I hope therefore you will not only readily accept of this rude essay as a token from your friend, but take it under your more immediate protection, as being dedicated to you, and by that title adopted for yours, rather than to be fathered as my own. And it is a chance if there be wanting some quarrelsome persons that will show their teeth, and pretend these fooleries are either too buffoon-like, or too satirical, and so will exclaim against me as if I were vamping up some old farce, or acted anew the Lucian again with a peevish snarling at all things. But those who are offended at the lightness and pedantry of this subject, I would have them consider that I do not set myself for the first example of this kind, but that the same has been oft done by many considerable authors. For thus several ages since, Homer wrote of no more weighty a subject than of a war between frogs and mice, Virgil of a gnat and pudding-cake, and Ovid of a nut. Synesius pleaded in behalf of baldness; and Lucian defended a sipping fly. Seneca drollingly related the deifying of Claudius; Plutarch the dialogue betwixt Gryllus and Ulysses; Lucian and Apuleius the story of an ass; and somebody else records the last will of a hog.
—Erasmas, In Praise Of Folly
First I read of the people. Disappeared from cruise ships. Some 165 of them, over the past 16 years. For some of the disappeared people, there are theories. For most, though: none at all.
Then I read of the pigs. Disappearing from farms all over the US. Hundreds and hundreds of them. For some of these vanished pigs, there are theories. But, really: folks don’t actually Know.
Some people would say there is no connection. Between people vanishing far out at sea. And pigs peeled out of their pens.
Some people would be wrong.
For there is indeed a connection. There always is. As there are no coincidences. One but must needs discern the Pattern.
This I have done. And thus I know the answer. I know who is disappearing the people. And the pigs.
Winkers.
From out of Albion, via the Daily Mail, came word that the humans are being heisted off cruise ships.
The problem has apparently become so Severe that there is now an outfit dedicated to it—the International Cruise Victims Association.
The Mail kicks off its piece regaling us with the breathless tale of a 63-year-old Britisher last seen quaffing cocktails on an Egyptian cruise. Then: nothing.
Today, more than five months on, Mr Halford, a bookseller from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, remains missing, his fate unknown.
His case is far from unique. Over the past few years, there have been an alarming number of unexplained and unsolved disappearances on board cruise liners.
According to the U.S.-based International Cruise Victims Association, 165 people have gone missing at sea since 1995, with at least 13 this year alone—many of them from vessels popular with British holidaymakers.
The Mail notes that in a few cases, there are indicators that the missing deliberately decided to go over the side, as in “CCTV footage [from a Caribbean cruise that] shows the unnamed woman, who was on holiday with her husband, climbing over her cabin balcony in the early hours and falling into the sea.”
But such events appear to be rarities. For in most instances, those who vanish were, before they disappeared, considered to be shiny, happy people.
Wonders the Mail:
[W]hat is happening to all these passengers who simply vanish while at sea, never to be seen again?
Are they the victims of a sinister crime wave? Have they had a mishap at sea and fallen overboard, or perhaps chosen to take their own lives?
The sad fact is that, in many cases, no one knows.
In comments inscribed by online readers of the Mail piece, we learn that the problem is more alarming than even the Mailpeople knew. Witness the words of a being monikered Susan, from Eastport, from out in the colonies:
I do known that a number of Navy personnel disappear from aircraft carriers every year. This is not made known of course.
The New York Times meanwhile informs us that pigs are disappearing in even greater numbers than humans.
This month, 150 pigs—each one weighing more than an average grown man—disappeared from a farm building in Lafayette [Minnesota] despite deadbolts on its doors. Farther north near Lake Lillian, 594 snorting, squealing hogs disappeared last month, whisked away in the dark.
And in Iowa, with added cover from the vast stretches of tall cornfields, pigs have been snatched, 20 or 30 at a time, from as many as eight facilities in the last few weeks, said the sheriff of Mitchell County, adding that among other challenges, the missing are difficult to single out.
