Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Ha!
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
“Don’t be Triassic,” snapped the Troodon. “This is the wave of the future.”
The Ankylosaurus swished his massive tail dejectedly, crushing a small tree. “I can’t help it my brain’s the size of a golf ball,” he said.
“Well, lucky you’ve got me around,” said the Troodon, adjusting a piston. “So long as I don’t eat you.” He smiled in that toothy way theropods had, which the Ankylosaurus had never liked, and examined his work.
“There, lovely. Drag that fuel over, will you?”
The Ankylosaurus, glad to be doing something the Troodon couldn’t, walked carefully up to and past the invention, dragging the bundle of wood the Troodon had harnessed to him right up to the maw of the machine. The Troodon plucked several pieces out and threw them in, then struck a match (invented a century before by another Troodon) and tossed it into the piles of kindling already inside. A flame leapt up, and the Anklylosaurus watched the fire grow with a kind of anxious fascination.
“It’s not doing anything,” he said after a while.
“Shut up,” said the Troodon, and the Ankylosaurus thought he sounded worried. “It just needs to heat up enough to … oh! Ha! Ha ha ha! Yes! Look! Yes! It works! I’m a genius! It works!”
It did seem to be working. The flames were leaping up to caress the container of water, and through some means that the Ankylosaurus couldn’t understand at all, this was moving a rod back and forth, which made a wheel turn. Smoke poured out of a small smokestack, and steam squirted out elsewhere. The Ankylosaurus waited, hoping there was more to it.
“That’s it?” he said, finally.
“That’s it? You lump! I’ve invented the steam engine! Can’t you see what this means?”
“I don’t know,” said the Ankylosaurus. “It seems to be spitting up a lot of smoke.”
“Pollution, bah!” scoffed the Troodon. ” The sky is infinite, the waters are infinite … what do you think’s going to happen? We’ll dirty ourselves to death? Ha! Dinosaurs have reached their rightful place as masters of the planet! You just wait!”
# # #
Fifteen hundred years later …
A massive asteroid, more than six miles across, barreled toward a planet nearly covered in black, sooty clouds, though glimpses of brownish-blue and brownish-green were visible through small gaps. When it impacted, it would raise a lot of dust over the corpses of the last dinosaurs, who had starved to death on their choked planet only a hundred years before.
Parthenia Rook, Episode 7: The Gory Candlestick
Monday, April 21st, 2008
The Bonobo King paced the marble floor of his bedroom in his crimson silk pajamas, unable to sleep again.
His spider monkey lover, Flamenca, stirred in the massive canopy bed. “Come to bed, darling,” she said in a sleep-heavy voice. “Whatever it is, you can destroy it in the morning.”
“That’s exactly it,” said the Bonobo King. “I haven’t been able to destroy it. It … her … Parthenia Rook. I’ve tried every approach conceivable–an android toddler, zombie photographers, an opposite gender identical twin raised to evil, unbalancing her fruit … if it weren’t for my esophogeal implants, that last miscalcuation would have cost me my life!”
“Let me take your mind off it,” said Flamenca, tracing a fold in the gold-embroidered coverlet with one slender toe. “You’ll come up with another evil plan tomorrow.”
“But if I do, it will come to ruin,” said the Bonobo King. “My evil plans are much too fiendishly clever to fail this often. Someone or something is foiling them.”
“But no one’s smarter than you, darling. And no one could foil your plans unless he were as clever as you are.”
The Bonobo King stopped short as an ugly realization came to him. Flamenca must have noticed, for her toe froze in place, and she said in a very careful tone, “What is it?”
“No one is smarter than I am, and only someone as clever as I am could foil my own plans,” he said. “Ergo, I am my own nemesis. For some reason I cannot fathom, I am sabotaging my own evil schemes.”
Flamenca gasped and the Bonobo King turned and leaped onto the bed, where he crouched over her tiny form. “What?” he said. “What did you think of just then?”
A tear trickled down her furry little cheek, and she shook her head, trembling.
“What is it?” he roared.
“You’re …” she whispered, “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
The Bonobo King screeched with fury and indignation. Snatching a heavy gold candlestick from beside the bed, he struck at Flamenca with it, smashing it down on her fragile body until she was little more than a smear of bloody fur.
Bits of brain stuck to the candlestick, and the Bonobo King threw it aside in disgust as he hopped calmly off the the bed. He resumed his pacing.
“Yes,” he said pensively. “You may be right.”