This great plague continued to ravage the world and, as happens so often with such pestilences, its visitations were not evenly spread for the wealthy and privileged suffered less than those who were poor, ill-treated or discriminated against. In this the mercy of the Lord is difficult to discern but the sinful human mind is not privy to divine secrets. Many were those who nonetheless looked upon these hardships as a sign that something needed to change about the world, that greater fairness and less division might come to pass. As time went by, though, I am sorry to say that these hopes looked to have been dashed for, among the Angles and others, and among the Northern Aremoricans, a great number emerged who seemed to think that the plague was not real, such was the blindness of their minds.

Among the Angles and Saxons especially there were those who were in no wise cast down by the disaster but rather seemed to revel in it for, as it seemed to them, this was an opportunity that had been denied them, unlike the generations of their fathers and grandfathers who had striven in a great and difficult war eighty years previously. To these foolhardy people it seemed almost a matter of honour that more people died in the kingdom of the Angles and Others than in other countries; it seemed to them that the fact that no proper measures to combat the plague had been put in place by Boris and his rascally gang, far from a matter of shame and scandal as it should have been, was a sign of the courage and fortitude of the people rather than their own blatant stupidity. Woe to these people! For in the midst of the plague a great celebration was called to mark the eightieth year since the ending of that war and people celebrated in the street and performed a curious pagan dance which in their tongue is called the conga. How many of these fools then caught the plague I cannot say but it was many. Boris dismissed the pestilence, as I have told you, and went about happily shaking hands with all and sundry. He caught the plague as a result, or so it was given out. Although he recovered, his supposed brush with death did not seem to bring him any kind of repentance or even any more sense than the limited stock he had had before. The wise woman of the Picts and Scots continued to shield her people from the worst effects of Boris’ mad rule though even she made some of the same blunders. Nowhere is safe from the visitation of the wrath of the Lord.

Far across the wide Atlantean seas, Donald Dux surpassed himself in his creative arts by claiming that the plague could be cured if only people drank poison. The officials of his government who were wise in the ways of the apothecaries then had to make official statements telling the North Aremoricans – who are a simple folk and easily beguiled – not to drink or inject into the veins of their body any of the toxins or venoms mentioned by the dux. Who could have imagined such a thing? Who could have thought that a realm would have to issue proclamations to its citizens telling them not to drink poison as a way of staying alive? Amidst this madness only the High Priests of the Temple of MOMA stroked their goat-like beards, nodded sagely and pronounced Donald’s – as they called it – neo-dadaist absurdism to be the kind of genius that was rarely seen in the world of men. Such heresy and wickedness is this that stalks the earth! Truly we are entering a time of the dominion of demons.

Donald then called upon the satraps of his land to stop keeping people indoors and to allow them to go about their daily business and catch the plague. Some of the North Aremoricans indeed, taking up the weapons of war to which, as I have told you, they are greatly addicted, stormed the palaces of some of the satraps and demanded the right to die of the pestilence. For some reason the people of this land are greatly attached to their right to die unnecessarily of a disease for they see this as the mark of a free man. In many of the lands of the earth, such as the Antipodes and the territories of the Western Empire, the plague began to recede, or at least so it seemed, as wiser counsels prevailed. Among the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts, and Scots, however, and among the North Aremoricans too, where people thought that taking precautions in the name of the health of the general people counted as an infringement of their liberties, the pestilence raged yet.