Strange Tails

“Sigh. They are cute,” observed Tiffani, his false eyelashes fluttered with admiration.

The great hairy spider stood atop a remote vista point, high in the tree line, having stopped to rest only a few moments before. On his back were Potbelly and Squirrel, snoring again, fast asleep from the rolling motion and the long journey—in which they had learned the spiders’ names—but most of all from the Chagrin Falls hip flask Tiffani had thoughtfully brought along.

The two contented passengers were not the subject of Tiffani’s attention, however. Instead his rapt gaze lay on a gathering of humans far below, reaping corn in a field. His companion stood next to him watching too, sighing. “Like little pogo sticks with eyes,” added Tiffani.

“Like brooms with a wig on,” agreed Brittanee. She carefully scooped Tiffani’s sleeping passengers, sharing the load, but she too had a greater interest in the small, distant, numerous bipedal shapes below.

“You just want to ruffle their dusty little mops and throw them a hot dog.”

“I know. Shame about the meat thing. Guess they are only animals.”

“They do love it though. And the beer.”

“Can’t give them beer,” warned Brittanee. “Remember what happens.”

“Even with their collars on?”

“Even with their collars on. They’re worse. Fight and pull them off each other they do. I’ve seen it.”

“Well I never.”

“Cute though. Like a lampstand in a dress.”

Squirrel blinked open one eye. Despite the potency of Chagrin Falls liquor his head felt surprisingly clear—and so too was the day. He decided to risk opening the other eye. Silently he took in the bucolic scene.

“They’re slaves, aren’t they,” he said, transfixed like the spiders. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen such a gathering of humans, and certainly never so many.

“I guess. But they don’t do well as pets. Never clear up after themselves.”

“And rubbing their belly has a rather unpleasant effect.”

Potbelly yawned herself awake. She must have been exhausted to sleep so much, and when she focused upon the world around her, her dopey brain gained some dim awareness they had traveled far. From their perch high up in the tree line she could no longer see the ribbon path or Chagrin Falls.

Indeed, the spiders had needed to rest. Given the strangeness of their cargo they were unable to take a direct route to the Glitterband, and climbing to the highest branches of the tallest trees, which grew at the highest elevation of the tree line, the exertion, even for their large and compact frames proved tiring. Powder brushes had been retrieved to address blushing faces; alarmed eeks passed between them at the sight of matted hair; blessings had been counted for tough-wearing nail polish.

Potbelly followed their gaze to the full-grown corn bending to a slight breeze far below, a breeze not felt by them at this far flung altitude. So golden in hue was the corn that she wondered, based on what she’d seen before, if it did in fact contain real gold. Teams of humans, half-a-dozen to a team, reaped the corn by hand, and the faint sound of their singing could be heard even at this distance away. She recognized the tune: Careless Whisper.

“Unpleasant how?” she asked, tuning into the conversation.

“The belly rubbing? Let’s just say when their leg scruts, it’s not ’cos you found an itchy spot.”

Brittanee tutted and Tiffani nodded. Their names were Earth names, deliciously exotic and daringly foreign, adopted by creatures who hitherto had no need of nominal designations. It explained the gender inconsistency, thought Potbelly—and it was Tiffani with an i, she’d been told, and Brittanee with a double e. That was very important.

“I suppose they’re so obedient because of those horrid collars,” she continued.

“Without them they do seem rather alarmed at the sight of us. I don’t think they got off their planet much.”

“So you just put them to work in the fields instead of keeping them as pets?”

“Sort of. There was some debate about culling them to save space; incinerate them, maybe. We could definitely do with the fertilizer. But then Huminecraft caught on and everybody wanted one.”

“Huminecraft?”

“Made a fortune for Chardonnay Twirl, so she calls herself. Everyone’s playing it. Twirl has so much money now she built her own pile of mud. Has humans wrestle in it. Diamond fields not good enough for her apparently, but then that’s the nouveau riche for you.”

“Huminecraft … is that some sort of game?”

“Yes, you build your own blue ball.”

“Blue ball?”

“What you call Earth. It’s what it looks like from our end. Everyone now has blue balls.”

“So Huminecraft is an Earth, I mean a blue-ball simulator?”

“In a choconutshell, yes.”

“But why not just leave all the humans on Earth, on the real blue ball, and watch them reap corn there?”

“Ugh, but then we’d have to commute.”

“And this is good exercise for them,” chipped in Brittanee. “They were getting quite chubby on your Earth.”

