Shortly after the arrival of the twentieth century, natural selection replaced the homing pigeon with the radio wave. This evolutionary leap resulted in the emergence of electrobiology as an academic field. Other members of the animal kingdom underwent a similar metamorphosis, though there is little agreement about what became of the barber’s hummingbird.
Instinctual fear is a turbulent cloud of contradictions occupying the deepest caves within the human brain. It has eight legs, yet is also legless; it is extraordinarily tall, yet is crushed by its own boundaries; it is forever surrounded, yet always alone.
Single-use paths through the city are produced in the following manner: a map of its streets, ideally eleven inches across by seventeen inches tall, is laid out on a level surface. Next, a single shell is loaded into the cartographic apparatus, filled with a mixture of cuttlefish ink, magnetic gel, and iron shavings. Finally, the trigger is pulled, allowing the electrically-charged cocktail to splatter across the entire breadth of the page.
The hornet's feathers were beautiful under a microscope. In each vane, he could see its stripes unfolding into sharply-defined fractals, interlocking Sierpinski triangles of black-and-yellow contrast. The further he increased the degree of magnification, the more intricate the patterns became.
In the lands east of the Ural Mountains, there is said to have once grown a plant whose fruit was a fully-grown lamb fastened to the soil by its umbilical stem. To some, this beast was known as the borometz, and to others, as the Yeduah. It survived by grazing on the grasses surrounding its roots, though it could never wander beyond its own tether to the earth below. Any separation from this stem would result in its immediate death.
INGREDIENTS
1 Noh mask
1.5 gallons rooibos tea
7 specimens dried coral
1 pair caribou antlers
“Now, I could ask you how many moons the Earth has,” the professor began. “Wait for someone in the room to blurt the obvious answer of ‘one,’ then smugly rebuke them. It is within my rights as your instructor to do this, but I am not a jackass, and all of you are smarter than that. You wouldn’t be at this university if you fell for such banal tricks. You’d have suspected I was playing at something the minute I asked such a question. So, I’m going to be straight with you on this one."
"From what you've described to me, it sounds like your brain is undergoing rapid shifts in chirality." The doctor's eyes were focused on his tablet. “Like you’re suddenly trading places with the other side of the mirror, yes?“
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it. But what could cause something like that?"