FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Author's Notes: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2047865/

Screwnaux wasn't the kind of stork Coleman had expected to get. He'd expected a bird that was all elegance and austerity, pristine in white feathers, with a polished beak and the little blue hat folded nice and neat. Just his luck to get the downer of the bunch, though. Screwnaux's feathers were the gray of dust and mold, limp and disarrayed, looking as though they'd be tangled up if they weren't too embarrassingly short to manage a good tangle. The cap was wrinkled and had lint on it. Even Screwnaux's eyes seemed duller, dimmer, and he spoke with a slow drawl to match his aggravatingly slow gestures, as though he were making motions underwater. Coleman had been prepared to deal with a lot of paperwork, but he hadn't been prepared to deal with it in slow motion!

"Yah filed form B-12 befah B-11, yah seeeee, so yah have tah redo B-11 and resend in thah propah ordaaahh," Screwnaux was explaining. "And please be shah to use thah propah inks this time. Remembah, red for thah primary form informashunnnns, blue for thah secondary triplicates, and black for signatchaaahhhs."

Coleman rubbed his forehead and tried to focus. It was hard. Five months. Five months! So many forms and papers and little rules all blurring together. He couldn't stop now, though. After all this work, to have it all come to nothing? No way. He was getting that kid!

"I'm running out of blue ink. It's really expensive. Can I just use green for the secondaries, like in the first five forms? I've got some green left..."

He didn't know why he bothered asking. He knew the answer already.

"Afraid not, saaaahhh. Ah know this is all verah hahd on you, but we have the system in place for a reason, and it's all for the good of the populaaaaace."

The self-righteous pose the stork used for punctuation, one wing curled up to the chest, was just too much, and Coleman's strained temper snapped. "Just tell me this. Tell me this. Okay? What's so good about making me wait half a year for a baby? Huh? I'm not abusive, you know I'm not! I'd be a great dad! All I want is a little kid to teach everything I know to, someone who can take my inheritance, someone I can be proud of and trust. All the guys at the office are in it for themselves, but it's different when it's your own flesh and blood, everyone says so. What's wrong with that? Is it some kind of sin, to continue a great legacy so the world will still be a great place tomorrow, with a great farm equipment repairing company in it?!"

"Why not at all, saahhh. Nothing wrong with it at alllll. But yah see..." Screwnaux paused for so long that Coleman felt a forehead vein throb before the stork finally continued. "Yah see, we up at Above just want to make shah all infants sent down to this great big wondrous human world get to thah right plaaaaaces. Just the right places, perfect places for perfect new-made lives. Think about it... a baby, why, it could be anything, anyone. Teaching it to grow up right, that's a big responsibility."

"Maybe even the biggest one," Coleman chimed in robotic chorus with Screwnaux, long since familiar with the speech.

As he confided to his coworkers sometimes in rooms unoccupied by avians, sometimes he thought that the storks went a little too far... like they figured babies were divine things to worship, or something. They were just babies. They'd grow up to be people like everyone else. Coleman didn't see what all the fuss was about. People who wanted kids and who weren't crazy or abusive or anything should have them, shouldn't they? Wasn't that a basic human right? But storks acted like getting a baby was a privilege, an incredibly priceless gift, and them the ones with the wisdom and discernment to dole out those gifts. What a load.

Coleman dodged any further pontificating by lighting a blueberry-scented candle, which he happened to know Screwnaux hated. But Screwnaux didn't know he knew. The scent served its purpose to finish up their business... well, not quickly, because Screwnaux didn't grasp that concept, but at least without any more tangents. He stood up knee-creakingly to see the stork off, shaking Screwnaux's wing in false geniality. Screwnaux made an attempt to straighten his hat before leaving, but it only slumped to the other side limply. Coleman watched the stork who was supposed to 'help' him get a baby leave, and had to wonder, not for the first time, how intent Screwnaux really was on helping.

#

Too many glasses. Too many bottles. Definitely too many colors. Coleman hated the place but he was here anyway, because he felt like he fit in. It was a place people went when they wanted to be distracted from everything else. A bar that screamed 'I'm THIS awesome, baby, so come get drunk in me!' with every square inch of architecture. Good for keeping your mind off of how old you were, with no one to run things properly once you were gone.

Yeah, it was a bar for lonely old people.

The actual bar of the bar enclosed most of the room. Lighting was set specifically to show off the huge variety of colorful glasses, most of which had to be for show. But the bartenders had some kind of system to keep track of it all, because they'd know just the right bottle out of the glassy forest to snatch when a drink was called for. It was pretty and welcoming, but tried exhaustively too hard at both. He slumped in a chair, feeling like he was collapsing heavily inwards on himself.

Coleman didn't really like to drink, but he drank anyway, because no one wants to be the jerk ordering club soda. Besides, a few of the guys from work were here, and he had to look like he was enjoying himself. He smiled and laughed at nearby strangers till he wanted to rip his jaw off and drown in the blood.

Seemed like it was like that with most of the others, too. Glass half-empty folks putting on fronts, painfully aware of the tick of every little second eating away at their lives. They still didn't have a reason to be home instead of out drinking. Every tick of the clock made it harder to get a reason, too. The ones who actually accepted that and enjoyed their solitude tended to gravitate elsewhere, towards nastier drinking holes where you could bust someone's lip and not get thrown out for it. This was a place for people who were waiting.

For people who had been kept waiting.

He drifted, out of a need for something to listen to that would devour thought, towards the back where a small ring of regulars argued furiously. The kind of arguing with lots of gestures and only slightly less spitting. He let the barking sounds wash over his ears and blank his memory, and after a bit started to actually listen, hearing words with immediate relevance.

