The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 71

07.17.03

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

71. [Plate 71]

Tall Tales

Every now and then the witches like to get together, take off their

clothes, and let down their hair. They build a campfire and, sitting

under the stars, tell each other lies. "The one that got away was sooooo

long," one says. "But that's just as well for, tight as I am, I could

hardly have crammed it all in."

"Hah! I suckled that little bugger at me own teat," another claims, "and,

my, how he did cry! He was never satisfied with nothing, was young

Adolph."

"Ebola, bovine spongiform encephalitis, West Nile virus, AIDS," brags a

third. "All of them because I neglected my personal hygiene."

The boasting goes into high gear. "I invented the Republican Party."

"Well, I invented Democrats."

like swanwick?

like goya?

so do we.

keep 'em sparring!

send money.

More options on the Contributions page.

T H A N K S !

"Tories!"

"Labor!"

"The Soviet Union!"

"The French!"

On and on it goes, like a baseball game impossibly prolonged into the

eleventh, the twenty-third, the two-hundred-and-fourth innings. Each lie

is immediately topped by another, every stretcher eclipsed by a whopper,

until the untruths have piled up so high as to have become a verbal Tower

of Babel.

The point of this game is to see just how wild a claim can be made before

somebody laughs. Every brag has to top what came before, but be presented

solemnly enough to allow its auditors to pretend to believe it.

Finally, the oldest witch of all shakes her head sadly. "Alas, we are

wicked, wicked women," she says. "You have to feel sorry for humanity. If

it weren't for us and our tricks and traps and temptations, there

wouldn't be no wars. Nor misery, nor poverty, nor cruelty, nor hatred

neither."

"How do you figure?" asks somebody younger.

"Well... people are fundamentally decent, aren't they?"

There's an instant's astonished silence. Then somebody snorts and

somebody else snickers. A third witch throws back her head and howls.

Clutching themselves, the witches fall over on their sides and roll about

on the ground, laughing hysterically. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" somebody cries.

"People! Decent!"

It's good to spend a night out with the girls once in a while. It really

cuts the grease. It helps one to get in touch with what's real.

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

This is the 71st of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

Eileen K. Gunn.

Founding sponsor: Matrix.Net

Hosted by SFF.Net.

-->