The Stock Exchange was almost deserted. It wasn’t actually closed, but instead of the hundreds of people who went there every day, only a couple of dozen were there. Betty’s Red Plague had only affected people in New York, so all the other stock markets around the world were still working away as normal, though everywhere was on edge in case the plague spread. This made all the stock brokers and bankers very, very cautious. Naturally, Winchflat and Aubergine Wealth were there and made a fortune. All they had to do was buy almost anything, start a simple rumour or two to make the price rocket and sell it few hours later to make millions. With so few people around, there was no one available to check if the rumours were true or not, and with such an air of panic everywhere people tended to believe every single one of them.
‘At least all the babies will stop getting fat,’ Winchflat laughed.
‘I don’t follow,’ said Aubergine as he stuffed wads of share documents into his pockets.
‘Well, today has been like stealing candy from a baby,’ Winchflat explained.
‘You know what we should do?’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘We need to corner something, not something people usually try to corner like gold or silver, but something much simpler that everyone uses and needs every day.’
‘You mean, like tea or coffee?’ said Winchflat.
‘Sort of, but something much more basic and something no one would expect it to happen to.’
To ‘corner’ the market in something means trying to own as much of it as possible. If you can own all of it, so much the better. For example, supposing potatoes usually cost twenty cents each and you wanted one. You would go to the shop, hand over twenty cents and get your potato.
Now, supposing you went to the shop and there were no potatoes because someone had bought every single one of them. By now, of course, you are really desperate for a potato, so you go to the person who owns them all and say, ‘Can I have a potato?’
‘Of course you can,’ says the potato baron. ‘How many do you want?’
‘Two, please,’ you say, handing over forty cents.
‘What’s that?’ says the potato king.
‘Forty cents, for the two potatoes,’ you say.
‘Very funny,’ says the potato god. ‘They cost five dollars each.’
‘But . . .’
That is ‘cornering’ the market.
Winchflat and Aubergine Wealth sat and thought. Potatoes were not a good choice. People could just eat rice or pasta.
‘There’s no food at all that would work, really,’ said Aubergine Wealth.
‘Chocolate might,’ said Winchflat. ‘People would go frantic if they couldn’t get a chocolate hit.’
‘True, but they might go more than frantic. They might get uncontrollably angry and start rioting,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘Also, not everyone is addicted to chocolate.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. We need something very basic that everyone needs, like toilet paper or underwear.’
‘Or both.’
‘I wasn’t serious,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘I didn’t actually mean toilet paper or underwear.’
‘Think about it,’ said Winchflat. ‘They are perfect. Everyone uses them. Well, apart from a few strange hippies and rock stars, and we can live without them.’
‘You’re absolutely right. Which one shall we do first?’
‘Toilet paper,’ said Winchflat.
One of the weaknesses of trying to own all of something is that lots of people will already have some. Normally not in large quantities, but often enough to see them through any shortage. Every supermarket in the world has shelves full of toilet paper, so most people wouldn’t even notice there was a shortage for quite a while.
One of the strengths of trying to own all of something is doing it if you are a wizard with awesome powers. The basement of Quicklime College’s Summer School had been fitted out as a laboratory containing everything a brilliant and enterprising young wizard like Winchflat might need to build absolutely anything he wanted to, no matter how amazing it might be. Winchflat’s wife, the disgustingly beautiful Maldegard Ankle, had not come to Summer School. She had far too much to do back in Transylvania Waters.22 She was, however, in permanent 24/7 contact with her adoring husband as they were both wearing Winchflat’s Permanent-24/7-Contact-Socks.
The first thing Winchflat needed was a very large space to put all the toilet rolls he collected with the machine. Luckily Maldegard knew of the perfect spot because one of the too many things she had to do that can be mentioned here was making the first ever really detailed map of Transylvania Waters.23
‘I have discovered the Caves of Huge Darkness,’ she told Winchflat.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I always thought they were made up, like fairy-story stuff.’