The spiders returned their gaze to the field.

“It does look so dreamy,” admired Tiffani, after a moment’s silence. “We have replicators for our food, as you know. Goddess forbid having to cook, but the humans seem to like perspiring and making things. Especially with the wheat. We let them eat it—the young ones live on this thing called toast, whatever that is. But we do love a nice pastoral scene. It’s so, well, pastoral.”

“So all of this work doesn’t actually serve any purpose?”

“Of course it does. It makes the place look pretty.”

“Expensive, though. Huminecraft has to ship in all this dirt. Blue ball crops don’t grow in dense carbon, apparently.”

“Driven the cost of mud right up, especially with Twirl and the size of her back yard. To think of the cost of my second cousin’s engagement soil. Tsk. But then everything’s double when a wedding’s involved.”

“You give mud to each other at a wedding?”

“Of course! Dirt mounds are a girl’s best friend. How else would you grow the wedding thistle? It’s traditional—the eternity sting.”

“So before Huminecraft you invaded Earth, just because … what … it was full of earth?”

“You know, we didn’t think of that.”

“They did, but it’s such a mess in the spaceship, and really, you don’t want too much of it. Gets all under your nails. And of course, muck scarcity inflates the price.”

“But we could’ve covered Ponyata in blue-ball soil and then had a top layer of concrete. Maybe with little islands of mud showing through, just for effect.”

“Ooh, now that’d look pretty. We should think about that. I’ll mention it to my aunt.”

The last few bars of The Bangles’ Eternal Flame drifted up from the field below, momentarily distracting them. Tiffani sighed. “These lot are very well organized. My Huminecraft clan has no idea about anything, especially making fire. Don’t think I’ll ever level-up from the Stone Age. I’ve seen them rubbing sticks together but they give up in the end and just use them for back scratchers.”

“I prefer it when mine go fishing. I let them make nets.” Brittanee was speaking to Potbelly, who had finally settled on her back after some scrutting. “They whittle bits of something or other. I’m in the Bronze Age. They make bigger metal things out of smaller metal things. Love it, really, very picturesque. I have this broach, look how primitive it is.”

Brittanee proffered something wrought inexpertly from a dull brown metal. It resembled solidified mud casings, the sort left behind by worms. Potbelly cooed appreciatively.

“But isn’t it odd—you being liberators, yet owning slaves?” she asked.

“Not really. Humans did it all the time on blue ball.”

While this conversation continued, Squirrel had spotted Cedric and Michel conferring atop the third spider, some distance off. Or at least, Cedric dictated something, Michel agreed enthusiastically, and their spider took no particular interest at all. The third spider’s name was Wayne, or more specifically, Way-ne! with a hyphen and an exclamation point. Squirrel, on learning this, and with choice expletives, refused to countenance such nonsense.

“Potbelly’s right for once—aren’t you lot supposed to be in the resistance?” Squirrel had asked this on rejoining the conversation. He gestured to the humans below. “Don’t you want to stop all this?”

“Well, I signed up because it seemed exciting,” explained Brittanee. “I mean, listen to the sound. The resistance, right? Little old me in a web of intrigue. Pun intended. Mother would be shocked.”

“I imagined better outfits,” replied Tiffani, clearly disappointed. “Foppish hats, long coats. Maybe a disguise or two.”

“Ooh a disguise. That’d be nice.”

“Cedric wouldn’t approve.”

“Yes, Cedric.”

“What does he approve of exactly?”

“I know. It’s the resistance, granted, but do you have to resist everything? Would it kill him to put on some dark glasses?”

“No. Sense. Of. Fun.”

“So why are you helping him?” asked Potbelly, now even more confused.

There was a moment’s pause for thought. The first few bars of Duran Duran’s Wild Boys wafted up from the plain below.

“Oh, I don’t know—loyalty, I suppose.”

“Loyal to the core we are,” nodded Tiffani. “Practically a fault.”

“See, your really committed resistor, you know, the sort that loved all those long dreary meetings, the ones who couldn’t wait to get so very angry about everything—“

“—And all those dreary plans—“

“—yes, the plans, memorize and eat, memorize and eat, played havoc with my digestion, but where was I, oh yes, that lot went on their spaceship mission to Earth and got themselves blown to pieces. One of your lot did it, you said? Bit of a snafu, considering. Ungrateful if you ask me, but no one does. Happens in war, I suppose. Anyway, after that debacle there was only us. We were on shift work that day, couldn’t make it.”

