Joe Hat handed out newspapers on a quiet corner of a new part of the United States in 2038. The newspaper defined his vision of “Slapbig Society,” a shape he could mold out of the withering old states and confused new ones. With a sizable inheritance, growing gallery of allies, and the public’s attention, Joe Hat created a spot for his head on New Mount Rushmore, which is where he was buried in 2064, twenty-six years ago, so his clone is twenty-six and is poorly regarded by Slapbig Society since he has been wasting away in college for eight years.
Joe Slap took his final Law class at Stewarts University in 2090. He showed up lugging a crate full of food, gossip magazines, and even a little pillow to place on his chair so that he was as comfortable as possible. He slipped his shoes off and explained between bites of sandwich that he wouldn’t have to study, because he was a clone of Joe Hat. The teacher asked, “What about Joe Hat’s son: young Cory Hat?” Joe Slap said that he wasn’t worried and proved it. Over the course of that semester he read magazines instead of textbooks, refused to engage in classroom discussion, and slept often in class. He was failed and blacklisted, never to be accepted back at Stewarts University. “I did what I was supposed to do,” he told the most powerful Slapbig admins, “I went to class and sat there.”
“That’s it?” they asked, and Joe Slap shrugged. Meanwhile, Joe Hat’s son Cory Hat studied under his uncle Jonnie Hat, learning what made Slapbig Society tick.
Cory Hat was told by Jonnie not to touch a dime of his inheritance until he was of age, so he earned spending money working out of the back of a pack and ship van delivering boxes. What might seem like a mind-numbing job helped him in the long run because the boxes he delivered were Slapbig boxes. As Cory spread the Slapbig word, he made enough money to buy food and flowers for his girlfriend Patricia Love. Patricia reciprocated often since she made her own money when she let people set up cameras in front of her, snap pictures, then pay her. She’s a looker in that red dress that she always wears, and with her long blonde hair always down and her makeup always on her face. Most everyone says that there’s nothing wrong with the way she looks and everyone else agrees.
At the beginning, the cameramen would ask Patricia out to dinner, but she turned them down every time by saying, “Cory Hat is taking me out to dinner.” The cameramen swallowed that bitter pill, accepting that they did not have a chance, and turned their attention back to their own personal gain. They asked Patricia, “Could we take pictures of you and Cory Hat at dinner together?”
Cory Hat and Patricia Love made a splash in the magazine world as two famous people who understood what made good food tick. They posed for cameras at restaurants, kissing behind plates of handmade pastas and writing blurbs underneath the pictures. Here’s one: Cory Hat wrote, “The shrimp scampi at Beachview Gardens was as beautiful as my love that night, and if my memory serves me, it was the night she wore her bright red Simon-and-Simon cocktail dress, the one from their spring collection. A delicious meal. Five shining stars out of five.” Patricia Love wrote,”It was one of those nights where the sky doesn’t turn black. It was bright all night, and even if the scientists don’t agree with me, I believe that this phenomenon was because of the light shining from my Cory Hat’s smile. I remember the Style Company pomade glistening in my lover’s dirty blonde hair as he told me, ‘This scampi is outstanding!’ We can’t stop chatting about our visit to Beachview Gardens. Five beautiful stars out of five.”
Joe Slap chuckled as he read Cory’s excerpt that was written for girls, but sighed a sigh of defeat when he tasted that scampi. It was the best.
While Joe Slap was reading magazines at school, he couldn’t believe he had slipped through the cracks. In fact, he wasn’t able to get through very many gossip columns because he was too busy thinking,” I can’t believe I am getting away with this!”
His keepers at Slapbig Central cracked down on Joe Slap’s behavior when they got hold of his report card. FFFFFFF. Joe Slap was placed under surveillance in a box that was called a “Slapbig Condominium.” There were no doors in or out, just little trapdoors that were big enough to squeeze in plates of decent food, tubes of toothpaste, rolls of toilet paper, and other things like that. Slapbig Central decided that Joe Slap must be homeschooled. If Stewarts University could not get through to him, his own parents were his final hope, so his parents were placed in the condominium as well. His parents were Kate and Marshal Hat, the parents of Joe Hat. They raised Joe Slap since he was a baby even if they didn’t volunteer to. When Joe Hat died, they both had beautiful light brown hair on their heads, but then they were given Joe Slap. Kate’s hair faded to white and Marshal’s fell out.
