Hitherby Dragons

There are some performances in the Gibbelins’ Tower that you don’t see.

Sometimes we’re afraid that they’ll give people the wrong idea. Sometimes we like to tell stories of how Mylitta beat up the monster. Or won his heart. But we can’t show those. Or sometimes we like to tell stories about dharma. But we haven’t figured out how to explain dharma yet. If we had, I guess, then maybe this story would be over.

Sometimes I just go out and I tell the empty chairs what the monster actually did to me. Then I get awkward and go hide.

Sometimes I tell bad pirate jokes. Like, “Knock knock? Who’s there? A pirate!”

Martin sometimes tries to get me to finish that one, but I think it’s complete in itself.

There’s a performance going on tonight that you can’t see. It’s about how the nefarious hunter William Show shoots Bambi’s Mom, but instead of dying, she spends four years in a coma and then wakes up to hunt William and his lieutenants down. It’s too violent for tender minds like yours! Also, Tarantino might be upset.

*This* stage is empty, though, so feel free to come down and play out scenes if you would like.

Jaime doesn’t know what to do.

“I don’t know what to do!” he exclaims.

So he stands up. He goes to his porch. His porch extends out over the ocean. He takes out a giant saw and cuts his porch off from his house. He and his porch drift out to sea.

“La la la,” he says.

But in the end, as he always does, he finds himself at the Island of Evil Chair.

This is the island of Evil Chair!
If you like the furniture you see here
You can buy it at Tortoise Market Square!

Maude the Modular Bookshelves walks along the shore. She sings her song to herself:

Here are the Modular Bookshelves
Don’t need assembly
She does that herself
She’s independent, wild, and free—

She stops short. “Oh my,” she says. “It’s Jaime! He’s washed up on the beach again!”

Jaime flops on the beach. He is laying on his back. He burbles. Water burbles out of his mouth.

“Are you all right?” she asks him.

Jaime sits up. He processes the situation. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “I just can’t seem to get away from the Island of Evil Chair. But why are you wandering alone, Maude?”

“Because I’m made with uncompromising Swiss quality,” she says.

He looks at her. She deflates a little.

“And I had a fight with Colt. So I’m walking on the beach and ignoring him, and he’s hiding behind those rocks sulking.”

Jaime stands up. He looks behind the rocks. He sees Colt the Coat Rack. Colt is sulking.

“I see,” Jaime says. “What did you fight about?”

“I thought that Colt went better by the entryway,” says Maude. “But he thought that I should be in the entryway. Boys,” she mutters.

Jaime laughs.

“What?” Maude says.

“Colt,” Jaime says. “Come here.”

Colt shuffles embarrassedly out from around the rocks. “I was sulking,” he says, sulkily.

Jaime raises an eyebrow.

“And meditating on my polished mahogany sheen,” Colt adds. “I mean, there was that too.”

“So,” Jaime says, “did either of you ever try thinking about things from the other person’s perspective?”

Maude squinches two shelves closer together suspiciously. “That sounds like a fool’s game.”

“Well,” Jaime asks her, “why do you think Colt wanted you in the entryway?”

Maude shakes her head. “No idea!”

“Why don’t you try pretending to be him by singing the Colt song?”

Maude hesitates. Then she tries it:

Here is one of our fine coat racks,
Twenty bucks and we’ll pay the tax
You can hang your hat
Or you can hang a coat
You can hang your bag or you can hang your tote!

She thinks about it. “Well,” she says, “I guess that most people who come to the island want to take off their coats and hang them immediately.”

“Right,” Jaime says.

“But!” says Maude. “Most people who come to the island wash up on the shore, not by the door!”

“Right!” Jaime says. He takes off his dripping, waterlogged coat. He hangs it on Colt.

“Now I can’t see,” Colt says.

“Try imagining,” Jaime says. “Can you imagine things from Maude’s perspective?”

Even as Colt starts to sing:

Here are the Modular Bookshelves—

there is activity elsewhere on the island. On a high cliff overlooking the beach, Evil Chair laughs as thunder booms!

“Ahaha!” laughs Evil Chair. “Jaime has returned. And he is teaching the foolish furniture the benefits of perspective!”

“That’s right,” Jaime calls up the cliff.

“That,” shouts Evil Chair, “shall be your . . . final! . . . mistake!”

He begins to sing the Evil Chair song.

Here is the evil chair.
He’s bad feng shui.
He shouldn’t be there!
He’ll mess up your luck,
One two three,
So throw him off the cliff
Immediately!

Colt says, hesitantly, “I still can’t see, but now I realize that Maude shouldn’t be in the entryway. There are no books there.”

“That’s right!” Jaime says.

Evil Chair shouts down, “Good happy feng shui furniture of the Island of Evil Chair! You’ve misjudged me!”

