Posts Tagged ‘Elephants’

16 items.

Wuxia Mumakil1

by Jenna on March 29th, 2004

In Middle-Earth, there is no union so sacred as the bond of friendship between a dwarf and an elf. When Legolas died, Elrond assumed his responsibility for Gimli. Yet the two of them could never be friends. To befriend Gimli would dishonor Legolas’ memory; and however much Elrond longed to share an ale and a story with the dwarf, he could not. Separated by the shadow of the dead, the two were doomed to live forever apart.

It came to pass that both of them met an oliphant, or mumak, who possessed great potential. It was forbidden to teach the secret arts of the elves to the mumakil—yet Elrond and Gimli wished to try. They feared if they did not that ambition and lost potential would taint the mumak’s soul and make it a poisoned elephant.

To assert its independence, the mumak stole the mystic howdah called the Green Destiny, filled with the dark riders of Sauron. It carried the howdah away to the distant forest, tall and green, where Elrond confronted it at last.

1 requires familiarity with the Lord of the Rings and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Great green trees rise on every side. Their branches rustle and sway in the wind.

Elrond looks grimly at the mumak. It looks back. It’s a giant elephant. It has four tusks. Its riders serve Sauron.

“Your martial spirit is great,” Elrond says, “but your anger poisons your spirit. Become my apprentice. I will teach you the way of the elves.”

The mumak charges. Like a feather, Elrond drifts upwards into the branches. The mumak snorts and jumps after him. It lands lightly on a branch.

Elrond’s branch sways. Swoosh. Swoosh.

Elrond fires an arrow. Swoosh. Swoosh.

The mumak tosses its head. Then it charges. It tries to trample Elrond. Elrond darts aside. The mumak stands at the end of the branch. The branch sways. Swoosh. Swoosh.

Elrond fires five times. The recoil sends his branch swooping away. The mumak trumpets uneasily as the arrows pepper its flesh. Swoosh. Swoosh.

The mumak charges Elrond and attempts to gore him. He catches hold of its tusk. His eyes closed, he lets it carry him backwards. Then, as the mumak stops, Elrond steps off onto a nearby branch. The wind blows him and the mumak apart. Swoosh. Swoosh.

The mumak wiggles its head. Elrond, who speaks the secret language of giant martial arts elephants, understands its meaning. The mumak is saying: “If you can defeat me in five moves, I will become your apprentice.”

Their branches sway together. The mumak takes a step; Elrond takes another. The mumak gores at him. Elrond steps aside. Then Elrond takes the fifth move, and suddenly the mumak no longer has its howdah. Elrond balances it in his hand. The riders look perturbed.

The mumak trumpets: “You cheated.”

Elrond sighs, and tosses the howdah into a pool deep below.

The mumak hesitates. Then it cries: “My riders! They’ll all die!”

“A true master needs no howdah,” Elrond says. “The desire for excellence is the only monkey on his back.”

The mumak dives off the branch towards the water below.

“I told you that you couldn’t save it,” growls Gimli.

Elrond looks at Gimli. There is a sorrow in his gaze that no words can express.

Uncomfortable, the dwarf looks down. “Well, you can’t,” he grumbles. “Some things can’t be fixed.”

“Ah,” murmurs Elrond. “This is a world of sorrow.”

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The Division1

by Jenna on April 7th, 2004

1 inexplicable unless you have seen an abundance of Japanese animation or comics, though no less accurate for all of that.

It is the beginning of time, and all the animals are lined up before the Presence to receive their special gifts.

“Weasels,” says the Voice. “You shall receive the backing of a strange, mystical organization that may or may not have the best interests of the world at heart.”

The weasels scamper with joy. Then they scurry off to the secret underground base. They show their ID. They are escorted inside. There, the grand weasel glares down at them. He intends to wring every drop of performance from them. Their youthful idealism is simply grease for the gears.

