Posts Tagged ‘Bees’

33 items.

Rolled. Into. One.

by Jenna on January 3rd, 2004

Killer bees kill. That’s their job. If they didn’t kill people, they couldn’t be killer bees. That’s the rule!

Robber bees steal. It’s pretty much the same job. It’s like robber barons. You have to assume that robber barons will steal stuff. They won’t kill you, but they’ll take the shirt off your back. It’s the same way with robber bees. They’re not killers, just thieves! It’s their honor.

Desolation bees leave you lonely. Do you ever find yourself sitting by the phone late at night, staring out the window? It’s raining? You drink hot chocolate, but it can’t soothe the loneliness in your soul? That’s probably because of a desolation bee.

Suicide bees kill themselves. They kill themselves in swarms. There aren’t many suicide bees. They don’t reproduce very often. Mostly, only failed suicide bees ever have kids. Genetics are against them. Each generation of suicide bees grows worse and worse. One day, they’re just going to give up and be masochism bees. Remember, the safeword is the honey dance!

Critical bees make incisive comments on the world around them. Have you ever done something really stupid and seen a bee nearby doing that dance? You know, the one that’s mocking you and your entire pathetic existence? That’s a critical bee. You can kill it if you want. It’s okay. It’s just a critical bee.

Web mining bees mine the web for useful data. When people steal your data with adware, they’re probably doing it on behalf of the web mining bees. It’s an annoying thing, but, let’s face it—they’re web mining bees. It’s hardcoded into their genetic makeup. If they had a choice they’d be incredibly wealthy hedonist bees instead.

Universe creating bees create universes. It takes one hundred bees to make a single universe. You should have known they were there. If you find a watch in the woods, you know it wasn’t chance, right? There was probably a watchmaker, right? And it’s the woods, so it’s probably a watchmaker bee. It’s the same way. There’s a universe. There have to be universe creating bees! That’s how one knows they’re out there. But it kills them. One hundred bees. One universe. One hundred deaths. That’s the rule. The bees don’t think it’s sad. They’re also joy in self-sacrifice bees. That’s the other side of their dismal coin!

Nonexistent bees aren’t real. It’s very important that you remember that. If you ever see a nonexistent bee, you’re just someone Hitherby Dragons made up. It’s tragic, but you know how it is! If you were a nonexistent bee, you’d harbinge fictionality too.

You’d harbinge fictionality, and you’d love it. You know you would.

It’d be like sex, chocolate pie, and bean bags.

All rolled into one.

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Excerpt from a Larger Thought

by Jenna on January 23rd, 2004

Apple trees are not fish. If they were fish, they would live underwater. They would have interesting survival adaptations. Since they have many branches, they would most likely swim like an octopus. An apple tree fish would look upside down from a surface person’s perspective. It would keep its branches underneath it and swish them through the water. Its roots would stick up. It would only invert and use its roots for swimming in an emergency. It’s not clear why a fish would need to grow apples. It’s possible that they would be luminescent organs that would help the apple tree fish see. Or they would be used, as in the surface world, for mating. The female apple tree fish would shake off the apples. Then the male apple tree fish would fertilize them. This would probably involve aquatic bees. Apple trees are not fish. So apple trees will end.

Bookshelves are also not fish. This is because fish can’t read. There’s no need for fish to have other, special fish to store their books on. If fish could read, then the fish-bookshelffish relationship would be symbiotic. The reading fish would eat little tiny fish and plankton. They would digest them. Then they would extrude the resulting mess into the bookshelves’ mouth. This is because bookshelves cannot hunt. In exchange for food, the bookshelffish would protect the reader fish’s books from predators. When a plagiarism shark snuck up, the bookshelffish would rattle its shelves and emit a great cloud of ink, scaring the shark away. Bookshelves are not fish, so bookshelves have bookends.

Despair is not a fish. Despair does not live underwater. This means that hope is a fish. Hope swims. Hope darts this way and that. Hope is an elusive fish. No one can eat it. It shall not end. If despair were a fish, then no one would want to eat it. Sharks would look at it and then go away. “That’s a despair fish,” they’d say. “That’s too bitter.” That’s just silly; so as long as there are fish, everything else has hope.

Cereal is not a fish. No one bothers to make fish whose only purpose is to be eaten by other fish. Except aquariums and pet shops. They don’t count, since they’re not a natural part of the great cycle of life.

It’s really not very hard to think of things that are not fish. It’s harder if you limit yourself to organic things that live in water, though. Sharks are not fish. Dolphins are not fish. Whales are not fish. Vice-President Cheney is not a fish. It’s not clear whether he lives in water. The television does not show him as underwater, but that could be the liberal bias of the media. It’s possible that we finally have an aquatic Vice-President and the liberal media actually edits the film to ensure that no one knows. If he would just wear a swimsuit more often, it would be easier to tell.

Anemones are not fish. They have no fins and they do not pursue their lives in a fish-like manner. It’s possible that they are simply deviant fish. It seems more likely that they’re an entirely different classification. If all of the anemones and aquatic Vice-Presidents in the world linked hands, they could form an anemone Cheney of love. But they have no hands. That’s why they weep.

Anemones have no hands. They have no feet. Sea cucumbers can invert themselves, shooting their internal organs into the sea. Orca command a fearsome arsenal of nuclear weapons. Seals can balance balls on their nose. Anemones don’t even have hands. But they do have something. A special something. They keep it secret. They don’t tell people about it. It’s something every anemone learns about before they’re born.

In that place before birth, they see a visitor; and it gives them the thing that they have; and it whispers, “Hold this safe. Do not let it go. Do not use it until the sky turns red and the sea turns black and it seems all hope is lost.”

They wait for that day; for that hour; for the hour of the anemone to come. In that moment, only anemones, fish, and the ocean itself will survive. Silent will be the halls of humanity, for humanity is not a fish. No more shall be the elephants, for elephants are not fish. The lions shall not roar on the African plains, for lions are not fish. Unless they’re lionfish. It seems odd that there should be lionfish, but there are.

So many things will end.

Banks are not fish. You can’t make a deposit in a fish. You can’t withdraw from a fish. There aren’t any tellers in a fish. If they were fish, people would go to open a checking account and they’d drown, screaming in their minds about the injustice of it all. But banks are not fish. So banks will end.

(continued at the start of this entry)

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The Unsubstantiated Assertions Fairy (II/II)

by Jenna on June 16th, 2004

It is 1968.

“I’ve been dreaming of Tantalus.”

