It was trash day. Henry Danton bullied his two allotted waste cans to the sidewalk and took out his pocket compass to measure the state-mandated 35 degree angle between the right side of the can and the edge of the street. It was an automatic action of every member of the world by this point, having been ingrained long before anyone living could remember. This was a state law, one of thousands, for which nobody knew the punishment, and which was therefore obeyed all the more rigorously. The official speechmakers of the day pointed out that the public works system was so delicately balanced that unless each citizen obeyed precisely every law, chaos would ensue. A misaligned trash can, for example, could cause the WCU (waste collection unit - an automated specter of the early morning) to spin out and into another citizen's home, starting fire, looting, and the collapse of human civilization in general.

And yet how many houses of cards are made just to be destroyed? Danton was not a man of such socially dangerous tendencies, but he was, in spite of his education, a man with whims and fancies, a type of human well nigh extinct in his age. As he looked down over his compass to direct the cans, keeping his eye concentrated precisely on the 35 notch, he noticed his attention wandering to the marking which bore no official red numbering, the marking that stood for 36. Soon the sharp outline of the waste can vanished from the numbered zone, shifting into this new territory. Danton wanted, on an official, public-face level, to 'put it right back again'. "You've had your fun, now return it to its place", a battalion of ex-teachers and television commercials told him. But Danton's whim, a small and usually tame creature, caught him by the spine and jerked him back into a standing position.

There Henry stood in the vast silence inevitably created by attractive, mid-priced housing, looking about him, expecting to have an even more hideous beast snap his back down again to compass level. And yet, nothing happened. He therefore put his compass in his pocket and returned to the house with a cool demeanor which betrayed his crime, as it was only the nervous man with his nose to the sidewalk that could blend in any longer.

Inside, his wife, a woman who had retained all of her physical beauty at the cost of her emotional stability, was shaving her dog Pickles down to a fashionable size. "Dear, the oddest thing just happened out there."

"While you were taking out the trash? That's a riot", she said in her nasal, tree-shrew soprano voice.

"Yes... a riot... it's very funny actually. You see, I was standing there, and I thought, rather I wondered, what would happen if, well, if the cans were just one mark off."

His wife's eyes narrowed and her lips distended into the shape of the dried mushrooms she habitually forced down her dog. She turned quickly to Pickles and began pouring forth her rage, "Oh, ton papa est vraiment cruel! Quelle horreur! Quelle mauvasitŽ!" (It will be noted that, whenever she was enraged, which was often, she would speak to her dog in a mixture of French and English known nowhere save high school classrooms. It avoided confrontation while still getting her point across.) Finally, having filled the dog to his maximum capacity with French, she stood up and turned to her husband, approaching him with one talon extended towards his chest, moving as if to impale him upon that ultra-manicured appendage. "Now, you, Henry Danton, will go out there right now and put those cans back where they should be. Don't you have any brains? 'What would happen if the can were a few degrees off!' I'll tell you what would happen. Our neighbors would be dead and you would be put away with all the rest of the crazies. Now stop standing there, like a Satchawaya... Gnat Flicker, and go put the cans back!" She stood, spreading herself out like a frightened cat, her face red, her breath coming in heavy, voluminous waves. "NOW!"

But Henry, the erstwhile Gnat Flicker (a species which owes its existence entirely to the imagination of Danton's prosecutor) was not there at the moment. Certainly he stood before his wife, but he no longer felt like listening to her. There was no great anger at her outburst, just a feeling of boredom, a wondering when she would be done with it all.

"So, you're just going to stand there, is that it? Then give me the thing, and I'll go out and put them back myself."

"I broke it and threw it away." He had done neither. It still rested firmly in his pocket.

"Well, I'm going next door to Johanna's and borrow hers!"