“Prairie dogs,” says the Voice. “You shall receive the ability to transform from your normal, ordinary clothing into special fuku by barking.”

The prairie dogs peek up from their holes. Then they sink back down. It’s so embarrassing! Why couldn’t the Voice have chosen someone else for this socially awkward destiny?

“Elephants,” the Presence thunders. “You shall be stalked by a mysterious bishounen. He may be your lover, or he may be your greatest enemy.”

The elephants pragmatically consider this. One trumpets. Elephants don’t really like losing their head over mysterious bishounen. Then suddenly he appears. He has a swirly cape. He has a mask. He’s stunningly cute. All reservation is lost. Little hearts appear in the eyes of all the elephants. They toss their heads and trample one another in an attempt to get to him. Then, just as suddenly, he’s gone.

“Rabbits,” says the Voice. “You shall receive the ability to combine into a giant super-rabbit. One of you can form the head. Four of you, the legs. Optionally, you may combine with a sixth rabbit for reproductive purposes.”

The rabbits twitch their noses thoughtfully. That’s a useful power.

“Amoebae,” murmurs the Presence. “You shall go to special boarding schools, where each of you will have a harem of adoring aliens.”

The amoebae wriggle with glee. Then, one by one, they realize that they reproduce asexually. This diminishes their anticipation.

“Leeches,” the Voice asserts. “You shall be secretive and romantic vampires, drinking the blood of humanity. No one shall understand your pain.”

The leeches sink below the surface of the water, dodging the terrible rays of the sun.

The Voice drones on, and to each their gifts; and one to each and all the animal kinds; all save people, who hid from the shadow of the Presence and received no gift at all.

“It would have just been something perverted,” people mutter, but that’s really just sour grapes.

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Scrape. Scrape. Crunch.

by Jenna on June 26th, 2004

Scrape. Scrape. Rumble. Scrape.

Martin staggers in. He’s in pajamas. He looks frazzled.

“Jane,” he says. “It’s 3am. What are you doing?”

“I’m moving pieces of paper labeled ‘table’, ‘chair’, ‘washing machine’, and ‘industrial elephant!’”

Martin hesitates. He looks at the floor. Jane shuffles the pieces of paper around. They’re square. They have labels. They have pictures, too. The pictures are crude. One could easily mistake the industrial elephant for a retail buffalo. But Jane’s lack of perspective drawing skills is not what surprises him.

“Why is it making so much noise?” he finally says.

She looks down. She tries not to giggle.

“Symbol-referent confusion.”

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The Elephant Gun

by Jenna on October 22nd, 2004

It’s the Whoville outback. It’s not very big. It’s got some grass, and some animals, and a set of telephone poles. A pair of sneakers hang from the telephone wires.

John is out shooting elephants in the Whoville outback. It isn’t working very well. For one thing, he hasn’t found any elephants. For another, he’s out of ammunition.

“Cindy!” he yells.

Cindy comes running out of the house. She looks up at him. One lock of hair hangs in a perfect curl right in front of her forehead.

“I need more solid shot,” he says.

“Have you killed an ollyphant?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Just a barn.”

Her face falls.

“It was working with the elephants,” he confides.

Cindy brightens. “I’ll get you more ammo!” she says. She runs inside. She comes back with a box of solid shot. She hands it to him proudly.

“Thank you,” he says. He ruffles her hair.

“I remember the trenches of God,” she says.

He looks a bit sad.

“They were pretty,” she says.

“Shh,” he says. He ruffles her hair some more. No matter how hard he tries, the curl always falls back to the exact center of her forehead. “We don’t need the trenches. We don’t need all that fancy theological stuff. People are people wherever they are.”

He whirls. His elephant sense tingles. He fires.

“Yay!” says Cindy. “You got Mommy’s sneakers back!”

“Ah,” he says. “Yes.”

“They fell to the ground,” she says. “Even though our world is very small. Why did they do that?”

“Whoville is spinning very fast,” he says. It’s an official handwave passed down to him by Whoville scientists. “It generates artificial gravity.”

