jamieproctor.ca

Recess came to Double River Elementary, and the bell rang ding-ding-ling-ding-dong. A signal for the first-grade class of Mr. Buckle to troop outdoors and enjoy the fresh mountain air and for Alan Sebastian Buckle himself to stand in the parking lot and set tobacco on fire in an unobtrusive corner while jamming it in his mouth, a curious habit that was becoming scarcer by the year.
The children began their recess playtime as they always did, in the same curious, well-behaved way that all the adults of Double River commented on so encouragingly. Two lines, just like the Old Milsop and the Young Milsop, just like the rivers (well, streams, really) that ran either side of main street, as formal as a marching band, each six-year-old looking another six-year-old straight in the eye. Glaring another six-year-old in the eye. Judging. Calculating. Strategizing.
It was all part of the game, you see. And it was always properly random, so it was all fair and nobody could complain except for the people who were paired off with Leslie Walnut and Gregory Macintyre, because you had to cut them a little slack after that sort of luck.
Silence reigned. Well, it reigned all day in the schoolyard anyways, but now, full of children, it reigned with a little more authority and gusto. A day-old newspaper displaying a lady with no shirt on blew its nervous way from one side of the playground to the other. Fingers twitched.
Claire Benedict, standing at the side of the line closest to the fence, cleared her throat and stared at the torso of Tim Maple opposite her. “I pretend,” she said, “that I’m a giant robot transformer.”
There was no noise, though it seemed there should’ve been – no whoosh, no foom, not even a good-old-fashioned zzzap! Steel shone and gravel flew as Claire sank into the playground up to her treads. She had to flail her enormous gun-arms a bit to stabilize herself, and knocked over the school flagpole like a toothpick.
Tim narrowed his eyes as a cannon that would’ve been oversized on a battleship pointed itself at him, and his six-year-old brain took the easiest way out. “Well I pretend that I’m a BIGGER giant robot transformer,” said Tim Maple.
The easiest way out was taken, and Tim stood over twice the height of Claire, towering over the schoolyard like a colossus. A colossus with even worse balance than she did, as a quick shot to the kneecap proved.
Tim fell over. Half the school went with him, including two kids that were a bit slow to duck and Mr. Alan Sebastian Buckle, who’d just wondered what the hell those noises were.
Everyone stared at Tim – or at least his left leg, which was most of what could be seen of him. Then Claire pulled back her cannon-arm and shot him in the head, removed most of it and filling the air with the smell of burning wires.
That was the signal for everyone to start all at once.

Charlie Norton swallowed excessively hard, looked at the expectant face of Gregory Macintyre, and decided to get it over with.
“I pretend that I’m –”
“Ipretendyoumeantheoppositeofeverythingyousay,” said Gregory with the poker face and deadly aim of a quick-draw master.
“-super strong,” finished Charlie. And fell over.

“I pretend,” said Emma Thompson, whose family had seen a movie or two over the past few evenings, “that I’m a vellossoripter.” She flexed her claws and pounced.
“I pretend,” said Toby Fenton, whose family had seen those same movie or two and had let him watch all the scary bits without skipping, ‘”that I’m a T-rex.”
There was a brief moment mid-leap where Emma attempted to complain of the unfairness of this and also dodge. She failed at both and forfeited everything north of her ankles, sending sickle-tipped toes spinning across the playground.

“I pretend that I’m Darth Vader,” declared Ethan Stewart, sticking to what he knew worked.
“Well I pretend that I’m Luke Skywalker,” argued Donna Timmons, who spotted the problem right away.
Both of them fired up lightsabers, ffweeooowr, Both of thew swung –zweeoooh, swish, swing, zap. Both of them cut off one another’s sword-hands. Ouch. Thud.
They stared at each other in mutual frustration.
Leslie Walnut cleared her throat, drawing their attention. “I pretend,” she said, with perfect inflection, “that I’m the Emperor.”
Zap.

“I pretend that you died,” said Hanna Hamilton to Douglas Fur. Doug opened his mouth, took a deep breath, and was slightly too late.
Hanna grinned triumphantly and turned to her next opponent, Jennifer Finch. “You too,” she said.
Jennifer Finch hadn’t trained herself to be the first hand up when the teacher spoke for nothing. “Nuh-uh,” she shot back.
“Yuh-uh,” replied Hanna.
“Nope. I’m in an invincibubble. You can’t hurt me.”
Hanna glared at the soft velvety sphere that had formed around her opponent. Then she recalled the science class of that very morning, and grinned. “What can break an invincibubble?”
“Nothing,” said Jennifer, cautiously.
“So air can’t break it. You’re gonna run out of oxx-y-genn,” sing-sang Hanna triumphantly.
“Nu-uh!” blurted Jennifer as faint purpleness crept in around her gills. “Air can go through ‘cause it’s see-through.”
Hanna snarled. Which was a bad idea, because you can’t talk when you’re snarling, and it gave Jennifer the three seconds she needed for her second idea. “And,” she continued, “it’s super hard and tough. I pretend I bounce up and down on your head one hundred and eleventy times.”
Hanna wasn’t in a mood for math. Math had stolen the best half-hour of her morning. Given this, it was probably a good thing that she wasn’t able to count past ‘one’.

“I pretend,” said Zack Newton with the confidence of a man who’s got it all figured out, “that I can’t die.”
Gregory Macintyre considered him calmly. “I pretend you’re stuck a billion feet underground forever and ever.”

“I pretend I’m Batman, and I punch you” said Robert Cross.
“I pretend I’m Spider-Man, and I tie you up in webs” countered Frankie Edwards.
“Well I pretend I’m the Hulk and I smash you really hard!” replied Robert, struggling to get his mask out of his mouth and succeeding in cobwebbing his tongue.
“I pretend I’m Superman now and I punch you SUPER hard!”
The resulting shockwave destroyed what was left of the area around the school and sent the other combatants tumbling through the air, forced to pretend parachutes, wings, and anti-gravity jet packs or just fall like rocks, a choice that half of them took.

“I pretend that I’m the best at everything,” said Tammy Windhouse. And just like that, she heaved up Stewart Maclean and Susan Dean and tossed them into outer space. “See?” she said. Then she poked Jennifer Finch’s invincibbule with one finger and pop, it faded.
“I pretend that I’m the infinity best at everything!” yelled Jennifer. She tackled Tammy and sent her careening through the town, slamming into the Main Street bridge and straight to the bottom of the river.
“I, pretend” slurred Tammy through a mouthful of bruise as Jennifer lifted her up by her neck, “am the infinity best. Plus. One.” She caught Jennifer’s fist in her teeth, then bit it off into Jennifer’s face, which vanished along with most of the rest of her. Then she cackled.
It was the best cackle, of course. The best plus one.
The dust settled, and from its obscuring swathe came a lone, slightly short figure.
“I pretend I’m the infinity best plus two,” said Leslie Walnut.
Tammy glared at her. “Are not. No such thing.”
“Yu-uh. Two is better than one.”
Tammy opened her mouth to argue this, but Leslie Walnut was plus two faster than her. And suddenly plus two more alive.

Two lone figures alone in the parking lot of the mall. The cars have been pretended away. The shoppers are hiding inside, peering through windows.
Eyes narrow. Teeth clench. Fingers flex. And then a breath is taken, and then:
“I pretend I’m the prime minister,” said Hal Green, “and I tell the whole army to come and kill you.”
“I pretend I’m the president of the United States,” countered Leo Grouse, “and I tell MY whole army to come and kill YOU.”
There was a moment there, as the countless men surrounding them reloaded and the battalions of tanks that had flattened the mall in their approach revved their engines. A moment where their expensive suits ruffled softly in the breeze.
“My army’s better,” said Hal, sulkily.
“Are not,” said Leo. “Geography told me so.”
Standing directly in between the two opposing forces, neither of their opinions soon mattered to them, or to two-thirds of Double River in general.

And so finally there were only two. But a different two.
Leslie Walnut and Gregory Macintyre come sauntering down Main Street towards one another, north and south. Piles of demolished cars surround them; deceased pretend-ninjas and pretend-pirates, pretend-cyborgs, even a pretend-space-whale are scattered about like disused action figures.
“I pretend,” called down Leslie, “that I got a really big gun.” The biggest gun; a hand cannon that looked more like a hand howitzer.
“I pretend that I got a bigger gun,” said Gregory, cautiously. And it was, but only barely.
“I pretend that I got a laser plasma gun,” said Leslie. It was so full of glowing tubes that there was barely room for the barrel.
“I pretend that I got a rocket launcher,” said Gregory Macintyre. “And it launches actual rockets. Moon rockets.” His arm nearly broke. “And I pretend that I can pick it up ‘cause I’m super big and strong.”
Leslie’s brow creased as she looked up at the thousand-foot colossus, whose shoulder-mounted weaponry was about the same size as he was. “I pretend,” she said, “that I’m Godzilla’s mommy. So I’m ten times as big as he is, and I’ve got ten times as good breath. It’s like a super nukular laser times a hundred.”
Gregory glared up at the giant lizard now facing him thanks to the power of multiplication. “I pretend that I’m as strong as the whole planet all at once,” he said.
Leslie’s eyes watered as an abstract concept crossed them, then snapped back into a focus that would probably be impossible past puberty. “I pretend that I’m as strong as the whole world at once plus the sun and moon at once.”
“I pretend I’m stronger.”
“I pretend I’m stronger than that.”
“I pretend I’m the strongest.”
“I pretend I’m the strongest plus one!”
“I pretend I’m the strongest for infinity plus one!”
“I pretend I’m the strongest for infinity plus infinity plus the earth and the sun and the moon and all the stars at once.”
“Well I pretend I’m just as strong as that!”
Leslie considered this. “I pretend you can’t-“
“Ipretendyoucan’tpretendwhatIpretend.”
“-pretend anymore,” said Leslie, in annoyance. “AND Ican’tbepretendedbyanyonebutme.”
They looked at each other. No last minute thoughts? One.
Two.
Three. And BAM.

When the dust settled, most of the universe wasn’t there anyore.
“I pretend that nobody was dead anymore.”
The tiny biomass of earth floated in an emptiness that didn’t even include space.
“Oops.” A moment’s careful thought was applied. “I pretend that everything was back to normal.”

And that was when the bell rang dong-ding-dang-dang-long, because recess was over and Mr. Buckle wanted them all back inside now that he’d had some nicotine in his veins again. The rest of the day would be nice and smooth and quiet, yes. He was relaxed, and not just from the smoke break – the kids were always so quiet after recess. Nice to see they were so well-behaved on their own.

Heaven knows why what Marjorie did came as such a shock to her family. She’d given them plenty of warning for it.
Why, that very morning, as her husband stalked the house in a full-blown mantrum, she’d told him so, cautioned him carefully. As he pointedly exchanged one-to-four word responses to any of her inquiries, deliberately ignoring anything that indicated how thoroughly wrong he’d been in their discussion, she sighed and said: “I swear, one of these days you lot are going to drive me to go out and live in the woods.”
But her husband was busy picking up small objects and putting them down unnecessarily firmly in the same place, and so he did not pay her any attention.
Later in the afternoon, her two children were fighting. Somebody had taken somebody else’s piece of plastic, and then they’d broken it, and now whose fault was it because if SOMEBODY hadn’t been grabbing their arm they wouldn’t have dropped it and why won’t you spank them mom huh why won’t you spank them WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE IN CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN THIS SPECIFIC SITUATION HUH MOM?
Marjorie was trying to compose an email to a client and had been stuck on sentence three for the past half-hour. She shook her head and once again tried to remember what an adjective was, tried to imagine a concept that existed outside the ingrown skull of a seven-year-old. “Christ,” she said, “if you guys don/t pipe down soon, I’m just going to go and live in the honest-to-goodness woods. I’ve got a spot picked out and everything, really and truly.”
But her children were both under the age of ten and therefore unable to hear anything but themselves, and so they didn’t pay her any heed.
Finally came dinner, which Marjorie’s husband had prepared by picking up many ingredients and firmly slapping them together without looking at anyone or any of the labels. Consequently, it was mysterious, and possibly contained pasta, and for some reason Marjorie’s favourite mug was being used as a container for the tomato sauce, and it made the children complain almost as bitterly as they snipped at one another. Almost.
“Quit pushing me.”
“YOU’RE pushing me.”
“Am not.”
“Are so, ‘cause you’re still mad that you broke the toy.”
“YOU broke the toy.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
And so on ad nauseum.
“Pass the tomato sauce, please,” said Marjorie to her husband. He picked up her favourite mug and placed it in front of her, wordlessly and excessively firmly. She sighed.
“This tastes gross,” complained the older child.
“Eww,” agreed the younger child.
“Copycat.”
“I thought of it first.”
Marjorie’s husband poured himself a glass of water and drank it with a needless amount of force. She counted to ten inside her head, wondered why her mother had always told her to do that, and said: “You know, this is pretty good.”
The children bickered. Her husband grunted.
“Tomaatooooo sauce,” said her youngest child.
“What do you say?” asked Marjorie automatically.
“Tomato sauce NOW,” repeated her child.
“No.”
“Tomato sauce now or else?”
“Also no.”
Marjorie’s husband picked up her favourite mug and passed it with excessive force, causing it to crack and split in half.
“IT WASN’T MY FAULT,” proclaimed her children simultaneously.
Marjorie counted to eleven, got up from her chair, and walked downstairs, where she retrieved her shovel and left her clothes. She was halfway up the hill in the backyard and making for the treeline before they noticed she was gone.

