Infrateal posted:
ok now its time for everyone's favorite gameshow GUESS THE SUCKLING'S PROVENANCE with your host, Unnnnnnncle SAM!
*crowd whoops n jiggles*
Uncle SAM: HOW Y'ALL DOIN' TONITE??!?!
*crowd whoops it to the nth degree*
Uncle SAM: Oh say can you see the fine croppa crappin' crawlers we pro-cure-ated para ti-i mean PARTY! time to PARTTTAY!
*crowd vocalizes all festive-like*
(Uncle SAM walks over to row of gleaming, oversized silver dish lids and begins lifting them up, revealing BABIES. Dish number ONE holds a beige baby with brown hair an insouciant smirk. Dish number TWO holds a pink baby in an orange jumpsuit with "heartbreaker" written on one sleeve and "ballbreaker" on the other. The baby is cooing disdainfully. Dish number THREE holds a deep umber baby who seems reluctant to emerge from under the dish. He reaches into his diaper and withdraws a tiny silver thimble, placing it on his head. Now he is ecstatic.)
Uncle SAM: And laaaaast but not leeeeast...
(Uncle SAM lifts lid number FOUR, revealing a green baby sitting stock-still. Her eyes are lavender and her diaper is a leaf.)
*crowd gasps*
(baby number FOUR turns to face audience. Tentatively, her eyes unfurl. They were buds before but now they are flowers. The many anthers are moving, tracking each audience member individually. She gurgles.)
*crowd hoots and honks*
Uncle Sam: Y'all know how this is gonna shake down. Three of these whippersnappers are 110% Purebred Heartland Homehearth Whitebread Cornfed Hee-Haw Dogsled Diaper Wiper Wittle Citizens and the other is... is a...
(Visible perspiration breaks out on UNCLE SAM'S forehead. Tributaries of sweat meet on the tip of his great hook nose and pool into a dangling globule. The audience is clearly enraptured by the process)
*crowds murmurs n mumbles, musical 'merican musings*
(the sweat globule has dripped away, leaving a nubbin of deposited minerals at the end of UNCLE SAM'S nose. His forehead is sweating buckets now, construction-orange hydraulic limbs emerge from his hairline and dump actual buckets of sweat on his face. As droplet upon droplet cascade from his snout, the miniature stalactite swells and takes form. In mere moments it has become a mighty SALT EAGLE.)
*crowd jumps for joy*
SALT EAGLE: keeaw? keewaaw??? KYYYAAHH!!!!
(the creature shakes free from UNCLE SAM'S nose, spreading its sodium pinions in rapturous, raptorous flight. It orbits UNCLE SAM'S head and he quickly stops sweating, seeming to take courage from the gyrations of his nasal gargoyle)
Uncle SAM: Yes. The other baby... is a... *gulps* a... a MONGREL FORINNER
*crowd recoils and screams. many women faint. many men draw their weapons and feint at invisible enemies. many of the weapons have fainted. droopy cutlasses flounce harmlessly through the air*
Uncle SAM: And it's UP TO YOU! It's UP TO YOU to protect AMAIRICKUH, to suss out the interloper, to sit in the driver's seat of teh justice bus and fingerbang LADY LIBERTY until she skeets so hard she drops her torch! And the torch lands on the evil baby!
(Curtains behind the stage are pulled open, revealing the CrocsTM-shod feet of the STATUE OF LIBERTY. The babies stir restlessly as they notice their silver platters have been positioned at the center of a giant red X.)
Uncle SAM: YES! We have to... we have to REDRAW OUR BLOODLINES! IN PERMANENT MARKER! A vile force beyond the veil, beyond the vale surrounding our SHINING CITY ON A HILL, an insidious foe fumbles at the zipper of our hoodie and is trying to MAKE IT TO SECOND BASE with our MOTHERLAND!
(The babies look confused. Baby number ONE is blowing a spit bubble in the shape of a question mark. His insouciant grin appears forced. Baby number TWO has pooped her jumpsuit. Baby number THREE attempts to crawl away, but it becomes apparent that all of the babies have been implanted with MAGNETS, and the silver platters were really thinly-plated PIG IRON. Baby number FOUR is nervously farting, but the farts are butterflies, and attempt to pollinate her eyes. She swats them away and continues watching the audience. Beneath each baby a ruddy glimmer is reflected on the platter, as of a very large fire very high above.)
Uncle SAM: So it's UP TO YOU! Three of these cuddle dumplins are stuffed with real Angus beef! One is filthy fucking dogmeat! GOLDEN RETRIEVERS. THEY EAT GOLDEN RETRIEVERS. Clap and make an earthquake because you are the continental shelf because you hold the country in YOUR HANDS! NOW: YOU MUST CHOOSE.
*crowd whispers among themselves. they steal glances at each of the babies in turn.*
Baby Number ONE: a goo?
*crowd confers and gesticulates. consensus is reached around a counterclockwise thumb-rotating motion.*
Baby Number TWO: ha bah bah?
