I monkey around with heads… Did I finish watching the parrot jail episode?
You might not be able to tell, because America's inflation rate put a pound on him again, but he and Canada are twins.
A bunch of us felt a dual EP flux erupting over in the New World on the same day in the sixteenth century. Hundreds of miles apart, and England and France and Sweden and Netherlands and I all wrote about the sensation. Kind of a weird shiver, like when you get maple syrup on your chin.
They were born because the decrepit men of Europe were stripping into skimpy outfits and strutting the catwalk, and we needed to remind ourselves what it meant to have wisdom. Which of course was impossible. So we needed some new conflict to invigorate us, and some new politics to confuse us, and some new controversies to inspire us, immer weiter. You know how the story goes. Loudmouthed, violent, arrogant, gluttonous America grew from his embryo of Opportunity. Air-headed, wishy-washy, incoherent, nonexistent Canada grew from his own. We all had to raise them. Some were better at parenting than others.
That's the thing with nation bloodlines. Despite the odd case of twins, we oddballs share more DNA with our own citizens than we do with each other. Even Vene and Romano aren't that close blood-wise. It's Roman curls that connect them.
Take America. He could donate his own blood and tissue to almost all US citizens, and (unobserved,) his cells constantly transform to accommodate new immigrants becoming naturalized. (If you call yourself American, you're inside him!) All the genes that determine sex, appearance, and behavioral quirks stay constant - we need individuality to understand the roiling feelings of the masses within.
But the fluid gene pool keeps a nation existing. It's how our famous Healing Factor works. Catch a cold? Just snatch some antibodies from everyone in your borders who doesn't have it and destroy the damn thing on the spot! Get impaled with a baton? Use the platelets and bone marrow from a million robust young men and the tight skin of one fair lady, and in five seconds you're not only healed, but looking healthier than before! To an extent, we can access deeper abilities of our citizens as well — speak languages, use skills, understand instinctively what a capital expenditure is. (Germany was five years old when he explained it to me, and I told him to go back to bed or I was gonna make him scoop horse shit in the morning.)
America and Canada share borders. They share enough heritage for nationfolk to call them siblings. And they share enough DNA for humans to call them twin brothers. What I find most fascinating, however, is that they happen to share a singular brain cell.
"What the double-hockey-sticks are you doing with my pancake pan!?" Canada whines above the roar of bubbling smoke coming from the stove in America's kitchen. He punches his southern brother in the shoulder, and where I sit on my stool at the island I start levitating popcorn into my mouth.
"I TOLD YOU I AM MAKING A BISMUTH KNIFE TO UNDO AN INJUSTICE!" America hollers back, smacking Canada on the forehead so hard he stumbles and falls right on his butt. Grumpily whistling away, America continues to fry up the putrid liquid bismuth until it's completely melted. Then he carefully holds a kitchen knife just under the surface of the metal and waits for it to crystallize. His elbows twitch. His eyebrows crinkle.
"Can you please buy me a new pan? That should make up for you using this one. Or… I could have provided you with a pan, had you told me about your plan to make a bismuth knife in a way that could convince me you were really doing it. Or… this isn't about you gaining the pound, is it? Because that can't be your fault. Inflation happens to all of us"
"Canada, you can shut the fooch up now."
"Okay."
But Canada's not okay because he looks up at me with a wide frown and the same eyebrow crinkle as his twin. I just shrug, then extend my left hand and gesture toward the pan. All the bismuth, including the stuff already solidified on the knife, shimmers and melts. Then with a gloop, it rises and floats and condenses into a churning liquid sphere. I clench my fist tight, and the thing freezes again, only to drop like a stone onto America's tight-fisted grip on the pan handle. There's a solid snap as his wrist breaks. Then a squelch-squidge-crick-creak as it crunches back together.
"Dude! What're you takin' his side for?" America yelps, flexing his fingers and forgetting about the pan for the moment.
I fold my hands and send him a buttcheek-clenching German glare. "Because you're being a wibble-wussy. You don't take out your frustrations on your brother. You take them out on the people you hate. And even if you hated your brother, you wouldn't smack him on the forehead. You'd wrestle him to the death and spike his body on the pyre. I'm the bastard son of Mars. And don't forget it."
The kid flinches like he used to. Ceesus, I'm gonna have to patch up those holes in the universe. Can't have SentimentAmerica popping up and making my boy all mopey because he gained a pound.
Speaking of which…
My eyes wander down to his midsection. I take a quick breath, concentrate with all my might, and snap my fingers. There's a faint blorp, and the pressure under his belt seems to relax. He pats himself down, amazed, and then quietly helps Canada back to his feet.
"Anything else your favorite fridge wizard can help you with?" I drawl, keeping my eyes all shiny and sharp. "Need some love spells? Always wanted a leopard?"
"Well, there is one thing America and I have been wondering about lately," Canada says, "which, it was about our heads, right?"
"Oh yeah! Dude, Prubo! You gotta switch our heads! We gotta know what happens!"
"It should be pretty easy, eh? Couldn't you just go pew-pew and fly our souls into each other?"
"No, Canadude, our actual heads, not our souls. If my head physically migrated to your body, would I go with my head, or would I stay in my body and have your head? That was the question."
"Oh," Canada says. "I get it now. But wouldn't that make my body your body, and then you'd have your own head on your body again? And my head would be on your body which would make it my body, and then it wouldn't be as if we switched at all."
