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Passions In Orbit, A Stirring In The Pants |
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By Matthew Sanborn Smith © 2007
Once he discovered her, nothing could have stopped Kanner from flowing to her around and through the orbital beltloops from which the WorldPants hung. Twenty-one stations from his own, Jena womanned the Zipper. Through her multi-toothed gates, the waste of the planet gushed. Across the skies Kanner drove a thousand head of clove to feed her forests of ham. At her feet he spilled one thousand mouths full of mango chutney to spread across her golden-brown fields of toast. With him he brought a thousand hues of tissue for her nosebleeds, which even now defied the most stringent coagulators in the system. Amamaur, Warden of the Right Back Pocket, grew green until he was red. No mere loop-runner would have his way with a woman as fine as Jena. Amamaur's resources were nigh-unlimited, as the Right Back Pocket was home to the WorldWallet. But the great Warden was wise enough to realize that it would take more than mere money to woo this queen. It was the personalized gift that touched the heart, he knew. Amamaur cut off his little fingers, ordered his minions to have them quick-petrified gold and sent the fingers to the Lady of the Zipper as the system's most elegant nostril stoppers. Jena sent her love but, alas, conceded that their respective responsibilities were too great for them ever to leave their posts. Smitten, Amamaur shot continent-sized trillion dollar bills into space until the World had to tighten its belt to make ends meet. Slowly, the Right Back Pocket drew closer and closer to the Zipper. Kanner, though staggered by unrequited love, saw the World's doom taking shape before his eyes. Long before pocket and fly ever met, the planet they surrounded would be squeezed about the mid-section until tectonic hernias erupted throughout the tropics, hemorrhaging magma until all life, below and above, was incinerated. No force known to man could cut through the magnificent WorldBelt, but in a display of freefall acrobatics and ingenuity that still inspires bar and grill arguments to this day, Kanner unbuckled the Gordian belt. The WorldPants fell away before they could tighten the equatorial waist to Armageddon. Along with them went Kanner's rival and his one true love. With nothing else to live for and nothing left to lose, the loop runner sailed out of the gravitational pull that had been the only home he'd ever known and went in search of Jena, knowing that those gold pinkies were heavy and bound to fall out soon. The World, having lost its pants right there in front of everyone, was absolutely mortified by the entire episode.
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