“I had a doctor’s appointment.”

“Oh right, three of your knees playing up.”

“Still do in this weather.”

“So,” continued Potbelly. “The resistance consists of you lot, Cedric, and maybe Michel on some kind of apprenticeship?”

“For today, yes.”

“Today?”

“Salesla Day tomorrow. National holiday. Can’t make it.”

“The in-law’s again?” asked Brittanee. Tiffani rolled many eyes.

“So if it’s just us, what’s the plan when we get to this place, this Glitterhand?”

“Glitterband.”

“Whatever. Are you going to just storm in and free the Nevermore army?”

“I do hope not!” declared Brittanee. “But we’re leaving all the machinations to Cedric. He likes to think of himself as the brains of the operation. Though he mutters to himself so much these days one does wonder.”

Potbelly and Squirrel glanced at each other with mutual concern. “I’m no longer sure this is worth all the Twinkies on Earth,” he said. It was a statement he thought he would never utter.

“We need to speak to Cedric,” announced Potbelly. “Cedric!” she called. “Cedric!”

Potbelly’s voice rang around the treetops and down into the valley. Or rather, a coarse loud bark woofed its way down there, which Potbelly still couldn’t reconcile as not being her actual spoken voice, and it echoed around the trees as if a short, fat, stubby-legged whale was singing across the ocean.

Far below, the human singing, which reached the first chorus of Take On Me, having finished its medley of barbershop Duran Duran, stopped abruptly. Hundreds of human sea anemone bobbed up their heads in a rolling wave then stared in the general direction of Potbelly.

Potbelly, who at that moment had been beckoning towards Cedric, saw him shoot up and then drop back down again. He waved an arm frantically, as if patting an invisible cat.

“Oh dear, we have to leave,” declared Brittanee. Quickly she readied a sticky thread and lassoed her two charges.

While being hastily strapped across Brittanee’s back, Squirrel peered down at the indistinct faces peering up. Next to them, in a thicket of trees, and to their right, something moved, something much larger, and much more spidery. Potbelly’s confused face returned to Cedric, but he, the spider carrying him, and Michel, were gone.

With a lurch and a roll the two were back in transit, and in a moment they were legging it from branch to branch, from web to web, and out of sight, slightly lower this time, down below the tree line, and a little more concealed.

“Nice work, mutton head,” said Squirrel, when he’d finally readjusted to the rolling movement. The strong silver thread pinched his groin uncomfortably, though he possessed enough wherewithal to grab a mint chocolate leaf as it passed by.

“We have to speak to Cedric. This could be a suicide mission.”

“Of course it’s a suicide mission! Since day one we’ve been performing the slowest Hari-Kari in history. Even the Rolling Stones died out quicker than this leisurely dive into doom.”

“But maybe we can help. Maybe we can come up with a plan.”

“Like what?”

“Like anything other than charging at a heavily armed fortress holding nothing but nail polish and a curling iron.”

“But you don’t know what Cedric’s plan is!”

“Exactly. That’s what’s worrying me. His behavior back in the cave was not encouraging. Maybe he’s just making it all up as he goes along.”

“Well, thanks to your howling we won’t know anything now. Not until the end of this,” he pointed at Brittanee’s rump, “this, the world’s hairiest roller coaster.”

“It makes sense to hide here,” said Brittanee, registering the comment with some affront, but too breathless from her exertion to say more.

They couldn’t tell what she was referring to until they were directly upon it, and then, whatever it was, it suddenly made everything go dark. A door closed behind them. The only remaining sound was the huffing of large plump bodies catching their breath.

“I got a stitch,” said one.

“That bloody dog’ll get a stitch when I get hold of her,” said a disembodied Cedric.

Finally a low light glowed, enough to reveal a small space barely roomy enough for its occupants. A button was pushed and a whirr was whirred. Squirrel felt his stomach slide down to his knees and then jump back up to his throat. There was a pop, and everything that was previously dark, wasn’t.

He blinked rapidly, flinching from the stabbing daylight. When his pupils adjusted he took in, as far as he could tell, a crystal dome, spherical like a bubble, translucent like a bubble too, but sheathed around its middle with a ring of wispy smoke that slid past and licked a little wave of goodbye as it did so.

“Ow,” said Potbelly, suffering from the same abrupt change in luminescence.

