The place: Siberia.
The time: could be any. It’s Siberia.
The horn blew and Pebby waddled in line with the other captured penguins as they headed back to the Berg. That was the name of their bunk, so called because it was essentially straw and mud caked over another iceberg-looking rock, surrounded by barbed wire at the base. The Siberian winds blasted the encampment, which felt like home, but, still, was technically a prison.
It was the fifth straight day of pecking stones into slightly smaller ones. Clearly, this was a pointless task meant to break the colony of penguins that worked alongside other human prisoners. The humans dug trenches, the penguins pecked stones, and the Russian guards would fart, secret and silent plumes of poisonous invisible gas that tormented said pecking and digging.
It was hell.
Upon the Berg, Pebby sighed in his makeshift nest of trampled tin cans and permafrost straw. Below him was another penguin, Perkins, who had chipped a good portion of his beak earlier. Perkins was gyrating back and forth, chirping on and on about diving into the sea below for a swim. There was no sea below the Berg; just the chipped rocks of hopelessness.
Pebby bowed his head and nuzzled his beak deep into his blubbery fur. He missed his wife, he missed his child, still a yoke in a speckled egg beneath the blubbery protection of his mother back home.
He wondered if he would ever see the ice flow again.
Morning came. The prisoner penguins atop the Berg were marched through a gap in the barbed wire by an armed guard. The penguins held their breath as they waddled by. Only one penguin dared to breath in and subsequently coughed on the toxic air of another USSR silent fart. For his insolence, Perkins was prodded in the back by a rifle barrel.
There was to be no handful of frozen guppies for breakfast that morning. The penguins were marched past the feeding quarters and towards the ominous mortar building at the center of camp, the one with the smoking chimney. Since their arrival, the penguins had yet to see any of the human prisoners ever return once they entered the mortar building.
In dignified silence, the penguins marched through the dark doorway.
They were arranged into rows of four in a dimly lit room. A ceiling light flickered above, giving most of the prisoners headaches—penguins are incredibly light sensitive. Then, a man with a slicing scar down his cheek and decorated with a chest-plate full of medals entered the metal door of the dimly lit room. Two armed guards stood at attention by his side. “There is no doubt that many of you have questions as to why you are here,” said the heavily medaled man, his chin held high with superiority. “I will be brief. I am General Popper, and you are now my penguins.”
The penguins stared.
General Popper rolled his eyes. “When I say you are my penguins, I expect all of you to salute. Raise a dorsal to your leader, filthy birds!”
The guards that surrounded the prisoners aimed their rifles. Each penguin instinctively raised a dorsal and honked their allegiance.
“Better,” said General Popper. “Any more penguin shenanigans and I will replace your guppy mealtimes with American tuna tins!”
The cries of mercy amongst the prisoners were deafening in the small room; as all penguins knew, American tuna was the worst.
“Good, now that I have your attention, we will proceed.” The General stepped to a wooden crate upon a small desk at the front of the room. He withdrew an orb-shaped object from inside, handling it gently. “Do any of you recognize this?”
Each penguin tilted his head, unsure of what the object was. It was vaguely familiar, appearing like an egg, only green and metal.
“That’s right, it is a hand grenade, a very special hand grenade. One designed for your penguin sensibilities.” The General nodded to a guard who pulled on a string. A map of the world descended with many red Xs tagged over several cities in North America and Europe. “You certainly recognize the significance of these locations,” sneered the General. “Zoos. All of them packed with American tourists, paying extra to see the penguin exhibits. Americans think your species so cute. ‘Look mommy, watch the baby penguin dive into the water and frolic while I spill my ice cream!’ Foolishness!”
The General slammed the tabletop, which rattled the wooden crate of hand grenades. Each penguin gulped simultaneously.
“Our top researchers,” continued General Popper, collecting himself, “have discovered the source of American pride, American snobbery, and, worse of all, American ingenuity.”
The penguins blinked. Not one knew what the general was talking about.
