His existence, a mishap. Creation, the punishment.

— Bastian Espada

A shadowy breath crosses the grass, and caresses the nape of potential prey.

It sniffs, moist air.

A vision: one watering hole, still fighting for existence eight months into the dry season.

It flashes forward, clearing a pride laying half-asleep beneath a nearby acacia tree.

A graceful stop, and its reflection disperses on the water.

Blurry ripples, a sunken murmur…

It swipes at the surface with its sharpened hoof.

Again.

Again.

Then, an explosion.

A colossal crocodile lunges; desperate, confident—and misses completely.

Before the suchurian predator can process what has occurred, it finds itself lying on its back. Subdued and immobile.

A pair of long fangs puncture its neck, thick and covered in osteoderms as it might be.

Ungulus von Drakul, Supreme Antelope of Darkness and Father to all Vantelopes, feeds.

— Bastian Espada

Jason blazed and fogged-up the library nook. He extended the joint towards the stone, who sat to his right—as was proper during times of war.

The philosopher’s stone pinched the tip of the scorpion joint and took a hit. “We just…we gotta—”

Smoke escaped in bursts with every syllable.

“—come together. Acquire knowledge. Power over this universe. And hope we can redesign it into something that doesn’t suck.”

“Woaaaah,” Matt said. “Why we though? Like, you ain’t even human, bro, you’re just a magical rock.”

The philosopher’s stone took another deep toke, and exuded a whole cloud of sweet Summer-Carolina Gold OG, enveloping the shelves with pure skunk.

“We are all guests of spaceship Earth, my dude. The universe would no sooner fuck you in the ass than me.”

The philosopher’s stone offered the joint to Matt, who took it without looking. “That’s pretty brutal, bro.”

The door to the library blew open. A group of crazed geophiles—their visages betraying an obvious ignorance of the importance of consent—fixed their eyes upon the stone.

It wept, for it knew the ways of the world.

— Bastian Espada

As was often the case on Sundays, on that far edge of the field, the man found himself surrounded by a crowd eager to be amused by his ramblings—and the ensuing heckling.

“We do what we do ‘cause we are what we are. We are what we are ‘cause we do what we do,” he said.

Some of the adults assented. A child scratched his chin. A red-billed pigeon cooed overhead.

“Problem is, by the time we start doing, we’ve already been. Been for a while.”

Gloria, an alcoholic spinster with no chill, frowned. Her eyes narrowed, and she raised her hand. “Wouldn’t that mean that if I do something different, I’d also become a different person?”

“Would you? Doing something different to prove a point totally sounds like something you would do, Gloria.”

A child stepped forward and planted himself a yard away from the man.

“What if I want to turn into a different person, so I do something I’d never do?”

The red-billed pigeon landed on a nopal next to the rock.

“You know, there’s an answer to that, but I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why?”

“Cup-a-coo, cup-a-coo,” the pigeon said.

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to. I really wish I were the kind of person who’d want to want to tell you.”

“Can’t you just choose to want to tell me?”

“Oof, sorry, kid. I really wish—” The red-billed pigeon pecked at the philosopher’s scalp. He swatted at it twice, then abdicated to the bird. “—that I were the kind of person who’d want to choose to want to tell you.”

“But—”

“Alas, I’m not.”

A rock came flying from the rear of the crowd and struck the philosopher in the temple.

He died of a brain hemorrhage later that day.

— Bastian Espada

“Welcome everybody! Welcome back to your favorite cooking show,” the host—a man in his fifties wearing too much makeup—said. “You see who’s standing right next to me, don’t you?”

The crowd roared.

“Our special guest for today, the one, the onl—”

The audience erupted. A woman fainted; a man at the very back deprived himself of the ability to speak for a whole week by yelling Woooo! at utterly inappropriate levels.

The guest, who until that point had been wearing little more than a plain white tee and a sincere desire to learn the culinary arts, put on a sheepish smile and took a bow. “Thank you for having me, it’s a real honor,” he said once the ruckus had subsided. “So tell me, what are we doing here today?”

“Silly me, I guess no introduction was needed.” The host side-eyed the camera and chuckled along with the crowd. “Today we are making a classic, a real staple of the show: we are, once more, attempting to recreate my grandma’s iconic Darwin bread.”

“Oh, what a treat!”

“Indeed. And we got ourselves a very special yeast. Our producers went all the way to a tiny hamlet in Bavaria to obtain it. Hopefully, it’ll do the trick.”

“Well, let’s get to it then!” The guest straightened his back and put his palms on the counter. “So uhm, tell me, what’s so special about this bread?”

“Ah, good question.” The host bent down and pulled a big bowl from beneath the counter, then placed it front and center for the cameras. “Here I’ve got flour and the yeast already mixed up. I added some sugar as well. Now, usually, when making bread, you want to create the ideal conditions for the yeast, right? Temperature, sugar, pH, hydration, so on and so forth.”

“Right, you want to make it as comfy as possible. Like that one Angolan brothel…”

The camera zoomed in on an elderly couple, showcasing their uncomfortable smiles and nervous darting of the eyes.

“Yes, exactly like that, I think,” the host said. “Well, to make my grandma’s Darwin bread, we go the opposite way.”

“Intriguing. How does THAT work?”

