A Tale of Two Kingdoms - Part Two…

The plague...

5 minute read

• by Ken Hiebert

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

When we last left Justin, he was at at costume party on his friend’s private island. Upon his return to civilization, he was unmercifully shoved back into his role as Supreme Ruler of the Small Kingdom…

* In case you missed it, you can find out what brought him to this point by reading A Tale of Two Kingdoms - Part 1

•••

King Justin was having a terrible day. The news of yet another shooting with a banned weapon was a painful reminder that his assault-style weapons ban hadn’t in fact eradicated those weapons as he’d thought it would.

The kingdom was in the process of recovering from an imported plague that had taken the lives of thousands of the king’s subjects. On top of that, unicorn fart production was down and the people hadn’t seen a rainbow in months.

The children of the Small Kingdom, though not directly affected by the plague (it only killed the elderly) were nevertheless not allowed to congregate for fear of spreading it back to their homes. Even the schools were closed, and so to ease their burden of too much free time, King Justin thought it would be wise to start a program that would enable the children to volunteer their time in worthwhile projects around the Small Kingdom, and even give them opportunity to travel to other kingdoms. And yes, they’d be able to do this and get paid for it. Ok, so technically this isn’t actual volunteering, but it sounds a lot better than, “getting paid minimum wage for a fancy vacation”.

King Justin stroked the few hairs that had begun to sprout on his chin while he thought about the ramifications of his plan. He knew the perfect organization to pull this off. The WEasels were always there for him when he needed access to young minds to pour his ideals into. Not only that, but they had been especially good to his family by providing his mother and brother with hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements. Surely this is an organization that is deserving of his generosity, so he again reached into his treasury and found 900 million dollars. This will make the WEasels very happy, he thought as his fingers discovered one more hair on his long, pointy chin.

It took very little time to float this idea to the King’s advisers, and of course they all agreed it was a fine idea, since many of them had also benefitted monetarily from the WEasels.

In short order the motion was passed and the WEasels were now in charge of administering a wonderful program for a bored generation eager to go out and help the world while collecting a nice little pay cheque.

Although this had seemed Iike a very well thought out idea at its inception, it didn’t take long for cracks to appear once the local scribes and heralds found out how much King Justin’s mother and brother had gotten paid by the WEasels. Then, when they found out that Money Billy had received almost $50,000 as well (but had kind of forgotten about it), it looked as though King Justin would have an uprising on his hands. In the end it seemed easier just to fire Money Billy in hopes the people’s anger would be assuaged. King Justin had plenty of other servants who could do Money Billy’s job, after all.

The other thing that was weighing heavily on the King’s mind was how to extend the holidays of his counselors. Yes it was true they’d already been on holidays for five whole months, ever since the plague hit, but these had been five glorious months for King Justin, as he had no one to answer to and could pretty much do anything he wanted without fear of some ignorant hillbilly from the western part of the kingdom criticizing his motives.

During this time he had developed a new morning ritual that involved one on one, personalized chats with his subjects via a microphone and several cameras set up outside his comfy cottage. He used these times to assure his people that he was managing everything from the cottage and there was no need to be afraid, unless of course you were to leave your home - then you should be very afraid.

His favorite episode of these chats was the one right before Easter weekend. Putting on his most somber face, he looked straight into the camera and said, “This weekend is going to be very different. You’ll have to stay home. You’ll have to skip that big family dinner and the Easter egg hunt. During that weekend, we’ll all have to find creative ways to celebrate Easter since none of us will be going to the cottage.“

He thought it had played quite well and the next day left to go to his other cottage with his family for the weekend. It still irked him that even though there was no one watching over him, somehow the scribes and heralds had found out about that one too.

Oh well, he had planned on using the news of a few new outbreaks of the plague to enforce his stay-at-home order and thereby keep all those meddling servants at home for a few more months. This would have been perfect, but then someone came up with the hare-brained idea that simply covering your mouth and nose with a piece of cloth was sufficient to protect you from the plague. Of course all the people believed that one right away and began making plans to send their children back to school, each with their own fashionable handkerchief tied on with a ribbon. Now he had to think of something else to keep those guys at home.

Suddenly, King Justin had an idea. This was not something that happened all that often so he was quite elated. "Since I am the King”, Justin reasoned to himself, “surely I can just take some time off without having to ask somebody about it.” This made perfect sense to him, since he really had been under extra stress with all the unfavourable news reports and having to fire his good friend Money Billy.

The next day he sent a message to all his servants and counselors that they should continue to stay home because he was taking another month off and therefore everyone else was also entitled to more time off. He was sure all his servants would be very happy with his ample generosity.

Excited to be on holidays, King Justin began making plans for the next month and half. He was pretty sure he’d have plenty of time to come up with another plan when this period was over. Maybe this time he’d be able to get rid of those guys for good…