“Sorry,” said Brittanee. “School’s closed for the holiday. Everything’s on manual.”

“Where are we?”

Cedric stalked over. “Not on our way to the Glitterband I can tell you that much,” he huffed.

“Well pudding me,” replied Potbelly, who despite the disorientation was prepared for his reproach. “I just wanted to know if you have a proper plan.”

“Of course I do!”

“And given how few we are, does it have an above-zero chance of success?”

“From this distance, of course not! I was rather hoping we’d be in the same postal code before trying it out.”

“We’re not actually that far,” said Way-ne!, speaking for the first time. “Maybe fifty clicks.”

“What’s a click?” asked Tiffani.

“I think about the length of a Carkball field,” replied Way-ne!. “I remember coach and his false teeth, and when they clicked, you could hear him about that distance away. Anyway, Cedric says it a lot.”

“It’s a mile,” said Cedric, eyes still narrowed on Potbelly.

“And what’s one of those?”

He nodded downwards. “About the distance from here to the ground.”

They peered through the somewhat-translucent floor. Far below the blurred but still lush tree line peered back. “Yep, about a Carkball Field,” confirmed Way-ne!.

“Horrible game,” tutted Tiffani.

“Nothing wrong with being athletically inclined.”

“I prefer to be athletically reclined.” Tiffani winked, and much to Cedric’s further annoyance both spiders found that amusing.

In the meantime Squirrel’s eyes had fully adjusted and he was at the edge of the dome peering out. From here he could see other domes, other schools maybe, certainly evidence of an expansive spider civilization. Most of the domes were slightly below their one, and they sparkled and glittered in the daylight as if he was looking down on the crown of a Queen. He saw one particularly dazzling jewel, easily the brightest of the lot, shining brilliantly off in the distance.

“How did we get up so high?” he asked.

“Instantaneous travel. A Goddess-send,” replied Brittanee. “We had to fire it up first though. Hence the darkness. Salesla holidays.”

“Instantaneous travel? You mean like the think-yourself-there-machine?”

“I prefer our name.”

“And we’re in a school, you say?” asked Potbelly, joining in. Like Squirrel she had adjusted to the intensity of the natural light and had begun to wonder at everything around her.

“Yes, horrible isn’t it. I had this place for history. Funny how you remember it all being so much bigger.”

From Potbelly’s stumpy height it seemed huge. Her gaze followed a dense network of silver-pearlescent spider threads pooling occasionally into nets, and their shimmering quality reflected the exterior light into dramatic patterns, as if some laser defense system had been popped in the freezer and then put out as an ice sculpture at a wedding.

Despite the stark coolness of its texture this new place was warm, in fact too warm, almost tropical. The air seemed to be heated by an artificial sun hanging some way off, like a bare lightbulb in a student bedroom, stark, globular, and impossible to look at for more than a second.

Potbelly craned to take it all in. She struggled to distinguish the roof from the sky and remembered that both were as artificial as each other.

“Well good job it’s here,” huffed Cedric. “We can lie low until the darkness switches on and then make for the Glitterband. Despite this sabotage we may still make good time. That damn dog.”

“Hey, it wasn’t her fault,” countered Squirrel, rejoining the group. Despite his odd feelings towards Cedric, his comment awakened a deep-rooted, if entirely incomprehensible loyalty to that same damn dog. “Well, I mean, it was her fault, but she’s a little simple, and liable to bark, and not just at postmen, and she has this faulty wiring—“

“—thanks Squirrel“

“—But, well she’s here to help you, unlike me; apparently I’m here because I can’t help myself. And while on the subject, Cedric,” he continued, blushing a little from his adamance. “I say, if there’s a plan, I wouldn’t be averse to knowing it too. It’s comforting to know the details by which one is to be massacred, just in case, you know, there’s a possibility of not actually being massacred, or at least, not being massacred quite so much.”

“We will not be massacred.”

“That’s a relief. How will the not-massacring happen?”

Cedric sat haughtily aloof until he realized no one cared for it. “Those guarding the Glitterband, or Sequin Mountain for that matter, would never expect to be attacked. There is no military stronghold anywhere on this planet. The Glitterband exists only because the fashion police on Ponyata is an actual thing.”

“My brother-in-law’s in it,” nodded Way-ne!. “A reservist. Less call for them these days, although he did have harsh words the other day with a perp that paired a red scarf with a green hat.”

“They never did,” breathed Brittanee.

“You do not want to know about his leg warmers.”

“Suffice to say,” continued Cedric, “the Glitterband is not a difficult nut to crack. Like your brother-in-law, I previously visited this place. A reconnaissance mission, back when the resistance had more bodies to spare, but if the Nevermore army has not broken out of its jail by now then hopefully it is simply due to their remaining in suspended animation. Wake them up, and the rest will take care of itself. Plus, this is a holiday. All I expect to see guarding the place will be humans, on their own, unattended.”

“And they’ll probably be on their little phones,” chimed in Brittanee. “Keeps them happy for days.”

Tiffani coughed. “Just a reminder, I have the mother-in-law’s thing tomorrow. Will have to pop off early and pick up a gift.”

“Oh, now you’re reminding me, my show’ll be on. It’s the finale. If—“

“No one will be leaving!” yelled Cedric, his volume quite unexpected. Cedric’s exclamation took its sweet time to finish echoing about the curved dome walls.

Silence followed.

“She’ll be ever so upset. She’s made a cheesecake.“

“I don’t have my recorder set. And I can’t even figure out how—“

“There will be no cake! There will be no stupid show! There will be no tomorrow! Do you not understand?”

Silence.

The spider next to Potbelly, who was clearly thinking about doing something with Cedric that’d leave him measuring the length of a Carkball field at terminal velocity, quietly fumed. “Maybe,” suggested Potbelly, looking at Cedric but speaking to the spider, “you’d like to show us around. Can we see the school?”

Tiffani bobbed an agreement, still staring at Cedric, but deciding to preserve his nail polish after all. As soon as they left the others followed, leaving Cedric to quietly seethe, or unquietly seethe if you took into consideration his low but unmistakable teeth-grinding.

“So this is what? Another mind control device?” asked Potbelly, gesturing to a small protuberance suspended by an armature. Its round shape mirrored the greater dome above.

“Mind control, now that’d be an idea,” Tiffani replied. “Keep the little bastards in line. No, it’s a projector that fits on ickle baby heads, so it should be small enough for yours. Give it a try.”

“What if it fries my brain?”

Squirrel hoved up too. “Then we’ll have to serve it on a crumb of toast,” he said. “At the world’s smallest dinner party.”

“These are learning devices, Squirrel. I’m sure they have a ball pit for you to play in.”

“What’s a ball pit?” asked Way-ne!, similarly arriving.

“It’s where Potbelly tosses mine after she’s done with them.”

“We can cook them at that world’s smallest dinner party you mentioned,” she sniffed.

“Are you not friends anymore?” asked Way-ne!.

“Ignore him,” said Potbelly. “He’s like having an evil but much uglier twin. Switch this thing on. Maybe I’ll learn something. Like how to make squirrel burgers for the dinner party.”

Tiffani lowered the dome over Potbelly. It covered her so completely, barring a stubby little tail, that she looked just like a Perspex statue of Michel. On cue Michel stumped up at his lethargic pace, and in a matter of moments all three off-worlders sat cocooned under their respective projector shells.

Initially the darkness reminded Potbelly of the disorienting and immersive cinema aboard the spaceship. Like the cinema, this was a circular, even a globular experience. She felt like a mote of dust in a raindrop, suspended forever from an overhang, never falling, vaguely aware of the universe outside but utterly contained by the one inside.

Then the light blinked on. A pink sea sloshed quietly under a yellowing sky, or as Potbelly now knew thanks to the spiders who proved sensitive to such matters, a fandango sea undulated soothingly under a goldenrod sky. Clouds swirled to reveal the face of a giant spider peering out as bright as the sun, while smiling benignly on a crowd of rapt, robe-clad minions. The minions stood together on a saffron-hued beach. Unmistakably, this was entrance of a Goddess.

Upon a single thread two tablets of stone were lowered down to a chosen minion perched high upon a mount, who took them solemnly before turning to her fellows.

“And lo, it is written,” she said, pausing for effect. She looked around at the massed crowd of spiders. A hush descended. She cleared her throat before continuing.

“Thou shalt have no other Goddesses before me, and certainly no prettier ones,” she said.

The chosen one paused, letting this divine wisdom sink in. She continued, iterating command after command.

“Thou shalt not take thy Goddess’s name in vain, or in anything else come to that, and if thou does, put it back immediately.”

“Remember thy beautician’s appointments, cancelling only with plenty of notice.”

