Twice a night, three fat men in trench coats come to my house to play cards. They sit at my wooden table and roll their dice for a while. They flick out their elephant-lounges to talk about the weather, but when they grow bored, they go upstairs and tuck in their daughters. When this happens, I look out my window and see a traveler riding a motorcycle beneath the street lamp.

Sometimes I check on my little beach. It’s located inside a drawer, and it’s filled with Scuttlers. Scuttlers are quite stupid but also very smart because they look like horseshoe crabs. Instead of brains, they have little tile maps in their head that they flip around. When they touch things, the little tiles flip in different directions and they broadcast electrical signals that make other Scuttlers flip their tiles. The tiles have more than two sides, so the creatures can work together to compute complex math equations like how to tie your shoe.

Some people say that we should kill them because they’re stupid, but those people only have a light switch in their head that switches on and off when they see different things. Other people think we should give them brains, but brains are just very long earth worms that fuel the body with their poop.