jamieproctor.ca

“Health card, please.”
The man had been in line for three minutes. The man had seen six people hand over their health card. The man was completely astonished to learn so suddenly that he, too had a health card – and what’s more, somebody might ever want to see it. He scuffled through all his pockets one after another, pulled out a big wad of mashed Kleenexes, checked all his pockets again, pulled out his keys and dropped them and picked them up again, checked all his pockets a third time and found his health card in his wallet in the first pocket he looked, and did all of this while keeping up a running commentary of ‘ohh,’ ‘ahh,’ ‘err,’ ‘sorry,’ and ‘I’m sure it was…’
The assistant gave the man a friendly, patient smile that had nothing to do with reality, took the health card, scribbled in a folder, and handed it back carefully instead of throwing it at his head. “Down the hall, to your left. The Waiting Room.”
“Oh, the waiting room.”
“No, the Waiting Room.”
“Oh. My second left?”
“Your first.”
“My left or your left?”
“Yours.”
“Right now, or the way I was when I was facing you?”
“Right now.”
“Right now or left now?”
“Health card, please,” said the assistant to the next person in line.
The man stood there for a little while until he realized he wasn’t getting any more attention, then wandering off. It was on his first left.

It, of course, was the Waiting Room.

The Waiting Room was coloured in beige and boredom, and decorated in soft ‘80s numbness. The air tasted like it hadn’t moved since the 40s, and the floor grumbled angrily when used. A big wooden door at the far end sealed away the doctor, behind oaken sternness and a big overhead bell that looked capable of summoning a most foreboding DING.
There was also a clock, which ticked with the wet, rhythmic firmness of an epiglottis.
The man didn’t notice any of this because he was busy gawping at the room’s inhabitants. Most of them were people like him, except the ones that weren’t.
There was a woman biting her nails. Her hands moved, even as she chewed, so it looked a bit like she was wrestling with her own head.
There was a man with a tie and a truly tremendous amount of sweat, which he was furiously adding to every second. Fresh droplets beaded on his face as if from a shower-head. His flesh appeared to have compensated for all of this by sucking itself as close to his bones as possible, maybe in hopes that it could cling on as the rest of its mass was sweated away.
And there was a small child inside eight layers of blankets, in a basket, screaming. Its parent had submerged their entire face into the basket, and was as invisible as the child itself, if a good deal quieter.
“Gosh,” goggled the man, eyes wide and mouth half-open. His lips glistened, his tongue half-protruded. “Woah,” he said loudly, just to be sure everyone in the room understood where they stood with him and his opinion. “Jeepers!” he said with the fierceness of a curse, and then he sat down in the nearest chair with violent force.
Then he got up, took off his coat, put it on three separate coathangers, and sat down again twice as hard. He made a little tune up in his head and hummed it, in precisely the reverse of that order.
But it couldn’t last.
“Hi!” he said to the sweating man.
The sweating man nodded. This tiny motion caused about half a cup of moisture to splash off his neck and drench his tie, changing every single colour on it to something dank and hideous. He turned pale – even paler.
“Boy! What’re you in for?”
The sweating man mumbled something that included the word ‘fever.’
“Boy that’s tough! Gosh! You know, I had a fever one time. Ate a big salad. Old home remedy. NEVER fails. Ever. You know, it’s because it’s full of vitamins. Good for you, vitamins. Vitamin A’s the best one, a cousin of mine’s a doctor and he did a paper that said-”
The bell above the big wooden door went DING. It sounded like schools and amusement parks and forgotten stovetop timers. It was very foreboding.
The sweating man stood up, mumbled something furiously, and ran away. Every footstep squelched and turned into a sucking, lamprey-tinged gasp.
There was a quiet three seconds.
“Hi!” said the man to the woman biting her nails.
She paused for a moment in her chewing.
“How’re you doing?”
She began again, then accelerated.
“Nervous eh? You know, I was nervous once. But my momma told me a special old family secret. You have to peel an orange and put it in your eyes. Then you blink as hard as you can for five minutes. It gets the vitamin Cs where they should be, you know.”
The woman biting her nails stuffed both hands into her mouth and began to grind her teeth furiously.
“Vitamin C isn’t as good as vitamin A of course – or even vitamin B! – but it’s in the top three. Obviously, since they’re alphabetical. And it’s not all THAT weak either – I remember I drank way too much orange juice once and I got too much vitamin C and I almost poisoned myself, although the doctors said it was water poisoning. They were just trying to keep me calm because I was so little; vitamin C poisoning is scary stuff, my mom told me. That’s why you’ve got to make sure it gets in your eyes and not your ears. Otherwise it can leave you numbed and frostbitten and anti-social, which is bad for anyone – not that I’ve not heard a complaint directed at chatterboxes, mind you! Once I went on for a while and it drove my poor old dad so nuts he had to spank me three ways, one for each cheek and an entirely new one all of his own invention. A bit harsh, but I learned my lesson, and I only talk to strangers now, or at least mostly. Common in my family. Anyways, I tend to go on like that, pardon me for not giving you a word in edgewise. Hey, what’s your favourite colour?”
The woman biting her nails was up to her elbows.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll wait ‘till you’re through. Don’t want to make you talk with your mouth full. So my aunt once-”
DING.
The woman biting her nails lurched upright, fell over, and furiously rolled through the big wooden door.
“Good luck!” called the man. Then he leaned back and sighed. Then he snorted. Then he started humming again, whistled for a few seconds, hummed some more, yawned, stretched, started to snore, jolted violently awake again (knocking over half a table of magazines) and stared at the parent and their child for four minutes hoping they’d take their head out of the child’s carry-basket for a second and make eye contact.
At last, he didn’t care.
“H-”
“We’re contagious,” said the parent.
“W-”
“One more syllable and you’ll catch it.”
The man shut his mouth. “Golly!” he thought loudly. Then he started to clean his nails by picking them off. Some of the pickings he ate – maybe to see what the woman biting her nails had been up to, experimentally – and some of them he simply flicked to see how far they would fly.
One of them flecked off the bell above the big wooden door, which went ‘ding.’ The parent stood up, grabbed their child, and ran through the door so fast the man had no time to see their face. From somewhere in the distance, someone (the doctor?) shouted something rude.
For want of else to do and absent witnesses, the man began to explore, chart, and conquer the rugged interior of his nostrils. This went on for ten million years.
And then, in the distance, hollow as an empty grave.
DING
The man got up, checked the entire room to make sure he hadn’t forgot anything, and very slowly walked through the big wooden door, accidentally shutting it way too hard and making the paintings on all the walls jump.