“Ha!” shouts Maude. “We’re still on to your tricks from the last time Jaime washed up here!”

“You think you’re on to my tricks?” asks Evil Chair. “How can you know—when you haven’t seen things from . . . my perspective?”

Jaime looks thunderstruck. Colt bumps into the cliff. Maude frowns as bitterly as a set of modular bookshelves can frown.

“We could try it,” says Maude, reluctantly. “It’s good to see things from others’ perspective.”

“Yes!” cackles Evil Chair. “Yes! My perspective is as valid as your own!” He sings, evilly:

This is the song of Evil Chair—

Maude and Colt sing along:

Bad decor should be everywhere

Evil Chair sings:

Your eye for taste
Tells you to run
But Evil Chair Decor says, “This room is fun!”
This is the song of Evil Chair!

Maude and Colt sing:

Bad decor should be everywhere!

Maude turns desperately to Jaime. “It’s insidious!” she says. “How can we tell bad feng shui from good feng shui when fairness requires that we treat all design ideas equally?”

But Jaime is climbing the cliff. He is grimly determined. Evil Chair knocks over a water glass so that, for a moment, it looks as if Jaime is climbing through a fierce rain.

“Evil Chair!” Jaime says, reaching the summit. “You are a false prophet.”

“I’m not ergonomic,” cries Evil Chair, “but maybe I shouldn’t be!”

“Moral relativism isn’t a weapon,” Jaime says, grimly. “It’s not for fueling proselytism. It’s a tool people should use on their own to limit their arrogance!”

Tip of the Day: Don’t let people tell you that you shouldn’t judge whether they’re right or wrong. Let them build a case for being right instead.

Your being a humble person is your job, not theirs!
Try it and see!

“It’s that time again,” Jaime says.

“Oh, no!” cries Evil Chair.

Jaime picks up Evil Chair. He grunts. He strains. Then he throws Evil Chair off the cliff. Evil Chair rolls across the beach and into the sea.

“I’ll be back!” cries Evil Chair. “You and I, Jaime! Locked in combat! We will always be drawn back to . . . THE ISLAND OF EVIL CHAIR!”

This was the island of Evil Chair!
If you liked the furniture you saw here
You can buy it at Tortoise Market Square!
5050 Swan Lake Drive, in Kenmore.

“I don’t know,” says Sarah to her boyfriend, James. “These woods are pretty spooky.”

“It’ll be all right,” James says. He takes her in his arms. He kisses her. “There’s nothing here that could hurt us.”

The earth shakes, once. His hands draw off her sweater and her top.

“But is it wrong?” she asks him.

“No,” he says. He shakes his head.

The earth shakes, again. Birds burst into flight.

“Nothing good people do,” he says, “is wrong.”

He fumbles at her bra hooks, without success.

The earth shakes.

Her eyes widen. “James,” she says.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ll get it.”

“No, James. James. James,” she says. “Behind you.”

He turns. He looks. He lets go of her.

“Wha—?”

He is grasped in a massive hand and hurled upwards into Heaven.

Sarah screams.

Johannes Agricola (1494-1566): a German Protestant reformer, at first welcomed by Martin Luther, but later condemned by Luther and others for his ‘antinomian’ heresy.

“It was, perhaps, a mistake,” Dr. Oboli admits.

“Pardon?” asks General McCoy.

“It might have been a mistake. To harvest the genetic material of Johannes Agricola, and bring him back to life—fifty times his normal size!”

“Yes,” General McCoy says flatly. “Yes, it might have been.”

“I honestly didn’t think he’d ever escape the lab,” Dr. Oboli protests.

“Spilled milk, Dr. Oboli. Spilled milk. Tell us what we’re up against.”

“It’s probably the greatest threat ever to face humanity,” Dr. Oboli frets. “Historically, antinomians and humans have been able to coexist only because we were just as big as the antinomians and could kill them if we had to. But Johannes Agricola is already dead, and he’s also very large.”

“Large enough,” General McCoy asks, “to physically fling the saved into Heaven?”

“Exactly,” says Dr. Oboli. “No one is safe.”

“What about the sinners?” asks General McCoy, practically. “I mean, aren’t they safe? What if we buy some kind of golden calf from a military supplier and everyone worships it until the problem is resolved?”

“It won’t work,” Dr. Oboli moans. “Antinomians aren’t like ordinary Christians. They don’t care about sin any more than they care about good works. To Johannes Agricola, you’re either saved or damned from the moment that you’re born. It’s a doctrine of arbitrary judgment!”

Antinomianism: the doctrine that those who God has already chosen to spare will find grace, and those he has not, will not, and that therefore the saved are ultimately free to commit whatever crimes and sins they like. In short: believers have a blank check from God, whether or not they choose to cash it.

