Don't Mess with My Dragons...

George the Dragonslayer was not at all what I expected. He looked...well... not very knightly. In fact, he looked distinctly geeky. You'd think I would've known what to expect from a character living inside my head. (For the uninitiated, my psycho-village is described in some detail in my April 2nd post entitled "My Village.")

As he sat down at my table, George noticed my surprise at his remarkably unheroic appearance.

"You were expecting someone more like Saint George," he stated, rather than asked.

In point of fact, he struck me as no more saintly than knightly.

To the server who appeared as though from thin air (the only kind of air found inside my head), George added, "Diet Pepsi. Not Coke."

The young lady looked at me uncomfortably and uncertainly. Clearly she had expected a request for mead or ale. Something alcoholic, at least. The atmosphere in the little tavern lent itself nicely to those beverages, but showed little promise for a Diet Pepsi. Or even a Coke. The floor was bare earth, hardened by centuries of use so that the dust swept off it every morning came from outside, not in. The fieldstone walls were blackened with age and with the smoke that somehow escaped the chimney opening over a fire that almost never slept. Outside, the rocks were blanketed in green moss and lichens. Rough timbers spanned the overhead space, supporting a durable slate roof. It was the kind of place where travellers rested and swapped lies about their journeys. It was the kind of place where you met to chat with a great dragonslayer. It was not the kind of place where you ordered a Diet Pepsi. Or even a Coke.

George looked at me with a mixture of amusement and skepticism. Clearly he expected me to summon up a few urns of water and try to change them into cola. I could've done it, too - after all, this was my head we were meeting in. But I chose instead to simply advise the perplexed serving-girl, "Just ask Polly for a Diet Pepsi. She'll know. And I'll have a flagon of mead. But not the warm stuff with the spices. Polly will know about that, too."

I think she was grateful that I used the word, "flagon."

"So, you're probably wondering why I wanted to talk to you," George offered, sipping his ice-cold Diet Pepsi. He appeared strangely comfortable with the idea that, in this tavern, beverages sometimes materialized out of nowhere.

"OK, let's say I'm wondering why you wanted to talk to me."

George seemed to miss the delicate point of difference between his statement and my reply. Maybe because I had already decided that he would never know that our whole conversation was taking place inside my head. That the Bored Head Tavern, situated in the little hamlet of Unclear-on-Mostpoints, was merely an invention. A sort of interface I threw together to connect myself and the self-styled dragonslayer, George.

"Well, in so many words, here it is," my guest refused to beat around the bush, "You seem to be remarkably unclear on the true nature of dragons."

"Is that so?" I wondered mildly.

"Most definitely!" he assured me emphatically, "There are no dragons."

"Because the dragonslayers have killed them all?"

"Precisely! But as you've already noticed, dragonslayers are not knights in shining armor on great horses."

"Dragonslayers are geeks who drink diet soda?"

"Well," he replied, ignoring or missing my none-to-subtle prod, "Not exactly. But the real dragonslayers were the men of science. The men with instruments to measure and examine and record and preserve all kinds of data. Every time a warrior rode off into the hills, dragon myths gained new life. If he returned, he was a great hero who had slain a dragon. If not, the dragon was credited with greater cunning and strength."

"So, Saint George, for instance, was neither a saint nor a hero - just a liar?"

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," he waved away my objection, "I wasn't there. I don't know whether ol' George ever claimed to have killed a dragon. Perhaps he rode into the hills, and returned with the news, 'There is no dragon.' Well, the townsfolk could have taken that as a modest way of saying he had killed the beast. Saintly humility and knightly heroism all at once. And from there the legend was bound to grow."

"And why did the townsfolk believe they had a dragon problem in the first place?" I challenged him.

"Maybe someone found a fossil dinosaur tooth or claw, and, ignorant of fossilization processes, assumed it must have come from a living beast. Perhaps they even found a fossilized plate from some armored dinosaur and thought it to be a dragon's impermeable scale. But, even if all that were true, none of it is the real reason that people believed in dragons."

George paused and took a swig of soda. I did the same with my flagon of mead. He could see that I knew that he was about to spring his most elegant argument upon me.

"Surely," he almost laughed, "you don't for a moment believe that people needed dragonslayers because they believed in dragons!"

"Er, yes, that was the impression under which I have labored, lo, these many years."

Predictably, George leaned forward, his pale blue eyes nearly filled with what probably passed as fervor in his social circle - if he had one. "That's just silly! People invented dragons because they needed dragonslayers!"

He sat back, letting this triumphant shot sink home. "Primitive people felt a need for heroes. So they invented powerful foes that only a hero could dispatch. And then they looked for a chance to believe that some such hero was actually among them. An army of Saint Georges could never have done away with dragons. For every fictitious dragon slain by a great hero, three more were invented. No, no, my friend, it took scientists digging in the dragons' hills to kill them off for good. We took our tools into the beasts' very lairs and found iron and coal and precious metals. But no dragons."

George drained his soda as though he had done some truly thirsty work sharing his thoughts about dragons.

"Now," he finished as he scraped his rough chair backward and stood to his feet, "we no longer need dragons or the heroes who hunt them. The unknown is no longer a thing to be feared - it is simply a friend to become better acquainted with. We have science and knowledge and technology. We need no mythic beasts. So you see why your quaint views on dragons are outdated, misguided and unhelpful."

And he walked away, toward the massive old wooden door that stood open on its hinges. I suddenly knew this had been one of those arguments we all hate - the ones where we come up with just exactly the right thing to say, right after our opponent walks away.

I thought for a moment that I might just rewind the scene and add my comment at the end, effectively putting the little twerp in his place. I even considered sticking him with the bill. But instead I just smiled and watched him step out of the door and into the misty sunlight. I had much better plans for him. A sense of calm and peace settled over me as I watched George flattened under the careless foot of a passing dragon.

Oh, don't worry - inside my head, being crushed by a dragon only means that George will have to walk around like an accordion for a while. If you don't get that reference, you have clearly not watched enough Bugs Bunny or Roadrunner cartoons. And that, in turn, means you may not belong here. But I digress.

The best part of my revenge on George is that, while accordioning around my psycho-village, he will have no choice but to repeatedly reevaluate the data collected by all those men with their instruments, who diligently measured and examined and recorded.

And in the end he will perhaps come to the conclusion that I would have shouted at him as he walked away - we haven't done away with dragons and heroes. We've simply given them new form - scientists' machines and conclusions. Technology is at once our new dragon, and our dragonslayer.

I hope that realization drives George nuts! Serves him right for messing with my dragons...