"And how long?!" the loudest of them bellowed, standing on his chair. He wasn't reeling or stumbling, which was actually a little creepy. You expected drunk people to be brash in bars. Sober people being brash in bars were more potentially troublesome. "How long," the man repeated, almost growling. The flamingo-pink bottles behind his head made an oddly cheery halo for the balding man, who Coleman had seen before but never talked to. He had a toupee, but wore it so badly that it was clear he didn't even care anymore; it was more like a fuzzy little hat than anything else. "A day, the damned birds tell us, it'll only take a day. Well, that turns into a week, doesn't it? And then they say a week, maybe two at the most, and THAT, just like magic, turns into a whole month! You've all seen the pictures of Above, you've seen how many birds there are up there. Not many. Not enough to justify the kinda crap they pull on us! It's not bloat, so what is it? I'll tell you what it is, it's a freaking grip on our balls! Oh, they trickle 'em out every once in a while, a baby here, a baby there, just enough so they can SAY they're keepin' their word and doin' their job. But it's all beak service."

At a confused mumble from the listeners, Toupee Man sighed in exasperation. "You know, lip service, but they don't have lips 'cause they've got beaks instead?" he explained with a barest fringe of patience. "It's just beak service. All of it. They SAY they're doing the best they can, but what they're REALLY doin' is takin' the payment and giving us hardly anything in return. I bet it's REAL cozy in Above, in those places they don't let visitors see. They probably get robots to do most of the real work while they sit on their asses and drink their appletinis all day.

"Bet they get great reception up there," one guy broke in dreamily. It would've been a smartass comment from most people, but Coleman recognized Jantree from work, a man whose brain was like shards from a shattered window in slow motion, and no bets on the angles. Frustrating if you weren't used to it, entertaining if you were.

Toupee Man wasn't a bad speaker, but he wasn't so captivating that he made everyone want to listen and nod. Still... a lot of what he was saying resonated with Coleman's own suspicions. A lot of it. They'd just trusted the storks for so very long, and when had that trust ever been shown to be justified beyond a shadow of a doubt? Storks were just like regular people from what he could tell. Lazy. Selfish. Ignorant.

More people were talking now, the discussion was getting well and truly derailed, but Coleman decided to re-rail it. He wanted to see where it went, even if it only led to a dead end. "Let's say you're right, in theory," he called out towards Toupee Man. Heads turned but he had no nervousness to squelch; people, like any soft pack animal, wanted herding. "So the storks're all getting fat off of us and giving us a bare minimum back. What're we supposed to do about it?"

Toupee Man fixed him with a gaze like red steel fresh from the forge and already intent on skewering before being cooled down. Yet somehow Coleman found his eyes drifting back towards the top of his head again. It took a conscious effort to stop it.

"I'll tell ya what we do about it." Toupee Man seemed torn between leaning closer or standing straighter, and in the end got off the chair to walk close to Coleman while not compromising spinal dignity. "We INVADE those feather-moltin', egg-layin' twats. I've got a friend with a license for flying and a crop dusting plane. If there were any of you with the balls enough to go it with us, we could fly up to Above, smash through to the nursery and grab all the kids we wanted. But it's not gonna happen, because you're all cowards. Which is why I've been talkin' this same shit over'n over in this same miserable bar for half a year now."

"That doesn't sound safe for the kids, does it?" another put in.

"The storks could consider it an act of war," Coleman said thoughtfully, turning the idea over in his head, poking it for flaws and finding way too many. "And they probably have some kind of defenses." He had to admire the raw guts of it, though. No one had ever attacked Above before. Storks on the ground, sure, but Above? Why bother when they were so few, so harmless, and so distant? Especially when the destruction of Above would mean the destruction of all current and future babies for the human race! Not a gamble anyone had ever thought worth taking...

Till now.

Not till now, because people could take just about anything in small enough doses, but sometimes, if things got too grating, a random psyche would snap, and pave the way for mobs with torches. Toupee Man was snapped, but Coleman figured that maybe in a few years he'd be Toupee Man himself, if things kept on the way they were.

"Psh. It'd be safe enough the way we'd rig the plane, I've got this all planned out. S'not like we'd go in guns blazing! It'd be a tactical strike, a surgical maneuver. In and out before the birds know what's hit 'em, and what're they gonna do about it? Throw eggs on the whole human race? It'd be egg on their faces in the end if they did that, and they're smart enough t'know that!"

"Still could be defenses. You could still run into something you're not prepared for and be dead in the water."

"Sky," Jantree corrected him with one of those little grins that made Coleman's neck-hairs tingle.

"There could be anything up there," Toupee Man said with acidic condescension. "But we won't know unless we try! You seem like a smart guy-"

"Thanks, I try," Coleman interrupted snarkily purely because he hated that phrase.

"-do you wanna spend the rest of your life fillin' out forms and getting squat till you're wearin' adult diapers?" Toupee Man rolled on. "Don't you think we all owe it to ourselves to at least try for better? For a future, for tomorrow, for a brighter time when we can KNOW that we've got kids to care for and be cared for by, where we can indulge in proper familial instincts the way the Good freakin' Lord intended?"

"You know what," one man said, "I'll do it."

"Really?" Toupee Man seemed shocked, but surprise quickly gave way to a Cheshire grin. "Not just pullin' my chain, Jobbers?"

