WITH LITTLE HOPE

With an important election just round the corner, what can be said about caring and truth?

Garry Geek sat at his console, which consisted of half a dozen computer monitors and a current bun, and grinned at Boris.

“It’s perfectly logical,” he aid, smearing his spectacles with something that was dribbling down his nose, “they all do it, politicians are particularly adept at it and the three or four blokes who own most of the newspapers are best. They’re wicked, they really are”

“But at what?” blustered Boris, not liking the reference to politicians because he was one, and he had fond memories of all the tricks he’s got up to in the bad old days when he’d been a schoolboy and bullied the wimps unmercifully.

Garry Geek grinned at him. “It’s a mathematical certainty,” he assured him, “and nothing like trickery on my part.”

“I never said it was!” snapped Boris.

“Well, I’d better explain,” sighed Garry Geek. “You get a hundred people in a room, for instance, and tell them an outrageous lie and at least one of them will believe you no matter how outrageous and unbelievable it is. And what’s more, they’ll make it their own lie and massage it until they think it sounds more acceptable, and pass it on. This will happen scores of times and eventually just about everyone wll believe the outrageous lie. It happens all the time.”

“Twaddle!” snapped blustering Boris.

“Not at all,” sighed Garry Geek, “it’s how religion became so powerful and it’s how the tabloid press keeps its readership. And it’s how you conservatives will win the next General Election. They’ve told the outrageous lie and it’s slowly being massaged into something so big they can’t lose!”

“What lie is that?” asked a curious Boris.

Garry Geek thought it best to humour the man. After all, by the way things were going it was a fair bet that he’d be lord of everything by this time next year. The puppet they’d shafted into being the current leader was doing what they knew she would, and failing. After all, it’s all she ever did when she didn’t have a carefully prepared paper to read from.

“The obvious one,” he replied.

“You mean…?” asked Boris.

“Yes,” nodded Garry Geek,

“That they, what you might call the Government, cares for people. That’s the lie and bit by bit and day by day the number of people believing it has grown until it’s an overpowering mass.”

“But it’s not a lie!” snapped Boris.”They do care! I care! Everyone cares!”

“Of course you do,” soothed Garry Geek, “but they’d like everyone to believe the caring is for social fairness and the health of a population and not what it is. You have your own agenda when it comes to caring, and that’s nothing to do with compassion of society. Why Queen Thatch in the bad old days even said there was no such thing as society!”

“I loved her,” burbled Boris.

“So let’s see what the computer says,” suggested Garry Geek.

He touched a couple of keys on his computer and pointed at one of the screens. “Look,” he said.

The image was quite striking. It was a 3-D image of a small boy dressed in shabby shorts and with hair that seemed to dance as a consequence of the livestock battling through nitty lives deep inside it. And a grotesque pale figure, almost incandescent with flickering shadows rippling over its skin, grabbed hold of the urchin and pushed a long arm down his throat. The child would have screamed if it could, but what boy can scream with an arm down his throat? Not one. That much was clear. Then, slowly, the arm withdrew and in its calloused fingers could quite easily be seen that it held a still-beating heart. Then the pale figure laughed gleefully, a hollow, shallow laugh, and slowly pulled the heart towards its mouth, and then, in cruel slow motion, swallowed it as the scruffy, shabby boy sunk in even slower slow-motion to the ground, and lay still.

“That’s the truth,” pointed out Garry Geek, “that’s the world and the caring that you lot want and, you know, the whole population knows it. But the lie’s been told, and it’s spreading even as we speak.”

Boris smiled his blustery smile. “I know,” he said.

“And there’s nothing they’ll be able to do about it,” sighed Garry. “They’ll see the truth … look there, at that screen again, at that representation of Truth.”

Boris glanced back at the monitor to see a crowd of horrified people slowly gathering round the desolate figure of a heartless boy. Then they started whispering to each other before walking on, trampling the tatty child into the pot-holed ground as they went.

“See,” said Garry, “it’s more important to vote properly than care for the child. So they’re off to vote and, because of the lie you started they’ll vote for you.”

Boris puffed his chest out. “I hoped they would,” he crowed.

“And life will go on unchanged,” sighed Garry, “the rich will stay rich, the poor become poorer, the world will carry on very much as it always has...”

“I know,” gloated Boris.

“Until I press this button,” grinned Garry Geek, “this button here, this red one, the one marked Escape…

And his finger slowly jabbed down.

© Peter Rogerson 01.06.17