From a block of solid rock, I carved out an exact replica of an ordinary stone. Big little small men came out when i split open the stone. When I pried off their little exoskeletons, I discovered small rolled up fragments of a map inside each of them. after careful consideration, I pieced them all together. And they weren’t a map at all. They were a recipe. I followed the recipe exactly and out sprang an eagle with no head. It squawked, it’s wings spread open and a shower of flowers burst forth. From the flowers issued swarms of arcane mechanical creatures. Bugs designed by some ingenious inventor in a far off land. I imagined him sitting in his tower by the sea. The tower was really a rocket which had landed long ago. aboard it was a wizard, a wiseman, wise enough to know to build a castle there where the wind whistled through the rocks.

The mechanical bugs buzzed and swarmed around my apartment. Everywhere they landed they left crystalline deposits. My furniture soon became covered. I asked them to stop. They refused. They were building a city. They asked me to be the mayor. I agreed. To the coronation ceremony, I invited all my friends. They were all very impressed, and sat smiling in the front row.

Before I knew it, I was immersed in administrative affairs. Tiny crystalline cities don’t run themselves. We’d decided to call the city Cornucopia. As mayor of Cornucopia my first official act had been to install the big little small men as my palace guards. They served me nobly. Second, I set the eagle in a watchtower at the city limits. The watchtower overlooked a field of flowers. Everything was running smoothly. The bugs were pleased with my administrative prowess, and I’d finally found what I was put on this earth to do. Until the day the Inventor appeared.

He showed up unannounced. The eagle had fallen asleep in the watchtower. My palace guards were all out to lunch. The Inventor approached me, saying, “Are you in charge here?” I am, I told him. Mayor of this fair crystalline city. How may I serve you? He’d come to collect his bugs, he said. I told him that was no longer possible. They were happy here. And more importantly, so was I.

He shook me, shouting, “Give them to me! They are mine!” I shook him back. Soon, we were both shimmering. Our vibrations had been replicated all throughout the crystalline structure of the city. Tiny holographic replicas of our struggle had shot up on all the street corners of Cornucopia.

They cried out in unison: “I am the Inventor! I have come to collect what’s mine! I will not be denied!” Before I, the crystalline mayor, could reply, the bugs appeared in a swarm and descened upon the inventor. He released me, thinking wrongly the bugs were returning to him. Instead, they’d come to encase him in their crystal coating. He struggled, but to no avail. By this time, my palace guard had come running in. Small as they were, they stabbed him with their little prickly polearms while the bugs completed their work.

The next day we set him in the town square in a place of honor. We held a ceremony and installed a plaque. I delivered a speech honoring the brave deeds of the denizens of our beautiful city, and their interventions with the Inventor. It was an extremely proud day. All my friends smiled.