Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker adored and venerated The Firesign Theatre, especially Peter Bergman.

For those of you who do not know who they and he were … there is no way to describe them in any way that would do them justice. But they were a comedy group of the 1960’s, 70’s ad infinitum (because their work is deathless). which shaped the minds of many of Kage’s generation in the directions of surrealism, topical humour, and laughing so hard you spout whatever you’re drinking out your nose.

It may be you are too young to remember them or to have been exposed to their later work – because they have not been idle in these late, degenerate days. So go and check out www.firesigntheatre.com for their history and many and varied works. Check out their entry in Wikipedia, if you are inclined that way. And if you are young enough, go sort through your parents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ old record collections for LPs with titles like We’re All Bozos On This Bus, or Put Down That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers. And listen to them. You will have an apotheosis, as G.B. Shaw said in Man and Superman.

Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Philip Proctor were the components of the Firesign Theatre. Last night, alas, Peter Bergman died. Kage would have been desolated – she regarded the four of them, but especially Bergman, as gods, GODS, of comedy.

During the 1970’s, in particular – when I was away at college a lot – she stayed up late at night in her tower and listened to FT on the radio. They used to broadcast on station KPFK, from some redoubt in the San Fernando Valley; loosing a tidal wave of ingenious insanity on the immediate environs. KPFK was listener supported, and didn’t have a hell of a lot of wattage … but Kage, still ensconced in the ancestral pile in the Hollywood Hills, was right down the twisting road and could pull in the station easily.

She used to sit up there in the dark, drinking wine, scribbling stories or letters to me from the moth-eaten comfort of her enormous overstuffed armchair, by the glow of candles and the rushlights she made out of aluminum beef potpie plates and dryer lint. (You think I am kidding. I am not.) She had to use candles and rush lights because the only electricity in the tower was by way of an extension cord from the second story hallway, and she needed that to plug in her Grundig console.

The Grundig was a huge beechwood radio/turntable unit. It pulled in AM, FM and all the marine bands – we used to listen to the Coast Guard harassing private sailors out in Long Beach on nights when the skip was good … it had green lights that lit up somewhat erratically, but generally indicated some portion of it was now warm enough to function. And in that submarine light, Kage would stay awake all night to listen to the Firesign Theatre.

On nights when they did not broadcast, she’d listen to old Mervin Cross on the Gas Company Opera Hour, and play records. Which included the LPs of FT, among others … the Beatles, Doors, Stones and all the other rock gods we took for granted; operas in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Never the news – she hated the news. She lived up there in the exalted atmosphere of music and fantasy, and slowly tuned her brain into the otherwordly aether.

I too am saddened by the news of Bergman’s death. Like all the rest of our weirder contemporaries (a lot of whom ended up at Faire) he was a voice of my youth. One with staying power, too – the routines are still hysterical, the buzz words and tropes and punchlines can still make old friends snicker.

What makes me saddest, though, is that when I read the news this morning, my first automatic thought was “Oh, God, how will I tell Kage?” Then there was the now-familiar earthquake in my mind, realizing once more that she’s dead; that I can’t tell her but at least it won’t upset her; but … But. She’s dead.

On the other hand, I can hope that she and Bergman might be in some proximity now. Somewhere in eternity, he’s probably working up a riff on the really strange trip dying turned out to be, offering another sugar cube to the nice paisley horsey … and Kage is giggling by the light of the flames in her own eyes, passing away some portion of an immortal night in laughter.

Kage Baker loved any excuse for a holiday.

We celebrated, in our time, National Oreo Day; St. David’s Day; the Queen’s Official Birthday; Shakespeare’s actual Birthday; National Pancake Day as well as Shrove Tuesday; and the Day the Buzzards Return To Hinkly, Ohio. Plus lots of other things that crossed our path and took our fancy.

When without a handy holiday but desirous of a celebration, Kage would declare it St. Ermenwyr’s Day. The nice thing about that holiday is that you can do almost anything to commemorate it, as long as you do whatever you do to excess.

Today, Dear Readers,  is International Women’s Day. And I am taking it off.

Have a good time!

Kage Baker hated going to the doctor. Any doctor. For any reason. It’s one of the reasons she delayed so long to have her symptoms checked when she began to bleed. Like lots of women, she hated gynecological exams more than anything else.

