The Cosmic Current

The Cosmic Current continues from yesterday.

Back in the tent, Sheila was waiting for the next customer to come along.

“Isn’t it interesting,” she said to her enchanted teapot. “Just about every reading this week has had a picture of a snail in it.”

“Are you sure they’re all snails? Couldn’t they be whirlpools or cyclones?” said the teapot.

“I suppose, but it still seems like a strange coincidence. I hope it’s not a warning that something calamitous is going to happen,” Sheila replied, taking a bite of her Jeavon’s Rabble.

“Snails don’t symbolise anything negative,” said the teapot. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The whole world moves fast these days, cars, trains, helicopters. Everyone does need to slow down.”

“You’re right, thank you,” smiled Sheila.

“You’ve got caramel on your chin,” said the teapot.

Sheila laughed and wiped her face with her fingers, making it worse before making it better.

Two million light years away, a tiny green flying saucer was pootling along at tremendous speeds.

“Slow down or we’ll miss the turn,” said Mavis.

“I’m only going at sixty million light years per hour,” replied Ivy.

Mavis was an amber snail (half a centimetre tall), Ivy was a striped snail (two centimetres tall). Every six hundred and fifty years they made the journey to planet Earth, to visit their relatives.

As they approached planet Earth it became obvious that something was not quite right.

“Wow, just look at it,” said Mavis, looking out the window at all the satellites and space junk surrounding the planet.

“Phew,” said Ivy. “Those are definitely disrupting the cosmic current.”

“I’d say something has caused these elements to leak out from the planet’s surface, and then drifted up to the thermosphere.”

“Yes, and they’ve amalgamated, we’ll need to reverse that.”

They set about fixing the problem. Mavis got out the instructions, and Ivy pressed some illuminated buttons.

“Ok, it says step one is to uncomplicate the elements,” said Mavis.

Ivy looked at her but did nothing.

“Dissolve, then return to sender,” explained Mavis.

“Right, right! Yes, I knew that,” said Ivy, pressing the pink button.

A moment or two went by, and then all of the bits and pieces surrounding the planet dissolved into nothing, and they had a clear view.

“Ok, it looks like they’ve been over run by robots, see how they dominate?” said Mavis, pointing out the vehicles lined up on every street in every town, in every country. “They’ve compromised the ecosystem, we’ll need to do a total reset. Press all the green buttons.”

“Done,” said Ivy. “What next?”

“Now push the yellow button, and that should do it,” said Mavis.

They sat and waited for it to take effect. Little by little, everything returned to the way it was before the rise of the machines (the Iron Age). Geological materials which had been extracted from the earth such as gold, silver, iron, sulfur, oil, coal, limestone and clay, went back under ground, as if mines had never existed, wooden things turned back into trees, and so returned all the creatures and habitats which were destroyed as a result of their manufacture.

“Ah, that’s better,” said Ivy. “Shall we begin our descent?”

As for Sheila, Kirsty and Anna, they were completely unaware that anything had changed, because the magic of snail technology had reached through time, so that as far as they could tell, this was the way the world had always been.

“Everyone get into pairs,” said Ms Garlic, as Ondine came back down to Earth. “I want you to discuss the way the real events were the seeds the myth grew from, and exaggerations and interpretations altered the story over time. What do you think really happened? Are there other myths which we could look at in the same way?”

Ondine smiled at Katherine, and Katherine smiled back.

Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny, interesting, and sometimes slightly bizarre vegan fiction since 2012