Work Text:
Hello, everyone! I’m currently writing this documentary during my vacation in Saxomania’s capital, Saxon. And over there in the middle of the square in front of the Capitol building, there is a tree, right next to some remains of a statue. It might look like an ordinary tree, but it’s not just a tree. It’s a part of Saxomania’s history, marking the moment when the whole country was freed from chaos and madness, from the reign of a deranged man. You see, if you come closer to it, you’ll find… a corpse. It’s remarkably intact, even though it’s been hanging there for 16 years, and people have been doing things to it and being generally disrespectful. Yes, it’s a real one, and yes, I did see some people beating it with sticks, spitting on it, etc. Now, let’s try to guess what his job is (and extra points if you guess who he is correctly), in one, two, two-and-a-half, and three! If your answer is “a politician” or “a former president,” then you’re absolutely correct! And you earn a bonus point if you guess the man was (drum roll please)… Lumpy! Now, you might have thought,” He may be stupid, but he doesn’t deserve that!” or “How can he even become a politician?!?”, am I right? And if the answer to that is yes, let me explain. (And if the answer is no, also let me explain.)
So, let’s wind back to December 31st, 1999, right before we changed millennia. They were counting down, waiting for the clock to strike midnight. And then the clock strikes midnight. Fireworks exploded into colors in the sky. Everyone was dancing and celebrating. The very next day, on January 1st, 2000, they would see their current president resign live on TV due to recent controversies. And 3 months later, there will be an election to vote for the new president, of course. They had 2 candidates: Lumpy, aka the Lumpy we all know and (not) love, and Lumpy, Lumpy’s twin brother, who’s so smart, even Sniffles is envious of him. The other Lumpy promised “a 2% tax increase for the 10% and a 1% decrease for everyone else, free health care, shorter work hours, an increased budget for education, healthcare, law enforcement, and the fire department, meaning more schools, universities, police stations, hospitals, fire stations, better healthcare, education, law enforcement, and better fire prevention and suppression", during his speech 2 months before the election. And our Lumpy? Nothing. He didn’t even bother to campaign or do anything. No speech, no appearance in public, nothing. He wasn’t even a politician; he’s just a dude who thought, “Oh yeah, let’s randomly campaign for president even though I don’t know what the word 'politics' means!”.
Then, the election date arrived. Approximately 7.8 million people, out of the country’s 8 million population, flooded the voting area. They got interviewed afterwards to predict the result. It was projected that the other Lumpy would win, since 7.6 million people claimed to have voted for him. However, the 200,000 people who claimed to have voted for Lumpy Lumpersmith said they were either trolling, stupid, had misclicked, or were confused. And then, on April 1, 2000, the results were broadcast live on TV. But everyone was bamboozled when the name "Lumpy" flashed on the screen, with an absolutely ridiculous chart of voters: 138% of voters voted in favor of Lumpy, while -38% voted for the other Lumpy. At first, people suspected that Lumpy rigged the election, but later found out that it was a bug in the system. Through the leaked recordings, we know that the employees didn't dare to challenge the result, because they feared it could stir up a civil war.
And, in the first month of the reign, Lumpy went on a trip to Russia to create new ties for a peaceful future, but it all went downhill when he suddenly crashed out and declared war on Russia on live TV, just because Vladimir Putin didn't offer him any tea. “The ties ended even before it started”, commented the translator, Sniffles. And while they’re at war, 3 months later, a set of rules was published for wartime measures, starting with: “All citizens must eat turkey every 5 hours every day.” It seems like a minor inconvenience to the people at first. And another 3 months have passed, and another rule was put in place: “All citizens must dye their hair, fur, and skin and wear clothes with the president’s skin color”. Yet again, it seems like another slightly more shameful rule.
But then in August 2000, another rule was established after a minor riot influenced by a video featuring anti-Lumpyism ideologies, which says: “Any piece of media in any medium, such as, but not limited to: videos, images, paintings, audios, websites, books, articles, etc. has to get the president's approval to get uploaded to the Internet or published. This rule applies to all media made before and after this rule was established.” Explicit contents like that with extreme violence, gore, and sexual content like snuff films, porn, etc. were severely affected, as shown through the 100% drop in sales. Documentaries were also affected; even the most seemingly innocent pieces of work were rejected just because he didn’t like them.
And in October, he outlawed both lawyers and the normal salute, instead, they had to greet each other as “I salute the glorifying vision of Lumpy Lumersmith!” Every single student who was majoring in Law was immediately expelled, all lawyers are fired from their jobs, and the turkey law just extended to outlawing all other types of food, causing agriculture to collapse, imports down by 95%, food processing and livestock farming down by 90%, resulting in $180 billion of damages or 281% of the country’s GDP and even driving the animal to extinction in the country, thus making global turkey prices go up by 200% because of the high demand just from this country all-year long. People are starving, as a result.
In 2001, he ordered the execution of a teenager for treason. The proof? Just a small piece of paper with Morse code on it that says: “Mark wrote this.”. He was promptly executed the next day. Then, a year later, the news of the war came. We lost ⅙ of our territory and 259,000 civilians and soldiers to the Russians, but all the Russians got were barren wastelands from all the fighting. The Russians also suffered some losses: 16000 soldiers died. The economy was in ruins.
And in 2004, as an attempt to restore the people’s faith in the country, he gave a speech in front of the parliament. 312,000 people attended, but when he spoke, they laughed and booed at him. His words were full of lies and unrealistic goals. Then, the broadcast was cut short, and what followed were gunshots. He even pulled out a gun and killed 200 people, and through his orders, the military killed 104,000 people, exactly ⅓ of the original crowd who attended the speech.
