TALES WE TELL EACH OTHER: Unboxing Evil

 

UNBOXING EVIL

By Jack and Alexandra

 


 

First Publication: September 25th, 2015

Word Count: ~1,100


 

It had taken him months, but he had all but succeeded.

The weeks he’d spent gaining the trust of the members of various gaming boards had been fruitless. No one had been willing to talk about the obvious satanic roots of their so-called “fantasy games”, even with a fellow practitioner… or as they called them, “players”.

He had quickly realized that the truth was so artfully concealed that even those caught in the web of demonic lies did not know it. They mindlessly re-enacted the evil eldritch rituals encoded in the grimoires disguised as mere rulebooks–as if any mere game could require hundreds of pages of arcane rules and tables that detailed actual occult spells and practices in a level of detail that rivaled the descriptions of ancient life found in the Bible itself!

So he had gone straight to the source, bypassing the sugar-coated and watered-down forbidden lore peddled by the toy companies and the book publishers. He had tracked down actual lost volumes of occult secrets, learned the rituals that formed the basis for these so-called games. He had practiced the rites, made the circle, drew the symbols, placed at each of the points of the star one of the bestial graven images used as pawns in the insidious ritual gameplay. He had called to the forgotten powers that he knew they represented, bound them to his will, bid them to come forth, to speak, to reveal their secrets to him and the world.

And he had succeeded, almost! He was so close to revealing the truth about the “master of the dungeon” who had cast his dark spell over the minds of America’s youth for three decades and counting.

There was only one problem.

“I say,” the cloven-hoofed satyr figure said. “Who is this ‘Satan’ chap you speak so knowingly of? Friend of yours? I could get off the line and let you try again.”

“No!” the investigator said. “I will not fall for your tricks.” He jabbed a stubby finger at the miniature minotaur, who mewed in confusion. “You! You are the very semblance of the beast himself! How many souls have you torn asunder?”

The minotaur mooed, heaving a massive shrug of its massive shoulders.

“Not much of a talker, that one,” the satyr said. “Look, I don’t know what you want from us.”

“I want the truth! I’ve promised my producer! I’ve promised the viewers!” he said. “In twenty-four hours, I must go live with the most explosive expose the world has ever seen. You must proclaim that Dungeons & Dragons is a satanic snare for the hearts and souls of the fools who play it!”

“You’re talking out of both sides of your face, fella,” said a two-headed giant. “Do you want the truth, or do you want us to repeat your fancy lie?”

“Maybe it’s not a lie,” said a floating orb covered with eyes on writhing stalks. “Maybe it’s all a matter of perspective?”

“Well, sure, there are two sides to every story,” the other head of the giant said. “But even if it’s not a load of guff, we don’t know anything about it.”

“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, mate,” said a leafy, lumbering hulk with skin like bark.

“Not that we’re not grateful for the attention, mind you,” the satyr said. “Very few people bother to call us up these days. It’s nice to stretch the old ectoplasm.”

“Liars! Liars! You are called upon every day in basements and dining rooms and even schools all around the country!” the reporter said. “I know you are! I’ve watched the enthralled move you around their obscene diagrams as they plot death and destruction.”

“Oh, I see where you’re confused,” the satyr said, gesturing down at the goat-like legs connected to the square base. “These bits of plastic aren’t us. They aren’t anything. They’re just, toys, I guess? You were able to bind them to us because they bear a certain resemblance to certain aspects of ourselves, as it were, but without you and your ritual, they are as harmless as a child’s doll or a toy soldier.”

The other four figures on the points of the star nodded in agreement, muttering things like, “Yep, that’s be it.” and “Stands to reason.” and “Moo.”

Finally, in desperation, the reporter turned his attention on the one figure that had remained silent: the massive, bat-winged, ram-horned and unmistakably demonic creature that towered over the others, in the center of the pentagram.

“How about you?” he said. “Are you going to be so bold as to claim you’re not a demon?”

“Obviously I am,” the figure said, its voice a deep bass rumble that seemed to come from everywhere except the center of the pentagram.

“I knew it!” the man said. “So the rest of you might as well fess up, too.”

“Oh,” the demon said. “Oh, no. These paltry pagan pests? These primal eidolons? They are lesser beings only, no kin to demons.”

“They’re no angels,” the man said. “So what exactly is the difference between these pagan spirits and demons?”

“For one thing, they are much easier to coerce into this world,” the demon said. “It did not matter so much if they were willing or not. They came when you called them.”

“So did you,” the man said.

“For another, they were far easier for a shaky-handed amateur to bind in a crude circle copied from a degraded copy of a faded book.”

“And yet, you’re still here,” the man said. “And all I have to do is put a camera on you and it doesn’t matter what you say or don’t say, or if you say anything at all. All of America is going to see that I was right. I’m going to be vindicated on national television.”

“I think not,” the demon said.

“Oh? And what exactly are you going to do about it?”

Smiling, the demon vanished.

The man let out an anguished howl of despair, but then he collected himself enough to check the child crumpled in the corner. It wouldn’t do. He would need another, but the other materials were not hard to come by. And after all, he had a whole box full of the damned miniatures left. There had to be at least one obviously demonic creature in there for him to summon. He knew how easy it was, and he knew the circle could be tricky.

He’d have his proof, if he could just stomach dealing with such evil instruments for a little while longer…


Tales We Tell Each Other is a special version of my usual Thing of the Day. These are ficlets that I write from a random plot generator as a collaborative writing exercise with my partner Jack Ralls.

FICTION: The Hoard Most Precious

THE HOARD MOST PRECIOUS

By Alexandra Erin


 

First Publication: September 24th, 2015

Word Count: ~1,500


 

Ah, so, another little mammal has come to beard the great wyrm in its den. Come, then! Come out and show me who would slay the dragon. Come out and see the hoard you would claim as your own.

What is that look? Is my treasure so much smaller than you imagined? I have roasted a thousand fools as they stood precisely where you stand, and yet I do not think a single one of you has ever found my fabled trove to be exactly what you thought the stories had promised.

Do not be twice fooled, though. If my neat and orderly hoard occupies less space than you were led to believe it must, still I assure you its value has likely been underestimated.

I think it’s the jewels, to be honest. Those who have much first-hand experience with precious stones are rarely driven to hunt the dragon’s hoard, so you have only your dreams to serve as a basis for comparison. You expect a chest of gemstones to be as big as your family’s cedar trunk, and you expect the contents to all be the size of a fist, yes?

Well, there are uncut stones to be had in that size, but unworked materials rarely hold my interest. See this cask of rubies? They were a gift in admiration from a red dragon with whom I once fought over territory. Neither one of us could claim the peak over which we quibbled, and so we sealed the truce between us with an exchange of gifts.

They seem mere pebbles, yes? You could retire modestly on one of them. If you could but fill your purse with the fraction of them it would hold, your descendants would be wealthy forever.

Then there’s gold. Certainly, there’s more of it here than you’ve ever seen, but I feel you were expecting there to be more even than this. Piles of gold. Mountains of gold with me nestled between them. The cave must be stuffed with gold to the point of bursting, or else the treasure-hunters will feel cheated.

Well, by my best conjuring, all the gold ever mined by the hands of man or dwarf would not fill this cavern. Does this surprise you? If it does, you have little knowledge of the nature of gold, of its scarcity, or indeed its density.

If I were to promise you your weight in gold to leave me in peace, you might decide it would be worth it, on the balance, to trade an uncertain fate for a certain fortune. But if I were to show you how little gold it would take to make up that measure, I fear you would be sure I was cheating you.