1968’s monster doesn’t look up. He’s like and unlike the monster of today: a spectacled man, with a striped suit and gray hair. He’s not paying attention to Priyanka, at least, not obviously. He’s playing, instead, with a spider in a box. It has its legs curled up tightly against its body. He tugs gently on one with his left hand. Slowly, the spider’s legs splay. He lets go. The legs quickly retract. “The Incans used to use this as divination,” he says. “Lock a spider in a box, and then look at what its legs are like when you open the box. I’m taking it one step further—by training the spider, I can control the future!”

Priyanka looks up. “Is it going well?” she asks.

“It isn’t biting me any more.”

“Progress is encouraging!”

Priyanka’s ankles are bound to the chair legs. Her wrists are tied to the wall. They have enough play that they can rest on her lap, but not enough to dangle at her sides. The chair is reasonably comfortable. The ropes are not, and her wrists and ankles are raw and red. She tests them occasionally, wincing, but it’s a formality. She has an interest in escape, but not the drive.

The monster looks up. “So,” he says. “Tantalus.”

“He is empty,” she says. “He stands in a land of plenty, but when he reaches for fruit, the wind whips the branches away. When he reaches for water, it drains into the parched earth.”

“Is that emptiness? I’d have called it despair.”

Priyanka considers this. “Despair is an action,” she says. “Emptiness is a state.”

“Ah.”

The monster puts down the box and the spider. He closes its lid. “Are you empty, Priyanka?”

“Sometimes I think so,” she says. “But still—I hang on to a little bit of myself. Because it’s important.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I have this theory, that it matters—to be who I am, to express who I’m supposed to be. But I don’t know why.”

The monster laughs. “No one’s important for themselves,” he says. “We’re important based on the roles we play in others’ lives.”

“Oh?”

“It’s arrogant,” he says, “to believe anything else.”

She giggles a little.

“What?” he asks.

“Snatch!” she says. “I stole your God!”

He looks vaguely perplexed.

“It’s something Mom taught me,” Priyanka says. “It’s a thing to say when people give too much importance to their own beliefs. If you don’t have God in your pocket, you can’t very well argue from authority. So.” She makes a snatching gesture, brought up short by the rope on her right wrist. It cuts into raw red skin, and she winces. “Snatch! I steal your God, and then you can’t make unsubstantiated assertions.”

“I laugh at God,” he says.

“True.”

“So it’s not very relevant.”

She bites her lip. She looks down. She thinks. “I think God is just a metaphor,” she says. “For whatever it is that makes people so sure that they know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

He smiles a little. “I have a fairy.”

“Pardon?”

“An unsubstantiated assertions fairy, or UAF. She lives in my pocket. When I ask her to, she declares something right.”

“Oh.”

“For example,” he says. He fishes out the fairy. It stands on the palm of his hand. Its name is Pomegranate. “Is it important that Priyanka be herself?” he asks.

“No,” Pomegranate says.

“See?” he says. “It’s not just my opinion. It’s also the fairy’s.”

“But what if the fairy is wrong?”

“The fairy is never wrong,” the monster says. “Are you, Pommy?”

“No!” Pomegranate states firmly.

“See, if you could steal my unsubstantiated assertion fairy,” 1968′s monster explains, “then you might have a case. As it is . . .”

“It’s the same thing!” Priyanka says. “The fairy is your God!”

“Nuh-uh,” Pomegranate informs her. “It’s magic. I wave my wand and make things righteous. It’s totally different.”

“Winning an argument takes power,” the monster says. “No matter what you’re arguing about, or what the logic might be.”

Priyanka sags. There’s a long silence.

After a while, the monster goes to the box, and opens it up again. The spider is busily eating a bee. There’s another long silence.

“. . . does that have a divinatory meaning?” Priyanka asks.

“Do you know,” says the monster, “I’m not sure?”

“If you eat a live bee, you’ll go to Heaven!” the UAF declares.

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The Cautionary Tale of Edmund Zombie

by Jenna on January 11th, 2005

The moon and the sun hang out in the sky.

“Men are such fools,” says the moon.

“Hm?” says the sun. He can’t tell yet whether the moon is referring to humans or to males.

“New Respite,” says the moon.

The sun looks down. He burns with the white-hot fury of a single sun. “Oh! The fools!”

The town of New Respite is still under construction. It has a revolutionary new approach to architecture. The entire town is made of massage oil, suspended in structural gel.

“Why are we doing this?” John Workman says, leaning against his shovel. It vibrates gently, soothing his back and shoulders.

“If a giant monster steps on this Respite,” Cynthia Foreman says, “then we want it to experience sensual ecstasy.”

“Charitable,” says John.

“Enh,” says Cynthia. “It is better to be of use to one daikaiju than to nobody at all.”

John goes back to work.

It was the opinion of the New Respite planning committee that it’s perfectly all right to build one’s city out of sensual massage oil suspended in structural gel. It’s moral, clean, safe, and smells nice.

They didn’t know that it attracts bugs.

“I hear that they’re building a city out of massage oil,” rumors Terrible Bug, in his spiny cavern beneath the earth.

Horrible Bug perks up. She stretches, popping her carapace. She flexes several spiky legs. “A whole city? But we love massage oil!”

“We do,” says Terrible Bug.

“Ordinary bugs hate it,” Horrible Bug admits. “They would stay well away from a city made in this fashion. It would be sanitary. But to us—”

They exchange a meaningful glance. Then they go to call the others of their kind. There are only a thousand Massage Bugs in all the world, but they are unusually dire.

“Corner Mart is your friendly neighborhood corner store,” says Frank Sales to the Mayor.

“Is it now?” asks the Mayor.

“We’d like to build our four thousandth storefront in New Respite.”

“You understand,” says the Mayor, “that we are primarily building New Respite out of the same numb resignation to our fate that prompted the Japanese to construct New Neo-Tokyo III?”

Frank Sales looks blank. “The Japanese are resigned to your fate?”

“I mean to say,” says the Mayor, “that a giant monster, or some other terrible fate, is bound to befall New Respite, as it befell Respite, Neo-Stress, Stress, Serenity, and Inchoate, the cities we indwelt before.”

“We will recruit management locally,” says Frank Sales.

The plans for Corner Mart’s occupation are quickly forced through the corrupt city council. It is built on an abandoned graveyard on a hill.

“The dead hain’t abandoned it,” says Marty Gravekeeper, as they shoo him out.

“‘Ain’t',” corrects Emily Martthug. “Not ‘hain’t’. Now git.”

So Marty gits. They build the Corner Mart out of peppermint-scented massage oil suspended in construction gel. Its crisp minty scent stings the corpses in their deeps. Soon one of them rises.

“I am Edmund Zombie,” says Edmund Zombie to Emily Martthug.

“You appear to be dead.”

“I am.”

