Normalcy Now

In Snowdrift Bay, the line between civic action and public embarrassment was usually very thin.

On that particular afternoon, it was practically invisible.

Cobblestone Square had developed the unmistakable look of some kind of event, though not a successful one. A small stage had been assembled near the fountain out of mismatched wooden risers and what appeared to be two repurposed produce crates. A few hand-painted signs leaned against the front. Someone had attempted bunting, then apparently lost interest halfway through. A crowd had gathered—not densely, not passionately, but with the cautious curiosity of people who had heard the words public grievance and decided that sounded worth a look.

At the center of it all stood the organizers.

Jeff, the sentient snowman from the DMV, held himself with his usual air of permanent insult. His scarf was wound tightly, his coal eyes narrowed with purpose, and in his twig hands he held a sign reading:

TOO WEIRD = TOO MUCH

Beside him loomed Whirly, the waving tube person who somehow also worked as Snowdrift Bay’s air traffic controller. He had brought a sign of his own, though because his entire body was in constant inflatable motion, it kept spinning wildly enough that no one could quite read it for more than a second at a time. Now and then people caught phrases like ENOUGH IS ENO or TAKE US SERI before it whipped around again.

And on Jeff’s other side stood Axel Woodsworth, the broad-shouldered lumberjack maître d’ of Bistro Deluxe, in his usual flannel, suspenders, work trousers, and boots that looked like they had recently kicked through an actual forest. His sign, unlike the others, was crisp, direct, and held with the solemnity of a battlefield standard:

NORMALCY NOW

The whole thing had the energy of a movement no one fully believed in, not even while participating.

Near the front of the onlookers, Yorn stood with Elara and Sir Reginald, all three watching with varying degrees of confusion.

“What,” Elara asked, one elegant brow slightly raised, “are they protesting.”

Yorn sipped from a paper cup labeled Butterscotch Latte Deluxe and considered the stage.

“I think,” he said, “the town.”

Sir Reginald rested one gauntleted hand on his belt and squinted at Jeff’s sign. “That feels broad.”

“It is broad,” said Elara. “They seem to be objecting to the general condition of existence here.”

Yorn nodded. “That tracks.”

On stage, Jeff stepped forward with the grave, irritated posture of a man who believed he had at last become the only voice of reason in a fallen civilization.

“People of Snowdrift Bay!” he shouted.

A few heads turned.
Several were already turned.
One woman near the jam stall kept shopping but did so more attentively.

Jeff lifted his sign higher.

“We are here today because things have gone too far!”

There was a murmur from the crowd.

Whirly flailed in agreement. “TOO FAR!”

Axel nodded once, heavily, like a man at a funeral for standards.

Jeff jabbed one twig arm vaguely at the square around them. “This town used to make sense. Or at least a little sense. Now every day it’s something new. Something ridiculous. Something no decent person should have to put up with before lunch.”

Yorn quietly said, “That feels historically inaccurate.”

Elara nodded. “Very.”

But Jeff was gaining momentum now.

“No more singing public fixtures! No more unexplained atmospheric events! No more objects that talk when they shouldn’t! No more entire days derailed by nonsense no one asked for!”

Whirly threw both tube arms upward. “WE WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!”

This might have landed better if he had not said it while accidentally folding nearly in half and slapping himself in the face with his own sign.

Axel stepped to the front next.

He did not shout.
He did not wave.
He simply stood there looking like frontier disapproval given human form and said, in his deep, mournful voice:

“There ought to be limits.”

That was, honestly, the strongest line anyone had produced so far.

A few people in the crowd actually nodded.

Brenda, who had drifted over midway through Jeff’s speech and was now standing a little behind Yorn with Philip, let out a soft snort.

“I hate that I kind of respect the commitment.”

Philip folded his arms over his oversized hoodie. “No, the commitment is real. The platform is just impossible.”

On stage, Jeff cleared his throat and prepared to continue.

Then Mayor Llama arrived.

He came into the square wearing his ceremonial sash and the expression of a man who had heard there were public feelings happening and was delighted to be included. He stepped into the edge of the crowd, took in the stage, the signs, the vaguely agitated organizers, and smiled with immediate diplomatic warmth.

“Ah,” he said. “A demonstration.”

Jeff pointed at him at once. “Yes! A demonstration!”

Mayor Llama nodded approvingly. “Wonderful. Civic life.”

“It’s a protest,” Jeff snapped.

“Even better.”

The mayor stepped closer to the stage and folded his hooves behind his back with calm interest.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

Jeff looked almost thrown off by the fact that he had not been immediately dismissed.