“Where you going mooommm hey where are you going what are you doing mom,” asked her oldest child, all in one breath and immediately running out of it.
“I told you all, and warned you properly,” said Marjorie. “I’m going to go live in the woods. There’s no use arguing, my mind’s made up. You can all go and be obnoxious by yourselves.”
“But moooooooooooommmm,” managed her youngest child before succumbing to near-anoxia.
“Be reasonable, honey,” said her husband. “You’ll freeze to death or starve or get eaten by coyotes or something.”
“No,” said Marjorie, halting at a likely spot on a pretty hillside. “That’s not going to be a problem. I’m going to be a tree. And you can all just go straight back home, see if I care.” And she shoveled a small pit open and stood in it.
“This isn’t very normal,” said the husband.
“Don’t care. Bug off now.”
So they bugged off and Marjorie stood in one place and focused on thinking about roots.

A short, burly-hurly man (more hurly than burly) came up the hill the next day, with some glasses. “Hello,’ he said. “I’m a psychologist. Are you the lady who thinks she’s a tree?”
“I AM a tree,” said Marjorie. “Look, you can see the bark.” And she showed him her arm.
“Oh, how fascinating – tactile delusions. That’s very interesting. My word. What is it, pine?”
“Larch.”
“Oh, how very interesting. Tell me about your mother.”
“Ask her yourself and she’ll tell you. That’s a bit personal, isn’t it?”
The man frowned. “Uh, I suppose so. Gosh I’m sorry. Right, uhm, what about your father?”
“Same thing.”
“Oh dear. Oh dear. I don’t suppose this is all something about repressed urges? Maybe, uh….sexual? Something about incest I guess – it’s a bit gross.”
“No. Not even remotely. That was mostly just Freud.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“He was a bit strange then?”
“Yes. You’re not really a psychologist, are you?”
He sagged. “No. Not really. But I read a book once, and I’m a friend of one of your husband’s friends, so…”
“You can tell my husband that I’m perfectly fine, and you can tell your friend that this is none of his beeswax. At all. If I want beeswax there’s a perfectly good hive just up the hill in a friendly pine. Now clear off, and if I were you I’d take my advice and read something written in the last century.”
He cleared off. Marjorie composed herself and focused on needles.

The next day an extremely short woman came up the hill and prodded Marjorie with her finger. “Larch,” she said sourly. “Larch. I didn’t raise a daughter of mine to be a larch of all things. Sakes alive, Margie, couldn’t you have at least been a nice redwood or something?”
“Hi, mom,” said Marjorie. “They phoned you in, didn’t they?”
“I mean, they’re pretty at least,” continued her mother, blissfully ignoring the question and thereby confirming the answer. “You could’ve consulted me on this.”
“We’re too far north and too dry for redwoods, mom. I’d fall over. Besides, they’re too big. I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
“Oh, and other trees are so much smaller, I expect? Typical nit-picking. Just typical. And you didn’t even tell me – oh what a MOOD you’re in this week.”
“Mom, they were driving me completely nuts. It was this or kill them all and burn the house down.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well serves ‘em right then. Mind if I smoke?”
“Yes. I’ve got needles now and you’ll get them all sooty.”
“Right.” Marjorie’s mother lit up her cigarette after three minutes fumbling with the lighter and muttering, then had a nice hourlong chat with Marjorie about how her boyfriend was a nuisance sometimes and had she heard about what Julie did? (She hadn’t) It was half-past midnight before she left, leaving Marjorie just enough time to comb the tar off her needles and doze off.

She woke up to the sound of a polite cough and the sight of her neighbour, Tammy, holding an axe.
“You’d better have a better explanation for this than I think you’re going to,” she told her.
“Well… I was thinking that maybe if I just get your legs free you’ll go home, and I do all the forestry work so-”
“They talked you into this, didn’t they?”
“Maybe,” said Tammy. “Look, you really shouldn’t be doing this. Trust me, people make lousy trees.”
“Well I’m staying put and I’m doing all right so far. I’ve got needles and bark and a good spot with enough sun and water to keep me going all year round for years. No reason to move at all and a lot less stress than down there. All my neighbours may be green and trying to passive-aggressively kill me through competition but at least they’re quiet.”
“Oh fine,” said Tammy, with an exasperated sigh. “Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be, we need a Christmas tree this year and-”
“No.”
“We wouldn’t use the axe I mean we could just leave you up here and put some tinsel on-“
“No.”
“But you’re in a great spot, I mean the lights would be visible for-“
“No. Go away, you’re in MY light.”
Tammy sighed again. “Fine. Be that way. Don’t listen to the experts.” She left Marjorie alone, giving her enough time to practice her twigsprouting before the day was done.

Three days went by.
They go fast when you’re sleepwalking, and they go faster when you’re busy adjusting your sap levels for the winter and bracing your roots for frost and getting those needles arrayed just right. Rest is for the deciduous.

And on the evening of day three, up the hill came the family, two small and one big.
“Hey mooom,” said her youngest child. “Are you gonna come back inside yeeet?”
“No,” she said. “It’s nice up here and the air’s clean and tasty. And I’m busy.”
“But it’s coold,” complained her oldest child. “And there’s bugs.”
“The bugs are DEAD,” said her youngest child.
“Not all the bugs.”
“Yeah they are.”
“Nu-uh, I saw a bug on the way here.”
“Liar liar.”
“Shush,” said her husband. “Look, honey, do you think you could come back inside? It’s going to start snowing soon.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Marjorie. “I’m not really as temperature-sensitive as I used to be. Really. None of you are even wearing your jackets.”
“We were in a hurry,” he mumbled.
“I’m sure.”
“Give her the present give her the present come ON what are we waiting for give her the present go on go go go OOOoooON!” chanted her children.
“Present?”
Marjorie’s husband put a little box on the ground – he had to, because Marjorie couldn’t and wouldn’t move her branches – and opened it.
Inside was Marjorie’s favourite mug. It had been glued back together with that painstaking lack of care and patience that was unmistakably childish. It had also been repainted with somewhat more detail.
“It’s very nice,” said Marjorie, with the practiced ease of half-a-decade of Mother’s Day behind her. “Very, very nice. Did you spend a lot of time on it?”
“Ten minutes,” said her oldest child proudly.
“And I did all the work,” said her youngest child.
Her oldest child opened its mouth and had it immediately covered by her husband. “We made some dinner for you.”
Marjorie considered this. “I don’t really eat anymore.”
“It’s fish and chips.”
Marjorie considered this a bit longer and more carefully. “Well, maybe just a little. Pass me that shovel.”
It took an hour to dig up her roots and rebury them properly so she’d be able to fetch them again in the morning. It took six minutes to find a way to fit her inside (through the patio door – the screens needed to come out anyways). And it took seven tries before it was determined that yes, Marjorie didn’t really eat anymore, even if she tried fairly hard.
But the mug was very pretty, and water seemed to taste better inside it. And the walking had worn the children out, so Marjorie got to talk to her husband a bit that night and that was nice.

So she re-rooted herself on the back lawn – but never too deeply – and they raised the ceiling a little bit, and altogether that worked just fine.

It began, as most troubles do, with mail.
The pamphlet was cool, slim, and professional; a really sleek and ergonomically designed piece of work that looked almost triumphantly uncomfortable in the rusty, wall-eyed mailbox that the mailman had stuffed it into not thirty seconds before. Howard’s puckered old fingers shook with excitement as he yanked it free and gently nudged it out of its sheath. A quick ogling confirmed his joyous suspicions, and he couldn’t contain his glee.
“Yiiiiiiiiiipeeeeeee!”
“Consarn it Howard shut the hell up. What will the neighbours think?”
“Nothing! They live forty miles away and who gives a flying fig, Lyle? Who really does give a single sweet jumping fig if I feel good in the mornings, eh?” Howard skipped his way back up to the front door with the verve of a younger and less arthritic man, waving his mail like a trophy. “Look! Look at this!”
Lyle’s face was already a mass of frown lines, but they seemed to deepen by oh about a foot each as he looked at the pamphlet. “Museum,” he said, each syllable elongated with disgust. “A Special Exhibition. Eugh! Tastelessness!”
“Oh Lyle, really?”
“The history of mankind and womenkind is the history of tawdrykind, Howard! You know mother warned us off against that sort of thing! Half the informationable boards will be filled with luridness and cheap filth, no doubt! Best to keep yourself at home and yourself’s mind out of the gutters. The turnips need weeding.”
“I weeded the turnips yesterday afternoon, I did, I did. Almost lost a finger but I did I swear it’s true. And besides anyways, this is an exhibition of prehistoric and archaic flora and fauna – no humans at all.”
Lyle’s watery, razory eyes blinked with venomous slowness. “No humans?”
“Not even so much as a baby sandwich.”
He considered this. “Not even a…small baby sandwich?”
“Not even that. No sliced bread or babies for at least a million years after their youngest item on display.”
“Pah, even worse then! At least people have the decency to do….that sort of thing… indoors behind closed curtains and locked doors and guard dogs! Animals get up to that sort of…business… in the streets! Prehistory?! Nothing but a long, sweaty, pounding tour of fortification!”
“Oh Lyle, don’t you mean ‘fornication’?”
“I know what I said that I meant what you knew, damnit! Isn’t proper English good enough for you? I’ll get in the car while you sort yourself out and pack us a lunch. And be quick about it! My lumbago is acting up.”

