What Now?
Beep beep.
As another day dawned on the desert, the fresh sunlight tinted everything red. The spires, cliffs, and towers of rock drank in the first touches of the sun, dispelling the coolness of night. The night predators dove back into their burrows, as their prey tentatively crept out of hiding, continuing their search for the small traces of dew that collected on the scrawny shrubs and the few blades of desert grass.
Beep beep.
And through it all, ribbons of black tarmac wound across the desert floor, connecting locations that were apparently far more interesting than the vast empty heat of the desert. A hole high up in the face of the rock protected its occupant from the worst of the day's heat.
Beep beep, beep beep.
Life here was hard and dry. Each day was a struggle for the few drops of precious moisture that could be found. The air scorched the throat with each breath, and the unforgiving stone offered no comfort.
Beep beep.
Beep beep.
Beep beep. Beep beep, Beep beep.
Beep- click!
Wile E. Coyote flipped the switch on his alarm clock.
7:00 a.m.
Time to start another day. He had not slept well the night before, for no discernible reason, and was bleary-eyed and groggy. This had been his routine for too long, however, and he knew he wouldn't get back to sleep again. Wincing slightly at the aches and pains that had settled into his knees and lower back as the years went on, he swung his legs out of bed, and shuffled slowly into the kitchen.
He flipped the switch on the ACME brand coffee maker, and cracked open the ACME brand refrigerator. All of which, was of course plugged into the ACME brand generator, which had miraculously decided not to explode on him yesterday.
Peering through the contents of the fridge, he eventually settled on a breakfast of powdered eggs, soy-bacon, and a low-carb bagel. As the faux-bacon began to fry, he opened the economy-sized tub of "ACME butter product" and spread it on the faux-bagel while looking through yesterday's mail.
Once breakfast was finished and the dishes cleared, he poured himself the usual second cup of coffee, and wandered down deeper into the cave to his workshop, easing into the dilapidated stool that sat in front of a worn and weary writing desk. The rickety desk seemed to strain to support the weight of the only volume laid upon it.
The eight-hundred page unabridged behemoth of the latest ACME catalogue.
Wile E. dampened his thumb with his tongue, slipped on his reading glasses, and sipped his coffee while flipping through the pages, searching for inspiration.
It was all routine at this point. In fact, he hated the ACME company more than he would like to admit. But the fact that they were the only company willing to deliver out here in the desert coupled with a very generous line of credit meant that he had little other choice. They had even continued extending him credit after Wile E. had brought a lawsuit against them for wrongful endangerment, false advertising, among other things. Of course, his absentee lawyer hadn't been heard from in months, which probably wasn't helping any.
Trebuchet? No, the last one had tried to kill him.
Repeatedly.
Rocket skates? Only if there weren't any better ideas.
He had already torn out the page with the so-called "Earthquake Pills," after that horrible misadventure.
After spending the majority of his life pursuing the Roadrunner and failing, Wile E. did not have much room in his heart for optimism. Each new idea was regarded with an initial caution, and although he threw himself whole-heartedly into each new scheme, plan, and plot, he was no longer surprised at failure. To him it was just a matter of course. He had even started ordering parts for the next ACME contraption before the previous one would (inevitably) fail.
Failure was assumed, yet giving up was unthinkable.
In the years since he had first started hunting the Roadrunner, Wile E. had commuted his reasons from simple hunger, to a twisted sense of vengeance, to a personal crusade. Now, however, he simply hunted the Roadrunner because that was what he did. It was his trade, his profession. Besides, it wasn't like he had anything better to do out here in the desert. Each day brought new challenges, each day new failures. But giving up wasn't an option. It was his life.
He hunted the Roadrunner because he hunted the Roadrunner.
Not that the ACME company was complaining about it. In past correspondences, he had heard from salespeople claiming that his account balance with ACME was legendary. He didn't even pay attention to the bills they sent him anymore.
It had been easier for a while, when a documentary crew had paid him a substantial sum to allow them to film his hunt for the Roadrunner. After several years of recording footage, hoping that Wile E. would finally catch the Roadrunner and make a fitting end to the documentary, the producers got bored, and packed up the equipment and left. A few years later Wile E. had found out that instead of a respectful, tasteful feature-length documentary about the plight of the desert coyote, the producers had decided that it would be more profitable to use the collected footage to create a slapstick, episodic comedy out of his life.
He didn't really mind all that much, at this point. Not like anyone he knew watched it. Plus, even though the documentary was produced decades ago, the comedy was still in occasional syndication, and he received a small (very small) percentage of the royalties every now and then.
The rocket launcher nestled at the bottom of page 437, perhaps?
ACME couldn't sell any actual military hardware, but they had some pretty close knock-offs every now and then. All of them, of course, encumbered by numerous manufacturing defects, lax quality control, and indecipherable user manuals.
His practiced hand and tired eyes filled out the part numbers and quantities on the next order form in the tall stack adorning the right side of his desk. Setting down the worn, chewed, and warped pencil, he slid down off the stool and tucked the order form under his arm and he gathered the materials for today's scheme.
-.-
The sun had climbed above most of the peaks, and the shadows were gradually being washed away in the noonday heat. Sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of one greasy paw, Wile E. double-checked the mounting bracket on the spring mechanism he had set up right by the roadside.
