It took some time for the press to ask the question which was on everyone's mind. In fact the question had festered inside the reporters' heads like a fish left out to become rotten in the sun. But the matter had no precedent leaving the propriety of inquisition of the president uncertain. On a particulate level, where each reporter would is represtented as a particle, each particle, or reporter if you prefer, hoped another reporter would have a substantial rapport with the president to break the precedent and report on the matter, leaving the other particles, or reporters of you prefer, relieved. It was in this way that the matter remained obfuscated, and the public became increasingly perplexed by the puzzle, and puzzled further that the reporters would not report on the matter, and that their letters to the reporters had gone unanswered.
However, the issue at hand or rather the issue that the issue had been eschewed at the hands of the press did not impress the public particularly; it had been years that their correspondance to reporters through calls, envelopes and letters, especially the latter, had been culled by the reporters to a shredder, or answering machine, enveloping their relationship in a saguine fog like bitter butter, but red. The public, which like an ocean, river or group of trolleys called transit, could be considered one thing comprised of many individual molecules or trolleys. Regardless, the public outnumbered the press, yet the weight of their inquisitions only succeeded in pressing the reporters to mollify the public with increasing mollifications, as though the public had sat on a balloon, which was the press. This was because, of course, the reporters did not know the answer to the question which was puzzling everyone.
As one can imagine, this was a frustrating moment for everyone. The press became upset with the public and the public became upset with the press. After over time the situation became increasingly awkward, with the public mumbling when they came across reporters at a restaurant, and the reporters failing to show up at press gatherings with the president altogether and eventually avoiding restaurants.
The situation was resolved when a sir by the name of Sir Fish, the same Mister Fish (the same Fish as Sir Fish (Sir Fish humbly prefers Mister Fish) who reported on the rogue drone, resolved the situation. This story that the reader began reading at the beginning of this story may not make a great deal of sense to the reader if, especially, or perhaps nonessentially, one is not familiar with that story of the sir Sir Mister Hamilton Fish (the same as Sir Fish and Mister Fish; Hamilton is Sir Fish's surname, Fish being a name the author uses to hide Sir Hamilton's identity; Sir Hamilton Fish is not based on any real Hamilton Fishes and any connection is purely coincidental; furthermore the author will use all these names of Fish interchangably to keep the story from becoming stagnant) and the rogue drone. If the reader is not acquanited with this story, which the reader should not be at the moment, as this is the first time the author has detailed the story about Sir Hamilton Fish (this statement is void if the author writes about the folliwng episode in a separate work and the reader reads that work before this story, or if he, the reader, or she, began reading this story in the middle; under the two previous detailed circumstances the author recommends you continue to read this story first, from the beginning, although, again this depends on what the author writes in the future and the nature of the narrative of the future work as the author is prone to forget things; furthermore, the author cannot be held liable for any confusion to the reader) and the rogue drone.
The story of Sir Hamilton Fish began back in the year 2010, a few months in the future of when this story was first written before subsequent revisions relegated it to the anachronistic status of most stories conveying the past from the present as though that author was in the past himself at the present moment, which as we can agree, he was not (or she) nor was the rogue drone.
The rogue drone episode was not so much a matter of a rogue drone but a prank drone gone rogue. This drone was sent into battle to find insurgent poppie growers by smelling nicotine and tracing these odiferous, or odoriferous, if you prefer, although I admit I prefer the former, farmers. The manufacturers intended the drone to spy on the insurgents or attack them, as you would expect a military drone to do, being drones built for a militaristic purpose. Yet the drone was not manufactured in the correct way at all, due to a few pacificist pranksters from Cal Tech, or MIT if you prefer. A couple hundred of these drones were released, and then to the drone control unit's bafflement, the drones disappeared from the control of the drone control center. The drones were missing for some time, and the army did not want to report what had happened to the press or public, because losing drones is an embarassment, especially to a drone control unit. However, they could not keep up the charade for long.
The situation was at first quarantined in the mountains of Baluchistan, where people smoking cigarettes were startled by the approach of a flying robot. Then the robots spread all over the world doing the same thing. However, the incidents were so random and bizarre that the press would not believe the public, and the public did not believe the press. This was the beginning of the tensions noted in the beginning of the story between public and press, and which were resolved in this first scenario concerning drones by the Sir Hamilton Fish, who would later also resolve the second scenario, or should I say, might, for suspense purposes, resolve the second scenario, the second scenario being the primary matter described at the beginning of this narrative on page one (assuming this story does not appear in the middle of an anthology, and depending on how the admittedly unlikely publisher decides to number this book) before the later introduction of the rogue drones.
