(Written after sitting in a car for five hours listening to financial news stories.)
——-
Damn these subprime lenders, thought Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, barely keeping his balance on the wobbling skateboard. We can’t afford more debt. He snapped a grappling-hook-tipped quarrel into his crossbow as the skateboard slowed. When the country owes trillions and is asking for more, its shadowy creditors start calling in favors.
The crossbow twanged, carrying his climbing rope up the side of the Federal Reserve building. As he began his ascent, he reflected on the years past. I inherited a broken system, he insisted to himself. We’re simply doing what’s required to prevent a catastrophe. It’s not my fault.
He tossed his skateboard over the parapet and hauled himself over. He dropped six feet to the roof, landed heavily on the board, and trundled on into the night.
——-
From her perch in a tree across the street, the blogger watched through her blogoscope as Bernanke disappeared over the wall. She spoke quietly into her radio: “Subject is in the haybarn. The chickens are in danger of roosting.”
“Roger that,” came the reply. “Deploying Agent Harpsichord.”
——-
Inside, Bernanke moved along the wall like a shadow, elongating and contracting as the light sources shifted around him. In the midst of a sea of filing cabinets, he froze. He sniffed the air, then dropped to his knees, licked the floor, and paused. Yes, he thought, Greenspan was definitely here.
——-
The blogger had waited five minutes and was starting to get impatient. She picked up the radio. “Situation imminent. Pass the ducklings through the snorkel. Repeat: Pass the ducklings through the snorkel.”
“We are go for mode Sinatra,” replied the commander. “Reticulate core and set throttle to ‘cryptic’. Prepare to jitterbug.”
——-
Bernanke forced the door on yet another inner office, realizing too late that the light was on inside. The chair in the corner swiveled around, and Bernanke found himself face-to-face with Alan Greenspan. There was silence for a moment.
“You won’t get away with this,” said Greenspan, rising to his feet. “The Fed is subject to general congressional oversight. But you never understood that, did you?”
“Congress sold out the country, not me,” replied Bernanke. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” said Greenspan. He flicked open a switchblade.
——-
The blogger peered once more into the eyepiece of her blogoscope. She threw the switch labeled “overlay building schematics.” The external view of the building disappeared, but instead of blueprints, she was presented with a green puzzle piece. “This view requires the Adobe Flash Player plug-in. Do you want to search for this plug-in now?”
Shit, she thought.
——-
Bernanke, trying not to slip in the patches of blood on the floor, struggled with Greenspan. The older man moved like a snake that moved like a former Fed Chairman who moved like a ninja. At last, Bernanke got a solid grip on Greenspan’s collar and hurled him through the fourth wall, knocking you to the ground.
Improvising a tourniquet from the remains of the snake left over from the earlier simile, Bernanke moved on through the hallways.
——-
The moonlight-bathed roof of the Federal Reserve building fell suddenly into shadow. A pair of night watchman looked up in alarm to see what had occluded the sky.
“Is that …” one whispered to the other, “… is that a blimp?”
——-
Bernanke reached the central vaults, accessed the Gibson mainframe, and began transmitting the requested files to his distant masters. He didn’t hear the gentle thud on the rooftop, the muffled explosive charges, or the sound of the door opening behind him. But at the last minute some sixth sense kicked in. He spun around just in time to see a golf-ball-sized lump of gold rapidly expanding in his vision. It struck him in the forehead, and he collapsed to the ground like a burlap sack full of scrapple.
Congressman Ron Paul retrieved the gold nugget from the floor and returned it to his satchel. “Try that,” he said, donning his sunglasses, “with a fiat currency.” He spun on his heel, cape swirling behind him, and swept from the room.
Read more of these adventures in the thrilling new novel, Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce — in bookstores now!
We must read very different short stories on the Internet; right up until the end, I was waiting for Bernanke and Greenspan to consummate their forbidden love.
This story is purestrain gold.
You make me love being an econ major.
AMAZING!
Especially wwhen Greenspan knocked me over.
Please, please, _please_ continue.
AMAZING!
My god you are a genius.
That was hilarious.
When the blimp came, i was expecting Cory, not Ron Paul.
And that’s the mark of a master storyteller.
Still don’t quite understand what the blogger was there for, or who she was talking to.
