Jack and
the BeanstalkJack and the Beanstalk
Once upon a time there was a little boy named Jack who lived in a rectangular house, measuring approximately ten by ten meters. They were incredibly poor because Jack's mother hadn't signed up for insurance when the telemarketer called her. They were so poor, in fact, that she sent Jack out one afternoon into the 27º sun to sell their cow in the nearby town market.
Jack wasn't a very strong boy at all and only managed to pull the cow along the dusty path at the speed of .05 m/sec. The cow was obviously very stiff and stubborn, mostly because they hadn't taken it out of their backyard in five years. While Jack was trying (but not succeeding) to make the cow go a little faster, a strange little man who was carrying several brown bags. He was very old (this did not surprise Jack in the least, because he was used to only old people, which can't be good in the first place) and had a beard that was about eight and a half centimeters long.
"Hello, little boy," the old man greeted Jack, "Would you like to by some magical beans, whose mass is approximately 6 grams per unit?"
"Uhh, well, I'm not so sure," Jack replied. "See, I'm supposed to sell this cow in the town market. My non-insured, old mother told me to."
"What are you talking about?!" the man screamed at an unusually high amount of decibels.
"Well, see, the cow..."
The man didn't take that long to interrupt. "The beans are worth much more than this spotted piece of cattle that goes 'moo'."
"Well, okay, I guess. I've never heard it moo before, though."
The cow mooed.
"So you'll buy the beans in exchange for the cow?" the man asked eagerly.
"Sure."
The man handed a bag, containing eight beans and having an overall mass of about 48 grams, to Jack. He then grabbed the cow and ran off down the path screaming something about hamburgers.
The boy shrugged his shoulders two inches higher than they usually stood, looked at the bag full of beans, and walked back home to show his mother.
As he walked inside, his mother spun around at an average speed of 3.7 m/s with a delighted facial expression. She then spied the sack full of beans her son was carrying and the smile accelerated off of her face at a much quicker rate.
"Where is the money, Jack?"
"What money? Oh, that money. Well, you see, I met this man who-"
"Let me guess, you met a man who wanted to buy your cow in exchange for a bag of so-called magical beans that he happened to be carrying at the time?"
"Uhh, yes, mother. How did you know?"
She set aside her copy of "1984" and looked at him straight in the eye. "Mothers are good that way," was the reply, which Jack, after the shivers up and down his spine had departed, judged to be colder than 0 Kelvin.
"I'm sure these magical beans will bring us good fortune, though, mother!"
"They're not magical, they're lima," she said, walking over to peek closer into the bag.
"Oh. I see. But the man said that their mass in units was 6 grams," Jack responded, hoping it would help the case. It didn't.
"Mass? Does it look like I care about mass right now? Why don't you find the area in square centimeters of my empty stomach while you're at it?!"
Jack, at this point, realized that his mother wasn't very happy. In fact, her blood was boiling at 94.5 degrees C, for their house was about 5,000 feet above sea level. He knew for sure that her blood was boiling, because steam was coming out of her ears.
"So, uhh, what's for dinner, then, mother?"
"Not beans!" she snapped swiftly and threw the entire bag of beans out the window.
"Oh, okay. I guess I'll just go to bed," he sighed, knowing how unhappy his mother was with him. So he did.
The next morning, he awoke to find a giant plant, probably about 200 meters tall, towering outside the house. His first instinct was that it was Christmas and his mother had received a very large mail-order tree this year. As he got up and looked around, he realized that it was still months before Christmas and that the plant outside had grown overnight from the magical beans.
Being the child that he was, he jumped out his window and walked across the yard to it without informing his mother that there was a 200 meter beanstalk by their house. He looked up and saw no end to it. He did see, however, little branches that he could easily climb on. He was an incredibly curious child, so he immediately jumped on the bottom branch and started climbing all the way up.
