Very important A/N: The first thing I want to say is this: the fic is written in the *style* of Jonathan Swift. Which amounts to this: that the syntax is achingly long, the vocabulary is in some places obsolete, and the tone is ancient-colloquial. In other words, those who are not aficionados of 1700's politically-themed prose, you might want to turn back now.

Less-important A/N: You still here? Wow; I'm amazed. You must be some Swift fan. Anyway… now for the specifics. This is a political satire. I wrote it ("wrote" is too weak a word—I poured out my sweat and blood for this thing) for an AP English assignment. I posted it on ff.n for the simple reason that I believe something I've spent this much time on (ie. more time than some of my fics) should be read by more people than an AP English III teacher whose attitude towards me is questionable.

The assignment was this: construct another "book" of Swift's novel "Gulliver's Travels;" use it to satirize some aspect of human experience. If you've read "Gulliver's Travels," you'll notice that this "book" is set between Book I (Lilliput) and Book II (Brobdingnag). Which means—well, it means a lot of technical stylistic stuff that I don't want to go into right now. The focus of the satire is "governmental hypocrisy." More accurately, American governmental hypocrisy. Yes, it is current, and yes, I do delve into certain specific current events. And unless you've been living at the bottom of Loch Ness for the past six months, you know exactly what I mean. So before you proceed any further, please, for your sake and mine, read the warning below:

Warning: if you're a very patriotic person, and you don't like to see America's faults satirized, turn back now.



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A Voyage to Wheen



Chapter I: The Author's enterprise and how he was forced to relinquish it, his misfortunes at sea, his abandonment, and the peculiar circumstances which brought him to the land of the Kee. The Kee capital city described. The Author meets several Kee.



I returned to London in the month of February, with our ship docking in the midst of a great squall that had run up from the coast of France and expelled its fury over Liverpool bay. My experiences on the past voyage not having been on the whole exemplary, I resolved, upon returning, that I should attempt to live the rest of my life on the mainland, perhaps as a seamen's physician or physician's instructor. My wife concurred, and pooling our meager resources, including the capital I had obtained from my adventures, we purchased a small practice on Penny Street, a half-mile off the wharves of lower London. Business was good for a year or so, although it slaked somewhat in the winter months when all the sailors were off in the tropics; however, within a year we had amassed a fair small fortune—at least, as compared with my income as ship's surgeon. But the tide soon turned: a mild Spring and unusually protracted Summer allowed the merchants to range farther afield for longer voyages, and the sailors that returned from such ventures were the healthiest and sturdiest of all their comrades, the weaker of whom (and consequently those that would have brought me the most prosperity) had died en route. Within two years, the gains which the first year had brought were spent; and my wife and I resolved that, should the following Spring not supply prosperity, I should once again put out to sea.

Three months after making this resolve, I found myself stationed as surgeon on the Starbuck, scheduled for a three-year voyage in the South Pacific, Herman Bildad, captain. She was a whaling ship, eighty feet in length and stiff-prowed, obviously built for weathering the violence of a North Atlantic sea; however, she proved herself remarkably agile in the sun- sick waters of the South, her thick hull enduring bravely both the sun- stroke and water-warp common in those areas.

Within eight weeks we had rounded the Falklands, cutting easily through their choked byways of ice; in two more weeks we were sailing on a cool, fast trade-wind up the western coast of South America, following a pod of small right-whales in hopes that they would lead us to a larger gathering. This pod, consisting of one male, four females (one of whom we killed), and one calf, held closely to the rim of the continent until about 10 degrees south, at which point they veered off westward, into the dull, tranquil waters of the middle Pacific. Our captain continued to pursue them, although his decision raised much dissent among the crew, who had hoped to take a two-week respite on the coast of Peru, and furthermore, watching with anxious eyes the cloudless, sultry heavens, feared a water shortage in the windless seas of the Equator. But the captain would not be moved: he was an Englander, and possessed in unfortunate amounts the independent obstinacy characteristic of that race. The sailors' fears were soon confirmed: twelve days after setting out after the right-whales, the trade-winds failed, the sail sagged against the mast, and the Starbuck slid to a rocking halt. We were marooned, as it were, in the midst of a great barren landless desert; the azure sea washed like glass from our prow with nary a ripple until the horizon. Thus stationary, the Starbuck remained for nigh upon twenty-seven days, bobbing in the sweltering equatorial heat, while her crew waxed ever more dispirited and mutinous. At length, upon the nineteenth day, the starving and desperate sailors at last raised a revolt, one which was very easily won: for despite the captain's stubbornness, he was an honest man, and recognized the dire misfortune which he had brought upon his comrades. His only resistance was verbal, and it was more a plea of forgiveness and for lenience than it was a reprimand. The mutinous crew, however, were intent on revenge. They desired to set him afloat without food or water in one of the longboats; when I objected on the grounds that this was a cruel, inhumane punishment, the rebel leader looked at me askance and queried as to whether I should like to join the captain. Of course I did not, and said so: however by then the idea had already been planted in that crew's shifty minds, and the following day, when the captain was set adrift, I sat miserably beside him in the longboat. I believe now that the crew was motivated by more than simple spite: I lacked seamen's skills, and was therefore a liability, for though I could not row, I consumed as much food and drink as any strong sailor.