Henry Danton did not actually care if the trash cans were put back at this point. He was not a revolutionary. He did not march beneath a banner with the motto "36 Degrees or Fight!" scrawled upon it. This action was not his form of protest against an unjust government. Having been in this world for a significant amount of time, his curiosity no longer got the best of him very often. He was therefore inclined to simply go out and put them back himself, the many-armed Whim already not being worth what he was putting up with. But...but damn it if he was going to let his wife win another one of these! She and her little sniveling dog and the health clubs and "Jessie's Book List" and on and on! "All right!" he said, "I'll go out and fix it." At that he marched outside, took out his compass, moved the cans to 34 degrees, and came back in the house, fuming his way down to his beloved (soundproof) basement, where he was able to put a few more touches on his plastic model P-38 before going to bed two hours early.

Danton awoke at three in the morning, not being particularly careful not to wake his wife, as he well knew that her sleep was a concrete bomb shelter which neither amorous caresses nor relentless jackhammers could penetrate. He looked from his window to the street, where the WCU should have been at this point, according to the written Code of Activity for Homeowners. And yet it was not until the perfectly arbitrary time of 3:47 that the WCU swung into view on Danton's street, its armatures reaching down and out, scooping up cans and throwing their contents casually into their storage recesses before noisily thumping them back on the ground again.

These machines were of an enormous size and ungainly construction, moving like a drunk German on vacation, and it was thus with no small degree of apprehension that Danton watched it approach his house. The armature lowered itself in a motion seen perhaps for the first time by civilian. Henry watched the armature lower and, the internal guidance system thrown off by an incorrect angle, begin to flop about madly, ripping itself out of its socket. He saw the newly positioned weight cause the entire WCU to flip over in a gaseous explosion.

In actuality, he saw neither of these events. What his eyes beheld, in painfully simple terms, was nothing more than the lifting up of his garbage can, the dumping of its contents, and the return of it to earth.

"Nothing happened", Danton said, looking at his hands and the floor, and his hands. "Nothing happened!" What relief came on the heels of not having caused the death of his wife and neighbors was overshadowed by a deep-seated nausea born of fear. As he continued to watch the mechanized sloth plod down the street, its lumbering, yet completely operational, movements dazzling him anew, he began to produce a series of statements in his mind, most of which began with the word "if" and all of which may be guessed without too much effort.

As he sat on the counter, resolving the picture of his empty trash can with his mental image of a well-oiled state, his thoughts were shattered by the barking of Pickles. It was an instantly recognizable bark, one which said, "I am doing this for no other purpose than to be annoying. I don't want food, I don't need to go for a walk, I don't sense danger. I'm just being evil."

"Get back to bed, you damn dog. You're not supposed to be up yet."

"All right, let's cut to the chase. I'm not supposed to be up yet, you're not supposed to be up yet. At least I was out with a woman, while you were using your freedom to look at a garbage truck."

This was the first time Danton had heard this dog speak, or any dog for that matter (with one exception in his college days, but that was for VERY different reasons). But what surprised him most wasn't that the dog was speaking, but that the dog was speaking English. Somewhere, deep within his mind, he had long ago conceded this dog could talk if it wanted to (as we all do with animals who share our experiences), but was sure that it would do so in Madame's pseudo-French.

"They picked up the trash, Pickles. They picked it up. Nothing went wrong. 35 doesn't mean anything!"

"First, it's not Pickles. Pickles is the invention of the sleeping creature upstairs. The name is Lion Crusher. Secondly; what did you expect? You probably believe that if you don't eat lunch between 12:30 and 1:03 you will get intestinal cancer, too."

"But that makes sense. Biologically we aren't meant to eat after 1:03. But this... this must be different. They must have designed a narrow range of tolerances into the machine to account for error. Engineers are always doing that. Machines are one thing, the body is another."

"Yeah, sure, okay boss. Listen, you don't tell on me, I don't tell on you, got that? And be careful, the more you look, the less it will make sense."

After Pickles took a dog bone from the cupboard with his left front paw, he returned to his bed, to be picked up by Mrs. Danton in the morning and told all about her dreams and plans for the day. As for Danton, he had to report to work in a few hours, and so he slept; eventually lulling himself to unconsciousness by repeating the thought that everything was over-engineered a little for safety, but all in all it would be best to not push anything too far.

