Author’s Note—

Of all the stories on this site, Gnostella is the one I do not like. It makes sense, and is important, but it just doesn’t make me happy. It’s possible that it’s just the name—that the original story is not absurdist, and the name is. So maybe I could just change the story name and the character name to something like “Inverse Ella.” That might work. Or I can replace the whole thing—not on the site, but in the monthbooks and your hearts—with this.

Remnant Ella

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful girl named Danielle. She lived with her dear father, her wicked stepmother, and two wicked stepsisters. Her dear father held the Gnostic belief that the world and its Creator were inherently cruel. Faith and virtue were opposites in his sight. Dispirited and disgruntled by his gloomy philosophy, Danielle’s wicked stepmother set fire to the library, burning Danielle’s dear father to death and destroying all his wonderful Gnostic tomes. Because Danielle sat in the cinders and rubbed the ashes on her face to mourn, Danielle’s stepsisters called her “Remnant Ella.”

Danielle became a beautiful princess. She met her handsome prince. Together they overcame many hardships and sorrows. Down they cast the stepsisters, and the wicked stepmother, and other instrumentalities of their torment. They brought peace to the magical land in which they lived. Then they lived happily ever after.

One day, as Danielle moved through the corridors of her castle, she tripped over a cat, who hissed and said,

How long have you lived now?
Do you even remember?
Who are you to deserve to be happy forever?

“That is an imperfect rhyme,” Danielle said. “I expect better from a magical animal.”

The cat scurried away.

One day, Danielle leaned out a window and beckoned a bird down to her finger. It came, with a certain reluctance, and landed there, and sang:

At last you’ve found happiness,
And yet, all the same:
Your life is a horror;
Your father’d be shamed.

“What do you mean?” Danielle asked.

The bird only sang.

So Danielle went to a mirror in the castle, inherited from her evil stepmother, and asked it, “Why shouldn’t I live happily ever after?”

The mirror showed her the lives of two peasants, one beautiful and one handsome, who had lived in her kingdom for many years. They lived together and loved together and overcame many sorrows. They brought forth life from the earth. They strove. Then, inevitably, the swords of circumstance and pestilence struck them down.

At that very moment, Danielle saw, the dead peasants stood before the three thrones of a god of judgment; and one aspect of the god sat to the left, and one to the right, and one between them. The ex-peasants stood there to face the penalty faced by those who die, and the handsome ex-peasant said,

“What is it that the prince and princess have that we have not? We lived, and we died, in sorrow and in pain; while for more years than men can count, they have ruled in that castle, defying time, defying age, defying sorrow; they are like ghosts, eternal beyond the boundaries of death; they are like demons, mocking the pain of others’ lives.”

The left god and the right god looked off into the shadows. The god in the middle leaned forward.

“The world is not fair,” said the god in the middle, “but as you make it so. Dreams are not real, but as you craft them. Hope, and magic, and life are choices. It is not for a person to blame the gods if they do not live happily ever after; rather, I think, this is a flaw in the greater portion of humanity.”

Then the beautiful ex-peasant spoke, and said, “This is an excuse.”

Danielle, watching, felt her nostrils flare.

“To live,” said the beautiful ex-peasant, “is to choose hope, and magic, and life, and dreams. To live is to want the happy ending. And who is there who is not good? Who is there who does not deserve happiness forever? We are flawed, we have many flaws, but if we are not all magical princes and princesses with destinies of greatness, that is not our flaw but the world’s.”

The god in the middle shrugged, then, and grinned, and he was not concerned. He said, “You are bitter creatures. I make my judgment: your existence after death shall be as expressions of that bitterness. You shall be creatures of ashes and sorrow. Your touch shall bring an end to joy. Your happiness shall be schadenfreude.”

He sat back against his throne, and the mirror turned to black.

Danielle nodded to herself, and said, “It is true; my father would be shamed.”

She broke the mirror. She cut herself upon a length of silvered glass. As her life drained out, she spoke a spell:

Ah! That the world should know such gods no more.
May my blood be a poison unto their throne.

Such a poison as this covered Snow White’s apple; such a curse as this doomed Sleeping Beauty; it is the red of such blood as this that stained the dancing shoes. And in their halls the gods dared not face her judgment; and two of them, the left god and the right, left their thrones. Into the darkness behind their places, they walked, and what happened to them thereafter is not known.

The beautiful ex-peasant and the handsome one took their places on the thrones; and why this should have happened is a mystery. Only the old men and old women in their huts, their mouths gaping with missing teeth, know that answer; and what it means, they do not say.

The joy thing is shaped like a fuzzy barrel: white, fluffy, and stout. A cowboy hat is canted on its head. A trenchcoat flutters about it. Its deelyboppers wobble.

“. . . it is an embarrassment to Washington,” seethes Cabinet Member Steve, “that such a thing should represent us. In the minds of the world, it is an American symbol, an American thing, because it chooses to fight for us. We are disgraced.”

“Perhaps,” says the President, folding his hands, “we can shoot it into the sun.”

“If we only could!” cries Cabinet Member Steve.

This is the hoary, dusty temple of the crocodile god. Susannah sprawls on its altar. Seventy worshippers in robes surround her, chanting profound and foul spells. The doors are great stone slabs, marred by weather. The walls are rimed with vines. The leader of the cultists lifts his knife and catches the light with it, his eyes growing sterner as he readies himself to bring it down.

BANG.

The doors slam open wide. Beyond them is the evening sky, the forest ground, the fading sun. In them, wrapped in a numinous limning of gossamer light, the joy thing stands.

“It’s not nice to stab people without permission,” says the joy thing.

Its trenchcoat flutters in a strange and sudden wind.

The head cultist looks up. He snarls behind his hood. He says, “It is godly and sacred, however. If you happen to worship the crocodile god. Which I do.”

The joy thing unlimbers its hat. The head cultist’s hands clench around the knife. The joy thing hurls the hat. It spins through the air and raps the knife from the head cultist’s hand.

Then cries the joy thing, “Alasta pampilenen!”

The heat of joy and brightness fills the room, and the chaunts that were chaunted to the crocodile god are chaunted no more.

The Embassy for Things stands beside the Canadian Embassy. Reporters seethe outside its door. The necessity thing comes out.

“Ambassador,” cries one reporter, “do you have a statement on the joy thing affair?”

The necessity thing’s voice has the sound of scratching chalk. “We do not consider the allegations against the joy thing substantive, but we are cooperating fully with Washington’s investigation. We have taken America’s request for a withdrawal of the joy thing’s diplomatic immunity under consideration.”

The great Nazi airship drifts ponderously across the sky. Its sides are blazoned with the symbols of the Reich. Its belly is swollen great with bombs.

The pilots are kicked back in their seats. One is halfway through a joke. “The second says, ‘The queen, she is impenetrable!’ And the third shakes his head vigorously. ‘No, no! That’s not it! She is impregnable!’”

This is translated from the German for your benefit, as the pilots laugh.

There is a thump. The joy thing has fallen from a biplane onto the window in front of them. It is hanging on to its hat with one hand and to a hook imbedded firmly in the glass with another. It smiles to them.

“When people ask you to be a Nazi,” it says, “just say no!”

There is a long frozen moment. Then, suddenly, both pilots are on their feet.

“Emergency! Emergency!” they shout in translated German. “It’s the joy thing!”

Joy and brightness wash over them.

The explosion of the zeppelin can be seen for more than one hundred and fifty miles. The pilots and the passengers drift down on their parachutes like so much tiny soot.

“What will happen to it?” asks the necessity thing.

Agent Pullet shrugs. “Its adventuring will be . . . curtailed.”

One thuggee is strangling Mr. Jenkins. The other is strangling his omelette. Thuggees like strangling things.

“Please,” whispers Mr. Jenkins. “Please, I have a family.”

“Ha ha,” laughs the thuggee. “We will send them your head!”

“And these hashed browns,” says the other thuggee. “I don’t like Denny’s hashed browns at all.”

“Please,” says Mr. Jenkins. Then his eyes close and he sags back.

A waitress approaches. She is carrying a silver tray. On the tray is the joy thing.

“Kali save us!” cry the thuggees, strangling cords falling from their hands.

“You shouldn’t play with your food,” declares the joy thing. “Alasta pampilenen!”

The food at that Denny’s is surprisingly good, even today.

“I don’t understand,” says the joy thing.

“You are requested,” the lawyer thing says, “to appear before the secret tribunal in seven days. If you don’t, you will be hunted down, locked in a box, and thrown in a volcano, in accordance with the terms of the Compassion and Conscience Legislation.”

“Helltrousers,” the joy thing slowly blasphemes.

The kitten is drowning. It is sinking beneath the quicksand and drowning.

“Take my hand!” shouts Angus. But the kitten can’t hear him, doesn’t understand, or possibly just doesn’t have the strength.

Angus lets out a little more line. He inches closer to the kitten. His line snaps. Angus and the kitten go down.

There is a silence.

Then they are rising, the three of them, Angus, kitten, and joy thing alike, rising through the quicksand and muck. The joy thing has puffed into a giant fuzzy ball, increasing its buoyancy. They cling to its fur.

“Sure is a good thing you were swimming around in that quicksand,” Angus says. “This kitten and I might have been goners!”

“Don’t play in quicksand,” the joy thing says.

Then it turns. It walks away.

“Hey!” says Angus. “Hey! Are you okay? You didn’t do that, um, that alasta thing.”

The joy thing is gone.

“I have done only good,” says the joy thing. “I have sought only justice. It is not my fault that my public image is not suitable for your cause.”

“In these days,” says Agent Pullet, gently and heavily, “a thing is not a thing, but what others see in it. You will be fired from a cannon into the heart of the sun, in accordance with provision 81 of the CCL.”