See that gold rock at your feet? I leave it there for a purpose. Do try to lift it. It fits easily in your hand, but it is not so easy as you supposed, is it? This is what a stone-weight of gold looks like. Fourteen pounds, as the accountants of the day would measure them. Would you like to keep it, with my compliments? As I told you, I have little use for raw material. It is not your weight in gold, no, but it is more than enough to change your life. And think of the story you would have to tell!

No?

Be not so hasty! I make this offer not for fear of my life but for fear of yours. I have no taste for killing greedy fools at this time of my life.

Yes, I called you greedy. The nugget in your hand would be enough to make you very wealthy, and you could carry it out with no more risk to your life than you faced in coming here. What else should I call you, when you turn down a proffered fortune for the slim chance of an even greater one?

What? You think I am the greedy one, to hoard such wealth? If I am jealous of my hoard, it is for a purpose, though I can see no reason why I should need such a purpose beyond the fact that it is mine.

Listen! I was old when the world was new. My bones are as old as stone, but my spirit is older still. The reckoning of my memory encompasses every epoch of the earth, and yet I recall each detail with the same clarity you recall your own life.

That is the crux of it, though. With what clarity do you recall the fleeting moments of your life? Do you not rely on keepsakes, which you call mementos, to serve as signposts as you wind your way through way through the labyrinth of the dusky past? Do you not commit events of great moment to paper in order to preserve a more reliable accounting than your own poor memory can serve?

You see a trove of treasures gilt and gleaming and assume that I covet such things because I am a covetous beast, which means I am but a sinful brute, which makes it virtuous for you to slay me and claim all of this for yourself.

But what would any of this be to you, that you would not find in that chunk of gold I so generously offered and you so cavalierly discarded?

See this bowl? A simple vessel of beaten gold. To you, nothing about it is as remarkable as its composition. The metal alone is valuable. There is not a dealer in art nor in antiquities who would pay a penny more than the gold’s weight for it.

To me, though? I was alive when this bowl was made. To look at it is to throw open the door to a time and place long forgotten. I remember the slim brown hands that held it, the full lips that sipped fragrant spiced wine from it. I can see in the theater of my mind the cushions on which they arrayed themselves, the curtains that hung around them. I can smell the wine, the food, the perfume and incense on the air!

Ah, and what does that call to mind but this gold censer? Its sweet airs once blessed the services of a temple no living being outside this cavern has ever clapped eyes upon. When I look upon the censer, I can smell the incense. I can see the great edifice of the temple. I hear the voices, lifting up in song.

I hear the same voices crying out in fear, and I smell the scent of burning wood and roasting flesh. It was not a nice religion. Or perhaps I was not a nice dragon. I do not recall what the nature of our conflict was, to be perfectly honest. I recall the people, though. So long as this relic remains in my possession, they will not be forgotten.

Few things in life endure. Wood and fabric rots. Iron corrodes. Silver tarnishes. Paint, pigment, and ink fade. Bones are ground into dust.

Gold lasts, though.

Gems last.

See these coins? Relics of rulers I’ve buried and empires I’ve outlasted. You would weigh them and count them, but in taking them from me, you would rob me of an accounting of history. Outside this cave, coins are stamped over, melted down. History is forgotten. Here, it is accounted for and preserved.

Among your kind and mine, I have had friends, and lovers, and enemies. The passage of the centuries dims the distinctions among these groups. I remember all fondly as threads in the tapestry of my immortal life. I would prefer to continue remembering them.

Here is my final offer, then: take whatever you may carry, so long as there is enough of any item you select that you do not deprive me of more than half of it. Take no more than half the fine rubies I highlighted. Select your favorite coins from among the various strikings and denominations rather than pilfering one pile. Take whatever it pleases you to take, just leave me with my memories.

Whatever this costs me, I will have purchased something precious: a novel experience. You would be the first one to accept such an offer, the first enterprising soul to leave my lair alive. After a few millennia I may not recall the color of your hair or the cast of your face, but every time my gaze falls upon a spot where some trinket used to be, I will remember that you existed and you did something remarkable, something without precedent in the course of history.

No?

Are you quite certain?

A pity.

What follows will not be long, and I long ago ran out of ways to make it memorable.

FICTION: “Sometimes, There Are Dolphins”

 

SOMETIMES, THERE ARE DOLPHINS

By Alexandra Erin


First Publication: September 21st, 2015
Word Count: ~2,000


 

Honeymoon Island, off the gulf coast of Florida, was connected to the mainland city of Dunedin by a causeway. It was a state park, open every day from eight a.m. until sunset. The beaches of Honeymoon Island were laid with shells as other beaches are covered in sand, with a fresh batch deposited daily by the gulf water tides.

The water as seen from the shore presented a shimmering spectrum of ocean hues, from sun-dappled silver to sparkling emerald to deep azure and many incomprehensible blends in between. The near-constant wind blowing in off the gulf keeps the clouds moving at a brisk pace, ensuring that even the most overcast days often present an interesting sight when the sun begins to dip below the distant waters at the curve of the world.

None of this had made much of an impression on Clara. She’d enjoyed the first afternoon at the beach well enough, and had had enough fun splashing around in the surf and collecting shells that she hadn’t minded staying to stare at the horizon with her mother.

“Sometimes, there are dolphins,” her mother had said excitedly. “They skim right along the shore, swimming in a pod. They trace the causeway and follow the outline of the island. Sometimes they jump and show off, or swim back and forth. They don’t always come, of course, but when they do, it’s usually it right before sunset.”

There hadn’t been any dolphins, though, that night or any of the five that followed. Each night, her mother had repeated the words “sometimes, there are dolphins,” at least once, with a little less fervor. Clara had gone from resenting her mother for dragging her out each night to feeling sorry for her.

This was the last night of their vacation, and now Clara was excited even though her mother wasn’t.

It was all because of the book.

She’d found it in the crawlspace over the garage of Grandpa’s old rundown little retirement cabin days ago, but it had taken her some time to learn how to read it. She’d never seen a book like it before, one not printed with orderly uniform letters but written by hand, many hands. Some of the letters were loopy and sprawling, some were spider-leg thin, but they all crowded against one another on pages that seemed like they should have been roomy enough to accommodate anyone.

Looking at the writing had given Clara a headache at first, as well as an odd, fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach. Curiosity had brought her back to the book, though.

That, and boredom.

Florida was supposed to be fun, but this wasn’t anywhere close to the right part of Florida, as far as she could tell. There was no Disney World here. There wasn’t even a Universal Studios. There was a Busch Gardens, but her mother had said she wouldn’t like it, even though the best description she had mustered of it was “like a zoo with rollercoasters,” and Clara couldn’t imagine anyone not liking that.

“Maybe next time,” her mother had said, though this was supposed to be the final trip, when Grandpa’s affairs were all wrapped up so the funny old house could be sold off.

Clara didn’t know what her grandfather’s affairs had been. She’d asked a few grown-ups what an affair was, but the answers had been amused and evasive.

So while her mother had spent most of her time meeting with people in suits and going through boxes in what she called the study, Clara’s attention had kept drifting back to the book. In time she’d learned how to look at it without wincing, and then how to read it.

It helped when she realized that the parts written in red pen were newer and made more sense than the rest. In fact, they helped her make sense of the others. She learned to think of it as a teacher correcting a badly written essay, suggesting better words, easier words.

At some point, she had started to think of the teacher as her grandfather and imagined that he was giving her some kind of guidance, knowing how much she hated to feel confused. The day she saw some of the papers in his study marked with the same red ink in the same handwriting, she had realized she was right. That was when she decided to keep the book for herself. It would be her inheritance, the last gift from her long-absent grandfather. It would make up for all the missed birthdays and Christmases.

She couldn’t tell her mother, of course. For some reason, her mother hadn’t wanted Clara to know much about him. Probably she was still mad about all her own birthdays and things that he’d missed.

