The Modern Prometheus: A Halloween Story
It’s Halloween. Time for my annual attempt at political satire (see last year’s effort here). Apologies to Mary Shelly, Monty Python and Buck Henry.
Setting: A laboratory located in a decrepit castle in Eastern Europe. Test tubes and electrical transformers fill the room. Outside, a thunderstorm rages. The year is 1789.
Dr. Madison: It’s alive! It’s alive! They all called me “mad,” but I have done what no man has done before!
Igor: Master, what is this creature?
Dr. Madison: I have transplanted the brain of John Locke into the body of the Magna Carta. I engrafted bits and pieces of Montesquieu, and gave the body a transfusion of Polybius’ treatise on the Roman Empire. Then, I immersed the body in a vat of the Iroquois Constitution and applied a charge of electricity. And it lives! This is a great day!
Igor (looking out the window): I don’t think everyone agrees with you.
A large mob of men carrying torches bursts into the laboratory. They are dressed in simple peasant attire except, oddly, all are wearing safety goggles.