The Strange Sources of Xenopaleontological Knowledge

I chased the space pirate all the way to Heraclius, one of those worlds that's nothing but grains and farm drones. I expected him to have some goons, a hideout, or at least a cache with a few guns there, but when I tracked him down, he was doing nothing but staring at a rock stuck on a couple other rocks.
"I remember," he said without turning around. "They argue whether a member of one species can be reborn as another, but it has to be true because I remember. I was a great magus once (for by that name we called those with the strongest psychic talents) and kings bowed to me even in their own palaces of brown-purple marble. They put before me the rich flesh of the uyilla, the delicate hobtgui roots, and I undid their difficulties. But even my wisdom failed when . . . Oh, I see the towers, how they crumble! The dead fill the streets and the wails of the living form inescapable clouds! Iauvne, where have you gone? Plellol ecsa, plellol monsa!"
"Fine, but I'm still going to arrest you."
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I should have waited for a convenient time to come here, but you sort of get these ideas in your head, you know?"
I wasn't interested in conversation with scum, so I didn't answer, but I knew all right.
Finis

Addendum

Another shared element of fantasy and science fiction is that someone who gets cut in half might get old, what with all the resurrection and the cloning and the surgery and the cyborgization and the holograms and the body doubles and the dopplegangers and the demonic pacts and the healing tanks and the divine intervention and the time travel and so forth.

An Analysis of the Sales of Final Fantasy VII: The New One

On day one, people had just looked up what it was called and therefore knew what to buy. By day two, everyone had forgotten which was which. Hence the dropoff.

The Three Bridges

"They say the three bridges over the Basawa river were made by fairies. Three different fairies, in fact, and so you be careful if you ever go that once you use one of the bridges, that's the only one you ever use. You know how fairies are."
On hearing that, three men conceived a desire to test the patience of the fairies. The first believed in fairies as much as he believed in honest judges. The second had purchased at a great price a blade promised to be effective against fairies and wanted to try it out. The third no longer had much use for the world.
The three traveled together to the Basawa and agreed that each would take one bridge, then shuffle themselves and go back over, and then move on to the third, one at a time. There was no particular reason for it except a whim, and since that was behind the whole trip, well.
They arrived at the three bridges. One was made of wood that came from those ever-growing trees that men aren't allowed to see. One was made from that metal that's harder than iron and redder than blood that men can't mine. The giants take care of that. One was made from pearl, the entire thing. They made quite a spectacle, all in all.
The three travelers carried out their plan, and at the end of it, the fairies appeared. "Who are these mortals who try to tease us when they have no ability? They can't pretend they don't know how to act."
The fairies came closer, three at first and then three hundred and three thousand after that. The three men were unafraid, and then the fairies realized.
"Oh yes, it's the gods of the ocean, the earth below, and the verdant surface who told us to build these bridges to remind them who they are when they finished their terms of incarnation. Well, never mind then, never mind."
The gods returned to their thrones, and the new era began.
Finis

The Ramifications of Cycles

Once a king heard the complaints of his subjects about disease and the spoilage of food. He wielded his royal might against the mosquitoes, the fleas, the rats, the foxes, and all the vermin in his kingdom. He hired hunters, drained marshes, built raised storehouses, and encouraged improved hygiene through a system of public baths. Everything that money and will could do, he did, and the subjects praised him greatly.
One day he had a dream. He was among the grasses, and they were taller than he, and when he met a mouse it was horse-sized, and all the insects and other pests that gathered around were large. Even stranger, they spoke.
"O king, our descendant, why do you persecute us? Do you not realize we are your ancestors, passing through the world again in these forms? What is a king without mercy, or what is benevolence that ignores the low as well as the high?"
This shocked the king. "You were once human? How can this be?"
"O king, all must pass through the forms he has earned. It is the same for you. You were a lion before, o king, and will be again, and many other animals."
The king bowed to them so low that his head hit the earth. "My ancestors, I honor you. But I ask, what of you? Why do you make my subjects ill and more hungry than their labor deserves?"
"Well," they said, "we are vermin, after all."
The king woke up, and from then on, he altered his policy. For every coin he spent before to battle the vermin, he spent two after.
Finis