Aug 21st – pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.

Part II of the serialisation of Hans Loë’s:

TRUMPELWILTSKIN*

*If you’d prefer to see this story all in one place, rather than serialised,you can get it here, in book form, for 0.99 of whatever you’re used to: [https://amzn.eu/d/0bNxBqPE]

PART TWO

When they met again a few days later, even the imp felt empowered to question his master. “I thought you had loads of supporters?” he asked.
“Radicals!” said Donald. “They pay their supporters, and they bus them in. Did you see it out there? My guys were having BBQs off the back of their carts in the cart park; and those cheats got in and took all the best spaces.”
“Who did?” asked the imp.
“Socialists! Disrupters. Anarchists,” said Donald. “They weren’t hard working people, like my supporters. My people wouldn’t throw a sixteen-dollar egg at a wall.”
“What did they pay them with? I can hardly pay my own bills,” said the imp.
“You saw them,” said Donald. “Eggs! They’ve got a secret underground pro-choice egg laying programme going on. Which is also anti-religious, and seditious, because Baby Jesus came out of an egg —they say it in the bible: Numbers, under Six. I’ve read it. It’s my favourite passage, though I like fourteen too —my lucky number. I could have them all thrown in jail if I wanted. What do you mean, can’t pay your bills?”

And so that discussion began again. This really was going to be the last chance the imp had to put his case. Donald was at a low ebb, and he was all ears for good advice.

“I’ve been trying to tell you. Inflation. We can’t keep up with the costs of building data centres; and the interest rate on loans —if you can get one, it’s through the roof.”
“I’ve done my bit for you Diddler —all the competition is banned; you need to get on with it while the going’s good.”

The imp smiled to himself. He dragged the footstool that Donald kept by the throne, towards him and hopped up on to it.
“Not quite all the competition’s gone,” said the imp. “There is that place in Canada, BettaMetaData. They’re pretty good. And they get a lot of customers from here.”
“Canadia! Don’t make me laugh,” said Donald, laughing. “They hibernate for half the year, up there.”

The imp made a little squealing noise. “Don’t be hasty, sir,” he said. “Think of this. Troth Essential, the leading social media product in the whole kingdom, with investment that allows it to develop its own AI tools, can be made unassailable. The best in the world! My data centres will assist that growth, but they need to be built. And we no longer wish to spend our own money to do that. Do you see the opportunity?”
Donald replied, “I’ve forgotten more about building than most people will ever know. I don’t like half-built buildings. Nobody knows more about half-built buildings than me.”
“BettaMetaData wants to grow too, but they face the same problems. Copper, energy, construction costs, it’s unaffordable.”
“What are you talking about, Diddler. Be more like me, say plainly what you mean.”
“I propose this: my company invests in BettaMetaData; BettaMetaData invests the same amount in Troth Essential; Troth Essential invests that same amount in my company!”

Donald’s eyes glazed over.

“Don’t you see? It costs us nothing. But we show those figures to the bank, and they’ll loan us all we need.”
“Fraud?” said Donald.
The imp shrugged his shoulders.
“I like it.”

The king had the imp walk with him from his court, towards the part of the castle in which the imp had been allowed to set up a headquarters, and a small-scale data centre to support his current AI services.

“I want you to show me how much this AI thing makes,” said Donald.
“It doesn’t,” said the imp.
“Doesn’t? How much do you charge?”
“Two-hundred bills a month,” said the imp.
“You can’t make money at two hundred a month?”
“It works at scale,” said the imp, “and we haven’t got that sort of customer base yet.”
“How many?” asked Donald.

The imp looked at the floor, “The people here, say they have no money for such things.”
Donald started to look displeased, “Cissy told me, that everyone was going to be rich with AI by the end of next year. Us first!”
“Yes, but he also said he was going to build the data centres with material he found on the moon,” said the imp. “…as I say, customers will come once we have made the world wealthy again.”
“I like that for a slogan on a cap,” said Donald, “but it’ll be us first, right?”
The imp nodded, “And just now, I have a better use for our people. They are needed for much more important work. Come with me.”

The imp looked up and down the long corridor, and when he was sure they were alone, had Donald follow him through a narrow opening that was concealed at the side of one of Donald’s trophy cabinets. They went through an unlit passage, feeling their way against its narrow walls, until fully five minutes later, they came to another doorway, this one full-size. A light shone under it from the room on the other side, and there was a change in the atmosphere as they approached it that told Donald that there was a great deal of activity going on in there.

