By Sean Dempsey, 07/20/25
Let no one say the following is allegory or invention. It is, I assure the reader, entirely true, having been performed not upon the floor of Parliament nor the pages of moralist tracts, but in a respectable laboratory, by a respectable scientist, using respectable mice.
In the Year of our Lord 1968, one Dr. John B. Calhoun, a gentleman of scientific disposition and curious leanings, resolved to construct a world.
Not for man (Heaven forbid we be tested so honestly) but for mice, those furred and fretful creatures whom Nature designed for hiding in pantries and confusing philosophers.
He called this world Universe 25… as I gather the previous twenty-four universes had produced mixed results.
In this final realm, he spared no expense, nor cruelty of generosity. Here was a place without famine, without thirst, without war or disease or tax collectors. Food appeared with mechanical certainty. Water ran clean and endless. The air was sweet, the bedding soft, and not a single cat, trap, or bureaucrat roamed the land.
Into this prelapsarian Eden were placed eight (8) mice.
At first, all unfolded as the modern urbanist dreams: growth without limit, sex without consequence, families without burden. The mice multiplied, untroubled by hunger or fear. They built nests, raised young, and busied themselves with the business of living, though, notably, no mouse required a job.
Yet as the population crept past two thousand (a number still well below the engineered capacity), cracks formed in paradise.
Males, stripped of meaningful territory or purpose, grew erratic. Some attacked their neighbors without cause; others withdrew entirely, lounging in corners like melancholic aristocrats.
The females, once attentive mothers, became careless or cruel, abandoning pups, hoarding resources, or engaging in acts which would scandalize even the more liberal segments of Westminster.
Amidst this slow descent, a new class emerged. Dr. Calhoun, with the poetic wit of a prophet in a lab coat, named this class “the Beautiful Ones.”
These were young, immaculate mice who neither fought nor bred, nor so much as acknowledged the tribulations of their kind. They lived in high nests, alone, grooming themselves compulsively. They were lovely, sterile, and utterly useless.
From here the end quickened. Mating ceased. Infancy dwindled to none. Though food remained in surplus and nests lay empty, the will to live… or, more precisely, the will to continue, vanished.
No predators came.
No plague descended.
Yet the colony died.
On Day 1,780, the last mouse, well-fed and magnificently irrelevant, perished.
Dr. Calhoun called this a “behavioral sink,” a sterile term which deserves entry among the grander phrases of political economy and ecclesiastical despair. For though his work was with rodents, the implications were drafted in a finer hand…
For, in closing, let the reader consider:
If a society is relieved of every burden, comforted to the point of paralysis, and stripped of the necessity to strive: will its members not, like the mouse, forget how to live?
If a creature has all it needs, yet nothing to pursue… is it not already dead, though it still eats and breathes?
Thus the fate of Universe 25 is not merely a curiosity in rodent affairs; it is a mirror polished far too clearly for our liking.
For in the absence of danger, virtue may decay. In the absence of hardship, purpose may dissolve. And in the absence of meaning, even paradise is a mausoleum.
