Here's a slapstick fable for modern times, which will tickle the child in all of us. And you thought you understood the way the government works.

Author James Patrick Kelly is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award and a 2007 Nebula Award winner. His stories appear frequently in Asimov's Science Fiction, and he writes the magazine's "On the Net" column. Publishers Weekly has called him "a meticulous craftsman in the demanding short-story form".