Do Kings Dream of Electric Jesters?

      T he hall was empty, a testament to the power of the King to clear a room whenever he needed to. Sometimes this was caused by his irascible temper but more recently, it was caused by one of the King’s fetid burps, the stench of which had once caused, or so it was rumored, an unfortunate Techo courier to turn from Striped to Swamp Gas before everyone’s eyes. Ever since the incident, real or not, people had tended to vacate the premises whenever the King’s belly started grumbling louder than usual.

      This danger did not perturb the two young pets skulking behind one of the pillars just beyond the entrance to the hall. The guards had let them in without asking any questions; after all, it was none of their business if the kids these days got their kicks by daring each other to stand in the way of Skarl’s burps. And yet despite the posturing that had bought them their ticket to an audience, the two children remained hidden after ten minutes, staring at the small blue speck at the far end of the hall.

      “You go first!” whispered the Draik, violently nudging his friend. “It was your stupid idea to come in here!”

      “Get out of here with that talk,” nudged back the Elephante. “You’re the one who didn’t believe me! If you had just believed me, we wouldn’t be here right now. We could be at home drinking root beer flo-”

      “I’m so beyond sick of hearing about your mom’s root beer floats, oh my goodness, you have to stop talking about that. They’re not as good as you think they are, and you know it. Now are you going to show me what we’re here for? Or do I have to walk out of here and leave you alone with Sir Burpsalot back there?”

      The Elephante looked taken aback but quickly recovered with a look of petulant determination. “Jeez, Archie, you don’t have to be so rude. I didn’t have to ask you to come along, you know!”

      “Then why did you, Ernie, huh?” shot back Archie. “You know how I feel about this place! After that joke I made four years, all I can think of when I come here is how angry the King looked.”

      “But that’s just it,” hissed Ernie. “Was he angry? Did you get a good look at him? Is he ever angry? Is he ever happy?”

      Archie looked nonplussed and tried to balance his concentration between shooting his friend dirty looks and not poking his head out from behind the pillar. “What are you talking about? He’s a pet, right? Of course he gets angry and happy. You’ve had too many root beer floats, Ernie, your brain is starting to go funny!”

      “No, just…” Ernie seemed to make up his mind about something. “Come on, watch this.” With a definitive blast on his trunk, Ernie flipped out from behind the pillar and marched straight up the hall towards the blue Skeith sitting on his throne. Archie squawked and hurried out after him, desperate not to be left standing alone.

      The long walk up to the throne was made even longer by the King’s silent, piercing stare. He didn’t blink, didn’t even change his disgruntled snarl as the two approached. Even once they were standing within feet of him, he didn’t so much as glance between the two of them. He just sat there, waiting.

      “I hope you thought of a good joke,” whispered Archie.

      In response, Ernie cleared his throat and recited, as though giving a speech at the Neopies, “What do you do if fierce Peophins has eaten too much tin of olives?”

      Archie’s green skin fairly turned white as he heard the words tumble out of his friend’s mouth. “What in Fyora’s name are you saying? That’s not even a joke! That’s not even a real sentence! You’re actually insane, oh Fyora, I knew it.”

      Ernie stood his ground, staring Skarl in the eye. There was no movement. Then, Ernie cracked a feeble smile and intoned the punchline of the joke, “You offering them a tin of….” He paused for dramatic effect. “What what what!”

      Skarl just stared, fists on his hips. He didn’t blink, he didn’t yell. It looked as though the joke had no effect on the King.

      Ernie turned to look at his friend, extending his hand towards the King as though he was showing off the result of a successful science experiment. “See?”

      But where once there had been an Archie, there was now a pocket of empty air. Archie, instead, had retreated all the way back down the hallway and was tearing out of the hall as fast as was possible. Ernie honked a farewell to the King before chasing after his friend, finally catching up to him just past the moat.

      “What in Neopia was that?” demanded Archie after he had stopped hyperventilating. “Were you trying to get us both thrown in the dungeons?”

      “That is what I was trying to get you to notice!” Ernie seemed in surprisingly good spirits despite the failure of his joke. “Did you see it?”

      “See what? You make a complete fool of yourself? Yeah, I had a front row seat, thanks.”

      “No, his reaction!”

      “Oh, yes, he really jumped for joy there. Thought for sure he’d bust his gut laughing, I did. Really won the jestership with that one, you did.”

      Ernie snorted in impatience. “Stop being snarky for one second and you’ll actually see it! If you bothered paying attention in class, you’d know that that joke is the funniest question and answer combination ever conceived by pet.”

      Archie took a second to mull this over. “You’re not serious.”

      “It is objectively the funniest thing ever said, hand to Fyora. Telling it to Skarl should have guaranteed the biggest laugh of his life. And yet there was nothing? Now why do you think that is?”

      “Because the people who came up with that joke were off their minds on borovan?”

      “Because,” Ernie steamrolled, “King Skarl is not what he says he is. He didn’t laugh, you see. He didn’t laugh because he couldn’t laugh because,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “he’s a robot.”

      Archie took a few seconds to digest what he had just heard. “…Excuse me?”

      “King Skarl is a robot. He’s physically incapable of laughing.”

      “Are you seriously trying to convince me that because King Skarl didn’t laugh at your trash joke that he’s a robot?”

      “It’s the only reasonable answer!”

      Archie flapped his wings as though trying to distance himself by whatever means from his friend. “Do you have any proof other than him not laughing? If that’s your only criteria, you might as well consider me a robot too.”

      Ernie smiled, like a spider who had just caught the fly in its intricate web. “Oh Archie, I thought you’d never ask.”

      ***

      “No way. Not Hagan too. You’re mental. Absolutely mental.”

