that he had no eyes anyway, he gave up and tried to remember what had happened over the course of the previous month.
The last thing he remembered clearly was hearing sirens and looking at the dirty smoke-stained ceiling of his low rent detective agency office. But this was a very confusing memory for someone who had no eyes. Something
else that was confusing to Bert was the fact that, in most of his memories from that day so long before, he distinctly remembered his name being spelled with a "u", and yet, before that, he'd always spelled it with an "e", and he was pretty sure that was how it was spelled now. So something very strange must have happened that day. Something very strange indeed.
As he sat pondering and pondered sitting, the subsequent events began coming back to him. Nothing as clear as the earlier memories, but some things were certain:
The Birds had made a preemptive strike on the Worms, after learning of their plans for war. They discovered these plans, using torture, from Robin, the silver-breasted sparrow Bert had secretly been having an affair with. The
pain of that thought was too much for Bert to handle, so he forced himself to remember more recent things.
After the initial attack, the Worms were forced to retreat underground for their own safety. Of course, they were worms, so this wasn't nearly as bad as it might seem.
But then the Bird Gods had brought about a Second Flood. The worms didn't know if there was also a second Noah, but it didn't much matter, because the Birds had stolen the sacred ark-clay that had allowed the worms to survive that first time. So thousands had died, either drowning underground, crawling to the surface to be plucked up by Birds, crawling to the surface to drown in puddles of rainwater, or crawling to the surface only to dry up
on the pavement when the sun came back out.
Before he could remenisce further, the door burst open, and the Overloard entered the room.
"Bert, we have a mission for you." [dot dot dot]
