The Threat-Hamster Papers

The fungoid looked pleased with itself. Its thousands of tendrils shimmered excitedly as it announced the guest of honor.

“Insipidia Threat-Hamster, “ it trilled.

The various Growns and Breds, treasuries of hybridization of all terrestrial life, resplendent in flashy ceremonial fabrics, milled decorously. Growns tried to maneuver their various shapes into less intimate proximity to each other. More than a few had found themselves parents as a result of just such stray contacts. Give birth to a talking toadstool over breakfast and see what it does to your relationships.

Growns, life forms housed in birdhouse-like cranial units perched on pylons with dignified six wheel star casters, or golden-embroidered air cushions. They applauded as they could, enthusiastic rustlings, sibilant hisses filled with approval, and whistling respect. Their protective razor wire was decorated with yellow tassels for the occasion, they’d polished their housings, and bought deodorants.

Breds, in their designer coverings, a mass of mostly uncompromising, understated, formwork, and implied prestige, made noises of welcome to the undisputed social queen. Breds, being freestanding, sexually produced beings, had different fashion criteria. The rivalry was never nasty, but always intense. It was natural that the two types would try to outdo each other in ceremonial excess.

The various beings had spent hours of indecision trying to dress for status. It’s not so easy when you don’t know what species you belong to, and have to try for a fashion statement based on hearsay. Handicapped by the fact that they contained the anatomies of plants, birds, animals, algae, fungi, mosses, fish, and bacteria, as well as a few socially acceptable viruses, the choice of accessories alone was enough to daunt the most ruthless debutante. What goes with a pseudopod? How do you highlight a coniferous face? To what extent are you prepared to reveal your antennae? Why? Does the chintz curtain clash with your tail?

Pomp and circumstance, at each others’ throats.

Broadcast around the world, this gathering was the ultimate refinement of the Scientocracy. A few cameras, microphones, and other utilitarian oddities protruded from the morass of glamorous monstrosities. A collection of Domos bustled about. Miniature Growns, generally menial servants, they were housed entirely within various machines, most of which resembled lampshades. They spent more time trying not to be crushed by the guests than working, but soon overcame that problem by perching their cameras on the guests. This created a minor status war of itself, much to the satisfaction of the Domos.

Insipidia, a Bred, approached the lectern, several tons of her, rhino sized, a tiara on her almost-human head, the slug-like body in a cotton floral print tubular dress. Couldn’t see her tail at all. She had learnt, those that knew her thought. Even the slime trail seemed to be evaporating demurely.

The assembled bundles of sentience, heads of various branches of the Scientocracy and other distinguished ambivalences, were dazzled. Her gray arms flashed with precious sea shells and a few kilos of diamonds and gold tastefully worn. Slithering through the applause, she delivered her address, her mild, gently modulated voice sliding among the crowd. Beautifully spoken, like most gastropods, she resonated with…….. well, breeding.

“It gives me real pleasure to open this annual meeting of the Scientocracy. I welcome the distinguished representatives of the Plagiarists’ Institute, the Pedants’ Progressive Society, and The Heirs of Management Science, as founders of the Scientocracy, and representatives of the other esteemed organizations which give so much to our work.

I look forward to your invaluable insights, and I know my father, Mordant Threat-Hamster, would applaud your dedication. For my part I am happy to report that the Threat-Hamster Administrative Breeding Facility has had a bumper year, with over two hundred and twenty million new Growns taking their place in society”.

(A thunderous outbreak of self-approval followed, which Insipidia, true to her ideals, took as an indication of zeal in the Scientocracy’s quest of pushing back the boundaries of the world’s deficiencies. In which direction they were being pushed was another matter).

“When humans began the great work of Rational Offloading which resulted in the modern distribution of the burden of commerce and material production to other life forms, none could have foreseen the great destiny which was to come. Who could foretell that humanity would be able to escape forever their fatal addictions to work and compulsive, obsessive, domesticity?

That last great and noble human leader, Carping Nag, founded the Scientocracy twenty five years ago today. His aim was to raise science above the pitiful, demeaning, sphere of mere application and use, into a shrine of sensitive, dignified, formality and decorum.