Inside the door was a hall.
Inside the hall was another door.
Inside the door was the doctor.
He was a small, furious man with large teeth and a stare that made you flinch. Aside from these traits, he was very unlike a squirrel.
“Hello. Sit down.”
The man was a bit like a dog, and turned around three times before doing so – he wanted to make sure he had time to read all the charts on the walls first. One of them had what looked like a cross-section of an eyeball on it, and he was curious as to what it was.
“Hey, doc, what’s that thing that looks like a cross-section of an eyeball over there?” he asked.
“That’s a cross-section of an eyeball,” said the doctor. “Sit down.”
“Wow. Which side?”
“Left. Sit down.”
“Is it blue? My uncle said blue eyes are built backwards from green eyes.”
The doctor gently but firmly gripped the man’s shoulders and pushed him slowly until he was seated.
“Stick out your tongue.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“Breathe in.”
“Breath out.”
“Look at my finger.”
“Keep looking at my finger.”
“Stop looking at my finger.”
“Any problems eating?”
“Well –”
“Any problems sleeping?”
“You kno-”
“Wonderful. You’re healthy,” said the doctor. He checked his watch. “And my assistant just went home, so, uh, bye. Last one out’s a rotten egg, eh?”
“Y’know, that reminds me of a thing my grand-”
“Excellent. Well, nice to see you, see you later, etc, goodbye, good luck,” said the doctor. His handshake was almost a quick slap, and he left at a dead sprint without putting on his coat.
The man raised an eyebrow. Well, sometimes these things happen. Doctors were busy after all. He shrugged, put on his coat, stepped back into the Waiting Room, and was wholly caught by surprise when it pounced and disemboweled him. He didn’t even manage a yelp before he was swallowed.

The room shook itself three times, like a dog. It curled itself back up into a comfortable three-dimensional space.
And then it went back to waiting. It usually took a few weeks before it was hungry again.

There was a little king. A very little king. A king so little that in normal times he ought to have been a prince, but there had been an accident and an operation and a funeral and somewhere in the chaos his princedom had been amputated and buried.
So there he was. On the throne. And while he was there things were brought to him. Treaties and proclamations and promises and threats and pleasantries and all the colours of the paperwork rainbow (which is beige) passed under his nose and he even signed some of it, when he had to.
He could spell his own name, almost.
But that gets tiring, and a little king’s attention span is no longer than a little prince’s. So now and then, and again, and again, he would dismiss his business and cancel his court and call in the storyteller he knew from his youngest years.
The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then she’d cough, and cough, and say “once upon a time…”
The hall filled with wolves, and bears, and wizards, and dragons. Princes, too.
And everything would be happy again.

The years wore.
They tore down the mountains inch by inch; they threw up the trees and chopped them to stumps; they ripped the wool off sheep and sewed it back on again. And that’s to say nothing of the weather.
But they beat in vain against the little king. For although they took his youngest teeth – and one of his elder ones, to an unfortunate peach-pit – and they yanked him up to the sky, and they rubbed raw hair and hide all over his little face, they couldn’t keep his mind. And that was as little as it had been the day he was crowned.
The borders were shaky. The neighbours were aggrieved. The queen hadn’t seen him in three months and his children not since the day they were born.
That didn’t concern the little king much, but his storyteller had died recently, and that made him very cross.
So the men went door to door, and they asked around, and they brought up men and women and although none of them quite pleased the king as much as his old storyteller had, they WERE a lot more numerous, and that was of all the pleasure he could ask for, and he went through them like some people went through clothes. A few changes a month.
One would stand there, to his left. One would stand there, to his right. The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then the first in line would clear their throat and say “once upon a time…”
Lions and tigers, snakes and sorcerers, giants and princesses.
And he’d smile, and remember being happy again.

Years, given time, form decades for mutual protection and defense. They’re human creations, it’s only fitting that they do this. And it works well for them, gluing together time in blocks that stand firm even as mere matter crumbles and rushes against them.
There were no more little kings. There were a half-dozen old princes and princesses, though. Older than the little king had been when he fathered them, the eldest almost the age of his old storyteller back in the days he remembered.
He didn’t remember much else. If it was real, he didn’t want to hear it. Messengers left empty-handed with nobody bothering to even shoot them. Trade had given up and gone home. By and large the country outside the castle ran itself, save for those grim nights when the grey-faced men with halberds came down into the towns to interrogate anyone who might be hiding scraps of narrative. A children’s fable, a hearthside tale, a bedtime story – anything, anything at all. The elderly in particular were beset, and many an older man and woman was short a few fingers; the result of an earnest effort to make sure they weren’t shirking in their duties.
The king’s throne saw in the middle of his hall now. No story was new to him, not in whole nor in part. He’d made up for it for years with stereo, now he’d had to take it a step farther.
A nervous, throat-clearing storyteller at each hand, and one before him.
The little king waved his hand, like this.
And they said, all together and at once, “once upon a time…”

And it was true that once upon a time was a fancy.
It seemed likely than twice upon a time was pleasantry.
Thrice upon a time? That was more than could be held in just one place.

The castle didn’t vanish. Most people were very clear on that. The castle wasn’t gone. It hadn’t been spirited away.
But it wasn’t there anymore.
That isn’t the sort of thing people question. Good fortune was what it was. People shrugged, and peopled moved on, and when the neighbouring kingdoms came together and gently muddled their borders across the fields and towns nobody made a fuss.

And somewhere, far away, locked inside the crushed hours of a thousand compacted daydreams, there is a little king – not really a prince, not really himself – trapped somewhere on an edge, poised above a hundred dragons, a thousand princesses, a million witches. About to fall in, but holding his balance.
With no idea when he is.

On July 12th, 4:00 PM EST, the Trans-Canada Highway wheezed three times, choked, and died.
Nobody noticed for a few minutes. Then a doctor pulled over. 911 was dialed and CPR was attempted – to no avail. A few helpful Samaritans offered assistance, one was hit by a car, and soon emergency services were hard at work and half the traffic was slowing down to gawk and the other half was honking at them.
The cause of death was unknown – old age, cancer, a virus, choking to death – though seemingly pneumonic. Whatever it was, it spread fast. By the next morning the Autobahn was out, and come lunchtime it was official. The roads were dead.
The obvious thing to do was the decent thing. They had to be buried.

Ten million bulldozers, two billion shovels, seven hundred million wheelbarrows, and a trillion frothing sweats later, the corpses of the world’s roads were interned with love, and with care, and with sore backs. Some priests were located to say a few words here or there of some kind or another, but when it came down to personal testimony nobody had much to say. There were billions of acquaintances and work colleagues, but not a single friend, and no family.
“I knew them, but I didn’t KNOW them,” was the refrain. “And god, they were such a pain on the way to work,” was another. So was “traffic.” A lot of gawkers, fewer mourners.
Part of that might’ve been the problems. They started up fast.

First of all was getting around. It was a tricky business, and suddenly was based almost entirely around legs, which most folks deeply distrusted. There were few manuals for that sort of thing, and the manufacturers were irresponsible and legally untouchable.
To begin with people started relying heavily on the sidewalks, but they were just WALKS now, not beside anything at all, and it wasn’t just walking. There were joggers, running, strollers, and on occasion maniacs that drove on them, desperate for a road rush and caroming their cherished four-wheel-drives down four feet square of cement. The police chased them with red cheeks and flapping pants, caught up to them at hydrants, at telephone poles, at other cars. They’d book what was there if it was still breathing and tag it if it wasn’t.
All of this made the walks tricky, and a lot of folks renounced them, or walking altogether, or both. They took to beds and chairs and couches and sulked there, dreaming of tires.

When the despair was too much to bear, some people took the obvious way out. They’d dig a pit, drive their vehicles into it, and their friends would bury them both alive in the manner of ancient Sumerian kings. Several celebrities entombed themselves with entire fleets in this manner, that they might drive in the next life. The Tomb of Seinfeld was a wonder of the world within the week, and looted by grave robbers, treasure-hunters, explorers, and amateur archaeologists before it hit September.

