An Unpleasant Dream About Ethnic Paranoia Rendered Into Story Form
The project had succeeded. When the Great Killer Asteroid finally hit the earth, (an asteroid made of vast quantities of gold, platinum, nickel, iron and silver), an armada of biospheres had already left the planet.
The sum of its parts had every known life form nested into various gerry-rigged carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen cycles. Each and every "Arkette" was successfully designed to be capable of sustaining human life for an indefinite period of time. Despite its undeniable flaws, the project was a capstone of human accomplishment, dwarfing both the great Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Late Twentieth Century Garbage Mountains.
My name is Volodya Bolshemensch, and I had both the honor and good fortune to have been brought up on the "Arkette" now referred to as the "Chicken Ship," after the Great New Understanding.
However, at the time of the story which I have been honored to tell, if I had referred to my Homeplanetcornland in such a way, I surely would have been beaked to death, and felt lucky.
Due to an unexpected set of events in the asteroid belt, the various "Arkettes" were scattered across the solar system. Although these biospheres were designed to last for centuries, and our sights were set on the stars, we were done in by the vastness of the solar system, and were lost to one another for uncounted generations, until on each ship all of existence was understood only in terms of the confines of a given biosphere.
During what is now referred to as my previous life, I was a third degree Feathermaster of Coop 1205. I never felt any alienation from the condition I now understand as being rather lowly and miserable because I found a wonderful, albeit illusory sense of purpose in serving the Great Egg of Life.
It is with both remorse and sadness that I must recall that those who had the courage and foolishness to question this notion were very slowly beaked to death in the weekly community rituals on our one day off of the Sacred Seven.
Perhaps a combination of this aforesaid courage and foolishness is somehow genetic, and was in a process of being bred out. Older and more experienced GodServers had noticed that it was requiring increasing amounts of scriptural nuance to establish an apostate. One old man confided in me over Cornsacred Whiskeybrew that the end of the world would arrive with the death of the last apostate, and that surely we were in the last days because a good apostate was becoming exceedingly difficult to find. Torture also served when we wanted someone to throw to the bugs. I thought torture was good, and served the egg. I was a very enthusiastic beaker. I looked forward to those sacred rituals with most of the moments of my working life. I expect you to find our breeding methods to have been perverse because we quite naturally modeled our reproductive protocols after the manner of fowl, but who among you can honestly laugh with scorn, you once of the Flounderships and Beaver ponds? In any case, to tell my history as I know it is to tell of my education and rearing. We had no sense of lineage as I have read in the accounts of certain other Arkettes. Heritage was tracked only in the records of Head Roosters. Population was managed by keeping the number of breeding males to the the barest minimum necessary to maintain the healthy genetic diversity determined by "The Glowing Voice of God, The Great NumberUnderstander," i.e., as I now understand, our ship's computer.
My father was a creative and virtuosic Featherbearer who instructed me in the fine and subtle mysteries of our gentle craft. I knew that I would never be anything more than a Featherbearer and could only hope that if I were equally brilliant in the performance of my humble craft, I would be allowed to serve the Great Egg by Breeding.
We took the mechanical accomplishment of our ship's ability to transform corn and chicken into all of our lives' needs quite for granted because we regarded it as an extension of our created world, the work of God, the Cosmic Egg.
Just prior to the Great Understanding, there was a problematic apostate movement which claimed that God was not an Egg, and that an Egg was in fact a metaphor for the true divine expression, an ellipse.
Most of these apostates were Priests, which made their disposition very problematic because they could argue Scriptural nuance better than most of the Godservers, whose enthusiasm was more pronounced than their study of Ovology. In a moment of inspired Ovulation, a Godserver dreamt that the best proof of apostasy resided in a superior argument, since it could only have been inspired by the work of the Evil One, the Great Horned Rooster, Chaunticleer.
It was on the very day that I, among fifty others, was to execute by beaking the first Chaunticleeric apostate to be so convicted by the Planetary Committee of Godservers that the Great Change began. I will admit to being quite disappointed because I had always enjoyed the sense of fellowship that always accompanied a properly drawn out execution. Pardon me if I digress and sentimentalize, but I miss the process of beaking because it represented such a perfect symbiosis of the symbolic and the socially utile.
Beakers were appointed by the Lottery of Merit. A lottery was necessary to determine merit because the shipboard environmental system had rendered all human maintenance of minimal significance. Since future generations may well find this difficult to imagine, in view of the consequences of the Great Understanding, I shall describe the workings of our "Homeplanet" as I remember it.