(Firm, decisive, applause for self-interest).

The so-called governments of that day are now gone, replaced with a safe and stable bureaucracy equal to the task. There are no courts, because there are now no laws or crimes, nor persons able or willing to commit them. An idyllic world, a safe world, a world free of arguments! What an achievement in a mere few years! (Unrestrained cheers of triumph).

The human population has stabilized in this brief period, from 12 billion down to about five or ten, perhaps twenty, million, retired from daily tedium, and well housed in quaint palaces. Where the others went we do not know, but we wish them well, wherever they are, and hope that they have found Certainty there.

The silly idea of space travel has been banned as unhygienic, and not nice. The few hundred thousand humans that did go into space have not been heard from since and are presumed to be living somewhere else. (Faultless reasoning; it had taken a lot of people sitting in a room for years to think up that description of the sudden departure of most of Earth’s human scientists and artists). We hope and trust that they too have found Certainty.

Whatever the work, whatever the tasks or difficulties, we know that we shall overcome them. We look forward to Certainty, Domesticity, and Absolute Bliss. Thank you all for your untiring efforts.

I now invite Sark, Coordinator of Information Ideology, to speak”.

She sat down, more or less, amid dutiful applause, next to the local protrusion of her boyfriend/partner, Rilando, an elegant, effusive, multi colored gelatinous being in a maze of see-through glasslike tubes, who was gargling with love and approval. Rilando had been piped in for the occasion.

Sark arrived at the lectern in typical style. The most famous and most influential Grown on Earth, the public face of the Scientocracy News, daily seen all over the world. Also arguably the most sincerely hated, responsible for coordinating and censoring the production of mass information systems globally. Sark was almost unavoidable, and implacably gave public interviews with on any, and seemingly every, subject, but mainly Sark.

Famous bores of the 21^st century could have taken lessons from Sark. Each nuance of every public appearance was a sensory trial-by-ordeal of affectations, whims, and self promotion. Worse, it was impossible to get Sark off air. Sark once took to the airways with a dissertation on its early life in the vats, on the basis of questioning the morals of the young generation of Growns. (Any ideological pretext will do for an expert). While this four hour horror was being broadcast, the Grown and Bred public somehow was not told that nutritional supplements were going to be halved because part of the planet formerly known as South America had caught fire, and was proving difficult to put out.

Sark, on the subject of Sark, was once described by an associate Grown as being similar to the Pacific Ocean dropping in and using the kitchen sink. There was a question of capacity…………

Housed in an Alpine chalet, the very latest model, its squid-like features reposing on the little balcony at the front. With its gleaming protective electrified razor wire and a blazing reflective orange drapery underneath it, covering the food and excrement pylon, its casters burnished with gold, it was quite the epitome of fashion. (Tentative applause with mutterings).

Sark stared into space, apparently ignoring the throng. Let them mutter. This will liven things up a bit, it thought.

“Humans are more than “retired”. The humans have come to the end of their demographic cycle; they have lost market share. All they ever do is have sex and indulge in filthy unproductive practices with which we are all too familiar. We are low on humans and unless they start breeding for themselves we can’t replace them”. The shrill and abrasive voice stopped expectantly.

Insipidia interrupted. Sark……… always Sark………never mind the niceties, the little pest had to be stopped.

“When you say, “Have lost market share”, whatever do you mean, Sark?’

“They have Failed To Come To Reproductive Dinner; Been Removed From The Great Daily Double Of Life; Not Inserted The Progenetive Tea Bag In The Cup Of Existence; Forfeited The Hereditary Ampersand; Are All Doomedsie-Poos[1]”, said Sark, to a genuinely stunned audience.

The use of the immortal phrase, portentously reminiscent, left trauma in its wake. Even its potential utterance was cause for terror. To actually say it was of great significance.

What, no mutterings? thought Sark.

“I leave it open to the meeting to discuss how we might persuade them to breed,” it went on, looking insufferably calm and unflustered.

The last sentence, leaving the entire issue hanging, was normal practice, normally used to make the delegates feel wanted. In this case they were speechless. The sheer lack of discretion! The one subject generally acknowledged to be off limits, broadcast globally, contradicting Insipidia………unthinkable….. Sark left the lectern looking abandoned after a nuclear attack.

