need any of the data and he’d just wanted both of them out of his hair while he did the real and important work in peace and quiet. 

“Today we hunt,” he said. 

“What?” said the naïve boy.  “Why?  We don’t need more food, the forage provides us with plenty of-”

“To make sure we don’t lose our edge,” said the Competent Man, smacking him idly on the head.  “A man is a hunter, and a hunter must hunt.  If we just live off flowers all day we’ll lose the vigour and rigour needed to escape this planet.  Grab a spear and follow me and do everything I say or you’ll mess this up.  Nubile waif, stoke the fires for us.  Don’t use the big axe if you want more fuel, just pick up sticks or something.  Would hate for you to hurt yourself.”

They spent all day and didn’t kill anything bigger than a sparrow.  The Competent Man pointed out it was because the naïve boy was louder than an elephant and as subtle as a spaceship take-off. 

***

Thirty-one days after the spaceship had crashed to the ground in a ball of molten metal and broken hopes, it stood heroically intact once more, ready to seize the skies and hurl itself home. 

“All tests are good, and by all tests I mean I know it’s done and done properly, because I’ve done it,” said the Competent Man.  “It’s like I’ve always said: the universe always gives you back exactly what you put into it, and nobody puts more into it than me!  Now let’s get the hell out of here and sell this place’s mineral rights for a staggering fortune, of which I will generously gift a small stipend to you both.”

“Lead the way, I guess,” said the naïve boy.

“Ladies first,” said the Competent Man, gesturing at the gangplank with one hand and grabbing at the nubile waif’s ass with the other, and as she danced away from his grip a nearby tree – surprisingly untouched by the rigorous logging that had occurred nearby for the past month – finally gave up the ghost and toppled over on top of the spaceship, crashing straight through its center and annihilating the engine utterly. 

“Urk,” said the Competent Man. 

“Well, it’ll be okay,” said the naïve boy.  “I saw a nice place to build a cabin back there near the lake.”

“Aglfgl,” said the Competent Man.  His lip bulged, and a thin trickle of mixed drool and blood slid over it. 

“Maybe we can repair it?” suggested the nubile waif.  “I mean, we’ve managed to handle this so far.”

“GLORT!” screamed the Competent Man, and he picked up the nearest fragment of debris and set about clobbering the ship, the ground, himself, and the other survivors in that order. 

Thankfully it wasn’t the sharpest fragment of debris. 

That was the one within arm’s reach of the nubile waif. 

***

It wasn’t such a bad planet, not really.  Oxygen, carbon-compatible yet not overly-hostile forms of life.  Plentiful water. 

And it helped that they had a food supply to keep them going while they got started.  The Competent Man had been a bit gritty but he was still fairly digestible, as long as you were willing to overlook the nasty bits. 

The stag was beautiful in the light of the early morning; sure-footed and strong-flanked.  Dew glistened on his muzzle as he breakfasted on ferns and grass; the clearing was so quiet that each individual chomp of his molars could be heard, and if he didn’t hurry the fuck up and get just one foot closer to her Rali was going to bite through her spear in frustration.  She’d been sitting here for two of the prettiest, coldest, dampest hours of her life waiting for a crucial six inches of movement. 

A bird twittered, the stag’s head jerked upright, and it carefully stepped six inches in exactly the incorrect direction. 

Well, that was enough.  Sometimes even if it was the wrong thing you had to do something, and that was why Rali jumped out of the tree screaming and stabbing everywhere, missing the stag by a full foot at the least and slightest.  It hopped, bleated, pawed aimlessly at her – missing her head by a LOT less than a foot – and bounced backwards out of the clearing, white rump flashing, hooves flying, directly into the monster’s mouth. 

The monster shut its mouth.  It was a very simple operation that led to a lot of complicated changes in the stag’s anatomy. 

“Show-off,” said Rali.  The monster grunted apologetically through its breakfast. 

She’d really wanted to get that one by herself.  Yes, yes, it was a team activity, but after months of practice she’d hoped to have a chance to test herself, prove that she’d accomplished something. 

Instead she accomplished a slab of venison over a fire, surrounded by a feathery and anxious blanket of squallers.  At first she’d tried to shoo them back to the farm – she’d left the pen open so they could forage, and eventually someone would show up to take them in – but they never did anything but flutter away and look hurt and terrified (a squaller’s default expression, to be fair) so she’d given up and accepted that her lot in life was to be accompanied at a distance by over a dozen neurotic stinking child-beasts. 

The eggs were nice, mind you. 

***

Rali woke early the next morning to an unexpected sensation.  Chill. 

The air was cold.  Her breath hung in front of her, puffy and pale.  The squallers had compacted themselves into even tighter balls of feathers than usual, and frost rimed the monster’s scales across the thicket patch they called home, or at least ‘bed.’

It was snoring blissfully, so clearly this wasn’t unusual. 

This was good.  Rali had enjoyed the last few months, which had involved less weeding and stump-clearing and tilling than she had ever imagined to be possible, but in the back of her head she’d always been wondering what the plan was for winter.  That the monster rested so casually indicated there was one, which was a tremendous relief. 

After three days of waiting she lost her temper and hit its snout until its eyes opened. 

“THIS is the plan?” she asked it incredulously.  “Sleep through the cold?”
The monster blinked affrontedly at her. 

“You’re going to sleep for three months?”
The monster indicated this was the case. 

“I can’t do that.”

The monster looked mortified, half-sat-up with great purpose, then slumped over and fell asleep again. 

Rali sighed, and remembered her farm, and remembered clearing the stumps. 
“Well.  Could be worse.”

***

The first snow came down later that day. 

The first snow that stayed came down later that night. 

The first white morning came right after that, and it was a real sight.  But what surprised her the most wasn’t the perfect snow-tracings on every branch and twig and needle in the woods. 

What surprised her the most was the sky. 

Rali had spent as little time outdoors in winter as she could – as anyone sane did – and she’d ventured out only for essential chores, and she’d done them quickly and as well as she could be assed. 

She’d never had this much time out here alone, and watching, and seeing the whole world turn pale grey from the heavens on down to the water-turned-ice was, well. 

Maybe it wasn’t beautiful.  But it was definitely something. 

