In case you hadn't guessed, my story's full of woe. It's a story of kidnap and slavery, imperialism and oppression, burgers, fries and medium Cokes. It's also a story of redemption and sacrifice, but now I'm spoiling the ending, so I shall turn to the tale itself before I start spoiling the middle too...

All great things start at the beginning, but if I may, I wish to jump back even further, to a time before I existed. Yes, I know, it's difficult to comprehend there being a universe without oneself, but that's how it used to be, and alas, how it shall be again one day. Anyway, my story begins with my great-great-great-grandfather. (Don't try and work that out, dear, just take my word for it that he was alive a long time before any of us were thought of.)

Grandpa (thrice removed) was a bear named Orson. He was the first in our family gene pool to have a lovely cream coat. Yes, I inherited it from him. He was born a brunette, but as he left infancy behind, his coat just kept on getting lighter and lighter. At one point they thought it would keep going until he was as white as snow! Anyway, much to the relief of the bear community, he didn't go on to become an albino, but stopped when he was the same beautiful fudge colour that I am today. I like to think I'm the spitting image of him.

Now, ignorant human, I must further digress from my story to explain a little about the bear world. For, you see, we do not come from the same universe as you. We live in a parallel Earth where there are but bears: living in houses, going to work and school, running the planet. There are human beings, but they can't speak and just run around the woods naked. Like in Texas on your world. Anyway, the relevance of this will all become clearer the closer I get to actually speaking of myself, but all you need know presently is that when I speak of the world, I am actually referring to the bear version of it, unless stated.

Grandpa Orson was one of those that discovered the Puddle. No, that is not incorrect capitalisation on my part. Indeed, the Puddle has come to have such significance in our world that it's become a proper noun (like Washington, White House, Texan and Idiot, in your world). Grandpa Orson found it one day whilst working on the building site with his pal Tiny (who, in typical over-worked cliché fashion, was actually an extremely large bear). They were hauling bricks when Tiny uncovered the Puddle, and jumped back in utter shock.

Now, it is important one does not misunderstand why he was shocked, for Tiny's own great-great-great-grandchildren continue to be formidably large beasties, and I don't wish to sully his name and invite a visit from them. Grandpa Orson was surprised when he saw the Puddle, though mainly because they'd been having a heat wave for the last four weeks and there had been no rain. It was only when he joined Tiny beside it that he was shocked too.

You have surely seen a puddle, for they do not differ greatly between our two worlds. You have seen how they shimmer and ripple, but are for all intents and purposes a liquid mirror on the ground. Well, if you look into a mirror, you see a reflection of yourself. But when Grandpa Orson and his pal Tiny looked into the Puddle, what they saw looking back, was one of you...

In your calendar, this would have been the year 1866. If you check out that ghastly piercing that I have in my earlobe, you will spot another occurrence of the year 1866. But, oh, there I go, spoiling the middle again.

Grandpa Orson leapt back from the Puddle immediately, but Tiny was transfixed. He gave Grandpa Orson a running commentary of what the human was doing. And at first, all he was doing was looking back, equally flabbergasted. This human was not only wearing clothes, but he seemed to be moving his lips as if he could speak, though Tiny couldn't hear what he said.

Suddenly, the Puddle erupted with a splash, and before Grandpa Orson knew, Tiny was being dragged into it, barking like a hound and slavering like a lion. Grandpa Orson, whose heroic gene I like to believe I have inherited along with his fur coat, forgot his fears and leapt to his friend's aid. But by the time he reached him, Tiny was already slipping into the Puddle, as if it were several feet deep rather than several inches. When he got close enough, looking into the Puddle, Grandpa Orson saw Tiny's back half on the other side.

The human was dragging him through! He had a small lasso caught around one of Tiny's legs, and was reeling him in! Except whilst humans in our world are half our size, Tiny was small enough for this human to grab. And as soon as there was enough of Tiny through the Puddle, that's precisely what the human did. And then Tiny was gone. Grandpa Orson fell on his backside.

It took a while to sink in. Grandpa Orson never forgot what that human looked like. His face has gone down in infamy amongst our kind. He had wild, glaring eyes, so wide you could see the whites around the edges. He had a long, twirly moustache that curled up at both ends and a thin, lipless mouth that twitched open and shut as he kidnapped poor Tiny.

Now, far be it from me to scoff, for I was not there, nor have I ever known a world without the threat of the Puddle. However, I think it extremely dumb that before they concreted over the Puddle, bears kept on going to have a look through, to see this strange human, to see if they could see Tiny. One and all found themselves quickly being reeled through. The human even used a net weighted at the edges when a whole group came too close.

