The Story of Drawden the Pig

Once upon a time, there was a famous hog wallow. A hog wallow, you know, is a kind of swimming pool for pigs. It's just that, instead of being filled with clear, clean, chlorinated water, it's filled with a mucky blend of mud, water, and garbage. Then too, because the pigs spend most of their time in it, there's a lot of feces and urine in the mixture.

All in all, a hog wallow is a very stinky place from our point of view. For the pigs, though, it's the ultimate delight, and they are quite content to spend every moment of their lives rolling in it and rooting around in it for a bit of garbage to eat-garbage well seasoned with mud, feces, and urine.

In this particular hog wallow, there was a gigantic hog at least two times as big as any of the others, and he seemed to enjoy snuggling in the slimy slush more than any of his peers did. His name was Drawden.

One day, Drawden was as busy as usual grubbing in the goo for a bit of swill to suck down his gullet. Suddenly, a tiny speck of brilliant light appeared directly in front of his eyes. In terror, he made one of those grunting noises most unique to huge hogs, backed up a foot or two, and intently eyed the flickering dot as it slowly ascended a few feet higher in the air.

Drawden had been watching it suspiciously for about five seconds or more, when it commenced to expand. A few more of those raspy, hoggish grunts escaped from a backward shuffling Drawden, and he now found himself confronted by a shimmering, two-legged, airborne figure clothed in glittering robes and having two snowy white wings protruding from his temples.

Before Drawden could think what to say or do, the shiny vision greeted him with: 'God give you peace, Drawden. How are you doing today?'

That voice was so friendly, it totally disarmed Drawden, and he blurted out: 'Who are you, and what are you doing here?'

'My name is Michael,' answered the apparition. 'They call me an angel. In fact, I'm the chief of all the angels.'

'Uh oh!' Drawden thought as he paused and swallowed hard in fright then repeated warily: 'What are you doing here?'

'I was having fun beaming from one place in the universe to another,' came the nonchalant reply, 'and I thought I'd beam to this one for a few minutes and see what's happening.'

'You were what???!!!' Drawden choked with bewilderment as he coughed up that question.

'You know,' contended the angel. 'Beaming from one place in time and space to another! I just will some portion of my energy to take on the right set of eight co-ordinates, and that portion of me will show up at any place in the universe at any stage of its history, and it will do it in an astronomically small part of what you call a second.'

'How is that possible?!' Drawden stammered.

'It's just a matter of using your intellect,' replied Michael. 'When you've got an intellect as vast as the universe, it can receive and process so much data so quickly, there's virtually nothing you can't do with time, space, matter, and energy.'

'Ah, me!' Drawden mourned. 'How I wish I had an intellect like yours!'

'Why should you wish for one,' urged the angel, 'when you already have one?'

'I'm not talking about you,' snapped Drawden. 'I'm talking about myself. I wish I had an intellect like yours.'

'That's what I understood you to mean,' rebuffed the angel. 'And I implied why should you, Drawden, wish for an intellect like mine, when you, Drawden, already have one? That is to say you have one mostly like mine.'

'Me???!!! I already have one???!!!' protested an angry Drawden. 'If I already have one, how come I can't use it?'

'Don't say 'can't',' recommended the angel. 'Say 'won't'. 'Can't' implies you lack the physical power. All you lack is the will power. You don't use what you don't use because you don't want to use it.'

'That's crazy,' scoffed Drawden. 'If I had an intellect as vast as the universe, how could I not want it all put to use? No creature having such an intellect could possibly want anything but to use it to the utmost, and only idiots could think otherwise.'

'That's far from being true,' chided the angel.

'And what's that supposed to mean?' scowled Drawden.

'Wellllllll,' the angel dragged it out-as if meditating upon whether or not to elaborate. Then, after a pause, he continued somberly: 'Many, many years ago-in the days when the serpents walked upright-your ancestors were very much akin to me. They too looked at the universe through the eyes of an intellect as vast as the cosmos.'

'My ancestors???!!!' Drawden interrupted.

'Yes!' re-affirmed the angel, and his voice was even more serious than before.

'Then, what happened?' Drawden demanded.