The Fear
You can get the Fear, but don’t let the Fear get you.
It was the year 3021, and the state of Utopia had endured a king for nearly thirty years. Not one born of bloodlines or ancient rites, but of algorithms, spectacle, and cruelty. He ruled, not from a castle, but from a black glass tower in the heart of the state’s capital. His name was King Greggor, and he had inherited the crown from his father—who seized it in a blitzkrieg of soundbites, slogans, and iron certainty. A media mogul turned self evangelized defender of the galaxy, Greggor’s father made the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump look like, well… ancestors. If anything, the moguls of the millennium before were but innocent ants to the monstrous roach of society that the Greggor Dynasty and its establishment had become.
Greggor was a king of circular answers and profitable punishments. A king who hated questions and distrusted anyone who wouldn’t ignore logic and reason to maintain the status quo. But, despite his best efforts, Greggor had a court of Jesters.
Nobles and generals, scientists, economists and scholars of the law, King Greggor had inherited a court of some of the sharpest minds in history. To hide their forward-leaning socioeconomic status, they dressed as clowns and ferries who danced, laughed, and cracked crude jokes in the palace halls. To the outside world, they were entertainers. But secretly, these were his peoples chance at holding on to life—learned men and women of towering intellect who hid their wisdom behind slapstick and wordplay. It was quite the disguise.
Quality of life in the kingdom had been stagnating for the past twelve years and now was at an all time low. As times in the kingdom began to sour, and to avoid the ever-prying eyes of the media—never mind the spies—the jesters of the court began to give their advice to the King in riddles, satire, and parody. The members of the court had grown surly and isolated in their old age. They were far more interested in testing the King’s wit and moral steel now than they were with progress towards a future they knew they wouldn’t be around to enjoy.
And, like the fool that he was, Greggor began to ignore them.
“Speak clearly or shut up,” he would bark. “Speak like people, not like gods.”
He hated the notion of intelligence on its face. Not of average minds, but of exceptional ones. Never to be outdone even by a little, King Greggor became more and more disconnected from the people who could remind him the world was vast and complicated, and who could remind him that some things were out of his control. He started to claim that brilliance was just a dressed-up form of arrogance, and anyone too clever was dangerous. And when they asked him if perhaps his best men should be dangerous—after all there were many states and nations that had something less than a kind eye on the cornucopia of social treasures the kingdom had amassed in the centuries leading up to King Greggor’s rule—he could not once, even for an instant, think of his people or anyone but himself and declared the question itself dangerous, and therefore illegal.
And so, his kingdom began to crumble.
The jester’s warned him time and time again. Day in, and day out. They spoke of fractures in the economy. Of rising movements in the south. Of food supplies dwindling, and infrastructure degrading. One day, Dr. Jape—an older jester, face painted with a permanent grin—performed a skit dressed as Greggor himself, shouting orders while blindfolded and wearing earmuffs. The audience laughed, nervously, but Greggor just donned a pair of headphones and quietly sat through the play, listening to his favorite album.
Despite the court’s increasingly imminent advice, half the country had been reduced to burning rubble by the fall harvest—cities and farms were torn between loyalty and revolt. Greggor blamed foreign spies, environmental activists, even ghosts. His speeches began to wane away from the issues facing the nation and degrade into arbitrary demands for displays of loyalty, displays of sacrifice, and displays of public outrage. Still, the jesters came each night to perform. Fewer each time, but enough to fill the air with a solemn sense of obligation. They juggled and joked, hinting desperately that the walls of their very own empire were crumbling.
But Greggor wouldn’t listen. He wanted to stay the course. Changing anything now meant he had been doing things wrong his entire life, and he simply couldn’t handle a referendum on himself of that magnitude. The King would rather see his people’s lives degrade into ashes than sustain a change in the social order—a change that might find him placed somewhere other than the top.
It was winter when the Tower fell. The rebellion marched through the capital slaying townspeople and police alike. The soldiers had deserted, many had switched sides. Most people had already left. And the jesters? They removed their costumes. They met the rebellion at the gate to the castle.
“Sorry it took us so long, Sir!” One soldier barked to a jester, cap still in hand.
The jesters had all gathered into a crowd, they grumbled with humility and approval, slowly taking the rebel troops into their arms. The troops passed out guns and water to the jesters, as they all turned towards the King. Greggor, now cornered in his throne room, stared at all of them.
“You lied to me!” he cried.
“We told you the truth. A thousand, neigh, a million times!” the jesters replied in a chorus of dissent.
Greggor sank into his chair. “I just didn’t want to fail. That’s my only fear”
A jester dressed all in black nodded. “You can get the Fear. But don’t let the Fear get you.”
And in that moment, Greggor understood. He was afraid of failure. And, of course, a King cannot be afraid of anything, so we see now: Geggor had quite a problem. But it was too late. The throne was taken. The tower emptied. The country had moved on without him.
Without The Fear.
The Fear
Kind: MP3 audio
Size: 11,248,325 bytes
Duration: 04:41
Audio channels: Stereo
Sample rate: 44.1 kHz
Bit Rate: 320kbps mp3