She hated the necessity of getting undressed and sitting about swathed in inadequate paper sheets; she was the most modest woman on the face of the Earth, and just not happy without her clothes. And she said she never knew what the hell to do with her shoes. You can bundle up your unmentionables in your outer garments and all, but what do you do about the shoes? Which become 10 times bigger and clunkier than usual in an examining room, of course.

She complained that she never knew what to wear, either, not knowing how much she’d get to end up keeping on. Socks became vitally important – as most ladies are aware, when engaged in gynecological exams, your socks are usually the one thing you can count on wearing all through it. Also, your feet get cold otherwise. Kage assembled a whole wardrobe of nifty striped pirate socks to wear for her gyno visits – they cheered her up.

It was part of the general malice of Fate that Kage’s terminal illness was gynecological in nature. She would have preferred leprosy. She wasn’t one of those casually liberated ladies who could drop their drawers and never miss a beat discussing politics with the nurse. The mere sight of the stirrups made Kage’s blood pressure rise, and that last year I learned to tell the nurses to wait to take her vitals until after the exam. Otherwise, her blood pressure – which had never before been abnormal – suggested a stroke was imminent.

Kage’s modesty was utterly outraged by the necessities of her illness. One of my jobs was to minimize that – I got really good of whisking sheets around, at bundling her as comfortably as possible on those damned cold tables. Of handling her amazing expanding shoes (always carry a Trader Joe’s bag). She never had to face the endless exams alone, and that helped her get through them.

Kimberly has tried her best to accompany me on my own adventure into cancer, but – you know, she has a life. And a job. And I don’t need as much help- I have all the shyness of a cat bathing on the front walk. As long as the exams don’t provoke so much bleeding that I pass out, I am fine. And since my exsanguinary eccentricities have been copiously documented in my files, my doctor’s office staff has been very careful about managing my pelvic exams.

I saw a doctor today for the second, obligatory post-surgical checkup. My darling gynecologist is home on maternity leave, so I got a very nice young fellow who hadn’t seen me before. Luckily, he read my file … so I emerged scatheless, and not walking funny.

Even better, my progress post-surgery has been exemplary. Not a trace of an infection, the incision looks like it happened 6 months ago, and all my blood work is normal. The fatigue and screwed-up sleep patterns are, alas, not abnormal following major surgery; I’m just gonna have to wait for my outraged system to settle on a new normal. Which might take months. Oh, well. It certainly beats having cancer.

The doctor even liked my socks – green and white argyle, with shamrocks. Socks, as I’ve said, are the most important part of your wardrobe at these visits …

So I am now officially freed to a maintenance schedule. I’m due back every three months for the next 5 years, but really – that’s not so bad.

It’ll give me an excuse for really wild socks. Kage would approve.

Kage Baker was fond of that classic weather saying: “Don’t like the weather? Wait a half hour.” She felt it was an absolutely perfect and nearly universal description of meteorological events in most climates. Everyone thinks their local weather is the craziest in the world.

It’s usually attributed to places like the Midwest or coastal areas, where the mixed-grill  model of weather is common. When you are living near (or on) large weather-makers like bodies of water and vast plains, you get used to the sudden and the unexpected. And you take a certain pride in it, as well, which Kage also noted.

It’s why so many non-Californians state, with hauteur and mild contempt, that California has no weather. “Ah, if you people had to deal with real weather,” they say wisely, “you wouldn’t be so casual about it.” Then they head for their storm cellar. They say this, of course, because they’ve never stayed in California during one of its meteorological psychotic breaks.

I doubt Californians would get too very worried, though. Partly because living with the earthquakes makes us unreasonably cocky.

Partly, too,  because Californians – indeed, West Coasters in general – don’t give up their past times and routines because a cold or warm front blows in. It’s why you get those human interest stories about skiers in bikinis (Hot sun, still plenty of snow!), and extreme boaters. Kage once asked a Washington state tall boat crewman if they minded sailing in the rain. The guy laughed and said that if rain kept them in harbour, they’d never go sailing at all.

The same feeling persists in Newport Beach, I assure you. And the fisher folk in San Diego and Pismo and Monterey and Crescent City just don’t give a tinker’s damn what the weather does, if the fish are running: but fisher folk never do.

