One Day On Arrakis [FICTOID]

“Well, this is new,” the spice merchant said.  “My sand crawler just turned into a pineapple.”

“No pineapples grow on a raucous,” said the Bene Gesserit.

“Tell me about it,” said the spice merchant.  “It costs a frelking fortune to import them.” 

“Guild Navigators are allergic to them.  It makes them break out in hives.”

“On a Guild Navigator, that would be an improvement.”

The two walked around the pineapple.  It was a big pineapple, but not as big as a sand crawler.

“Where did all the mass go?” the spice merchant asked.  “My sand crawler was larger than this by several metric tons.”

“There are some things men were not meant to know.”

“Is that some offhanded sexist way of saying, ‘I have a secret but I won't tell’?”

“You want to get your gonads shoved in gom jabbar?”

“You needn't get testy.”

Yhey walked around the pineapple some more, examining it this way and that like two ravens examining the shiny object.

“Another thing that's always puzzled me,” the spice merchant said, “is how the spice mutates people into Guild Navigators who can fold space to enable faster than light travel.  Since the spice is found only on Arrakis, how did they get here in the first place?”

“LALALALALALA! I'm not listening to you,” said the Bene Gesserit.  

The spice merchant tapped the top of the pineapple with his toe.  It toppled over.  “Seems like an ordinary pineapple,” he said.

The Bene Gesserit picked it up.  “I shall take this to my sisters for further study.”

“Hey, that's my pineapple,” said the spice merchant.  “After all, it was my sand crawler.” 

“Your sand crawler is no more,” said the Bene Gesserit.  “I claim this pineapple for my sisters.”

Taking it back to her cloister, the Bene Gesserit summoned her sisters to study the pineapple.

Later that evening, they ate it.

Later still, the devoured pineapple transformed back into the component parts of the sand crawler, killing off that chapter of the Bene Gesserit in a spectacularly gruesome and exquisitely painful fashion, much to the benefit of Arrakis.

© Buzz Dixon