      “You can’t claim that two pets are brothers and then only make one of them a robot! Logic dictates that they both have to be!”

      “And what’s the problem with Hagan? He doesn’t laugh at your jokes either?”

      “Don’t be silly,” Ernie chided as he strolled towards the green-clad Skeith at the end of the hall. “King Hagan likes knowledge and deep thoughts. Just watch and learn.”

      King Hagan watched the Elephante and Draik approach with the same discerning look he had greeted every pet with since time immemorial. One eye faced towards them, eyebrow lowered; the other faced away, eyebrow raised.

      “One should never assume,” began Ernie, “that a friend is like the honor of a Weewoo.” This he said with head bowed and even, Archie noticed, tears beginning to dazzle in his eyes.

      King Hagan remained unmoved. “I’m not dense, youngin’. I already knew that!”

      Ernie nodded in acceptance and turned to walk away, dragging Archie with him. Archie in turn just stared at his friend.

      “What was that? What did I just see? I thought you were gonna do something crazy like you did with Skarl?”

      “Are you serious, Archie? Didn’t you hear what I said? That was possibly the most heartfelt thing I could’ve said! It was about you, you know…” Again, Ernie’s eyes filled with diamond-sparkling tears, and Archie suddenly realized that the ones from earlier hadn’t been stage tears; they had been real.

      “That…? That was the most heartfelt, deep, philosophical thing you could think of? It sounded like you just selected a bunch of random options from a list or something! I could’ve made it.”

      For the third time in as many hours, Ernie snorted. “Clearly you know nothing of poetry, Archie. That was my heart and soul on the line, and did you see what Hagan did? Nothing! He did nothing! I would have expected, given what we’ve been told about Hagan, such a delicate soul to be touched beyond repair by those words! But instead, he did nothing. He didn’t cry. And do you know why?”

      “Oh Fyora, don’t tell me…”

      “He didn’t cry because he couldn’t cry because-”

      “No no no, I’m not hearing this, no no!”

      “He’s a robot!”

      Archie whirled on his friend in a rage, stopping him halfway back to the entrance to the castle. “No! Robot Skeiths look completely different from those two! There isn’t some mastermind who made these two ‘brothers’ who won’t laugh and won’t cry. There’s no conspiracy to keep you from winning these two competitions! You just have to accept that you aren’t as funny or wise as you think.”

      “Literally impossible, my friend!” Ernie rejoined. “I’ve been doing this every day for so long that it’s statistically invalid for you to suggest that these two give away compliments at random. I’d certainly have won one by now. They simply must be robots programmed to not feel emotions.”

      Archie heaved a sigh. “Fine, you know what, I’ll let you believe that on one condition. We stay here and wait. We wait for a single pet to come and talk to the King. If the King reacts the same, we leave and I’ll forever be a convert of your robot theory. If the King actually shows some emotion, then you have to admit that you’re terrible at both jokes and philosophy and should probably just give up and go get one of those root beer floats you kept going on about.”

      Ernie thought for a second, ruminating on the possible rewards of both redemption and root beer. “Deal,” he finally said, holding out one of his massive hands. “But you’ll soon be eating your words, Archie!”

      It didn’t take long for a pet to enter the hall, a ragged-looking Buzz who couldn’t have been more than ten minutes out of the field he worked in. If he had ever been in a place of learning, it was only to use the bathroom while he was on his way to the market. Ernie would have been impressed if he had a name and could also spell it.

      But the Buzz hovered down the hall towards King Hagan, straw hat in his hands and eyes cast down. Finally, he reached the King’s throne and coughed feebly. “M’king,” he began. “I’ve a phrase f’r y’.”

      “I b’lieve that hard work i’like a Buzz.”

      Ernie pushed both his hands into his mouth to stop from busting out laughing, but a small squeak still came from out of his trunk. “Is that it? Fyora above, I should keep that one in mind for Skarl! Is he talking about himself? I can’t believe it, what foolery! I can’t wait to see his face when Hagan-”

      But whatever Ernie thought Hagan was going to do, he clearly didn’t. As Ernie watched from behind his pillar, his trunk, once raised, fell lower and lower until it nearly touched the ground. What met his eyes was Hagan placing his hands together under his chin and lowering his head until it rested upon the peak. His shoulders shook and it seemed as though he were either laughing or crying. It wasn’t until he raised his head that Ernie and Archie could see the tears dotting Hagan’s eyes and the proud smile on his face.

      “Ahh…brilliant. It’s good to know,” he beamed, “that there are intelligent Neopians out there.” He placed a fatherly hand on the Buzz’s head. “I give you an A+. You must take this gift from me.” Then, Hagan pulled out a gigantic sack of neopoints from behind his throne and thrust it into the Buzz’s hands. He also deposited a large book on top. “There’s a good book store on the way back to your farm,” he winked. “Could be worth a pretty penny.”

      As the Buzz streaked out of the hall, buzzing with joy, Ernie sank to the floor in a stupor. “I…I…”

      Archie, meanwhile, couldn’t stop himself from smirking at his friend’s misfortune. “Funny kind of robot, that Hagan. Looks like he must be a tractor or something, relating to the working class and whatnot.”

      “But…but…my sentences…”

      “Sounds to me like you try too hard, Ernie. But wait, hey hey hey. I just thought of something! What do you do if a friendly Draik has had too much of this nonsense?”

      Ernie just looked dumbstruck.

      “You offering him a glass of root beer float! Hahaha! Isn’t that a good one? No? Right, now you know how Skarl feels. Come on, get up. Let’s wet our whistles and figure out exactly how the Wheel of Knowledge is rigged against us. Now that one, I know you’re right on.”

      The End.