She could’ve looked at it for hours, and she did.  And then her stomach rumbled. 

Time for a hunt.  She grabbed her spear, stood upright, said “hey, let’s go” to the monster, and started swearing.

***

The last berries of the season were gone, so she ate the nuts fallen from the trees. 

The snowfall came and hid the nuts, so she hunted the stags, fat-packed for the lean times. 

The stags hid in their secret thickets in the deep woods, and that was when the squallers started to look nice and tempting, but they were also her (slightly-foul-and-fowl-smelling) blanket and besides they were laying hens, not eating.  And there wasn’t a lot of fat on them after months living in the wild. 

So Rali improvised.  She climbed trees and jammed her spear into holes and sometimes (just often enough to be worth it) into a sleeping treecurler atop its nut hoard.  She threw very small rocks at very small birds for very small meals.  She went down the frozen lakes and smashed open the ice and dangled lines made from twisted grass and bark, and once she smashed a hole open in the shallows for a drink and accidentally brained a sleeping turtle as big as her torso, which was a nice surprise and an even nicer meal. 

All in all, she was doing surprisingly well when the blizzard came. 

It was remarkably sudden.  One moment Rali was considering the snow, trying to figure out if a hoofprint meant a stag was slumbering in the bushes ahead of her or had left days ago, the next everything had gone completely white.  She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, or anything else in front of her face for that matter.  Then she stopped trying because her eyesockets were rapidly becoming snowballs. 

Finding her way home in that was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, foot by foot, grope by grope, one foot in front of the next woops that wasn’t in front that was behind, fall after fall after getting up.  But at last she stumbled into a dark space that wasn’t blindingly white and fell face-first onto the monster’s fur and slumbered like the dead. 

When Rali woke up the first thing she realized was that the monster didn’t have fur.  The second thing she realized was that she wasn’t in the thicket.  And the third thing she realized was that the mawbear she was sleeping on top of was waking up. 

***

There were no more blizzards, and even the darkest depths of the cold that came the following month were no terror under Rali’s new coat.   She foraged freely far and wide, drunk on the invincibility offered by a belly endlessly full of thawed bear-meat and coddled in its slightly smelly embrace, even if it did make the squallers panic every time she came home with the hood drawn up.  Maybe she shouldn’t have left the head attached.  She did her best to earn back their fleeting, panicky trust with endless bribes of anything green she found in her prey’s stomachs. 

Well, the bits Rali didn’t eat herself.  At this point she’d have done a lot for a single burnt tuber from the west field on her farm. 

Except remove stumps. 

She would definitely not remove stumps. 

She WOULD, however, tear open stumps with her hatchet, unearthing tiny and beautifully frail families of wood-voles, which she would devour.  They were very succulent, and small enough to eat whole when roasted, particularly on a fistful of the little (and hard, and tough, but oh so smoky) monk’s-ear-fungus they bedded upon.  It was in the middle of her preparing one of those miniature feasts that the monster finally bestirred itself, nostrils prickling from the smoke. 

“Hey,” she said to it.  “Sleeping beauty done yet?”
It wobbled itself almost to a standing position. 

“Because I’ve been busy.  You didn’t know I couldn’t just nap through the cold, did you?”
The monster, though possessed of an armoured and inflexible face, had expressions aplenty in subtle casts and cants of its head, eyes, and body, which Rali’s keen familiarity with it allowed her to read.  For example, careful observation of the way it was deliberately avoiding eye contact with her, covering its face with its claws, and whimpering as it crept over to her on its belly allowed her to hypothesize that it was sorry. 

“You’d better be.”
It grovelled a little harder. 

“Okay, that’s enough.”
Birds took to flight in nearby trees, ears popping with the sheer force of the whine. 

“No, it’s fine.  It’s fine.  It’s-” Rali’s eyes narrowed, then shot to the wood-voles simmering on the stone next to her in their fungus bed.  “Wait.  Are you asking for one of these?”

Hope dawned in the monster’s face, followed immediately by a snowball. 

***

There was no clear victor in the great winter battle, only a cessation of hostility following mutual exhaustion of arms and also legs. 

Rali maintained she won because the monster ran out of energy and stopped moving.  The monster probably would’ve argued it won after Rali became immobilized for over an hour under the weight of all the snow in the thicket. 

Both of them definitely admitted in the privacy of their own heads that the squallers won.  By the time both of them were up and about again, the little bastards had picked the wood-voles clean. 

Before the sun had made itself known Rali was off and moving and already aching in both shoulders from winding the crank of the well, all the water sitting beside her smug and faintly mud-scented in its buckets.  She glimpsed up at the horizon and saw the first fresh light of dawn top the distant hills, already flexing itself to peel away the damp chill of the night. 

“Fuck you,” she said, wearily.  And then she was off. 

First things first were stumps.  Every spring she had cleared the stumps from every field, and every spring all of them would have mysteriously reappeared.  She would’ve hired an exorcist to look into it, but there was no money for that. 

There was no money for an awful lot of things. 

Like, for example, a mule to help her plow and till and drag the stumps out of the ground.  So instead she shovelled and chopped and swore at them until they moved

Then there was a break for a late breakfast of scraps from last breakfast. 

It was not a very good breakfast but that was all part of the plan; at this point in her day she’d eat anything and enjoy it. 

And then, back to it!

Rali dragged the stumps up the hill to her house, and she dragged the stumps down the hill to the woodpile.  She chopped the wood, and she split the wood. 

Wipe the brow.  The salt in the eyes stings.

And then, back to it!

She poured water for herself, and she poured water for the trembling little squallers in their paddock.  She shooed off the lurking claw-cat in the bushes, and she cursed the burning sun.  She sowed the west field, and she tilled the east field.  She weeded the north field, and she only noticed the monster when she pulled the last weed from between its talons. 

In her defence, she’d been bent over double for an hour and the winter’s-children were already tall and flourishing, near head-high.  

Rali immediately did the one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was make a sudden movement.  In this case, she stood up very quickly while doing the other one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was look it in the eye. 

She was spoilt for choice.  There was an awful lot of eye.  A soft charcoal colour with big slit pupils.  And right below them a mouth that looked to have been made by splitting a crocodile in half and filling it with teeth. 

It yawned at her.  The tongue didn’t curl, which seemed unfair given how thoroughly it reminded her of the claw-cat in that moment. 

Rali nodded once at it, did the third one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was turn her back to it, and walked across the field through her yard inside her home and to her kitchen table, where she stuffed her fist into her mouth up to the wrist and screamed as long and silently as she could manage. 

***

Rali made tea.  It seemed like the best decision she could make at the time, it gave her something to do with her hands that wasn’t watching them shake, and since her hands were shaking it took almost an hour to make and longer still to drink.  It was the harsh stuff, made from a real curdleroot she’d dug out from under the steps a year ago, dried-out and stringy and pupil-shrinking, and when she finished her first cup she felt almost human; her second cup made her almost normal; and her third cup made her forget how fear worked so she decided what the hell.  

She peered out the door. 

No monster. 

She slowly paced the length of the house, checking around each corner. 

No monster. 

She climbed atop her roof and stared as far afield as she could. 

No monster. 

And then she went back to it, but with a lack of emphasis and rigor that she would’ve found appalling any other day.  But flaming snakes alive, she had an excuse to have a bit on her mind right then. 

Also the curdleroot was giving her the shakes pretty bad. 

***

The next morning was entirely normal, which Rali considered deeply suspicious. 

She crept out the door and looked around and wasn’t immediately eaten, but that wasn’t as reassuring as it could’ve been. 

So she worked at the well, and she gave the squallers their water early (they were still asleep, soft things), and she told herself it wasn’t at all an excuse to keep herself from walking out into the fields and she hated how poor a liar she was. 

If only her sister were here.  That woman could lie a river right out of its bed. 

Rali walked down into the south fields, shoulders slumped, brain tense, ready for anything, prepared for the worst, and was completely and utterly unprepared to find every single remaining stump in the field piled into a grody heap in its center, roots and all. 

“Fuck,” she said involuntarily, and knew her mother would’ve smacked her.  “What the fuck?” she elaborated, and that would’ve been soap in her mouth.  “What the fucking fuck?” oh this was all beyond the pale. 

She stared at the pile, then stared behind the pile, then stared around the pile.  But there was no monster, and there was a job to do, so in the end Rali’s duty won out over her shock and she started dragging them back to the woodpile. 

The monster was dozing on the roof of her house.  It cracked an eyelid at her as she towed the first stump by, red glow soft in the early morning light. 

“Thanks,” said Rali. 

It blinked, then did not pounce at and devour her. 

Her hands still shook all day, but that helped.  And so did a little more curdleroot. 

***

The next day the stumps she hadn’t chopped yet were crushed into very small splinters in the middle of the woodpile.  The monster was dozing on top of the woodpile. 

The day after that the south field had been re-tilled by giant claws, and it was curled around her house. 

The day after that the north field’s weeding had been performed – if somewhat inexpertly – by a pair of titanic jaws, and it was sleeping in the crushed patch she’d first found it in. 

And so on.  And so forth.  And again.  And again. 

Seven days in Rali woke up in the middle of the night with the back of her neck tingling (she’d run out of curdleroot earlier that day), walked outside, and tripped over the monster’s tail.  It was crouched in the middle of her yard, where it was very, very carefully attempting to work the crank of the well. 

“I think I’d better do that bit,” she said.  “You can go eat the damned claw-cat.”

***

Things became much easier after that.  (Sometimes – the experiment with the plough failed, on account of the monster possessing a rather large and inconveniently inflexible tail).  Open and honest communication always helps. 

Rali sowed the seeds in the south field, and the monster reaped the sprouted winter’s-children in the north field with its bladelike paws. 

Rali spread the squaller-dung over the freshly sown fields, and the monster stood next to their paddock to ensure they produced plenty more. 

Rali weeded, weeded, and weeded again, and the monster tried to weed was politely dissuaded and settled for standing directly over her as the sun blazed, acting as mobile shade while its tongue lolled from its mouth. 

Rali went into town and bartered away the harvested winter’s-children, and the monster stayed behind and ate three claw-cats and one lurk that thought a paddock of unattended squallers looked very tasty. 

Rali invited visitors over to talk shop, and the monster hid behind her house until it sneezed and she had to make very awkward excuses to get them off the farm without looking around first. 

And so on and so forth through the blazing summer and into the rusting trees of autumn and the harvest welling up out of the land, which was harvested in equal parts by both of them.  Rali handled the delicate grains, the monster dug up the tough tubers, and if the crop was a little more slashed than usual neither Rali nor her bartering partners mentioned anything of it. 

For the first time in half a decade, she had a surplus. 

“Go away,” she told the monster. 

It gave her a soulful look, insofar as it was possible with that face. 

“Not forever, just for the afternoon.  Go mess around in the woods or something.  It’s a surprise.”

It took her a little longer than expected – it had been ages since she’d seen her mother make the big oven-pits, covered in slow-burning grasses – but it all came back ready enough.  And if the tubers were a little charred, so what?  It brought out the flavour, which was good because the grainy porridge was filling but it wasn’t exactly lively. 

A giant cold snout bumped Rali’s back and thanks to many months of practice she didn’t jump out of her skin. 
“Eat up,” she said, and the monster dropped a giant and only slightly bloody (at the muzzle) stag on the embers. 

She stared at it.  Its flanks wobbled with autumn fat. 

“And this is what you’ve been living off’ve all year?” she asked. 

The monster made a small and affirmative noise. 

She looked at the stag, and she looked at the monster, and she looked at the table and its porridge and its charred tubers. 

“What the hell,” she said.  “Mom always said I’d be a lousy farmer.  No work ethic.”

***

It was a good six weeks before anyone checked in on Rali’s farm and found it empty; paddock, yard, and home alike.  The weeds had already taken over, and the fields were – somehow – full of stumps. 

The squallers never did not stop following the two of them. 

As it wrapped its limbs around the decapitated stump of what had once been the Chrysler building, an unnamed technician – sliding hopelessly towards its maw – pulled the emergency backup release switch, sending a few zillion volts and ohms and other things crashing through the skyscraper’s superstructure and directly into its skull, which exploded. 

It was still there the next morning, slumped yet upright, oozing yet unmoving.  The sun shone dazzle-bright on half its scales; the other half were blotted and blackened from the smog of its vaporized cranium. 