“It is a scientific fact that American children develop FOUR TIMES the required brain cells for national superiority after visiting penguin exhibits for the first time. It only follows – and my word is supreme! – that the best way to combat American nationalism is to destroy the source of these enumerated brain cells. That’s why each of you is being primed as a donation for every city zoo marked on this very map.”
A penguin in front of Pebby raised his dorsal and asked a very smart question, “Honk? Honk, honk?”
The General was not amused. He nodded to the nearest guard. The inquisitive penguin was dragged from the room by his dorsal fins. The metal door slammed, muffling the penguin honks for help on the other side. A dread silence befell the other prisoner penguins.
“There will be no more foolish questions!” shouted the General. “Any more interruptions and each of you will be clubbed like baby seals!” He smiled knowingly. “Skeptical that we would ever be so cruel?” The General leaned in closer, as though relaying a secret. “Who do you think invented the practice of clubbing baby seals in the first place, hmm?”
It isn’t the nature of a penguin to shiver. But in that dimly lit room, every penguin shivered for the first time.
“You will each be armed with a hand grenade,” instructed the General. “It will be painted white, which will resemble your species’ eggs. So perfectly identical will our hand grenades be to penguin eggs that American zoo caretakers will never know the difference. And when the time is right, you will all be sacrificed in a vast explosion of heroic nature! You will destroy American nationalism at its source!”
The penguins blinked.
“And,” admitted the General after several anticlimactic moments of silence, “quite a few American children and their families, I suppose.”
The penguins looked to one another, certain there were two ways out of this: rebellion or death in a zoo, both equally awful. In solidarity, each penguin made a decision and stretched a fin to one another. Pitted against rifles and Russian farts, they would attack the General, explode the eggs, and sacrifice themselves in a blubbery explosion before any American school children could lose out on the opportunity to take field trips to national zoo aquariums.
There could be no nobler a cause.
Pebby nodded to Perkins beside him. They stepped forward, ready to be sacrificed.
Then, there was a knock at the door.
“I’ve rented this room for an entire hour,” complained the General, signaling a guard to see who was knocking. “Who in the world is interrupting—”
The nearest guard turned the knob to the door. The door swung back into the guard’s face, rendering him unconscious. A pair of men in white furry overcoats barreled through the threshold with brass badges stitched to their breasts. The General reached for his firearm, stuck in its holster from disuse, and the two men fired two polar bear-strength tranquilizer darts into his neck. The General slid to the ground unconscious.
The two men in white radioed into their sleeve. “All clear. We got ‘em.”
Pebby and the prisoners stared at the men in white coats. Slowly, the men holstered their tranquilizer guns and removed their ski masks. “Sorry we took so long,” said one of the men with a mustache, indicating his brass badge on his furry coat. “Story Police. This story has gotten out of hand. Our alarms went off when we got wind of ‘Russian farts’, no pun intended. It took us a while to figure out the setting of the story and where you were being held prisoner. The setting wasn’t very specific, which should have been a clear sign this story wasn’t going well. But we found you; you’re all safe now.”
The penguins embraced one another with dorsal fins, awkwardly hugging one another. During the celebration, Pebby stepped forward and asked a question with a series of honks and squeaks.
The mustachioed man laughed at the penguin’s candor. “Yes, that Russian General sounded more like a Nazi to me, too. Don’t worry, we’ll get your colony home. You deserve to be part of a better story than this.”
The penguins honked in agreement.
The mustachioed man looked to you, the reader, and nodded assuredly. “We all do.”
With a hearty laugh, the two men in puffy coats gathered all the penguins into a close huddle – which was second nature to the colony – and raised a device with one large red button to the sky. Then, with a single press, the two men and colony of penguins disappeared from the story entirely.
When he awoke, General Popper tore out the tranquilizer dart from his neck and surveyed the empty room. He ground his teeth, cursing the Story Police. “They won’t save you next time, penguins. Next time, Neil Gaiman will write the story, and it will work! My plans will be,” the General slammed his fist on the small table of hand grenades, “realized!”
BLAM!
A vast explosion. The General, and this story, finally came to an end.