"I'll do it," Jobbers repeated, mouth seeming to move independently of the rest of his stony face. "Half a decade I've been listening to you talk all pissy, the proudest wannabe revolutionary anyone's ever had the displeasure t'see. I'll help you pull this crap off, and it'll fail spectacularly, and we'll all go to jail. And you'll stop talking about this crap, finally, because good Christ I am sick of hearing it."

"Hah! Well, at least one of you's got some! Anyone else? Eh? Who wants to snatch some hope for the future from the nest of oppression?"

"I'll give it a try," Jantree put out, as though he could opt out in the middle if it wasn't going well or something. Toupee Man roared his approval but it was Jantree's smiling head bob that held Coleman's attention. Nothing about that guy was normal.

Then the ball was rolling. Almost half the little crowd signed up, in the end. And Coleman watched quietly, thinking, thinking....

There was no way it could possibly work.

But still.

Just to have hope again.....

He was so tired of being mature, of being patient, of growing older while playing by the rules and doing things the correct way. A man could poison himself to death on doing things just the right way. Sometimes you needed to be stupid.

"I guess I'll go, too," he said finally, and Toupee Man gripped his hand with a shake like a weapon. "What's your name?"

"Snappledroop."

Coleman couldn't help but snort with laughter. "That is the best name I've ever heard."

"Shut up," Snappledroop replied with such immediacy that it had to be a hardwired response to a common occurrence. "And gimme your number. I'll let you know when everything's in place."

#

They were riding in a large net stapled (Coleman desperately hoped) firmly to the body of the little plane. All that grandstanding, months of planning, years of wanting this?

It all boiled down to being thrown into a net and clinging on for dear life to the little wooden handholds that had been nailed on expressly for that purpose.

At least the babies would have a better time of it on the way out; there were plenty of babyseats built right into the plane down deep where the wind wouldn't blow much, with enough extra straps, buckles, and seatbelts to give a bondage fan a heart attack. They couldn't get more than a dozen at best, but then, there were only six of them, so with a baby on each arm, in the most optimistic of scenarios that was about right. It wasn't like they'd be able to go back for seconds.

With luck they wouldn't get any bad seeds. The storks insisted that all their infants were high quality stock, but everyone knew that the people the storks didn't like ended up with little sociopaths or mentally challenged kiddies. Just one more reason to give this completely ludicrous and probably suicidal plan a try. At the very least they'd be famous for it. Coleman could live with being a famous failure. Could die with it too, if it came to that.

Coleman opened his mouth to yell a question towards the unfortunately-named Snappledroop, but was interrupted by an insectile intrusion.

"Mind the bugs," Jantree said in a gentle tone that Coleman more imagined than actually heard through the noise of flight. For some reason he winked.

Coughing and twisting his face in a disgusted grimace, Coleman nodded and looked away. Anything was better than looking at that weirdo. Wait, not anything. Down was worse. A lot worse. There were clouds down there!

"We're here!" Snappledroop roared, a raucous warcry the deaf couldn't miss. He topped it off by pointing dramatically. It was easy to imagine a booming musical chorus in the background.

Considering it was home to the most hardcore bureaucrats in the world, Above was a startlingly beautiful place. It was the kind of beautiful that got dreamt up by little girls who were constantly told that they were, in fact, pretty pretty princesses. There was a lot of pink involved, and shimmering gates, and gazebos, and latticework, and flowers (mostly baby's breath, of course). The architecture seemed more grown out of its surroundings than built, all rounded curves and gentle slopes; there were more windows than walls. All of this rested on the whitest, fluffiest cloud to ever be imagined as a sheep by a sky-gazer.

No storks outside, at least on the side they were approaching from. That part of Above was more for show than practical use; the chill, thin outside air wasn't healthy for infantile lungs. They zoomed in on an outcropping with grass trimmed to exactly one inch. The 'cargo' squeezed out of the net and clambered down to the ground, stretching bodies that had endured a trip not designed for the comfort of mortal men. The air wasn't any better, but at least the ground was soft as velvet. Half the group collapsed onto it, kissing the grassy soil gratefully, while Coleman stood, along with Snappledroop.

"Good luck, guys," the pilot told them in a way that made it clear he was glad he wasn't part of this phase of the operation. Leaving the plane on Above for the whole mission was far too risky on top of all the other chances they already had to take; their transport would meet them back here in half an hour. They'd even synchronized their watches for it.

"Right, then," Snappledroop said roughly. He had only two ways of speaking: rabble-rousing angry, or gruffly serious. Even when he was supposed to be happy about something he only grudgingly let the emotion show in the barest outskirts of his expression and tone, like an unwanted guest he was uncomfortable housing. "Everyone got their maps?" Six scrolls of paper dutifully unrolled, a sound like small polite applause. "Remember the teams: me, Chandle, Jantree take the out of use big door on this wing, Coleman, Jobbers, and Tand take the little side entrance on the next wing south-south-east. Coleman's in charge of team two on account of the fact that he whimpered the least on the trip up." Who was to be in charge of the first team was left unstated but obvious. "Use the walkie talkie if you get into any trouble, but make SURE no one hears you."

"It would be easier to do that if they had volume control," Tand pointed out. They were Snappledroop's walkie talkies, and they were about as cheap as those things could get without actually being childrens' toys.

"Well, you'll just have to be extra careful then! Coleman, you got your gun?"

Coleman nodded reluctantly and pulled back his coat to show the holster. He hadn't wanted to take weapons at all. The added complications were not things he was prepared to handle. Snappledroop had been adamant, though, and Coleman was the only one with a license. So they'd compromised; he had a gun, but there weren't any bullets in it. They could nail him for the additional charge of carrying a weapon onto private property, but not for deadly assault. Or whatever kind of assault pointing a gun with bullets at it in people involved. He wasn't entirely sure. This was his first time being a criminal.

He was scared to death in the back of his mind, but didn't let the rest of his mind think about it too much.

"Terrific. Now, remember what I went over about their beaks... those things can stab as bad as knives. I hear some of the damned birds've taken to sharpening the bloody things. So stand well back if things get frisky. ...Coleman, look at my eyes when I'm talking t'you, dammit."

"I'm sorry, it's just... nevermind." Inevitably, his eyes drifted to the top of Snappledroop's head again.

"Stop looking at my damn hairpiece! I paid a lot of money so people would not stare at my scalp, thank you!"

"Well, how did you keep the thing on during the flight? It's uncanny."

"None of your business, that's how!"

"Glue?" Jantree suggested with his usual I'm-not-entirely-here-but-I'm-here-enough-to-make-you-uncomfortable tone.

"Christ's sakes, let's just get on with it. I've had all I can take of this preliminary bullshit." With that, Snappledroop stalked off, his partners trailing after like obedient ducklings.

"Staticky," Jantree murmured after a little, barely audible.

"What?!" Snappledroop snapped, clearly at his limit. Coleman decided that Snappledroop's limit would have to stretch a lot to get through this without a heart attack.

"The walkie talkies," Jantree explained, saying this through his walkie talkie to emphasize the point rather effectively.

"They'll do just fine! And keep the line clear unless there's an emergency!"

Coleman grinned. "Those two are gonna have fun. It'll be like a sitcom." He was sad he wouldn't see, but grateful he wasn't going with them. It was the sort of thing that was only funny from a safe distance.

"So. South-east-east door, right?" Tand asked, fidgeting. He didn't seem terribly comfortable. Had allergies, for all that Coleman knew; there were certainly enough flowers around to exaggerate that sort of thing, even with the icy-sharp breeze.

"South-south-east," Jobbers corrected. "Let's get this over with already. At least I'll look positively smashing in orange." That last bit delivered in an effeminate accent eerily close to that of the prissier storks.

"Off we go then, to glory or doom," Coleman said cheerily. "Hopefully the former." He was technically in charge but had no illusions about his role. Jobbers was only going to try so hard, and Tand was liable to follow whoever yelled at him the most at any given moment. Still, they were his for now. Maybe they'd get off to a great start and everything would be fine.

No, even he didn't believe that. But he had to pretend, at least.

They crept towards the tiny side entrance that was, in theory, completely unguarded. It would have been an enjoyable stroll through soft sproingy greenery, except that occasionally storks walked by inside Above, easily-visible from the huge windows. So they sidled and scrambled and crept from conveniently located piece of architecture to conveniently located piece of architecture, doing their best not to be seen. There was a white fence encompassing the perimeter, but it was strictly ornamental, a knee-high picket affair. That probably didn't bother the storks, since they could fly and all. Coleman had always envied them that a bit, but now more than ever before. It was a loooong way down, and he still remembered those childhood nightmares of falling endlessly.

The door was a tastefully subdued off-yellow, framed in off-gray. It had two knobs: one for human height, and one for stork height.

"Silver and gold, silver and gold..." Jobbers sang lowly and very badly. "That's what we'll be payin' to get out of this crap soon enough."

"Okay, that's enough pessimism for at least five minutes," Coleman chided, a bit sick of it already.

There was a small plaque next to the door, done in a light wood. Even the font was soothing.

A GENTLE REMINDER TO ALL

CLEAN UP ANY NOXIOUS EMISSIONS IMMEDIATELY!

YOUR CHARGE'S POO AND VOMIT IS YOUR POO AND VOMIT FOR THE CLEANSING!

GERMS ARE THE ENEMY OF TENDER LOVING CARE

LULLABIES AND LADYBUGS,

L. R. R. CLAMPEFOIGNE, ESQUIRE, HEAD-NANNY BY THE GRACE OF ABOVE

"Watch us step in something the minute we cross the threshold," Tand muttered. "It'd be... situational comedy? Dramatically appropriate? Something."

"I'm not sure that'd qualify as situational comedy," Coleman said, eyes scanning windows for any tall, angular stork shapes. "I think it's more slapstick."

"S'not irony?" Jobbers put in. "Sounds like it'd be irony to me. I mean, I'm no expert on comedicus appropriatus, but..."

"First of all, contrary to certain cartoons, putting -us on the end of words doesn't magically turn it into Latin. Second of all, the rule about irony is that nothing that you think is ironic is, in fact, actually ironic. Let's go, I don't see anyone."

It was a funny feeling, going in. Laying a hand on the knob he inwardly cringed, as if he expected it to bite him. He had a great cause, even if the plan was spotty as a leopard, but still, he felt guilty. It felt like breaking in someone's home. But that was stupid, because Above was open to visitors at all times of day and night. The only difference with them was that they hadn't walked up to the front desk and asked for a pass and a vomit-shield escort. It was trespassing to go in without the permission slip that accompanied the pass and escort, but if they were caught before they did any babynapping the storks would most likely treat them with the utmost courtesy while expelling them. Storks were almost never temperamental so far as he knew. They didn't get angry. They just got increasingly annoying in an extremely civilized way.

And anyway, it wasn't like they had security systems that could tell whether people were walking around with or without a little pink slip of paper, right?

The very instant that thought came, Coleman knew it had been a mistake thinking it. He'd jinxed himself and doomed them all! The storks had to have ridiculously paranoid security. Above was home to the origins and future of both humans and storks! Who knew what kind of crazy setup the storks had in place to prevent little impatient meddling humans from gunking up their carefully-designed system, a cake composed of countless layers of red tape with anal-retentive frosting?