“Fudgeweasels,” swears the joy thing, unable to find the words to convey the immensity of its feelings, scatology and blasphemy alike deserting it in this moment of its greatest need.

They load the joy thing into the cannon.

They swivel the cannon to face the sun.

“The sun isn’t a toy,” says the joy thing. “Don’t shoot things into it!”

The cannon fires, and that is the end.

Sometimes, when the sun is shining, remember the joy thing. It is still up there. Its deelyboppers are aflame. Its fur is burning. It is not alive and so it cannot die, and it loves you.

It would wish you well.

Jane clings to an iron chain. Tom feeds it out, above her, lowering her down into the garden. She descends, inch by inch. Below her, the roses tremble. Each stem is lined with thorns. Each petal is dewed with rain.

Maria stands in a garden arch, looking out at the rain. There is a large and bulky metal cylinder beside her.

“‘Raindrops on roses,’” Jane whispers to herself. “I sure hope we’re right.”

Jane’s whisper is as quiet as the rain. But Maria still looks up. Her eyes burn with an alien scorn.

“Jane,” Maria snides. “How nice to see you.”

The metal shape is a gun. It rises in Maria’s hands. Its barrel is as thick as Jane’s torso, and it begins most ominously to whine.

Nicolae
Age: 10
Code Name: Omen

Nicolae is tainted with demonic blood. It lives inside him and makes him write brooding Gothic poetry. The taint is degenerative and irreversible. One day it will consume him and in his shape and with his name rule as the Beast of prophecy over an empire of evil.

Nicolae is a founding member of the Doom Team.

This story begins several hours beforehand, on a bright Monday morning, in the house at Number Seventeen Doom Lane.

Tom, Nicolae, Michael, and Mouser drink tea in their secret treehouse. It is secret because of its sign, which reads “Tom’s Secret Treehouse—Invisible to Girls!”

Jane climbs up the ladder and joins them.

Tom is dumbstruck.

“Jane!” Tom says. “How did you find us? This treehouse is invisible to girls!”

“I used my hearing and my sense of smell to deduce its location,” Jane claims.

“. . . I guess you can come in, then,” Tom admits.

“It’s a good thing, too,” says Jane. “I have an important letter from Uncle Bertram!”

Tom sees the letter in Jane’s pocket. He reaches for it. She grabs it first and holds it against her chest.

“It’s addressed to me,” Jane says. She shows Tom. It is indeed addressed to Jane. “But it is not just any letter. It is a confession!”

Tom gasps.

Mouser wriggles his whiskers. “Mew!”

“What could he have to confess?” Michael asks. “Once the Doom Team exposed his drug empire and his prostitution habit, I assumed we’d plumbed the depths of Uncle Bertram’s depravity.”

Jane unfolds the letter. She scans it with her eyes. She has already read the letter so this is simply to help her get the details right. “Bertram says that Maria, the lovable nanny who brought joy and music into our lives, is in fact a ‘Fan Hoeng assassin.’ He activated her . . . today!”

Nicolae reaches out. He picks Mouser up. He strokes the kitten.

“Oh Mouser,” Nicolae confides. “Place not your trust in humankind. They will betray you.”

“It says,” Jane continues, “that Uncle Bertram is in Bermuda spending our trust fund. But he had pangs of guilt. So he had to write us a letter explaining why it is all our fault.”

Nicolae’s eyes darken.

Jane’s mouth twitches. She reaches out a hand to Nicolae’s shoulder. Nicolae permits the familiarity.

“He didn’t specifically mean you,” Jane says. “He never really accepted that you are destined to rule the Earth as the antichrist. He mostly rants about our lack of obedience and our inability to understand adult affairs.”

Nicolae shrugs a little.

“It’s always about being the antichrist with adults,” Nicolae says. “Even when they don’t admit it.”

Jane’s hand falls away. She chews on her lip. Finally, she shrugs.

“Tom,” Jane asks, “What is a Fan Hoeng?”

Tom puts down his tea. He takes out his handheld computing machine. He pushes and clicks buttons. He calls up the file on the Fan Hoeng.

“They are aliens from outer space,” Tom says.

“I always knew the Doom Team would fight aliens someday!” says Michael.

Jane sulks.

“The Doom Team and Jane, I mean,” Michael says. “And Mouser!”

Jane revises her sulk to a wry half-frown.

“In 1981,” Tom says, “the Fan Hoeng intercepted a Nazi radio transmission asking for help from any sympathetic aliens. They immediately flew to Earth to help defeat the Allies. It was already too late, and both East and West Germany politely declined their aid. The Fan Hoeng did not have enough fuel to return home and no one had spare plutonium to donate to Nazi space aliens. So they parked their mother ship in a lunar orbit and became a shady syndicate of space criminals. They are not human but can use a ‘Sapioreplicator’ to construct human bodies and minds. These artificial minds are haplessly lovable and bubbling with ‘joie de vivre.’”

“That’s why we all loved Maria,” Jane says grimly. “She was a Sapioreplicator construct.”

Tom shuts down his handheld computing machine. Its display becomes a mirror.

“It is strange to have loved something so unreal,” reflects Tom.

“I have never loved the real at all,” says Nicolae.

There is a crunch of an alien footstep on the leaf-strewn lawn. Maria walks past. She is clad in alien battle armor. She is carrying her gun. She looks left and right.

“She can’t see us,” whispers Jane.

“Is it the sign?” Tom asks. “Because it would be good if that worked on some girls.”

Jane casts him a pitying look.

“Mew!” declares Mouser.

“It’s not the sign,” Jane says. “It’s—look at her somatics, Tom! That’s no ordinary stiff neck—she’s struggling not to look up.”

“It’s the human personality imprint!” Tom realizes. His voice is a bit too loud in the crisp morning. Everyone dives flat onto the treehouse floor. There is a long silence. Maria does not seem to have heard.

“It’s the human personality imprint,” Tom says, more quietly. “The Maria we knew—the Maria who sang to us about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens—”

“She’s fighting for control.”

“It’s a Fan Hoeng secret weakness!” Michael says. “Inside that hardened alien killer is a nanny bubbling with hope!”

“‘Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,’” recites Nicolae. His voice is like a trickle of dark water. “‘Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with string—’”

“It’s not a song,” Michael says. “It’s a message. She smuggled it out of her alien-ruled brain. It’s—it’s—it’s a recipe!”

“The only thing that could possibly save us from a killer alien nanny,” breathes Jane. “A Taoist immortality elixir!”

Tom
Age: 11
Code Name: Swift

Tom descends from a primordial reptilian species whose genetic code can attach parasitically to human DNA. He is destined to use his scientific skills to eradicate the ‘human infection’ and warm the Earth until his species may flourish again. Time travelers have confirmed this future and his grandmother often nags him to get on with the eradication already. So far, however, Tom prefers to solve mysteries and help people out.

Tom is a founding member of the Doom Team.

Jane dangles in the garden above a raindrop-covered rose. Her hand reaches for it, but it’s just a little bit too far. Tom continues to lower her down.

Maria’s gun whines as it charges up.

“Almost . . . almost . . .” Jane cries. “Got it!”

Maria’s gun chimes.

“And I have you,” Maria says, softly.

Tom releases the chain. A counterweight attached to the other end of the looped chain falls.

“Thank the stars for action-reaction!” Jane shouts. The descending counterweight lifts her rapidly towards the garden balcony. She hurtles over the railing and into Tom’s arms. The two of them stumble backwards into the house wall.

BOOM.

“Death ray!” cries Jane. “Into the house!”

She attempts to disentangle herself from Tom. Tom attempts to disentangle himself from her. They succeed and make it through the balcony doors into the library just in time to escape the second shot.

“That will not stop her long,” Nicolae says. “She is a space alien, trained in calculating complex trajectories. Once she determines the correct angles she will jump up through the balcony doors and slaughter—”

Nicolae counts mortals.

“Jane and Mikey,” he says.

“Not if we slam the door in her face just as she jumps,” says Jane.

“That’s thinking like a Doom Team Auxiliary!” congratulates Tom.

Jane makes a horrible face at him for reasons Tom is unable to comprehend. A moment later, they hear Maria’s jump jets firing.

“Now!”

Tom and Jane and Michael and Nicolae slam the balcony’s doors. Maria smashes into the clear plastic with enough force to knock the children back. Maria looks startled and flat. Tom and Jane and Michael and Nicolae look winded. But it is the children who recover first. They scamper out of the room and are gone.

“You brats!” shouts Maria. “The Fan Hoeng clan will destroy you all!”

Tune in tomorrow for the harrowing conclusion of . . . THE INCREDIBLE ALCHEMY ELIXIR!

Yesterday, in the first installment of The Incredible Alchemy Elixir . . .

. . . a sinister letter revealed Uncle Bertram’s intent!
. . . nanny Maria donned the armor of a Fan Hoeng assasin!
. . . the Doom Team collected the first ingredient for a Taoist immortality elixir: raindrops on roses!
. . . Nicolae brooded about being the antichrist!
. . . Tom swiftied!
. . . Jane sulked!

And now, the exciting conclusion of . . . the Incredible Alchemy Elixir!

Mouser
Age: 8 months
Code Name: None

Mouser is a kitten. He became an official Doom Team auxiliary when he killed a mouse and left it in Uncle Bertram’s bed. His declaration of “Mew” often confounds the enemies of righteousness and strikes terror into evil’s heart.

He is mewing even now!

“I’m sorry, Mouser,” says Nicolae.

“Mew,” whines Mouser. Mouser struggles desperately.

“Come on, Mouser,” says Michael. “It’s just one whisker! You can spare one whisker!”

“Is it really ethical to pluck Mouser just so the rest of us can live?” Jane asks.

“We can think about ethics later,” Tom delays. “Right now, there’s a bigger threat!”

“It’s all right,” Nicolae says.

