Cinderella Had a Farm

Once upon a time, Cinderella married the King and quickly became beloved as the “People’s Queen.”

The King and his advisers decided to exploit Cinderella’s humble origins and benevolent nature by naming her head of Education or Housing, but Cinderella claimed Agriculture, because she knew the history of agriculture was the history of the world.

She embarked on a listening tour around the kingdom and was photographed inspecting fields, riding tractors, and milking cows. She presented each farmer with a needlepoint of the Serenity Prayer, which she encouraged the farmer’s wife to hang in a prominent place in their home.

She shared her findings during a cooking segment on the kingdom’s most popular morning show: “Farmers,” she said, wanted her to “streamline bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and centralize operations.”

What this meant was Cinderella alone would decide which crops, and how much of them, farmers could produce each year. She’d pay other farmers not to grow crops at all as a substitute for agricultural price support programs, though the press release only mentioned the policy’s “water-friendly conservation measures.”

She announced an initiative to grow the largest pumpkins in the world that could support nutrition programs and create clean energy. She launched satellites for crop surveillance and environmental monitoring, and limited groundwater pollution by consolidating all the cow farms into one sector of the kingdom. (That sector just happened to be upriver from her Stepmother’s chateau.)

Some farms prospered under Cinderella’s policies, but most failed because of drought, and with fewer working farmers, a food shortage developed. Citizen journalists studied the satellite data to figure out where all the water had gone.

They discovered the kingdom’s water was being diverted to support Cinderella’s Giant Pumpkin Program. (They also discovered Cinderella was tracking the movements of all the maids and fairy godmothers in the kingdom with VR scarecrows.)

The people were outraged. Starving rioters broke into the Giant Pumpkin facilities only to learn her pumpkins weren’t fit for human consumption.

read more

The scandal became known as “Watergate,” and Cinderella acted quickly to quell it. She paid the medical bills for people who’d been poisoned by the pumpkins. She made museums free to the public and gave artists grants. Her Fairy Godmother created stimulus checks, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!

But the King and his advisers did not come to her aid. They allowed “Watergate” to fester and grow because they viewed it as an opportunity to boost the economy, rally the populace, and secure the kingdom’s water access for generations to come. While the public focused on Cinderella, the King secretly prepared for war.

One evening, Cinderella received an unexpected visit from an old enemy.

“Don’t worry, I’m here to help you,” her Stepmother said.

She told Cinderella about the King’s secret plans and warned her: “They will blame you for everything—for going to war, for losing the war, for sacrificing their children to the war machine. The King doesn’t care about you, he cares about his legacy. And there are plenty of other maids in the kingdom.”

Cinderella knew her Stepmother was right.

She summoned the Fairy Godmothers to the Giant Pumpkin facilities at midnight and agreed to reduce the surveillance of their movements and the regulation of their activities in exchange for their help transforming the giant pumpkins not into high-speed RELLA Rail, as planned, but into tanks.

At first light, the Queen deployed the tanks in a surprise attack on the King and his advisers. She interrupted the morning news to announce the change in leadership and reveal what the King had been up to. “War is not the answer,” she said. She declared water restrictions on golf courses and put an end to the Giant Pumpkin Program. She called on Fairy Godmothers to help restore the rivers and make the crops grow. She vowed her reign would be guided by two principles: what is best for the kingdom and what is best for the Earth.

Her Stepmother watched the Queen’s speech from home. She was impressed with her adeptness at blaming the King for the crisis without acknowledging her role in it, and by her composure despite the dangerous days ahead.

She thought Cinderella’s best path for a long reign was to focus on the first principle while ignoring the second, because the Earth would be fine no matter what we did to it. The Earth would still be the Earth even when there were no people on it. It would simply enter a new phase, and continue evolving, and might even thrive in a post-human ever after.

—Paul Rusconi