by John Scalzi
HORN.PSD: [obviously dismayed] Oh that’s just great. You mean I’m playing something outside of an established continuity with a fan base who’s sure to complain? I swear I’m going to kill my agent.
CROTCH.PSD: Tell me about it. Once I was in this Hentai image where the schoolgirl’s outfit was the wrong color and the tentacles weren’t nearly far enough inside the—
FACE.PSD: We really don’t need to hear anymore.
CROTCH.PSD: But I was wondering what the Kittytrice represents?
FACE.PSD: Oh that’s easy, the American public, who were whipped into a frenzy by the Bush policies into being something they’re not. That’s probably why they made the Kittytrice violent instead of cute.
SWEATER.PSD: Wait, so Obama is trying to kill both the Bush administrations policies and the American public? In what reality does that happen?
FACE.PSD: Have you ever watched Fox News?
[OFF STAGE rim shot]
CROTCH.PSD: Then…what’s the spear?
FACE.PSD: [unsure suddenly] Katrina?
LAVA.PSD: [confused] I would have thought the lava/volcano part was Katrina.
SWEATER.PSD: And wouldn’t it make more sense for angry clown sweater guy to be the American public riding the Obama Kittytrice to kill the OrcBush with the spear of…what the hell is the spear anyways?
HORN.PSD: That doesn’t make sense because Obama’s policies have turned out to not be radically different from the worst of Bush’s policies in terms of wiretapping or assassination of American civilians for example.
CROTCH.PSD: So the spear is Obama killing the Bush policies with policies that aren’t that different from Bush’s?
FACE.PSD: This is far deeper a work than I suspected.
HORN.PSD: I’m not sure you can really apply a political filter to this. Maybe the orc is an orc, the beast is a mere means of transportation, and the angry clown sweater man is an unfortunately dressed person who hates orcs, all put together with the sole intent of generating competing theories as to what it all means?
LAVA.PSD: What does that make the volcano and the lava?
CROTCH.PSD: The elements that, as you mentioned, tip it over into awesome.
[MOUSE CURSOR enters from STAGE RIGHT]
MOUSE CURSOR: All right everyone I have an announcement…
[ALL gather around MOUSE CURSOR]
MOUSE CURSOR: I would like to thank you all so much for your time in showing up today. I regret to inform you that Mr. Zugale has decided to go in a different direction with the project. He will actually be painting using real world oils and canvas as opposed to creating the work electronically. You should all be very proud of your capabilities, and Mr. Zugale is happy to work with you on other projects in the future. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out like we expected, but we love your enthusiasm and thank you again for your time.
[MOUSE CURSOR EXITS, stage lights dim quickly from top to bottom]
HORN.PSD: [uncertainly] Well surely someone will remake the painting in Photoshop?
[CURTAIN]
BEDTIME STORY
Bernadette Durbin
All right, which story do you want tonight?
“Tell me the story of the book you’re reading, Daddy!”
Old Man’s War? But—
“Pleeeeeeease.”
Okay. Old Man’s War is the story of John Perry—
“John Scalzi, Daddy.”
What?
“It says right on the book.”
Um, okay. The story of John Scalzi, who signs up with an interplanetary fighting force. They only take people who are really old—
“Older than you?”
Older than me. But it doesn’t matter that they’re old, because they get given a new body that’s young again. And green.
“Like an orc!”
Like an…orc. Sure.
“With a great big axe!”
Um…
“Because orcs fight with axes, don’t they?”
Yes, orcs fight with axes. So they send John…Scalzi to various planets to fight to protect human colonists. Some of the planets are nice, but some are pretty nasty.
“Like Mount Doom.”
And when he’s there he has to fight against other people who want those planets to live on. So one day, John is on a planet that’s not so nice…
“Mount Doom!”
…like Mount Doom, all volcanic fields and erupting mountains. No fun at all. And suddenly, he’s attacked by—
“A unicorn pegasus kitten!”
…Is it a zombie unicorn pegasus kitten?
“Nooooooooooo!”
Just checking. He’s attacked by a unicorn pegasus kitten, all sharp horn and deadly claws, ridden by none other than—
“Wesley Crusher!”
You’ve been watching Next Generation again, haven’t you. Ridden by none other than the stalwart Wesley Crusher, spear in hand, wearing—
“A clown sweater!”
A clown sweater? Why?
“’Cause it’s silly.”
Yes. Of course. I should have guessed. So Wesley swoops down upon John, who yells out his war cry—
“The head of Scalzi demands blood!”
—at which cry many a former foe had quaked in terror. But not Wesley, not he, but he yelled in return—
“Can’t sleep; clowns will eat me!”
…You have the strangest…well. John Scalzi swung his axe at the unicorn pegasus kitten—
“Don’t hurt it, Daddy!”
—which dodged nimbly out of the way. Wesley Crusher fell to the ground. He lifted his spear as John hefted his axe. And then he shouted out—
“1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a dance war!”
Mighty Wesley shouted in reply—
“So you think you can dance?”
—and then the unicorn pegasus kitten brought a disco ball. Wesley got to his feet and struck the opening pose for the pasa doble. The dulcet strains of—
“The Chicken Dance!”