Cindy reflects.

“I remember the trenches of God,” she says again.

“Shh,” he says. “We’re still just as good. Even if we aren’t right there next to the trenches, they’re still in our hearts. People are people, wherever they are.”

He whirls. He shoots, anticipating an elephant sense tingle. There is no tingle. There is no elephant. The noise does startle a duck, which quacks indignantly and takes off. He considers shooting the duck, but he is hunting elephants, and there are few things John abhors more than mission creep.

“Why can ducks fly?” Cindy asks.

“Whoville isn’t spinning hard enough to ground a duck,” he says.

“The trenches were pretty,” she says. She reflects. She holds her hands wide apart. “They were this big. And it was like they cradled our world.”

“They did,” John says. “They gave us our place. They held us close and made us wise. But we don’t need the trenches, Cindy. People are people, wherever they are.”

“We could make our own,” she says. “We could dig them, in the dirt!”

John laughs. “We already have them,” he says.

“We do?”

“The world’s full of trenches,” he says.

He points down. “Between the stalks of grass. Between the hill and the dale.”

He points up. “Between the clouds, there are the trenches of the sky.”

John grins at her. “Why, Cindy, there are even trenches in my gun.”

“There are?”

“Yes,” he says. “They’re all along the sides. They’re called rifling or grooves. They make the bullet spin so that it can fly straight.”

Cindy laughs.

“What’s so funny?” John says.

“Trenches everywhere,” she says. “It’s like God isn’t special!”

“Well,” John says, “I figure that people are made in the image of God. And guns are made in the image of the Godship.”

Cindy looks very serious, all of the sudden. “So the bullets are like Whoville?”

“Yes,” John says. “There could even be little people just like us living on each bullet I fire.”

“A little Cindy,” she says, “and a little John!”

“Yes,” he agrees. “That’s why it’s very important that I find an elephant. It’d be horrible if little Cindy and little John lived their lives in vain.”

“But it’d be okay,” she says. “Right? I mean, people are people, wherever they are.”

“Yes,” he says.

“What if Whoville doesn’t make it to the promised land?” she asks.

His elephant sense tingles. He turns. He fires. There’s an appalled trumpeting and a horrible thump.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I like to think He’d forgive.”

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Why Don’t Ducks Have Hides?

by Jenna on January 5th, 2005

Ducks don’t have hides. They have feathers!

Bears have hides. That’s why you can’t see them. Look! There are no bears in evidence.

Geese have down. Down is a quark. Geese are indeterminate! If you observe geese, they collapse. That’s why geese aren’t used to guard houses any more. Burglars got too observant!

Elephants have hides, but Daredevil can see them. This is because he does not actually see. Instead he has enhanced all of his other senses.

Giraffes have spots. Here and there. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. You get through the bad spots to get back to the good spots. That’s the giraffe attitude towards life.

Fetuses have placenta. The placenta is a form of currency. It is a medium of exchange. Fetuses use the placenta to obtain goods and services. Fetuses have a strong economy. Everybody invests in fetuses. That’s why they don’t use pladimas or plaquarteras. It’s too much money. Fetuses don’t have anything they need to buy that would merit upgrading their currency past the cent. They could get a Ferrari, but it wouldn’t fit into the womb. It would need to be a mini-Ferrari, and those are nice and all, but at a certain point you just can’t have miniaturized fetus versions of everything. It’s bad enough that they can buy crack, nicotine, and subscriptions to special fetus-enabled massively multiplayer online games.

Wolves have fur. This makes wolves furries. Since they’re already wolves, they don’t pretend to be wolves. They pretend to be humans. A small excerpt from wolf furry-play follows.

The alpha male struts in. He puts down his briefcase. He says, “Hello, honey, I am home! Since you do not need estrus to stimulate your sexual interest, perhaps you would be up for a rousing bout of Church-endorsed missionary position sex?”

