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All I want for Christmas is . . .
Posted to %afda by pieceoftheuniverse on 27th November 2000
Wonko The Sane wrote:
>
> What do you want for Christmas ? ... 1 item only.
Ideally, world peace.
However, the universe being what it is, I'll have to settle for a Farnoople Weething with a side of wampooslets.
The trouble with Farnoople Weethings (with or without the side of wampooslets) is that they're terribly rare. They have a life expectancy of about seventeen billion years in the wild, but sadly have been hunted into extinction by knight errants who have mistaken them for dragons -- which is somewhat odd, seeing as how the two species look nothing alike.
Farnoople Weethings had a disreputable reputation for doing nothing in particular, and doing it rather well. A whole year's supply of nothing would be generated by them, effectively and generously given to the entire planet due to entropy -- that is, no large amount of nothing can be kept in a small area if said small area is in a larger area with a lack of nothing. But the Farnoople Weethings didn't care, as that would involve doing something about it, thus putting the nothing generation at risk. So they just created more nothing to cope with the problem, hoping that it would all even out in the end.
Dragons, on the other hand, would be terrible at doing nothing -- in fact, all too often they would go about doing things that were rather rash, violent, and effectively illegal; be it taking the occasional sheep or townsman (or, on particularly bad days, razing entire towns), they made a name for themselves in the medieval world.
People being what they are, however, they could never quite agree on what that terror from the skies actually looked like. So, like anything decided in committee, their sketch artist came up with what they called a dragon, but was actually a very good likeness of a Farnoople Weethings.
Well, that's all the knight errants had to see! On their horses they went, and sought out all the Farnoople Weethings they could find, effectively snuffing them from existence. The knights, too embarrassed to admit that they had caught the Farnoople Weethings they had killed doing nothing at all to endanger them, made up stories of fire-breathing monsters roasting an entire hunting party, and whatever else might come to mind.
It didn't take too long for the dragons to realize a good thing when they saw it, so they held a top-secret meeting atop one of the higher peaks in the area.
"I've called you here today," said the lead dragon (in dragoneese, of course, so you'll have to excuse some words that may be lost in translation), "to discuss the problem of the humans."
There was much grunting, flame-belching, and tightening of claws at this. The leader waited until they had settled down a bit, then resumed:
"For some reason they've decided to attack our comrades, the Farnoople Weethings. While we have no alliance with the Farnooples, this does endanger the supply of nothing generated here -- before we know it, we'll have to do more to stay alive, rather than the somewhat easy life we have now. And not just us; the humans, too, will find it harder to live without the Farnoople Weethings. So we must stop our assaults on the other life-forms in the hopes that they'll leave the Farnooples alone. We must ... leave."
"But where to?" asked a smallish dragon, whose name has since been lost to history. "Where shall we go?"
"We have long since had the means to depart this planet," said the lead dragon. "We shall pass that knowledge on to another life-form ... maybe the dolphins ... before we go. As to where to ... well, we've had an eye on the Brequinda on the Foth of Avalars for some time now. We might as well start packing."
Of course, we all know what happened to the Fuolornis Fire Dragons, so we won't go there. But the Farnoople Weethings continued to be hunted despite the dragons' disappearance, if more for the fact that the Farnooples did not have the means, or in fact the desire, to leave the planet. In other words, they were killed because they were there.
But there are rumours that the Farnooples have resurfaced. There are reports that some people are actually getting paid for doing nothing at all. This nothing can only be coming from one source: the Farnoople Weethings.
And I wouldn't mind having one. With or without the side of wampooslets.
--
pieceoftheuniverse - imagine, my own supply of nothing!
