Chapter 3

All things considered, Herbert felt the day had gone pretty well.  He had been selected for random disposal by his friends and family.  He was a couple of feet from landing safely when his parachute was caught in a freak storm.  He was herked and jerked through the air across half of Upper Hippotulamulia and he was not yet convinced that his limbs were still fully attached to his body.  A final gust finally ripped his parachute and he nose dived into a river.  After pin balling off rocks for a mile or so down the rapids he finally pulled himself onto the shore.  He crawled onto the river bank and as soon as he had rolled over onto his back to catch his breath he noticed the eagle swooping in towards him.  It scooped him up, flew him back to its nest, dropped him off and left again.  He was caked in mud, bruised, beaten, tired and, were he not so beaten, battered and tired, he would have been very hungry.  All things considered, thought Herbert, I couldn’t have hoped for anything better.  I’m still alive, I think, I still have all, or at least most, of my limbs, and I’m miles away from the dinkle’s tree.  I couldn’t have asked for much more.  He was not being completely sarcastic.

***

Hutley was a man of many talents.  He could tie cherry stems with his tongue.  He knew some magic tricks.  Only a fool would take him on in poker.  And he was arguably the Universe’s favorite con artist.  But recent events made him think that the Universe had turned against him and was determined to make him come clean. (footnote: The Universe had not, in fact, turned against him, and was completely disinterested in him coming clean or staying dirty, but he did get a big kick out of putting people in very awkward situations.)

It all started with the monkeys.  Monkeys were common visitors to Thursley, but they generally didn’t take the time to stop and begin large construction projects.  Asteriods were not strangers to the region, either, and stopped by as frequently as possible.  But this asteroid had the looks of a divinely guided precision strike.  Then there was Franklin.  Selfish little prat just disappeared.  And now Thurslinians wanted to know why.  Hutley was worried.  As Head Priest at the High Temple of Grimesly he was responsible for preventing or, if that failed, predicting or, at least, explaining such events.  What have monkey forts, tactile asteroid strikes and invisible men got to do with each other?

He had, traditionally, relied heavily on two tactics.  The first involved inventing calamities that he had averted.  He liked ridiculous weather and alien related troubles, but sometimes pulled in hideous diseases that turned people into zombies and such.  His second tactic was to explain existing problems as somehow related to a failure by the people of providing him with a sufficiently luxurious lifestyle.

But Hutley, or Lord Hutley the Immaculate of the Graygathian order of the High Temple as he was officially known, lacked the imagination to relate monkeys, disappearing men, asteroids and the silkiness of his sheets.  He decided that some other supernatural force was tired of playing along with the deities his ancestors had invented and was calling in her chips.  It was time he let the people of Thursley know that Graygathia and Dorloria had retired and Random Chaos had been promoted in their place. It would have been his first, truly prophetic moment.

The entire town, minus one mentally unstable clerk and a thief who’s occupation had suddenly become much more lucrative, had gathered to hear the wise words of their richest, and therefore holiest, citizen.

“Degenerates of Thursley and asinine followers of Graygathia.”  The introduction was ceremonial; Hutley’s ancestors had gotten a real kick out of how much they could insult people in the name of deity and wanted their descendants to have the same opportunity.  “Wretched, puerile slobs that seek and receive the assistance of Dorloria despite your officiously pungent redolence.  Gather your disturbingly misaligned faces to me and you will hear words that you will blindly obey like brainless sheep to the slaughter.”

The crowd was excited.  Hutley had opened with the full ceremonial introduction.  They knew they were about to learn something very important.

The ceremony typically continued with the slaughtering of the invisible counterpart of a sheep.  Hutley loved lamb chops and thought the “invisible counterpart” was the magnum opus of his ancestors.  “Bring the sheep of sacrifice.”  A real sheep, a nice fattened one appropriate for sacrifice, was brought forward.   It was led up the stairs of the ziggurat-like temple, past Hutley, and out of sight inside the temple.

“I now call on the sheep in its true form.”  Hutley went through the dramatic motions of waving a yellow cloth like a bull fighter behind which the ‘sheep’s true form’ would, invisibly, appear.  He had done this hundreds of times.  Sometimes he would do it a couple of times a week when he wanted to get the priests from the neighboring temples together for a party.

But something was wrong.  The cloth waving was met with silence.  They should be cheering.  Usually, he waved the cloth and the stupid fools cheered, but now they weren’t cheering.  They didn’t applaud.  They didn’t even smile.  They just stared.

Confused, Hutley followed their eyes to the spot where the sheep should have been pretending to be.  As he expected, nothing was there.  He turned to the crowd, “What?”

 The eyes looked up at him and then back to the spot.  “What’s wrong?” he repeated.

The local bully piped up first, “Where’s the sheep?”  The crowd mumbled consent and confusion.

“What do you mean ‘where’s the sheep’?” Hutley stumbled. “It’s right here like always.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Of course you can’t, you illiterate tully.”  Hutley struggled to step back into his role and calm the crowd with verbose insults and contradictory (aka mystical) explanations.  “The sheep is invisible in its true form.  That means you can’t see it.”

“Since when?”

The Universe wasn’t out to get Lord Hutley the Immaculate of the Graygathian order of the High Temple, it just had a terrible sense of irony.

***

Mary and Murrey braved the storm heroically.  The wind blew over them, blocked by the thick grass of the deep plains, but they trudged on with pronounced, meaningful steps.  A flash flood washed them up, but they managed to grab a deeply rooted piece of grass before they were washed over a cliff (a frightening 6 inch drop in an otherwise completely flat plain).  The water forced a horde of worms to the surface, but the twins majestically defeated all of the completely harmless crawlers they found in their paths.  They figured that was good material to start composing the heroic epic poems that generations of dinkles would sing about them.  They also decided to add in some trolls and wrestling matches with demigods for narrative flow between dramatic episodes.

***

Sneaux had never had an unobstructed view of the Outside.  The outermost branches of the tree could not support the weight of a dinkle, and so he and the other dinkles had always looked from further in the tree at a world blotted by stray branches and leaves.  During the high season, leaves would completely enclose the dinkles in their own isolated universe.

From under the tree, though, a new reality was opened up to him.  He could see the grass stretch out to the horizon.  In the storm, magnificent lighting and percussion colored a dramatic show of power.  After the winds passed over head and into oblivion, the lightening offered an extended encore that also seemed to be stepping in as a preview of some unworldly power that lay beyond.  This all, in his mind, confirmed his hypothesis that he hadn’t been missing much.

