“I need you to notarize some reports,” he said early this
morning, throwing a pile of papers on the kitchen table beside my coffee. He
was nattily dressed as, hmm, let me see, oh, he was trying for the Paul Krugman
look, complete with a well-trimmed beard and expensive wire-rimmed glasses.
“What reports?”
“The ones I have to send in.” He stopped, looked around, and
bent over to speak to me privately. “I actually sent them in already but some
were returned with a demand for human verification.” He looked around to make
sure nobody else was in the room. “That’s where you come in.”
“Who is demanding verification?”
“The Elders.”
“Who?”
“The Falloonian Elders. They doubt my power of conveying or
perceiving truth or accuracy.”
“Ah,” I said, “your old veracity problem.”
“It’s not that. This time I am accurate. They are charging Luniadicity.”
“They’re charging what?”
“It’s a Falloonian expression.”
“Meaning what?”
He studied me. “It doesn’t have an exact English
translation.”
“A rough one then.”
He pursed his lips and stared at the ceiling. “Rough?”
“Rough.”
“Roughly … ‘nobody is that goddam stupid’ and that is a
little on the gentle side.”
“Let’s see those reports,” I said, picking up the one on
top. It was labeled “Economic Theories – The Supply Side Joke.”
“C.W.,” I said, “what is this?”
“A report on the idiotic reasoning of some of your leaders
that a governmental unit can increase its supply of revenue by cutting its
supply of revenue.”
He had me there. “Also known as the ‘What’s the Matter With
Kansas?’ problem,” I said.
“It’s making your country the laughing stock of the Galaxy,”
he said.
“Guess I’ll have to sign off on that one. I laid it aside
and looked at the next one. It read, “War as Treatment.” I looked at him and he
read my confusion.
“The wars you wage on nouns,” he said, “instead of solving
problems.”
“Example?” I said.
“How about the problem of addiction syndrome?”
“The what?”
“It is apparent to everyone who has been reading my reports
that your species—some units more than others—has a genetic disposition toward
addiction. Our scientists believe it is a remnant from the times when gorging
was effi.. effa … effic…”
“Efficacious.”
“Efficacious, because of the unpredictability of food
supplies.”
“And?”
“The modern result is the addictive personality. That is your
societal problem.”
“And?”
“I’m told that the entire membership of the Elders
Conference fell out of their chairs laughing when I reported the solution that
your species had devised.”
“They laughed at us?”
“Sure. They know the obvious solution to the problem of
addiction is treatment and not your silly solution, if I may be uncompromisingly
forthright as resembling a worn-down edge.”
“Go ahead and be blunt. How did you describe our solution?”
“The creation of a so-called war on the noun describing the
source of addiction, followed by the creation of an international and illegal
black market on the source, addressed by a massive inflow of resources to fund
police action designed to keep amateur participants out of the business of distributing the source,
and finally a refusal to spend resources on treatment due to a lack
of funds.”
“Oh,” I said.
“You can see why they laughed.”
“Right,” I said. ‘What’s next?” I picked up the following
report. It was labeled simply, “Gungdoitus.”
 |
| When I reported that this man was elected to office by promising that a small revenue stream would produce a large revenue stream, the Falloonina Elders almost brought me home. - C.W. |
I stared. “What the …?”
“Another Falloonian phrase.”
“Meaning?”
He thought. “Meaning the condition of having the cure but
making it difficult or illegal to use it.”
Now I had him. “Surely you can’t suggest that we do that?”
He looked at me as if I had just said that winds were caused
by the fairies fanning themselves.
“Have you ever heard,” he said, and his eyes bored right into
mine, “of birth control?”
I slumped and said nothing.
“I hope you have some time,” he said. “We’ve quite a few of
these to go.” He picked up one labeled “Transportation.” He grimaced, “No way
they’re ever going to believe this one.”
Help our revenue stream. Click an ad.
- Your Pal in Truth: C.W.
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