Allan Miller

Content Warning

ageism

Nessie was playing the bagpipes at a haggis eating contest when she heard the news. At first, she’d thought the congratulations were in praise of her chanter control, but then some of the villagers had wished her well, or said they were sad to see her go. With the word “retirement” ringing in her ears, she made her excuses, slipped quietly away, and sank back into the loch. 

Retire? Why would she want to retire? She’d only just turned 180 million. No one had mentioned anything to her about quitting. There had to be some mistake. Still, it might be an idea to put in a few more appearances in the run-up to tourist season. 

A couple of days later she found Mr Mackenzie standing on the banks of the loch. After exchanging a few pleasantries, Nessie began to tell him about some of the new ideas she had planned for the summer, but the man from the tourist board seemed oddly distracted. His gaze fixed on the long expanse of water that had been the monster’s home since before the last ice age. 

‘Is something troubling you, Mr Mackenzie?’ enquired the sauropterygian, sensing his unease. 

‘You’ve done a grand job here Nessie,’ replied Mackenzie, taking his eyes from the loch and craning his neck skywards to face the gargantuan marine reptile. ‘Isn’t it about time you took a well-earned rest?’ 

‘I dinnae understand?’ Nessie understood perfectly well, but there was no way she was going to make it easy for the jumped-up messenger boy. 

‘We — That is the board and I — feel the time has come for you to hang up your flippers.’ 

‘I’m nae extinct yet,’ snapped the disgusted relic of the Mesozoic era. ‘I’ve got aeons left in me!’ 

‘The thing is, we’ve decided to take things in a new direction. Get rid of all the old tourist tat. Give our visitors something a bit more… modern.’ 

Nessie winced. It took all of her willpower to stop herself from devouring the tourist board lickspittle right there and then. Mackenzie fished about in his sporran and produced a long silvery object. It looked like a small metal serpent. 

‘Nessie, meet Mecha-Nessie.’

‘Mecha-Nessie?’ blanched the flabbergasted leviathan. 

‘It’s you, but an upgrade. Nessie 2.0 if you like. Braw eh?’

‘It’s nae very big.’

‘Obviously, this is just a model,’ smirked Mackenzie. ‘The real thing is currently on its way to Scotland from China. Two hundred feet long, atomic powered, and fully programmable. It’ll provide a world-class visitor experience, with guaranteed daily sightings, five times a day, every day.’ 

‘Tourists dinnae want guaranteed sightings,’ Nessie protested. ‘They want a bit o’ mystique.’ 

‘There’s nothing mysterious about disappearing on a month-long bender,’ replied Mackenzie, gesturing towards the dozens of discarded whisky barrels bobbing up and down by the water’s edge.

‘Whit about merch?’ 

‘Our focus groups show that kids are no longer interested in tartan monster plushies, plastic plesiosaur bath toys, or My Granny Went To Loch Ness And All I Got Was This Lousy Kilt type nonsense.’ Mackenzie held up the Mecha-Nessie. ‘They want interactive toys, WiFi enabled with downloadable software, and for a couple of hundred quid a pop the articulated Mecha-Nessie robot-kaiju action figure will provide exactly that.’ 

‘KAIJU!!?’ Nessie exploded. ‘Nae exactly Scottish is it?’

Mackenzie pressed a button on the toy Mecha-Nessie’s tail.

“YoU mAy taKe oOr LiVes bUt yoU’LL nEveR tAke Oor sHortBreAd!” spoke a recorded message, in a robotic but arguably more convincing Scottish accent than the one used by Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart. Then its eyes lit up, red smoke billowed from its mouth, and its head rotated 360° to the tune of Donald Where’s Yer Troosers? 

‘I cannae believe this is happening,’ spluttered Nessie. ‘I’ve given this loch the best 20,000 years o’ ma life. You humans have made a bloody fortune exploiting my image, and I’ve hardly seen a penny oot o’ it. Well, dinnae think you can replace me with an overgrown tinned mackerel and a few flashing lights. I’m going tae sue yer arses!’ 

‘On what grounds?’ Mackenzie scoffed.

‘Age discrimination.’

‘Sorry, the decision has been made. Mecha-Nessie will be here within a fortnight, and I’m going to have to ask you to hand in your thistle whistle.’

Nessie had stopped listening, and the last Mackenzie saw of her was a trail of air-bubbles moving away rapidly towards the middle of the loch. Two weeks later, the mechanical doppelgänger arrived and made its way into the loch with much fanfare and a great deal of coverage in the Highland press. 

Initial sales of Mecha-Nessie action figures and Kaiju Jimmy hats were brisk, although as a result of the algorithms in the Scottish AI operating system, many of the dolls turned out to be far swearier than anticipated, with several children being traumatised by Mecha-Nessie threatening to boot their baws. The toys were recalled and rebranded as adult novelty Mecha-Nessie figures, but the gimmick didn’t last long. There just wasn’t the same affection for the new leviathan as had built up over the centuries for the Loch Ness monster. 

The full-sized Mecha-Nessie was programmed to perform ever more elaborate aquatic displays, but when the robotic titan malfunctioned and began destroying downtown Inverness, with an arsenal of weaponry that included laser cannons, proton screams and spinning tail spikes, a regiment of the highland infantry was called in to take out the mutinous monster. From then on, visitor numbers to Loch Ness plummeted, and with it revenue. 

An online petition to save Nessie attracted over 350,000 signatures. Clan chiefs held crisis talks with the tourist board, but there was really only one thing to do — they had to bring back Nessie.

The Loch Ness Monster had not been short of offers. It was assumed she’d left to prove she wasn’t a one-loch wonder, and was probably working as the Lake Superior Servant or the Dead Sea Dinosaur. The Scottish government sent out research vessels, but after a year with no confirmed sightings, the boats were recalled. Nessie had vanished. Eventually, an approach was made to the Kraken, but after the way Nessie had been treated, the tentacled colossus told them to bugger off. 

Time passed, and the Loch Ness Monster was consigned to history, before becoming legend, and finally myth. Then, late one night, many years later, old Angus MacLeod of the clan MacLeod was making his way home from the pub in Fort Augustus, and decided to take a shortcut along the loch side when a trail of bubbles appeared on the surface of the water…

Allan Miller is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, auto fiction, and humorous micro fiction. His work been published in such places as Gutter, Full House Literary, Firewords, Popshot Quarterly, Ellipsis Zine, Porridge, Mono, Noctivagant, ForgeZine, Hooded, and The Martello.
His website is at: allanmiller.weebly.com