“Oh, no, honey, not now! I am too busy shooting my gun at the wolf who culled the weakest members of our herd of cows! Bang!”

“That sounds like fun. Shooting wolves improves the strength of their gene pool! But surely we could have sex and shoot wolves at the same time?”

“That is very kinky. I admire your dirty mind!”

“Bang!”

“Bang!”

Together: “Bang!”

That is how wolves imagine human intercourse must be.

Birds feather their nests. Invest in birds! In the old days, everyone invested in birds. That made social mobility very easy. Today, few people invest in birds. Instead, they give them to other people. That’s their investment mistake!

Lions have manes. Sewer lions have sewer manes. Gas lions have gas manes. Sewer lions are like regular lions but they live in the sewer. They have long flowing hair. They stink. They are greenish. Gas lions live in the upper atmosphere. They are ethereal. They also stink, but it is only because the gas company adds a foul smell to them. Newborn gas lions are odorless killers. Legerdelions have legerdemanes. They’re tricky, though, so I can’t explain them here.

American eagles have lush heads of obviously natural hair. They’re not just the Presidents of the hair club for birds. They’re also members!

Fish have scales. They weigh your soul against a feather. The feathers are just laying around in the ocean. They’re duck feathers. They are very heavy. A fish weighs your soul on the scales to determine whether you deserve Heaven. Then the fish realizes that it cannot breathe air. It flops about in increasing agony. Someone hits it with a rock. That’s pretty much the end of things for fish.

Giraffes, on the other hand, don’t die when they find themselves out of the ocean. Maybe it’s because their lungs can breathe air. Maybe it’s because they’re immortal! Or maybe it’s just because nobody hits them with a rock.

Lemurs have lema. It’s a special kind of skin. It’s also used for lemons. That’s why lemurs seem so zesty all the time.

Clocks have faces. They are good at facing their doom. They know that they are counting down the seconds to their own oblivion, but this does not bother clocks.

Sharks have sharkskin. Ducks don’t like being eaten by sharks. When a shark attacks, the ducks try to hide. But they don’t have hides! They have feathers. This is sad for the ducks, but good news for the fish.

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Flood

by Jenna on June 3rd, 2005

The antelope race beside the Ark.

The waters are glassy, sometimes, when the rain slows down. They are rich in color. The hoofprints of the antelope are like the dents of great raindrops.

The antelope have wide feet and a powerful light foot technique. For seventeen days they keep their balance on the water. Yet slowly, as the days pass, they sink deeper and deeper into the shining waters until at last they drown.

“There’s no room for the hippos,” Ham says. “We’ll have to eat them.”

“No eating the hippos,” says Noah.

“But Dad!”

Noah considers. “There are those birds,” he says, “that fly into your urethra when you’re peeing and nest inside your crotch. We could eat them.”

Ham considers that.

“Okay,” he says.

The seven-limbed howlers struggle upwards from the cities below. They flail. They howl. They reach the surface and fill their great and terrible lungs with air. Then they sink, again, slowly, pathetically, and hoard their energy for the next long breath.

The eagles circle tiredly in the sky above.

Shem and Ham descend into the Ark.

The deeper they go into the Ark, the more tightly crowded the animals become. It is the nature of the construction of the Ark that any number of animals can be packed within it; near the bottom, Shem believes, the density of packed animals becomes asymptotically infinite. But they do not need to go that far.

“Good sheep,” says Shem, passing a sheep.

“Good cow,” says Ham, passing the cows.

“Good crocodi—BAD crocodile!” says Shem. Shem brandishes his broom at the crocodile. It reluctantly turns away and snaps its mouth closed. It slithers deeper, slithers down, its long green body vanishing under a cluster of chickens, wrens, doves, owls, game hens, and wildebeests, and it is gone.

“Good hippo,” says Ham, grudgingly, as they pass.

The urethra birds are not very far down. They are good at gaming the ecosystem for maximum advantage. But it does not save them now.