There is a black dog standing at the entrance to the room. It pants. It looks at Mouser. Mouser goes very still. Nicolae plucks a whisker.

“He won’t give me any trouble,” says Nicolae bleakly.

Jane blinks. The dog is gone when she opens her eyes.

“Now for the bright copper kettles,” Michael says.

Michael
Age: 7
Code Name: Mikey

Michael is a special child. He can eat anything. He is not hungry very often but the more he eats he more he can eat—and the more he needs to eat. Tom’s equations suggest that Michael’s consumption will become asymptotically infinite by 2032, forcing him to devour the stars, the planets, and finally even the endless hungry void, leaving behind only the blank slate on which the universe was writ.

Michael is the newest member of the Doom Team.

The house supply of bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens sits in a pile in the middle of the kitchen.

Maria slouches against the wall. Her gun is by her side.

“I thought you would come here,” Maria says.

Jane and Tom and Michael stand frozen.

“I made sure you’d have to come here,” Maria says, “in fact.”

Nicolae steps forward. Maria’s gun rises. The gun begins to whine.

“How long does it take?” Nicolae asks. “I mean, for your death ray to initialize?”

“Seventy-five seconds,” Maria says. “It is a principal weakness of Fan Hoeng technology.”

Nicolae walks to the pile. He selects a pair of warm woolen mittens from the pile. He uses them to polish the edge of a bright copper kettle. The copper smears away, revealing the dark black beneath.

“Fake kettles,” Nicolae says. “Very cunning.”

Maria’s gun whines.

Nicolae scans the room. There’s a black dog standing by the pot cupboard. It pants. Nicolae walks over to the pot cupboard. He opens it. He is not hurrying.

Jane blinks.

The black dog is gone.

“I’ll put an end to all this nonchalance!” Maria shouts. Her gun fires. It shoots a ray of pure death. The blast hits Nicolae in the center of his chest. Circular ripples of fading death pass through the room.

There’s a silence.

Nicolae does not look harmed. He takes out one of the concealed bright copper kettles. He puts it under his arm.

“Indifference,” Nicolae says.

Nicolae’s pupils have shrunk to points.

“Not nonchalance.”

Nicolae walks back to the others.

Maria opens and closes her mouth with a prim little click.

“He really is the antichrist, isn’t he?” Maria asks flatly.

Jane glares at Maria. Michael’s nostrils flare.

“No,” says Tom.

Tom steps forward. “No. He’s not. He doesn’t have to be. Not even if he’s immune to death rays. He’s a person.”

Tom juts his chin defiantly.

“Yeah!” says Jane.

Maria tilts her head to one side. “But—I am not wrong? That is his destiny?” she presses.

Nicolae answers. He bites out the word. “Yes.”

“Well, then,” says Maria. “I’ll just have to set my death ray to holy.”

Maria clicks a lever. Her gun begins a new kind of ominous whine.

“Could it be?” says Nicolae. His eyes brighten with something like joy. “An early end to the long dark aeons of my life?”

Jane grabs Nicolae’s arm. “Run!”

“But—”

“Remember the Doom Team code!” says Tom. “You don’t have to die just because some people think your existence is evil!”

Jane tugs harder on Nicolae’s arm. “RUN!”

Nicolae hesitates, then, fractionally, he nods.

The four children dart away, Mouser galloping after.

Jane
Age: 8
Code Name: None

Jane is trouble. Bertram’s brother, David, adopted her because he thought that she might destroy the world. It turned out that he was wrong. Because she’s just ordinary trouble, Tom won’t let her join the Doom Team—but she’s so helpful on all of their adventures that the Team unanimously voted her in as a Doom Team Auxiliary!

“Brown paper packages,” says Jane. “Brown paper packages. Brown paper packages. What could that mean?”

“Dad’s opium stash!” Tom declares.

“That’s it!” they all shout. “Opium!”

They race downstairs to David’s abandoned bedroom. They break open his cabinet and take out a brick of opium. It is in a brown paper package, tied up with string. The children boil water in the bright copper kettle; mash up wool, opium, Mouser’s whisker, and the petals of the rose in a large glass bowl; and finally they pour boiling water over the mix.

“It’s a marvelous immortality elixir!” Jane says. “Bottoms up!”

“. . . Ladies first,” says Tom.

They stare at the lumpy mix for a bit.

“Nicolae?” Jane asks.

There is a black dog standing in front of Nicolae. It pants.

“Ask Mikey,” Tom suggests. “He’ll eat anything.”

“Nuh-unh,” says Michael. “I can eat anything. That’s different.”

“All right . . .” says Jane, unhappily.

Jane picks up the elixir. She lifts it to her lips.

The door to the room opens. Maria stands there. The gun is not whining. It is readied and braced against her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” Maria hisses. “Once you’ve been immortal for five hundred years, Heaven would send a terrible wind to destroy you. And even if you survived that, it’d send a terrible fire to kill you five hundred years later! That’s why there aren’t many immortal Taoists around.”

Jane pauses before drinking. “I don’t want Heaven to destroy me,” she admits.

Nicolae looks at her.

Jane blushes. “Sorry,” she says. “That was insensitive. —But I don’t!”

“You won’t have the chance,” says Maria.

Maria pulls the trigger. Jane, desperate, splashes the elixir of immortality on her face.

BOOM.

There is a silence.

“You’re not dead either,” Maria says, dumbly.

“I guess I’m a Taoist immortal,” Jane frets.

“You can’t be a Taoist immortal,” claims Tom. “You’re a girl.”

Maria fires again. She fires shot after shot at Jane’s chest. It splashes off.

“You are a Taoist immortal!” Tom exclaims.

“The gun,” Maria whispers. “It’s overloading. I’ve shot too much death at an immortal! It’s going to explode!”

“Serves you right,” sulks Jane.

“It’s your fault!” curses Maria. “It’s all your fault! The Fan Hoeng will avenge me! They will sear this world, they will ruin it, they will salt the earth and boil the seas, all to get at you, Jane! All to destroy you!”

The gun explodes.

There is dust and there is rubble and the ceiling falls.

David
Age: 72 years
Code Name: None

David Fitz built the house on Doom Lane as a haven for children destined to destroy the world. He adopted Tom, Nicolae, Michael, and even Jane. They never knew whether he wanted the world to end or just thought that destined avatars of destruction had it pretty tough. All they knew was that he loved them, that he took them in, and that he died, leaving the Doom Team and their trust fund in his brother’s greedy hands.

He is mourned.

Jane is dizzy as they haul her into the light.

“Is everyone okay?” Jane asks. “Michael? Oh my God, is Michael alive?”

“I ate the death and the blast,” Michael says. “I’m okay. And I even saved Mouser. But I’m hungrier now.”

“I’m so glad,” Jane says. She hugs him tightly. “I’m sorry I tried to get you to drink the immortality elixir.”

“It’s okay,” Michael says.

Jane blinks away her tears. She pushes Michael away. She looks around at the rubble on Doom Lane.

“Well,” she says. “They’re going to destroy the Earth to get at me.”

“Yeah,” Michael laughs.

There is a silence.

“I guess that means I can join the Team now,” Jane says. “Huh?”

Tom’s face is stricken. Nicolae’s eyes are dark and wounded.

There is a silence.

“Of course,” Michael says.

Nicolae, quietly, nods.

“Yes,” Tom admits.

A bird sings, far away.

“I’m so sorry,” says Tom, wretchedly.

The rubble shifts and crunches.

“Jane, I’m so sorry!”

The lion stood outside Sid’s office building. Its tail lashed. It growled.

“It’s hard to imagine that someone let you out on purpose,” Sid said. He looked around him for sanctuary. There was no one else in the square. Behind the lion, the revolving door of the office slowly spun.

The lion padded forward three steps. Sid hefted his briefcase, pulled his arm back across his body, and then flung the case at the lion. It bounced off the lion’s hide, but the beast snarled and stepped back.

“I’d better go in and call animal control.”

Trusting in insouciance, Sid loped past the lion into the building. He made it into the circle of the revolving door before the beast turned and charged. Shoving forcefully against the glass, Sid managed a quarter turn before the beast followed him in. This was enough. Its claws scraped at the glass behind him. Sid waited until he could reach the lobby, then threw his weight against the door to slow and stop its turn.

“Raar?” the lion snarled, hopefully.

“Stay there,” Sid said.

Then he went up to his cubicle. He passed Max on the way, and Claire, and Saul. He waved to them.

“There’s a lion in the revolving door,” he said. “Don’t use the door unless you’re prepared to strangle the beast unconscious.”

Claire rolled her eyes.

“It’s true,” Sid swore.

“This is why I don’t walk to lunch,” said Saul. “If it’s not rain, it’s lions. But if I drive, then the lions can’t pierce my defensive metal shell.”

“‘Car,’” said Sid.

“You should call animal control,” Max said.

“I’m gonna,” Sid said.

“Before the lion gets out and ravens among the cubicles.”

“I’m gonna,” Sid emphasized.

Then he reached his cubicle, sat down, and made his report to animal control. In the distance, he could hear snarls and roars. Then there was the clatter of a toppling swivel chair and the slowly fading mewing, coughing, and grunting sounds of Claire strangling the beast.

Sid sighed. Then he shrugged. He stared for a few minutes into his dharma box.

Sid hung up. He logged on to the system. Then he began to take calls.

Five of them proved irrelevant, in the broader story of Sid’s life.

The sixth did not.

“UDBI technical support,” said Sid. “This is Sid. How can I help you, Ms. Baker?”

“I’m only human,” said the panicked voice on the other end of the line.

The sound of Sid’s typing was like that of a heavy rain.

“How long has it been?” Sid asked.

“Nearly three hours,” Ms. Baker said.

Sid’s pinky finger came down on the carriage return with a loud crack. He was silent for a long moment.

“That shouldn’t ever happen,” Sid said.