The past career of Danton had been a rather remarkable one. He began in the government's urban development department, where he was immediately rocketed to fame and glory by his singular idea of solving the homeless problem by mandating that all homeless people found on the streets be dressed very nicely, at the government's expense, in the latest fashions. This made the homeless nicer to look at, and thus reduced the general pity and unhappiness levels of citizens walking there. For this brilliant solution, he was soon promoted to the post he currently occupied, that of the Secretary General of the government's double-F, or Fad and Fashion, department.

It had been decided long ago that, since fads and fashions are good for commerce, but are ultimately unpredictable, a series of 40 or so fads should be created which the government would rotate once a year, repeating the cycle after the 40th year. This was a much praised undertaking, as it made being fashionable easier for everybody, gave the government a sure monopoly on the latest trend, and removed much of the chaos from the lives of those whose mind was busy anticipating what would be next. It allowed all shops to specialize successfully, rather than risk picking a loser, and produced uniformity without the necessity of uniforms.

It was therefore a rather large event when Henry Danton came into work, looking perfectly healthy, a good half an hour late, with signs of that ancient biological relic, perspiration, clinging to his collar line. His colleagues were just discussing whether they should use the posters from forty years ago to announce the arrival of the new season's fashions.

Croller, whose job it was to minimize spending, saw nothing wrong with the proposal, saying that it would even add to the particular retro feel that it was their department's job to create. Hendrickson, whose job it was to disagree with Croller, maintained that the continuing use of ad campaigns to announce a new year of fashions was superfluous in this age, that they should just ignore it all together and concentrate on the important things (these were the same 'important things' which Hendrickson had been urging to his companions for years now, but had yet to describe in any more illuminating fashion).

With the arrival of Danton, then, the real decisions could finally be made, as it was his job to listen to them and then do whatever he had decided before receiving their opinion. It was voted to make an up-to-date poster, but to save money by having it printed on a new kind of paper made out of the food which the government's supermarkets threw away in order to keep up the appearance of having more food than they knew what to do with. (As a matter of fact, government food warehouses were at critically low levels, but that was no matter, as Danton was planning a new dieting fad for next month which would drastically reduce consumption, putting off the starvation of humanity for at least another year). The entire system was not as air-tight as it could have been, but it contained enough drastic and sweeping gestures to impress the easily impressed, which is to say everybody, and was thus approved.

The only man at the table who did not speak was a junior clerk by the name of Yevgeny, who had hoarded all of the executive desk toys in the room and was playing with them all simultaneously, creating a kinetic-magnetic-therapeutic beast which was impressive, but not entirely to the point. It was what was expected of him, however, and therefore he received a good write-up in the day's reports.

Normally, all of this: the tolerated, nervous exertions of Yevgeny, the unheard reports of Hendrickson and Croller, and even his own unquestioned authority, did not strike him as odd in the least, but rather as indicative of the governmental policy of giving every man his proper place. Yevgeny was a neurotic moron, and therefore his job ought to coincide with his particular talents. Yet now, looking about him, considering how his own department was run, that WCU seemed to make much more sense. It was, for example, a set rule that no official was to look out of any government window for more than ten seconds while he was working, and to furthermore take a fifteen minute break between these ten second periods of relief. Yet, if any of his men had done such a thing, would he really go through the trouble of filling out a report? And if he did, would anybody really go through the trouble of processing it up above?

It was stated in the Code that the ignoring of such actions could cost the state more than 500,000 work hours per year, which would in turn throw the entire governmental system into chaos, resulting in the inevitable indiscriminate murders, riots, and monument defacing. It sounded terrible when Danton first read it, but looking at Yevgeny he began to wonder; how much is lost by having Yevgeny gaze out onto the street below all day? He didn't know how to do anything else, and everything ran just fine without him, just fine!! The trash still got picked up didn't it? The trash will get picked up even if Yevgeny takes the toys into his office with him!

