two men

Once upon a time there were two boys, born on different sides of the world. Both were poor, and both were clever and both were very lucky. 

One boy learned how to fight, using his opponent's weakness  to give him the leverage to push them off balance even if they were bigger, stronger, older than he was. 

Because he had grown up poor he knew how many poor people there are and he knew if he made their lives better they would let him be king.  And because he was clever and lucky, soon he was. But some people got in his way. Not everyone thought that he was making their lives better. Some thought there might be someone  cleverer than he was, that they should be king instead. They said he was lying about wanting to make everyone's lives better. So the Clever King made a law that everone must cheer when they saw him, and if they didn't they would go to prison. But not wanting anyone to think he was mean, he said that only very bad people went to prison. Soon everyone cheered and the Clever King was happy.

Till he saw that the kings and queens in other countries didn't think he was a good king. He saw they had big armies and he was afraid that they would invade his country and stop him being king. So he made sure his army was just as big. He had to spend lots of money on the best weapons which meant there was less money for food. But the Clever King told his poor people "If I am not king, everyone will be hungry because other countries hate us being happy. "

Because he didn't want anyone in his country to be hungry, which would make them unhappy, he looked round for a way of getting more food. The country next door was the best country in the whole world for growing food. They had so much they were selling it. The Clever King said, "Our countries are next to each other, which makes us like brothers. You shouldn't make your brother hungry, that's wrong. You should let me be king in your country and share your food with us so we'll all be happy" But the people in the food growing country liked their own king because he was funny. So the Clever King said they were very bad people, and the best thing would be to go into their country and get rid of them. 

But there were more bad people than he had realised and it took longer than he had thought, and it became a war, as soldiers in his army were being killed which made their Mums cry. So to keep everyone happy, he made a law that no one was allowed to say there was a war. But he was worried that people might see those Mums crying, and be unhappy. So he made another kind of army, to fight this unhappiness. And this army used words as their weapons. and they didn't need aeroplanes to get these words into his people's homes because they used the internet. It cost much less than the real war. 

The kings and queens in the other countries had hoped the Clever King's people would stop wanting him to be their king, and were disappointed. They said he was cheating but there was nothing they could do.

And all the time soldiers from his country were dying and everyone from the food growing country was dying and there was no food being made at all, and people in all the other countries in the world began to worry that there was soon going to be nothing to eat, and they asked their  own kings and queens to do something? But these kings and queens were all scared of the Clever King and just kept hoping his people would get rid of him, but they didn't, because his internet army had won in their homes and they all thought he was a good, wise king and every problem ws caused by kings and queens in other countries.

Far away, on the other side of the world, the other clever boy had not learned to fight, he had learned how to make money. By the time the clever king had started his war, this boy had grown up to be the Richest Man in the whole world. And while there was a king in the country where he lived, this king was not nearly as clever as he was. This king was always complaining about the Clever King far away, saying how dangerous he was. And he was always asking the Richest Man for money, to help feed the poor in his own country. 

But the Richest Man said dreams were as important as food. If everyone dreamed they could be as rich as him then they would be happier than if they actually got a tiny bit less poor from him paying taxes.. Dreams were more important than money, when you had as much money as he did. He had so much money he was nearly bored, till he dreamed of being a hero, a pionneer, a space explorer leaving the earth full of poor people and pollution  behind and living on another planet, a planet he had made perfect for him. 

He got irritated when the king asked him for money, he got annoyed if anyone tried to stop him doing whatever he wanted. Some people started saying he had too much money and that made angry. He shouldn't have to put up with that! The Richest Man looked round the world to see if there was anyone as good as him, and saw, far away, the Clever King. 

The Richest Man saw at once how the Clever King's war was going badly - he would never waste money like that! But he saw too that the Clever King's internet war was going really well - in his own ciountry, no matter what the Clever King did, everyone believed he was  great. The Richest Man thought about this. If the Richest Man wanted to do whatever he liked he must be king of the internet. But not just in one country, he was better than the Clever King, he was so rich he could own the internet of the whole world! No one would know anything unless he wanted them to know it! But would the people who said he was too rich let him buy the internet so he could say bad things about them? They would have to, if he said that if they didn't then they were stopping free speech, that if they tried to stop him they were as bad as the Clever King. 

So while everyone was watching the war over food started by the Clever King, the Richest Man in the world bought the internet. He bought the news. He bought freedom. He bought the Earth, and all of us