Millie: A Cautionary Tale

Millie lives in a universe that is not this one. Her universe is called Xanth.

Millie’s universe was created by Piers.

Piers created everything in the universe, including Millie. You can tell just by looking around! Xanth is filled with the glory of Piers. Xanth people have written sonnets about it. Bob, a prophet of Xanth, wrote it in his Letter to the Zombies: “Anyone who cannot see, just by looking around, that the universe was created by Piers, is completely off his rocker. It’s called Xanth, for heaven’s sake, plus, you guys are freakin’ zombies.”

Millie knows this is true because Bob’s Letter to the Zombies is part of The Book.

The Book is Piers’ Word. It is inerrant.

It’s important to have an inerrant Book! Otherwise, it’s all just relative, and then you get birth defects.

Millie learned to read when she was a little sprog of three, and the first thing she read, after Green Eggs and Ham*, was The Book. She’s been reading it ever since.

“Man,” she says to her friend Tess, “how about that Book?”

“It’s Piers’ Word!” answers Tess cheerfully. “It’s inerrant!”

“I know!” answers Millie. “I was wondering if you had an opinion on the part where the puffins build a hang-glider out of pancakes and clotted cream.”

“Puffins?” says Tess.

“Yes,” says Millie. “In the Book of Birds Building Things Out Of Breakfast Foods.”

“You’ve read that one?”

“Haven’t you?”

“Well, no,” says Tess.

“You haven’t read The Book?”

“Well, I’ve read most of it,” says Tess defensively. “The important parts.”

“But how do you know which parts are important if you haven’t read the whole thing?”

“There is a general consensus,” asserts Tess primly.

“But consenses are relative and fallible! Only the Book itself is inerrant– not Xanthian people’s consenses on the relative importance of bits of the Book.”

“I thought it was consensi.”

“Whatever. If The Book is the only inerrant source of truth, it seems like you ought to read the whole thing.”

“I hate birds.”

“You could learn some important things.”

Five days later, Tess drops dead of avian flu. Millie doesn’t get it, because she’s eaten her Wheaties. The Book told her to!

Let this be a lesson.

*This is an infinitely recurring children’s book that exists in every known universe, even the ones without intelligent life or tangible matter.