The last remaining survivors stood, heads bowed, loosely arranged in a semi-circle - or what would have been a semi-circle had there been enough of them remaining to form a semi-circle. They stood with heads bowed only partially out of a collective sense of shame, but mostly because staring at the carpet was a much more appealing thing to be staring at than the miniscule ball of fury pacing back and forth in front of them.
The Little Bald Leader had started talking at them some time ago and there was no sign he would be stopping any time soon. As he warmed to his task, rivulets of sweat had started dribbling down his face. They seemed to be emerging from the top of his head, like leaks from little BP oil rigs. If the Little Bald Leader was aware of the rivulets he gave no sign of it, he just kept talking - and glistening in the harsh office light, the sweat and his tanned, orangey skin combining to make the carpet a much more appealing thing to be looking at.
It had all started with a seemingly simple but definitely loaded question: "Is there anything else I don't know about?" But while everyone else was shaking their heads and muttering appropriate denials, one of their number - the crusty old one, as usual - deliberately chose to misinterpret the question as being of the non-rhetorical variety and had delivered an equally loaded reply - "but we all thought you knew too" - and off went the Little Bald Leader, like a firework on the back lawn at Guy Fawkes.
It had started with a generous slathering of sarcasm - how was he to know we were who we claimed to be? Were our names our real names or ones we'd picked up from deceased people along the way? And it's not like he can ask to see our passports to see if we are who we say we are, because how can we even believe passports any more?
When no one, not even the old codger, aka the Ghost of Politics Past, had the guts to answer these questions, the tirade evolved into something of a philosophical discourse on the concept of what is known and what is unknown. So everyone settled in for the long haul.
The Little Bald Leader, rivulets and all, was really warming to his task, posing many deep questions and a few shallow ones as well. You think you know someone, but then it turns out you don't know them at all - except you actually did know, only you told everyone you didn't. And now, even worse, everyone else in the country knows that you knew but said you didn't. And if you know something about someone but you don't want others to know, but then they do know, can you un-know what you knew without anyone noticing? And if you un-know things, did they actually even happen in the first place? And if you deny that they did for long enough, even though you know very well they did, then did they?
By now everyone in the room was getting a bit confused. Not that this was unusual, because the whole country was also a bit confused (to say the least). But the confusion in the room turned to consternation as the Little Bald Leader changed tack and started going on about how if no one knew anything, even when they did know it, then there could be no certainty, and where there is no certainty, then how can there be existence? While no one had the foggiest what the Little Bald Leader was actually saying, the concept that they could cease to exist, as an entity - political or otherwise - was something that was weighing heavily upon the collective mind of those in the room; was this the end of the road for them all? Was oblivion the next stop on the gravy train?
Only the old codger, the winner of the Montgomery Burns lookalike competition at the party conference three years running, seemed unfazed by this. After all, he had been to oblivion and had come back - so how hard could it be to pull the same trick twice?
But as the Little Bald Leader sweated and ranted, everyone else in the room could see how what started in a graveyard could end up in another graveyard - a political graveyard. Their political graveyard.
Then, inexplicably but also all too predictably, the Little Bald Leader stopped talking and started to dance. And all semblance of dignity fled the room, hot on the heels of hope. And the semi-semi-circle of the damned knew their time was nigh. Except for the old codger, who smiled, sensing another comeback on the horizon, just like his old mate Lazarus had managed.
Final word: Return from a state of confusion
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