(Cont.)
Now, a while after the above events, during the Annual Ritual of the Mandrake Piñata, Samson was in a good mood, so he decided to visit his wife Hansina. He took a spotless lambkin for her to dine upon, and he showed up at the doorstep of her father’s house: for Hansina had never moved in with Samson, as they had not spoken since the day of their disagreement over his wedding riddle. Thus, Samson rang the bell; and, while waiting, he slaughtered the lambkin and began to strike its blood on the posts of the house. When his wife’s father came out to the entryway, Samson said to him: “Hello, my dear father-in-law. Behold, I brought a feast; I will now go in to my wife Hansina. Let me into her chamber.”
But her father stood blocking the door, and would not suffer him to go in. And he said to Samson: “Oh, this is awkward. You see, I truly thought that you hated Hansina; so I gifted her to one of your wedding guests. She lives with him now: she is not here at present. But, look, she has a younger sister who’s also a little mermaid – she is, in fact, even more petite than Hansina; and she’s also a robotic waitress, whose service is more obedient than Hansina’s, plus she breaks no dishes – and she is even prettier than Hansina. Take her instead of Hansina, I pray you – you’ll never know the difference: All women are the same.”
Upon hearing this, Samson stood there in silence for a moment, with the lamb’s blood dripping from his hands; then he said:
“Not long ago, I intended to brave a medical operation, which would alter my species, and change the base of my entity from carbon to silicon, just so that I could successfully mate with your daughter. But now, because of the way that you two have acted, I shall always be prejudiced against Robotic Sea People.”
Then Samson stormed away from the front door; leaving Hansina’s father standing there, speechless.
And as Samson neared the back of the house, he heard a sweet, feminine voice singing a sublime song, which said: “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.” And Samson reasoned that the damsel must be one of the estate’s agricultural workers, for the house had an underwater garden in the shade; and he assumed that her lyric was a prayer for help to exterminate the foxes, which were ruining the submarine crops. And Samson said within himself: “Ah, so the foxes are threatening the aquatic farm of Hansina’s estate: let me therefore, instead of destroying these pests, increase their number to provoke total ruin.”
So Samson went and caught all three hundred of the foxes, and tied firebrands to their tails; then he let them loose in the underwater garden, and the fire hissed and sizzled and crackled as they ran, and it burnt up all the sea grapes, and the sea lettuce, and all the fields of sea wheat that were there. And the entire body of saltwater evaporated, and there was much smoke.
Then the Sea People who were watching nearby from the penteconter said: “Look over there: that madman Samson just burnt down Anderson’s farm! And all because the old man gave away Samson’s wife. Did you hear about that? After Samson and the girl went through the wedding ceremony, the father gifted his daughter, the bride, to a guest at the feast. And Samson, who said all the vows and therefore should have been the maid’s husband, was unaware of this development, till just now: that seems to be why he has gone berserk.”
And these Sea People who were onlookers at the above event then decided to step in and lend a helping hand to Samson, for the sake of mob justice. Therefore they took torches and burned the whole Anderson household, with everyone inside: Hansina Christiana the little robo-mermaid, and her father, and the rest of the family, all went up in flames. And there was the smell of burning plastic and smoldering circuitry. (For the old man was lying, in the scene above, when he said that his daughter was absent: she was truly in her chamber with her new husband, right there at her father’s home.)
Now, when Samson learned that the Sea People had avenged him in this way, by incinerating Hansina’s household along with her family, he was maddened afresh, and he exclaimed: “Because ye Sea People have done this, I will do the same to you. Then, at last, we will be even. For two wrongs make one right.”
And the Sea People from the penteconter, hearing this, said one to another: “What is he talking about? Does he not know that we were trying to help him? How did we manage to misread the situation? Was his wife not abhorrent to his heart, and did he not wish her dead? I wonder where our reasoning went awry . . .”
And, as they were thus wondering aloud, Samson came up with a torch and held its flame to the tail of each Sea Person, in the same way that one might light the wick of a candle, and they all burnt up.