‘Well, my darling,’ Maldegard replied, ‘the whole of Transylvania Waters is such a wonderful and magical place that it’s all kind of fairy-story stuff, isn’t it?24
The Caves of Huge Darkness were originally created by the first wizards to live in Transylvania Waters when they fled there to escape persecution from the Knights Intolerant,25 who were determined to rid the world of every single wizard and witch by the most painful methods possible. The caves were to be the final place to hide if they were ever invaded. However, the Knights Intolerant never managed to reach Transylvania Waters and so the caves were gradually forgotten.
Winchflat had never quite believed the caves existed, but just to make sure he had built a Big-Hollow-Places-Detector, which told him there was a space beneath Transylvania Waters. It told him it was hollow and it told him it was incredibly big, but didn’t tell him where the way in was. Finding the entrance was one of the things near the top of his Must-Do-List, which was stored in his Must-Do-List-Storage-Device, which was like a notebook only different in highly technical and exciting ways that mere humans could never understand. Now his wonderful wife had found it and he looked forward to getting home again so they could both explore it together before they let anyone else know about it.
After all, he thought, you never know when a big hollow place might come in handy.
‘I know a secret place that will be perfect to hide all the toilet rolls,’ he told Aubergine Wealth, though he didn’t tell him where it was. ‘When we go on to stage two and corner the undies, there will be room for those too.’
Winchflat went to the basement laboratory and designed a massive Toilet-Roll-Magnet-With-Kitchen-Roll-And-Tissue-Attachments-Machine.
Although he desperately wanted to know where Winchflat was going to hide everything, Aubergine Wealth knew better than to try to force Winchflat to tell him. Although Aubergine was a wizard himself, and there were few his equal when it came to making huge amounts of money, he knew that Winchflat had awesome magical powers he could never compete with. He was, after all, one of the Floods, descended from Merlin, the greatest wizard of all time.
I’ll wait, he thought. The boy will give it away sooner or later.
Yeah, as if, thought Winchflat, who was wearing his invisible Thought Reader. For some reason he wasn’t sure of, instinct told him to tell absolutely no one about the vast cave complex, not even his own family.26
While Winchflat was sorting out his machine, Aubergine Wealth went over to the Stock Exchange and began buying shares in every single paper manufacturing company. Within two hours he was in control of the entire world’s production. Each company then received an email telling them stop production immediately.
‘Are we ready?’ said Winchflat as he powered up the Toilet-Roll-Magnet-With-Kitchen-Roll-And-Tissue-Attachments-Machine.
He had warned everyone at Summer School to wear safety helmets as there was no way of predicting all the routes the millions upon millions of toilet rolls from all over the world would take on their way to Winchflat’s secret storage facility.
‘Excuse me,’ said Ffiona. ‘I’ve got a question.’
‘I’ll just start the machine first,’ said Winchflat.
‘No, no!’ said Ffiona. ‘This is a very important question you need to answer before you start the machine.’
‘OK, what is it?’
‘As I understand it,’ Ffiona said, ‘your machine is going to transport all the toilet paper in the world to a secret location. Right?’
‘Every single sheet?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that will include used toilet paper and paper that is actually being used right at this moment?’ said Ffiona.
‘Yuk!’ said almost everyone.27
‘Ahh,’ said Winchflat. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Clever girl.’
There was a delay of about an hour while Winchflat built a filter that excluded toilet paper that wasn’t the same pastel colour all over (apart from any pretty patterns that might be printed on it).
‘There we go,’ he said. ‘I’ve added a No-Poo-Attachment. So I think we’re good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.’
‘I can,’ said Betty. ‘I know wiping your bottom with a newspaper is awful, but won’t people just do that, or tear pages out of notebooks?’
‘Another good point,’ said Winchflat.
There was a delay of another hour while Winchflat built a Ruff’nit Machine. It was programmed to cut in about thirty seconds after the main machine started and make all the remaining paper in the world Very Itchy.
