"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."  -Coleridge, _Ozymandias_

	HEY PRESTO said the Divine Voice, and the majority of the heavenly
host hopped down to the material world to see what God had come up with.
	"You just going to sit there?" asked Purloin. Stick Figure nodded
curtly, as did Keystone, Stick's backgammon opponent. "Your loss," Purloin
said.
	"Not mine," responded Keystone. "His. Doubled right back at you,
Figgy." Stick nodded again.

	The new creation say atop a small sand dune, ringed by angels. Most
of them came in the shapes of bendy toys, as was the fashion. None of them
spoke. "Is that awe I see on your faces," God asked?
	A giraffe whose rubber head wobbled uneasily on top of its pipe-
cleaner neck stepped forward. "It is not, your Majesty." It swayed for a
few moments, then added "The humans, your favorites, have already invented
the piano."
	God huffed and puffed slightly; the angels turned their heads away
out of respect. "The creation... the INCEPTION of a piano ex nihilo has
something to recommend it beyond the simple craftsmanship of a mortal being.
Have a look at it. Every beam is perfectly hewn. The timbre of the bass
notes brings a certain personality to it as well. If any of you has fingers
I think you'll find the action to be lovely. All of it took only an in-
stant."
	Panoply flexed some of her hundred fingers and sat down to play.
She ran through a little Chopin, broke into a medley of songs that Tori
Amos was scheduled to think of for her comeback a few years hence, and
finally played her favorite Bach fugue. It almost seemed as though she
might be overcome with emotion, but through it all her wraparound grin re-
mained implacable. The last few notes continued to sound as she bounced
gracefully off the gorgeous mahogany bench and back to the company of her
friends.
	"Let it be written," bellowed the giraffe, "and let the chronicles
of this age commemorate the perfect piano as it was given on this day to a
grateful polity." Huzzahs and hallelujahs rang out demurely. God ascended
back home, as did several of the angels whose flexible ankles were start-
ing to bug them. Panoply stayed around to entertain a few of the more
amorphous toys with Joplin's less-known rags. The patron saint of carbon-
ation, Lily, had hopped on a chariot upon hearing the news and arrived in
the stillness of evening to distribute a new soda they were making in Sri
Lanka. Around midnight even the stragglers stopped manifesting, and that
was that.

	"Another piano?" asked Keystone. This time Purloin nodded. Stick
Figure bore two men off and sighed. "We find ourselves in the twilight of a
beautiful era, my friends. I wish I had the words for it."

written for Zainab and Dimitri at ABP #1 10/12/01

I now know Coleridge didn't write Ozymandias, and I know the question mark in para 4 is totally wrong; I made those mistakes honestly when I wrote the story, so they stay. I'll probably resist the temptation to write with epigrams too much in the future, but I like how this turned out. Aside from the... yeah.

And look at that: a real punch line! I'm also proud of the fact that Stick Figure is "Figgy" to his friends. God doesn't come off too well in this story, I suppose, but I want to reiterate that it really *is* a perfect piano. You have to give him credit for that.

I meant to do something else with the contrast between all caps (the big holy Word of God that makes things happen) and God's usual speaking voice, but I think that gets across okay.

Petty intellectual property theft alert: the connection between angels and bendy toys is from a story I read; I think it's by Kim Deitch. (Write if you can confirm or correct me on this.) In that one the toys are damned souls being tormented by the angels for cheap kicks, so it's a different sorta thing, but the initial leap is Kim's. Or someone else's.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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