After the expenditure of three hundred sixty five trillion dollars, one billion lives, and the frying of the entire electrical grid of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America, it was dead. 

That was the first mistake they made.  The second was building the plaque. 

***

It was a very tasteful little plaque, appropriately somber yet not dour.  It mentioned the scale without getting lost in the numbers.  It honoured the many rather than the few, bringing the unnamed technician to mind without elevating her above the other billion dead people.  It did not nationalize a global tragedy.  It praised human ingenuity and selflessness without diminishing the costs.  Its font was somber but not oppressive.  It did not have any pictures. 

It was well done as far as plaques go, but there was a dangerous amount of thought going into it that maybe should have been put somewhere else. 

Though really, who could blame anyone for being distracted?  An awful lot of the world had been stepped on, and all the parts of it that hadn’t been stepped on were finding themselves in need of food, since so much of that had gotten stepped on, radiated, or atomized too.  It was amazing anyone had the brainpower to pull together a plaque, but then again plaque-making committees are a specialized and often-ignored group of people, and they did what they could when they saw the need for it.  And in other circumstances this would have been very admirable, save for what the existence of the plaque implied. 

The implications were as follows:

The problem had been here.  The problem had been solved.  This was evidenced by dint of the fact that there was now a plaque.  It was now part of history, and thus safe to ignore forever as the blissful future arrived by way of the important present. 

This is not to say that perhaps things would have gone differently without the plaque.  But it was definitely a mistake. 

***

Their third and largest mistake was assuming brain death was of great significance to any and all complex organisms.  The unnamed technician could’ve told them otherwise – she had grown up on a chicken farm – but she was dead now along with a billion other people, and so an ass was successfully made out of u and me, as was proven on the fiftieth day after the decapitation when it jerked bolt upright out of its slump and walked through the rubble of the Chrysler building into the side of three separate skyscrapers one after another, pirouetting like a titanic ballerina. 

It did not step on the plaque. 

***

Remobilization took time.  A long time.  The armed forces were in a much reduced state, were being rallied from a considerably more jumbled and confused world, and were being called to arms with the fully-earned knowledge that they were almost wholly ineffective against their enemy.  This made things slower than they had been before, as did the knowledge that they were trying to kill something that didn’t seem to respect the realities of being dead.  It was striding across the countryside at full tilt now, barrelling through and over and occasionally across (when it stumbled) any obstacle that could exist, leaving footprints up and over Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and both sides of the Grand Canyon before falling into the Pacific Ocean by mistake.  This was a tremendous relief to the armies, who went home to any homes that hadn’t been crushed. 

It emerged three years later in Melbourne, which it removed from existence before tripping over Uluru and toddling its way into the South China Sea.

And a year and a half past that it was in Tokyo. 

It only took a week to get to Beijing. 

Clearly there had been some sort of learning curve at work here – insofar as something now lacking a brain could learn – and it had been successfully scaled.  Projections were looking alarmingly similar to the initial rampage, with the obvious difference being that it no longer roared, merely made low wheezing and gurgling sounds from its neck-stump.

Besides the obvious, there were some worrying changes.  It moved truly erratically, moment to moment, month to month.  Directions reversed, spun, curved, and re-reversed on a dime, penny, or quarter.  It no longer grappled and bit and blasted; its whole body was a blind weapon wielded against a planetary soft target. 

Sometimes it got stuck, like when it walked on its forelimbs for six months before falling on its side on top of London. 

In addition, it could no longer functionally be distracted, lured, dazzled or blinded, lulled, confused, or tricked.  Several very earnest and only slightly poor-taste research papers were crafted on the possible potence of the autonomic nervous system in the absence of the somatic around now, but everyone who would’ve frowned at the timing was too busy panicking so they went almost unnoticed. 

Fifteen years later global civilization became functionally deceased as a concept and the papers were even less noticed. 

***

The plaque was still in one piece, mind you. 

The bells sang, sang, sang in the attics and the steeples and the courtyards, and they could barely be heard for the cheering.  Terrum rejoiced, and even the very oldest said they’d never heard tell of any time more gleeful – remarkable if true, for the people of Terrum were great tellers of stories, and their expertise grew with age.  The war was over, all men and women and children could walk without fear and know that all others were their friends.  At last the world was united, at last it was one and peaceful.  The people of Terrum danced in the streets, in their houses, at their workplaces, and nobody stopped to make fun of anyone’s footwork their joy was so great. 

Particular joy surrounded the great bonfire of wicker-and-wire cages in which all of the anti-citizens of un-Terrum were heaped, screaming in agony and pleading for mercy.  This inspired extra mirth among the citizens, for it was well known that all outside of Terrum were mere homunculi in the shape of people and had no souls minds or actual bodies, being merely composed of cunningly arranged twigs and dirt that lived to plot against all the free beings of the world. 

The people of Terrum were indeed great tellers of stories, and better still at believing in them. 

***

With the whole of the world (now safely renamed Terrum, for Terrum was indeed all that remained in it) now attended to, the attention of the great minds of Terrum now turned to corners that until now had remained unexplored. 

The far jungles and deserts of places that had once been various un-Terrums were explored, and found to contain somewhat exotic but not particularly imaginative creatures that acted much as beasts of that size would, rather than the unicorns, dragons, and men with heads in their torsos that had long been sought after. 

The deep sea was plumbed with bathyscaphes and ROVs, but alas, not one kraken or sea serpent was found, merely pretty large squids and some fossilized (long-extinct) shark teeth. 

Under the ice sheets at the very ends of the earth were found great sleeping submerged lakes, absolutely none of which housed any life forms more malevolent or alien than novel strains of bacteria. 

In desperation the many explorers and discoverers of Terrum turned to the skies, only to report that the heavens appeared to be populated primarily by nothing and secondarily (FAR secondarily) by big fat balls of burning gas with some scattered chunks of rock. 

A citizen with the appropriately heroic name of Roff Yelter was promptly launched into orbit to personally examine the nearest of these chunks of rock, in hopes of extracting something more expectedly exciting. 

“This is the farthest any citizen of Terrum has ever been from Terrum,” he announced heroically as he exited his ship of space, “and proof that it can extend its reach to cover the whole of this abyssal void.”

