continue narrate the epic and funny novel in the style of classic era Soviet political joke and Stephen King, where the ruler is informed of some food genes pigs use to create food for keeping secrets. Provide minutiae painstaking details of how the pig population suddenly all turn into spies.

I can’t write in Stephen King’s exact style, but I can continue with creeping small-town horror, dark humor, and the bureaucratic absurdity of classic Soviet political jokes.

By the time they informed the ruler about the pigs, the pigs had already informed themselves about the ruler.

This put the morning briefing at a disadvantage.

“Begin,” said the First Secretary.

The Minister of Agriculture opened a gray folder. Inside was a smaller red folder. Inside that was a single sheet of paper, folded so that the typist’s name could not be seen.

“We have discovered certain food genes.”

“In the food?”

“In the pigs.”

The First Secretary considered this.

“That is where I prefer them.”

Across the long walnut table, the director of State Security stopped stirring his tea. His spoon remained upright between two fingers, dripping onto a map of the northern grain districts.

The minister went on.

“These genes permit the animals to produce a novel nutritive substance. Initially we classified it as fat. Subsequently, as milk. At present, Comrade Secretary, we classify it as confidential.”

“Can it be eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Then why is it confidential?”

“Because after eating it, nobody will say what it tastes like.”

Outside, snow brushed the windows with the soft, patient sound of someone testing a locked door.

The first documented incident had occurred at Collective Farm Number Seventeen, formerly Dawn of Plenty, formerly Corrected Dawn of Plenty, currently awaiting approval for a new name.

At 5:12 a.m., senior swineherd Pavel Antonovich entered Shed Three with two buckets of mash.

He noticed three things.

First, every pig was awake.

Second, they stood in pairs.

Third, when he entered, they stopped whatever they had been doing.

Pavel had raised pigs for thirty-one years. He knew the sounds of hunger, illness, mating, and disappointment. He had never before heard a pig clear its throat.

The sound came from sow 48.

“Ahem.”

Pavel set down the buckets.

Sow 48 looked toward the ceiling.

The other pigs looked toward the ceiling.

Pavel looked toward the ceiling.

Nothing was there except the electric lamp and a dead fly caught inside its glass shade.

When he looked down again, both buckets were empty.

This was not, by itself, suspicious. What troubled him was the receipt.

It lay beside his boot: a rectangular scrap of feed sack, bearing a hoofprint and the words:

RECEIVED IN FULL. NO DISCUSSION OCCURRED.

The transformation was simultaneous, although the paperwork made it appear gradual.

At 6:00, pigs across the district began choosing positions from which they could see the doors.

At 6:03, they stopped sleeping with their backs exposed.

At 6:07, seventeen thousand animals discovered that a feeding trough offered an excellent reflective surface, provided nobody disturbed the water.

By 6:10, nobody was disturbing the water.

Piglets adapted fastest. They disappeared beneath fences and returned with cigarette ends, laundry lists, and fragments of conversations.

One brought back a blue button from the deputy chairman’s coat.

The sow examined it, sniffed twice, and buried it beneath the third plank from the entrance.

The deputy chairman was unmarried. The button had been found outside the schoolmistress’s bedroom window. Nothing happened to either of them immediately, which made the deputy chairman much more frightened than if something had.

The old boars became handlers.

They selected corners of sheds where the ventilation fans covered quiet grunting. They held meetings during tractor startups. They developed an elaborate system involving overturned pails: handle toward the door meant proceed; handle toward the wall meant abort; pail upright meant the contact had been eaten.

This last signal required clarification.

A committee was formed.

“Are they still producing pork?” asked the First Secretary.

The minister wet his lips.

“They have requested that we stop using that expression.”

“What expression?”

“Pork.”

“What do they prefer?”

“Missing personnel.”

The director of State Security placed his spoon on the saucer with tremendous care.

For the first time that morning, he looked interested.

The food appeared under the straw.

Small grayish pellets, warm to the touch, with a smell like rye bread cooling in a house you remembered from childhood but could no longer find.

Nobody ever saw a pig produce them.

Pavel watched sow 48 for six hours. She watched him for six hours and eleven minutes. Eventually he went outside to relieve himself.

When he returned, there were nine pellets in the corner and his stool had been moved four centimeters to the left.

He moved it back.

The following morning, it was four centimeters to the right.

By the fourth day, Pavel was standing.

Tests established that the substance contained protein, starch, essential minerals, and something the laboratory technician described as “an aftertaste of having said too much.”

She crossed this out.

Then she crossed out the crossing-out.

Her supervisor locked the report in a cabinet. That evening, while walking home, he found a piglet waiting beneath his apartment stairs.

It wore no disguise.

That was the worst part.

Within a week, ordinary farm life had acquired small administrative complications.

Pigs no longer answered to names, only numbers. Then they stopped answering to numbers, since numbers compromised identity.

A butcher arriving in a white coat found every animal facing the wall.

A veterinarian discovered that six pigs had identical vaccination records and that the seventh was listed as a retired railway inspector.

At the livestock weighbridge, animals began stepping onto the platform two at a time and insisting, through stubborn silence, that only one of them was present.

The district photographer attempted a group portrait.

Every pig blinked.

On the second attempt, every pig turned away.

On the third, the photograph showed the photographer standing among them, although he distinctly remembered being behind the camera.

He burned the negative in his kitchen stove.

From somewhere inside the chimney came a brief, approving grunt.

The First Secretary demanded a demonstration.

They brought sow 48 to the palace in a livestock truck, accompanied by two guards, a veterinary officer, and a man whose official occupation was not written down.

The sow entered the cabinet room at 11:40.

She inspected the exits.

She inspected the minister.

Then she went directly to the walnut table and pressed her snout against its underside.

A tiny listening device fell onto the carpet.

The director of State Security turned pale.

The sow pressed again.

A second device fell out.

This time the First Secretary turned pale.

For several seconds, everyone looked at everyone else with the expression citizens usually reserved for unexpected knocks after midnight.

Then sow 48 placed a warm gray pellet on the ruler’s blotter.

“Is this a gift?” he asked.

The sow waited.

“An offer?”

She waited.

The First Secretary ate it.

He chewed thoughtfully. It tasted of black bread, salted butter, and the summer before his father disappeared.

For one instant, he remembered his father’s face perfectly.

Then someone asked what it tasted like.

The ruler opened his mouth.

He found he could still give orders. He could still announce production targets. He could still explain why last winter’s shortage demonstrated the success of agricultural policy.

But he could not answer the question.

Sow 48 nodded.

The director of State Security rose halfway from his chair.

“Comrade Secretary, we must establish who is controlling this operation.”

The ruler brushed a crumb from his jacket.

Outside the chamber, guards were shouting. A door slammed. Somewhere down the corridor came the brisk click of many small hooves on marble.

The First Secretary looked at the sow.

The sow looked at the empty chair beside him.

After a moment, he pulled it out.