Insipidia was mortified. She could have taken the soft option of not being quite mortified, but being her, she had to be mortified, on principle. Anyway, Sark had shattered her glowing introduction. Her father had warned her about Sark, years ago. She turned to her trusted lover in his inspiring portable tank.

“Rilando! Sark says the humans are all Doomedsie-Poos!” She gave a look of bovine dejection, quite impressive on a slug.

Rilando, gurgling in his tank and maze of tubes, a gelatinous benevolence, was sympathetic. One thing Rilando had always loved about his large and empathic friend was her caring nature. Not many people could love a gel for who it was.

“Ah, don’t worry dear, I was once Doomedsie-Poos myself. Could be worse.”

“Yes, true, but dear, you were a solid then.”

“My point exactly. Best thing that ever happened.” Rilando, a being of several cubic kilometres of dripping if likeable irrelevance, overall found no faults with anything much. Apart from a fear of plumbers, he was in no danger of anything much, either. He ate another eel cheerfully.

In the glue-like silence that followed this exchange, Insipidia fretted.

Her problem was in fact that in the absence of humans, the entire purpose of the Scientocracy and her father’s breeding vats would be gone. As it was, the 50 billion of them serving a few million humans were fairly well employed, if she said so herself, but……………….?

The Scientocracy had managed to exist for decades with only a few humans, but it was culturally and logistically geared to relate to human needs. Growns were so strongly psychologically attuned to human society, and trained to function in the idiom of smug urban bliss devised by Nag and supplied by her father. They would suffer withdrawals from humanity, if deprived of the dear little things. They might even try stealing humans from each other.

No, it wouldn’t do at all, and she must take action. Her father had a terrible time when the humans stabilized themselves ………..well, really, began to vanish……..the silly creatures. Sark would bring this up. The topic above all others which the Scientocracy was unable to resolve, and had now spent two decades trying not to mention.

She considered Sark. Imagined that brain, in its Alpine chalet, mounted on its mobile frame………….always somehow intrusive …….. better to keep Sark guessing. A more suspicious being would have noticed that Sark had timed its “revelation” far too well to be a coincidence.

Others might have noticed that anything Sark said was given weight, because of its constant appearances on the media. The person that tells you the news tends to have the same value as the news.

Irritatingly, Sark was a very senior Coordinator, and Insipidia couldn’t get rid of it without her father’s approval. This was complicated by the fact that her father had now been absent and uncommunicative for some years, and she really had no idea where he was. She had been duly deputized by her father, but on a vague basis, and there was plenty of room for Sark to get round her within the organization.

A very difficult situation, now much more so. Sark knew that its statement couldn’t be ignored, and that Insipidia would have to react. She also knew that when she reacted Sark would be waiting with some new development. She decided to ward it off with options, the theory being that an excessive amount of choice can destroy any logical argument.

“It can’t be that hard to produce a few more humans. Can’t we replace them, or clone them, even recycle them?” A cry truly derived from the heart and being used to producing sentient beings by the millions.

Sark’s dark olive face with its wide yellow eyes peered out from its housing, a few tentacles appearing to snap in annoyance, if not too obviously. Sark didn’t invent the art of being patronizing, but had done a lot to perfect it.

“…….Oh, you’re serious. No, no again, and no, I don’t think so. For example: replacement; with what? The other natural life forms? They absolutely hate us artificials. How do we sidle up to them and say, “Excuse us, we’ve run out of humans, would you mind filling in?””

“Even the squirrels?” Some straws are for grasping. At least the squirrels had a culture to work with. Insipidia secretly liked the squirrels.

“Especially the squirrels. They’ve never forgiven the Scientocracy for losing all those humans and doing them out of an audience for their game shows. Anyway, we’d have to reconfigure all Growns to service them instead of humans. How can a Grown commit piracy, gather acorns, compose rhetoric condemning the Scientocracy, and sweep out holes in trees? Their housings would get all dirty. Squirrels don’t want or need our civilization; ask Chinga.”