Also, despite the folks who evidently need to see a tornado to recognize weather at all, California has weather. The place is a thousand miles long and sandwiched between a mountain range and the Pacific Ocean – man, we got nothing but weather! But it comes in every variety known to Man, often simultaneously, and the changes can be subtle. It’s frequently the case that the sun is, yes, shining from San Francisco to San Diego. But it’s shining through fog, dust, water vapour and sometimes smoke; the sun may be out, but the air temperature will range from 103 to 40 degrees. Somewhere along that cline, the marine layer has advanced and socked in some 10 by 10 mile stretch; somewhere else, the wind is blowing at gale force through miles of grapes and grain, scattering leaves and cereal everywhere.

It all happens at once around here. And when it doesn’t, it at least changes places with insane speed. We have seasons, we really do – but no day typical of any one season is forbidden to show up in another. They make lightning raids on one another’s territory. It’s like the description of the seasons in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The last couple of days, it’s been hot in Los Angeles – in the 80’s, and muggy with it; a sky of hot pearl and all the mountains turned transparent in the haze. I kept my little porch door open till 9 PM, letting in the warm wind and far too many moths. When I went out to my car this morning, though … granite sky. Middle air like crystal, revealing the mountains above San Bernardino to be capped with snow. It was chill enough to see my breath, and it never has gotten over 60 here to day. There’s a wind warning, a high tide warning, and a chance of rain.

I’ll be putting my cotton nightie away and digging the flannel back out of the drawer tonight. Kage – who simply wore nightclothes in layers – would be smirking at me. She never did trust the weather for more than that mythical half hour, anyway.

Kage Baker, like so many people, hated Mondays.Unless they were the third day of a 3-day weekend; in which case, they were to be used for excursions, extra writing, and other gleeful pursuits of self-selected delights.

Even after she retired from 9-5 drudgery to work and write from home, she hated Mondays. This was largely because I still had an office job, and wasn’t especially noble about having to get up and go in. I’d drag around the house on Monday morning, whinging and moaning and making those threshold-of-hearing noises that the room mates of sleeping people make to drive them nuts …

“Can’t you leave quietly?” she’d hiss from her bedroom.

“I don’t want you to take sleeping in for granted,” I’d say virtuously, trying to find two matching shoes.

“Oh, screw you!”

So, today is a Monday. We had hot and cold running raccoons all night, and the Corgi had to repel boarders at least once. Despite the hideous wrath of God weather in the Midwest – where it is currently snowing on the tornado damage – it’s muggy and in the 80’s here in Los Angeles: our least attractive weather pattern, hot fog. I resent it and feel guilty about it, since my roof is intact and the only noticeable earthquake we had to day was in Berkeley; and frankly, Berkeley on a Monday tends to spasm a little naturally.

Mondays was further horror-enhanced by my entering a phase of mourning not mentioned in the formal lists. It’s sort of … uber sensitivity. That is, a sudden excrutiating  awareness of a thousand little reminders of loss, long after the larger realities have settled into place. I feel like I’ve forgotten things, things that mattered enormously while Kage was alive; and now all those things are awake and standing by the road as I pass by, making rude gestures … Suddenly there a tons of small things popping up, and every one of them feels like a glass shard  of memory in my heart.

See’s Chocolate’s damned Irish Potatoes, the weirdest seasonal candy ever: Kage loved them. Lawn flamingos. John Carter of Mars, whose Tars Tarkis looks to be properly sardonic but too skinny. Neanderthal art discovered. The positive flood of new and re-discovered animals in Malaysia; the insane new pterosaur fossil in China; the re-hybridization of the Sonoran red wolf.

Bacon and egg burritos at Los Burritos. KFC’s chicken pot pie coming back. Yucca spires on the hills, the tall spoked plants she called “wheel trees.” Finding Mr. Krabbs in a desk drawer. The first daffodil blooming in the pot where she planted them. All the weird and lovely things I see as I drive through the city every day, that make me think automatically: Oh, must tell Kage when I get home! And then remembering again that I never will …

Memory is sometimes like a malignant hedgehog, running out of the shadows to stab you with a thousand ridiculous little needles. The metaphor is absurd, but that’s what it feels like. All those tiny pains, nothing that can stop me but nothing that will stop  cutting into me, either.

Man, I hate Mondays.

Kage Baker was a firm believer in the axiom that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Although, to be honest, she felt that even being informed merely lessened your chances of being victimized by precisely the same misfortune or asininity that had done for your ancestors.