The Museum had been renovated in the last twenty years since Lyle and Howard had visited it; a giant crystal sprouted from its side and bulged shining light all across the street, a monument to architectural excess and the relative cheapness of reinforced glass in the modern era.
Howard loved it, and didn’t even need to ask Lyle’s opinion on it because Lyle gave it to him right away and he could ignore it safely.
“Now when we’re in there,” he told his brother, “you must NOT, I repeat, must NOT, I repeat, MUST NOT, one more time, MUST NOT AT ALL buy any CHEAP TOURIST TAT, are we clear on this set of particulars, Howard?”
“I have never done any such thing Lyle and I don’t feel that saying that to me is particularly fair.”
“Phah, we’ve both seen that look in your eyes when you look at….that sort of thing. You’ll spend half your life’s savings on monkeys in barrels and prostitutes and bagels if I don’t keep a sharp eye on you.”
“I don’t have any life’s savings, Lyle.”
“All the more important that you safeguard what you don’t have then! You’re a spendthrift soul, Howard. Why, you would’ve had us pay for parking even! PAY, for the privilege of being shut away in a great dirty underground garage!”
“It really was much nicer out in the fresh air,” agreed Howard. “Bracing, too. The thrill of the hunt for a parking space! The honk of horns, the screams of slurs…”
“I don’t see how everyone had missed that last space. It was plenty obvious. Public territory, too. Perfectly sound as a perfectly sound bell’s sounding.”
“I don’t think people nowadays are used to cars parking on the sidewalk.”
“They had plenty of space to squeeze round unless they were fat. And I say me to you, Howard, if any man today realizes what he has done to his belly to make it swole as a result of squeezing round our car, we have committed a minor act of grace without even trying.”
“Wow,” said Howard.
“Excuse me,” asked an extremely polite and very annoyed voice that they had been ignoring for the past two minutes, “are you two going to buy any passes?”
Lyle squinted through his ornery eye at the ticketmaster. “We were having a conversation, young, young, young lady,” he said severely. “No need for that sort of lip.”
Howard handed over a small and neatly shuffled sheaf of bills from a few decades back. “Two for the special exhibition, please.”
“Right. Here’s your stubs.”
Howard dithered. There was a specific way in which the foot is held and the hands work as the human body dithers, one that is hard to describe. Howard’s hands practically oscillated.
“What?”
“I don’t suppose I could get a hand stamp?” he asked hopefully.
“Got rid of them ten years back.”
“Oh. I’m quite sorry,” he said, as kindly as he could manage.
“Just as well,” said Lyle. “Leads the youth to tattoos and violence and eating fries with the improper sort of condiments past midnight. Good riddance! Where’s the first stop?”
Howard unfolded his map. “Well, it’s….hmm. Some Triassic fossils!”
“Walking ones?”
“No, just regular old ones.”
“Well that’s just failing for lack of trying. What about giants? They got any giants?”
“They’ve got a giant ground sloth, but that’s part of the main museum.”
“A giant giant ground sloth?”
“Just a proper regular giant ground sloth.”
“Well this is turning dull. I believe you’ve picked up the wrong map, Howard. As is usual of you as our mother warned me of.”
“My feelings are being hurt, Lyle. Right here, just above my breast-bone.”
“Don’t use words like that in public or I’ll wash your mouth out with stoats. “
Howard sighed. “Excuse me miss, but do you have another map?”
“Sir, would you please get out of the way of the line.”
“Absolutely, just in a moment. You know, the OTHER map.”
“No sir. There is no other map.”
“The one with-“
“The good stuff,” interjected Lyle.
“-the good stuff, yes.”
The ticketmaster looked at the fifty-person buildup in her aisle, looked at the two withered old men, calculated the cost of making a fuss or calling security versus playing along with the burdens of senility. It was the sort of math that only a human brain could do, and hers did it very quickly indeed.
“Of course, sir. The other map. Here you go.”
Howard took the map politely and Lyle snatched it from his hand. “Thank you very much, miss. Have a pleasant day now.”
“You shouldn’t give away that sort of thing for free, Howard. People will get used to it.”
“Nobody can ever have enough pleasant days,” said Howard with perfect serenity. He ruffled his map. “How odd. She seems to have gotten mixed up. This is just the regular map with a doodle of….a stegosaurus. In pen.”
“The heat must have cooked her poor stupid young brains on account of being young, Howard. You should know about that sort of thing. If you hadn’t gotten your stupid young brains cooked on account of being young.”
“Sure enough, Lyle.” Howard tapped the map gently with his thumb and shook it four times. “There we go. All sorted out. See, here’s the entrance! Just besides the elevator you hit the wall with your thumb and it sends it to the bottomth floor.”
Howard did so. The wall cracked open, broke into little pieces, and opened up into a large, bulky device made mostly of quartz and extremely unfriendly angles.
“Never did trust these things,” muttered Lyle. “You can never trust anyone who doesn’t trust Euclid, mind you those words.”
“Euclid wasn’t due to be born for…” Howard flipped through his pamphlet. “…seven million years or so when this elevator was built, Lyle. Says here it was made by a race of terrifying monkey-men who worshipped the other side of the moon that no man has ever truly known.”
“No wonder the damned thing gives me the heeblies. Cheap monkey-man labour never did last reliably; I know a man who knew a man who had a sister that bought a watch off one of the little hairy bastards that only lasted two hundred years before it snapped in half and let all the demons out.”
“Lyle, you can’t just pass judgment on an entire people like that! What will the neighbours think?”
“They’ll hate our guts on account of us being the wrong colour, same as always. Why should I care?”
“I’ll admit that you make a convincing argument, Lyle.”
The doors creaked, groan, and mashed their way through another wall, disgorging the brothers into a space that was more cave than basement. Occasional marks on the stalactite-infested walls showed where someone had optimistically attempted to place a brick before giving up in perfectly rational disgust.
“Now, what’s up first? And be sharp about it! We want to get done with this place and leave before you learn anything that isn’t good for you.”
Howard flourished his map. “Let’s see…well, we’ve seen the protosimian transport. Next up is the trhinosceros.”
“Nothing but a cheap hoax, a P.T. Barnumism. Sew a third horn on a rhino, bam wam mystical magical creature cross my heart swear to god very cheap thank you very much sir. And then you take it home and it doesn’t have enough supernatural hootenanny in it to fertilize the turnip patch.”
“No, no, no, this one’s real! Not like the one that Lewis sold you.”
“Who said that was the one that Lewis sold me? I was doing him a favour, that was all. Rhino-sitting. For money. Which I paid him. There was no…grift involved!”
“Of course, of course.”
“We skip it,” said Lyle firmly. “What after that?”
Another map-ruffling. “A Lemurian Dodecahedramid.”
“Huh. They bring the whole thing in?”
“It says they had to leave it wedged halfway through the wall. But you can go in and wander around!”
“Pass. Damned lemurs loved traps. Getting forcibly devolved in the great interprimate wars was too soft on a bunch of critters that got that much joy out of making razor wire and bottomless pressure-plate-operated pits, I’ve always said that and I always will. Hope the whole lot of ‘em get poached out of existence toot sweet.”
“Extinction is forever, Lyle,” said Howard primly.
“No it isn’t. Remember the right whale?”
“Yes I do and I still fully support that action.”
“Damned hippiemancers. They sucked the flavour out of canned tuna for all time just to power the comeback of one itty-bitty extinct goddamned whale.”
“You hated canned tuna, Lyle.”
“Well I hate it MORE now. Forever. What else they got in here?”
Ruffle ruffle. “The skull of a mammoth-king.”
“What rank?”
“Hmmm…. Third dynasty, first Epoch. Fifth from the throne, ended his cousin’s reign by backstabbing and frontstabbing and side-smashing and skull-crushing.”
“How big’re his tusks?”
“Lyle!”
“Well?”
“That’s just not the sort of question you ask!”
“The mammoth’s been dead for thousands of years, Howard, and unless some goddamned hippy brings one back in the next ten seconds none of them are going to get offended at me so you can take your self-righteousness and piss on it. How big were those tusks there?”
Howard stalled and hummed, then caved in. “Ten feet,” he whispered. And blushed.
“Hah! Compensating for something, was he? Ten feet. Hah! Aha! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
“ANYWAYS,” said Howard, much, much too loudly, “they’ve got him in the third vault on the left if you want to take a-“
“Oh hell no Howard! Looking at that sort of thing is straight-up-straight-down-indecent and it might get IDEAS in your head. What else is there?”
“Let me see….oh! Oh!”
“What oh now?”
“They’ve got the bones of the last sorcerersaurus!”
“What?”
“And, uhm, also the bones of the first sorcerersaurus.” Howard crossed and uncrossed his map, squinting at it.
“What?!”
“Apparently there was a bit of a time paradox.”
“They’ve got those damned things here? NOW? Near PEOPLE?! Get us the hell out of here five minutes ago damnit!”
“Calm down, Lyle.”
“I’m not calming down! You don’t calm down when you’re four seconds from being possessed by something seventeen clades away from your biggest throwback of a relative! Christ on a cracker with cheese what if he’s already GOT someone? Get in the elevator, get in the elevator, GET IN THE-“
“No, it’s fine. They’ve got his bones locked up in a ten-foot-thick solid iron cube made of leftovers from the Yucatan meteor crater.”
Lyle considered this, hand frozen halfway to the enormous rusty lever that summoned the lift.
“Ten-foot?”
“Ten-and-three-point-sixteen-onwards-inches.”
Lyle’s body lost the nervous tension that had temporarily rid it of fifty years of wrinkles. “All right. Alright. All is right. Damnit, don’t do that sort of thing to me. You KNOW I got a bad heart.”
“You replaced the heart fifty years ago, Lyle. I picked the baboon out myself.”
“And you picked a damned lousy baboon, Howard. I told you and I told you and I told you again and again, you have got the worst way with monkeys I’ve ever seen or heard of.”
“No need for insults, Lyle. Shall we go see-“
“No. I’ll stay in the same building as that…thing but there’s no way in hell’s left clavicle that I’m going to be the closest breathing object to it when it decides it’s time for a jailbreak. Now shut up and tell me what’s next on the list.”
Howard said nothing.
“Well?”
“I thought you wanted me to shut up.”
“Oh quitcher sulking and gimme that.” Lyle snatched the paper from his brother’s unresisting fingers and ran a cursory squint over it. “Lessee….uh. Uhm. Hmmm. Ah. Okay. That’s good. And uh. Right. That’s no good. Right. Yeah.”
“Would you like me to read it to you, Lyle?”
“Look they make the damned print too fine nowadays, you know? It’s all those computers. Too much binary makes your alphabets shrink.” He thrust the pamphlet back into his brother’s hands. “Go on then. Show off. See if I care.”
“Well, there’s a fully crystallized mammal resistance stronghold. Half a mile across originally, shrunk to the size of your Adam’s apple. Part of the sorcerersaurus exhibit.”
“Howard, the only thing duller than living rats is dead, crystallized rats. And the only thing duller than THAT is self-important holier-than-thou underdog rats. And these are all of those things at once except for living. So no. Let ‘em be.”
“These are our ancestors, Lyle, who fought against a dreadful power for the future of their children!”
“Sure as hell not THEIR kids then, ‘cause they got fossified to their sixth degree of relation. Pass – there’s enough living idiots for us to gawk at; we don’t need to go find dead ones. Go on, what’s next.”
“The Tyrant’s Tassled Tscepter,” said Howard, rolling the words like bowling balls.
“I won’t tolerate tassles in the house, I won’t tolerate tassles in the public. Next.”
“It was an emblem of might and strength for a multi-million-year succession, Lyle.”
“Yeah but not a man jack or woman jill of ‘em thought that putting tassles on their instruments of authority was anything less than the bee’s knees and I don’t see why I’ve got to put up with that sort of tripe. Next! NEXT! Next.”
“A leviathan’s rib, fresh from Greenland.”
Lyle squinted up at the cavern’s ceiling. “They could fit that in here?”
“Well, a one-tenth square model. Half of it. Well, almost a third. Rounded up.”
“Pass. We’ve got no time for the little stuff.”
“The bones of the first sorcerersaurus.”
“You already mentioned that!”
“Well, the list IS chronological, Lyle, and I DID say there was a bit of a time parad-“
“I’ve said my piece on the damned thing. What, are you trying to make me say everything twice? Hoping I’ll run out of air, choke to death, leave you the house to yourself? I should’ve known you’d pull that sort of trick and as you can see I have, so you can take your plotting and shove it lengthwise, you little sneak!”
“Lyle, I would rather die than cause you a moment’s intentional distress, I swear it upon mother’s grave.”
“Oh you ain’t good enough to kill me intentionally. You’ll just get careless one day, see if you don’t. But I’ve got my eye on you, and THAT’S how I’ll get the jump, you’ll see.”
“Yes, yes.”
“You’ll see, you know, you’ll see.”
“Of course.”
“What’s next now?”
“Ummm… a Dimetrodon High-Knight in full regalia.”
“Chivalry isn’t obsolete enough; you want to drag me to a version that was old, dusty, and extinct by the time of the first tyrannosaurus?”
“The Great Tower of the Scorpions.”
“Fat lot of good it did them against the spiders if you ask me which you did.”
“I didn’t!”
“Yes you did. Go on.”
“The First Step.”
“The what now?”
“I don’t know, let’s see…uhm….’The rock where the very first little bug intentionally hopped out of the water to avoid a predator, then successfully hopped back in. Do not touch.’”
“Bah, a tourist-trap. Just trying to sell plastic assembly kits of it in the gift shop, no doubt!”
“No, no, no! But they do have grow-your-own-First-Sprout kits.”
“What now?”
“’The very first little green algae that grew just barely outside the splash zone of the shoreline.’ They’ve got its fossil here, and you can buy a little kit that lets you-”
“The garden is for turnips. Our mother planted it and grew turnips, we have grown turnips in it, we are growing turnips in it right now, and we will continue to grow turnips in it in the future. NOT tourist tat. Understand my words, Howard?”
“Clear as crystal, Lyle.”
“Is there anything else?”
Flip flip flip. “Just one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, the very first copulation. They caught it on record – they think a mudslide trapped the couple mid-”
“WHAT?!”
“Well, they didn’t know what to expect, I suppose – it says here that they were asexual up until that moment and the pleasure sort of caught-“
“Alright, that’s it. We’re off. Time to go home.”
“But-“
“No buts! Not a single but until your butt lands in the car and you get to driving!” Lyle spat on the floor. “THAT! A grown museum for grown humans and other grown sapients displaying THAT like it’s something to be proud of! Hah! A signal to head home if I’ve ever heard one!” He pursed his lips in thought. “Does the gift shop have reproductions of it?”
“Err…yes. Assembly required, thou-“
“Good enough, here’s the money, go fetch it. And don’t spend more than ten dollars on yourself, you hear?”