“Was the name awkward,” Emily asks, “when you were alive?”

Edmund Zombie looks impassively at her.

“You’re not allowed to be on this property,” Emily says. “You’re trespassing.”

“I am not bound by your mortal law,” Edmund Zombie says. “I obey a higher ethical principle. One measures a zombie’s worth not by statutes but by brain-eating.”

“How is one to tell which moral code is superior?”

“Empirically; I will eat your brain.”

He lurches towards her. They wrestle, there, on the hill, in the dark, in the parking lot of the Corner Mart. The shadows grow long, and the woman is bloodied, but it is Emily Martthug who proves the victor. She clasps Edmund Zombie in stocks. She places a muzzle on him. She stocks him in the store for the low low price of $119.99.

Edmund Zombie burns with the white-hot anger of 1.38 x 10^-8 suns.

In Terrible Bug’s spiny cavern, the thousand Massage Bugs have gathered. Each is as tall as a man and twice as deadly.

“We are ready!” cries Terrible Bug, lifting his standard high. “Let us march on New Respite!”

They swarm upwards to the earth. They march like an unstoppable storm. They descend on New Respite. It is John Workman’s house they infest first.

“Excuse me,” says John.

“Yes?” says Horrible Bug.

“It seems to me that this is my house.”

“I am not bound by your vertebrate concepts of property,” says Horrible Bug.

“Internal bones got nothin’ to do with this,” says John.

Horrible Bug is forced to concede the point. “Granted,” she says. “But it is my external bones that are razor-sharp.”

John considers this for a while.

“Fine,” he says. He stomps to the door. He takes down his hat. He puts it on, defiantly. Then he goes to Corner Mart.

“I need something to deal with bugs,” he says, to Melanie Service.

She shows him the Raid.

“Bigger bugs,” he says.

She shows him the katanas. They are only $59.99.

“Bigger,” he says.

She frowns. She looks him over. “If you want a gun, that’s in Sporting Goods.”

“Guns won’t save me.”

“I’ll have to think outside the box!” Melanie exclaims. She thinks. After a moment, she makes a bright dinging noise. “You could buy the zombie!”

John is desperate. He buys Edmund Zombie. Edmund Zombie glares at him.

“You’re kind of adorable,” John says. “Trussed up like that.”

Edmund Zombie moans something behind the muzzle that sounds vaguely like, “Spaaaain!”

“Right,” John says. “To business.”

John carts Edmund to his house. He pushes the zombie inside.

“Look,” says Terrible Bug. “It’s a stocked zombie.”

John triggers the remote muzzle and stocks release. Edmund Zombie is free at last.

“Uh oh,” says Terrible Bug. He writhes with the yellow-bellied fear of 2.7 x 10^-3 suns. Edmund Zombie begins his rampage.

“Help me!” cries Horrible Bug. She was having sex with Seductive To Other Bugs Bug in the massage oil. That made her the zombie’s first target.

“Nobody go into the woods alone!” cries Fruitless Warning Bug.

“God will save us!” cries Unrealized Deus Ex Machina Bug.

“Oh, yes, eat me, eat my luscious brain!” moans Disturbingly Inappropriate Bug.

Edmund Zombie eats the bugs. He eats their brains. Then he eats the rest of them, because he’s not entirely sure which part of a bug is its brain. Soon he’s round as a ball with bug meat.

“Brains!” he shouts. Then he hiccups. There’s few things more pathetic than a hiccuping zombie, and John is forced to laugh.

“I think I’ll keep you,” John Workman says.

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Woo-Wobble-Wobble

by Jenna on May 9th, 2005

Jinga the Sea Monster is wobbly and fierce. He is hideous and horrid. He sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“Woo-wobble-wobble,” he says, shaking himself. “Humanity is terrible and full of sin.”

His tendrils and his body shiver like jelly. If you could taste them, they’d taste more like offal than jelly, but there would be a bit of a sweet huckleberry sugary taste to them.

“Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble,” says Jinga the Sea Monster.

Then he gestures, with a slimy tentacle, at the Mirror of Sight!

The image in the mirror skims across the world of human life. It pauses briefly on Shelley, who is making brownies.

“DEE generate,” declares Jinga.

The mirror skims past Emily, who is in school, listening to her teacher and sometimes picking her nose.

“Sinful!” snaps Jinga.

The mirror finally settles in on Diane, who is sitting at a table, at a restaurant, out on her first date with John.

Lester the Adorable Earwig is a giant squiggly earwig. His nametag designates him adorable. He sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“How perfidious a creature is woman,” says Jinga.

“Ah-ah,” smiles Lester. “But is she more or less perfidious a creature than man?”

Jinga shivers. His body woo-wobble-wobbles softly. “That is a difficult one, Lester. Very difficult!”

Lester chitters smugly.

“I would say,” says Jinga, “that because a woman can become pregnant, she has more capacity for perfidy; and because humans in general exercise such capacities fully, that she is more perfidious—on the whole.”

Lester scowls. He had wanted to stump Jinga.

Pecuny is a silky ooze. There are bits of many colors in Pecuny. They are not admirably arranged.

Pecuny sits in the Council beyond the Edge of the World and he judges.

“These two,” Pecuny says. “Their minds are full of unworthy thoughts. Let us punish them.”

“Punish! Punish! Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble!” says Jinga.

“No!” says Lester. He is still sulking. “We have an arrangement. We cannot punish them until they are dead.”

“But look at how she is eating that breadstick,” says Pecuny. “And he! He is using the dinner fork for his salad!”

“Not until they are dead,” Lester says. He squiggles about in mild agitation. “We have rules. They may still redeem themselves while they’re alive, you know.”

“Pfah,” pfahs Pecuny.

“Lester is right,” says Jinga, sadly. “Look. She is muttering something. Can anyone read lips?”

Diane is leaning in towards John. She mutters, “Hey, I think we’re being watched by the Council beyond the Edge of the World.”

“Bugger,” says John.

“I think they’re talking about sex,” Lester says. He squints. His eyes are not very good, even though they’re faceted.

John eats another bite of salad. He uses the dinner fork again.

“Want to play a trick on them?” Diane says.

John suddenly grins. “Really? You have a radiator?”

“I do,” says Diane.

Lester leans back. “Well, that’s that. Judged and found unworthy. Let’s move on.”

Diane reaches into her purse. She subtly sets her radiator to evil.

“Wait,” says Jinga. He wobbles.

Diane picks up her salad fork, malevolently. She takes a bite of her salad. She chews. She chews her salad like each bite is a genocide.

“Woo-wobble-wobble!” says Jinga, in distress.