The Great Trannsubstantiation Room was a genuinely awesome sight. There was row upon row of chickens, as far as the eye could see, divided into different stages of development, as well as different utility roles. There were egg chickens, feather chickens, elite Roosterbreeders, and Bonsai chickens (sold as household Gods), to name a few. There was also an encyclopedic collection of what I now understand to be genetically engineered Chickens, which we called the Grand Expression of the Feathered Mystery. All of these animals (Chicken, how that word sticks in my craw) had their beaks mechanically removed and were attached to huge conveyer belts. We called this process "the Planet Serves the Chicken God," with no sense at all of the double meaning involved therein. There was a common saying among our people, "consider the God manifest Chickens of the Belt, They neither toil nor spin."
The most awesome moment in our work was the Cycle of the Exalted Metamorphosis when the Chickens on the belt disappeared into the Breast of the Planet, and Chicken parts would appear as if by magic in various and widely seperate sectors of the Planet on the Third Day. From our point of view the Chicken was the source of life that fertilized our lands, clothed us with plumage, and provided us with talons and beaks which were symbols of social and religious status. In addition, they provided us with a sense of shelter from the relentless chaos that constituted our general understanding of the ever shifting stars of the Multiverse. Thus, for us, the Chicken was perceived as God made Flesh to sustain our wandering planet.
As Featherbearer it was my sacred duty to take bins of feathers and bring them to the Exalted sub-assistant Feathermanager, who oversaw the divination of Holy Mattresses and Pillows via the Encrypted Ritual of the Great Number Understander Keystroke. I can say with pride that after thirty years of faithful Service, I never once failed to be included in the Lottery of Merit because I had delved deeply in the Mysteries of the Feather and never lost a single one under my charge!
I refer the skeptics among you to the meticulous records that were kept by the Featherdusters who were assigned to the wake of all Featherbearers
Turning to the ritual of Beaking, the process was divided into three parts: the Number of the Beast, the Hunt and Peck, and finally, Beaking proper. The Ritual Encryption for the Number was performed by the Godservers under a Sacred process called the Methuselah Menu. The Number varied greatly from week to week. Some apostates had claimed to see a pattern in it, but they were quickly beaked beacuse such a claim was a sure indication of the Evil One's inspiration. Despite their prestige, I never envied the Godservers their position because the difficulty of locating Evil was vast. Once the Number (or quota, as the apostates called it, and the Great Understanding indicates that they were supposedly closer to the truth) was established, the process of Hunt and Peck began.
Hunting and Pecking began with Inquiry based upon Suspicion. Although I know little about this method, having been a Featherbearer, I can say with certainty that Suspicion was never cast upon anyone who qualified for the Lottery of Merit. Thus, one sure criterion for Suspicion was social disfunction. Beyond this I can only repeat scuttlebutt. I have heard that once someone falls under Suspicion one is almost sure to be Beaked.
However, there were procedures to be sure that the one suspected was indeed Chaunt†icleeric. These tests included Roostering, which required the subject to wear a device called the Strappado and simultaneously walk over burning Sacred Corncobs. It was then up to the Godserving Tribunal to determine whether the subject looked like the Evil Rooster.
This was based on three criteria: first, did the subject's screams sound like Cock-a-doodle doo? Secondly, did the subject's walk over the burning cobs appear more Rooster than human? And finally, at any time during the test did the subject take the name of Chicken in vain? If any of these critreria seemed to apply, then the Tribunal marked the subject for Beaking by driving drumsticks into their eyes.
The subject, blinded and shamed, was then released back into the general population to grope their way through our petty abuses, such as kicking, maiming, and socially acceptable rape via the anus, which belongs to both sexes.
Unlike some of the other more depraved legal systems on other ships, we had always taken scrupulous care to treat both sexes equally. In fact, women with corncobs often proved to be some of the most enthusiastic practitioners of this particular protocol. "Bleeding like the ass of a beakee on the final walk" was a very common simile on our Arkette.
The final walk always took place during our Seventh Day Social Ceremonies. Those of us who had been chosen by the Lottery of Merit took our places on two paralel lines of Beakers, our positions determined by the Lottery. Being one of the last of the beakers that the beakee had to walk past was considered most favorable because if the beakee survived the first wave of the, gauntlet, then they had to reverse their direction, and rarely made it through again. Thus, to be near the end of the line increased the likelihoood that one would have the good fortune to perform the final, killing beak.
