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Futuristic Vermiculture & the Demise of the Universe
Daniel G. Snethen
World scoundrel, star-traveler,
trouble-maker
and criminal Pest A. Cyde nonchalantly walked through the security portal of
the Annelid Living Art Gallery of Annelida. The detectors had noticed nothing
abnormal.
The entire museum literally
crawled and
undulated with living exhibit after living exhibit of every known species of segmented
worm in the universe. These were contained in open-air containers artfully
decorated by countless renowned artisans of annelid art. Etches, sketches,
paintings, sculptures and beautiful mosaics of inlaid stone from a hundred
thousand planets adorned them.
Each, a panorama, a story
of the history of one
world or another, each giving homage to the mythology and natural history of
gate-keeping annelids which maintained the ecological balance of every planet
in the Cosmos. These living art displays could be transported anywhere and
utilized for the rejuvenation of a planet on the brink of environmental decay.
Today however, the future
of the ever-expanding
universe was jeopardized. No one could fathom what Pest had done. Many knew of
his peculiar diet, but no one suspected what he had eaten and drank for six
months, was a recipe for disaster. When refined, the combined byproducts of his
peculiar diet produced a lethal poison, undetectable in their separate forms.
Pest
A. Cyde walked out of the public restroom
carefully visiting each display, depositing a single dram of unknown substance,
exited the premises, boarded his ship—leaving the planet of Annelida with a
smirk upon his countenance waiting for the world to begin dying.
Daniel
G.
Snethen is an educator, naturalist, moviemaker, poet, and short story
writer from South Dakota. He teaches on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Little
Wound High School in the heart of Indian Country.
KJ Hannah
Greenberg is eclectic. She’s
played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket weaving, and
studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s
more, she’s a certified herbalist, and an AP College
Board-authorized teacher of calculus. Her creative efforts
have been nominated once for The Best of the
Net in poetry, once for The Best
of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry,
once for the Pushcart Prize in
Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award
for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award
for the Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s
had more than forty-five books published
and has served as an editor for several literary journals. Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs: https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T Within its
pages are two
tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another
Day" and "Light Notes."
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