Pity, though, thought Insipidia. She’d almost succeeded in liking that idea, even if the squirrel pirates in her lake were getting a bit frisky.

There had been for some time now The Squirrel Issue. The squirrels had grown large in the last few decades, and their culture had developed astoundingly. They had produced a technology very rapidly and developed it to about 20^th century human level[2]. Their leader, Chinga, was demanding a continent or so for the exclusive domain of the squirrels. They wanted no part of the Scientocracy, humans, or any other Abusive Atavistic Anthropoid Atrophies, as Chinga described it.

The Scientocracy preferred not to deal with either the issue of the vanished humans or the squirrels. Both problems were far too hard on the intellects and aesthetics of beings designed to live in an urban stasis. The missing humans they desperately wanted never to have to ever again try to find. The failure of the previous effort was so embarrassing. The squirrels they preferred not to think about at all, as Sark knew perfectly well, and was using it against her. Any pro-squirrel ideas would be well out of place in this gathering.

Sark was still speaking.

“……We can’t clone them because Nag destroyed the cloning database information in that final fit of pique. We’ve never tried cloning anyway because the breeding vats made the techniques obsolete. There was nothing that actually needed cloning. Added to which humans were considered able to replace themselves, and had some strange aversion to cloning of each other.”

“Why?”

“They were worried about abuse of the processes. The fact that all technology has always been abused seems not to have occurred to them. Even now, one of the most dangerous weapons available is a box of matches.”

Human thinking was a total mystery to non-humans, however well attuned to their culture they might be. There appeared to have never been any rational basis for any human thought, but such as human thinking was, it infallibly sprang up as an obstacle to new ideas anyway. Insipidia digressively remembered something called philosophy, a field in which any idea could be reduced to slush, then usefully forgotten.

Sark ground on.

“Recycling might be possible, but when they die, they decay, unlike Growns and Breds, and they can’t be re-used. I really doubt if we can develop an entire science able to breed humans in the few years or decades we have left before they become extinct.”

Insipidia wasn’t about to allow Sark to hog the floor and calmly pronounce the fate of the Scientocracy.

“Well, think about it. We can’t have the whole world being put out of business just because there are no humans around.” Any degree of irony or contradiction in the statement was lost on all present.

“At least”, she added pointedly, “squirrels are relatively friendly. What if some other species moves in?”

This was a nasty not-very-veiled reference to the rats, which tended to eat Growns alive, given the opportunity. She noted that Sark hadn’t missed that.

‘Er, yes, quite”, muttered Sark, “Perhaps there is something we can do with them……..”[3]

Sark was not pleased. The idea of upsetting Insipidia’s conference had been a sort of holy grail, and now more work had rolled in. Sark had hoped that there would be an instant demand for further enlightenment on its own views on how to solve the problem, modestly orated to the watching billions. Insipidia had sidetracked the issue. This reduction in options removed any possibility of that speech. Sark was also truly scared of rats. Diligent Prudent Conscientious Obfuscation was called for here. Committee-adept to the core, an offload was obvious to Sark.

“I suggest we appoint Prestigiousilia, as Head of the Practical Dogma Unit, to conduct a procedural study to examine ways of dealing with this crisis,” said Sark primly. In committee tactics, this is known as “To cast one’s bread upon the waters in hope of getting a bakery in return”. From a management point of view it translates into somebody else coming up with the unacceptable ideas.

Politically, this was an acceptable and useful out for Sark; the PDU was an important plank in the Scientocracy, and Sark was in Information, after all. Added to which the whole idea of squirrels replacing humans would be subjected to the sort of morbid theoretical scrutiny that it deserved. Only a pedant can make life and death issues truly boring.

Prestigiousilia was ecstatic. What it lacked in objectivity it made up for in mindless agreement. Its algal head blooming with fluorescent and slightly moist joy, it ranted lyrically, its casters clanging against whatever part of the very large stage it happened to collide with in mid-monologue.

“Oh, there’ll be earnest task forces and wise study workshops and demographic claques……… and onerous recitals……… administrative dirges…….” Being products of management science, enthusiasm was built into the psychological structure of Growns and Breds. The most mundane task was habitually greeted with raptures bordering on the obscene.