There are only so many ways for people to improve society on a short term basis, Kage said, and most people are too lazy to implement them. If you declared pogroms on the financial caste in your government, because you resented their success, odds are the habit would continue until your economy collapsed in self-righteous ignorance. Spain started it, but in fact European countries kept it up until the middle of the 20th century. That’s one the reasons, she maintained, that Spain didn’t enter the Renaissance until General Franco died …

Mind you, that never discouraged her from pursuing her duties as a franchise holder. She always worked hard to know what the issues were, make an informed decision, and do what she could to move us on out of the ignorance of the past.

Today is March the 4th. It’s been the occasion for a lot of silly jokes about marching forth: which I swear I never thought of before today, but have seen six or seven lame examples of this morning. Eeek, people: get a life. Marching forth is not such a great idea in this day and age. A lot of problems could be lessened by doing less of it, or at least applying a little more thought and decent philosophy to those things for which we do march forth.

More importantly, today is the anniversary of the first peaceful exchange of power in modern times between elected national officials: John Adams succeeded George Washington. And no one died! I am sure that various Guild leaders and militia captains had managed it prior to this all over the world (not so sure about Ladies’ Altar Societies, which tend toward bloodthirstiness) but on the scale of an entire country, this was the first time.

That is a great and grand thing to commemorate. It’s also amazing and splendid to realize that for over 200 years – despite name calling, stone-throwing, voter fraud, candidate fraud and other assorted scabby practices – we’ve kept it up. In the United States, the old President does not have to die when the new one takes the Oath of Office.

Some years, like this one, it appears this will be our only concession to acting like a grown-up country. But, by all the gods and goddesses, we do it. Under our national hysteria runs a deep and still unsullied stream of strength and common sense, and it tends to manifest just when we need it.

I’ve slept away most of this lovely weekend, depressed as hell by the political insanity on the airwaves. I ought to stop paying attention – but politics is a grownup’s game and responsibility, and I cannot bring myself to rest easy in ignorance. Just when I am ready to give up and relocate to some area of the British Commonwealth, though, an anniversary like this one comes along.Which helps.

I can look back at all the elections that did not litter the Capitol steps with bleeding victims, all the inaugurations not enhanced by the victor holding the loser’s bloodied head up to the cheering crowds. It makes me feel better.It makes me feel we got something right more than once.

We may not manage to avoid repeating all our history, Dear Readers, but it’s enormously hopeful to realize that some of it should be repeated. That’s why Kage never gave up, but voted every chance she got; why she stayed informed and contributed her mite to the democratic process.

It’s just a damned good idea.

Kage Baker loved shrimp. She was a little cautious about what she called naked shrimp – any shrimp not breaded or covered in an interesting sauce – but if they were very fresh and a decent size, her suspicions were allayed. Small ones, she said, always made her worried that they’d been raised in someone’s table-top aquarium.

What she liked most were big, golden, battered, fried prawns. Preferably eaten out of a twist of paper, while sheltering from the rain in a doorway or under a bridge, in sight of the sea on a grey winter evening … and while that sounds impossibly specific, like a geas from a faerie tale, it was something she accomplished fairly frequently in Pismo Beach.

The best ones were from the Golden Lantern, which was the only Chinese restaurant within walking distance for most of our lives. Luckily, it made stellar food – egg fu yung as thick as paperbacks and tender as a rose petal, lemon chicken in a sauce like yellow neon light, and those prawns … which could be dumped from the white cardboard carton into  brown paper bags and thence carried off in triumph to the seaside. We’d shelter under the eucalyptus trees or the Pier (if the tide was low enough) and eat hot oily prawns with our fingers and practice speaking in English accents …

That was in our teens. By adulthood, the conversation had evolved into Kage’s own stories. Fried prawns were a staple in the coastal cities of the Children of the Sun. Kage would lovingly describe the brightly lit ocean-front promenades, or the wet stone quays between fishing boats with painted sails; and among them, the two-wheeled carts venting steam like small dragons, selling hot prawns and noodles and kebobs you could dip in lemon lamp oil …

Kage always longed to be able to drink scented lamp oil.

Quite late in life, I finally persuaded her to try lobster as well. That was a revelation to her, but nothing like shrimp. She loved it, but it never could replace the shining golden ring of a perfectly fried prawn.

Kimberly has just introduced me to something I never, ever thought of as a shrimp snack. She appeared at my elbow here with a plate full of fresh little cocktail shrimp and a bowl of seafood sauce – pulled out one of the handy breadboards in my desk and told me, “Eat this.”  Instant, easy shrimp cocktail! Amazing! How is it I reached 58 years old and never thought of this?