“Bawk!” proclaims one urethra bird, startled, as Ham grabs it around the neck.

“Ch-caa!” declares the other, in some distress, as Shem seizes it in turn.

The axe descends.

“It’s natural selection,” says Noah, as he chews on a leg. “Those that do not please me, die. Evolutionary pressure driven by the seething core of the Ark will inevitably create a new generation of animals better suited to the exigencies of my desires.”

Days and nights pass.

In the third and fourth weeks, great clusters of ostriches swim by.

The ostriches are not happy with the rain. United, they are strong. Solitary, they are weak. But the rain and flood tries their solidarity.

One by one, ostriches commit social errors.

One by one, the clusters drive them out.

The stragglers are easy prey for the sharks, the icthyocampi, and the cold.

“I wonder if Mr. Sills is still alive,” Shem says.

“He’s got to have drowned by now,” Noah argues.

“I know some of them were trying to build cities in the deep,” Shem says.

Ham walks out and stares down at the water.

“It’s weird,” says Ham. “To imagine all the people we knew, down there.”

“Freaky,” Japheth agrees.

“Cold and blue and drowning.”

“It’s because God didn’t like them,” says Shem. “I mean, as much as he liked us.”

The sheep goes, “Baa.”

“Animal on deck!” says Noah.

They quickly hurry the sheep back into the hold.

“Can we eat the sheep?” Ham asks.

“No,” says Noah. “Sheep are good animals. That’s why it made it all the way up.”

“The hippos?”

“No eating the hippos.”

“But Dad!”

Noah considers. “Isn’t there some kind of animal that lives mostly on the brains of dead people?”

“Worms?”

Noah shakes his head. “Besides those.”

“Cranium beavers?”

“Yeah,” says Noah. “Those. We can eat those.”

Ham and Japheth descend.

The deeper they go into the Ark, the more tightly crowded the animals become. It is the nature of the construction of the Ark that any number of animals can be packed within it; near the bottom, Japheth suspects, the animals are unable to survive in solid form but instead revert to their natural plasmic state.

“It’s hot as God’s spankings down here,” says Ham.

“Shh!”

“What?”

“No blasphemy. We’re on the Ark.”

There is a creaking, clunking noise, as the sea serpents of God beat warningly upon the vessel’s side.

“Right,” says Ham, sweating. He looks sideways. “Good oryx.”

By the eighteenth sub-basement of the Ark, Ham and Japheth are forced to carve their way through the animals to make room for their passage. Thus dies the bulwark buffalo, the crowball, and the cave goat. Thus dies the ghoul, spoken of in legend, and the icy blue beast in whose image the Slurpee was made. Thus dies the elephant and the fungal turtle.

“Here,” says Japheth.

The cranium beaver skulks defensively behind its dam of skulls, but this primitive instinct cannot save it from the knives of Noah’s heirs.

“Good sheep,” says Japheth, on the way back up.

“Baa,” insists the sheep.

It’s so adorable that even Ham has to scruffle the sheep behind its ears.

The rhinoceri have gone feral, long, and lean. In the distance, as the sons of Noah eat, they watch the primal battle between rhinoceros herd and megalodon, under a sky full of storms. The waves of that battle rock the ship, and the sinuous shapes of the rhinoceri lash and shimmer and in the sea.

“They’re winning,” says Naamah, in some surprise.

“There’s just a chance,” says Noah, in satisfaction, “that the megalodons’ll be another casualty of this rain.”

“I’ll tell the others,” says Japheth.

So he goes to the speaking tubes and calls down into the depths of the ship, “Let the rhinoceros be informed that their kind still live, under the sea.”

And up comes the honking, and the bleating, and the wailing, and the howling, and the hissing, and the chirping, and the long pleased snore of the happy shipboard rhinoceri.

“That means we could eat them,” says Ham. “I mean, the ones we have here.”

“No eating the rhinos,” says Noah.