“You know sir, in there,” and he pointed to the wall to his left, “is our scraping-centre,” said the imp, “well, this is its deep-mining research facility”. 

Once in, Donald saw a dozen rows of laboratory style benches with people sat, closely packed, facing computer screens. Each of them wore a metal skull cap, and each cap was wired into a computer in front of them, and to each of their neighbours, so that the whole room of people was linked in a circuit.

A new recruit was added near the back of the room. He flinched as the cold metal cap was placed on his head, then again when it sparked into life as he was switched on.
“Wouldn’t that noise drive them mad?” asked Donald, tuning into the low industrial hum.
The imp shook his head, “Not once they’re under the caps. They just get a tingle in their teeth when they’re first hooked up.”
Donald blew a sigh, “How long do they last?”
“A while,” said the imp. “We can only mine them for two or three hours a day. They need rest —it makes the results better. So, we let them recover, and use their brains as they normally would. Reading books, and watching TV. That sort of thing.”

Donald beamed. “Make them watch Troth Essential,” he suggested.

“That’s what they do when we’ve finished with them,” said the imp. “While we’re mining them, we need intelligent and informed brains for our systems. That’s the point. They become dumb, and we become clever.”
“That’s what they do when we’ve finished with them,” said the imp. “While we’re mining them, we need intelligent and informed brains for our systems. That’s the point. They become dumb, and we become clever.”
“I’d like to have a go on that, myself,” said Donald. “What do you do with it once you’ve collected it?”
“Once we’ve got it, we take other citizens, less brainy but you know —like normal social media users, and they use the raw product and ask questions, and test it, and that helps us improve it, and to turn it into an AI product that will be the best in all the kingdom, and then the world. And because it feels like real nice people, then eventually we will make the world love us again.”
“I like that love talk,” said Donald.
“Yes, and if you think about it, once they love and trust us again, they will begin to buy our exports once more, and they’ll forget all about tariffs. We will make them buy our chocolate that tastes of vomit; we’ll make them buy spray on cheese; we’ll make them buy our ugly cars, watch our ridiculous sports; buy our wigs, our diapers —all the things that made us great in the first place.”
“So, our customers will be foreigners, and our own people do not need to earn high wages?”
The imp nodded.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Donald.
“One last big batch of new Donald-bills from the Royal Mint, and then what commodities and mines we cannot buy, we’ll tax.”
“Diddler,” said Donald, “I knew I was being very shrewd when I chose you for this work. Consider it done. You’ll hear the money printers whirring this very evening.”

It came to pass that the programme to acquire and tax gold saw the miner and his daughter brought before the king.

When it came to the part where the imp told the miner that tax on commodities was going to have to increase, the miner smiled. “I was coming here to petition you on the very same basis,” he said. “If you could lend me some money, I’ll have my mine producing properly again. And you’ll get lots more tax from me, without even having to raise the rates.”

“How’s that going to work?” Donald shouted. “Rates go up, you pay more. How can rates stay the same and you pay more? You’re as dumb as those rocks you dig out of the ground. Give him some math Diddler.”

The imp took the miner to one side and began a discussion, and he soon discovered that the miner had prepared well for the meeting. He and Agathe had worked hard on the figures —the small amount required to test drill, and survey the mine; the cost of development if they thought there was a good chance of mineral deposits below the surface; and he presented his case well, to a point.

The imp was aware of Donald pacing impatiently a few yards to their right; there were many more similar cases to deal with that day, but he wanted to give the miner time to make his case. The imp knew that he was learning much about the mining business during these meetings, and he was eager to make the best of the opportunity they represented.

They wanted gold; the miner wanted gold. The spending power of the Donald-bill was in terminal decline —it was destined for oblivion, like one of Cissy’s rockets coming back to earth faster than it set off; the spending power of gold was on a parabolic curve upwards, like an imp with a king’s boot up his backside.

Unfortunately, the miner, not being used to such opportunities, spoke a little too much. Not only did he oversell the possibilities of his currently barren mine, he dramatically exaggerated the value of his daughter in the enterprise too. He declared her a marketing phenomenon for the way people loved her, and how she was able to sweettalk anyone be them supplier, customer, or worker, into indulging her silly father and his old mine with clemencies that they would not extend to other people.

Donald interrupted their discussions, “Let me talk to her alone. If she’s as good as you say, there’s valuable work she can do for us here.”

