The Follies of Man Episode 1

Napoleon Bonaparte

     I’m Roland Grompdigger, my friend and nominal boss is Grover Bostarus. We work for CBS, Centauri Broadcasting Systems. We specialize in alien reality programs. Grover is the face of the program, also known as the anchor. If Grover is the anchor, as the Chronicler, I’m the ship. In the old days we would have had a team consisting of the anchor, an executive producer, an investigative reporter or reporterett, a camera man or woman, a sound woman or man and a stylist, gender undetermined, plus some kind of administrative assistant. Well, it isn’t the old days. Now it’s just Grover, me and my helium crystal computer. One thing hasn’t changed from the old days. The anchor still holds the ship back. Sorry, a little Chronicler’s humor.

     Maybe I should be angry at Grover; after all he gets all of the attention and public acclaim. But given who the public are, I can forego their acclaim. And besides, my purpose is to be a chronicler. It’s a position I was trained for and I’m good at it. I’ve been trained to absorb vast amounts of data, when it is subjected to the appropriate algorithms the data can be used to create 3D chronicles of events. In a sense, I’m a 3D camera with a brain for a hard drive. While I like to think of my abilities as phenomenal, I do have my limits. Fortunately, if I overload on data and suffer factual constipation, I can download the excess to my HC computer. I know factual constipation is a sophomoric phrase, but when I compared it to fecal constipation, at last year’s Chronicler’s conference, I got a big laugh and three free drinks at the lounge that evening.

     Originally reality programs revolved around beings in our solar system. The genre was a huge success, consistently capturing the top ratings for the three to fifteen year old demographic that controls most spending. Shows like Duck Realm captured everyone’s attention and Infantile Bo Bo made the audience cry with laughter and touching, Sappy Bo Bo, mommy-moments. But, then the Great Deceit of 2510 was uncovered when Edward Sleazeden released the GSA papers.

     Sleazeden had been hired as a low level contractor by the Galactic Spy Agency. As a low level contractor he would not, ordinarily, be given access to all secretes being kept by the GSA. However, Sleazeden was no ordinary low level contractor, he was competent. After watching his GSA boss struggle with syncing a desktop computer running Pain 8.1 with a new pPad, Sleazeden sneakily offered to help. Being thoroughly frustrated, his boss jumped at the offer and didn’t hesitate to provide his password when asked. Sleazeden got the ostensibly incompatible devices cooing like doves.

     Like most senior managers, his boss used the same password for everything and thus Sleazeden had the keys to the kingdom. While surfing through the GSA files, Sleazeden made his world changing discoveries. The beloved reality shows were being manipulated by their producers to create suspense and conflict. Who knew? And, even more disheartening, Infantile Bo Bo was, in fact, a 23 year old dwarf, and the men of Duck Realm were actually women in male drag. Upon learning these disarming facts, Sleazeden felt compelled to release his ill-gotten information to the normally uncaring population. He released the information on 10/10/10, a day of infamy. For once, the population did care about the deceit. The GSA closed all of their window blinds and disappeared. Sleazeden found refuge in a country with an abundance of e-mail brides. The government promised investigations. But, on 10/13/10 the first round of play-off games were broadcast and the population moved on, but the old reality shows were gone forever.

     CBS was fortunate, in a way. They hadn’t produced any of the formerly popular shows, so they escaped most of the fallout. Unfortunately, they hadn’t produced any popular shows at all, let alone the disgraced ones, so they were desperate for a hit. Luckily for CBS, Sheldon Parade came along.

     Sheldon first postulated his theory of multi-dimensional time travel just after the Sleazeden hoopla died down. As it turns out, Sheldon had eyes for Rose, the daughter of CBS’s President, Charlie Thorn. Before anyone expected it, Rose Thorn became Rose Parade. Wanting to please his new father-in-law and being ignorant of its value, Sheldon agreed to sign over the rights to all broadcast events that could be created by the application of his theory. Charlie was greedy and didn’t want to pay for the rights, but after all, it was his daughter’s husband, and the legal department warned him that consideration was mandatory for the contract to be binding, so Charlie gave him a small advance plus residuals.