‘You know,’ said the Headmaster, ‘the business possibilities are endless. I mean, you could make the remaining paper give anyone who used it a rash that could only be cured with a special ointment from a company that we own most of the shares in.’
In the end, it was decided that was probably going a bit far so it was agreed the Ruff’nit Machine would just give anyone who used it a red bottom like Betty’s spell had done. It would scare the living daylights out of everyone, but not actually do them any harm.
‘You know what might be fun?’ said Merlinmary. ‘If you made all the bank notes as soft as velvet. Don’t you just love the idea of everyone wiping their bottoms with money?’
‘It’s a bit mean, isn’t it?’ said Betty.
‘It is,’ said Merlinmary, ‘but also hilarious.’
‘But that’s sacrilege!’ said Aubergine Wealth, who adored money.
‘Right,’ said Winchflat, ‘I think this time we are good to go unless anyone else can think of something else I need to do.’
No one could. So they all put their crash helmets on and Winchflat pressed the Big Brown Button on the front of his machine. At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening, but then toilet rolls began to appear as if out of thin air. It was incredible, but the soft rolls of paper were actually moving through solid walls before flying off down the streets and out to sea.
Roll after roll appeared, mixed up with loose sheets of paper and packets of tissues. There were so many of them it looked like a snow storm as they flew out of shops and offices and bathrooms and people’s hands all over the world. It also cleared all the finished paper out of the factories that Aubergine Wealth had bought the shares in. Small clouds of paper merged into bigger clouds, some of them over a mile wide. Tracking stations around the world picked up the tissue clouds and followed them out into the middle of every ocean. And then, they all suddenly vanished.
Winchflat knew they would be picked up by radar and there was no way he wanted anyone to know where they were going. So, once the paper clouds had grown as large as they were going to, he pressed Button B and they dematerialised into individual atoms too small to follow and continued their journey. Once they reached the Caves of Huge Darkness, all the atoms joined up again and the toilet rolls, tissues and other soft papers collected in piles over the cave floor, where an ancient relic from the age of dinosaurs – the Complaining Woodlouse,28 a sort of blind beetle the size of a shoe – began to eat them.
From the inside of millions of bathrooms everywhere came horrified and disgusted screams from people who had been too close to using their handful of toilet paper to stop.29 The noise was deafening. Apart from the screams, there were hundreds of thousands of people calling out for their mums, thousands of voices screaming every swear word known to man in every language known to man and woman.30
The chaos that occurred that day was endless. People about to blow their noses suddenly sneezed into their own hands or, worse still, someone else’s hands. Spilled tea, coffee, blood and red wine just soaked into pale clean carpets, clothes and furniture. Governments around the world accused each other of a terrible plot. No one knew how it had happened, but the Russians blamed the Chinese. The Chinese blamed the Japanese. The Japanese blamed the Indians. The Indians blamed the British and the Americans blamed everyone.
Only Tristan da Cunha didn’t blame anyone because none of their toilet paper had disappeared. Winchflat had a soft spot for Tristan da Cunha and had added a special filter that excluded them. Naturally Transylvania Waters itself and the Transylvania Waters Summer School’s supply of soft, gently scented tissue remained untouched too. But everywhere else, from royal palaces to humble cottages, was totally one hundred per cent soft-paperless.
This time the traffic jams were ten times worse than they had been when Red Bottom Plague had broken out. Everything ground to a complete halt as people abandoned their cars and ran to the nearest supermarket to buy toilet paper. Of course, the shelves where the toilet paper should have been were empty. Sneaky people broke into the checkout tills – not to steal the money, but to take the paper rolls the receipts were printed on. But they had vanished too. Humans can never outsmart a wizard.
Enterprising people tried to think laterally, which means thinking sideways to try and find a solution to a problem that is not the usual solution.
This is what they thought.
If there is no paper, what else can we use to wipe our bottoms?
Here are a few things that do not work:
• Lettuce leaves.