This was the point, arrived at in every internal dialogue, where two trains of thought come to a cross roads, work out a compromise, and end up forming a machine with an engine on either end, both working ferociously, while the contents go nowhere. It mattered little, however. Even if HE was too apathetic to regulate his men, such could not be the case for the other, less superficial, departments. What was more disconcerting was the fact that, as he looked around him, preparing to address his men, he saw nothing but empty chairs. All had apparently left for lunch.

Danton got up and headed for the lunch room, only to find the lunch orderlies locking it up for the day. He ran into Hendrickson on the way out. "What's the deal? Did they finally condemn this place?"

"It's 1:03, Mr. Danton; lunch is over. We thought you took yours in your office."

The head of the double F department then fell immediately to the floor in wild convulsions, his throat emitting the sounds of a man choking not at the hands of a two bit alley thief, but at those of raw fear.

"I need a doctor, now, get a doctor! Hendrickson! Go, go!"

The office went into a panic as their boss showed all signs of passing from this earth. Half of the employees took advantage of the opportunity and left to go home. As it turned out, this is also what the other half of the employees did, Hendrickson included. It was not until Yevgeny, coming out of his painfully well-lit office two hours later, discovered the unconscious Danton on the floor, that any action was taken. Paramedics were called and, due to the importance of the person involved, they showed up only nominally later than all sense of decency could tolerate. Danton was rushed to the pristine Hospital of the City (the name had been suggested in the early days of the new government, when public figures still had a sense of sarcasm and when others, the majority then as now, were dense enough to take them seriously), where he was placed in a private room with three or four other invalids.

A crack team of doctors immediately fell upon him, administering a battery of tests, deciding that Danton needed to be retroactively fed lunch, meaning that food would be placed into his body in the state of digestion which it would have been at at this point had he indeed eaten lunch at the correct point. Some quick calculations were made, followed by some even quicker incisions and injections, and the earth became a safe place to live once again.

"You're very lucky you were brought to us when you were, Mr. Danton. A few hours later, and all would have been lost. Oh, don't thank us, thank the government. Without the research they have allowed my colleagues and me to conduct, this method would never have been found, and you would be dead at this very moment." With this the doctors left the room in a line, exiting through the door single file, like old penguins plunging into the water.

One doctor, however, remained, not taking part in the general waddling. He stood in the corner and looked at the infinitely grateful patient of the state. "You know what the sad part is," he said after surveying Danton a few more seconds, "It's that those men left here fully convinced of what they said, that if they had not done what they did, you would now be no more than a corpse, in spite of the fact that they have never seen any actual internal damage caused by disobeying statute NB1821. Maybe a concussion or two after arch culinary offenders like yourself have flopped around enough in anticipation of a miserable end, but not so much as a single liquefied internal organ to show for it all."

"Listen, Doctor..."

"Krankenhilfer."

"Really? That's too bad. In any case, Doctor Krankenhilfer, I know how it works in government offices. The people who follow the rules and get things done are always looked upon with jealousy by those who can't keep up. I know what I felt, how close I was to death. You can't argue with biology. I was warned not to be careless about this, as the state has investigated it all very thoroughly before. I made a mistake, but thanks to the help of those doctors... yes those doctors, not you...I am still alive. Sure, some of the state's rules don't make any difference, but one man can't test them all, so I'll just keep to the right path, thank you very much."

"Do you know what time it is?" the good doctor asked.

"4:30."

"Very good. And when is one supposed to eat dinner?"

"Between 6:00 and 6:33."

"And what is this that I have just pulled from my pocket?"

"A sandwich."

"Observe." The doctor then proceeded to eat the sandwich and wash it down with something that smelled faintly like gasoline. "There we are. Now I'll just sit here with you and you can watch as my hands and feet fall off."

"Get out! Get out now!! You're an insane man. If you want to kill yourself, go right ahead, but you won't make me a part of it."

"I'd love to, of course, but I do have a great deal of paperwork to go through, and this is such a nice spot to work in."

"I shall offer no aid when the end comes."

"Heaven forbid."