Unfortunately the rock was featureless and dull.  Roff took some bits of it aboard for souvenirs, but a tiny and immeasurable fault in the ship of space’s engine exploded while he was heading home, sending him spiralling out into absolutely nothing interesting for the rest of eternity. 

It was duly announced to all of Terrum that Roff had discovered and befriended a space-puppy before heroically sacrificing his life returning it to its parents, but there wasn’t much heart put into believing it, even from the Editors. 

***

It was beginning to appear to the citizens of Terrum that the universe was a singularly poor environment for narrative to grow in.  This displeased them, and it was decided that this should be rectified as immediately and forcefully as possible. 

The task of finding a means of this correction was given to their greatest and most powerful scientist, Queltel Binmarc, who was absent-minded, smoked a pipe, AND possessed outrageous hair.  He stayed up the requisite all day and all night and at precisely and exactly the wee hours of the morning he came up with a theory based on a careless and passing observation that he almost didn’t write down, which was duly announced the next day to the Grand High Editor. 

“We will build a giant and bizarre machine that will rebuild the universe to be more satisfying to our personal desires.  It’s a risky and daring and bold plan, but it’s the only one we’ve got,” he informed him. 

The Editor licked his lips; this was better than he’d ever dreamed.  “And what are the odds of it working?” he asked. 

“A million to one,” said Queltel, with tremendous satisfaction. 

The Audience that followed the Grand High Editor about constantly to record and witness the living story of Terrum gasped. 

The project was announced the following morning, and every man, woman and child of Terrum rejoiced at the news of completely certain success. 

***

Building the great device was a labour of years, and one whose every step was conducted according to the most exacting requirements. 

Blood and sweat and tears were duly extracted from the few un-Terrum anti-citizens that existed and mixed into its foundations to meet all safety standards. 

Top men laboured day and night in specially designed airplanes that kept them on the cusp of twilight twenty-four hours a day. 

Every factory in Terrum burned with furious energy, often forging and reforging the same parts over and over again so that it could be so. 

And the Terrum Children’s League went door to door selling apples to raise funds for the production of parts, thereby keeping thousands of doctors away for months and resulting in several deaths from chronic illnesses. 

***

When the day came, half of all of Terrum watched it live from their television sets, half of it listened to it from their radios, and a tiny and unmeasurable quantity of them were about to turn on the machine. 

“Ready?” asked the head foreman, a specially-grizzled and majestic sort of man who hadn’t spent a moment in his adult life without a cigarette chewed in one corner of his mouth. 

“As ready as it’ll get,” said Queltel.  “It’s a million to one chance.  Here goes nothing.”

The whole thing could’ve been designed to boot with a button, but a lever had been chosen for gravitas, one with just enough resistance and heft to it to make the scientist’s spindly arm flex as he heaved against it mightily.  A shove, a click, and a satisfying thunk emerged, and the machine roared like a farting titan. 

“It’s working!” screamed the Audience in perfect harmony. 

The machine belched, grunted, and then every light in the building dramatically flickered as it sputtered and died exactly as planned. 

“Damnit.  DAMNIT!” shouted Queltel with precise timing, and then, trembling with a carefully-chosen degree of rage and grief, he thumped a particular spot on its side with his fist. 

The machine turned on. 

***

The machine turned off. 

“Did it work?” asked the Grand High Editor.  The words were expected of him, but something about them felt… odd.  Greasy in his mouth.  Even the ellipses of his internal monologue seemed reluctant to flow. 

“How should I know?” asked Queltel Binmarc.  “I don’t know a damned thing about machinery.  I’m just a man with funny hair and a pipe.”

“But…but…” said the Grand High Editor, and he felt the words die in his mouth.  “Yes, of course, that makes sense.  Why WOULD having funny hair and a pipe make you good at machinery?”

“No idea,” said Queltel.  “I’m not a scientist, and even if I was, a scientist isn’t an engineer.  Why am I in charge of anything in this room?”

“Don’t ask me,” said the head foreman.  “I’ve got two left thumbs.  Hell, I’ve almost put my eye out six times just replacing this cigarette – which is plastic, by the way.  I’ve never smoked.  Why am I in charge of putting together complicated machinery?”
“Why am I in charge of anything at all?” asked the Grand High Editor aloud.  “I have a soothing rich voice and good posture, but I don’t understand the first thing about people.  I should be a singer or something.”
“Sing WHERE?” demanded a member of the Audience, suddenly making herself known as a distinct individual.  “All the good choirs are in the cathedrals to the glory of Terrum Forever, and we know that’s bunk now.  What the hell IS Terrum anyways?”
“A fabricated identity designed to unite a broad spectrum of enserfed and assimilated peoples across the greater Terrum seaboard that then embarked upon a genocidal spree of conquest across first Terrum proper and then the world at large, spurred on by a series of obviously self-serving beliefs and myths about their own rightfulness and power and the wicked and malevolent nature of all foreigners, most of whom shared more in common with the citizens of Terrum than those citizens did with their own leaders,” said another suddenly-distinct member of the Audience, all in one breath. 

“Oh,” said the former Grand High Editor. 

“Seems right,” said the first member of what had been the Audience. 

There was a long and decidedly unrehearsed silence.  Then all present and viewing committed suicide in a series of awkward and fumbling ways. 

***

And soon all was quiet all across the whole world that had been Terrum, save for the cheerful hail-and-well-mets exchanged in the streets by the roving packs of depressives who had left their rooms for the first time in years. 

The lock opened underneath my fingertips with the willing smoothness of oiled salmon, soft and smooth and buttery.  Not a creak not a clink not a thunk squeaked loose from the defeated metal, and all that was left now was a flimsy wooden door that was there to stop indecent eyes, not a ruthless predator of the night. 

Which I wasn’t.  I was just a criminal.  The former come in adventure stories, the latter are naturally occurring. 

I opened the door.  It was the least exciting thing I’d done all night, but the most anticipated.  My target lay within, trapped in its useless shell.  Beneath the covers it turned and shifted and snored, and I reached out with one (untrembling!) hand, grasped tightly, and pulled smoothly. 