Now his fingers were dancing on the keys. Dozens of charts and maps opened up on his screen, cascading from the background to the front.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” said Ms. Baker. “My car didn’t start. My room is a mess. I’m having petty thoughts, Mr. Sid.”

“It happens to all of us,” soothed Sid. “Even UDMI employees. Just hang in there until I can get your dharma system back online.”

He spun the mouse wheel. Convulsively, he stood up. “It’s not just you,” he said into the phone. “It’s your whole junction. I’m going down there to look at the lines. Can you call back, extension 833, if the problem isn’t resolved in twenty, thirty minutes?”

Ms. Baker’s voice is hesitant.

“I guess,” she said.

Sid frowned. He added, “Lock your door.”

Ms. Baker hung up the phone.

Sid left his cubicle. He loped down the hall.

“Sid?”

That was his boss, Dr. Ezekiel Brown, emerging from a side hallway.

“Walk and talk,” said Sid. “We’ve got a whole junction down in Block 43.”

“Damn it, Sid,” said Dr. Brown. “You know you’re not supposed to head out on this kind of thing without my gnomic management wisdom.”

“It’s probably just a short of some kind.”

Dr. Brown held up a finger. “Operations involves preparing for the worst eventualities,” he said, “not the best.”

“A line that needs repair.”

“Soar like the eagle,” said Dr. Brown, “who flies without a net.”

Sid laughed.

“Thank you for the inspiration, Doc.”

“You’ll call?” Dr. Brown said. “I mean, if you need management?”

“I’ll call.”

Sid seized a toolbox from a shelf as he passed. He reached the elevator doors just as they opened and disgorged a tour guide and a set of guests; without pause, Sid turned smoothly for the stairs, flung open the door, and headed down towards the parking garage. Behind him, the guide was saying:

“There’s a Hindu story of a King returning from war when a river flooded and blocked his path back home. He said to each of his ministers and generals, ‘show me your erudition and your heroism—reduce this river’s flow!’

“And they couldn’t.

“But then one of the camp followers said, ‘River, sink low.’—”

The voice faded as the stairway door closed behind him. Sid reached the garage, got into his car, and drove to Block 43.

The phone rang while he was halfway there.

“Hi, Daddy!” said Emily.

“Hi, honey,” said Sid. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“Mole men,” said Emily.

“There aren’t any, honey.”

“There are now,” said Emily. “We aced all the standardized tests, so the teachers said we could establish an autonomous subterranean collective. Now we’re lurking in the caverns underneath the city!”

“They’re not caverns,” said Sid. “They’re access tunnels.”

“Mole tunnels,” said Emily. “We tamed an alligator, you know.”

Sid laughed. Then he frowned. “Huh. The zoo’s in block 43; I hope the Animal Wrestler is all right.”

“Do you want us to check? We could tunnel under the city and emerge stealthily at the zoo!”

“Can you achieve consensus on the matter?”

“A band of mole men thinks as one!”

There is the sound of disagreement on the far end.

“Huh,” said Emily. “Leadership challenge. I’ll call you back. Love you Daddy!”

“You too, hon.”

Sid pulled over outside the UDBI satellite installation for Block 43, a small boxy building principally containing supplies, a junction box, and a mechanical console. Sid waved his hand over the handprint reader by the door, went inside, and began flicking switches and taking line readings. A frown slowly deepened on his face.

He flicked open his phone and hit a speed dial. “Doc?”

Doctor Brown’s voice was hopeful. “Sid! What’s up?”

“Can you get the police to evacuate people from block 43?” Sid asked.

“That bad?”

“The whole block is glitching all to Hell,” said Sid. “It’s worse than the 2016 incident, and I can’t find a reason for it.”

Doctor Brown nodded. “I’ll call back,” he said.

Sid opened the door and looked nervously around the street. The sun was bright. Pythons slithered companionably through the green grass. Birds chirped. There were no fires and no obvious looting, which seemed to reassure Sid.

His phone rang.

“Yeah, Doc?”

Emily giggled. “Hi Daddy!”

“That was fast,” said Sid. “How did the leadership challenge go?”

“We struggled fiercely in the dim twilight beneath the earth! Drums beat vigorously! But then someone remembered that the zoo has baby goats, so we all decided to check it out, because, ooh, goats.”

“Congratulations.”

“We’re peering up at the zoo with our mole eyes now. I think someone’s been showing the animals the dharma boxes, Daddy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well,” said Emily, “mostly, the eerie cooperation of gazelle and panda in smoothly coordinated escape operations! But also the Animal Wrestler is floating unconscious in the alligator pen with little gifts piled around him like the gators wanted to honor a noble foe.”

“Can you round up the animals, pumpkin?”

“Daddy,” said Emily scandalized. “I’m eight.”

“Well,” said Sid, “if your mole men aren’t up to it . . .”

There was a long pause.

“We’ll see what we can do,” said Emily. “But the autonomous underground collective disapproves of keeping animals penned. That’s our free mole spirit!”

The phone buzzed.

“Got a call in,” said Sid. “Talk to you later, honey!”

“Bye!”

Sid clicked the Flash button. “Yeah, Doc?”

“The police are on the way. Any progress?”

Sid shrugged. He flicked a few more switches.

“It’s in perfect working order as far as I can see,” said Sid. “If you want to offer gnomic management wisdom, now might be the time.”

Doctor Brown hesitated.

“There was a Hindu story,” said Doctor Brown, “about a King returning from war when a river flooded and blocked his way home.”

“That’s not wisdom!” said Sid, scandalized. “It’s in our company manifesto!”

“He challenged his ministers and generals to lower the river,” said Doctor Brown, who wasn’t the kind of man to abandon a good story. “But it was an ordinary camp follower who solved the problem, saying, ‘River, sink low!’ And the river, which had ignored the entreaties of ministers, generals, and Kings, sank until she could cross it without wetting her ankles. Because, as low as her position was, she was perfect in her dharma. She knew who she was. She knew what she was there for. And because she had that power and that confidence, no force in the universe could stop her.”

“Okay,” said Sid.

“So why are you letting this stop you?”

Sid opened his mouth to speak, paused, and frowned.

“That’s a good point,” Sid said, after a moment. He poked at the side of his mouth with his tongue. This somatized his internal attempts to evaluate the state of his soul. “I’m dharma-OK. The glitch isn’t affecting me. So I should be able to fix this.”

“Soar like the eagles, Sid!”

Sid tapped at his forehead with his hand.

“Okay,” Sid said, “so here’s my theory.”

“Oh?”

“We look at the dharma boxes to center ourselves in our dharma,” said Sid. “To become like that camp follower. The boxes resonate with who we really are, down underneath, to help us reach our fullest potential. That’s why you have such a hard time finding reasonable opportunities for your motivational speeches—we’re already at our personal peak of excellence!”

“. . . Yeah,” sighed Doctor Brown, sadly.

“But the dharma boxes aren’t manifestations of a God-like universal will,” said Sid. “They’re machines. They’re mental and spiritual feedback devices, and the first versions were built by ordinary imperfect humans. Here’s what I’m thinking: what if there’s a global error in the design? Something pervasive and subtle, something that none of us can see because every thought we have is shaped by the feedback from the boxes? So that when I stand here, looking at the evidence of the glitch, I’m still unable to see it, because it’s something that can’t exist in the context of my world?”

Doctor Brown considered. “Something that heroes can’t solve, but ordinary people can?”

“No,” said Sid, after a moment. “It’s more a general philosophical problem with turning to external evidence to figure out who we are.”

Sid hung up.

Several flamingoes flew by.

Sid thought.

Then he took out his dharma mini, set it on “Neutral,” and stared into its face.

Sid’s thoughts grew thick and full of error. Some of the glamour fell from his world. A seed of fear sprouted in his heart.

Grimly, he put the dharma mini back into his pocket and began to work.

After a while, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” said Ms. Baker. “It’s been forty minutes.”

“Oh,” said Sid.

Ms. Baker hesitated. “Oh?”

“I’m trying to figure things out,” Sid said. “But I’m off system myself.”

He leaned under the console, took off a panel, and stared at the wiring underneath.

“It’s terrible,” Sid said. “You know? I mean, it’s like I’m climbing a mountain, and there’s a cold wind blowing, and my fingers are numb and the picks are loose and there’s an evil goat and I could fall at any second and die.”

Ms. Baker made a little, pained laugh.

“Yeah,” she said. “There’s an evil goat outside my door too.”

“. . . baby goat, probably,” Sid said. “There was a zoo maintenance error.”

“Oh.”

“I can’t believe we used to live like this. I can’t believe being human used to be like this all the time.”

“Yeah,” sighed Ms. Baker.

“It sucks.”

Ms. Baker hesitated.

“Also,” said Ms. Baker, brightly, “you could get stabbed! By muggers!”

Sid smiled a little.

“Or get hit by a car,” he said.

“Catch gangrene.”

“Sniffles!”

“Social conflict!”

“Internet trolls!”

“War!”

“Stubbed toes!”

“Sheer blatant stupidity that you didn’t understand for years until one day you’re sitting at home and suddenly you realize just how wrong you were!”

“Oh, God,” said Sid. “I remember those. Those were horrid.”

They laughed.

“It’s actually the one thing that surprised me,” said Ms. Baker, after a bit. “I mean, when I moved to a UDBI district. That suddenly everyone got along.”

“Well, it’s natural,” said Sid. “I mean, you perfect people, and—”

Sid hesitated.

“I’d been expecting irreconcilable differences to remain,” said Ms. Baker.

“Yeah,” said Sid.

“It just seemed sound. That sometimes not everyone could have what they want at the same time.”

“That’s erroneous,” Sid said, distractedly. “I mean, in the formal theory of dharma boxes, it’s not so much that everyone gets what they want, as that people recognize that point beyond which they can’t have everything. They lose their connection to the basic human, mortal cruelty of the world.”

