Our Hideous Progeny

by C.E. McGill

It is a ravenous thing, ambition; even more so than curiosity.

For some, I have heard, it is a fair-weather companion, evaporating at the first sign of hardship and leaving its bearer behind with only modest dreams. For others, however, it is merciless – a burning, aching, gnawing thing that refuses to abandon its host no matter how long or hard they work, until either they succeed or are left hollowed out, prideful to the last.

we were led into the parlour – or, at least, a room which looked like a parlour in the process of being eaten by a library, which was in turn being gradually subsumed by a naval museum.

It had been such a thrill to see our electrical devices working those first few times – the buzz of the wires, the arcing snap of sparks in the air. But now, each specimen only one more wasted body left in our gruesome, rodenticidal wake, that excitement was waning.

What were you, once? I wondered. Was it your forefathers and foremothers who slithered, long-necked, through the Liassic seas? Do you remember what it was like to have teeth that rent and tore? I shall give them back to you.