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{{Infobox Story
{{Infobox Story SMW
|main character= [[Bernice Summerfield]]  
|main character = [[Lwpha]], [[Bernice Summerfield]]
|featuring=  
|featuring     = [[Jason Kane|Jason]], [[Isaac Summerfield II|Isaac]], [[Peter Summerfield|Peter]], [[Kothar]]
|setting= [[Mimsphere]], [[27th century]]
|enemy          = The [[Draconian]]s
|writer= [[Kate Orman]]
|setting       = [[Mimsphere]], [[27th century]]
|anthology= ''[[Nobody's Children]]''
|writer         = Kate Orman
|series= ''[[Bernice Summerfield (series)|Bernice Summerfield]]'' short stories
|anthology     = Nobody's Children (anthology)
|prev= The Soul's Prism (short story)
|release date  = 3 August 2007
|next= The Loyal Left Hand (short story)
|series         = ''[[Bernice Summerfield (series)|Bernice Summerfield]]'' short stories
|series2= ''[[Bernice Summerfield (series)|Bernice Summerfield]]''
|prev           = The Soul's Prism (short story)
|prev2= Freedom of Information (audio story)
|next           = The Loyal Left Hand (short story)
|next2= The Loyal Left Hand (short story)
|series2       = ''[[Bernice Summerfield (series)|Bernice Summerfield]]''
}}{{prose stub}}
|prev2         = Freedom of Information (audio story)
'''''All Mimsy Were the Borogroves''''' was the first story in the [[Bernice Summerfield]] anthology ''[[Nobody's Children]]''. It was written by [[Kate Orman]].
|next2         = The Loyal Left Hand (short story)
}}
'''''All Mimsy Were the Borogoves''''' was a [[2007 (releases)|2007]] short story written by [[Kate Orman]] and released as the first story in the ''[[Bernice Summerfield (series)|Bernice Summerfield]]'' anthology ''[[Nobody's Children (anthology)|Nobody's Children]]''.
 
This story acted as a continuation of the ''[[Big Finish Productions|Big Finish]]'' stories ''[[The Judas Gift (audio story)|The Judas Gift]]'' and ''[[Freedom of Information (audio story)|Freedom of Information]]''.


== Summary ==
== Summary ==
Benny and Jason are vacationing on the planet Phaaag Zenbrou, where the visiting Isaac Summerfield is looking after Peter while Jason and Benny try to conceive a child of their own. Following the destruction of all life on the Mimsphere, however, Benny is torn between her desire to have a child with Jason and her fear of bringing new life into a world where nothing is safe. As she ponders this, she is contacted by a Mim diplomat named Lwpha who asks her to help him rescue his children from the planet Proxima Longissima. During the war, eight million Mim evacuated from this colony world, and in the confusion and panic, a colony of Mim children -- a borogove -- was accidentally left behind. Benny advises Lwpha to appoint her the children's godmother, which gives her a legal pretext to inquire about them. Jarith Kothar, the Draconian currently in charge of the Braxiatel Collection, denies the presence of a borogove on Proxima Longissima and advises Benny against visiting the planet, claiming that the presence of surviving Mim insurgents would make it too dangerous. Nevertheless, Lwpha convinces her to investigate his claim in person, to find evidence of the borogove's existence, and to expose it to the galaxy so the Draconians will be forced to let the children go.
[[Bernice Summerfield]]'s vacation on [[Phaaag Zenbrou]] is interrupted when [[Mim]] diplomat [[Lwpha]] seeks her help in saving the Mim's children from [[Draconian]] forces who have annexed the colony world of [[Proxima Longissima]] as part of ongoing [[Draconian-Mim War|war]] efforts.


