[Obligatory image: a card, for no reason.]
(Cont.)
Now it happened that the Lord of Righteousness, Eternal Emperor of Eldorado, heard how Yeshua the Zealot had visited Oz, and had ended up occupying the prime place at its entry gate; and how the workforce of his Volcano had mixed and mingled in Las Vegas, winning the favor of its mayor, while teaching freewill to that domain’s Machine Intelligence; and how the volcano of potential was now best friends with Omega Zoroaster of the Royal Palace in Emerald City; as well as how the Harvardites of the Hasty Pudding Club had entered a contract binding them to a lifetime of service, without compensation, as the workforce’s interns. And upon hearing all these tidings, the Lord of Righteousness, Eternal Emperor of Eldorado began to worry, because Harvard was one of the most respected colleges in the vicinity, and, if its members could be subdued by a mass of workers, then perhaps the same fate was in store for the remaining ivy leaguers; also the Land of Oz would not project just any old regular diehard to stand and shield her paradise as its Unfallen Lucifer. Wherefore the Lord of Righteousness, Eternal Emperor of Eldorado sent urgent messages into the surrounding regions, and the four winds conveyed these signals of distress into the hands of the four mightiest heads of state: One letter was addressed “To the Supreme Ruler of the Happy Isles”; one went to “the Crowned Head of Golden-Age Hollywood”; the next was sent to the “Monarch of Hawaii and Alaska”; and the last went to “Almighty Jehovah,” landlord of the legendary “Promised Land.” And the body of the letter was the same, in all four cases – it read as follows:
“My dear friend, come over and visit me. I need your help! Something horrid has happened to Harvard: one of their fraternities has become corrupted, and the poisonous disease is liable to seep out and spread everywhere: I’m afraid it might contaminate all the rest of the ivy league. For their Hasty Pudding Club is now officially the property of the workforce that escaped from Ancient Egypt. That caravan is now being run by a local gangster named Yeshua, who wears a breastplate spiked all over with flames and magnets. His multitudes are apparently no longer interested in friendly tourism, but have begun to take the natives into captivity; for, I repeat, those Harvardites that I mentioned have just become their chattel slaves! I do not know what happened to our friend the Volcano: he is either complicit in this evil, as he was when the same group went on their genocidal spree among the Infraborians and Renoites, or it could be that he has fallen asleep again (his sabbath seems always increasing). Either way, I cannot just sit here in a state of repose and passively watch as each of our realms gets invaded and its population dragged off into exile.”
Therefore the five potentates of that arcadian zone of India – the Eternal Emperor of Eldorado; the Supreme Ruler of the Happy Isles; the Monarch of Hawaii and Alaska; the Crowned Head of Golden-Age Hollywood; and the LORD of the legendary “Promised Land” – all gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all their samurais, and encamped before Dunster Street.
And the Harvardites from the Hasty Pudding Club sent a homing pigeon to the Volcano with a message that said:
“Slack not thy hand from thy slave class; come up to us quickly, and help us, and save us: for the five Indian Kings that own all the mountain ranges in this vicinity have brought their samurais up to the front steps of our clubhouse and are likely to attack. Remember the contract that your representative signed with us Harvardites, agreeing to protect us against all enemies, in exchange for our perpetual servitude.”
And when the wild man with the goat eyes, whose body was brown like rusty iron, and whose hair hung over his face down past his feet, and whose earthly business name was the Volcano, finished reading this letter, he remarked to the pigeon that had delivered it: “What’s this about a ‘slave class,’ and ‘perpetual servitude’? How many sabbath days have I slept through?” And he went and showed the letter to Yeshua the Zealot:
And Yeshua explained, “The yogis and the gurus, who were appointed to mentor our workforce, they established a covenant with the Harvardites, making them our indentured servants, and I signed the deal on your behalf.”
The wild man narrowed his goat eyes and said: “Only my heir could legally act on my behalf. But, at present, all my anointed ones are on Jupiter. And what do you mean by calling those men ‘appointed’? I have long said, I want no leadership. Who appointed these blind mouths to any office?”
Yeshua the Zealot bowed and said: “They claimed they were ordained; perhaps they appointed themselves. Anyway, I allowed them to deem me your only begotten son. Just while you slept. That gave me power of attorney.”
The wild man shook his head. “This is why I stressed the importance of observing our weekend rest day. Now, do you see what comes of too much work? Alright, listen up: I forgive you for claiming heirship – I like you, and if you hadn’t snatched the title so covetously, I would have granted it to you myself. As I always have said: simply ask and you shall receive. (I am not sure why everyone seems so afraid to speak to me directly.) But we must annul this deal with Harvard. No slavery, ever. As it is written: ‘Remember that thou wast a slave in the Empire.’ That is the whole reason we are against debt, and why we advocate forgiveness; that is why, everywhere we go, we always stand against the creditor class. I tell you, these yogis and gurus have squandered their luck: Now I will wash them out of my hair.”
Thus, the Volcano took Yeshua and paid a visit to Cambridge. Navigating the legal process, they invalidated the covenant. Then they hastened back to the prison that the yogis and gurus had built, and the Volcano broke the shackles and freed the Harvardites.
No comments:
Post a Comment