To Be or Not To Be

by Ryan North

  You know for a fact that you’re unusually fast at slapping tables (what can I say, you had a boring childhood and had to invent your own fun), and as there’s no penalty to slapping in first, that’s what you do. Then you clear your throat and answer:

  » “Denmark’s earliest archaeological findings date back to the Eemian interglacial period! That’s from 130,000 to 110,000 BC.” «

  » “Denmark’s earliest archaeological findings date back to the Devensian glacial period, at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, 2.5 million years ago.” «

  » “I dunno, but my mom lived here too, so it’s got to be at least, like, 30 years.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  “Incorrect!” Horatio says. Fortinbras slaps in with his answer: “Denmark’s earliest archaeological findings date back to the Eemian interglacial period. That’s from 130,000 to 110,000 BC.”

  Darn it, it’s like he read your friggin’ mind.

  “Correct!” shouts Horatio. “Fortinbras, if you get this next question right, you will be my new king. Ophelia, if that’s who YOU want to be, you’ve got to get this next one right just to stay in the game.”

  Horatio looks at you both, and then clears his throat. “Next question: how long is the coastline of Denmark?”

  Again you slap in first.

  » “8735 kilometres!” «

  » “7314 kilometres!” «

  » “Trick question! No coastline has a precisely defined length, as the length will depend on the method used to measure it. If I use a metre stick, variations in the coast smaller than one metre will be ignored. But if I use a centimetre stick, then I’ll include those measurements, but ignore those less than one centimetre! Since coastlines behave like fractals in this regard, there is no single length measurement I can point to without making simplifying assumptions first.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  “Technically correct!” shouts Horatio. “Fortinbras, you and Ophelia are now tied for first. Whoever answers my next question correctly will be the ruler of all of Denmark.”

  Horatio clears his throat.

  “Final question: I am imagining a speculative future country that I will call the United States of America. This country is made out of many smaller states, each with their own name. Which speculative future state am I thinking of when I say that its land area is slightly less than twice the size of Denmark?”

  Uh oh.

  You slap in and say:

  » “Texas.” «

  » “Alaska.” «

  » “Massachusetts.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  “That, Ophelia, is...”

  Horatio pauses, dramatically.

  You and Fortinbras glance at each other. It’s so tense! Who knows what Horatio will say? Who knows??

  “...incorrect,” finishes Horatio. “Fortinbras? Any ideas?”

  “Um...whichever one was the sixth to enter the union?” he says.

  “CORRECT!” shouts Horatio, leaping up and hugging Fortinbras. “You won, dude! You are totally now the king of Denmark! Whoooahhhh!”

  » Gracefully accept your loss at Denmark trivia «

  » Challenge Fortinbras to a race around the world instead «

  * * *

  * * *

  You bring out your queen too, mirroring her move perfectly.

  She moves her queen back one square and takes your queen. You’ve lost your queen in two moves. This isn’t going well for you, Ophelia!

  “This isn’t going well for you, Ophelia!” Gertrude says, plagiarizing me but come on it’s not like she could know!

  I’ll save you some embarrassment and tell you that the rest of the game doesn’t go well for you either, and at the end you are down to your king and a pawn. Gertrude, on the other hand, has been toying with you and has managed to promote ALL of her pawns to queens, giving her a total of nine queens.

  Here’s how the board is set up:

  Ophelia, the most impressive thing is that you managed to even GET yourself into this position. It’s not easy to end up so screwed in natural play! It is sincerely impressive in its own way. But it is...

  » checkmate. «

  * * *

  * * *

  You bring up your horsey’s pawn two spaces to form the first step of a zigzag wall.

  Gertrude raises her eyebrows.

  “Congratulations,” she says. “You have managed to lose the game in the shortest possible time: two moves. It is impossible to lose at chess any faster. There is no way for you to be worse at this game.”

  “Not true!” you say. “I could be worse if I didn’t know how the pieces moved.” Gertrude writes down “Qd5#,” then moves her queen diagonally as far as it’ll go, putting it beside your pawn.

  “The thing is, I’m not convinced you haven’t been guessing your way through it so far,” she says, “but it doesn’t matter anyway.” Duuuuude, I’m pretty sure that’s...

  » checkmate. «

  * * *

  * * *

  This is awesome! And it’s going to go great, because who better to know how to kill someone than someone who has recently been through that “getting killed to death” process themselves? You wait till Claudius is sleeping (NEXT TO YOUR WIDOW) then wake him up by tapping him on the forehead a bit.

  “Hey, it’s me!” you whisper. “Your brother! The one you murdered!!”

  “Aw crap,” Claudius whispers back. “Ghosts are real?”

  “Real pissed at you, anyway,” you reply. “Listen, I’ll cut to the chase: we are from a time where ‘an eye for an eye’ is considered to be a good thing to build a justice system around, so I am here to kill you.”

  “How?” Claudius asks, his eyes wide, terrified.