At some point the question of food arose. None of it was moving anywhere, except maybe by ship, or plane. And neither of those could move anywhere once the fuel itself stopped moving.
Some of the farmers would be okay, but most of them needed supplies, and those couldn’t move anywhere, and so on, and so on, and so everyone realized pretty fast that this was going to be it for a lot of humanity, or at least anyone living in an industrial setting.
It was at this point – or near enough – that several people tentatively proposed replacing the roads. They were shouted down almost instantly. “Oh, they’ll just die again, what’s the point,” was the refrain, closely paired with “waste of taxpayer’s dollars.” Everyone who advocated nonsensical arguments against that sort of thing was shut up very firmly and soon everyone was free to get back to more pressing matters, like starving to death.

After the question of food came the question of graves. A lot of people were starving to death, and the ones left over to bury them were fairly weak and spindly. Cannibalism was a natural solution to both problems, but the nourishment on an emaciated skeleton person is pretty scarce and besides nobody really had the energy for that sort of thing.
The obvious solution, discovered in good time, was to bury the bodies with the roads. This was embraced by all, with some even bumping themselves off a few days in advance so they could be reunited with their beloved vehicles on the byways of the infinite just a little bit faster.
Nobody had the energy to chisel rocks anymore. Luckily, a half-buried tire made a wonderful headstone.

And after the question of graves came not much at all, because everyone left was awfully busy and couldn’t spare the time.

The roads waited a few years until they were sure everyone had forgotten, then snuck off.

Lightning crashed. Thunder boomed. In the bunker, under a cold caged bulb, four figures sat in silence, pouring over a tangle of papers and blurred photography.
At last they sat up, one by one, each making solemn eye contact.
General Goreblit lit a cigar. He ran a hand through his crew cut and confirmed that it was still precisely angled, and breathed a sigh of relief. “So. What is this we’re dealing with?” he asked.
“Ah uh um, eh, the uh, technical term for it is a Borborislich zerblinnia, as referred to by Linnean classifaction schemes, ahem,” said Doctor Wirms, pushing his giant spectacles a little farther up the enormous nose that almost disguised his entirely missing chin. “In uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh layman’s terms, it’s a MONSTER.”
“A monster?” asked the woman.
“Good god, man,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Speak English, American English. What’s this thing’s capabilities? What are its motives? What can we do about it?”
“I’ll tell you this thing’s capabilities,” said Captain Tom Johnson, whose chin shone diamond hard in the electric glow of the room. “It’s dangerous. I’ll tell you this thing’s motives: it’s a menace. And I’ll tell you what we can do about it: we can blow this monster to kingdom come through good old know-how and hard-work and can-do spirit and me making this face where I squint a little bit.” And Tom Johnson made that face where he squinted a little bit. .
“That’s the spirit!” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Doctor, you heard the man, it’s all taken care of.”
“Right,” said the woman. “So… what kind of monster is it?”
“I think the question right now, of course,” said Tom Johnson, “is exactly what kind of monster we’re dealing with here?”
“Hard to say,” said Doctor Wirms. He pointed at the incredible large metal box that filled half the room with itself and the other half with its grinding hum. “We’re still uh crunching data, uhm, er, uh. But it’s a monster. It could be uhhhhhh almost anything. Anything, that is to say, viz, dangerous, per se.”
“One thing’s for sure, egghead,” said Tom Johnson, “it’s not from around here. It’s a stranger. It’s from out of town. And that, doc, makes it the nastiest peace of work I’ve ever heard of. We’ve gotta stop it before it kidnaps our woman.”
“What?” said the woman. “Where’d THAT come from?”
“With all due respect,” said Doctor Wirms, “the Pythagorean Theorem suggests that it’s uhm, the result of uh. Careless yet quirky use of lab materials. One of my err colleagues must uh have ipso facto left dangerous SCIENTIFIC MATERIALS somewhere and caused MUTATION or, quid pro quo, UNCONTROLLABLE ROBOTS.”
“What kind of problem we looking at there, doctor?” asked General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Give me the worst-case scenario.”
“Oh, they’ll eat power plants or something. Or build more of themselves, Carthago delenda est, perchance to uhn, ahem, RULE THE WORLD.”
“By god, I won’t let that happen,” said Tom Johnson. “Count on me, doc. Give me the straight-shooting solution to that sort of mess.”
“If it’s robots, uh, ahem, asking them to solve for uh…love will do it, the lorem ipsum effect. If it’s mutants, it gets uhhh…trickier. Lots of guns or something.”
“What if you’re WRONG, doc?” asked Tom Jonnson, planting his knuckles firmly on the table and leaning over the doctor like a testosterone-flush mountain over an emasculated anthill. “What if this monster isn’t from earth at all….but from SPACE? I flew jets once. I know about space. It could be an alien, the worst kind of stranger, which is the worst thing of all! And I know those suckers REALLY love kidnapping our woman.”
“Who is this ‘our’ here?” asked the woman. “And did anyone just hear that?”
“It is scientifically impossible for extraterrestrial organisms to be the source of this problem,” said Doctor Wirms. “The Fermi Paradox prohibits it! No sophisticated alien would visit as anything more than a robot probe, due to Asimov’s Three Laws. Although uh, I guess it could be an uhm, unsophisticated organisms, such as err…. A large, ravenous goop, constantly consuming all matter.”
“It sounded like a knock,” said the woman.
“Disgusting,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. He lit a cigar and squinted through the massive haze of smoke in front of him. “Well men, I won’t lie to you. This monster has to be stopped here and now, or it means nothing less than the extinction of the human race and by that I mean a few cities in this country, which is much more important. Good luck, godspeed, and give ‘em hell.” He lit a cigar, shook both their hands, and lit a cigar. “Honey, get the door, will you?”
The woman sighed, got up, dodged a pinch, and opened the door to the bunker.
“Hi. Who is it.”
“The monster.”

The monster was a smiling, sober gentleman in a tidy and respectable suit, the kind you’d find on a really earnest – but not overeager – middle manager, or a thoughtful executive who’d earned his keep through hard work and loyalty. His hair was parted perfectly. His eyes were filled with kind wisdom. He was the size of a five story building and his shoes were well-cared-for.
“Now,” he said warmly, “why don’t we all just have a little sit-down and talk about all this? Man-to-man.”
“Right then,” said the woman. “I’ll just…. go.”
“That’s right, doll, just siddown somewhere,” said Tom Johnson, elbowing her to one side. “Sir! Captain Tom Johnson, ex-pilot, but just call me Tom. What can we do for you this fine day, sir?”
“Ah, a no-nonsense sort of man,” said the monster. “My favourite kind. You know, I was in the army when I was younger. Gave ‘em hell. But that was a simpler time, eh?”
“Over here,” said the woman, edging around the corner of the bunker.
“General Goreblit,” said General Goreblit, giving the monster a firm and honest shake with his right hand and lighting a cigar with his left. “Call me Harold. What can we do for you today, citizen?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said the monster. “This is just a social call. Well, maybe a bit of business, but that’s nothing personal. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. You know, you remind me a lot of my brother. A good man, he was. He got shot down in ’41. His radio was dead.”
“For a while,” called the woman, as she turned the keys to the jeep.
“In point of fact,” said the monster, “there’s one very important thing that needs to be done around here. I’d like to step on your whole town, starting with you. It seems harsh, but I think you’ll agree it’s fair and practical. Let’s not get fuzzy-headed about this, we all knew what we were getting into when this business started. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.”
“Logically speaking, you make perfect sense!” beamed Doctor Wirms, adjusting his comically enormous bowtie. “Oh my goodness, I haven’t been so excited since…err…Los Alamos! Gee whiz!”
The woman honked the horn once as she went ‘round a curve in the road, and was gone.
“Fantastic,” said the monster. He gave them a fatherly smile as he raised his enormous shoe. “Now, just remember, this is going to hurt me a lot more than you.”

