Slave to the Orchid.

Evolution is a process that serves a purpose. Evolution begins from grand design and is culminant in what we see now. If you think that there is no place for teleology in evolution then I want you to explain to me, how come all printers only come with a half filled cartridge? Do you think that sort of thing just happens by accident? That natural selection came along and siphoned some of the ink out of the cartridge? It doesn’t happen that way buddy, because Natural selection is stupid and can easily be outwitted and I saw him down the pub pissing it up when I was buying the printer. No, and it is not so much that natural selection is ill-equipped to perform the task on his own, it is just that I don’t think he’s been working very hard lately. I’ve seen a number of cretins and cripples kicking back in the hospital and I don’t know what Robespierre is going to do when he gets back and finds us in this state of disarray.  He may want to start all over again.

Listen, first there were single celled organisms. These organisms were produced by twist of solar radiation, salt water and lime. They floated around for a time first learning how to change their shape aimlessly, then eventually learning how to break themselves in two and make two smaller single celled organisms that bore their resemblance but were not them. This is the genesis of the play Oedipus and although corrupted over time its most recent iteration is accurate in everything but the temporality of the patricide and the exact mechanics of the maternal incest. These organisms continued to enjoy reproduction, as it was the only action available to them other than passive transport on a column of water, and developed the orgasm in order to ensure they knew when they were doing it right. They had loud house parties because there were no cops. One of these organisms, Dave, got a mermaids cunt hair stuck on his ass and using it as a paddle he adapted well to the frequent changes in water-current direction which had become commonplace as circle dancing caught on at barmitzvahs and weddings. His advantage spared him from the first great extinction, which occurred when CFCs were invented, and he was incorporated into future multi-celled organisms as sperm, the most useful cell ever. All the while Dave was fucking around in the ocean, other less individualistic and less competent-with-a-road-map of his single-celled counterparts had grouped together in big sheets of still aimless but warmer life; seaweed. The warmth provided by the extra company proved irresistible to these agglutinated cells (mostly female) and they strived evermore for warmth and companionship. Trees first grew out of the sand at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean as one innovation in the pursuit of more warmth and rainforests arise from the propensity of seaweed from which arises the well-known maxim “seaweed loves company”. At first they were satisfied with warmth as an end in itself but soon became jealous of each other and grew ever higher until they chanced upon a group of hummingbirds.

While the majority of the seaweed had opted to invade the land, and assert their hegemony on the sand, the luddites amongst them had remained in the ocean as seaweed. Seeing as aimfulness had not yet been invented and they were continually vexed by their utter uselessness they contracted a plumber to produce “something pretty, with lots of green and in full-high-definition with HDMI”. Although the project was abandoned the plumber left behind a filet-o-fish. This had been bought at a newly inaugurated McDonalds restaurant and was undercooked. As this story unfolded, fish arose de novo from a patch of sand that was initially intended to look like a woman’s genitals but ended up looking like a pineapple. These fish started out eating sand but soon realised that the seaweed too was edible. Eventually during a long walk, one fish, an author in her time, discovered the orgasm left behind by the single-celled organisms who had eventually become trees. Early adopters made use of the discovery immediately, though the majority of fish waited til the start of the next financial year when a major upgrade was expected which would make this version useless anyway. Counterintuitively female fish were the quickest to make use of the orgasm, it preoccupying them so wholly that this preoccupation was disseminated down the tract of evolution and serves in small part to explain why they are hopeless drivers. Once universal adoption had been achieved a dire energy crisis arose as fucking required far more of it than simply swimming around. Peak-seaweed had been reached many decades earlier and it was not the best tasting stuff anyway. In a fit of despair one of the daddy fish (sharks) bit one of the mummy fish (whales) and found the taste delightful, whence arose carnivorousness and the fact that chicks like a slap on the bum while you drill them. This was the first time in history or prehistory when money became an important tool of seduction. As most fish could serve as either mate or meal, a horny fish needed to add more value than contained in a spare five minutes and “the wife is out of town”. Which is how the diamond ring came about. Diamonds were costly in these pre-Roman cultures. Although himself oblivious to his true motivations, an entrepreneur amongst them invented the submarine in one of the very first eco-tourism ventures but left it on a beach in Panama after the first four tourists died of asphyxiation and future attempts to fill the submarines with water failed to produce a mode of transport energy efficient enough to offset the costs of operation. It’s a curious footnote to prehistory that his Uncle-in-law in a similar circumstance invented and discarded nuclear energy in favour of a healthy diet and because a life well lived is the best revenge.

Heightened sexual competition required a high level of organisation amongst the fishes and with the invention of the hand-axe a great deal of restraint had to be shown in combat lest somebody lose an eye. In the fortuitous concurrence of these two developments, seemingly purposeful in retrospect, local councils were formed to legislate against axe duelling and serendipitously in passing one such law accidentally formed the basis of taxation law with the clause “with nominal entry fee to cover cleaning costs”. With overt sexual rivalry now sublimated to class aspiration and high-finance, a large but still minor portion of the population felt that old-time morals had been forsaken and that it wasn’t safe to leave the door open anymore. They formed a council of concerned members and whilst brain storming potential solutions to what they perceived to be the crumbling of society and family-values became engaged in debate when one raised the possibility of settling Portugal. Others amongst them wondered whether they would like to be seen as colonialists displacing the indigenes of the land who, in 200 million and fifty thousand years, would have been there 50000 years already. Their detractors reasoned that San Franciscans were not so worried when they displaced the indigenous heterosexuals of northern California. A dangerous and intractable problem of logic was reached and all present eventually compromised with the invention of squid-rings. If it had not been that the Professor who ran the sub-department of Logic, at the University Department of Philosophy was a priest, this impasse may not have been reached and we may have ended up being descended of fish.

This evolutionary cul-de-sac was opened by the introduction of a novel species, the meteor. Descended of space yet curiously an adaptation best suited to not being in space. They were an exemplification of the adaptability of organisms to rapidly changing environments. Meteors were amphibious having successfully lived in the atmosphere and on the ground and they are the natural progenitors of frogs, salamanders and Proteus the god of men and women who subscribe wholeheartedly to self-determination by Zodiac sign.

Dissatisfied with the descent of the meteor and resolute not to allow themselves to decline so, the crocodiles turned on their authoritarian masters, the Dinosaurs and drove most of them to the island of Taiwan where they reformed a government paradoxically less authoritarian than the crocodile government by which they were replaced. The crocodiles became extinct after the Internet was accidentally deleted, their systems of education failed and the population was pied-pipered by a charismatic but suicidal leader who espoused equality. He by force of arms relocated salt-water crocodiles to fresh water and fresh water crocodiles to salt-water. Unfortunately for them, though in looking back, fortunately for us, the fresh water crocodiles died of dehydration in an osmotic coup de grace inflicted by their new homes. Salt-water crocodiles met with the rainbow trout in their journey up the river. These fish told them of how they had fled the ocean, a Gomorrah of sin, prostitution, orgasms and investment, in favour of the slower pace of life in these streams. It was terrible, they said, and they had even considered invading Portugal. The crocodiles horrified by the very possibility of this imperialism chained themselves to each other in protest.

Fortuitously as this raft of crocodiles floated down the river they drifted through a patch of dried seaweed and old coke bottle labels, which in aggregation formed a sail, were caught by a gust of wind and became a pterodactyl. She landed in a tree, and in too successful a display of mating prowess attracted a horse, got married and let herself go. Covered in unruly arm-pit and pubic hair she learnt to pick fleas first with her teeth, then her small pterodactyl arms and she eventually had children, half-horse, half-pterodactyl, who could do the same. These children, rebellious by the time of adolescence, climbed down the tree, using these arms, and began organising into punters, pimps and whores. The madam of one bonobo brothel noticed the added business on the days she had her lazy whores punished by hair-plucking. This practice became ubiquitous when it could be painlessly achieved with an ingenious invention and is why all Scandinavian bitches are smoking hot.

Which brings us back to the trees: They had grown quite high indeed when they reached a group of hummingbirds, who were themselves busying about, in desperation, trying to find some flowers. They were in fact exquisitely pleased when a tree grew so tall as to reach them because they had been buzzing about in empty space for a while and were worried they mightn’t ever find a flower. One of their number, boastfulmost amongst them and most adept an orator, stood forward to greet the trees and hopefully, entreaty them to stay.

“Hullo good tree, how is it that you’ve made it up so far, you must be quite clever and certainly cleverer than the smaller trees down there.”

“Right you are little bird. What is it that you yourself are doing up here? Not much up here really.” He replied as he looked around, a little disappointed at the Spartan furnishings.

“Well we were looking for flowers and having seen none down closer to the ground, we’ve been spiralling ever upwards.” And he looked higher still as he puffed his little chest and made a spiralling motion with his left wing, as if there might yet be higher altitudes to discover.

“Interesting.” The tree added politely, not yet engaged in the birds life’s story.

“Yes we’re quite remarkable creatures really.” The desperate bird nodded vigorously, trying still to ensure the tree’s continued residence in the heights.

“How so.” The tree was still willing to hear him out; it wasn’t as if he had a meeting to attend.

“Glad you should ask. Well did you know our wings flap at an astonishing speed? Ninety times a second in fact.” The hummingbird’s eyes lit up as he reeled out his trump fact. There were none he’d told who had not been verily amazed.

“Really?’ The tree spat as he was predictably ensnared in the conversation.

“Absolutely, I tell no lie. And that we can hover, perfectly still in the air as we flap our wings so fast?” The bird could see the shining wings of Nike on the horizon and pressed on.

“Never.”

“I kid you not. And that while we are so hovering, we can accurately guide our beak, which has a fine calibre but is quite long, certainly long enough to be unwieldy to most, into the depths of the deepest orchid?” This he made especially dramatic, as he knew he had now exhausted the list of his astonishing qualities.

“Quite amazing. And quite inappropriate really, you know most Orchids look more like a vagina than many of the vaginas I’ve seen.”

“And I’m sure you’ve seen very many old-tree, which is why I’m so happy you’ve joined us up here. You seem to have quite beautiful flowers.” The bird reclined backwards into a sort of seated position as he hovered in the air. The tree was happy for the conversation to have turned to his favourite subject.

“Oh yes, the pride of the forest.”

“And so many of them! Well we’re quite partial to flowers. Actually as I believe I’ve described, we are perfectly suited to drinking their nectar.”

“Mmm, nectar must be so sweet and tasty.” The tree interjected excitedly. The bird matching his excitement continued.

“Oh it is! Can’t go long between drinks though, takes a lot of energy to flap these wings so fast you know.”