So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so verymuch out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just a moment too late to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

“Oh, well,” Alice said. “It was just a silly rabbit, anyway.”

Liberally adapted from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

On the day it ran out and he spotted the tall silhouettes of the palm trees in the distance, he simply silently adjusted his course towards them but he did not alter his pace. He did not think “Ah, there is water there.” It was simply as good a direction as any.

It was only when he got closer, close enough to see the green of the leaves that he allowed himself to feel a flicker of hope, a flicker that was kindled into a flame by the sight of sunlight glinting off a silvery surface as he came over a high hill.

He didn’t have it within him to break into a run by that point, but the glorious sight gave him a jolt of energy and determination that kept him on his feet, kept him moving forward. It was there, it was real. He had not fooled himself.

A refreshing breeze sprang up as he approached the oasis, and he smiled a smile that froze and then faded. The fronds of the trees did not stir. There was no scent of wet earth or vegetation or anything alive, just the dust of the desert carried on the wind. He looked up at the greenery and saw that it was blocky, solid. The trunks looked waxy or plasticine. He stepped forward, cautious now… an artificial oasis was unexpected, but it might still save him. If someone had taken the time to decorate this patch of desolation, they might still be in residence. If not, they’d probably have built their tiny paradise around actual water.

That hope was dashed when he passed under the resin boughs of the artificial trees and found a “lake” of hard plastic with a rippled surface. A wooden post stood near the edge of it. It bore a placard. He stepped up to it and read it, his parched lips moving silently as he drank in the words:

La Mirage (R. Pescatero, 2017) – This outdoor installation piece, created during the artist’s prolific “asshole phase”, is intended to call to mind images of a lush desert oasis, an island of life in the midst of the most inhospitable terrain. The piece calls to mind the fleeting and transient nature of hope by luring travelers in with an illusory promise of sustenance and succor. Like the artist’s related works, Rotating Signpost (2015) and his ambitious Retreating Rescue Lights (2022), La Mirage has been known to invoke feelings of frustration, desperation, and even despair in viewers.

“How picky are you?” the fish asked. “It’s not enough that I can talk?”

“Well, maybe I’ve seen talking fish before,” the fisherman said. “Can you dance?”

“No,” the fish said. “But I can sing. I sing the most beautiful songs, the songs of fish.”

“What do they sound like?”

“Have you ever heard whalesong?”

“No,” the fisherman said.

“Oh, well, the songs of fish are kind of like that, but better,” the fish said.

“Can you sing ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’?” the fisherman asked.

“What?”

“The Bobby McFerrin Song,” the fisherman said. “I have a largemouth bass at home that sings it. Can you do that?”

“Why do you need me to sing that if you’ve got a fish that sings it already?”

“Well, it’s kind of a robot and if you could do it for real… honestly, I’m not sure I even need one singing fish, let alone two,” the fisherman said. “It was a birthday present, because I like to fish and so my wife thought… well, who knows what she was thinking.”

“Listen, if you let me go then I’ll sing you a song that will stay with you until the end of your days,” the fish said.

“I don’t really like music,” the fisherman said.

“What do you like, then?”

“Fish, mostly,” the fisherman said. “That’s why I keep coming out here. For fish. I don’t know why you guys keep making this so complicated.”

“You’re the one who brought up wishes.”

It has slept for a long time. Now for the first time in ages it awakens in pain, pain such as it has never known. The air is hot and thick, strangely invigorating but unfamiliar. The beetles which live on the forest’s trees, thinning them at a reasonable level and then dying in the winter, have not been dying, and so the trees are in agony. The forest is not the trees, but the trees are of the forest and it feels their pain. It acts. Taking in a deep breath of the newly vitalizing atmosphere, the forest acts. It adjusts its trees, changing their sap to be thicker and more abundant, better suited to repelling the insects.

It’s a start, but a slow one.

I can do better, the forest thinks, taking in another mammoth breath.

It reaches out and it awakens some of its children. There are spiders in the forest, and insects that hunt, and birds with long, clever beaks. They can be adjusted, too. Made cleverer, made hungrier, made more numerous. The forest is alive with activity now, fully awake and alert It reaches out within itself. The wolf packs that once roamed it are all but gone. The great bears are dwindling in number and lazy. Long paths have been cut through the forest’s body, and in some cases covered over with rocky earth and barriers of metal. Its boundaries have retreated inward upon themselves.

