Sci-fi humorous short story
The stranger has licked out the remnants of the porridge from his whiskers and carefully wiped his alien face. As he bent over a bowl of water, the courageous reflection of an ordinary domestic cat Vasily, also a tracker and a scout, ideally adapted to terrestrial conditions, looked at him.
“What had you only have to endure for the sake of your homeland and its glory,” purred the “cat” stretching and slowly moving towards the small passage under the fence, dug at his mental command by mutt dog Buddy from the poultry farm.
A year ago, the Emancipator was sent to the Earth to help underdeveloped species, and the first ones he targeted for liberation were chickens from the Djudjalarim poultry farm. His choice fell on a farm with that name only because he really liked the melody of the song of the same name.
The director of the farm was surprised to note that in the last year the death toll were replaced by an increase in the chicken population, which brought him a good income. He couldn’t explain it, and he didn’t intend to. And only Vasily knew the true reason for what was happening and waited for the chickens, trained by him in advanced magical art, to free themselves from the unbearable life behind the Iron Curtain, as people once did.
* * *
“Form modification is the most important thing that any Chicken Mage should have!” Mrs. Pio-Pio didn’t just say, but proclaimed and then blossomed into a ball of orange fur with curly bright green shoots. One of the first students and followers of the Great Meow, she worked tirelessly, teaching the youngsters magical techniques.
Her group consisted of preschoolers – not yet fledged fluffies, and some of the soup roosters, the elders of the poultry farm, were dissatisfied with the demonstration of such frank and exciting forms of hen flesh to the chickens. But who, if not an experienced teacher, should have known – if you can’t teach a chicken the tricks of magic from the very shell, expect second-class eggs from them.
“Hey, Beak, let’s go dig in the grass during the big break and look for some grains!” the yellow fluffy ball squeaked to its neighbor.
“Eh, Chicka, you’re still just a yolk!” the mocking neighbor grinned, “Let’s go right now and swallow the big earthworm!”
“But he is one, and there are two of us…”
“Well, exactly, child! Let’s grab it with our beaks from both sides and tear it in halves!”
“Oh! I’m scared. What if he gets hurt?”
“Well, which kind of Chicken Mage are you? Chickens form-modifying the world, and you are afraid of some worm.”
“I’m not afraid of the worm, I’m afraid that we will hurt him!”
“It won’t hurt him, he doesn’t even have the brains for that. And to make it easier for you, imagine that this worm will grow into a huge snake that will devour you along with our brood.”
“No, no! Only not the brood!”
“Then don’t wait, peck him yourself!”
“And you?”
“I will help you from the other side.”
“Oh, Beak, you will definitely become a fighting rooster, and if I can, I will always help you.”
“Mrs. Pio-Pio, please allow us to leave for a moment. Chicka has irritation of the cloaca, and she need … to drip a few drops.”
“And what do you have to do with it, Beak? She can move away, but you can’t!” Mrs. Pio-Pio had cackled out and took the form of a purple-blue badger.
A wave of trepidation swept through the class. But Beak, although taken aback at first, was not going to give up so easily. He uttered in his mind the formulas of determination and resistance – his down grew stronger and turned into the gray needles of a hedgehog.
Emotional mother hens, watching the class activities, cackled, and Blacky, Beak’s mother, a Spanish Minorca chicken, proudly raised her red comb, like a flamenco dancer holding a fan.
“Well done, Beak!” Mrs. Pio-Pio praised him, taking on the appearance of an ordinary Rhode Island laying hen, “If I hadn’t known that it was you who had taken the form of a hedgehog, I would have lost some droppings out of fear… Well, as a reward, I’ll let you visit your girlfriend.”
Without waiting for any additional conditions or restrictions, which are always expected from adults, Beak ran as fast as he could to the large oak tree, where Chicka was already fighting with an earthworm.
“Hold it tight!” he shouted to his girlfriend as he ran and with all his strength pulled the wriggling end of the invertebrate.
