------------------------------------------------------------------------ UCirc Warren Newsgroups: alt.devilbunnies From: adm4@po.CWRU.Edu (Aaron D. Mandelbaum) Message-ID: <3470b6$olj@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> Reply-To: adm4@po.CWRU.Edu (Aaron D. Mandelbaum) Date: 2 Sep 1994 10:55:34 GMT Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Cement. The warren was made out of cement. I'd expected dirt, particularly after the squirrel's rant about DB's and humanity, but maybe cement was part of nature, too. Somehow I doubted it. In any case, it wasn't the squirrels who'd built this warren. According to Loren, who so far was my only source on matters like this, none of the other squirrels would do more than chitter in my direction. I wondered if he was the only one who could speak, but I really wanted to talk to someone else, because I didn't like him. All of the squirrels were annoying, in some ways. First of all, they were cute, and it was unnerving to know that these cute little critters were not only intelligent, but technologically advanced, and not entirely benign. Second, they had a way of getting underfoot, worse than any cat, and every once in a while one would scramble up my leg and perch on my shoulder, either to hitch a ride or as a shortcut to the upper level catwalks that ran along the walls. Third, there was all the chittering. It was almost deafening! But Loren... Loren was obviously one of the leaders, I could tell by the way the crowds parted when he walked down the hall, and by the way everyone scurried to follow his orders. But when I asked who was in charge, he just said... "Why, we are! The squirrels, that is. I'm sure you can tell this was once a DevilBunny warren," "How?" "Excuse me?" "How can I tell? It's not like I've been in a warren before." "Well, look at the scale. Why would squirrels built six-foot ceilings? Anyway, this used to be UCircWarren. Still is, but it used to be a Devilbunny warren. A lot of the Ohio squirrels came here to work on weapons to protect us from the humans -- this was before we knew the truth. "Then, I had a vision. I saw the planet, beautiful and blue, hanging there in space. The night side turned towards me, and I saw humanity spreading like a blight across the globe. I had a lot of dreams like this, you understand, we were all dedicated to the cause, and it was all we thought about. "But this time it was different. I wasn't a scientist, I just worked in shipping and supply, and I'd spent the entire day poring over a world map of the major warrens, trying to find out where our shipment of lightbulbs had vanished to. The map swam before my eyes, then wrapped itself around the globe. "Every human city had a red dot, marking a major warren, in or near it. Without exception. Ha! I thought, there is no escape from us! "But the Earth stopped, and started turning the other way. The sun flashed wildly around and around as time reversed faster and faster, until it was like a strobe. But that faded out and what was left was like a map, of human and devilbunny cities superimposed on each other. "As time went back, the human cities shrank and disappeared, at least on this continent, which was what I was looking at. One by one, they shriveled up and popped out of existance, followed quickly by the devilbunny warrens around and beneath them. Finally, the continent was empty, save for a few warrens scattered across the country. "Then I woke up." "And suddenly realized that Devilbunnies were the true evil?" I asked, confused as to what exactly the point of all this was. "Not until later. It was later, when I was telling the dream to one of my friends and he asked why the human cities disappeared first, if I was going back in time. That was when I knew the truth! The DevilBunnies weren't fighting the human's takeover of nature -- they were causing it!" "What did you do?" "The first thing I did was try to tell everyone I could, so they'd know what was really going on, but none of them would listen, dismissing it as just a dream. So I went to the warren leader to confront him with the truth. "He denied it, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that I was right. I told him that we wouldn't live a lie any longer, and that the alliance between DB's and squirrels was at an end! He attacked me, but I had prepared for it, grabbing a prototype hand laser from the weapons lab before coming up. It burned through his armor and killed him. "The second in command called in to ask for orders, and saw the body lying on the floor, me standing over it. He ordered all the squirrels on the base rounded up and thrown in prison -- he knew that we'd never cooperate now that we knew the truth. "But the weapons lab was mostly run by squirrels, and I managed to get there before security and rally the workers. There were a hundred laser prototypes, and enough older weaponry lying around for us to sucessfully defend the lab, and later liberate the entire base. The few surviving DevilBunnies ran for the other Cleveland warren, swearing vengeance on all squirrels for this treachery -- as if they weren't the ones who'd betrayed us! "After it was all over, I gathered everyone together and told them how the DevilBunnies had been using us, and how everything we'd done had been wrong! Since then we've been preparing to fight against the DevilBunnies and drive them from the planet!" "And they never came to retake the warren?" "There was one attack, which we barely repelled, but then some Fudds -- they didn't call themselves that at the time, of course -- attacked Cleveland and we laid low while the other nearby warrens were destroyed. We stayed low when the DevilBunnies retook the area not too long after, and haven't been bothered since. If anybun gets too close, we take 'em out, and make it look like a human did it. The nearby warrens have learned to stay far away from this part of town. We've been hiding here, preparing for the time when we can face the Devilbunnies and defeat them, once and for all." "And you're ready now?" "Not even close. But your ignorant postings have no doubt alerted the world to our existence, and we can stay hidden no longer. We HAVE to attack!" "So you're doomed," I repeated, just to confirm it. "Gaia is with us," he said, "We cannot fail." I left the warren with a pair of squirrels in full combat gear -- second generation hand lasers, tiny antigrav packs that could negate almost half of a squirrel's weight, and probably a couple other things I didn't notice. They looked sinister as hell, even without their gear, and their fur, like Loren's, was pure silver with none of the brown (or is it red? Gotta check that out at the library) highlights most of the squirrels had. They both had miniature keypads so that they could 'talk' to me -- I wondered why Loren could speak, and no one else, but they refused to answer. I asked why they were accompanying me, and they 'said' it was to protect me -- from the temptation of skipping town, no doubt. Still, this was LonGears' territory, and even with them I didn't feel completely safe. -- Aaron Mandelbaum (I don't need no steenking .sig) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Usenet Web 1.0.3 (development) / webmaster@netimages.com