Once upon a time there was a beautiful Queen who was loved by the King but feared by all his subjects.
Unknown to the King, the beautiful Queen was wicked to her step daughter, Snow White.
Snow White was also beautiful but, unlike her Wicked Step Mum, was liked by all the Kings subjects because she was so sweet, kind and considerate.
"You'll never get anywhere with your soft liberal attitudes," snarled the Wicked Step Mum. "You need to toughen up and learn to be nasty!"
"Yes Step Mother dearest," was all Snow White would say, which irritated the heck out of the Wicked Step Mum who was hoping to provoke Snow White into a fight so she could discredit her with the King.
As Snow White grew up, she showed signs of becoming a talented writer and became popular, not only with the local Writing Circle, but also with the King's subjects on the Internet, where she would put her short stories on-line for all to read.
The Wicked Step Mum started to put short stories on the Internet too. She even forced members of the local Writer's Circle to vote for them on the Top List Web Sites to make her stories look more popular than Snow White's. But, as time passed, the Wicked Step Mum grew more and more worried that Snow White was outshining her.
It was the Wicked Step Mum's habit to peek and poke in Snow White's mail. One day, a package arrived for Snow White containing a desktop search bot program.
"Search for everything you desire and anything you want using the world's latest cutting edge artificial intelligence search algorithms!"
the cover proudly boasted.
It was the opportunity the Wicked Step Mum had been waiting for and she immediately decided to do a web search to see whether she or Snow White was the most popular writer amongst the King's subjects.
The instructions explained that the search bot was activated by the first line of an old fairy tale. So the Wicked Step Mum typed into her computer:
"Mirror Mirror on the wall who is the best free online short story writer of them all?"
There was a brief pause and the search bot replied:
"Though thou art clever, fine and fair,
Snow White's short stories are the best anywhere!"
This threw the Wicked Step Mum into a great rage so she kicked the cat and locked Snow White in her room for three days with nothing but bread and water and a computer dictionary to read.
Again and again, the Wicked Step Mum typed in search phrases in an attempt to find a story genre where the search bot would admit she was more popular than Snow White.
"Mirror mirror on the wall who writes short stories that are the funniest, the saddest, the most thrilling and the most romantic of them all."
The answer came back "Snow White".
"Mirror mirror on the wall who writes the best on-line fiction, sudden fiction, micro fiction, micro-stories, postcard fiction, very short stories and short short stories."
The answer still came back "Snow White".
"Mirror mirror on the wall, who writes the best on-line romance, thrillers, science fiction, mystery and crime short stories ?"
Each time, the search bot came back saying it was Snow White's stories which were the best, the funniest, the saddest and the most romantic in the world.
Finally, in desperation, the Queen commanded all her subjects in the Kingdom to vote for her stories on the Top Sites.
Afterwards, when The Queen questioned the search bot and got the same reply that Snow White was the better writer, the Wicked Step Mum flew into the greatest rage of all, frothed at the mouth and lay on the floor screaming.
So the King was forced to send the Queen to a far off part of his Kingdom, where the Queen could be prevented from doing any harm to herself or frightening the King's subjects.
When the King let Snow White out of her bedroom, she was very happy because reading the computer dictionary day after day was getting very boring.
She spotted the CD containing the search bot software lying besides the Queen's computer.
In her rage, the Queen had cut the CD into many pieces with the sharpest of scissors and battered the fragments with a heavy hammer.
However, Snow White still made sure she paid for the software by return and enclosed the sweetest of letters.
Can you guess what she wrote in her letter?
This is what she said.
Dear Sir
I enclose $100 in payment for your excellent practical joke wind up search bot software, with optimised artificial intelligence algorithms for maximum irritation.
Your wonderful software worked perfectly.
Regards
Snow White
After which, Snow White and the King, who, like his subjects, found he didn't miss the Queen at all, lived together happily in the Palace for ever after.
The End
Rob Hopcott
(On-line author - fiction - news)
Copyright Rob Hopcott 2007. All characters in this modern fairy tale and other free on-line short stories, flash fictions, micro-fictions or short short stories on this site are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.
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