The Department of Dysfunction
The King was restless. He’d found a worm while he was eating an apple, so he had to find another apple to chomp on.
Not that apples were scarce… You see, apples were almost infinite. They cost quite a bit though, and sometimes you even had to pay by the minute to eat your apple.
Everyone had an apple. At least one.
But, the wise King (of the Council of Authority) knew he had the power. Only two and a half companies were licensed to produce apples. And only his Council had the power to issue (and revoke) those licences.
The King wasn’t alone in his dissatisfaction. Some of his loyal (and not so loyal) subjects also found worms in their apples from time to time, and they had to find another apple and start eating all over. The discontent grew among the subjects and some even sent letters to the Council of the Authority. This meant that, for once, the King (and his Council) were actually forced to do work.
The Council decided the blue company that made green apples was in trouble. Not because it had the odd rotten apple, but because it was being willingly conquered by a far away imperial empire. This empire would make the blue company (with green apples) more efficient, it would bring its expertise in making apples that it learnt in far flung lands all over the world.
But the Crowd Of Jesters And Taunters United didn’t want the company to be conquered. In fact, it wanted the apple company to remain hamstrung.
The King was in a far away land as the imperial empire arrived to take control of their jewel, and the Crowd of Jesters seized the opportunity. They came to the chambers of the Council (sans its King) and demanded the Council stop the “grabbing of the family crown silver”. The Council duly complied, and put up a fight to stop the imperialists.
This plan didn’t work thanks to the empire’s newly installed Supreme Ruler. He had to show, through an Olde Judge, that the empire (no matter who its ruler was) would honour scared contracts.
In all this chaos the Crowd of Jesters even threatened to stop eating the green apples. But damn, those apples were tasty.
The company which made yellow apples was not in trouble (no one even mentioned the company that made red apples).
In fact, the yellow apple company blamed the basket company and the donkey company. Every now and then the baskets, which were critical in moving the apples from the orchards to the towns and even within the towns and villages, broke. This meant that some apples were dropped.
The two (and a half) apple companies couldn’t really do much about the broken baskets. After all, the basket company promised it was making baskets as large as they could, as quickly as possible.
The donkey company was also to blame. The apple giants needed the power from the donkeys to make the whole apple network work. Sometimes donkeys died, and during the first month of the year of last, there were very few donkeys indeed. In fact there was a donkey shortage and donkeys had to be rationed.
The Supreme Agency (a step above the King and his Council) gave the company more money to build more donkey farms, but building these took time. It was foretold that building these donkey farms would, in fact, take until the next decade.
But the King was having none of these “excuses”. The apple companies knew that the King’s blame was misplaced, they would’ve loved to have blamed the Council (one of the real reasons). But they couldn’t risk upsetting the King too much, because after all, he had the power.
The Supreme Ruler, in his “One Big Speech”, said that apples would become cheaper. The previous Supreme Ruler had said the same thing for a decade. Apples had become cheaper, but no thanks to his single sentence of attention each year.
No matter, the new Supreme Ruler and his new Supreme Agency had anyway decreed it thus.
The Supreme Ones even dispatched their fittest and most cunning general to the post. He would oversee the apple factories. In fact, he’d oversee all the fruit makers, and the Council of Authority (and its wise King). Never mind the fact that the general was a man of war, and had never even seen an apple factory.
Maybe he would lead the apple factories to war?
But enough about the general.
Now, the apple companies wanted to make their own baskets and build their own donkeys, but they weren’t allowed to. They desperately needed to be able to build their own baskets, because in recent days the basket company (there was only one) had become unreliable.
Actually, there was a second basket company, which got its “Licence to Make Baskets” from the Council eons too late, but this company which made bright orange baskets was still trying to get its basket-making process in place.
The Council (and their King) had taken their time. After all, the King (and his good Council) had many pressing issues. These were “of particular concern,” he said. But, he hastily added the Council had “already engaged stakeholders” which, of course, made the problem go away.
After interventions by a pear company and an Olde Judge or two, the apple companies (and practically any other fruit company) were finally allowed to build their own baskets. Now, building baskets took time and was expensive, but the apple companies made a lot of money from selling apples, so they started building baskets – big ones at first.
The King kept at it. He was unhappy. There were still worms in his apples. There was a Great Festival of Games fast approaching where participants and followers would arrive from empires all over the world. The Festival was used as an excuse for almost everything in this empire, and the King decided that there wouldn’t be enough apples when all these people came to visit.
“The apple companies are to blame for the worms! They better make more apples and cease blaming the basket company, or I’ll take away their licences to make apples!” he shouted from the balcony. Scribes were among the only ones standing outside the Authority’s castle to listen.
This sowed fear at the apple companies.
The proletariat felt good about themselves. At last the wise King was on their side.
Every single subject, barring three in the empire had at least one apple. Never once did they consider that they’d become addicted to their apples.
What would they do without them, if the King had his way?
Moneyweb
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