text: Hello, I’d like to introduce you to Hershel, he’s a desert dwelling wasp. He has the physical form of a chimpanzee but knows himself to be a wasp. He lives on a planet similar to earth. On that planet, his function is that of a bee. It’s a mystery, really, why the standards of his planet mandate he be labeled a wasp. His physical form nor his function are wasp-y in nature. It would seem there’s no correlation between “wasp” on earth and “wasp” on Hershel’s planet. Hershel lives in isolation and always has, the life of a desert-dwelling wasp is lonely. He walks from tree to tree pollinating them as he goes. This, of course, is inadvertent-- he’s just a sneezy guy. What’s remarkable about Hershel is that his sneezes take a really long time to happen. Long enough to account for his walks between trees, which average about 4 days. This makes it possible for the pollen to dwell in his respiratory system until he’s near another tree. On reflection, Hershel found it odd that he hasn’t seen a single other being ever, not even his parents. Yet he knows of parents and what parents are-- he has trouble reconciling these facts. On what was June 4th on Earth and just another day of walking for Hershel, he decided he was rather tired of walking about and being alone. He figured he had nothing to lose, so he began to build a spaceship out of the materials around him. “Right”, he said, “I’m going to Earth.” Hershel knew he didn’t know how to build a rocket ship, so he was surprised to have finished building one. He also knew that he didn’t know, or at least he had no reason for knowing, that there were other planets. Ten seconds to blastoff and Hershel found himself sitting in a fully functioning cockpit wearing a full spacesuit. A voice was counting down over the headset. A voice. ‘That’s odd’, he thought to himself, ‘I thought I was alone’. Whatever, he had bigger things to worry about-- he was about to be launched. All of this was enough to distract from the compelling amount of oddities. “...three, two, one, blastoff” Hershel sneezed. “Bless you”, said the voice. “Thank you”, said Hershel. “You’re a chimpanzee”, said the voice. “Oh, shit” said Hershel. Then, as lucidity began to dawn on him, he awoke. Hershel left his dwelling on earth where he was sleeping and joined the others in the common space. He spoke, “bzzz bzz bzzzzzz bz bzzz” Roughly translated from Earth bee, “guys, you’re never going to guess what I dreamt.” Epilogue: Hershel lived for another forty days before he came to his unfortunate end. His colony's hive was next to a zoo, and there were flowers in the chimpanzee enclosures. In one particular enclosure lived a chimpanzee who sneezed quite often. He also liked to aggressively poke people and things with his sharp nails. For this reason, the zookeepers referred to him as "Wasp". On Hershel's fateful last day on earth, Wasp accidentally poked a flower that had Hershel in it. As Hershel's body sat on the floor detached from its stinger, his life flashed before his eyes. "bzz bz bzz". "Probably not gonna wake up from this", he said.