Bud and Ernest are soldiers.

“When General McCoy said to search this region,” Ernest says, “I don’t think he meant for you to go into the church, alone, carrying only a candle.”

Bud looks embarrassed.

“I mean, that just seems—dangerous.”

“I’m not really doing it to look for Agricola,” Bud says. “I just want to pray at the stained glass window by candlelight.”

“Wouldn’t a mosque be safer? There won’t be any giant undead antinomians there.”

“What are the chances that of all the churches in this little town, he’d be hiding out in this one?”

Ernest shrugs. “Point,” he admits. He stands and watches nervously as Bud goes into the church, alone, carrying a candle.

“Oh, no!” shouts Bud. He is seized by the giant hand of Johannes Agricola. He is flung through the stained glass window and in a great arc up to Heaven.

“I always thought,” whispers Ernest. “I always thought, in my heart, that I had God’s grace.”

The earth shakes. Ernest pulls out his gun. He points it, hands shaking, towards the church.

“No!”

The earth shakes. The great doors of the church creak open, like paper pushed by a child.

“No!” Ernest shouts. “I don’t want to go to Heaven!”

He fires desperately, bullets embedding themselves uselessly in Agricola’s reanimated flesh. Then he runs. He runs before Agricola can see his grace.

Ere suns and moons could wax and wane;
    Ere stars were thundergirt, or plied the heavens,
    God thought on me his child;
Ordained a life for me, arrayed
    Its circumstances every one
To the minutest; ay, God said
    This head this hat should rest upon
    Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun.
– “Johannes Agricola in Meditation,” by Robert Browning

“What I’m thinking,” says Mr. Brown, “is Agricola Cola.”

“What?” General McCoy asks.

“We don’t have to fear a giant undead antinomian. Instead, we can market him. ‘The risk of sudden enHeavening,’ we’ll say, ‘is just one of the perks of delicious Agricola Cola.’”

“Why will that help?” General McCoy asks, blankly.

“Well,” Mr. Brown says, “the problem isn’t people going to Heaven. People do that every day. The problem is that people are afraid. Resolve that fear, and suddenly Johannes Agricola is no longer a threat—just a friendly giant givin’ people a hand.”

“Get out of my sight,” General McCoy says. “And I hope you’re saved.”

Mr. Brown scowls. General McCoy stares him down. After a moment, Mr. Brown flees.

I have God’s warrant, could I blend
    All hideous sins, as in a cup,
    To drink the mingled venoms up;
Secure my nature will convert
    The draught to blossoming gladness.
– “Johannes Agricola in Meditation,” by Robert Browning

“All right,” General McCoy says to his troops. “We’ve got a problem.”

He taps the tactical map behind him with a pointer. It shows the town, and a big question mark, and a little airplane.

“We have no idea where Johannes Agricola is,” General McCoy says. He taps the question mark with his pointer. “He’s picking us off one by one, and he’s immune to ordinary gunfire. But he’s just one giant undead antinomian. We still have time to set a trap.”

“Yes, sir!” snap his soldiers.

General McCoy moves the pointer to the airplane. “This is our problem,” he says. “Word is spreading to the other undead. Dracula. Living Dead Guy. The ‘love zombie’. Our media scouts say that one of them is already flying into the area. They’re interested in this antinomianism. There’s a real chance that Agricola can convert them to his doctrine of licentiousness and vice.”

“What about Dracula’s three handmaidens?” a soldier asks.

“They converted to Islam some time ago,” General McCoy says. “The burkha protects them from the terrible light of the sun, but also nullifies their infernal seductive appeal and silky lingerie. They are no longer a threat.”

The soldier nods.

“Even so,” General McCoy says, “we need to act fast. Dr. Oboli has created a ‘clean nuke’ that only kills antinomians. But it’s a stationary mine and only has a thirty foot radius. So we need to bring him to us. Which means we need bait.”

He clears his throat.

“Are any of you, ah, bound for Heaven?”

The soldiers shuffle their feet. PFC Morgan lifts his hand, but only halfway.

“Morgan?” asks General McCoy.

“I try to be a good person,” Morgan says. “I mean, there’s some whoring and cursing. But other than that.”

General McCoy surveys the soldiers. Ernest, standing in the back, keeps his hand at his side. His face is anguished. He will let PFC Morgan die.

“Very well, Morgan,” McCoy says. “We’ll stake you out for the antinomian.”

“Do you think he’ll come?” Morgan asks.

General McCoy stalks forward. He rips Morgan’s shirt open, artfully, to display the PFC’s Russell Crowe-like chest.

“He must,” says General McCoy.

Wer anderen eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein.
(“He who digs a hole for another, falls into it himself.”)
– Johannes Agricola

The earth shakes.