Clara had already somehow known she couldn’t tell her mother about the book, but it felt good to have a reason that she could use to explain to herself why this must be so.

But even though she would keep the book for herself, she wouldn’t be selfish about it.

When she’d found the ritual, she’d known that her grandfather had a gift for his daughter, too. He’d spent so much time marking it out, translating the instructions into simple terms and even drawing clear diagrams. All the words were sounded out in bright red ink. It couldn’t be simpler.

The sea-king’s summoning spell, the note beside the illegible title had read. That was exactly what they needed. If the lazy old dolphins wouldn’t come out and play for Clara or her mother, she was sure they wouldn’t ignore a summons from the sea-king himself, whoever he might be.

She hadn’t fully believed that it would work, of course, when she’d tried it. It had just been something to do. She was a bit old to believe in fairy tales, after all. Not all the way.

But she’d…felt something, something rising up from deep inside and beneath her. She’d seen the candles gutter green and then sputter out. She might have imagined what she’d thought she’d felt, but she knew that candles didn’t look like that when they just blew out.

And the book…the book had slammed shut and spun around in the center of the circle, just like it was riding on mama’s old record player.

The spell had worked.

It had worked!

And so this night, it was Clara’s turn to scan the horizon as intently as her mother had the nights before.

The dolphins were coming, she knew. They were coming. They’d heard the sea-king’s summons and they would be coming. Her mother’s guidebook didn’t say if the dolphins would come from the left or the right…from the south or the north…so she tried to keep watch in both directions.

“Well, it’s a nice enough night for our last night here,” Clara’s mother was saying. She laid a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Better enjoy the view while it lasts. Look, the sun’s dipping into some haze. Do you think it’ll be swallowed up before we get a proper sunset?”

“I don’t know, I’m watching for dolphins.”

“Clara…I know I said there might be dolphins,” her mother said. “But, honestly, it’s best not to set your heart on it. Sometimes, there are dolphins, but it isn’t something anyone can predict or control.”

“Maybe,” Clara said. She almost decided to tell her mother about the spell then and there, but she thought it would be better if she just let her be surprised.

The dolphins would come by sunset. She’d had that idea fixed in her head when she did the spell, and if she’d only been guessing about how the magic would work, she still had gotten the distinct impression that the message had been received and answered in the affirmative: sunset.

“Just don’t get so fixated on looking for one thing that you miss everything else, okay?” her mother said. “My father…your grandfather…did that, he did that his whole life. He ignored everything else, everyone else, while he went off and searched for…I don’t even know what. I’ve been looking through his files for a week now and I still don’t know what he hoped to find. I just know that he died alone, half-crazed and full of regret. He missed so much of my life, Clara. He missed his own wife’s last years. He missed so much…”

“Jeez, I’m just looking for dolphins, Mom!” Clara said, whirling around and pulling away from the hand on her shoulder. “Will you give it a rest? I’m not going to miss my whole life because I spent one night looking for the stupid dolphins that you wanted to see in the first place!”

“Sorry!” her mother said. “I’m sorry, I…that was probably projecting. This is the first time I’ve been back here since papa’s funeral, and the longest I’ve been here since I was a little girl, and I’ve just…I’ve been feeling and thinking things that I left buried for so long. I shouldn’t have pushed all that off onto you, Clara. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Clara said. “I didn’t mean to get so mad. I just…I knew you wanted to see dolphins, so I wanted to bring them to you.”

“Oh, honey, you can’t bring someone dolphins,” her mother said, with what sounded like a surprisingly nervous laugh. “They’re wild and free creatures, almost like people themselves. Honey, that’s what makes seeing them so special, you see? They don’t operate on a schedule or come when you call them. You can’t control nature. Believe me, your grandfather wasted his life learning that lesson, if he ever did learn it in the end.”

“Well, I don’t know if he wasted it,” Clara said, as she became dimly aware of a commotion among the other late-lingering beachgoers. “But…”

“What on earth?” her mother said, looking at a point behind her, somewhere out over the water. “What…”

Clara turned to look out to sea. Almost straight out from her, at a point on the horizon and moving on a path perpendicular to the nearest stretch of shore to her, something was moving…several things were moving, racing along the shining silver waters, leaping out of the water as they ran along.

“Dolphins?” Clara said excitedly. Behind the frantically frolicking figures, the sun was sinking into the sea.

“Those aren’t dolphins,” her mother said, then corrected herself. “Those aren’t just dolphins.”

And they weren’t.

There were dolphins, yes, but fish of every size and description raced along beside and ahead of them.

“Are they feeding?” Clara guessed.

“Nah, dolphins don’t hunt like that,” a young woman staring out at the onrushing spectacle said. “They try to surround a school of fish and trap them against the surface of the water, they don’t chase them down like lions hunting gazelles. And look, they’re not trying to catch the fish…they’re breaking ahead of them.”

“What are they doing?” someone else asked. “I thought they were supposed to follow the shore.”

“They’re wild animals, they’re not supposed to do anything,” Clara said. “Right, Mom?”

She looked up at her mother for support, but her budding sense of satisfaction was nipped when she saw the look of pure horror on her face.

“Are they racing?” a man guessed. “Or being chased? Why are they trying to get away from the fish? Don’t dolphins eat fish? I’ve never heard of a fish eating a dolphin.”

“I don’t think it’s the fish that they’re trying to get away from,” the young man said. “What’s that saying? If you and your friend are being chased by a bear, you don’t have to outrun the bear…”

The nearest dolphins weren’t so far from the shore now, and they showed absolutely no sign of slowing or stopping. Clara hardly noticed. Her attention, like everyone else’s, was not on the dolphins but on the rising swell far behind them, behind the stragglers and the leaping schools of fish.

The sun set.

He rose.

Ia!


Alexandra Erin is a crowdfunded poet, tweeter, blogger, and author. If you enjoyed this or her other work, please join her on Patreon to keep the words coming.

TOMU CHAPTER 307: Getting To Know You

Since I’m moving to a Thing of the Day model and since my Thing at least one Day most weeks is going to be a Tales of MU chapter, I’m going to start cross-linking them from here, so people who follow my blog or the thing-of-the-day category can keep up with them.

Today’s chapter is 307: Getting To Know You. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t informed by the “cool kids” discourse I’ve been participating in and observing on Twitter and around the internets, but I’d also be lying if I said my take on that hasn’t been shaped by my experiences writing Mackenzie all these years.

FLASH FICTION: “Feeding Gnarlybone”

Feeding Gnarlybone
By Alexandra Erin


First Publication: September 17th, 2005
Word Count: ~400


 

“Why do trolls live under bridges?”

“Well, properly speaking, trolls don’t live under bridges,” I said. “They’re highly magical creatures, you see, and they like to live in canyons and river beds, places where there’s a steady flow of energy for them to tap…”

“But then why does everyone act like they do? And what about old Gnarlybone? Is it just him?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” I said. “Trolls live in canyons and river beds, but those things don’t exactly come with roofs, do they? So the troll builds himself a little house out of stone… no one’s cunning with stone the way a troll is, and they anchor it on both sides of the pass, and what does that give you?”

“A bridge!”

“Something very like one, yes,” I said. “Close enough that they might as well do a little extra work to make it into one. Because the places where they like to live are natural channels for natural energy, but there is another kind of energy that’s created when folk travel on the same path in enough numbers for enough time. The flow of ideas, of thoughts, of words, of life… it creates a channel that intersects the one the troll taps.”

“So trolls don’t actually eat travelers?”

“Have you ever heard of old Gnarlybone eating anyone?”

“…well…”

“Have you ever known anyone who got eaten by Gnarlybone?”