“Fine,” sulks Ham, crunching on a barbecued cranium beaver leg.

The last of the scissor-beaked night terrors drowns that day.

“Look!” cries Ham, one silvery morning.

“What?”

“Elephants! The elephants didn’t die out after all!”

Noah rubs his chin. “There’s no reason we can’t take another female on board to replace the one you carved through.”

“Right on!”

Shem and Ham operate the elephant crane to retrieve a backup elephant from atop Ayers Rock.

“Baa,” the sheep remarks, conversationally, as it watches.

“Animal on deck!” says Noah.

Naamah and Japheth hurry the sheep back into the hold.

Days and nights pass.

“I can see them far below,” says Japheth, later that night. “All the people I ever hated.”

“Are they trying to tame sea horses?”

“They’re dead, Dad. They’re moving in great drifts through the night.”

“Baa,” mourns the sheep.

“Animal on—”

Noah laughs a little and stops halfway through the sentence.

“Oh, let it be, I guess,” he says.

The sheep looks down into the water, at the hills and dales of Scotland-under-the-Waves.

Flick!

A fish-tailed sheep skims to the surface of the sea.

For a long moment, the land-sheep and the sea-sheep look into one another’s eyes.

Flick!

The moment is gone; and the two sheep go, in their respective elements, below.

In such manner as this: running, swimming, struggling, serving, seething, mourning, and loving does the world survive the rain.

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(Still Sick) Stacking Mammals and Sid

by Jenna on September 6th, 2005

Gelling agents are often made from various emotions. It is very inefficient to use happiness as a gelling agent, while sadness is extremely effective. That is why Jell-O jiggles so often so tragically. However this story is not about jiggling or gelling, but rather about stacking mammals and Sid.

It is possible to stack mammals to achieve almost any desirable effect. This requires sticky mammals, such as sticky goats and sticky elephants. These are sticky mammals because they adhere to one another and they bear live young. Sometimes this is a consequence of pregnancy and at other times a consequence of inappropriate stacking. Always read the assembly instructions before stacking mammals!

Not every mammal is naturally sticky. You can test this out. Attempt to stack a cat on a dog. They may cuddle happily, or they may completely fail to adhere. That’s because their natural stickiness isn’t adequate to the task of stacking. You can also perform this experiment with cats and easily surprised pandas. Take note of the fact that this will surprise such pandas.

In order to make mammals stickier one can use a gelling agent. This renders the mammal in question into a gelatinous mammal. Gelatinous mammals are always sticky.

Some gelling agents are made with glue. Others are made with happiness!

In the Valley of Happy Gelatinous Mammals there are many mammals made gelatinous with joy and stacked into useful configurations. There is a stack of mammoths that forms the local government and end-to-end opossums that provide advanced communication services. Always the mammals there are happy, and their land is full of rainbows and gumdrops and singing.

Among the mammals move the shimmer-things, which are things that manifest as visual distortions, or, shimmers. Some of the mammals think these things are angels. Others hold different characteristic beliefs regarding the shimmer-things.

Sid is a gelatinous ostrich. He lives in the Valley of Happy Gelatinous Mammals. It is the default consensus in scientific circles that ostriches are not mammals, but there are many specific objections that serious researchers have raised to this classification. These include the very real possibility that the “ostrich eggs” sold on the market are in fact buffalo eggs. If you have ever savored a hearty buffalo steak over fried ostrich eggs and hashed platypus then you probably understand why many important culinary institutes support this theory. This is the basis on which the shimmer-things made Sid gelatinous and stacked him in the Valley with the others.

“Can you make it rain?” Sid asks the shimmer-things.

The shimmer-things stack the mammals appropriately to make it so. The sky glooms. Thunder rattles. Then lightning spears down and rain drums against the earth.

Sid hides his head in the ground. That’s how impressed he is!

Then he pulls his head out. He looks sly.

“Can you make China untether the yuan from the dollar?”

