“And I'm telling you, this is an illegal assembly. You have no right to be here.” The policeman patiently explained. The warm, somewhat fuzzy looking portly man in the cardigan looked him dead in the eyes, and glibly remarked:
“But to quote Socrates, What is a right?”
“Oh no sir, you're not going to get me with that one. You know as well as I that it has been illegal to have reasoned beliefs in this city for three quarters of a century now.” The officer said, hands in his belt loops. The other officers behind him waited patiently, if somewhat confusedly.
Behind the disputing pair, the orchestra played on. At the sight of the police they had switched to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana - which the officer thought was frankly rather offensive - and were managing to go full blast in spite of the fact that their conductor was currently arguing with said police, his baton flicking becoming exceedingly erratic. (A little problem like “going to jail” is not the sort of thing that stops a symphony orchestra.)
“Well fair enough, fair enough. Never let it be said that I am not a reasonable man, even when it comes to being reasonably unreasonable. Now officer, do remind me - what was your objection to our being here again?”
“My objection, sir, is that this is an unlawful assembly. You do not have a permit.”
Having finished Carmina Burana and finding that, tragically, the policemen were still there, the orchestra switched to Night on Bald Mountain.
“I don’t? Oh, but my dear sir, I think you’ll find I do,” Claireholm Dundas, conductor of the Miracle Street Symphony Orchestra, cheerily said as he made a series of frankly completely unintelligible strokes with his baton.
“No, sir, I think I’ll find you don’t. You may think trying to confuse me will help, but I’ve already done my due diligence and contacted the Ministry for the Trampling of Rights and Dignity. And they were quite explicit that no orchestra had gone through their permits department in the last six months, since your Midsummer’s Eve performance at the botanical gardens..”
Claireholm seemed entirely unsurprised by this, and merely laughed as he continued to wave his baton around. (The officer knew nothing of music, but even he was starting to suspect that standing on one leg and spinning the baton in your hand had little to do with the content of the orchestra’s music.)
“My dear sir, I would never dare try to confuse a loyal upholder of the law. I said I had a permit, but I said nothing about having a permit from the Ministry for the Trampling of Rights and Dignity. I have a permit for one unlawful assembly from the Ministry for Organised Crime - it is quite legal for me to be illegally present here.”
“You have a permit for unlawful assembly? … They offer those?” The officer said, incredulously. Claireholm Dundas pressed on merrily.
“Oh yes they do. I have one permit for a lawful unlawful assembly.”
The policeman - one Officer Fido, a family man with kids who was really a good sort and wanted to be there about as much as Claireholm wanted him - groaned. It was not simply a matter of running to the nearest payphone and calling Darlene (the police secretary) and asking her to contact the Ministry for Organised Crime. They didn't hand out files to anyone without bribery, thievery, or extortion notices, which would require filing a report with the Ministry for Organised Crime in order to get a report from the Ministry for Organised Crime. (The Ministry for Organised Crime was a big champion of bureaucratic bloat - it necessitated more people filing reports for nepotism, fraud, and wasteful spending, after all.)
And anyways, even if they had a permit for an unlawful assembly, said assembly was still - as the name implied - unlawful. Did an unlawful assembly become a lawful assembly merely because it was a lawful unlawful assembly? Surely not; then it would be a lawful assembly, not an unlawful lawful assembly. But was it an unlawful assembly if it was a lawful unlawful assembly? The answer must be an equal negation, for then it would merely be an unlawful assembly, not a lawful unlawful assembly.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
And regardless of whether it was a lawful assembly, or an unlawful assembly, or a lawful unlawful assembly, or even an unlawful lawful assembly (potentially another alternative offered by the Ministry for Organised Crime, and one Officer Fido dared not neglect - for he could arrest Claireholm for lawfully convening an unlawful assembly, only to learn that he’d unlawfully been there lawfully), well… was it the type of assembly Officer Fido could even arrest someone for?
After all, if he arrested him for an unlawful assembly and it turned out to be a lawful unlawful assembly, it might be Officer Fido’s head on the chopping block, but on the flipside even a lawful unlawful assembly was an unlawful assembly, and so he might be expected to arrest him anyways.
“Having trouble reasoning this out, officer?” Claireholm jested. “What a pity we have no Socrates here to help us - but we hear nothing about his being good at music anyways, unless drinking songs count.”
And suddenly it all clicked for Officer Fido. He was being reasonable - when he ought absolutely not to be.
“Now sir, you told me that your permit permits you to lawfully be unlawfully here, but read another way, couldn’t we say it permits you not to be here?”
“No; that would be the negation of a principle which is fairly clearly a positive.”
“Ah ah ah, that’s being reasonable, and we don’t do that here.” The officer said, wagging his finger.
“No, we don’t, so you have no reason to arrest me,” Claireholm Dundas continued, standing on his head and directing the symphony orchestra with his feet. Having finished Night on Bald Mountain, the symphony orchestra now proceeded to Aram Khatchaturian’s Masquerade - Ballet Suite 1: Waltz. Officer Fido was a little hurt. It was one thing to insult him, but did they need to do so so openly? He decided to try being reasonable (in a non-legal, and therefore legal, sense).
“Look, can’t you, you know, just end your performance? Or move its location? You’ve upset some real bigwigs, and they’re pushing for a termination to this surprise concert.”
Claireholm pretended to be horrified, his jaw dropping. Given that he was still upside down the result was fairly ridiculous, but neither of them believed in dignity anyways.
“Sir, compatriot, noble officer, my dear friend, you want me to end a Christmas concert early? And deprive the people of the joy and light and whimsy that Christmas can bring? It’s Yuletide cheer, not Yuletide tears.”
“It’ll be Yuletide jeers if I have to pack you all off to the old jail cell - and it ain’t you they’ll be jeering at. Please be reasonable, sir.”
“Rationality is so old school.” Said the man standing on his head.
Officer Fido sighed. “If I may ask, when does this concert end, at least so far as your own plans go?”
“My dear sir, you know what they say: it is not over until the fat lady sings. And she” he said, placing stress on the pronoun, “plays the tuba.”
And he pointed to the fat lady, who was indeed playing the tuba. She was glaring daggers at Officer Fido, and as he stared at her started blatting on the tuba with greater intensity, as if to emphasise that she was not going to sing anytime soon.
Claireholm saw that the officer wasn’t convinced, so he pulled out the final - if unfair - stop.
“Besides, my good policeman, why should I be afraid of any random ‘bigwigs.’ Do you even know who sent me?”
And then Officer Fido felt a shiver of fear. He’d assumed - as had his employers - that this was simply someone unwisely offending a corporation, possibly on mistake, possibly on purpose. But if Someone Big had sent him here to perform this concert wilfully…
(He had been sent by Someone, but it was not Someone Big but Someone Very Small - a certain Christmas elf, specifically.)
The poor policeman turned white. Claireholm felt a little bad, but the show must go on, and it was not only Halloween that was the season of tricks.
The officer was opening his mouth to say more when their conversation was cut off, and not by the symphony orchestra.
Deep within Das Gleiche, but clear as day, they heard the sound of banging.