Now, in these circumstances, my natural abilities and innate cleanliness led me to the ruling class. I’ve become accustomed to doing as a ruler would; that is, I do a lot of what I want, usually, but not always, when I want it. I don’t usually stoop to writing. Normally, I would simply ascend my desert fortress – built, naturally, when the TechnoMuslims came – and begin yelling across the wide expanse of this earth as if all mankind were a battered Yahweh-cult and I, its disappointed-by-life, impotent, and gin-soaked Moses, much as I have done within the pages of this very magazine. Recently, however, as I was waiting for the elevator to take me to the loftiest heights of my steam-punk keep, I was struck quite forcefully (and, if I remember, repeatedly) by I the agony of inspiration. The light of reason pulled me down with much gnashing of wicked jaws and glowing of red eyes; I pissed myself from clarity of mind, then slipped beyond the pale of consciousness. When I came to, I was immediately sure that a muse had spoken to me: I should not rely on the old ways. This was a new era, not a time for stuffy pretense. It was time that I went to you, the filthy, horrifying mass. It was time that I listened.

Some details still required working out. I had decided that I would make this a Q&A. There would, however, have to be some planning. For instance, I decided against direct contact. I also chose to write the questions myself. That way, I’d be assured of getting the answers right. Doing so also saved me the trouble of having to speak to any of you or hear your dull-witted opinions delivered with the wretched, fat-tongued drawl common to yeoman everywhere. Having scratched with gilded chisel onto plates of gold my plebeian gift, I rang down to a nearby village for a team of strong-backed porters and a broomsman to clean the paw prints and tire-treads from my floor, and dispatched the whole affair by rope-sled to London, or St. Petersburg, or wherever it is that they press papyrus these days. I assume that the mission was successful, and was not ambushed by TechnoMuslims or vultures. Enjoy, then, these bits of hearty, peasant-faced wisdom as you would the rustic pleasures of a trench-toilet and righteous toil.

Question: My neighbor is a widow. How ought I to gird myself against her witchcraft?

Answer: Boil sage in the vomit of a meer toad and apply it to your daughter’s neck, that which has not seen the immoral light of a noonday sun. If the curse of woman-child is not upon you, you are safe from the witch-spell regardless.

Question: I have finished reaping my lord’s grain to the tale of two scupper’s full. These I then deliver to market for nary more than a Dutchman’s two-farthing and nonce-penny. Of this, two florin is the bailiff’s & a white shilling the divining hag’s. Whither do I go thence, where I may find both seed for the harvest & the birthing-iron, that my kin be protected from sin by all-consuming heat?

Answer: Send a pigeon to my cousin, Hearweald, who is both grainier and a magician of woman’s sorrow-time. He will ask only farthing and quince-penny.

Question: I have heard that in the towns, a man may live without lord & dine frequently on pig’s offal. Such a gentlemanly life I can hardly bethink. I am tempted, but fear sin & offense unto my betters by my immodesty. What am I to make of these thoughts?

Answer: Beg God that you are not already beyond saving.

I had written more, but I found my notes shredded and reeking of animal urine and coolant. It seems, then, that I’m finished. I suppose that this is a tearful moment, isn’t it? No, don’t cry: it fattens the cheeks. While I may be gone, take heart, for there are others like me. The Economist magazine shares my lively spirit in pursuit of the dismal science. You should find a reassuring resemblance to me in its condescending tone and alchemical methodology.

And now, I suppose, I should say my proper goodby- Wait a minute. What was that noise? It came from the hallway.

Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, of course. It all becomes clear, now: cyborg coyote mullahs.

I should’ve known.

~ Lion Summerbell

It was a life that Milton Friedman could not have argued with. Each morning he awoke, ate sparingly, took the simple tools of a lonely farmer into his sinewy, sun-beaten arms, and met the land to which he was bound head on. He had but one small, round mirror with a crack in its centre, and rarely did he see himself in it. Had he been able to see himself, the face that looked back at him would have very much reflected the soul hidden beneath it: though roughened by work and weather, he was still strikingly handsome, his blue eyes suggesting the profundity of the laborer, he whose wisdom is that of sweat, tears and the salted earth. He was a mountain of a man, a monument to physical strength. He carried sick heffers from the pasture to the barns as easily as he tossed bales of hay the size of refrigerators onto his wagon. With a knife he could slice the eyelash from a deer and with a gun graze its nose from a hundred yards. He rose before the sun and worked long after it had gone. The years passed him by in this way, hard but good, and he believed himself content.

But he was without something; Friedman was lonely. He was a man with everything but companionship, and so felt himself to have nothing. Not even shooting a deer’s nose and then slashing at its eye could cure his gloom, though he had tried and tried again. The way that Keynes looked at him, that day, brought his spirits all the lower. And then came the voice:

“I reckon it’s past the time any God-fearin’ man should be in the pasture. Least I s’pose it is so for myself, but I am a tired man, and my stomach is empty.”

Friedman let his head drift to the right, his chestnut hair brushing against the opposite shoulder as he did. He was at first surprised to see no one; but there was another man at the fence’s edge, no more than fifty yards away. He could not make out anything more than the immense size of the stranger and the glint of moonlight on silvered spurs.