     At first, the other networks laughed at CBS. They thought the time-travel paradox would make Sheldon’s discovery useless and a big embarrassment for CBS. You’ve heard the paradox; if Jenna traveled back in time and kicked her grandfather, George, so hard that he couldn’t procreate, how could she have been born in the first place to go back and kick him? This is a rhetorical question, so stop trying to answer it. What the other networks missed was the “multi-dimensional” part of Sheldon’s theory.

     It seems we can visit the past and not worry about the paradox. Because, it’s not our dimension’s past that is visited, it’s the human dimension’s past that is affected. We can return to our dimension without impact. Of course our visit might impact the other dimension’s future, but what do we care, and besides they won’t know that anything changed. As a bonus, Sheldon’s theory took account of the fact that time doesn’t flow in a straight line. It’s not a chain where the current moment is linked to a preceding moment, the past, and the next moment, the future. Rather, time is more like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Everything is in it, but it looks like a mess and makes no sense until you grasp an item, a moment, and then you grasp another moment and another, which gives you the impression that one moment, was linked to another when in actuality each moment was a random occurrence. The beauty of this arrangement is that we can go to any point in time and space in an instant.

     Charlie Thorn and his programing department soon came up with a new, scandal free, concept for reality shows; find historical events in the Sol system, send a team to chronicle the event and then produce 3D holo shows for the public’s pleasure. No one in the audience had easy access to the Sol system’s history and, therefore, couldn’t question the authenticity of the shows. The first attempts were disasters, however, as demonstrated by the Dang incident.

     Centaurians are anatomically similar to humans. We are both bipedal, have feet, arms, hands and only one head. But in other respects we are different. One of our teams created quite a stir when they opened their MDTT portal and found themselves facing a Chinese Emperor and surrounded by troops armed with spears, swords and bows. They had hoped to reach an agreement with the emperor to chronicle the building of a wall he was planning. The anchor tried to communicate with the emperor but with little success. All he got out of the conversation was the emperor’s name, Dang. Dang didn’t know what to make of the strange creatures before him, so he made a regal decision and ordered his troops to slaughter the creatures. Realizing their peril, the crew immediately escaped through the portal with their tails between their legs. Oh, by the way, tails are one of the differences. The most lasting benefit of the incident was the addition of “Dang if I’ll do that again,” to our lexicon.

     CBS realized live crew’s weren’t going to work. Besides, everyone in the industry had adopted, “Dang if I’ll do that again,” as part of their employment contracts. CBS needed a way to surreptitiously record events. This gave manas a new opportunity, provided they wanted it. But, few Centaurians, manas or not, would welcome the chance.

     Centaurians are a sedate and ancient society. Most of us don’t do much, mainly because we don’t need to. We have a robust robotic economy that provides enough wealth for all of us to meet our day-to-day needs and be quite comfortable. Basically we have two classes: those that want more and those that don’t. The don’ts tend to pursue activities that bring them personal pleasure, but not necessarily financial gain. The wants tend to pursue activities that provide financial gains in order to purchase things that give them pleasure. But neither class is inclined to put themselves at risk. That’s what robots are for. There are, however, a small percentage of us that are open to risk. Our popular media despairingly calls them, “adventurers.”

     I guess I’m an adventurer, because when I learned of the opportunity to combine my innate mana abilities with my learned chronicler skills I jumped at it. As a mana I can merge with most sentient and semi-sentient beings and some creatures that are hard to classify. I am usually able to encourage their cooperation and get them to do my bidding. Grover is also a mana, but his mergers are pretty much limited to full-sentient beings. We both have the very handy ability to read thoughts and sometimes influence others with our own thoughts. We have to be quite careful about how we go about it however.
  
     I once found myself surrounded by a pack of wolves. Fearing they would find me a very satisfying meal, I needed a way to distract them so I could make my escape. All of a sudden, I sensed one of the females thinking; “No, not now! Not estrous! Not here! If the Alpha smells me, she’ll be angry and think I’m after her mate. If he gets wind of my condition, she’ll be more than angry. I’ve got to slowly back away.” It may have been wrong, but I was scared, I projected the thought, “Back away won’t work, turn tail, shake it thrice and run.” She did and the pack followed. I got away. But, I was concerned. The last thought I sensed from the Alpha was: “Bitch, you better run!”