Then Samson went down and dwelt in a cave of Fallout Rock, also known as Lynch Peak. Remember, it was here that, after bringing the workforce out of the Empire and into the wilderness, the Volcano’s erstwhile prophet Moses suffered a fallout with the populace, and its angry mobs almost lynched him, because they were dying of thirst; but then Bryan teamed up with the Volcano, and they caused a drinkable torrent to spray from the cliff. However, this many years later, all those waters had dried up; or their source was re-corked or stoppered, for the stream was nonexistent.
Now that day when Samson took refuge in Fallout Rock happened to be exactly the Nth anniversary of Moses’ first arrival at the place (which was also, some say, Moses’ last arrival at the place).
Then when the rest of the Sea People got wind of what had happened on the penteconter, how Samson had burned alive the robo-aqua-vigilantes that had incinerated his little mermaid, they recited aloud that notorious verse from Exodus (21:24), “Eye for eye, fin for fin, gill for gill, tail for tail,” and they went up and pitched an encampment against the Volcano, and spread themselves out before the caravan, in Vadnais Heights (which is where my good friend Stegz used to live).
And the wayfarers of the Volcano said to the People of the Sea: “Why are ye come up against us?” And they answered: “We’re here to arrest your countryman Samson Elohim, so that we may do to him as he has done to us.” Then the wayfarers said: “Wait here, just a moment . . .”
Then three thousand pilgrims from the caravan went to Fallout Rock, where they had a hunch that Samson was hiding, and they found him in the cave there, among some prophets’ glowing remains, and they said unto Samson: “Do you not understand that the Sea People are our friends? We have been mixing and mingling with them, all this time; yet you keep having altercations with parts of their populace; now they’re likely to slay you. You’re making us stink like bad fish in their nostrils. Why are you acting like such a wild man?”
And Samson answered and said: “As they did unto me, so have I done unto them.”
Therefore they said: “Well, we have come here to bind you in this nylon net, so that we may deliver you over to the Sea People.”
And Samson answered them, and said: “I understand. Just give me your word, that you will only bind me: Swear that you will not club me to death yourselves.”
And they assured him, saying: “Surely, you will have no such fallout from us: we won’t lynch you. We will only secure you, and deliver you into their custody.” Then they bound him within the great net, and brought him out from the rock.
Thus the pilgrims arrested Samson and began to escort him back. But when they appeared in Vadnais Heights, the Sea People all saw Samson thus constrained, and they shouted against him: and the Spirit of the Volcano came mightily upon him, and the mesh of nylon that was restricting him became like paper that was burnt with fire, and the netting loosed from off his limbs.
Thus freed, Samson looked and saw on the ground the bone of an ass. (This was the same bone that the hominid tosses heavenward, in the 1968 film 2001, before the famous jump cut to the space ship.) Samson reached down, and took this bone, and tossed it forth (just like the hominid does in the movie), and it curved around as a boomerang, and knocked out a thousand robotic mer-persons: and they all gave up the ghost.
Then Samson sang his song that goes: “With the bone of an ass have I slain a thousand foes.” And then John Milton took him aside, and gave him a timbrel, and taught him all new lyrics, and then Samson sang: “. . . on their whole host I flew / Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled / Their choicest bots.”
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of singing, that he cast away the bone out of his hand (for he had caught it again, above, when it boomeranged back), and then Vadnais Heights he renamed “Ass Bone Heights.”
Now Samson was parched, since heretofore he had been holed up in Fallout Rock, which was a scandalously dry place; therefore he lifted his voice, and cried: “O volcano of potential, I do not know where you are at present, but I hope that you can hear me. Behold, you have effected this great deliverance through your elohim: now would you allow me to die for thirst, and fall down motionless like one of these broken machines?”
Yet, just a moment ago, above, when he had cast away the bone of the ass from his hand, look there: it spun around curving through the sky and flew over to Lynch Peak, and the bone struck the rock, as it ricocheted, twice, in strategic places, which knocked away whatever had been blocking the source of its spring, and this caused a cascade of fresh water to gush thereout.
So the wild man then appeared on the scene and met Samson, and told him that he had heard his cry; and the Volcano picked up his elohim with his vortex (for Samson was too weak to walk), and he set him down beside the rock’s plunge pool. And when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived.
And the amount of time that passed during all the foregoing events with the Sea People was twenty years.
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