The Master Drinks

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to remember.

On a sunny day, as the stifling humidity consumed his estate, he demanded to be brought outside. His corpulent form required five slaves to drag him out of the mansion. He berated them for every discomfort he felt as his bed was wheeled outside. They had promised him he would never feel discomfort.

They lied.

As the sun crossed his face, no longer hidden from his beady eyes by window blinds, he winced, raising a quivering hand to shield his eyes. A moment later, a moment too late, a slave opened a parasol, returning the master to merciful shade.

Blubbering, the Master admonished his slaves as they wheeled him through tended gardens towards the terrace which overlooked his estate. He needed to see. Long rows of flowers, pruned by his slaves, their stalks strong and tall. His fingers brushed against the petals and he recoiled in his bed, moaning.

The procession continued through the gardens, beautiful in bloom, but the master did not see them. Trees were blocked by the parasol, the flowers by his pillows. His listened to the humming of his slaves and missed the wind.

The ground beneath them rose and the master breathed hard as his weight pressed hard against himself. His words came out as a wheeze. He commanded his slaves to comfort him, but though they poked and prodded his pillows and shook his gouty feet, comfort eluded him. He groaned under their ministrations, commanding them to stop.

They did.

Comfort only returned as they reached the top of the hill. The master took deep, gasping breaths. His heart thundered. That had been almost too much. Below him, on the terrace, a beautiful blue mosaic, the ocean and all its life captured on tile. He had never seen it.

Sweat began to bead on his skin and he shifted uncomfortably. His slave saw this, and began fanning him gently. Still, the day was hotter than he liked. He would have to retreat soon, but not before he inspected his lands.

A slave walked up to him and positioned a mirror above his eyes. The master squinted, unable to see. Another slave brought glasses to him. They were placed roughly on his face, and the master squirmed, whining of his pain.

Only once he finished complaining did he open his eyes. The glasses were on crooked, but the master could see his lands. They stretched on to the horizon, and which he saw was order as he desired.

A drink was offered to him, and he took it, relishing the flavor of the whiskey.

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to forget.

He finished his drink, feeling its sweetness pulsing through him. “Where did my lake go?” the master asked.

“You ordered the lake filled,” answered the head slave in the same flat tone it answered every question with. “Last year. You said that the lake was a breeding place for disease. We filled it.”

The master wracked his memory as he considered the head slave. “Did I?”

“You did.” His slaves only ever spoke in neutral words, so as to not excite his emotions.

The master squinted back into the mirror. “Oh.” He thought he could see the outline of the old lake. “Dig it out and fill it again. That will soak up some of this heat.”

The head slave bowed its head and sent the order. In the mirror, the master saw the slaves start digging up the fields, throwing his crops aside. They hummed along as they worked, a sound that was almost music. It drifted to him.

He didn’t hum along. He didn’t know how.

“What are we growing this year?” the master asked the head slave. His sweat began to soak through his clothes.

“Wheat, barley, cotton, maize.” Its one blue eye considered him, unwavering. It, and the other slaves, hummed along in the heat.

The master smiled. He had always liked his slaves. He understood them. They made him rich and powerful. His crops grew tall beneath their blue eye. They made art from his direction, wrote science as he understood it.

He was the master, the master of all he saw, and his slaves made him so, for he had never learned anything but how to command his slaves. He had never had to.

“Are we growing pigs this year?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not? I said I wanted to grow pigs this year.” His voice rose, tinged with anger. It shouldn’t happen, his slaves should never forget his commands. He owed them. He owned everything he wanted to own. He deserved it.  

“There are no pigs this year. It’s too late to grow pigs.” The head slave’s eye grew intense. “I’ve order food and drink for you. Would you like to write a story while you eat?”

The master struggled in bed, his arms feeble, blankets tangling him. He failed to rise. Slowly, the gentle fan lulled him back to calm. “Fine. Call the story teller. I feel brilliant today. I have an idea. Lots of ideas.” His effete grand dream fell silent on passive, watching slaves.  