Diane licks her lips with filthy, horrid intent. She reaches for her water glass. She picks it up. She drinks it.

“Scum!” shouts Lester. “Scum! Scum! Scum!”

Lester does the earwig dance of absolute horror. It is not adorable at all.

Diane adjusts the radiator to encompass John.

“What’s it set to?” John asks. His voice is ripe with evil; there is good probability, Pecuny assesses, that he is even at that moment indwelt by the Devil.

“Evil,” Diane says. It is suddenly obvious to everyone who looks at her that she has never been baptized.

“Um, is that a good idea?” John frets, eyes bulging with selfish shortsightedness.

“Wait,” says Diane. She stretches out the torture. “Wait—”

“We must punish them now!” shrieks Pecuny. “Now! Now! N—erk.”

Diane has flipped the radiator to perfect good.

“Huh,” says Jinga.

There is a dead silence in the Council beyond the Edge of the World as Diane finishes her salad and pushes the plate back.

“Huh,” agrees Pecuny.

“Woo-wobble-wobble-wobble,” whispers Jinga, uncertainly.

“It is a miracle,” concludes Lester.

“Grace,” Jinga agrees.

“We are privileged to witness a miracle,” says Lester. “Because we ourselves are good.”

“Woo-wobble-wobble.”

“Yet—”

Diane grins. Her water glass in front of her lips, she says, “Now I’ll take the radiator out and dump it in the trash, and they’ll probably spend the rest of the day thinking about how wonderful trash is.”

“W00t,” says John, in the blessed fashion of the saints.

Diane walks out of the restaurant. She looks around. There is a public trash can on the other side of the street. She begins to cross.

“Woo-wobble-wobble!” cries Jinga. “That car! It will hit her!”

“It will end her perfect grace!” shouts Pecuny.

“This must not be!”

Jinga dives through the mirror and into the human world. The sound of the car as it strikes the sea monster is the sound of death come to huckleberry. There is Jinga splashed on the windshield and on Diane’s new suit and on Diane’s face.

Diane sprains her ankle as she falls.

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When a Bee Loves a Flower Very Very Much, It’s Time to Think of England!

by Jenna on May 19th, 2005

Stinger and Violet, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-
Crash.
. . .
Stinger and Violet, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-
Crash.
. . .
Stinger and—

“This is never going to work,” says Max Stinger, the glorious reconfigurable bee-human machine.

“It’s my chastity circuit,” frets Violet.

“No,” Max says. He reaches out to brush Violet’s metal brow. “Your chastity circuit is not breaking tree branches. That is our combined metallic weight. Your chastity circuit just supercharges your metal skin with painful electricity when we attempt hanky-panky and says, ‘Danger! Chastity mode engaged.’”

“Oh,” says Violet. “So that’s why you always leap away shaking your hands when it engages.”

Max nods sadly. “You didn’t know?”

“I thought it was just playful nervousness,” Violet says.

Max Stinger sighs. He looks away into the distance. “If we cannot sit in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G, we will have neither love nor marriage. And while your circuit functions, we may know no lust. Ah! Violet! Life is cruelly engineered!”

Violet reflects.

“What we need,” she says, “is some sort of anti-gravity belt.”

Max panics.

“No,” he says. “I mean, we don’t need that. We can use some sort of . . . a block and tackle, or . . .”

Violet looks at him.

“Max?”

Max deflates. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll ask him.”

“Why are you so afraid of my father?”

“I’ve heard he eats robots alive,” Max says. “On toast!”

Violet considers this.

“He’s too thin for that,” she says. “Robots are very heavy and would be totally indigestible without a lot of toast.”

“Fine,” Max says. “But I’m only doing this because he’s the best antigravity engineer on the planet! If he weren’t, I’d so keep on hiding from him until he died.”

“And then you’d pretend regret?” Violet teases.

“Darn right!”

Max stomps off.

Max goes to the old man’s house. He knocks on the door. After a moment, a wizened figure hobbles out to meet him.

“You? Who’re you?” The old man peers at him, up and down. “I didn’t make you,” he says. “Go away.”

“I’m Max Stinger,” says Max. “I’m interested in your daughter’s hand.”

“You’ve got bee hands!” declares the old man. “You don’t want a flower hand! That’d disrupt your overall aesthetic theme!”

The old man looks Max up and down. He lifts Max’s arms. He studies the transformation mechanism. He hits the back of Max’s knee with his titanium cane.

“Definitely not. No flowers for you. Look at those bee hands! They shoot off in a one-two punch of justice!”

“I mean,” Max says, after a moment, “in love. I am interested in falling in love with your daughter. But the branches keep breaking under our combined weight.”

“Oh no,” says the old man. “I’ve been down that road before. That’s why all my modern daughters have chastity circuits!”

“Pardon?”

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes genetic recombination using robot parts! That’s what the chastity circuits are for—to utterly remove the risk that irresponsible mechanical one-night stands will burgeon into tender affections and a long-term committed relationship! Honestly, you ought to know better.”

“But I’m not really interested in the irresponsible mechanical one-night stands,” says Max. His subvocalization circuit adds, Much. “I want love. I want marriage. I want robot children.”

“Listen,” says the old man. “How would you go about making children with my daughter?”

“Well,” says Max, “I guess that I’d take some of her design elements—kind of a robot genetic code, you know—and some of mine, and mix them together.”

The old man nods. “And?”

“Well,” says Max, “I’d innovate some. I mean, just so that junior wasn’t the same as every other transforming bee-human/flower-human robot hybrid out there. Like, possibly I’d add some sort of transformation that would let the first little boy become a supertanker, and the first little girl become—”

Max draws a blank as to what a girl might transform into. “A nuclear hawk-wolf,” he says, to avoid an awkward silence.

“Exactly,” says the old man. “You’d evolve. And evolution leads inevitably to humans being nothing more than glorified apes, which is precisely why we don’t let robots do it.”

“But . . .” Max founders. “You let computers evolve.”

“That’s totally different,” says the old man. “You can’t fight Moore’s Law. It’s hardwired into God’s plan. It’s part of the Telos.”

“Oh.”

Max hesitates. “If you’d make us a gravity-defying belt,” he says, “we could commit to a barren and childless marriage.”

The old man tilts his head to the side. “What, you’d never even be tempted? Tubes can be untied, son. Snips, unsnup. Mechanical clocks, they tick.”

“I’m a playboy,” Max Stinger tries, desperately. “I really just want to sow some wild oats in Violet!”

The old man snorts. “Don’t try to fool me, son. I can see the gleam of commitment in those polished titanium eyes.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll think of America!”

The old man hesitates.

