By Peter Wilhelm
Destroy the memory of history and you have no past. The shambling, idiosyncratic masses who brush up against you in the riverine gulleys that were once proper streets, with stagnant potholes for kids to sport in, want you to pave more fake alleyways, then repatriate yourself to Marion Island.
I generally ignore them – and they me – since I cannot pave and have no objection to anything anyone else does (mayhem and destruction aside) and were it not for the media might never even have heard that disgusting word “xenophobia”.
But the vileness creeps ever closer. I was quietly mooching in my garden nurturing a few thousand survivors of my former pet Golden Orb spider Matilda (who exploded into millions of molecule-sized spiderlings after guzzling her sexual partners Banting-style). A creepy noise in the shrubbery alerted me that my loathsome neighbour Gatvol van der Pomp was tunnelling through the vegetable and animal structure that demarcates our private landfills in the key-point we term home.
“Have you seen who’s moved in?” he gasped in ethanol-laced puffs. He pointed to the giant liver-spotted brontobeetles frolicking in the occupation zone over the road. An alien species from a miserable brown dwarf orbiting Proxima Centauri, as pseudo-arthropods they have twelve legs with eight eyes. Your normal pub grubs. They eat each other when they mate, like humans.
“I think we should sneak over at night and throw polka-dotted paint on their walls. We don’t want their kind around, stealing our women and our jobs.” Gatvol was living up to his name within his stoned-age comfort zone. I said: “The women want other humans, even men, and there are no jobs.”
This enraged him. “Are you suggesting I have some kind of disease, like herpes zoster or politically incorrect syndrome? Do you even know how Siouxie is progressing? You never ask.”
Gatvol’s daughter Siouxie is undergoing a sex change (sorry: gender reassignment) through entire vats of testosterone and human growth hormone being decanted into her veins. She wants to join the Stormers though they are not known to have signed on any females – in itself a symptom of genderphobia (a word I have just invented).
The results (along with Siouxie’s preparations to run from Woodstock to Mosul) are spectacular. Think of a gigantic furry wrecking ball rolling inexorably along. A sphere so massive it probably has its own gravity field. She has lost whatever features she once had, perfect for the Stormers.
“Listen Gatvol – I know all about the LBGTI community. I am not genderphobic and believe that ‘live and let live’ is a sound proposition for the kind of nation we cooked up all those centuries ago. Siouxie is an ‘I’ in that category – ‘intersex’, meaning neither male nor female. Stormers need to have willies, so won’t the porcine selectors sipping G&T draw the line?”
“Are you suggesting Siouxie should apply for a penis transplant?”
“Well,“ I said. “She may find it uphill without some symbol of manhood. She could revert to the cute little button she once was and serve watery drinks at the strip joint. An American advice columnist, “Dear Prudence” (to be found online at Slate), recently remarked that the new wave of feminists didn’t want to skitter around resembling Chewbacca. Options are open.”
Across the road a titanic extraterrestrial brontobeetle buzzed in agony as his wife chewed his ears. I gestured: “Just leave them alone. Soon there won’t be many left. They will be endangered. You and Siouxie will be safe behind your fleet of drones and death rays.
“Otherwise she can flatten them. Then no-one will ever accuse you of xenophobia."
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