As the warm indoors air embraced him, he stood still, blocking the doorway, awaiting the wrath of a thousand avian nannies. He held his breath. Moments passed.

"Are you gonna let us in or what?"

Heaving a sigh, Coleman shuffled in a little ashamedly, letting Jobbers and Tand in behind him. There wasn't any such thing as jinxing yourself. He was being silly. No one had thought to try anything like this before, and so naturally the storks wouldn't think to have tight security. No alarms were going off, no metal barriers were slamming down, no trap doors were opening open. The storks were lazy, shortsighted bureaucrats, not paranoid mad scientists.

"This is really nice," Tand commented perkily, looking around. Coleman glanced over. The man already looked one hundred percent better in the womb-like inside temperature.

The wallpaper was eggshell white with green vines and pastel flowers. The floor was rubber, which was a bit unclassy, but he supposed it was easier to clean that way. The taupe paint-spackled ceiling was at an average, unintimidating height. There were regular light panels that illuminated every square inch while being glazed enough that you could comfortably stare right at them without blinking.

It was nice. Bland, but nice. And why not? No reason not to feel comfortable here. They'd all started out here in the first place after all. In a way this little invasion was like coming home... coming home to ransack the house, admittedly, but still. They were coming for human babies. Their babies. Their futures.

"Anyone feeling any subconscious babyhood memories welling up in their heads, or is it just me?" Tand asked in a low voice as they walked, rolling their feet to minimize the sound. The trouble was that human feet made a lot more noise than stork feet by default. And that squeaky rubber floor wasn't helping.

The distinct lack of dangerous encounters left Coleman with too much time to brood over the storks in ways he hadn't brooded before. He'd never seen a stork use its beak except for talking or sipping tea, but he'd read things in the paper that suddenly seemed more meaningful now. Stories about how brave storks had darn near pecked some fool's eyes out for assaulting 'their' children.

He was going to steal 'their' babies, and all he had was an unloaded gun.

The environment, gentle and tender though it was, didn't lull him into relaxation again. That oh so soft light was oppressive; the absence of shadow meant that much less space to hide. There were windows everywhere. The air was open and fresh, constantly circulating, because there was no place in Above that was truly cut off from the rest of it. Everything was soft and warm and edgeless, but that just made it easier for some wandering stork to smother you to death in perfect serenity should he choose to do so. All Coleman's doubts and worries rushed back to him, and he was terrified, but he didn't dare show it. Because he saw the other two were getting the same way, and someone had to fake nonchalance so that the rest of them could follow in kind. This wasn't going to fall apart because of him. And he deserved a child, after all he'd gone through, after all the years of hard work and lonely living, after the months and months of circular paperwork.

The map was pretty accurate, and after those first couple of storks they seemed to be enjoying a more or less deserted area of Above. He would have felt a little better if the place had actually been a bit dusty or shown other obvious signs of disuse, but hoping that the storks were slackers on cleanliness was plainly a lost cause.

They walked past an ornamental sun on the wall, and it opened its eyes.

"Hello, intruders," it greeted them with a voice warm and rich as syrup. "Lovely weather we'll be having, eh?"

There was a tension-filled pause.

"I don't think there is any weather indoors," Coleman said with careful politeness. "And actually, we're not intruders, we just... ah, dropped our passes."

The sun chuckled, rounded cheeks jiggling. "Of course, of course. By weather, I actually meant the agonizing rays of heat I will soon by raining down on your heads."

"You don't want to ruin the carpet, do you?" Coleman asked desperately to buy time while the three of them started backing away. Surely this thing couldn't be burning people all over the place, it would offend the storks' sense of aesthetics!

"No worries! I never miss." The sun grinned, displaying a set of piano key-white teeth as its eyes started to glow.

It followed them, moving through the air without any apparent method of locomotion.

"Time to run," Coleman murmured to the others, and with a meaningful group nod, they broke for it.

Bellowing with laughter, the sun followed just a little behind, and it wasn't long before Coleman felt painful, itchy welts slap onto the back of his head and neck, seared there by energy weaponry he didn't dare look at. This was bad enough. There was no way he was risking a blast to the eyes.

"Awfully... advanced... personality for an... AI... guard..." Jobbers managed to say between breaths for air. He was easily the heaviest of the three of them, although stout rather than fat, and Coleman wondered worriedly if the man would be able to keep up.

"Know a guy that sounds just like him back at work," Tand grumbled. "Always wanted to bash his smiling face in. Wish I'd brought a pipe."

Jobbers perked up at that surprisingly vicious sentiment, seemingly forgetting his weariness in the event of Tand showing some bile. "Nice... attitude! We'll go down... but we'll be a right pain... in the ass... first, right?"

"Quick, duck behind here!" Coleman said perhaps louder than was wise (given that the sun could hear), grabbing the two of them and hiding in yet another of countless identical empty rooms. They cowered at the door, crouching so they couldn't be seen through the window.

"Duck behind here?" Jobbers whispered bitingly. "Are you retarded? He was right behind us, when he realizes we've stopped running this'll be one of the first places he'll look."

"Well, it always works in the movies," Coleman whispered back defensively. So he didn't have a genius idea up his sleeve every single minute, so sue him!

The sun swooshed right past them, chortling with anticipation of further temperature-related sadism. They waited in strained quiet.

"See?" Coleman whispered, feeling justified. "It's just a dumb AI, not a real person. We fooled it."

"Mauve alert," a very gentle, breathy, only just barely masculine voice announced from nowhere at all, echoing all around the room and outside in the hallway. "Bad people present. Sun and moon defenses engaged."