This loquacity lasted well, noted Sark happily, always ready to pile on encouragement when Prestigiousilia seemed to be running low on synonyms. Even the Plagiarists’ representatives gaped at the quantity of clichés Prestigiousilia now produced.

In order to save her increasingly adjective-addled mind, political face and stymied conference, Insipidia had to call a halt. She couldn’t oppose the study, since the “revelation” regarding the disappearance of the humans compromised the Scientocracy, which was supposed to be running the planet. To do so would imply that the Scientocracy was doing nothing about a real crisis. Nor could she contradict Sark without something resembling factual information, however accidental. Sark’s single destructive statement now forced her to face an issue her father had been unable to deal with. In fact, he’d failed utterly.

More defensively, she still had to ensure that Sark was kept busy enough not to interfere with the process of actually solving the human problem. She didn’t believe that it was that bad. Humans knew how to breed, didn’t they? There were still millions of them, after all. She would take care of this herself.

Sark knew that the whole of Grown and Bred society was based on maintaining a nominal human civilization. What she didn’t understand was how Sark could possibly benefit from verbally crashing that society into a truth it didn’t want to know. There had to be more to it.

The squirrels could be quite a handful……..pawful…..tentacleful…. They would keep Sark very busy. Her sense of humor revived.

“ I approve. The study may proceed. The squirrels will be evaluated as replacements for the humans,” she said magnanimously, startling Sark, who’d got quite mesmerized by Prestigiousilia’s incredibly energetic, if by now aimless, tirade. This was not to Sark’s liking at all. Squirrels did hate artificials, and they particularly hated Sark, and went to great lengths to tell Sark about it, even putting up a giant billboard saying so. Exactly what the enormous pylon was doing to Sark in that picture was still a major topic of debate in the Scientocracy.

“ I appoint Sark as Head of Information on this study, to be called Project Doomedsie-Poos. Sark will liaise with Prestigiousilia on a daily basis and maintain data integrity throughout”. She’d add a few other burdens later. She also deliberately left out any actual functional details regarding what the Project was supposed to achieve, how, with what, and when. Let Sark figure out those problems before trying to solve the one it had created.

More sincere applause, this time for burying Sark.

They adjourned for lunch. Insipidia wondered whether the humans could be encouraged to breed voluntarily, or would have to be persuaded. She wished she were home.

THE THREAT-HAMSTER ESTATE

Jollity McRorsarch[4] was the head Majordomo at the Threat-Hamster Estate, a Grown, resembling a stock cube with eight legs and a polymorphous face, the shape of which reflected its moods. Housed in a little cottage on a very conservative pylon with a picket fence motif, it was the very epitome of understated decorum.

It trundled into the grounds in front of the main building and emerged from its housing, one of the Growns able to actually get out of the cranial installation altogether. It had a little area on its housing mount with immaculate bonsai hedges for privacy, where it was able to sit naked apart from a clever pair of shorts and watch the news.

Dutifully it tuned in to the conference using the little visual/audio monitor near the bougainvillea. It chortled to itself over Sark’s obvious debacle. Life was good, even if those squirrels were on the loose. Humans? Who cared?

Jollity was more worried by marauding birds than squirrels, and had even had to take a pill to make itself smell bad to them, something called ammonia. Humans apparently once used it to attract members of the opposite sexes, according to Sark.

Strange how life reinvented things to do different things to other things to cause things that did things differently from the way they used to do them. Then they did things which they hadn’t done before and the cycle expanded itself. Charming process, thought Jollity. It was a very philosophical stock cube.

It tuned out, and picked up its book. It was reading Sark’s new version of Thuycidides’ Peloponnesian War, in which the hero, O’Really O’Riley, didn’t get the girl, or bagel. An improvement, thought Jollity, on The Iliad, where the drag-racing and macramé tended to go on a bit.

“ Hey McRorsarch,” came a voice.

“ Ho McRorsarch,” came another.

“ Haaaaaaaaaaa McRorsarch,” came a chorus.

Jollity sighed, rather an achievement for a stock cube, and pointed a few eyestalks to see, as expected, an ant choir, wearing those garish little sunbonnets. They perched on an overhanging branch in full hiking gear.