And since I have no qualms myself about naked crustaceans, I’ve been alternating typing with fingerfuls of luscious cold shrimp. It does mean the little black cat is licking the keys on my keyboard, but that’s actually an improvement over walking on them and producing gibberish on my monitor. The shrimp are safe – she lives on essences, perfumes and dew drops – it’s the memory of shrimp that she wants and is licking off the keys …

I just started this entry to reminisce about meals and excursions with Kage, and how those long walks  by the sea with bags of prawns in our pockets got worked into her stories. She always liked to confer immortality on what she loved. And then present reality showed up in the person of a plate of cocktail shrimp, and suddenly everything dovetails neatly into itself. The narratives seam themselves together into one gleaming circle.

Shrimp Ouroborous. Neat.

Kage Baker had a rather arbitrary view of seasonality. She had no argument with the actual, demonstrable seasons of the earth – she moved more easily to their rhythms than to any man-made system, and she paid more attention to the flow of solstices and equinoxes than she ever did to the calendar.

But she felt that the general emotional field of the planet had its meteorology, too; and that it could be sensed if one just paid attention. Kage maintained that this field interacted with things like the weather and the magnetic field and the long-distance movements of other things in the solar system. She felt that one of the drawbacks of the modern urban lifestyle was that metal and concrete interfere with sensing these things, and people attune their lives with artificial systems.

Was she serious? I am still not sure. Kage could spin sudden worlds off her fingertips like the cards in a gambler’s rose. She always smiled when she talked about things like a season of skepticism or delight; but it may have been pleasure in her own movement through the emotional fields. Energy fields tickle, she commented opaquely  from  time to time.

God knows, Kage was peculiarly susceptible to static electricity. She was always shocking herself on faucets in the kitchen and bathroom, despite usually wearing tennis shoes with rubber soles.  Any wind at all, and her hair would shed white sparks when she shoved it off her forehead. She was infamous for giving shocks to other people, at concerts and movies and grocery stores. It’s not me, it’s the emotional field, she’d protest, grinning and as unashamed as a cat that has just delivered a static shock with a wet nose.

The world’s feeling didn’t always align with the world’s weather. And Kage predicated her activities on the feeling as often as not – she  could decide that a battle scene could not be written yet because it was a laughing day. She’d gauge the light and the wind and declare it was a Northern Day, time for Vaughn Williams on the CD player, and maybe a story about Mars: though summer was gleaming on the sea, and all the windows stood open to the scent of roses.

Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring – species type days could occur at any point in the calendar, by Kage’s analysis. Mind you, they did happen in synch most of the time; but not always. And in case of a conflict, Kage always went with her internal tally.

This week has been one for oddities. Kind persons have sent me articles on all manner of weird things, like the Lord Howes Island stick insects; fantasy is nibbling at all the edges of the world, like a high wind full of glitter. Mars makes a close approach to Earth tonight. Saturn is in retrograde until late June, and I have the clearest image in my mind: the whole vast ring shuddering to a  halt, shedding coloured sparks like confetti all over, and then ponderously beginning to turn in the other direction … the focus on the world has softened, and when it get clear again: who knows what we will see?

In the meantime, phantoms and dreams walk round the walls at night, performing entertaining shadow plays. The world is singing in a minor key, with strange accompaniment from glockenspiels, binious, saz and other exotic instruments. Flutes made from the tibias of men, harps with keys carved from princess’s finger bones. Despite the spears of daffodils and iris in my inchoate garden, the ground is breathing out frost into the warm mouth of the seducing wind.

In my mind, in a pergola of transparent panels, a woman walks down neat furrows of red dust. She scatters a glittering green crystal as she goes: manganese catalase and aerobic microbes and barley. And behind her rises a mist of newly freed oxygen and water …

I think a new scene in Marswife has been born. That’s how the world feels today.

Kage Baker truly loved to read. She was a self-taught reader, which was discovered by Mamma when Kage started correcting her on stories read aloud. Kage spent her childhood seeking safety and freedom in books – as many of us do.

But she was not only sheltered by books, she was inspired by them. The urge to tell stories herself could never have been far below the surface: it first arose in response to wanting favourite stories to go on beyond The End. Before long, Kage was altering plots so they came out better – then coming up with entirely new ones. She sort of learned to tell stories backwards and inside out.

