Discworld 09 - Eric

He looked behind him. The glowing outlines of Eric’s magic circle faded and winked out.

“I’m not being picky, you understand,” he said. “It’s just that I thought you said you could get us back to Ankh. This isn’t Ankh. I can tell by the little details, like the flickering red shadows and the distant screaming. In Ankh the screaming is usually much closer,” he added.

“What’re quantum mechanics?”

“I don’t know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.”

Below, harshly lit in the arid vacuum of space, Great A’Tuin the world turtle toiled under the weight of Creation. On his — or her, the matter had never really been resolved — carapace the four giant elephants strained to support the Disc itself.

There might have been more efficient ways to build a world. You might start with a ball of molten iron and then coat it with successive layers of rock, like an old-fashioned gobstopper. And you’d have a very efficient planet, but it wouldn’t look so nice. Besides, things would drop off the bottom.

Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn’t own their own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

Forever was over. All the sands had fallen. The great race between entropy and energy had been run, and the favorite had been the winner after all.

I thought, you see, that if I could show people how to get what they wanted more easily they’d stop being so bloody stupid

The tide got on with things. Further down the beach the last surge poured into a hollow in the rocks, and the new sun beamed down on the soaking remains of a half-eaten egg and cress sandwich. Tidal action turned it over. Thousands of bacteria suddenly found themselves in the midst of a taste explosion, and started to breed like mad.

"What shall I do?"
"Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother."

You did, did you?" said the king. "Thousands of more-or-less innocent people dying? Straight out of our hands," he snapped his fingers, "just like that. Straight off to their happy hunting ground or whatever. That's the trouble with you people. You don't think of the Big Picture. I mean, look at the Tezumen. Gloomy, unimaginative, obsessive... by now they could have invented a whole bureaucracy and taxation system that could have turned the minds of the continent to slag. Instead of which, they're just a bunch of second-rate axe-murderers. What a waste."