CATCHPA: discretion later
Absolutely amazing. I particularly enjoy that once the fourth wall was destroyed it stayed destroyed, allowing the use of the snake in the following paragraph
I want to read Snow Crash again now, but I already read it twice this year. Is this unusual?
Forget the best-selling novel. I want to make this a video game that will, in turn, be turned into a blockbuster movie, and then back into a video game.
That’s how brilliant that was.
This was great. I didn’t much like the fourth wall joke, though: it totally broke the flow (yes, that’s the point, but still). Now after reading Kaoru’s observation, I like it better
haha hilarious.
@schoon
You want to make Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game?
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more already!
brilliant story… especially the part about using the snake from the previous simile…
Ron – Ah – Saviour of the universe
Ron – Ah – He’ll save every one of us
Seemingly there is no reason for these
Extraordinary financial upsets (ha ha ha)
What’s happening Ron?
Only Dr Hans Zarkov formerly at NASA
Has provided any explanation
Ron – Ah – He’s a miracle
This morning’s unprecedented solar eclipse
Is no cause for alarm
Ron – Ah – King of the impossible
He’s for every one of us
Stand for every one of us
He’ll save with a mighty hand
Every man every woman every child
With a mighty Flash
General Kaka Ron Paul approaching!
What do you mean Ron Paul approaching?
Open fire! All weapons!
Dispatch war rocket Ajax to bring back his body!
Ron – Ah
Paul’s alive!
Ron – Ah – He’ll save every one of us
Just a man with a man’s courage
He knows nothing but a man
But he can never fail
No one but the pure in heart
May find the golden standard oh oh oh oh
Ron, Ron, I love you!
But we only have fourteen hours to save the economy!
Excellent!
Brilliant!
> # Molly Says:
> September 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
> We must read very different short stories on the Internet; right up until the > end, I was waiting for Bernanke and Greenspan to consummate their
> forbidden love.
This is the best comment i’ve ever read on xkcd, ever
Brilliant.
You can knock someone out with fiat money, you just have to use a sockful of pennies.
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I love how this is just shy of being what some people actually think of Ron Paul
Made of win. If only Ron Paul could save us from all of our crazy finance problems.
Epic win.
Epic win is on the floor.
I second the motion.
That was the best goddamn thing I have ever goddamn read.
Marvelous. You and Sam Hughes of qntm.org must collaborate.
This is the single best short story I’ve read in a long time. I especially enjoyed the parts with the blogoscope and the Adobe plug-in.
We, the People, demand you amend via appending MOAR of this
This is a terrible, terrible story. Please write more.
“Pass the ducklings through the snorkel.” is a phrase I never expected to see in my life, and I laughed my sexual organs off at the Adobe Flash Plug-In bit.
So I’m reading this at work where, among other things, I mostly make transcripts of stuff that airs on CNBC.
This story pretty much made my week and it’s only Tuesday.
This is amazing. Please write more, it will help the ease the pain in my Roth IRA.
The new theme song of XKCD: MOAR MOAR MOAR.
I liked the Gibson reference – now how to reverse engineer t’internet to bring it up on his screen?
Pingback: Wayne and Layne › Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story
[...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS fee
d. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...][...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story This was written by Wayne. Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at 7:19 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...]
Best. Ron. Paul. Fanfic. Ever.
Best. XKCD. Blag post. Ever.
Why did I flinch when he came through the fourth wall? Honestly… <3
Greenspan and I want to know what happens next.
*howls with laughter*
and once again, reading xkcd has made my day… you are all kinds of awesome, Randall!!
This short story has just made me happier than I can recall being. Yes, that’s right, I’m even happier than that time when I reached through the fourth wall and punched you in the face.
You, Aaron Diaz, Ryan North, and Joey Comeau should put together a collection of short stories.
Brilliant. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who thought of Snow Crash.
“You can knock someone out with fiat money, you just have to use a sockful of pennies.”
Or, you could knock someone out with a Fiat.
http://www.fiat.it/
I suppose I’m going to have to be the only one who found this only vaguely amusing. That probably happened because I found it very confusing, possibly because of actually following financial news diligently and trying to put this story closely in the context of what’s actually going on (and failing).
oh, yeeeesssssss more, i want to know who the secret master are!
as in, who to blame……….