“Like so.” The sound of a can of cold, frothy beer being opened echoed through the studio. The host poured the whole can into the bowl. “Alcohol kills yeast. Also, beer comes from yeast—the beer is effectively another yeast’s territory, right? You’re removing the home advantage.”

“Yeah, I get it, a double whammy. No yeast would ever like that—unless it’s some kind of psycho yeast.”

“Exactly. And now, I’m going to pour a little bit of this.” The host produced a pitcher of boiling water.

“I can imagine. Just look at that steam! Oh, heavens, I bet it didn’t like that, didn’t like it at all.”

“Finally,” the host said, pressing his palms together as if in prayer, “we bring out the big guns.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial filled with yellowish liquid.

“Now look at that.” The guest peered into the vial, studying the swirling eddies born from chaotic micro-turbulence.

“This, my friend, is no common urine.”

“Of course. Uncommon urine. That’s...that’s— the right type of body excretion to use in the kitchen. Wouldn’t want it to be common…”

“Rare indeed, for you see, every fifteen years, at the southern point of the isle of Madagascar, something magical happens.”

“How magical?”

The host cleared his throat. “Every fifteen years, for one night—and one night only—the elder southern yellow lemur matriarch emerges from her slumber to mate. She produces a serum filled with pheromones, proteins, hormones, and a dash of her personal microbiome.”

“Sounds thick, robust even. Like my favorite wines.”

“Yes, she then mixes it with her urine—”

“So that’s where it enters the equation.”

“And proceeds to spray it all over her territory. Collecting this substance requires a massive logistic effort, and it deprives an entire lemur tribe of the opportunity to reproduce. So as you can imagine, it isn’t exactly easy to acquire.”

“Sounds illegal.”

“Eh, it adds to the flavor. Fun fact: this show alone drives seventy percent of the global market.”

“What accounts for that other thirty percent?”

“Now we add it to the mixture, cover it up, and wait.” The host extended his arms towards the audience. “We’ll go to a commercial break and once we are back, we shall see if this yeast is worthy enough to accompany us in our bread making journey. Don’t go anywhere!”

“I can’t wait!”

The crowd cheered.

The camera flew around the studio.

“Welcome back everybody. Aaarreee you ready to see the results?”

The guest assented with his head and clapped. The audience followed along, tapping with their feet in anticipation.

The host removed the cover from the bowl and showed its contents to all viewers.

A wave of disappointed boos rippled through the studio.

“Yes yes, indeed,” the host said. His hands on the counter, looking down. “Another night, same hour, same result, ladies and gentleman. We have proven, once more, that no yeast has been invented that’s capable of making my grandma’s old Darwin bread.” He lifted his head and brought his hands together. “Never mind that however! Tune in tomorrow to see what we’ve got cooking up on your favorite cooking show!”

“Thank you for having me. It was real fun—really educational.” The guest shook the host’s hand.

The audience clapped.

The camera zoomed out.

The outro music played.

TV screens faded to black.

People in the audience began to stand.

“Good show,” the guest said as they both watched the audience being ushered by the show’s handlers to exit in an orderly fashion. “I do have a question, if you’ll humor me.”

“Of course, anything for an autograph!”

Both men chuckled.

“So, what’s the secret? How did your family make this bread?”

“Believe it or not, obtaining rare lemur piss was in fact easier in the past.”

“I’m not talking about that. I mean the original yeast—what happened to it?”

“Oh, well, that’s easy to explain. When grandma died, the family lost access to her private parts.”

— Bastian Espada

While staring at the ceiling,

Lost in mindless peering,

To me came the strangest idea:

The notion—

that reality is a tad bit too real.

— Bastian Espada

The phone doesn’t answer.

It never does.

— Bastian Espada

His assistant pushed a stack of documents across the table. Their well-suited interlocutor skimmed through the papers and grinned.

The man smirked, then leaned forward. “The rich will hide, the young will die, and the poors will eat their boots. From our dead we’ll raise martyrs and saviors; from theirs, villains and traitors. Eventually, we’ll make all combatants into heroes. And once they’ve finished weeping…”

The man picked his cigar back up.

“We’ll fuck their widows.”

— Bastian Espada

The group cheered as they cocked their shotguns.

A few paces away Princess Peach—huddled behind a fallen log—observed the group. “I’ll distract them,” she said to her companions. “Go get Mario.”

— Bastian Espada

“Absolute rubbish!” the studious orc said. “If we truly lived inside an incomprehensibly large mana crystal, we would be seeing elemental flares annihilating each other at the micro-pixel scale.”

“Any mana crystal dense enough to contain an entire reality within it would have to be green! We should expect everything to be tinted green! And yet…” the wyvern scholar waved his hand through the air.

“One requires little else to dismiss the idea, than to point to the most obvious obstacle for the emergence of life in such a universe,” the half-elf, half-giantess professor said, “any living thing that managed to come into existence would be immediately afflicted by mana sickness, driving it to proactive self-destruction.”

The stubborn gnome frowned and pouted. “You lot just don’t have any imagination!” he said, pointing a finger at each of his detractors.

The studious orc wiped his glasses on the cuff of his robe, then sighed. “Enough, Romulus. You need to face the fact that there just isn’t any good evide—”

Timmy shut off his PC.

— Bastian Espada