The Big Kettle Drum Is Beating
A man in a dirtied, blue checkered bathrobe stood on a street corner waving a cardboard sign:
THE END IS NIGH.
The cloth belt of the bathrobe swayed as he pumped the sign up and down and spoke his truth: “The universe is shaped like a kettle drum! Somebody’s beating on it and messing it all up!”
How the people laughed. Didn’t he know the universe was a sphere? They laughed and ignored his message of warning. Until he was proven right when, a few months later, scientists at BINL made the disturbing discovery that the universe was shaped like a kettle drum.
But the reality shaking discoveries didn’t stop there because they also discovered that the universe was simply one of many instrument-shaped universes, and when all the instrument-shaped universes were put together, formed a concert band.
The Symphonic Winds of the Upper Land was the band’s name, and each universe-instrument had its own god playing it. There were new age rockstar gods (they played the drums and guitars), nerdy band girls goddesses (they played the flutes and clarinets), obnoxious know-it-all gods (they played the violins and violas), laid back to-cool-for-school gods (they played the cellos and bass’), burly sports gods (they played the tubas and euphoniums), short quiet goddesses (they played the French Horns and oboes and other weird instruments like the bassoon), and the most important ultra cool gods (they played the trumpets and trombones and saxophones). And off to one side were the annoying singer goddesses.
The worst part was, the gods didn’t even make their own music, they stole it from the species living inside their instruments. Currently, the gods were performing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by the Beatles.
Back on Earth, the man in the dirty bathrobe was lauded as a prophet by all.
He was elected to the newly created position of POPE, or the Person of Prophetic Experiences (because PPE was taken by personal protective equipment), a position that had the ear of the General-Secretary of the New United Nations (NUN), which itself resided under and got its power from the Global Over-Democracy (GOD).
By decree of the POPE, the bathrobed man declared that all music production cease. These gods and goddesses needed to learn what copyright was and needed to fairly compensate the artists they had shamelessly stolen from for centuries.
When the gods discovered this, they destroyed the kettle drum instrument-universe and created a new kettle drum universe.
Then, the gods performed Shiny Happy People by R.E.M., and the citizens of the new universe killed themselves.