     Mana’s have to be careful with our merge and thought partners. Generally we can’t force them to do something they find repugnant, nor can we force them to love or hate another. If we tried to do these things, we’d run the very real risk of making our partner psychotic. As manas, harming a partner is the last thing we want, even to our own detriment. Being a mana is a precious thing and should never be abused. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun now and then.

     CBS wanted a show that could go on for years. Everyone knows the real money is in syndication and syndication takes lots of episodes. In response, “The Follies of Man” series was developed. The series proposed to follow some of mankind’s greatest blunders looking for new ways to please our audience with the outrageously silly and often foolish things humans do to themselves and others.

     So, while our bodies stayed safely behind in stasis, Grover and I found ourselves, by human reckoning, in 1803 Virginia at Monticello just as Thomas Jefferson was reviewing a treaty that James Monroe and Robert Livingston had brought from France for the purchase of New Orleans. This was our first project and was mostly intended to get the lay of the land and a sense of the characters that might be the subject of our pilot program. We couldn’t stay very long, unless we chose a merge partner, but we were hesitant to do that until we had a better idea of the situation. So our initial plan was to observe things for a little while.

      “James you have greatly exceeded my instructions. I trusted you would find success in your task to purchase New Orleans and thereby gain the United States a port at the mouth of the Mississippi. But never did I expect a treaty of this nature,” Jefferson said.

     “Honestly Mr. President, I do not fully understand these events myself,” said Monroe. “We negotiated diligently for New Orleans and had thought the deed was at hand, when an agent of First Consul Bonaparte interrupted our conclave and declared an abrupt end to it. He informed us that the First Consul refused to sell New Orleans, but would make a non-negotiable offer of his own when his schedule allowed him the time. Robert and I were greatly disappointed and worried that we had failed you. He kept us waiting for days, during which time we tried to image what the First Consul intended. We really had no concept of his intensions, but we hoped he would, at the least, offer access to the port of New Orleans or a site where we might build a new port, perhaps Baton Rouge.”

     “Bonaparte is a clever man; he most certainly had some plan in mind when he stopped the negotiations. Had you no clue?” said Jefferson.

     “None for two days, then Bonaparte’s Minister of Finance came to see us. He inquired as to our authority to act on behalf of the United States and under which circumstances we would be obliged to return for further instructions. I assured him we had your full support and authority to act on your behalf, but that all treaties required the approval of the Senate. With great difficulty, I kept a straight face, as I added, Senate approval was just a formality. The fact that the Minister of Finance had made these inquires, rather than the Minister of State, made me think that Bonaparte might have issues other than politics to consider,” said Livingston.

     “Oh my Robert,” Jefferson said, “You better hope no Federalist spies were in attendance, demeaning the Senate’s role could be a costly political blunder. But I see your point. I was concerned too, that after Bonaparte took Louisiana back from Spain, our attempts to acquire New Orleans would be misinterpreted as a political maneuver to lay claim to all of Louisiana.”

     “Exactly Mr. President, but why send the Finance Minister?” Monroe said. “The only logical reason was that he needed money to support his European desires and considered his new world assets a source funds. The next day our delegation was summoned to Versailles.”

     “Versailles, that is strange. It is neither his seat of government, nor his residence,” Jefferson said.

     “For those very reasons we thought it most likely to be an embassy ball or some such affair and wore our best attire. You can imagine our surprise when we arrived and saw no other embassy coaches. We were lead into an opulent room and sat at a table capable of seating thirty or more. And still had no idea of what was to come,” Monroe said.

     “It appears that Bonaparte was attempting to impress you, or perhaps to intimidate you to gain some benefit for him,” Jefferson said.

     “I think you may be right Sir, for moments later, large ornate doors opened and in strode Bonaparte and his entourage. I know much has been said about Bonaparte’s lack of height, but he projected a stature that was not associated with physical measurement. George Washington was the only other man to elicit this response in me, although he was quite tall,” said Monroe.