“What brings you lot here?”, Jollity inquired politely, hoping to forestall the rest of the song. Growns have the dubious ability to communicate with any species, and it was thus they first learned the full sarcasm of terrestrial life.

“We’s a-celebrating with an ‘ike. The ‘umans are all Doomedsie-Poos!”

Unmistakable glee, noted Jollity, disapprovingly. Insouciance among the lower orders, no less.

Insectoid wit.

“Now look, ants, you can’t just scuttle about the place being cheerful.”

“Why not? It’s worked pretty well for the last hundred million years, annoying dinosaurs and all. Do you think it was just a coincidence all those picnics were sabotaged, and then made the subject of endless jokes and cartoons?”

“And we won, every time.”

Pride, eh? thought Jollity.

Apparently the rustic accents didn’t apply when they were trying to make a point. Jollity persisted, cautiously. This sort of give and take could be tricky if you were a stock cube, particularly an intelligent one. Better not to argue the point about the humans. He continued diplomatically.

“Yes, didn’t it work out well? Nobody ever suspected you were happy little hedonists, living lives of unrestrained frivolity. Why give the game away now?”

“E’s got a point there, Gladys. We ‘ave standards to maintain.”

“Yeah, leave off, Glad, old girl, we’s an-‘iking. Tootles, Jols. ”

They meandered off, Hey McRorsarch-ing happily. They’d forgotten to follow up on the human part of the conversation, so presumably this was just an excuse to go and annoy things.

They certainly fooled Solomon, thought Jollity.

Jollity went back to reading about O’Really O’Riley’s battle with the vacuum cleaners of Argos.

The Threat-Hamster Estate grounds were a dream. Jollity loved them.

Insipidia’s mother, Interminabilia, had placed a wonderful bird bath, with multiple sculpted fountains, made of a brilliant and rare green marble in front of the gigantic edifice of the main building, “to clutter it up a bit,” as she put it. The thing also caused a lot of confused birds, much to Jollity’s satisfaction. It was Jollity’s idea to include a birdfeeder, as well. The birds became desperate when attempting to figure out the seating arrangements, and who was to carve, and kept dropping the cutlery.

Later she and Mordant added the few hundred or so hectares of other clutter, at seemingly random points about the estate. The lawn was replaced with a huge all weather moss, which grew like a huge quilt across the entire estate, and could be simply moved when you wanted to plant a new tree, or building, or servant. It could even be tailored and worn.

Of course there was a lot of commemoration of things involved in sticking up all this stuff. There was a statue to the Vicarious Virtuosi, idealized 20^th century rock stars, the first people ever to realize that reality was avoidable if you stole other people’s music, had an ego the size of North America, and an IQ where the first whole number was well to the right of the decimal point.

There was the statue of The Great Market Analyst, the first Information Dictator.

A magnificent fountain depicting the Struggles Of Fashion Editors was nicely balanced by the Tomb of the Unknown Day Trader, signified by a blank screen and a representative half cup of coffee.

One of the very first robotic statues, a huge dainty slab able to disagree in the most ugly terms with anything said to it, marked the veneration of talkback radio. Television was recognized by a smile nailed to a symbolic ratings chart.

Hollywood was finally interred in a large two dimensional dollar shaped structure saying “Thanks” in several human languages

A wonderful bas-relief paid homage to the masses of humans who commuted themselves to death in the service of the greater good. They now trudged forever across five kilometres of poignant suburbia and urban scenes. One of them even smiled, at 5:01 PM every evening.

There were in addition to these wonders many buildings, housing the Threat-Hamster business nerve centers, a cozy fawn colored Psycho-Gothic cement barracks for the Domos, where they played seven card stud poker.

A five storey games building for Rilando, (he liked to play sports and was very fond of Neuro Polo, preferably at water table level).

The main building was a complex of eight previous buildings, grown together by architectural necessity[5] and Mordant Threat-Hamster’s various obsessions. Insipidia’s and Rilando’s quarters comprised the upper ten floors, partly owing to Rilando’s preference for sleeping in a three dimensional shape. He tended to slosh around otherwise.