Sid frowned.

“But you have a point,” he said. He closed the panel, sat back, and said, “I’ll have to call you back.”

“Thank you,” said Ms. Baker. “I mean, for working, I mean, even when—”

“Only human,” said Sid.

It was still terrifying to him. His gestures were slow and clumsy. His thoughts were cold and confused.

“Yeah,” Ms. Baker said.

Sid hung up. He called Doctor Brown.

“Hey,” said Sid.

“Hey, Sid. Are you all right?”

“What would have happened to the camp follower,” said Sid, “if the river, confident in its dharma, had chosen to continue its flood?”

“That’s not possible,” said Doctor Brown.

“Pardon?”

“It’s basic dharmic theory. That part of our perfection that depends on others is also that part that we can expect from others. If a person and a river are in the world, then the limit of their dharmic excellence as they approach perfection is also in the world. The final perfection of all entities must coexist in . . . God, Nirguna Brahman, the Cantor-Deity, or what have you. Of course, this year’s models only really give an effective perfection around 98.3%.”

“Huh,” said Sid. “Then I have a theory.”

“Shoot.”

“The glitch isn’t a machine error,” Sid said. “It’s a dharma error. Something happened that meant that—to the limits of current technology—not everyone could be perfect at once.”

There was a thumping and a stampeding outside the satellite installation.

“Whee!” shouted Emily, riding by on the back of a water buffalo. She had a length of cord wrapped through its mouth as a bit and was slowly, surely, exhausting its strength.

“Inconceivable,” said Doctor Brown.

“I’m conceiving it right now!”

There was a long silence.

“But what kind of . . . ghoul could have needs so fundamentally incompatible with someone else’s that they couldn’t be 98.3% perfect at the same time without cascading system errors?”

“Whee!” shouted Emily, riding past the other way. The water buffalo seemed to be tiring.

“I’m betting on the sharks,” said Sid. “But possibly an evil flamingo.”

Doctor Brown cleared his throat uncertainly. “Well,” he said. “I figure the thing to do for now is to lower the output on Block 43′s models. If there’s some kind of communications breakdown that makes it impossible for everyone to harmonize at 98.3, maybe they can coexist at 90, 95% perfection.”

“And in the long term?”

“In the long term,” said Doctor Brown, “as the technology of human perfection gets better, and whatever little quirk you’ve found here gets resolved, someone will just have to have a dharma that bridges the gap.”

Sid sighed. He took out his dharma mini. He set it on “Full.” He stared at its face.

“This could be most of the glitches we’ve been seeing,” Sid said.

“I suppose.”

“The little ones, I mean. They’re usually when someone new logs on to the system. When, maybe, reconciling their goals and desires makes for a little hiccup as the system strives to adjust to a new local perfection.”

“Maybe.”

Sid waited for his thoughts to clear.

“. . . what if there isn’t a person whose basic nature spurs them to smooth over the irreconcilable gaps between people?” Sid said. “I mean, what if things get worse, instead?”

Doctor Brown made a little laughing noise.

“Sid,” he said. “Of course there’ll be someone like that.”

“Daddy!” shouted Emily, pounding on the door. “Daddy, I beat the water buffalo! With my fierce mole-like stamina!”

“It’s technologically inevitable,” said Doctor Brown.

The house is old and empty. Edmund’s father lives alone.

His name is Mr. Domel.

Mr. Domel has no wife. Edmund’s mother was young and beautiful but she left him in the sunshine of three summers past.

He has no servants. Mr. Edgars used to dust his grandfather clock and prepare his meals and wash the wooden floors. But Mr. Edgars is gone.

Edmund’s father sent him away.

Servants can’t be trusted.

He might have freed the wolf.

And, finally, Mr. Domel has no son. Edmund is far away. He attends boarding school. He studies at the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth.

“Why do I have to go?” Edmund asked, back when he was first sent off. “I’m not wayward! I’m quite well-behaved. Everyone comments on my decorum.”

“The school is my weapon,” Mr. Domel said.

This is a decision that Edmund’s father now regrets. Edmund still calls him, now and again, but he is distant and strange and has a wall around his heart.

“I eat people now,” says the Edmund-beast, on the phone.

Also, he eats people.

“That is a novel interpretation of decorum,” says Mr. Domel.

“It is a consuming hunger. I don’t think I should come home for the winter break. I might eat you.”

Edmund’s father thinks about how to broach the question that is nagging at his mind. Finally, he chides himself. Honesty, my good man. Honesty.

“. . . Was it me?” he asks.

“You?”

“Was I a bad father? Is that why you’re eating people?”

The Edmund-beast snorts.

“Better to blame the video games,” the Edmund-beast says. “The loose women. The ginger nuts. Oh, father, why would you think you’re important enough to make me an anthropophage?”

It is cutting and it is meant to be.

“One day,” says Mr. Domel, “the wolf will eat everyone. That’s why I didn’t have time for you as a child.”

“I know,” says the Edmund-beast.

The Edmund-beast makes spasmodic faces at the phone. It isn’t sure how to carry on this kind of conversation.

“It’s okay,” says the beast. “You can’t hurt me. There’s a wall around my heart.”

Long ago, the wall around Edmund’s heart was made of straw. Then the wolf huffed and he puffed and he blew it all away.

There was straw everywhere in the house for weeks.

Now the wall is made of wood.

“Thanks for calling,” says Mr. Domel.

“I love you, Dad,” says the Edmund-beast.

There’s a long, awkward moment. Then Mr. Domel fumbles the phone back onto the hook.

He goes to check on Edmund’s heart.

There’s a small altar in the Edmund-beast’s room. On it is a heart, and the heart is surrounded by a short wooden wall.

There is a howling from below.

Mr. Domel pats the wall. It is sound. It is solid. It is still standing.

So he goes, and he sits in his easy chair, and he remembers.

“Is that a cat?” asked the dwarf, long ago.

The dwarf lived under the ornamental bridge in Mr. Domel’s back yard.

“Yes,” said Mr. Domel. “I bought her for my son.”

“Does it have footfalls?” asked the dwarf. Its craggy face had a kind of avid look on it.

“No,” said Mr. Domel

“Because I could make footfalls for it,” said the dwarf.

Mr. Domel put the cat down. The cat jogged a few steps and then vigorously licked her hind leg. This entire procedure transpired in silence.

“Tell you what,” said the dwarf. “I’ll make it some footfalls, and trade them for your son’s heart. You know the cat’s footfalls in the wolf’s chain are fraying.”

Mr. Domel never really understood why the wolf’s chain was made of things like cat footfalls and mountain roots, but he accepted it as the kind of reification that dwarven smiths were prone to do.

“Fine,” said Mr. Domel.

Later the police arrested the dwarf and gave the heart back to Mr. Domel, but by then it was too late to put the heart back in.

“Stupid dwarves,” says Mr. Domel.

He can hear the distant clicking and clanking of the cat padding through the house. The cat miaos plaintively.

A few days pass.

“How is school?” Mr. Domel asks.

“I’m still not allowed to eat Peter,” says the Edmund-beast. “It’s very disappointing.”

“I bought a muzzle,” says Mr. Domel. “Like they used on Hannibal Lecter. If you wanted to come home for the holidays.”

“It wouldn’t contain me,” says the Edmund-beast.

“I could have Lethal bodyguards standing by,” says Mr. Domel.

“They wouldn’t stop me,” says the Edmund-beast.

“I could coat them in Lethal barbecue sauce,” says Mr. Domel.

“Aww.”

The Edmund-beast clicks its teeth.

“Hey, Dad,” he says. “What have I become?”

“Lethal,” Mr. Domel says.

That’s the brand of Edmund’s school. That’s the brand of everything around him. It’s the brand of the things that in a million subtle ways have steered the affairs of Edmund’s life.

It was a long time ago that Mr. Domel had named the brand. He’d been talking to Ms. Cullers, his marketing VP.

“I want one of those abstract brand names like Pepsi,” Mr. Domel said.

Ms. Cullers blinked.

“Abstract? Pepsi?” she asked.

“It isn’t?” Mr. Domel said.

“It’s the name of a forbidden god,” Ms. Cullers said. “A chthonic god of human sacrifice and the bubbly caverns beneath the earth. I’m pretty sure they drilled into her arteries to develop the delicious taste of Pepsi One.”

Mr. Domel waved his hand vaguely.

“Or Levi’s, then,” he said.

“Short for Leviticus.”

“. . . oh.”

Ms. Cullers looked at him intently. “Listen, Ed,” she said. “Marketing has to be honest. It has to start with a rational consideration of the product’s purpose, boiled down into a simple form. Otherwise the customer will recognize that you’re using the label to impose meaning on the product that it otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s the kiss of death! So, what’s the point of all these diversified products?”

“It’s to kill the wolf,” said Mr. Domel. “It’s all to kill the wolf.”

“‘Lethal,’” Ms. Cullers said.

The Edmund-beast’s voice is icy. “I did not ask to be part of your branding efforts, father.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Domel says.

“Damn it—”

But Mr. Domel is too tired to continue this conversation. He hangs up the phone.

Mr. Domel walks downstairs. He goes down into the basement. He looks at the wolf. It is flopped there, larger than a lion, wiser than an owl, clean, lean, and sleek.

“I am working on a boot,” says Mr. Domel.

He takes it out. It is a very large boot. It is made from scraps of many other boots. It is heavy.

“Like the one that’s supposed to stomp you some day.”

“That one would not suffice to stomp me,” says the wolf. “Perhaps if it were one thousand times as large. Or,” and here the wolf is nonchalant, “Not.”

Mr. Domel throws the boot up in the air. It comes down. It lands on the wolf. Its force is insufficient to consider it stomping.

The wolf flicks an ear.