“Sheep need turnin’ in, and the fence is broke. I have no hands but my own to tame this place, and I do not rest.” Friedman paused, unsure of what to say next. “If it’s food and a bed you’re lookin’ for, I reckon I can give you both. Ain’t got a bed, but there’s hay down in the barn and the night won’t be a cold one.”

The man began walking forward, revealing himself as he did. Friedman’s eyes shot open, for here was a creature defying description. The stranger’s face was almost entirely hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat and a cascade of long hair like pure-spun gold, but what he saw was the hard but strong eyes of an outlaw. As he drew closer, Friedman found his heart pounding uncontrollably. Words failed him. He felt bewitched.

The stranger was close, a few paces in front of him, his hands on the holsters at his side. His brow was low and his teeth flashed in the smile of a rogue. “I surely can’t refuse that offer, friend.” He reached a hand out. “Frederick Hayek’s the name, some people call me ‘The Rabidly Anti-Socialist Kid.’”

Milton looked at the hand, and then made as if to take it; but Keynes whinnied from behind him, and, when he turned to look, he saw a deep distrust in the tired face of the horse. He turned back to Hayek. The hand still floated out in front of him. “Friedman,” he said, taking Hayek’s hand into his.

Keynes neighed long and loudly, pouring his agony into the night sky. Then he was gone, in a storm of dust and hooves. Friedman wrenched his hand away from Hayek and lunged in the direction of the fleeing stallion, but he felt powerful arms encircle his chest and wisps of hot breath on his neck, and he could not move. “Let him go,” came the silken voice of the bandit. “Reckon we can have more fun without him.”

Friedman’s lungs had begun to work in fits and starts. His body tingled; he could feel Hayek’s muscles against his back and around his body, and he desperately wanted to melt into them. When at last it came to him that he should say something, it was all he could do to consent. “Reckon we could, Kid.”

Something stirred in both of them, making their leather chaps almost unbearable. He could hear the pigs begin to squeal rabidly, as if in orgiastic madness. The breeze had died. The air was hot.

“Reckon we could.”

~Lion Summerbell

So, what, you’re no doubt asking, is the deal with these stock markets, and how is it that they control, and have controlled, the fates of as diverse an array of peoples as the Dutch, the British, Japanese housewives, and most recently, coke-snuffling twenty-somethings from New Jersey who shit $500,000 no-questions-asked mortgages? There is no real short answer to that question, but a short answer to a question is magic, so I’m going to go ahead with that. The workings of stock markets rely on the famous “Black Box Principle”; that is, if you put something into a box, close the lid, and then plant a truck bomb inside the headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission, you will find 1500% more of the thing in the box when you return to it. The phrase ‘stock market’ itself is derived from the Anglo-Saxon stoc, meaning a tree trunk, and the Latin mercatum, meaning a place at which commerce occurs. In ancient times a stock market was a place where trees were bought and sold, and if a thick-chested woodsman was lured away by the bouncing breasts and loose morals of a buxom country lass halfway through cutting down an oak, the market was said to ‘fall.’ Similarly, if markets ‘fall’ today, scientists agree that the most likely culprit is a pattern of behaviour known as ‘chase the secretary with the fat ass,’ an obvious descendant of the lusty wanderings of the ancestral lumberjack.

Now, you’re probably wondering just what kind of a boner it took to cause this year’s catastrophic shake-up, and who it was, exactly, that popped that mother-lover of a Stiff Steven. The answer isn’t really magic, but let’s all agree to keep this simple and say that it is. The story goes that an evil lich with a sallow face and drooping claws named Greenspan placed a chest of cursed Spanish doubloons in the middle of the NYSE’s trading floor. Drawn by their natural affinity for gains both free and ill-gotten, the traders flocked in helpless wonder around the unexpected bounty. When they all had stuck their hands in, however, they gasped in fear and outrage as their boners exploded forth from their trousers like so many tricky moles braving a whacking. In the grip of the foul wizard’s spell, they could little more than stick their jammin’ jimmies into ever more profitable and less secure real estate gambles, for it was only in the cooling nether regions of mortgage instruments that they found some relief, if only temporary, from the unquenchable fire which gripped their forsaken loins. Additionally, they became skeletons at night, and lived on a skeleton pirate ship that submerged and then appeared at inopportune times to menace Captain Jack Sparrow and his motley crew of attractive but utterly loathsome screen whores (incidentally, look out for the audiobook version with Patrick Stewart as the gang accursed brokers and Morgan Freeman as their boners). As one can well imagine, such a frenzied and skeletal pisser-poking could only end in tears.

My point is that it’s time to get out, to run for your lives; batten down the hatches; pray to whatever god you prefer not to listen to you. If you have stocks, get bonds; if you have hedge fund shares, get money market shares; if you’re an immigrant, get another mattress to put over your money. It’s a bumpy road to hell, even in a hand-basket. But I’d like to end this piece on a cheerier note, with a little something to get us through the tough times ahead. As Sylvester Stallone once said, musing on the ineluctable hardships of the human condition: “Rambo isn’t violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist”. Such extreme, shit-headed resistance to the terrifyingly obvious facts of real, actual, verifiable reality should be an inspiration to us all: nothing is too difficult that we can’t blow up all of Southeast Asia to spite it. Amen.

                                                                                                                                                                                                ~ Lion Summerbell