Wikiclams

This is the story of the wikiclams - the clams that anyone could edit.

Once upon a time, the wikiclams lived in peace - harming no-one, and being harmed by none. They lived life as all other clams do: sitting on the sand, growing and eating and dying.

Then came the famed adventurer, Fjafalgnjir the Vexed. He sailed to the tiny island by which the wikiclams were found, quite by accident when a storm tossed his ship onto its sandy shore. But when attempting to harvest the clams, he thought quite distinctly to himself, these clams should be much bigger (in Old Norse, of course) - and lo! They were so!

Fjafalgnjir was quite surprised at his discovery. He touched the wikiclams, tasted them, and then, to test, thought these clams should each contain a large oyster (in Old Norse, of course). And lo - they were so!

Fjafalgnjir was astounded at his discovery. Together with his crew, he harvested the clams in great numbers; sometimes he edited them to great size for food. At other times, they were edited for purposes of treasure, to mirrored hue or jeweled facets or (once, on a bet) to a perpetually spinning, hovering, glowing state. (That one Fjafalgnjir kept in his cabin for use as a night-light.) At last, the Norse adventurers left the island, marking it carefully so as to be able to find their way back again; but tragically, a storm rose up once more as they traveled the cold northern seas, depriving them entirely of their bearings and consigning the Island of the Wikiclams to history and legend.

Centuries later, the Island was found once more, when an English destroyer on extended patrol for German Unterseeboots found the island, unmarked on its charts. The captain himself went ashore, curious about their discovery, and (feeling a bit peckish) thought that the sight of so many clams on the sandy shores should emanate an odor such that would make any man hunger. And lo, it was so!

Again, the crew were startled by the discovery, and only one among them knew the near-forgotten tale of the Island of the Wikiclams. Much experimentation was conducted, and after adequate samples were taken (and eaten), the destroyer steamed back to port to report its exciting discovery. Scientists were fascinated by the phenomenon - the clams seemed to rearrange their very molecular bonds, though the instrumentation available at the time was too poor to say for a certainty.

The war ended before the wikiclams could be put to any use, and in the post-war cutbacks and budget shortfalls, no more research could be conducted. Still, they were remembered, and a generation later, as another Great War broke out of the confines of Europe, another expedition was sent to the Island of the Wikiclams. They were swiftly discovered to be weapons of unparalleled power, capable of being edited into explosives of unparalleled power with mere thought. High commanders dreamed of clams used as bombs and land-mines, and sent tankers out to gather more.

It was then that treachery struck. German spies were able to gain word of the poorly-concealed operation, and a flight of Luftwaffe bombers were sent to the Island of the Wikiclams to turn the sands into melted glass. The Axis could not control the Nordic seas with enough certainty to deny the Wikiclams to the Allies - but they could destroy them, as indeed they did, only harvesting a few samples. When the Allied force arrived, they found only ruin.

Still, a few wikiclams remained, in laboratories on both sides of the war. They were hoarded, unused, until the war's closing, when Allied agents caught word of a mad scheme to Axis wikiclams to destroy the Allied forces - and half of Europe to boot. The only possible protection was the Allied wikiclams - swiftly edited into vast protective clams upon being shipped to the front. On a fateful day, the Axis set off its Wikiclam weapons - only to find them thwarted by their own kind. The clams, edited into weapons of war, battled for brief moments in the skies of war-torn Europe - and then vanished forever, gone from the world whose violence had destroyed them.

And that is the tale of the passing of the Wikiclams from our world.