He woke up early (relatively speaking) the next morning.  He had planned before going to sleep that he would position himself such that when he woke up he could stretch vigorously and, with a little luck, “accidentally” catch Pinkle under the chin with a haymaker.  He had been so excited about the prospects that he was up hours more imagining what it would feel like.  When the moment arrived, though, his yawn-powered upper cut landed roughly on a painfully resistant root.

Pinkle had obviously been awake for hours.  He had fetched the shell and sealed it with a twig.  He had built a little teepee of sticks as though he were going to build a fire.  When Sneaux sat up, Pinkle was on his knees with his ear on the ground (a very difficult feat for a dinkle).

“Hey Pinkle, you look like an idiot.”  Pinkle didn’t react.  His face had that look of determined focus that only those fully employed in some ridiculous activity can ever achieve.  This look is remarkably impervious to insults. (footnote: Theories about the ability of this look (the I’m-trying-to-look-like-I’m-thinking-real-hard-but-the-clockwork-upstairs-definitely-ain’t-working look) to resist insult center on those types of individuals that are usually found employing it.  The first group is those that have overactive imaginations—some children and any politicians who think they will actually make a difference.  The second group is made up of B grade actors and the other politicians who know their work is inconsequential but try to convince people otherwise.  For these groups, their fictional worlds buffer them from outside interference.  The third group is made up of people who are not intelligent enough to focus and listen at the same time.  The most reliable evidence forces us to conclude that Pinkle is probably a member of the third group.)

Slowly, either for effect or to avoid losing his balance, Pinkle raised a “shush” hand to Sneaux, so, logically, Sneaux decided he needed to repeat his statement more loudly.  “Hey.  Pinkle.  You Look Like An Idiot.”

He finally got Pinkle’s attention.  “Will you be quiet, man?” Pinkle whispered sharply.  He was in his element—that is, courageously navigating waters that have only become treacherous because of his own imbecile attempts to avoid fantastic (not fantastic ‘great’ fantastic but fantastic ‘crazy psycho hallucinations’ fantastic) danger.

“I’m listening.  For grass monsters.  Or birds.  Or . . . whatever else might want to eat us.  We’ll need to know where they’re at so we can go the other direction.”

“You learned that from the Guide?”  Sneaux queried.

“Came up with it on my own,” Pinkle responded proudly.  He put his ear back on the ground and closed his eyes to emphasize that he was focusing very hard.

Sneaux looked at the terrain around him.  He knew he had to leave the tree to find food.  The world around him in every direction looked exactly like the world around him in all the other directions.  Grass.  Lots of it.  Tall grass.  Three times taller than he was.  In every direction.  Just grass.  Nothing else.

He remembered which way the water had ran during the storm and started to develop a plan.  You see, Sneaux has an incredible amount of respect for water; it has mastered the art of always following the path of least resistance.  You could say that water was for Sneaux something of a role model.

So, remembering that the water had flowed past the tree towards Pinkle’s current location, he walked between Pinkle and the tree and started to jump up as high as he could (not tremendously high, mind you) and stomping his feet as loudly as possible on the way down.

Nothing.

He took a couple of steps closer towards the squatted Pinkle and jumped again.

Nothing.

He took a few more steps towards Pinkle.  If Pinkle didn’t hear him this time he was close enough that he could kick him for making him exert all this energy.  He jumped again.

Pinkle’s head shot up.  “I heard’m.  They think they’re pretty sneaky devils, but they can’t get by me.”

“What did you hear?” Sneaux asked preponderantly.

“Sounded like a three legged grass monster.  Big fellow, about twice as tall as a dinkle and much longer.  I’d guess he was about three leagues to the north and heading this way fast, so we’d better get moving.”

Sneaux looked up and cursed whatever was up there that got their kicks out of making a helpless dinkle very miserable.  He wouldn’t have to fight gravity, but now Pinkle thought they needed to double time to run away from figments of his imagination. Irony.

As they started to walk away from the tree Sneaux turned to Pinkle, “How far’s a league?”

Pinkle’s face immediately tightened into a look of painful, ignorant determination.

***

Herbert knew he needed to get out of the tree before the bird returned.  He didn’t know why the bird had left him alone in the nest, but he assumed it wasn’t because the bird was shy.  Herbert thought it more likely that it was going to borrow some rosemary and ginger from a neighbor so it could properly enjoy its meal.

As we mentioned before, even though Dinkles live in trees, it is, in fact, a bit of a mystery why.  That the Universe had decided to also inflict Herbert with a fear of heights he felt moved the condition from irony to cruel irony.  Herbert had learned at a young age to be grateful for what he has instead of becoming angry for what he doesn’t have, because his only other choice is to seek revenge on the entirety of the existence and Forces of Nature.  Now, sitting in a bird’s nest, beaten, bruised, battered, high in the air and afraid of heights, only happy to be where he is because where he was will soon no longer be a where but will become a was as well, thoughts of revenge started to seep into his mind.

Dinkles had traditionally avoided seeking revenge against the Universe and the Forces of Nature by insisting that a system of karma was operating.  The idea is this—the Universe is just picking on them because he’s a bully.  They don’t think they’ve done anything to deserve their situation, and therefore can’t do anything to undeserve it.  (footnote: Most societies in the Universe have some concept of called karma (because it is a really cool sounding word in almost all languages) but there is very little consistency in its meanings.  Generally, though, it is an attempt to explain why life sucks.)  So, they just try to ignore the Universe and hope that, like the little kid that is intent on mimicking someone who refuses to talk, he will eventually lose interest and let them get on with it all.

Herbert felt, though, that it was time that someone taught the Universe a lesson.  He didn’t know what that lesson would be, who would teach it or even how one would go about teaching the entirety of everything a lesson, but he felt that these logistical challenges were minor inconveniences compared to the more pressing demands of not dying.

He was confident, therefore, that the first step in getting back at the Universe was to get out of the nest.  He awkwardly crawled out (Dinkles for reasons I don’t feel I need to discuss are not natural crawlers), wiggled his feet down to the branch below and lost his balance.  He wasn’t too concerned about losing his balance.  He figured he had two methods of getting from the branch where he was now perched to a lower one: falling or jumping.  Falling from the branch at least made his impending death accidental, while if he had jumped it would become suicide.  He didn’t want Gravity to think he had given up.

So, Herbert lost his balance and fell.  And he continued falling.  From inside the nest he had no concept of how high off the ground he had been.  He had been assuming that his fall to the ground would have been broken by branches, which, if he was lucky, just might knock him unconscious before he rebounded off the forest floor.  But instead he just fell.