The shimmer-things form a swirling vortex of indecision. Then they whisk about restacking happy animals.

“Whee!” shouts a lemur, as it is rapidly rearranged relative to various wildebeests.

“Grmf,” grumbles a gelatinous bear.

“In a move that could trim the trade gap with the United States, China revalued its currency higher against the dollar Thursday,” says CNN.

Sid hides his head even deeper in the sand this time. He’s very impressed.

But after a while, he pulls his head back out.

“So,” says Sid slyly, “if I wanted to see what being unhappy was like, you could just restack some mammals and I’d know. Right?”

The shimmer-things rotate in a fanblade array.

“Hm?” challenges Sid.

“No,” say the shimmer-things.

Sid looks blankly at the shimmer-things.

“If we’d wanted to make gelatinous mammals unhappy,” explain the shimmer-things, “then we could have stacked them much more efficiently in the first place.”

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Sellurt and Morgan: The Ark

by Jenna on September 12th, 2005

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.

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If Animals Had Elemental Powers

by Jenna on March 20th, 2006

There would be parrots with water powers.

They would live under water.

They would make raucous noises like “Squawk! bubble bubble bubble! Squawk! bubble bubble bubble!”

This would be very disconcerting for the sailors.

There would be burning tyrannosaurus rexes. They would not be extinct because their fire powers would allow them to survive K-T extinction events such as the one that killed all of the non-elemental dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The burning tyrannosaurus rexes would laugh and laugh as they rampaged through American cities but in turn people would laugh and laugh and laugh at their flaming stubby little hands.

It is actually possible that the flaming dinosaurs would not survive but it is definite that any tyrannosaurus rexes with K-T elemental powers would still be around, so, anyway.

There would be at least one Metallic Hopping Vampire. He’d be like a Hopping Vampire, only with powers over metal. That’d be so cool!

And there would be sharks who could jump twenty feet out of the water, hang there, and form bullets out of the wind to devastate their enemies. To hunt these sharks you would need a bigger boat. A bigger, bulletproof, flying boat. And lasers. And even then it would be a near thing.

There would be octopi who would assemble in eight-octopus teams using their aquatic telepathy. It is arguably not so good to be able to talk to fish when one is the King of Atlantis but it is very good when one is a fish and normally unable to communicate at all.

There would be koi with the ability to disrupt bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a terrible element but it is the element that koi get and the koi are not technically to blame for its presence in the traditional Chinese six-element cycle.

Who is to blame for that, anyway?

Bees. Bees are to blame for the traditional Chinese six-element cycle and also they sting people so Hitherby Dragons will not give them any elemental superpowers they do not already possess.

There would be elephants with special elemental ninja powers. For example there would be an elephant master of snow and ice. If you asked the other elephants who the coldest elephant ninja master is, they would invariably trumpet, douse you in water, and then indicate the snow elemental master. In addition there would be a shadow elephant—an umbral elephant, as it were—who could slip under your door and then manifest and charge you.

Charging shadow elephants are very scary even if you take away their credit cards because the phone book overflows with companies willing to extend shadowy elephant ninjas new lines of credit with no questions asked. They can even do it mid-confrontation, so that it might go like this:

“Ha ha,” laughs strong-jawed Buck Williams, brandishing the elephant’s credit card and thus preventing it from charging.

“Trumpet!” trumpets the shadowy elephant ineffectually.

Then the shadowy elephant spies one of many NO QUESTIONS ASKED credit card offers on the table next to the door where strong-jawed Buck Williams, son of Giorgi, keeps his unread mail.

Swiftly the elephant seizes it.

Swiftly the elephant mails it.

Then the elephant, oh so ungraciously, looks smug.

Buck’s eyes widen. In bullet-time, he turns and lunges for his elephant gun. He fills it with buck shot. He levels it. But it is too late.

“Trumpet!” trumpets the triumphant elephant.

He doesn’t ever pay for the charges. It’s a bad debt!