“Alas,” says Mr. Domel, who had legitimately and desperately hoped that some unlikely magic would transpire.

“I’ll get out,” the wolf says. “Then I’ll kill everything, like I told your father and your father’s father and his.”

“But not Junior,” says Mr. Domel. “You never say that to him.”

The wolf lolls out its tongue. “Young Edmund will live to see it,” says the wolf. “That’s why I don’t have to tell him.”

The next day Mr. Domel goes to pick up the mail and the Edmund-beast is there outside his door.

The Edmund-beast’s posture is animalistic. Its hunger is a physical force. And all around the house there are students in yellow hats, watching.

Mr. Domel backs up into the house.

The Edmund-beast follows.

“I’ve decided that I don’t care about your stupid wolf,” says the Edmund-beast.

Mr. Domel bolts for the stairs. He makes it there a bit ahead of the Edmund-beast. He is tumbling down the stairs into the basement when the Edmund-beast grabs his wrist and starts to pull him back.

The wolf stands up.

The wolf howls.

The wolf’s breath is hot and it washes through the room. The sheer sound of it makes the Edmund-beast stagger back. Mr. Domel falls to the basement floor; and at the top of the stairs, the Edmund-beast wobbles back and forth in uncertainty.

The wolf huffs. The wolf puffs. The wolf blows down the wall around Edmund’s heart. For one long moment, the beast’s grip breaks. Edmund stares full into an understanding of what he has become.

“Oh!” he cries.

It is more a wail than a scream. And with it flows away the morale of the Edmund-beast, so that when the beast comes to the fore again it does not follow Mr. Domel down the stairs but instead it flees.

Mr. Domel looks at the wolf. The wolf looks back. It is sitting again.

“Thank you,” says Mr. Domel. “Unless you’re about to break free and raven through the house and eat me, in which case, get bent.”

The wolf laughs, quietly, to itself. It is a cheerful whuffling noise.

“What?” asks Mr. Domel.

“I do not like you either, much,” says the wolf. “But you are company worth preserving in these long last hours of my chains.”

This is a history of Mr. Kong.

541 years before the common era, Mr. Kong is still just a young boy. He lives in the city of Qufu. His father is dead. He lives in poverty with his mother. Sometimes he runs errands for her in the market.

That is what he has just finished doing when he hears gasps from everyone in the market.

“Hm?” he says. “Huh?”

He uses a very polite form for this question. Every adult around him would marvel at the precision of his language except that they are too busy marveling at something else. One of them points upwards and Mr. Kong sees what it is.

“Oh, my,” he says.

There is a maiden wrapped in winds, winds colored like fine silk, descending through the starkness of the sky into the Qufu market. Her eyes are closed. Her face is peaceful and aristocratic. She is surrounded in her flight by four great brooms, and before she lands the brooms sweep the dust away.

She lands.

Her eyes open. She looks around. For a long moment she assesses the situation. She says, in crisp clear speech, “I will need housing, food, pen, paper, and a temporary servant.”

The crowd is falling to its knees before her. They are offering her their worship. But young Mr. Kong has seen something that is even more urgent than worship.

The four brooms are rising slowly back into the air, and Mr. Kong has observed a clod of market filth clinging to the straw of the third.

It is difficult to know what precisely it is that passes through Mr. Kong’s mind at this juncture. He is, after all, a boy in the mold of the sages of old, and we all of us are not. However, it is reasonable to assume that it is something like this:

“Surely, those brooms are sent by a respected elder god, perhaps the August Personage in Jade! It is not appropriate that we of Qufu should send our filth to our elders; that’s like mailing one’s body water to the Emperor!”

So Mr. Kong moves through the crowd to the third broom. When he humbles himself before it, it hesitates in its rise and bobs a little lower. Taking this as an invitation, young Mr. Kong grasps the broom firmly by its handle and begins to scrape it clean against the ground.

“Young man,” says the woman. “Perhaps—”

Her comment, relevant or otherwise, comes slightly too late. The broom is thoroughly spooked by Mr. Kong’s treatment. It jerks off the ground, carrying Mr. Kong with it.

Mr. Kong has only a moment to contemplate the proprieties of this situation, and, as he is very young and does not yet understand the will of the heavens, this is not enough.

“Ah,” says Mr. Kong, still hanging on.

The broom races off into the sky.

One should not imagine that this is the kind of tale where Mr. Kong immediately throws one leg over the broomstick and affects a Quidditch-playing attitude. Nor is it the kind of story wherein he dangles helplessly for a time, falls off over the mist-shrouded mountains, and dies. In fact, it is the kind of history that specifically neglects to examine the manner of Mr. Kong’s travel, assuming that he found an approach to the situation both dignified and survivable, in accords with the broomstick-riding provisions of the lost eleventh volume of the Book of Rites.

When he lands at last, the brooms have traveled not, surprisingly, to Heaven but to a well deep in the quiet woods of Lu. On the edge of the well sits Wishing Boy.

“Oh,” says Wishing Boy.

He’s startled by Mr. Kong’s presence.

“Your pardon,” says Wishing Boy, “dear child. I did not expect the brooms to return with a passenger. Was there something unsatisfactory about their conduct?”

Mr. Kong blinks at Wishing Boy. Wishing Boy is a teenaged child with golden skin and a large opal set into his forehead. He is young but has an air of wisdom to him.

“There is no matter worth your concern,” says Mr. Kong.

“Good,” says Wishing Boy.

He closes his eyes. After a moment, he opens them. He says, “But wait. Then why are you here?”

“It was a regrettable incident,” summarizes Mr. Kong.

“I see.”

Wishing Boy smiles a little. “Youthful spirits, is it? You wished to taste the upper air?”

Mr. Kong closes his mouth firmly.

“Accident, then?”

“If you could kindly direct me to the city of Qufu,” says Mr. Kong, “then I can be on my way and I will not trouble you further.”

“The woods are full of tigers and giant snakes,” says Wishing Boy. “You would be torn to shreds and then get snakebite. Please, sit. Satisfy my curiosity; then I will send you back to Qufu on the wind.”

Mr. Kong takes a seat, after introductions and mild protestations..

“So,” says Wishing Boy. “I can see that you are a fine young man, full of humaneness. That is why I do not assume malicious intent on your part, and have not flung you into space to come down wherever fate directs you.”

“I wished to clap some of the filth off of the broom,” explains Mr. Kong.

Wishing Boy smiles.

“But,” says Mr. Kong, “I must admit that also I am curious how a broom should happen to fly.”

“It is no great matter,” says Wishing Boy. “When I was a younger child I fell into this well and became stuck. Worse, my head was partway under the water; to breathe, I needed to bend my neck painfully back. This was extremely distressing and forced me to develop what I call the alchemy of wishes: that is, the spiritual power to grant myself whatever I wish for. This freed me from the well but has other applications besides. For example, it is why the brooms fly: I wished to them, ‘you! Brooms! Fly!’”

“That is a great power,” says Mr. Kong, quite impressed.

“That is what I thought at first,” says Wishing Boy.

“At first?”

“Well,” says Wishing Boy, “at first, I thought that it was truly marvelous. I had been a poor child. I could barely afford to drink my own water and often I ate the dust from my clothing to survive. Now I could wish for gold and I would have gold. I became so wealthy that I could stick an opal in my head and still have leftovers for buying mansions and hiring servants.”

“Ah,” sighs Mr. Kong. He would have been wealthy, but his family had had to flee the state of Song.

“There was a girl, a princess. Her name was Qiguan. I had loved her from afar. Now I filled her heart with love for me, and abolished the societal conventions that separated us.”

Mr. Kong ponders that.

Wishing Boy raises an eyebrow.

“Your face shows some concern.”

“I mean no criticism,” says Mr. Kong. “But surely that was not correct.”

“No,” admits Wishing Boy. “It wasn’t.”

He looks up.

“I had thought these things would make me happy,” Wishing Boy says. “But they did not. Can you guess why?”

Mr. Kong thinks. He offers, carefully, “Is it a true love, if it is love born of wishes? Can you truly change your social place with magic? Is wealth truly wealth, if it is not earned?”

Now Wishing Boy laughs.

“I had not thought of that,” he says. “My. I suppose that would indeed make me unhappy, if my wishes were false. But no. It was subtler than that. You see, her love was true, real love. And that is how I understood that it is meaningless to search for love. All of my life I had seen the love of others as a prize to be won, but when that game became too easy I understood that it is their business, not mine, whether someone should love me. It was not worthless because it was false. It was worthless because being loved does not make me a lovable person, and that is what I had actually wanted.”

Mr. Kong considers that.

“And the wealth?” Mr. Kong asks.

“It was the same. To have wealth—that just means that I’d wished for it and nobody wished against it. It’s not a big deal! So why should I want wealth?”

“It is better than eating the dust from your clothing,” says Mr. Kong.

Wishing Boy smiles.

“That is true,” he says.

Mr. Kong hesitates. “Honorable Wishing Boy,” he says. “Please forgive me for asking. But it seems to me that you should wish an end to war.”

“Ah,” says Wishing Boy.

He shakes his head.

“I cannot do that, Mr. Kong,” Wishing Boy says. “To wish an end to war is to wish for humanity to change. I do not know how to wish for that. I like humanity.”

Mr. Kong gives Wishing Boy the first true smile he has shared thus far.

“I understand,” he says.

“So that is why I have sent the princess away,” says Wishing Boy. “That is why I do not live in my great mansions. I have decided to sit here at this well and practice austerities. I do this because I desire to be a better person, and also because wealth and privilege give me the luxury to practice austerities.”

Mr. Kong grins at Wishing Boy.

“That’s so,” Mr. Kong agrees. “A poor person goes hungry, and a rich person fasts.”

Wishing Boy laughs.