Donald beckoned for Agathe to follow him into a small room behind the throne. It was Donald’s emergency toilet, truth be told, but it worked well as a private meeting room too, because of its position in the castle.

Agathe looked around the small room, at the towels and flannels, and what were they —sponges, or mops perhaps? All of them shades of brown, yellow and gold. “I’d give them a good boil wash if they were in our house,” she thought to herself.

“Your father talks pretty highly of you.”
“That’s because he doesn’t understand the simple things I do,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know half of what he does in the mine each day.”
“I’m sure nobody knows half of what I do in this room, all day,” thought Donald. It was rare for him to be with someone else in this funny little den. He felt energised in there. Free somehow. It was in the busiest part of the castle, and yet still private. He looked at his special sponges and his thoughts immediately flew to the Italian Prime Minister.
“I need staff around me who can reach out to my people the way you can. They are in poor spirits,” he said.
“I am sure,” said Agathe, and she was entirely convinced of this, “my father tends to over-flattered me. I’m far from certain that I can live up to his words.”

Donald went to sit on the closed toilet, making rubbing motions with his hands on his thighs. It worked with other minions, but Agathe couldn’t take her eyes off the strange colour scheme of the funny little washroom.

“You are needed,” said Donald. “I heard your father. He said good things. Good things are good. I speak like that. Very clearly. I understood it.”

Agathe smiled weakly.

Then Donald said, “Show me you can do it, and I will forgive your father his tax, and I will give him a year’s holiday on his land rent.”
“That is most considerate your majesty,” she replied, “but he’s here today to seek a loan on his mine, or to offer a share in it. I’m sure he will be generous. I am not of great talent, as he says, I am just a loyal daughter, but I know that if he returns home without me, and without a means to improve his mine, he will suffer greatly.”
Donald raised himself up by the banisters at either side of the toilet, and came down from the small step in front of it. “Your father thinks he can come here and make a deal? I make the deals round here, and I know a liar when I see one. You’re his only asset —did you not see how I had to dig out that admission from him —how he gave you up against his will?”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to offend you,” said Agathe. “He worries about having to close his mine, and if that is so, where he will find new work. There seem to be so few jobs for people like him.”
“The problem with people like your father,” said Donald, “is that he can’t understand that when the number of jobs reduce, it’s good for the economy. It means that we’re doing them with AI instead.”
“Then what will become of my father?” she asked.
“He will have more time to enjoy his life,” said Donald. “Go and ask Diddler out there. He’ll explain everything I’ve done. We’re the hottest kingdom on earth. Hot as a desert. I went to Australasia the other day and they said ‘Your kingdom used to be as cold as Iceland; now it’s as hot as a desert’; people like your father need to stop complaining, and jump on board.”
“I see,” said Agathe.
“You don’t ask me what job I have in mind for you.” said Donald.

She shook her head. She’d agree to anything to get out of that space.

“You’re going to tell them all how happy they are,” he said. “On Troth Essential. You make them feel nice about their lives, remind them how much they like me, and how I’m creating an AI future for them, and that they’re all going to be rich. Even people like your father.”

“That’s very kind, of you, sir.” she said. “May I go? I’m feeling a little poorly in this hot space.” She used hot in preference to other words she might have normally chosen, he seemed to like hot, and used it to cover a wide range of descriptions. The smell of drains filled the small space.

Donald felt around in his robes until he found the key, which he tossed over to her. “Send for Natalie, she’ll take you to your room. Then tell her to come back with clean sponges and the ointment.”

In her lonely room, in the highest part of the main tower, Agathe, cold, alone and hungry, wept silently into her pillow. “What would become of her father? What was expected of her? Was she a prisoner?” She felt so wretched, and so beyond the help of anyone who cared for her.

The clock ticked round to two a.m.; she had not received a morsel to eat, let alone a visitor. She was beyond despair. When the king came the next morning, he would expect her to have done his bidding for him, but she had no clue what that amounted to.

Then the door banged open.

