Anarchy by Hamlet

Anarchy by Hamlet

Stanley watched as the Priest looked first at one man then the other.
“You know why you two men have been called here?” the Priest questioned in a thin, raspy voice.
“Y-yes.” one man replied shakily.
“Yessir.” the other man said. At this the first man gulped visibly. One was always supposed to address a Priest as “Sir” and he had not, a possibly fatal mistake. Fortunately for him, the Priest appeared not to realize this.
“Oh? And why is that?” the Priest asked, an amused, yet evil, look on his face.
The two men looked at each other. Stanley guessed that they had actually not known what they had been charged for and had just pretended they did. After a few seconds one of the men spoke. “For offending The Order Of Priests?” he ventured quietly.
Everyone in the room snickered. Of course they had offended The Order! there was no other way to get in trouble!
The Priest glared around the room. Everyone quieted instantly. “You two men,” he said menacingly, “failed to kneel as a Priest walked by.”
Stanley saw someone roll their eyes. Priests only ruled the humans because they hoarded all the technology.
He looked back and saw the Priest berating the two men, but he didn’t pay much attention. Two hours later the sentence was given: both men were to go to prison for six years. “Oh well” Stanley thought as he walked from the court room, “looks like another boring day.”
* * *
“Friends! Felines! Countrycats! Lend me your ears!” a young tuxedo cat, Hamlet, prince and general of the army of the great cat city of Ellsinore, yelled to the cats assembled before him. “Humans have tampered with nature for too long! We must stop them!”
Brutus snorted derisively and looked at Caesar, who was sitting on the other end of the couch in their small apartment. “Boring!” he said loudly, more to annoy Caesar, who was hanging on Hamlet’s every word. Then Brutus went into the kitchen to make some popcorn.
“Your loss,” Caesar said, not taking his eyes off the screen, “this is fascinating.”
Brutus just grunted. When he came back with popcorn Hamlet was shouting, “What a piece of work is man. How ignoble in reason! How finite in faculty! In form and moving how inexpressive and despicable! In action, how like a slug. In apprehension, how like a demon. The blight of the world. The epitome of monsters! Man delights not me!”
“Huh?” said Brutus stupidly, “did you understand that?”
“No,” replied Caesar with a touch of awe in his voice, “but it sure as heck sounded good! I’m gonna join him, because these humans have hunted us far too long! We need to stop them!”
“ Well, that was sudden. If a donkey said a word with more than two syllables you’d follow it to Pluto and back!”
“Shuttup Brutus! You’re not changing my mind this time!”
“Brilliant!” muttered Brutus, “now I get to follow a dimwit into a death trap!”
* * *
“Very good speech sir.” Lt. Romeo, a tortoise shell cat, said after he and Hamlet had left the assembly area.
“Well, at least it was effective,” replied Hamlet in a hoarse voice, “next time I’ll hand out leaflets.”
Romeo didn’t reply to this, and instead turned to McDuff, the tech specialist.
“Are the shuttles ready, McDuff?”
“Yeah, all systems operational,” said McDuff, not even looking up.
“Good. Hamlet we’re ready to--.”
Just then, Horatio, a young tabby scout, rushed in, panting.
“Yorick, they got Yorick!” he yelled frantically.
Hamlet’s eyes widened, and he said, “Whoa, slow down. Yorick’s dead?”
“Yeah.”  “Okay, s--,” Hamlet started, but Romeo cut him off.
“How’d he die? Tell all. Leave nothing out.”
“Well,” Horatio began, “Yorick and I were patrolling the tunnels beneath Old France when we saw a llama. We were tired of old preserved meat, so we shot the llama and ate it.”
Here McDuff moaned, “Lucky! I’d give my tail for some fresh llama!”
Then Horatio resumed his tale. “After that we set camp. The next day we continued along the path we had been going on, but we came to a gorge that neither of us were familiar with. Yorick then accidentally knocked a rock down the gorge. We heard the echoes as it bounced of f the sides of the gorge. We never heard it hit the bottom. Interested, Yorick and I looked down. We could not see the bottom, but there was a faint yellow glow.”
Romeo’s eyes widened. “The Paris Fissure!” he exclaimed.
“Eh?” McDuff said, a puzzled look on his face.
“The Paris Fissure,” Romeo explained, “is one of the three ways to the earth’s core. The other two are the California Mine and the Hong Kong Chasm.”
“Whatever,” said Horatio, ”Then we went farther down the tunnels. One night, as we were eating our dinner of not-so-fresh llama, we heard noises. The noises sounded like monkey-talk, and if we set our vocabulators to ‘Primate’ we could understand most of what they were saying. There were two creatures, a male and a female. The dialogue between them went something like this, though some parts we could not make out:
‘What are we doing in this …?’
‘…sent us, I’m not sure what they think we’ll find here.’