Drat.

Of course there would be a real alarm system.

Well, he'd known this was a dumb plan from the start, hadn't he? And he'd gone along with it. So they weren't action heroes. They'd just make it up as they went along and survive somehow. And even if they failed, at least they'd done something rather than sat complaining back at home.

"...did he say sun and moon?" Tand asked with eyes like trapped mice.

No one was really surprised when a bellowing crescent moon burst through the door and tried to decapitate them all.

That was only the first of numerous varied torments the storks' security system had for them. There were the fake babies, made out of straw with button eyes, who wailed loudly enough to make everyone temporarily deaf. The squishy plastic mattresses that tried to suck you down into them. The ominous lullabies with lyrics tailored towards decreasing morale in a gentle, sleepy, motherly voice that was really quite unnerving, given that it was singing about the thousand and one horrible ways it would kill anyone who hurt her babies. The baby monitors, alternating between audio and visual ones, making it so that they had to pay attention and either creep quietly or hide carefully or else there would be tons of storks after them in a heartbeat.

And the storks themselves, of course, armed with acidic milk bottles, toxic dirty diapers, and strangulating moist towelettes. The first time the storks saw them, he was ready to give it all up. But somehow they outfought the birds and got away, and the storks seemed to have a very bad sense of direction. They'd run all over the place aimlessly, frantic over 'their' babies, but were easily given the slip once out of sight. The only thing Coleman could figure was that their cause was righteous so some benevolent divine force was giving them a helping hand. He hoped Snappledroop's team was having an easier time of it.

Pretty soon, they realized their time was almost up. They had to get out before their ride left without them! It stopped being about the babies and started being about getting out in one piece. Some sort of peculiar war time soldier style bonding that Coleman didn't really understand took place, and he learned that Tand was cheating on his wife but felt guilty about it, while Jobbers took out his repressed worldly aggression by chainsawing down trees as a hobby. Coleman felt eerily normal by comparison. What were his problems? He was a little depressed, a little lonely, he wanted to see his future continue in some way after his life... but couldn't anyone say that? It was almost embarrassing to not be able to relate some mad quirk or tragic flaw in turn. Strange to feel bad about being normal.

Jobbers was, maybe inevitably, the first one lost. A green pit of... well, Coleman preferred not to think about it too much, swallowed him up with a stench-ridden burp. For such cultured and dignified creatures, the storks placed seemingly no regard on giving enemies a clean death. What kept Coleman going on, more than anything else, was the knowledge that poor Tand was depending on him to get out.

So when Tand was hopelessly ensnared in a net of unrealistically sticky bibs, and Coleman had no choice but to leave the man to the approaching storks, there wasn't much left to fuel any further action. Nothing but weary grit, a tired desire to at least see it through to the end. He was going to lose, but well, he'd known that anyway, hadn't he? Hadn't he won, in a way, just by coming here and expressing all his pent up frustration over a prison of senseless, over-stamped, over-plicated papers and forms? Yeah, maybe so.

Even if he got out with a kid, what would happen? It seemed incredible that no one had asked that obvious question before this whole mess had started. Once they were out, with stolen babies, the storks would hunt them down. They could either give the babies up or spend their lives in hiding. So long as there were storks there would be a bottleneck in triplicate on the future of humanity.

Those were the thoughts going through his head as he crawled through the unusually large and accommodating ventilation ducts of Above. They hadn't been part of the map, but they were so big and going in the right direction, it seemed a shame not to use them. So far it had worked well enough and nothing had figured out he was up here yet. He half-expected to be required to duck past lethally sharp fans or fight rabid vermin, but there was nothing except him.

Crawling and crawling till his knees ached, checking his watch every few seconds even though he knew it only slowed him down, eventually he heard an organ playing. Drawn towards it out of fascination at the completely out of place sound in the otherwise nursery-like atmosphere of Above, he tried to figure out the direction and get just a little closer, to hear everything, and maybe peer through a vent. Just a little, before he went back empty-handed and minus two comrades, to explain everything to Snappledroop, assuming Snappledroop would be there to explain to. It wasn't like he was delaying or anything. He'd go back for the pickup. Just... not yet.

There was at least one room in Above that didn't conform to the usual architectural scheme, and Coleman found it and looked into it, eyes wide with fascination as they peered through metal strips.

It looked almost like a funeral parlor: dark wood and a short burgundy carpet, low lighting in glazed glass casings that seemed almost embarrassed to be there. Expensive but very subdued and slightly uncomfortable furniture. Plenty of flowers in vases, vivid islands of color in a sea of drear. A room for sad people to be sad in.

Storks were there, crying and consoling one another with inadequate words and awkward hugs. Some of them blew their noses loudly on lacy hankies. The men wore black and gray suits with nearly invisibly bland ties, the women modest black and dark blue dresses with veiled hats about a decade out of fashion. There were even smaller teenaged and child storks, equally formal of attire, fidgety and a little bored. Some of them followed particular very distraught storks around for the express purpose of constantly handing out fresh handkerchiefs.

Throughout all this, with the organ a gentle background, a coal-black stork up front spoke, voice theatrically expressive, rolling and deft of tone. It was the kind of voice that had absolutely no trouble making itself heard on the back row. By the stark white collar, Coleman judged the stork a reverend or something similar, whatever storks used for religious ranks.

There was no question of listening or not. It was impossible not to listen and understand every word, so clearly and unmistakably was each syllable pronounced. The only choice was to go on or stay and see what it was all about, and Coleman chose to stay. He was intrigued by a part of Above he'd never known of, a part so clearly at odds with the rest of the place that it even, for a moment, distracted him from the horrible thoughts of his lost teammates.