*crowd makes furious shooing and beckoning motions. a woman's voice blares outraged syllables over the hubbub. two men eye each other as if hankerin to wrastle. finally, the crowd settles into a sullen decision, as a flatulent dog kicked off its owner's bed may settle onto a patch of carpet*
Baby Number THREE: maf oof. mf. ahh!
*crowd enters pitched frenzy of argument. insults are hurled and also objects. wrastling is commenced. factions coalesce from the chaos, bunkers are improvised, the crowd is poised for an interminable war of attrition when STATUE OF LIBERTY is spotted tapping an enormous toe. An armistice is brokered. The crowd decides.*
Baby Number FOUR: [editor's note: we cannot reproduce the sound which emanated from baby number FOUR. our phonetics are wholly inadequate. we suspect that if every writing system and musical notation developed in the history of civilization were deployed simultaneously, we would still face this shortcoming. we suspect that if every mark made on paper, every keystroke, every arc of piss that scalds a snowbank, if all of this were recorded for ten thousand years and this record were to be considered as a single symbol--baby number FOUR would crawl through the ages, tiny knees flailing, gaining purchase through adventitious moments of friction, seconds buckling under her tiny weight, and she would appear to our descendants in the sanctum of their archive and she would laugh, and that sound would send each molecule of air on a unique euphonious trajectory, galvanizing the atmosphere, reverberating, and the folly of millenia would become apparent and immaterial simultaneously because who could care about all that when each tiny hair of the cochlea is singing a different and more splendid song.]
*crowd eyes one another. crowd arches eyebrows. crowd nods.*
Uncle SAM: SO... ye made up ye minds? such dire deliberations deserve ample ticks to tock in but... *gestures at STATUE OF LIBERTY, who can be seen towering through multiple strata of cloud, idly tossing her TORCH.*
*crowd utters an affirmative*
(Babies are fidgeting)
Uncle SAM: ARE YOU READY TO BURN AND CRUSH A BABY??!??
*crowd w00ts a lil. just a lil.*
Uncle SAM: ARE YOU READY TO SAY, THESE THREE ARE REAL LIVE BABBEHS, AND THIS ONE IS A FUCKING DEFECTIVE NONPERSON SHIT TURD CRAP FART!?!?!?
*crowd ventures a more solid w00t. crowd is pretty sure it wants to w00tle. w00t.*
(Babies are making clumsy signs at one another. Baby Number TWO is peeling off her poopy jumpsuit. She is tattooed with the same proclamations as her sleeves. Baby Number FOUR is farting continuously now, and letting the butterflies settle where they may.)
Uncle SAM: ARE YOU READY TO DROP A MILLION POUNDS OF BURNING ALASKA CRUDE FROM ORBIT! ARE YOU READY TO DRILL BABY DRILL TO KILL BABY KILL!
*crowd w00ts majestically, as SALT EAGLE w00ts in antistrophe*
(Baby Number ONE is blowing larger and larger spit bubbles, joining them into a congeries of salivary envelopes. Baby Number THREE has removed the silver thimble from his head and is obsessively twisting it in his chubby fists.)
Uncle SAM: ALLLL RIGHT! WHICH IS IT! WHICH BABY IS WITCH!
*crowd, unanimously, points at Baby Number ONE/TWO/THREE/FOUR; the specifics are irrelevant because the effect is the same*
Uncle SAM: YESS! YOU HAVE CHOSEN WISELY! NOW, LADY LIBERTY! LET FREEDOM RING!
(Far, far above, in trans-Neptunian space, somewhere out beyond the Oort cloud, in the ethereal calm of interstellar boredom, a torch--burning despite the complete lack of oxidizer--begins to accelerate. It is going to hit Earth, hit a red X, but first there will be a brief encounter with--
(The babies' frantic industry has produced a thing. Convoluted chambers of spit-bubbles warp along a hyperbolic plane and enclose a lepidoptiary of butt-erflies flapping furiously while at the center of the arrangement an orange jumpsuit is affixed by means of sticky, cloying poop to the underside of a great bubble and three babies hold the garment in one hand and the fourth baby--actually Baby Number THREE--with their other hand, because Baby Number THREE has dialed in a vector on his thimble and the spitship takes off, overcoming the MAGNETS, rushing upward like the lilt of a baby's coo--
(The TORCH is falling and the BABIES are rising. Are they on a collision course? Have the BABIES escaped? Are they all FORRINERS? Was Uncle SAM in collusion (of course?) Was the crowd really one person (of coarse?) What you need to keep in mind is that it doesn't matter--this is all a ridiculous scenario unfolding in one person's mind (originally mine but now, with completely different nuance,, your own). It's not a metaphor or an monster cockysis, it's a ridiculous response to a ridiculous notion. If you really want my interpretation of the ending it's that the babies have escaped, they were all foreign, uncle sam knew it and knew they would escape, and the torch is going to explode into a beautiful fireworks display that will make the crowd forget all about the babies. You should forget all about the babies. I don't know how this post got so long. Whoops.)
