G-LtE™: ODE TO THE KING - 2nd Edition
In the kingdom of Gil in a mountainous state, a king lived in his egg shell white palace along a crooked creek where black lions guarded the gate. Unlike most kings’ abodes with moats, high stone walls and drawbridges to deter prying eyes the palace’s imperious expanse was in open view for serfs to see with ultra keen acuity and unbeknown to the king more than a slim minority dubbed the scene an ostentatious monstrosity.
The opulent vista of the palace grounds allowed the king to advertise his wealth for passing serfs to apprise and with his name inscribed conspicuously high on a wall, the scene eliminated doubt to one and all that he was the richest man about. To amplify his royal image a banner bearing the king’s royal crest snapped in the wind to trumpet his lineage as superior to all the rest in Gil’s downtrodden kingdom.
The king, rich beyond compare, strived to continually amass more gold for his engorged asset treasury. His breakthrough to unimagined richness, as believed by local serfs, arose from his sapping precious minerals from a supply line snaking through Gil to a distant monarch’s turf.
When the king was apprehended for the heist, he compensated the offended party at a discounted price and surplus gold he acquired with the ruse was used to grasp more treasures to covet for his personal use.
Throughout Gil innumerable serfs survived in their ramshackle dwellings remarkably void of bling and flair to be enshrouded by winter’s blasting air that disrupted slumbers of those among their shivering numbers.
Unlike the serfs suffering in the cold the king snugly nested at night sunken deep in his thick feather bed with one eye open to continually see and dote on treasures piled in his vicinity.
The serf’s children wailed themselves to sleep at night since births after their meager sups while each day the king’s family gormandized to continually expand their royal girths.
Many luckless serfs in Gil lost their land when they could not pay taxes due. The king bought that land at deflated prices and as his holdings grew he bragged that he owned nearly four score thousand acres in addition to his egg shell white palace he displayed in pretentious view.
The king owned fleets of chariots his servants drove. Those conveyances bore his insignia in bold, the same as the one on his stable along the crooked creek where his regal palace housed riches from his unrelenting clutching for gold.
The sleek white chariots were dispersed throughout Gil to give the king multiple eyes and ears, and nothing remained secret to him to make serfs tremble in fears. They believed that if they provoked the king in any way they or their family would lose jobs or suffer other devastating fates from orders barked at the palace with its lion guarded gate.
Real or imagined it mattered not because the pervasive perception of the king’s choice to do as pleased preserved his iron fisted control over Gil’s perpetually down trodden lot.
The king crowed that on any given day, one way or another, more than 50% of Gil’s serfs depended on him for their paltry pay. His recurring reminder of economic sway was designed to maintain his grip in an inordinate way. He called the tune for Gil’s legal entity including the tethered esquires certified for skills in deceit, subterfuge, and perfidy.
A prized distinction for the king was his doctorate degree garnered with his wealth from Gil’s university wanna be although he had not demonstrated notable academic agility. The serf’s schools were under his unrelenting thumb, the church was too where serfs went to pray, and he even controlled local news of the day.
News control arose after the king’s young son ran amuck by transporting forbidden stash into Gil before shooting it all up and parlaying the excess into glittering cash. The son’s nab was followed by pampered rehab in a posh resort, a punishment reserved for Gil’s elite unlike blistering treatment metered out to penniless serfs caught with illicit snort.
After the stash incident involving the errant son, the king hastened his emissary to order the kingdom’s crier never to utter words to defame the royals’ name or to any disseminate other news to his disdain. From that day hence the crier dutifully complied because for him to remain gainfully employed the king must never be annoyed.
When the king was questioned about his heavy hand throughout Gil’s pie he always feigned innocence replete with abject deny. The serfs believed he operated behind a curtain pulling strings and levers to ensure that his control-orientated endeavors always payed off dead certain.
It was the sovereign’s modus operandi to deploy surrogates to relay preemptory orders of the day. If sticky blowback occurred he issued retractions with explanations that his representatives had committed unintended translational infractions.
One more days than not, in the early morn the king sped to Gil’s main eatery in his number one marked chariot where supporters had assembled dutifully to tolerate him to perform.
He predictably boasted of recent acquisitions of treasures galore, he usually poked rasping fun at some luckless serf, and before leaving he always delivered his special brand of jest making claque members roar knowing that if they did, free breakfasts from the king would be secured.
The day finally arrived when the king lost control of the kingdom’s news. The time tracked with advent of the information highway with truth permeating remote hollows and byways.
Now, with clicks of a mouse, electrons prance on silicon chips for Gil’s computers to hum, and what had been a chronic deterrent to shedding chains of repression has irreversibly come undone.
With serfs more in the know new found accountability emerged to uncork freedom to surge. When that fateful development erupted the king and his coterie exhibited stressful alarm about changes Gil’s computers had constructed.
The reason be that informed serfs everywhere wield substantial clouts to make it exceedingly harder for today’s royals to get their way with unwanted incursions of their gargantuan snouts.
As applies to mortals all, Gil’s king will eventually morph to worthless litter, not anything of enduring value associated with mesmerizing glitter. Gil’s serfs don’t view the king’s riches with envy, lust or jealously because they know that worldly treasures in storage never substitute for purpose-driven moorage. Serfs realize too that what truly counts in the end, be it for a king or those without regal peerage is contributions beneficial to fellow men, not expansive collections of treasures bequeathed to next of kin.
All the above relates simply to what Gil’s serfs say and similar to many stories told a fortuitous end game may yet unfold. Hopefully, the king will do something laudably bold to set conditions straight. A fitting gesture for the dire occasion would be to add his considerable political weight to aid Gil’s serfs fearlessly battling the State’s DOE invasion.
The choice is solely the mighty king’s to make. He either supports Gil’s vulnerable children at stake, who are the serf’s invaluable treasures, or he is a willing supporter of the contemptuous State. To aid the children would be an honorable memorial into time immemorial unlike his egg shell white palace with lions guarding its gate along that crooked creek near Alice.
~~ Author and Source on File ~~