"-always a hard thing to leave one of our children to the whimsical mercies of earthly fate. We cannot tell if that destiny will be a cruel one or a kind one. We do not know if dear Sarah will be raised by humans who loved her as we have loved her, and indeed, we cannot lie to ourselves, the odds are against it." The reverend's wingtip wiped away a single tear, a droplet so perfect that Coleman wondered if it was fake. "But... the cycle must continue, the circle must be completed! Yes, precious Sarah had only the mildest of gas, and never cried if she was full of milk, but the well-behaved and the bratty alike, all must succumb to gravity, being human rather than stork! And we must rejoice! Yes, my friends, rejoice in Sarah's departure, for to her is given a great and wonderful gift, the gift of growing up! She will learning and making decisions and one day perhaps even beckon to us for a child of her own to care for, and all these things are what makes a human being what it is. As the providers of children, we are the first step in a song old as time itself, and the next verse is not ours to sing. Let there be joy in passing the harmony over to another, for only in this cooperation can we achieve true storkhood. The caretakers cannot care forever, but let none say that we did not care exactly long enough!"

Coleman understood now. There was a little bundle he'd not noticed before, cradled in one continually weeping stork's wings. A baby. And what did it say about him, that he'd so completely overlook the reason he'd come to Above in the first place? That was the reason he'd come... for the babies, the children... wasn't it? Because he cared, because he needed....

Would he cry that hard when his child left the nest, and rejoice that solemnly?

He'd never cried like that in his entire life.

About anything.

He had to give them their due. He figured that much now. They were nasty, prissy, lazy, selfish and self-serving pricks who hid behind walls of red tape and drowned in bodily fluids anyone who tried to change things. But at least some of them loved those babies, really loved them, and gave them up anyway. Coleman thought about all the human parents he knew who didn't seem to really care about their kids much, even though they'd requested them. Not abused, not neglected, just... didn't love. And he also thought about the ones who let love grow out of control and strangle their kids with neediness and control. If there were many 'funerals' in Above like this one, then the storks perhaps were fitter for human childcare than humans were.

There had to be a better way. Some kind of peace to make, a compromise, a treaty. Something. He didn't feel like stealing babies anymore. He wanted to argue and shout and stamp his feet and throw things, but not hurt anyone, not start a war, not skulk around like a burglar. He was going to go back to the pickup point and talk to the others, and say... he didn't know what he'd say, but maybe he'd think of something really inspirational on the spur of the moment.

Full of renewed vigor and purpose, he crawled through ducts at rapid speed, visions of Something Vague But Important to do looming urgently in his head. Fifteen minutes away from pickup... ten minutes and covered with sweat... five, and nearly there.

He dropped out of a vent onto the floor after kicking out the conveniently loose grate, opened the door outside with an enthusiastic punch-like gesture, embraced the cold slap of outside air without a flinch....

And walked straight into a black-winged, black-necked, and otherwise pristine white stork, looking straight at him while sipping from an impractically minuscule teacup.

"Oh, hello there," the stork said with a slightly twangy accent, tone cheerful and head bobbing politely. "Care for some the old Earl Gee?"

"What now?" Coleman blurted confusedly, wondering why he wasn't being attacked. Maybe this one just hadn't heard any of the ruckus. Maybe all that red tape hindered communication with each other, too.

"Earl Gee," the stork repeated patiently. "Earl Gray."

"Ah... I'm not really that thirsty, just came out for a quick breath of air, you know..."

"Yes, yes." The stork waved him on negligently. "On with you then. Don't want to be late for your flight, now do you?"

Already several hasty steps away, Coleman froze. He looked back very, very innocently and saw the stork peering over his teacup with a knowing, conspiratorial gaze.

"You know, don't you," Coleman said, dismayed. Well, it was just one stork. He could handle one single solitary bird. Maybe.

"Oh, come now, you have to admit, you fellows weren't exactly masters of stealth. We all saw the plane come in, for one thing. Your pilot was clever enough to try the cloud-hiding trick, but you'd have to be a lot better at it to fool an aerial species, I'm afraid."

"So that's it, then," Coleman said flatly, almost relieved. "We're done." He wouldn't have to explain anything to anyone now because the whole mission was dead. Complete failure, everyone captured. He was going to jail, but at least there wasn't anyone still alive and close to him who'd be traumatized by it. The benefit of being lonely was the freedom to screw your own life up however you pleased.

"Done?" The stork blinked. "Well, you're finished with Above, certainly, the little charade is over, but you're quite free to go back down to the dirt again. We haven't commandeered your crop duster or anything."

"You're letting us go? After all the trouble we caused you, and all the effort taking us down? Why?"

The stork laughed. "We're really not supposed to, but every once in a while I like letting some sensible humans in on the game. What's your name, my flightless chum?"

"Uh... Coleman."

"Well, Coleman, I'm Viselois. Sure you don't want some tea? It's very relaxing."

"No!" He started to back away slowly, suspecting some kind of trap.

"Oh, calm down. No one with their back to that much sky should look so much like a cornered animal. Look, Coleman, you're far from the first group of humans to think they could waltz into Above and take whatever they wanted. We're not complete dunderheads, we know that our lengthy and complicated ordering process for children gets you all in a tizzy. Might as well try to keep bees from making honey as withhold human babies from human adults."