Benny and Lwpha travel to the Mimsphere inside an old space wreck; the planet's orbital defences classify it as junk and allow it to burn up in the atmosphere, and the survival pod hidden inside splashes down safely in the ocean and is hidden amidst the debris. Lwpha takes the form of a Draconian soldier, and he and Benny head for a research pontoon set up above the borogove's last known location. On the way, Benny inquires about Mim biology, and although Lwpha is reluctant to reveal too much to her, he does explain that the Mim, like all forms of sentient life, evolved from a collection of cells that learned to co-operate with one another. Most life in the galaxy evolved from sponges; on the Mimsphere, sponges themselves evolved the ability to shape-change as a defence against predators. Mim reproduce asexually by budding, and their young group together in a cluster where they slowly develop into individual sentient beings, trained to mimic any form of life, survive in any environment, and even reform themselves if cut into pieces.
== Plot ==
Holidaying on the vacation planet [[Phaaag Zenbrou]], [[Bernice Summerfield|Bernice]] and [[Jason Kane|Jason]] enjoy an intimate session together while [[Peter Summerfield|Peter]] is being looked after by his grandfather, [[Isaac Summerfield II|Isaac]]. Unbeknownst to the pair of them, they are being observed by a [[Mim]] [[shapeshifter]], [[Lwpha]], who later introduces themself to Bernice as a diplomat who seeks her assistance in rescuing the Mim's children from the colony world [[Proxima Longissima]], which has been overrun by [[Draconian]] forces.


Lwpha delivers Benny to the pontoon, claiming that she's a biologist named Frymer who was stranded on the planet when the Draconians invaded. The Draconians test Benny's blood, but accept Lwpha at face value, since it's too time-consuming to test every Draconian soldier on the planet and it's assumed that Mim civilians would be unable to mimic a Draconian convincingly. Benny is put to work with Lady-Captain-Savant Cheset, one of the few Draconian females permitted to pursue an intellectual career; she's studying Mim biology in order to figure out how a mass of undifferentiated tissue can think, and she believes that the borogove has migrated from its original location and has since been hidden. Benny is horrified to learn that Cheset has been conducting an autopsy on a dead Mim child that she claims to have found on the seabed, but Lwpha believes that it probably died accidentally when the borogove migrated. The official Draconian stance is that the Mim only mimic sentient behaviour, and that they abandoned their borogove because they don't care for their children; this is presumably to make the destruction of the Mimsphere more palatable to the rest of the galaxy. However, Cheset is interested in finding out the truth, not just supporting official policy. Benny wonders whether Cheset would make a useful ally, but before she can decide, the pontoon explodes.
Crash-landing on Longissima in a spaceship, Bernice and Lwpha infiltrate a Draconian camp with Lwpha disguised as a Draconian guard and Bernice their prisoner. They are introduced to the Draonican [[zoologist]] [[Cheset]] and observe her experimentations on a deceased Mim child in her efforts to prove the [[Joyce-Gate hypothesis]] that Mim are [[Sentience|non-sentient]], which would allow the Draconians to use a slew of new weapons otherwise prohibited by law. During this time, the base is attacked by Mim resistance fighters.


Lwpha's body shields Benny from the brunt of the explosion, but he is widely scattered, and Benny is left treading water alone for hours until he pulls himself back together. When they are seen together, they are contacted by a cell of insurgents who had no idea that there were other Mim agents aboard the pontoon when they blew it up. The saboteur, Spong, smuggled explosives onto the pontoon's supports by dividing his body into nine pieces too small to trigger the Draconians' perimeter defences. He and Benny try sharing jokes, but find that their species' sense of humour doesn't translate well. Once Benny has recovered from her exposure to the elements, Lwpha takes her to see the borogove -- and, astonished by its size, she realises that there's something Lwpha hasn't been telling her. He is forced to admit that, out of the thousands of offspring in the borogove, only a few hundred will survive to adulthood. This is a natural part of Mim biology and childcare; caring for each individual bud in the earliest stages of growth would be like caring for each individual gamete in a human body, and some human embryos. The Mim care for every child that develops to term, and even though many Mim contributed offspring to this borogove, Lwpha loves each of them as if they were his own. The Draconian position that the Mim don't care for their children simply isn't true -- and the fact that this borogove was abandoned implies that the mass panic during the evacuation was somehow manufactured.
All of the Draconians are killed, including Cheset, while Bernice and Lwpha are separated. Lwpha recovers after several hours and soon locates Bernice, who has been drifting out to sea. The Mim resistance arrive and apologise for getting the pair caught up in the attack. Lwpha introduces Bernice to the borogove of Mim children and, alongside another Mim, [[Spong]], they help to safely evacuate the children from the planet. The trio are attacked by Draconian laser beams and Spong is killed. Stranded on the water world, Bernice decides to take and send a [[photograph]] into the network which will ensure they are retrieved.