Getting home took a bit longer than expected. Somebody’d attached a truck to their car and was trying to move it, and Lyle had to yell for over ten minutes before he gave up and let them go.
“Senility is god’s gift to the elderly that haven’t got it, that’s what I’ve always said,” said Lyle, cradling the extremely calm and plain brown paper bag his prize rested within. “No excuse quite like it in all the world.”
“That’s the truth, Lyle,” said Howard, as he pulled into the driveway. “That’s the truth.”
“I still can’t believe you spent money on that tripe. It’ll rot your brain and drive your gonads to depravity while leaving your wits in Muddles, Alabama.”
“The Scientific American is a fine publication, Lyle, and their articles on dinosaurs are most entertaining. This book will last me for hours and hours of joy and discovery!”
“How good can it be? They still think there’s only three periods in the Mesozoic, for the love of Jesus’s littlest toenail!”
“Ignorance is bliss,” said Howard. “And we all need a little bliss in our lives, eh? Admit it, this trip was fun. A nice bit of relaxing to soak up the afternoon.”
Lyle peered into his bag. “Yes. Yes I suppose you could say that. Yes indeed. Now do me a favour and piece this together for me; the print’s too small to read.”

Behold the city, millions of souls strong, all of varying sizes and shapes! The site where ten thousand cultures and ethnicities dropped themselves off for a sleepover and stayed forever, bickering and embracing their neighbours and watching their children grow up. A hotbed of humanity that put any greenhouse to shame, a beehive with more frequent sex, an anthill that needed no queens. A billion mouths opening every second, talking, trading, pouring waves of sounds and information over one another, evolving constantly and using a trillion words from every language you could name.
A trillion and one, now. And that was the problem.

I nodded to Finneas Fabian as he picked his way over the broken glass of the study. “Professor. Glad you could spare a moment of your time.”
“I have it in plenty,” he muttered. Already peering at the walls, examining the hundreds of incredibly outdated packages of information stashed away behind sheet glass, safe from mildew. “And I’d say this takes precedence over any of my research, Inspector.”
“I more meant the Linguistic Singularity. Only every five years for a week, be a shame for you to miss –“ I pulled up short because I was being fixed with a glare that could’ve melted steel. For someone with eyes that watery, the professor could focus them until they gave you sunstroke.
“The Singularity,” he stressed, “of which we have had more than sixty, is hardly singular. It is also notably lacking in novelty. I will not be missed or looked for, and I hadn’t intended to go at all. They are not interested in my field, and I return the feeling tenfold.”
“Right, right, right,” I said, holding up my hands. “I get it. Forget I said a thing. You want to see the evidence now?”
Fineas relaxed, if only a little. He was a short, round little man, but his spine seemed to uncurve when he got angry, expanding him upwards like a vertical pufferfish. “Yes. Yes of course. Show me.”
There wasn’t much to show. A chalk outline, where the body of Sir Agnes Gabbley had been taken away. And a huge outdated monitor, the screen nearly a full foot across, monstrous compared to the sleek modern puter hooked into it, its case an inch across.
The screen’s monstrous width was even more pointless than it had been since the invention of the ICU. Only a single thing remained visible on it: a smudge of writing on a word processor.
“Prehistoric,” I said. “No idea why she didn’t just pop in an ICU – it’s not like her affection for old tech made her use these, uh, books any often. Lab sweep said the cases haven’t been opened for thirty years, and that was just to put them away.”
“I-C-U,” said Finneas absently, as he peered at the screen. “Eye-See-You. An initialism for a small screen placed across the surface of the eye, usually the right eye this side of the Atlantic. Very pleasing phrase, formed with punster’s heart. No. I am allergic to them. Put any electronics that close to my eyes and they give me seizures. I suspect Agnes shared my condition. Not uncommon. Point four percent of all humans.”
“Thought you were the Professor of Obscure and Forgotten words here, Finneas. Isn’t that a bit modern for your tastes?”
“I think better when I talk. A bit of a curse, you know.” He pointed his finger at the screen. “Don’t worry, Inspector. This… this I recognize.”
“Great. What’s it mean?”
“LAN.” The word came out without force, almost carelessly, cushioned. “A full-blown acronym, Local Area Network. Twentiesh century. Hasn’t been used in, oh, a few hundred years.”
“Brainlog says it’s the last thing she did. Sat down, mucked around with work and such, sent a letter to her brother-in-law-“
“Anything interesting?”
“It was about bonsai gardening.”
“Oh.”
“And then she pulled up another letter, wrote, uh, ‘LAN,’ and drops dead. Shock, right?”
Finneas pursed his lips. “Definitely. A word that old can be a bit of a surprise, dropping right onto your tongue – err, so to speak. And Sir Agnes was elderly and had a bit of a congenital heart defect. That’s the problem with nobility; too much inbreeding leads to all sorts of nonsense.”
“Professor, someone is dead.”
“Yes. Yes they are. And if we don’t do something fast, they won’t be the only one.”
“What?”
“The word won’t stay put. It’s mobile now – I’d say it escaped from someone’s private collection. Can you get your men to check on every linguist or dabbler of words in the city who keeps any sort of data on twentieth-twenty-first-century language?”
I made the call, and I winced a little inside. A lot of the names that were scrolling across my ICU were important with a capital Self, and wouldn’t take kindly to an emergency property search. This could have fallout. Hell, this could have half my career path glowing in the dark. But like I’d just told the professor: someone is dead.
“Good. Now, while that’s underway, find me the location of the next crime scene.”
I checked my messages. “How’d you know?”
“A guess. Where is it?”
“Coco Café. Downtown.”

Coco Café was a lovely building, even surrounded by big swaths of alarmingly-coloured police tape. Real nice walls, early twentieth-century stuff renovated only a few times, cared for with love. Even the paramedics rounding up the gurgling, twitching stroke victims seemed to be admiring the view.
“I will need a compilation of their ICU’s displays at the time of event, please,” the professor had asked. “Hardcopy.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Put it on a piece of paper or something or transfer it to a monitor. I need to read this.”
Now, twenty minutes after thirty amateur novelists had screamed and dropped their morning coffees all at once, here it was. Five pages of dead tree, single-spaced even with my bad handwriting. Contents: a bit of porn, but mostly dictionaries, thesauri, and grammar guides.
And the last page. The last page was just one word, on each ICU:
lol
I blinked at it. “What the hell does this even mean?”
“It’s an initialism.” Finneas was sweating now, sweating in the coolness of the September evening. “El-oh-el. Laughing Out Loud. Originated as a descriptive phrase, became a quick way to express amused and happy emotions in a text-only medium. Again, early twentiesh century. Inspector, can you get your men to search faster? Have they found anything, anything at all? A hint?”
I checked. “No. Most of them just got permission to search, and one team hasn’t even gotten the guy to answer the door yet. What’s the hurry? It took this thing three hours to jump from Agnes to the Coco.”
“Yes, but it’s not the same word,” he said. “There’s a link, but it’s not the same word at all. Same era, same area of prevalence in dialogue, but nowhere near the same meaning. Inspector, we are dealing with a reigning word.”
“A what?”
“You know about bees, Inspector?”
“What?”
“Apologies. Ants?”
“Sure.”
“This is a Queen word we are hunting. So far we have only found her children, left behind in the wake of her passage. She could have a handful, Inspector, or she could have dozens. Or a hundred. Have your men found anything?”
I checked again. “No.”
Finneas shut his eyes. “Oh dear.”
I blinked, and the ICU changed. “Get in the car.”

City Councillor was one of those positions that depended entirely on the person holding it. You could change the lives of a hundred million people, or you could take lunch breaks and read novels during meetings. Councillor Brevish had opted for the simpler option.
We got there before the emergency response this time. It made accessing the ICU a bit difficult. Well, finding it anyways.
“Aren’t you going to help?” I asked Finneas.
The professor had turned an unusually green shade of brown. “I’m sorry?”
“Professor, a cutting-edge ICU is the size of a fingernail. A LITTLE fingernail. And it’s somewhere inside, oh, call it eleven pounds of pulverized meat and bone, spread over three square meters of floor and wall. Any help would be appreciated.”
“I understand that there are forensic sweeps-“
“Don’t have one. I haven’t had the time to upgrade in six months. On your knees, Professor.”
To his credit, Finneas did as I asked, and without even throwing up, although his hands shook an awful lot. Within four minutes the cleanup crew was there and I was running a search through the blood-and-brain-stained ICU of Councillor Herman Brevish.
“What does this degree of response tell you, Professor?”
Finneas looked up from the corner he’d slumped in. His hands were still shaking. “What?”
“The head exploding.”
He turned a bit green again. “Massive force. He must’ve been neglecting it. We put out warnings and instructions on proper care every week, Inspector, but there’s always some fool that doesn’t listen, that wants to keep some multisyllabic gargantua in their attic and check up on it only when they want to show off their vocabulary to guests.” He shook his head, the anger overcoming the nausea. “You cannot do that. It simply doesn’t work. Pen up something big like that and the pressure just…builds. And builds. And then it.-“
“Explodes?” I asked. The search was running slowly. Brevish’s files were a mess; something had rampaged through their guts and thrown them willy-nilly.
He looked at his shoes. “I was going to say escapes. But yes. Sometimes it is violent.”
“So this is expected?” There we go, clarity was emerging. I’d had to practically rebuild the whole damned thing.
“NO!” he shouted. “No it damned well isn’t and I’d thank you to stop reminding me that I spent any amount of time picking through a human being’s grey matter, thank you very much! At most you get cerebral hemorrhaging, perhaps if milder a concussion! This is…unheard of. God knows only what sort of monstrosity this moron was keeping cooped up in here. But it’s escaped and now who knows where it’s off to. Are you listening to me Inspector? We are facing a worst-case scenario here!”
I blinked.
“Inspector, would you please look at me?”
I blinked. My ICU didn’t change. Still stalled. Still dead still.
And right in the center, a word.
(Of course it would’ve come home to hide)
A word with a thousand words on it, crawling with them, dangling off its sides, a concept made of concepts coated with concepts concepts concepts concepts concepts
I woke up and rolled to the side, head aching from where the floor had made contact, eye a blazing pain of soon-to-be-swollen flesh, fists ready to strike back at whoever’d socked me.
Finneas was wincing and rubbing his hand. “Are you alright?”
I remembered, and relaxed. “Barely. Thank you. Head hurts. Do you have my ICU?”
He pointed at the floor where a white-hot puddle of metal and plastics was quietly spitting to itself and ruining three-hundred-year-old marble.
“Needed the excuse to upgrade anyways.”
“Do you remember anything? Anything at all? Inspector, did you see what we’re hunting?”
I thought fast, because the headache was cruising in over the horizon, fast and furious, ready to turn conscious thought into a thing of short sharp peaks and deep, aching valleys. “Yeah. Yeah, I saw it.”
“What was it?”
I frowned. A nonsense word. “Internet.”

The emergency team had brought along a spare ICU. Kindly of them, although using it in the left eye American-style made my head hurt – well, everything made my head hurt.
Finneas hadn’t stopped pacing and muttering since I’d spoken to him.
“Professor,” I said.
He stopped.
“We need to know what this thing is, and where it’s going next.”
“Right. Right. Of course.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m trying to think, you see. Inspector, you just came face to face with the word for, well, ah, hmm, well, uhm. You know, it’s sort of hard to explain. I imagine fish have a similar problem describing water.”
“Tell me.”
He pointed at my ICU, and at the bloodstained puter on the Councillor’s desk. “The…linking mechanism between these machines. Between all machines. The ability they have to communicate over distances.”
“That’s what this thing is?”
“Of a sort. That is a rough description of what the internet was. Is. Was.” He ran his fingers through what hair he had left – was it thinner now than it had been at the night’s beginning? “The term lasted from the late twentieth century up until, oh, about a hundred sixty years later. Past that, well, why bother? It’s too ingrained to describe.”
“And what makes this word so…loaded?”
“Because it in itself contains almost every single odd-end and discarded concept, meme, and thought formation that existed during the period of its conception!” said Finneas. “It’s a damned linguistic dragon, a conceptual giant! You look at it and you look at an entire series of dialects, all overlapping, all cobbled-together on the crudest levels! It’s like wringing your brain through a kaleidoscope! And that damned dolt Brevish kept it cooped up like a spelling-bee prize.”
“Halfway there, Professor. Where’s it headed.”
“Well, for the biggest target where it can feel safe,” he said. “Somewhere it can get lost in the noise. It won’t help it, of course, poor monster. It’ll tear apart its own cover just by using it, like a brushfire trying to hide under a single blade of grass.” His face went blank.. “A single blade of grass. Single single oh no no no.”
I was already running to the car.

