The Young Dictator

by Hughes, Rhys

  “The kettle hasn’t even boiled yet. Maybe it’s mad?”

  Dad grew angry. “That’s no way to talk about your mother! She only wants what’s best for you, my girl!”

  “She’s not real,” whispered Jenny urgently.

  Dad clenched his fists and puffed out his cheeks and Jenny decided it was better to keep quiet for the time being.

  The kettle boiled at last. Dad went to attend to it.

  While his back was turned, the model pointed at him and then drew a wooden finger across its wooden throat.

  Jenny was astounded by this gesture. The model then made another so worrying that Jenny was rendered speechless. It reached up with one arm and pretended to grasp the sky in its fist, pulling the clouds, stars and all the other things up there down to the level of its face, as if it would eat them. It repeated the action many times.

  Of course, directly above it was only the ceiling, but Jenny knew the meaning of the gesture. It chilled her and she leaned forward. “Gran? Are you Gran?” she whispered. Was it possible that the spirit of Gran existed in this robot? That she had been reincarnated as a matchstick model with a clockwork heart and brain? Why not?

  Jenny still didn’t believe that Gran had died during the alien invasion. She knew her too well. The sort of thing that Gran would do would be to develop some amazing weapon activated by a button or lever that could be used in a situation of dire emergency.

  Pushing this button, or pulling that lever, would result in something so unexpected and unusual that it would be impossible to anticipate what it was before coming face to face with it. Moving her soul, like a migrating itch, into this robot was only one example.

  Dad had finished pouring the tea. He brought two mugs over. “What’s up with you? Why the farfetched look?”

  “Do I have a farfetched look?” cried Jenny.

  “Yes, almost as if you are thinking of something so unlikely that only a mad person could possibly think it.”

  “Maybe it’s just the way the shadows are moving over my face,” said Jenny with a smile. Dad accepted this.

  “I didn’t make a cup of tea for your mother.”

  “Because she’s a robot, I suppose?”

  “No, because I couldn’t find any sugar. She always takes sugar in her tea,” said Dad. Already it seemed he had completely forgotten about the real woman who had walked out on him.

  Jenny sighed. Was returning to Carrington a bad idea, she wondered? Life in outer space had been simpler!

  Having a mechanical matchstick model for a mother was never going to be easy, but things suddenly went from bad to worse one early evening a few days later. There was a knock on the door and before Jenny had the chance to go and see who was there, the model had stalked off down the passage and opened the front door itself.

  Representatives from various political parties were standing under a huge communal umbrella in the rain and they wanted to talk about why the matchstick Mum should vote for them, but they all spoke at the same time, disagreeing with each other. Mum slammed the door in their faces and turned to face the approaching Jenny.

  “I think politics is rubbish!” cried the artificial Mum.

  She didn’t use her mouth to speak.

  What had happened was that she had learned how to make her arms and legs creak in a way that approximated the sound of a human voice, so for example she might say the words, “Good morning!” by flexing one of her elbows in a particular way. This did give her a very wooden tone, but she was able to make herself understood.

  “What did they want from you?” Jenny wondered.

  “They are candidates for the forthcoming by-election. Apparently the last Member of Parliament for Carrington was devoured by giant spiders. It sounds like nonsense to me,” said Mum.

  “Oh no, giant spiders really do exist. I’ve seen them!”

  “Not the spiders, Jenny. They sound sensible. I was referring to all this fuss about the by-election. Pure gibberish. I bet I could do the job just as well as any living human being could!”

  “Then you must put yourself forward as a candidate,” suggested Jenny and she had a funny feeling that history was repeating itself. Then Dad’s voice shouted out from the lounge that this idea was silly because it cost money to stand for a by-election, 500 pounds just to register your name, and the matchstick model was penniless.

  “I can lend you the money, I’m loaded,” said Jenny.

  “Would you?” Mum creaked in joy.