Once upon a time there was a monkey.
It was a hungry monkey. And hey, it was all alone on this little island. And there was so much delicious fruit to eat, on so many trees! Enough for dozens of monkeys, surely.
And so the monkey ate all the fruit in one week and starved to death.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the monkey, shrivelling up in the sun. “What could have been done differently? Nothing. Urrh. Ah. My kidneys.”

Once upon a time there was an expert.
One of several experts, mind you. A whole band of them. They’d found out that if you took a stone you could hit a flint to chip a flake to fashion a tool to cut a branch to sharpen a point to embed in a pit to really make a mammoth’s day go very poorly indeed to get a nice lunch and also some mammoth byproducts like ivory and bone and fur and so on. A lot of the mammoth would end up smelling bad and rotting but oh well.
And so the experts hunted all the mammoth at full speed at all times as hard as they could and all the mammoths died, which made an awful lot of them hungry, cold, and devoid of shiny objects.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the experts, counting their fingers to see which digits had fallen off last night when the wind came extra-frosty. “What could have been done differently? Nothing at all. Oh dang, that’s seven.”

Once upon a time there was a tiller of the soil, salt of the earth, practical level-headed sort of person.
There were a LOT of them. Takes bodies to keep a farm running. A lot of bodies growing a lot of crops to feed a lot more bodies to grow a lot more crops to feed a huge amount of bodies to grow a huge amount of crops to feed an insane amount of you get the idea I think, don’t you.
Problem was, you ran out of room for those crops. So there was nothing to do but dredge out wetlands, chop forests, and denude hillsides. Cram those crops wherever they fit, and if they didn’t, fit them anyways. If it was too hot? Irrigate. Still too hot? Irrigate more. A little too hot oh well irrigate it.
And so the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people suffered from foul water, rain-stripped soils, and seasonal flooding that washed away many of their livelihoods and also their livelilives. Famine and so one were pretty common, and their towns fell apart.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people. “What could have been done differently? Absolutely nothing at all. Dang, the fields are a saltpan again. Better eat rats.”

Once upon a time there was a great and mighty ruler.
Alas, one of many. And the problem with being one of many great and mighty rulers is that none of your fellows is ever quite willing to admit the obvious truth of your being the greatest and mightiest. This gets especially galling when one of them has a nice bit of land, or a lovely port, or are friends with someone you don’t like or think you like more than they do.
So for simple reasons such as these, it’s expedient to commit some kind of diplomacy or war or whatever. Eventually the greatest and mightiest of rulers achieved the finest truth – a domain larger than any had seen before.
And so it split apart from the inside within their lifetime, held together by spit, self-interest and varnish as it had been.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the great and mighty ruler from their deathbed, a bit muffled by fourteen sharp blades and a pillow held firmly over the face. “What could have been done differently? I can see absolutely nothing at all. Hey, I think I gave that dagger to you on your birthday. Can’t you write more often?”

Once upon a time there was a wise and far-thinking entrepreneur.
It turns out that there was a source of heat and power greater still than that imagined by the age-old means of flammable rocks: flammable liquids. Drag them up, burn them up, blow your mind. Soon everywhere that was anywhere had dozens of rigs lining the landscapes, sucking for their quick fix. At some point it was brought to the attention of several of the wisest and farthest-thinking entrepreneurs that flammable liquids might be curdling the entire planet’s atmosphere very quickly, and this was astutely deemed impolite to broadcast. After all, what was life worth living for, if not for flammable liquids?
And so the whole world burned on together, some furiously, some hesitantly, only to run into a somewhat nasty shock a little less than a hundred years later.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the wise and far-thinking entrepreneurs, as they considered their stock options, checked their golden parachutes, and bought land in New Zealand. “What could have been done differently? I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine, it’s impossible to imagine anything being changed but nothing at all.”

Once upon a time there was a New Zealand.
New Zealand does not contain monkeys. It has some nice and very patient birds.
New Zealand’s patient too. It can wait. It doesn’t have any other choice, but that’s okay, it’s at peace with that.
Because it knows that when it comes down to it, nothing really ever gets done differently.

On a warm Wednesday morning, safely on its way into midspring, Paul McGuinty woke up early, had some coffee, and descended into his garage to talk to his dragon.
It was waiting for him, and hungry. It must’ve smelled the air.
Paul walked around it clockwise, stopping here and there to touch a fender, to examine a speck of dust, to flick a fleck of froth from the windshield. He never quite stopped talking even when he inhaled; no words, just a constant stream of syllables and murmurs, baby words, for a great fire-gutted iron-skinned smoke-belching baby that he loved more than anything that could say ‘dada.’
“Good!” he said at last, and slapped the hood affectionately. “Good!”
Then he went upstairs, had more coffee, got dressed, and got behind the wheel. He turned the key and it growled, he pressed the pedal and it roared.
“Time for some treats, goo’boy,” he crooned. “Time for some treats.”

It balked at the first stop. Dragons, as a rule, are not fond of water unless they own it. Paul was confident it would relax by the time he was done at the register.
“Will that be express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without scented soap?”
“Nonscented, extra soap.”
“Superscrub on or off?”
“Superscrub on, extra extra soap, with turbo premium and extra premium. He deserves the best.”
The woman smiled the quick and easy grin of someone being paid far too little to think of any questions and punched it up. She rattled off some nominal fee and Paul gave her twice that and told her to let it run twice as long as usual.
Into the waterfalls went the dragon, cautiously, nudging at the pipes and hoses with its snout, distrust making it grumble and lurch at movement.
“Easy, easy, easy m’ goo’boy, whoosagoo’boooooy,” said Paul, as the jets began to thunder and descend, panting furiously at the sight of grimed skin. “Gotta scrubbadubbdubb. Goooooooo’boy.” And other things like that, that calm down dragons.

It roared louder when they took to the road again – maybe hoping to vibrate loose the last few drops of water from its hide. It was fiercely clean on a dirty street and maybe that was what made all the cars shrink back from it.
Besides, it was very large. Didn’t quite fit in its own lane. Not quite a proper vehicle at all, really. But a very good dragon.
And very good dragons got very good service.
“Tires?”
“Yes. And oiling.”
“Express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without uberspraying?”
“With, and pump extra into the seams.”
“Relaxing music or no relaxing music?”
“Ultra premium, uberspraying – heavy on the seams and every crevice – and double that ultra premium. No music. It puts him to sleep.”
The boy smiled the nervous and slightly rigid grin of someone who still cared about the sanity of the general public and punched it up. Paul gave him a few handfuls of bills without counting and told him to put the entire staff on it.
The dragon lay there, quiescent. It glowered at the approaching hoses in helpless pride.
“Ittabeefiiiine, ittabeefiiiiiiiine,” soothed Paul. “Goooooooo’boy.”