“You again? Who are you?” she asks.
“I am Trumpelwiltskin, the imp. I work for the king. He calls me Diddler. Why so sad?”
“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.
“Don’t confuse me with the king,” he said. “We live in the castle, and do what we must to make the best of our circumstances here, but I am not like the king. You can trust me by my deeds, not my words. What would you have me do?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know!” she cried, and torrents of words and complaints fell from her lips: how she had been separated from her father, who was sent home to starve; how she was held virtual prisoner; and worst of all, that she had no idea what it was that the king expected from her.
“Don’t worry, he’s always like that,” he said. “He doesn’t realise that we can’t understand what he says. 4-D chess he calls it. I think it’s because of that thing on his head, every time he has it cleaned, he puts his heaviest, tightest crown on it to keep it in place, and I think it stops the blood flow. Tell me some of what he said to you.”
“All I know is that I have to go on Troth Censhal, I think he called it, where I’m to tell everyone how happy they are, and remind them how much they love King Donald.”
“Ah! Troth Essential. I know what he means. I can help you. I’ve got algorithms. I can make people bend to my will with those things.”

Then he went on to tell her how he had a whole section of one of his apps devoted to suicides, and how that worked.

“By the time the sun comes up, I will have three corpses lying prostrate with anguish at your feet. They’ll have taken their lives, full of dread that they might never hear anything quite as beautiful as your voice again. Chasing the dragon, we call it.”

That didn’t seem like a very nice occupation to Agathe, but the imp assured her that they’d have been dead within twenty-four hours in any case if left to their own devices.

“Then how can I pay you?” she asked. “Are you not Trumpelwiltskin, the richest imp in the kingdom? And I am a humble miner’s daughter, and have no money.”
“Give me those trinkets,” he said quickly, pointing at her mother’s heirlooms hanging from her neck.
The imp knew how much the jewels were worth. Surely, she did too? So, by handing them over, was she not bribing him? Besides, the way things were going, every little helps, he thought.

The next day, when King Donald came to inspect her work, what he saw before him surpassed his expectations by some way. “Did I not tell you how gifted you are?” he said. “I know these things. I can see them.”

But then he told her that he had set that first task as a test, and that she was to prove her real worth the next day, when she was to cast her charms to Troth Essential subscribers beyond the castle, out into the broader community.

The next night progressed in a similar fashion. The young girl sobbed in impotent despair until, in the dead hours of the night, the imp appeared again.

He batted away her concerns, telling her that he would easily surpass Donald’s new ambitions. “This time, we’ll produce a dozen dupes beguiled by your loveliness,” he said.
And when she asked how, he replied, “By enticing citizens with worthless paper-contracts for gold. They’ll go all sparkly-eyed at the prospect of getting their hands on the precious metal for nothing, and we’ll get them signed up, and eating out of our hands, desperate for the king’s signature on something that resembles parchment.”

That was all very well. And if he could make that work with what was basically a two-minute advert that she read from a script, so much the better. But what would she have to give to access such expertise this time? He had taken all that she had, the previous night.

The imp suggested that she should pledge her father’s last gold nugget that he’d told him about.

It was an unacceptable request. “It’s our future,” she said. “It’s all we have.”

The imp withdrew to the computer workstation in the corner of her cell, and busied himself there for a while. When he spoke again, he suggested a compromise —that in return for the nugget, he would direct some of his AI income to her father’s mine, and become a joint-venture partner in it.

“The exceptional price of gold justifies this at the moment, and I am prepared to take the risk that it stays that way. If it falls in price, it’s to my loss,” he told her. “But I will invest to back up my half-share, and if we find other metals there too, particularly copper, in our work to expand the mine, so much the better.”

Well, that sounded exactly like the deal that her father had proposed in the first place. She nodded her consent, and the imp led her back to her workstation, where she clicked, “I Have Read and Agree to the Terms” on the document he brought to the screen.

When Donald saw her work the next day, he really began to warm to this new idea of his —this new girl was going to be a wow. She was miles better than that trad wife with big knockers and vag-yoga pants. She was a piece of work. No one liked her, men or women. And when she started speaking, it was even worse. That voice! There were men who wanted to pull all their hair out when they heard her, and others who’d have rammed knitting needles into their ears rather than listen to another word she spoke. Donald, he was lucky, he was blessed with ears that grew back whenever they’d been attacked —he could hear without even listening; but he knew that he could easily have pulled his hair out if he’d wanted to. And the temptation was getting stronger. Over a dozen new and happy subscribers in just one night’s work! She was the real deal, this Agathe.

“But one more proof,” he said, as he prepared to leave her little studio with en-suite and pulldown bed thing, like you used to see in American sitcoms all the time, but rarely did these days. “This evening,” he told her, “Prove that you can extend your reach beyond the town and the neighbouring villages. Sign up a hundred new and devoted subscribers, from at least fifty miles away, and I will reward you by marrying you.”