And to add on top of that, images and videos of him breaking the law, such as using the old greeting, not touching any turkey and him enjoying those banned content from former government employees, leaked documents talking about a secret operation involving torturing ADHD and normal people to “see if they have blood and to create mind-control pills” from Sniffles, that translator who worked with Lumpy and Putin on live TV, the scientist behind faster-than-light movement and head of Department of Medicine and Biology were circulating on the Internet. The documents acknowledged that there are simply no such pills that exist and that he was looking for a reason to torture them for fun. Sniffles later came out, saying that he was ashamed for even working on such a project, though he might have been forced to do so.
Now, that was the last straw. For the people, for the countries, for absolutely everyone. Then, when the sun had barely risen, at 3 am on 7/9/2004, the remaining 6.5 million people flooded the capital and marched on the streets to the parliament, while scraping blue paint off walls, ripping off cameras used to spy on them, and burning clothes that have even the tiniest bit of the color, as they were followed by writers, who threw ink jars at the walls, musicians, who played so loud they shattered glass windows, journalists, government employers and ⅘ of the army. They marched for 4 hours straight, then at 7 am, when they reached the statue, they pulled it down, then sang L’Internationale. But then, the rest of the army came, but they shot at the building instead of shooting the rioters like Lumpy asked. Then, they all stormed into the building, and that is when a famous photo of a college student, aka. Handy at the time before losing his arm, attempted to throw a makeshift Molotov cocktail at the entrance.
There was no one to stop them because all of the employees had gone on strike a month ago, and some even joined the riot. They came into the 5-story-tall building, and made a mess: thrown papers, smashed portraits, fallen cabinets, chairs sitting where they shouldn't. Journalists took pictures of the mess and people making it, which soon landed a spot in the national newspapers. And then, a lucky journalist got to the fifth floor, where he met Lumpy in a meeting room. Through a leaked video that was recorded simply because he left his tiny camera on, we know that an awkward showdown happened:
"Why would you make civilians eat turkey every 5 hours?" - He asked.
"To ensure that they have enough nutrition." "And yet that caused a famine."
“Uh… It’s just because of the economy!”
“The same economy that got destroyed by that very rule?”
"Uh-”
"Okay, how about the fact that you forced them to wear clothes that have your skin color?"
"I'm just making them wear their national colors."
"But why? Also, I don't think politicians would make their skin color their national color."
“I’m, uh, trying to make people proud of the country-”
“But here we are, in the middle of a riot!”
“Oh, uh…”
"And why would you execute that poor boy?"
"He was planning to riot in Morse code!"
"Not quite, buddy. He only wrote, ‘Mark wrote this. ’”
"And how would you know?"
"I know Morse code, dumbass. Also, many people translated it to be the same thing I just said."
"Uh.."
“And even if he was planning to riot, how can he pull that off? He’s a fucking teenager! He can’t convince anyone to riot with him, at this age!”
“…”
And then, the protesters barged into the room, then the army followed in, and arrested Lumpy on the spot, all while the writers wrote everything they saw, and the musicians played music in the hallway, cheering for the fall of the tyrant. After that, they threw him out of the window.
Then, at 7:00 a.m. on August 9, 2004, a trial took place. But he would come an hour later, looking smug, before calling the lawyers he had hired. No one responded. He called again, but was met with some bad news from his secretary: “Mr. President, your lawyers whom you hired are exiled from the country. Maybe you need some meds to remember anything, after all.” Then the grin disappeared, and colors drained out of his face. Now, if we read the rulebook, it clearly states that lawyers are outlawed. Even without a lawyer, the police, with witnesses and mountains of evidence, have been able to give Lumpy a shocking sentence: over 1000000 death sentences for not eating turkey, 200 life sentences for killing 200 people, a $50 fine for not wearing his skin color, and a $5000 fine for using the old greeting.
He was promptly jailed right after, and they told him the punishment would come soon. He waited for five years, growing more paranoid over time, as he finally realized the damage his rules brought to the country, as the rules also applied to him, since his power was gone. On paper, he’s still the president, but in reality, he has been stripped of his powers, now living a life that, if it were brought up as the punishment for all crimes, not even POWs, who lived through what could be considered hell, would dare to commit.
The reason they took that long to execute him is because of the largely inefficient bureaucracy he had built, and because his birth certificate was saved on a database so old, the tech was stored in a museum, only paper copies remained, and yet it was as tall as a TV, according to the employees in that museum and the police officers who were tasked with it.
Finally, on 8/9/2009, he was brought to a field. While moving, he got tomatoes and eggs thrown at him. He looked so helpless in front of the guns’ barrels that people reported that they almost felt bad for him.
“I almost felt bad for him, but then I remembered he was the same person who killed 200 people in that speech.”, one such person said.
And then, the guns were fired. Bullets came hurling at him. And just after he died, his shins gave up, making him look like he was kneeling, like a last beg for forgiveness done posthumously. But they didn't care; they were happy the tyrant was dead and that they were freed from him, after all. They kicked him down and spat on him.
And today, the corpse was embalmed and hanged on a tree in the middle of the square, next to the remains of the old buildings, to act as a warning to all future presidents and congressmen: to not be petty, hypocritical, childish, and, worst of all, stupid. The other Lumpy was promptly elected after the event and is now doing everything to make his people happy, including doing what he promised and cleaning up the mess our Lumpy left behind. But he still has a long way to go, because we predicted that it would take him 25 years to fully clean up the mess, if he takes 10% of the entire country’s figures. He only dedicated 0.5% to fixing the damage (that means he would take half a millennium to completely undo it.), and he’s planning to increase that to 1%, 5%, then 10%.
The end.