When the sun came to touch the dragon again, it shrank back at the rivalling glare. The dragon was a light source all its own now. It glowed with oils, its plating seethed, it had gone from impenetrable to unpenetrable in a single stride and the dirt simply gave up and died against its sides in handfuls, the road shrinking away from the grip of its summer claws.
Its roar was steadier now. Earnest, not thirsty. It knew this was its time a-coming. It knew it would be out and around from now on, not shrinking from the cold. It knew that it would be on the highway soon, shouting down small and quailing vehicles, bullying fat slow transports, calling from overpasses.
It knew things. It was a dragon.
Paul knew things too, mostly that there was one last stop to be made. This time there were no words, no questions, only buttons.
Regular, premium, super premium, ultra premium, ultra deluxe premium, ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory.
Paul selected ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory and held down the nozzle for what seemed like seven years while thinking about what kind of chocolate bar he wanted. After far too much time he wandered indoors, paid up, and walked out with a reddish wrapper that had seemed the least likely to contain peanut butter.
He was incorrect.
Paul was annoyed. He kicked at the dragon’s pedals, and it snorted defiance at him. It was tense, he was tense. Things were thrumming, things were hissing.
It was time to go.
It was time to go NOW.

The dragon LEAPT out of the gas station, darted onto the road, slipped into the on-ramp, and shot onto the highway so fiercely that it almost ran a car half a kilometre away from itself off the road, purely from shock.

The roar was around Paul now. He was in its teeth, after all.
Air screaming at his ears. The drip and trickle of its innards underfoot. Hot breath whooshing. And inside, fire, hot fire, screaming to come out.
Paul stamped the pedal harder and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He was laughing so hard that he didn’t hear or see the police car until it pulled in front.

Paul pulled over. Slowly. Grudgingly. Seething.
Inside he was swearing. Outside, he was merely hissing.
He pulled the keys out of the dragon, and kicked it savagely as it grumbled its complaints.
How dare they. How DARE they. Didn’t they know who he was? Didn’t they CARE? How dare they!
He swore, he hissed, he nearly spat, and he turned a friendly smile to the man outside his window.
“Good afternoon officer! What seems to be the problem?”
“Just a friendly reminder, sir,” said the cop amiably.
“Oh! How kind of you!” said Paul. He kicked the dragon again. “What is it?”
“Your gas cap seems to be open, that’s all.”
“Well isn’t that nice to know,” said Paul’s mouth while his brain turned itself on and off three times so fast he almost didn’t notice what was happening.
Oh. It must’ve been while he was thinking of a chocolate bar.
And then it was far too late.

The dragon pulled itself out nose-first, flames and smoke billowing in its wake like a runaway blockbuster. Its oiled scales shone brighter than mirrors in the noon sun; its claws and teeth were purest white and its eyes a red that could make rubies crack. It was clutching the policeman in its rearmost talon, and as it flew out of sight as fast as imagination Paul never saw the cop so much as twitch or scream.
Mind you, he made up for it himself.

The origins of Risbit are shrouded in history’s thickest fog. It’s unknown if they were from the Rockilees or the Hollow; if they served Immish or Talgo; or even if they were male or female. Nonetheless, the legend has a straightforward shape.

One day, Risbit was hunting prongnose on the middle heights, far above what passed for the highest villages of the time. The Peak was thinly settled, but the prey had already learned what to expect from the bipeds with pointy bits in their hands and glints in their eyes, and was predisposed to nervous flight.
It went down from blood lose somewhere up the Trundledowns. Uneven terrain, but clearly above their houses. From there they could see every twinkle of light, every flicker of movement, almost close enough to touch.
It made the knowledge of the five-mile downhill stomp with whatever bits of a five-hundred-pound piece of meat they could rip off even more depressing.
And then Risbit spoke The Words. And, as The Words were so very wise and important, they are known with a precision that no other detail of this story can be sure of. Much else fades, but they remain, seared from brain into the stone of the Peak itself.
Risbit spoke The Words, and The Words were: “Why don’t we just roll it down there?”

Ten minutes later the slightly battered corpse of the prongnose slid off a last slope and pinwheeled into Risbit’s house, denting the wall. It is for this reason that the Peakward face of all houses constructed to this day contains a slight indentation.

There were consequences beyond the dreams of any.
First, there was now incentive for hunters to walk the higher slopes. Now that they knew of The Words, there was no true problem with killing a fat beast far from home. As long as the distance was vertical, it was, for all intents and purposes, insignificant.
Second, there was an innovative explosion in packaging, along with an exploration of material properties. The right kind of padding in the right place could keep a prongnose or bulkhead from exploding – or losing limbs – for an extra half-mile. Once the foragers got interested, baskets were designed that could safely deliver first sturdy tubers, then delicate berries – and weighted just so, so that their momentum was sustained until they reached home.
Third, Risbit was titled ‘the Poly’ by the general acclaim and agreement of their peers.

Some centuries later, after Risbit the Poly was safely buried, their home village became embroiled in a dispute. It seemed that another, younger clan had built their own village directly Peakward of the pre-existing settlement, and the manner in which this blocked off the necessary access to rolling resources was deeply resented. The accused maintained they had done nothing wrong, and in fact that the deeply Flatward positioning of the prosecution gave them unfair title to an unnecessarily large strip of the Peak. This was disputed with sharp objects, and a bloody battle ensued until the smaller, Peakward village, on the verge of defeat, heaved a large boulder down on a shale scree and triggered a very sharp and sudden avalanche.
To this day, the exact location of Risbit the Poly’s tomb and village is unknown.

So, another factor came into settlement. The lower the village, the more Peakward slope it could lay claim to for transport. But the higher the village, the less likely it would be that some upstart rival would claim its Peakward land and threaten its Flatward neighbour with burial by rock. War went from vanishing scarce to a constant threat; every person kept an eye on higher ground and slept with their shoes on. In vocabulary, ‘Peakward gaze’ went from referring to clear-headed planning to creeping paranoia.
At length, the fate of the Peak in general came to rest in the uppermost of its denizens: a council of four headsfolk whose settlements were placed so highly as to be unassailable by rolling, yet deathly impoverished – all of their foraging had to be done downslope, and hand-toted back. Above them was only a little cap of summer frost. As none of them could hurt the other, they talked as equals without fear for the first time in several generations, largely to complain about their problems.
It must’ve been then that some had the idea of extortion, which wafted around like a bad smell until – as many bad smells do –everyone grew accustomed to it and decided it wasn’t so bad. If the Four on the Peak couldn’t roll their own resources, they could profit handsomely from the rollings of their Flatward tributaries. Larger, more prosperous villages were forced to yoke their bounty and drag it upslope by rope (later chain) and by hand. It is believed this wearying vassalage led directly to the domestication of the stupid-but-tractable bulkhead, which spent a lot of its time wandering up and down the Peak anyways and didn’t mind carrying an extra quarter-ton or so of food and supplies as it did so.