Now, with Donald there was that aroma-atmosphere thing you encountered when you got close. Then, as he came in closer still, to err, intimate distance, you could distinguish mouth-end aroma; and low-end aroma; and then there was the Onion Belt, as Natalie had referred to it when she’d asked her for sponges —is there a problem near his Onion Belt? she’d said, and made a pointing gesture towards her lower abdomen. Dear me, all that took some getting used to. There was a wife who would earn her keep. And then there was the conjugal side of the marriage to consider too.

He looked like that thing that they found in the sewers in the town which had stopped all their toilets flushing. She remembered the day when they finally loosened it, and they’d all stood on the harbour wall to watch as the greasy, off-white iceberg of fat and human waste, floated out to sea like an alien giant prawn.

“Perhaps the imp has an algorithm for it?” she thought.

Nevertheless, all that considered, Queen —there was an offer that would get her and her dad out of jail.

When the imp came later that night, he was taken aback by the king’s offer. “And in contemplation of this marriage, has he talked of a dowry? Shown an interest in your father’s mine, perhaps?”
She shook her head, “I don’t remember him saying anything about that.”
“Our mine, I should say,” said the imp, “because under the terms you signed last night, you’ll have to inform me first if he does. I own half now, don’t forget.”
“No. He hasn’t. I am his bargain,” she said, suddenly not at all certain what it was he had said, when the king visited her.
“Touch my wiener, first,” said the imp.
“No!” she said. “Never.”
“What if you did it with a plastic touching device. Something that looks like a dog’s toy, perhaps?

Agathe hung her pretty head, and shook it solemnly. “It has come to this. How will I ever escape?” she thought.

The imp went to the far end of the room. He seemed to be deep in thought. “Was it his reaction to the sudden news of the marriage? Did it bother him that much? Please let him help me still,” she said to herself.

The imp approached her again. Smiling now. “How about a photograph, that you rub?” he asked.
“Never” she shouted. “Stop talking about such things.”
“A photograph of yours, that I rub?” he tried.
“For goodness sake, Trumpelwiltskin, the answer is still no, and it won’t change!”

The imp took another turn of the small room, then came back to face her once more, seemingly unabashed by his spurned efforts at courtship. “If you’re sure the wiener thing is out of the question, this is what we’ll do.”
She nodded to say it was.
“If I help you this evening, my share in the mine rises to fifty-one percent.”

She didn’t know what to say, but she was pleased with the change of mood, and did her best to look like she was giving the suggestion due consideration.

Before she spoke again, the imp added. “…oh, and of course, for your undertaking never to tell the king of my interest.”

She had never before had to consider such a weighty subject, nor to respond in such short order to such a serious matter. In her simple way of looking at things she thought that she, and so her father, would soon have the riches of Donald’s kingdom behind them, and agreed to the imp’s proposition. After all, her father would be left with almost half of the mine, and he’d have the power of the king’s most influential adviser working alongside him.

As he had done previously, the imp led her to her workstation, and brought to the screen, a document detailing the agreement.

“Just page to the bottom, and tick the box,” the imp said.

She thought it better to read it first, but fifty pages into the eight hundred, with an hour of the short night already gone, the imp reminded her what little time remained to do the work, and this was to be their busiest night of the three. She scrolled to the bottom, and ticked the box.

When dawn arrived, Agathe was asleep, fully clothed still, lying on top of her bed. The imp had gone, but the room was pristine. She went to look at the computer, logged on to Troth Essential, and saw, as promised, not hundreds but thousands of new devotees, seemingly persuaded by her, signed up to Donald’s new economic initiative, and pledging everlasting fidelity to him and his cause(s). “All for the promise of their name in a raffle to win some gold-plated coins with Donald’s head printed on them. Perhaps they really do love him?” she thought.

coming soon… PART THREE

It was a month or so into their wedding, when Donald and the imp found themselves chatting in the scraping room office. Agathe had become the mainstay of their promotional efforts, and to incurious observers, their co-dependent relationship that delivered wealth, and a sort of ersatz popularity, was working like clockwork.

Agathe’s front-facing role in all that they sought to achieve, saw her often in the scraping facility.

“Does she not have the sweetest soul in the whole of the kingdom?” asked Donald.
“Yes,” said the imp, “she truly does.”
“And does she not charm my people and make them love me?
“She does,” said the imp, “but to be absolutely honest with you sir, I thought you did that on your own?” “No, you weren’t listening correctly, and as a result of that, you didn’t allow me to say it properly. I was telling you about how she made them love me even more…