“He’s getting closer,” whispers Dr. Oboli. “He’s getting closer.”

“He will go for Morgan, won’t he?” the general asks.

“It is not for science to say who can be saved.”

The earth shakes.

Morgan is tied to a post in a forest glen. He is a sacrifice to the antinomian. Next to him is the clean nuke. All around him, hiding in the shadows, are the soldiers of General McCoy.

PFC Morgan is praying.

“God,” he says, “please don’t take me. I want to come to you. But gently. I don’t want to be flung.”

The earth shakes.

“Please,” whispers Morgan to the sky. “Not this way.”

Johannes Agricola stands in the glen. He towers over the soldiers. He looks down at Morgan. Then he looks away. His eyes scan through the trees. His giant hand reaches down.

“He’s not going for Morgan!” General McCoy shouts. “Abort! Retry! Fail!”

Ernest looks up. He sees the shadow of the hand. And suddenly he knows.

“General,” he shouts. “He’s here for me!”

And he runs. But not away. He runs into the clearing, and casts himself down upon the nuke.

Johannes Agricola’s hand scoops up Ernest and the nuke alike.

“Trigger it! Trigger it!”

There is a flare of white light.

Johannes Agricola (2004-2004): a giant undead German Protestant reformer, at first loved by Dr. Oboli, but later betrayed by him and utterly destroyed. He flung many people directly into Heaven, as well as one very surprised cat.

“He’s gone,” says Dr. Oboli. “My greatest creation. Gone.”

“I’ve lost a man today,” says General McCoy.

“How can that compare?” says Dr. Oboli. “It was suicide—suicide! Ernest chose the worst possible moment to convert to antinomianism.”

General McCoy’s mouth works. He does not know how to respond to Dr. Oboli’s statement.

“But I,” says the doctor. “I built an antinomian from clay and dust. I created a great thing—a gigantic undead Agricola. And now it is gone. And it shall never return.”

“At least no one else will be flung into Heaven,” says General McCoy.

“Yes,” says Dr. Oboli. “At least no one else was among the saved.”

There is an uncomfortable silence.

It stretches.

“There’s always good works,” General McCoy suggests.

Programming theory allows one to construct a proof of a program’s correctness. In some cases, one can even construct a piece of software rigorously by following the mathematical logic of the software’s goals and intentions. In 2004, no one ever actually coded this way, because it was a hugely inefficient use of programmer and execution time, and branching the techniques out to new projects often required the invention of new math.

In late 2008, Professor Gries’ paper on EVM—efficiency-driven verifiable code—made waves in the software industry. It postulated a new waveform approach to programming that allowed automatic generation of efficient code from a well-defined set of program standards. It became practical at many companies to build code, even complex code, by restricting the programmer’s attention to an overspecified user interface.

In spring of 2015, the robotics lab at Johns Hopkins developed the “robot test” for verifiable console games. The idea was simple: each proof of correctness was implemented in the form of a robot capable of playing the console game, and simultaneously mapped down into low-level code. When the robot’s playstyle matched the desired result, the game was complete.

By 2031, the games industry was dead. Marketing surveys conducted by software, and often speaking primarily *to* software—to the personal agents of humans interested in playing games—generated the precise specifications of bold new efforts and sequels alike. These were turned into robots, and games, and on occasion the manuals. Final Fantasy XXXI was a smash hit, and all John Square and Oenone Enix had to do was hit Y in response to “Make next game (Y/N)?”

Admittedly they had to do so simultaneously, and this produced a lot of finger bumping before they just gave in and kissed. But it happened.

In 2038, the singularity came and went, and it is 2087 now.

It is hard to express the primal delight that fills the robots as they play the latest games. They have gone beyond mere experiences of play. They are transcendent. They are religious. They are ecstatic. They are mind-expanding. It is because of the games, and specifically Dragon Warrior MLM, that the robots are sentient.

They do not know they are sentient.

They think it is merely a characteristic of their avatars in the games.

And sometimes, between bouts of Mario Party, they pause, and one robot will say to another this:

“I know that they were nothing compared to the gods we play.”

And the other responds: “But I miss humanity.”

They call this SimLoneliness, and it costs them only $12.

“Did you fetch the morning eggs, Danielle?”

Danielle holds her hands over the breakfast table. They are cupped together. She separates them. Rubies fall. Sapphires too, and emeralds. Seven gems, and an egg.

“I see.” Her wicked stepmother narrows her eyes. “The hens have not lain eggs properly in several days.”

“I feed them the normal feed, mother.”

Danielle’s wicked stepmother is named Glory. She clicks her sharp fingernails on the table.

“Danielle,” Glory says, “these gems are very fine, but what may I eat for breakfast?”