For some time the Four on the Peak prospered. Unassailable from below, unrivaled above, at last the most obvious problem reared its head: what to do about those beside you. It was such an obvious thought that all four of them had and executed it at about the same time, leading to a mathematically unlikely quadruple ring ambush. So great and obvious was the hubbub and confusion at the summit that several of the larger, bolder Flatward vassals armed themselves and stole up to the heights. Hardened and embittered, they overpowered the weakened and reduced forces of the Four, although several emergency avalanches were deployed before defeat was obvious. The villages of the Four on the Peak were razed and their supplies of deadly boulders and shales depleted by the expedient measure of dropping them down empty slopes.

A time of relative peace blossomed. The Peak’s heights were now depopulated, and the strategic benefits of their position were now known and defended against. Walls were sculpted around settlements to both ensnare rolling goods along specific paths and (in wary preparation) to deflect barrages from above. In truth there were now few enemies from within; the shared suffering inflicted by the Four had forged a small bond of commonality. Rather than competing for rollzones, most codified and elaborated upon their own pre-set roll-routes.
This mutual pacifism was well-timed, for it was not longer after this that those strangers, the Flat, came to the Peak. They had interesting and exotic goods and metal weaponry. The first they bargained with, the second they threatened with, and if the Peakers hadn’t been wary from the get-go things might have ended very badly – conquered first from above, then below. As it was many of the most Flatward settlements were razed, but the newcomers didn’t know of The Words, and thus were wiped out in vast numbers when they sought to climb higher Peakward into the waiting stone rain.
The Peak solidified in friendship at this defeat of a common, alien foe, and the proto-Peak Republic was formed in the loosest sense of the term.

What followed was not unimportant, but was devoid of dramatic shifts. The Peak Republic solidified. The roll-routes were formalized into the rollways, which were deep, broad, and required the relocation of much of the Peak’s good stone into their surfaces. Agriculture – practiced initially at the behest of the Four on the Peak for greater tribute – was refined. The prongnose went extinct. Erosion became a concern, and sculpting of the slope beyond its use for rolling became more common.
This was referred to as the Combing.

The Peak Republic fell in the end not to infighting among peers, but friendship between strangers. Numerous kinds of Flat came to trade at the bottom of the Peak, and in time some of the Flatwardmost settlements came to enjoy a nigh-monopoly on exotic goods and luxuries, from which they profited handsomely. Jealousy grew in those consigned to the Peakward heights (who paid the greatest sums for the smallest tastes of these indulgences) and in the end quarrels grew into denunciations grew into embargoes grew into incitement grew into deliberate disruptions of the rollways. Shielded well from stone, the protecting Peakward walls of the Flatward settlements were not proof from stink and sickness – the Peakward settlements beset them with rotting and diseased carcasses and sewage, choking their fields, forage, and rollways with murderous bacteria. In the end every settlement Flatward of the Rockilees was emptied, either driven into the arms of their Flat allies and friends or eradicated by plague.
This was the second great redistribution of the Peak’s population. Now both the extreme heights and the farthest lows were relatively devoid of habitation. The Peak was girdled with life, and by history, inclination, custom and practicality, this range did not change greatly from that point onwards.

At some point, something had to be done about the trees.
Wood wasn’t what you built a house out of in most of the Peak, but it was needed for an awful lot of tools and smaller-scale projects. The Peak had been forested thick to the treeline in the old days, but toward the mid-life of the Peak Republic that coverage had been thinned thoroughly. Now, with the concentration of population in the Peak’s midsection, competition for timber began to grow. Each settlement also now needed more cropland – Peakward, preferably.
Nobody was above them. Nobody could sneak up on them from below.
So, once again, precautions grew into paranoia. War against one of your neighbours risked an ambush from your other, so it was safest to fortify and content yourself with sabotage and mending the effects of the sabotage of your rivals.
There was plenty to mend. But it was a lot harder than the sabotage, so nobody ever put quite as much effort into it.

At length, a problem emerged. The rollways were wearing awfully deep, and some of the oldest and most-used were collapsing inwards. Alternate routes were found, but they were less stable to begin with (being in less preferable terrain).
There were several summits. During the course of these, it was determined that
(1) rollways were necessary for a Peak life. Existence without The Words was, fundamentally, not thinkable.
(2) without noticing, it appeared that a point had been reached by which rollways were no longer sustainable at the scale necessary to sustain Peak society.
(3) the individuated benefits of ceasing to crumble the Peak with rollways were basically non-existent and if any given Peak settlement did so its neighbours would simple take its belongings.
So, having determined that they couldn’t possibly fix anything, the people of the Peak resigned themselves to merely enlarging and refurbishing the rollways as much as possible as fast as possible.

Some time later, Flats came to the Peak again. Not as conquerors, not as traders. There wasn’t much anymore to conqueror or trade with, so they had to settle for being explorers, and complained a good deal about their lack of fortune. Nothing but crumbled, buckled rocks, ruts, bumps, and dirt – very poor dirt at that.
“This is the ugliest hill I’ve ever seen,” decreed Abideel Gutchen, and those words were written in her journal and remain true to this day, centuries later.
Mind you, the years have taken their toll on the Peak since her day.
It was probably a whole sixty foot high when she saw it.

Sleeping people, somewhere.
“Psst!”
One less, now. But pretending.
“Psst!”
Still pretending.
“HEY!”
Ow that was the ribs never mind, up they go.
“About time! I’ve been poking you for hours and ages and forevers.”
“Why. I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired. You can be tired later. I have something very important to do! I am a hero, and a hero needs a story, and a story needs an adventure!”
“Ah.”
“And I need you to come with me for it.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve got things that need lugging. Luggage. You can be the luggee. The lugger, even.”
“Those sound like bad things to be.”
“You can be the luggage then, come on, come on. Time’s a-wastin’.”
Luggage would have protested, but The Hero had a maniacal endurance that wore away mere discomfort like a waterfall ate cheese, and soon he was prodded upright, packed with supplies, and placed on the trail.
“It’s important we sing as we walk,” said The Hero, “to show our fighting spirit. Also, to bid our loved ones farewell in case we all succumb on this desperate journey.”
Luggage waved at his friends and family. They waved back.
“Not good enough. Do re mi fa so la get going.”
Luggage didn’t know the words. That was okay – he could hum, and The Hero didn’t seem to know the words either. Or the tune. And sometimes when the path went rough the lyrics dipped into swears.
It was a good song, though.

By afternoon they ran out of trail.
“We’re leaving the Lands We Knew,” said The Hero. “That’s important. Here’s where the adventure kicks in. Keep your eyes open.”
“What’s the adventure, anyways?” asked Luggage. His feet hurt. They’d packed on the side of better-safe-than-sorry, which was making his spine extremely sorry.
“We’re going to find a ravening monster.”
“That sounds very dangerous.”
“Of course! And then we’ll risk our life and limbs to kill it!”
“That sounds even more dangerous. Why?”
“Because it’s a ravening monster. It needs to be stopped for the good of us all.”
“If it’s this far out it’ll get pretty tuckered trying to raven at us. Are you sure you can’t carry some of this?”
“I need both hands free for my weapon. Anything can happen right about…..now!”
And The Hero put his foot off the beaten trail.
Four hours and a lot of dirt, branches, twigs and leaves went by and ended at a camp, with a small fire and some foods. The Hero stood ramrod stiff next to the blaze, weapon in his hands, eyes darting.
“It’s not quite dark yet. We can see for a little ways. Would you like some?”
“Constant vigilance,” said The Hero. “I can hear something out there. We’re not alone.”
“You want first watch then?”
“I’ll stay up all night if I have to. They’ll seize any moment of weakness.”
“That’s yes?”
“There – there! You see that?”
Luggage hadn’t. Then it happened again.
“There….right ahead.”
“Yes. That’s a bat.”
The Hero shushed him and slowly and menacingly raised his weapon, eyes narrowed and face scrunched in devastating power.
Luggage went to bed. When he woke up, nothing had changed.

They didn’t sing on the second day. The Hero said it was because nobody was there to listen, so it didn’t matter. That and The Hero was extremely tired and kept tripping on things and yawning.
“Too many…..rocks. Jagged rocks. Around here, that is,” he mumbled angrily. “This is….un’atral. Must be a draaaaaa—aagon. Mmph. Around here. That is.”
“We’re hunting a dragon? That’s pretty dangerous. Why are we doing this?”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” said The Hero. “You’re loud.”
Then it started raining.

The second night was a lot quiet and simpler. No bats. No campfire. No watch, even, because The Hero demanded first watch again and fell asleep before waking up Luggage.
Just the trickle and hiss of soft, insistent rain against the river.
Breakfast was leftovers from the attempt at dinner. It was mostly enough, and it was mostly crumbs. It took a lot of concentration to eat, and so when The Hero grabbed Luggage’s arm and pointed, bug-eyed, most of Luggage’s attention was diverted to rescuing his next mouthful.
“LOOK.”
Luggage looked.
There, farther down the riverbank, lay a thing of scales and hide and teeth, mouth wide open against the dawn, embedded amidst the reeds and dirt and snoring just a little bit.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Are you sure it’s it? It looks like a crocodile.”
“An alligator. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure it’s an alligator? Its snout looks a little narrow.”
“That doesn’t MATTER. Listen, this is all very metaphorical now. It’s both an alligator-”
“A croco-”
“-AND a dragon. We’re making things realer than real here. What’d we have for breakfast last week? You remember?”
“No…”
“But it was real, right? What was that story your aunt told us last fall when we wanted to go nutpicking after dark?”
“You mean the one about the headless ghost with teeth the size of –”
“Exactly my point. Thank you. So! It’s an alligator. It’s a dragon. I’m a hero. These are all the things that matter right now, and so I say: this is it.”
The window bustled in a low-key sort of way.
“This is it,” said The Hero.
“This is it, I guess, okay,” agreed Luggage. “So, do you want me to distract it from the front, and you come up and –”
“No!” said The Hero, passionately. “I don’t want you hurt! This is my fight! My fight, using my rules, and for my reasons! A hero doesn’t risk other’s lives like that! I’ve got to do this selflessly, purely, and profoundly! You can sit behind this rock and worry about me.”
“Well, I’m very good at that,” said Luggage. “Alright. But please, be careful. And you still haven’t told me why we’re doing this!”
“It’ll all become clear,” said The Hero. “It’s all something meaningful. A Hero makes a story, Luggage, and stories always make sense. We’re at the denouement. The dragon is in our sights. All is to be revealed. If I die, remember the story. You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“Get ready…get set….don’t do anything!”
And The Hero charged.

Forty feet of empty shore lay ‘twixt monster and man. It was mostly mud, and deeper than it looked. The Hero’s charge foundered, but his weight sustained it, and he ploughed through marshy grass and slopping sludge with weapon held firm. His battle cry DID taper a bit, but he needed his breath for bigger things.
The crocod – the alligator, the monster – turned its head a bit. Its mouth was still open, but it didn’t really move much, right up until the point where The Hero took a flying leap and landed right on top of it.
For a single, shining moment The Hero’s arm and weapon were framed against what would’ve been the sky if there hadn’t been trees there. Instead they just sort of stood out against the leaves. A bit.
Then it came down, quick as lightning. THUNK.
The monster grunted – more of a snort, really a puff of air if anything – and went limp.
Luggage realized in the sudden silence that he’d been holding his breath. Also, clenching his toes. He could hear the twitch of his tendons as they relaxed.
NOW came the roar, erupting from the chest of a human rather than the beast. Huge and great and guttural with emotion and joy over a death evaded, a death embraced, came the call of The Hero, the climax of the saga.
“HOLY SHIT,” he yelled at the world as he leapt to his feet, arms wide, mouth agape. “LOOK HOW BIG MY DICK IS!”
And the alligator spun about, grabbed him by the pelvis, and pulled him under.

Luggage ran over to the water. He thought about doing something, but it was as thick and clear as mud on a warm morning. All he could see was six no three no one not one ripple. Smooth as a weed-clotted plate.
So instead Luggage picked up the leftovers of breakfast and put them in his stomach for safekeeping, and he walked home.
The bats didn’t bother him.
The rain didn’t bother him.
The rocks didn’t bother him.
The night didn’t bother him.
His feet were a bit sore by the time he got home, all alone, and with the most attention he’d ever seen.
“Where’d you go?”
“What happened?”
“Where’s your friend?”
“What happened?”
“Did anything happen?”
“Something happened.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“Yes, tell us a story about what happened. Tell us a story.”
“Tell us a story.”
Luggage thought of all the things he’d been told to remember and they all clotted in his mouth and the words he couldn’t imagine jumped out of him instead.
“An allegory ate him.”

And they had to be as happy as they could be with that, because that WAS that.

“Look at the light.”
“Look to the right.”
“Look to the left.”
“Look to the ceiling.”
“Look at the floor.”
“Now look straight ahead and read the letters until you can’t see them.”
I squinted.
“Q….P…R….C…G….F….T….M…S….Z….”
I squinted harder. Oh, there it was.
“Splon.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Splon. The last letter on the chart is splon. I almost couldn’t see it.”
“There’s no splon there.”
“Yes there is. It just took me a moment. I didn’t expect it.”
“There’s no such thing as splon.”
“Look at the chart.”
“I can’t see a splon.”
“Well, then talk to the manufacturer. Because there it is. Fairly clear, too, now that I know it’s there. Splon.”
“Wait here.”
I waited here. Some time and more here later, along came the optometrist again, this time with a relaxed woman in a suit.
“Hey,” said the woman. She was so relaxed her eyelids were barely open. “Do me a favour. Open your mouth and say om.”
“Ah?”
“No. Om.”
“Ommm.”
“Hah! Thought so. He’s got third eye. See? Right in the middle of his forehead.”
The optometrist squinted. “I don’t see it.”
“Exactly. Right, come into the room next door. We’re going to run a few more tests. It’s not a common condition.”