  Jenny nodded. “Why not? It might liven things up around here.” She was finally convinced that Mum wasn’t Gran in disguise. And the fact of the matter is that she was bored with the slow pace of ordinary life. What she craved was excitement and mischief.

  “Excellent!” laughed Mum. “If I win and go to Parliament, I’ll abolish lampshades and watering cans and kick the Queen off her throne and I’ll throw jelly and fight the powers that be.”

  “The powers that be what?” asked Jenny, already knowing the answer but feeling she had to ask this anyway.

  “That be in power!” answered Mum logically.

  “I can promise to vote for you when the time comes,” said Jenny, “but I won’t be able to stop other people voting against you. Mr Zosimus no longer lives opposite and I don’t know any other alchemists in the town who can manufacture apathy clouds…”

  “I’ll just have to convince them with my promises.”

  “Sure,” said Jenny. “I’ll help you.”

  Dad appeared. He looked dishevelled and tired. “I can imagine that all sorts of trouble is going to happen next.”

  “Let’s hope so!” declared Jenny.

  He shook his head. “You’re always so irresponsible, my girl! Do you ever think what life would be like if you gave up these schemes of yours and had a simple ordinary existence?”

  Jenny nodded vigorously. “It would be disgusting.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he said.

  Then he sighed and went back to the lounge. It wasn’t his place to put too much pressure on anyone. After the Civil War he had mellowed out considerably. He just wanted to relax.

  Jenny chewed her lower lip in thought, then she said, “The first thing is to devise a strategy for our campaign.”

  Mum allowed herself to be led up the stairs to Jenny’s room. This was going to be the nerve centre of their operations. Jenny cleared her desk by using her elbow to sweep everything on it onto the floor, then she took a notepad and pen and jotted down ideas.

  “We could assassinate the rival candidates?”

  “Tricky and illegal,” said Mum.

  “I do have friends in high places,” Jenny confided.

  “Fair enough. Let’s kill them.”

  “I want 50% of the money you’ll get when you go to Parliament,” said Jenny candidly, “as my adviser’s fee.”

  “You’ll get it,” promised Mum, pivoting her head away to conceal the smile of pure evil on her varnished face.

  “Plus expenses taken from the TAX MONEY jar.”

  “Of course. All agreed,” said Mum.

  And so they worked for an hour on the details of their campaign. But it never occurred to Jenny that Mum might actually win. It was only a game really. After all, who in their right mind would vote for a clockwork robot made out of matchsticks? Frampton hadn’t said anything about how long it would be before she wound down.

  Maybe she was self-winding and would continue forever?

  Night fell. Carrington slumbered.

  But chaos was stirring.

  The dreams that the matchstick model had were peculiar and violent. She dreamed of ruling the country, the world, the galaxy, of going to Hell and taking over there, even of ruling Time itself. Then she would sit on some throne somewhere and laugh herself silly.

  When she woke up, she found Jenny standing next to her bed. “Come on, rise and shine. We’ve got work to do!”

  Mum yawned. “Aren’t you going to express surprise that robots need to sleep just as
much as living creatures?”

  “Why should I?” replied Jenny. “I have lived with clocks and watches all my life and I know from experience they have similar sleep patterns to humans. For instance, when they say ‘midnight’, it’s time for bed; when they say ‘ten’ in the morning, it’s time to get up. How would they know this if they didn’t go to sleep themselves?”

  Mum frowned. “Your logic is faulty but… I like it!”

  “That’s the main thing,” said Jenny.

  “I’m glad it’s the main thing.”

  “Today we have to go to the Town Hall to register you as a candidate. You’ll have to put your name down as an ‘independent’. Then we’ll have to go around talking to the electorate.”

  “What? The people who fix wires and stuff?”

  “No, those are electricians. The ‘electorate’ is another name for people who are allowed to vote. People who aren’t allowed to vote have another name. They are called the ‘disenfranchised’. I have no idea why such an awkward word was chosen for them.”