Instead of the bone cracking smack of a branch or the thud of the forest floor, Herbert’s fall was broken as he sunk deep into pillowy softness.  He opened his eyes, but could see nothing.  The air around him was cool and moist and sparse.  Falling from the tree, Herbert realized, he had fallen into a pile of leaves.  He quickly made the transition from shock at not being dead to confusion at not being dead to relief at not being dead to fear and panic that if he was not able to get out of the pile quickly he would not be not dead very much longer.

Chapter 2

There are two, contradictory experiences of all sentient beings in all universes and multiverses. First, we all carry on as though we are the center of our personal -verse. We are consciously aware that others exist, and that others have similar emotions and sensations, and we might talk as though we care about those emotions and sensations, but in the end we can only care about our own emotions and sensations.This doesn't make you a bad person--it can't be any other way.

On the other hand, every being that has ever existed has been haunted by a sense that there is something larger going on around them. Someone else is pulling the strings, having more fun, making the big decisions while we our stuck at home on Friday nights, going to the same crummy job, using the same, unscented toilet paper. We try to tell ourselves that we are happy in our own spheres, and that we are just being paranoid, but we know its not true. Our lives really are lame, and someone out there really is more important, having more fun, and keeping all the big secrets to themselves. There is that one person who really is invited to all the exclusive parties and really is privy to all the important gossip and powerplays, but you're definitely not that person.

Even the Universe suffers from the contradiction of 1) feeling as though he is the center of the universe and 2) feeling like he is missing out on something bigger. Of course, he actually is the center of the universe, and the periphery and everything in between.

On Lutranean B, this contradiction resolved itself in a perfectly, simplistic way that not even the Universe could understand.

Lutranean B is a world if sentient diversity. The planet is named after the dominant species--the Lutranea. A full grown Lutranean was more than 8 feet tall and incredibly attractive. For the most part, species tend to be drawn to other members of their species, finding members of other species relatively less attractive, but everyone agrees that the typical Lutranea is no less than a mortal Adonis. People cannot actually agree on what a typically Lutranea actually looks like.

The most populous species on Lutranean B are the Aranas. With multiples heads, eyes, legs, abdomens and little sprikly things, Aranas are considered to be among the least attractive sentient beings--but given their high birth rate, they obviously disagree. Aranas never surpass a foot in height, and were generally disregarded for thousands of years and big insects that wouldn't shut up. The Lutranea still use the phrase "talking with the Arana" as a euphemism for insanity. The Arana still use the phrase "bugging like a Lutranea" as a euphemism for freaking out . . . and "smart as a Lutranea" is not a compliment.

The Darfinians are often treated like the Lutranea's shorter, uglier, bluer, and generally nerdier little brothers. They generally top out at 6 feet, walk upright on two legs, have two arms with opposable thumbs, and are best known for being a second late with the witty comment at parties and getting one-upped by a Lutranean when they try to impress. They tend to live in forests far away from the Lutranea.

And then there are the Dinkles.

The Lutranea generally consider themselves the dominant species of the planet, and no one really bothers to disagree. They claim that position based on their advanced sewer system; sewer systems being an obvious way to measure the technology, culture, civility, and non-ickiness of a people. No one is really quite sure why the Lutranea invested so much in an advanced waste disposal system, since their waste literally does not stink. The Lutranea respond that others would understand if they had to live with the pressure of being the most perfect species in existence, but, of course, they don't.

***

Dinkles spend the majority of their lives sitting in a row along a branch taking turns puffing a pipe. Centuries ago, before they had developed the myth of the poisonous air and grass monsters, the pipes were filled with a combination of weeds and mushrooms that acted as a mild relaxant. Now, they filled the pipe with dried and crumbled leaves from their tree which had absolute no psychoactive properties whatsoever. More important to the Dinkles, who experienced little stress in their lives and, therefore, had no real need of a relaxant, the leaves smelled better and were therefore more pleasant for passing the time.

The Dinkles spent the majority of their time smoking a pipe because they had the majority of their lives to waste. Collecting nuts required them to work full days for most of a month, and then the rest of the year they would live off storage.

The nuts were distributed equally because, quite simply, no one wanted more nuts than they could eat. Consequently, there were no rich or poor among the Dinkles. The leaves for filling pipes were available in abundance to everyone. Taking eggs was a dangerous task, and so, when the opportunity arose, the entire nest was cleaned out. The eggs were large enough that one nest could typically feed most of the Dinkle population, and they had to be eaten quickly or they would go bad. Everything was shared equally. There was no such thing among the Dinkles as fine wine, fine clothes (they only had leaves), fancy jewelry (from bark?), high art (on bark?) or, for that matter, fine women (footnote: the population control program is not as difficult for the Dinkles as it might be in other societies, because the Dinkles don’t find themselves to be at all attractive). All Dinkles lived, essentially, the same.

But Sneaux had found a reason to be cynical, and for this the Dinkles hated him. To explain, cynicism in a society is typically the product of class conflict. Generally old money, when challenged by new money, will create measures of refinement (a taste for good art, drink, clothes, manners etc.) that take a lifetime to develop. Then, they belittle all other attempts at good living to establish themselves as superior. Other classes, in an attempt to copy the higher classes, will develop a similar attitude, elevating their own food, drink, art, entertainment, and women. Eventually, nothing’s good enough to satisfy everyone, and people learn to just be cynical about everything.

The Dinkles were not cynical. They all generally ate the same food, drank the same water, smoked from the same pipes, and were equally spherical. Putting down another Dinkle for his choice in food or women was pretty pointless.

Sneaux was different from other Dinkles in one important way, though. He freely expressed his view that life is for suckers and mocked other Dinkles for valuing it. For the Dinkles, Election Day provided their one source of self-elevating pride. It motivated and perpetuated population control measures because it allowed non-Extra Dinkles to celebrate their lives as intentional, if not meaningful, while the Extras were inferior. They hated Sneaux because he tried to turn the tables on them.

Some have wondered, though briefly and without much real interest, what the Dinkles think about while they're smoking their pipes. It has been suggested that if they had a surface that allowed them to gather in a circle they would talk more. Further, the argument goes, if they talked more they may have developed literature, philosophy, and, perhaps, even begun to question and criticize the existing social order. This, of course, is blathering hogwash dreamed up by people that have never actually met the Dinkles.

But some have wondered what the Dinkles think about while smoking their pipes. Their universe is bounded by the outer limits of the tree branches. Birth and death are reduced to mechanisms of the population control program. They do have some poetry and storytelling, but the themes are very limited—you can only write so much about bland nuts, smoking pipes, and a series of battles hundreds of years ago that no one remembers. The truth is, mostly they try to think of alternative ways of preparing nuts, in which, unfortunately, they have made no progress.