Grandpa Orson was there when they poured the concrete over the top of the Puddle. He and Tiny had been building the shopping mall that was eventually completed on top of it. That was supposed to be the end of the kidnappings. An estimated thirty bears had been snatched already. Horror stories did the rounds of bears shrinking and becoming motionless creatures.

The Puddle had come to mean death...

Before we finally come to my part in this sorry saga, I must first note that on several occasions, both within Grandpa Orson's lifetime, and since, other Puddles cropped up. And, as before, bears disappeared through them, last seen being these inanimate creatures in the hands of humans, looking remarkably like a bear version of the small, cuddly human beings we give to our children in the bear community to play with as toys. Most bizarre. But as with the first Puddle, these were all concreted over and a new mall built on top.

Now we must skip ahead several generations, skip my birth, and my youth because, whilst interesting, they're not relevant. They were happy times, and I didn't pay much attention to the tales of Grandpa Orson and the Puddle, that's all you need know. I'm glad, however, that the story was wheeled out at every conceivable opportunity, because somehow it managed to stay with me. And for this, the entire bear community should be indebted.

Does that sound egotistical to you?

Well, that's because, ignorant human, you don't yet understand the lengths to which I have gone to be here now in your presence. My part in this story begins toward the end: the End of the World, that is (and yes, I damn well think this merits capitalisation, as well!)...

We first realised our world was coming to an end when all the humans in the woods died. So it wasn't all that bad, to begin with. But then the skies began to darken and the seas began to boil. Several bears, announcing themselves to be prophets of the divine, forecast the end of the world, and after that, the idea kind of stuck. They then declared that the only path to salvation was to take a long walk off a short pier... into the boiling waters of the oceans!

That idea wasn't as widely embraced...

We all knew the end was upon us when the skies became black, but then kept on getting darker. It must be hard to comprehend a colour darker than pitch black, especially if it does not exist on your world, as it didn't on ours either. For a few days, we all remained in our homes, awaiting the end. But I'm a strapping young lad, as you can surely tell, and I need my grub.

End of the world or not, I decided to go looking for food. I couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing than noshing on some chow (though only, mind you, because the end of the world came whilst none of us were in season). So I left home and headed out into the dark. It was now so dark, not even my superior bear eyes could see much further than a few feet ahead.

Somewhere along the way, I must have lost my bearings, because it wasn't the supermarket I ended up in, it was the mall. Of course, I didn't realise this at first, and followed this picture I had of my surroundings in my head toward the fish counter. I fancied some boiled salmon. At least when the seas had boiled they'd saved on everybody's gas bills. Huzzah!

I first realised I wasn't where I thought I was when I imagined myself to be nearing the fish counter, but couldn't smell any sea salts or fish oils. So I stopped, no longer able to rely on my superior sense of bear sight, but hoping my superior sense of bear smell could take me in the right direction.

What I smelt, however, was another bear. Perhaps he knew where we were, I thought, so I followed his scent until I could hear him whimpering. I called out, and he stopped crying then. Turned out he was lost too. He had decided the prophets of the divine's way out was infinitely preferable to just sitting around waiting for doomsday, and had gone out looking for that short pier so he could take a long walk off it. I told him to pull himself together.

Cuffing him about the head, I told him all about Grandpa Orson, and how he'd not gone looking for the easy way out when faced with the deaths of his closest friends. Then I realised I had turned into my own father, berating others with the legend of my ancestors as if there was a lesson to be learnt. Except, perhaps, as my sobbing companion pointed out, there was.

It was then that he told me were in the mall. That very same mall that was built over the Puddle my Grandpa Orson and his pal Tiny had found. I felt quite proud of my heritage at that point and beamed into the blackness. But obviously, the come down was quite sharp. After all, here I was, standing in the footprints of my great-great-great-grandfather, awaiting death.

What would Grandpa Orson do?

I never knew the real Grandpa Orson, of course, so it's entirely likely he would have done nothing. In fact, I rather like to think that the version I knew of him was a legend and he really would have done nothing, because then that makes me the great hero in our family. Now, pay attention...

I told my sniffling new chum what I had in mind, and to my surprise it didn't take long for us to find the spot beneath which the Puddle was buried. I don't know quite how, but over the next few hours, we seemed to double, triple and then quadruple in number. Since being in your world I've seen you puny humans barely able to control a pneumatic drill. Ha! I'd love to see one of you take on the uraniumatic drill our bear builders use.