The elephant isn’t the last elemental animal we will examine. There are also earth beetles. These are beetles capable of burrowing through the dirt. Right through the earth! People can’t do that. We don’t have the requisite elemental mastery of earth, which is the problem.

Earth beetles are also good at throwing gigantic rocks at their enemies and at making clever balls out of dried dung.

“What a clever ball of dried dung!” one might praise, seeing them.

Such a compliment makes earth beetles puff up with pride!

Metallic Hopping Vampire would like to clarify that hopping vampires are not animals and so his hypothetical metal powers have nothing to do with the premise for this entry. Oops!

Finally there would be owls who fly around shooting lightning at things. One of them might try shooting lightning at a K-T-powered tyrannosaurus rex.

Bam! K-T extinction event!

That’d show those elemental-powered animals.

After a while, Martin says, “Today’s insight is apparently . . . not to taunt large predators that can cause K-T extinction events.”

Solemnly observes Jane: “People needed to know.”

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Pasta

by Jenna on May 15th, 2006

You can make miracle pasta by stirring together flour, miracles, milk, salt, and butter. Then you cut the mix into long strands, air, and cook. The biggest difficulty is in finding the miracles. Once you have done that the stirring, cutting, airing, and cooking is easy.

Miracle pasta is good with a spicy red sauce and shrimp.

It is also good with despair as it is the function of miracles to alleviate despair.

A long time ago seven miracle pasta wheels fell to Earth, one of them landing on a frog.

It was like this:

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Squish! Thump!

“We will guide these people, and guard them, and shepherd them,” say the miracle pasta wheels.

Then they roll around and make all kinds of havoc.

“Oh, look!” says a hungry child in Germany. She points at a pasta wheel. Then she eats it. This alleviates her hunger and her despair!

Six pasta wheels remain.

“The simplest way to rid our planet of the troublesome infinite-weight stone would be to launch it into space via rocket,” decide Atlantean alchemists.

Whoosh! Sploosh! It is a typical Atlantean disaster.

Two pasta wheels are on Atlantis when it sinks. They grow weak and soggy in water and eventually drown.

A mammoth in North America stumbles across a pasta wheel. “At last,” it says, “the power of miracles is mine!”

Three blind sages stumble across the pasta wheel at that same exact moment.

“No!” cries the first blind sage. “Pasta is a human treasure!”

“A tasty meal!” cries the second.

“An ineffable symbol of hope and endurance!” explains the third.

“I’ll show you my terrible tusks,” trumpets the mammoth. But only one of the blind sages is even aware of the mammoth’s tusks! He runs away and two sages remain.

“I’ll stomp you with my terrible feet!” the mammoth declares. But only one of the blind sages is even aware of the mammoth’s feet! He runs away, leaving one blind sage.

“I’ll defeat you with my mammoth philosophy of nonviolence!”

There’s a pause.

“Yoink!” says the last blind sage, grabbing half of the pasta wheel. The mammoth seizes the other half. They each run away, treating the pasta in ill manner.

Later, Arthur Pendragon falls.

He bleeds from many wounds.

“Oh, Arthur,” says a wheel of miraculous pasta. “You were the best of England.”

This is in fact not true. The best of England was probably the curry. But pasta does not know such things.

“So hungry,” murmurs the dying king.

“Partake of my flesh, my liege,” the pasta wheel says. “You will never die.”

Two pasta wheels remain.

They roll around the world causing all kinds of havoc.

One meets a man.

They fall in love.

It is the forbidden love. It is the love between man and pasta: that slippery, boiling love that slowly stiffens as it cools, eventually becoming dry and tasteless.

Heaven frowns upon this love.

The man is chastised.

The pasta is cast up into the sky, where it becomes a new constellation.

Thus in these days there is only one wheel of miracle pasta left upon the Earth.

There is only one miracle left to guide us, to guard us, to shepherd us, and to bring us hope.

Treasure it while ye may; the world progresses swift.

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