“Honor thy nail polish and thy lippy”

“Thou shalt enslave all humans, especially the annoying ones, which is all of them, and do it in cool spaceships, no rubbish mind.”

“Thou shalt not commit grown-uppery.”

“Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s tweezers, not even in an emergency, even if it is Friday night, and definitely not for that thing you like to do with them.”

“Thou shalt not bear witness to mismatched accessories.”

“Thou shalt not comment on the size of thy neighbor’s ass.”

“Thou shalt not forget the bit about the humans and the spaceships. That one’s really important.”

After the commandments were done the beach scene faded, to be replaced by a montage sequence of great tumult. The montage was accompanied by what Potbelly would have guessed was Eye of the Tiger were it not quite impossible that two entirely separate civilizations, divided by a great expanse of space could come up with the same introductory chord sequence and think it the only possible selection when adding a soundtrack to time-lapsed re-enactments.

Each vignette shared a theme of potential military success followed by ultimate military failure. Stone castles first rose and then fell, seemingly impossible to maintain whilst also preserving the integrity of one’s grooming. Leather and chain mail were invented and then discarded due to chafing. Horses were pressed first into cavalry and then into competitive dressage. The internal combustion engine drives a tank, followed by an airplane carrying all the tank drivers to a tropical vacation. Lasers melt steel then exfoliate wrinkles.

As the last notes of You-Know-It-Might-Actually-Be-Eye-of-the-Tiger-After-All fade out, a fanfare blows and the great spider in the sky reappears. Beach minions prostrate themselves, and again the Goddess speaks.

“People! Like, what did I say? Why aren’t you icing humans? And where are all the spaceships? You lot totally suck!”

The spider on the mount, no longer dressed in a hessian robe but in a fetching space age silver onesie, kneels down before her supreme being. From the deep blue hinterland of the sky a lightning bolt strikes the spider, and she leaps up yelling Eureka!

Wearing glasses now to demonstrate a newly-acquired genius, the lightning-struck spider pours over complex plans, while off in the background great fearsome spaceships are built, think-yourself-there machines come into being, and great debates ensue over who or what will pilot these intergalactic vehicles so far from a decent hair salon.

Afterwards, in a test tube, grows a squid, and in the next scene spiders from all across the planet are waving goodbye while the squid waves a little tentacle back from a window of its spaceship. Saluting bravely, the squid disappears into a starlit sky towards a small, blue-ish blob in the distance.

Last, and least, because the reason for it was not clear to Potbelly, the same genius spider now sits behind a small steering wheel, humming to herself while peering out of a windscreen at what is now clearly Earth. Ah, Potbelly realized—finally—they drove it here. They drove the whole damn planet closer to Earth.

“But why?” asked Potbelly, when the dome whispered a quiet farewell to her cranium.

“Incredible,” stated Michel, his symmetrical cousin lifting upwards too.

“I thought we’d at least get some snacks,” whined Squirrel, crawling out from under his.

“But why?” repeated Potbelly, ignoring him.

“But why what?” Tiffani answered. “Why drive the planet closer? Sweetie, glamorous as floating for weeks in the frozen vacuum of space might seem to you, here, love, social suicide. Miss even one gala luncheon and—“

“No, I mean, why does the Goddess hate humans so much?”

Tiffani considered this for a moment. “Never really thought about it,” she replied, eventually. “Didn’t ask.”

“You never thought to ask?”

“Didn’t like to, really,” Tiffani shrugged. “Besides, everybody else was doing it.”

“If everybody else was sticking their head in the oven would you do that too?”

“Because the hairdryer was broken?”

“No, I mean … I was just following orders. It’s not good enough. You have free will. You can resist.”

“We are. That’s why we’re here.”

“But what about the rest of you? Why go along with her, this Goddess? Was she even real? It could have been some sort of mass delusion.”

“I didn’t actually see the Goddess but my cousin did. He said she was very convincing. The light show was particularly nice. Not someone you’d mess with, anyway.”

“Is that your cousin who licks the furniture?” asked Brittanee, creeping up quietly in a manner Squirrel still refused to get used to.

“It’s the varnish. They put sugar in it. It’s not his fault. Besides, who wouldn’t carry out the will of a Goddess?”

“But if you didn’t see her, how do you know she’ a Goddess? Or that she exists at all?”

“She left behind all that stuff. The tablets. Plus the divine wisdom, how to make spaceships, how to grow the Angrothal. No spider would engineer an Angrothal. Just look at them. They’re mean. They pull your hair.”

