Imagining
Good Moves. The “what might have been. game is one of my top ten favourite heartbreakers. To wit. Imagine if you will, Botany Bay (which the autochthonous people called Gamay), 34°00’16. South 151°13’04. East, January 26th 1788. Arthur Philip and his Fleet of the Doomed lands to find the place deserted of both man and beast. Moreover, even the vegetation seems to have vanished entirely and all he surveys is a barren, hostile rocky wilderness.
Three weeks before this arrival, following a tip from a very wise and sensitive Brush bronzewing (Phaps elegans) who could sense trouble way ahead, the whole population of Gamay and environs, human, animal and vegetable had migrated temporarily some 1,000 miles North West.
Philip decides that the place is a bummer. He tails back and heads deeper into the Pacific Ocean, towards Ponape (now Pohnpei). This intrusion pisses Great Cthulhu off immensely; he wakes up in a foul mood and devours the entire fleet without even breaking a sweat. Then he goes back to sleep. The end.
And here’s a picture of a very pretty Brush bronzewing for to gladden your eyeballs: