Dreams of the Quill

Longer than previous miniatures. Also, this was written a while ago. I never posted it, and am doing so now only because in the future there will be sequels. Whenever I’m feeling goofy enough.

The night sky was turning orange, thanks in large part to a huge amount of light pollution. As everyone knows, there are two ways to deal with light pollution: the first is to darken things by covering light sources with light deterrents. The second is to allow all the light to escape into space by removing all particles in the air.

Humbert, being the kind of guy he was, much preferred the space-earth cross-channel tunnel approach, so he started building a tower from the top of the air over his city to the top of the atmosphere. When he was half-done with the construction, dawn arrived, dyeing the sky a brilliant pink.

Thinking to himself that this was not orange, Humber clambered down from his perch 150 kilometers in the sky and went home to bed.

He woke up around five in the evening, ate a delicious breakfast of cereal bars, kissed his teddy bear good-bye, and went about various errands. Which mainly consisted of buying more cereal bars. Eventually the sky darkened, turning that elusive shade of dark gray tinted with orange.

Thinking to himself that this was orange, Humbert tried to go back up to his tower to continue its construction. Unfortunately for him, the air force had targeted his pride as an alien crafted and was blasting the hell out of it. This meant that he couldn’t climb up its sides safely. Fortunately for him, he had constructed it to withstand the suction of light from the earth’s surface into space. So it was strong, and wasn’t being destroyed.

He shrugged, not truly dismayed, and decided he could always come back and work on the tower at some later date, when the air force wasn’t blasting the hell out of it. He went home and ate a cereal bar. Then he crawled into bed, only a brief four hours after waking up, hugged his teddy bear good night, and—

—and it bit his head off.

The moral of the story is that you should always finish what you start.