“You wanna try me?”
Chester A. Arthur XVII reflected on just how well he knew Queen Victoria XXX and how sated her inner sociopath currently was. He weighed this against how she’d look topless.
“I’m a little concerned that my being strangled is taken as a certainty,” commented William H. Taft XLII.
Chester A. Arthur XVII didn’t hear him. He was reflecting on his options thoroughly.
“Seriously, guys,” continued William H. Taft XLII, “why is my brutal murder at one of your hands never an issue?”
Very thoroughly.
“Your continued silence is not helping to alleviate my fears.”
“Hush, Billy,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “The grown-ups are talking.”
“You know,” Chester A. Arthur XVII finally said, “we’re all getting a little ripe. New clothes probably wouldn’t hurt.”
“Pansy.”
Forty-Two: It’s Not Lazy If You Call It an Homage
Timmy was a squirrel. A typical, ordinary, completely boring, nut-hoarding, tree-climbing squirrel. Nothing funny or unusual going on with him at all.
At least, not until he was kidnapped.
Timmy was out one fine day, gathering berries and crumbs for his family, when suddenly everything went dark. Was it night? No, it couldn’t be. It just stopped being night. Did the sky fire go out? Maybe. The sky fire had been exceedingly erratic lately. But, wait, hold up. Timmy’s feet weren’t on the ground anymore. What the fuck was this nonsense?
It took him a moment, but Timmy eventually figured out he was inside of something. A bag, probably. He had never been inside of a bag before, but he had a vague idea of how they worked. He had only an even vaguer idea of how to make them not work, but it was better than nothing.
Timmy clawed and gnawed at the bag, twisting and rolling and making little squirrelly noises, but to no avail. The bag was reinforced. With another bag. Escape was hopeless.
So Timmy gave up hope.
This wasn’t actually all that difficult. Timmy barely understood the concept of hope. To him, it was just the imprecise notion that clawing enough at anything equaled food. Plywood, concrete, people—scratch, scratch, scratch—hey, there could be a hunk of bread under there—scratch, scratch, scratch.
Then, without warning or reason, or even a decent transition, everything changed.
The bag was removed and there were all these people and pointy things and lights and pain and oh my Jesus what the hell please let me die and, and… and suddenly Timmy knew exactly what was going on. He was in a laboratory, surrounded by scientists and attached to electrodes and stuck with needles. He caught a glimpse of a formula on a chalkboard and quickly deduced that his brain had been boiled in radiation, sparking a higher cognizance. Holy shit.
This was alarming to Timmy in a lot of ways, actually. The existence of pants, for one. And the sudden and overwhelming sense of shame due to not wearing pants, for another. Mind-blowingly simple, really, he thought, covering one’s junk with cloth. One’s junk should never be exposed! Unless, of course, one loves and/or lusts after the person to whom one is exposing one’s junk. Wait, what? Contradiction was also new to Timmy.
But, Timmy quickly reasoned, all that could wait. There would be time enough to ponder all the imponderables, to cover his junk and flash his wife, once he got out of this lab. Timmy stared at his restraints, trying to discern a way out of them, when, all of sudden, they started moving. What the crap? They stopped. That was weird. Timmy started thinking about removing the restraints again. The restraints started moving again. Wait. No way. Could it be? Telekinesis! Artificially induced cognizance was fucking awesome.
Timmy freed himself from his restraints and then his cage, and finally scampered across the desktop.
“Stop him!” said someone.
Timmy threw a scalpel at that someone’s face. With his fucking mind.
Timmy proceeded to butcher and maim the remainder of the scientists, taking out a lifetime of frustration in a matter of moments. Which was fitting, seeing as how Timmy had only actually been frustrated, or even aware of the possibility of frustration, for a matter of moments.
Timmy the squirrel bolted out of the lab, across the lawn and into the street. The street. Streets are things that go places. Oh, man, this makes life so much easier! Timmy decided to follow the street to wherever it was going.
But, wait. The street was vibrating slightly. What the hell? Timmy turned and looked around. There was something big and purple and pink barreling towards him.
It was, it was… it was a car. Timmy remembered cars. Cars sucked.
Forty-Three: Ka-Thunk
“Jesus, Charlie,” said Queen Victoria XXX, her knees bouncing off her face, “what’d you hit this time?”
“Another squirrel, I think.”
“What’re you, aiming for them?”
“I’m not doing it on purpose, they just keep ending up under the tires. I think they’re committing suicide. They’re probably part of a cult.”
“Seriously? A suicidal squirrel cult?”
“Sure,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “It’s not nearly as far-fetched as it might sound. It’s well documented that, throughout time, all manner of cults have resorted to suicide as a final ritual, regardless of the various lines of reasoning that led there. And given the sheer volume of things that are gaining sentience that shouldn’t be these past few years, it only makes sense that similarly cognitively-enhanced members of a species would band together—at first turning to one another for companionship and a sense of understanding, but eventually entering into a similar mindset. Couple this with the animal kingdom’s heightened sense of danger and unrest and it’s safe to assume that those wild and untamed creatures are fully aware of just how fucked this planet is. With the only options open to them being trying to identify and fight an elusive and intangible enemy or attempting to flee from the all-encompassing nature of said invisible threat, it’s not hard to believe that their fight or flight instinct would reconcile itself to suicide. Hell, it’s amazing that they haven’t all hanged themselves already.”
“Well, no, not really,” said William H. Taft XLII. “I mean, you can’t seriously expect squirrels to tie a noose.”
“There’s bound to be an artificially educated chimp somewhere with the know-how and the thumbs to perform such a task.”
“You think there’s a monkey somewhere, just knitting nooses and selling them to squirrels?” asked Queen Victoria XXX.
“Well, not necessarily selling. He could be bartering for them, or giving them away. Chimpanzees are industrious. There’s bound to be at least one looking to capitalize on the misfortunes of his brethren.”
“Squirrels and chimps aren’t brothers,” replied William H. Taft XLII.
“They’re closer to each other than they are to us.”
“Wrong again, Charlie,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Evolutionarily speaking, chimps are much closer to us than to squirrels. Everyone knows that.”
“Would you buy a noose from a chimp?”
“Why would I be buying a noose?”
“Just answer the question. Yes or no.”
“No.”
