The Suit Wars Redux
for Nick

At the time the suits revolted, Sam was actually reading a book about suits. Not the fighting kind, just regular suits. Sam thought they were neat, which was why he had gotten into researching them, which was why they were both in this mess to begin with. By now he and Bi had been hiding out for some time on a floating rock a ways above the plains of Somewhere. One of the primary difficulties about living on a floating rock was that it got hit by other floating rocks from time to time, usually while one of them was in the bathroom, like right now. Actually Sam wasn't reading a book at all, he was just watching suit videos on his phone on the toilet. Well, Sam called it the head, for reasons unclear to Bi. It always made Bi think the base could use a tail as well, and they had been planning to build one for a while but Sam had beaten them to it.

The other primary difficulty about living on a floating rock was that it was hard to get groceries delivered. Bi had actually constructed a machine that could produce groceries from scratch indefinitely, but due to principles of stoichiometry that they didn't really understand, it always put out twice as much bread as anything else, and neither of them liked bread that much. Sam had dug a little cellar to put the extra bread in, but there wasn't that much room inside the floating rock and Sam needed real windows to throw himself out of when he was being dramatic. The grocery machine was on the top floor of the base, which meant that the whole thing technically counted as a sandwich from time to time, a fact of which both of them remained blissfully unaware.

From the floating rock it was actually quite easy on most days to see the colorful armies of suits battling their way across the dusty plains, with their pocket pens and rainbow marbles and whatever else new suit technology had been developed since Sam and Bi had exited the arms race. In fact for all they knew there was a legs race as well now, as trousers had been one of the major untapped fields of research that they had never gotten around to exploring. The sight always made Sam want to toss a rock down and see if he could hit one of the suits, a plan which had the unfortunate flaw that the rocks floated. As a result there was a little trail of pebbles in the air leading away from the main floating rock, which is what Bi had assumed was the tail Sam had built for the base.

It was while sitting on the toilet, absent-mindedly scrolling through suit videos, and watching the clouds of battlefield pigment drifting across the sky that Sam had his idea for the day, which he quickly relayed to Bi. (Actually, the first thing he had said, while watching another video earlier, was: Hey Bi, did you know you can use a vacuum to clean a cat? This idea actually quite intrigued Bi, especially the implications for artificial goldfish habitats, but as there wasn't a cat at the base they ended up ignoring Sam. A secret base on a floating rock is a relatively poor habitat for most cats, a fact which may be counted as a third difficulty.) Hey Bi, said Sam. Do you think if we got them to fight in a sandstorm they'd all turn beige?

There was a pause, where if they were face to face Bi would have just stared at Sam for a while, but as they weren't they could only stare at the door of the head for a while, which failed to have the same effect. During the first part of this pause Bi was still trying to unravel Sam's use of pronouns, as they were still thinking about cats from earlier, and the potential ways of cleaning a sandstorm off of a cat. Then they spent a while thinking about what Sam had actually said. To be honest, this was longer than it was usually worth thinking about something Sam said -- but, and this was the key, not always. Beige? asked Bi finally. Your plan is beige suits?

I guess? said Sam, slightly muffled through the door. You don't think it'll work? (Sam only sounded muffled to Bi, to be clear. To himself he sounded fine, while Bi was the muffled one. You understand.) Well, replied Bi, most anything can be made to work. We'll think about it some more. Bi immediately regretted saying this, as it was now inevitable that Sam would do the thinking extremely vocally while continuing to hog the head, like some kind of sonic head hog, but to their surprise they instead heard a flush and Sam came out saying, What if we did a competition? This was an idea Sam had originally gotten from yet another video series, but Bi did quite enjoy doing them and so it was agreed. Bi usually won, mostly because Sam recused himself from the judges' committee in order to prevent a repeat of the infamous 1-1 deadlock incident, but Sam always had some good ideas. Sometimes those ideas had to do with new types of shopping center that only sold string and string byproducts, admittedly, but you can twine mall, as they say. Or something like that, anyway.

The first thing to figure out was a new type of suit that would be able to protect them when they finally ventured back down into Somewhere. The two scientists worked away for days in their separate labs, only exchanging brief words when they came out for breaks, such as 'a' and 'aa'. Sam tossed a few more floating pebbles off the edge. Finally it was time to show off the results.

