Once upon a mime lived three
tiny fleas. These fleas were pleased to tease the poor mime they inhabited.
These cruel little things would torment the mime whenever they could--
especially when he was trying to sleep.
“Hey, quietboy!” the first
flea would shout. “Why won’t you talk to us?”
The mime would just look down at
the flea on his knee, smile and shrug.
At this point flea two would chirp
up, “Well, if you won’t shoo us or tell us to be on our way, we’ll just
bite you all night.”
The mime just pouted and shook his
head.
Noticing the mime’s lack of
verbal response, the three fleas would shout “Yay!” and leap to devour the
poor guy.
Normally on their off hours, mimes
are permitted to speak. It just so happens that this mime was currently enrolled
in the School for Silent Monks and Mimes. The dormitory he lived in was shared
by others who were doing their best to remain silent. (So you can see the
mime’s dilemma.)
One evening the mime had a good
idea. He pulled out pen and paper and wrote “Shoo, fleas! Leave me alone!”
The fleas glanced at the paper but immediately claimed that they couldn’t
read.
“So, are you going to tell us to
go away?”
The mime helplessly (and silently)
cried.
“Yay!” shouted the
blood-thirsty fleas, and they fell to their feast.
After four months of this horrible
onslaught, the mime was on the verge of losing his mind. He definitely had an
irrational fixation with not breaking his silence, but had to find a way to be
rid of these sleazy fleas.
He tried bathing completely as
many as four or five times a day. He tried squashing them, but the fleas were
super fast. He tried showering them with repellant and bug bombs, but somehow
they were immune. He collected a huge library of books on just about everything
under the sun, simply to rid himself of those pesky fleas. The torture continued
and the mime got more desperate with each passing day.
The mime finally went and bathed
himself in enough radiation to kill any insect immediately. Afterwards these
fleas were still there, but they were obviously very unhappy. It was only a week
before they were back to normal. The mime was, at this point, an irradiated
lunatic.
Our poor mime then proceeded to
study black magic in order to do away with the fleas. He learned all sorts of
magic and learned to invoke the spells silently. Unfortunately, the fleas were
only moderately affected by the most powerful spell he could find. This
unfortunate mime was determined to give it one last shot.
He figured that the only things
that were able to harm the unholy beasts were radiation and his magic. The mime
took everything he had learned in science and black magic and combined them into
one final attack. He created a spell that would take all local radiation and
infuse it into these three particular fleas. There was only one problem: the
mime would have to speak the final initializing phrase. Finally this was a
sacrifice that he was willing to make.
Everything was prepared to go and
the mime wasn’t the least bit nervous. The three fleas continued biting,
unworried. The mime started the spell in the radiation chamber he had devised.
Radiation streamed, power flowed, and fleas bit. It was the most beautiful
display of random energy ever produced. Lightning shot from his hands and fire
streamed from his toes—the time had come.
The mime opened his mouth to speak
the words that were precisely defined for this spell. They began as a low
grumble.
“The End…”
His voice failed him. The
unpracticed voice cracked upon uttering the second word of “The End of those
damned fleas!” and suddenly the spell began to suck more power out of the
environment.
All lights extinguished. The
entire universe plunged into darkness to have its light pulled into the weaving
of this spell gone mad.
There was one second of total
silence.
Within this second, the mime spoke
the last word of the universe.
As all radiation in the universe
was being totally infused into all matter, all matter was being infused into all
magic, and all magic was being infused into all light, the mime made his final
statement.
“Oops.”
The three fleas, sitting in their
newfound situation, discussed the current empty universe.
“So, where’d mime boy go?”
wondered flea one.
“Probably where everything else
went,” flea three responded.
Reveling in the fact that they
were now the only all-powerful beings in the universe, the second flea said,
“Let’s get something going, guys!”
And so it began.