“But tell me,” says Mr. Kong. “If you do not wish for love, or wealth, or privilege, or an end to war—if you have no wants because you do not think that there is a purpose to having things—then what do you wish for?”

“I wish that everyone should be freed of suffering,” says Wishing Boy.

Mr. Kong frowns. He looks seriously at Wishing Boy.

“But that will not happen,” Mr. Kong says. “You are a very powerful wisher but not even the August Personage in Jade could accomplish that.”

“It is very difficult,” agrees Wishing Boy. “But I am not alone.”

That is the end of their conversation, for the purposes of this history, though there are further pleasantries that pass.

It is thirty years before Mr. Kong returns to that well, a teacher set on learning more about the world. When he does, he finds it desolate, and no Wishing Boy remains.

It is at first Sellurt’s assumption that Noah is exaggerating regarding the number of animals stored on the Ark.

He can hear them, of course. There are always sounds. There is trumpeting and barking and buzzing and keening and at night there is a thin distant wailing that merges with the creaking and shifting and croaking of the wood.

And he sees no small number of them—the zebras, the antelope, the ostriches, the platypuses, and the lions, of course, the lions, more than two of them, more than seven of them, more than he can count, their great padded feet always stalking through the decks.

There is impressive biodiversity on the Ark.

But Sellurt has studied the Earth. He knows how many species there are.

They cannot all be on the Ark.

They are too many.

They are endless.

Mehanem—or Noah, as everyone calls him—is always busy. He does not have time to meet with Sellurt and Morgan. Thus it is that the two visitors from the Galactic Confederacy are abandoned there to the depths below deck, to watch through the portholes the endless dreary rain and listen to the skittering and scratching in the walls. Sometimes Sellurt’s eyes will close and he will wake up to the feather-soft touch of a spider or mosquito crawling across his leg; and each time, he observes with interested horror, it is a different species than he has ever seen before.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Morgan, after a while.

Morgan is sitting at the window, dropping coins from the porthole, watching for and failing to see that moment when they strike the water and vanish into the immensity of the deep.

“It doesn’t matter?” Sellurt asks.

“I mean,” Morgan says, “humans can’t breathe water, right?”

In Sellurt’s mind there is a momentary fantasy of drowning one of Mehanem’s sons, the human’s arms and legs flailing, his face slowly turning blue, his animal noises grinding to a halt.

Then Sellurt shakes his head.

“No,” he agrees. “They can’t.”

“Then their civilization is dead. It doesn’t matter that we’re not able to invite them to join the Galactic Confederacy. They’re dead. It’s over.”

It has been seven days now and the rain has not ceased to fall.

“Surely it’s just this subcontinent,” says Sellurt.

Morgan looks out.

“A whole world can’t die to rain,” Sellurt says.

“It’s surprising,” says Morgan. “How many animals there are. Whether or not he really got them all. Where do you think they go, when we can’t see them?”

On the ninth day, when Sellurt goes to the hatch that leads to the upper levels, he finds two lions there. They are between him and the hatch. They have gingivitis, thanks to their poor dental hygiene, and their maws are dripping blood.

“You’ll have to let me by,” says Sellurt.

But the male lion yawns, with its great yellow teeth, and its breath is rank.

“God,” mutters Sellurt.

He backs away.

There is the sound of hooves on the deck beside him, the heat of fur in the air, the whining of a fly, but when he turns to track the beast’s location with his eyes he cannot see anything but the wooden halls.

Sellurt finds a place where he can hear human footsteps, endless human footsteps, pacing on the decks above. He hammers on the ceiling. He shouts. He is dignified at first but then he screams until he’s hoarse, until he cannot breathe, until he falls and curls upon himself below.

The air is thick and fuzzy and he is sure he is surrounded by the beasts, but when he opens his eyes they are not there.

“Are you okay?” Morgan says, when he finds him.

“I’m fine,” Sellurt says.

“Okay.”

“I’m fine,” Sellurt repeats, and then he says: “This is intolerable.”

A koala shares their evening meal that day. It is the first time that either of the aliens have ever seen one, and the last they ever will.

When Sellurt checks the hatch again, the lions are still there.

Every time he checks the hatch, the lions are still there.

The humans are beyond Sellurt and Morgan’s reach.

“It must be Noah,” Sellurt tells Morgan. “The humans are more advanced than we believed.”

“Hm?”

“The rain. This isn’t natural rain. It’s something they’re doing. They have a machine. Noah is doing it. He has a machine.”

“Why would they kill everyone off?”

“Why aren’t there more of them on the boat?” Sellurt says. “Why were they all left to drown? There’s plenty of room. They could fit twenty, thirty more families in here. But the lions kept them away. The lions stood outside the Ark and kept them away. He wanted them to die.”

“Don’t obsess,” Morgan says.

“What?”

“We’re an advanced galactic species,” says Morgan. “I’m sure we can figure out some way to deal with lions, if we have to. We could use our stunners. Or some kind of telepathic mind control. The options,” and he gestures extravagantly, “are endless.”

Sellurt sits down heavily.

“Yes,” he says, bitterly. “I’m sure we could.”

There is a great long-legged bug probing at his hand. He’s not sure where it came from. It wasn’t there when he sat down.

He will not shudder, Sellurt decides. He is a citizen of the Galactic Confederacy. He is above such distress.

His meeting with Noah will wait.

On the eighteenth day, Morgan observes, “There are too many animals.”

There is a distant sound of slithering. It is very dark and the damp seeps in through the wood.

“Too many?”

“They are endless,” says Morgan. “Never mind what Noah claims. There are too many different animals, just the ones we’ve seen. They can’t all fit in here, not with this much free space.”

The rats stare at him from the rafters, their red eyes glowing. There is the dry scraping noise of scales on wood. There is a peculiar, choking cough.

“They have to fit,” Sellurt says. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

“There’s no room.”

Sellurt leans back. His eyes are blank and white. He is thinking. He is counting, in his head.

“There’s no room,” he agrees.

The air is hot. It is the steam of a zoo, of a kennel, of a hundred thousand bodies pumping warmth and stench into the air.

Sellurt swats at his arm.

“Why,” he asks plaintively, “did Noah save the wasps?”

There is silence for a time.

“We’ll go,” says Morgan. “We’ll go. We’ll deal with the lions. We’ll face them down.”

“Yes,” says Sellurt.

Something clammy brushes against Morgan’s face. He waves his hand at it but it is gone.

“Stupid frogs,” Morgan adds.

They rise.

They walk in the direction of the hatch.

Morgan stops.

“Don’t stop,” Sellurt says. “We have to get out of here. We have to get to the hatch. I think we will go mad, Morgan, if we stay.”

Morgan is staring at the air, with his head tilted to one side, a peculiar expression on his face.

“Morgan?”

“We have walked the length of the Ark,” Morgan says. “And more. And still there is no hatch.”

“Ridiculous,” says Sellurt.

And there in the dimness and in no specific direction: not east, not north, not south, not west, Sellurt can make out a shaft that rises through the levels of the ship, above and below, through more floors and spaces than he can count.

“Don’t you see?” Morgan says, his voice immensely small and tiny in the emptiness of the Ark.

“No,” protests Sellurt. “No. I don’t.”

“It’s endless.”

Sellurt can feel the breath of the lions at his back, and there is everywhere to run.

1. Ms. Dorothy Adams

It is December 10, 2012, and Ms. Dorothy Adams is lost in a magical land.

On the ground at her feet is the vegetable boy. He could be dying, she thinks. He could be dead.

There are at least ten and perhaps fifteen of the tiger-things closing in on her position. She does not recognize them. They are no earthly beast. Their claws and fangs testify regardless to a tangible and certain prowess.

She holds a makeshift club—a stripped-down fallen branch—in her hands.

“This is the measure of a life,” she thinks: “What you’ll risk it for.”

2. The Spry Old Man

Her story properly begins with the rendition. She was in the process of returning home from Europe to her parents’ Virginia estate when an irregularity in her documentation incited the agents on the scene to draw her aside. In security she languished, for a short period of time, before the Agency came to speak to her; and when they found her intransigent in her unwillingness to profess false crimes—as one could only expect from a woman, no, more, a Virginian! of the United States Armed Forces—they handcuffed her and placed her on an outgoing flight.

Her guard, an old man in the Agency’s dark uniform, was so spry he could barely sit still in his seat. He was alive with a fierce and radiant energy; he was smiling, he laughed when the pilot made intercom jokes, and when his partner came back into the cabin to bring them their meals, he came very close to cheering.

From time to time during the flight, he would pat her shoulder and smile to her—an intimacy that she, naturally, rebuffed.

“You’re so lucky,” he said.

She gave him a frosty look.

“You’ll see!” he assured her.

The plane shook a little in the wind and there was the soft pitter-pat of weather on the hull.

“They told me that in certain places in the world,” said Ms. Adams, “it was legitimate, no, standard practice to employ torture. So I expect that is my situation; and I would not call it lucky; but I will not break.”

“Oh, there’s torture,” said the spry old man. “There’s plenty of torture in the world. There’s all kinds of horror. But not where you’re going.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Then I don’t see the point,” she said.

“The elimination of potential difficulties,” he said, and his smile was so brilliant that in any other circumstance Ms. Adams would have smiled back; but as things were, and expecting as she did rendition not to a magical land but to Syria or Guantanamo, his smile struck her as evidence of intense sociopathic bent.

She turned her eyes away towards the window. She frowned.

“It’s hailing fucking marshmallows,” she said.

“Language, young lady,” he said, “Language!”

She was forty-five.

3. Thrown

At a certain point in time and space, in response to an unknown signal, the spry old man seized her from her seat. She did not struggle, not at first, because he had a gun and the circumstances were poor; but when he began to force her towards the door, and with the plane still in flight, she fought for her very life.

“Quiet!” he said, and struck her on the head. Her vision went white. Her ears rang. Then she could hear the opening of the door; and while she desperately tried to remember how her arms and legs worked, he released her from her restraints and flung her from the plane.

