Swat

Pope Brian's astral body was excited. Thirty years he had spent in
abject self-flagellation. Thirty long years of torturous abnegation.
Thirty long, long years of never resting his gaze on womanly form. But
now, ah yes, now, it was all finally coming to fruition.

Now he would meet God.

Brian's heart leapt as the swirling light grew brighter; a great
rushing sound filled his ears.

He was here!

"Oh my God, where art thou?" he moaned as his astral body thudded
face-first into something straggly and evil smelling.

"Oi!" said a rather irritable sounding voice. "Gerroff my rug!"

"I beg you pardon?" Pope Brian pushed his arms beneath him, lifted his
berobed astral body and peered into the devil-ringed eyes of a
malevolently sneering ram's head.

"Yaaaagh!" He screeched as a strong hand grabbed him by the scruff of
the neck, plucked him safely out of the ram's reach and deposited him
on a rickety old stool that creaked and groaned beneath his posterior
as though unsure whether it either wanted to continue life as a stool
or crumple into a pile of matchwood.

"Best sheepskin that," the irritable voice grumbled. "Doesn't need any
astral bodies dribbling all over it. No, no, not at all. Bad for it,
y'see."

A white-bearded old man stood before the pope. He was dressed in
flowing - albeit unfortunately yellowing - robes and wore soft leather
slippers on his feet. His eyes were brightest blue and his frizzy hair
stuck up from his head as though he had just been for a walk in
hurricane. A wide grin was stupidly plastered across his deeply
wrinkled face.

"How do you do?" he thrust a violent hand under Brian's nose. The pope
jumped, the stool finally decided it no longer wanted to be a stool and
promptly dumped him in a mass of cracking wood and flapping arms to the
floor.

"Sorry, sorry," the old man hauled him to his feet once more. "My
mistake, damn stool's always doing that. Doesn't like religious types,
so I'm told," he added in a whispered aside. "Here," he led the
trembling Pope to a new chair. "Try this one, best seat in the house,
front row view and all that. Watch out for the chewing gum."

"Where&;#8230; where am I?" Brian gurgled, slumping into the chair,
which folded alarmingly around him. He was sure he could hear something
licking its lips somewhere.

"My home," the old man fluttered expansive arms at the candle-lit and
cluttered cottage around him. "Don't be shy, have a good nosy around,
I've got no secrets." His face became shadowed, his eyes narrow slits.
"As long as you don't go through the door on your left. Or the one on
your right, and watch out for the trapdoors and the spine-necked
Rattasnax, it's carnivorous you know, and feeling a bit peckish,
visitors just don't stay long enough these days. Oh, and my teddy
bear's just got a new shotgun. He's a terrible shot, bless him," his
face brightened again, "but apart from that you'll be fine."

"I think I'll stay here," Brian murmured faintly.

"Suit yourself," the old man shrugged and shuffled over to a darkened
corner of his home.

Silence descended. The pope's astral body felt a tad deflated. He
wondered if he should say something.

"Erm..." he began.

"Who? What!" the old man spun around, flattened his body against the
table he was working at, his eyes darting defensively about the room.
"Who's there, blast ya? Teddy, get your shotgun!"

"It's&;#8230; it's only me, sir," Brian stuttered, wondering if he
would ever manage to extricate himself from the avaricious chair.

"Me, huh?" the old man squinted over at him. "You don't look much like
me, that's for sure."

"No, no," Brian plopped out of the chair like someone who had just
been plucked from a swamp. "Pope Brian."

"Oh you," the old man relaxed. "For a minute there I thought you were
one of them." This last was said in a dark, foreboding voice that made
poor Brian immediately peer over his shoulder to see what else was
coming for him. Visions of sabre-toothed, 'shotgun'-wielding teddy
bears filled his mind.

There was nothing there, just piles of musty and unidentifiable
rubbish. Brian heaved a small sigh of relief. "Who are 'them'?" he
asked curiously.

"Them," the old man accusingly stabbed the shadows, hurricane hair
flying. "They. The ones in charge. The Big Boss. The Top Knobs. They
who must be obeyed."

"Oh," Pope Brian's astral knees felt weak. "But aren't you..?"

A creak, then a loud thunk and another, and another, and another
interrupted him.

"What..?" he croaked, turning on his heel to see hundreds of books,
each one at least a thousand pages thick, drop through a curious slit
in the bottom of the cottage door.

"Oh don't mind that," the old man said airily, returning his attention
to the table before him. "That's just the next few sections of the
Encyclopaedia Genomica."

"But there are hundreds of them!" Brian gaped as the thudding
continued. A quite respectable pile had built up by now.

"Billions actually," the old man said off-handedly. "We're about a
tenth of the way through at the moment."

"We?" Brian wasn't sure he wanted to know.

The old man looked up. Brian squeaked. A huge eye was gazing back at
him.

"Oops," the old man pushed a circular glass device up onto his
forehead. "Forgot I still had that on. Yes," he turned and gestured at
the table. "Me and the ants."

"The ants?" Brian looked down. The table was lit up now and all he
could see, stretching interminably backwards to the lost walls of the
cottage, were row upon row of glass screens each containing millions of
insects. What was even more amazing was the fact that, impossible
though it may seem, each ant held a volume of the Encyclopaedia
Genomica and was apparently perusing it with great interest. Brian
gulped. Leaned forward. Surely it couldn't be&;#8230;

"I don't believe it," he quavered.

"What?" the old man slapped him on the back, almost sending him
face-first into the nearest screen. Several ants stopped their studies
long enough to glare at him. "That they can make spectacles that small?
I know, I know. I've spent many a millennia trying to figure that one
out, let me tell you."