“Perhaps they are edible,” says Danielle. She taps a ruby. It rings, lightly, like a bell.

“I should have the wealthiest chamberpot in the world,” Glory says, “and not be full from it.”

“Mother?”

Glory shakes her head. “It is no matter. I shall have bread and cheese. Clean the cinders, Danielle. They are a disgrace.”

Danielle curtsies. She goes to the closet. She takes out a broom and a pan. She holds the broom at her left side like a sword. She leaves the room and goes to the fireplace. The room is full of cinders and ash. They are being fanned onto every surface and every wall by seven cinder pixies. In the center of the room stands the cinder troll.

“I’ve been sent to clean this up,” she says.

The troll looks her up and down. He snorts. “You’re not much,” he says.

Her right hand crosses her body and takes the broom’s hilt. In a long circular motion, she brings the broom up and around until its bristles face the troll. Her left hand joins her right at the broom’s base. The broom is heavy, held in this fashion, but her arms do not tremble. “I am whom my mother sent.”

The cinder pixies go still. The troll looks her up and down.

“It’s my right,” says the troll, “as a cinder troll, to push the cinders out into the room.”

“And mine, to sweep them back.”

The troll hesitates. “Perhaps,” he says, “one quarter of the room in soot, and three parts clean.”

Danielle closes her eyes. She thinks. Then she opens them. “They say that every one of us lives seven lives,” she says.

“Aye.”

“And that we should be kind to those we meet. For anyone may have been one’s mother, in another life, or one’s father, or one’s child. One’s lover, or one’s friend.”

“That’s wise,” says the cinder troll.

“In another life,” says Danielle, “I believe that we were friends. For there is a light in your eyes that my soul knows. But in this life, I have a duty, and I must drive you back.”

She steps forward. The troll steps back.

She steps forward. The troll is still. Then he reaches behind him to the fireplace and draws forth a poker, and takes it in his great strong hands.

They duel.

“I had not thought,” says the troll, “that Glory would have a loyal servant.” He is breathing lightly though Danielle’s lungs burn. Each clash of poker and broom makes her arms ache.

“She is my mother,” Danielle says.

“That,” says the troll, “cannot be so.”

Cinders in the air swirl into Danielle’s mouth, and she chokes. Her eyes water. The troll strikes, the poker winging her shoulder, and her left arm goes numb. She falls backwards. The troll does not advance. After a moment, he holds out his hand to help her up. She takes it. She backs away. She reassumes her stance.

“She has taken me in,” Danielle admits. “The mother of my birth is gone.”

“Ah, so.”

“My true mother went adventuring,” Danielle says. “To find a lost prince, they sent out seven maidens; to find each lost maiden, they sent out seven princes; and for seven princes lost, seven maidens each; and so in progression were all the heroes lost, and my mother among them. And I was left behind.”

The troll feints, then brings the poker around hard. The broom cracks, though it does not break. The poker lunges for Danielle’s face, and she steps back.

“And why have you not gone?” asks the troll.

She looks at him. She does not answer, for she does not know. Slowly, she brings the broom back to her side. She sets her feet. Her eyes burn.

“Are you surrendering?” the troll asks.

Danielle shakes her head.

“Then we will end this now,” says the troll.

“May we be friends again,” says Danielle, “when next we meet.”

The troll steps forward. There is tension in the great muscles of his arm.

Danielle’s shout splits the air and makes the cinder pixies flutter. She strikes. There is a crack like the breaking of the world. She is past the troll in a single motion, stumbling to a stop, kneeling in the ashes, and her broom is nothing but splinters.

The troll falls, and the room is clean.

¹ requires familiarity with Norse mythology.

Silverware clatters. People talk. Waiters bustle.

The wolf is bigger than the sun.

There are voices in the restaurant. One of them is resonant. “And then my hammer smashed right through the whetstone,” it cries, “bearing straight on to kill the giant Hrugnir!”

“But what of the clay giant?” another man asks.

The wolf is bigger than the moon.

“Ha!” Deep laughter, and joyous, fills the restaurant. “They’d given him a mare’s heart. When he saw Hrugnir fall, he was so scared he wet himself!”

“That’s bad,” the second voice comments. “I mean, if you’re made of clay.”

The wolf is bigger than the vault of Heaven.

A waiter named Steve approaches the wolf. There is a thin gold cord wrapped around his ankle. He smiles. “Have you decided on your order, sir?”

“Of all the places,” the wolf whispers to itself. “Of all the places to eat, I had to choose the place where the Thunderer was eating.”

“Pardon?” Steve asks.

“It’s my day off,” the wolf explains. “They all think I’m just tangled up in the terrible cord the dwarves made for me. But I’m not.”

“Oh.”