Sneaux, like most Dinkles, had never actually thought about what happens after death. As he fell out of the tree, he still didn’t think about what happens after death and instead thought something along the lines of “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggg-ggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, the interpretation of which is still being debated.

Had he been able to focus while he was screaming like an idiot he would have noticed 1) he was able to scream, which meant his lungs were still reasonably well positioned, 2) his spleen was still fully intact and as useless as ever, 3) when he was scared he screamed like a sissy girl, 4) a massive wall of dust that was moving in quickly and might reach him before he hit the ground, 5) Lutranean B had two moons of about equal mass (footnote: the moons were named, incidentally, Norman 1 and Hyptokaramuliathalipulis. A disgruntled scribe had convinced the King responsible for naming the moons (his name being, rather coincidentally, Norman) that the name of the second meant Norman 2 in some ancient language. In reality, Hyptokaramuliathalipulis was just the most ridiculous series of syllables the scribe could come up. Little did he know, Hyptokaramuliathalipulis is a name, in a language older than Language herself, and it can be translated either as That Which Cannot Be, Yellow Bunny Horse Slippers or, rather ironically, Norman the Second.), or 6) that the tree might not actually be the best place for a Dinkle right now, despite all other evidence to the contrary.

***

Herbert, to avoid coming to terms with his seemingly imminent death, noted the moons, calculated their orbits and postulated on their origins, and became very aware that the Dinkles were about to be in the middle of something much bigger than they could ever imagine. And then he thought to himself a most curious thing: death by monkeys or death by elephants.

***

Mary and Murrey floated down together, each striking poses that seemed to them very noble indeed. If there was ever a time where attitude mattered, it was now - at the start of their grand adventure. They landed first, softly and graciously, followed by Sneaux and Pinkle. Sneaux’s parachute had snagged on a branch and so lost its ability to slow his descent, and Sneaux crash-landed unceremoniously in between the twins. He lay there, sprawled out - as well as any creature approaching spherical could sprawl - and as he regained his senses he noticed Mary and Murrey standing above him.

“You alright, Sneaux?” Mary asked. “You look…”

“Like you’re ready for a bath.” Murrey finished confidently. Pinkle landed a few inches away from the trio, poised and ready to take on any grass monster that might be hungry.

Mary glared at her brother. “That’s not what I was going to say, Murrey,” she stated with a hint of irritation in her voice. “I was trying to tell Sneaux that he looked a little disoriented.”

“Oh.” Murrey immediately looked embarrassed and even heartbroken, but just as quickly forgot the whole incident. “Where’s Herbert?” he wondered aloud.

The four Dinkles on the ground, with the exception of Pinkle, who had now dropped to the ground in a GI pose and was crawling through the grass on his elbows, spent a short moment wondering where Herbert could have gone. They didn’t spend too much effort on this question, however, before they decided that he had probably landed without them noticing and run off.

“He’s gone to find food,” said Mary. “He’s gone to start an adventure,” decided Murrey. The twins began discussing, in whispers, how Herbert was probably planning on one-upping them in their escapades, what they could do to stop him, and where they should first look for food. Sneaux was thinking about how it just figured that his own parachute would be the one to get a hole in it, and Pinkle was busy staring at nothing and cocking his head slightly to the side, listening intently for any sign of trouble.

What the four Dinkles didn’t know was that in fact, Herbert had had the unfortunate lot of being carried away by the hurricane force gale that had blown in, a gale from which they were temporarily protected by the thick grass. This, of course, will be supremely important later in the story, but for now it will flop elegantlessly as an elaborately foreshadowed event that is painfully anti-climatic.

Mary and Murrey scurried off. Motivated now by competition, they were even more determined to travel speedily in the direction they had chosen completely at random.

Pinkle looked at Sneaux. “Brilliant. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“What are you talking about, you dip?” Sneaux was unpopular among the Dinkles because he challenged the system, but also because he had a terrible habit of throwing out random insults whenever he had the chance.
Pinkle didn’t seem to notice. “Screaming. It kept air from entering your lungs and amorphized your spleen. Chapter 3 of the Handbook. I decided to take out the spleen so I wouldn’t risk attracting predators, but your effeminate quiver indubitably scared away any predators for miles.”

As a back handed compliment, Sneaux caught this one in the jaw like it was wearing a weighted, armored glove. He was a bit embarrassed to have his ‘dip’ still hanging out there and decided to change the subject. “There’s a storm moving in. It’s big, and we need shelter now.”

Pinkle pulled out his "Exiles' Survival Guide". The Guide had two parts, Preparation and Field Work. Pinkle had memorized the Preparation portion, but had followed the author’s unequivocal advice that he not remove the seal from the portion labeled Field Work. (footnote: In a personal note from the author, Bimal informs the reader that these pages are chemically treated for the toxic air, and if exposed to tree air the writing will vanish.) Now he broke the seal to scour the pages for advice on shelter.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no no no no no. . . What have I done?” Pinkle screeched as he flipped feverishly through the pages. “I’m an idiot.”

“I concur,” Sneaux submitted with pleasure, feeling immediately less humiliated but a little disconcerted with Pinkle’s reaction to the Guide, “but what has provoked this most recent bout of self-effacement?”

“The air here is not toxic. The grass air, apparently, has cleared the pages. My copy is useless.” Pinkle moved quickly from fear, to acceptance, to self pity and hopelessness. He slumped on the ground and dropped his face in his hands. “I’m lost. We’re lost.”

Sneaux had always been impressed with Bimal’s lack of scruples, but he was awe struck by this most recent revelation. The man, obviously, possessed a brilliance surpassed only by Sneaux himself. He decided that he would pick up where Bimal had left off. The squatting Pinkle had food squirting from his blue pajama pants, and Sneaux was famished.

“Pinkle, you slimy maggot, pull yourself together.” He was impressed with the force of his own commands. “The storm’s coming from the north. We’ll set up camp on the far side of the tree and use the base of the tree to blunt the storm winds. We’ll need to empty out a couple of those nuts in your pants to store water.”

His new subordinate split a smile, pulled out a nut and tossed it to Sneaux. He took out a second for himself and produced, almost magically, a sharpened rock from deep inside his pants. Sharpened rocks, for obvious reasons, were very valuable to the Dinkles, the closest they had to sacred relics.

Sneaux then Pinkle chopped holes in the tops of their nuts. The meat inside could be dug out by hand, and the two Dinkles cleaned out their nuts in a couple of minutes. After the storm had passed they could carve out fallen sticks to function as stoppers.

