The Ten-a-Penny Parable – by Matt Hollingsworth

Alright, so we’re in a city, you all with me so far? So in this city there’s this man; we’ll call him Person A and Person A has ten million dollars in a briefcase. Don’t ask why he has so much money or why he’s choosing to carry it around with him. Anyway, we’ve got Person A with his wad of cash and he’s walking down a mysterious, dark alleyway when he runs into another person: Person B. Now Person B so happens to be a thief with a notable lack of ten million dollars, so naturally he decides to do what thieves do and tie up Person A to take his money. So Person B now has ten million dollars so what does he do? You probably didn’t guess it: he takes the money to the local bar and buys round after round of drinks for him and his friends. You think his friends would like that but human beings can be a bit fickle at times and one of his friends, Person C begins to become angry. Anger and greed are not always the best combination as many of you might know and pretty soon Person C lures the now-intoxicated Person B back behind the bar and slits his throat. Plot twist! Now Person C has the ten-million — minus the cost of the drinks of course.

So, drunk on power — or is it riches — Person C takes his loot down to the whorehouse and books all available women: Persons D-M. But upon seeing Person C open his briefcase, all whores present become overwhelmed with greed but being smarter than Person C, they decide to get him drunk, dare him to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills and then throw his corpse into the river (the whorehouse is next to a river, btw).

Now Persons D-M have the money and decide to split it ten ways between them — one million each. More than enough to keep them on easy street a long time. The rest of their lives in fact, as while these events have been occurring, Person A had struggled free of his bonds, filed a police report, and watched the money get passed down the links all the way to Persons D-M. So now Person A has his money back (sparkles and rainbows) and the poor whores have life in prison. Persons B and C are dead. Full circle, yay. Makes you wonder about the cost of life, right? Two people died over that ten-million. Actually no, they died over nothing. There’s the exact same amount of resources in the world as there were before. They died transferring that money from Point A to Point B then back again to Point A. The price of their blood comes out to a flat zero. So, yeah, I guess they didn’t die for anything at all. Ah, well. That’s depressing. The end.