“…no.”

“It would be accurate to say that trolls feed on travelers, or on travel, but so do humans and most other folk,” I said. “After all, we’d be in pretty sorry shape if we couldn’t get grain from the flatlands, wouldn’t we? But trolls can survive without that kind of commerce, as long as they can tap a powerful enough natural flow. The way I understand it is that it makes things better for them, like a bit of honey or spice might do. It’s a thing they can live without, but life is better when they have it.”

“So rivers are troll food, but roads are troll candy!”

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose that’s about right.”

“So we should probably go down into town tomorrow.”

“Oh?” I said. “Why do you say that? Are you in the mood for some candy yourself?”

“No! Because then we’ll be feeding Gnarlybone, and he won’t have to eat anyone.”

I laughed.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said. “Anyway, we don’t need anything from town.”

“But we could buy some candy.”

“I thought you didn’t want any.”

“Yeah, but if it would help us feed Gnarlybone… I’d take some.”


 

Read more of my flash fiction at fantasyinminiature.com. If you enjoy my work, please consider leaving a tip, buying some e-books, or join me on Patreon.

SHORT STORY: Walk Briskly

WALK BRISKLY

By Alexandra Erin


First Publication: September 15th, 2015
Word Count: ~4,200


 

The funeral home is very old, old enough that it still has an old-style chapel. That’s where we’re holding what is still called the viewing.

The podium on which sits the now-traditional portfolio album is situated in the middle of a recessed nook that was obviously designed to hold something a bit larger than a person in repose, and which now holds something a bit smaller than the average end table.

I’m being a bit clinical about it all partly because I wish to remain detached from the scene, and partly because I am detached, whether I want to be or not.

The jungle of flowers flanking the photo display do nothing to disguise how small it is. They swallow it up.

From a certain angle, it looks like my mother’s unnaturally youthful face is peering at me from out of a monstrous hybrid rose bush. It is not a pleasant or comfortable idea, all things considered.

I turn away. It’s not easy to detach myself from that image.

My grandmother isn’t any happier with the state of things. She handled the arrangements. She picked the funeral home. It apparently has some history that I don’t remember with her side of our family.

I wonder how many times has she been here, before? How many times after? How long would it take a person to get used to a change of that magnitude? I don’t know. The world I live in is the only one I’ve ever known.

My uncles have been trying to keep my grandmother calm for a good twenty minutes. Their results have varied.

“But I just wish I had another chance to see her,” she is saying when I tune in. “Would that really be so much?”

“Ma, the law’s the law,” my Uncle Mike says.

“It wouldn’t be her anyway,” Uncle Jeff says. “You know a body’s just a body. Anyway, is that how you want to remember her? The pictures are better.”

“The pictures are pictures!” Grandmother yells. “She’s my only daughter!”

“Geez, quiet down, Ma,” Mike says. “People are gonna…”

“People know she’s grieving,” Jeff says. “That’s what this is. Grief. It’s okay. Ma, you know it would break her heart if she knew you took that kind of risk. You know how careful she was all the time.”

“You mean she was afraid all the time,” Mike says. “And she wasn’t happy if everyone else wasn’t.”

That’s when I turn away.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Walk!”

This is what she’d yell whenever I was heading out the door. It didn’t matter where in the house she was, or whether I’d told her I was going out. She’d sense the front door opening, zip to the nearest doorway to the front hall, and yell out the reminder.

“I know,” I’d call back over my shoulder.

“Don’t run!”

“I KNOW!”

I did know. Everybody knew. Just like, sometimes, everybody ran, because no matter how brave we all acted around the schoolyard, we still got scared a bit at a rustling in the ditches or saw something staring eyelessly out of a hedge.

There was no need to run. None of them could. Most of them could barely walk. But at the same time, there was no real reason not to run. The point was to get away, right? Running was safer than walking. As for the risks…

“That’s how you trip,” my mother would say.

“But I’m still faster even if I trip,” I said back to her, once. “If they’re not close enough to grab me when I start running, they’re not going to be any closer when I fall!”

“The one you know about won’t be,” she said. “They hunt in packs, remember?”

“Mother!” I said. “There haven’t been packs for years!”

“There are occasional packs still,” she said. “It doesn’t even have to be a pack. It could just be two of them, the one you see and the one you don’t. Anyway, it really only takes one. What if you trip and twist your ankle? What if you break your leg?”

“I’ll still drag myself faster than it can,” I said.

“Oh? Have you ever had a broken leg? Remember when you broke your finger? You almost blacked out.”

“I could still trip if I’m walking.”

“But it’s all about odds,” she said. “It’s all about risk. When you’re running, you can’t keep your eyes on the ground. You don’t have as much time to react when something comes up. You can’t stop yourself if your foot snags on something. And what happens if you wind up running right into a dead end?”

“We don’t live in a labyrinth,” I said. It was a new word to me at that point, and I was very proud of it. Probably a bit too proud, or else I wouldn’t have dared to say that, as sure of myself as I was.

I don’t remember exactly what my mother said in response to that. I do remember I was less proud of my vocabulary afterwards.

I never argued with her about that again. I still didn’t think she was right about running. If it was about odds, then who was to say that it wasn’t riskier to spend more time in the area? If there might be more than one, then wouldn’t it be better to get out of there before they could surround me?

But even if I didn’t think running was as dangerous as she made it out to be, I recognized that there was a different kind of danger in pushing her too far.

In all honesty, the danger posed by the amblers was distant and abstract compared to the danger posed by pressing my mother’s buttons. I had no experience with being dragged down by an ambulatory corpse, but I had been grounded.

Anyway, the debate about running had only been a side point in an older, longer-running argument about the way to deal with things like amblers in the first place.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Hey there, Safety Tip,” my cousin Brian says.

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” I say.

“Ah, hell,” he says. “I’ve been calling you that for years. Everybody in school did! What else am I supposed to call you?”

“My name. Anything else. Just don’t call me that today.”

“What’s so special about today?”

I stare at him. I know he’s making fun of me, but I can’t tell if this is part of the tease or not. I don’t know which would be crueler.

“My mother is dead,” I say. It’s all I can do to get the words out. I expect them to come tumbling from my mouth in a rising roar, but when I hear my voice, it is tiny, thin, and piercing. I want my words to push him away, but I can see on his face he doesn’t even feel it.

I turn and walk briskly away.

* * * * * * * * * *

My mother always did love her safety tips.

Look both ways before crossing the street. Don’t go in the water for a half hour after eating. Stop, drop, and roll if you catch on fire. Stop, look, and listen when you get to the train tracks.

Her favorite, of course, was the famous WALK.

Every time she shouted “walk” to me as I was heading out the door, I knew she didn’t just mean “walk” but “WALK”. I knew this because for the longest time, she would give me the whole spiel before letting me go out alone:

Walk briskly, stay Alert, keep your eyes Low, and Know the area.

That’s what you did if you encountered an ambler. That’s what you were supposed to do, anyway. Don’t approach. Don’t engage. Don’t stop and watch it stumble around towards you. Don’t laugh at it, no matter how helpless and harmless it looks. Don’t stop and take a picture of it. Definitely don’t try to get a picture with it.

Almost everyone else in my class had a picture of themselves with an ambler in the background. Polaroids, mostly, because they didn’t have to be developed. The kids who had actual film photographs were the coolest kids with the coolest parents, the ones who would let them have everything and let them do anything.

Justin Peterson was one of those kids. He had a picture with his arm around one, though it was dead. I mean, it had been rendered inert again. He’d shot it between the eyes and then propped it up for a picture, which his dad took.

He’d been a hero to the whole school, once.