Sir Hamilton Fish, not a reporter by profession, but rather a person with a title, brought the press and the public together by refusing the robots a cigarette. The robot drone approached him, asking the sir to spare a cigarette in their normal noisome robotic voice. However, Sir Fish, a pacifist who never did like drones, refused the robot his cigarette, something no one had every done, because the drones were intimidating in the context of being in the same place together with the smoker as opposed to being in separate or distant places. The drone, therefore, was programmed to try a second strategy: to repeat the same question over and over again until the smoker relented. While the drone hovered there in the air, saying “do you have a cigarette to spare do you have a cigarette to spare do you have a cigarette to spare do you have a cigarette to spare do you have a cigarette to spare”, Sir Mister Fish was able to get his camcorder from his nearby country home and subsequently record the monotonous drone.
It was this evidence, played on the news, that reconciled the press with the public, allowing the public to think that perhaps the press was not crazy after all for reporting what members of the public said, and allowed the press to believe that perhaps not all public smokers encountered by drones were crazy after all either.
So it was this Sir Hamilton Fish that was famous for bridging the rift between public and press. He chuckled in his estate as the president gave speeches to an empty press room month after month, waiting for his chance to reconcile people and press yet again. Then on a nice day in March, he marched to the white house from his estate in London, and looked through a hole in the door, or window, where the president stood giving a speech. He waited until the moment when the president finished his speech and looked at the empty chairs, paused and then ritually asked, “any questions?”
Then Sir Fish swung open the door dramatically. “Mister President,” said Sir Fish, “Why is there always a cellist playing music behind you when you give speeches?”
But the president had memorized the one hundred and fifty three responses to any and all questions, and knew that although the eminent members of the press had vanished for a few years, someone would imminently ask him to answer a question, most likely in the future.
“What cellist?” asked the president.
“That cellist,” said Sir Mister Fish, equally prepared from years of preparation with a computer that listed all gramatically coherent responses the president might use as response (not realizing that there were only under two hundred possible statements).
“If there is a cellist here, he is in fact entirely unrelated to these press conferences or to my general appearances to the public,” denied the president.
The automatic camera which had relayed the speeches to the news and televisions in the absence of the press for a long time, was stunned at this confrontation. The public began turning on their televisions everywhere, and the press slowly began to return to the room, like melting ice cream going into the sewer.
“Well if there is no causal relationship between you and the cellist. Will you at least admit that there is an ontological element to the cellist in the room, and perhaps even that there is a strong physical and temporal correlation to the presence of both you, the president, and this cellist?”
The British wit of Sir Fish did not concern the president, although the president realized there was a true genius before him.
“No,” said the president.
“Well then, said Sir Fish, “if you remember, it was I, Sir Fish, that finally revealed your administration's deployment of pranked drones in the Baluchi region. Since I was right then, don't you think it is plausible that I am indeed correct again, now!”
“Not necessarily,” said the president. The showdown came to a standstill, and the entire press corps stood outside the press room nervously kicking each other on the foot and motioning with their eyes at the other reporters. There was silence in the press room where the president, sir, cellist and camera stood alone, and silence on the televisions. There was silence in the warehouses where the televisions had been manufactured and had long since been deserted, and there was silence in the space where the satellite rotated and revolved, sending the television message back to Earth.
Sir Fish paced back and forth across the room smoking a pipe throughout this silence.
“Well then, if there are no more questions, I'll be on my way,” said the president finally. He began to leave the room, and the cellist stood up to follow. Noticing this trend, Sir Fish jumped with a thought of epiphany worthy of Archimedes but not relating to bath tubs, his hat flying into the air and then landing back on his head when he settled back on the ground, quadratically.
“Mr. Cellist,” said Sir Hamilton Fish. “Can you play Prokofiev's Opus 22, the one the president said was his favorite song during the election debate?” The cellist nodded. The president turned around.
“That is purely circumstantial.”
“Mr. Cellist,” continued Sir Mister Fish, “did the president hire you to play the cello during his speeches?” The president's eyebrows rose in alarm like the lid of a tea kettle under pressure. The cellist lifted his chin as though he was beginning to nod. Suddenly a person, suspiciously looking very similar to the vice president, circumstantially, shuffled his way under the stage curtain on his elbows and threw a garden snake at the cellist's heel.
“Ow!” said the cellist, distracted by the snake biting his heel, and stopping his chin gesture in mid chin movement, such that we will never if it was a nod or a shake, even if one suspected it was a nod since shakes tend to be horizontal, but not always nor conclusively. He dropped his cello and ran out of the room.
“Well, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore,” said Sir Hamilton Fish.
“I think we can agree on that!” said the president. The press cheered and ran into the room, breaking the awkward silence that had lasted several years. People watching television around the world stared at their screens in disbelief. The press lifted Sir Hamilton Fish and bounced him across the room on their shoulders, and then onto a boat and then around in circles until he arrived in England, and then back to his estate. There Sir Fish retired happily, both a celebrity and a detective, although never officially a reporter.
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