The Linguistic Singularity could’ve been hosted anywhere. It could’ve been held in any one of its attendee’s studies, on a puter somewhere on the moon, inside Oxford… and all without a single person having to budge from their homes.
Thankfully, the convention’s guests were just stodgy and old-fashioned enough to want a big, physical get-together. This made following the screaming much easier.
The doors were wood; an ancient luxury. My boot was steel; a modern convenience. It was an easy contest.
What a damned sad, horrible sight. Dozens of them, writhing in the aisles between display racks of ancient books, of carefully-preserved hard drives.
“Get their ICUs out!” I yelled to the crew behind me. “And whatever you do, don’t read anything!”
I ran to the side of my first victim: steel-haired, iron-spined lady, foaming at the mouth. I put my finger and thumb to the corners of her eye socket and PUSHED.
Nothing. Damnit, must be wearing hers American-style. I tried the other socket.
Nothing.
I looked closer. The eye was blank with mindless terror, but also empty. Physically empty. “FINNEAS!”
The professor was staring around him in total horror, trailing in the wake of the emergency response squad. Whatever tough line he’d talked about his colleagues before, I doubted he’d have wished this on them. “What? What?!”
“Where’re their fucking ICUs?!”
He twitched under the swear. “Reg. Regulations! They changed them ah, uh, three – two years ago! Naked eye only! Purists, stupid purists did it!”
“Then where are they getting the damned seizures from?!”
A short, sharp yell of panic and total existential terror came over my ICU link, then a thud. Man down, Jean Chang was down. He was on the second level, above us.
Above us, dangling on a tether thicker than a human torso from the sky-high ceiling of the hall, was a monitor, a screen. Magnificently obsolete, a titan of the old ages, measuring more than fifty years across. I could practically feel the static of its power from underneath it.
A thousand tiny lines of text were streaming across its face.
I averted my eyes hurriedly as I strapped my handgun to my palm, never being so thankful as now that I was a slow reader. Power source: built into the frame. Had to get up twenty feet and inside a titanium casing. The staircase seemed to turn to molasses under my feet as I ran up it, adrenaline turning my ears into ocean-roars, sounds from the insides of seashells.
It was a ten-foot gap, and over a railing? Could I make it? The question didn’t enter my head until I was in midair, which was perfectly fine because the answer was yes. At least for my fingertips.
I dangled there, underneath the belly of the beast. And that was close enough for me to reach up and twitch the trigger on my handgun, sending a gratuitous amount of volts straight through the metal of the monster’s base and into a coiled serpent’s nest of delicate wiring.
Smoke filled my mouth. I cough, spat down, nearly hit Finneas. “Is it cooked?!”
He glanced up, froze, and started foaming at the mouth. The professor froze for a split second, then ran to his side.
“Shit!”
I glared up at the monitor above me. Of course it wasn’t using the old power source; the thing was a century out of date, maybe two. They would be passing the current through the air straight into the screens: no muss, no fuss, no worry of staining ancient, precious wiring. No way to block it, no way to stop it.
Fine. Old-fashioned it was then.
I’m no jock, never have been. And it was the happiest day of my life when I got promoted to a (mostly) desk job. Paperwork was a chore, not a curse. And I never cursed these parts of myself as much as I did then, as I hauled myself up and up over the face of twenty-seven feet of sheer-faced screen, ripping what handholds I could with boot and nail.
Words leaked in. I kept my mind on my job and my eyes on my hands, not on what they clutched, but words leaked in. So many words.
lol lmao lmfao lolcats lolcatz lulz brb wtf
Acronyms, right? Finneas called them initialisms. Don’t pay attention to them, you’ll just attract the big one…
Climbing faster now, eyes moving quicker, but so’s the brain, and it’s picking up more and more and more raptor jesus first-world problems at first I was and then I lol’d rofl roflmao LAN browser Google Google Google Yahoo anyonymous blog blogger
I shook my head – shaking my whole body in the process – and nearly slid away as my fingers clamped onto solid metal again. So much empty space beneath me. Empty and filled with words like omg omg gtfo gtfo qq moar GTFO
I raised my hand, gripped the base of the cable, flicked the grip of my handgun to heat.
And there it was, right in front of my eyes, a thousand words suckling at its belly, half-formed. The internet.
It looked back at me, straight into my hindbrain.
wtf pwnt wut
And I’d love to say that I had a one-liner ready, even if it would’ve been wasted on a word, on a nonsapient linguistic concept. But I’ll be honest: when your entire body stiffens up in unconscious dread-induced paralysis, your hand clenches. And mine clenched at many, many thousands of degrees Celsius, taking about half of the cable with it.
The rest met gravity, and embraced it. And that was all for me for about a week.

Rough job. I got a promotion, though. New title, new ICU, new hand (new forearm, nearly). New hookup, too, if Finneas’ll get off his ass long enough to phone me back.
And a new vocabulary. But he’s advised me to try to keep that under wraps. I’m inclined to agree.

In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was a dial tone. And there was an answering machine, and a message left. And there was a name of business as well the concept of ‘names’ and ‘businesses’ and the business was Bailey and Sons Home Creations.
Near the end of the beginning, they arrived and did a preliminary project assessment. And Bailey said “this job’s a good ‘un,” and it was a very good ‘un indeed, and the project began.
And Bailey did say “Shit, I can’t see worth balls in this dark. Someone turn on the lights.” And someone – Simon, the youngest of the Sons – turned on the lights. And Bailey said “that’s great.”
And Bailey said “Christ it’s damp, fetch me a freakin’ mop willya? So Thomas, the second-youngest of the Sons, fetched a freakin’ mop, and used it to sop up some of the moisture so that there was a space above the rest of the waters, but he didn’t clean it up all the way. And Bailey said, “that’s no goddamned good, Thomas, but we’re rushed so I’ll let it slid. Just pull your thumb outta your ass and LISTEN, okay?” And Thomas did that, and Bailey said that was just fine.
And Bailey said “I guess if you wanna do somethin’ right you gotta do it yourself,” and he took the mop and shoved all the water into one large mass with a bit of dry space in the middle, where he stubbed out his cigarette. And he vowed once again that he would quit soon, just so Lorraine would get off his back. He’d quit soon, real soon – tomorrow or something. And that was good enough.
And Bailey said “Damnit this thing’s as sterile as your uncle Rob’s nutsack; Joey, pour some fertilizer onnit.” So Joey took the big burlap sack of ancient and musty Beget-Thou-Hence and spilled it like the clumsy sot he was, being the biggest even if he was only the third-youngest. It sprayed all over Bailey’s cigarette butt and the genes got all scrambled and algae and plants colonized the sea and the land. And Bailey did swear a blue streak at him and cuff him and spent a good half hour trying to pry up the weeds before he gave up in a huff, stuffed his cigarette butt into orbit, and decreed that it would ‘have to do.’ And it did.
Then Bailey complained that it was ‘too damned bright and unfocused, somebody tune the light a bit.” And Douglas did, and he accidentally ended up guaranteeing the land widely varying intervals of freezing cold and searing heat on seasonal, yearly, and geological time scales. But he did trim the lights, so that there was one big one during the day and a lot of tiny little ones at night, plus Bailey’s big dimly-glowing cigarette butt. And Bailey said that this was good.
At this point it was realized that they hadn’t been keeping close track of time, and Bailey said that four days would do as a guestimate.
And Bailey did squint heavily and slope-browedly down upon the land, and he did say “Jesus H. tapdancing Christ on a crutch with a piston up his pooter, the place is CRAWLING with the little green SOBs! Get me a can of heterotrophic herbivores, ASAP!” So Daniel brought the big metal canister, rust and all, and carefully tipped out about one millionth as many herbivores as were needed in the sea, and Bailey grew impatient and wrested it from him, and spilled animals of all kinds and types and diets all over the sea and the sky, and blamed Daniel for it and punched him in the jaw and hurt his fist because Daniel, the second eldest son of Bailey, was nothing but skin and bone and brainless vapidity. And Bailey sucked his bruised knuckles and remarked bitterly that it was ‘done, at least.’ And that was the fifth day gone and blown, as far as he said it.
And Bailey said, “Fuck it, nobody looks in the ocean anyways. Let’s just do a good job on the dry stuff, okay? Just that. Then we can ship it and book it.” So Bailey and ‘Rat-Nose” Rasputin, his eldest son, carefully put animals all over the land, aiming for style over substance and writing off all of Australia’s fauna the moment anything else came into contact with them. And Bailey said that it “painted a pretty picture,” which was good enough.
Then Bailey said, “Hey now, we’ve still got time and a bit in the budget. Boys, take lunch, I’m gonna leave a little showpiece here for our customer.”
So Bailey grabbed together a few piles of ape genes and kludged together something amusingly bipedal, something that would get just as many backaches and achy shoulders as he did, a handful of males and females was good enough to get the job done.
Then Bailey said, “Tool-users…yeah, that oughta do it. Man oh man, either they’ll croak it during their first glaciation or they’ll turn into motherfuckin’ locusts.”
Then he said, “Hey, see that big mess over there, lying all over the place? All that crap my useless good-for-nothing kids made? Go on, give it a try, take it on. Dare ya. Double-dog-dare ya, you ugly li’l primate shitheads! G’wan!” And other things like that.
Bailey straightened up and rubbed his back as he looked upon all that he had made, and it looked good enough to ‘pass the eyeball test and get a check cut.” And that was the sixth day. By his watch and his hourly pay rate, at least.
That was when the project was deemed ‘done.’ At least, after lunch.
Lunch took up all of the seventh day, and it was billable. Then Bailey poured one out on the ground to celebrate the project’s completion, killing all the marsupial mammals of South America, because screw it, it was time to go home.
And in the end, there was a mess, and we sort of coped with it.

Someone chipped a rock.
Nuk took the chip from the rock that someone chipped and put it on a stick. It was a spear.
Mala took the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and she made it smaller, and fletched it. It was an arrow.
Neb took the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he shot a deer with it and traded the hide for iron, which he smelted and shaped. It was a dagger.
Titus took the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he had it smelted down and reforged into steel. It was a sword.
Gao took the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he had it melted and reshaped into a pick. He mined sulfur and a few other interesting things with it, and shaped them into a sort of explosive. It was gunpowder.
Diego took the gunpowder that Gao made with the help of the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he placed it in a long tube and fired a little bit of lead out of it. It was a gun.
Hiram took the gun that Diego made with the gunpowder that Gao made with the help of the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he used all manner of interesting little machines to make it fire extremely, extremely fast. It was a machine gun.
Wernher took the machinery from the gun that Hiram made with the gun that Diego made with the gunpowder that Gao made with the help of the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he arranged them and fuelled them and launched them into the air and watched them fly and fall down into the ground, where they exploded. They were rockets.
Julius took the rocker that Wernher made with the machinery from the gun that Hiram made with the gun that Diego made with the gunpowder that Gao made with the help of the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he made a very special sort of substance to place inside it. It made small machines tick, click, and squeal when you held them close to it.
An elected official took the special payloads that Julius made with the rocket that Wernher made with the machinery from the gun that Hiram made with the gun that Diego made with the gunpowder that Gao made with the help of the sword that Titus made from the dagger that Neb made using the arrow that Mala made from the spear that Nula made from the chip from the rock that someone chipped, and he pushed the button.
There probably wasn’t really a button.

Someone chipped a rock.

