Proudly Inerrant — Chapter 2

Preamble: This the second chapter of a serialized science-fiction novellette concerning failures of fidelity in the transmission of culture. (Previously: Chapter 1)

PROUDLY INERRANT
by Cheeseburger Brown

PART I, Chapter 2.

The mayor of mayors comed over. He was upset. That's when I telled him about what Candy or Hardy had sayed about the problems of victory but he wasn't even slightly mollified but rather abjectly fucked up in the emotions.

I was all, "Mayor-mayor, what's up?" and invited him to sit. I have pillows for the purpose. "Can I pour you a cup of tea?" I poured him a cup of tea.

He pushed it aside. "I have no time for your rituals, douche."

"Tea can soothe the mental tummy and unclench the literal anatomy."

"I'm not religious," he argued.

I shrugged. "Suit yourself. There's trouble in the city?"

He nodded desperately and goed on to say about one of those normal problems that the city peeps faith is an ultra-new and terrifying punishment from Causation Prime but turns out to be recorded in non-circular historicological books from the classical ages which douches such as myself are sexless enough to piece together and read. I choosed a volume from the shelf and unrolled it carefully across the reading desk where the light was good.

I peered and the mayor of mayors peered over my shoulder. "What does it say?" he sayed.

The city definitely had a pox. An encrappening in the observance of youth variolation ceremonies had accumulated into a killer miasma preying on the mature. "I hate to have to lecture you again about variolation," I hated to have to say, "but it's a way meaningful sacrifice in the eyes of the cooties."

"Childs die," the mayor of mayors membered me. "Every year childs die. The childs of important peeps!"

"Lo, but it's minor death, common as pebbles. Without incurring the requisite minor deaths we risk awakening a wraith of real death: and so like therefore fertile peeps die in dozens, poxed beyond repair."

"Are you reading that from the book or is it just you saying?"

"It's a bit of both."

The mayor of mayors' face lighted up. He had a tinkening! "Maybe a mass sacrifice of healthy childs would appease! We could rig a lottery, and make them look all busted by painting their faces poxy."

I shook my head. "That's not how cooties roll."

"Darkwins!" he sweared. His head drooped. But then he looked at me out the corner of one eye. "Ahem. How are your experiments with rotted vegetables going?"

I smiled. "Let me dump your tea, Mayor-mayor, and I'll refill it with alcohol."

"Thank you, gentle douche. Faith, in most countries the douches never have the ear of their local mayor, let alone the mayor of mayors. But I tink -- as much as your malarkey is the greater part silly -- that there are seeds of the real causal facts in what you say."

I sitted back and watched him enjoy his drink, eyes closed with satisfaction. I prodded him. "Don't the findings of the founders member you to heed douches at your peril, and shit?"

"The founders had forgetted alcohol," smiled the mayor's mayor. He opened his eyes. "And, therefore, perspective."

I poured myself fresh tea. "What does your perspective show you?"

"History is a line, not a ring. Change is possible. The findings are…not without flaw."

"Blasphemy," I sayed. I leaned forward and knocked my cup against his, a classical ritual he always finded startling.

He looked around quickly then chuckled before his expression becomed all business again. "So, it's the normal prescription for pox then, is it?"

"Exactly."

He started humming aimlessly. "Um. Member me how it goes?"

I sighed and turned around to draw the sheet music from my shelves. "You way should let me teach you to read," I sayed.

"People would tink I was gay."

I nodded. "Gotcha-gotcha. Popularity is way important when you're the mayor's mayor. You've sayed all that before. Refresh your cup?"

He maked a show of looking toward the window and the angle of the sun. "Well, maybe there's time for just one more go," he sayed, offering his cup forward. "The puberty parade begins soon but I don't factually make my appearance until the very end."

"It looks like a swell bunch this year, verily."

He nodded. "My sexist advisors advise me we may have a fertility rate as high as one in twenty. I don't care what their god says, we'll out-populate those valley bastards yet."

He holded up his cup and I holded up mine and we knocked them together again.