Hours passed, but no limbs fell and no organs oozed from any recognizable orifice. Every passing minute seemed to be mocking Henry as he lay there in bed, scar-ridden, digesting second-hand food. "All right - what does it mean? Have you developed an immunity? Are you from another planet?" he said at last.

"Oh yes... I'm an alien. That's the most likely answer. It couldn't possibly be that NB1821 is just another law put on the books for the sake of annoying people in the name of public health!"

"The government has better things to do than make laws just to annoy people."

"You are right, the annoyance is a secondary trait. The main purpose is of course to keep people busy and completely aware of what they are to be doing when. It was a grand project, once. All of that searching for purpose, all of that inefficiency, was to be erased with several million strokes of the pen! It was a superb exercise of the imagination as well. Not only did rules have to be thought up, but rationales as well : 'Otherwise the state will fall into chaos', 'Your body will burst into flames', 'You will be made unable to have children', and on and on."

"If that were true, if there were no reasons, nobody would follow all those rules. But they do; most everybody does. Therefore there must be a good reason for doing so."

"When those rules were first introduced five hundred years ago, they were an intolerable burden to the people, enforced only by the most strict discipline. All infractions were noted by an energetic, optimistic government bent on creating perfection. People soon fell into line, and have stayed there to the present day, for the most part. They know nothing else. But those government officials who started it all are now resting in their public memorials, being preserved by a liquid lacquer which revolts the young children brought to see them on patriotic holidays, but which the adults have gotten used to.

"The subsequent generations of world leaders forgot that the new state was a creation and experiment, not the expression of a necessity. They no longer controlled the law, but let the law run its course, which it did, being ruled only by the most powerful force in any civilization: apathy. The laws are still there. People still follow them, because they always have. The difference between now and then is simply this : The government has ceased caring if you break them or not. They, like us, have grown fat and tend towards the lowest energy state possible. It is for this reason that our wonderful government will continue forever. It has the obedience of the people without having to expend the energy of its laws. That is why I can eat my sandwich when I choose, and why we are allowed to sit here and have this conversation in the first place."

"How do you know all this?"

"Isn't that interesting. Your first response was not a rejection of the idea, but a question of validity. You think it's possible, then. There is hope for you. Just don't do anything too obvious. The police might not care about bringing the sword down on your neck, but there are still neighbors and co-workers to be dealt with, and who knows if they are not the more fearsome force?"

After two days, Henry returned to both his home and his desk, looking quite good after having nearly been liquefied, as his co-workers noted. For the most part, his mind worked the way it normally did, thankfully easing into the groove of his old daily routine. He was soon back to inspecting cars and clothes to make sure they resembled precisely their forty year old predecessors. And then one day Yevgeny was removed from his office.

He had been promoted to the position of Public Works Overseer, whose duty it was to organize the corruption of the people in the government's grand public projects so as to maximize the satisfaction of those who stole while minimizing the amount any single individual took. He received this position after submitting a proposal calling for the unionization of corruption. Every worker was to join this union, which had a pre-allocated percentage of government funds set aside for it, every member receiving an equal share of the graft. This introduced a spirit of democracy into the money laundering trade, and led to Yevgeny's unanimous election to the head of the program he had invented.

This infuriated Danton to no end of course. That Yevgeny, who never did any work, who was a drain of his department's resources, that neurotic Yevgeny was now the holder of a prestigious new post of more importance than Danton's own was too much to take. The history of this odd little man was well known. Once, when he was eight years old, he entered his room and reached out his hand to turn the light switch on; but the switch simply flipped to its new position with a thud. The light did not come on. It was a terrifying experience for the young man. To have an action like turning on the light simply not work, to have that flick of the switch be totally ineffectual, destroyed his faith totally in all that he had previously taken for granted. All of those things which we naturally see working perfectly well every day soon became so many question marks for Yevgeny. He could not do anything without having his heart catch in his throat as the possibility of failure flashed in his mind. Every switch he had to throw filled him with an agonizing second of fear. He did not lose faith in the government per se. He simply no longer thought about it, as his mind was too preoccupied with the thousand mechanical disasters which surrounded him daily, terrorizing him. This was why he stayed in his office all day long, surrounded by intense lights which were turned off and on by a subordinate clerk, who was also required to change the bulbs every night. Since his simple act of faith had been met with a cold, dark No, he took as few leaps of trust as necessary.

