Stephen Arr's "Chain of Command" (short story, satire, free): Bureaucracy illustrated!

I'd never even heard the name of author, & what a lovely tale!

Story summary.

George & Clara are mutated mice - telepathic, intelligent, & capable of speech. They live with their children in a nook in an atomic plant. Every night, someone puts a trap outside their mousehole. No one gets hurt, since all mice, even kids, know about it, but Clara fears kids might get hurt anyway. She wants George to convince the humans to remove the trap.

So we get a hilarious view of the human bureaucracy as poor George's request travels up the hierarchy...

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, May 1954.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories about bureaucracy; Fiction from 1950s; Tuesday Classics.