In theory, the device had been advertised to cause a net of Kevlar-fiber-reinforced rope to spring up across the roadway, either netting the roadrunner in his tracks, or with enough velocity, dicing him into neat little roadrunner-cubes. Never mind the fact that the "Kevlar-fiber" looked like ordinary packing twine, the package appeared to be missing several important parts, and that even he could tell the instructions were written very poorly (his Korean was really getting pretty good these days). Sighing, as usual he was just going to have to make the best of it.
Of course, he was still about an hour and a half away from having everything set and ready, as long as there were no additional technical glitches, like the metric bolts shipped with the imperial nuts in the last order. Nevertheless he heard the distant and familiar rending of air that signaled the approaching roadrunner.
Cursing to himself gently, he wished he had gotten the device installed sooner; it was very unlikely the roadrunner would pass this way again today. He looked angrily at the pile of tangled netting that still sat unobstructive at the roadside. Deciding to make a sincere effort, he grabbed his largest wrench, walked to the middle of the road and stood as a batter waiting for a home-run pitch. Wile E.'s sharp eyes picked up his target tearing down the thin black ribbon of asphalt.
-.-
The roadrunner is a remarkable creature. Its light weight and powerful leg muscles evolved to allow it to reach speeds far exceeding those of any natural predators. Its metabolism runs hot and fast, taking in large quantities of oxygen and burning energy cleanly and efficiently to achieve and sustain high speeds. Naturally the heart rate of such a creature is much higher than normal, churning blood through its narrow and limber body like a small engine running at high-RPM.
It is a highly-tuned thoroughbred racing machine capable of outrunning almost anything in its natural habitat.
Except, of course, itself.
-.-
Wile E. stood fast as he watched the roadrunner approach, the hefting the weight of the wrench in his hands. His knees bent, he hunkered for the eventual strike.
And then something went wrong. Unthinkably, the blur of the roadrunner's feet stuttered, flailed, and tripped. Suddenly ungraceful, the long and slender body tumbled to the asphalt, digging violently into the grit and dirt of the roadway.
Frozen in place, the coyote watched the roadrunner skid to a stop at his feet, twitch a few times, and finally be still.
The heavy wrench slipped out of his hand, falling to the asphalt and sending a loud clang across the sudden silence of the desert.
-.-
The trouble with highly-tuned thoroughbred racing machines is that they are not terribly tolerant of less-than-ideal operating parameters. For example, a race engine will stall if it is not fed enough of a very specific air-fuel mixture, and it will rapidly overheat if not provided with enough oil for lubrication. The oil must also be of exceedingly high quality and of the specified viscosity, as poor quality oil will degrade quickly, and gum up inside the engine.
The same thing happens to roadrunners if they often consume low quality birdseed, such as that manufactured and sold (in bulk quantities at a deep discount) by the ACME Corporation. The aforementioned ACME birdseed has been found in independent research studies to be unusually high in cholesterol, saturated fats, and (surprisingly) sodium. It has been found to contribute to diabetes, obesity and of course, heart attack.
-.-
Wile E. Coyote stared down at the lifeless body of the roadrunner, now lying at his feet, and couldn't quite process what had happened. There had been no contact. He hadn't even touched the roadrunner, with the wrench or any other part of his body, and here he was standing over it.
Was this… victory?
Looking down at it, he tried to think of all the reasons he had pursued his adversary throughout all of the years. None of those reasons seemed to make any sense at the moment. Days spent scheming and planning and building and executing, despite constant failure, and nights spent dreaming, longing, salivating for the day when he would finally succeed, and could taste the sweet, delicate flavor of roasted roadrunner.
It didn't seem so sweet and delicate now.
In fact, the body didn't seem to have a whole lot of meat on it, at all. Finally seeing it up close, he realized the roadrunner was mostly bones, with long, sinewy, stringy muscles draped across it. The meat would be gamey and tasteless, he could tell. It would be a pain to prepare and cook, for whatever miniscule scraps of meat he could pry from between the bones. The leading edge of one underdeveloped wing stuck out from underneath the corpse, feathers and skin peeled away by a vicious case of road rash.
He thought about what he had been pursuing all these long years, and knew that whatever that was, this was not it. He felt as if his soul had been struck like a gong, and was still ringing from the impact.
Dazed, he turned away from the corpse in the road, and staggered weakly back to the meager shade of a rock where he had stowed his tools. Leaning heavily on the rock, he suddenly bent and vomited.
After the remains of his last meal were distributed evenly across this particular patch of desert sand, he wiped his maw, the thought suddenly occurring to him with rising panic:
What am I going to do tomorrow?
There was no more roadrunner to hunt. No game to play, no problem to solve, no target to pursue. His own heart rate escalated uncontrollably, every last neuron in his brain firing a million different thoughts at once, and after a few moments of sheer panic-stricken terror, Wile E. Coyote mercifully passed out.
-.-
When he awoke again, his heart rate and blood pressure had settled, but his nerves still felt jangly, and his arms trembled slightly as he packed up his tools. He couldn't bear to look at the corpse, still lying in the road, but turned and headed in the opposite direction, taking the long way down through the valley and back to his cave.
Upon reaching home, his empty stomach growled at him, both from being forcibly and existentially purged, and from having skipped lunch, but he still felt too out of sorts to eat anything. He poured himself a glass of water, but set it aside after two sips. Staring out at the setting sun, he let his mind gingerly probe the idea that had knocked him out cold earlier:
What now?