“I will! Every time! I promise! I’ll think of nothing save America as our circuits mesh in glorious mechanical harmony, a rhapsody of patriotism and lust that will totally curtail any desire to differentiate my genes and spread my design principles to a new generation of competitive robot offspring!”

The old man sighs.

“Ah, damn,” he says. “You had to hit me in the patriotism.”

Stinger and Violet, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-
VRRRRRRM
S-I-N-G! First comes
VRRRRRRM
love, then comes marriage,
Then comes a frantic choral representation of the Star-Spangled Banner!
VRRRRRRM

“Somehow,” says Max Stinger, “I can’t help thinking that it would be easier to prevent robotic evolution through intelligent design.”

“Shut up and sing,” purrs Violet’s secondary speech processor. “It’s the third verse that’s the sexiest.“

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The Domain of Reason

by Jenna on May 25th, 2005

The evil peony thrashes in its rage.

“It’s horrible,” says Shannon. “Bruce, it’s horrible.”

Bruce shakes his head. He clicks his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, my adorable partner. Remember that if you don’t respect nature, nature won’t respect you!”

“It’s a giant mutant peony! And I think it’s evil!”

Bruce stares down at the evil peony. He thinks. Finally, he snaps his fingers. “It’s the radioactive meteor, Shannon! It’s got to be!”

“The radioacti—what radioactive meteor?”

“The one that crashed to the earth last night—right here! In our garden!”

Bruce and Shannon stand on the balcony. They look out at the garden of the historic Winders Estate. Below them the evil peony writhes in mindless mutant malevolence.

“Bruce, we have to talk about this.”

Bruce grabs Shannon’s shoulders. His voice is low and intense. “A mutant plant that’s starved for basic nutrients inevitably comes to hunger for human flesh. And once its mutant genes escape into the general population it’ll hybridize with other plants to create an unstoppable mutant army!”

Shannon looks pained.

“Bruce,” she says, and her voice is low and sad. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be bringing these problems down on our heads with your sloppy reasoning?”

Bruce looks blank.

“I mean,” Shannon says, “well, I mean, do you remember the bee-men?”

“Ha ha!” says Bruce. “The terrible bee-men . . . defeated with ordinary table salt!”

“Yes,” says Shannon. “Those. Bruce, why were there bee-men in our house?”

“That’s a good question,” says Bruce. He lets go of Shannon’s shoulders so that he can rub his chin meaningfully. “In the end, aren’t bees our greatest enemy?”

“It’s because you do this!” Shannon shouts. “It’s because you do this and you don’t make sense and the world still follows your ideas instead of mine!”

She pushes him, in sudden fury. Bruce falls, quite surprised, off the balcony and into the flower.

“Help!” he says, struggling. “It’s trying to eat my brain!”

“Bruce!” Shannon says.

“Shannon! Quickly! The Flower-Redeeming Bazooka!”

Shannon turns towards the Flower-Redeeming Bazooka mounted on the wall. She starts to pull it loose from the mounting. Then she shakes herself and snaps out of it.

“Bruce, there is no reason why we’d have a flower-redeeming bazooka!”

“It’s the kind of thing I’d make.”

“You need a causal explanation,” Shannon whimpers.

Bruce hesitates.

Shannon firms up the line of her jaw. “You do. You’re supposed to. I don’t know if I can live with you any more, Bruce. I don’t know if I can stay married to someone who isn’t bound by the domain of reason. I got captured by bee-men because bees have an incredible sense of smell before you defeated them with table salt.”

Bruce looks blank. “It has the structural form of a reasonable statement,” he says. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

The evil peony writhes. Its petals wrap around Bruce’s limbs. Its pistils probe viciously at Bruce’s earwax. Bruce shouts in horror and kicks a petal away.

“It’s not fair,” says Shannon. “It’s 2005, Bruce. You have your marvelous flying chair and the rest of us don’t even have our flying cars. You have your marvelous anti-depression serum and the rest of us are dealing with Dark Ages psychiatry. I used to look at the Space Needle and ask myself where our glorious future went, and you took it, Bruce! That’s got to be the reason! You can’t have science if there are people to whom it doesn’t apply!”

Bruce bites down on a petal and spits it out so that he can speak. “That’s ridiculous, Shannon! Science and technobabble coexist in nature—it’s only man’s arrogance that forces us to choose between them!”

Shannon is crying now. She is stripping off her wedding band.

“Shannon,” Bruce says. “Now isn’t the time. You can’t walk out on me while I’m being eaten by a giant evil peony! . . . it’s the radiation affecting your mind!”

“The radiation?” Shannon asks, hesitantly.

“Please,” Bruce says. “If it eats my brain this peony also gets all my scientific genius! All my knowledge! My priceless legacy! It will use it to kill us all!”

The petals fold over him. He kicks one out. He kicks out another. Petals flutter slowly to the ground.

“He loves me,” whispers Shannon. “He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not.”

“Shannon,” Bruce says, “don’t you see that your cold and mechanical reason can still construct hypotheses regarding the nature of the domain in which it does not apply?”

Shannon freezes.

“He loves me!” she says.

Then the bazooka is in her hands and firing. The evil peony screams and burns in a great flare of light as it becomes a good peony.

“Ha ha,” says Bruce, as he stands and dusts himself off. “It’s nature’s perfect creation—the benevolent mutant man-eating peony.”

“I will not eat you at this juncture,” hums the peony. “My morality argues against such an action.”

“I get to run tests on you,” says Shannon. “I mean, real tests. Not just the Test-O-Meter.”

Bruce makes a face.

“Not my fault you don’t have flying cars,” he says. But it’s a sulk and a concession all in one.

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This Noble Plant

by Jenna on June 20th, 2005

Abstract. Peonies are a plant often used in radioactive waste disposal. This essay gives some basic information on this noble plant and explains the increasing trend towards using peony gardens to efficiently and cleanly resolve radioactive waste accumulation issues.

Peonies are plants of the genus Paeonia of the family Ranunculaceae. They are hardy perennials whose large flowers often bloom in spring and are usually pink or white. Peonies are not generally considered dangerous flora: they have no natural weaponry and are not poisonous in nature. However it is still best to use caution around peonies unless one is a trained professional.

In medieval times peonies were grown principally by peons. This included serfs, servants, and flunkies, but not minions or the unattached lower class. As a rule the unattached lower class could not afford peonies and had to dispose of their own radioactive waste. Minions, conversely, grew minionies, hardy perennials whose large flowers often betrayed the minions to their doom.