For a while, everyone had wanted to be him.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I’m told your mother died peacefully,” a blonde woman wearing a red pillbox hat with a veil of netting on it tells me. “And that she passed without incident.”

“Yeah,” I say.

I’ve been told that, too.

Everybody keeps telling me that. They clasp my hand in theirs, give me firm, unblinking eye contact, and tell me the news that I had been given long before them: my mother’s body went into the crematorium peacefully and still.

Why do they tell you this? Why do they think you need to know? Dead is dead, even now, or at least gone is gone. My mother is every bit as gone as if something had tried to beat and claw its way out of the box.

Anyway, what do they tell the people whose loved ones did turn unexpectedly? If it’s supposed to bring peace to know that it didn’t happen, what do they tell the family when it does happen? Nothing?

Then I know, with a certainty: they passed without incident. Like an angel. Like a sleeping angel.

Of course they do.

“What a blessing!” the pillbox lady says.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“I had nightmares about my Albert, before he went into the fire,” she continues. My eyes dart around the room looking for an escape, but I know I’ll find none. I came to this corner to escape. It seemed like the last safe place for me to stand. “They tell me that they can’t feel anything, that it’s not really them anymore, but what if they’re wrong? What if they’re wrong? They still don’t know why it happens, and I mean, people used to think cows don’t feel anything. We don’t really know anything, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” I agree.

* * * * * * * * * *

The first thing I asked for when my mother said I was old enough to go out by myself was a sword. Sherry Morgan had one that she said was Japanese. Her grandfather had brought it back from the war, she said, and now it was hers. Everybody thought it was the coolest.

I liked it because I thought its curved, single-edged blade would impress my mother. What could be safer than that?

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “What good is a sword for?”

“Sherry says it can cut right through bone and everything,” I said.

“What sounds safe about that?” she said.

“Mom, it’s not even sharp like a razor,” I said. “You have to, you know, swing it. Hard.”

“Then it’s not going to do you much good at your age, is it?” she said. “Anyway, you don’t have any reason to cut one up. All that’s good for is getting seven kinds of yuck on you, and it doesn’t even stop them.”

“I could cut off its arms and legs and then go for the head,” I said. “Sherry Morgan says she’s killed lots of them.”

“You don’t kill an ambler, sweetie,” my mother said. “They aren’t alive.”

“They’re kind of alive?” I said. “Mr. Grossman says they’re undead.”

“That is superstition,” she said. “They’re just… a thing that happens. Like a storm, or an avalanche, or a sickness. And speaking of sickness, the last thing you want to do is smack into them with a sword. Who knows what germs you’ll splatter yourself with?”

“Mom, you can’t catch it,” I said.

“That’s what they say, but no one knows what causes it,” she said. “And even if you can’t, you can catch other things. A rotting body is a perfect incubator for disease.”

“I’d be careful!” I said.

“Showing off with a sword is the opposite of careful,” she said. “I’ll get you something you can use to keep them off of you and get away. That’s the goal. Just get away.”

When she told me she’d get me a pike instead, I hadn’t known what she meant. Looking it up in the school library, I’d found pictures of wicked looking medieval weapons that looked like a spear had a baby with an axe. It wasn’t a shotgun. It wasn’t a handgun. It wasn’t a chainsaw. It wasn’t a sword. It wasn’t any of the things that I’d ever wished for, but I didn’t care. That just meant no one I knew had anything like it.

It meant that for once, I was going to be the cool kid.

When she actually brought it home, I was horrified. It was nothing like the pictures from the book. It reminded me of a whaler’s harpoon, or at least what I imagined one would look like, only the end of it wasn’t pointed or hooked at all. It was just a broad, flat metal thing, kind of like a boat oar. The patented safety tip, the package had called it.

My mother had loved her safety tips.

“If the goal’s to get away, why not just get me a sword?” I said. “At least then I could run away!”

I knew the words were a mistake as soon as I’d said them, but it was too late to take them back and I didn’t have the speed or eloquence needed to explain that I’d meant it in the sense of retreating, sensibly, at a safe speed.

“Don’t. You. Dare.”

I think I knew then and there that my fate was sealed, that I’d be stuck with the pike forever.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said.

“You don’t run from them. If you see them, you walk away from them. Walk briskly. The pike is only when one gets in your way, when one lurches around a corner or sneaks up on you.”

“How are they going to sneak up on me? Everyone says they barely know we’re here anymore. You practically have to step on one to get bitten.”

“Those are the old ones,” she said. “New ones pop up all the time, and they’re still a bit quicker, and they have better senses.”

“They still can’t exactly sneak,” I protested. “They’re not smart like that.”

“No, but they’re very quiet and they’re very patient,” she said. “Anyway, if you’re so sure they can’t get close, then why do you care if you have a sword or pike? You shouldn’t need to use it very often.”

“Then can I just leave it at home?”

“You were the one who wanted a way to defend yourself.”

“I wanted a weapon!” I said. “I want to fight them!”

“There’s nothing to fight! They aren’t exciting. They aren’t enemies to defeat. They’re just something to avoid when we can, and deal with when we can’t. That’s what you have to do.”

* * * * * * * * * *

They call what happens next the remembrance, though I know I won’t remember any of it.

While her brothers and co-workers get up and talk about the kind of person they think she was, I’m looking at my mother’s face in the big round oval frame that dominates the display. The pictures were chosen from all times of her life.

The biggest one is the one that I guess people thought best represented her. It wouldn’t have been my choice, and not just because I have a hard time remembering when she ever looked that young. Her cheeks are too rosy. Her lipstick waxy-thick. I know she looks happy, but I also know what she looked like when she was happy.

I don’t know what a corpse looked like, lying in a coffin with its face made up by a mortician and fixed into the best approximation of a relaxed expression that can be wrung from a corpse. I’ve read old books, though, where people talk about how such faces are unfamiliar, artificial.

I feel that way looking at the picture of my mother. I couldn’t guess the context from which the portrait was cropped. The background is an almost white sky. She’s smiling for the camera, with no idea that this forced, fixed expression is going to be her death mask.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Take your pike if you’re going out,” my mother said when she saw I was heading for the door without it.

“They just did a sweep yesterday,” I said.

“And they always miss one,” she said. “Watch the news and you’ll see. The day after a sweep is always when someone gets taken. Because it makes people careless, you see. Someone always dies after a sweep.”

“They do a sweep every month,” I said. “If someone died every time…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t mean here. But somewhere. Anywhere. It could be here. Take your pike.”

I sighed and lifted the long, unwieldy pole off its wall mounting.

“If you want to keep me safe from amblers, you should have got me a gun,” I said. I thought my logic was foolproof. “It’s got a lot longer reach than a big, heavy stick.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “A gun is way more dangerous than an ambler.”

“Isn’t that the point?” I said.

“Do you know how many people get shot every day by accident? Do you know how many people a day shoot themselves?”

Probably not even one, I thought. It couldn’t happen that often or people wouldn’t make guns. I did know that I was on a losing track.

“I don’t even know how I’m supposed to kill an ambler with this thing,” I said instead.

“You aren’t supposed to kill them,” she said. “First, they’re already dead. Second, that’s why we have patrols. You’re supposed to get away from them. If one’s in your way, you push it back or you knock it down. Sweep…”

“Sweep the knees!” I said. “I know!”

“You get it down, and then you…”

“Then I walk away.”

* * * * * * * * * *

My name is called. I remember being told that I should probably say something, and I remember that I had said in response that I would like that. I hadn’t given it any more thought. That’s just what you do when your mother dies, right?

It’s never happened to me before and it would never happen again, but even an hour ago I couldn’t imagine that I wouldn’t want to stand up in front of a room of mixed family and strangers, that I wouldn’t have anything inside me to say to them.