And now this Yevgeny was, in spite of it all, a more important man than Danton! With this insult all of the doctor's words came back to him again. He knew from experience that his requests for promotion were ignored as soon as they left his desk, as were his complaints about his department in general. This road of protest blocked, he did the only harmful thing of which he could think. Two days later, he approached the curb of his house, dragging two waste bins behind him, and proceeded forward to the middle of the street, where he left the two silent protestors. He could feel the ground shake as his neighbors all simultaneously fainted from shock, which brought him no small satisfaction.

His wife, of course, was beyond furious. So furious was she indeed that she complained to Pickles in English, as anger was temporarily blocking all neural paths leading to the patchwork doll which was her French education. She shrieked at Henry for the entire day, scratching at him with her claws, her multiple layers of makeup forming a Martian landscape as they were moved about in front of a wall of hateful tears. During all of this, Henry was sitting on the couch, alternately clipping his nails and feeding the dog olives. He said nothing, as he was too tired to begin down any path which might suggest reconciliation and compromise. She soon stormed up to her room, dragging Pickles, who was already whimpering in anticipation of what he would have to endure in the coming hours.

The trash came late again that day, this time at 3:52. "Apathy," Henry explained to himself. The WCU did come, however, picking up the well ordered cans from his neighbors houses before coming to his houses, clumsily grasping at the air in front of his curb twice, and then proceeding forward, knocking down his two trash cans nonchalantly while continuing its course. Five minutes passed, then ten. Finally Danton had to blurt out in a rather loud voice, "Well, why aren't you coming to get me? Here I am, and that pile of garbage is what I think of your laws!"

"Oh, very dramatic!" said Pickles from the corner of the room. "Behold the great Revolutionary, haranguing the fat government from atop his mighty pile of banana peels and used tissue!"

"The whole neighborhood will wake up and see the trash out there in the morning. They won't be able to ignore it. The government will be forced to arrest me. I'll make my case in court. I'll open people's eyes to the whole thing, and then we'll see how many Yevgenys can feed at the public trough."

"Listen, Henry, you can't revolt against a government that doesn't care about revolutions anymore. Where prosecution has been given up, there are no martyrs. Whether out of clemency or out of laziness, the fact remains that in the end nothing will come of this. You now know about your freedom. Enjoy it a little. Otherwise you'll waste your breath and everybody else's patience. And remember, every time you protest, I have to hear about it endlessly, so have some pity, all right?"

But Henry had stopped listening long ago, as he was busy planning his next strike against his superiors, his next opportunity to bring all he knew to the world. His new idea would not be a simple local incident. It would be something that people could not fail to take note of and deal with. With this battle plan in mind he began the morning meeting at work with more energy and excitement than usual.

"Gentleman, we are going to embark today on a brand new campaign to bring up the sales of every single product of ours. It is a sure thing, but we will need to work around the clock if we are to get it out in time. Other departments are already thinking of similar means to boost their positions, and we don't want to be left behind!"

"That sounds great, sir, I'll get on it right away!" said Yevgeny's replacement, Blake, a yes man who was always saying yes too early or too late, an experience disconcerting to his superiors, but somehow endearing.

"Thank you. Now, first we are going to produce three hundred thousand posters to be put up at every major mall and government building; posters which will grab people's attention and cause them to buy our products by the bucketful."

"It will be expensive, but is doable. What do you want put on these signs?"

"All right, everybody listen carefully," Danton said in a whisper, bending in and pausing to make sure they were all hanging on his upcoming revelation. He then said in a grand voice as he blocked out the words in the air with his hands, "They will say, 'SCREW YOU ALL, YOU CONFORMIST BASTARDS! WISE UP ALREADY!' in big red letters across the top and center and then have at the bottom 'Now Go Out and Buy Some Regulated Government Crap' in black. What do you think?"

