Chapter 10

Saddam Hussein presents Objectivism in action!

And so Our Ridiculous Heroes set off to discover who could have designed such a fantastic wonder gizmo. Naturally it was a few days before they noticed the damned thing was signed - "Jon Gort!" In crayon.

"Of course!" cried Daffy. "Just like in my dream!"

"Huh? What dream?" Spank asked, all befuddled. He always got lost when the conversation turned to something besides himself.

"Jon Gort designed this! Of course only he would have the Great Mind for such Greatness!"

Spank felt very diminished and spent the rest of the chapter pouting.

Not that Daffy could notice. Armed with a vague idea of what she was looking for, she went storming into every other business in the surrounding towns to demand -

"Why didn't you make yourself fabulously wealthy on this dream invention!?"

The nameless gentleman in question took one look at the laughable design and said, as tactfully as he could, "...Because it doesn't work?"

"It was the product of a Great Man! With a Great Mind! Powered by his Greatness!"

Being actually involved in a business, the man said more heatedly, "Lady, this is just a doodle with 'POWR' written up top in bubble letters!"

Daffy could glean no rational response from these lice. She tried and tried -

"Never heard of it."

"You're joking, right?"

"I'm a pirate! I only know the ways of the sea! Arrr!"

Discouraged, Daffy took to pouting along with Spank. Fortunately, her cell rang before things could devolve into a protracted pity-party for the undeservedly rich airheads -

"Daffy! Thank god I can hear your voice again!"

"What is it now, Dithers?" she demanded. "I have alot of very important-feeling-sorry for myself to do."

"I can't explain over the phone because it's too urgent! It has to wait several hours for you to get back to the office because of its urgency!"

"Ed, that makes no sense. Have you been taking notes off of me?"

"Yep! Do you love me now?"

Fortunately Daffy had hung up right before Dithers could ask. "Spank, we need to go back!"

He brightened, "To the hotel room?"

"To New York! Urgent things need our eventual attention!"

* * *

Those urgent things were gradually revealed to be, in no particular order -

The Union she'd previously thrown a hissy fit at was filing a class action suit of wrongful termination for over a hundred engineers Daffy had personally fired for "looking all darkie."

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona were stirring up holy hell as the Gort Line had been constructed weaving in and out of their territories without any notification or proper paperwork on the part of Braggart Big Damn Rail. Further, physicists were crying foul at how a single line of track could do such a thing.

A collection of scientists, metallurgists, and other so-called "experts" had all testified before Congress on the inherent dangers of spankmeum - from it's instability to its record-breaking toxicity.

And to top it off, someone had finally pointed out that the new federal regulations on such things as construction, bridge design, and other things actually did apply in Colorado. Meaning both she and Spank were violating a whole mess of laws just by letting the Gort Line exist.

Edguy Dithers was his sycophantic best. "Oh Daffy, how could they be so mean to you?"

"Clearly it's all just jealousy!" Daffy declared. "These parasites just wish they could run a railroad as well as I do!"

The distant rational part of Edguy's brain was screaming that he himself had been doing much of the day to day administration but he'd long ago learned to ignore rationality where Daffy Braggart was concerned. "That is so true."

No it's not.

But as we've seen - and as we'll see much much more - Daffy never let a little thing like "reality" get in her way! "These looters won't take away all my hard-inherited gains! Because Tim is going to fight them for me!"

Admittedly, delegation is a skill of sorts...

Daffy stormed into Tim's office, brimming with vapid rage! "What do you intend to do about this!?" she demanded unspecifically.

"Daffy. Good. I was worried today would be pleasant," Tim replied evenly. "If you're referring to the current legal troubles of Braggart Big Damn Rail, I've already got our lawyers working out settlements with the parties involved. Other than that, I'm not going to do a damn thing."

"So you're just going to let these vermin steal all we've accomplished? That's so typical of you, Tim!"

Thanks to a lifetime of having tolerated her bullshit, Tim didn't rise to the bait but instead said, "You should be asking what I'm going to do about you. The board's fickleness can be convenient sometimes."

Daffy, caught in mid-rant, could only stare dumbly at her brother. Of course, she stares dumbly at most things. "Huh?"

"I had you removed this morning. Henceforth, you have no executive control over the company."

"Oh yeah! There was that too!" Edguy called from the previous scene.

Tim continued, his voice firm, "I'm shutting down the Gort Line now, before anyone else dies for it. I'm re-activating our electric train project. And I'm barring you from setting foot in this office ever again." He then calmly went and busied himself with some papers.

Daffy, struck dumber than was normal for her, could only gape for a long while. Then, tapping that white-hot strain of self-absorbed crazy in her brain stem - "You just want to sell out to the leeches! Well I'm here to run a railroad and -"

"And you have been really fucking bad at it!" Tim snapped back. "No one but your socialite buddies will ride on it, no one but desperate illegals will operate it, and the whole rest of the country has been downloading a flash game where they can blow your arms and legs off with a shotgun!"

"Well, I'm not interested in what the rest of the country thinks," said Daffy, getting all in a huff.

"Meaning you don't care what your own clients think," said Tim, laying it out for those of you who still don't get it. "Which is why you suck at business."

Now that struck a nerve.

Daffy bolted from the room, weeping like some womanly stereotype. Tim felt a sudden stab of guilt - all that anger at his sister had been building up for so long that when it finally came it... He felt so ugly. The necessity of what he'd done was little comfort.

Outside under the unforgiving brown skies, Daffy ran stupidly from her problems like any spoiled airhead would. At every sign with words such as "Public" or "Community" she recoiled in exaggerated horror like one of those montages you see sometimes in old movies. She finally found her way to a greasy spoon where the fry cook impressed her with his poise and cognizance. Why, it was the greatest and best philosopher Huge Asskorn!

"Mr. Asskorn, what are you doing here?"

"I got canned for being too awesome! The rest of the faculty were just jealous I was getting all the good freshman tail!"

"I know exactly what you mean," Daffy said. "Why, everyone complained about my Gort Line because it was too good and then they wouldn't recognize the awesomeness of Spanky - I mean, Mr. Rearend -"

"Hey, we're talking about me here!" Asskorn interjected. "Now how did you want your burger?"

Why yes, I did just condense over twenty pages of fluff into the above. You're welcome.

"Hey, wasn't I supposed to have a scene?"

Be quiet, Spank. Your scene was too boring.

But what's not too boring is this - in the diner hung a TV that cut from whatever it is diner TVs show to a news report. "This morning, oil tycoon Ennis Buyit set fire to his own wells!"

"No!" declared Daffy.

"Yes!" declared the TV. "A letter received by federal regulators who'd been investigating Buyit - mostly investigating if he had any oil at all or if he was just playing the commodities market - was just forwarded to this network. It reads, 'Can't get yer mitts on it now loozers! LOL!'"

The nation, being made up of real people as opposed to clumsily assembled political strawmen, was rightly horrified at all this. Even Republicans were bemoaning the environmental damage such an act would do to the United States. Everywhere, Americans were up in arms and ready to lynch this Buyit fella - who'd vanished as criminals and con men are want to do.

Yes, everyone was united in these new sentiments of conservation and lynching oilmen. Everyone but Daffy Braggart and other such idiots who thought it was just so neat to see flaming crude spraying across the land.

But who cares! We're finally back on schedule!