     “What was Bonaparte’s demeanor?” Jefferson asked.

     “Very determined, but gracious I would say. He approached me with an open hand and in English, thanked me for meeting with him. As if I had had a choice, but still it was gracious. Our negotiations, as usual, had been in French so his use of English was clearly intended to be a polite gesture. He went on to say, and I quote: The United States of America was the midwife of the French Republic’s birth and, as such, deserves special consideration amongst the nations that share France’s orbit about Sol. Accordingly, it is my intent to sell Louisiana to the United States of America for the paltry sum of 60 million francs plus the cancellation of the 20 million francs currently owed by France to America,” said Livingston.

     “He gave no reason or explanation for refusing to sell New Orleans?” asked Jefferson.

     “No Sir, none at all,” Livingston said.

    “Did he shed any light on why he wanted United States to purchase all of Louisiana?” asked Jefferson.

    “Again none, other than his previously stated kind feelings for the United States,” Monroe said.

     “Very interesting, I suspect his disastrous losses in Haiti and his failure to obtain Florida from Spain may have had a hand. The threat of war with Britain must have been on his mind too. I imagine these things had more to do with his decision than his abiding friendship for the United States,” Jefferson laughed.

     “Frankly Mr. President we were dumbfounded by the offer. I asked Bonaparte if we might have some time consider his proposal. Bonaparte stared at me for what felt like minutes but were only seconds I am sure and said yes but not long,” said Livingston.

     “We then said our goodbyes and retired to our quarters in Paris, with the understanding that the First Consul expected an answer forthwith. I think it fair to say that we were most excited about the proposal as we discussed it during our carriage ride,” Monroe said. “We did not have maps of Louisiana with us, but we both recalled its size to be approximately equal to all of the lands controlled by the United States, some 820,000 to 830,000 square miles. The purchase would, in one fell swoop, double the size of the United States.”

     “I’m curious gentlemen, how did you find it acceptable to commit your country to an amount of $15 million when you were only authorized $10 million for the acquisition of New Orleans and its environs. In addition, I wonder if you considered whether, or not, you had authority under the Constitution to acquire so much new territory?” asked Jefferson.

     “Well Sir,” Monroe said, “we had discussed, well before we left for France, that the purchase of New Orleans, in order to protect Mississippi shipments, could be justified under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. So the idea of securing the west shore of the Mississippi did not seem to be an unreasonable extension of the concept. But to be honest Sir, Robert made the strongest argument with his figures.”

     “Interesting, Robert please explain,” said Jefferson.

     “As I saw it Sir, Bonaparte was offering us New Orleans for $10 million and the remainder of Louisiana for $5 million. That meant the cost of the Louisiana territory, excluding New Orleans and its environs, was less than $0.01 per acre. Good heavens Sir, I could buy five acres for the cost of a tankard of beer. So James and I decided to execute the treaty as soon as possible. We both feared Bonaparte would change his mind,” Livingston said.

     “You make a strong argument Mr. Livingston. It would seem only a fool would reject this opportunity. It is my hope the fools in Congress are outnumbered. Sirs, you have accomplished more than I could have prayed for, you have given our republic the ability to stretch its wings of freedom to the Pacific shores. And to have received the treaty on July 4th seems most appropriate,” said Jefferson.

     Grover and I were amazed at Napoleon’s blunder; he effectively gave away a country twice as big as France. He could have sold New Orleans for $10 million and subdivided the rest at a giant profit. We felt we had enough to prepare a half-hour pilot after padding our live recording with background information about Europe in Bonaparte’s day and the future wealth created by what came to be known as America’s Breadbasket. The facts made Bonaparte look pretty foolish. We considered expanding the program to demonstrate more of his follies, like his failed Egypt expedition and his decision to invade Russia in the winter. While those events did occur, plus others, we feared our audience would accuse us of making them up for dramatic effect; after the Great Deceit of 2510, we couldn’t take the chance. So we wrapped up our pilot and submitted to the network. We hope to hear soon whether or not there will be more episodes of The Follies of Man, stay tuned.