  “Maybe there was a vote to choose the name and because they didn’t have a chance to vote, they got a bad one?”

  “I like the way you use reason,” admitted Jenny.

  “My thinking is logical,” said Mum.

  “You’ll have to read Machiavelli too,” said Jenny.

  “I look forward to the experience.”

  “We’ll have to invent a slogan for your campaign.”

  Mum thought about this. “How about I NEVER GO ON STRIKE? It’s a joke of course, because I’m made of live matches. I guess we’ll have to create some promotional leaflets too?”

  Jenny sighed. “It’s proving to be a bit of a headache already. I wonder how long it’ll be before I start regretting this scheme? Ah well, too late to back down now. Let’s cause trouble!”

  “All for one and all for me!” cried Mum.

  Jenny made a face. There was something not quite right here. What if Mum turned out to some sort of psycho when she got in power, if she did get in power? How far could Jenny trust her? Not at all, probably. But the important thing was that this was an opportunity to create mayhem, even if it ultimately backfired and destroyed her.

  “Bodyguards! I’ll need bodyguards!” cried Mum.

  Jenny pulled her chin. “There are some giant spiders I know who may be willing to take on that role. I do know some words of Spider. If only I still had the power to make statues come alive! In a sense, that’s what the ticktocker Frampton Plunk has got.”

  “I think of him as my father,” said Mum.

  Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Really? What about Dad?”

  “I think of him as my mother…”

  “This is getting confusing,” muttered Jenny.

  “What colour shall we have for our paper flowers? All candidates for by-elections wear paper flowers,” said Mum.

  “Purple?” suggested Jenny.

  “Nah, purple is a naff colour! How about red?”

  “That has already been taken.”

  “I don’t mean a normal boring red, I mean the red of blood and fire. A red that trickles and flickers as if alive!”

  “I’m not sure I’m capable of producing such a hue.”

  “No worries,” said Mum. “We’ve just make white paper flowers and I will colour them in later, when I’ve won.”

  Then Mum started chuckling.

  Jenny felt uneasy, but there was also something about Mum’s laughter that made her want to join in. Finally she was unable to hold herself back and she taught Mum a new chant. Soon they were chanting it together at the tops of their voices and Dad was knocking on the ceiling of the room below with the handle of a rotten mop.

  “Crush and dominate! Crush and dominate!”

  Jenny’s former hopes of a quiet life were over. So were her fears of the same thing. The next few weeks were a crazy whirl of frantic activity as the matchstick Mum’s political campaign got going properly. Jenny was her strategic and tactical manager, promoting her by delivering leaflets, writing her speeches, arranging interviews.

  With extreme difficulty, Jenny succeeded in kidnapping a giant spider from the basement of the Town Hall. She put it on a leash and trained it to act as Mum’s bodyguard. On one occasion it ate the postman, but that was simply due to high spirits, and soon it was so obedient that it didn’t bite anyone unless Jenny or Mum ordered it.

  At first, the majority of people in the town were suspicious of Mum. It was hard enough work getting them to give a wooden robot a chance but they also remembered the havoc Jenny had caused in the aftermath of her own political adventure as MP for Carrington.

  And yet, thanks to the tenacity of the pair, the quality of the speeches and the novelty of the situation, Jenny and Mum slowly developed a loyal following. So now came phase two of their campaign, the militarising of this band of adherents. Uniforms were needed.

  For an official symbol, Jenny devised an emblem consisting of several lollipops on sticks bound together in a bundle. It was an eccentric symbol but Jenny insisted that it stood for solidarity, force, wisdom, strength and things like that. Mum was somewhat bemused.

  “What does it mean exactly?”

  “I’ve already told you a dozen times,” said Jenny.

  “Tell me again,” insisted Mum.

  “The lollipop sticks represent unity. It’s easy to break just one lollipop stick but a bundle of them can’t be broken by a normal human being. Try it yourself! Having said that, you’re not human, so forget it. The heads of the lollipops represent sweetness.”