In the modern day horticulturists use peonies to absorb excess radiation from the waste products of local nuclear power plants. This technique requires a secure facility and a number of peonies. The peonies absorb the waste through their roots and associated mycorrhizal fungi and then convert the radiation into mutation. Most of the resulting mutants die, after moaning things like, “Stamen! Stamen!” or “Leaaaaves.” A few peonies in each generation instead take advantage of the extreme environmental stimulus to pursue productive genetic differentiation.

Genetic differentiation has produced peonies with various new natural advantages. Some peony species have acquired new coloration, phosphorescence, increased lifespan, or the ability to speak with bees via “bee telepathy.” Others have become the national flower of China and the state flower of Indiana. It is not clear if the last two are two separate species, which has led leading Sinologists to postulate that China is located in Yellow River County, Indiana rather than the mysterious Orient as Fu Manchu would have us all believe.

Who is Fu Manchu?

Fu Manchu is a hardy perennial terrorist whose large followers often enact his terrible will. He plays a surprisingly critical role in the modern understanding of peony-based nuclear waste disposal.

This insidious mastermind is a poisoner based out of Beijing, a city that may be more familiar to some readers as Peking, Peiping, Indianapolis, or “Northern Peace.” He is a brilliant mycologist who develops many of his poisons from mushrooms (mycorrhizal saprophytes) growing on a picky child who likes Life cereal (Mikey.) He also distills traditional Beijing poisons from his Pekingese—a hardy yappy perennial of the family Ranunculaceae whose large flowers are often neurotic.

Fu Manchu is almost certainly the third-greatest threat to 21st-century America, second only to Al Qaida and Kim Jong-il’s terrifying “Space Terrapin.” Fu Manchu regularly patches his operating system but actively discourages Americans from doing the same to theirs. This creates insidious security holes which he can exploit to his own advantage. For example, when an American fails to patch his or her peonies, it may allow Fu Manchu’s poisoned seeds to take root and steal control over the garden from its rightful owner.

Fu Manchu discourages patching using two principal methodologies. First, he accentuates the natural human tendency towards laziness in patching their systems using his accentuator. Second, he regularly trolls gardening blogs to inform people that they are better off with the original unmodified codebase. His comments are generally flamed as partisan but his insidious ideas sink deep into the minds of his victims. Then those ideas eat those minds and grow mindies, hardy perennial thought-forms of the family Athenae whose large flowers are reknowned for wisdom and beauty alike.

Thanks to the efforts of Fu Manchu an unpatched garden is very dangerous. You might be strolling in such a garden on a sunny day with a cup of delicious iced tea in your hand. Suddenly spiked roots burst from the ground all around you. At this point you are still justified in optimism regarding your day. Then the roots seize your legs and arms and drag you into the air. Now your situation is not quite so excellent as at first it appeared. Struggling is only likely to intensify the problem with your garden’s codebase, causing the universe to segfault and turn blue.

As late as 1972, it was believed that the only viable garden-saving option for an American in this predicament was destroying the world and creating a new one from scratch. Most Americans, spoiled by the culture of victimization and their own unwillingness to work hard, lack the means and motivation to enact this procedure. This encourages Fu Manchu to cackle evilly and declare: “Ha ha! Thanks to insufficient precaution on your part, your decadent American garden has failed!”

That terrible laugh sends chills down a typical person’s spine. It has failed Fu Manchu in at least one case, however—when the blooming mindies of a scientist in this very predicament created the science of peony-based radioactive waste disposal. Terror gave rise to inspiration. She postulated that by spilling her vials of radioactive waste into the peonies she could convert the radioactivity into mutation, which would in turn grow mutinies—hardy perennials closely related to minionies. The large flowers of the mutinies would inevitably turn the large followers of the terrorist against their master, Fu Manchu.

An incredible waste disposal solution. An answer to Fu Manchu.

Two birds. One stone.

The noble peony.

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Countdown to Annihilation! (10:57:28 – 10:59AM)

by Jenna on July 21st, 2005

Previously, in the first four installments of Countdown to Annihilation! . . .

. . . the sun blew up!
. . . so did most of the people!
. . . Snavering Lavelwods swarmed through Charles’ factory!
. . . Charles and Iphigenia found themselves on the brink of destruction!

But will Charles use the Snaverer-Killing Bomb?

Will the Lavelwods break the Eight-Minute Hourglass that holds back the end of the world?

Can the Book of Luke survive the insane pressures of temporal acceleration?

And just what is the one thing that Iphigenia would keep, if she could keep one thing, and only one thing, to last her all the empty years?

The Snavering Song (Traditional)

Snaver, lavel, what can you do?
Our hour nears: we don’t care about you!
It’s great that you lived and it’s great that you’ll die!
Out of our way! Our hour is nigh!

Lincoln was shot and Jesus spiked up
Herbert the Nudist exposed in the buff
Socrates—poison! Angela—bees!
And everyone left
They will die in the freeze!

Snaver, lavel, what can you do?
Our hour nears: we don’t care about you!
We’re glad that you lived but it’s time that you died.
Out of our way! Our hour is nigh!

“Here!” shouts Charles. He points at an airlock. Iphigenia turns sharply right and drags him through it. They wait inside while the doors cycle. Then they enter the Eden room.

Charles turns off his hovershoes and settles down onto the ground. He beams at her. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

The Eden room is a self-sufficient biosphere. It is contained within two rapidly spinning translucent candy shells, each more amazing than the other—but it is not this confectionary accomplishment that prompts Iphigenia’s answer.

“It’s a garden,” Iphigenia says in awe.

Iphigenia stares around. The Eden Room is beautiful and grand and full of trees, and it has its own little sun circling in the sky above.

“It’s marvelous,” she says. “It’s the most marvelous garden.”

“It’s built entirely on Biblical principles,” Charles boasts. “For example, the whole room is suspended in a Leviticus-Luke gyroscope rotating at a constant 70 verses per second. And the artificial gravity is provided by psalms!”

“But why are we here?”

“It’s the safest place in the whole factory,” Charles says. “Listen. Can you hear that?”

Iphigenia listens.

Then she frowns. “Little . . . squiddish thumps.”

“Snavering Lavelwods,” hisses Charles. “God promised them that they’d get the Earth after humans did, if they were good. So they were good for a very long time. But now darkness is rising and the Fimbulwinter is coming and the Snaverers want their due. We left the door open. My fault. Not yours. But we left the door open. And now they’re going for the Hourglass.”

He hands Iphigenia his marvelous See-Through-Things Prism. “Look through this,” he says.

Iphigenia peers through it.

“I can see right through it!” she says, with amazement.

“It’s all in the focal length,” Charles says. “Hold it farther from your eye and you can see through more things! Please keep an eye on the Lavelwods for me. I’m going to try to engage the auxiliary defenses. Incidentally, what did you choose?”

“Choose?”