We got through the concrete in no time. I don't know how long. It was similarly dark day and night by that time, and have you ever seen a bear wearing a watch? But, lo and behold, beneath the concrete was the Puddle!

When the drill was turned off, and we stopped getting irradiated by its fuzzy green nuclear glow, the twenty of us shuffled around the edge. We all knew the stories, of course, and the Puddle didn't seem any less dangerous for being buried beneath the concrete for the last few generations.

At once, there was light again, and we shielded our eyes against it. The light was coming from the Puddle. It was coming from the other side! The others seemed almost afraid of it, so accustomed to darkness they had become, but quickly remembering how close to Armageddon we must have been, I was the one that first dared approach it. My heart was thumping.

But what I saw relieved me. There was a human on the other side, but far from being the evil-looking man of the legends, this one had olive skin and beautiful pinched eyes. You call them Chinamen. I don't know why, exactly, because the humans I began to see were all females.

They seemed, to me, to be walking on the ceiling. More likely was that whilst our side of the Puddle was on our floor, their side of the Puddle was on their floor too. They hadn't noticed the Puddle, but were sitting nearby with rods and nets. I realised what they were doing when they suddenly leapt off the stools they were sitting on, leaned forward, and plucked up a bear. This Puddle having been disused for over a century, they had turned to other ones...

I watched, captivated. These were the monsters of bear history, yet they didn't seem to be savages. Once they'd taken the bears from their Puddles, they quickly released them from their nets or lassos, and then stroked and brushed their coats. They then put them somewhere out of view. It seemed a far less depressing fate than the unknown deaths that awaited all of us here.

A couple of the bears I had sent on an errand during the midst of digging finally returned, successful. They'd brought a rope, which I quickly fashioned into a lasso of my own. I told the others to stand back, and then I began to swing it around my head. I'd never done this before, but it came naturally. I think bears could be professional lasso-throwers in your world.

I sized up my targets. There were three to choose from. Chances are I would catch one of them, so I let the lasso fly. It plopped into the Puddle, and I saw it stretch out, slower on the other side than on our own.

The women it finally landed over had just stood up after seizing another bear from another Puddle. She barely had time to notice. I used every muscle in my body. So did a couple of bears behind me. They'd grabbed hold of the tail end of the lasso. We pulled. We brought her flying through.

And fly is the right word...

This was the unexpected part. We thought, comparing her to the bear she had captured, that she was several times our size. Except that when she passed through the threshold of the Puddle, she seemed to shrink. She was of such a small weight that the three of us pulling on the lasso fell back and she fell on top of us. And had I not seized her in my paw quickly, the others would have trampled over her in the shock that followed. Because, you see, she was tiny.

Do you remember my mentioning of the toy humans we gave to our children in my world? They're about a foot tall at most, soft and cuddly, and naked. Kids like to suckle them in bed. Well, for some bizarre reason, that's exactly what had become of our Chinese prisoner. I looked to be clutching a child's toy in my hands, about nine inches tall, wearing clothes, with an amusing expression of shock on her face. Most importantly, she was dead.

Or so we thought...

Our interest in the human we had seemingly killed was quickly diverted when we saw what else had come through the Puddle with her. And that was the dead bear she had just fished out of another Puddle. Except now it wasn't dead anymore. Nor was it smaller than the human. It was as large as us, and as alive as us. He coughed and spluttered, and then stood up.

This will take some explaining. He introduced himself as Lauryl. He had a funny name and a funny accent to go with it. None of us had ever heard of the place he said he came from. However, we quickly found common ground. He had ended up in your world by going through another Puddle just like this one. I pre-emptively told him he didn't have to thank us.

But thank us for what, he wanted to know. Why, thank us for saving his life, I told him plainly. Except, and here was the hard thing to get our heads around, he claimed he had been in no danger. He hadn't been dead. Being taken through the Puddle wasn't like taking a fish out of water. Indeed, far from being dead, he had entered a new dimension altogether.

And we scoffed. But, and this was how he convinced us, it was a dimension where the world wasn't going to end anytime soon. And then we knew he came from the same universe as we did. He explained.

On the other side of the Puddle, dozens of bears were being snatched out of this bear universe to be sold into slavery. Humans like the one we'd caught sat around the Puddles all day, kidnapping bears, binding them, labelling them, dressing them as their new masters saw fit. Lauryl saw this all. He saw there was no escape. Except, and here he lowered his voice, there was.

