Satire

“Sir Peter Buys the Literary World”

NEW FICTION BY KARL WENCLAS

(image c/o mansionglobal)

ONE MORNING financier Sir Peter Plutocrat, waking up in his 57-room mansion west of London, in the United Kingdom, decided he hadn’t enjoyed the article he’d read in Britain’s faux-conservative newspaper last night– it was not conservative enough— and decided to buy the publication.

“It’s those ‘creative’ writers,” he muttered to himself as a robot maid brought him tea and biscuits on a silver tray. “Bloody wankers!”

The robot opened drapes in the room so Sir Peter, a ruddy-complexioned man never lacking in arrogance and privilege, could look out on the enormous lawn where robot groundskeepers were already at work. At that moment Sir Peter decided to buy up every pretentious “literary” periodical in the U.K.

A few weeks later he stopped in at one of them, Overheard Magazine, in their posh London offices in an historic building in a 17th century tavern. Accompanied by three robots who moved impassively behind him. To Sir Peter’s surprise, staffers were typing furiously on desktops.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “You’re figureheads. You’re not supposed to write anything! We have AI chatbots for that. You’re supposed to look snooty and privileged. Like persons who attended Eton and Oxford, as you did. Do you understand? Pose is all.”

He looked at the staffers parked at historic dark wood desks.

“And don’t pout! On second thought, do pout. It looks properly aristocratic. But throw in a sneer or two on occasion. Be above it all. Tell yourself: writing is drudge work, fit only for proles and robots.”

The line of motorized robots followed Sir Peter out the door.

Sir Peter transferred Overheard‘s success to America. He bought up a host of trust-fund-founded intellectual, cultural and literary journals on the “left” and “right”: Me-Plus-Two; Carnival Affairs; The Baffled; Pseudo-Marxist Reviews; and Kompackt Rag, among others. Sir Peter merged several of them. The editors, “the best and brightest” that could be purchased, had known one another at Yale and Brown and not got along.

“Quiet!” he said to the lot of them in their pricey new Manhattan skyscraper office, and like the obedient forever-students they’d always been, they immediately shut up.

(photo c/o loving new york)

(To be continued?)

“Trump’s New Ballroom”

NEW FICTION

He dreamt of a ballroom.

A big ballroom. BIG. In capitals.

An actual dream.

He’d first had the dream at age twelve. Or maybe seventeen, when he was a cadet at a military academy, sleeping in a dorm. A lonely time.

A vivid dream. The dream said, “Build the ballroom.”

But he’d had the first dream when he was twelve and his father took him to a big, beautiful hotel in Manhattan, or maybe Paris, or Zurich, and the hotel had a large ballroom. He’d seen ballrooms before, but not like this ballroom.

He’d said to himself, age twelve, looking at it, “That is one big beautiful ballroom.”

That night in the hotel he had a dream about a ballroom, not just any ballroom. HIS. Which meant it was the biggest most beautiful ballroom anyone had ever seen.

Now he was building his dream ballroom. Finally at last. The Big One. At the White House, which he now owned. Because he was the President.

Oh, he knew, everyone told him– aides he could fire with a move of his little finger– “But you don’t own it. You live in it but you don’t own it.”

But he owned it. He was the President and he owned it. And so he was changing it, to make it the most beautiful White House with the biggest most beautiful ballroom ever seen. It was why he’d become President, he realized. The motivation. To build the ballroom.

“Don’t put that pillar over there!” he yelled at a foreman in a white hard hat.

You knew who the foremen were because they wore white hard hats, not blue ones. Or yellow ones.

“Read the blueprints! Doesn’t anyone read blueprints? And don’t connect the copper wiring to the glass wiring. Do not do that. They don’t connect. You do not connect them!”

Sheesh! he said to himself.

Aides scurried around him and moved him in different directions, but they didn’t know. Only he knew. KNEW.

Which is why he was President.

Tractors roared, earth moved, wings of the White House crumbled before his eyes, concussions and visions of noise and chaos, and he loved it because he knew when it was over, the project complete– tiles gleaming and gold statues positioned everywhere and the richest, wealthiest most famous guests, trillionaires and kings– he knew, KNEW, all the effort would result and had resulted in the world’s biggest and most beautiful ballroom.

-Karl Wenclas

“Art Exhibition”

AN EXCERPT FROM THE LOUD BOYS

As Van made preparations, his new business partner, Fake Face, attended a charity event in a well-guarded suburban enclave, repository of most of the area’s remaining wealth, much of it held by the progeny of deceased industrialists. His smiling rubber mask fit well with the artificial smiles and insincere greetings of other donors. The fundraiser was at a local art gallery. The gallery’s current exhibition was titled “Connectivity”– partly financed by a grant from a Fake Face tax shelter. Fitting the theme, electrical cables spread across the floor like black snakes, connected to strange-looking purple steel machines and giant video monitors displaying the latest in certified NFT art.

“EMBRACE THE CHAOS”

flashed on and off in lime-green letters on a large electronic screen in the ceiling. “We’ve blown the building’s circuits three times already!” the gallery’s curator in a near corner bragged to a circle of wealthy patrons.

“Oh! So glad to meet you again!” a wealthy blonde matron of fifty gushed to Fake Face– they’d met previously at a fundraiser for an animal shelter.

The woman’s ninety year-old husband had recently died, leaving her his fortune. Money to spend and time on her hands. She’d had plastic surgery– her cheekbones were ridiculously pronounced, turning her unobservable eyes into narrow slits. Her lips were swollen balloons. Her skin had the consistency of wax. Both obscenely rich individuals who’d made their wealth in mercenary ways peered dutifully at slabs of AI-generated artworks adorning the walls: either meaningless black-and-white blips and blots, or colorful scenes from unproduced cartoons, with the exaggerated glowing plastic quality of all such AI concoctions. Images of inhuman red-purple-blue figures with distended forms and exaggerated eyes. Illustrations for a madhouse. Mirror reflections of the crowd.

The pricey gallery was an island of insanity in a sea of tragedy.

When Fake Face turned to speak to the woman, she saw his shifting eyes and sensed his real face behind the rubber facade, smelling his sweaty intensity.

!!!

(Based on real happenings? The Loud Boys is now available via Nook, Kobo, and Kindle. A paperback version is coming.)