“Cheerio!” he cried, and “Godspeed!”

She fell.

Ms. Dorothy Adams, Private First Class, passed through a layer of clouds, the soft springy substance of them parting only reluctantly as she hit. She disturbed a flock of stairstep birds in flight, her fall broken awkwardly and embarrassingly by first one then the other as she caromed through the sky. Then there was nothing beneath her but a spreading green land, and she said, “I shall, at least, have a story to tell in Heaven.”

Then, with a grace in tragedy and a grim resolve to—if at all possible—survive the impact that would follow, she closed her eyes, made her body limp, and thought of distant lands.

4. Waking

It was the sun that woke her: the rising sun, over the hills. She mumbled and she whined, for a moment not Ms. Dorothy Adams but the small child she had once been, tossing in her bed at the Virginia estate, resenting fiercely such early awakenings. Then the cold realization of her situation struck. She was at once on her feet and staring about.

“I am unbruised,” she thought, and a dizzying wave of confusion passed over her. “I am in a forest and I am still dressed in my clothes from three days ago and I am unbruised.”

In the distance she could hear bird calls, so many bird calls, and an occasional, terrible throaty roar.

To her credit, Ms. Dorothy Adams wasted no time on her confusion. She was a woman, no, more, a Virginian! of the United States Armed Forces. Her first priority was not to understand but to survive. She tuned her senses to their fullest and their most alert. She seized a fallen branch from the ground and stripped it of its twigs and bark. She placed her back against a tree.

Slowly, because of the low priority and reliability of this sensory data, she came to realize that from the branches of the trees around her hung not nuts or flowers but roast turkey; saving, of course, for those from which hung clumps of potatoes or bowls of stuffing, and where the birds had cracked them open, she saw that the potatoes were mashed and buttered inside their skin.

“Gracious me,” she swore, her gutter mouth forsaking her. “It’s a proper feast!”

5. The Vegetable Boy

This magical scene would no doubt have ended with a fine repast or a psychotic break, save that a certain other event intervened; that being that the vegetable boy, fleeing the pursuit of a pack of Kazimajars, burst at that very moment into the clearing.

He was handsome, for a vegetable boy: his hair was green, his skin a fine nut-color, and his eyes as warm as the spry old man’s were bright. He wore fine purple raiment with a white silk undershirt. He was tired, panting, his clothing torn and the leaves in his hair half-wilted; but nevertheless he had some energy left to him.

Ms. Adams had been, during her native country’s unfortunately prolonged excursion in Iraq, reckoned the second-best sword in all the Middle East; though, of course, her skill with the gun was far more relevant. Thus she did not hesitate in considering herself the vegetable boy’s superior in personal combat, and, reasoning that he should have information of value to her, she confronted him. With a lithe step and a fierce demeanor she stepped out and brought her makeshift club to his throat; or so, at least, she had intended.

“Foul!” cried the vegetable boy, stepping back; and from the back of his hand grew a great long thorn, which he brought across to parry her club. “Treachery!”

As she did not know how much time there was to waste, Ms. Adams wasted none; she disengaged her weapon and attempted to strike him on the head. In this she would have succeeded, save that the thorn was amazingly swift in motion. Each blow she attempted he parried or reversed, and as she fenced with her opponent she realized that here was a boy, albeit a boy apparently made principally of vegetable matter, who could easily have ranked as one of the top five swords in the Middle East. After three more exchanges, she found herself admiring him, not so much for his skill but for his style; and after a passata-sotto lunge had failed her, forcing her into an awkward, stumbling retreat while the thorn stabbed about her face, the innate courtesy of her birth overcame her dedication and she exclaimed, “Such a waste that you should be an enemy!”

“The same,” he said, and stepped back a moment to salute. “For I had scarcely expected to encounter a princess of such beauty and such skill in this Kazimajar-infested region, much less find myself wood-to-wood with her.”

“I am not a princess,” she said.

“Then what are you?” asked the vegetable boy.

“Ms. Dorothy Adams,” she said, “Private First Class of the United States Armed Forces.”

“Well,” he said. “It seems to me that a Private First Class is much the same as a princess, only perhaps a bit fiercer; so you must pardon my misunderstanding.”

“What are you?” she said. “What am I doing here? Where is this place?”

“I am the hope of the vegetable tribe,” he said. “When I am ready to plant myself, I will tame this region, and make it habitable for my kind. As for what you are doing here, I cannot say; and as for this place, well, it is the Peapod Forest of Gillikin, as its unusual green color should indicate.”

Then she is staggered; then she says, “I have taken rather a journey—”

But the vegetable boy’s hand goes to his side; he clutches at a tear in his clothing, where his flesh has started of a sudden to leak a dark purple ichor.

“Oh, dear,” he said. He smiled at her. “I guess those beasts back there were more accurate than I’d thought.”

“Beasts?”

“It’s all the activity,” he said. He stares at his hand, which is purple. “I’m sorry. I’m going to pass out now, and here I’ve hardly just met you.”

And she could hear the beasts that hunted him approach.

6. The Tiger-Things

They are everywhere: the hunting Kazimajars, great cats of a sort but with patches of serpent-scale and bear-fur and the voices of men.

“He is our prey,” whines one of them.

“Tasty, tasty vegetable boy.”

And Ms. Adams, with the stern strength accordant to a woman of the United States Armed Forces, denies them. She stands over his fallen body and says, “Find something else.”

Some of them are circling around behind her. She can hear them.

“A turkey. Or mashed potatoes,” Ms. Adams says.

“He’s tastier,” whispers one of the beasts.

She has no time; the position is rapidly becoming untenable. She steps forward and whirls her club and cracks that beast upon its face. It reels back, stunned and whimpering: “You hit me!” it declares.

“I’ll beat all of you to a pulp,” she says. “I’ll show you what it is to fight a woman of Virginia!”

She clubs another sideways. It staggers into a tree. Spinning to drive back another, she unleashes a war cry: an unearthly yell, terrifying, the cry of a goddess come down to make war among men. And there is fear in them, and the will of the pack is breaking, and the Kazimajars are scattering, but there is one, the largest of them, the savage beast named Groth, who does not succumb to fear. He remains where the others have fled. He leaps upon her; she is borne down to the ground under his weight; his teeth bite out her throat, his claws score her sides. Her arms are numb and she cannot feel the club in her hand and she is only thinking, “I must throw him off and drive him back before I die.”

And as a last act to give credit to her name, a moment of heroism to prove that even in these troubled lands the life of a woman—no, more, a Virginian!—was not without account, she woke her arm to life and placed the club under his neck and thrust it upwards; and gagging, wretching, in great misery, the Kazimajar staggered away.

She lay there, soft and quiet, waiting to die.

But in this magical land of childhood, there is no heroism; there is no accounting; there is no virtue to such deeds. Death is unsacred here, and she realizes, when the moon rises and the blood that flows from her and the vegetable boy fades to a trickle, that there is not even any pain.

A tide of hopeless rises in her.

She tastes a sick horror in the back of her throat: for these are the lands of childhood.

Then she sets the matter aside and sits up slowly and turns her thoughts to the south, where if there is an airport it most likely resides; for it is not meet for a woman—no, more, a Virginian!—of the United States Armed Forces to surrender easily to those who find death unsacred.

1. Build a rocket and fly to the sun.

The rocket is made of ice.

It will melt.

Also the fuel ignition may prove problematic.

All in all not the best idea.

2. Attach blocks of ice to pads, affix to a tiger’s feet, and slide tiger around on your hardwood floors.

This is an entertaining spectacle but tigers are an endangered species.

For example if you have stairs the tiger might slide onto the stairs, endangering them.

Or if someone ships you yappy dogs from amazon.com and you let them out because you do not rationally expect the large box from amazon.com to contain multiple yappy dogs, the dogs might gang up in primal rage and assault the relatively helpless tiger, endangering them.

Also tigers are not allowed in your house and may eat you if the floor proves insufficiently slippery.

3. Sleep buried under large piles of ice.

Regardless of what you may have read in the Enquirer this will not turn you into a yeti. Yetis are dependent on fringe characteristics of the Himalayan ecosystem to survive and it is not possible with current technology to transform into a yeti using domestic ice.

4. Pizza topping.

At first your mouth will feel pleasantly unburnt. However you cannot swallow the pizza until the ice melts, at which point it will offer no protection and the hot cheese and hotter tomato sauce will cause the usual burns. Ice in pizzas is best confined to stuffed crusts and the flavorful ice crystals that gazpacho pizza sometimes features.

5. Pens

Do not use ice as a pen. The idea that mortal works are inherently transient and pass like the winter’s snow at the coming of the spring is descriptive and not prescriptive. Also you can’t write anything with a clear pen which means using black ice which can kill unsuspecting hackers trying to download your writing.

6. Grand unified field theory

Bohr’s attempt at sticking the various field theories together with ice failed. As did his similar attempt involving tongues, field theories, and cold flagpoles. You’re not better at this than Bohr, so you need to find a new approach, like melting down various field theories in a pot or superglue.

7. Substituting for Folger’s Crystals

In general you cannot hope to win the arms race with Folger’s. Whenever I have attempted to substitute anything for Folger’s Crystals they have cleverly reversed my gambit and turned my initial sense of victory into ashes in my mouth. Sometimes, I think, they even substitute Folger’s Crystals for those ashes, although there is no time to notice any difference before I must swallow that bitterness of their revenge.

Very very tired. The canon entry slated for today will appear on Saturday or after the letters column, basically depending on whether my petition to the Vatican for two extra days in August goes through. With best wishes to all, including my friend who is awake again and still herself. Yay! (Historical note: this entry and that bit of the dedication was actually written about a week ago, which is why I’m cheering something you already know!)