* * * * * * * * * *

Justin Peterson got his throat torn out when I was fourteen. He’d been hunting in the woods, supposedly for deer but probably not really.

He turned.

There’s no rule that says getting killed by one always turns you into one, if there are any rules at all. It seems to happen more often that way, though. Some people think there is just a correlation between dying violently and alone and turning, but other people say that’s just anecdotal. They say it seems that way because people who died in accidents in the middle of nowhere never get cremated.

I don’t know.

I do know that the thing that had been his body stumbled onto the field during an outdoor day in gym class, I was the last one to know it had been him. I turned, and I walked briskly towards the school, taking the long way around the big sloping hill up to the parking lot, because I might slip. I heard my classmates’ laughter turn to screams and resisted the urge both to look back and to run.

Most of them were okay, physically. They were screaming because they recognized who it had been. Some of the jocks tried to tackle it and bash its brains in. One of them got a bad bite on his arm. He needed stitches and antibiotics, but he lived. His reputation did a 180 overnight, though. No one ever quite believed that it wasn’t infectious. He went from being one of the coolest kids in school to a total pariah.

It wasn’t just that the other kids were afraid of him. He’d get knocked down in the hall, have things thrown at his head. People would shuffle past him, moaning in the way that amblers never moan but people always act like they do.

I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. Everyone acted like at any moment he might turn into a monster and kill us all, but they didn’t act like he was a threat. They acted like he was weak. I asked my mother about it, not because she’d understand but because I didn’t have anyone else to ask.

“Fear does that to people sometimes,” she said. “It brings out the worst in people. That’s part of why it’s so important not to be afraid.”

“You don’t act like that.”

“Sweetheart, that’s because I’m not afraid,” she said. “And I don’t want you to be afraid, either. I don’t want you to think you have to be afraid.”

“Then why do I have to carry a stupid pike around, if I’m not supposed to be afraid? Why do I have to know all the rules? And why are you always checking on me, always hassling me about them? Why all the stupid safety tips?”

“There are things we do when things are scary, so that we won’t be afraid,” she said. “It would be terrifying to go down the road at sixty miles an hour if there weren’t seat belts and brakes and signal lights and, and… safety features. We have all those things, and we have rules of the road, and because we can count on them to keep us safe, we don’t have to be afraid.”

“But people still die in car accidents, don’t they?”

“They do,” she said.

“And people still get killed by amblers.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, they do. They probably always will.”

“You are afraid!” I said. I’m not sure if I felt triumphant or terrified at catching her in this contradiction. “You said you’re not.”

“I don’t have to be,” she said. “Love, things—people—aren’t just one way or another. Sometimes I get scared when I’m driving, too! The important thing is that it doesn’t become all that I am, that the things I feel don’t overwhelm the things I know, like how to drive safely. The important thing is that you don’t panic.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“My mother,” I say, “always kept me safe.”

I know these words are inadequate. I know I should be explaining, elaborating… saying something about how she knew it was a scary world, and she didn’t hide that from me, but she always made sure I had the tools to deal with it.

I should be saying that “safe” didn’t mean I wouldn’t die, though I didn’t. It didn’t mean she didn’t worry every time I went out the door, but that she could let me go out the door.

None of these words will come, though. They won’t form up into ranks inside my head and I can’t make them march out of my mouth.

“She wasn’t afraid,” I say. “She taught me not to be afraid. I love her, and I miss her… and I’ll always miss her… but I still know I don’t have to be afraid.”

People are looking at me like they’re not sure if I’m finished. Have I said enough?

“That’s all I have to say,” I say. “There isn’t anything else…”

There’s some awkward, scattered clapping, which weirds me out because I didn’t expect it. Were people clapping at the other speakers? I get out from behind the lectern and head down the aisle. I don’t go back to my seat. I need air, but more than that, I need to be somewhere else, anywhere else, just as fast as I can safely get there.

I fumble out the claim ticket for the coat check and thrust it with shaking hands to the attendant, who peers at the scribbled scrawl underneath the description.

“It’s the pike,” I say. “Seven and a half feet long, with a safety tip.”

“Right,” he says. “I saw that in the corner. Hang on. You know, I didn’t know anyone still carries these. Sure, you could brain a thing hard with it, but it’s so awkward to swing. There’s got to be easier ways to take out an ambler.”

“I’m sure there are,” I say. “But I don’t have to take them out. I just have to get away.”

“Well, the threat level for tonight is elevated, so if you’re not looking to fight, you’d best be ready to run. Can I call you a cab?”

“No, thank you,” I say, sniffling. “I’ll walk. Briskly.”


Alexandra Erin is a crowdfunded poet, tweeter, blogger, and author. If you enjoyed this or her other work, please join her on Patreon to keep the words coming.

FICTION: The Redundant Man Who Was Redundant

Author’s Note: Inspired by a conversation in the comments on File 770, I’ve decided to re-post my story “The Redundant Man Who Was Redundant”. This and six other short stories are available in my collection The Lands of Passing Through, for Kindle, Nook, or as a mult-format bundle (Kindle, Epub, HTML, and PDF) direct from me. All versions are are DRM free. Enjoy!


The Redundant Man Who Was Redundant

By Alexandra Erin


 

“According to a CNN news network story, the selling of the MTV music television station could result in…”

In his office in the Department of Redundant Acronyms, Steven Stevenson II groaned and turned off the television. Every day… all day… the hits just kept coming. He looked back at his computer monitor, at the message he’d been typing to the third largest bank in the country. The first and second largest had already served him with cease-and-desist orders for “pestering” them with his “prank messages”.

It all seemed so pointless, sometimes… especially when he glanced at the letterhead at the top of the screen and saw the words “DORA Department”. That hadn’t been his idea, to be sure… and now he was getting memos from the BSA suggesting it be shortened to “DORAD”.

He needed to get out.

“Hold my calls, Dora,” he said to his secretary on the way out the door. “I’m going to lunch.”

“Don’t forget the man from the central CAO office is coming by this afternoon!” Dora reminded him.

Steven Stevenson II sighed heavily and rolled his eyes.


The part about lunch had been a damnable and odious lie, of course. He had, in fact, gone to a bar. It wasn’t the sort of bar that served food, beyond the pickled and salted variety. It wasn’t a dive, either… it was simply a dedicated outlet for serious drinking. Stevenson wasn’t always a serious drinker, but he refused to confront the CAO man on an empty liver.

“You look like a man who’s coming to realize the crushing weight of futility that is your life,” the obnoxious stranger intoned pompously as he grabbed the stretch of bar adjacent to Stevenson.

“What makes you say that?” Stevenson asked without much interest.

The man had the look of a man who was losing his hair. He wasn’t, though. He just had that look. Probably he was, Stevenson decided, but could afford to have it all regrown. The man had a face like a putrescent walrus, but he’d paid good money to have his hair loss reversed.

“There are only three reasons for a man to be in a place like this around lunch time,” the man said. “Either he’s celebrating, he’s coming to realize the crushing weight of futility that is his life, or he’s having a meeting. You’re not having a meeting, and you don’t look like you’re celebrating… ergo, you’re coming to realize, et cetera, and so forth.”

“Congratulations, you’ve figured me out,” Stevenson said, raising his glass in a mock toast. “Is that what you’re celebrating? The defeat and misery of others?”

The man chuckled.

“Oh, in a roundabout way, I suppose, in a roundabout way,” he said. “But, I didn’t mean to inflict my personal joviality upon you, no… I just wanted to give you my card.”

“Are you some kind of psychiatrist?” Stevenson said, looking at the edge of the cream colored bit of parchment disdainfully.

“No, nothing like that, nothing like that at all. I deal in more permanent solutions,” the man said. He held out the card more forcefully. “Go ahead and take it… it won’t bite,” he said, chuckling again.

Stevenson did, and actually looked at it. The gold-embossed logo declared that the man worked for the TastyFlesh Human Resources Company, and that his name was Orville Smith.

“Thank you, but I have a job,” Stevenson said.

“Good job?” Smith asked. “Satisfying work?”

“It’s a job I believe in,” Stevenson said testily, because it hadn’t been all that satisfying as of late.

“What do you do?” Smith asked.

“I head up the Department of Redundant Acronyms,” Stevenson said.

“Oh, the DORA department,” Smith said, nodding sagely. Stevenson winced. “Not exactly the, uh. largest or most prestigious branch of the federal bureaucracy, is it?”

“I didn’t pick it for the prestige,” Stevenson said, and Smith snorted.

“No, I’d guess not,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not offering a job, per se… more of an opportunity.”

Great, Stevenson thought, here comes the pitch.

“The earth is overcrowded,” Smith began. “You know that. Everybody knows that. The price of everything is going up, especially food. Well, no… especially fuel, but food’s got to come from somewhere, right? You can’t really grow it in the cities…”

“Actually, I read an interesting article about the new hydroponics pilot program in Chicago, and then there’s rooftop gardens,” Stevenson interjected. “And the new synthetic meat cultures can be grown anywhere there’s proper facilities. They’re doing interesting work in Nairobi with…”

“Will you quit interrupting me, man?” Smith said. “You can’t grow food in the cities and the bottom line is it’s getting harder and harder to find any arable land that isn’t covered by a city. Past generations supposed we could solve this problem with space travel, colonizing the moon and Mars, but we now know the whole idea of space exploration is a bust. So, what’s left?”

“Tell me,” Stevenson said.

“In a word, sir: cannibalism.”

“Cannibalism?” Stevenson echoed.

“That’s right, cannibalism,” Smith said. “We predict it’s going to be the biggest growth industry of the coming decade, and TastyFlesh is going to be at the forefront of it.”

“That’s… illegal,” Stevenson said. It was also immoral, amoral, unethical, and several other things, but he had a feeling that none of those would really bother Orville Smith.

“For the time being, yes,” Smith said. “But, we’re in this for the long haul. See, we draw up contracts… life-long, ironclad contracts… and our employees get a nice competitive wage paid out every other week, full insurance, vacation, all the usual benefits… ”

“Wages for what?” Stevenson asked.

“Just for being available,” Smith said. “Our employees come into our facility every day—barring those vacation days—and just sort of lounge around. They can bring books, magazines, portables… we don’t expect them to actually do anything. Actually, we discourage it. Just enough exercise to stay healthy, not enough for them to get all stringy.”

“But, how do you make any money?” Stevenson asked.

“We’ve got some of the best lobbyists in Washington working 24/7 on this whole ‘cannibalism’ thing, and when it’s inevitably legalized… that’s when it’ll all pay off,” Smith said.

“You really think it’s inevitable?” Stevenson asked.

“Absolutely inevitable,” Smith said. “Say, man, don’t you read? Malthus. Swift. It’s all there in black and white, ready to be discovered.”

“I think you’ll find that Swift’s A Modest Proposal was, in fact, a work of satire,” Stevenson said.

“His what?”

“The work you’re referring to,” Stevenson said. “A Modest Proposal. He wasn’t actually advocating cannibalism as a means of alleviating the burdens of the poor, he was using that idea as a satirical vehicle. As for Thomas Malthus, he failed to take into account technological advances that would increase the rate of food production until it exceeded that of population growth.”

“Ah, well, whatever you say,” the man said. “Haven’t read any of that myself. It’s just some names that crop up in the corporate literature. Anyway, look at it this way: supply and demand. If there’s a shortage of food, then anything which increases the food supply while decreasing the demand has got to be good.”

“But, the actual problem of overpopulation derives from a scarcity of resources,” Stevenson said.

“Right,” Smith agreed. “And legalizing cannibalism would add resources to the pool.”

“It actually wouldn’t, though,” Stevenson said. “Not in the long term. All those people you ’employ’ have to be fed the same as any other person…”

“Well, that’s why we pay them a good wage, obviously,” Smith interjected.

“Yes, but don’t you see, they’re still consuming their share of resources,” Stevenson argued. “For eighteen years… I assume you’re only signing up adults?”

“Of course, man, what do you take us for?” Smith said.

“So, for a minimum of eighteen years, they’ve been consuming just like any person. And because human being are not in fact cattle, a good portion of the food they’ve taken in will never be recouped,” Stevenson said. “The human brain is a marvel of evolution, but it’s a woefully inefficient source of sustenance.”

“Well, who wants to eat a brain?” Smith retorted.

“Yes, but, you see, a great deal of the nutrition that we consume goes to support our brain,” Stevenson said. “This is just one reason why big, dumb animals are preferable as a food source over smart, shrimpy ones.”

“That may all be true,” Smith said, in a tone of voice which suggested he suspected otherwise. “But… we aren’t feeding them for eighteen years. Just from the time they sign up with us until we get the legislation pushed through.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s feeding them,” Stevenson said. “The point is that they’re still taking the same share of resources for those years.”

“So, what’s your point?” Smith asked.

“That if the idea is to reduce demand for scarce resources, then raising human beings for slaughter is a woefully inadequate way of going about it,” Stevenson said.

“Well, that’s the larger idea, yes,” Smith said. “But we’re a private company. All we really need to do is turn a profit.”

“But the cost of supplying a human being with the necessities of life even for, say, a year… including not just food, but housing, clothes, transportation, and modest entertainment all add up… putting together a wage and benefits package that’ll seem competitive to any other job… has got to be higher than that of bringing to market an animal that’s been raised in a box and doesn’t need anything but nutrition and medicine,” Stevenson said. “How can you possibly hope to break even if you have to invest that kind of money into a single one of your—I can’t believe I’m saying this—feed animals?”

“Well, I’m not an accountant, am I?” the man replied, sounding offended. “Damn it, man, I’d hate to see that kind of talk getting to our investors. We’ve got experts looking over all our numbers at all times, and they assure us it’s a sound principle.”

“Just assuming for a moment that you ever do manage to get this thing legalized, how exactly do you intend to stay in business?” Stevenson asked. “Don’t you think your pool of volunteers will dry up once people realize it’s not just a cushy job that pays them money to lounge around?”

“Of course,” Smith said. “But that’s the beauty part… once it’s legal, that frees up our paid lobbyists to start pushing for, shall we say… broader channels of acquisition.”

“Disgusting,” Stevenson said.

“Hey, just because your job’s a joke is no reason to go raining on my parade!” Smith said.


“Now to begin: you’re the Secretary of the DORA department, are you not?” Clark Whizenby, the CAO man, asked Stevenson at the outset of their meeting.

“It’s just DORA, actually,” Stevenson said.

“Do you mean to tell me that it’s not a department?” Whizenby asked.

“It is,” Stevenson said as patiently as he could, “but that’s what the ‘D’ stands for. When you say ‘the DORA department’, you’re actually saying ‘the Department of Redundant Acronyms department.'”

“Well, I think what I’m saying is, ‘the department that’s called DORA’,” Whizenby countered. “That ‘redundant’ word, as you call it, conveys meaningful information about the agency’s organization.”

“In that case, why not just say ‘Department ORA’, or ‘the ORA department’?”

“Well, because ‘ORA’ is not the BSA bureau’s standard acronym,” Whizenby said. “In fact, that brings me to why I’m here.”

“Of course,” Stevenson said. “The BSA chief has petitioned to have DORA moved underneath him again.”

“Not quite,” Whizenby said. “He’s proposed liquidating the entire department and absorbing its functions.”

“Is there a difference?” Stevenson asked.

“Only to people who are currently employed by this department,” Whizenby said. “Which, if I’m not mistaken, is not many people at all.”

“No, you’ve cut our budget several times,” Stevenson said. “It’s… actually just me, and my secretary, Dora.”

“Right,” Whizenby said. “Well, in situations like this, I like to begin by telling a little story. Twenty years ago, before the central CAO office really came into its own, there used to be a national administration called NASA.”

“I think I’ve heard of it,” Stevenson replied sardonically.

“National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” Whizenby said. “Annual budget of tens of billions of dollars every year. Why, we could have paid for three months of war on the money NASA was getting every year. At the same time, we had another administration called the FAA… the Federal Aviation Administration. Their annual budget was only half of the NASA administration’s, but that’s still, as they say, quite a chunk of change. Then, some bright young egg at the fledgling central CAO office pulled out a dictionary and realized that ‘aeronautics’ and ‘aviation’ were practically the same damn thing!”

“And the rest, I suppose, was history,” Stevenson said.

“Damn straight it was,” Whizenby said. “We took a look at both administrations’ books and realized that the FAA was overseeing thousands of flights on the same budget which NASA used for a handful of flights. So, we folded NASA into the FAA… I don’t need to tell you, there was a lot of controversy at the time, but history has vindicated the decision: in the intervening two decades, there’s been no meaningful scientific exploration of space… no lunar colonies, no domes on Mars, nothing.”

“Maybe not in this country, but India and China have both established…”

“Third-world countries!” Whizenby said.

“Excuse me, but China is the world’s largest…”

“Are you going to let me finish a thought or not?” Whizenby said. “China and India are nothing. We’re the world leader in space exploration, and what do we have to show for it? It’s all commercial… space tourists and communications satellites. The American people should pay billions for a separate organization to oversee that?”

“By that ‘logic’,” Stevenson said, smiling pleasantly and keeping as much sarcasm out of his voice as he could, “wouldn’t it make sense to fold the BSA’s functions into DORA? After all, we make do with a shoestring budget.”

“It’s not just that the FAA had the smaller budget,” Whizenby said. “They produced more with that budget. They were efficient. You, on the other hand… well… we’ve never been quite sure what the point of the DORA department was in the first place. What exactly do you do here?”

“I help to maintain the integrity of the English language in an age of increasing abbreviation,” Stevenson said.

“That’s what the BSA does,” Whizenby said.

“Not quite,” Stevenson said. “Their only concern is that everybody uses the same set of acronyms.”

“How’s that different from what you do?” Whizenby asked.

“It’s completely different,” Stevenson said. “We… that is to say, I… work to insure that… well, let me give you an illustrative example. Let’s say you’re going to the ATMM to take out some money. You put in your card. What does it do?”

“The card?”

“The machine, Whizenby. What does the machine do when it has your card?”

“Well, I suppose it asks me for my PINNN number, doesn’t it?” Whizenby asked.

“Right,” Stevenson said. “Except, you don’t actually need to say ‘number’ because that’s what the ‘n’ stands for in PINNN.”

“Which one?”

“All of them,” Stevenson said. “See, when the system was devised, in the late 20th century, the code was simply referred to as a ‘PIN’, which stood for ‘Personal Identification Number.’ Almost immediately, though, people… as well as the institutions which utilized such things… began referring to it as a ‘PIN number.'”

“And that was bad because…?”

“Because it wasn’t long before some bright egg decided to shorten it to ‘PINN’ with an extra ‘N’, and the whole thing started again,” Stevenson said. “Look, Whizenby, I know what mainly concerns you is efficiency. Think about how often the word ‘PINNN’ or the phrase ‘PINNN number’ are written, printed out, or saved into a database somewhere. Imagine if we could save all the ink, toner, space, and other associated resources being used up by those extra trailing letters and the redundant word? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“It would, but we have to consider usefulness, too,” Whizenby said. “For instance, if you’re dialing into one of those automated AMS menu systems, and the voice just asked you to key in your PINNN, you can’t see how it’s spelled or capitalized, so there’s no way of knowing it’s not asking for an ink ‘pen’ to write with, or a stick ‘pin’, or your numerical ‘PINNN’… though by tacking that one extra word onto it, the meaning is made clear. It may be redundant, but it’s not superfluous.”

“Well, that as may be, yes,” Stevenson said. “But wouldn’t the meaning be made clear by context? Of the things you mentioned, only one of them can possibly be keyed in or otherwise offered over a phone, and certainly only one makes sense in any situation where an AMS attendant is asking for something.”

“A well-worded communication doesn’t require the listener to figure out what they are being told, because it tells them that outright.”

“Well, even if there is some slight advantage to making the numerical nature of the PINNN explicit over the phone,” Stevenson said, “then there’s still no reason to include the redundant appendage it in written matters, is there?”

“Separate standards for written and verbal communications? That’s too complicated… it’d never fly,” Whizenby said. “Plus, whatever tiny gains we’d realize from not printing the extra letters would probably be eaten up by all the clarifications and memoranda and such that would need to be issued to explain the discrepancy. Anyway, it hardly seems like it’s the end of the world if an ATMM machine asks me for my PINNN number.”

“Look, I don’t ask for much,” Stevenson implored. “Cut my budget again, if you have to. I don’t need a secretary. Just let me keep doing this, if for no other reason, then so that twenty years from now you’re not leaving the CCAOOO office and putting your P-I-N-N-N-N-N number in a damned ATMMMM machine.”

“Do you really think it’s likely to go that far?” Whizenby asked.

“There are three Ns in ‘PINNN’ already,” Stevenson countered.

“Right, and I think most people would agree that’s plenty,” Whizenby said.

“More than plenty,” Stevenson said.

“Then we’re agreed,” Whizenby said. “Look, normally, we either eliminate or merge… one or the other, never both… but… the odds are there’s at least one opening in the BSA at your pay level. Actually, I take that back; they don’t have any positions that pay so little. The point is, if your work is so important to you, then it wouldn’t take much shuffling to get you a job over there.”

“But what they do is antithetical to my work,” Stevenson said.

“That being the case, one might very well ask why the citizens of this country are paying two arms of the government to work towards opposite goals in the first place,” Whizenby said. “I think a reasonable person would agree that the ultimate goal of all is to make sure the language is easy to use and easy to understand… and that being the case, the real redundancy is having two separate agencies going about it in differing ways.”

“But…”

“I think I have everything I need from you, Mr. Stevenson,” Whizenby said. “You will receive an official notice of the central CAO office’s decision within three days… followed swiftly by an order to vacate the premises.”


 

“Bad news, sir?” Dora asked Stevenson.

“The worst,” he said. “They’re shutting us down in three days.”

“Well, it’s not much, but at least I’ll have a chance to use the new letterhead before we go,” Dora said.

“What new letterhead?” Stevenson asked.

“This,” Dora said, holding up a sheet of paper with the word “TEST printed on it. “It just arrived from the BSA bureau.”

Stevenson gritted his teeth. The logo at the top of the paper read now read “DORAD”.

“I suppose I can take some small comfort in the fact that I won’t have to see that become ‘DORAD Department’,” Stevenson said.

“What?” Dora asked.

“Nothing,” Stevenson said. “Well, I suppose we’d better start looking for new jobs, anyway.”

“Oh, I’ve got that covered,” Dora said. She rummaged in the papers on her desk and found a pamphlet. “This new company’s hiring loads of people… no qualifications needed, just a medical exam, and you don’t even have to do any work. It’s called TastyFlesh HR. Have you ever heard of them?”