(Cont.)
And the wild man with the goat eyes said to Moses: “Go make an appointment with the King, because I have hardened his heart, and all his administrative staff is overconfident. This is the perfect time to show them more signs of my power. And you will have something to tell your children and grandchildren, when you see the awful things that I shall perform. After this, everyone will know that I am the volcano of potential.”
So Moses and Bryan trekked back to the city and made an appointment with the King. And once they were in the throne room again, they said: “We have another message from the Volcano: ‘How long will you refuse to admit that I am your better! Release my workers, so that they can come and see me. Or else, if you refuse again, then listen: tomorrow I will invite my friends the locusts to come and invade your country. You will see a great cloud of them approach the coastline, and then they will draw near until they cover the whole face of the land, and you will not be able to see anything, their swarm shall be so thick. And any of your crops that survived the last catastrophe, my locusts shall devour them. And they shall swarm into your houses, and all over your administrative staff, and into all the houses of your elite friends in Edina. This will be a locust infestation the likes of which not even your fathers or grandfathers experienced. For nothing like this has ever happened, from the day the earth was made, until this moment.’” And he turned around and walked out of the room.
And when Moses and Bryan had left, the members of the intelligentsia addressed the King and said: “How long are you going to let these guys continue to torment us? Why don’t you release the workers and let them have their little holiday? Have you not looked at the land lately – the entire country has been devastated!”
So the King called Moses and Bryan back to the throne room, and he said to them: “Fine, go and have your weekend outing. But who exactly among the working class are you expecting will accompany you on this trip?”
And Moses answered: “The entire labor force needs to attend: young and old, sons and daughters, as well as their livestock. Not a soul is exempted. All the workers must have a picnic with the Volcano.”
And the King said: “May your crazy god plague you as he has plagued me, if I ever allow you to take the working children. The children remain! Take the menfolk and the elderly. That is enough. Now, get out of my sight.” And then the royal guards forced them out of the room.
So the wild man from the fiery vortex on the hillside said to Moses: “Wave your wand over the land to call the locusts, so that they can eat up whatever crops were not destroyed by the hailstorm.”
So Moses stretched out his arm and waved the wand over the country, and the wild man caused an east wind to blow through the land all day and night; and on the next morning, there they were, swarming in vast hungry clouds upon the wind: the locusts.
And these locusts went all over the place. They were everywhere. Not since the country was first founded had there been a disaster on this scale. For they blanketed the entire landscape, and the whole earth was darkened. And they ate every growing plant or tree or shrub. Anything green, they devoured it. They left nothing in their wake.
And the King called Moses and Bryan to schedule an emergency meeting. And when they entered the throne room, before they could speak, the King said: “I wronged your Volcano god, and I treated you terribly. Now please forgive me, I beg you – look: as the King, I am on my knees before you! Please, just this once, forgive my wrongdoing, and go back to the Volcano and ask him, just this one time, to change his mind and save me from destruction.”
So they left the King and went to deliver this message to the wild man. And the wild man summoned an extremely strong west wind, which swept away the locusts and deposited them in the sea: all through the land and on all the coasts of the country, there remained not one living locust.
However, the wild man hardened the King’s heart, so that he refused to release the workers.
Then the wild man with the goat eyes and the foot-length hair said to Moses: “Wave your wand at heaven, to make darkness engulf the country: the type of darkness that is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. Total blackness that is oppressive, like a physical substance that suffocates the soul.”
And Moses lifted his wand to heaven and waved it around, and a heavy gloom of darkness came down and congested the land for three entire days.
During that time, the people could not see one another; so they all stayed right where they were and did not move. But all the workers had light in their dwellings.
And the King invited Moses to a meeting, and he said: “Go ahead and take your Volcano Holiday, but just let your livestock remain in the country with me. You can even take the working children with you. That’s my concession. All I want is the livestock.”
And Moses answered: “But if you keep the livestock, then where are we going to get the meat for our barbecue? No, the livestock must accompany us: no hoof left behind. Although we will not know exactly what our host has planned for us until we arrive at his hill, certain elements are so basic as to be obvious, such as the fact that a feast needs food. This should not come as a surprise to you: I explained clearly that our weekend get-together would entail grilling. The volcano of potential is not an abstemious entertainer.”
But the wild man from the vortex, always pulling strings from behind the scenes, caused the King’s heart to harden again, so he would not agree to the terms.
And the King rose up in anger and said: “Leave, now. Begone. I’m finished with you. And take care that you stay out of my sight – don’t cross my path. For the next time you see my face, you will meet death.”
And Moses answered: “Well said, O King. Never again will I see your face alive.”
§
And the wild man with the goat eyes said to Moses: “I have just one last trick to play on the King, and on his class within the country. After this, he will release my workers without question, believe me. Not only will he permit the labor force its vacation, but he will pack them up and send them off with haste, and cast them away from his presence with zeal. – OK, here’s the plan. Go and tell all the workers to call on any of their neighbors who are owners, managers, administrators, or overseers – anyone who is part of the ruling class. Have our workers pay these neighbors a visit and request to borrow their precious jewels – gemstones, gold and silver earrings, necklaces, et cetera – ask them to lend you their luxurious fineries, and I will predispose them to favor you. (Yes, I use these terms “borrow” and “lend”; however, don’t worry: you most likely will not need to return them.)”
And the wild man did as he said, and he caused those upper-class neighbors to grant this request from their underlings. So the workers borrowed their neighbors’ most precious ornaments. If this situation strikes the reader as implausible, just consider that Moses himself had become a type of celebrity in the land, because of all the terrors that he had taken credit for causing: And the labor force lionized him, while the owners and the King’s administrative staff felt awe for Moses – they feared him, and their attitude toward his followers was one of appeasement; they hoped to be able to keep the workers calm, and, if possible, to avoid an all-out revolution, by granting simple demands, like the request to lend jewelry, so that they would not have to comply with the greater demand of actually treating the workers as equal humans.
And Moses announced: “Listen to the words of the Volcano: ‘At midnight, I will personally visit the land; I will walk right into the midst of the country, and I will draw my glittering sword, and I will personally murder every firstborn child of the ruling class, and all the firstborn of their administrative staff – their lackey servants who live in their houses with them, and who have turned their backs on you workers; also those who serve as guards and overseers in their State Protection Squadron – all their firstborn children I will murder, personally. As well as the firstborn of their house-pets. And, when I do this, you will hear a great shriek of terror welling up in the country, and it shall grow louder and louder, as the oppressors all discover their slain children. It will be a cry like nothing ever heard before or since, and it will permeate the whole land. But all the children of the working class will be totally safe and sound: not even a dog will dare to move its tongue against them. This shall prove that the volcano of potential observes a crucial difference between the ruling class and the working class, and he identifies with the latter. And all the members of those groups that oppress you will come to me, while I am there in person lurking through the country at night, and they will bow down before me and beg me to leave: “Get out!” they will cry, “and take all your wretched workers with you!” And, at that point, I will exit from the country.’” And Moses stomped away in rage.
And when Moses reached the fiery brim of the vortex where the wild man lived on the hillside, the wild man was waiting for him, staring with his goat eyes, and he said to Moses: “Again, the King will not heed your warning; for my terrors must increase and multiply within the Empire.”
And Moses and Bryan performed everything that the wild man had instructed them (up to this last terror, which the wild man intended to accomplish personally); but nothing that they did to wreck the country was able to move the King an inch. For the wild man had cast some sort of enchantment that caused the heart of the King to remain hardened, no matter what happened; and he would never release the workers to attend their picnic.
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