“And not enough legs,” added Brittanee, who then looked at Potbelly. “No offence.”

“But how do you know some spider didn’t just dream it all up? A smart one, granted, but not necessarily divine. You could’ve been duped by some evil genius.”

“What’s the difference?” inquired Squirrel, joining in. “Isn’t God just an evil genius in a white beard?”

“Our Goddess does not have a white beard,” sniffed Way-ne!. “She’s very well groomed.”

“But you didn’t see her!”

“Well, no,” replied Brittanee, not at all comfortable with such heresy. “But how else would everything exist? I mean, we didn’t just go poof out of nowhere, like a magic trick.”

“How do you know we didn’t?”

“So magic tricks make more sense than divine beings?”

“You said magic tricks, not me. I’m referring to a perfectly understandable chemical and physical process. A big bang.”

The spiders eyed her, unconvinced that anything chemical or physical was in any way perfectly understandable. Squirrel wondered if the room would benefit from a big bang joke.

“What Potbelly’s asking is this,” said Michel, taking up the gauntlet. “Is it reasonable to you that a Goddess invents the universe, decides she doesn’t like some far flung bit of it, and rather than just snuffing it out herself with her divine omnipotence she has a planet full of narcissistic spiders go through an accelerated evolutionary process just to genetically engineer squids to fly out and do the job for her?”

“Well if you put it like that.”

“We do,” said Potbelly, not realizing we did, but liking it anyway.

“Goddess moves in mysterious ways,” intoned Way-ne!, meaningfully, not wanting to lose out in the debate.

“She has that in common with Potbelly’s bowels,” nodded Squirrel.

“Mysterious ways? Like throwing lightning bolts at you and then tossing out such celestial pearls of wisdom as Like what did I say and You lot totally suck?”

“We should not risk the displeasure of the Goddess,” continued Way-ne!, digging deep and finding a tone even graver than his opening gambit. “Lest thou be struck mute and cast down into the deepest pit of hell.”

The other spiders gasped quietly and made the sign of the curling iron.

“Is that from your bible?” asked Michel, genuinely curious.

“Probably,” Way-ne! coughed. “I only skimmed it.”

Squirrel gazed at Potbelly, and in his usual way communicated with one raised eyelid how metaphysical discussions were all very well, and he’s not averse to the occasional existential crisis of belief, but none of this actually put high fructose corn syrup on the table. She nodded in return, realizing too, that what is done is done, divine or not.

“Any grub?” she asked of the spiders.

“We have the fruitful bounty of the divine Goddess,” returned Brittanee. “We picked it while you were asleep. Unwashed and uncooked mind, but it seems you lot aren’t fussy.” She rolled out a selection of very odd looking leathery things.

“Is that the actual fruitful fruit of the Goddess?” replied Potbelly, looking askance at Squirrel.

“Fruit? Over my dead body,” he muttered, before correcting such a rash statement. “Though willing to compromise, naturally. I was thinking more along the lines of chocolate.”

“No replicators here. This is all we have.”

“I suggest you try it.” Michel had wasted no time and was chomping on a round, brown-ish blob. “It’s candied.”

Squirrel sniffed at the blob with suspicion before taking a bite. Crunchy sugar granules dissolved between his teeth. His gritty mastication was followed by a low, sensuous moan. “Oh baby,” he said, grabbing another.

“Do you two want to be alone?” Potbelly asked.

“Maybe they’re right about this Goddess,” he said, licking his lips and ferreting in the spiders’ snack bag for more. “Beats the crap out of a few loaves of bread and some fish.”

“We usually prefer to say grace,” commented Tiffani, pulling her bag back whilst Squirrel tugged on its strap.

“Leggy, you can say whatever word you like, just gimme.” He hurrahed as the bag pinged back his way.

Then, as if Squirrel had pulled on a light cord and not a bag strap, darkness fell, and suddenly—the great torchlight in the sky had blinked off. A few low glows in the classroom rose to meet the gloom, and several giant spider-shadows cast themselves against the windows. Instinctively, the smaller creatures huddled together.

Potbelly was the first to speak. “This planet … it’s in a huge hamster ball, is that right?” Her words came from somewhere in the half-light. She realized now she was whispering.

“Yes, the shell around Ponyata can warp space. It’s so we could get nearer your Earth. Spaceships flying vast distances—the wait’s too long.”

“Humans might disagree.”

