A Killing in Transparency Falls Kingdominium

Or All Parody is Local

Part One

In a land pretty close by...

Down the block, even...

There was a mighty Empire that stretched beyond imagination to the North and nearly to Cuba in the South. Its breadth measured less than a days' walk for an alligator. In the Empire was a rich, but hard-headed Prince, who saddled with a peck of mere Principalities, relentlessly followed his dream. Even more than gathering excessive riches, the Prince just had to be a King.

So, the Prince purchased a small kingdom and chased out the few vagabondsmen, hookers, alligators, vultures and other lawyers using just the power of his voice.

And, like that, declared himself a King.

The Emperor did not hear the new King amid the din of twelve hundred other declarations directed his way, being at a Tea Party that day, but the declarations were legal just for the saying.

The new King searched Empire Records online for weeks and finally gave his nascent Kingdom a positively musical name: Transparency Falls, after his planned cascade you could see through emptying in the canal adjacent to his Kingdom. And what other name was left.

The King envisioned his Kingdom as a kind of large hedge-walled principality with a charmingly babbling cascade and an inviting Welcome Gate, since that was pretty much all he knew. First, he hired a laid-off engineer, John Foureyes, ironically diagnosed with terminal myopia, to be his Royal Building Code Department, because someone had to do it. Foureyes proved his worth immediately by writing a code section banning cascades.

"It makes no sense," said the King.

"That's Braille," replied Four eyes. "It's in the millions of nano dollars of babble, Sire."

"Say again."

"Millions... Oh. Sire."

"Then, no cascade. But I keep the gate. You gotta have a gate." He then added, with an obvious twinkle, "And a drawbridge."

"Uh..."

"Can't you see I twinkled.... Never mind."

"Plans approved, Sire."

The King proved his seriousness by hiring the small but famed architectural engineering firm, Piglittle & Piglittle, LLC to actually draw up some plans and realize his vision.

Piglittle & Piglittle, LLC was the remnant of the storied Piglittles Three, Inc. The third Piglittle brother had become disenchanted with the firm and moved to Reality Bites, far away in an Empire near New Jersey. He had tired of his brothers’ unwavering faith in and specification of certain building materials. He, this third Piglittle, spent years convincing his brothers to combine their materials to build buildings no one in the Empire could afford. He finally gave up and moved to Reality Bites, a place far up North where people actually paid money for houses made of the bricks he so loved. Unfortunately, he had the same obsessive gene as his brothers. He became too enamored of the Northern style using something called basements and soon designed nothing but brick basements.

Hence, it was only Piglittle & Piglittle, LLC that went to work for the King. The brothers had once squabbled over the relative merits of straw-only construction and stick-only construction. (“Brick, you can use the hell up where it snows”, said both Piglittle brothers together.) Thanks to their departed brother, they had fused their geniuses and now designed truly elegant buildings with stick structural components and straw walls and roofs.

The King, a utilitarian and nearly a Scot, had no interest in elegant and had his doubts about paying for sticks. But, if you want the Piglittles, you got sticks as well as straw. The King and the Piglittles settled on the brothers’ favored materials, but in squat, rectangular, multi-unit buildings. “With hedges, Bermuda grass all over the place and a pink gate, it will look grand,” the King told the Piglittles with his powerful voice blowing a half ton of straw off of recently tarred street.

The King hired a master builder, von Buffy, who had been using sharpend sticks and mallets long before the Piglittles even sniffed straw. And let the sensitive Piglittles know it. Von Buffy had built for the King’s other fiefdoms several successful strip markets, perpetually flooded, it seemed to the Piglittles, anyway, with all the extended family of Piglittles simply to lazy to work.

In no time, the King's vision developed, with the help of many mercenaries hired by von Buffy to keep costs way under his bid and because he had no choice anyway. The Kingdom had few remaining inhabitants more skilled or even larger than a geko. Unfortunately, von Buffy’s mercenaries, though larger than a geko and with eyelids, were no more skilled and less able to walk on walls and ceilings to do the wiring or duct work properly. Despite that failing, the mercenaries, encouraged by the King’s powerful voice, and von Buffy’s piece-work wage, roughed in the sticks for buildings with great speed and no Chinese drywall. It was a triumph of the King's will. Fortunately, the King was in a pub when any straw was being tied to the sticks, albiet with Grade-C string and... you’ll see.

