Little Robot in a Giant City

I submit to you my second entry in the flash fiction writing contest I entered. Again, I did not score so well. The assignment was to write political satire, and, honestly, I could hardly believe that one of my judges disliked the piece because I did not explain what it meant, even though in my story description (which contestants are required to include on a title page), I declared that this was an allegory. A writer does not explain his/her use of symbolism in the story. That is for class, workshops, and literature circles. That’s where the fun lies in reading such things–sharing ideas with others, afterwards. I am not trying to say this piece is perfect or even good, but I am saying that the reasons given as to why it was poorly received are crap. I am miffed about his, but I’m not angered by the judges distaste for my work, I am angered that I actually paid money to enter a competition in which I was judged by someone who doesn’t know what the f**k they are talking about. Anyway, with out further ado:

The Midas Odyssey

Mr. Midas was a farmer of unprecedented skill. He raised the healthiest sheep, and those sheep produced the best wool, and they were so happy that they reproduced more like rabbits, allowing Mr. Midas to often trade the extra livestock for a great wealth of goods. The entire tribe loved Mr. Midas. A time came when he needed so much land for his sheep and wealth of goods that there was no longer enough land for the tribe to live, and the tribe was forced into war.

They needed more land to live, but the other tribes did not want to give or share. The tribal leaders and community came together to discuss their problems. They helped each other understand that Mr. Midas’s wealth caused their problems. They went to him and said that he must share the land he claimed as there was not enough for the tribe, and they had tired of war. He refused. The tribe granted him some sheep and goods, took the rest, and exiled him forever.

Over the years, as Mr. Midas moved from place to place, people in various parts of the world fell in love and gave birth to children. An Indian man had children with a Chinese woman; a Japanese person with an English person; a French person with a native North American Indian; an aboriginal South American with a Spanish plantation owner. Eventually these people, or their descendants, made their way to living in the United States of America.

Mr. Midas also made his way to the U.S. after, once again, being driven out of a community in which he had claimed more rights to property than there was to give. He learned what a bank was, and lawyers, so he found some partners to start his own bank, all of which he bought out of the business. “Ha! Come get me this time! You’ll never have my wealth from again!” Mr. Midas thought to himself, and rightly so, as there was no such provision in the law to keep a bank from acquiring more assets from the community than there was to give.

One year, Mr. Midas realized he had grown old, quite old. He decided that no one would have his wealth, and he would have a little fun at the same time.

“Mr. Midas!” screamed the bank manager. “Surely, you are not robbing your own bank!”

“Indeed I am!” he said from his wheelchair, gun in hand, clear tubes leading from his nose to an oxygen tank hanging from its chair sling.

Mama Shifflett, a local barber making a deposit, dropped her scissors in terror while fumbling in her purse.

Maria Patricia Cheng picked up Mama Shifflett’s scissors. She stepped across the polished bank floor with a shy, closed, and conservative walk. “There, there, Mr. Midas. I’ll take care of everything.”

“See,” Mr. Midas rasped. “You all could learn something from this fine, hard-working specimen of a packy-jap-back-chink-paddy.”

Maria placed her hand on his frazzled head of hair and allowed her hand to fall, giving one gentle stroke to his head. She whispered in his ear, “relax now dear. I’ll take care of everything.” It wasn’t what she said, or even her tone, but her dark chuckle that alerted Mr. Midas, who tried to turn his head to see what Maria was on about, but an old man was like an old idea; no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t make it work anymore, despite how creative you tried to be. With a casual demeanor worthy of the greatest deviants of history, Maria reached out with the shears and snipped the tube to Mr. Midas’ oxygen tank.

Mr. Midas panicked. He drew his emergency device from his inner pocket and mashed the button to summon his personal guard, the man who had followed him in. The guard strode with urgency towards Mr. Midas, reaching into his suit jacket. He could have been reaching for a replacement tube or a handgun, but Maria no longer knew fear. With the defiance of every rebellion in every culture she inherited, she knocked Mr. Midas’ oxygen tank onto the floor. She heel-smashed the flow valve with the fury of the entire world, simultaneously destroying it and her shoes. The compressed air escaped with violence, propelling the tank across the floor and through the entryway door, leaving a perfect hole where the bank’s business logo formerly sat. The sounds of chaos poured in from the street.

Save for Mr. Midas, who struggled in his powered wheel chair, no one moved, not even his guard. It appeared as if time had stopped around him. The people in the bank stood motionless, and watched Mr. Midas struggle, fall to the cold, stone floor, twitch a few times, and die. His gun lay near his cold, dead fingers. Maria kicked it over to a bank security guard, who summarily unloaded it.

After an eternity of silence, a teller spoke up, “Um, Ms., um…”

“Maria,” Maria said.

“Yes, that’s it. What should we do now?” asked the teller.

“Give the money back,” she answered.

“But, that money belongs to Mr. Midas.”

“No, it doesn’t. It never did. He did not make that money; we did—all of us. We just spent it on him after we made it. The problem is that he never spent it back, like he was supposed to. That is why you can’t afford a working car, even though you work in a business where the walls are, literally, decorated with gold.”

Maria, confident she had fulfilled her life’s mission, went home. Everyone else felt exhausted and confused. They knew they had been given a chance of a lifetime, a chance to make the world better, but they were so tired and the responsibility held great, crushing weight. They went home to sleep on it, and in the morning, they forgot Maria’s name before they arrived at work.