Page 52 - Fables volume 2

Archy’s Bunker

Smart enough to master the boss’s old Remington, Archy took
advantage of living interstitially in a newspaper columnist’s office to
learn to read about current events. It was hop-and-hope from word
to word on the previous day’s editions, a process taking the young
cockroach away from normal adolescent self-ranking in the sub rosa
insect hierarchy coexisting with its human counterpart in the old
Constitution Building. Thus he learned about the imminent nuclear
threat, but not how to distinguish female scent-tracks; about his
species’ resistance to radiation damage, but not why to race around
erratically when the lights went on; and about the half-life of
plutonium-239, but not when to avoid the baser proclivities of his
less-evolved fellows.
None of his peers would listen when he told them an apocalyptic
disaster was unavoidable, that the humans had backed themselves
into imaginary corners and would destroy everything and everyone
exposed to their terrible weapons. Despite his vast store of
knowledge concerning the greater world outside the building, he
became a social outcast. Nevertheless, his innate optimism and
patience led him to a messianic self-image: a new Noah, who would
save his family in an ark from a flood wiping out all others.
That ark soon occupied most of his time. He found an old length
of lead pipe, capped at one end, in the lowest sub-basement. Another
cap lay tantalizingly close. Archy could not budge it. After long
consideration, he realized he would have one chance to get it into a
position close enough to the open end of the pipe without creating a
closure impossible to budge from inside or outside. It required all his
skill and several weeks to create a pair of grooved and intersecting
inclined planes in the dirt floor next to the old pieces of plumbing. At
last his engineering project was ready for implementation. Archy
kicked away the tiny pebble restraining the pipe and jumped aside as
it rolled down its ordained path, ending open-end down at the
bottom of the ramps’ vertex. Perfect!
Then, after making careful line-of-sight measurements for the
fiftieth time, he released the cap from its equipoise at the top of the

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