It came to be one day that Smart Tony, now very old but still very smart, not tired of telling all Americans that they will surly die unless they hide behind masks and suck down a good handful of the newest Pfizer drugs, was escorted to his new home.
“How lovely,” Smart Tony told his handler, who now wore a uniform and had a gun. “Taking care of Smart Tony is like a national pastime, and you finding me a new home that you say will be just the kind of place I wanted for all Americans, that’s good of you, thank you. I hope my new neighbors will be my kind of people, you know, smart and caring like Smart Tony, obviously not as smart and caring as me, which ain’t even possible, but smart and caring enough that they agree with everything I say.”
In fact, they were! It was like a reunion of the smartest and most caring people in all the world, all together in one room, behind bars, and without any misinformers or medical heretics!
Once his handcuffs were removed and the safety bars were closed behind him, he was so pleased to see who was in his new home.
“Rachel in the Meadow!” Smart Tony proclaimed upon seeing his good friend from TV. “How are you doing! It’s been a while since you helped to shut down America and then America shut you down. What you been doing with yourself since then?”
She smiled, seeming very happy. “This place is amazing; you are going to love it!” she said to Smart Tony. “It’s my dream! We can say and do anything we want and no one questions us! And the whole room is a fluid gender bathroom. Anyone can eliminate anywhere! On the walls, the floor, even the ceiling, all genders, everywhere! If this isn’t progress, I don’t know what is. Although, Smart Tony, remember how we talked about the big gas companies and how they ruin the world. Well, that big lug there, he makes more gas than Exxon.”
Rachel in the Meadow pointed to a man urinating against the wall. The man turned and smiled, his hair bright orange and his face full of warts, his fly still down. “Hey, Smart Tony, glad to have you back! Wait till you taste the beans in this joint. Best food ever. The best! I eat them day and night. There’s no bean eater better than me. I’m the best.”
The sight of his former boss made Smart Tony leap for joy. “My Don!” he said. “What a wonderful surprise! So, you say the beans here are good?”
“Good?” Don said. “I don’t know the word good. They’re great! Just like me. I’m great! Been in this cell so long, and now to have all of you join me, wow, we can change the world in here, make some money, keep illegals out, and stuff like that. These bars, they will keep out all the unwanted rapists and murderers and just leave us rapists and murderers to do what we want with no one telling us we're wrong, which we never are. That’s what I call a perfect world! And we can even tell those Chinese people what they can do with themselves behind the safety of these bars. Is China still around? Or did they sink?”
“Sink?” asked Jake the Tap Dancer, who paced around. “How can a country sink? That’s misinformation! In fact, you’re misinformation. Everything in this cell is misinformation. That very fact that I am here is misinformation. I should be out there scaring people. How can I do it from here?”
“The bars, they keep out illegals, so we’ll be safe,” said the Don. “Relax, tap dancer. We’re on the same team now, and behind these bars, we’re safe from scoundrels who criticize us for doing what it takes to make America great and make us great and rich and the best, the best people ever!”
“And the bars keep out COVID, just as well as masks do,” said Rachel in the Meadow. “I keep telling tap dancer that in this place there is no misinformation, since everything we say is true! Right Governor?”
“Of course!” said Ex-Governor New Some, who had been in the back of the cell looking at himself in a mirror. “I passed a law in here that bans all misinformation, bans all people we don’t like from even talking if we think they’re misinformers, bans any bans other than the bans we want to ban. Me and big Don, I used to think he was on the other side, but he’s just like us! We all agree: sometimes you have to flex some muscles and not worry about stuff like the Constitution and free speech and other stuff if you want to change things. Look at my muscles if you don’t believe me,” he said flexing them.
Don flexed his too, and soon enough they were feeling each other’s muscles with great joy.
Except the tap dancer, who remained skeptical, and whose muscles were not so big and swarthy as the other two so he felt a little sheepish. “But if we only talk to ourselves, how can we make a difference? Even if we squelch all misinformation in here, how does that help?”
“How could you say that?” Rachel in the Meadow asked. “We can pee anywhere, gender neutral, and we are safe behind these bars to say and do anything we want. It’s heaven!”
The tap dancer thought about it. “But I don’t like big Don,” he said. “He’s mean.”
At that moment, big Don gave the tap dancer a big Don hug, and everyone cheered. Tap Dancer hugged him back, a few tears welling in the corner of his eye.
"I love you, big Don," the Tap Dancer said.
"Of course you do," said the Don. "Everyone does. Who wouldn't?"
Smart Tony was just so happy to be here in this room with people whose conversations were stimulating and smart and who agreed with him that it wasn’t nice to question nothing he said. Back out in the world, people had started to doubt him. Like when he told the new President to put kids in cages lest a new Omicron Variant FU-2-U that was brewing in Luxenberg start killing everyone, and then suggested nuking Luxemburg. “It’s a small country, no one knows where it even is, so no one will notice when it disintegrates, so it’s scientific, it’s smart, we got to do it.”