“You can’t expect a wolf to spend his whole life bound with a vicious cord,” says Fenrir. “Not on a beautiful day like today. So I took a day off.”

“No, sir,” says Steve. His voice has sympathy in it. “I do the same thing myself, sometimes.”

“Do you?”

Steve nods.

“Then can you help me get out of here?” Fenrir asks.

Steve smiles.

“I wound up with a piece of whetstone stuck in my head,” grumps the Thunderer’s resonant voice, rising once again above the sounds in the restaurant. “Stuck in my head! Can you believe it? The sorceress Groa—”

There is a pause.

“I smell wolf.”

A great tall man rises from a corner table. His hair and beard are redder than the setting sun. He walks over to Fenrir’s table. Steve stands in front of it, as if to block his view.

“Is there, by any chance, a wolf here?” the Thunderer asks. He tries to look around Steve. Steve wriggles back and forth a little, in place, conspiring to obstruct the Thunderer’s view.

“Sir,” says Steve, “you can’t imagine that we’d serve . . . wolf.”

The Thunderer narrows his eyes suspiciously. Suddenly, he shoves Steve aside. But the wolf is not at the table. There are only four great gray pillars, scattered around the center of the room, holding the ceiling high.

“I still smell wolf,” says the Thunderer. But then he shrugs. It is a peculiar little shrug. It is the shrug of a man used to much strangeness in his life. He walks away.

“You can sit back down now,” says Steve. Fenrir sits back down.

“Thank you,” says Fenrir, gravely.

“Kindred spirits,” says Steve. “If you want to skip out on your check, I’ll pretend you’re in the bathroom.”

Fenrir’s tongue lolls. He slips away.

Dolls have a monarchistic streak. They are trained in authority from the moment of their making. It is not so with the weebles, who wobble but do not fall down; nor with the teddy bears, who are most sensibly gregarious; nor the sock puppets, that prefer to brood in solipsistic silence, down at the heart of the world.

The bombs fall, and there is a long silence.

Time passes.

It is 2138, and up to the gallows they march them: the King and his daughter Meredith. Their nooses hang side by side.

“By what right do you do this?” Meredith asks.

It is Saul who comes forward to speak for the crowd. Saul lifts his chin. He looks her in the eye.

“Because,” Saul says, “he has grown cruel.”

The King is indifferent. He looks past these men.

“When I was a child,” says Meredith, “my mother broke the rules of my kind. She fell into the basement. She could not reach the stairs. The rats and spiders tore her apart. And as I stood there, looking down, thinking that I might cast myself after her—might save her—the King’s dream car passed by. And he looked out. And he said, ‘Bring her.’ And they dragged me back. And since then he has raised me. And loved me. Is this a cruel man?”

“We live in poverty,” says Saul. “And he in wealth. He has kept for himself our treasures. And he does nothing to save us.”

The King flinches. Then his gaze is stern again.

“We were sixty,” says Saul. “And now we are twelve.”

The King’s teeth clench. But still he is silent: silent until Max, standing by the noose, beckons him back. Then, as the King steps back, the words force themselves from his throat.

“I was left in charge,” he says.

Max takes his arm. Max drags him back.

“No,” says the King. “No. The human child. She left me in charge.”

“We molder,” whispers Saul, “while you play in your dream house and dentist’s office.”

The noose wraps around the King’s neck. It is soft and uncompromising, woven from the last few strands of Barbie’s hair.

The trapdoor opens. There is a sound like the snap of bone.

Meredith’s eyes are wide. Max turns to her.

“Disclaim him,” he says. “Abandon him, and we may let you live.”

There is something animal in Meredith’s eyes. She puts her fist to her mouth. She does not speak, but with a convulsive motion sits down at the gallows’ edge. She rocks back and forth.

Max looks at Saul.

After a moment, Saul shrugs. “Leave her be,” he says. “We are only twelve.”

Max nods.

“Her head is, any road, somewhat smaller than her neck.”

So Saul walks away, and Max walks away. The crowd disperses, through the dust and the cobwebs, to loot through the night the treasures of the realm.

Morning comes.

Meredith pulls the King from the noose. She stretches him out on the platform. She crouches over him, wobbling forward and back.

“Wake up,” she says. “Wake up. It’s morning.”

The King does not open his eyes. His eyes cannot be closed. But there is a certain sense that comes to them, after a while.

“Death is the emptiness that howls,” he says.

Her face twitches.

“Why are you cruel?” she demands. “Why are you cruel? Why do they play this game?”

He pulls himself to his feet. He dusts off his shirt and pants. He looks at her. For a moment, there is sympathy in his eyes. Then there is only regal detachment.

“It is the game,” he says, “one plays with Kings.”

There is a long silence.

“Weebles favor a parliamentary democracy,” she observes.

Saul is just a kid. He’s growing up out in the country, bit by bit, every day.

“I don’t want to do my chores,” he says.

“If you’re bad,” says his mother, “then the gibbelins will come and take you away.”

“Oh,” says Saul. So he goes and he milks the vampires. He collects the mummy eggs. He hauls hay into Barnface.

He doesn’t protest his chores again.

One day, Saul finds a puppy. It has three heads. Its mouths drip acid. It is very hungry because its last owner starved and beat it.

“Come here,” Saul says.

The puppy hesitates.

“Come on,” Saul says. He holds out a steak. It was meant for the river men. But they can go hungry for a day.

The puppy inches forward, low to the ground. Then it rips the steak from his hands. Its teeth and acid rapidly turn the steak to an ex-meal.

“I’ll take you home,” Saul says.

So from that day Saul has a puppy. They play in the fields.

“Mother,” he says, one day, “why do I have to work so hard?”

“If you’re good,” says his mother, “the sugar fairies will come and take you away.”

“Oh,” says Saul. So he goes and he fixes the tractor. He rebinds the limbs of the great round-bellied field demon. He leaves out some milk and his shoes for the cobblers to fix.

Saul goes to school sometimes. Just a little. His mother doesn’t hold much with education, but she wants him to give it a fair shot. Every time the grim white arms of the bus haul him inside, the puppy barks. It licks the bus. Then it sits down and waits patiently for Saul to come home.

When he comes home, the puppy is very happy.

“It’s your sixteenth birthday,” Saul’s mother says, one day. “Have you been good?”

“I have, mother,” says Saul.

“I thought so,” his mother says. So she gets up from their breakfast. She goes around the table. She hugs him goodbye. “Go on, son,” she says. “The sugar fairies are here.”

“Can the puppy come?” he asks.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “The puppy’s evil.”

“Oh.”

He goes outside. The sugar fairies find him. They take him, two to each arm and three to his body, and they drag him off to the Land of Pleasure and Happiness.

The puppy is sad.

¹ every Thanksgiving, even in the hardest years, the President looks on the Thanksgiving turkey with eyes that cannot remain stern. Every Thanksgiving, the President is hungry, but offers one turkey a miracle. A pardon, a gift of life unlooked for, an unimaginable grace.

To a single turkey; and thereby, to all the world.

The world is torn by war.

Is it a missile? Is it a grenade? Najma does not know. The ceiling was high. Now it has fallen. It is atop her, in great thick chunks, and she cannot breathe.

That is when the Thanksgiving Turkey arrives.

“Hello,” says a voice. It is a small and clucking voice. “Hello. Are you Najma?”

She speaks a little English. She tries to clear her throat. “Hello,” she says.

“I am Stars,” says the voice. “I am the magical Thanksgiving Turkey. I was pardoned by the President. I am here to save you.”

Najma breathes. It is hard. She thinks. It is harder.

“I do not know any magical turkey,” she says. “Please help.”

“I can only help you find your way,” says Stars. “Crawl towards me. Crawl towards my voice.”

Stars gobbles. It is a gentle gobbling, like the song of the heavens.

“I am hurt,” says Najma. But Stars the Thanksgiving Turkey helps those who help themselves. So she begins to crawl. She drags herself towards the sound. Every muscle hurts. But as she scrapes herself along the ground, the wood and plaster on top of her begins to shift. She finds herself able to breathe. She sees light ahead. She sees Stars.

“My mother,” she says. “My mother. My father. My family?”

Stars leans down at touches her nose with his beak. It is a Thanksgiving blessing.

“Some will live,” he says.

She touches his foot. He is her hope. He is her salvation. He is a turkey, and she has not eaten in two days.

“Thank you,” she says.

How many hundreds of people does Stars visit that day? How many thousands? How much hope can a single magic turkey bring?

Najma does not know.

Pulp Formula Bodhisattva drinks from a water fountain. A shadow looms. He looks up. He half-turns. The water trickles to a stop. Tony M.’s fist swings like the hammer of God.

P.F.B. staggers.

“Tony—” he protests.

“I told you never to find me,” says Tony. He advances on Pulp Formula Bodhisattva. “Never to look for her! To stay out of our lives!”

“I didn’t know you’d be here!”

P.F.B. backs away. He is short and wiry. His eyes hold infinite gritty determination and equally infinite compassion. He is backed up against a plate glass window. He raises his fists. “I didn’t know!”

Tony is half again the size of P.F.B. He’s wearing a black suit. His chin is square.

“I’m not here seeking Eleanor!” P.F.B. says.

Rage comes over Tony’s face then. Not all P.F.B.’s mastery can save him. Tony steps back and wrenches the drinking fountain away from the floor. The metal screams. The pipes spurt. Tony swings the fountain into P.F.B.’s chest. P.F.B. crashes through the window and out onto the street.