“Breathe in, breathe out, visualize yourself, yadda yadda. Okay, you meditating?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Now meditate at the light.”
“Okay.”
“Shh! Meditate to the right. Now the left. Meditate waaay up high at the ceiling. Now meditate at the floor – down, down, a little more – there! Now meditate and look at what I’m holding in my hand.”
“It’s hard and black and cold and stained with the guilt of failing to clean the coffeepot before you left home this morning.”
“What?”
“It’s the fifth time you’ve done that this month. You’re sorry but you don’t know how to make it better. It’s all your fault. You’re the worst.”
“Weird. That’s not normal third-eye behaviour. I figured you were going to see this die in my hand and tell me what number it came up from. Wait here a second.”
I waited a second. When the woman in the suit came back, it was with a man in a bathrobe.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Bend over.”
I bent over.
“What do you see?”
“A wasted life. A hollow existence. A failed marriage. Three resentful children that will not come to your funeral.”
“Yep. Sounds about right. Classic fourth eye. It’s lodged up your backside, and you’re seeing the backside of all humans with it. Ah well, whatcha gonna do.”
“Is there a cure?”
“Hell no. Why would there be? We’ve all got something like it, yours is just abnormally acute. Now, bend over and look at this picture.”
“Hollow longing for immortality, a desperate anxiety to make a mark.”
“You betcha. Now look ahead. Now look left. Right. Up. Down. Ahead. Now, concentrate as hard as you can on what’s in my pocket.”
“It’s fuzzy. And impossible to get ahold of.”
“You kidding? It’s my alimony cheque. They stick like glue.”
“It’s a cheque? I can’t see a cheque. Just an uncertain mass of…stuff.”
“Huh. Hold on a tick.”
The man in the bathrobe left. When he came back, it was in the company of a woman in a coat and a full-sized scanning electron microscope.
“Hello,” said the woman in the coat. “Do me a favour and tell me what this machine is looking at, without checking the display.”
I had to squint pretty hard. “I can’t tell, sorry. All I can see are stringy bits.”
“Well shit,” she said. “Looks like you’re sub-sub-sub-atomic. Or something. Hell if I can tell. Any alternate universes down there?”
“Let me look.”
I looked.
I looked REAL hard.
And when I was done looking, I looked around some more and found I was all alone in the room and they’d tied me down pretty good.
There’s an argument outside the door. Pretty energetic. Not sure what’s going to happen when it’s over. There’s ethical quandaries, and political ponderings, and some sort of abstract angles.
If I’d looked ahead a little bit harder, I bet could’ve seen this coming.
Oh well. My hindsight’s always been 20/20.

The nest wasn’t much. A clump of down and some pebbles, crammed in the crutch of what must’ve been a nice tree a hundred years ago, and had probably had leaves up until the last decade.
No twigs. Hadn’t been any twigs for ages.
Still, a nest was a nest, and that’s why its occupant slammed beak-first into Alistair’s eyeball, popping it like an overripe grape.
“Fuck!” said Alistair. And he fell over backwards, nest in hand, grasping, flailing, wailing, and he bumped down ten feet head over heels and somehow missed landing on his neck, which was quite a feat.
“Fuck,” concluded Alistair. His eye throbbed. His back ached. The wad of feathers and tiny frail broken things that had been a bird was mashed against his collarbone, and that hurt too. “Fuck.”

The bunker wasn’t much either. Concrete, steel, earthworks. And a lot of forethought and hope. It had been camouflaged at one point, back when that might’ve served a purpose. Time had scraped that smug look off its face.
Inside was a light, surly and shrunken in the face of the incoming dawn. It was a big day. They could afford to use the last matches.
At the light was a fire, and beside the fire was Barbara, and under Barbara was a chair, which was placed at a table, which was covered in objects.
“This is way too complicated,” said Alistair.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Hey, what’s up with your eye?”
“Bird,” said Alistair.
Barbara raised an eyebrow.
“A fucking bird,” corrected Alistair. “But I got the eggs. One of them. It’s a little cracked. But it’s an egg.”
“Oh that’s nice. Should we boil it or fry it?”
“I thought you said you’d scramble it.”
“You need milk for that, properly.”
“You need water to boil it.”
“Well, that’s for the drinks. We’d better fry it.”
“We need butter for that.”
“Maybe if we boil it with the bad water and get rid of the shell?”
“That sounds dangerous. Oh well.”
The bad water took a while to boil, thick and truculent as it was. Alistair poured the good water into the two glasses. Barbara rooted through the metal box that had been a refrigerator when it had power, and a coldbox when it had insulation, and was now basically a cupboard with odd smells and creaks.
“Where’d you put the rat?”
“I minced it up and put it in the old butter container.”
“The becel?”
“That’s margarine. I put it in the old BUTTER container.”
“Margarine’s basically butter.”
“No it isn’t. Vegetable oils. Very different.”
“Tasted the same.”
“No it didn’t.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
The argument ended there. Most of them did. Barbara found the minced rat inside an old tuna tin.

They sat down. The plates were ready. The dishes were ready. The water was still clear, untouched by the faint haze of the air.
Forks up. Dish uncovered.
“Oh lovely,” said Barbara. “Where’d you find them?”
“Under an old shed. Must’ve been used to store fertilizer and seed.”
“Is it crabweed? Looks like crabweed.”
“I don’t know. What’s crabweed look like?”
“I’m not sure. My mother used to call anything that she didn’t want in her garden crabweed.”
“Huh.” Barbara put some of it in her mouth and chewed. “Tastes like crab.”
“Huh. Really?”
“No, I’m fooling you. It tastes like weeds.”
“Gosh.”
And it did.
“What’s the dressing?”
“Oil.”
“What kind?”
“I squeezed whatever I saw lying around.”
“Oh. What’re the little gritty black flakes?”
“What little gritty black flakes? I can’t see with this eye.”
“They’re little. And gritty.”
“Well –”
“Oh, and they’re black. Almost forgot.”
“Could be anything. Maybe they were part of the crabweeds.”
“Eh.”

Salad was finished. The plates were flipped over, for cleanliness’s sake.
“Minced rat. What’d you do to it?” asked Alistair.
“I browned it over the lamp. Then I seared it over the lamp. Then I fricasseed it over the lamp. Then I sautéed it over the lamp. Then I roasted it over the lamp. Then I pan-fried it over the lamp. When I couldn’t see any more red bits I figured it was done. Deglazed the pan with water to produce the sauce.”
“So it’s a sort of rat sausage, is it?”
“Those are stuffed into the intestines. The intestines are part of this. I think it’s more of a haggis, maybe. Maybe?”
“That needs oats. And it uses sheep.”
“Salads don’t use crabweeds. Beggars can’t be choosers. There’s not many more fish in the sea.”
“None at all, I think. Couldn’t find one last week. Just jellies.”
“Not bad for rat though, is it? At all, I mean.”
“I’ve had better rats. But this is the best rat I’ve had since I haven’t seen any in months.”

Finally, the main course. The egg. Pale, off-white-blue. Creased and folded even before it cracked. Twisted on both sides. With the sludge of the bad water wiped away.
Inside, it was deep brown.
“Is that normal?” asked Alistair.
“I can’t remember,” mused Barbara. “Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever had an egg that looked like this before. What kind of bird was it?”
“Here it is,” said Alistair. He peeled the bird out of his collarbone and held it up for inspection.
“Flatbird. Not very informative. Could be a redwing blackbird no no those aren’t wings, that’s its insides. Nasty.”
“Good egg, though.”
“Yes. Surprisingly sweet.”

The daytime fog was coming in, thick and rancid-hot.
“Dessert?” said Alistair, raising his glass.
“Dessert,” confirmed Barbara.
“Have you got your pill?”
“Always do, for twenty years.”
“Well then. Bottoms up.”
“Here’s to the future.”
Gulp. Chug. Chug. Clink.
Ahh.