Build a Blight Workshop

You’ve heard it everywhere. X amount of monkeys with X amount of typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. It’s a common saying that highlights the absurd fringe of statistical possibility, but it also is the easiest way to get across the concept of recovering legendary items that once existed at the beginning of time. Many artifacts bear unique powers, but the most powerful were destroyed long ago out of necessity. As nothing is known about their origin, if they even had one, a strange organization has formed in secret to take a different approach to bringing back these items.

With infinite realities, it is usually easy to eventually find one where a normally-sinister item is regarded as being innocuous, its original purpose long forgotten. For example, the first snake was actually an animated effigy of sorts, a devious entity whose greatest regret is that the devil took credit for its work in dislodging humanity from perfection. Organic snakes were created to be visual reminders for humanity of the dangers of temptation and evil, and the original they were based on was destroyed early on in human history.

But in some variation of this world, people have forgotten what the snake means, and the animals are often held in cute regard alongside dogs and cats. In this reality, the Build a Snake Workshop franchise allows kids to customize their own plush snakes, offering a surprising range of materials. Stardust, goat’s blood, lotus petals, uranium, natural cotton and coagulated electricity residue are among the thousands of components there.

These materials are actually what the group behind this business thinks were most likely used to form the original snake. Unsuspecting children are the monkeys, provided with an infinite supply of typewriters. One day a child will accidentally execute the exact recipe to recreate that snake, and it will be free to wreak havoc. The organization will wait a few months in an alternate reality, then they’ll send a team back to the ruins of civilization to capture the incarnation of temptation born anew.

Almost every reality has a franchise of this sort meant to recreate a different long-lost artifact, unknowingly manufacturing their own apocalypse. If you see such a business in your local mall, it may be best to delay the inevitable and take your children to a different establishment.

(Originally written 1/8/2016)