The Kaiju Preservation Society

by John Scalzi

“Firebomb the place,” Laertes said, from the room he and Brent shared, where he was playing a video game. “No one’s firebombing anything,” Brent yelled back to Laertes. “Yet,” Laertes replied. “You can’t firebomb your way out of every problem,” Brent said. “You can’t,” Laertes called back.

Go ahead and eat all you want, but avoid excessively fatty foods, since one of these is going to tell your body to purge fats in a way that absolutely challenges normal sphincter control.” “That’s . . . not great.” “It’s a mess. Seriously, don’t even think about trying to fart for the next eighteen hours. It’s not a fart. You will regret it.”

We all looked. “Mate, those look like fossilized turds,” Kahurangi said. “That’s why we call them poopfruit, yes,” Tom said. “You need to talk to your marketing people,” I suggested. “They taste better than they look.” “They would have to, wouldn’t they?”

“It’s the twenty-first century; no one goes by Betsy anymore,” Tom said. “But even if they did, there’s usually context. If you’re saying, ‘Betsy has the results from the lab,’ it’s probably the human. If it’s ‘Betsy just got pissed off and burned down twenty thousand acres of jungle,’ it’s probably the kaiju.”

“The last Gold Team geologist decided to retire after we basically had to reattach a limb. For a second time.” “Oh.” “Well, that’s not completely accurate. It wasn’t the same limb twice. They were different limbs.”

“That thing looks like H. P. Lovecraft’s panic attack.”