He rallied quickly.

“We demand normalcy,” he said.

Whirly jerked upright. “NORMALCY!”

Axel raised his sign a little higher and stared at Mayor Llama with all the blunt force of disappointed flannel.

Mayor Llama listened.
Really listened.

Or at least performed the kind of attentive silence that made people think he was listening while he decided how charming he wanted to be in response.

At last he nodded.

“I hear your concern,” he said.

Jeff folded his arms. “Good.”

Mayor Llama went on. “But I do think we have to be honest with ourselves about the town we live in.”

Jeff’s expression darkened immediately.

“Jeff,” said Mayor Llama, turning gently toward him, “you are a sentient snowman who works at the DMV and once threatened to report a raccoon for emotional loitering.”

Jeff looked offended. “That was different.”

“Whirly,” Mayor Llama continued, “you are a waving tube person who directs planes through what can only be described as aggressive improvisation.”

Whirly drew himself up, insofar as a waving tube person could do that. “It works.”

“Sometimes,” said Philip.

“And Axel,” said Mayor Llama, looking at the lumberjack, “you run a fine dining restaurant in full logging attire and once told a man his napkin posture lacked moral discipline.”

Axel’s jaw tightened. “It did.”

Mayor Llama smiled warmly at all three of them.

“My point is simply this: none of you are exactly arguments for restraint. You are, each in your own way, glorious examples of Snowdrift Bay’s particular charm.”

Jeff looked ready to explode.
Whirly deflated slightly with rage.
Axel’s sign creaked in his hands.

“That,” Jeff said through clenched teeth, “is not the point.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mayor Llama. “But it is still true.”

And that might have been the end of it.

A petty, unresolved little protest.
Some public grumbling.
A few wounded egos.
The crowd drifting away with nothing solved and everyone privately convinced they had made some sort of point.

Then came the noise.

It started as a metallic screech from somewhere at the far end of the square.

Not a familiar sound.
Not a cart.
Not construction.
Not anything anyone could immediately place.

The crowd turned.

The protesters turned.

Mayor Llama turned.

And into the square strode something no one had ever seen before.

It was enormous.

A robot ostrich—though “robot ostrich” somehow failed to capture the full spiritual violence of the thing—marched into view on long metal legs that clanged against the cobblestones with frightening certainty. It stood at least seven feet tall, its body a gleaming arrangement of polished metal plates and exposed mechanical joints, with a long articulated neck that moved in abrupt, birdlike jerks. Its eyes glowed red. Not warmly. Not threateningly, exactly. Just with the impersonal brightness of something that did not need permission to exist.

Its beak clicked once.

Its head tilted.

It stopped in the middle of the square and regarded the crowd with the unreadable intensity of a machine that might be assessing them, or might simply be preparing to do something much, much worse.

No one spoke.

Jeff’s sign lowered by an inch.

Whirly went oddly still.
Axel’s grip tightened.
Sir Reginald slowly put one hand on the hilt of his sword.

Brenda whispered, “What is that.”

“No idea,” said Yorn.

Elara, for once, had no immediate elegant remark. She simply stared.

The thing drew itself up to full height.

Then it threw back its metal head and, at full volume, blasted:

“YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG—”

The square nearly came apart.

The sound was deafening.

Not singing, exactly.
Not speaking either.

It was a mechanical patriotic bellow, loud enough to shake window glass and send two pigeons fleeing from the roofline in a panic. The robot ostrich began marching in place with vicious precision, metal feet hammering the stones in time to its own performance. Its neck snapped dramatically with each phrase. One wing-like appendage jerked outward in something approximating national pride.

No one moved.

The crowd simply stood there, being screamed at by a patriotic robot bird none of them had asked for.

Jeff was the first to recover.

He pointed at it with his whole body.

“THIS,” he screamed, “IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!”

Whirly flailed so hard his sign flew free of one inflatable hand and smacked directly into a tourist’s ice cream cone.

“WE ARE LIVING WITHOUT OVERSIGHT!”

Axel dragged one hand slowly down his face.

“We tried,” he muttered, to no one in particular. “We really did.”

The Robot Ostrich continued.

“YOU’RE A HIGH FLYING FLAG—”

It did a sharp, clanking half-turn and began what could only be described as tap-dancing. Sparks snapped once beneath one metal foot. A child near the fountain burst into delighted applause.

Sir Reginald leaned toward Yorn and said in a hushed voice, “Never has a political argument been so completely vindicated by poultry.”

Yorn nodded solemnly. “Especially mechanical poultry.”

The robot hit the final line of the chorus with such force that the bookstore windows rattled.

Then it froze in a triumphant pose, one metal wing flung outward, one leg lifted, head held high toward some invisible patriotic horizon.

Silence.

A long one.

Mayor Llama looked at it with deep interest.

Then, in the tone of a man trying to recover control of a situation he had absolutely not caused but would now be expected to narrate, he said:

“Well.”

Jeff rounded on him. “No, don’t ‘well’ this!”

But the mayor was already stepping toward the Robot Ostrich, fascinated.

“And this,” he said, gesturing gracefully, “appears to be our new friend.”

“It is not our friend,” Jeff snapped.

“It just screamed a war song at me!” AxWhirly shouted.

Axel pointed at the machine with the grim certainty of a man who had never felt more correct in his life. “That is the entire protest.”

Mayor Llama took another step toward it.

“An imposing design,” he murmured. “Excellent presence. Strong commitment. Possibly ceremonial.”

The Robot Ostrich turned its glowing red gaze toward him.

Mayor Llama stopped.

The ostrich tilted its head.

Then, without warning, blasted again:

“YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG—”

This second rendition was somehow louder.

Not louder in an ordinary sense.

Louder in a structural sense.

The sound hit the square like a patriotic shockwave. Window glass rattled. A nearby café tray jumped six inches. Two pigeons launched off a rooftop in complete moral panic.

And Whirly, who had already been stretched to his emotional and physical limits by the day’s events, took the full force of it directly to the torso.

For one unbelievable second he held in place, his tube-body flattening backward in the blast like a flag in a hurricane.

Then he tore loose from the side of the stage and went flying.

Not stumbling.
Not toppling.

Flying.

He shot backward across the square in a flailing blur of striped fabric and outrage, pinwheeling end over end before slamming into a stack of empty apple crates near the cider stand.

The crates exploded outward.

Whirly let out one long, fading, indignant WHOOOOOOOMP as he disappeared into the wreckage.

The whole square froze.

Brenda stared.

Yorn stared.

Even Jeff, who had been vindicated in the broadest possible terms, looked momentarily distracted by the sheer quality of the launch.

Axel pointed at the distant pile of shattered crates and said, with grim satisfaction, “That feels relevant.”

From somewhere inside the wreckage, Whirly’s muffled voice cried, “THIS IS WHAT I WAS WARNING YOU ABOUT!”

The Robot Ostrich, unmoved by any of this, finished the line with even greater conviction and snapped into a triumphant pose.

Silence.

A long one.

Mayor Llama looked from the ostrich, to the crates, to the protesters, and then back again with the expression of a man trying very hard to pretend all outcomes remained manageable.

Jeff rounded on him. “No, don’t ‘well’ this!”

But the mayor was already stepping cautiously toward the Robot Ostrich, fascinated.

“And this,” he said, gesturing gracefully, “appears to be our new friend.”

“It is not our friend,” Jeff snapped.

Axel jabbed one finger toward the apple-crate wreckage. “It just launched a man.”

From the crates, Whirly yelled, “I AM STILL IN HERE!”

Mayor Llama adjusted his sash.

“Yes,” he said. “Strong introduction.”

Jeff dropped his sign.

Not dramatically.
Not symbolically.

Just let it go.

It hit the boards with a sad little flap.

“That’s it,” he said. “Forget it. Forget all of it. The town’s gone.”

Axel nodded once, like a man finally receiving confirmation from heaven.

Sir Reginald watched the Robot Ostrich continue its thunderous patriotic performance and said, “I do not know whence it came.”

“No one does,” said Elara.

“And yet,” Sir Reginald added, “I feel certain it arrived with confidence.”

“That,” said Brenda, still staring, “is the worst part.”

As the square slowly began to empty—people covering their ears, children either delighted or crying, the protest entirely obliterated by the existence of a single impossible machine—Snowdrift Bay did what it always did.

It adjusted.

Not well.
Not quickly.
But enough.

Mayor Llama remained near the Robot Ostrich, still trying to regard it as a civic opportunity. Jeff, Whirly, and Axel stood in a miserable little cluster beside the abandoned protest signs, united at last not by principle but by total defeat.

And overhead, in the bright afternoon light, the metallic patriotic voice of the Robot Ostrich continued to ring out across Cobblestone Square like the opening note of some new and unnecessary chapter in town history.

In Snowdrift Bay, this was generally considered a bad sign.