About 720 seconds later, he reached the top and looked around. He saw nothing but a layer of water-dense cloud vapor and a little trail leading to a giant house in the distance. He looked down to the ground, then remembered he was acrophobic and decided it was best to follow the trail to the house.
Jack approached the 500 meter house with caution. He walked up to the door and knocked on the door, and it echoed for fifteen seconds. A very large woman, whose mass was incomprehensible to such a tiny human mind, answered the door and looked down at him.
"Can I come in? I'm incredibly hungry and my mom got mad at me for buying beans in exchange for a cow," Jack pleaded, adding a little too much information to the situation.
"Well, okay," the very large woman replied, "I'll have to warn you, though. My husband gets very cranky when other people come in."
Jack nodded and quickly ran inside. The giant woman was more than happy to feed him some food, about one fifth of what a giant would eat for a midnight snack. Right as he finished it, though, he heard the woman's husband coming.
"Oh no, your husband's coming!" Jack exclaimed.
"Oh no, my husband's coming!" the woman exclaimed.
"Fe fi fo fum, I smell the room-temperature blood of a person from England! Is he alive or is he dead? I'll grind his bones to make a kilogram of bread!"
Jack, while not a critic, found this piece of poetry absolutely revolting. The giant's wife eagerly distracted the giant while Jack scurried off into a dark corner to hide.
"Good morning, Rufus!" she said to him merrily.
"Mmmfngngn," he replied.
"How are you this morning?"
"Gramphngn."
"That's nice."
The giant sat down at a table with stacks of gold coins and eggs on it. Jack, watching eagerly from the darkness, saw the giant start to count them and then put them onto a gigantic triple-beam balance.
"Gusss what, Helga?" the giant said in an actually understandable, but incredibly deep and rumbling voice, which would break a Richter scale on earth.
"What, Rufus?"
"That goose has given us a metric ton of gold this week," he chirped cheerily.
Jack began wondering what exactly this goose was. Just then, the giant stood up and walked over to a crate, taking the bird out of its nest. It laid an egg out of pure shock.
"Hello, my fine little fowl," the giant said, very pleased with the egg that he managed to catch on his knee. He set the goose down on the table and looked at his wife. "I am hungry," he roared and his obedient wife poured him some soup and set it in front of him.
Bite by bite, the giant ate the soup. He then decided that he hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, probably due to the kids next door playing their heavy metal music too loudly, and went back to sleep. Jack, sensing the opportunity, rushed out of the corner, climbed slowly up the table, grabbed the stacks of gold and the goose from the top of it.
He quickly climbed down again, at the average speed of 3 m/s and rushed out the front door of the castle. He scurried across the cloud layer to where the beanstalk had sprouted up. He looked down at the ground miles below uneasily, but stuck the gold in his pocket, grabbed the goose in his underarm, and climbed down uneasily.
His mother, upon seeing him return, was not happy. But what else was new?
"Where have you been, you no-good bean-for-cow-trading son?" she screamed at him.
"Oh, I've been to a giant's castle. His wife fed me and then I stole their goose."
"Oh, I see. You've been over at the Jones' again, haven't you?"
"No, no, I don't ever go over there anymore. I can't keep up with them."
The mother looked down her 14 centimeter nose at the child. Jack quickly picked up the goose and showed it to her. Out of shock again, it laid another egg right there on the table.
"See, mother? It lays golden eggs!" Jack exclaimed, proudly.
The mother was, for the first time in her overlong (according to Jack) life, happy with her son. "My, my! How wonderful! We will feast tonight!"
They ate and they ate tons of food, with volume enough to fill their entire stomachs and then some. The rest of the day passed seamlessly, and the mother and her son went to bed happily.
The next morning, Jack hopped out his window again and decided he would return to the giant's house to get more gold. He climbed and he climbed, the same distance and average speed which he had climbed the beanstalk the day before. He followed the small path to the castle and banged on the door again. The giant's wife answered it.
