EthicalDative

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/09/15/le-coeur-a-ses-raisons-que-la-raison-ne-connait-point/)

*From the charter of the Rhipidistian Society.

The end of lunation 247.457627-12 matched about twenty douzains of the Old Reckoning. No one was quite sure how to label the new chronology, but it felt like more than a routine vibration in the cesium of Isthmia’s atomic clocks. The house of Huff Pugh Fuchs was entering an indeterminate decade of the Uncommon Era. That was what counted. Time kept passing successfully, and the duchy under the current Montmorency — number XIV — was stoked to celebrate itself.

The hallmark moment marked persistence: first, that of the Montmorencys in sitting their dynasty’s impotent throne; first, that of the Mamasutras in perpetuating efficient privilege; first, that of Isthmia Inc. in wresting perpetuity from the scoured barrens of a dead hemisphere; last, that of the ding warrens whose organs fed the transplant mills in the mansion district.

Normally, the prospects for a donor on an organ farm biding his date with Texas cologne when a recipient surfaced would have been humdrum. The donor about to be mentioned, however, was no ordinary ding. You recall the “Adopt a Ding” promotion mentioned several figments ago? Siddhartha Huff had duly chosen a random ding to coddle symbolically like the rest of his peers.

But rather than relinquish the juvenile to whatever his fate portended when the promo period expired, Sidd elected to stealthily groom his adoptee for a shocking purpose, one referenced glancingly heretofore, to be snatched from the shadows of allusion hereinafter. The upcoming Heritage Ball, designated the “Lunation Gala,” would prove to be more climactic than even this writer had supposed.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/09/10/heres-conflict-it-had-to-come/ )

He was an oddity in the Rhipidistian peerage: a patrician who chafed under the yoke of privilege and pose. Siddhartha Huff knew in his bones that he was a left-handed entity in a right-handed body. Sidd was a political animal from even before he realized it. The honor he held as Shootist for the Posse of Matrons awakened him instinctually. It brought him edgewise to the very crotch of Isthmian pow. Each year’s Heritage Ball whose dais pose he captured caused the earth to move for the desultory flaneur that Sidd had become.

Sidd believed he had the puckish gumption to transition to a Mamasutra if he dealt his cards right. He was prepared to play the long game. On one hand it would give him a shot at achieving Posse rank, the ne plus ultra of pow in the duchy. On another, it afforded respite from his partisan dysphoria and the maunderings of bilgeweed vapers in the clubby opprobrium dens of Mar-a-Gogo.

A sense of urgency to act on his thrust was gripping Sidd. He intuited an approaching climax to the figment in which he figured, to be followed by the sad satiety of dénouement. Coiled plot momentum propelled him to ride the crest of the moment to whatever desertified barrens it stranded him on. This mess started with a yacht wreck and would surely end just as badly, but end it must, he theorized.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/09/06/rubber-of-aspire-meets-highway-of-dream/)

His mansion sprawled in the sunny uplands; his larder bulged with premium ancillary protein; the flower of lab produce was carted daily to his kitchens; his chef staff conjured shakshukas and bibimbaps for him at the drop of a hat; his thés dansants were legendary among the Four Hundred; he stroked a mean putt on the Mar-a-Go-Golf pastures; he rubbed classy elbows at The Gentleman’s Club.

What more could Siddhartha Huff want that wasn’t proffered in spades by accident of birth? The answer was pow. Sidd craved it in the worst way. He and his Rhipidistian cronies had all the pose in the world, but they lacked pow. The terms of the co-griftership handed down by the Better Monday Agreement — the magna carta of Isthmia — were crystal: pose to the Rhips, pow to the Mamas, fifty-fifty skim divvy, nominy dominy amen.

The Montmorencys’ clench on the precedency had relieved Rhips of the burden of figurehead choice. They had capitalized on lack of purpose to play, eat, drink, bet and hang at Mar-a-Gogo. The obesity thing crept up on them. When they realized they had a problem, it dawned that the Mamasutras held all the patents on SlenderTech ™. Siddhartha Huff was the sole one of their number to perceive how this would alter the delicate balance of greed in the land.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved