One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(2)

On the day of the race, the tortoise and hare met for the first time in five years at the starting line, and shared a brief, private conversation as their whole world watched.

“Good luck, hare,” said the tortoise, as casual as ever. “Whoa! You know what’s funny—do that again—huh, from this angle you look like a duck. Now you look like a hare again. Funny. Anyway, good luck, hare!”

“And good luck to you, tortoise,” whispered the hare, leaning in close. “And just so you know—nobody knows this, and if you tell anyone I said it, I’ll deny it—but I’m not really a hare. I’m a rabbit.”

This wasn’t true—the hare just said it to f*ck with him.

“On your mark, get set, GO!”

There was a loud bang, and the tortoise and hare both took off from the starting line.

Never, in the history of competition—athletic or otherwise, human or otherwise, mythical or otherwise—has anyone ever kicked anyone’s ass by the order of magnitude that the hare kicked the ass of that goddamn f*cking tortoise that afternoon.

Within seconds, the hare was in the lead by hundreds of yards. Within minutes, the hare had taken the lead by more than a mile. The tortoise crawled on, slow and steady, but as he became anxious at having lost sight of his competitor and panicked over what he seemed to have done to his legacy, he started speeding up: less slow, less steady. But it hardly mattered. Before long—less than twenty minutes after the seven-mile race had begun—word worked its way back to the beginning of the race that the hare had not only won the contest, and had not only recorded a time that was a personal best, but had also set world records not only for all hares but also for leporids and indeed for all mammals under twenty pounds. When news reached the tortoise, still essentially under the banner of the starting line, he fainted. “Oh, now he’s napping?! Isn’t that rich,” heckled a nearby goat, drunk on radish wine.

Those who didn’t know the context—who hadn’t heard about the first race—never realized what was so important about this one. “A tortoise raced a hare, and the hare won? Okay.” They didn’t understand the story, so they didn’t repeat it, and it never became known. But those who were there for both contests knew what was so special about what they had witnessed: slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.





Dark Matter





“And that’s the puzzling thing about dark matter,” said the scientist at the end of our planetarium tour. “It makes up over ninety percent of the universe, and yet nobody knows what it is!”

People on the tour chuckled politely, like Wow, isn’t that a fun fact?

But I looked closer at the scientist, and I could tell something from the smirky little smile on his fat smug face:

This motherf*cker knew exactly what dark matter was.

“So as you look up at the skies tonight, I hope you have a little more perspective, knowing more about what we know—and don’t know—about our vast and magical …” etcetera etcetera.

Everyone clapped and the tour guide smiled that smug smile I mentioned before and waved goodbye without opening his fingers like the huge fat nerd that he was. Everyone else on the tour headed back to their cars, but I kind of sidled up to the scientist with quite a little fake smile of my own.

Two can play this game, fatso.

“Pretty interesting tour you gave there,” I said. “Lotta interesting facts.”

“I’m glad you had a good time!” he said with that smug smile again.

“Oh, I did, I did,” I lied. “In fact, I’d like to ask you something about Saturn.” I gestured to a dark corner of the hallway.

“Sure,” he said, still smiling at me and ignoring my pointing. “What would you like to know?”

“Over there, over there,” I said to the fat f*ck, pointing to the dark corner. “Past by where the coats are. There’s a diorama of Saturn that I think is all f*cked up. The rings and stuff. Come here. I want your expert opinion.”

“I can’t imagine they would have gotten the rings of Saturn wrong,” he said. “Oh, unless maybe you mean the mural at the entrance? The one for tots?”

“Yeah, that,” I said.

We walked toward the corner and when we got there I grabbed the string of the tour badge around his neck and twisted it and choked him hard.

“What is dark matter?” I said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he coughed. “Nobody knows.”

I pulled the cord tighter.

“We can measure its effects,” he said. “We only know what it isn’t.”

“Well, work backwards, bitch! You know what it isn’t, so what is it?”

I pulled the cord tighter, and with my other hand I started pinching him in cutesy, creepy ways. Nothing that hurt, just things to scare him and make him think, Jesus, who is this guy? What else would he do?

“All right,” he whispered. “All right. I know what it is.”

That was more like it. I eased up on the cord a bit.

“If this is a trap, I swear to God, I will come back and kill you,” I said.

I was just bluffing. I didn’t want to kill this guy and go to jail for the rest of my life. I was curious about this one thing, but not that curious. Plus, if I killed him I’d never get to know what dark matter was, and it was kind of driving me crazy. Ninety percent of the universe, and we have no idea what it is? How are we supposed to sleep at night? Actually, maybe I was that curious!