Scruffy

For his tenth birthday, John Coetzee's grandfather, a senile CERN physicist, FedExed him a black hole. John's parents, who were both employed as logicians at the University of Durban's Philosophy Department, were, naturally, concerned that this shirt-button-sized hole - which their son had christened Scruffy - would grow
larger and, eventually, suck up the city of Durban. They pleaded with John to send it back to his grandfather or, at very least, donate it to the Durban Museum of Modern Art, whose most recent exhibition the Coetzees had declared to be "the beginning of the end." The ten-year old, accustomed to robust and extremely rational dinner conversation, put his foot down: "It's utterly irrational to ask me to return nothingness.” Suitably chastised, John's parents allowed him to keep Scruffy. Two days later, Detective Xolani Hlongwe, standing above the void where Durban had once stood, coughed, tossed his cigarette into the abyss, then turned to his colleague, Detective Craig Naidoo, and opined: "This is why logicians shouldn't have children."