“Plume!” there were two halves, but, most importantly, none of the birds dared to approach the two hedgehogs celebrating their victory over the terrible snake.
* * *
The warm summer has passed. Cool autumn days have arrived. Sometimes a snow fell on the cooled black ground. Fluffy yellow lumps became young birds, covered with snow-white feathers. Mrs. Pio-Pio counted her pupils every day. Usually this procedure brought her joy mixed with sadness… She could not understand why some lived and prospered on the farm, while others disappeared unknown where.
“This is how our world works,” she spun her mental chicken yarn, “Some are destined to change it, and others are destined to serve as chicken meat.”
Mrs. Pio-Pio was proud of her students: both those who successfully form-modified reality, and others who left the poultry yard early, placing their plucked carcasses on the altar of human prosperity.
She closed her eyes and dozed off.
At this time, a young “led” fox cub, Foks, crept up to the fence of the poultry farm. “Led” – because he still couldn’t pronounce “R” well and often said “L” instead.
But he had already planned an adventure – to crawl under the fence, separating the farm from the forest, and drag away a chicken. His mother, the red-haired beast Pippi, was teaching him that stealing a bird from the yard is highest level mastery, for which he has not yet grown his tail.
“Why, mom?” Foks was surprised, “There are a lot of bilds there, just glab any one and lun. And in the folest, filst tlack, then guald, and glab, if you’re lucky.”
“Because, my silly son,” his mother answered, “In the forest you will be left, at worst, without a dinner, and in the yard, at best, without your tail!”
But Foks really wanted to try his hand. And without telling anyone where he was going, he began digging under the fence of the poultry farm.
The closer to the exit, the more pleasant the smell of bird flesh became.
“That’s OK,” he thought, “I still have my powel.”
The farm was quiet. The birds scattered to their incubators and poultry houses, and only the restless ones, Beak and Chicka, were still walking together.
“I’m uneasy, Beak: it’s already dark, it’s hard to see, and Mrs. Pio-Pio didn’t recommend going for a walk after lights out.”
“And you, Chicka, hung up your earlobes. The chickens are laughing! What are you, fluffy chick? It’s already fledged and you’ll start laying eggs soon. And you reason like a preschooler. We are protected by a guard, two dogs, a fence and our form-modification!”
“Listen, Beak! Who, if not me, will worry about you and our future brood? Are you sure that Chicken Magic will help in all cases? The watchman took the dogs into his warm chicken coop. I myself heard him tell them, “My old woman has been casting spells all her life, she never went to the doctors, but she rushed off to have vaccination as a rocket.” Maybe life behind the fence is not at all what we imagine it to be?”
Before Beak had time to answer to Chicka, Foks’s sharp muzzle appeared from under the farm fence, followed by the fluffy red body of a fox cub.
“Co-Co-Ca-peesh?” Chicka began to lament, but Beak was on the alert.
He was already pronouncing the main magical formulas, turning into a wolf cub.
“I’ll make a red little hood out of you now!” he growled in a voice that was not his own, strengthen his navel while Chicka was covering with brown bear hair.
“I’ll get you!” she growled for good measure.
Foks trembled. He did not expect that the birds were protected by forest animals with whom he had no intention of messing with. Without taking his eyes off the wolf cub and the bear cub, he began to slowly back away towards the dug hole. And suddenly, his tail came across something soft and fluffy.
“Fox telliels!” the thought of dogs flashed.
But it was the red-haired beast Pippi, who rushed to help her son.
“Oh, you are a little blaggalt,” she mimicked Foks, “You never know what you will see at night. You have to smell it. What it smells – that it is!”
And it was as if a veil had fallen from the little fox’s eyes, and he saw a white cockerel and a hen and one large black hen rushing towards them, so that its spurs sparkled. It was Mrs. Pio-Pio, taking on the image of a panther, who selflessly rushed to the aid of her students. And in the distance the door of the guardhouse had already opened, and two dogs had already rushed out, and the watchman was already aiming his gun.
