Three men with three drinks and three opinions sat at one table, arguing at every volume at once.
“You’re asking me what motivates a human being?” shouted General Duck Noggin, pounding his long, fleshless hands on the table like a pair of macabre drumsticks. “I’ll tell you! Anyone can tell you! FEAR! Fear of death! Fear of pain! Fear of the unknown! Fear of your mother being disappointed in you! And then you ask me how to direct a soldier?! Are you stupid AND deaf?!”
“Stupid and deaf, stupid and deaf, stupid and deaf, stupid, and, also, deaf,” mocked Admiral Loaford Schlap from somewhere inside the depths of his moustache, his monocle glaring fearsomely above his jowls like the cherry on an human sundae. “Must you describe yourself in every sentence through projection mental AND vocal, idiot boy? Anyone can tell you that, anyone can feel that, and THAT is why it is not special. Fear is old and worn and by the time childhood is behind you everyone has gotten used to avoiding it. What never wears out? Hate. A hate acquired at age two can be bright and shining when you die in bed at a hundred; even gold can’t age as gracefully. Teach a citizen hate and point them at the foe and they will fight until their body is dust, then sweep themselves into the enemy’s lungs!”
“Both of you are tragically astray,” said the third officer, shaking his head in sadness. “Fear and hate are negative emotions. You can harness them, but not tame them – they’ll smash your plow, run rampant over your fields and destroy your crops. You need to think positive. You need to think of foundations, of unshakability and steadfastness. Everyone needs something to love, don’t they? Make that your cause.”
“Shut up, Bob,” snapped Duck Noggin.
“Yes, shut up Roberts,” agreed Loaford Schlap.
“I’ve told you before, you can call me ‘Bob Robs’; we’re all friends here,” said Chief Military Advisor Bob Roberts, or ‘Bob Robs’ to his friends. “And as we’re such good friends, we should test our ideas fairly and equitably. I believe we will be starting a war with our neighbours soon, won’t we? Why don’t we each motivate our troops in the manner we think best and see who has set the best record at the end of the day? A good, clean yardstick.”
“That’s stupid,” said Duck Noggin.
“If he doesn’t like it, I’m in,” said Loaford Schlap.
“Oh no you don’t! I’m in too.”
And so it was, and so they separated in haste, for the war was soon to arrive and the bill even sooner than that.
***
General Duck Noggin addressed his new recruits in the parade grounds, so raw they barely knew how to salute, pacing in front of them like a restless mantis before a parade of ladybugs.
“Listen up, you maggots!” he told them at great volume. “You are going to die! We all are! And if you listen to me and do as I say, I will ensure that is later than if you DON’T listen to me! Now drop and give me twenty!”
The soldiers stared, then awkwardly and nervously descended to all fours and began to do push-ups.
“Too slow!” said Duck Noggin. He pulled out his pistol and shot the slowest soldier in eyesight with it, bang! “Now get back up!”
Limbs shaking, eyes wide, they scrambled back up.
“Too fast!”
Bang!
“Now climb the hill!”
Panting, sweating, shaking, they climbed the hill.
“Use your hands, scum! Scramble like you mean it!” Bang!
They used their hands.
“DON’T DROP YOUR WEAPONS, IDIOTS!” Bang! “Now GO BACK DOWN!”
They went back down.
“To the barracks! Go to sleep! A soldier must sleep when they can and wake when they are needed! YOU! SLEEP FASTER!”
Bang!
And so it went for weeks, with not a second of the day not devoted to training, and not a second of that training taking place without General Duck Noggin and his always-smoking, always-loaded, always-brandished sidearm. The bodies were left to rot where they fell, and each became a lesson that was repeated aloud each time they marched past them.
“Make eye contact when you speak to a superior! Be confident!”
“Lower your gaze in deference when I’m addressing you! Be humble!”
“Don’t stow your pack sloppily! Take your time!”
“Don’t take so long stowing your pack! Hurry up!”
“Stop staring at the bodies, the battlefield will be full of them!”
“Don’t ignore the bodies, they’re there to teach you a lesson!”
On and on and on and on and on and on the lessons in fear went, ever-shifting, ever-rising, until at last not one soul under the general’s command could sleep, or walk, or stand without a terrible black hole inside them clawing at their skin, demanding they sacrifice anything and everything to be free of its tug against their nerves. Their eyes belonged to dying dogs, not humans, and they whimpered in their sleep – soundlessly, because that was one of the corpse-lessons.
Then came war. Then came the march. And then, atop a small hill before the battle, came the speech. Duck Noggin stood tall – not merely for his height, which was great, but because he had so thoroughly bent the army beneath him.
“The enemy is upon us!” he shouted. “They are heartless and dangerous and seek to kill you! But I can do so much worse! I will pull your soul free from your eyes and floss with it! I will pull the trigger at your skull should you flinch for an instant from duty! I am the inescapable doom that awaits you if you fail, and you WILL NOT FAIL! AM I UNDERSTOOD?”
