patrick.net

I've been thinking, imagining lately that the world is like a basement, surrounded by 4 cinder block walls, originally full of boxes of saltine crackers, taking up every cubic foot of space in that basement, and then a mama rat and papa rat were plopped right in the stairwell going down to the basement and the door was locked. At first the rats would eat into a box of saltines, and find out that they were set for life...hell they could kick back and have a cracker any time they wanted, and they could use the empty box leftover to be their own cozy little den. It would be so cozy, the two rats would have to do the wild thing and then there would be 10 more baby rats...with all the food they wanted, and by the time they were born the rats would probably be into box number three. Of course, with all the cheap food and space available, the brothers and sisters would lose track of who is family and who isn't and next thing you know, there'd be 50 rats. But they'd still have plenty of food. And time would march on, and as it did an observer would begin to see a rat-wave begin to form, kind of like a flame front one would find inside a combustion engine cyclinder after the spark ignited the mixture. The rat-wave would gain strength, becoming more and more efficient as the rats increased the productivity of consuming and procreating. The rat economy would instill awe in the observer as they became eating machines, spreading out in three dimensions into the mass of boxes. They would start moving at a faster and faster rate, learning how to frac the saltine boxes to loosen them up in advance, and they'd develop filling stations for the women rats so they didn't have to move, they'd get bucket brigades going to bring the crackers to the female rat dens, and they'd accelerate, and at some point they'd be just a foot or two from the cinder block walls, the whole basement having a wall of rats increasingly having moved away from the stairwell toward the walls. And they would keep on going...growth is good, demand for saltines is going to continue to rise, but the supply is limitless, they think. What will the rats do when they hit the wall? They will scramble for the last few crackers and then what...they will look at each other and what will they do what will they think. I feel like I'm in the wave and I can't get out. So I'm digging into the door of the basement so I can get out of there before the rats hit the wall. I hope I can get through before its too late and they eat me. Any of you rats have a comment?