Somebody had been to your world, then returned to ours, even after being bound and labelled by the slave drivers, when they accidentally dropped him in the Puddle that led to Lauryl's slice of the universe. All the bears had gathered around, quickly freeing him, but he didn't want them to. He knew the end of the world was nigh, and didn't want to die here. Of course, Lauryl's people told him just the same as we told Lauryl, that they assumed the Puddle meant death. But no, the new arrival told Lauryl and his people. On the other side of the Puddle, one could do exactly as one could do here. The most irritating thing, however, was that one could not do it when human beings were watching.

The bear didn't explain why. He was suddenly lassoed back into your world, and several of Lauryl's friends were similarly caught shortly thereafter. I realised we'd probably watched all this happen. We'd seen them get Lauryl. And he was glad about it. But now he was getting increasingly annoyed that we had brought him back to this doomed world, and captured his saviour too.

We all gathered around the human. It was me who wondered whether she could still move and talk. Lauryl said he expected so. Just as we looked like toys on your side of the Puddle, you look like toys on ours. It might have just been me, but I swear I saw the human glance at me and slowly blink.

Suddenly I had an even better idea than throwing ourselves into the cosy oblivion of the Puddle. It still involved throwing ourselves into the Puddle, but not to cosy oblivion. There was another life awaiting all of bear-kind on the other side, and perhaps if enough of us went through, we could overwhelm the humans and put an end to bear slavery. At least, that was the plan...

Going along with Lauryl's theory that whilst trapped as a soft toy in your world he could still see and hear everything, we bore down on our poor human captive and gave her our ultimatum. I'm sure she looked even more scared as I boomed and spat over her. She reminded me of a human toy I'd had as a boy. I told her that our world was ending, that we all wanted to come through to her world, and that if she refused, she would stay and die here with us.

Of course, she couldn't refuse, could she?

So, that's basically how it happened. I reckon over a thousand of us came through the Puddle in the end. That's quite a lot. I don't know whether the bear world has ended yet. I know bears are still being fished out of Puddles in that place you call China, but I don't know whether those Puddles lead to my universe. On coming to your world, I was pleased to learn that the guy with the twirly moustache had been dead as long as Grandpa Orson had. His name was Salco, and I heard the human females refer to him often.

From China I came by boat to Ingland. I think that's how you spell it. I preferred China, to be honest. It was warmer. Still, travelling in a crate on the boat between the two was great. Without humans for weeks, my crate-mates and I could move around and talk as we had before coming to this world. Someone in the crate said they'd heard of this place called Umerica, where the love of soft toy bears first originated, named after some man called Prezedunt. It sounded like the best place for a bear like me to begin a new life.

So when the two tall humans came into that shop in Ingland looking for a new slave, and I heard one of them make mention of shipping him to someone called Jennuh in Umerica, I was glad I was at the front.

And, thus, here I am. It's been a long trip in the plane and across Umerica, as you, my dear, can surely imagine. However, in that period I've been completely alone, which has given me time to pen these memoirs. I hope now you will understand that I am my own person, even if I don't move or speak when you are looking. However, if you ever need someone to listen...

Anyway, here endeth my tale. Did you like it? Bears have been kidnapped and enslaved, imperialistic humans have oppressed us, but in the end, it was that nice Chinese lady we'd hooked through the Puddle that redeemed the entire human race. We threw her back and she started reeling us out, but when she got to me, she bent over and whispered that she was going to dress us all up smartly so that we would all go to fine homes. I couldn't reply, of course, because there were too many people watching, but she knew I was grateful.

Oh, and as for burgers, fries and medium Cokes, and where they come into this tale, they don't really. Except to say I already hate them. Those two males who bought me in Ingland had just been gorging themselves on that stuff before they came and bought me. I just hate hate hate that smell!

I hope there's none of it in Umerica...

NOTES:
This story was written about a UEA-emblazoned teddy bear I bought Jenna for her birthday (left). Salco is the company that made the bear, and was established in 1866, hence that date cropping up. It also has 'Made In China' on the label, so naturally the Puddle on the human side had to be there. The first line is lifted directly from the Frankie Howerd sitcom "Up Pompeii!" Characters named for: Joe Orton (dead gay playwright -> Orson), River Phoenix (dead junkie actor, but Jenna's a converted fan, so I named the bear thus) and as for Lauryl, well, that's an ingredient in Colgate toothpaste...