For some reason no kids ended up in cages and there weren’t any bombs dropped, and still no one died from FU-2-U, which perplexed Smart Tony who knew they would die soon enough unless he did something bold and scientific, so he found some kids and put them in cages, because he was that smart and caring, and sure enough the very next day a new handler with a gun and uniform rewarded him by putting him in his new home here, which he started to realize was the best place he could be.
“All the professors and doctors I know and who I tell what to say, they agreed with me that unless we cage and kill people we ain’t never going to get rid of FU,” said Smart Tony to them all. “That’s how I know it’s right. When are they ever wrong? When am I ever wrong? We’ll be safe here in this cage, but the rest of the world, FU will kill them all, that’s a guarantee, a promise, it’s science.”
“Hey, I’m a big fan of cages, a big fan,” said the Don. “I only eat eggs from caged chickens.”
“Agreed,” said the New Some. “Any eggs we eat in here are by definition caged, but if you want, I can make an executive order that says all chickens must be caged if they are going to lay eggs.”
“You know what would be a good law, Governor?” Said Rachel in the Meadow. “We should have gender neutral eggs. Why should just women chicken be forced to lay eggs? That’s sexism, it’s racism, it’s not woke at all. We need eggs to be more fluid in their sexual orientation.”
“When I tried to pass laws out there banning anyone from doing anything the new President said, and banning anyone from doing anything I didn’t like, when I forced everyone to get extra vaccines and wear extra masks and not leave their homes and not go to school, all the sudden everyone in my state started questioning me, even though they still love me, so I passed a law to shut them up if they said any misinformation that disagreed with me, and I put a lot of people in jail who dared to disseminate anything I didn’t want to hear, and next thing I know some right wing misinformer with a gun brings me here,” said New Some. “At first I was upset, but then I realized that in here I can pass any law I want, so Rachel in the Meadow, from now on, we’ll have all eggs gender neutral.”
“We are making such progress!” she said. “What do you think, Tap Dancer?”
“Eggs from now on will be misinformation unless they are laid by male chickens,” the CNN anchor declared. “I will say it on TV and make sure everyone knows that it’s the new truth.”
“I declare that science stipulates that only male chickens can lay eggs!” said a jubilant Smart Tony. What progress they were making here, and he only just arrived!
“I like my eggs scrambled with bacon and white toast, lots of white toast, a whole loaf of it, with butter, real butter, the best butter,” said Don. “We should make a law to assure that everyone eats eggs that way, and we can have some men eggs and lady eggs and even eggs from the chickens who can’t decide, just no illegal immigrant eggs.”
The tap dancer, who agreed with Don rarely, had to give him the thumbs up on that and Rachel in the Meadow clapped. New Some took out a pen and started writing the new law.
“Look at us,” smiled Smart Tony. “As they all die out there of FU, because they don’t none of them want to do what I tell them half the time, here we are finally doing what is right and sciency! We don’t need none of them! We got it all figured out and we are making it happen!”
Don and New Some retreated to the back wall to look at themselves in the mirror and compare hair thickness, while Rachel in the Meadow found a new part of the wall to pee on.
All the sudden, from outside of the cage, several guards approached them. They were all wearing masks, and not just one mask, but three!
“Finally,” said Smart Tony. “Smart people who listen to Smart Tony! You men out there, you should be applauded, you are heroes! In the world outside of this cage, the new President, he don’t like no masks, don’t believe in them, say they are a nuisance and foolish. Wait till he and everyone else says that stuff from six foot under! Then they’ll be saying, wish I listened to Smart Tony, that’s what they’ll say. At least here, people is smart and we is all safe.”
“Wait until you see what they are doing,” said Rachel in the Meadow, as the masked guards pulled out syringes from their bags. “They are giving us our daily boosters! Can you imagine? We get a new Pfizer booster every day! Except for Don. They give him a shot of Clorox.”
“Damned right they do,” said the Don. “American made, and it kills everything. Other than my libido. I got the best libido ever. There’s no one with better libido. Ask the ladies. I mean, the real ladies, not the ones like Rachel there. I had a lot of ladies, that much I can tell you. The best ladies!”
“They love me too, Don,” said Smart Tony. “We’re like Adam and Eve in here, God’s agents to create a new society once the world out there all dies from FU and other new variants.”
“Except I’m the Adam with the biggest piece of equipment, let’s make that clear,” said the Don. “And if this is Eve, we got some problems,” he said, pointing to Rachel in the Meadow.
