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  ...presents...         Loneliest Being in the World
                                                         by Broken Symmetry

                      >>> a cDc publication.......1994 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____
 |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|

     Contrary to popular myth, Santa hated children.  Not because he had a
special dislike for young people, but because he utterly loathed all of
humanity.  Why else live at the South Pole (not the North, that was another
erroneous myth) if not to put as much distance between him and the rest of
mankind as possible?

     The only person he did love was his wife Sarah, and he loved her with a
depth and purity that put most people's concept of love to shame.  It was she
who loved children, although unable to have any of her own.  And it was her
idea to make every child in the world happy with a present once a year.  So,
once a year Santa would reluctantly give out his gifts, then rush home to watch
his wife as she watched their world-wide scanner.  Sarah would "ooh" and "ahh"
as each package was opened, and Santa would just sit back and smile at her.

     They thought this would continue forever.  They had both survived cold,
fire, falls from tremendous heights, gunshot wounds and a truly staggering
amount of time without any ill effects.  That is until Sarah contracted skin
cancer, no doubt due to the increased solar radiation coming through the ozone
hole.  By December 24th she was in pretty bad shape, but insisted Santa go out
on his yearly run.  It would do her good, she said, to see all those happy
faces the next morning.

     She was dead when Santa got back.

     Santa buried her on Christmas day and stood at her grave for two months.
The first month he knew nothing but his overwhelming grief.  By the end of the
second he had begun to ask himself what he would do next.

     He half-heartedly tried a number of conventional means of suicide, which,
as expected, had no effect.  Forced to live, he eventually decided what he
wanted to do with his life.

                                   - x X x -

     The elves were all given intensive courses in biology and genetic
engineering.  Those who were unable to pass Santa's rigorous exams vanished
mysteriously, providing more incentive to those who remained.

     When their training was complete, Santa told them his plan.  Humans would
have been shocked, but elves view the world in a very different way and didn't
really understand the difference between the "gift" they would now design and
those they had made previously.

     After a long period of development, the experimentation phase began.
Homeless people who were never missed (and children who were) were grabbed in
large numbers, taken to the workshop and experimented on extensively.  One can
only wonder what the last thoughts of these children must have been as they saw
Santa Claus standing over them, looking down coldly and holding some dark,
unpleasant instrument.

     Eventually the virus had been perfected, and next Christmas it was
delivered to every child who had not reached puberty.  And the same the
following year, to all the children that had been born in the interval.  And so
on, year after year, until the year that there were no more children born.

     Santa's virus altered DNA, prevented the onset of puberty, and slowed the
rest of normal development down significantly.  The last generation of humans
tried desperately to find a cure, but in vain.

     From the workshop, Santa watched humanity die out one by one until the
last person alive, an eighty year old little girl, collapsed in the street:
believing herself the loneliest being in the world.

     She wasn't, of course.  Santa still lived.

     Santa then released the remaining elves to the realm from which he had
abducted them.  Then he took the sleigh up to supersonic speeds, out of Earth's
gravity well, and pointed it at the sun.  He figured the sun's intense heat
would kill him, even if the vacuum of space didn't.

     He was right.
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  (' ')  |            Save yourself!  Go outside!  DO SOMETHING!            |
   (U)   |==================================================================|
  .ooM   |Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Broken Symmetry.        |
\_______/|All Rights Reserved.                               12/01/1994-#299|

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