  “Aw geez, so many ways,” you say, counting them off on your fingers. “I could startle you and make you have a heart attack, but that takes time. I could throw a pot at your head until you die, but that lacks grace. Instead, check this out.”

  You move your ghost body so it’s floating right above Claudius. He stares at you, his eyes wide.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  “Way too late for THAT,” you reply. You lower yourself to him, face to face, and keep going. His face dominates your field of vision and then you’re inside his skull, inside the pink of his brain, his blood darkly obscuring your sight. You sink slowly deeper and deeper into him, lining up your ghost body with his regular body, until you are just about occupying exactly the same space.

  Then you make yourself corporeal.

  What happens next happens so quickly and with such force that it’s hard to describe, but “Claudius explodes everywhere” captures most of it. I mean, you’re fine, but man is this disgusting. Literally disgusting. Gertrude wakes up, dripping in gore, screaming.

  You, my friend, have achieved revenge.

  You roll over onto your back and apologize to Gertrude. You explain over her screams what happened, and you tell her that you still love her even though she married your brother mere weeks after you died. But you can’t be with her anymore, you say. You tell her you need to go find your own path.

  “Sorry about the bed,” you say, floating up through the roof.

  You spend the rest of the afterlife acting as an immortal judge from beyond the grave, exploding those who have committed the most egregious crimes, merely blowing the hands off those who have been awful people but still, you feel, deserve a second chance. People whisper your name in fear (criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot, after all) and it works out pretty good for you. You do a lot of good for a lot of people.

  And yep, it turns out that blowing up bad guys never does get old!!

  THE END

  * * *

  » Restart? «

  * * *

  You agree that drowning is the way to go. The only problem is that you and Hamlet have different drowning plans.

  Your plan is to wait until Claudius is drunk, which won’t be long
because he drinks every night, and then lure him to the water’s edge and hold his head under until he dies. It seems like a pretty good way to drown a dude.

  “It’ll look like death by misadventure!” you say.

  RATHER than doing that, Hamlet’s plan is to pretend to be insane, and then the best part is that YOU’LL pretend to be insane too, and then you’ll fake your own drowning, which will allow Hamlet to act even crazier, and then he can drown the king when Claudius is not expecting it because who suspects a crazy person to act violently and irrationally, nobody, that’s who, because after all the only thing crazy people ever do is speak in riddles and tight, tight rhymes.

  “Your plan seems needlessly circuitous and dumb,” you say. “And I’m not keen to fake my own drowning. No, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that we...

  » go with my plan instead.” «

  » do your plan after all, and I bet my earlier sentence structure made you think this sentence was going to end differently.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  “I sure did!” Hamlet says. “Okay, perfect. I’m going to go back to the royal court and act crazy-crazy-crazy all the time. You tell your dad about how crazy I am, and then you start acting crazy too, okay? And then this afternoon you can confront me and act crazy in front of everyone, alright?”

  “Okay!” you say. “That is, after all, what I just consented to!”

  “Perfect,” Hamlet says, leaving. “Love you!”

  You go meet with your dad and tell him how totally cray Hamlet is, then leave. Back in your room, you start putting together your crazy costume. You shove some flowers in your hair and tangle it up to make it look all messy. Then you put on your nicest dress and get dirt all over it, because only an insane person would ruin such a nice dress!

  A little while later, a note is slipped under your door. “MEET ME AT THE ROYAL COURT AT 2 –LOVE HAMMY” it says. “P.S. B CRAY Z.”

  You show up at council at the appointed time with the appointed crazy, only to find Hamlet there alone. He nods to you and begins a lengthy and very loud soliloquy about the value of life and whether or not he should kill himself. When it’s over, he walks up to you. “OH HEY, OPHELIA I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE,” he announces, and then whispers to you, “Act like you’re breaking up with me!”

  “Why?” you say in a normal speaking voice. “Nobody’s here.”

  “Shh!” Hamlet whispers in return, and then he turns from you. “OH NO, YOU’RE TRYING TO GIVE BACK ALL THE LOVE LETTERS I’VE SENT YOU? BUT WHY??”

  You look at your empty hands.

  “GET THEE TO A NUNNERY, BECAUSE IF YOU TAKE A HUSBAND YOU’LL TURN HIM INTO A MONSTER. LISTEN, WE’RE ALL JUST PLAIN AWFUL AND THAT’S THAT,” he shouts.

  “Hamlet,” you say, “are you doing this for someone’s benefit? Because there’s nobody here. Let’s do this again in front of Claudius, okay?”

  “He’s hiding just down the hallway!!” Hamlet whispers to you urgently. “I’m leaving, but I just broke up with you! Talk about your feelings! And do it really loudly so they can overhear!”

  “Ohhhhh!” you whisper back. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  You clear your throat as Hamlet leaves.

  » Do a nice fancy speech for Claudius’s benefit «

  » Claudius isn’t the shiniest pickle in the shed! Just cover the basics in your speech instead. «

  * * *

  * * *

  “O, WHAT A NOBLE MIND IS HERE O’ERTHROWN!” you shout, glancing at the door.

