[This is one of my earliest creative works that is not lost to time, and its date of origin is only December 16, 2012. “On Shovels” began life as legitimate advice to a friend about “how to use the established framework of genre to set up and break the expectations of the reader, so as to make good art,” as I said in a 2015 author’s note. Basically: You can do whatever you want. Let the constraints of good sense come after you apply your wild creativity. And in this case, not at all.]
(in Swedish, meta means “to angle for fish”)
Start off telling the story of some normal highschoolers and their ordinary troubles and concerns when suddenly APOCALYPSE happens and they’re fighting for food against the dedomesticated dogs-become-wolves!
And once things have settled down and they think a new normal has been established, a mysterious visitor (who looks very much like the main protagonist we’ve been following) comes into their camp and announces that she is from two years in the future and has a warning to give them, but before she reveals any juicy future information, someone goes mad and transmogrifies into a pig and runs into the forest!
Then cut to a lengthy description of Saturn’s moon Titan especially about its permanent south pole hurricane and how that marks a change in the weather since yesterday.
Narrated by the pig.
Cut to Imperial Japan in a room where an old magistrate lies ill in an opulent bed.
The occasional violent cough shakes him in his bed.
A young man wearing a modern suit enters.
His gait suggests that he has recently recovered from a broken leg.
The suited man asks, “Have you lived the good life?”
The magistrate replies between coughs, “I have lived well and have no more enemies.”
The young man unsheaths a katana and proclaims, “That’s not strictly speaking TRUE!”
Stabbing the old man in the heart with the last word.
The magistrate lets out his last breath and coughs, “Et tu Caesar?”
The Conqueror sheaths his sword speaking with an undeniable force, “Stay down this time Brutus.”
A moment passes.
And he leaves.
Cut to a new mother lovingly reading Gödel, Escher, Bach to her newborn as they fall asleep together on a couch in their living room. Describe extensively the extreme normality of the room (assuming the voice of an omnipresent narrator with a distaste for babies).
Cut to a flock (herd?) of moa birds in New Zealand circa 500 CE.
Be very concerned about whether to call it a flock or a herd.
Slowly reveal that the narrator for this part is actually the herd (flock?) of moa itself, with each bird contributing a bit of sapience so that the whole flock (or maybe it is herd…) has achieved a reasonable intelligence and is developing a rudimentary scientific method.
Enter into the scene one of the highschoolers who was named at the very beginning but never mentioned again.
This person has a gender ambiguous name and is only referred to by their name and the singular they.
Anyway, this person enters the scene by a shovel suddenly bursting up out of the ground amidst the herd (flock?) of moa, breaking its train of thought.
They dig up into the open air and reveal themself to be covered in grime and say, “Hello! I’m [name] from before!” (while they’re ostensibly saying this to the moa flock/herd, this statement is meant for the reader and should be fish-anglery in an obvious way) and then jump into a nearby lake to clean some of the muck off but there’s a crocodile!
And suddenly they’re in a dire struggle, tearing apart crocodiles with their bare hands!
Describe the gruesome scene entirely in terms of cuts of beef.
Cut to me finishing the first draft of “On Shovels” and wondering what the hell I just wrote.
Pan the camera from me to a mirror, revealing YOU as camera wielder and say to the camera, “I’ll bet you didn’t realize that this wasn’t a book…”
Cut to a description of the pig, which at this point has had arcane symbols and ancient hieroglyphs branded all over its body and have the pig wonder, “Wait, what caused that apocalypse in the first place?”
And give the pig an explanation involving intercosmic war, time travel, and a mysterious case of amnesia that was all.
The pig eats the explanation because it was just a bunch of papers you gave to it.
End the book now and say that the sequel will be out as soon as the pig is sacrificed.
The original protagonist wakes up and rushes to the window of her bedroom to see if her dream was actually a reality.
But her window isn’t a window — it’s a mirror.
And all she sees is that she is a herd of moa.
Or maybe a flock.
And she screams.