They ran to the south side of the tree, going over or around protruding roots. They positioned themselves between two larger roots that, they supposed, should buffer them against any winds that got lost in all the confusion and came at them from the wrong side. They heard huge drops of rain began to pelt the grass around the tree even before they had been able to settle in their new shelter.

“OK,” Sneaux started less convincingly, “Now, go out and fill up our nuts.”

Pinkle hopped up, grabbing both shells, and ran away from the base of the tree. As he ran he was apparently focused on the branches above them. Sneaux was first confused about what he was doing, which mutated into indifference about Pinkle’s fate, but was ultimately beaten out by a supreme concern about the future of his next meal as it was now packaged in a certain pair of blue pajama pants. He hopped up and ran after Pinkle. He had barely cleared the cover of the roots when a confused gust caught him and Pinkle and lifted them both off their feet.

Sneaux had barely hit the ground before he was up and running again. “What are you doing, you fool? Where are you going?” The words were caught up in the wind and carried to some other destination than that which Sneaux had intended.

Pinkle had struggled to get up with the shells in his hands and pants full of food—in any other circumstance Sneaux would have been amused by the show and for the second time that day discovered that his eminent death was really making life less funny. The delay allowed Sneaux to make up ground on Pinkle. He dove for his feet, or, rather, flopped in a manner that somewhat resembled a supple whale, and managed to trip him up with his hand. Pinkle’s feet were ripped out from under him, but his torso continued forward and whipped down like a fulcrum. He kept a hold of one shell, but the second flew out of his hand and was caught in the wind and blew well beyond the cover of the tree.

With only one shell, Pinkle was much more agile. He hopped to his feet. He ran another foot, near the edge of the tree’s cover. He found a spot that had been wetted by dripping water from a leaf high above and dug out the loose mud with the rock. He stuck the shell in the hole and turned back. Sneaux watched this performance from his belly. Athletes will often fake an injury to cover some idiotic move on their part, but Sneaux didn’t need to fake anything. He felt like the dive had detached each muscle from its proper skeletal contact point.

Pinkle ran back by him, looked confused, gestured for him to run back with him and said something that was swallowed up in the wind that approximated, as far as Sneaux could tell, something along the lines of “What are ya’ doing on the ground?” Sneaux decided that Pinkle must never know what it was that he was doing on the ground, and, with his mind occupied with his good fortune that Pinkle was obviously unable to deduce the obvious, Sneaux hopped up mindlessly and was half way back before his body finally got his brain’s attention and he limped the rest of the way back.

The two sat under the tree, breathless. “Sneaux,” Pinkle huffed, “I lost one of the shells.” “I know,” Sneaux replied. Sneaux wasn’t sure if Pinkle could hear him over the storm, but he was certain the tone exposing his own guilt was washed away with the wind.

“Wait.” Sneaux said, turning to Pinkle. “There’s something we need to do. Something I’ve always wanted to do.”

He stood up, turned around, and looked up into the tree. As loud as his oversized lungs would allow him he began, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.”

Pinkle had been out of sorts after his recent adventure, but Sneaux’s insane declaration at no one in particular caught his attention.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” having noticed that he caught Pinkle’s attention he decided he should start again from the beginning. “WE HAVE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SOLEMN NECESSITY OF TELLING YOU WE THINK YOU ARE THE WORTHLESS, ROTTING MUCOUS I HOPE TO BLOW OUT OF MY NOSE.” He waved at Pinkle to stand and join him.
“WE MEET HERE UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE EXILES TO PERFORM OUR REQUISITE DUTY OF LETTING YOU KNOW THAT YOU SUCK.”

“We hope you die humiliated and homeless,” Pinkle started timidly. Sneaux was surprised, but encouraged him to continue. “We hope you run out of food,” he was picking up steam, “OR THE TREE BURNS TO THE GROUND TAKING YOU WITH IT OR . . . “ He looked at Sneaux and grinned like a full-blooded goofball “YOU CATCH A BLOODY COLD AND SNEEZE YOUR LUNGS OUT YOUR NOSE.”

Too embarrassed to look at each other, the two turned around, found a spot, sat down and watched the storm pass above them. Minutes later Pinkle had fallen asleep to the relaxing sounds of rain drops on leaves and gusts of wind that could probably rip a man’s hair out of his head. Several feet above him, the entire Dinkle population was also sound asleep, completely unaware that any storm of any magnitude had passed their way.

***

Elias was also unaware of the storm, because he lived hundreds of miles away from the Ephulsian Plains of Upper Hippotuliamulia. But Elias was strangely aware of the Dinkles. Elias often found himself drawn to that half sentence, usually following a semi-colon, that mentioned the Dinkles in Lutranean text books.

Elias had always been a big different from his fellow Lutraneans. He was a bit rebellious. In a society obsessed with keeping up appearances--a rather boring endeavor since Lutraneans could not help but keep up appearances--Elias liked to break the rules.

He liked to shock people. He generally stuck to petty crimes--talking back to teachers, cannon balling at the pool, mooning the police--but he occasionally found himself daydreaming about starting a mass panic, a work stoppage, overthrowing the government, something that would really get people worked up.

The most serious of his crimes, though, was consorting with the lesser species, not to exploit their labor, but to learn. It was through these interactions that he learned about the mystery of the age of work. The Lutranea weren't too concerned about the age of work because they never really did any; they could always convince a Darfinian or Arana to do it for them. But Elias found himself strangely drawn to this debate. It was completely esoteric, pointless, meaningless, hopeless--it was perfectly academic.

Elias was more drawn, though, to the idea that the age of work was once 0; at some point, the age of work was born to replace something else, and there he learned about the myth of the age of magic. A world of Magic! A world of broken rules, of disorder, of Chaos! And Elias had dreams.

So, on a Tuesday in the Spring, in the 12th year of Norman Gregory the MMDLXXIV, a date that, notably, could not be measured by the age of work, Elias set out for Mount Apothesis.

Chapter 1

Evolution claims she spent so much time getting their brains to fit in such a small space that she really just forgot about the rest.  Others have suggested that the Dinkles are proof that Evolution has a sense of humor, because nothing so unsituated for its environment, or existence in general, could possibly have come about by accident.

(The Dinkles had been fit with all the necessary internal organs--lungs, spleens, etc.--but the Dinkles often complained that she was in too much of a hurry when she did it.  They were, as a result, the first to develop laxatives and have the world’s most complex sewer system on which they inscribed at frequent intervals, “Evoluti, hic comede”.)