She still loved other people’s stories, though. One of the odder regrets attendent on becoming a successful writer was that her time to read recreationally was much reduced. She had her firm favourites that she never relinquished and read over and over – and she tried to do research for stories on topics that already interested her, so she could enjoy the research a bit.

Kage’s last couple of months, I read to her all the time. I’m glad, now.

But there are story notes safe in my files about stained glass, and pottery glazes, and old faerie lore, and Neanderthal culture, and abacuses, and abyssal oceanic life – all things that interested her, and that she read up on with the excuse that a story could come out of it … and some will. A couple of these projects went into the Nell Gwynne sequel already.

Today is, apparently, Read Across America and World Book Day. I’ve been therefore reading most of the day, instead of doing freaking anything else at all, and I am going back to it as soon as I get this entry dutifully posted.

I’m reading for two, now.

PS and Update: the universal reaction to that brilliant article on Lord Howe Island stick insects was loathing. I am astounded! Those bugs – while, yes, inarguably loathly – are so weird they are ubercool. The world needs them, just to balance out the elevator music and blancmange and parking lots that typify mundanity. However, I am very pleased to note that everyone liked Bell’s Pyramid. Shows your innate good taste.

Now, go read something amazing.

Kage Baker was not afraid of bugs. This was amazing, as the list of things she was afraid was long and complex. But mere arthropods? Nah. Mind you, she didn’t go so far as to handle them with any pleasure -though she did once cautiously stroke a pink-legged tarantula. (I merely had a stroke.) Chance encounters, though, did not faze her.

This was especially handy because I come unstuck when faced with most insects. Too many joints, too many optic cells. Spiders also make me nuts. It’s not the multiple legs so much as the multiple eyes. Also, nothing should have a mouth that works sideways. Not fur, pink stripes or the Predator’s fly dreadlocks could improve a spider’s face.

Catching and defenestrating bugs was therefore one of Kage’s jobs.

In Pismo Beach, there are the usual varieties of bugs. Our gardens were always richly endowed with them, and Kage always saved me from intruders who decided to try indoor living. Especially the stick insects – they liked to eat new rose leaves (itself a heinous crime) but they also liked to hitch a ride as one passed the roses, and come into the house. I’d inevitably glance sideways and see beady compound eyes on my shoulder, have hysterics, and Kage would have to rescue me and the stick insect from mutual destruction.

Those things can get big! Horribly, science fiction-radiation-end of the world big … at least it looks that way when you bring your hand down from scratching your neck, and one is sitting on your hand looking at you. But then – there are these.

A Company Job

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years?sc=fb&cc=fp

I must acknowledge my debt to the inestimable Mr. Tom Barclay (thank you, Tom!)  for bringing these to my attention. Not only are they unbelievably huge, their continued existence is such a miracle that it can only be a Dr. Zeus project.

These are Lord Howe Island stick insects, and they’ve been considered extinct for 80 years. They lived here …

… a modest tropical paradise in the Tasmanian Sea, until the entire population was devoured by immigrant black rats. Goodbye to the largest stick insect in the world, affectionately known to entomologists as the “tree lobster” because of its armour and freakish size.

However, 13 miles away is Ball’s Pyramid …

Ball's Pyramid

… which looks like a Sandals Resort for Mordor. And that is where, recently, the last surviving breeding population of Lord Howe Island’s Stick Insects were found. By accident. By some mountain climbers, in the dark (the bugs are nocturnal). Under one, single melaleuca bush. Turned out the entire global population was 24 insects: which is an improvement over none, but not really encouraging.

Eventually a breeding pair was moved to Melbourne Zoo. There are now 700 of the things, and an upcoming 11,000 eggs incubating. Australia, meantime, is trying to figure out where to put them – Lord Howe Island is still lousy with rats, and Ball’s Pyramid cannot really sustain 11,000 foot long tree lobsters. But in the meantime, they have been saved from oblivion, so people are pretty happy so far.

This has got to be a Company job. These bugs cannot fly and do not swim. Somewhere, under some portion of the Outback in the secret Company base that has been there for a thousand years, some entomologist is laughing his ass off as the mortals try to deal with the humongous bugs he saved for posterity. Doubtless while stoned on theobromos. You’d have to be stoned to do this. I mean, look at those things! But politely, man, because they’re sure as hell looking back at you.

Kage would be so pleased.