Hendrickson coughed and said, "Well, it's forceful, but I'm not overly sure how it's going to sell the product."

"But it's so clear."

"You're right, I'm one hundred percent behind you", Hendrickson replied without so much as changing the position in which he was sitting. Danton had long known that Hendrickson was the type of person who would accept any proposition if it was implied that not agreeing with that statement would be a failure of insight. He agreed to a lot of very stupid things in this fashion, but he had a tremendous reputation for 'being able to get a handle on things quickly.'

Danton and his team worked quickly, and produced the necessary ad campaign within the space of a week. Every day of that week Danton looked forward with sugary venom to the moment he would be called into the authorities to answer for this outrage. He sweetly imagined the tremendous stir it would cause, the questions it would force to be asked, and the heroic position he would earn as a prisoner of the government. It was now not about Yevgeny, or garbage collection, but about something much more precious to mankind : pure egotism. Danton saw himself as the creator of a new era, born of his frustrations and conversion. The current regime was successful, and he was important in it. But how much more to be the unquestioned leader of the order which overthrew all he saw around him. You, reader, might scoff at such grand delusions, but if it worked so well for Paul and his movement, why do you deny it to our poor Danton?

And so, on day 183 of the year 538, Danton's campaign was unleashed upon the public. It was offensive for no discernible reason, simple, easy to memorize, and gave one definite instruction to all who read it. It was therefore wildly successful, serving as an example to advertising executives ever after. Danton was promoted yet again to a Vice Chancellor position, which he would officially be appointed to at a great public ceremony to be held on day 218.

Not anticipating this particular reaction, Danton was temporarily thrown off guard, but soon had an even better plan formulated, one which would not suffer from the vagueness of his past attempts. Yes, the millions who would be watching him at the Vice Chancellor ceremonies would indeed have something to behold. They would watch as one of the highest government officials in the land destroyed all that that government had built. Symbolism, hidden meanings; this was all rot. He would now grab them by the hair and smash them in the teeth. Then they would listen, and once they started listening, the state's entire defense system of apathy and non-action would be defeated.

Danton's wife began to talk to him again. Indeed she was positively loving, after her own fashion, when she heard of his new position and prestige. The garbage incident was forgotten by her and the neighbors, who for their part greeted him with more smiles than ever, accompanied by a few modest suggestions for how things could be run. Not that anything was wrong with how things were being run, of course, but just to make it all go even better, you know...

The dog stopped talking to him, which frankly relieved Danton to a great degree, as Pickles never had anything encouraging to say anyway, being too much a dog of the world for optimism. Yevgeny even descended upon his office to congratulate him on his great success. Now that Henry was above him again, Yevgeny didn't seem so bad at all, and the two departed better friends than they had ever been.

Everything was indeed going so well that Danton wondered if it would not be best to let things continue in this fashion. In the end he was resolved by the thought that, if this is how much respect he received as a Vice Chancellor, he would receive infinitely more as the man who brought about a new era. And so he prepared himself, rehearsing the moment which would go down ever more in history as the act which began true civilization.

Soon the great day came. The Coliseum of the City (named by the same gentleman mentioned previously during a second moment of inspiration) was filled to capacity that day, which meant approximately two hundred thousand were gathered around Danton that day, not counting the many millions who were watching the event on television or listening to it at their workplaces (a universal work break had been declared for such a purpose). On the main stage sat Danton, Yevgeny, the three other Vice Chancellors, and Sedak, the religious leader of the nation. After a brief film detailing the highlights of his career was shown, Sedak gave a speech declaring how a man like Danton is only made by strict observance of religious law (not that he himself observed it, nor did he particularly care if anybody else did, but what else was he going to say?). He was followed by each of the Vice Chancellors, who assured the crowd that it was by observance of municipal law that Danton had come to his current position (were one an archivist, one could find that the three speeches made on this day corresponded with the three speeches made on the day of the election of every new Vice Chancellor since year 281. Yet they had grown in power with each new VC, as they attained the status of tradition and not merely 'a matter of form.') Yevgeny was there to interject some humor into the day's events and introduce Danton himself, as they had known each other for so long. In front of this large crowd, he had a disturbing amount of self confidence, of masterful control over both his body and his words. Strange what happens to a man when fame drops upon him like so much carp. But what did Danton care? His moment had come.