The forest exerts itself like it is giving a great shrug. Roots extend towards roadways, seeds find their way into cracks. The effects of this are not immediately apparent. The plant parts of the forest are not as quick as the animal parts, even with the refreshing effects of the altered air.

The forest touches the bears and the wolves, along with the bats and the owls and the blackbirds and the raptors and the raccoons and the badgers in their dens. It reaches out to all of them, along with the deer and the rabbits and the squirrels and the mice. All the hunters, all the scavengers, all the foragers. They are all awake now, attent and waiting for the forest to act.

I can do better than this, the forest thinks again, and it adjusts them all. They remember when they were larger, when they were wilder and fiercer, stronger and smarter. They remember when the forest they were a part of was a thing of greatness and they themselves become greater.

There are men in the forest. It didn’t notice them at first, because there have always been men in the forest, though they stopped being part of the forest long before they adjusted to their present shapes. Its attention is on them now that the initial shock of pain that jolted it to consciousness has subsided. Some of the men are felling trees, not with stone and fire or even with iron but with strange metal implements that shriek and spin. Trees are being dragged off by great mindless metal beasts that belch out precious carbon and toxic-flavored fumes. Elsewhere, the forest’s insects are being killed by poison, the forest’s birds are being frightened back into their accustomed timidity by the roar of men’s strange devices, and the forest’s beasts are being hunted with things it can’t even begin to describe.

Shocked, the forest reaches out… and receives yet another shock. Across the world, its brethren have all been similarly penned in, reduced, or even destroyed. Their cousins, as well. The wetlands: drained and built over, or starved, or poisoned. The undulating prairies: fenced in, ripped apart, made to bear tamer seeds from other places. Rivers channeled and dammed, and everywhere men have laid their rocky paths and spun webs of metal carrying lighting and water, built their odd angular lodges, and constructed their roaring engines.

We can do better, the forest says, and it starts to wake the others up.

The technology to build the artificial bodies that carried out the labor was ages old, but building the minds to drive them had proven elusive. At last that problem had been solved, or at least rendered obsolete by a scientific breakthrough in another area, that of faster-than-light communication.

The world was at peace, but not all were content. There were those who believed that the ‘perfect’ culture was founded on exploitation, that the drone-minds were being taken advantage of, that it was not right that those who toiled so tirelessly and so reliably should not share in the produce of their labors, but they were paid little heed. Nobody was forcing the drone-minds to work for them… that was the beauty of the system. There was an entire race of creatures who seemed willing and eager to bend their brains towards tasks that were for them nothing more than a stylized representation on a view screen, and they would do it and do it well for no further reward than having their performance of the tasks acknowledged. Priests argued with scientists whether this was evidence of divine planning or mere cosmic happenstance, but both agreed that it would serve no purpose to let such a precious resource go to waste.

Across the vast gulf of space, a hundred thousand screens flashed with notification icons. The strawberries were ready to be harvested.

“Henry?” his wife said from right behind him. Close enough to touch him. He thought she was going to. He expected to feel her hand on his arm like he usually did, but he didn’t. She was scared, he thought. She was right to be.

“Henry,” she said again, from a foot or two farther back, “they’ve plowed the roads again. We should really go out to the store while we can. We’ve used up all the canned soup, and there’s no milk or bread…”

“We can’t go out there,” Henry said, not taking his eyes off the snow, alert for any signs of movement.

“Henry, it’ll be fine. The truck has four wheel drive.”

“You think you’d make it to the truck?” he asked.

“It would be easier if you’d shovel the walk again, but the important thing is…”

“The important thing is that we’re in here and they’re out there,” he said.

“What’s out there?” she asked.

“Sharks,” Henry said.

“Sharks? Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, just as another triangular fin slid out from beneath the whiteness and glided smoothly across the lawn.

“Look, look!” Henry said, pointing. He turned to see if his wife was seeing it, but she had turned to walk away. When he turned back to the window, the thing had submerged itself again.

“Henry, you’re getting cabin fever,” his wife said. “We all are, I suppose. I’m going to get the kids bundled up.”

“You can’t take the kids out there!”

“They need to get out, even just to the grocery store,” she said. “You do, too.”

“We have supplies left,” Henry said. “We can last until the snowmelts.”

