The Fool

It was always the same. They were so easy to fool – so gullible. Ever since he came into existence, he was always goading them to do something silly: something so deliciously foolish. It was his whole reason for being – to trick; to fool; to befuddle. And wasn’t his purpose just wonderful.

Although he always saved his best trickery, his best tomfoolery, for that one special day – April Fools. It was he who invented it after all – he wanted a day that was his: one to encourage those to follow his delectable pursuits of pure wanton silliness. Oh others can claim to the founding of such a delightful day: the Christian’s will claim that they started the tradition when Pope Gregory proclaimed a new calendar into the world, moving new year’s day, from April 1st to January 1st. Some people obviously didn’t get the memo (an opportunity he used to pull another prank) and so continued to celebrate the new year in error, on April 1st. These people were ridiculed for not knowing when the new year was, and for continually celebrating it in April. These people came to be known as April Fools, where people would play tricks on them and try to convince them that something false was true – and what fun that was to watch. It does have its roots in other cultures throughout history – all thanks to him of course. He did like to spread joy throughout the world: well, it was joyful for him at least. 

He wasn’t malevolent or malicious – he just was. They called him by many names, but he preferred to be known as simply the Fool. It was amazing the things one could get up to when people assumed that you did not possess all of your mental faculties. Acting the fool had certainly gotten him into many situations where he could cause the greatest of mischief – the Great Fire of Rome, that was him. OK, that may have started off as a mild prank – wilful fire raising was always a great pastime – but that had quickly gotten out of control rather swiftly, and well, these things happen sometimes don’t they? There was also that one time during a former US President’s funeral, where his pet parrot had to be removed from the ceremony because he was swearing so loudly – oh the mirth. You would not believe how hard it is to train a parrot to swear properly, with such inflection and such conviction, even for an immortal god. Never work with animals or children – both can suss you out pretty quickly my dear.

Anyway, past misdeeds aside, a new year meant a new challenge. With the advent of the internet, and all that entailed, people were becoming increasingly hard to fool. Although he did work rather hard in order to convince the American people that the election had been stolen – what a kick political turmoil is. And it’s no mean feat trying to convince half the population of a country that the other half are liars, cheats and fraudsters – again, just like in Rome, that whole situation got out of hand pretty quickly, what with the invasion of Capitol Hill and all that: ah well, no matter, one can never know where a trick will end up, or how far people will go, but then that’s what makes them so irresistible. 

He had to work extra hard now to pull off his tricks, and his next one might just be the biggest one yet – it had taken him years of planning: he had utilised their own tools against them. The internet. TV. Music. Video Games. Social Media. You name it, he had his fingers in all of them. Every. Last. One.

His one last and final trick: his last hurrah. He was going to convince the whole world, that their whole reality was a lie. Could you just imagine the expressions that they would wear when they truly believed that everything that they knew was in fact a lie? Oh, how devilishly clever he was.

The idea had manifested in his psyche centuries before, but never had the means existed before that would allow him to convince so many so quickly, until now. The internet; the 24-hour news cycle; radio; print – the means of communication and manipulation were endless. He had already been planting the seed for years – convincing people that they lived in some sort of simulation – implanting the idea that would lead to the film the ‘Matrix’, was a stroke of pure genius. This allowed people to believe that this could be possible, where people would actively start looking for ‘glitches’ in the matrix - ‘glitches’ that he so readily supplied. He also managed to convince many millions of a phenomenon that was later coined the ‘Mandela Effect’, due to the fact that many people shared the same collective memory, that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, and had not in fact, went on to become President of South Africa. People came to genuinely believe that what they remembered from the past, was different from what actually was – of course, this was all true, he had been working diligently to alter what people remembered from the past, and actively change them as they appeared in the now (such fragile things memories are). The internet was a great tool for this endeavour, so too was that wonderful novel that he had also inspired in the mind of one great author – ah yes, ‘1984’, with its Ministry of Truth. This had certainly allowed the populous to respond well to such strange and dystopian ideas of a simulated and alterable reality.

With the introduction of the Covid-19 pandemic, people were ready to believe just about anything – with such a massive alteration in human behaviour, they were just in the right frame of mind to believe his final trick – now all the strands of his final masterpiece were all coming together and falling into place, it wouldn’t be long now until his majestic plan was achieved in all its edifying glory – until the time of his greatest deception. 

It wasn’t long now.

April 1st was just around the next dip in the horizon.

And things would never be the same again.