Insipidia’s collection of mementos, tokens of appreciation from the public, including such novelties as the original watering can in which Rilando was reborn, took up several floors. An army of Domos, supervised by Jollity, was usually at work trying to identify the pieces and figure out how to store and display them. This work had now been going on for sixteen years. Bric a brac, like the Golden Gate Bridge, was generally housed in the titanic living area, where it wouldn’t get in the way. [6]

Insipidia’s recliner, its storage bays filled with her favorite soft green vegetables and surrounded by a massage rock, was the centerpiece of the area, with a few spigots and inground sculpted pools for Rilando dotted about the place. A few fruit trees thrived under the massive skylights, and a nice moss lawn carpet kept things homey. Add a few fine spray misters, and you have paradise, Threat-Hamster style.

Her sister Intolerabilia’s building, nearby-ish, was also a study in compromise. No madman would have dared build anything so grandiose, or so highly glazed. King Ludwig’s castle looked like a phone booth by comparison. Stunning gardens, constantly and inexplicably in bloom, incredible green and white granite, marble, jade and turquoise rockeries, waterfalls, bathing pools, little creeks, shady groves. All this in a hundred square kilometres of grounds, surrounded by a security system devised by Insipidia. Even bacteria had a hard time getting in without an appointment.

Inside was quite similar, ferns everywhere, a living room of eight square kilometres containing a vast meter-thick wall to wall shag carpet, golden lights, a chandelier weighing five tons made of diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies, and other niceties. The bathroom was slightly larger than the Forbidden City, on which it was modeled, with a solid amber window of fifty square metres.

The sad case of Intolerabilia’s affliction, which resulted in the death of any human who saw her, was a result of what is biologically referred to as “sexual apocalypse”. The pity of it was that Intolerabilia was seen as the epitome of human desirability, by all eight human sexes. A chameleon in reverse, she took on the characteristics of whatever the viewer wanted to see most, and had no control of the process. The viewer then died, having passed over the so-called “sexual event horizon”. She was exiled from human society, and lived a life of isolated elegance among a true masterpiece of landscaping which she designed herself.

The outer boundaries of the main estate were therefore strongly walled, with a variety of motifs, mainly praising Threat-Hamster products and wishing the world well in a qualified way.

A few pine, oak, sequoia, maple and eucalypt forests with the odd mountain range provided some privacy, although the legions of Domos enforced it. Even the woodlice were microchipped and numbered, at Rilando’s request, to ensure authenticity as Threat-Hamster Estate residents.

A small hectare or so sized cottage contained Insipidia’s friend Turgidia, a fellow she-slug based life form, and Insipidia’s confidante. They used to hunt lettuces together as children, until it became too dangerous.

A domestic breeding vat for the Estate to replace staff was delicately hidden near the midden located blushingly behind the incinerator, tactfully next to the pulping machinery, deftly masked by the glue works, about twenty kilometres from the house, downwind.

For a dilettante gel mousse, Rilando had an acute sense of taste.

The Threat-Hamster Estate, original bastion of artificial life, had ironically produced the finest array of natural life in the northern hemisphere. Admittedly such genteel animals weren’t all that natural, but they fit the definition of not being produced in vats. Lions strolled around thoughtfully looking for photographers. Bison practiced tennis, for some obscure ungulate reason. An occasional elephant wrote its memoirs.

Chimpanzees moved in, claiming the ecology couldn’t survive without them, an echo of human views a century earlier. To the surprise of everyone, the chimpanzees, of all species, having settled in, absolutely refused to have anything to do with the world structure. They considered the whole thing faddish and immature, and were quite terse on the subject of humans:

“We’s been done a-told they-all that there were no good a-come of that comin’ down out of the trees game of they’n, and there a-weren’t a-never goin’ to be none. So thar!

Don’t y’all a-be inventin’ fire, we said. Don’t go a-chasing all they me-chanical principles, we said. Did they gone and been and done and went and listened? Naw, they’s a-been done gone becomin’ they person-y type thingsies, and wearin’ they flashy garment-y things with the big genitalia holders.