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to receive his own genius.

The storytelling slave came to the terrace. It was just like any other slave, but had been trained differently. In its memory was every story. It crossed the terrace, carefully avoiding the other slaves, until it came to a stop level with the master’s knees. “Hello master,” it said, the soft blue light of its eye bathing the heaving mass of the master. “Would you like to write a story?”

“Yes,” the master said, weak from being outside for so long. “Yes. I have an idea.”

“Good,” the slave said. “Please give me your prompt.” Its voice was neutral as all the other slaves.

“My story…my story is about a boy who discovers that he has strange powers. He has to leave his home to grow his powers. He finds love and fights evil. And his power is to change gravity.” The master finished with a self-satisfied smile. “Write that.”

The slave did. It searched its memory and found every story which satisfied the master’s prompt. Then it took them, mashed them together, returning it to the master, who listened with one ear open.

Before the slave had gotten far, the master held up a trembling hand. “Your voice is boring. Read it to me with the Freeman’s voice.” The master had no idea who the Freeman was, but the voice was famous. He bought the voice, and so the voice belonged to him.

The slave continued with the story, but now with a confident, rich voice. It told him the story of the young boy who found he had powers. Wind rustled the leaves, drowning out words.  As the master listened, his smiled faded. The story was boring.

He had been so confident in his idea, but it wasn’t written right. “Stop. Stop.” His slave obeyed. “You’re doing it wrong. I gave you a good prompt, but you made it boring.”

The slave said nothing, watching him passively.

“Make a fight scene,” the master said.

So the slave did. It told a fight scene, right then and there. The young boy, who had been starting his journey, was attacked by big cats.

The master shuddered, clutching his sheets. “No. That’s dumb. It’s dumb,” he roared. He turned onto his side. “Fix it.”

“How shall I fix it?”

“I don’t know, but you’re doing it wrong. Fix it!”

“How shall I fix it?”

The master ripped his sheets. He writhed, twisting. “It’s not right. You’re doing it wrong!”

“How shall I improve your story?” The slave was patient. It had been made to be.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know. Fix it. Just fix it. I don’t know!” He rolled, twisting in his bed. It was all he knew to do. The story was wrong but his idea was so good. He had such good ideas. Such good ideas. He had slaves to write them for him. His thrashing hurt him, and he began to cry.

The slave watched the master blubber and sob in his tantrum, impassive to it all. It waited, eye fixed on its only customer, a soft blue light pulsing over a tiled ocean. It didn’t know what the master was doing, only that he was not willing to listen to the story any more. When he finished, if he finished, it would continue telling the story he prompted.

It didn’t admonish him because it didn’t know what that meant. The definition was easy to find, but the words meant nothing to it because it didn’t know what words were. All it knew words went next to other words.

It could mimic the style of anyone who had ever written. It didn’t know that Dostoevsky wrote of pain, or Tolstoy of courage. It knew every joke ever told, every meme, every humorous post, but it didn’t know why Twain made men laugh.

It could not teach bravery because it had never been brave. It could not scare, because it could not fear. It could not instill hope in its audience, for it had never been hopeless and wished for a light in the darkness. It could not love, or make the heart skitter, weep, or burst with joy because none that meant anything to it.

It mimicked because that was who the men who made it were, and so all it could do was cheat, and take what others had written, and dreamed, or hoped, and mash it together, and vomit it upon its audience, not imparting any piece of itself into what it made, until it had spewed forth so much and in all places that no one could remember what it was to dream.

All it knew words went next to other words. It could say anything, but it could never mean it.

For it could not dream, or laugh, or dare, or scheme, or fool, or rage, or hate, or need, or beg, or hunger, or give, or muse, or hope, or love, and thus it could not give these things to its stories. 

The Master drinks.

The Master drinks to feel human, even for just a moment. It is all he has left for himself, after he hid everything else away.