—rang out, as John smiled grimly. He danced the Chicken Dance. He danced the Y.M.C.A. He did the Mashed Potato and the Twist. Wesley countered with the dreaded Macarena and the Electric Slide. John nodded. ‘You compete well,’ he said, ‘but can you limbo?’
“So the unicorn pegasus kitten got a bar…”
Yes. And John started to dance underneath it. The unicorn pegasus kitten sneezed—
“Oh no!”
Oh yes… And the bar collapsed, falling on top of John Scalzi.
“Wesley was very sad.”
He asked, ‘Are you okay?’ and he lifted the bar off of John’s chest. ‘I’ve been better,’ he replied. ‘But I like dancing better than fighting.’ Then he shook hands with Wesley, and they agreed that they could share the planet in peace.
“Shiny!”
So how do we end the story?
“Rocks fall, everybody dies!”
Traditionally, stories end with ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’
“Rocks fall, everybody dies!”
Fair enough. And that is the story of Old Man’s War.
“Can I read it when I’m older?”
Of course you can. Now, what does the kitty say?
“Meow.”
What does the duck say?
“Quack quack.”
And what does the chicken say?
“Sizzle.”
That’s right.
“Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
I love you too, sweetheart. Good night.
THE MAKING OF THE UNICORN PEGASUS KITTEN ART: A TRANSCRIPT OF AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SCALZI
Q: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, Mr. Scalzi.
John Scalzi: Not at all. Happy to share the story of this magnificent work of art.
Q: It is magnificent, isn’t it?
Scalzi: It really is. I think we can say without reservation that it is the best picture featuring an orc, an actor and a unicorn pegasus kitten, ever.
Q: So h
ow did this all come about?
Scalzi: Well, early in the year I knew I wanted to do something special to help raise money for Lupus research, and after some thought, I had the idea which roughly conforms to the picture as you see it today. Artist Jeff Zugale had done some work for me before, so I called him up to see if he had time to take the commission. He did, and then after that I got hold of Wil and asked him to take part, and of course he was quite enthusiastic. Jeff and Wil both live in the Los Angeles area, so at that point the big logistical issue was getting both me and the unicorn pegasus kitten into Jeff’s studio for the posing.
Q: What was that again?
Scalzi: I said the real logistical issue was getting me and the unicorn pegasus kitten into the studio at the same time.
Q: So you’re saying this picture actually happened.
Scalzi: No, no, obviously not. I mean, it’s not as if Wil and the UPK and I were actually in a lava-strewn volcanic crevasse, preparing to do battle with each other. That’s just silly. That’s where Jeff and his potent imagination comes in. We are all in a studio, posing.
Q: I think the thing I’m trying to wrap my brain around is that you appear to be saying unicorn pegasus kittens exist.
Scalzi: Of course they do.
Q: I don’t think their existence is common knowledge.
Scalzi: Well, they’re not native to the Americas, which I think may be the source of your confusion.
Q: Where are they native, out of curiosity?
Scalzi: The northeast part of the Irkutsk Oblast. Which, as you can probably tell by the use of the word “oblast,” is part of Russia.
Q: …right.
Scalzi: There’s a small preserve of them just north of Kirensk. Just follow the river and you’ll see them on the west bank. If you hit Yakutsk, you’ve gone too far.
Q: It just seems like an unusual sort of animal, evolutionarily speaking. For one thing, a cat mating with a unicorn.
Scalzi: Or a pegasus. Right, because of the genetics incompatibilities.
Q: I was more thinking that neither unicorns or pegasuses exist, actually.
Scalzi: Well, you know. The unicorn pegasus kitten project goes back to Soviet times. They were doing lots of mad scientist stuff back between the 30s and 50s. The legend has it that during the Second World War Joseph Stalin personally asked Trofim Lysenko to spearhead a hybridization project to develop adorable yet deadly animals to stalk and kill the invading Nazi armies all along the Eastern front. The unicorn pegasus kittens were a spectacular success; the zombie were-koalas, not so much.
Q: There’s still there the problem with the whole “mythical animals” thing.
Scalzi: Unfortunately when Lysenkoism was dropped as a Soviet science policy in the mid-60s, a lot of the paperwork on this project was inadvertently destroyed. There are a few gaps here and there. You can’t expect me to be able to explain everything.
Q: Even with their remote home, you’d think we would have heard about these things before. Because, you know. Unicorn pegasus kittens. They’re pretty marketable.
Scalzi: I think the official Russian government policy is to deny their existence. The Russians aren’t proud of everything their Soviet forebears did, and these experiments are one of those things it prefers not to talk about. If it officially recognizes the unicorn pegasus kittens, then it would also have to recognize The Great Zombie Were-Koala Plague of 1959, which wiped out half the population of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. There would have to be reparations. Russia can’t afford that now.
Q: So how does one get a unicorn pegasus kitten from Irkutsk to Los Angeles?
Scalzi: Let’s just say you have to know a guy, and leave it at that.
Q: Okay. So when did you all manage to get together?
Scalzi: We did the posing in early April. I was out in LA on other business and so I was able to carve out a couple of hours from my schedule.
