artwork: Bertrand Santini

Mark Allen's
"The Nothing Nothing Nothing Cake" part two:
Copyright 2001 Mark Allen

The assembled court grew very quiet... why you could have even heard a mouse fart!
But one by one the court broke the silence... and they began to start...
Slowly whispering "That's it?", "That's all?" "What nerve!", "What gall!"
And other secret accusations - which echoed quietly throughout the hall.

The king simply turned rotated slowly, then took the escalator back up to his room
One of the harem girls munched a bite of cheese and grunted "Is that all he wants them to consume?"
Oh but the poor advisor! He needed to brief the royal chefs, but feared to trouble the king anymore!
Nevertheless he ran up to the king... and caught the tip of his cape... just as he was shutting his bedroom door

"Your royal highness," he blurted "I of course don't want to cause any trouble,
But the cooks need to contact the importers, exporters and suppliers on the double!
The batter must be beaten, and the berries sweetened - oh you know preparation is a must!
What shall I tell them are the ingredients? Oh sir I do not want to make a fuss!"

The King turned his head slightly to his right, (his heavy cubic zirconia hat was bending his left ear)
"I have made my wishes known advisor, per our previous discussion I am sure you are aware!
The cake is to be made of nothing at all, I thought I had made that clear!
YOU must convince them to believe otherwise, or I suggest you look for a new career!"

The king then slammed the door, the advisor stood in a defeated slump
"I have to think of something quick! or I'll be living in the village dump!"
The advisor realized that he would have to decide for himself about what was what!
So he ran down to the royal cooks - to let them know "nothing" was what was up!

He gathered the chefs and said "Take the week off! Go on vacation! Or to the beach!
Your culinary tricks are not needed! My spin doctors are the ones I need to breech!
Leave the premises! Ta-ta! Go home! I'll see you in the Fall!
It turns out the contents of the nothing cake are nothing but "bugger all"!

After the chefs left the castle... the advisor then ran to his assistants and yes men
He breached them over and over... again and again and again...
"It is not what is in the nothing cake, or if it's that's what's even real!
It is what the people's minds believe... it is with that we will seal the deal!"

"About the nothing cake, how it smells and tastes is not the key!
The success of this dessert, relies solely on on what people "think" it to be!
And with that said and established I'm now excited and nervous to decree;
that the level of deception we must create, will be the absolute greatest in history!"

"I do not care if starving rats, pigs, dogs, roaches, monkeys, snakes
Dust mites, gnats or even amoebas don't like the nothing cake!
It is not those simple creature's choices which me must manipulate!
It is man's complex mind that is of importance here, make no mistake!"

"Man is the one very creature in nature, who's balance of reason and instinct is perfect!
Ah! And within that labyrinth of checks and balances - is what lies it's greatest defect!
His brain is a complex contraption - it's combination of logic and emotion is very rare!
We can easily cause it to fall in on itself, if we word things with the greatest of care!"

"We must pummel the people with prognostication, before they take their first non-bite,
That will make even the most studied man's head spin... with anticipatory delight!
Ahhh... we must create such a fool-proof myth about the non-cake, and it's secret non-substance
that even before they receive this placebo pacifier, they will be drooling with no resistance!"

So all the advisor's associates, and their associates
And further down assistants and gophers
Went to the royal library to research, plot and conspire
(Why they even wore fur loafers!)

Whilst the royal yes-men spun their evil plans, they said "Oh compared to us the people are inferior!"
Oh this power to trick people did make them feel quite superior!
"Look how much clever-er we are, how the people's simple brains we so easily manipulate!"
And this caused their fevered minds to go into overdrive whilst they did stipulate!

Oh it was an appalling spectacle to behold indeed! Their brilliance was self professed!
Their utopian ideas, when analyzed with a clear mind (which none of them now possessed)
Were filled with endless loop holes, quadruple nonsense and pretentious twists!
Why they even stooped so low as to quote from famous French post-constructuralists!

Oh the mind bending philosophy was getting pompous, and highly unreliable!
Yet it's power to deceive and fool the people, that was sadly ...undeniable!
So soon their wordy manifestoes, were planned to be dropped from the castle towers
It was sneaky and downright malicious, the way they were lying about the nothing cake's power!

The town news editors, reviewers, critics and analytics
were rounded up and torched one by one at the stake!
They were secretly replaced by double agents
who would write glowing praises of the upcoming nothing cake!

They had to make the people down below believe
The nothing cake was something they would love to make them fat
But what would the nothing cake actually be?
Oh no one... no one at all...  was even thinking of that!

Then way down below in the dismal town, nothing cake flyers had been posted with care
In scientifically chosen key demographic spots - within the crowded town square!
The people had already gathered around, and were already hungrily perusing
The carefully worded announcement - which cased much happiness and drooling

All the while - back up in the royal kitchen, the cooks were nowhere to be found!
The royal advisor had given them the month off - there was not a crumb, not a sound!
Cobwebs were forming on the cooking spoons, cheese graders, cutting boards and pans
It seems that actually making a cake, THAT important fact, had not entered into their plans!

Yes I will say with mush suspicion, that the emptiness of the kitchen,
and it's lack of anything in it actuality going on
Reflected perfectly the source of the soon-to-be awful situation,
and all that would eventually go wrong!

The townspeople were all too anxious (due to the advisor's deafening hype)
to board a "nothing cake" bandwagon of the most rickety and unstable type!
An analogy? Why the plan had no tires, it's "driver" was blind, it's alignment was all over the place!
But I will tell you, it's greatest flaw of all, was that at it's core... IT HAD NO BASE!

The royal advisors, yes-men, philosophers and spies, had made a tragic, profound mistake
The people would truly believe in their heads, the crafty lies about the nothing cake...
They would fall hook line and sinker... without a single solitary crumb of doubt,
and it is from this blind faith, this trust in something that wasn't really there:

THE END OF ALL MANKIND would disastrously SPROUT!!!

Copyright 2001 Mark Allen