The Archfornicator of Canterbury

8 The Royal National Herald

The Royal National Herald was Bulimia's leading newspaper. It was also the only newspaper. Politically active agricultural students had at one time tried to start publishing a newsletter. Soon after, the Royal Secret Police paid them a visit and in no uncertain terms let it be known that it would behoove them to concentrate on their studies instead of subversive activities such as the spreading of knowledge. The editor-in-chief was invited for a tour of the Secret Police headquarters, and was never seen again.

In this particular edition, the front page was taken up by an article praising the efficiency of Bulimian farmers and their unfailing capability to exceed the production quotas set in the five-year plan of the Ministry of Agriculture. The article was accompanied by several photos of smiling muscular farmers posing in front of their tractors, which glistened and gleamed in the sun as if they had just been driven off the assembly line and given a thoroughly polished waxing.

Bulimia did not in fact have a Ministry of Agriculture, nor did the farmers have production quotas to exceed. The only farming-related activity that was practiced the country was yak herding. There were no five-year plans. There was, however, a simple explanation for the front page story.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, some enterprising former Party members smuggled the Pravda story generator out of the country. By some quirk of fate, the story generator ended up in Bulimia. The Minister of Porn and Propaganda struck a deal with the smugglers, exchanging the story generator for a six-pack of fermented yak's milk and five American dollars. The inclusion of the latter caused some controversy, as the five-dollar bill was in fact an exhibit at the Royal National Museum. Nevertheless, the exchange was completed and the story generator was installed in the basement of the Royal National Herald building in downtown Nuevo Saunabad.

The story generator was an imposing piece of machinery. It was an impenetrable jungle of pipes, valves, vacuum tubes, wires and flywheels, and stood several meters high. Since nobody would have been able to put it back together if it had been dismantled, an annex of the building had to be demolished before the generator could be lowered into the basement with an impressive number of pulleys. The generator was powered by steam, originally produced by burning dried cow dung, but since there were no cows in Bulimia, yak dung had to be substituted. It didn't take long for the newspaper staff to figure out that it would be a good idea to connect the exhaust to the building's chimney and not let it fill up the basement and subsequently the rest of the building.

The output console stood proudly apart from the rest of the generator. It had a typewriter keyboard, several Nixie tubes, and a daisywheel printer which produced the output. Amazingly enough, it could produce output in the Latin alphabet as well as Cyrillic, probably because it had been used to generate pamphlets for export as well. The generator was used and the console manned on those days when there was nothing much happening in the state of Bulimia. Consequentially, the generator was being used almost every day.

Several floors above the basement, Benjamin Mousse-O'Leaney, the editor-in-chief of the Royal National Herald, practiced his putt on the wall-to-wall carpeting of his office, trying to sink the ball into a plastic cup tipped on the floor below a framed portrait photo of the King. Judging by the number of golf balls scattered around the office, his putt could definitely do with some practicing. Mousse-O'Leaney was just about to swing once again when the phone rang. Undeterred, he hit the ball, which bounced off the cup and rolled under his jacaranda desk. He leaned his putter against the desk, sat down on his chair and answered the phone.

"Mousse-O'Leaney."

"Hello is this the Royal National Herald. Could I speak to the chief editor please."

"Speaking."

"Listen carefully I am not going to repeat this. There is a bomb in the Cathedral. It will go off in exactly 15 minutes. Good day."

"Hey wait a mi–"

The caller hung up the phone. Mousse-O'Leaney looked at the receiver with a perplexed facial expression and put it down. After a moment of contemplation, he picked it up again and dialed a number.

"Peterson. Listen I want you to get off your butt and go to the King Square right now. Take the kid with you what's his name. Yeah him. Make sure he brings plenty of film. Have him take a couple of photos of the Cathedral. We don't have enough stock photos of it. Well in case he gets lost. Look Peterson just do it will ya. And don't get too close to the Cathedral. I don't want any photos with the spire cut off."

With that, he hung up the phone. Smiling to himself, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a Cuban cigar and a lighter. Leaning back, he turned the lighter on and gazed into its blue flame. After what seemed like an eternity, but in actuality was something like five seconds he lit the cigar, leaned back and took a long puff, letting the smoke out in a slow exhale.

The Archfornicator of Canterbury by Olli-Pekka Rinta-Koski
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.