Days pass slowly when water is scarce, and my sojourn in the longboat beside my ousted captain seemed to stretch for three weeks, rather than the three days which it truly spanned. The captain himself neither rewarded nor chastised me for my part in the mutiny (which he must have guessed to some degree); in fact, he paid little heed to me whatsoever and instead constrained himself to stare blandly out over the open water, dispirited and hopeless. Many have written that the condition of a man's spirit affects that of his body, and I found our captain to fit this standard: he died quickly, on the second day. I believe he desired it, for on the first day he gave this message to me, and they were the only words he ever spoke that entire time: Good surgeon, should Fortune choose to smile on you and return you to our beloved England, I would beg you to relay my love and apologies to my dear wife and little children, who no doubt shall be bereft in my absence. I swore to him that I would do so, had I the chance, and he spoke no more. His death followed shortly thereafter, coming at noon the next day, when the sky dipped most swelteringly towards the sea. I regret that I possessed not the means to make a proper funeral; I could only speak a small Latin eulogy and unceremoniously heave his corpse overboard, where it floated bloatedly for full five hours before at last becoming waterlogged and sinking. Seeing this, I feared for my own life, for I had little water and even less food. But I soon found my anxieties to be baseless: the evening of the second day brought a quickening of wind, and with it, maroon and ponderous against the horizon, hulking storm clouds. That night a tempest arose the likes of which I had never known, and all the more violent for the pitch blackness in which it occurred. I clung to the sodden boards of the longboat, my body across the oars so I might not lose them, while all around me Nature vented her fury: the sea lashed me about like flotsam, the wind scraped the longboat attempting to dislodge me. For ten hours this continued, and I know not how far I traveled that night; only that, when the clouds began to glow from behind with dawn's grey, I looked over the prow and found a great landmass shimmering not a mile distant from my position.

My joy at this sight was immense, and I think it aided in the strength with which I seized the oars and rowed towards the land. As I neared, however, I began to note something very peculiar about the water surrounding the isle (for so I presumed the land at this point): the shallower the water became, the muddier it grew, and the more its aquamarine hue faded, becoming lighter and greener, not the pristine emerald of some tropical seas, but a yellowish, unwholesome color, like that of old hay. By the time my keel scraped ground, the water around me shone sun-yellow, thick and staining. It made a curious clucking, glugging noise as it washed ponderously over the beach, and was reluctant to leave it, the waves drawing back heavily; I found that when I deserted my longboat and had to step through it to achieve land, the water clung to my breeches and shoes, thoroughly dying them a yellow hue. However, I was too preoccupied with finding a source of fresh water to pay much heed to these abnormalities; later I recalled them and realized how peculiar they really must have seemed. The beach on which I stood sloped gently upward until it encountered a rocky precipice, crumbling in many places and gummed in others by the same yellow substance which colored the water; beyond this precipice stretched a flat plane, greyish in hue, and tufted irregularly by hard bunches of grass; in its hazy distance I could make out a curious outcrop, quite all, of what I guessed must be stone (although I quickly discovered this first impression to be erroneous). Beyond this moor mountains rose, their peaks concealed by thick masses of lemon-colored cloud. No plantlife save the grass could be seen, a characteristic in my favor, for the absence of trees and shrubs allowed me an unobstructed view of the beach, furthermore one in which I could find water very easily; not ten minutes after landing, I espied a small stream trickling between the rocks a quarter of an English mile to my left, which I made for quickly. This stream's water was, thankfully, quite unlike that of the ocean, carrying only a slight yellowish tint and being on the whole fresh and cleanly-looking. I had bent down to drink, and was just cupping the water to my lips, when a sudden noise startled me, and a shadow fell over my form from behind. I turned very slowly around, in hopes that the cautiousness and gentleness of the motion should dissuade the creature behind me (whether it be man or beast) from a premature attack; when this gesture was complete, and no attack had been attempted, I found myself staring at quite the strangest-looking being I had ever chanced to lay eyes on. It (or he, rather, as I later learned) was something like a prodigious bird: the height of a tall Englishman, about six feet two inches, covered with a downy coat of yellowish feathers. His forehead sloped steeply downward to apex in a great, hard beak, something in shape like that of an English chicken's; his uncovered feet were three-pronged, brown, and clawed at each end; his posture was not totally bipedal, being leant about twenty degrees forward; his facial features were broad, with beady wide-set eyes which he cocked to either side when viewing objects head-on. His most striking features, however, were his arms, which did not exist in the conventional sense, but rather were replaced by a set of extraordinary wings, eighteen foot span (I later learned that a normal male's wingspan is seventeen foot). These he tucked behind him, smoothly but vertically, in the manner of a kestrel or peregrine falcon.