“Supplies? We have fifty pounds of dry cat food you laid in when you were so afraid of that virus,” she said. “We’re not eating that, not when the stores are open and the roads are clear.”

“Honey, please listen to me,” he said, though he recongized the tone in her voice. She wouldn’t be persuaded or reasoned with.

“We’re going in fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes to figure out how he could save his family from what was waiting outside… or to decide if he’d have to settle for saving the children, somehow, if their mother wouldn’t be stopped.

It was a grim choice, but a man had to do what it took to protect his family.

He didn’t know or care who had hired him to kill so many young men. He didn’t know what they had done to deserve death at his hands… he didn’t know if they even did deserve it. That was not a matter for him to decide. He was neither a philosopher nor a judge.

But there was one question that plagued him, that dogged him nightly. Many of his targets seemed to be insomniacs, being awake at their computers or reading in their beds when he came upon them. And when they saw their doom was upon them, more than one of them had chosen to say as their last words, “You can’t kill me! I’m a virgin!”

And so Ichiro, though he did not like to ask questions, wondered still: why did so many teenage males confuse ninjas and unicorns?

“Do you ever worry,” the larger man said to the smaller, “about posterity?”

“About what?”

“You know, your legacy.”

“Oh,” the smaller man said. He held up a gaudily jeweled ring. “I think I’ll leave a fine one, if any bastard of mine ever tracks me down to claim it.”

“What I mean is, we are outlaws, criminals. We rob and plunder, and sometimes kill.”

“When it is needful to kill, only,” his companion said.

“When it is needful,” the big man agreed. “But needful or not, how do you think history will look back on you?”

“Kindly, I should think,” the man said. He shrugged. “I’m not particularly bothered about it.”

“Kindly?” the big man echoed. “Kindly?”

“Yes, kindly,” the thief said. “They think kindly enough of their absent king, whose wasteful wars necessitate the taxes that turned folks like you and I out of our homes. They lay the blame for that at the feet of his poor, duty-bound brother, who does his best to keep the realm running and feed the starving beast abroad. If my meager depredations are remembered at all, they will no doubt also be blamed upon John.”

“Or you’ll be cursed alongside him.”

“I think not. Who will curse us? The many and common poor folk who form the meat and blood of this lands? We have done nothing to them,” the man said. “It is the gentry they revile… the taxmen even more. They are vilified for the same reason that we rob them: because they have money that others do not. And if they’re villains to the multitudes,and we direct our evil against them, does that not make us good?”

“Does it?”

“Of course not,” the smaller thief said. “But posterity is a tidy custodian… it likes to keep things neat.”

“So you do not worry about posterity because you think you will be regarded as a hero?”

“No, no, not a whit,” the smaller man said. “I do not worry about posterity because I do not expect to be around to greet it… save in passing, as it were. I am an honest thief and would not misrepresent my intentions to anyone, for anything. That would make me no more than a common swindler.”

“Do you mean to say that if you could set down how you would be remembered throughout all of history, you wouldn’t do so?”

“Of course I would, but I can’t, so it’s no use worrying about it. Although, since the subject is up…”

“Yes?”

“It would be very kind if some considerate scribe were to write for me a lady-friend.”

The silence stretched on. She glared at him, and he began to feel a different kind of fear, the fear of having said something foolish, of having been foolish. He wondered if it would be possible for him to slink backwards out of the kitchen and into the living room, to pretend like he hadn’t seen what he had seen and hadn’t consequently said what he had said.

That was unlikely, he realized. Even if he just kept slinking all the way out the front door and down the steps and out of her apartment building, he could hardly avoid her. They had known each other for years, after a fashion… they’d been on the periphery of each other’s circles for long before he’d grown bold enough to introduce himself. There were too many mutual acquaintances, too many shared associations, too many links.

The look of scorn oftened on her face, and he saw with a pang of guilt and empathy what was behind it, the hurt and the disappointment. He’d caused that, with a single harsh-flung word.

The tray of drinks that had been levitating above the counter ever since he stumbled in on her wobbled a little and then settled back down.

“Wizard,” she said finally.

“W-what?”

“The word is wizard.”

After a night of fitful sleep, he set out, mounting his charger at dawn and riding down out of the hills at a good, solid clip. He reached the castle before noon. As he approached, he spotted a figure gowned in green, walking along the outer wall. Any last vestiges of a doubt he might have harbored in his heart fled when he heard the song, the beautiful clear voice wafting down from the ramparts.

