The Hand of Chaos

Appendix III The Kicksey-winsey Demystificated

In the beginning of all time and creation, there was the Kicksey-winsey. There were also a lot of things before that, but they didn’t really matter. It wasn’t until the Kicksey-winsey came into being that there was any point or purpose to life. The Mangers, great and terrible beings of the sky, created this most wonderful place and brought we dwarves down to it. Then they left us alone. When they left us alone, they really messed up.

From that time until now, we have continued to struggle, work, and serve the Kicksey-winsey with our lives and our blood. We didn’t know why. No one told us what the lever twisting did when we twisted or why bolt tightening was of any consequence. My old friend Balin Purgeflusher—a fine and dedicated dwarf until his untimely accident—had no concept of what he was flushing when he purged.

You, my fellow dwarves, have been born in an age of enlightenment—when we are no longer slaves to the elves nor to the humans nor even to the Mangers who dumped us here like so much garbage. We no longer grovel. We no longer live off the scraps tossed to us by others. Today, we have lifted up our heads and stand tall—as tall as we can in such circumstances—with our elven and human neighbors.

One of the great benefits of this age of enlightenment is that we now have a better understanding of the Kicksey-winsey and its overall purpose. Dwarves from every scrift often ask me, “What is the Kicksey-winsey?” and “Where did it come from?” and “What do all the parts do?” and “When do we eat?” They should be asking, “Why do we have a Kicksey-winsey?” but since I just asked that question, I’ll answer all of them—even the one you didn’t think to ask. WHAT IS THE KICKSEY-WINSEY?

The Kicksey-winsey is a masheen. A masheen is a collection of wheels and turn-knobbies and lever-bangers and tube-zoomers that, when all put together, DO SOMETHING! That is a masheen. When you turn your turny-wheelie, you are helping the masheen to do something.

Just what you are doing is highly dependent upon what part of the Kicksey-winsey you are serving. The diagrammatic map of the Kicksey-winsey—drawn by myself and reproduced here for the first time—should serve to demystificate the mystifying masheen. If you will pay attention and follow along on my map, you will recognize parts of the Kicksey-winsey that you and your family have served for generations.

At its very simplest, a masheen takes stuff called matrels and turns it into poduct-goodys. Matrels are, by themselves, pretty useless stuff. An example of matrels would be the ore brought up by the dig claws from below. To date, the dig claws have been the primary source of matrels for the Kicksey-winsey. However, in a startling revelation, we now know that this ore was only intended to be used for the building of the Kicksey-winsey itself—not for the actual creation of poduct-goodys! The primary source of matrels was to be a location that we know as Wombe. Wombe has traditionally been the home of the Scrift Heads and the High Froman. Perhaps many of you, too, have told jokes about the Froman and how they never really worked and served the Kicksey-winsey. This is because his tasks—the collection of matrels from the Lexax[69] through mystical processes understood only vaguely by the Froman through tradition—was not possible to perform until the Alignment of the World. With the lands of all creation[70] now brought into harmony, the intended work of the Froman has begun, and at last, all the people of our government are honestly employed.

From Wombe, these matrels are then distributed via a number of different means to various cities of our acquaintance through a system called Conveyer. Everything from whoosh-wagons, sucker tubes, rip-roads, flushers, and zoomers is utilized to distribute these matrels to their destination. Throughout our history, this movement of raw matrels about the Kicksey-winsey has, of course, been noted but never clearly understood. Various theories regarding its meaning have been forwarded. Groth Staredial’s theory, popularly called Blood-winsey,[71] though crude, was not far from the truth. The late Throtin Pushpuller’s competing theory that the Conveyer was intended to be an alternate transportation system was tragically disproved by his own tests near the Erm Melty-vat only last year. Though too late for Throtin, we now understand this Conveyer as a distribution system for matrels, never intended to transport live dwarves.

At the same time that the Fromen at Wombe are sending out matrels for each of the scrifts, a second system with the magical and mystical name of trami-sond is at work. This was not always so. In the beginning, the Kicksey-winsey created its own powher with a device called a spinnerator that put water into large holdings. The amount of powher that the spinnerator made, however, was not enough to fulfill the destiny of the Kicksey-winsey. Now, with the Alignment of the Worlds, powher comes from a different source. Through processes unknown to us, an enput device gathers a mystic force called Powher from the realm of Lexax. This wonderful force is then channeled into a secret place, known only to the Mangers, called the Room of Trol.

(I must interject, for our young audience, that the Room of Trol has no connection to actual trolls. No trolls exist in the Kicksey-winsey, although I have been told that there may be some in remote locations in the Mid Realms. There is no need to panic!)

The Room of Trol then takes the powher and sends it as a tramis down the tramis-sond system. The form of this powher varies from the gas that lights your lamps to the driving force that wheels your wheels in the Kicksey-winsey. Whatever form it takes, powher is the stuff that makes everything in our world work.

When enough matrel and enough powher are brought together in the different scrifts, then the Kicksey-winsey creates—through our help and efforts—a variety of poduct-goodys. Poduct-goodys are riches beyond need. They are everything from tunics and trousers to lamps and forks. They are everything from pillows to hammers. They are chairs, tools, weapons, food, and water. Everything that one could think of that one would want—and a great number you haven’t thought of—are poduct-goodys of the Kicksey-winsey.

However, do not be led to the false conclusion that this wealth comes without a price! “Everything has a price, some just hide it better than others.”[72]

There are others who live in the Lexax who exact payment for the matrels and powher that they send to us through enput. They call this tribute that they demand esport. Once the poduct-goodys are finished, we select that which we need and then send the rest—an enormous surplus—through the esport just outside of Het back as tribute to those who are now sending us matrels and powher in such abundance. Why should we send esport, you ask? Well, you probably didn’t ask why, but I will. Why should we send esport, you ask? Because, I answer, if we don’t send esport, they’ll stop sending emport and powher, and we no longer would get to have new poduct-goodys instead of the garbage the elves used to give us. The Kicksey-winsey does many other things such as sending water from the holdings to the other realms above us through the Liftalofts and keeping the various continents in line with a series of masheens called linners.[73] I will not be describing them here. They are complex subjects and are probably better dealt with another time.[74]

Just before the beginning, the Kicksey-winsey was started by the Mangers. The first dwarves, led by the legendary Dunk Pullstarter, were brought to Drevlin by the Mangers and established here. The Kicksey-winsey was started. The common misconception is that the Kicksey-winsey was always as large as it is now. This is simply not true. In the beginning, the Kicksey-winsey was quite small—some say no larger than a single scrift section—and did nothing but work to increase itself. This was natural. The first part of the purpose for the Kicksey-winsey was to establish and protect itself so that it could eventually fulfill its second, and more important purpose, of serving the dwarves, elves, and humans as well as those who exist in the Lexax.

I have no idea. Neither do you.

The reason we have no idea is that the Kicksey-winsey is so unfathomably huge, so titanically complex, and has been so out of control for so long that it has grown beyond our ability to understand it. Without Mangers and Trollers to direct it, the Kicksey-winsey itself has been taking whatever steps were required for its own brainless survival.

We serve the Kicksey-winsey so that it may serve us. This is the second purpose of the great masheen that we have directed for so many years without any knowledge of why. If we take care of the Kicksey-winsey it will take care of us and that should be enough purpose for any dwarf. It certainly is enough for me.

Now that the Kicksey-winsey is operating as it was always meant to—whenever we want. That concludes my talk and begins our lunch.

Kicksey-winsey Demystificated.