Done.  Like smoke against my palm, languid and smooth. 

There was a snort, a twitch.  Eyes roaming quicker beneath shuttered lids; body beginning to shake off the paralysis of the night.  He was waking up. 

“Mine now,” I said happily, aloud. 

And I left for home and for a bed of my own.  I’d taken what I came for. 

***

It was a fine fat one; it put me under for twelve hours.  Dreamless.  The good shit. 

Yes, that was among the smoothest and clearest sleeps I’d ever stolen.  Its owner had been possessed of a good mattress and soft pillows and a conscience untroubled by anything he had or hadn’t done.  Most people would wake up from a sleep like that too pleased to even be resentful over its conclusion. 

I woke up hungry. 

No, it hadn’t been enough.  Of course it hadn’t been enough.  That had been a good sleep, and I’d been stealing good sleeps for over a decade now.  ‘Good’ was no longer good enough.  I had my pride, I had my talent, I had my skill, and thanks to my insomnia I had plenty of time to consider the application of all of them. 

I phoned Jed. 

“Wusszat?”

“It’s me.”
“Besssss?  Whi.”
“I need names.”
“’s ungoddleeour.”

“It’s noon.”
“Nuuuh.”
“Pour some coffee in your ears, Jed.  I need names, and I need them now.”
“Wha’ kind?”
My fingers were itching.  I wished my phone still had a cord; I needed something to twine between them. “The impossible kind.”

***

The hardest part was getting into the base.  After that I just had to get into a janitorial supply closet and all of a sudden hey, that lady has a mop bucket and coveralls, who cares what she’s doing. 

Okay, getting onto the launch pad was a little tricky, but even if everyone there WAS very attentive they were busy being very attentive to the ten thousand things that each of them had to prevent going wrong, so that helped. 

T minus three hours.  All the initial work putting you in is done, you’re flat on your back, you’re ready to do something but have nothing to do, your body wants to tense up but you’re too well trained for that, so you relax.  And you rest. 

And you’re juuuust within arm’s reach if I climb the scaffolding far enough and lean next to the cockpit. 

Making it out was much easier, even if I had to stop myself from skipping. 

“Six out of ten,” I told Jed. 

“Well, nobody said a dozy astronaut would be the most restful-”

“Oh no, the sleep was lovely.  Controlled yet loose, ready for anything, better pick me up than a tankerful of coffee.  But the challenge was shit.  Six out of ten was GENEROUS.”
“C’mon, sneaking into a rocket launch wasn’t tricky?”

“I said I wanted impossible, not tricky.”
“Look, I was half asleep, alright?  I gave you something that would be a huge pain in the dick off the top of my head and went back to bed, whaddaya want from me?”
“Well, you’re awake now, so I want something impossible.”

***

Now, I could have made this one easier on myself.  Could’ve taken the long way in, subtle insertion by surreptitiously slipping off the side of a cargo ship, crawled my way mile by mile inland, so on and so forth. 

But I was in a hurry.

So I snuck my way into the wheel well of an airborne troop transport with an oxygen tank and thermal insulation, exfiltrated the airbase, smuggled myself into overland cargo, then took a six mile hike into the crumbling and eviscerated heart of the city until I found the forward command post’s radio room, where one man was sleeping next to another one screaming over the sound of rocket fire. 

I propped him up a little on his pillow, kissed his forehead, and walked off as he sat up and started swearing at his friend. 

“Blissful as a sleeping baby,” I told Jed.  “But not impossible.”

“You got shot at!”
“I got shot AROUND.  Very different, and very easy to take care of if you’re well rested.  Which I was.”
“You’ve had high-security, you’ve had high-danger, what the hell else do you want from me?”
“Use your imagination.”

***

Well, I HAD asked for it. 

But goddamned, that was the longest voyage of my life.  And I’d listened to entirely too many goddamned propellers through the hydrophones before I started hearing the songs. 

Tracking them was another matter, another few impossibly long days.  And then I had to dive –  shallow dive admittedly, but still a dive – while muzzed on a combination of exhaustion and sleeping pills. 

Luckily I landed on top of the whale’s head, which shortened my search time considerably.  And as my arms pinwheeled like a cartoon clown, one palm slapped its way over that ancient scarred brow and peeled half-a-hemisphere’s-worth of tranquil sedation right out of it. 

“Weird,” I said.  “But boring acquisition.  And a little too dull.”
“Weird?”
“It literally put me half asleep.  Half of my brain, not half of my body.”
“Everyone’s been half asleep.”
“Not like this we haven’t.  Holy fuck my…everything… still feels weird.”
“Weird, weird, weird.  You’ll gripe at everything.”
“I didn’t say BAD weird.  But god, that was dull as hell.  Marine biology is not my thing.”
“You asked for impossible, whales are pretty rare.”
“Pretty rare isn’t-”

“Impossible, YES I GET IT, Jesus.”

“You don’t have to send me after him, no.  But like, something close to him.  Difficulty-wise.”

***

This was very much not close to Jesus in any way except difficulty-wise. 

Sneaking into the white house had been hard. 

Finding a secret service guard who was willing to doze on duty was harder. 

And finding food to keep myself alive while I waited was hardest of all.  I could only steal so many sandwiches from the employee fridges before someone put two and two together, so I spent a lot of my time emulating an alligator: remaining absolutely still and conserving energy for a final strike. 

But I’m not patient when I’m hungry, or when the last nap I’ve had was half a nap coaxed out of a drowsy whale’s brain in the mid-Atlantic a week ago, so in the end I finally decided what my problem was. 

I was aiming at something that wasn’t impossible enough. 

So I dove off the roof, missed the first secret service member with my fists but hit him with my stomach, flopped aimlessly on the floor like a dead fish, kicked the second secret service member’s gun loose with my feet, and hurled myself through the Oval Office doors. 

Just as I’d gambled: the lazy fuck was asleep in his chair. 

“AHA!” I shouted, and he woke up. 

Oh. 

Shit. 

***

“So, would you say that fulfilled your expectations?”
“No.”
“C’mon Bess.  You said you wanted impossible, and what’s more impossible than something you failed at?”
“I didn’t fail at it!”
“You punched your target in the skull and ran off with his semiconcussed blackout.”
“I got him, anyways.”
“Hah!  And how well rested do you feel?”
“Zero out of ten.”
“And the challenge?”

