Anon (November 2025)

“He who laughs, laughs his last laugh,” and so the sentence was executed on the spot.

In the capital of the realm of Ötarkh, the communities that spiraled out from the centre were for all practical purposes islands. They were as distant from one another as if they were miles and miles apart with no easy access. On ascension, Ötarkh, the self-proclaimed Great Polymath, had razed the outskirts of the ancient city and redesigned his subjects’ habitation to resemble elliptical spirals radiating out from the centre with only one connection and that to the omphalos. Each spiral community was a separate demesne with one way in and one way out. Mostly self-sufficient, the inhabitants rarely needed to travel beyond their own community. And when they did, they were required to pass the peacemakers who managed ingress and egress.

This was Ötarkh’s genius—the creation of an ornately laid out imperial city that most effectively projected his power over his millions. Housing and commercial buildings were short and squat, nothing over two storeys. This, to accentuate the grandeur of the palace and its extensive grounds that seemed to float above the imperial city. It was the pride of his empire. But Ötarkh had also spent his long reign drawing and redrawing colourful maps of his entire land, partitioning town and hinterland to reward his devotees and marginalize subversives and rivals.

Among his eccentricities, the most striking was his immoderate aversion to the sound of laughter. It was said that his only sibling, an older brother, Elvin, who mysteriously disappeared prior to Ötarkh’s ascendancy, had terrorized the young Ötarkh to the point that the boy had nearly lost his wits. The most wicked laughter that would freeze the blood of the grimmest peacemaker accompanied the boy’s daily beatings and torture. To this day, laughter is forbidden throughout the land. It matters not whether it is with gaiety and happiness, laughter, however manifest, earns the death sentence. Officially, those in court maintain that it is an affront to the dignity of the person and office of the emperor.

Among those who were designated to live in the spirals, none were remarkable in any way imaginable. Wealth, certainly not. Just bare sustenance was ephemeral and unpredictable for most. Intelligence, none stood out, and many of the duller majority were recruited to tend the grounds of the palace. Virtuosity in the arts or music; again, none could be found. Such extravagance! Good looks—not for long as those so blessed were snatched away as soon as the palace took notice. While these were not clever, they were pleasant to look at.

And so, a peddler of trinkets and charms and assorted trivialities and frivolities would be born, live and die in obscurity. A common lot for all who lived beyond the court. In ushering the peddler into this story, there is really no need to provide a name, but for convenience, he will be referred to as Anon.

As was the case with all peddlers, Anon was an itinerant trader, this being the most polite description that would ever pass the lips of subjects and peacemakers. His merchandise comprised small vials stored away in deep pockets on the inside of his shabby overcoat. The ampoules appeared to be empty yet each was carefully labeled in a long-forgotten script. Of course, the peddler could read the script or at least remember what it said, or so he professed to his skeptical customers.

In these transparent little bottles was the most dangerous commodity in all Ötarkh’s kingdom. Laughter. Anon carried on his person the laughter of many, some from the present and some from those now deceased. How he came by bottled laughter was not widely known, but no matter. The credulous still believed and optimists still hoped that laughter had not been completely silenced. The few who could confirm that these tiny vials contained what Anon said they did never admitted it. For to admit it would be to invite a most brutal interrogation by the peacemakers. And so, even a whisper was popularly thought to bring down a curse.

Now, Anon and others in his trade had developed the art of rendering themselves invisible. It was by these means that they were able to move relatively freely from one of the empire's cochlear canals to another, trading their wares for whatever might obtain a profitable exchange elsewhere. But it was risky in the extreme. To be caught was to be summarily executed, then and there. The peacemakers were merciless and they enjoyed their work. It was, among them, a point of honour to always be busy.

Anon’s was a particularly precarious existence as the slightest hint that he was dealing in laughter would have brought not just sudden death but the most unimaginable horrors of torture by men and women whose lust for blood and violence was never sated. Needless to say, Anon had a corner on the perilous laughter market.

And so it was that Anon with the stoppered laughter wound his way through one helical subdivision after another. His goods were not those of conspicuous consumption. Quite the contrary, a consumer could only enjoy their precious decanted laughter after sound-proofing a tiny partition of their compact efficiency. Carelessness could result in laughter escaping to the adjacent flats and once done, the peacemakers would be called in to haul off both buyer and seller. This had happened at least once to the peddler’s knowledge. It had led to the confiscation of a lifetime's collection of laughter. And, of course, the permanent disappearance of the purveyor. A deep bitterness grew up in the furtive company of his fellows.

Anon, himself, had his own grievances. He was the heir of family Anon’s laughters—these men, father and grandfather, had been assiduous in secrecy and, well, just plain lucky. Grandfather Anon, as a young roustabout and prankster, had opened a vial of the most effusive and joyful laughter during a circus performance back in the day when circuses were still permitted. On and on the laughter lasted, echoing throughout the building reaching every corner of the pavilion. In the mad stampede to exit the facility before the peacemakers burst in, Grandfather Anon dropped the vial on the ground. It was instantly ground into glass particles by the heavy tread of the frantic spectators. Not a sliver or spall remained . . . else Anon would never have been born. Many died that day.

Grandfather Anon, during the slightly more liberal reign of Elvin’s and Ötarkh’s father, had weaseled his way into the company of the young Elvin. Elvin was a notorious profligate who traveled with a large entourage of the well-bred and ill-bred, riotously drinking and whoremongering throughout the realm. There was more than a touch of vengeance in Grandfather Anon’s motives, and peddler by birthright and fate, he was always alert to opportunity. It was in this company that he perfected the dark art of decanting laughter from the ambient.

Of the vials that had been bequeathed him, one was prized above all the rest. Its magical content had passed into a third generation of Anons. As the last of his kin, Anon had become its keeper. For those brave enough to purchase one of the vials and live, the promise of laughter’s return was not just an apocryphal tale, a fancy of idle fools. It was hope itself. However, only Anon knew the contents of this special vial. It was Elvin’s laughter—Elvin, the older brother of the man who had become Ötarkh.

The vial’s destiny could be said to have been fixed by Grandfather, but it had been accepted by son and grandson. Hidden deep in their souls was a longing for an unknown something. This tiny vial contained the future. It was only to be opened in the presence of Ötarkh who would be driven mad by the evil laugh that had tormented him as a youth. The responsibility for emptying the vial would rest with the one who finally figured out to get close enough for the last laugh.

Whether one act of retribution would change the course of history was a gamble. And whether the future would be an improvement, an even madder gamble. Nevertheless—