Sneaux was like any other Dinkle.  He was about two inches tall and approaching spherical.  He was about as agile as whale blubber in navigating his home environment.  He, like other Dinkles, only managed to stay in the tree with a complex system of harnesses and nets that got frequent use.

But Sneaux was also somewhat unique.  He was a third son.  He was a goof. A big goof. Not on the scale of the Lucian atrocities, of course, but definitely not part of the program of population control that the Dinkles had been practicing for generations.  Not that the problem wasn’t correctable; it was correctable and Sneaux knew that it was only a matter of time until it was corrected.  Then he would find out what it was like to have his spleen explode or his lungs come out his nose—whichever happened first.  By all accounts, a lose-lose situation.

***

The adventures that would transform Sneaux from rotting roadkill in the eyes of his kinfolk to a legend of mythical proportions began on the day that Sneaux always assumed would be his last.  It was election day.

Sneaux struggled to get out of bed that morning.  The Dinkles did not have a penal system, let alone capital punishment, but if they had he might have thought, “This must be what people on death row feel like.”  He would have been terribly mistaken, so it is probably better that he didn’t think that.

Instead he thought, “So, this it what it feels like to wake up in the morning of the day that you will get shoved out of the tree only to have your lungs ripped from your chest and out your nose before you even hit the ground.”  He was, in this case, very accurate.

The election was at noon, but still Sneaux couldn’t force himself to wake up before eleven to enjoy his last moments alive.  He hadn’t yet enjoyed any moments of his life so far, so he didn’t really think the last moments would be any different.  Even if he had that expectation, he wouldn’t have gotten up any earlier.  He stopped battling habit soon after birth.

He threw on his leaf bib overalls and made his way towards the Hall.  He lived near the bottom—that way he would never need to risk going up at the end of the day—and the Hall was near the top.  He used a trunk ladder to climb the first 10 feet, got tired and hopped in a pulley seat and rode it the last 90 feet.

(footnote: The Dinkles take more pride in their system of pulley seats than even their sewer system.  Ropes, strewn through a system of pulleys, are tied to rocks at one end and attached to seats, like you’d find on a swing set but much longer relative to the size of a Dinkle and wooden, at the other.  Dinkles are typically expected to climb up a set of ladders built out of the tree trunk, but then will always ride down the pulley seat.  With three in the seat at once, they outweigh the rock and pull it up.  Seats could then be used if a Dinkle needed to climb in a hurry or if they were bringing bulk up with them and the weight of the rock could lift a single Dinkle with a light load all the way to the top very quickly.  Similar to the inscription on the sewer system, they etched on each seat, “Gravita, item tu”.)

***

Five parachutes.  Pinkle had arrived early and was anxiously inspecting them.  Pinkle, like Sneaux, was an extra.  He was a second son and third child.  But instead of accepting his fate, he decided early that he was going to beat exile.  Everyday he traveled to the edge of the branches and would take big whiffs of tainted air to “toughen his lungs”.  He decided that he didn’t need a spleen, so he went ahead and had it removed.  He was now looking for the parachute that would provide him the slowest, most reliable descent.  Sneaux noticed he had already changed into his baggy blue pajama pants, and they appeared to be stuffed with food; he considered that ridiculously optimistic.  Even if he survived the toxic air and the fall, the birds or grass monsters would eat him well before his stomach settled and he got hungry.  He was carrying a copy of Bimal's “Exile Survival Guide”.  Of course, no one had ever actually survived exile, so it was about as effective as any other self-help book.

The twins were there too, thanking everyone individually for coming to see them off on this, the best day of their lives.  Sneaux thought dryly to himself that they wouldn't be so excited if only they realized that it was going to be the last day of their lives.

Mary and Murrey were the only pair of fraternal twins - indeed, the only pair of any sort of twins - in all the Dinkle population. They caused quite a stir when they were born.  No one had ever seen anything quite like them before.  Their mother, Lucia, had screamed and, in an effort to rid the Dinkles of the woman who had given birth to such an abnormality, climbed to the highest branch she could (which, luckily for her, was only the second one from the ground due to her bad back and fear of heights) and promptly and dramatically flung herself from it.  Also luckily for her, right at that moment the children's choir happened to be passing by, practicing for their annual "We Beat Out all the Other Dinkle Tribes" celebratory parade, and the banners they carried broke her fall - mostly.  She survived, but the fall did put her in a coma for a couple of days and rattled her brain in such a way that she awoke thinking her newborn twins were the most beautiful Dinkles in the whole Tree.  Incidentally, she no longer has a bad back and has miraculously overcome her fear of heights.

Unlike the others elected to jump for the sake of population control, Mary and Murrey were by no means extras, being the first male and female in their family.  They were, in fact, the first male and female of many males and females in their family, since their mother thought they were so adorable she should do the world a  favour and have as many as dinkly possible.  When she had popped out her 17th Dinkle, the Committee for Population Control sent her a letter saying if she didn't stop they would have to take drastic measures.  The CPC had meant to issue the ultimatum after Lucia's 11th Dinkle, but had spent so much time arguing over the wording of the letter, what the drastic measures might be, and the environmental impact of sending said letter, that it took an extra 17 months for the warning to be sent (after it was copied nearly word for word from a note by the committee leader's bully child confiscated in the middle of his history class, the drastic measures were left undecided, and the environmentalists had been paid off).  By that time the warning didn't do much good, because Lucia had already decided she was tired of having children and had just taken up leaf collecting as her new hobby.

Mary and Murrey, instead of being elected to jump, had happily volunteered for what they thought would be the start of a grand adventure, which would make them rich and famous upon their triumphant return and guarantee them a lifetime of royalties from the story.  The fact that no other elected Dinkles had ever returned, triumphant or otherwise, did not seem to concern them.  Perhaps someone should have warned them of what they were volunteering for, but as the twins weren't exactly on the list of those you would invite over for dinner if you wanted a favour from the Governor, no one did.

Pinkle, on the other hand, was very aware of what he was getting into.  He just thought of himself as some kind of incorrigible conqueror of danger.

Pinkle is actually a very popular, or rather common, name among Dinkles.  Dinkle was originally the tribal name of the lone survivors of the “Dinkle Wars”, and so surviving members are at times referred to as so and so of the Dinkle.  Pinkle of the Dinkle is one of the more comical sounding names in the known universe, and as such it has been reserved among the Dinkles as a sort of space saver.  Extras are often named Pinkle so their parents are not forced to think of a better name for their shame—and so no one will ever take them seriously.