‘Maybe we’ll find food or …we could just turn back, saying that we couldn’t…’
Then they came out of one of the side tunnels. Yorick and I recognized them immediately from all the pictures we’ve seen. They were humans, almost twice our height! Still, when they saw us the they both shrieked. Yorick stayed calm, simply drawing the stun baton we are required to carry when out in the tunnels, and I followed suit. The humans both drew their weapons, silver blades about three feet long. The humans attacked first lunging at Yorick, who jumped out of the way in the nick of time. I swung my baton like a club at the female, who collapsed on the rock, dead. I stared for a little while, realizing I had just killed somebody. If only I had not delayed! for when I looked back, the other human had just skewered Yorick! Needless to say, I charged the foolish human. My baton had broken on the other thick skulled human so I used my claws and teeth. He tried to pull me off his face but just ended up inflicting more pain upon himself. It was over in a matter of seconds.
Now, I was lost, tired, alone, and running out of supplies. After a few weeks of wandering around the tunnels, I began to lose hope. But then, one morning I heard the sounds of Ellsinore. It was two more days ‘till I reached Ellsinore. Then I came straight here.” With that, Horatio concluded his tale.
McDuff let out a whistle. “You must must be starving! Let’s get you to the kitchen! Romeo nodded in agreement, but Hamlet wasn’t paying attention.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” Hamlet cried, “I knew him, Horatio. And I will not let the humans continue with these atrocities! They attacked you on sight. Granted, you had drawn weapons, but still, we will act, we will fight back, we will march on the humans’ city.
* * *
“I knew we shouldn’t have joined the army.”
Caesar didn’t respond. Brutus was right, of course. They had been marching for two weeks with very little time to rest each day. But he refused to yield to Brutus, he was determined to stick to his original decision.
“Where’s your patriotism Brutus? Leave it in Ellsinore?” He said, determined to give as good as he got.
“Patriotism is irrelevant Caesar. What are relevant are my footpads. I’m an urban cat, born and bred. I am certainly not made for trekking under Germany to go to battle with a race that is just a psychotic offshoot of chimpanzee.”
“I second that!” said a young cat marching behind them called Laertes.
“See?” said Brutus in what Caesar thought was an annoyingly lofty tone of voice.
“You’re one of the few that do.” Caesar said to Laertes. “Most cats would follow Hamlet to the underworld and back again if he asked them to.” The fact that this was true made Caesar grin inwardly. That would show Brutus. This evening when the army set camp Caesar would bring the topic up again to see what Brutus had to say. He really did love his victories!
* * *

That evening, Caesar waited with Benadick and Antony, his tent-mates, for Brutus to come back. Eleven o’clock came and went. Midnight. Still, Brutus had not come back. Caesar looked at Benadick and Antony, but both were asleep. He checked his chronometer. One fifteen.
“He should be back by now.”
Finally, Caesar opened the tent, hoping to see Brutus somewhere.
No Brutus, but a halogen lamp was on in one tent, and hushed voices came from within.
His curiosity aroused, Caesar went over to the tent. He looked in. They were talking very quietely, so he couldn’t tell what they were saying. He could, however, tell who they were. All told, there were seven. Brutus, who was talking the most, Iago, Macbeth, his sister, Lady Macbeth, Laertes- “Laertes,” Caesar thought, ”That’s odd.”- Tibalt, and Happy Dagger (On odd chap who changed his name as soon as it was legal for him to do so. Legally, the smiley is part of his name).
Caesar also saw a chart:
• Laertes - Hamlet
• Iago - Othello
• Both Macbeths - McDuff
• Tibalt and Happy Dagger - Romeo
“ Interesting,” Thought Caesar, “ that’s where they are all positioned. Probably so
they know where to contact each other.” Still, he wasn’t sure, but he decided not to mention it to Brutus.
The cats seemed to be ending their conversation, and they all got up. Caesar gulped. They couldn’t know he had been spying! So, he got up and ran as fast as he could back to his tent. Luckily for him, Brutus was taking his time to leave, so Caesar had time to get in the tent and pretend to be asleep.
* * *
Romeo and his team looked at the city with no small amount of awe. Everything was massive, the buildings Hundreds of feet tall in some areas. After further inspection however, they thought there must be some mistake. Besides the buildings, everything seemed primitive. Surely these were not the humans they had all heard about, even seen in movies! Those humans had had hovercars and eyescanners and all sorts of technology! These humans didn’t even have guns! All they had were swords.
“Well troops,” Romeo said uncertainly, “Hamlet told us to wait in the sewers until he and his squad give the signal.”
“Erm, sir? What is the signal?” asked Caesar.
“It’s-“
“And why the sewers?” Brutus butted in.
Romeo looked peeved. “The signal is a blue flare, and the sewers because we must not be seen.”
“Oh.”
* * *
“So far so good.” thought Brutus. His plan was running smoothly so far. Laertes was in position. Macbeth had killed McDuff, and Iago was ready. Happy Dagger died (actually a good thing as far as Brutus was concerned) but Tibalt had succeeded. “Still,” he reminded himself, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, so you best be careful.”
* * *
There it was, the flare! Finally! It had been quite hard for Caesar to resist leaping out of the sewers and shooting all the humans who were walking down the street.
As soon as Romeo saw the flare he gave the order. Already Caesar could hear the screams of humans being slaughtered by different squads. He leapt out of the manhole and started shooting humans. He had always been good at the simulators and these targets were bigger and more plentiful. Also, they didn’t fight back. The battle, if you could call it that, was over quickly and the squad split up to chase down more humans.