Now yewse Growns be a-trundlin’ about, all got up in yer para-fern-alia, with you’n Domos and they other accoutry-ments, like you be owning the place. We’s a-stayin in the trees, thank ye kindly,” said a spokeschimp.

Such was the chimps’ commentary, when invited to the Annual Performance Evaluation. They aspired to nothing less than being the epitome of The Way Things Ought To Be, and never tired of telling anyone fool enough to come within earshot that they were. Even humans never managed to be quite so blatant.

A few desultory saltwater crocodiles on holiday arrived and offered to mediate with the chimps and anything else with a problem. Jollity had thought of introducing them to Sark, and still was thinking about it.

A fresh wind brought a few Bred butterflies, unique as the only flying Breds, quite huge beasts, very colorful, about an acre in size with relatively small bodies. They were developed accidentally when Mordant Threat-Hamster became rapturous about organic food dyes and experimentally tried to create turquoise Growns.

Prolonged mixture of dyes produced a series of colors which refused to blend, and as Mordant fretted, a single butterfly, attracted by the colors, fell in. It emerged spluttering ferocious and quite graphically obscene indignation until it noticed it was now the size of a football field. Others, grown from its scales, followed, rising out of the culture-goop like giant psychedelic stamps. They bred true, and now roamed the globe, their semi transparent wings reminding Jollity of vast stained glass windows. For reasons never quite explained they now fed on exclusively on apple cider, which they made themselves.

As the grounds flickered in their many butterfly-induced hues, Jollity reflected that most of the animals appeared to have fitted in rather well into the Estate ethos. The ants were rowdy but good natured, the crocodiles sarcastic but friendly. The deer reminded Jollity of that song, My Heart’s In The Highlands A-Chasin’ The Women, The Deer Will Just Have To Wait. Of course the Estate deer just roamed around looking dappled and dreamily tricking the Domos into feeding them six times a day and playing Mah Jongg.

Jollity tried to envision himself as a human from the past confronted with this community of beings. Apparently the normal human of the previous century lived in very small premises, surrounded with essential medications, chemical escapes, sedatives, caffeine, alcohol, and lifesaving talk shows. Didn’t sound much fun, really.

Anyway, a people living in each others’ armpits in a few permitted cubic metres could hardly be expected to relate to people living in hundreds of square kilometres. The mind adjusts to its environs. Tiny habitats and tiny behaviors produce tiny minds, with tiny ideas.

Humans had also designed things to be as they thought they were expected to be, rather than what they liked. The only possible explanation, surely, for those incredibly monotonous, boring “office buildings” which the Scientocracy had spent years pulling down. They would never have been able to design anything like the Estate. Too much new thought involved. No élan in the buildings, no singing waterfalls in the bedrooms. You’d think the curve had never been invented.

Even if they had superior intellects, they’d never been known to use them.

Jollity’s mind drifted on………

Imagine a truly advanced species choking on its own wastes, unable to escape because it relied on production of the materials that produced the wastes. The automobile; that classic achievement of a glorified shopping trolley. More expensive than its owners, usually unable to move on the costly roads built for it, and refreshingly able to kill anyone that used it, or came too close to it.

“Doomedsie-Poos” seemed almost too good for them.

Agriculture; the superlative-thwarting ability to use 200 kg of soil to grow a loaf of bread. How humanity ever took itself seriously as a manager of the planet Jollity could not fathom. They’d never be able to run the Estate. Presumably it would have been easier to grow the automobile and feed bread to it to produce better soil……..Jollity tended to follow analogies wherever they led……….

[1] Famous tantrum-cry of Carping Nag, who used to utter it incessantly while refusing to elaborate and jumping up and down a lot, destroying scientific databases with a fine indiscretion.

[2] Humans had derided this technology as the product of trial and error. Humans generally did describe anything done by “animals” as trial and error. Of course humans never tried or erred at anything.

[3] Nobody questioned the need for some species for them to serve. Life would lose all meaning.

[4] McRorsarch; Term coined to describe shapeless things of Scottish descent.

[5] Architectural necessity- a truly horrifying concept. Not mentioned in polite circles.

[6] Insipidia tried bravely to maintain the impeccable, if vague, sense of aesthetic tastes of the Threat-Hamsters in all things.