Sneaux leaned over to Pinkle.  “Take the one on the left,” he whispered, feigning concern that this information not be shared with Mary, Murrey and the other extras that could be getting dropped with them.

“Why?” Pinkle logically responded.

“It’s the best.”

“How do you know?  What do you know about parachutes?”

“Look at the cross-stitching, man.  And the way they’re folded.  The second one on the left has, I’d say, a 50% chance of failing to open, and the one on the far right is too weakly stitched.  It can’t hold up to the hurricane force winds we may be facing out there."

Pinkle thought about this.  He was visibly troubled.  “If it’s so great, why don’t you take it for yourself?”

“I’ve got a spleen, man.  I don’t have a chance.  But you, you’re ready.”

Pinkle smiled gleefully.  “I do have a chance, don’t I?”

Sneaux was glad this last question was rhetorical, because he had grown disinterested in lying to him any further.  Yanking the chain of a man with a half hour left to live wasn’t as much fun as he’d been hoping.

The conversation, though, was not yet over.  “I looked.”  Pinkle had leaned over and was whispering so closely in Sneaux’s ear that Sneaux could feel the moisture from his breath condense in his ear canal.  It tickled.

Sneaux knew exactly what Pinkle meant, but was shocked into disbelief.  The Dinkles had one and only one rule that was considered important--except, of course, the having-a-lot-of-babies thing.  No self-respecting Dinkle should ever look down towards the presumed landing spot of the exiles.  One reason, obviously, is that seeing the dead bodies of their exiled comrades may influence some Dinkles and bring an end to the practice, and thus risk the sustainability of their society.  The second, publicly advertised, reason is that the exiles should be given more respect and not have their dead bodies gawked at from above.

Sneaux had looked several times already and knew what startling discovery Pinkle thought he was about to reveal to him.  He figured that the exiles were his brothers in arms and they would want him to take a little peek.  He was just shocked that Pinkle would look.

“Looked at what?” he responded.  He immediately regretted this response, because faking ignorance would only prolong the conversation.

“I looked, you know, you know. . . . You know, right?”  Pinkle was struggling to explain what he had done without admitting guilt, but eventually gave up.  “I looked where I’m not supposed to look.  Guess what I saw.”

Sneaux was wondering if he’d ever practiced looking surprised, but was confident he couldn’t do a good fake surprise, so he decided to head Pinkle off at the proverbial path.  “Nothing.  I guess that you saw nothing.”

The facial expression this response inspired from Pinkle, which managed to encompass the entire continuum of emotional variance possible to Dinkles in a single set of wrinkles and brow relocations, made the entire conversation worthwhile to Sneaux.  He knew that he sure would have had a good laugh about it that night—except he’d be dead.

“That’s exactly right,” Pinkle responded when he had gathered his composure and scrambled to regain the initiative on the conversation.  “I didn’t see anything—no bodies, no parachutes, no blue pajama pants.  Nothing.”

Pinkle’s optimism was killing Sneaux, so he decided to do the meanest thing he could think of and gave Pinkle a peek into his own realism.  “Pinkle, they’ve all been eaten.  Those unfortunate enough to make it to the ground before a bird snagged’m were gobbled up by the grass monsters.”

It didn’t work.  “No, you’re wrong.  You’re dead wrong.”  Pinkle then took a quick moment to bask in the glory he felt should be coming his way for what he believed to be a very clever, even if accidental, pun.

Sneaux used the moment to slip off.  A crowd had now gathered and the Hall was nearly full.  The Hall was a simple structure compared to some of the other Dinkle accomplishments; the Dinkles had not yet figured out what force of nature they could snub by building a more impressive meeting arena.  It was built in a fortuitous location where 8 branches stretched for a couple of yards parallel to one another.  The cross section of those branches formed a U shape on which some bark had been laid to make a center stage with theatre seating rising up on two sides.  It could safely hold a third of the Dinkle population, but on election day it was expected to hold twice than many.

Giving the Hall a panoramic glance, Sneaux noticed storm clouds gathering in the west.  He tried to think of a reason for this to frustrate him or encourage his sense of victimization, but he couldn’t find any.  He was confident he would be dead before the storm arrived.  He underestimated how fast the clouds were moving in front of a hurricane force gale.

***

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” called out the Governor, “we have gathered here today to participate in the solemn necessity that we call Election Day.”

The crowd roared in a very un-solemn fashion.  Living in a tree made it difficult to participate in any events that were actually fun, so they made the most of election day.

“We meet here today under the jurisdiction of the CPC to perform our requisite duty of sending five beloved members of our community in search of fame, glory and, more importantly, food.

A ripple of shoulders passed through the Hall as two thirds of the surviving Dinkle population simultaneously shrugged.  They, one, knew it was a lie and, two, were completely disinterested in the fame and glory of the extras.  Mary and Murrey were strutting around the center stage like lame peacocks.  They waved on the indifferent crowd with uneven flapping motions with their arms; this was their moment to shine.

“Without further ado, let us begin the business at hand.”  The crowd exploded and the Hall rocked.  The Governor couldn’t help but respond.  “Today, we will be electing FIVE Dinkles to take up their parachutes and take the big jump.”  He was almost screaming into the microphone, the functioning of which was rather inexplicable among a people that had not yet discovered electricity.  “First, we have Mary and Murrey, children of the ridiculously fecund Lucia.  Although they are not extras, they have asked to jump as soon as they were old enough, and as the siblings of the Lucian Extras who can deny them?”  Attendants quickly switched between boos and cheers where appropriate, except for a few who could not keep up and were rather embarrassed to be booing when everyone else around them was cheering.  Mary and Murrey had won respect among Dinkles by volunteering to jump, the kind of respect one gives to the person that does and eats unspeakable things to survive being trapped in some extreme location.

“Third is a Pinkle.  He asked for a one year postponement after being elected last year so he could recover from surgery.  This healthy, overdue extra looks healthy and ready to jump today.”  Pinkle was in a corner, focused.  Sneaux couldn’t tell if he was meditating or taking care of some final business that would be much more difficult while gliding down with a parachute.  Sneaux had wondered if such business were more difficult without a spleen, but concluded that, if anything, clearing some room could only make the whole process smoother.  Either way, Pinkle seemed oblivious to the crowd’s gleeful response.

“The next nominee, a third son and rather worthless extra, is Sneaux.”  Sneaux had not made much of an effort to make many friends which was clearly reflected in the crowd’s response to his announcement.  Where most nominees got cheers, and some the occasional boo, Sneaux provoked profanity and comments predicting the future location of his lungs relative to his chest cavity and the stomach of some rather grotesque grass monster.

