TheBanyanTree: mad sheep snippet 2

[Peter Macinnis]

He reached down and started the engine as a voice beside him said "Hello 
Eric, nice jeep!"

There is a theory about the world that there are many bifurcating 
universes, where small variations lead off in different directions 
because people make different decisions. Many of these universes don't 
go very far, because someone decides that the red button really WANTS to 
be pressed, and cannot be denied, or that climate change was invented by 
scientists as a scam to get better research funding. They are all doomed.

One whole swarm of universes remains permanently deliriously happy. On 
those universe lines, Adam and Eve sent out for a pizza, because they 
suspected the apple tree had been sprayed, so the apples would 
undoubtedly fail their organic certification. The pair had no proof, it 
was just a feeling they had about the shifty look on the face of the 
angel who told them to leave the apples alone. The angel definitely had 
something to hide.

Some universes are oddly shaped, and Columbus DID fall off the edge of 
the Earth. In others, seafaring inhabitants of Massachusetts sailed 
across to Europe, just after the Black Death and took it over. Most 
universes, however, are blandly similar, and merge once more to form the 
mainstream universe.

That sort of return to normality is impossible when somebody hears a 
comment about a jeep, and for no apparent reason thinks it was actually 
about sheep. That sort of error throws quantum balance out the window.

Eric looked up and saw Mrs Roberts, the nosy neighbour from 
next-door-but-one, known to the rest of the street as the Ogre of 
Manchineel Drive. In his hands lay the balance the mainstream universe. 
Eric made a wrong choice, as people often do when trying to fend off 
insidious evil, manifested as a nosy neighbour.

In most cases, "wrong choice" is a very subjective term. Some people 
might say it was the right choice, so let's just say that Eric made a 
choice.

"Hello, Mrs Roberts! Yes, nice colours aren't they — all nice and varied?"

He found himself immediately assailed by eight mad sheep, all shouting 
that Mrs Roberts could not see them, and that she was talking about the 
jeep, while at the same time he had Mrs Roberts reacting in puzzlement. 
"What do you mean, all nice and varied?" she asked as Myfanwy butted him 
on the shoulder, shouting once more that Mrs Roberts could not see the 
sheep, but she was drowned by Mrs Roberts saying "Restored jeeps are all 
drab green like this one, though they don't usually have a pannier of 
the back. But why are you jumping around like that?"

Eric jabbed Myfanwy in the nose with his elbow, which caused her to 
withdraw, howling, to her side of the car, and turned to his questioner.

"Why am I bouncing around? Sorry Mrs Roberts, I'm just trying to get 
settled in the seat, and I thought you meant the mad sheep who are 
riding with me."

"That's torn it," roared Dougal. "Bruce!"

One of the red sheep on the back seat answered in a laconic Australian 
accent. "Yeah. You want me to give her a woolly mind, Doogs?"

"Fast as you can!"

"No worries". And with that, a red sheep sailed up out of the back seat 
and disappeared into Mrs Roberts' right ear. Her face contorted and 
swelled, her eyes bulged, and then she returned more or less to normal 
as Bruce emerged with a squelching sound from her left ear and landed 
lightly on the front of the jeep. He grimaced. "Struth! Not nice in 
there at all. And she's having it off with some politician!"

Dougal's face was grim. "No time to waste then, Bruce — make another 
pass, just to be sure. Do a spinner!"

"Righto!" Now Bruce went from left ear to right ear, rotating as he 
entered and exited. "All clear," he said.

Mrs Roberts stood beside the jeep with a vacant look on her face, then 
she smiled. "Well, it's been nice talking to you, Tom, I must be off."

She headed back to her front gate and as Bruce settled in the back, he 
commented that there would be no more trouble from her.

Now about the outcome: nobody could guess that she would forget the 
appropriate precautions when entertaining her politician friend that 
afternoon, and so would conceive a daughter who inherited the 
viciousness of a suburban gossip multiplied by that of a politician who 
started his public life as a talkback bully. The child wasn't quite the 
spawn of Satan, but she was good enough (or, strictly, bad enough) to be 
the Spawn's stunt double.

In time, this child would become powerful enough to instruct the civil 
service to make time turn back, so she could discover what freak event 
had caused her to be created. It was just good luck for the sheep that 
this child had been schooled under a standards-based system of her 
father's devising, where people were tested lots but never actually 
taught anything other than that Thinking was Undemocratic.

This scheme allowed her father to splutter about declining standards 
with no fear of ever being wrong. The system did a lot for people who 
created league tables for schools, and nothing at all for education.

As a direct result, his daughter's generation ended up lacking 
mathematical and logical thinking, which explains why she was able to 
take power.

But because of her deficient education, she did not notice when one of 
the more cunning technicians opened a panel and threw a bucket of water 
into the electrics at just the right time.

She remained unaware as she hit the mainstream universe polystring some 
17 seconds too late, and so her aim was off by three universe-threads. 
Worse, she was travelling vengefully at a speed only appropriate in 
armour-drive universes.

Her space-time shadow hit the Manchineel Drive locus hard enough to put 
a permanent hernia in the space-time of two thirds of the mainstream 
universe, and she also put a permanent end to herself. By then, Eric had 
turned the corner and was negotiating a vicious speed bump, which he 
blamed for the tremor that came to him through the wheels.

The space-time hernia, and the effect it had in reversing entropy in a 
number of pendant universes in later eons is not a topic that we need to 
address here. Back in the real world, Eric was looking at his watch.

peter

-- 
Peter Macinnis, Manly, the birthplace of Australian surfing
feral word herder, also herbal remedies, bespoke fish
hooks, umbrellas mended and budgerigar requisites
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/