"Oh, geez. Are we getting these little ones every day now?" she yelled out of frustration, almost knocking Jack's entire body over. It was obvious that she didn't recognize him.
Disguising his voice to sound like John Wayne's, to prevent further recognition, he replied, "Yes, well, I'm very hungry and I was wondering you could feed me something."
"Well, look, I don't think I should. A boy we had here yesterday stole close to a metric ton of gold."
"Oh! I'm sorry, miss. I really am starving, though! My stomach is about seven eighths empty. I have not eaten in a 96 hours!"
"You poor little person. Alright, you may come in and feed off of my stew."
Jack scurried in, ate a little stew, but stopped halfway because he wasn't terribly hungry after the gigantic feast the night before.
"Why aren't you eating?" the giant woman asked him with a little animosity.
"Because...because I thought I heard someone else in the house," Jack said, desperate to make up a convincing lie.
"Oh no, it's my husband. He's always cranky this time of morning."
Jack wasn't far wrong, because the deep, bellowing, extraordinarly loud voice of the giant came echoing down the hallway.
"Where is my harp? Bring me my harp, Helga!" he demanded.
"Yes, Rufus. Coming, dear!"
Upon hearing mention of a mysterious harp, Jack perked again. He saw the giant walk out with a tiny little harp made of gold and set it on the table.
"Play!" he growled at it. It obediently played the most beautiful melody Jack had ever heard, at approximately 1.7 notes per second. Then, the giant's nose picked up again and he recited the same piece of atrocious poetry he had the day before. Jack flinched when he heard it. The giant, however, got up quickly and started walking toward where he was. Jack quickly started running toward the table. He climbed up it at about 1.5 m/s faster than the day before, and grabbed the harp. Unfortunately, as he grabbed the harp, it stopped playing, creating an incredibly awkward silence.
"I have GOT to learn how to play an instrument," Jack muttered inaudibly to himself, remembering the constant nagging of his mother to learn how to play one. He hated it and reminded himself of this at that moment, but then realized that the giant was turning around, and decided it was beside the point.
The giant, hearing the sudden silence, whirled around and saw the little boy standing on the table, harp in hand.
"AH-HA! A little boy trying to steal my harp," he boomed. "I will grind your bones to make my bread!" He started walking ominously toward the now 4-cm-wide-eyed, quivering boy.
Jack, completely disregarding the fact that he could seriously hurt himself, jumped all the way off the table and landed on the ground. Luckily, it was a moderately safe landing. He ran and he ran all the way over to the door, which was now closed.
"Oh no, how will I get out of here?" he screamed, seeing the giant approaching. The answer came to him quickly with a giant poof of some unknown noxious gas.
"Hello, Cinderella," said the now-appeared fairy godmother.
"Huh, who're you?" Jack inquired, stopping in his tracks and almost ignoring the giant.
"Oh, shoot. Wrong fairy tale again. I should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque. Anyhow, the least I could do is help you out of here," she acknowledged, nodding at the door. She quickly waved her wand, created a doggy door, and disappeared in the same poof of gas which she had appeared in.
"I wonder..."
The giant was running at him quickly, so Jack ran through the flap in the doggy door and scurried across the cloud layer to where the beanstalk was. The giant quickly opened the door and ran full-speed, which was about 10 m/s for a giant of his size, at the little boy, who still had the harp in his hand.
Jack climbed quickly down the beanstalk and reached the bottom right as he saw the giant look down on it. He slipped and fell right as he realized there was a world of smaller people, and fell down on the beanstalk. He accelerated at the speed of 9.8 m/s/s and landed on the ground in a giant dirt cloud, collapsing the beanstalk with him.
The frightened little boy ran inside his house and presented his mother with the harp. She was, once again, delighted. He told it to play and it started playing that same beautiful melody which it was playing before. They had enough gold to live good, hearty lives for the rest of their days. He and his mother were happy forever, and so they, naturally, lived happily ever after.