No one answered. He pulled his gun free and shot the nearest silent face. “SPEAK WHEN SPOKEN TO!” he roared.
“Yes, sir!” called the soldiers all together and all at once, high and quivering.
So General Duck Noggin held his gun high, turned his back to his army with absolute and supreme confidence, and commanded “CHARGE!”
The battle was a confused rout even by the standards of war (seldom does an army flee in terror before the foe fires upon them) and afterwards it was very difficult to determine if General Duck Noggin had truly perished. The only corpse that theoretically could be his had been so utterly obliterated from behind by massed musket fire that it could have belonged to anyone.
***
Admiral Loaford Schlap harrumphed at the marines of his captains as they went through their paces. “Sloppy! Very sloppy.”
“Their marksmenship is more than adequate,” protested one of the officers.
“Not the guns, no, not the guns – their mindset! They fight to hit the little dot in the center of the target; who’s going to care about THAT when the fire hits the field? They need motivation. They crave fuel, fuel for the flame we shall alight in their bellies! Attend to me! Here are the facts that must be conveyed.” Loaford snorted, hawked, cleared his throat, and beckoned his secretary – a wizened beast of tendons and hair. “’The Enemy,’” he spake with great enunciation, “’is very nearly, but not quite, entirely human.’”
The secretary waited, hand poised.
“That’s it,” clarified Loaford. “We don’t want to rush to put all our cards on the table at once, eh? All of you, take a copy of that each, give it a shot on your lot – then when they ask you what that means, elaborate on it in your own words and tell me what words work best! We’re in this for the long-haul, we’ve got to let the marinade penetrate deep into their guts before they’re all tender and ripe for the battle. And to do that, we’ve got to find the right ingredients.”
So the admiral’s seventy captains saluted and took his notes and that evening they spoke to their soldiery of their enemies, and of how they were very nearly (but not quite) entirely human, and the next dawn they came back with their own notes, which were pooled and sorted through into a comprehensible and criticisable form by Loaford Schlap.
“Not bad,” he admitted, puffing away on his overpipe. “Not bad at all. We will need to condense this, drill it down to the red-hot bedrock and then hammer that until it cracks open and the blazing magma of bloodlust spills forth to carry us to the eruptive violence that is glorious victory!” He coughed triumphantly, then removed his underpipe to jab it at his secretary. “Write that one down. Yes, write it down. And while you’re writing it down…let’s see what’s been bubbling brightest in the stewpot…. Yes, this one. This works. Yes. Yes.”
So the notes of what gave the marines most ire were taken and written and sent out to be tested again, and the captains spoke their new words that night.
“The enemy,” said Captain Hovard Slenk, “have smaller brains than you.”
“The enemy,” warned Captain Mercy Pottery, “have smaller hearts than yours, and their genitals are malformed.”
“The enemy,” instructed Captain Cluny Clobbbers, “do not eat animals you consider it appropriate to eat, and eat animals you consider inappropriate to eat. They enjoy this.”
“The enemy,” elucidated Captain Mothsplatter Prentice, “have been cut up in every way by a scientific study and that study did not find a single organ corresponding to a soul.”
And that too was gathered, and studied, and improved upon, and that was the first two day’s work with weeks yet to come.
“Good job,” said Loaford Schlap. “Next fact: ‘the Enemy hates you.’ Get cracking so we can get delving!”
So it went, and so they learned, and so they proceeded.
“The enemy despise our beautiful, bounteous, and gorgeous homeland,” said Captain Hovard Slenk in a tight, angry voice. “They want to burn our orchards and ravage our fields and piss on the ashes and shit on the piss.”
“The enemy can’t stand how amazing and powerful and dangerous our strong and perfect military is,” said Captain Mercy Pottery in a low, warning voice. “They’re sneakily forcing us to attack them before we make them look like the miserable and pathetic failures they are and they have no choice but to give up and commit suicide before our majestic radiance.”
“The enemy covet our great wealth,” said Captain Cluny Clobbers in a loud, outraged voice. “They want to take your money and spend it all on things they don’t need or like that won’t work anyways.”
“The enemy are jealous of how beautiful and perfect your spouses and families are,” said Captain Mothsplatter Prentice in a contemplative, aloof voice. “They want to kiss them on the mouth mwah mwah mwah.”
“Almost there,” said Admiral Loaford Schlap with satisfaction when they had processed all of this. “But now we need the final step to set the path straight: ‘the enemy is inferior.’ Get it off these notes and into their heads – hurry!”
“The enemy are lazy and indolent and they lack the strength and will to fight you!” said Captain Hovard Slenk.
“The enemy are feeble and limp of every body part from wrist to foot and they lack the strength and will to fight you!” said Captain Mercy Pottery.
“The enemy are idiotic drooling chumps that don’t know warfare from cookware and they lack the strength and will to fight you!” said Captain Cluny Clobbers.