Forgive me if I digress and describe my own particular Beaker, but it is important to me to set down our practices to the best of my ability because after the Great Fall, excuse me, I meant Understanding, they have been relegated to the negligent care of time.
Whenever one won a lottery, one was awarded a Beak. This one affixed to a metal staff with a fine Chicken derived adhesive. I had more than thirty of these to my credit by the time of my final Beaking, and my staff was greatly dreaded or hoped for, depending on the inclination of the culprit, because during the last years my fine instrument accounted for at least twelve final blows!
It was a sad day indeed for me when I had to surrender it and my feathers of honor in the name of the Great Understanding, and I wipe tears from my eyes at the mere memory.
The sensitive among us knew that the final days were at hand when the Great Number Understander began registering the Number of the Beast as being zero. At first the Godservers thought that perhaps they had been performing the Holy Keystroke Ceremony erroneously. Perhaps, they said, there had been laxity in the meditation procedures.
But no matter how many times it was tried, zero came up. Yet we were sure there were still apostates among us. And there were many other terrifying signs and portents. A fixed star began to loom in the heavens, and our entire planet resounded with the booming voice of the Master Chicken. I was there and I remember those awful words all too well.
"Automatic docking procedures with the Flounder Ship are being initiated. All systems go!"
There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Within hours the fixed star grew larger and larger, until it was perfectly clear that it was a planet much as our own. It slammed into the never used Portal of Infinity, and with a great shudder the portal opened, and our planets were joined.
This part is agony in the recounting. My memories are little more than a heap of broken images and impressions.
The ungodly stench. The monstrous appearance of the planet's inhabitants. Their gross nudity enhanced by some sickening oil with which they covered their bodies, reeking to the ceilings of their idolatry and hideous practices.
But most atrocious of all was the monstrosity atop their staffs, the laughable perversity they called the Creator, the skull of something that could only be called an instrument of evil, a flounder!
Within hours our entire planet, faithful and apostate alike, was uniting against a common and revolting danger. There were many battles, and not all of them in our favor. Our enemy was an oily and dangerous one. The stink of them alone was enough to send an entire regiment into shock. Good men and women all, suffocated to an early grave.
The Great Number Understander went haywire. The Number of the Beast Ritual kept giving the same cryptic answer, "Operator Error."
Messianic cults began to abound in the expectation of the Second Coming of the Great Completed Chicken at the conclusion of the Flounder War. Our Godservers were organizing the planet into a huge army for the final Confrontation.
The pagans on the other side of the portal were no doubt doing the same when the voice of the Planet again resounded with those terrible words.
"Automatic docking procedures with the Elephant Ship are being initiated. All systems go!"
The vast technological superiority of the Elephant people caused us to establish an uneasy truce with the disgusting flounders, but matters only grew worse.
Not a week went by where our ship did not resound with strange and terrible names:Antelope, Giraffe, Horse, Whale, and worst of all, Rhinocerous!
The Number Understander began emanating strange and garbled transmissions, the most dreadful of which was, "Database linkage on-line."
The Godservers began acting strangely, as if their work with the Number Understanders had given them a terrible vision which had shaken the foundations of their faith. Rituals fell out of practice.
The Great War was called off, disappointing me terrifically, since I was looking forward to dying an honorable death on the Great Conveyor Belt.
Of the decadence that followed I would prefer to say little. It began with the young. The "fashion of flounder" soon devolved to "elephant style," and "horse mode." And then, Great Chicken, they began to interbreed! Of that now common practice called "doggy" I shall not speak.
I am an old man, and thank Chicken, near death. I have straddled two ways of life, and cannot bear this new mode. I, the greatest Beaker and defender of the Faith among my people, am now branded an apostate and sentenced to die. These new barbarians call it a "courtesy" to allow me to feed my history into the "common database of the error of the pre-civilized universe."
Woe to you who read this, you are a member of the lost. The sacred mysteries of the Feather will die with me, and all the other mysteries held by the other martyrs now branded apostate will die with them. Meditate upon the Egg, if eggs there still be, and perhaps deep within your heart the truth will unfold.
I go to my death with the words of life and truth: the Chicken, the whole Chicken, and nothing but the Chicken. So help me, Chicken. BACK TO THE CONTENTS