Hitherby Dragons

stored with Martin’s observations of gods in the wild:

The water whistles. A hidden hand comes down. He binds in him the kettle and the steam.

Every log cabin has its lincoln.

You can’t normally see them. They are long shadows on the wall, long and tall, coming to a peak in their stovepipe hats.

Sometimes, when the water whistles on the stove, and the lincoln’s hand reaches down, you catch a glimpse.

That’s all. Just a glimpse. From the corner of your eye.

It is 1809.

Susan is asleep. The rest of the family is out. The wind beats against the door. The big fat spider is crawling, slowly, down the cabin walls.

It is to the spider that Abraham speaks.

“There is pain,” he says. “This land is hurting.”

There is salt on Susan’s cheek.

The spider fetches a large fly corpse. It begins dragging it, with huffs and puffs, up the cabin walls. “That’s so,” he says. “And I don’t know if I’ll have enough for winter.”

It’s 1809, and even spiders are hardy folk.

“I could help,” Abraham says. “Lincolns bind things together.”

He brushes his fingers along the logs. They aren’t held together by anything. They’re just kind of stacked there. But still the cabin stands.

“A lincoln can’t leave his cabin,” the spider says. “Or you get shot. It’s a thing. Worse’n with Kennedys. Could you pass me that other fly?”

Abraham picks up the corpse, then hesitates. “What happened before guns?”

“There’ve always been guns,” the spider says.

Abraham lifts the body up.

“Can you get the wasp?”

“Too heavy,” Abraham says. “I’d have to make myself a body out of clay and sticks.”

“Alas.”

The spider trudges down the walls.

“You’re happy here,” the spider says. “Aren’t you?”

The lincoln drifts across the walls, and binds together two stray strands of web. “Yes,” he says.

“Then why would you leave?”

“People are worthy,” the lincoln says.

“Ah.”

There’s a silence.

“They are,” the spider agrees.

“And it makes me sad,” Abraham says, “sometimes, that nobody can see my hat.”

The great mother horror lived here long before you and me. She had many children.

Her children ate the sharks.
Her children ate the tigers.
Her children chased down the hawks on the wing.

There was a great darkness.
They had eaten the sun.

There was a great stillness.
They had eaten the wind.

Great mother horror walked among her children. She saw that some were eating puppies. Some were eating kittens. Some were eating little humans, not even as old as they were tall.

“Stop that,” she said, gently. So her children dropped the puppies, and kittens, and the human babes from their long long teeth. They went off to fight enemies who were worthy of them.

Great mother horror lay down to sleep.
It was very quiet.
It was very still.

Then there was a rustling,
A rustling,
A rustling in the moors.

They rose all around her in the marsh,
With soft, high giggling,
And little barks
And little mews.

And their tiny hands dragged her down
They dragged her under
And great mother horror was gone.

Her children gathered to mourn her.
“We tried to warn her,” they said. “Tut tut!”
“We tried to warn her,” they said. “Ah so.”
“But the babies deceived her.”
“The little ones deceived her,” they said.

Then they walked to the edge of her home
And out into the great darkness
And they were gone.

If you look really hard,
You can still see her shape,
Trapped and drowning
Under the marsh.
Not quite alive
But not all the way dead.

Out back there’s a tree. It’s the tallest tree in Snohomish County. Its branches are great and wild and they cover the sky.

Sid comes there after his children die. He sits beneath the tree.

“Do their souls go up into the sky?” he asks.

There’s nothing there, is the tree’s reply. It’s not in words. But Sid can hear.

He looks up. “Surely,” he says, “there must be stars.”

Stars, and rocks, but yet no heavens.

Sid adjusts himself in his seat. He pulls a sharp stone out from under him, blue and white, and tosses it aside.

“Why not?” he asks.

People used to come here, says the tree. They climbed me to the heavens. They went up into the sky.

Sid listens.

And one day, a man ran to me, ragged and bruised. He’d been beaten. He was limping as he ran. And he climbed up, up, up the tree. And the people who hated him came after. They saw him rising towards the sky. They were angry. They shouted. They threw stones. And then they too began to climb.

“Did he make it?” Sid asks.

He reached the top, and he saw that they would catch him. So he started hitting the sky where it touched me. He wanted to break it so that they couldn’t follow him. But the sky is very fragile, you know, and the whole thing just shattered.

“Oh,” says Sid.

So there’s nowhere for your children to go, says the tree. Just the endless hungry void. I’m sorry.

“No,” Sid says. “It’s okay.”

And he sits there for a while. Then he goes and he walks around in the field. After a while, he finds a stone. It’s blue, and sharp, and veined in white. He climbs, holding it delicately in his hand. He puts it up at the top of the tree’s branches. Then he climbs back down and goes looking for the next.