A very long time ago in that misty location called Someplace, there was a man. And this man was a chef. And this chef’s name was Nim.
Nim cooked all the food for his village. It hadn’t always been that way, but now every last meal went through his fingers, a stream of cuts and chops and bushels and bundles. It was such a waste not to have this happen. Nim could make a fish fly straight through your stomach, could put a bird to swim inside its juices, could take a handful of leaves and an anonymous root and make a dessert that would bring an old miser to tears of gratitude and vows of charity for just a taste more. There was no count to the number of recipes he knew, for he knew none; each dish was spontaneous.
People asked him how he fit all that knowledge inside just his one head, how he did it. Very often.
And each time this happened, Nim would think it through carefully as he stirred the pot or tossed the pan or shut the oven door. And he would say, “Practice. First a bit, then a lot. Then more. That’s practice.”
Nim’s practice caught the eyes of all kinds of people, from the watery eyes of fellow serfs who tended his home for him during his long cooking hours, to the desperate eyes of mayors who pled with him for bowlfuls, to the very pudgy eye of his lord, King Jot. King Jot knew what he liked, and he liked the little bit of Nim’s food that he had confiscated from an upstart peasant. King Jot also got what he wanted, and so Nim was yanked bodily from his home in the dark of night and brought up to the king’s castle, hauled between the arms of a dozen strong and rough men.
“They say you’re the best,” said King Jot, to Nim. “Is it true?”
Nim thought about this. “Maybe,” he said. “If someone knows more, I do not know him.”
“Well, get to work then!” said King Jot. He sent Nim off to the kitchens, and inside an hour he had eaten the best soup of his life, soon followed by the finest breakfast, the perfect luncheon, and a roast that had him thumping the table with his palm after each bite, sending the silverware a-quivering.
Things changed for people that weren’t Nim. The peasants had to do their own cooking again, the castle guard endured the scent of that which was untouchable for them, the king managed (somehow) to grow broader. But Nim remained in the kitchen, day in and day out, having only a bigger stove. If he felt resentment, he didn’t show it. He just practiced. First a bit, then a lot. Then more.
One day the king’s brother came a-visiting, Duke Crumb. King Jot put especial emphasis on Nim that this meal be perfect, so as to properly show off – though he needn’t have bothered. Everything was exceptional, always exceptional, and the boar and potatoes was transformed into something unearthly for the plate. The duke, a thin and darting man, twitched and snapped at his plate until he’d eaten enough for five hungry lumberjacks, resentful though he was of his host and his endless boasting.
“Now wasn’t that the finest thing you’ve ever eaten!” laughed King Jot as the servants carried away their plates. “No chef can compare to mine, not even yours! Don’t you agree, brother?”
Duke Crumb fumed a little. “It is true, maybe,” he said. “Possibly. But tell me, is your cook a true royal chef?”
“What d’you mean?” asked King Jot. “He cooks, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, yes, any old housewife can COOK – well, maybe not like this,” admitted the duke. “But a royal chef must be willing to make sacrifice, to burn bright and hard and fast, to cook the finest no matter the cost to life and limb, to give himself to his employer body and soul!”
King Jot’s eyebrows were hopping like crickets. “Well now! Do I hear a suggestion from you?”
“Have him cook us his hand for breakfast,” said Duke Crumb. “A truly royal chef can make anything taste wonderful, even under the worst pain, even the least palatable morsel, without hesitation.”
King Jot grumbled and twitched. “Fine!” he shouted. “I’ll have Nim cook us his hand for breakfast! You’ll see how true and royal he is!” And so the order was given.
Nim woke up early the next morning, and prepared his kitchen carefully, with tourniquet and dressing (medicinal) and butcher’s knife and cleaver and dressing (light and fruity). Then he placed his hand in the frying-pan, and cut it with a strong blow and a twitch, and he fried it finely and sliced it thinly. And it was the best breakfast that either of the two royal brothers had ever had.
“Magnificent,” said King Jot thickly, as he licked his plate. “Wondrous. Amazing. Don’t you agree, brother?”
“Yes,” muttered Duke Crumb, “but we’ll see how well he cooks with one hand!” And he stalked away home, to his own (long-suffering) chef, who made him a very nice dinner that wasn’t quite enough.
Nim stayed up late all week in the kitchen, a tidy bandage wrapped around his stump, changed daily. He hoisted his pans and pots with exactly five fingers and one thumb, and became adept at holding many things in just one palm, salt shakers and pepper grinders and spice containers dancing from countertop to dish and back again, nearly juggling. He practiced. First a bit, then a lot. Then more. And he cooked meals exactly as fine as he had before.
The winter grew cold and long, and as his peasants shivered King Jot invited his brother over to the castle for a lavish solstice banquet. Nim laboured long and hard into the evening, and at the end of the food King Jot threw down his napkin and smugly pronounced his chef the finest there could be. “Even one-handed he is twice the match of any other, times ten!” he crowed. “Don’t you agree, brother?”
“Fine, fine, fine,” muttered Duke Crumb, steepling and unsteepling his fingers like an indecisive carpenter. “But he is no true royal chef.”
“What’s that?” asked King Jot, sharply.
“He has given a hand for you,” said Duke Crumb, “but it was his left! A TRULY royal chef would’ve given us his best and finest first and foremost, no less! Have him cook his right hand, and we’ll see what sort of chef your man really is.”
King Jot fussed with his moustache and sucked on his lip. “Fine!” he bellowed. “Let it be done, as proof of his skill!” And again the order was given to Nim.
Nim had a short nap after dessert and woke up before the night had left, and he prepared his tools once again, asking a brave and stout servant to swing the cleaver for him. Then with a swish and a thud, Nim’s next challenge began. He filleted the hand and fried it and drizzled it with oils and spices. It was prepared in time for breakfast and served crispy-golden, and it was the best breakfast that the two royal brothers had ever had, except for the last one.
“Glorious,” said King Jot tearfully as he picked crumbs from his beard and devoured them, one-by-one. “Outstanding. Beauteous. Don’t you agree, brother?”
“Fine,” said Duke Crumb, sulkily. “But let us see how he can cook without fingers!” He grumbled the whole way back home, and badgered his own cook to prepare him a snack at two in the morning, which he didn’t like for no good reason.
Nim barely slept for a month. He used tweezers between his teeth to grasp objects, and his toes to hold pans and pots, and his stumps to manhandle roasts and apply rubs. He practiced. First a bit, then a lot. Then more. And every single dish he prepared had never been more delicious.
Spring came, the flowers blossomed, and the kitchen became unbearably hot once again. To celebrate the labour of the farmers, Duke Crumb was invited to enjoy much of the fruits of their previous year’s labour. A great salad was made by Nim, with hundreds of different ingredients applied in exactly-measured quantities, and when the great bowl was emptied King Jot belched loud enough to rattle every window in his castle. “I own the greatest chef in all creation,” he proclaimed, boldly, “and may God strike me down if I say otherwise!” And God didn’t, so he smiled even wider.
“Fine!” snapped Duke Crumb. “Fine! I admit it! It is true! But he has not given you his all yet.”
“Whatever do you mean?” asked King Jot, puzzled. “He has no hands left!”
Duke Crumb’s lips were thin, bloodless strips already, but somehow he pressed them thinner still. “He still has his head,” he whispered.
King Jot shrugged and sighed noisily. “Will THIS prove his superiority to you, brother?” he asked.
Duke Crumb nodded once. “Indeed,” he said, and managed not to smile.
“Then let it be done!” roared King Jot. “Guards! Inform Nim!” And they did.
“This is not a good plan,” he warned the guard captain. “Tell the King to reconsider this. It will not end well for him.”
The guard captain gave him a look. “Just do it.”
Nim did not sleep that night. He sat and thought and planned. A great cauldron was set up, and spiced with every last thing in his kitchen, brothed and prepared five-times-over. The exact temperature was calculated and reached. The cleaver, honed to the thinness of a sliver, was clutched tight between his toes. And with a single, clean motion Nim cut off his head and sent it – plunk! – into the pot, where it boiled and bubbled until noon, when the servants obeyed his instructions and took it out and served it for lunch.
It was simply the best thing that King Jot and Duke Crumb had ever dreamed of. Ever.
“Terrific,” said King Jot with a sigh as he threw the bones over his shoulder. “Miraculous. Divine. Don’t you agree, brother?”
“Yes,” said Duke Crumb, face a twisted mask of misery. “Yes. I admit it. I MUST admit it.” He burped. “It does go down a bit…rocky though.”
“Does it?” asked King Jot, and belched. He felt most strange. “It does, doesn’t it? Ow! Ah!” And both the brothers clutched at their temples as migraines bloomed and blossomed inside their skulls, migraines with shapes and names, migraines that smelled of garlic and chives and knifes and soap and spices. A thousand thousand things and know-hows and to-dos and meal-plans and shopping-lists all sprouting through their heads, like a flower. First a bit, then a lot. Then more. Then more.
And all at once.

The new King was an estranged nephew; Jot had never found a wife, claiming them quarrelsome. King Root was a far more even-tempered and restrained man than his late uncle, and on the whole people were happy enough, especially since Duke Crumb’s estate had been restored to farmland. That fed a few more mouths in each house, and that’s always good.
The royal kitchen sat unused, as part of some agreement that no chef ever spoke aloud or broke. But now and then someone, usually an adventurous apprentice, would wander down there and touch the big cleaver embedded in the countertop next to the stove. For luck in their studies.

It never helped, of course. The only way to learn is to practice.