He took the golden podium before him and looked at the sea of gaping mouths. "My friends", he said as he stiffly stretched out his arms in the fashion of an amateur dramatic actor, "Today I promise to deliver a gift unto you all! Have you ever wondered, even for a passing moment, what would happen if you didn't wear green on Saturdays, or if you used pencil to fill out your identity papers every year instead of a Standard-Five? Of course you have, and you have had answers to; you have heard such answers today. Not only will you be expelled from society and placed in chains, but you will cause the suffering of all those whom you love the most. What I tell you today is the single most important phrase you will ever hear: It is all nonsense! There's nothing to any of it! These people up on the stage just want to keep you busy, to make things easier for themselves, to control you! They have had their way with you for the past five hundred years. They have been so successful that you don't even question their right to declare what they want. They give you an excuse, a reason, and you bend your backs under their rules. I'm here to tell you today, though, that you need do so no longer. I shall lead you to your freedom! Will you follow me?"

The audience shuffled its collective feet. They did not howl or hiss at this audacious man. They wanted it all to be true, but they also knew that it could not be so. One official can't erase five hundred years of tried and true experience. They would not move against him out of hope, but would not move for him out of habit.

"Very well. I see that you need convincing. Do you see this apple? Notice that it is currently 1:35 in the afternoon. I am now going to eat this apple and then continue with my speech. You can watch me for hours and hours, and nothing will happen to me. If this does not prove that it is all so much hot air, then there is no hope for you poor creatures."

With this Danton confidently took a large bite out of his apple as the audience held its breath. Another bite, and another, until the core was all that remained. "There, the apple is no more. And look at me; I'm still standing and talking. The new state, our new state, will be started with something as simple as this apple core." Danton then loosened the collar of his Vice Chancellor robes as he felt his throat was constricting uncomfortably. "Yes, I will lead you. We will march together to a glorious new future. The rules are meaningless. Make your own rules!" These words were halting and slurred. Danton was seen to rely more and more upon the podium to support his weight. "The old ways hold nothing over you now...be free ..."

And Danton fell to the side of the podium. Yevgeny was instantly by his side, speaking to him softly as he loosened the heavy robes. "Oh, poor Danton, it appears that you've died - on your big day! How terribly sad. What a wonderfully dramatic flair you've managed to add to the afternoon's festivities. All of that canned, stilted talk of freedom for naught... How could this have happened, and who will they ever find to fill your shoes?" The question was delivered with a steadily lowered hiss as Danton's Apple Core Rebellion softly scattered to the wind.

The crowd had fallen on its knees in the meantime, in repentance for having believed that this man could defy the laws of nature and the government without suffering the consequences. They had always believed, they said to one another, as they shut any hopes they had in an even darker dungeon than that which had held them for the past five hundred years.

Yevgeny was eventually named to the post vacated by Danton. He took the new government energetically in hand, raising a new generation of bureaucrats and intelligence agents who cast their nets anew over mankind, all in order to rid the country forever of the influence of Danton's non-existent followers.

A new corridor was built in the Hall of Founders to hold the body of Henry Danton. This path, which was painted entirely in black, linked the building containing the original founders to that which would go on to hold Yevgeny and his followers. It was forever a powerful reminder of the great sin the nation had committed, and the gratitude they owed their new savior.

100 years after the death of Yevgeny, the state police force had fallen again into a state of non action.

The government itself thrived for another 2,000 years, until it was destroyed, along with the rest of civilization, by a tragically anonymous meteor, rendering all of these events, in the final analysis, quite laughably meaningless.