Ironically, just as the King began construction, a race of foreigners far, far from even Hawaii suddenly developed a voracious appetite for straw. They had learned to like straw better than cat meat. Trillions of tons of Grade-A and even Grade-B straw were suddenly being bound into bundles with string and placed in 40-foot stick-and-spit shipping containers. Just when all those materials were supposed to be headed for Transparency Falls.

In a desperate conference, the Piglittles expressed their horror. Von Buffy was demanding they approve inferior straw and sticks, since “air may be transparent around here, but it ain’t as strong as up North.” And the mercenaries? “They have dry mouth by 9 AM. From the Tequila.”

There was nothing for the King to do but halt construction or approve straw you wouldn’t feed your least favorite goat and fund daily allotments of chewing tobacco for the mercenaries.

The King thought long and hard, agonized to be honest. Transparency Falls had made him a King, a title that would be forever his, inside pubs and out. King! No matter what.

Also, he mused, in some other Empires, Kings who overstayed were often offed in a big Public Square.

It was a long, seemingly endless blink of the King’s eye, but it was decided.

“Put another building in there instead of that big Square.”

Transparency Falls was to be finished. As solid as could be. Expected. Under the circumstances.

Sneezing became a Capital Offense.

The King, with the Piglittles and von Buffy beside him, beheld his vision that day when his Royal Code Inspector sealed the Certificate of Completion. “Jesus. Right there,” pointed von Buffy. The straw, sparkling in the morning dew, rustled in a breeze oh so gentle and soothing. Upon feeling which, the Piglittles did dare open their eyes. There all the rectangular buildings stood.

Whispered on Piglittle to the other, "They look like they're swaying."

"The straw's stiffness index?" responded the other. "Way below my spec."

John Foureyes came within a foot of patting both Piglittles' behinds. "Fellas, it's an optical illusion."

At that very moment, the King was thinking, Now, the easy part.

Following Empire tradition, the King declared a Constitution, hired a scrivener to cut-and-paste together—a process ironically much like his building--a body of laws, the “BodyofLaws”. Pursuant (in scrivener-speak) to the BodyofLaws, the King installed a Privy Council, the members of which were privileged and had keys to the executive privy, the only one that flushed half-decently in Transparency Falls. Which might explain their titles as well, the Privies. The King filled in the first Privies himself. The Principal Privy was called the Principal Privy, or the Principal. In the very early days, the Principal mostly trained the under-employed gekos for the Easter festival.

In no time, the King had assembled suitably gullible people, many with down payments, in his Kingdom, called Fallguys.

As much as the King knew about building a kingdom, he was a little vague on running one, except for designing himself a royal flag emblazoned with a transparent crest. “Trust me,” the King told his subjects.

Again.

And, this being a fable, they did.

As close to wise as the King would ever get, he followed Empire custom and hired more mercenaries to run administer his kingdom, as he would surely too busy with something else. They were called the Mercenary Bureaucrats, but soon, of course, the Crats for short.

Best of all, the King could levy taxes, originally called His Majesty’s Due. This gave the King cash to do complete his Way Early Bucket List, which he called the budget. These taxes after several years of 12% increases came to be called the “Frikin' Dues” in the Fallguy vernacular.

Early on--at that fateful construction meeting, in fact--the King planned to turn the governance of Transparency Falls over to his Fallguys subjects. He had the title; he didn’t need the annoyance of a kingdom, anymore.

Thus, the King amended the Constitution, as only he could, and declared the Kingdom “Transparency Falls, a Kingdominium” and turned the keys to the Welcome Gate to the grateful Principal Privy. Though he was to keep several abodes there, to let, the King left Transparency Falls forever behind him, spiritually, physically and... legally.

He hoped to hell.

End Part One