"But if you don't go with your head, you'd have my head on your body. Would that then make my head your head? Would you have your thoughts or my thoughts in there?"
"God, I didn't even think of that. How'd we come up with this again? Was I high?"
"I think you were high and I was wrestling the lectern back from Florida Man."
"Fair enough," Canada says.
Fair enough. Well, that phrase is fair enough to grind my gears and boil my blood into salty iron pretzels. I must hear it fifty times a day, and not counting when Canada himself warps into existence at 3 a.m. to justify stealing more cheese sticks. Let me reiterate how I'm not a flimsy poet, and then let me tell you how the sheer boneless acquiescence of "fair enough" reveals a sweat-slippered flounder-head of a pajama-pants-coveting nation.
Called myself the son of Mars already today. I suppose I should do something barbaric.
Leaning gently over the counter, I grasp Canada's head between my dreamy-veined hands. Remembering that technique he taught me, I simply twist and sever the space-time between his head and the rest of his body. His head squelches right off, and I firmly grasp it with my thumbs squishing the cheekbones. The muscles twitch warmly beneath my fingers. A sticky, noodly mess of blood vessels hang down and start to stain the crotch of my joggers.
"Thought this would feel weirder," the head says. "You wanna put me on America's body then?"
Beyond any brutal flashbacks your 2 a.m. brains could think up, I'm perfectly calm in this kind of situation, with the sticky noodly blood vessels and the headless Canadian body chilling stiffly against the island while its heart continues to pump earth power through its veins.
So the next thing I do is reach up and squish Canada's head onto America's body, right next to the first one. The vessels writhe and sink and the flesh all melds together again.
"How that working out for you?" I ask, truly curious this time.
America, who's been stunned this whole time, now wiggles his fingers and pats his chest and stomach again while Canada's head watches closely. Then the heads swivel left, then right, then one looks up and the other looks down. I snap my fingers and change my joggers into a clean pair of jeans.
"It's not really that different," America says. "I can still control my body fine. He's not doing anything different."
"I can feel your pulse," Canada says, "and my pulse… ugh, it's like when my pundits comment on your politics. I can feel everything you do, even if it's not my business."
"Ha! Then do you feel this!?" America yells. He winds up and slaps his own left hand so hard that his fingernails fly off and plinkle-plinkle on the tile floor. Tears come to the eyes of both heads. At least for a second. Then there's a swizel-smizel, and the nails grow back, thanks to five million ladies who at the moment are stuffing their faces with peanuts.
"Well, let's try the full effect then," I say. This time I float up over the counter as I remove America's first head so I don't get any blood on my pants. There's a sloppy mess on the counter, but living in America has taught me that American science is making a bloody mess. (He calls it a fucking mess, though.) America's head comes off even easier than Canada's did! It's like his neck is all threadbare and his brain is filled with helium! Goodness enough he can't die so easily.
SCHLUK!
I plop America's head onto Canada's body, and it now becomes Canada's head on America's body… or some shit…
Now here's where things get weird.
America's body's arms shoot outward, fingers twitching. Then Canada's body's arms do the same. Both bodies crunch, and shake, and twist, and mechanically step toward each other. They slap each other across the face, then passionately hug.
"C-can't describe this. It's like I have t-two bodies at once," Canada chokes out. Or is that America? Their faces are getting kind of blendy.
"I can't hear your thoughts, but also, your earth power is inside your… my body… dude, eugh, I'm internally commenting on your politics too. God, your prime minister's a lunatic. I hate that I understand that now."
"And your president is absolutely irreversibly incompetent. But at the same time I wanna travel to your cities and donate money to questionable charities that indirectly support him."
"The right arm on the body Canada's head has shoots up and over, then slaps the counter, swings across the much, grips onto the front of the other body's shirt and shivers as it pulls itself forward. A terrible amount of similar fingers start tickling at each other, then creeping up to pinch noses and poke foreheads.
"What? You're both going back to monke?" I ask from my perch in the air.
"Ow. Ow!" the head I think is America whines. "Stop it! Stahbit! Staaahhbit you!"
"I'm not even hurting you. I'm hurting me! I think. Ow! Quit it!"
"I'm not doing anything!"
"You pinched my butt!"
"Did not! You pinched your own butt!"
"No I didn't!"
"Yeah I did! 'Cause I'm you! And also me!"
"I'm so ugly!"
"Hey!"
Both tongues stick out.
And I'm starting to wonder if I should even put their heads back the way they were. The single brain cell they share is clearly functioning as an emergency beacon between the two. Could be fun to see how they adjust to fully merging their terrible twin-stincts. How long they could take fully understanding each other down to the tiniest observable chromosome.
But I'm not as barbaric as I used to be.
SCHLUK! SCHLUK!
I wriggle off both of their heads, then swoop up and squish them onto the ceiling.
~N~
My contribution to the question of what nation DNA looks like when observed: Normal human DNA. When not observed, it's a right mess.
A few months ago, Matt Walsh was talking on his podcast about how his 4-year-old son asked what would happen if he switched heads with his brother, and they had a long conversation about it. Sometimes I still think of this at 3 a.m. whilst the police chase concludes outside my dorm room window.
Oozed out by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net 21. September 2021. Reposters more cursed than this.