It all started so innocently. A man, a plan, a way to save time where it was needed.
The man was Wally, and that wasn’t his fault, it was his parents’. The plan came to him late one Friday night, as he prepared to engorge himself upon moderately violent video games in order to forget what lay ahead of him at weekend’s end. A simple idea, one that leaked into his skull from places unknown.
“If I go to bed earlier,” said Wally to himself (Wally), “I could wake up earlier and have a longer weekend!”
This was such a good idea that Wally did it right away, and slept deep and long. Something in his head ticked over and over in the night, muttering inside REM, whispering as he surfaced from a blanket of boring dreams.
“Hey!” said Wally. “If I work ahead of myself over the weekend, I’ll get off early at work every day all week! That’ll save LOADS of time!”
And so Wally did just that, and laboured all weekend. On Monday morning he dragged his carcass and his workload into his office – sleep-deprived and yawning and more than a little bit cranky – and was promptly rewarded with more work. A lot more work.
“Hey,” said Mitchell, his boss, “you proved you can handle it, right?”
“Right,” said Wally. And he left it at that, because any of the next words he was planning to say could’ve gotten him in trouble. But that was fine, because all those frustrations and fumes bottled themselves up inside him, fermented, and popped out as another fabulous, wonderful idea, fresh and faintly alcohol-scented.
“Hey!” said Wally. “If I just get Mitchell’s job, I’ll be able to give myself time off!”
So Wally went to night school and started visiting the same bar as Judy (his boss’s boss) and undermined and sabotaged Mitchell at every opportunity, taking only enough downtime to eat and sleep. And seven months later, the job was his and Mitchell had departed in disgrace, leaving Wally the heir to the office and five hundred pounds of unfilled, unsorted paperwork that had accumulated during Mitchell’s nervous breakdown, much of which was coffee-stained.
“Balls,” said Wally. “I’d better get all of this done so I can take some time off.”
So he pulled out his pen and his pencil and his eraser and he delved through the mountains of files and emails and letters and bills and Important Notices and when he was done he had almost as many as he’d started with, and his employees were all complaining their asses off.
“I’ll never be able to have a nice quiet weekend this way,” said Wally. “I’ll work through the weekend and clear it all up. My NEXT weekend will be perfect.”
So he did that for three weekends in a row and still had work left over, which was when he began to reconsider his strategy.
“What if I were to just take the money and run?” he asked himself. “I’m at a moderate position of authority, I could embezzle and steal and pinch and nick a fair bit before I lit out. Enough to keep me comfortable in a different country with a different name, surely. I’ll do it! But I’d better do it right.”
And Wally boned up on how to do it right. He watched films, read books, learned a bit more finance, and after three years of nonstop planning he ripped off a few million dollars and ran away to an undisclosed location under a name that wasn’t Wally. Mind you, he was still Wally underneath it all, which was what made him do what he did next.
“I can’t relax,” Wally told himself. “If I get sloppy, they’ll find me. And then they’ll get me. I need an escape route and traps and warning flags and a carefully randomized schedule that never lets the locals see me as anything other than background noise. And I’d better look this all of this up under a number of different disguises and IP addresses, so I don’t leave a trace.”
Wally planned and plotted and researched and constructed and organized himself for five more years. And at the end of it all, he had a secure bunker that he was confident was traceless, a shrouded and hidden and re-routed and false-flagged ID that would’ve fooled the CIA five times over (the FBI eighteen times, a preschooler six), and some incidental inside knowledge of illicit drug dealing going on five miles down the road that he’d stumbled on and used as a self-example of how NOT to cover your tracks.
“They’re going about all wrong, all sloppy,” fretted Wally. “And if they get caught, I might get spotted too, and that’d be a disaster. I’ve got to prevent that. And I can only REALLY do that if I’m in charge.”
Wally was very methodical. He integrated himself to the drug-dealers over the next two years, was running the operation in three, and had realized that the whole thing was run incompetently immediately, which was what launched his six-year project of taking over the entire cartel complex and all subinstitutions himself. He barely had time to sleep at nights and had to use a lot of his own product to keep himself awake and energetic, but finally he sat at the top of the heap, all the connections and phone numbers and favours he could ever need at his fingertips and a host of varyingly loyal subordinates beneath him. His eyes were bleary and his mind was weary and he knew he wasn’t through as soon as the first reports started filtering up to him.
“It’s the damned governments,” he mumbled to himself – very quietly, because somebody might be listening. “Oh my men can do their jobs well enough, but only if they’re not constantly being pecked away at by secret services and so on and such. I’d better get them off our backs. I’d better do that right quick, or I’ll never get any rest or quiet.”
The bribing took a long, long time. The cosying-up took even longer – Wally’s people skills hadn’t atrophied so much as adapted to a world where ‘fuck you pal’ was a courteous greeting. But he was persistent, and he never let up, and one day he found himself an internationally-renowned Respectable Citizen who’d made himself a very close personal friend of the current administration of his home country.
“Partisanship,” he muttered. “Partisanship will be the death of me. I won’t get a thing done once those other guys get in, they’ll go a-poking and a-prodding at my past, keep me on the defensive. I’ve got to keep them out. Shut them down. And bribes won’t do it, no no no. Must be a direct hand in it. My hand.” He looked at his hand. Papery skin, visible veins. Well, he’d been busy and a bit stressed lately; soon he’d have all the time in the world.
Running a campaign and debating the press were hard, debating your opponent was easy – all nudges and winks and nod-nods. Wally became the last president of his country of birth at the end of a five-year trek of carefully founded propaganda, and he celebrated with a nap in the big chair that was now his due. It was the first he’d slept in about a decade.
He woke up in a cold sweat. Christ, now he was in for it. Everybody’d be after him now, looking for something. He had more subordinates than a dog had fleas, he had more whiny neighbours looking for help than a bird had ticks. He had more enemies than a shark had teeth. Jehovah’s galloping nutsack, what had he gotten himself into?
“I’ve got to get a handle on it all,” he whispered subvocally – circumventing the surely-present spycams. “They’ll keep me on my toes, never give me a moment’s rest. Got to find a way to shut them all up, get them out of my hair.” He ran a hand over his scalp and winced. Maybe he could tell them to stop it? No, they wouldn’t listen. Could he wait his term out? No way, they’d be on him like a pack of jackals at a dying wildebeest. Why did they spell it that way anyways, with two ‘e’s? His head hurt. He needed that break. Why wouldn’t anyone just give him a bit of a damned break? Every damned human being in the world seemed to just love standing between Wally and Wally’s peace and quiet kick-back time.
Wally examined the desk in front of him. There was a phone. He wasn’t supposed to use it except as a last resort.
Well, he’d tried the others, so he guessed this was it.

The bunker was cold and dark and a bit wet, and Wally’s fingers were shaking quite badly as he stuffed rags into the cracks that had formed in its exterior under the force of the bombs. That’d have to do until he mixed up some fresh cement. And checked the Geiger counter. And sorted the foods by perishability.
Well, he’d get it all done now and have some spare time tomorrow. Then he’d have all the time that was left in the world.

There’s a saint for everything, they say, and the people of Saint Clemeth knew this to be so. After all, if the Good Lord could spare a saint for Saint Clemeth, he must have them fit to burn.
It’s a lonely little place, Saint Clemeth. Not bad, but lonely. Empty and treeless, with only the sea spray and the gull-cry and the mourning of the seals to make an impact on the world. The seals do that the most, with their calls. Those sorrowful night-cries of theirs sounded like someone very young, or maybe very old, and very unhappy either way; one-of-a-kind-anywhere-ever. The people of Saint Clemeth knew that a special sort of seal that made a special sort of wailing like that needed a special sort of name. So they called them wailing seals.
Saint Clemeth was not the patron saint of imagination. He was a straightforward sort of man, who’d dethroned the king of the rocks and opened Saint Clemeth (the island) to the Good News and all that sort of thing, then up and died and left a little cairn that was currently tucked behind a neat white church perched above a small and brightly-painted town nestled on the shores of Saint Clemeth. The island.
The people of Saint Clemeth lived the time the Lord allotted each of them long, full, and slow. If you could paint someone’s life, most of the people of Saint Clemeth would look very similar: a big, broad, blue line that stretched on across the canvass and petered off to a neat little tapered end. If you looked very closely, perhaps with some sort of microscope, there’d be a miniscule little blip every twelve months when the fishing festival of Saint Clemeth (the saint) happened. If a family fisherman caught the crown-fish, that little blip of excitement would be visible with the naked eye. And that would be about that.

It’d been eleven months and about thirty days of waiting and here it was again. The sort of day that made the sea spray high and the seals wail low, the time for that little blip in the slow blue lives of Saint Clemeth’s fishermen, where they’d grab their line and tackle and nets and tricks and boots and stomp on down to the docks in the afternoon, with all the town watching with binoculars and telescopes and squints and in the case of Mad Mortimer his seeing-eye gull. Mad Mortimer swore up and down and on a blue moon that the cranky little bird worked, but he also swore up and down and on a blue moon that he’d never walked into the side of his house ever, or at least more than once, and certainly not in front of witnesses no sir, so he wasn’t what most people called trusty.
Mad Mortimer was a big, big man, and so was the dent in the side of his house, worn smooth by salt air and repeated collisions after pub night (most nights). In fact, it was so big that if you stood very still in it with your back against the wall and held your breath and if you were as small as little Susan was, you’d almost vanish from the street if people weren’t looking too closely. Little Susan found this very useful, especially when her mother was chasing after her to cut her hair for the festival.
“SUUUUUUUU-SIEEEEE!” came the Voice with a pealing clang-clong-cling that’d have driven pride into a church bell’s heart. “COME RIGHT HERE THIS INSTANT I MEAN IT” and so on and so forth, all the words and threats blurring into one big fuzzy siren that told little Susan that she’d better keep moving, because her mother was hunting fast and hard. No stone would be unturned, no doorstep unpeered, no neighbour unquestioned. Little Susan would have her haircut so she could be at the docks promptly and timely to wish her elder brother Stanley good-luck before he headed out to help Uncle Benson fish for the crown, and if she happened to think Stanley was the biggest louse ever to escape from a lobster trap and scuttle into town in the guise of a human, well she’d just have to keep it to herself. Little Susan had resolved that she would sooner die than suffer such tyranny, but she’d rather it not be of embarrassment: her mother was a mighty and skilled woman in many ways, but she was a terror with a pair of scissors. She needed an escape route, and fast.
“SUUUUUUUU-SIE!” called the voice, sharper now.
That’d torn it; next she’d be using little Susan’s full name. It was time to get serious about escape. But where? The streets were bustling, every path filled with revelry. Potential Judases. Her only hope was to hide somewhere her mother would never look for her, never suspect her presence, never even think to ask of….
“SUSAN! AGNES! MCALLISTER!”
Right, that was it. Time to head to the docks. Little Susan slipped out of Mad Mortimer’s dent like a wisp of steam from a teacup and eeled her way downhill in the alleys and byways, head held low and feet drumming along like a double-time marching band. An eye or two caught her passage – Kelvin the ironmonger, cousin Patricia – but so what? Nobody would ever suspect her destination, no one would guess that she’d hide right in the place she meant to avoid. It was utterly, utterly, totally, completely, absolutely foolproof, and she reached the docks with her spirits high.
“Hoy,” said Stanley. “What’re you doin’ here? Where’s mam?”
Out of the frying-pan and into the fire, little Susan swallowed the immediate grimace that threatened her face and mustered her wits. “Dunno.”
Stanley looked at her and frowned. “She wouldn’ let you wander ‘bout alone. Where’s mam?”
“Dunno,” said little Susan, calculatingly.
Stanley’s eyes narrowed. “You di’nt run away, didja?”
“No!” said little Susan.
He shook his head. “Figgurs. Unc Benson!” he called, turning about to his uncle’s boat. “I’ll be back quick as a blink! Jus’ got to drag me sis back to mam.” Having said his piece, Stanley turned back to find his sister twenty feet away and accelerating.

Confound the luck of little girls, thought little Susan. But her hopes were still alive. The docks weren’t a safe unknown anymore, but there were a dozen places to hide every dozen feet, and a dozen more of those if you were small and slight and willingly to hold your breath. All she had to do was dodge between the procession of the MacDonald children – all head and shoulders above her, easier done than said – and then weave behind the crowd forming (at a safe distance) around Mad Mortimer’s make-your-own-foghorn-from-a-tin-can-and-an-angry-cat demonstration, and then hop, skip, and jump into the nearest empty boat, low in the water and tied as firmly as a rock.
Little Susan peered out just above the waterline and saw her brother go dashing by. Success, and sweetly taken! But he’d slow down soon, and backtrack; Stanley was a loathsome sort, but clever. She’d need to take a more careful shelter, and look, the cabin door was unlocked! Saint Clemeth was watching over his festival after all, and over little girls in particular. So she hummed a bit as she shut the door behind her, and peered through the dusty old window into the bright blue world. Not more than a few minutes, and she’d be home and dry. Not at home though. That would be troublesome for a while yet.
There was a noise, and little Susan froze. No, it’d been a creak, a groaning of a board in an old tub that from the look of it had been afloat one decade – or century – too many. There were no ghosts in town. Not since the one at the lighthouse, or the one at the cairn, or the one that was in their basement. Stanley had a lot to answer for. But she was sure there was no ghost at the docks.
“Mmmmmmrrgh?”
Little Susan opened her mouth to scream, saw Stanley ashore in the crowd, and shut her mouth again. Instead, she spun on her heel to face any ghosts that might’ve been about and hissed “quiet!”
A pile of old furry rags sitting in the captain’s chair moved, and opened its bleary brown eyes, lost in a tangled beard much too big for them that had somehow spread from nose to navel. “Ffuurwut? Eh?” it creaked.
Oh, thought little Susan, and saw what it was. It wasn’t a ghost. It was old man Thane. He was called that so as not to confuse him with Big Douglas Thane the miller’s helper, or Little Tommy Thane who cried the Sunday papers up at Noonan’s way. They weren’t his relations. She wasn’t sure if ANYONE was old man Thane’s relation.
“Oooooh,” said old man Thane, looking more closely at her and recognizing a person, even if it was a small one. “Ayyy seeee. Whurter ye doon heer. Eh? Whuut yoo in me hoom fuur?” He had the most peculiar voice; every word he spoke sounded like it was being hauled up out of a very strange and deep tidal cave.
“What’re YOU in here for?” countered little Susan.
Old man Thane’s face was a mask of misery, a thousand little lines carved by unhappiness that tears could never have shaped, like a mighty canyon formed from trickles of water. It wrinkled at little Susan’s question. “Caant feesh,” he mumbled. “Bee indy wayy. Noo fest-“ and here he stopped to wince extra hard –“eye-vall fer me.”
“Stanley’s doing it,” said little Susan, filling the name with as much disdain as she could manage. “Anybody could do it. Everybody’s trying. Aren’t you going to even try?”
Old man Thane didn’t say a word, but his expression said everything, every word that little Susan had ever heard tale of old man Thane. Not Captain Thane, though he’d owned the boat for as long as he’d need to for it, been afloat for longer than any set of grandparents anyone could name. Old man Thane. Because a captain worth his name had to catch something. Wherever old man Thane spread his nets and cast his bait, that was where the other boats fled, leaving him on one side of the island and they on the other. And they’d snare fish, and old man Thane would snare his bent old brown fingers in his nets and sit there looking at them as if to ask what had gone wrong.
The next day he’d try the other side of the island. And it would happen again.
Old man thane: the man that never left his boat and couldn’t catch so much as a cold.
“Anybody could do it,” repeated little Susan with total confidence.
Old man Thane kept not saying a word.
“Well, probably,” she amended.
Old man Thane lowered himself farther into his chair again and turned it away.
“Well, maybe not you, MAYBE,” said little Susan. “But neither can loads of people! Stanley could never get the crown. Ever. Not in a million years.”
Old man Thane didn’t say anything. But he turned his chair ‘round again, slowly and laboriously, with a lot of creaking. She wasn’t sure whether it was from his legs or the cabin.
“Wuut?” he asked.
“What?” she replied.
“Hoo ye noo?” he asked.
“Hoo I noo what?” said little Susan.
“Hoo ye noo abut me cruun!” yelled old man Thane, stamping his feet and smashing his fist on the arm of his chair with a violent spasm. His voice creaked like leather and his chest pumped like a bellows, he’d gone all red in the face under his mess of whiskers, but his eyes weren’t angry, just confused, and that’s what made little Susan stay calm. That and that she was sure that if she ran outside, Stanley would be standing right there, sure as sixpence. Saint Clemeth seemed to be in the mood for giving that sort of luck to little girls today.
“I don’t know about anything,” she said, trying not to sound too proud. “My teacher says so.”
“Me HAHTT,” clarified old man Thane. He coughed violently. “Me hahtt.” He sank down into his chair again, rubbing at his face. “T’sawwl noo guud. Not witoot me croon, me hahtt. Noo guud seens den, noo guud noo, noo guud everr. Noo guud.”
That haunted look was back in him now, shrinking him where he sat. He was the smallest-looking adult little Susan had ever seen, as small as little baby Caroline that was still in a crib. And it was because he looked so very small, and because she couldn’t imagine a captain without a hat, that little Susan said what she said next, which was this:
“I could get it for you.”
Old man Thane looked up again.
“If you really want it, I guess,” she said.
He rubbed at his beard, fingers colliding by chance with a pipe that was lodged somewhere near his chin. “Tha…..th’…oon th’ rooks. Oop hy. Abuv. In tha stoons whaar hee poot et.” His hands were shaking as they dislodged the pipe. “Caan ye? Whiill ye?”
Little Susan looked over her shoulder at the docks, and saw no sign of Stanley. A seal blinked at her with watery eyes from underneath the pier; the affronted royalty of the rocks.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
Old man Thane looked at his pipe as if it were the most complicated object in all the world. And he nodded.
So little Susan left – after checking the docks again, carefully – and did some thinking as she walked, aimlessly. She’d made some sort of a promise now, and that was important. It was also a pretty big promise, from the way the old man had acted. That was also important. So she should go and do it right now, which meant thinking. That was hard.
Well, she’d check the rooks first. So she looked around, and she saw the rooks. Everywhere. Underfoot, in the harbour, on the hill up above, all over the place. Saint Clemeth was a rooky place, it was part of what made it hard for anything to grow there. It also made this hint of little Susan’s next to useless.
What next? Oop hy. Abuv. So little Susan looked oop hy and abuv, and saw a lot of big blue sky and only the merest wisps of clouds. She started to get dizzy, and looked somewhere else. That wasn’t very helpful at all.
In tha stoons whaar hee poot et. Which hee? Which stoons? There were just as many stoons as rooks, and little Susan was getting really annoyed about this riddle, which was much harder than the ones grandpa told when she wasn’t supposed to be listening. Those all ended up being about naked people and body parts. Body parts like the hand that descended on little Susan’s neck like a vise.
“Susan Agnes McAllister,” breathed an extremely quiet and deathly calm voice in her ear. “You are in so much trouble right now.”
Little Susan would’ve protested, but felt that uninstructed use of her throat might cost her her head.
“It is almost noon and you still don’t have your hair cut,” continued her mother in her absolute monotone. “You will have to say good luck to your brother with messy hair and a sore backside.
Little Susan cursed her entirely fruitless and now-deadly aimless wandering, but silently. Her back was prickling with the anticipation of the smacking to come, the air seemed thick with tension. Or something else. She couldn’t quite place it.
Little Susan’s mother paused for a moment to listen, and then little Susan heard it. Oh. Screams.
They were getting louder very quickly.
“What is-“ managed little Susan’s mother, and then Mad Mortimer came rumbling into sight, running uphill but with the full force of panic behind him and his heart in his mouth, bleating fit to burst. There was a sound like eight kinds of armour-clad fur-spitting hell coming after him, a racket that couldn’t have been bested by a freight train laden down with fifteen cars of mixed pins and balloons.
Mad Mortimer was a big man, and the byway that little Susan and her mother stood in was a small one. And he wasn’t about to stop.
In the half-second it took for little Susan’s mother’s full-formed, adult, rational mind to process this, little Susan had wriggled off and away and run for dear life through an open door, proceeding through an open window, an alley, and a road in that order, all uphill. Faint crashes and shouts behind her informed her sensitive ears that her mother was probably all right but angrier than before, and she shouldn’t check on her. It wouldn’t be safe.
Safe. She needed to be safe again. Not the docks, not the town, not anywhere, where could she go?
Well, right there in front of her, inside the church. Thankfully empty, too.
Little Susan reached for her second neglected doorknob of the day, only to find that the minister, trustless, heartless man that he was, had locked the place up for the festival.
She said a word her grandpa had taught her (inadvertently) and pounded the door and hurt her fist. Where now? There was nowhere to hide up here on the hill, nowhere to run, and if she walked down the road back into town she’d be spotted for sure. She needed to hide, hide, hide, the overpowering instinct that nature instills in children and mice, and she ran around the church in circles, hoping against hope that the back door was open.
Locked.
Little Susan slumped down against the door, resigned to her fate. That was when she saw her hiding place, courtesy of Saint Clemeth, patron saint of luck for little girls and maybe Saint Clemeth (the island) too she guessed.

Saint Clemeth’s cairn was small and cramped and something in it seemed to be poking little Susan in the most uncomfortable part of her rear. She wondered how Saint Clemeth had ever managed to fit inside it. Maybe he’d been small and cramped too. But as she heard her mother’s footsteps fade away in the distance alongside some particularly vicious mutterings, she wasn’t about to complain about space. Better a numb backside than a raw one.
Something was definitely poking her and threatening to undo that. She rolled over and around in the tight little cubby that was the holy receptacle of Saint Clemeth’s earthly remains, then froze mid-wince, eyes bigger than saucers, waiting three slow blinks to make sure what she was seeing was still there.
It was.
And so it was that little Susan reached into Saint Clemeth’s cairn, oon th’ rooks oop hy abuv the town, in tha stoons whaar hee poot et, and removed old man Thane’s hahtt.
It looked nothing like a captain’s hat, and it was much smaller than she’d have thought it was; a circle of rusted iron and blackened silver, dark as a lump of coal even when held up to the sun. It smelt like metal and salt and it made her palms itch and her mother’s voice in the back of her head go on about tetanus. But more importantly still, it meant that her promise was still good! Now she just had to get it back down to the docks and
“SUSAN.”
Little Susan’s feet acted without her mind needing to inform them, and that was how she stayed one step ahead of her mother for the first fifty feet of the race, because her mind was busy obsessing over how stupid it’d been to stand up in plain sight on the top of a hill with her mother not two minute’s walking distance away.
The next half-kilometer was a test of drive. Little Susan’s mother had a hide to tan and a child to discipline and set on the straight and narrow. Little Susan had a promise to keep and a deadline to reach – as they entered the town, the foghorns on the boats were sounding, the lines were being cast off, the wailing seals of the harbour were kicking up a caterwauling fuss at the unwanted intruders on their rightful dominion.
The last ten yards were decided on endurance and leg-length, and here it was that little Susan’s mother claimed an unfair and biased advantage and seized her up in both hands.
“What is THAT thing you’ve-“
Little Susan’s vision was a tunnel now, made of curious faces staring her way, a maze she couldn’t see through. Where was he?
“-rusty all over, you’re going to get lockjaw-“
The faces turned away as one, back to the sight of the festival’s launch, the boats all headed for the harbour’s mouth. All of the faces, except for one. Old man Thane was staring dead straight at her, mouth frozen wide open in shock, pipe dribbling out of one hand to fall to the deck at the sight of her and what was in her hand.
“-give me that!”
The last six inches were decided by a strategic elbow of little Susan’s, which planted itself in her mother’s side and halted her grip for a fraction of a second, which was just long enough for little Susan to move her arm on the last, shortest, and hardest stretch of the race and hurl the cruun at old man Thane, where it bounced off his chest and into his boat.
Little Susan missed what happened for the next few minutes, because she was busy being given the sorest backside of her life. It was alright. Afterwards, plenty of people wanted to tell her about it.

Old man Thane looked down at the thing on the deck of his boat for a long, long time. He reached down to it real, real slow. And as he straightened up that bent old back of his, he placed his crown upon his head.
And old man Thane changed, just like that, in the strange little ways that people change all their lives. He stood up straight, and he looked tall. He stood up strong, and he looked big. His eyes weren’t watery, they were glistening, his crooked fingers clenched and unclenched themselves into straight shape, and even his beard was different. It flowed, not bristled.
He didn’t say a word, but he bent back down to his work. A quick shrug and a tug and a yank and the moorings were gone, his boat was adrift, its engine a-putter as he steamed out of the harbour, last in line, serenaded by all the annoyed wailing seals.

Out there in the mouth to the wide open sea, the boats gathered. In a moment they would scatter, but not too far. This was a test of who could find the best fish right here, right there at Saint Clemeth’s. Nobody wanted to bring back some foreign fish, it’d ruin the spirit of the thing right proper. But before they scattered, they’d gather to wish one and all good luck at the harbour’s mouth, and that was what put so many noses out of joint when old man Thane chugged up in his boat and stopped there, right in the middle of all of them before they’d even had a chance to exchange pleasantries.
He cut the engine and watched them. The day seemed too quiet all of a sudden, even with the seals still complaining and all the other boats running.
“”Ey, move it!” yelled Uncle Benson.
“Gerout of there!” said Mr. Macdonald.
“What’s about that poky hat?” asked Angus the younger.
Old man Thane did a very unnerving thing here. He looked at each and every one of them, all at once, and he grinned, he grinned bigger than anybody would’ve thought a human mouth could stretch. He grinned ear to ear and back to the other ear again, and if there was ever a more fearsome thing to see than that, not one of the men knew it.
All of them shrunk back in their seats.
“Christ on a cracker,” mumbled Stanley. Uncle Benson said nothing.
Old man Thane cocked his head and listened to them all mutter, and then he coughed. Once, twice, three times. A big hacking rasp that sounded like someone tearing strips off a lung. Gunshot coughs.
Now, two things happened. First off, all the other boat’s engines stopped dead. Second, a fish jumped into old man Thane’s boat.
He caught it with one hand and looked at it as if it were made of gold for a long, long, long time. Then he tossed back his head and let out a bark. One, two, three barks. Big, solid, sharp-tongue calls that sounded like they came from a dog’s mouth.
The seals shut up just like that. And another fish jumped into the air and right into old man Thane’s mouth.
He chewed it and swallowed. One gulp. Then he wiped his mouth and laughed and laughed and out came the biggest tearer of a bellowing roar that hadn’t been heard since the end of the world, a sound that a foghorn wanted to be when it grew up. It shook the timbers of every boat present and it made the sea curl itself up into fits and when it ended the air seemed more fragile than it had been just a minute ago.
When it ended, old man Thane wasn’t there anymore. And neither was old man Thane’s boat. But the water was being sucked down in spirals where they’d sat, and Stanley told anyone who’d listen – just little Susan, as it turned out – that he saw a big old tail flip against the current and head down into deeper waters, searching for shining scales underwater.

Nobody caught any fish, not for three days. After that they came back, but they were scared pretty fierce for a while.

By and by, it came to pass after all the fuss had died down that the people of Saint Clemeth heard something new – or rather, didn’t hear it. The wailing seals had stopped their evening wailing, stopped up for good. Now they just barked and burbled and bellowed like any regular old seal did, and they did it all day and snoozed all night. Obviously, they needed a new name now. The old one didn’t fit.
So they called them Thane’s Grandchildren. And that name fit nice and snug.

Jamie Proctor, 2012.