The other day I was out running errands and on the sidewalk I saw a piece of dog poop, or it was so big maybe it was from a human or even maybe from a bigger animal. Anyway, at first I kept walking but then I retraced my steps. There was something well-formed and pleasing about the poop. I knelt down and, letting my imagination play around, I molded the poop into the form of a little animal and then, when I was happy, I breathed life into it and the resulting creature was so beautiful that I multiplied it a million times and named it a “ferret.” People freaked out at suddenly being surrounded by these millions of strange new animals, so I gathered them all up, all over the world, and put the bulk of them in pet stores and in little hamster-like enclosures in private homes, and I scattered a few in a natural habitat in, uh, I don't remember where it was, probably South America I guess (these are the ferrets that I'm saying I gathered up, not the people). Then, because this redistribution freaked people out even more, I wiped from everybody on earth's memories the past few minutes, in which “ferrets” had suddenly appeared from “nowhere” (or, more precisely, from “me”), and, what was a little trickier, I implanted memories of ferrets in the minds of a few billion people—basically, into the minds of everyone who, under the new dispensation, would have been expected to know about them, for example people who live in countries where ferrets are now popular—I had to take a little more time adjusting the memories of people who actually have pet ferrets in their houses now. I also adjusted the memories of all the people who had witnessed me playing with the poop in the first place (I had been planning to do that anyway). Then I walked home. I don't have a pet ferret.
That night at about three in the morning a terrible storm broke, and since I hadn't been able to get to sleep anyway I got out of bed and made some coffee. Then at around four I went ahead and got dressed and put on my rain slicker and, I don't know why, I left my apartment and went for a walk, a walk out in the rain. I had been thinking about what I'd done, I guess, about the way I'd deceived everyone in the world, and the way I'd sort of made a fool of them. And, I don't know, I guess I felt like I ought to apologize; but the thing was that none of you guys out there knew you'd been tricked; in order to apologize to you I'd have to tell you what I'd done, to tell you that I'd made a fool of you and that those little ferrets you're cuddling are just big pieces of furry animated poop. And while that might be the just thing to do, it probably wouldn't make you feel any better. Well, this is the kind of situation I'm getting into all the time, and I suppose I'm used to it, and I know what to do when this kind of a mood comes over me. Or rather, I know the only things that I can do. So I went out into the storm and wandered the streets of the city alone, apologizing—apologizing to the rain, for lack of other company. Things are okay, I guess. Things are always okay and then one day they're over with. But I have to admit, it made me very sad, when I was out walking alone through the gray rain-blurred dawn, to see all of you out there on the sidewalks, your hands open at your sides, your eyes helpless and confused as you stood there, unable to do anything else, and watched your pet ferrets, on the sidewalks, melting in the rain.
* With apologies to The Bastard Son of the Lord Home Page.
