The
Hand of God
So be it. Here is the true story
of how Team 1, aka ‘the silver entry-level P.’, was helped by higher powers to
acrimoniously surpass Team 3, aka ‘the red push-push’, in the rankings, if not
in truth, of the Saignant Monte-Carlo Rally 2001.
As the survivors of this
spirited event can remember in their sleepless nights, that year saw the advent
of a new stage called the ‘vrai-faux-econorun’, a last resource measure by the
organizers to fend off the standard habits of malpractice by some competitors
who purposely overspend precious fossil fuel during calibrations in order to
gain unethical benefits in the least consumption trials. The econorun-I thus
became calibration-II to be followed by a true econorun-II based on the results
of econorun-I, so that those who had cheated in consuming artificially little
in the fake econorun-I be truly punished when the results of the true
econorun-II would not be calibrated against the fake calibration-I. Fasten your seat belts.
The only grain of sand in this
otherwise well-oiled mechanics was the failure of the fake organizer Alain (aka
the absent god) to properly estimate the time it should take to swallow the
thousand and one turns of anyone of the shortest and most economical – but
*not* fastest -- route from Lake St Croix
to Sospel. The minimum one could possibly do (when in doubt, flat out)
was to arrive half an hour late at Sospel – a genuine disaster for the gas pump
owner who had a special date with his favorite television program that
night. Thus filling and tanking became a
thankless rush, during which the gauge of the gas pump became accidentally
erased after filling of silver entry level P. When Meg, special envoy of the
absent god, aka ‘the prime minister’, enquired on this, the proud but shrewd
owner of silver entry level P (aka PTJ) did not remember anything. This
precocious Alzheimer is not uncommon among anomalously gifted individuals, but,
surprisingly, it was to have, at least temporarily, beneficial consequences for
him and his teammate. For the young pumpist-delegate did remember the amount. In
the fierce language of the descendants of Voltaire, with the profound accent of
these remote southern quarters, he replied ‘deux cent quatre-vingt-quatre
francs vingt-quatre, Madame’. This was dutifully recorded as 224,84, which is
effectively a very similar sounding number –
this-French-counting-system-is-really-stupid-I-always-use-the-Swiss-one-anyway.
This erroneously small number
gave victory to PTJ and his silver entry level P. – to the great dismay of MTG
(aka ‘The President’) who was, for the ninth recorded time in history, trying
to dominate the elements and his frivolous temperament in the great yearly
passagiata. PTJ did not protest – who would? – but he did remember one year
later (Alzheimer can be cured very suddenly, we are told) to ask the prime
minister to keep this absolutely secret for the rest of their lives. He revels
in these small but satisfying expressions of interpersonal power tripping. He
would have secrets that the absent god did not have.
Of course, the great secret was
promptly told by PTJ at the banquet in Monforte d’Alba, to all who would hear
it. In vino veritas. This correction
to history having been made public and acknowledged, and under the pressing
authorization of The President, the final rankings of the 2001 rally shall be
modified, for…
“I am sure that the winners of the rally would not like to be declared winners knowing it was due to a mistake”. (Mike The President, 5 June 2002 16:01, in an amazing, self-fuel-filling prophecy.)
The 2001 econorun results and overall totals are consequently modified as follows:
