Soap Mites

Evolutionary Dead Ends: The Soap Mite

Bubba came back today. I was just downing my fourth soap shake, and I almost choked on the suds.

"Bubba, my boy!" I cried. "We thought you were dead!"

"I wish you'd ease up on the suds, Pop," he said, as if the wobble had never happened.

But maybe not quite as if the wobble had never happened. He was ... more serious. And he had never criticized my drinking before. But never mind. My boy was alive! No one who disappeared in a wobble ever came back. The visibly dead were counted the lucky ones.

"Please, " I stammered, "Come in! Sit down! Rest! Are you all right? Tell me everything!"

"I've seen it," said Bubba softly.

"Seen what?" I asked.

"Everything, Pop," he replied, and dread began to creep through my shell.

"God?" I whispered.

"No," he said. "At least, not exactly."

"Then that's not everything," I observed, calming down a bit.

"Pop, the world is a bubble," said Bubba.

"What?" I thought I hadn't heard him correctly.

"It's a bubble," he repeated, "floating in the air, carried by the wind. That's what wobbles are. They're changes in the wind. The bubble ... that is, the world ... shakes violently when that happens, and some of us get sucked through the, the ... skin, which is soap. The rest are all gone, swept away into nothingness. I stuck to the outside somehow. By luck, I suppose, and I was able to wriggle my way back through. And there are all kinds of ... things out there, things that our world could run into! And our world, our bubble, is the most fragile thing there is. If we ran into something, well, ... we could pop, Pop! And that would be the end for everyone!"

"A bubble, Bubba?" I burbled.

"We could pop, Pop," he repeated.

"That's, that's quite a story you have there," I replied, searching for solid ground somewhere. "You've, uh, just survived a wobble. I've never heard of that happening before. I bet that ... unsettled you a bit. You should rest. Yes, rest! And see what it looks like tomorrow."

"There's no time for rest," said Bubba. "Heck, there may not be any tomorrow! We have to tell everyone! The very first thing we have to do is stop guzzling soap. It's what our world is made of!"

"That, um, sounds like radical talk," I reminded my boy gently. "The Bad Mites say things like that. All the responsible citizens say that's radical."

"Responsible?" he scoffed. "You mean rich. That's the Soap Mining Monopoly talking."

"No, no," I corrected him. "Experts say that."

"Paid by the Soap Mining Monopoly," Bubba replied. "Not real experts. Ask yourself what the 'Bad Mites' have to gain from warning us not to squander our soap. And what's 'bad' about them, anyway?"

"Not 'bad,'" I corrected. "'Bad.' Mind your capital letters! They don't have to gain anything. They're Bad. Bad mites do Bad things because they're Bad. The Right to Soap is right in the Holy Book. God gave us soap to guzzle like there's no tomorrow."

"Which there may not be," said Bubba, rather snarkily, I thought.

"Think of the economy?" I said, changing tack. "All of us work in the soap mines. What would happen, if we started laying off the suds? Heck, SMM would start laying off the us!"

"Pop," said Bubba with a sadness I had never before heard in his voice, "our world is at stake. Don't you get that? If we pop, Pop, nothing survives. Jobs don't make the top ten on our worries list."

"SMM says we can't do anything that would hurt the economy," I answered.

"They are insane," said Bubba. "Clinically, certifiably insane."

"Well, of course, they're not!" I replied, a bit huffily. "Why, they wrote the definitions of sane and insane!"

"Which is why no one in our world recognizes their insanity," said Bubba. "But any impartial, off-bubble observer would see it immediately. Destroying the thing that sustains your life. And ruthlessly suppressing anyone who tries to stop you. I don't think there's a better definition of insanity."

"But you know who else would see it immediately?" Bubba continued. "Anyone who can see from the point of view of an off-bubble observer. I did. You could. I know how to get through the skin now. I can show you. I can show everybody. No one can see what I have and persist in the madness."

"Maybe tomorrow," I temporized.

I'm thinking about how I can get some help for my boy. I can't have him spouting radical extremist nonsense to the world. And I sure don't want to piss off the SMM.