“The enemy believe in the incorrect gods and are actually minions of small and worthless devils and they lack the strength and will to fight you!” said Captain Mothsplatter Prentice.
And then there was no more time, but that was enough. Loaford Schlap stood on the deck of the greatest vessel his country had ever commissioned and looked down upon the grandest fleet his people had ever constructed and every eye he met looked right through his and out the other side, fixated with bloodlust on the foe.
“B’god we’ve done it,” he marvelled to his captains, mesopipe drooping from his incisors in admiration and joy.
“Yes, sir,” said Captain Hovard Slenk, teeth gritted.
“And on the eve of battle no less – hah, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. They lie anchored – unable to press us, unwilling to retreat, awaiting the day-wind that shall convey us to their destruction.”
“Aye, sir,” said Captain Mercy Pottery, eyes smouldering.
“Come the dawn we will press the attack and leave this sea awash in corpses.”
“Surely, sir,” said Captain Cluny Clobbers, face contorted.
“So sound the bell for night’s watch and tell the men to dream violent dreams – on the morrow, those dreams shall come true!”
“It can’t wait,” said Captain Mothsplatter Prentice, foaming at the mouth. “ALL HANDS TO THE BOATS!”
“What?” asked the admiral.
“TO THE BOATS!” screamed the other captains.
“YES, SIR!” called the soldiers all together and all at once, shrill and cracking to pieces
And the admiral asked ‘what?’ again, but such noise and such emotion are not found in places where questions are tolerated, so he was swept aside as every soul in the fleet set sails, dropped boats, seized weaponry, and very slowly poured out across the midnight sea into the surprised but grateful jaws of their foes, who found that enemies attacking with the wind against them, no plan, and complete disregard for their own existence were a pleasant surprise. The next day dawned on a single fleet and a wide array of splinters, some of which may have once been a deck an admiral could have stood upon, or a selection of gradated pipes he might have smoked, but they all looked much alike by that time.
***
Chief Military Advisor Bob Roberts received the news of the disaster at sea without much thought as to its impact on his bet. He was concerned with the speech he was drafting. He was concerned with the guard he would be addressing.
He was also concerned if he had a poppy seed stuck in his teeth. His mirror fixed that much for him. Then he straightened his collar, stepped to the balcony, and raised his voice to an appropriate level for the benefit of the ranks of those who waited upon his word.
“I know that we are in a dangerous and strange place right now,” he spoke. “But have you considered that it is also a fine and beautiful and great one? Look at how perfect this building is. Look at how wonderful the people who made it are. Look at each other: aren’t you beautiful? And not just physically: each and every one of you has lived the very best life you could have because of the tremendous wisdom and excellent emotional care you have shown to all others for all your lives, as instilled in you by the loving and irreproachably tender guidance of your parents, all of whom believe – as do we all! – in the sanctity and everlasting joy available to every human being that dares call this place home. Truly we live in a place of heaven come to earth, and in so coming, it has proven itself greater than its original home – that which dwells in purity and glory unseen is by far lesser than that which descends to mundanity so as to shine brightly amidst the ashes and thereby inspire all us weary souls to rise up in glorious ascension from the mud and dirt to the aethereal cloudscape of sublimity. The absolute, ultimate, final, terminal, concluding end-state of this land is not yet reached; its message is as of yet unaccepted, as can be seen by how all humanity has not yet joined together in harmonious and humble supplication and love before our unimaginable glory. Therefore our defeat is not possible, for losing before that happy day is also impossible. You will win us victory because you are very good and we are very great. I love you. I’d wish you good luck but you don’t need it.”
The citizen’s militia, national guard, reserve battalions, and assorted conscripts blinked greatly and stared.
“Now go forth and win, for love of all that we are!” cheered Bob Roberts,
“Yes, sir!” called the soldiers all together and all at once, loud and proud. And they marched out in their serried ranks and, to the world’s considerable surprise, did just that. At the very gates of their capital the foe was scorned and turned aside – driven not just from their walls, but from the country entire, then further still – and they were heroes.
Then they returned home and used their newfound heroic status to advocate for putting up a large fence around the land – legal and literal – so that they might cultivate their power and perfection and work towards their ultimate destiny as the greatest country to ever exist untroubled by the demands, threats, and feeble pawings of the lesser-and-less-glorious nations that surrounded them. Some disputed this and were immediately set upon as traitors.
Twelve years later the country – starving, undersupplied, depopulated, and torn apart by four successive civil wars (hyperpatriots vs the disloyal; hyperpatriots vs the irresolute; hyperpatriots vs patriots; and finally hyperpatriots vs hyperpatriots) – was annexed jointly by its neighbours in an act of coordinated international pity. Chief Military Advisor Bob Roberts was not available for legal commentary, having been executed in a show trial for insufficient love of country some ten years earlier.
***
The fate of the bar where the bet was made is unknown. If it was burned, it was probably rebuilt. Drinks, like armed conflict, are a timeless necessity.
Though the precise manner in which both are executed can vary.