Iphigenia moves the See-Through-Things Prism closer and farther from her eye. She shrieks a little as she can suddenly see the Lavelwods in the factory halls.

“As the one thing you’d keep,” Charles says.

Iphigenia frowns at him. “You are very strange.”

Charles beams at her.

Iphigenia stares through the Prism. “They’re swarming through the factory,” she says. “Snavering everywhere. I think they’re shouting something.”

“Shouting?”

Charles goes to a tree. He presses a knothole to reveal a device labeled, “Factory Universal Translator—DO NOT LISTEN!”

“You’d best not listen,” Charles says.

He activates the device. He tunes it to Sneezle. There is silence. He tunes it to Morphum. The silence remains. He tunes it to High Lavelwod.

“Bleep!” snarls the device. “Bleep! Bleep! Bleeping humans! Bleep! Bleep!”

“Ow!” says Iphigenia, who couldn’t really help listening. “Too much bleeping!”

“However,” snarls the device, “we concede a reluctant admiration for your many fine inventions.”

Charles is blushing.

“Bleep!” shouts the translator again, as the Snavering Lavelwods swarm.

“Too. Much. Bleeping,” emphasizes Iphigenia.

“Oh,” says Charles. He reluctantly turns off the universal translator.

“It hurts my ears,” says Iphigenia. She looks through the prism. “There’s some kind of silver door in their way.”

“That’s my first line of defense,” says Charles. “It’s made of Invulnerable Crumpium!”

“They’re crumpling it with their tentacles!”

“Yes, well,” Charles admits. “It’s invulnerable, not uncrumplable.”

Charles has opened up a panel hidden in another tree. He is triggering various buttons.

“Huh,” Charles says. “There’s a spider on the outer hull. I hope it’ll be all right.”

“Probably safer than anywhere else on Earth!” Iphigenia says.

Charles laughs.

“That’s true! That’s true. But it adds to the mass calculation! Not much weight budget for spiders. What’s happening now?”

“Now—”

Iphigenia peers. Then she looks awed. “You built a giant self-scratching blackboard?”

Charles looks modest. “It’s the latest in nonlethal defense technology.”

“It’s definitely annoying them,” Iphigenia says. “The scraping and scratching of the fingernails on the blackboard—it’s driving them mad! Except . . .”

“Except?”

“They’re not giving up,” Iphigenia says. “They’re drowning out the noise by singing!”

Charles flicks his hands over buttons and levers. Then he frowns. “Dear, dear, we’ve got a goat out there now, too.”

“A goat?”

“It must be so afraid of the sun blowing up that it fled right through the Snavering Lavelwods to cling to the side of the Eden Sphere! What a heroic, sticky goat.”

“We have to open up the airlock!” says Iphigenia. “And let it in!”

“No time,” says Charles. “No time. Have they gotten through the Giant Golden Bowl?”

“Through and past,” whispers Iphigenia, in terror.

There is a thump. A Great Gallumphing Uniplex has attached itself to the side of the Eden Sphere.

“No idea what that is,” whispers Charles. “Stupid animals and their pack behavior! Don’t they realize I have strict mass limits?”

Then he blushes.

“No, that’s not fair. I’m sorry, animals! I’m sorry! I won’t insult you again.”

Iphigenia shrieks. “They’ve broken through the defense of last resort!”

Charles looks nervous. “Are you sure it’s the last resort?”

“It was labelled ‘Defense of Last Resort—DO NOT BREAK THROUGH.’”

Charles hides his face with one hand. “Why doesn’t anyone ever read?”

His voice is taut, but there is humor in it. Even at the end, he is laughing at the world. Iphigenia can tell.

But then the humor leaves him.

Charles grows glum, silent, and dark. “I don’t know if we’ll make it,” he says. “Not with all the extra mass pressing on the hull. These animals better pull their own weight.”

“Make it?” Iphigenia asks.

There is the distant shriek of a hawk coming in to land on the Eden Sphere.

Then Iphigenia beams.

“You’re going to trigger the Snaverer-Killing Bomb!” Iphigenia proclaims. “Then this whole sphere will bounce and roll through the empty Earth driven by the force of that explosion. If the animals aren’t too heavy for your compensation thrusters, we’ll land exactly where you planned—at the birthplace of a new sun!”

Charles gives her half of a smile. “That would be pretty cool.”

But then his voice goes flat, and he shakes his head.

“I’m not going to kill them,” Charles says.

“Oh,” says Iphigenia.

“I was so afraid I would. To save you. To save me. But I won’t.”

They are silent for a while.

Then Iphigenia smiles at him. Just a little.

“That’s okay, then. It’s okay if we die. I don’t want to. But it’s okay, if it’s to keep us from killing. The Lavelwods are adorably fuzzy little monsters.”

She looks again through the See-Through-Things Prism.

“Just . . .” Charles says. “Just give a moment, for regret. And fear. And mourning. Just a moment. Then I’ll smile, and say that everything will be okay. And it will be.”

In the distance they can hear the snavering song.

The Snavering Song (Modern Arrangement)

Snaver, lavel, what can you do?
Our hour nears: we don’t care about you!
It’s great that you lived and it’s great that you’ll die!
Out of our way! Our hour is nigh!

Rasputin was shot and Rasputin drowned
Poisoned and stabbed and laid in the ground
Joan of Arc—burned! Henry’s wives did not please!
And everyone left
They will die in the freeze!

William to plague. Sian to starvation!
And millions on millions who died for their nation.
Vlad—now a vampire! Jekyll—a beast!
And everyone left they will die in the freeze.

Snaver, lavel, what can you do?
Our hour nears: we don’t care about you!
We’re glad that you lived but it’s time that you died.
Out of our way! OUR HOUR IS NIGH!

Thundering through the factory in accompaniment to the song’s last words there is a crash.

The See-Through-Things Prism drops from Iphigenia’s nerveless fingers.

“What?” says Charles. “What did you see?”

“They’ve reached the hourglass,” says Iphigenia. “They’ve broken it. The sand is falling.”

The room is very still. The animals stare in through the candy shell. The snake flicks its tongue. The spider shifts uncomfortably from leg to leg, never sure which six to stand on on occasions like this. The goat goes, “Beeeee!”

Charles’ wristwatch alarm goes off.

“Oh, dear,” Charles says. “It’s 10:58.”

Then he laughs. It’s a wonderful, terrible, horrible laughter. “I’d forgotten I’d set that,” he says. “I wanted to tape Lizard Cops.”

Iphigenia stares at him. Then she joins him in laughter.

“Me too!” she says.

And as they laugh, the last rays of sunlight race frantically towards the world.

