The Pied Piper of Hamactor

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The Pied Piper of Hamactor

Once upon a time in the foggy village of Hamactor, on the banks of the Patomybac River, the townspeople were sore distressed. “Rats are eating our economy,” they said. “What are we to do?” Mayor Jimee gave Sunday night sermons blaming Prince Saudee for the malaise, but to no avail. The cry rose up, “Is there no way to drive the rats away so that we can again be prosperous?” With a crash the door to the Hamactor Theater flew open, and out stepped Ronee, the most beloved of the Hamactors. “I know an enchanted piper, Laugher the soothsayer, who can drive the Rats away!” The townspeople, interested but cautious, asked “But how could we pay him? The rats have eaten all of our goods!” Ronee, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “That’s the beauty of Laugher’s wisdom. Without the rats, there will be an explosion of wealth, and we can pay him and still have plenty left over.” The townspeople were greatly excited that there could be some much gain with no pain. Jimee cried out “Don’t listen to him! It’s all an act!” But when Ronee, in his folksy, lovable manner, said, “There you go again!” the townspeople rose up and acclaimed Ronee the new Mayor of Hamactor.

Being the great communicator that he was, Ronee soon had a message to Laugher, who lived across the river in the village of Suplai. The townspeople gathered by the Patomybac to watch as Laugher arrived with great fanfare from the Suplai side of the river. Laugher’s voice echoed across the square, “Let me work my Suplai Side magic and there will be prosperity for all! You’ll be able to pay me and still have more money than you have now!” Ronee beamed with pride at the hope he had brought to his people, but the moment was spoiled when a gruff voice was heard from behind his robes. It was the evil dwarf Stocmun, who shouted, “If you listen to Laugher you’ll be cursed! He’ll steal the love of your children!” “Silence Stocmun!” cried Ronee, and pulled a magic ray gun from his belt. Stocmun was instantly struck mute! The townspeople were so impressed that they nicknamed Ronee “Ray Gun” and honored him by giving all of his descendants priority use of Hamactor’s dock on the Patomybac, which came to be called Ronee “Ray Gun” Heir Port.

With the morning in Hamactor Laugher’s music started wafting across the town, and soon the rats were seen to be moving out. Jimee’s clan shouted “they were starting to leave anyway!” but nobody was listening. With the rats gone, it was now time to pay the piper.

Part 2: TooYoo’s Axe Cuts

While life was definitely better without the rats, the townspeople were quickly getting used to their new prosperity and couldn’t abide the thought of sacrificing any of it to pay Laugher. He was eventually driven out of the town by the soothsayer guild. What the townspeople didn’t understand was that the only real effect of Laugher’s music was to drive the rats to reproduce at an ever increasing rate. Jorjee, who took over as mayor after Ronee retired, was concerned enough about the growing population of rats outside of town to ask the people for axes to kill the rats, but this made the people angry because they had read on his lips a promise of no new axes. Thus Bilee, one of Jimee’s clan, became the mayor. His approach was to lead expeditions to collect the rats and lock them up in a big box. This started to work, and the townspeople began to hope that the rat problem was solved once and for all. Unfortunately, when it came time for Bilee to retire, his apprentice, Woodee, called Owl, was overheard babbling about the box that Bilee had used to lock up the rats. Thus the townspeople instead elected TooYoo, Jorjee’s son, whose praise for Laugher caused the townspeople to fondly remember Ronee and his wizard. Soon the strains of Laugher’s music were again wafting through the town, but this time the rats didn’t flee. Indeed, not only did the population of rats up the river start to grow again, but the rats locked up in the box soon exploded out of it. The townspeople started to get uneasy, but they still trusted TooYoo, whose folksy ways reminded them of their beloved Ronee. They allowed TooYoo to let Laugher keep playing. The result was a terrible tragedy. The more Laugher played, the more the rat population exploded. And no longer were the rats content to stay up the river where they had been. When some of them saw that their fellows had escaped from the locked box, they started joining them back in Hamactor. “Don’t worry, axe cuts will kill them!” shouted TooYoo, but the more axe cuts they took, the more the rats advanced, slowly but surely.

Conclusion: The Great Rat Session

One day the children woke up, and their parents were all gone. “Where are they!” they cried as one. “They’ve left for the sunny land of Floree, duh!” said Owl. “They got sick of the rats and the axes, and decided to let you deal with them!” And everywhere the children looked, there were rats – in the storeroom, in the armory, in the gardens, in the workshop, in the alchemy lab, in the schoolhouse. “Where are we ever going to get the axes we need to kill these rats?” And so it happened that Stocmun’s curse came true. The children hated their parents for the blight they had imposed on their lives. “How could they have done this to us!” they said. “What were they thinking?” Town councils were held that were so exclusively focused on the rat problem that they came to be called Rat Sessions. The children grew increasingly angry with each new Rat Session, until during the Great Rat Session the children resolved to invade Floree to get axes from their parents. The former townspeople of Hamactor were pulled from the lives of leisure, and as a sign of humiliation were forced to endlessly repeat the ancient, cryptic chant of servitude, “Yew-Won-Fur-Eyes-Wiz-At?” And gone from their lives forever was Laugher, the Pied Piper of Hamactor.

Credits

Jimee: James Earl Carter

Ronee: Ronald Wilson Reagan

Jorjee: George Herbert Walker Bush

Bilee: William Jefferson Clinton

Woodee (called Owl): Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.

TooYoo: George Walker Bush

Stocmun: David A. Stockman

Laugher: Arthur B. Laffer, Sr., PhD

Prince Saudee: Crown Prince Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud

Children: Future electorate of the United States of America

Townspeople: Current electorate of the United States of America,