Wiggle has lived in a snowcrete world this past week. The chest-deep snow, paved with six inches of sleet into a snowglobe, remains unmarred outside his window. For the giant and the giantess who found him stranded on this savage planet of the apes, dote on him. It is not yet necessary to search for and repair his wreck. The big fox in the yard searches for the bunnies under the window atimes. Besides that, life is pretty domestic; well, there is shitposting on Daddy’s lap…
Wiggles, this morning, riding atop the back of the giantess who straps his Gaia Rover ejection seat to her back while she cleans clothes, cooks and discards the things he has outgrown into some hoard of garments, out of which he supposes that other foundlings have been attired upon crashdown, stopped and said, “Good morning, James.”
Around the corner from the stuffed animal room limped the ever-shrinking remains of the orphan giant. The degredational arc built into giantkind is obvious in this one, addressed with a mixture of respect, kindness, and an amazed pity that it is still alive: “Wiggle, its James!”
‘Wave and be polite,’ thought he, turning his yawn of surprise that it did not fall over straight away, into a mask of innocence. It was not a total loss for a student of the giants inhabiting this place:
“James is going to sit and write while we eat—isn’t that so nice!”
‘So, this is, dare we say it, a scholar of their rude kind? A shamanic being? Yes, a chance to study them from a more reflective lens—all they do is feed, water and measure me like some orbital kelp grown for the Gardens of Orion.’
“So, James, they call it snowcrete. Have you, in all of your years ever seen such snow, this deep, hard, like it froze as the wind was rippling across it. It’s like a snapshot of a frozen sea. It has been so cold for weeks, hasn’t melted a lick, maybe glazes in spots. And when you cut it with the coal shovel, it wants to break in big chunks, not little, and they’re heavy.”
“Never saw snow like this, anywhere. Cold like this to weeks below 20, that happened one time in the mid 90s. I recall being chased through the Inner Harbor by ashy Bantu zombies for my duster, and beating a hasty way to work. Now, in July, the news will quote one hour, in one February afternoon, that was warmer than the record, and ignoring the 20 days of killing cold, declare for global warming. So this never happened, enjoy it before it’s erased.”
Wiggles perked up from the ejection seat that the Old One called an aluminum papoose. The wizened little giant noticed, “Don’t worry, Buddy, [1] Dad won’t let them get you.”
‘Them? What, evil giants? That would be inconvenient, especially since the Gaia Rover failed to survive First Impact. Never fear—I’m small enough to hide and have giants to protect me!’
Then came the handoff—a things giants do with their foundlings when they want to shirk their primary responsible, being the service of his every need, or, in those cases when whims do not rise to such heights, satisfaction of mere-dear curiosity…
“Here Wiggles,” cooed the Giantess, as she handed him off into the palsied claws of the time-beaten drudge of some pitiless tunnel of toil, “Have some James time while Mamma changes the laundry.” Off she was, his very own ambrosia tanker, into the depths of the house whereupon she goofed off in some manner according to the elaborate fiction that clothing somehow got “dirty,” which was obviously a made up giant word for, I’m tired, Oh Prince of Orion.
The Starfarer presently known as Wiggles among the giants of Gaia, then looked up in horror at the bleached kelp hanging limply from the fey visage and thought, ‘Woah, Mamma, I’m not even adjusted to this High-G planet and you hand me to one almost undone by gravitation himself—is this hazing?’
The old seer of the apes soothed, “I know Buddy [1], not near as cushy as Mamma—but at least you’re not leaning up against Dad’s washboard abs—we can call this a compromise.”
And, before his eyes, was a rude back-lit shadow, upon which this brute cast his thoughts—such as they might charitably be called—and Lo, the gnarled paw scrolled like when Daddy did the chest-thumping ritual with rival dreaming giants called “shitposting.” There, a terrible scene of wonder and blunder appeared.
‘Woah, no wonder this giant is worn down to nubs—look at this! The screen was filled with an image of the unkempt giant, uniformed, wearing three stars on his collar, pressing a swarthy image of organic savagery face down into an open sewer. Behind the old giant of stoic mien, stood various primates with eyes of alarm. Here, in their forms, the entire history of some giant race was writ, from rise to decline: from black fur biped, to noble warrior of ebony hue fallen in the gutter of some more cultured giant race, to degenerate examples of a race wilting to light brown and wearing frost giant cast-off attire crowding around the ruins of some once great, nearly amenable, city.
The Starfarer named Wiggles looked up, caught his eye lids in the beastly tangle of gray and white kelp hanging from the giant chin, blinked, and said, “So the duty of your cast is to punish the inevitable high-time-preference transgressions of the lower, darkling, orders. Yes, we are farers of a kind—avast, we both drool, wafted into low IQ dysphoria by the lack of spiritual stimulation.”
[Meme: The Streets]
And the wasted giant understood his drool-bubble oration, “That’s right, Buddy. That was made by a reader based on my Paveman Jones article. Now check this out. When I shopped at Ham’s Korean liquor store, he used to make me wait for my purchase while the Bantus made theirs, and reward me with a discount after they left.”
[Meme: James Helping the Asian Shopowner]
The image before him told a tale of invasion, of uprising, of retrograde societal collapse. And there was the hero, the uniformed enforcer, whose sagging lap he sat upon, “You see, Buddy, how the merchant looks like your grandpap? In the past, Celestials such as himself, had to look to snow niggas such as myself when the Groes rose. That’s why your Daddy is a Bleach Boss, siring sons upon Celestial and Subtropical babes to produce a hybrid vigor strain able to put down the tropical multitudes. Buddy, sixty years from now, that’s you with three-stars on your collar…”
“Bro, say it ain’t so—I’m not a giant! Don’t tell me there are more clothes to outgrow! You said I was Celestial, at least half—isn’t there a heavenly chance?”
The giant nodded to the two ancient tomes, one black and white, the other red and gold, and Wiggles reached out his slobbery hands for the pages of enlightenment. They were too heavy to move. But the giant hand helped hold them up as Wiggles quested, “Yep, Buddy, you noticed, the Bible, and Doctor Faust, which is the Bible for heavy metal maniacs.”
He was then tenderly cupped between two giantess hands and whisked unto one stupendous hip, with the sinking realization that he was destined to be one of these things too.
“James, how did it go—Oh, homeschooling already Wiggles? What was the lesson, James?”
“Natural Justice Enforcement. When the time is right and his cabin is built in the yard, we will import some ghetto chillens—maybe scatter Butterfinger bars for bait—so he might practice paintball marksmanship from the musket ports.”
“Wiggles! Happy day!”
Notes
-1. Buddy seems to be the colloquial term for visiting scholar among the giants.