Bi wheeled out their three prototypes first. First, there was a hazmat suit. Collecting the hazardous materials to make it had actually been quite arduous, as there weren't a lot of them on the rock, but Bi had been able to combine a number of innocuous kitchen ingredients into a truly horrifying composite substance. In any case, Sam considered that the uncanny similarity of the process to their long-ago (accidental and traumatic) invention of the rainbow marbles qualified as a mental hazard, if nothing else. Then there was a bunny suit, about which Bi was ambivalent. (Sam took a closer look; it was entirely composed of bread.) Bi's third suit was a lawsuit, which in accordance with its name obeyed the law of gravity, the law of the excluded middle, and perhaps dozens of other laws that Sam didn't even know about. Overall Sam was impressed, and had already decided his vote would go to Bi before remembering that it didn't count.

Sam's contribution was a trivial fursuit. Upon inspection, there was actually nothing there at all.

While all judges agreed that Bi had won the round, it was still to be decided which of their prototypes to pursue. With the initial vote tied at ⅓-⅓-⅓, Sam and Bi briefly panicked at the prospect of a return to the nightmare scenario before Sam hurriedly proposed combining the three together. Bi agreed and proposed that the hazardous buns would surely be baguettes, as French bread is pain. It then turned out that both of them found the lawsuit rather frivolous, so they swapped it for Sam's instead. The resulting suit would thus be thoroughly illegal.

Now as I have mentioned, the great revolt of the suits was beginning at just this time. The causes leading up to this event were many and complex, and would take an army of historians to adequately explain. The army of historians, unfortunately, was engaged in combat at this time and not available for comment. In any event the result was that the battlefield disintegrated into a mass of confusion with someone fighting everyone and anyone fighting no one. With the suit armies coming apart at the seams, it was the perfect time for the two scientists to make their move. They were unaware however of the true reason behind the suit revolt: a top-secret plan that called for -- actually, I have no idea. I'm just the narrator.

Whatever the Federation had been cooking up, it was to become irrelevant. Back at the ranch, Sam and Bi donned their jumpsuits for the leap off the floating rock. On the way down Sam surveyed the surrounding horizon, and finding an ideal sandstorm approaching, excitedly headed off toward it. Bi lost track of Sam and glanced around nervously, unable to see him anywhere. Of course, once they remembered that he wasn't on Anywhere at all, but on Somewhere, they were able to reunite and begin setting up. This was their plan: with disarray in the armies, and that array of hazardous materials they were planting, the suits would be herded right into the path of the storm. The rainbow fog of war meant no one would see it coming.

Then Bi looked up. Oh, they said. Oh f***. This was actually the first time Sam had ever heard Bi drop an F-bomb, which was quite ironic considering their full name. He was also quite impressed with how Bi had managed to pronounce the asterisks. Then he spotted what Bi had seen. The sandstorm wasn't just a sandstorm, it was the dust kicked up by a stampeding herd: the desert lynxes of Somewhere.

How could this be? shouted Sam as they dove for cover. Our plan was flawless! But Bi was pulling a scrap of paper from their suit pocket, a forgotten leftover from the abandoned prototype. One last law that they had unwittingly been forced to obey: Murphy's Law.

When the pounding of feet had died down, Sam and Bi peeked out from behind their new best friend, a large nonfloating rock the size of a small nonfloating rock. The armies were gone. The pigment clouds were gone. The rainbow marbles were gone. All they could see was a field of tan slowly settling in the still air. Bi sneezed. Sam munched on a baguette. Bi sneezed again. Then they realized what had happened.

A wave of dust, spray paint, and lynx hair rolled over them, and out of the gloom, menacing shadows all around: catsuits.

Well, said Sam. It was nice knowing you.

I guess we were the weakest lynx, said Bi.

...wait! yelped Sam.

Bi waited.

A vacuum, said Sam. You can use a vacuum to clean a cat.

It was time to use Sam's prototype. It was nothing. Empty. In other words, a vacuum. Perfect for getting cat fur off a suit. OR WAS IT?? Well, yes it was. Unfortunately, as both of them well knew, a vacuum was also the ultimate hazardous material, for nature abhors a vacuum. (Nurture, on the other hand, loves a vacuum. But I digress.) Bi hesitated, pondering the possibility that this could be the end of both of them. Sam was so stressed out that he threw himself out a window. This was so much less possible than it had ever been before that Bi didn't even comment on it.

But in the end, there was nothing else to be done. With the beige catsuits closing in, the two scientists hugged and said what might have been construed as their prayers if there had been gods by that point. Then they activated the trivial fursuit. There was a giant sucking sound. Sam and Bi, flung out of the blast zone by the counterreaction, could only aim for their floating rock and hope to land in a pit of soft bread.

They missed.