There’s still no sky, except a little bit of blue, right above Snohomish County. But Sid’s just one man, and a tree takes a while to climb, and there’s an awful lot of sky.

He’s probably just not done.

It might be too late for Sid’s children. It’s hard to know. Or maybe there’s just enough room for them up there, like it is now, so he stopped. People give up sometimes. It happens.

But he’s probably just not done.

¹ with apologies to Adam West, Ralph Nader, and the authors of Left Behind.

It is 2006.

Noah enters the famine factory. He’s wearing a baseball cap and he’s carrying a notepad.

“I want famine to be safe,” Noah says.

Judd Stevens, his guide, looks uncomfortable.

“More than fifteen thousand workers have died at your factory in the last year,” Noah says. “Most companies would have taken this as an opportunity to review their work conditions and precautions. You—”

“My dear Mr. Childe,” Judd says.

“You took it as an opportunity to count them against production.”

The apocalypse machine is running all around them. It is black and burning red and rises as far as Noah’s eyes can see. Workers cling to the machine like insects to a cliff, climbing, tinkering, a seething hive of men. They are emaciated. The famine radiation has melted the fat from their frames.

“My dear Mr. Childe,” Judd says again. “You must understand that each of those fifteen thousand starved to death. It’s purely in alignment with the code.”

A worker loses his grip and plummets. Noah makes a check mark on his notepad.

“Starvation?” Noah says.

“They work until they die,” says Judd. “Poor dears. We would feed them more, but even ‘Hungry Man meals’ do not help.”

Noah rubs his finger along the machine. It comes away grimy. The grime makes him feel hungry.

“They are ‘over one pound of food,’” Judd says. “Yum.”

“This is unsanitary,” Noah says. He tastes his finger. “And hideous.”

Judd grits his teeth. He turns to Noah. “What makes you think I will not leave you here?” he says.

“I believe the consumer can check shameless corporate power,” Noah says.

“This is the belly of the beast,” Judd says.

But Noah makes a call.

His new life began almost two years ago. Bush and Kerry earned millions of votes, but only 144,000 people turned out to vote for Nader.

Noah had not been one of them. He believed, truly he did, but he was seduced away from Nader by the siren call of brand-name whiskey, and, later, by a hangover. When the Rapture came on November 8 and 144000 Nader voters ascended bodily into Heaven, Noah realized his mistake.

Planes crashed.
Cars went out of control.
Minifridges sat empty.
Swivel chairs spun in silence.
Nader’s picture presided over empty beds.

Without the guidance of strong consumerist principles, the world fell overnight into savagery. And Noah saw what would come.

“These are the days of the Tribulation,” he said. “When Antichrist, Inc. shall rise to rule the world. Its subsidiary companies shall churn out war, bloodshed, famine, pestilence, and death. And the people shall be alone.”

And so he made his devil’s bargain.

It is 2006, and Noah is starving. He is also on hold.

“You can’t be lax just because you serve evil,” Noah says. “If you don’t respect your workers, they won’t respect you.”

“My dear Mr. Childe,” Judd says. “People will starve overseas for a quarter of what we must pay them in America.”

Judd is not sure whether to sneer triumphantly or look nervous. He doesn’t know whom Noah is trying to call.

“You’re not competitive overseas,” Noah points out. “They can manufacture their own famines better and more efficiently than Antichrist, Inc.”

Judd strokes his goatee. “Granted,” he says. He looks down. “I suppose that after I forge your favorable report, I should think upon your principles.”

“Hello?” Noah says into the phone. His stomach rumbles with desperation. “I must speak to Nick Squamous. Immediately.”

Judd pales.

In 2004, Nick Squamous was nothing more than a handsome multimillionaire playboy obsessed with his parents’ death. Some people, in his position, might have put on a batsuit and become a crime-fighting furry. Nick Squamous’ path differed. He prevailed on his connections in the Skull and Bones society to become the Antichrist, instead, selling his soul for immortality.

“Why should I hire you?” he said, to Noah, shortly afterwards.

“Because the Apocalypse is consumer-driven,” Noah answered.

Nick toyed with his Antichrist-a-rang. “Go on.”

“‘Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production,’” Noah said, “‘and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.’ Adam Smith.”

“Naturally,” Nick said, “I studied his work in the Mysterious Orient.”

“You can generate war, bloodshed, famine, pestilence, and death,” Noah said.

“Also,” Nick said, “hail, fire, blood upon the earth, a burning mountain falling into the sea, and the Wormwood star falling on the rivers and streams.”

Noah blinked.

“It’s in the second stage of the business plan,” Nick explained.

“You can generate these things,” Noah said doggedly, “but only insofar as there is a market for them. In short, you rely on the very population you’re killing for the efficiency of your services.”