“Not when they arrive and wake up dead, so to speak. Cryogenic freezing works for only so long. After that, you’re a meat popsicle.”

“That is what you’d call cold comfort,” replied Michel, filling in for Squirrel, who was otherwise engaged.

“The great inventor tried distorting time by measuring it in units of waiting for a kettle to boil,” explained Brittanee. “Unfortunately that got out of hand; the universe slowed down to a crawl. She had to measure it in snooze button intervals to get us all back up to speed again.”

A thunk echoed about the room. It was the sound of something small, furry, and yet oddly solid hitting the floor. They spied Squirrel out cold, as if impersonating a cryotubed human.

“Is he OK?” asked Brittanee, concerned.

“Sugar coma,” replied Potbelly. “Seen it before. He’ll come around in a few hours.”

“If he ate less sugar maybe he’d be less … you know …” Way-ne! made a skittish movement with his forelegs.

“I’ve warned him many times,” shrugged Potbelly. “But it’s a squirrel thing.”

As they wondered at him, Potbelly thought about the incalculable number of artificial chemical reactions inside Squirrel’s tiny little brain, the infinite feedback loops, the complex signaling, but most of all how all that crazy complex technology could be brought down by one pound of sugar and some sunset yellow.

Looking up in the half-light she noticed a picture she’d seen earlier. Little baby spiders at the feet of their teacher, each under a dome, just as she had been earlier. Something struck her.

“I know how Tina got her information,” she said.

“Tina?”

“The Earth spider. The one from the Silence. The one who brought down your spaceship. She was here, or somewhere like here.”

They all looked up at the poster. Michel gasped. “Of course,” he said. “She’s smaller but she might just get around without causing suspicion. Though … how could she gather all that information so quickly?”

Cottoning on to the theory, the spiders chimed in.

“Homework,” said Tiffani. “Pops out the side of the Learn-o-Matic. About the size of a candy corn. If she was smart enough she could pull the information together in no time. Carry it out easy, too.”

“Or insert it inside herself,” agreed Potbelly.

“Kinky.”

“I mean in her leg.”

“I stand by my comment.”

“There’s no firewall preventing you from accessing any kind of data,” continued Brittanee. “The kids are meant to learn everything about everything. Not like in my day. Happy with a stick and a hoop, I was.”

“This is exactly what the humans had hoped,” said Michel, clearly impressed. “A thousand combinations of uplifted animals and by sheer luck one makes it through. Not quite the outcome they’d expected, of course.”

“But how could she know about the resistance?” asked Potbelly. “Their attempt to round up humans, to help liberate the Earth? Without knowing that how did she know they had a spaceship and it was a way to get home?”

“Oh,” said Way-ne!, dismayed.

“The PTA meetings?” replied Tiffani, looking despondent.

“I think so.”

“PTA meetings?”

“The resistance was given to a lot of angry shouting. An endless competitive scrabble for entitlement. Backbiting. Posturing. A PTA meeting seemed the perfect cover. Held right here in fact. That’s how we knew the code to get in. Your Tina would’ve heard it all.”

“Then she hitched a ride and had the telepathic ability to take out the squid.” Potbelly whistled. “She was perfect.”

Cedric rejoined the group. He’d been sitting alone in the far corner of the room sulking, or so they had assumed, no one had felt much like finding out.

“Did you know any of this?” asked Potbelly of Cedric.

“Not everything,” he replied, “but, most, pretty much. Had to be, when you think about it.”

Potbelly couldn’t tell if he was lying. Those red-and-green eyes still shone, even in the half-light, but they betrayed nothing. One of those eyes disappeared when his head turned sideways, looking at Squirrel, whose snoring had begun to echo around the room.

“I suggest we wait until morning rather than travel tonight. Follow his lead.” Cedric nodded at Squirrel. “The Glitterband is another fifty clicks from here, and Sequin Mountain even farther. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

“Really?” inquired Way-ne!, still coming to terms with all that had been discussed. “Seems exactly sixteen hours to me.”

“I mean, we have a tough road ahead.”

“No, we just go straight—“

“So,” interrupted Potbelly, choosing not to subject her brain to any more of that kind of reasoning. “You know for sure the Nevermore army is in this Glitterband?”

“Tomorrow we will see.”

“OK, that sounds a lot less confident than—“

“Tomorrow,” repeated Cedric, with a single hairy eyeball peering out from the gloom. “We will see.”