The Tap Dancer wasn’t sure if that was a true statement or misinformation, but when New Some declared it to be law that Don had the biggest equipment and that all the men here were to be renamed Adam, and when Smart Tony declared it to be science, Tap Dancer knew it was true, so he stood on a chair and announced it for all to hear.
“I only wish it had been this easy in California," said New Some "If everyone just did what I said and kept quiet, boy, it would have been one heck of a state!"
“Look at the bright side,” said Rachel in the Meadow. “In this cell we have created everything you dreamed of in California. Daily vaccines forced on us, permanent self-quarantines behind steel bars, people in power setting rules that everyone in this cage has to obey without question, gender neutral bathrooms, fact-checkers who support what we do and erase everyone else, and these nice people wearing masks because they care about our safety.”
“That’s not we are wearing the masks,” said one of the guards, who starting shoving needles in their arms. “We wear them to try to muffle the Don’s gas. And it’s not working.”
“That’s because you’re wearing them wrong,” said Smart Tony.
“How are we supposed to wear them?” asked the guard.
“Different than you are, that much I know, because if they don’t work, that means you’s is doing it wrong, or because other people ain’t wearing them. Usually it’s someone else’s fault.”
“That’s what I always tell my listeners,” said the Tap Dancer. “It’s always someone else’s fault.”
“I totally agree with you, Tap Boy,” said the Don. “I never done nothing wrong. I’m perfect. When something goes wrong, someone else is to blame.”
“Me too!” said Smart Tony. “We are really the same, aren't we! We all hate stupidity, which we define the same way, it's anything that we don't like or anyone who don't like us."
“Stupidity is misinformation,” said Tap Dancer. “In here, we’re all smart. We’re perfect.”
“I’m certainly perfect!” said New Some. “Not only am I perfect, but I’ve never been wrong. Never. I mean, I look in the mirror sometimes, and I say, New, you handsome devil, you are just so damned right, and just so handsome!"
“Me and New-boy are the same that way,” said the Don. “I like to look at myself. It turns me on.”
“Look at us, Big Don,” said Smart Tony. “A guy from Brooklyn and a guy from Queens, two guys who are damned smart and handsome and always right; God must be pretty wise to have put us in here together with these other smart people. We is all the same, and everyone out of the cage, they is all different, they is wrong, we is right, we is smart, they is dumb.”
“I declare that to be law,” said New Some, writing it down.
“But you don’t like gender free bathrooms or cage free eggs,” said Tap Dancer. “Who is going to decide which things to do in our perfect world here?”
“Hey, Tappy, any egg in here is ok with me, so long as it’s scrambled, and Meadow Girl can pee on any wall she wants as long as she don’t pee on me,” Big Don said to him. “Ideas don’t matter. What matters is power and that people listen to what I say and do it and don’t say it’s not so. This is the kind of power I crave, what we got in here.”
“I’ll make sure that anyone who doesn’t agree is shamed,” said Tap Dancer.
“I’ll fire anyone who questions us,” said the Don.
“And I’ll make sure people only read what I tell them to, and in the colleges everyone will have to take my course Shut-Your-Face-And-Listen 101, which is the only science course anyone needs,” said a happy Smart Tony. “I love all of you, and we guys here, we know how to do’s it right, and we will!”
They looked at each other and smiled. “I think it can work,” said Rachel in the Meadow. “There’s only one problem, we’re in here, and the rest of the world is out there, and we have to wait for them all to die before our genius ideas can become the norm.”
“That is a problem,” said New Some. “On the other hand, it may be a blessing.”
“How so?” asked Tap Dancer.
“Until everyone dies, someone out there will try to get in our way and accuse us of not caring and not being scientific,” said New Some. “I like it in here. I've never felt better!"
“Like I said,” smiled Rachel in the Meadow. “This place is perfection. It’s everything we have worked so hard to create. It is nirvana.”
“And I’ll be president again,” said Don.
“No, that would be me,” said New Some.
“We don’t need no President,” said Smart Tony, breaking up the fight before it even started, like he used to done on the Brooklyn schoolyards. “Here’s how things will work here. I’ll tell you’s guys what is scientifically right, Meadow will tell us how great it all is, Tap Dancer will declare everything I don’t say to be misinformation, New Some will make what I say into a law, and you, big Don, you just say and do whatever you want and we’ll tell you that you’re smart and sexy and you got big balls.”
“Not just big balls,” said the Don. “The biggest.”
At that moment, Big Don passed a gallon of gas that nearly knocked everyone out.
“Well,” said Rachel in the Meadow. “We still have some work to do before this world is perfect. Maybe a fan?”
“I deem it to be law!” said New Some.
And on that note, the smartest people on earth shook hands, and they became what they always wanted to be, the most powerful people in their own worlds.
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