I sighed and rubbed my aching forehead, where the imprint of my knuckles still pulsed.  “Eight.  Or so.”
“Good enough?”
“No.”
“You’re unsatisfiable.”
I hung up, I looked at the ceiling, and I thought about impossible things. 

Then I fell asleep.  But I DIDN’T enjoy it one bit. 

“I’m more of a harsh kick in the nuts,” she replied. 

“Well, that’s weird,” I said.  Then she kicked me harshly in the nuts. 

“Listen up, dipshit,” I heard through the ringing sound and horrific tunnel vision.  “Rent’s due.”

***

The first thing I did after the gasping, moaning, and crying was – wait, I guess that made it the fourth thing I did. 

So the fourth thing I did after the gasping, moaning, and crying was phone up my best friend and best partner, ‘Johnny’ Doesmurders.  He’s been with me through thick and thin; even forgave me after I falsely accused him of being the Murderkiller, on account of all the murdering and the killing that he loves to does.  Now that’s a pal and a half and half again. 

“Hey,” said ‘Johnny,’ as he picked up the phone.  His voice was rough, tough, and gruff, like the noises badgers make when they’re fucking, or the sound of rocks falling downhill into a big pile, or like, some kind of big burly guy working out and maybe spraining his arm a little but trying not to make a big deal about it because his friends’ll think he’s a wuss or something.

“Boss?”
“Huh?”
“Boss, you’ve just been sitting there on the line breathing heavy for like six minutes.  You stuck on similes again?”
“No,” I said, truthfully.  I was just considering them thoughtfully.  “I was just considering them, thoughtfully.  Now getcher ass over here, Doesmurders.  We’ve got some cases to solve.”
“What cases?”
“I’ll let you know when I find them.”

***

“Damnit,” I said.  “I can’t find a single case in here.”
“That’s the crossword, boss.  And you’re holding it upside down.”
I flipped it on its side.  “I KNEW something was off here.  We’ve got a case.  Let’s head over the crossword offices and find out who paid them off to print this thing upside down and sideways.”

“You think there’s someone behind it?”
“Could be, ‘Johnny,’ could be.  Maybe a Mr. Big involved here.  Or even a Mr. Huge.  Or…” I swallowed, the world tightened across my chest.  “…maybe even a Mr. Colossal.”
“Sounds heavy.”
“The heaviest.”  My heart palpitated inside my chest like an octopus playing the bongos with badminton rackets.  “Now drive me over.  You know I’m not allowed to anymore, not since the… incident.”
“I don’t know that, boss.  Because every time I ask about it you just say ‘the…incident’ or occasionally ‘…the incident’ instead of informing me as to what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I ran over sixteen people in my car in pursuit of a suspect and only fifteen of them were poor.”
“Ah, I gotcha.  Who was the rich guy?”

“The suspect.  Now let’s get driving – and be sure to stop by Bob’s Burgers on the way.  I’ve gotta craving.”

***

“Okay, you can come in now, boss,” said ‘Johnny’ from inside. 

I took two steps into the newspaper office and froze like a spider monkey trapped in maple syrup. 

God, what a mess.  Bodies strewn across the floor.  Someone’s head thrust through their computer monitor.  A man had been force-fed his own notebook. 

“Mass suicide,” I said to myself.  “A terrible site.”
“That’s ‘sight,’ boss,” said ‘Johnny.’

“I said what I said and I meant what I said,” I snapped at him.  “Now help me search their pockets for evidence.”

Just as I’d suspected, they’d all had money in their wallets.  We confiscated the motives, but we were still coming up emptier on clues than a pregnant wallaby’s pouch on mother’s day.  Or a bird’s nest in late December.  Or a lumbermill in a desert.

I squinted manfully at the nearest monitor, then jabbed my finger at it.  “There!”
“Where?”
“Right there, clearly legible.  But it’s written in that damn stupid text I can’t read.”
“Cursive, boss?”
“No, Arial.  Times New Roman or nothing, ‘Johnny.’  Now translate the thing.”
“Looks like they were typing up a headline.  Says here that the night-shift smuggling at the docks was getting out of hand, called on the cops to do something about it.”

“The cops,” I muttered.  The wheels in my head were greased up and spinning faster than ballerinas on hot tin roofs coated in butter and a bit of salt and pepper. 

“’Johnny,’” I said, seriously, “we need to go and get breakfast.”

***

The eggs slid across my plate like a swimming snake, aiming straight for my heart by way of my arteries. 

“Use your fork, boss,” said ‘Johnny.’  “Or at least your fingers.”

“Shut up, ‘Johnny,’” I said carelessly, like a man trying to eat a fried egg with his teeth and nothing else, which I was.  “And turn off that TV, will you?  I’m sick of hearing about how the newspaper crew was wiped out by unknown criminals.  Puts me off my breakfast.”

“Me too,” said ‘Johnny.’  “I hear tell they were going to write a big expose about the docks where some of my coworkers hang around for legitimate reasons.  A crying shame.”
“Me too,” chimed in a mysterious man swathed in a giant trenchcoat and enormous fedora in the booth next to me.  “But for other reasons.  Hey, did you know that the mayor’s life is in danger?”
I blinked like a turtle being asked for an autograph by Britney Spears or whoever it is the kids like these days.  “Huh.  No?”
“Oh yeah.  Within the hour.  If you hurry, you can stop it.  I’d help myself but I can’t move because of this giant fedora.”
It all added up. 

“’Johnny,’” I said, “grab the silverware and follow me.  We’ve got a nuclear missile to stop.”

“That’s the mayor’s assassination, boss,” said ‘Johnny,’ retrieving his butter knife from the stranger’s throat, where it had mysteriously appeared. 

“Whatever.”

***

I kicked in the door like a grown man knocking over a child’s sandcastle only to find the sandcastle was actually a cementcastle and then swore a lot as my foot hurt like crazy so I fired my gun a few times to take the edge off the stress. 

“Okay, nobody move!” I shouted in a friendly way. 

The mayor coughed and wheezed and fell over with a damp thud.  I shot him a few times to show I hadn’t been kidding. 