Brian felt the urge to scream, but bit it down. "What are they doing?"
he faintly asked.

"DNA, Popy, m'boy," the old man clapped his hands together. "The
building blocks of life, the stuff we're all made of."

Brian looked blank.

"What?" the old man looked surprised. "You didn't think it all just
popped out of the primordial soup just right, do you? It took eons of
research, m'boy, eons, why&;#8230;"

At that moment one of the ants tapped on the glass screen. The old man
leaned over, opened a small door and took the proffered piece of paper.
Just looking at the complex figures scribbled on its surface caused
Brian's head to ache. The old man shuffled away from the ants, gaze
fixed to the paper. Brian followed close behind him, unwilling to risk
being left alone in this preposterous place.

How they managed to traverse the teetering towers of refuse without
any fatalities Brian could not even begin to comprehend, in fact he
would later swear that the cottage moved around the old man instead of
vice versa. Whatever, by the time they reached their destination the
pope was sweating in a most un-God's representative on earth-like
way.

Before them stood countless three-dimensional models, spiral in form,
but incredibly detailed with tiny spheres and rods. Brian counted
nearly five hundred before his eyes started to water. The old man
reached out to a model three rows deep and seven across. He removed a
green sphere and inserted a red one.

"What is it?" Brian asked, considered tapping the old man on the
shoulder and then thought better of it. "Is that all?"

"Is that all?" the old man roared, rounding enormously on the
quivering astral body. "It took Colin six hundred and fifty million
years to work out that particular strand and you say is that
all!?"

"I'm sorry," Brian felt an urge to scream again. A shiftily creeping
bug on the old man's shoulder caught his shamed gaze. He noticed a
small spade-shaped implement hanging on the wall nearby and
instinctively snatched it up, preparing to swipe.

The old man's hand shot up and caught hold of his wrist before his
blow could land. "Good heavens, no!" he gasped. "You must never, never
do such a thing. Imagine what would happen if you were to swat the bug
that created Einstein."

"Eh?" Brian wanted to scream quite badly now. "Why do you have these
'swats' around then?"

The old man looked guilty as he hung the plastic swat back on the
wall. "We all have our destructive urges," he flushed. "We all get
miffed now and then when a certain ant named Cyril gets too big for his
boots. What do you think caused the Dark Ages, anyway?"

"The Dark Ages?" That was it. He had to get out of here.

Pope Brian's astral body hurtled towards the nearest outlet, which
just happened to be a wonkily shuttered window. He threw open the
blinds and got his wish.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" he screamed as multi-coloured nebulae
exploded and thunderous matter coruscated before his translucent
gaze.

He scuttered away from the window and fell to his knees. The old man
muttered to himself as he drew the shutters closed again. The light did
not seem to bother him in the slightest.

"What&;#8230;" Brian wrung his hands, he looked, if he had but
known it, slightly ridiculous, kneeling as he was in the midst of a
pile of old mouse droppings. "Was that?"

"Oh, just a few stars being born," the old man flumped into a chair,
waved a weary hand. "The usual."

"The usual?" Brian's wringing grew more agonised.

"Are you sure you're the pope and not a parrot?" the old man kindly
inquired.

"Oh my Lord!" Brian flung himself at the old man's feet. The old man
surreptitiously shifted them. Astral dribble was not good for leather
slippers either. "Art thou the Lord God? Canst thou offer succour to
this poor soul?"

"God?" the old man looked taken aback. Then he began to chuckle. "Good
god, no. Whatever gave you that idea? God&;#8230;" he seemed quite
amused by the idea. "Haha, very funny, Popy m'boy."

"But, but, you&;#8230;" Brian struggled to find some sense to all
of this. His mind quite stolidly refused to believe that it had spent
thirty years in misery for nothing. "You look like him," he lamely
finished.

"What, this?" the old man laid one hand on his scrawny chest, the
other on his white hair. "Heavens, I only look like this because you
made me." His eyes glazed over, his mouth lifted in a misty smile. "I
used to be such a pretty young woman, once upon a time. Lovely curls I
had, and the dresses, my oh my&;#8230;"

"But the meaning," Brian desperately interrupted him. "The meaning to
life. What is it? There has to be a meaning!"

"A meaning?" The old man looked down at him. "A meaning?" He shot to
his feet. "Who's been telling you that?" He stormed across the room. "I
won't have it!" He picked up the plastic swat. "Stuff and nonsense!" He
stalked over to the ants. "Right!" He loomed over them. A billion tiny,
bespectacled heads lifted. "Which one of you's been telling the humans
there's a meaning to life, eh? Come on, out with it!" He waved the swat
threateningly. "I'll start a hundred Dark Ages this time, Cyril!"

* *

"Felix, Felix, come quickly," the young priest charged, robes flying,
into the quiet chapel.

Felix looked up. He had been studying Exodus and his aquiline features
were taut with repressed anger, both at the interruption and the
acolyte's unseemly use of his name. "What is it, boy?" he asked
coldly.

"It's Pope Brian, Your Worship."

"What of him?"

"He's gone mad, Your Worship."

"Mad?" Felix got to his feet; his black-bound bible fell to the floor.
"Why, what is he doing?"

"He's out in the garden, Your Worship."

Felix scowled, began to sit down again, damn the boy for wasting his
time. "And what, pray tell, is he doing in the garden?"

"Swatting ants, Your Worship. Lots of them. For some reason he keeps
calling them Cyril..."

-The End-