The election was won. Applause, speeches, champagne, adulation, interviews, articles, plaudits, and many other less decorous things flowed like wine.
But regrettably, all good things must come to an end.
“Sir, you’ve been in office for sixty-three days,” said the wise-guy, smart-alec, insolent, churlish, insufferable reporter. “When were you planning to DO something?”
“I’m in the middle of lunch,” said Mister Leader, who was actually only into the first inning of lunch – he hadn’t touched his fries yet. “I can’t believe you’re interrupting my lunch.”
“You pulled that out in the middle of a press conference.”
“This is incredibly rude behaviour and I want no part of it,” said Mister Leader, wiping the crumbs from his face with palms that trembled with rage. “I didn’t elect you to misrepresent me this way. See if I ever vote for you again!”
He stormed offstage in such a snit that he nearly ran over his own campaign manager.
“Nobody understands me,” he wept piteously into their breast. “They’re all so mean.”
“There there,” soothed the campaign manager. “I know just what’ll cheer them up.”
“Empty promises?” piped Mister Leader, tear-streaked face turning upwards like a hopeful baby bird.
“Fulfilling campaign pledges,” said the campaign manager.
Mister Leader burst into tears and tried to jump out the window.
***
“Pick one,” said the office manager.
“Pick one,” said the secretary.
“He’s not listening,” said the campaign manager.
“Yes I am,” pouted Mister Leader. He kicked his legs under his desk fitfully, rattling the heavy chains that secured him to the spot.
“Let’s make a deal,” coaxed the campaign manager. “If you pick the campaign pledge you want to fulfill right now with no complaining, you can have your dessert right away.”
“Remind me,” said Mister Leader with fierce intensity.
“There’s the plastic edict. You promised that you’d outlaw the use of recyclable plastics in school drinks and replace them with lead-lined bottles.”
“Lead costs money,” muttered Mister Leader. “And the other three?”
“The motion to turn the central metropolitan park into an oil field needs work. You’d have to go and hire geologists, or at least people willing to pretend to be them for five minutes.”
“Rocks are dumb.”
“You said you’d fire the head of property safety inspection out of a cannon into the lake.”
“Would that take paperwork?”
“For the cannon? Yes. And finally, there’s the matter of the road to nowhere.”
“Where’s that again?”
“Nowhere. It’s not connected to anywhere, so it can’t be somewhere. It’s just nowhere.”
“I like roads,” said Mister Leader. “Do they have suburban development in nowhere?”
“I don’t see why they would,” said the campaign manager. “It’s nowhere special.”
“Is the land cheap?”
“If the land were worth anything, it would be somewhere instead of nowhere.”
“I like what I’m hearing,” said Mister Leader. “Let’s do it.”
***
The preplanning was complex, and was accordingly delegated with great aplomb and ceremony to less important and less well-paid people by Mister Leader personally.
“I can’t find nowhere on any of our maps,” complained the cartographic planner.
“Of course you can’t,” said the campaign manager. “If anyone knew where it was, it wouldn’t be nowhere.”
“If we don’t know how far away nowhere is, how do we know how much of a budget we’re going to require to construct the road?” asked the project manager.
“Not that big a budget,” said the campaign manager. “Everyone knows it’s nowhere important, so we won’t need a particularly impressive highway.”
“Are we meant to just start building without any directions and just hope for the best or what?” demanded the head foreman.
“You’ve got it exactly right,” said the campaign manager.
“Why are you answering all the questions and where’s Mister Leader?” asked the press secretary.
“None of your business,” said the campaign manager. Then they called the meeting early and went home to feed Mister his diet of Tums and bourbon. All this stress was really getting to him.
“Do they love me yet?” he whimpered, buried beneath his sheets, blankets, duvets, comforters, covers, mattresses, and an entire foam pit.
“They will soon, they will soon,” soothed the campaign manager. “You’re going nowhere fast.”
***
Construction began on April the first and ran into problems immediately.
“My men keep fucking up and clearing ground or laying asphalt with regards to the environment around them,” warned the head foreman. “Every time I turn around some idiot’s taken us off target from nowhere and started wandering towards somewhere. How are we meant to work like this?”
“Work blindfolded,” said the campaign manager. And it was so.
“I’ve been trying to inform the inhabitants of nowhere that thanks to Mister Leader prime real estate opportunities for developers and also them I guess are coming their way for weeks now, and no luck,” mourned the press secretary. “How can I drum up votes from these guys when I don’t know their addresses?”
“They’re nobodies,” said the campaign manager. “And they live nowhere important. It’s okay if they don’t vote, because they don’t vote for everyone equally. What’s important is that our pre-existing voter base sees that we keep our promises.”
“The workers are beginning to ask why we haven’t paid them yet,” warned the project manager.
“We’ve been paying them nothing for days on end, what more do these greedy little moochers want?” replied the campaign manager. “Once we get to nowhere they’ll be able to spend all of it. Tell them they’ll get twice as much nothing and that should shut them up.”
“I woke up tonight and I was blind,” confessed the cartographic planner. “No dark, no light, no anything. Only nothing. Then it was gone, and everything was here again.”
“That’s just nowhere,” said the campaign manager. “Go back to drawing your maps.”
“They’re all blank.”
“Well, draw them blanker then,” snapped the campaign manager. Then they went home and handed a nice big baby bottle of benzos to Mister Leader, who suckled its rubber teat softly and dewy-eyed as they sponge-bathed him.
“Do they love me yet?” he hiccupped as a particularly potent gulp went down the wrong pipe.
“Nearly, nearly, nearly,” murmured the campaign manager, patting his back until his burps came out. “We just need to find the middle.”
***
“I can’t see anything,” the cartographic expert said softly, his mouth the only moving part of his face. “I can’t see something. All I can see is nothing, and I don’t know where it is.”
“Great,” said the campaign manager. “That’s great. Just keep drawing that map so we don’t go off-course.”
“I’m not drawing anything. All my pens and paper have vanished.”
“Exactly.”
“All my workers have left,” said the head foreman. “Nobody’s doing anything.”
“Excellent, perfect, great, wonderful,” said the campaign manager. “Don’t you start doing anything either.”
“My office vanished this morning,” said the project manager. “I phoned my landlord to complain and my voice was unfamiliar to him. Eventually he couldn’t hear me at all and hung up. Do I even exist?”
“Everything’s going poorly, and nobody’s involved,” said the campaign manager. To themselves.
“Mister leader needs to give a speech about the project now that it’s complete and nobody’s seen him in over a month,” said the press secretary. “Where is he?”
“He’s already there,” said the campaign manager.
Then they got up, went out to their car, and drove down the road to nowhere.
Inside their trunk, carefully blindfolded, was Mister Leader.
And then they let him out.
***
There were giant novelty shears. There was a ribbon.
And there was nowhere.
“Cut it,” said the campaign manager.
“Who’s watching?” said Mister Leader, dripping perspiring eyes twitching behind his blindfold. “I hear a crowd.”
“Nobody important. All of them. Only the most important nobodies are here, and they’re all watching. Are you ready?”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Oh good!” said Mister Leader. And he snipped the ribbon and the road was open and with that, it was done. Nowhere was now part of somewhere.
Nobody applauded.
“Wait,” said a belated bystander in the crowd, “what’s somewhere?”
“Everywhere nowhere isn’t,” replied another.
“Oh. Where’s nowhere?”
Then the conceptual laws of physics caught up to them, and also its own feet.
***
The universe did NOT end. Just three dimensions of it.