“Hm,” Nick said, examining a can of Antichrist Shark Repellent for possible inclusion in his utility belt. “And, since there is no mortal force external to Antichrist Inc. capable of imposing regulation upon us, you suggest that I should impose it internally.”

Noah nodded.

“But why you?”

“I am the last of the Naderites,” Noah said.

Nick arrived at a decision. He stood. He offered his hand. “You’re in.”

It is 2006, and Judd is quite clearly beginning to sweat.

“Yes, sir,” Noah says into the phone. “No, sir. Yes, quite hungry, sir. Just one or two sizes, sir. No, sir. No, he’s not, sir.”

Noah holds out the phone. “He’d like to speak to you.”

Judd takes the phone. He looks unhappy.

“I’ll be waiting outside,” Noah says. And he walks out the door of the famine factory, whistling to himself.

In 2011, Ralph Nader shall return, twenty feet tall, to banish the sinners and usher in a thousand year consumerist reign.

In the meantime, there are only men like Noah, small, feeble, and fallible, but keeping the flame alive.

The messenger came from very far away.

He rode through the void bearing our pardon. He passed waterfalls of fire, and snakes greater than rivers, and jungles of green so pure that Rainbow Brite would know envy. And still he rode.

He came in time to the walk, to the march, to the progression of the shadows. They walk through the endless night down to the deepest sea.

They are blind.

They are deaf.

They cannot feel one another. For they are all shadows, and shadows feel as shadows alike.

Each of them says, as he or she walks, “I am lonely. I am empty. I am tired.”

And so they wend their way down to the deepest sea.

It is here that the messenger failed. It is here that the messenger betrayed us, and we may say it is wrong without compunction, for it was wrong even by the messengers’ own code.

He stopped.

He reined in his horse, and he came down.

And he walked among them, each to each, and touched them, and gave them an answer to their loneliness.

And through the long night the shadows wept, and there was something pure and uncompromisingly beautiful in their tears.

But he has not come.

The messenger has not come, and this was wrong, and he knows it is wrong. And that is why the world is not right.

That is why the world can never be right.

That is why the world is not right today.

1. A child of a man and the principle of fate, and
3. deciding, “In my life, I shall only experience every other event,”
5. He too slept with a principle of fate.
7. And he had a son named Rival.
9. He saw that the child was beautiful, and loved him, but
11. A servant took Rival in the dead of night and carried him away.
13. In a distant place, unknowing of his father, Rival grew to a youth.
15. He learned the art of the discus.
17. He found himself in his father’s city on the day of a discus match.
19. And his father looked down from the stands. And quite by accident,
21. The father’s eyes met his son’s. “You,” he said. “You are my blood.”
23. And Rival became his heir,
25. And if time is not circular, then here the story ends.

**
2. If time is circular, he took the name Successor,
4. redefining time so that every other event flowed in sequence.
6. Fate grew pregnant with Successor’s child
8. And fate prophesied that this child, his Rival, would kill him.
10. Successor ordered his son slain, so his son fled—
12. Weeping bitter tears.
14. In a distant place, where his father could not find him, his Rival grew into a man.
16. When he was strong, his Rival set out in search of Successor’s home.
18. He took up a great stone disc.
20. He hurled it at his father’s head.
22. And the stone struck Successor dead.
24. And if time is circular, then the one man is the other—

So a famous scientist once gave a lecture on astronomy, and afterwards, an old lady approached him.

“What you said is rubbish!” she said. “The world is a flat landmass on the back of a giant turtle.”

“Ah,” said the scientist. “But what is the turtle standing on?”

“A bigger turtle!” she responded.

“And that turtle?” the scientist said.

“Memory overflow error,” declared the old woman, and vanished.

**
A student once told Dijkstra, “Each two years doubles the speed at which new graduate students can compute. A genius in your time, you are already obsolete.”

“In ten seconds,” Dijkstra said, “I will think of a paradox. Can you tell me what it is?”

The student thought for five seconds, and then derezzed.

In this fashion Dijkstra learned that the GOTO statement is in fact harmful.

**
Knuth spoke to two students.

“I have written a program that can solve the halting problem,” the first student told Knuth.

“Then the entire world in which we’re having this conversation cannot exist,” Knuth answered.

“Zing!” declared the second student, and snapped her fingers in a Z.

**
“This isn’t right,” said Professor James Hook, glaring at the student’s paper. “This isn’t even wrong.”

To demonstrate, he put his hand right through the paper and into a terrible interdimensional space. This was how he lost his hand and also how undefined values first tasted human blood.

**
Some people say the woman in the first anecdote didn’t vanish at all. Her eyes went blank and grey and she began spontaneously reciting tomorrow’s NYSE prices. The NYSE responded the only way they could: they stuck her in a back room and hooked her up to the ticker.

Ever since stocks have been traded at tomorrow’s prices rather than today’s!