  “Sweetness! No, no, no! But that’s not the sort of message we should be putting across. It’s far too nice.”

  Jenny shrugged. “Does it actually matter? I just like lollipops. But it is sweet, isn’t it? A human girl and the wooden robot of her mother working together to strive for a better future?”

  “A better future, did you say?”

  “I meant a different future,” corrected Jenny.

  “I don’t really have a political philosophy,” Mum admitted.

  “Nor me. It’s just a game,” said Jenny.

  “But you think games ought to be taken seriously?”

  Jenny nodded. “There’s nothing more important than playtime. The art of playing is the highest human accomplishment. Trust me, everything’s a type of playing, even war and diplomacy.”

  Mum creaked her approval of this sentiment.

  And so they continued working…

  When the morning of the by-election finally arrived, a grey day with a light drizzle, Jenny and Mum took their allotted places outside the polling station with the three other candidates.

  The spider kept trying to sink its fangs into the legs of their rivals and Jenny was forced to shorten the leash by wrapping it around her arm. She spoke harshly to the spider. “Skeel skeel kreek!” she hissed and it calmed down immediately, blinking its eyes.

  The sound of marching feet reached them.

  Around the corner at the far end of the street came a small army. Mum waved to them. The boots rose and fell in unison and the other candidates began pointing and shouting. “What’s this?”

  “Just our supporters,” said Jenny.

  “But they are carrying clubs! This is outrageous!”

  “Sure, but it’s practical politics.”

  “How dare you? We live in a democracy! We’ll ensure that you never have anything to do with an election in this town again. You’ll be struck off the register and disqualified and—”

  By this time, the marching people had arrived.

  Jenny nodded to her uniformed supporters. They suddenly rushed the other candidates and twisted their arms behind their backs. “You’ll do as we say from now on,” she said coldly.

  “Yow! Ouch! Stop it! That hurts! Yow!”

  Jenny smiled a very thin smile. “Every time a voter enters the polling station, you are going to tell them to vote for Mum here. Understand? If you don’t, then I’ll make sure your arms are twis
ted into knots that never will be undone again, although I’ll give my spider here the opportunity of trying to undo them for you. Get it?”

  The other candidates nodded and whimpered.

  And so it was that Mum’s popularity soared. At the end of the day, the polling station was shut and the ballot boxes were taken off to be counted at the Town Hall. Jenny and Mum went along in attendance and the army of loyal followers went with them. It took hours to count all the votes and then the Lord Mayor mounted the stage.

  He cleared his throat and spoke into the microphone.

  “Blue Party – nil… Green Party – nil… Yellow Party – nil… Blood and Fire Party – 30,000! I therefore declare Mum to be the new official Member of Parliament for Carrington!”

  “Congratulations!” cried Jenny.

  “Thanks,” said Mum. It was her turn to speak into the microphone and make the traditional speech thanking the other candidates, but she didn’t quite get this part of the proceedings right.

  “My campaign was almost ruined by these idiots!” she screeched, as she pointed at the rival politicians. “Dispose of them! Into the river with them! Into the river! Tied all together!”

  Jenny was shocked. The uniformed army of followers rushed onto the stage and seized the candidates and the spider wove a web around them and the mob hurried out of the Town Hall.

  “This is a little unorthodox,” Jenny whispered to Mum.

  Mum shrugged. “It’s just a game.”

  They heard the distant splash and the screams for help. Then there was just gurgling and a menacing silence. The Lord Mayor slowly took off his hat, fanned himself with it vigorously.

  “Have the bad old days returned?” he asked Jenny.

  “I think they have,” she replied.

  Mum began striding up and down the stage. Her walk was strange and involved raising her legs very high on each step and crashing them down heel first on the wooden boards. “Crush and dominate!” she shouted; and for the first time, Jenny didn’t feel like joining in. When Mum finished, Jenny smiled at her and asked tactfully:

  “I bet you are looking forward to going to London?”