“Immediately into the trench!” Pippi commanded, grabbed the “panther” by the thin chicken neck and, following Foks, dived into the black hole between two worlds.
“Poor Mrs. Pio-Pio,” said Chicka. “She will never dream of a rest again.”
“Have the Elysian Fields!” Beak crowed goodbye.
* * *
The phone rang in the poultry farm director’s office.
“Poultry farm Djudjalarim. The director is listening.”
“Tofik Jafarovich, it’s Samoilov from the newspaper that’s bothering you. Have you heard the news about the pillow factory?”
“Our regional one? “Down and Feathers”? Where do we supply the down? No, I haven’t heard. And what happened?”
“The correspondent conducted an interview at the factory. They rename themselves as “No Down, No Feather”, abandon natural down and switch to synthetics.
“Are you joking? This is ruin for us. At least at the half! What about the contract?”
“They said that it was cheaper to pay the penalty than to compensate customers for allergy treatment. By the way, I can sell you some advice – release new sets of chicken legs. I’ve already thought of a good name: “Legs for the streets.” If there is an overload with cutting chickens, there is a company that will happily…”
“Samoilov, come get some chicken – this is for information provided, but I don’t buy advice. We can put half the province under the knife!”
After hanging up the phone, the director of the poultry farm became thoughtful. Bad news! To balance the loss of income, the number of chickens must first be halved.
“Lucky you!” he turned to the cat Vasily, whom for some reason his wife fell in love with, “You’ll soon overeat with chicken.”
“Piss!” the scout answered and dashed into the yard to urgently report the news to the Chicken Mages.
Almost the entire chicken population of the farm gathered at the central site of the facility. The speaker was a young but socially active cockerel – Beak.
“If we don’t take protective measures, then many of us will face a meat processor. I propose to cause not a temporary magical change of feathers to fur, but a permanent mutation. Volunteers should catch bird flu from migrating geese, while we should get a swine flu vaccination. Furry chickens will make handling more difficult. They will have to be shaved, not plucked. We think that difficulties will delay the disposal of chickens, but there is no guarantee that it will not be the other way around –speeding disposals up! It is impossible to know for sure.
The activist’s words were received with alarming clucking. But no other proposals were received. And how can you get an unusual vaccine?
“Co-co-co-cat!” Chicka spoke out.
It was wise. Who, if not the Great Meow, could deliver it?
* * *
The next morning, the forwarder Fyodor was very happy when Olga Petrovna, the wife of the director of the poultry farm, asked to take her to a pig farm a hundred miles from here. However, he couldn’t stand cats at all, but Olga, to his surprise, took her cat Vasia with her on the trip.
“What a BS!” Fyodor thought about the trip, the cat and Olga.
He suspected a completely different reason why he had already helped Olga Petrovna on trips around the region. He always tried his best and didn’t seem to screw up. But this time neither the pig farm nor Vasily were encouraging.
“Not only are we going so far, we’re also dragging a living witness with us,” Fyodor thought with irritation, “It seems that the cat witness was not taken into account, but… I was worried about the case of a friend whose dog brought a smartphone into the toilet just when he was peeing. The friend was unable to convince his wife that the dog accidentally took the photo and he had no intention of sending it to anyone…”
They start their trip quite early, but when Fyodor wanted to stop for a rest in the middle of the route, Olga protested,
“Let’s drink coffee, you can eat, and we’ll move on! We have an important task. We’ll rest later if we have time.”
Fyodor didn’t like this “if”, but the position of a freight forwarder and a family friend obliged him. And they moved on.
They were greeted respectfully at the pig farm,
“Welcome, colleagues! Yes, we have a swine flu vaccine. We will be happy to share it with you, but just for these sum…”
Such numbers made Fyodor’s legs weak, but he hoped that only legs. And on the way back they still had to rest.
