A Habitrail Named Klein

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A Habitrail Named Klein

This song originated as an (unsuccessful) entry in the ConChord 2002 InstaFilk contest, on the them of "Rodents and Physical Phenomena".
The title is a reference to the science fiction short story, "A Subway named Moebius", published in 1950 by A.J. Deutsch.

Walter was an ordinary hamster in a cage;
He had no lofty aspirations.
His days were spent in munching on Purina Hamster Chow
And taking mini-hibernations.
But when his owners started to construct a Habitrail
They never thought this hobby would progress to such a scale.

[chorus]
Oh, Walter, we falter, we fail to express
How sorry we are that we caused such a mess;
We didn't predict and we couldn't foresee
That you'd be the victim of topology.
They added lots of tubes and bends and tees to the array,
And Walter found the maze compellin'.
He'd navigate each circuit in his bland, intrepid way,
A little furry, fat Magellan.
At length the connectivity had nearly grown complete;
The habitrail had formed a twisted hypertoric sheet.
[chorus]
So Walter sallied forth with no awareness of the fact
That he was crossing holes in subspace.
And soon he met himself along the tubeway coming back:
This was no ordinary rat-race.
A moment later there were three, and then they numbered four;
The Walters piled up in the cage and plopped upon the floor.
[chorus]
When Walter's owners came to feed their little furry pal,
They found more than they had expected,
For there a writhing mass of Walters wallowed wall-to-wall,
And more were constantly ejected.
The mass of plastic pipes that they'd assembled had turned traitor,
And become a furry-rodent space-time-warp regurgitator.
[chorus]
They waded through the hamsters as the Walter-level rose,
Enduring all the nips and nibbles.
See how the squeaking, undulating, plush amoeba grows,
Just like a bunker full of tribbles.
They tried to disconnect the last addition they had made,
But sank beneath the deadly tide of Walters on parade.

[chorus]
You might suppose the output of this hamster-spewing gun
Would carpet all the world completely.
The extra mass might cause the Earth to fall into the sun,
Thus wrapping up the story neatly.
Instead, the house and soon the habitrail both gave way,
Leaving 90 million Walters there, without a place to stay.

[chorus]
The hamster horde dispersed well-nigh as fast as they arose:
They hadn't shown up with provisions.
They starved and fought and died and they were eaten by the crows
and dogs and cats and owls and pigeons.
In fact there was no damage on an ecologic scale;
Who knows what would have happened if they hadn't all been male.

[chorus]