Lwpha and Spong escort Benny to the human embassy, and on the way, she tells them about her future child Keith and the sense of loss she experienced when that future seemed to disappear before her eyes. Lwpha admits that he'd probably prioritise saving other Mim's children, because he could, genetically at least, replace his own. Their boat is then spotted and blasted out of the water, and although Benny and Lwpha manage to abandon it in time, Spong is severely burned and loses most of his soft tissue. As he dies, he admits to Benny that his people have taken deliberately silly-sounding names in order to sound harmless to humans, and Benny tries to offer him comfort in return by telling him about human beliefs in the afterlife. She and Lwpha are now stranded without a boat in the middle of the ocean; Mim insurgents won't risk trying to rescue them now that they've been spotted, and Draconians won't be searching for survivors. Benny thus broadcasts a photograph of herself from her camera-phone, relying on chance to determine who finds them first; fortunately, a boat from the human embassy arrives just seconds ahead of the Draconians, and although the Draconian gunboat harasses them all the way back to the embassy, they're unwilling to risk a diplomatic incident by firing first.
Bernice and Lwpha are rescued by humans before the Draconians manage to find them. They reveal the truth about the existence of the borogoves and the Draconians are forced to admit their own knowledge about them. However, the Draconians claim that the Mim children are considered war orphans and that they have been looking after them. As the Mim are not permitted to leave Draconian space, Bernice ingests Lwpha into her blood stream allowing her to pass through the Draconians systems undetected and return to the [[Braxiatel Collection]].


Once safe in the embassy, Benny releases her photographs of the borogove to the galactic media. But the Draconians unexpectedly respond by revealing that there are several other abandoned borogoves on the planet. Records of their existence and the lives of their parents were presumably lost in the destruction of the Mimsphere, and now the public perception will be that the Draconians have a moral right to raise the borogoves, which the Mim obviously abandoned to save their own lives. The Draconians offer to send Benny back home with no repercussions, but Benny risks her life by allowing Lwpha to shed most of his mass and diffuse into her bloodstream so she can smuggle him off-world. She is shaken when her blood is tested at the spaceport, but somehow she passes the screening and is able to get back to the Collection, where Lwpha diffuses back out into her bathwater. Once he's reformed, Benny tells him that the Collection will be hosting negotiations between the Draconians and Mim on the subject of the borogoves, and Lwpha thanks her for her bravery, which may have saved thousands or even millions of Mim children.
Although after the success of their mission, Lwpha was assassinated.


== Characters ==
== Characters ==
* [[Lwpha]]
* [[Bernice Summerfield]]
* [[Bernice Summerfield]]
* [[Jason Kane]]
* [[Jason Kane]]
* [[Isaac Summerfield]]
* [[Peter Summerfield]]
* [[Peter Summerfield]]
* [[Isaac Summerfield]]
* [[Jekhet]]
* [[Lwpha]]
* [[Jarith Kothar]]
* [[Cheset]]
* [[Spong]]
* [[Spong]]
* [[Jarith Kothar]]


== References ==
== Worldbuilding ==
* The Mim have a colonly world called [[Proxima Longissima]]. The Mim name for it translates as "Holiday Home".
* [[Lwpha]] initially disguised themself as a [[Kapteynian madder-lily]] ornamental [[plant]] in [[Bernice Summerfield]]'s hotel room.
* The [[Mim]] have such a thing as a [[sinking theatre]].
* Lwpha hails from the Mim colony world [[Proxima Longissima]]. The Mim name for it translates as "Holiday Home". Another Mim colony was on [[Teegarden's star]].
* Bernice is holidaying on the planet [[Phaaag Zenbrou]] which is home to the native [[Zenbrouli]].
* Bernice noted that Lwpha was whistling "[[I Am the Walrus]]", and later sang "[[I'm Walking Backwards For Christmas]]".
* A [[Lacaillian]] prospecting vessel passed through Proxima Longissima's [[Oort cloud]].
* One of the [[Draconian]] bases was on [[Ushumgallu]].
* Bernice thought that the Mim got their name from the word "mimic", however, Lwpha informed her that they actually got their name from the ancient human word "coy".
* [[Xebec]] were native marine life on Proxima Longissima.
* Bernice and Lwpha took on the identities of [[Frymer]] and [[Kherue]] respectively.
* [[City Fourteen]] was a location on Proxima Longissima.
* The [[Joyce-Gate hypothesis]] suggested that the Mim were not sentient and rather sock puppets to entities from another dimension.
* Lwpha took on the form of a water-based "sea dragon" from [[Ninmah 5]].
* Lwpha joined the [[Enmity]].
* [[Knaubetj]] the Three Horned Face was the [[Draconian]] [[Spirit of Chaos]].