Several hours later few humans remained, and most of them were barricaded in the Town Hall. Though his arm had been badly injured, Caesar and some other cats still roamed the streets.
As he came down a dark alley he saw a body of a cat.
“Huh,” he said out loud, “so they did fight back.” He found more corpses, mostly human, with some cats here and there. Then he came upon the body of a tortoise shell cat.
“Romeo.” He swore under his breath. Then, he looked closer. A bullet, in his neck.
“Didn’t know they had guns.” He said.
“They don’t”
The noise startled him. He turned around to see Brutus, gun in paw, walking towards him. Then he realized. That group he had seen talking early, it was all about assassinating the captains of the army! That list-but Brutus couldn’t have known, he obviously hadn’t gone along with it.
Still ,he drew his pistol. Something about they way Brutus had said that hadn’t seemed right.
“Tibalt, Tibalt killed Romeo!” he said, looking at Brutus, hoping to see a surprised reaction.
Brutus just grinned evilly. “What a pity… so you found out. Oh well…”
“Et tu Brute?” It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. Brutus just nodded.
Caesar raised his arm to shoot, but he knew Brutus would hit him first since he was hurt.
Then Brutus shot him in the eye before he could even fully extend his arm.
Caesar’s body fell to the ground with a dull thud.
* * *
Hamlet was quite unaware of the treachery that had just occurred. He wandered the streets looking for his captains. McDuff Had been slain in the fighting trying to take on five well armed Priests at once. He actually managed to take out three, a commendable feat, to be sure.. Prosper was controlling the siege of the Town Hall and Othello was off chasing some humans in the tunnels outside the city. Only Romeo was unaccounted for, and Hamlet was beginning to worry.
He turned a corner and saw Laertes.
“Hello, Laertes,” Hamlet said.
“ I challenge you to a duel, a duel for control of the Army of Ellsinore.” he said
Hamlets jaw almost hit the ground. “You’re kidding.”
“No. Come on, fight me, coward!” Laertes said, sneering at Hamlet. “Too scared?”
“Be reasonable Laertes, if you kill me the army will attack you on sight.”
“So?” With that Laertes leaped at Hamlet, gun forgotten. Hamlet dropped his weapon and jumped at Laertes, colliding with him in midair. Laertes was younger and slightly faster than Hamlet, but Hamlet, who was not slow, was a far more experienced fighter.
Soon, Hamlet had his claws at Laertes’ throat.
“Just surrender, I don’t want to kill you unless I have to.” Hamlet said.
“No.” said Laertes, snarling defiantly. His teeth seemed almost green in the artificial light. “I’ve done my job. And succeeded.” He grinned maniacly.
The greenish light on his teeth unnerved Hamlet. Then it hit him. Poison! Oh how he’d been such a fool! If Laertes had injected antidote into his bloodstream, all risk of being poisoned would be eliminated! Of course Laertes hadn’t expected to beat him, he had just been gambling on the fact that Hamlet wouldn’t kill a defenseless person, or at least would let him live long enough for the poison to take effect. He was right, already he could feel the poison in his blood, slowly killing him.
* * *
For Laertes, that moment was one of pure joy. He could see the realization in Hamlet’s eyes. He shoved Hamlet off and got up. Hamlet tried to get up, but seemed not to have the energy. Instead Hamlet just crawled away from Laertes, yet never took his off him. “Now I just sit here until you die,” Laertes said, “And make sure no one comes to save you.”
“Ever thought,” Hamlet said through gritted teeth, “that you might need saving?”
Laertes’ eyes widened as Hamlet reached for his discarded gun and shot him right in the gut. With a disgusting gurgle, Laertes fell to his knees, then onto the ground.
Hamlet fell back against the ground. “The rest,” he said to the air, “is silence.” Then his eyes closed. A few seconds later, his heart stopped beating.
* * *
Brutus grinned. Unless Laertes had bungled it quite badly, his plan was going perfectly. Then he felt cold metal at the base of his skull. A gunpoint.
“I saw the whole thing, and you are under arrest for treachery and murder.” It was the voice of Horatio.
“Really?” Brutus said casually. If only Laertes would hurry up!
“Ah, well, you asked for it. But one thing, why?”
“Yes,” thought Brutus, “now I just kill time.”
“Because the whole system is screwed up.” he said aloud.
“Really? How?” said Horatio dubiously.
“The prince gives a speech because he’s bored, works up a crowd and ‘Bang!’ we’re stuck marching off to war with our fearless leader behind us.”
“Oh. I see. Thank you for imparting you knowledge unto me, but I’m afraid I don’t agree.”
“Wha—“ Brutus couldn’t even finish his sentence he was dead so quickly.
* * *
The siege was over quickly. The humans inside the Town Hall actually threw the Priests out, letting the cats kill them. The Priests, even with their superior technology, were no match for the sheer numbers of working class humans in the Town Hall. Later, Othello defeated Iago and signed a peace treaty between humans and cats, one that would last thousands of years…

Wednesday, March 14, 2007