The thermostat with the vaccine was loaded into the SUV and driven back. Vasily again occupied Olga Petrovna’s lap and purred contentedly.
“What does it matter to him?” thought Fyodor, “If I were a cat, I would never go shaking on the roads for four or five hours on Olga’s lap. Even as a person I wouldn’t go like that!”
But the greatest disappointment awaited Fyodor at a halt at a small tavern and hotel, where they had already vacationed before.
Unexpectedly for Fyodor, after dinner Olga turned to the cat,
“What, Vasen’ka, should we rest for an hour or hurry home?”
And damn Vasen’ka meowed to his mistress to come back!
Fyodor had to carry out Olga Petrovna’s will, but the forwarder looked unkindly at his opponent and thought,
“What if I kick you along the ridge at home?” and was horrified by the answer he received in his thoughts,
“And what if I hit your balls on a poultry farm?”
After this short conversation, Fyodor no longer wanted to deal with the owner’s cat. He even began to suspect a strange connection between it and Olga Petrovna, but, to be honest, he attributed all these crazy thoughts to fatigue and lack of fresh air in the car.
“Let’s go back and check the exhaust system for sealing,” he thought, “What a BS comes to my mind!”
* * *
It was no coincidence that Tofik Jafarovich invested his money in chicken vaccination. With such bad news, he only needed mass death among his chiken. His task was to slaughter healthy chickens gradually, and not to kill the remaining ones within a week and sell off the buildings of the poultry farm, which would no longer be needed.
But the vaccine brought along with the health of the chickens a result that was unexpected for the farm director and expected by Beak.
“Think, imagine what furry creatures you are!” taught the Chicken Mage.
The feathers from the chickens became useless goods, and in their place thick boar bristles grew. Now, in order to sell carcasses, chickens had to be shaved rather than plucked!
“Crap! I was caught like a chicken!” thought the director of the poultry farm.
Olga Petrovna offered to buy them wax for hair removal.
“Stupid woman! May be you want to offer Brazilian style!” Tofik yelled at his wife in anger, although he himself really liked it when Olga did this.
One way or another, additional losses were brewing, but it was necessary to save what was left – take good care of the chickens, and gradually reduce their number to benefit sales.
Chicka was beside herself,
“Listen, Beak! Despite all our efforts, the director did not lose. In our chess game there is a Chicken stalemate. This draw suits the director, but not us. We only need chicken check and mate!
“When did you learn to play chess?”
“I do not know. I once have pecked a chess study from Kasparov’s book, and then it just happened in my head.”
“Chicka, you are The Hen with a capital H! Just a Chicken Grandmaster! Do you have any saving ideas?”
“You know, Beak, I love you, but I don’t really share your views on magic. This is an excellent defense tool – they see us differently, they fear us and do not attack us. That’s great! But does this make us furry and strong? No! But one injection of the pork vaccine – and we were covered with real hair.”
“I still love you Chicka, no matter what your body is covered with, even scales.”
“In that case, listen to my idea: vaccinated chickens can influence not only the growth of their feathers or hair, but also the growth of their bones. They should imagine that their wings are expanding. And then, perhaps, this will happen.”
“This is brilliant, Chicka! I’m proud of you, my white swan!”
Beak, out of a surge of feelings, began to flap his wings, jump on the bride and mount the entire poultry yard.
And the next morning poultry woke up with long, swan-like wings. The birds elegantly rose into the clouds and headed to the Promised Land of nesting.
“We’ve finished the game! The business now is flied away!” the director of the farm said in his hearts.
“Where did they fly?” Olga asked Tofik.
“What a flock! I don’t know. If I were them, I would move to a place where money are growing on trees… And what do you say about all of this, our friend, Vasily?”
The cat imagined the next stage of emancipation – a flock of flying cows – and smiled into his whiskers,
“Purr-sht!” he purred, stretching with the whole body of an alien and scout, ideally adapted to terrestrial conditions.
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