This latest literary endeavor by JLH is a judicious mixture of allegory and satire.
So What and the Seven Geeks
A Progressive Tale of the Future of Personkind
by JLH
Once upon a time, there was an evil one-per-center who — like most celebrities — lived where it was almost never cold and often sunny. She believed (correctly, according to her cosmetic surgeon, her trainer and her dietitian) that she was the most beautiful celebrity in all the world. Among her many retainers was a pretty teenager who had been trained since childhood to be the perfect servant. She had faultless, alabaster skin, and, in some other time and climate, she might have been called Snow White, but in this semi-tropical paradise devoted to the care and service of VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE, her name was So What.
On the evil one-per-center’s sitting room wall was a 120-inch HD screen controlled by a remote keyboard, on which she could Skype, live-stream PBS specials on the destruction of the planet by the Koch brothers, keep up with her hundreds of thousands of fans and “buddies” by chirping with them on CHIPPER, take and send selfies to a favored few, while sipping a vanilla mocha frappucino latté from Muchbucks, and following the news of the world on ET and John Stewart. She faithfully followed her attractivity ratings on FACESPACE and MODBOD, and at least once a day typed in the query,
Tablet, tablet, on the wall,
Who is the attractivest of them all?”
And awaited the standard reply: “You are, oh Babe!”
One day, however, the tablet hummed for a second, before saying, “Well, some people think it might be So What.”
The evil celebrity was so outraged that she checked who had expressed that opinion on FACESPACE and immediately “unbuddied” them.
Clearly, it was time to act. You don’t stay on top of the heap, if just anyone can walk up and stand beside you. So she summoned the head gardener of her vast “herbal” gardens , and ordered that the unfortunately attractive young person be taken to some empty lot in the surrounding urban jungle and killed, and the heart brought to her as proof.
Now the gardener — like everyone else — was very fond of the young servant, and knew he would not be able to carry out his orders. It should have been simple — kill a deer, harvest the heart and take it back to the evil celebrity, still dripping fresh blood. Well, since this was the city, he might have had to make do with a large dog or a strayed coyote. However, the gardener was a devoted member of PETA, and could not bring himself to do that. And he was not only not a speciesist, but also not a sexist or a racist and not even much of an ageist (although some of the very old tended to be pretty reactionary, even in this land of sunshine), so his options were limited. Fortunately, he knew of an establishment where he could procure a heart for a reasonable fee, no questions asked. (Well, almost none.)
So he betook himself to this establishment and gave the secret knock. As he had hoped, his old friend was on duty and answered the door.
When he explained his need, she said, “All of our hearts, like all of our harvested organs, are quite small, you know. If your boss wants the life of this teenager, she will expect to be given the correct heart. Any reasonably intelligent person will see that the heart is the wrong size.”
“Oh, please!” he smiled, “This is a celebrity. Her brain is smaller than any heart.”
The gardener told So What that she was being discharged, and was never to return or communicate with anyone at the evil celebrity’s residence. With no further explanation, he released So What into the trackless urban jungle, then took the heart back to the evil one-per-center, who was delighted to receive it, and immediately fed it to her cat. Afterward, some people would say that this made the cat an accessory-after-the-fact, but others countered that this was carrying anthropomorphism too far. PETA and NOW later co-sponsored an ad which argued that no human biological by-products should be wasted.
The evil one-per-center celebrated by allowing a Thai masseuse to walk barefoot on her back, and followed up with a steaming hot bat-guano bath and face mask.
The gardener had a quiet talk with the keeper of the celebrity’s data center, who was also very fond of So What, and they agreed that the tablet would no longer have any knowledge of anyone called So What, and if anyone should wish to investigate, they would say that the hard drive and DVDs had self-destructed, or been lost, or suffered flood damage, or…
Meanwhile, So What — on her own in the vastness of civilization for the first time — was helpless and clueless. Like anyone else in this situation, she turned for help to the first governmental entity she encountered. She wandered into the downtown office of the IRS, where she was received by a clerk, who noticed that she was well-dressed, attractive and intelligent, and must therefore owe taxes. However, the clerk could not find “So What” anywhere in the database (except as an internal comment on complaints received from certain organizations that they were being targeted by the IRS). So the clerk asked “Are you an undocumented alien?” So What — who felt quite alien in the trackless urban jungle, and had never before needed ID — said, “Yes,” and after that, everything went well. She received an instant refund for taxes she hadn’t paid, coupons with which she could purchase food — alternatively alcohol and tobacco — and an official ID that entitled her to work for governmental agencies and to drive any vehicle with up to 18 wheels.
She also departed the IRS office with a certificate entitling her to attend any university of her choice for less than in-state tuition.
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