Once upon a time, there was a little homunculus. His name was Herbert. He lived in the somatosensory cortex of a big, fat professor.

One day, he sprang fully formed from the professor's forehead, an event that was unfortunately as fatal for the professor as it was liberating for Herbert. Seeing the enormous bloody corpse of the professor (who of course looked just like Herbert, but much, much larger) made Herbert feel rather queasy, so he decided to go out for a breath of fresh air.

Upon emerging into the fragrant spring air, he was struck by the need to rut. "Oh, if I could but find a pretty homuncula, I could start a family!" thought Herbert. And he rushed down the plaza in search of just such a little lady.

After some hours of fruitless searching, Herbert came to an exhausted rest beside a rather scuffed brown Oxford shoe. As he paused a moment to catch his breath, the owner of the shoe suddenly took notice of him.

"I say!" said the shoe's owner. "Horatio?"

"Er, no," said Herbert. "Herbert."

"I must say you look a great deal like my friend Herr Doktor Professor Horatio Dortmunder," the man (whom we will henceforth refer to as Dr. Eintopfgericht, for this was his name) said thoughtfully.

"Oh. Really?" asked Herbert.

Dr. Eintopfgericht bent down and took Herbert in his hand. Herbert found this state of affairs rather undignified, but then thought of the professor's exploded cranium and decided to hold his peace. Dr. Eintopfgericht held Herbert quite close to his face -- his eyes were a bit bloodshot, but very penetrating -- and said, "Hmmmmmmmmmmm."

"Ah," said Herbert, who began to see where this was going. He tried to look cryptic.

"A great deal like him, indeed," repeated Dr. Eintopfgericht meaningfully. Herbert squirmed.

"Do you perhaps know Dr. Dortmunder?" Dr. Eintopfgericht asked.

Herbert hesitated. "Well, I wouldn't say know."

Though he was really quite a mild-mannered professor in his way, Dr. Eintopfgericht was entirely capable of looking severe. He had frequently driven undergraduates to tears with a single arch of the brow. He gave Herbert his very best skeptical glare. Under the white-hot glow of professorial disapproval, Herbert was as a tub of oleomargarine left on the back of a potbellied stove. He confessed all.

Dr. Eintopfgericht listened carefully, and nodded at all the right places. He seemed surprisingly unperturbed. The explanation for this lack of concern was twofold, and Herbert was never to know either part of it. But you, gentle reader, need not suffer from the same handicap. The reasons were these:

First, the good doctor Eintopfgericht was an extremely daring and knowledgeable neurologist, working well beyond the mainstream of his field. He was thus well aware that homunculi reside in the somatosensory cortices not only of big, fat professors, but of all mankind. What is more, he suspected certain potentialities of these homunculi that are generally not well known among respectable neurologists. His thoughts upon hearing Herbert's story, therefore, had much more to do with its implications for his theory than with immediate concerns about Horatio Dortmunder's demise.

Second, Horatio Dortmunder got right up Dr. Eintopfgericht's nose.

"So tell me," Dr. Eintopfgericht said when Herbert had finished. "What is this about the desire that struck you as you left the house? This need to, hm hm hm, rut?"

(Dr. Eintopfgerhicht successfully suppressed his desire to have a little giggle over the ignominious fate of Horatio Dortmunder, who had truly annoyed him a great deal.)

Herbert allowed that he had, yes, felt a need to rut, and furthermore, yes, that need was still upon him, now that he came to think of it.

"Well!" announced Dr. Eintopfgericht, "This biological imperative should certainly not go unfulfilled!" So the two of them set out together to find a homuncula who might meet Herbert's needs.

Eventually, after a great deal of assiduous searching, they located one. She was not as pretty as Herbert had originally had in mind, but he had become somewhat less particular by then. He had also come to recognize that he was not terribly handsome himself, though he was "very cunningly put together," as Frau Eintopfgericht had pointed out one night over dinner.

This homuncula was living in the unemptied mailbox of a graduate student who had perished of a surfeit of cough drops. She had lowered her own standards considerably after living for several months on nothing but phone bills and recall notices from the library. The two homunculi were therefore perfectly content to sate their homuncular lust upon one another, and spawned many teensy offspring.

Dr. Eintopfgericht published a tremendously influential monograph on their biological makeup, and they all lived happily ever after, except for the .02% of second-generation homunculi that he vivisected (with their parents' full blessing, of course).

The End.