Zappers

We found the first one in the mud, and it changed the course of the war. From the beginning, there were critics. "It's too horrible," they said. "It's immoral to turn that thing on members of your own family," they said. But the enemy was swarming us, and the zapper turned the tide. We code-named the first one "Frank." Clearly, it was the gift of a wise God.

Here, the story starts to get tricky. Shortly after our glorious victory over the forces of evil, it turned out that another colony had its own zapper. Clearly, this was the result of the machinations of a cunning devil. While the Good have a virtual monopoly on intelligence, you can't beat Evil for cunning.

We took this as a test of character. We never faltered. Instead, we found more zappers. All we had to do, we reasoned, was maintain a numerical zapper superiority over the bad guys. When we got more zappers, however, they got more zappers. Then other colonies of ambiguous righteousness started finding zappers. Before we knew it, there were half a dozen zapper powers. Turns out, the things are common as ... well, they're pretty darned common. A state of MAZ (Mutually Assured Zapping) settled in.

If exclusivity was not possible, and quantity was not a reliable solution, we reasoned, quality must be the answer. We went into zapper development with an enthusiasm that did credit to our moral standing in the world. I should explain that the zapper proper, the part that shoots out of the zapper's mouth and zaps the enemy, depends on speed, accuracy, and stickiness. We bred bigger, stronger, faster, stickier, more accurate zappers. The enemy attempted the same, but they are not as smart as we are, remember. Although they are more cunning. So we are confident that we can take them in a zapper war.

Of course, one thing we have to deal with that the enemy does not, is the swarms of oozing thorax types who are forever bellyaching about the evils of zappers. Not content to cry over the dead bad guys from the last war, the oozing thoraxes yammer on about casualties from zapper testing. Well, of course, we had to test our improved zappers somewhere. But we were really careful and didn't hurt anyone, and anyone who says different is either lying or a traitor or both.

Oh. And the oozers say our zappers could turn on us. Can you imagine that? They say, "What in heaven's name are flies doing, breeding horrible, fly-eating monsters?" I mean, talk about having no acquaintance with reality.