He should be running. Just in case Viselois was telling the truth about the plane, just in case there was hope. But he stood and talked for the same reason that he'd stopped and watched the 'funeral.' Because of a fascination with a part of stork life he had never seen before, never suspected the existence of. "Then why do you do it? Why not streamline things, make it easier and faster so we don't get upset over how long it takes?"

"There's a benefit to the delay." Viselois carefully set his teacup down on a nearby chess table. "It gives people time to think about what they're asking for. It's human nature to want children, but it's also human to not think about the consequences and meaning of instinctual desires. Doesn't come as naturally to storks, you see, so we appreciate the babies while we have them because of how artificial the arrangement is. But because it's only natural for humans, they come to expect it. And then start thinking that they deserve it. As though the shaping of a unique life is nothing more than something they are owed, a debt to be settled. Most of them don't give a thought to the feelings or welfare of the child itself until they've had years to brood over it. So we give them brooding time, and of course they're unhappy about it, but once they have the child they're much less likely to take it for granted."

"So... you guys are playing psychological games with the entire human race for our own good," Coleman commented acidically. "And all that stuff you just happen to get in the process... the little gifts under tables, the free meals at meetings, the money from multi-layered hidden fees, that doesn't matter to you at all, of course!"

"Oh, we like that end of it too," Viselois admitted shamelessly. "We're not perfect, any more than humans are. The system is set up the way it is for the good of everyone involved, and both sides are really quite selfish. It's not a cycle free from heartache or exploitation, but what is in this life? Anyway, that's not the big secret I was going to tell you." Viselois leaned closer, and Coleman supressed the urge to lean away from that pointy beak. "The secret is that we let you guys let off some steam every once in a while. Twice a year at least, sometimes more, we get people just like you, thinking they're oh so clever and original, that they're going to show the oppressive babysitting storks what for. We let it happen, Coleman! Traps are scary but nonlethal. We capture some of you and 'accidentally' let you escape just so you don't get complacent about it. And of course we practice at being the most incompetent guards ever."

"You let us break into your home and beat you up and steal your babies?" It was rubbish! There was no way. The whole thing was just too... too....

Well, how else could he explain all the little lucky moments, all the surprising incompetence just when they needed a break?

"But... but you killed Tand and Jobbers!"

"Did we? You saw their corpses, eh?"

"Err... well..."

The truth of it all hit Coleman painfully, and all of a sudden he realized that he and the other guys weren't necessarily smarter than the storks. At all.

"Oh my God, you left Jobbers to rot in a hole full of poo," he moaned, hands grasping at his face as if to forcibly rip the image of poor Jobbers, alive and probably disgusted beyond all human ability to comprehend, straight from his brain. "You evil little monsters!"

Viselois laughed. "Well, we have to have some fun with it! After all, if we made it easy you'd get overconfident and there'd start to be far too many raids for us to handle! Not that faking complete idiocy and helplessness doesn't have its own entertainment value. Ever fallen down in a straight line, like a domino chain? It's surprisingly fun. We do let you chaps have a few babies every once in a while. Can't have you leaving empty-handed all the time, or you'd just get more frustrated and there'd be no stress relief. Got to keep the lid cracked so some steam can escape. Just a little bit. And... oh, hello there," Viselois added in a surprised voice, noticing along with Coleman that Jantree had somehow sneaked up alongside them while they'd been busy talking. The man was sipping from Viselois's cup.

"Truce, right?" he asked.

"Err?" Coleman and Viselois said together, united in incomprehension.

"Assume we're having a truce, sine we're talking instead of fighting," Jantree elaborated, sipping the tea with every sign of enjoyment.

"Yeah... I guess so..." Coleman said slowly. He and the bird watched Jantree drink for a moment longer.

"Mmm, Lady Gray."

"Earl Gray," Viselois corrected.

Jantree shook his head slightly. "Lady. S'got citrus." He sniffed the air above the cup and let out a sigh. "Smells better'n Earl too."

"Well, ruffle my feathers, and here I've been calling it Earl Gray for months now." Viselois shrugged and leaned over to Coleman. "Bit of a cracked egg, isn't he?"

"You have no idea."

"So."

"So..."

"What're you going to do now that you know the awful and terrible truth?"

Coleman thought about it.

He thought about all the storks leeching off of human society, impeding the progress of mankind for wine under tables and brunches at their favorite restaurants. He thought about people just like him all over the world, angry and tired and lonely, and getting more of all three every day. But he also thought about the mock-funeral with the storks crying for love of what they forced themselves constantly to give up, and of Jobbers and his freaky chainsawing, and of Tand's chaotic mess of a marriage, and Snappledroop's general prickly attitude. And he thought of himself, too... how he'd imagined the fun things he could do together with a kid, but always the things he liked. What if he got a kid who liked different things? Would he just let the kid alone to grow up however, like a wild plant that had snuck past the garden wall? And how he'd thought so much about how nice it would be to have someone to continue his legacy. Never mind what the kid would want to do with his or her own life. Coleman thought about all the selfishness, and all the hurt that didn't seem to have any solution other than to tear everything down and build life up from scratch again. He thought about how untouchably, teeth-grindingly pristine and gleaming Above looked from the ground, and also about how beautifully rich but unorganized and messy the earth seemed from Above.

It was a mess down there.

It was a mess up here, too, just in different ways.

"Any ideas?" Viselois broke into his ponderings after a few minutes, sounding almost hopeful that Coleman would be The One to come up with a miracle fix on the spot, like a hero in a story would.

"...can I have some of that tea?" Coleman asked.

Jantree poured him a cup and smiled his dreamy smile, and Coleman drank it and thought of clouds drifting through the sky like newborn souls, just as aimless as everything else.