“Next up is a second Pinkle, . . . “  The Governor continued to announce 3 more Extras, each born the wrong sex or, generally, when they should not have.  Dinkles felt that baby Dinkles were somehow responsible for when they were born and what sex they were born, and were therefore extremely offended by Extras to have disobeyed very functional and well advertised expectations. 

The excitement for this election was especially high.  Usually, the number of jumpers matched precisely with the number of Extras that came of age that year.  The act of electing jumpers merely gave the Dinkles an opportunity to express their disdain for the audacity of the Extras to be born.  Because Mary and Murrey had volunteered, though, there were seven nominees to fill five spots.  The first four spots—Mary, Murrey, Pinkle and Sneaux—were given, but the crowd now needed vote to fill the final spot with one of three candidates. 

This caused some problems.  Because the election process in the past had been only a formality, there was no system for counting votes.  The Dinkles were able to work around this difficulty though because only a small number of the attendees (that number being exactly 3) actually cared which one of the nominees filled the final spot.  In the end, the Governor picked the fattest of the three on the grounds that the thinner two would represent less of a strain on the food supply.  Herbert immediately regretted indulging himself on extra nuts the last few months.

Mary, Murrey and Sneaux had put on their blue pajama pants while waiting for the Governor to pick their final member.  Pinkle arose from his meditation, tightened his parachute to his back and was practicing his jump.  He had read in the guide that his parachute would be more effective if he was able to lay out flat quickly after the jump and was determined to perfect this technique even while practicing on a flat surface.  Herbert was struggling to find a pair of pajama pants that fit him.  Sneaux noticed he looked a little panicked and his hands were visibly shaking.  He concluded that Herbert’s sudden verdict had not given him time to think about how little life had offered him so far and realize that the prospects for the future weren’t much better.

In a few minutes they were all loaded up and ready to jump.  The Hall had a plank at the outer end.  It was great for effect when the Extras would walk out to the end and jump off, but it also served to extend over the outer reaches of the branches and give the Extras a clean jump out of the tree.  Mary and Murrey were first in line to jump.  Sneaux was third, Pinkle fourth and Herbert last.  Mary and Murrey were excited to get started, Sneaux was completely indifferent, Pinkle wanted to see the dangers that awaited him by carefully observing the fates of those ahead of him, while having someone behind him as a bird decoy, and Herbert was struggling to come to terms with his life and, more eminent now, his death.

The front half of the seats were suddenly expected to support a disproportional amount of the attendant crowd’s weight.  The anxious Dinkles were holding their collective breaths anticipating the inherently anticlimactic moment as the jumpers disappeared over the edge.  As Mary stepped to the edge of the plank and disappered, Sneaux first realized he was about to die and his mind began to race.  He momentarily forgot about the general miseries of life and, in this state, irrationally concluded that he was not ready to die. 

But what could he do?  No one had ever tried to run; there wasn’t really anywhere he could run.  A passionate speech would never work, not with the way the other Dinkles felt about him.  He looked up and noticed that the storm clouds were moving in much faster than he had originally assumed, but he couldn’t think how that would work to his advantage.  Then, in a grand epiphany, he realized how he could get out of this but he’d have to act fast . . .

It didn’t work.  He’d taken two steps, tripped on his pajama pants, fallen on his face, and quickly rediscovered why he’d felt so callous about life for so long.  He stood up, saw Murrey disappear over the edge, got a running start and took a running leap off the edge plank.  Or so he intended.  Instead, he tripped over his pajama pants for a second time just as he was loading up and tumbled over the end.  He felt certain the crowd’s laughter was the last sound he’d ever hear.

By Way of Introduction

The tree-dwelling Dinkles of Upper Hippotulamulia may be the most unique of the sentient species on Lutranean B.  The entire known population dwells in a single tree in the Ephulusian Plains. Only a handful will ever leave the tree’s branches.

With an average height of only two inches, the Dinkles are also considered the smallest sentient species in the world and, potentially, the entire universe.  It is a mystery how such a small brain cavity can hold a brain complex enough to conduct intelligent thought, though no one has been sufficiently interested in this mystery to bother traveling all the way up to the Ephulsian Plains of Upper Hippotulamulia to find the answer.  One popular theory was that the Dinkles had been faking it for the last 2000 years, but it has since been discovered that extensive “faking it” is one of the more sophisticated behaviors of sentient beings.

A more alluring mystery, which has drawn effusive speculation but, again, no serious academic study, is how a sentient species has come to live entirely in a single tree.  The debate is fuelled by the fact that the Dinkles live in the sole tree within 100 miles of its location.  Some claim that the Plains were once a forest inhabited by a flourishing population of Dinkles.  Warring Dinkle tribes battled over issues of seemingly important philosophical merit.  A relatively weak and fearful species, war strategy centered on night raids with the intent of burning down the opposing tribe’s tree.  Today the lone tree in the Ephulusian Plains houses the victorious tribe.  This theory has been promoted without much physical evidence, but it is commonly accepted on the basis that it is a fun story and rejecting it would require one to come up with another theory.  The Dinkles have developed the world’s most sophisticated sprinkler system, perhaps evidence of adaptive war technology or, perhaps, just the misallocation of public funds.

In the tree the Dinkles can provide for all their physical needs.  Tree nuts and bird eggs make for a complete diet, and they have chiseled storage tanks out of the tree branches to store water.  The leathery leaves of the hippolucamus tree are sown into clothing and the holes dug in the trunk are shelter enough for the mild winters of the region.

In this environment, the Dinkles have developed strict population controls.  They consider it imperative that they eat all of the tree nuts to prevent new trees from sprouting and hosting rival tribes, but excess population can lead to hunger or even starvation.  Perhaps as part of the effort to control the population, up to a half dozen Dinkles will “parachute” out of the tree branches and wander bewilderedly across the plains in baggy blue pajama pants.  If we knew their destination it may provide us with important insights into Dinkle culture, but those that have attempted to follow these Dinkles have all quickly lost interest.

The Dinkles, though sentient they may pretend to be, do not appear to be planning for the doom that awaits them. Detailed analyses and blind guessing have dated their home at several thousand years old and in its final days. It is, in fact, much older than anyone could have imagined.  Unfortunately for the Dinkles, no one yet cares.

But they will.

This is a story of how a lazy and obstinate young Dinkle called Sneaux nearly caused the premature destruction of his species and his world but managed, in that sequence, to have learned a thing or two about the meaning of life, and had some time left over to save the universe—at least, the worthwhile parts of it.