by Horia Hulea
Chapter 2
The personality cult of every normal tyrant has its own special perks. Some rename all the days in the week and all the months in the year after them, including making their year of birth the year zero of history and their birthday the national day because, as every subject of the country knows, history began with the birth of the Leader.
Other tyrants decorate their walls with the heads of the opposition leaders that still have the faces comically frozen in the surprised expression that graced their unexpected death.
Others write inept books like On Establishing the Great Advancement or The Book of Infinite Wisdom or other literary masterpieces in the tyrant couldn't help but lay down in such great details every single law, every single rule of the grand future plans that ever crossed his mind, so that the future generations may witness the beauty of the ultimate wet dream of a control freak. Naturally, these works of genius are required reading all over the land.
Not only that, but every single day, every single person should recite its preface before going to sleep and wake up in the morning mumbling its quotes and phrases.
However, what every single tyrant has in common, proven to be the most certain thing—the absolute must—is to pile up lots and lots of titles for himself.
You can't be a proper self-respecting tyrant if your people don't call you names like: absolute, supreme, father of the nation, great, paramount, eternal, triumphant, glorious … essentially every single pompous and inflated fart sound you can find in a dictionary.
And all these with a "The" in front!
Because any warlord can be a normal eternal leader and a common supreme visionary, but "THE eternal leader"? "THE supreme visionary"? "THE absolute commander"?
That means there is only one of a kind!
Everyone knows you can't beat that!
And if you think that the tyrant himself took a day off for brainstorming all these titles, you will be SO wrong!
Why should you do all the hard work by yourself, when you can have an army of ass-kissers with velvet tongues just waiting to polish those buttocks until they shine like spotless porcelain? That is why every supreme majesty has hordes of spineless cowards coming up with the most idiotic ass-kissing ideas just to earn the privilege of being The Absolute Leader's favorite pet:
- Building the greatest statue in the most pharaonic temple to match the monumental grandeur of the Extraordinary Ultimate Genius while starving an entire nation and killing millions just to build it in one year? Check!
- Forcing every single citizen to have the same haircut and the same clothes as The Absolute Supreme Leader and Great Visionary of all the centuries? Check!
- Punishing by death the simple fact of covering or turning facedown the picture of The Eternal Father of the entire nation? Check!
And you may think that a tyrant's life is nothing but boring executions and useless glorious planning but, once in a while, if the country is rich enough and the technology is advanced enough, you will have a tyrant that is actually interested in questions like:
"Who are we?"
"Where are we going?"
"How it will all end?"
The echo of these questions bounces off the walls of the great Hall of Science, smashing down one by one in the head of the Master Scientist.
"I don't know, oh! Absolute Leader and Ultimate Light of the meowing universe. But we now have the ability to find out!"
The one mechanical eye blinks out of sync with its still-biological counterpart, looking attentively at The Supreme leader and Father of the Nation.
A cat as fat as a bagpipe is sitting belly up, uselessly trying to use his sedentary muscle to roll over and sit up. So much for feline grace and elasticity.
The bagpipe cat finally manages to move and says in a very interested tone, "Please, do tell me again about this new machine."
The Master Scientist explains again how the greatest minds of the nations (obviously, not greater than the mind of The Greatest Leader) managed to force a disturbance in the electromagnetic field, allowing particles to travel faster than light. And the accent is on the word particles. Plural. Because it isn't just one particle that they can push through the disturbance; it is many of them! And those said particles (someone's keys, to be more precise) were sent one hour earlier (preventing him from searching for them all over the place), thus achieving time travel after all these years of obstacles and unfortunate accidents.
Small disclosure: In case you do not understand what the Master Scientist means about "obstacles and unfortunate accidents," let me clarify:
You noticed the mechanical stumpy eye that never manages to blink in sync with the normal one? Well, that one was lost in the first stages of the project. A very clumsy accident on the part of the Master Scientist for being stupid enough to correct The Great Leader on the impossibility of building a collider in under one year. And the mechanical paw? Well, another accident, caused by not finishing the plasma core by the deadline The Great Leader had promised to himself. The segmented tail that needs oil every three weeks? Or the rotating ear that never seems to rotate? Well … the results of more and more little, unfortunate accidents that seem to happen all the time. But since nobody wants to lose an irreplaceable head, the glorious vision of The Visionary Leader must keep on marching!
"Your Absolute Highness, more glorious than all the Suns in the universe, after we experimented with the disturbance, we were able to create a portable time machine that allows the wearer to travel to any moment of time. The good news is that we tested on toys, balls, and rats, but the bad news is that every time they reached the time destination, they ended up inconveniently in a mangled puddle of slime."
"Very inconvenient," adds the bagpipe cat, "but I presume all these are minor details? I'm more than sure that you will fix it by the time of my next anniversary. You know how much I like surprises. The nice surprises!"
"Oh yes, glorious sun of the cat universe. Everything is possible under your guidance and infinite wisdom!"
Three more paws to go, one eye, and one ear, thinks the Master Scientist. That is a good reserve in case some more "accidents" happen.
As the Master Scientist is bowing and retreating, the bagpipe cat resumes his belly up position and starts purring a little line of thought:
This time travel smells so good! As good as fish fried in butter and then dipped in cream. Not to say that this was his project idea, conveniently suggested by the Master Scientist, ever since he drowned the previous supreme genius of this nation.
Some people say that controlling the power of the atom is the best power you can have.
Others say that controlling the minds of the subjects and building a system of organized terror is the proper power to have. But the bagpipe cat knows that, one way or the other, these are good enough … for a while.
But controlling time? Now, that is the ultimate power!
Master Scientist had said that this will be "the ultimate weapon of staying in power forever and ever."
Countries? Yes, you can conquer as many as you like.
Subjects? Yes, you can control as many as you can.
But at some point, your time runs out, and some other fat cat will inevitably take your place. At least, that is what the Master Scientist said.
But with the time machine? Every time something or someone threatens his glorious reign through an unfortunate turn of events, all he has to do is go back in time and fix it.
Not only that, but he could travel as far as he wanted in the future, where the solution for immortality would surely be invented, snatch it, and then live forever and ever.
He will be called … The Time Lord!
The emperor closes his eyes and stretches as long as his width.
Oh, he likes this title! And he came up with it all by himself! Or was it the Master Scientist? No, no, he definitely came up with that! (One of the downsides of being a tyrant is that you forget which ideas are y
ours and which come from your underlings.)
But until then, until the time machine passed all these nasty safety trials, he needs someone to make the first jump—someone not so brilliant to get any ideas or ask any questions. Someone who is stupid enough to test it but smart enough to operate it.
And that someone is surely not the Master Scientist.
Because we don't want a brave soul to go back in time and drown his Lordship when he was just a kitten, now, do we?
Or change some other very important minor thing in the past and then … what do you know? The face of the supreme leader on all the walls and buildings will be a cat with a mechanical eye.
No!
We need a useful idiot!
And to get a useful idiot, we need a time travel narrative concealed in some high and righteous purpose. A purpose to capture the attention of the idiots. Not only that, but we also need this narrative to keep the idiot motivated to come back! Something like a mission … something with a goal … something with grandeur in it!
"Hmm, I think I might have a brilliant idea."
