polytopia-inventions (September-2025)

Sanchez was a happy child, loved and overfed by his mother, and only beaten gently by a father who was rarely home.

Sanchez was born into the Quetzali tribe, a corn-chomping tribe of peace that worshipped birds and loved to play games and lark about inventing things.

Sanchez was not very good at inventing things. He had no imagination at all in that regard. He was a feelings guy. ‘Look at him!’ they would tease, ‘He’s thinking again!’

After a while Sanchez was no longer a happy child. He was fed up with being the butt of everybody’s jokes. He had started thinking even harder. One day, when all his so-called friends were making wings and pretending they were birds at some festival or other something happened: Sanchez had an idea of his own.

Sanchez had thought up an entirely new idea. It was not a reinforced shield or a spinning chair or a sweetcorn catapult… it was a… concept. He tried to think of a name for it. He could not right now, he would think of it later.

All that was needed now was some persuasion. This did not prove difficult, because Sanchez having an idea was quite the occasion. Within a few minutes, the entire tribe (including his father who he'd not seen for three days) had gathered round. An hour or so later, everybody, apart from Sanchez, was wearing wings and stood on the edge of a cliff.

The name had come to Sanchez. It sounded foreign and made no sense, but it… felt right.

So it was, on that day, the day that the entire Quetzali tribe happily and gormlessly plummeted to the ground that Sanchez had invented Nihilism.