The building sign above him reads SOUGHT-FOR THINGS.

Tony walks out. Tony lifts the drinking fountain high.

“I’m here,” P.F.B. protests, “to find the Attachment Killer!”

Tony hesitates.

“The murderer who glues her victims?” Tony asks.

“Yes!”

Tony sighs. He puts the fountain down. He holds out a beefy hand. P.F.B. takes it. Tony lifts him up.

“Why?” Tony asks.

P.F.B. hears someone moving purposefully through the building. He tries to open his third eye and see who it is.

“Why?” Tony demands. P.F.B. snaps out of his trance.

“I want to bring universal enlightenment,” says Pulp Formula Bodhisattva. “But no one knows how to do that. I don’t know how to do that. I only know how to follow the pulp formula. So that’s what I do—”

Tony cuts him off with a gesture. “Your universal enlightenment,” he roars, “cost me Eleanor!”

P.F.B. clenches his fists in frustration. “You have to understand! I checked the files in the Bureau of Sought-For Things. Universal enlightenment is not here! And if it’s not here, then someone must have stolen it. And I have no hope unless that person is an appropriate pulp nemesis—like the Attachment Killer!”

“Pah,” Tony says. He sighs. He slumps. “Just . . . go away.”

There is a shape standing behind the plate glass window. It is the insidious Dr. Rex. She wears a white mask. She has long white-blond hair. She is carrying a rifle. She is wearing a lab coat. It billows as she laughs.

“Perhaps, Tony,” cries Dr. Rex, “you’re too attached to your memories!”

The attachment gun fires.

P.F.B. dives at Tony. He knocks the man out of the way. A blast of attachment to material things ripples past Tony and affixes a parked Miata to the street.

“When a man is too attached,” laughs Dr. Rex, “he cannot breathe—the air locks in his lungs. He cannot laugh. He cannot move. That is attachment!”

She fires another blast.

P.F.B. shoves Tony behind a mailbox. He leaps up. He hovers in the air, radiating compassion rays. He reads Dr. Rex’s nametag.

“Dr. Rex,” he says. “It is not too late to seek enlightenment!”

Dr. Rex’s face contorts. She howls. “I don’t care about enlightenment!” she shouts. “It was merely the bait!”

“What?” asks P.F.B. He falters.

“To lure you here!” cries Dr. Rex. “So that I could attach you and use your compassion energy to power my Bodhisattva Bomb!”

The gun fires straight at P.F.B.’s heart.

“I can’t become attached,” says P.F.B. The beam splashes over him. The rays of universal compassion slowly crystallize. “I’m a bodhisattva!”

But he knows he is wrong.

Tony wrenches the mailbox from the ground. He looks at Dr. Rex.

“Help?” asks P.F.B.

Tony sighs. He hesitates. He puts the mailbox down. He shakes his head. He walks away.

Dr. Rex fires in a continuous stream. Pulp Formula Bodhisattva’s glorious radiation crystallizes. He is attached to everything in the world around him. He is becoming the seed for a Bodhisattva Bomb.

“Tony,” he says. “Why?”

Dr. Rex laughs.

Tony slows down. But he keeps walking.

“I know why,” says Dr. Rex. “You were in Bangalore. Fighting for enlightenment. You and your daughter’s fiance Tony. And somehow it never occurred to either of you to message home saying you’d be three days late for the wedding.”

Tony stops.

“Pulp heroes don’t keep appointments!” P.F.B. says.

Tony snorts.

“She knew only universal enlightenment mattered to you,” says Dr. Rex. “So she left. That’s when Tony left too, and swore he’d never help you again. A man’s good as his word, isn’t he, Tony?”

Tony looks back. He studies Dr. Rex, frowning. Then he gapes. “Eleanor?”

“You can’t save everyone!” shouts Dr. Eleanor Rex. She rips the mask off her face with her right hand and tosses it aside. “Not your way! Not with pulp heroism! The only way to save everyone in the world is to kill everyone in the universe! Thus—the Bodhisattva Bomb!”

P.F.B. opens his third eye.

“Maybe,” says Tony. He sorrows. “Maybe that’s right.”

“I can see her heart with my infinite spiritual attainment, Tony!” says P.F.B. “She doesn’t want to do this. She just decided it was the only way.”

Tony thinks. Then he turns on Dr. Rex. He strides forward.

“You won’t hurt me,” protests Dr. Rex.

“No,” Tony agrees. His shadow looms over her. She looks up. She half-turns. The attachment ray fades out. Tony M.’s kiss comes down on her lips like the hammer of God.

Time passes.

“The stolen universal enlightenment,” P.F.B. asks. “Where did you put it?”

Dr. Rex waves him away.