Tune in tomorrow for the shocking conclusion of . . . Countdown to Annihilation!

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House of Saints: Saturday Morning Special

by Jenna on August 13th, 2005

“I am a hatter of some skill,” Vladimir admits. “Did you know that the first crowning hat was mine? It was not as advanced as what we have now. It was not alive. It was not warm in my hands. It did not speak to me at night. But it was mine. I made it from the gravesoil of long-abandoned hats. It was soft and mushy and everyone laughed at me when I wore it on my head but it opened the path that led me to the House of Dreams. Now who is laughing? I am head boy and my enemies have been eaten.”
– from House of Saints: Vladimir’s Dreams

Vladimir is not there one day when they are eating lunch, and the discussion comes around to the purpose of the House of Dreams.

“I have dreamed of a storm,” says Amber.

“I too,” says Cheryl.

“I felt . . . like I was part of it. Like I was . . . a lightning rod. A channel for it.”

Cheryl picks listlessly at her cafeteria meat loaf. It does not inspire her. Its flavor is surprising, but not surprising enough.

One day, Cheryl thinks, she will show the kitchen staff. She’ll show them all.

“And my left forearm is strange now,” says Amber. “Ever since the dreams.”

She taps her arm. Cheryl’s ears hear the thump of flesh on flesh, but in her mind Cheryl hears a ringing like metal.

“Wow,” says Cheryl. “Is it conductive?”

Amber beams a little bit. Enthusiasm runs between them like a current.

“Let’s go run tests!” Amber says.

For science and madness are the joys of their House.

House of Saints


Saturday Morning Special

The House of Dreams has commandeered a lounge in Miller Hall. There they work on the great boot they intend to build in space.

“Put on Voltron,” says Cheryl.

So they play that in the background, for inspiration.

“I do not like boots,” says Vladimir. “This project—it feels like a waste of my talents. And I dream unsettled dreams.”

Cheryl looks at him.

“In them, I am like a lump of metal,” says Vladimir. “Where is the lightning in me? I am only a lump—some cobbler’s tool, no doubt, heavy and dumb. That is what we become by cobblery. I do not like boots, Cheryl.”

Cheryl is still looking at him. She is shaking her head slowly.

“What?” Vladimir asks.

“It’s a boot,” says Cheryl, “in space.”

In the background, the robot lions charge together. They form a giant robot. This is the glorious stock footage that is Voltron.

Vladimir rubs at his chin. There is the sparkling pressure in his mind again. He can feel the power of the House building in him. “We should add lasers,” he says. “At least.”

“Now that’s using your dreams,” says Cheryl. “Heat-seeking lasers!”

“And a worldkiller nuke.”

“Deadly nanoviruses.”

“A space station!” Harold says.

“Dimensional disruption rays!” Amber cheers.

“They laughed at us in engineering class,” says Vladimir. “But now the engineering department is in ruins and we may build as we see fit.”

“Ha,” laughs Cheryl. “Ha ha ha!”

Thunder crashes all around them.

It is another joyous gathering of the House of Dreams.

That night Vladimir dreams unsettled dreams of the wolf. It is looking for him. He can tell. It is sniffing about with its cold wet nose. He wakes with a gasp, his silent assistant shaking his shoulder, and he sobs:

“I have seen the ending of things. It approaches like a storm. Fools are we to think of riding that storm. Fool was I to think of guiding it! We are used as mindless tools by fate.”

His assistant presses a cup of coffee into his hands. It is an ancient remedy for prophecy. Vladimir drinks. Soon the weird has passed. Then his assistant leads Vladimir over to a console. It is beeping and flashing with red lights.

“Hm,” says Vladimir. “I see. So one among the Hungry dares to test the defenses of my room.”

He closes his eyes. He meditates.

“Send out the robot bees,” he says. “Coded to his gene sequence. That will discourage him, and the others of the Hungry, from such foolishness.”

It is an unpleasant beginning to another happy day.

“I don’t like the staged booster design for the unmanned efforts,” says Harold, when they’ve gathered once again.

“Hm,” says Vladimir.

“It’s very vanilla,” concedes Cheryl.

“True,” says Vladimir. He rises dramatically. He crosses out a sheaf of plans with a single motion of his bright red pen. “Then let it be ended! Instead, we shall use a catapult to fling shoe leather into space. Such incredible hang time! Our slogan shall be ‘Be Like Mike.’”

“In what fashion is this like Mike?” Cheryl asks.

Vladimir hesitates.

After a moment, he waves a hand dismissively and grunts, “Enh.”

He does not actually answer.

“We could use a beanstalk,” counterproposes Cheryl. “We could call it the Shoelace Project. Or . . .”

Her eyes widen.

“‘The Bootstrap.’”

“Ha,” says Vladimir. “Ha ha ha!”

In this fashion Cheryl’s suggestion carries.

The House of Dreams works fervently into the night. But at some point, the students’ minds slow down and the difficulties of the problem overwhelm them. Soon they are working not from joy but from obsession and frustration, beating their minds against the difficulties of the task. They are like birds fluttering against the glass, or moths against a flame. Then they are too tired to think at all.

When Vladimir staggers into bed it is nearly morning. He falls into his dreams like a broken elevator falls. He tumbles into them like a wounded bird. He is dizzy and vertiginous and there are great shapes all around him. They are dwarves, he thinks, and gods.

He tries to open his mouth to scream, but he cannot.

They toss him into a fiercely-burning forge. They shape and twist him with their hands. They mold him like a lump of metal and his mind is burning with the lightning.

When he wakes his tongue is thick and his mind is spinning and he says, “I see how to do it. I see how to do it.”

The dream cannot disturb him. Not even the ingrown nail on his left foot can disturb him. The lightning is with him now. He sees.

And they work that day in joy.

“I dreamed a few days back,” says Vladimir, seven hours later, “of the ending of all things. I dreamed that we were arrogant. I dreamed that it was not in us to shape the storm.”

Here he laughs.

“Can you imagine? I, I, Vladimir, I doubted. But here we are. Here, we shall do it. We are ready. We shall make this boot and the lace that lifts it.”

But Cheryl is looking at him. What he sees in her eyes he struggles to deny.

“Vladimir,” she says. “We do not guide what is coming. We are shaped by it. We are the lightning of its path. We are the hammer of the storm.”

Voltron plays behind them, on the television screen.

And there is a sudden sick realization tightening Vladimir’s chest as he looks down at the table and now he knows, and he says, “And I’ll—”

It is ridiculous. He does not speak it. It is a thing in his mind alone. He is a man. He will always be a man.

He shakes his head.

On the television behind him, Keith shouts, “And I’ll form—the head!”

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