Whilst I crouched silently before this animal, pondering all the while on whether he was a creature of reason, he likewise examined me, cocking his head jerkily as birds do when investigating something, and shifting his substantial weight from one talon to the other. When two minutes had passed, he seemed to complete his assessment, whereupon he voiced a guttural screech, kraaee reriee when converted to the English alphabet, and motioned with his left talon that I should stand. I did so, now fully convinced that this being was reasonable; and so that he might see that I too was rational, and understood him, I gestured towards myself and said the word human several times. He responded by touching his breast- feathers with his nimble left talon and repeating the word Kee; thus I learned the name of the species on whose continent I had landed.

After these crude formalities had been exchanged, my guide (as I shall call him now, for I did not learn his true name until much later) made two hopping steps backwards, and, again resorting to the use of his left talon, motioned me thither; but before I could take one step, he unfurled his great wings and leapt into the air, flapping vigorously to free himself from the earth's pull. I, who was unused to the sight of such a large living creature taking flight, edged backwards, towards the stream, whereupon my guide (observing that I was not following) alighted and once again hopped towards me. His manner was perplexed: obviously he could not fathom my frightened reaction, nor my inability to pursue him; as if he, possessing wings, naturally expected that every other rational being should possess them as well. Because of this simple prejudice, it took me a long while to make clear to him the situation of my dilemma, and many elaborate hand-gestures; but finally I succeeded, and he contented himself to hop swiftly but somewhat awkwardly along the ground while I went behind at a fast walk. In this way we covered approximately seven miles; as we traveled, our destination became increasingly clearer to me: we were headed for that distant outcrop of tall structures which I had noted earlier, and which I had construed to be obelisks of stone. In fact this was no natural phenomenon at all, but a city, the capital of the Kee land, the grand metropolis of Heekreet. No greater than Dublin it was in circumference, and far less than London in population; however the soaring height of its closely-built structures lent it an air of grandeur equal to that of England's greatest cities, for the Kee were a people wholly of the air.

I shall now, to satisfy my undoubtedly curious reader, present a description of that majestic conurbation whereto I was led by my Kee guide. Heekreet is a thoroughly industrialized city, whose borders, unlike that of the normal English town, are very sharply defined; I once, to experience in full this distinction, stood with one foot within the city and one foot without it, and felt the boundary myself: Heekreet has no horizontal suburbs, for the plain rolls up to crash abruptly against the first of the skyrises. The city's operations are vertical, and defined in general by class: the gentry (I cannot say nobility, for these people are a democracy) house in the vertical center of the buildings, about 9,000 feet from the ground, where the air is cleanest; the working class nests below them at 6,000 feet; storage, septic, and other utilities occupy the considerably more dirty area at 3,000 feet; while the upper halves of most of the buildings are economic areas, with wares-shops and other small enterprise being at 12,000 feet, and the last 6,000 feet of space concerned with the heavy industrial work. I disliked flying in these sections, for on a whole they are choked and dusty, and filled with the same yellow ash which, I now presume, colored the seawater and to an extent the air.

I shall not attempt, for fear of boring my readers, to provide a fuller description of the physicalities of Kee society, nor of my early adventures with my guide, and the many difficulties which the differences between Kee life and my English one presented. Suffice to say, that my guide conceived an ingenious method for conveying me between the buildings, which were my chief hurdle in navigating the Kee world: he and another Kee would take a long hammok, woven of a certain river-weed, and carry it between them, while I would cling to it as best I could. Although this method of transportation somewhat unnerved me at first, as use builds confidence, I soon grew comfortable with it. My guide, who was called Ieer in his own language (the speech of which I was able to learn with surprising quickness), lived in the vicinity of 7,000 feet, not a peasant of the meanest sort, yet far from the genteel class which nested 2,000 feet above. His home, which was rectangular, resembled the cinder-blocks with which we construct our own English homes; he shared it with his nest-mate and twin, Reei. Although from the first day we met my relationship with Ieer was one of mutual trust, and later friendship, yet my dealings with his twin were from the very beginning disagreeable, as if he harbored some previous grievance against me. I suspect that the resentment he bore sprung from a sort of angry jealousy, that Ieer held me in so high an esteem, when Reei considered me to be no more than an ugly featherless Kee, and not worthy of his twin's praise. For most of my stay in this household, however, I paid little heed to Reei's umbrage, a dire misjudgment on my part, and one which would cost me dearly later.