“They all look alike,” said Curt Younker, the sheriff[.]
According to the Times piece, Americans are thinking that the pigs are being stolen. For money. Because, you know, to Americans, it's always, all about money.
The pigs vanishing are said to be:
one more sign of the grim economy, a reflection of record-high prices for hogs this year and the ease of stealing pigs from the large barns that are often far from the farmer’s house.
“This is the hot commodity of the moment, like copper a few years ago and gold,” said Ryan Bode, whose family company, Rebco Pork, discovered that 150 of its pigs were missing on Sept. 16, shortly before they were to be taken to market.
The loss was $30,000, he said, on top of the “ungodly high” price of corn that he had paid to feed those pigs for six months until they were fat enough to be sold. “And after all that, they’re not here,” he said.
Even hewing to the Stealing Theory, though, Americans are having, figuring it out, Problems:
For the moment, as worried hog producers around the region pledged to strengthen their security systems and considered offering rewards to solve the string of cases, investigators in Iowa and Minnesota, which are among the nation’s top hog producers, were left with a tangle of complicated questions.
Was this all the work of a single roving band of pig thieves, or were they isolated incidents with separate culprits, all driven by the high price of pigs?
And who would have enough experience with 270-pound pigs, and sufficient equipment to pull off such heists?
And where exactly would they have taken the pigs?
“Hundreds of pigs don’t just disappear,” said Marc Chadderdon, a sheriff’s investigator[.]
Well, except they do. If winkers happen to want them.
The first thing that must be understood about winkers—also known as “winkies,” or, familiarly, “winks”—is that, at root, it’s not their fault.
As I explained in the previously unpublished Science Man paper, “Indicators Of Winker Activity In Selected Household Moves, 2010-2011″:
The base problem is that there is not enough matter to substantiate all of the many physical objects in all of the many dimensions in all of the many universes. For reasons Unknown, there is perpetually a universe/dimension-wide shortage. Somehow, there is always available only, say, 99% of the matter required to maintain 100% of the physical objects. So, to deal with this never-ending shortage, there are “winkers”—trans-dimensional creatures who scurry about all day every day snatching stuff from one place, where they think it won’t be missed, to transform it into some needed-right-now something else, for somewhere else.
If the winkers do their job right, by the time a being develops again a need for the stuff snatched, that stuff will already have been replaced. But the winkers are busy, harried, not perfect, and sometimes they fail to anticipate needs correctly. That is why sometimes you will go to get something that you know is in a certain place, and it’s not there: the winkers took it, and have not yet returned with it. The missing object “winked out.”
Now, some may question why there does not exist enough material to at all times substantiate all the matter present in the all of the many universes and many dimensions.
Except, really, all one has to do is look around at this little blue ball, upon which we spin through space, and observe such entities as mayonnaise and, well, Armando, to discern that this joint is seriously out of whack. Riven with serious and, in the end, terminal manufacturer’s defects.
And, as here; so, elsewhere. Fact is, wherever it is, whoever it is, it is almost always, in some way, in Need.
Nope, this ain’t just “the human condition.” Oh no. On this planet, for instance, it is definitely not only humans, who suffer from the snatchings of the winks.
As I noted in the aforementioned Science Man paper:
This problem plagues not only humans: jays have remarkable memories, a jay able to perfectly recall where s/he has buried 10,000 separate objects. Yet I have several times seen a jay pause, puzzled, and then scream in outrage, when s/he went to dig up a nut. Because it wasn’t there. Because the winkers had snatched it. And not yet replaced it.
The winkers, until very recently, have tried to go about their job somewhat quietly. As I inscribed in the unpublished Science Man paper:
Generally, winkers don’t like to be found out. But once they know you are on to them, they drop some of the game-playing. So, I will look for something in this filing cabinet, for instance, that I know is there; it isn’t; I’ll then know the winkies are afoot. I’ll then go into the kitchen and make myself something to eat; then come back here to find the object has winked backed in, exactly where I had just looked.