Cory Hat was placed in the Slapbig Condominium too because he was being raised by Kate and Marshal Hat; his grandparents. Even though the condominium was a punishment solely for Joe Slap, the higher-ups at Slapbig Central hoped that Cory Hat might benefit from a stint in a cage, trapped with a bad example. A Hat writing pretty words about meals and posing for magazine cameras didn’t give Slapbig citizens much faith in their possible successor. The goal was for Cory to emerge as a more mature, more cool guy who doesn’t write for girly magazines. People want to vote for a man’s man, or at least that’s the way it is now.
Watching through the lens of surveillance cameras, Slapbig eyes studied every corner of the condominium. Slapbig Central was contented with Cory Hat’s rapid maturation over his nine months of detainment. He kept the cell tidy, his grandparents fed and watered, and most honorably, he held brief daily chats with Joe Slap to discuss what Joe had been doing. Marshal Hat was too busy assuming the life of a conductor, playing with model train sets in the garage, to have any standing as the man of the house, and Joe Slap had no reason to desire the role, being the clone of Joe Hat. He thought of himself as the second coming. When the second coming comes back, you don’t really have a choice but to worship Him. He could do whatever he wanted, inside a condominium or outside.
At the beginning of the family’s captivity, Slapbig’s goal was to put Joe Slap to work, since he had accomplished nothing over his eight years of schooling. He was given worksheets to complete; they really weren’t very hard, just twenty minutes of work a day, but Slapbig was happy that he was doing as he was told.
Slapbig Central took their focus away from the condominium when they reshaped the world into Slapbig 2.0. It was only when the inevitable question of succession was raised that their attention again turned to Cory Hat and Joe Slap. Cory Hat had been too busy tending to Kate Hat’s rapid decline in health to continue work on his writing. A magazine blurb shaped hole had grown inside of him to the size of a novel. Slapbig Central read what he wrote from the cameras they installed on Cory Hat’s glasses and they saw his potential as a novelist. He was pretty good.
“Listen here,” a voice whispered from the head of the Slapbig Table, “Would even the greatest novelist of all time have what it takes to lead Slapbig Society? Think about Hemingway for a second. He could write a killer book, sure, but he couldn’t lead a thing! He was always alone in his room, just writing, not leading society.” Slapbig Central had a long talk and decided that Cory Hat’s artistic temperament would just not suit the throne. All care and attention must again turn to Joe Slap. After all, he was a clone of Joe Hat. There had to be a hint of Him in there somewhere…
Cory and Marshal Hat were set free to attend Kate’s funeral, but Joe Slap was not. Slapbig Central realized that his worksheets had not helped him to mature, instead, he had reverted to a helpless child prone to tantrums. A turnaround was needed, and quick, because the Slapbig System viewed Joe Slap as their one and only successor, so Joe Slap was given a living breathing baby to take care of with the hopes that he would learn to care for someone other than himself. Joe Slap named the baby Tanner Slap.
The pictures taken of Patricia Love over that nine month period of pregnancy and detainment were doctored by Slapbig photo editors to flatten her baby bump so that nobody would find out that there may be another heir to the Slapbig throne. She was placed in a condominium of her own along with a small group of Slapbig nurses, until her baby was plucked from her and given to Joe Slap. She was let go and has reunited with Cory Hat, who would very much like to meet his son one day.
Tanner Slap was given his first worksheets when he turned two. He was a bright kid who knew from the jump that Joe Slap was not his father. He said his first word, “Dad,” when he picked up a framed photograph of Cory Hat, and cried baby tears onto it because of how handsome his father looked in the picture. Joe Slap appeared in a reflection on the glass, drinking a Slapbeer and scowling at the baby who was the reason for his continued imprisonment. “I hate you!” yelled Joe Slap. “You’re a nobody! A big fat zero! A good for nothing piece of--”
Baby Tanner had heard enough. He dropped the photograph to the floor, shattering it into a million little pieces, and turned his attention to the security camera on the ceiling. He crawled across the floor until he was directly under the camera, stared directly at it, and blinked in morse code, “Slap on.” This was the code word that the second coming had been prophesied to recite upon his return to this mortal realm. Joe Slap was set free and Tanner was taken to the bitter cold peak of Big Mountain where his training would begin.