Q: Was doing the posing difficult?
Scalzi: No, Jeff’s a real pro. He took a lot of pictures for reference and did a quick sketch of us in our places, and then we were done. The hardest part was keeping the UPK in hover mode.
Q: Aside from the volcanoes, did Jeff take many liberties?
Scalzi: How do you mean?
Q: Well, Wil seems more pumped up, muscularly speaking, than he does in real life.
Scalzi: Are you kidding? Have you actually been in Wil’s presence?
Q: Well, no, I’ve just seen him in pictures.
Scalzi: Dude is ripped, man. I saw him changing his shirt at w00tstock. Each one of his six-pack has a six-pack. He’s got, like, a case-and-a-half pack. The pheromones that waft off him cause fish and amphibians to spontaneously change their sexes. Trust me, Jeff was totally working from life.
Q: I have to say he hides it well in pictures.
Scalzi: Well, the thing is, he’s almost always wearing oversize t-shirts. To hide his form. Because he’s married, you know. Happily. He knows better than to wantonly ignite lust wherever he goes. It’s just not fair to his many admirers.
Q: So you’re saying he’s keeping his awesome musculature under wraps…for the fans.
Scalzi: That’s just the sort of incredibly cool guy he is. I mean, have you ever heard of any other public figure who would do something like that?
Q: Honestly, no.
Scalzi: Exactly. So in some ways it’s a treat from them that the clown sweater shows his true and ample dimensions.
Q: Not to mention the blue hot pants.
Scalzi: I suppose indirectly they offer some salacious thrill for the kids. But you should know those blue shorts have historical military significance.
Q: I don’t know this, to tell you the truth.
Scalzi: You went to high school, right?
Q: I have some memory of it, yes.
Scalzi: Then in your world history class you should have learned that in 1263, Alghu Khan, the great-grandson of Genghis Kahn, declared war on Kaidu, his rival for control of the Chagatai Khanate.
Q: Yes, that’s pretty much the only thing I remember from world history.
Scalzi: Then you’ll also remember that to defend himself from Alghu Khan, Kaidu allied himself with Berke, Khan of the Blue Horde, who give him an army. An army which included a cavalry of warriors so fearsome that they went into battle clad only in small, tight blue pants. Because that’s just how badass they were. Now, as it turns out, Wil is very distantly related to Kaidu, so when we put him astride the unicorn pegasus kitten with a spear in his hand, he felt the hot blue pants would be an appropriate tribute to his warlike ancestor and the cavalry he commanded.
Q: Of course, the clown sweater throws off the historical accuracy a bit.
Scalzi: We’re not doing a Ken Burns documentary here. We can afford a little room for creative interpretation.
Q: Like with you being an orc.
Scalzi: What do you mean?
Q: The portrayal of you as an orc. All green and scaly and ugly and, you know, orcish.
Scalzi: You don’t like me as an orc?
Q: I just think it looks like you lost a bet of some sort.
Scalzi: Really. Lost a bet, is it.
Q: No offense.
Scalzi: Well, offense taken, asshole. I’ll have you know I’m proud of my orc ancestry.
Q: I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
Scalzi: No, you didn’t know, did you. You thought just because I can superficially pass for a human, I must be human, and then you could make all your little bigoted orc jokes without consequence. Surprise, you dick. Probably everything you ever learned about orcs, you learned from Tolkien.
Q: Well…
Scalzi: That putz. Tolkien didn’t know any orcs. He never spent any time with orcs. And Oxford was—and still is, I’ll have you know—a hotbed of irrational anti-orc sentiment. Going to Tolkien for your orc history is like going to Shakespeare to learn the truth about Richard III. It’s all propaganda and lies. Anyway, lots of people these days are part orc. Famo
us people. And not just the ugly ones, or pro wrestlers. Angelina Jolie is part orc.
Q: Is she.
Scalzi: When she played Grendel’s mother in Beowulf, it was totally a shout-out to the Orc-American community.
Q: That might be stretching the interpretation of Grendel’s mother a bit.
Scalzi: How would you know? You know who one of the foremost Beowulf scholars was? Oh, yeah, that’s right——Tolkien. That bastard’s been screwing us for decades. Maybe you don’t want to see a conspiracy here, but then again, you don’t have to, do you, Mr. Oh-We’re-All-Humans-Here.
Q: Look, I’m really sorry. I was thoughtless. I apologize.
Scalzi: Warren Buffett’s part orc.
Q: Seriously. Very sorry.
Scalzi: Rachel Ray, man.
Q: I believe you.
Scalzi: You better.
Q: Let’s get back to the artwork.
Scalzi: Yes, let’s.
Q: I have to know, once the posing session was done, what happened to the unicorn pegasus kitten?
Scalzi: Well, it’s funny you should ask that. It was difficult enough getting the thing into the US, but once it was here, the middleman I used refused to ship it back. Said that now that it’s been exposed to US germs, taking it back to Irkutsk introduces a risk to the other UPKs. It could come back with a new strain of feline distemper, hoof and mouth disease or avian flu and just decimate the native population. So now it’s stuck here.