Of course, not many people experience something like this. Because not many people are even aware of the existence of winkies. I am aware of them only because I am a Science Man. And thus am Trained to Notice the Strange.
Mostly, on this planet, people just go to look for shit, and find that it isn’t there. They never even dream that winkies are responsible. For they don’t even know what a winkie is.
Winkies have remained largely unapprehended on this planet because so much of the human populace consists of Drunks and Married People. Drunks, when they can’t find something, eventually figure that it’s because they’re too twisted on liquor, that they can’t find the dern thing. Married People, when something isn’t there that’s supposed to be, exasperatedly assume The Other One moved it.
Winkers, ever the opportunists, thus voraciously steal from both Drunks and Married People. Knowing that, if they don’t manage to return the stuff on time, someone other than them will be Blamed.
Similarly, this is why they also traditionally excavate large loads of matter from people who are Moving. Because everyone knows no one can find a damn thing, after they’ve moved.
Again, from my Science Man paper:
Moving is a golden opportunity for winkers, because everything is in chaos. So they can snatch great armfuls of stuff, and still hopefully get it back before it’s missed.
It was while researching my Paper, which concerned winker activity among those involved in moving, that I discovered that the winkers had suddenly and unaccountably gone Weird. Even, alas, Wild.
For instance, consider the case of the person from whom the winkies lifted pants. Not just one pair of pants—traditional, acceptable, winker behavior. No, in this instance, the winkers made off with all the person’s pants. Rendering the person pantless.
Clearly, I realized, the winks had become either: (1) Evil; or (2) Desperate. For they were no longer observing the Rules.
As I wrote, in my Science Man paper:
There are supposed to be some limits. For instance, snatching a rotor out of a moving motor vehicle, or lifting somebody’s vitally needed medications. These are things Just Not Done.
When once the winks had run off with all of a person’s pants, I knew, as a Science Man, that we had progressed far beyond those innocent days when winkers could be placated with socks, or coat-hangers.
Socks, because they had trained humans to believe that said garments naturally “disappear”—in the dryer, or the drawer. And so these never need be returned. Coat-hangers because they had accustomed people to “discovering,” upon opening the closet door, that either they had very few, or had somehow accumulated about 7000. So these they also felt no obligation to return; or felt they could return, as a coat-hanger, stolen stuff like old silver coins, baby pictures, love letters, or a .29-cent computer part that prevents the world from plunging into nuclear holocaust.
It was because of The Great Pants Heist that I knew, as a Science Man, that it was the winkers who were plucking people off cruise ships, and draining whole farms of pigs.
And that I knew that this was Extremely Alarming.
Previously, it was just Not Cricket, in winker world, to run off with living creatures. Only the inanimate, that was their motto. But no longer. Now, if you live and breathe, that is no guarantee that you won’t be winked, to be transformed into an xtyl-tube, on the planet Kytui. Because one is Needed there.
Obviously, there is some sort of truly massive matter shortage out there. And people and pigs, while still alive, are being carried off to ameliorate it.
This brings new, and depressing, Meaning to all the 2012 doomsday scenarios, at present a-ululating across the plains of the planet. Those who think we are entering the End Times.
It occurs to me now, now that I know that winks are boldly making off with people and pigs, that that might very well be. The End Times. Here. Pretty soon Now. Because somewhere out there, somebody needs matter. And the winks may have decided, that that matter might as well be us. Because, I guess, in the big scheme of things, we on this little blue ball, just don’t much matter all that much. So we might as well be carried off. En masse. To be made into new matter. For those who more matter.
To the best of my knowledge, no Science Man has heretofore exposed the existence of the winkers. So far as I know, I Am The First.
And, odds are, the winks will not regard kindly, this piece.
So, if I write no more, you will know the reason why. I will have been carried off. By the winks. To be transformed into something like an xtyl-tube. On the planet Kytui. Because one was Needed there.
Bon voy.
(This piece, such as it is, originally available, illustrated, in red.)