  “THE COURTIER’S, SOLDIER’S, SCHOLAR’S, EYE, TONGUE, SWORD; THE EXPECTANCY AND ROSE OF THE FAIR STATE, THE GLASS OF FASHION AND THE MOULD OF FORM, THE OBSERVED OF ALL OBSERVERS — QUITE, QUITE DOWN!” you scream, wandering around the empty room.

  “AND I, OF LADIES MOST DEJECT AND WRETCHED, THAT SUCK’D THE HONEY OF HIS MUSIC VOWS, NOW SEE THAT NOBLE AND MOST SOVEREIGN REASON, LIKE SWEET BELLS JANGLED, OUT OF TUNE AND HARSH; THAT UNMATCH’D FORM AND FEATURE OF BLOWN YOUTH BLASTED WITH ECSTASY!” you holler, fixing your hair in a reflection to make sure it looks as crazy as possible.

  “O, WOE IS ME, TO HAVE SEEN WHAT I HAVE SEEN, SEE WHAT I SEE!” you bellow, just as Claudius walks in with your dad.

  Nailed it, Ophelia!

  Because they’re mad sexist, the king and your father discuss your relationship with Hamlet like you’re not even there. Near the end, Polonius seems to remember you’re there and in a quick aside, he tells you not to say anything because they’ve already overheard it all anyway.

  Nice to be thought of in there somewhere, right?

  Anyway, Claudius decides that Hamlet will be sent to England where his insanity can do no harm. They don’t seem to notice that you’re acting insane, even though I really was being honest when I said you did a great job with your crazy speech. They’re jerks. What can I say? They’re jerks. I don’t care who knows it.

  » Meet up with Hamlet to discuss what happened «

  * * *

  * * *

  “I think that went well!” Hamlet says.

  “I guess it did!” you say. “They think you’re crazy for sure, but I don’t think they noticed that I was crazy.”

  “You gotta play it up,” Hamlet says. “Sing, talk in riddles, reference sex a li’l. They’ll definitely think you’re nuts!”

  You look at him. “So you’re going to England?”

  “No, I’m gonna stay here. I’m going to try to trick Claudius into revealing his guilt. In the meantime, you act crazier, okay?”

  “Okay, I guess,” you say.

  You stay in your room and sort of putter around for the rest of the evening and most of the next day. You write down some riddles you can use to sound crazy (“What has two feet and two legs? Give up? BIRDS AND A BUNCH OF OTHER VERTEBRATES ACTUALLY.”) but decide you can probably do better.

  Things are going pretty well in the writing department when Hamlet shows up again and tells you that he accidentally killed your father!!

  “WHAT?” you say, completely shocked.

  “It was an accident!!” Hamlet says. “There was talking and then there was stabbing and maybe there was some stew involved and look: I’m sorry.”

  “He was my father, Hamlet!” you scream at him.

  » “And because you killed him, I will now kill you!!” «

  » “And because he was an emotionally manipulative, sexist pig of a man who did not respect me as a person and raised my brother to do the same, and plus the fact that death comes easily in this time period, I am actually not that upset about his death.” «

  * * *

  * * *

  “Cool,” says Hamlet. “That’s super convenient.”

  You nod.

  “Okay, well — this’ll feed into the whole ‘you crazy’ thing. Can you go use it?”

  You nod again.

  “Okay. Terrific. Well, I’m going to go off and be crazy some more. I’ll be in touch. Talk soon?”

  You nod a final time, and Hamlet’s gone.

  You spend the next few days wandering around the castle, being as crazy as you can manage. You make up songs about sex and stuff, but I’m not typing them here because I’m not gonna lie, they get a LITTLE bawdy. Oh my.

  A few days later, you feel like you’re properly prepped for your new, improved crazy act! You decide to try it out on Gertrude. You walk into Gertrude’s room and Hamlet’s friend Horatio is here too. He’s not in on the “just an act” part of your craziness, so lay it on thick, Ophelia!

  “How now, Ophelia?” asks Gertrude. Here’s what that means: “What’s up?” You answer in song, singing about “cockles” (gross).

  “Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?” asks Gertrude. Here’s what that means: “Hey wait, how come all the singing?”

  You answer in song, singing about a crazy little thing called death. Gertrude tries to interrupt you, but you interrupt her interruption by saying, “Hold on, check this out!” and then you sing a song about showers. />
  Then Claudius walks in! You’ve got two choices here: you can sing songs to him too, thereby establishing how TOTALLY NUTS you are, or you can break from the plan and just kill him now, because honestly Hamlet’s plan isn’t exactly the iron-clad gem of brilliance you’d hoped for.

  » Kill Claudius! «

  » Continue singing: that one about “cockles” was pretty good; you wanna sing some craaaaazy songs «

  * * *

  * * *

  You liked that, huh?

  Okay, here’s the next song you sing to the king of all of Denmark!

  Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,