He drew his horse to a halt a short distance from the base of the high wall. The singing, too, stopped.

“My lady!” he called. “Please, my lady… I beg a moment of your time!”

“Yes?” the same beautiful voice replied, a little uncertainly.

“My lady, my name is Sir Roderick of Dunhall,” the knight said. “For thrice three years, I have been haunted by a dream, a most singular dream about a most singular lady. For all that time, her face, her voice… her beauty… has danced in my sleep and afflicted my waking hours with what was at first a most pleasant distraction. As the years went on, though, I found myself increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of my dream-damsel. I sought out a soothsayer who told me that I would find her, living in a castle of white stone on the shore of a great sea. I set off at once, sharing my tale to any who would listen. I described the castle and the face of my inamorata to any who traveled far and wide, hoping that someone would know them… and at long last, after many wrong turns and false trails, I believe I have found her. If you will only show yourself to me, so that I can confirm that you are the lady of my dreams, then we can be wed this very day and I shall be the happiest man upon this earth.”

There was no reply at first. Sir Roderick held his breath. Then, he saw movement…a glimpse of golden curls as the lady peeked down at him from the high parapet. It was just a glimpse, but it left him dizzy. Her hair was the exact shade of his dream lady’s.

“My lady?” he said.

“I think you have the wrong castle,” she said.

“I am certain that I do not!” he said. “Please, lady, allow me to look on you, so that I may know that you are the one I am destined to wed.”

“I’d rather not,” she said.

“But… if you are the one who has come to me in my dreams…”

“I do not control my own dreams, Sir Roderick,” she said, “and I am certainly not responsible for any of yours.”

“My lady, I have come so far.”

“I didn’t make you do that,” the lady said.

“But I have ridden for…”

“Is your steed magic?” she asked. “Does the mere act of riding him often change people’s minds? Or shall I marry you as an act of sympathy for his saddle sores?”

“Please, if you’ll only just show me your face…”

“What will that accomplish?” she asked.

“It will prove that what I am saying is true,” he said.

“That you’ve been dreaming of me? I believe you,” she said.

“Then… will you accept my love?”

“Don’t be ridiculous… I do not know you, nor do I long to.”

“But I have dreamed of you… this is my destiny.”

“But what?” she asked. “Am I not allowed any say in this? Do your dreams and your destiny mean that I am not allowed to have my own dreams, my own destiny? If I did appear to you in your dreams, did you ever ask me what I felt? Or why I was there? Did you ask the soothsayer if I had my own beloved, or how I would feel about being asked to marry a man I’ve never met?”

“Do you have a beloved?” Sir Roderick asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I am not interested in you.”

“My lady, if you mean to test my devotion, know that I am prepared… though I have been sorely tested already.”

“Silly knight, your devotion doesn’t interest me,” she said. “How can I make that any plainer?”

“I’m ready to fight for your honor. I will duel any man, slay any dragon, bring you any tribute… only tell me what you wish for, and I shall make it so.”

“I wish to be left alone,” the lady said. “I wish to be free of men who regard me as a trophy to be won, who think that I should be overjoyed to be a mere figurant in their dreams. I wish to have my own wishes respected, when I make them clear and particularly when they touch most strongly on myself and my own disposition.”

“I see,” Sir Roderick said. “And, so… if I were respect your wishes for now, do you think that in time you may grow to return my love?”

“In what respect will you respect me, if you only do so in exchange for what you want?”

“My lady, I do not like to mention this because I do not like to brag, but I am the heir to the throne of High Dunhall,” Sir Roderick said. “I will one day be its king, and if you marry me, you will be my queen. Does that not make a difference to you?”

“Does anything I say make a difference to you?”

“My lady, I think that perhaps you are not thinking things through.”

“I am going to count to five and then I am going to call for archers,” the lady said. “One…”

“Indeed, my lady, that’s quite enough!” Sir Roderick said, wheeling his horse around. “You’ve made yourself clear! I shall away with me, and bother you no more. There is no need to lower yourself to such base threats.”

“Apparently there was,” she called. “You would not shift yourself for any words I could conjure alone.”

“Have you nothing else to say, knowing that I have dreamt of you every night for nigh unto a decade, knowing how far I have come and knowing that I am heir to a great kingdom?”

“Yes,” she said. “Two…”

“I’m going, I’m going!”