The winner is Michael Gordon, who gave us two memorable SF Leap Day scenarios — the first a day with serious consequences, the second a day with no consequences!

We’re also declaring a runner-up this week: John O, whose “Fall of the Legends” is too great not to recognize. John, we’re going to send you a Fantasy Magazine gift bundle.

Both winners, drop us a line at prime@prime-books.com and give us your contact info!

Turns out the widely held lemming prejudice is due to a Disney film, White Wilderness, where the crew loaded a handful of lemmings onto turn tables, spun them, and forced them to leap into a foamy abyss.

Aforementioned lemmings were purchased from Inuit children and forced to perform in violation of union rules and without the aid of stunt doubles.

Said action was then covered up in the guise of mass hysteria attributed to feeble minded rodents.

It is unclear if Uncle Walt was aware of the chicanery. But the fact that the film was filmed in Calgary, where there is no sea, should have been a clue that something was amiss.

Please contact me to join the class action lawsuit.

Stop the madness.

So when it was time to produce my replacement, I requested the birth date Feb 29 from the Ministry of Birth Authorizations. They directed me to their Department of Astrologically and Numerologically Auspicious Dates, where a friendly intern told me my request was unusual but permissible under the regulations. But as they were awfully busy recalculating the new astrology charts now that Pluto had been reinstated as a planet in good standing and they hadn’t seen their superiors or any paid staff since vacations started in April, he asked me to help by working out my exact age for them. I had to hurry too if I wanted to catch the deadline for next year.

I turned in the papers the next day, hoping to hear from them within a week. Three weeks and nine service request later I did, but it was bad news.

Dear Prospective Parent, the message said. Your application was reviewed on May 3 and referred for special investigation. Our records indicate that your Days-to-Date Age (DTDA) is more than what your calculations show, and a correction request was placed on May 10. After the completion of the correction process on May 15, your case was transferred to the Available Dates Department, which indicated that unfortunately Feb 29 was no longer available. The only open date for next year is Feb 14. Please indicate if this is acceptable, or if you desire to wait for the next Feb 29.

My heart broke. Feb 14? The darkest, most sinister day on the calendar? Of course it’s open—no one wants it! According to tradition, it’s the day of the evil imp Cupid, who flies around disguised as a pudgy naked baby and shoots arrows into hapless humans, infecting them with an incurable disease called Amor Romanticus and an inexplicable obsession with the color red. AR, as we know, is the main cause of depression, suicide, homicide, and unauthorized reproduction. Some say there’s a prophecy that a diabolical creature called the Beast will be born on this day and she will bring about the end of our current era of goodness and perfection. But that’s just silly superstition.

I got a couple of Margaritas from the cocktail machine so I could think more clearly. There was an attachment with the message that highlighted the error in my DTDA figure: I was ten days older than what I had stated. How could I mess up so badly? I quickly redid the multiplication on my wrist computer and I got the same thing as before. Those idiots at the MBA—

Damn, the Leap Days. I had forgotten to add them. There had been ten of those since I was born.

Well, anyway. Waiting four years was not an option, so after getting a few more Margaritas and watching the latest irreality show in my teleroom (“Does This Chair Make Me Look Short?”), I decided I’d take it. I wanted a special day—well this one was even more special, and it would work just fine.

“Alright. You first — tell me exactly what you did.”

“Well … uh, sir… I set off a massive series of ground level nuclear detonations to slow down the Earth’s spin — just by a smidge, ya know — to cure the leap year problem.”

“Cure? Problem, you say?”

“Um…yeah. Yes, sir. It sounded like a good idea at…”

“Shut up. Now — you. Tell me exactly what you did.”

“I … uh … I set off a completely different series of nuclear detonations to place the Earth into an orbit ever-so-slightly closer to the Sun, with the aim of giving us a shorter trip around the Sun.”

“Hoo-boy. And — let me guess — the purpose of this was to ‘cure’ the leap year problem.”

“Actually, I was going to say ‘fix.’”

“Shut up! I have another question for you two — but I suspect I already know the answer — did you two even think to consult with one another, or me before you embarked on these public works projects?”

“no”

“WHAT?”

“NO, SIR!”

“And — tell me — what exactly have your unfortunately synchronized projects left us with?”

“I can handle that one. By my calculations, we’ll … um … we’ll have progressively shorter calenders every year.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Earth is dropping into the Sun, sir.”

…

Inevitably.

We are now close enough to tell this will be a dual-sex planet, and we adjust accordingly. One of our most experienced leaders assumes female identity and declares herself Mother Earth. She’s far ahead of me, but I can see her spansuit shred in the upper atmosphere and she wills her molecules out into a globe-misting spread. The degree of difficulty that displays makes me proud to be a Legend Seed. One day I will be that skilled. More importantly, the sentient beings of this world will come to regard their planet as feminine, and will, in the deepest recesses of their primitive brains, no matter how far above that they reach, feel moved to love and respect it.

A new kid, off my shoulder, is going to do something silly. All the ones fresh from the academy do something silly – I did – he will too. I am not disappointed. Unable to achieve nearly the molecular spread of our leader, he rockets down to and blankets an island in this planet’s northern hemisphere, assuring that the children raised there will hear about something called leprechauns. Wee folk? Rainbows? Pots of gold? I wonder how long he’s been cooking that one up.

My best friend – a real fan of the ocean worlds – does one of her specialties: Atlantis. It’s a cautionary tale plus a quest, and will spur our beings toward exploration and humility – nice job. We are falling faster now:

The Grim Reaper.

The Fountain of Youth.

The Philosopher’s Stone.

The Legends fall from the sky and I see we are going to be heavy on hope and quests, light on cautionary tales, so I aim for that continent beneath the leprechaun kid – better to keep an eye on him – and decide on something bloodthirsty, something that roams the night, sucking the life force from the unwary, something to keep people sensibly home and in their beds. I will be Vampire. But first I want to see something. The entity that is my mate in dual-sex incarnations will do something spectacular – she always does – her creations are studied back at the academy. She hits an upper jet stream and her molecules fly out over the entire largest continent and all land surrounding – to which I can only say, “Wow,” and becomes…

Inwardly, I am laughing so hard it’s hard to keep course. Giant, magical, flying, fire-breathing lizards? If anyone can pull that off, she can, but as I shed my spansuit and let my molecules fly I have a final thought:

Dragons. That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of.