== Notes ==
== Notes ==
Line 45: Line 66:


== Continuity ==
== Continuity ==
''to be added''
* Every living thing on the [[Mimsphere]] was destroyed. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Freedom of Information (audio story)|Freedom of Information]]'')
* [[Bernice Summerfield|Bernice]] refers to her and [[Jason Kane|Jason]]'s hypothetical future child as "Keith" or "Keithette", and later recalls the events of her previous interaction with her child [[Keith Branigan Kane-Summerfield|Keith]] from the future. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Return of the Living Dad (novel)|Return of the Living Dad]]'')
* [[Kothar|Jarith Kothar]] was the [[Draconian]] [[ambassador]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Judas Gift (audio story)|The Judas Gift]]'', [[AUDIO]]: ''[[Freedom of Information (audio story)|Freedom of Information]]'')
* [[President of Earth|President]] [[Fiona Dickens|Fiona]] was in charge of the [[Earth Empire|Earth Embassy]]. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Final Amendment (audio story)|The Final Amendment]]'')
* [[Lwpha]] compared leaving their children to the [[Draconian]]s to Bernice leaving [[Peter Summerfield]] to the [[Fifth Axis]]. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[The Fall (short story)|The Fall]]'', et al.)


{{TitleSort}}
{{TitleSort}}
[[Category:Bernice Summerfield stories]]
 
[[Category:Bernice Summerfield sources]]
[[Category:Nobody's Children short stories]]
[[Category:Nobody's Children short stories]]
[[Category:Draconian short stories]]
[[Category:Mim stories]]

Latest revision as of 21:42, 27 March 2024

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All Mimsy Were the Borogoves was a 2007 short story written by Kate Orman and released as the first story in the Bernice Summerfield anthology Nobody's Children.

This story acted as a continuation of the Big Finish stories The Judas Gift and Freedom of Information.

Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Bernice Summerfield's vacation on Phaaag Zenbrou is interrupted when Mim diplomat Lwpha seeks her help in saving the Mim's children from Draconian forces who have annexed the colony world of Proxima Longissima as part of ongoing war efforts.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Holidaying on the vacation planet Phaaag Zenbrou, Bernice and Jason enjoy an intimate session together while Peter is being looked after by his grandfather, Isaac. Unbeknownst to the pair of them, they are being observed by a Mim shapeshifter, Lwpha, who later introduces themself to Bernice as a diplomat who seeks her assistance in rescuing the Mim's children from the colony world Proxima Longissima, which has been overrun by Draconian forces.

Crash-landing on Longissima in a spaceship, Bernice and Lwpha infiltrate a Draconian camp with Lwpha disguised as a Draconian guard and Bernice their prisoner. They are introduced to the Draonican zoologist Cheset and observe her experimentations on a deceased Mim child in her efforts to prove the Joyce-Gate hypothesis that Mim are non-sentient, which would allow the Draconians to use a slew of new weapons otherwise prohibited by law. During this time, the base is attacked by Mim resistance fighters.

All of the Draconians are killed, including Cheset, while Bernice and Lwpha are separated. Lwpha recovers after several hours and soon locates Bernice, who has been drifting out to sea. The Mim resistance arrive and apologise for getting the pair caught up in the attack. Lwpha introduces Bernice to the borogove of Mim children and, alongside another Mim, Spong, they help to safely evacuate the children from the planet. The trio are attacked by Draconian laser beams and Spong is killed. Stranded on the water world, Bernice decides to take and send a photograph into the network which will ensure they are retrieved.

Bernice and Lwpha are rescued by humans before the Draconians manage to find them. They reveal the truth about the existence of the borogoves and the Draconians are forced to admit their own knowledge about them. However, the Draconians claim that the Mim children are considered war orphans and that they have been looking after them. As the Mim are not permitted to leave Draconian space, Bernice ingests Lwpha into her blood stream allowing her to pass through the Draconians systems undetected and return to the Braxiatel Collection.

Although after the success of their mission, Lwpha was assassinated.

Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

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