“Aw man, the mayor’s been assassinated,” called someone hiding under a desk.
“Shit, we’re too late,” I muttered.  “’Johnny,’ question the suspects for clues.”
“They don’t know anything, boss,” he said.  “They’re all unpaid interns.”
Damnit, this workplace was too topical to be relevant.  The trail had gone cold, colder than a box of fish sticks inside a refrigerator inside a freezer on Antarctica, if Antarctica were on Pluto, the exoplanetary object located at a phenomenal distance from the sun. 

“You okay, boss?”
“Huh?  Oh yeah, I was doing similes again.”
“It’s okay.  By the way, the radio says there’s a hostage situation down at the bank.”

“What!?  When?”

“Oh, in about ten minutes.”

“Good thing it’s only ten minutes away,” I said.  “We’re on the case.  Or next to it.  Or under it.  I don’t care where the hell we are relative to it as long as it’s close, but not too close, or too far.”

***

The bank was crammed full and bustling.  Clearly the  hostage-takers had instructed the poor bastards to act naturally.  There was only one way to handle THAT.

“NOBODY MOVE OR I’LL FUCKING SHOOT EVERYONE AND ANYONE I’M NOT AFRAID TO DO ANYTHING EVER,” I said calmly and authoritatively.  I fired a few rounds into the air and the bank manager to emphasize my point. 

“I’ve already searched the vault, boss,” said ‘Johnny,’ appearing at my elbow with some giant sacks of money.  “There was nothing in there but all this money that the crooks left behind.  It’s probably covered in poison or ants or something.”
“Good evidence-gathering, ‘Johnny,’ I said.  I fired a few more rounds into the air and also accidentally my elbow in my excitement.  “Ah, fuck.  Let’s go home now.  It’s been a tough day.”

***

A tough day calls for a tough drink.  I like my drinks tough, like jerky beaten with a brick.  I like my drinks mean, like a rabid dog chained up in a home for angry people.  I like my drinks nasty, like your mother telling me I’m a disappointment that won’t amount to anything ever when I was twelve which hurt my feelings a lot.

“I’m not crying,” I told ‘Johnny.’  “I’m just leaking tears from my eyes.”
“It’s okay, boss,” he told me.  “But it’s not all bad.  Sure we failed to stop the smuggling, the mayor’s assassination, or the bank robbery, but my business associates just came into some cash, the mayor’s gonna stop hassling us, and we have all this criminal money from the bank.  So your rent’s not a problem anymore!”
“’Johnny’ Doesmurders, you are the truest, bluest friend I’ve ever had,” I said.  “And that ain’t no lie.”
“It’s no problem, boss,” he said, and slapped me on the back.  “Also, someone’s put a ‘kick me’ sign on you, so I’m gonna need you to turn around and bend over.”
“Aw heck.” 

Third time this week, but rules are rules. 

The sun had filled his entire world, spreading out from the center of the sky to eat the ground and sea and his own flesh.
Except for one little black speck smushed underneath his arm where it stretched on the searing rocks.
“Hello,” said the king.
“Hello,” said the ant.
“What are you doing here, ant?”
“The same thing as you, I think. Dying.”
“Good eye.”
“I mostly find my way about by smell, actually.”
“Hmm. How do ants smell?”
“TERRIBLE.”
They laughed for a while about that.
“I’m out of my mind, I think. The sun’s eaten me up, and soon my heart will stop. The ungrateful peasants have turned against me. And now I’m talking to an ant.”
“Why not talk to ants? We’re much easier to find than humans.”
“True, true,” said the king. “But I’m a king. I didn’t talk to ants. I talked to humans. Well, I talked at humans, and then they did things for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I was a king. If they didn’t do what I said they’d end up in trouble because I knew best and everyone knew it. Don’t you have queens?”
“Yes, but they’re basically egg factories.”
The king thought about some of the more bitter arguments he’d had over the course of his marriage. “I think my wife would have agreed with you, but wouldn’t have appreciated it.”
“What did YOU do if you weren’t an egg factory?”
“I told you: I reigned. I told people to build high walls and they built them; I told them to till the soil and they tilled it; I told them to stab my brother’s army to death and they stabbed them good and proper and I got to put his head on a pike.”
“What did you do with it after that?”
“I think I threw it out once it was down to the bone.”
“Wasteful.”
“It could’ve been any old head by then, there was no point to it anymore. What would YOU have done?”
“Eaten it,” said the ant. “It’s every member’s duty to feed the colony.”
“Then why are you sitting here?”
“You sqooshed half my abdomen with your elbow. I can’t move under my own power.”
“Oh.” The king had never felt the urge to apologize in his entire life, and he didn’t feel it now. But he was a little embarrassed.
“Why’d you do that, anyways?”
“I didn’t really want to sit out here. I’ve been couped, you see. My wife poisoned half my cabinet and persuaded the peasants to rise up against the other half. Said I was a blithering incompetent.”
“Are you?”
“No idea but it doesn’t matter much, does it?”
“Suppose not.”
“It’s impious to spill divine blood though, so they’ve staked me out on the stones here to bleach until the world does for me instead. After that they’ll probably crucify my remains over the castle gate until they get too raggedy.” He sighed, and wished for a breeze. “So, what did YOU do with yourself?”
“I dug a lot of tunnels and I helped murder and consume many caterpillars and I reared countless eggs to adulthood and I battled valiantly against the evil and perfidious Other Colony and in a few minutes when my sisters follow my scent trail to your elbow I’ll probably be repurposed as food for the young, so that I may continue on as part of the colony amongst the stomachs of my infant kin.”
The king squinted at the ant, or thought he did. His eyes weren’t really working as they should anymore. A curious sensation was worming about inside him, a very unkingly one.
Oh. Shame. Yes, he’d heard of this. How bizarre.
“You know…” he managed, “on the whole, you’ve probably been a lot more useful than I was.”
“Thanks,” said the ant. “But don’t be too hard on yourself. Your life is hundreds of times more valuable than mine.”
“Really?” asked the king, voice wobbling.
“Really,” said the ant, with deep sincerity.
And it was telling the truth, because even bleached-out by two days of exposure there was an awful lot of protein left on the king by the time the ant’s colony found them both six minutes later.