So I blame my friend Falcon

I should also blame reading Facebook really late at night, but I’m mostly going to blame Falcon.

She posted a meme with a list of superpowers that would be limited, but still useful. Well, that concept underlies a large portion of the Hyperion and Meagan universe. And frankly, I’ve come up with worse. Some of the ones on the list: Can teleport up to 7″ away and Can control toasters with your mind. Either of these could be very useful on a day-to-day basis.

But the one that caught my imagination was: Free gravel for life.

Gayle and I discussed my resulting dream this morning and she agreed a good use would be working for a road construction company. Gravel is one of the big-ticket items and if you could just teleport it in then you could make a fortune and the company could save a fortune. Win Win. Unless, of course, the gravel was being pilfered from existing gravel quarries. This goes to show that even in her fantasies, Gayle manages to remain an ethical and caring person. I’m more laissez-faire. And I created Hyperion. You all know something’s wrong with me. You don’t have to pretend.

I mean who says that the gravel really belongs to anyone? Sometime in the distant past, through multiple generations and multiple business sales, some unknown person was walking through the woods and stumbled over a pile of rocks. And being a forward-thinking individual, exclaimed “I claim these pebbles in the name of France!”

So, if he could do that, I’m going to excuse the theoretical side effects of my wonderous teleportation powers. Unless they can actually prove my pebbles came from their quarry, which would bring the court system into the fantasy. But more on that later.

Gayle’s expansion of the idea had merit. And we could certainly use some gravel to fill in the low, watery areas on our property. But I thought bigger. Way bigger. What if I used my power to fill in the Grand Canyon?

Gayle’s next look was one of horror. And, rechecking my calculations, I think I might be able to see why.

But you can put away the torches and pitchforks. My plan is entirely altruistic. You see, somewhere out in the icy depths of space is the asteroid, Graveltron. This pile of ethically sourced, purely organic pebbles is on a collision course with Earth. If nothing is done, it will slam into the planet with devastating results. And the point of impact will be … well, what do you know? The Grand Canyon.

So, in truth, I’m using my powers to slowly and safely transfer the asteroid to where nature intended it. You’re welcome.
So, what are we talking here? Assuming the asteroid holds just enough pebbles to fill in the canyon…

Yes? You in the back. Put … down … the … pitchfork! Look, we’re filling in a natural wonder with extraterrestrial material. I think we all knew that SOME handwaving was going to be needed.

If that bothers you, I might as well skip over the part where I had to figure out how to protect the flow path of the Colorado River itself. It’s not like I want a lot of environmentally disastrous side effects. I’m the good guy here, remember?

So, according to the Internet, which we know is never wrong, the Grand Canyon has a volume of 5.45 trillion cubic yards. A ton of gravel takes up 0.714 cubic yards. So (skipping the boring math in the middle) if I could summon one ton of gravel per second, it would take 123,392 years to fill it up. And that doesn’t include smoothing and raking, nor food and bathroom breaks.
So, I’m going to have to redefine “a lifetime of gravel” to be more in the order of 1 million tons per second if I’m going to still have time in my life to do other things. Valles Marineris … you’re on the list.

So, having been a bit daunted, my dream mind decided to make things a bit more realistic. And that’s how I ended up in County Court. Remember that? It was up at the top of the essay. I promised I’d get around to it.

Turns out I was arrested for standing on top of 10 tons of gravel that had mysteriously appeared in Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, which is where the Grand Canyon officially starts. I mean, you have to start somewhere. I apologize to the residents, but you can’t fill in a historical landmark without breaking a few eggs.

Yes, you in the back again? Yes, I think it’s highly likely that somebody in Lee’s Ferry has a chicken coop. Yes, I’m sure all the chickens ran away first, so it was only the eggs. Yes, I think we’ve established I’m a bit of a menace to society.

Anyway, they couldn’t actually prove that I’d trucked in or dumped the gravel, or committed any crime that’s actually on the books. But they still fined me 1000 tons of gravel, to be delivered to a local road project, for misdemeanor standing-on-a-pile-of-gravel-in-a-national-park.

You just can’t win with these people.