• Goldfish.
• Sticky tape.
• Golf clubs.
• Weet-Bix.
• Belgium.
Here are a few things that do work, though you have to be pretty desperate:
• Kittens.
• Wigs.
• Cardigans.
• Armchairs.
• Seaweed.
• Bacon.
• Parrots.
• Small children.
Here are some things you must NEVER use:
• Copies of The Floods.
• Dynamite.
• Mashed potato.
• Belgian dynamite wrapped in barbed wire.
• Your baby sister.
Some people decided they would not go to the toilet until the crisis was over. Some of them exploded.
A few days later posters began to appear everywhere. They were advertising a wonderful new and exciting toilet paper that was softer and fluffier yet much stronger than anything anyone had ever experienced before. The posters said:
And sure enough, a few days after the posters appeared, all the supermarket shelves were overflowing with Cuddlycheeks. Not only was there toilet paper again, but it really was the softest yet strongest toilet paper that had ever been created.
Everyone was overjoyed.
Until they got to the checkouts.
‘Ten dollars a roll!’ they cried. ‘You must be joking.’
‘It’s a special introductory offer,’ said the checkout girl. ‘Next week it goes up to fifteen dollars.’
But everyone paid up. They complained. They argued. They threatened, but they paid up, because if they didn’t, there were only too many people who would.
The first week, Transylvania Waters Summer School made three billion dollars.
‘This is not so much like taking candy from a baby,’ said Professor Throat, ‘as taking its toothless gums too.’
The second week, with the price increase, they made six billion dollars. The third week, because worrying about the high price of toilet paper was making all the humans very stressed, which meant they had to go to the toilet twice as often, they made eight billion dollars.
‘I wonder just how much we could get away with charging before people refused to buy it?’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That would be an interesting experiment.’
People were already setting up stalls on street corners and selling toilet paper by the sheet. In the poorer parts of town, shops were being held up at gunpoint by desperate men demanding all the Cuddlycheeks products and people were auctioning sheets on eBay.
The fourth week, the Floods made ten billion dollars.
They knew they could have increased the price to twenty-five dollars a roll, but at twenty dollars a roll, adverts started appearing on the internet and on shop noticeboards offering second-hand toilet paper for sale. That was when they decided it was time to call a stop.
‘Except there’s still a bit more to be made out of this,’ said Aubergine Wealth.
He and Winchflat went to the Stock Exchange and sold all of their shares in all of the paper companies for an outrageously astronomical profit. All, that is, except one small factory in Belgium. The sale did not include the secret recipe for making the ultra-super-soft Cuddlycheeks, but the new owners of the factories didn’t care. They just began making the old stuff again. Getting twenty dollars for one roll of toilet paper was fabulous. Money began to pour in like water.
For a whole week.
Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for fifteen dollars a roll.
‘It’s OK,’ said the new owners of all the other factories. ‘We’ll charge fourteen dollars a roll. It’s still several thousand per cent profit.’
Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for ten dollars a roll.
‘Oh well, eight dollars a roll is still a huge profit,’ said the other factories.
Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for five dollars a roll.
‘We’re still making a profit.’
Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for a dollar a roll.
Half the other factories closed down.
Then the factory in Belgium began selling Cuddlycheeks for twenty cents a roll.
The other half of the factories closed down. Aubergine Wealth bought them all back for almost nothing and they all began making Cuddlycheeks and settled on a fair price of two dollars a roll.
By the end of the Great Toilet Roll Enterprise, as it was referred to in Volume Two of Aubergine Wealth’s later autobiography, All Your Monies Are Belong To Me, the Quicklime College Summer School had made thirty-seven billion dollars.
22 Don’t ask.
23 See The Floods 11: Desperate Housewitches.
24 Maldegard had discovered the entrance to the caves when she had been out searching for Gasper Berries in the deserted dungeons below the cellars below the kitchens of Castle Twilight. She had read about the legendary berries that are the sourest thing in the whole world – one berry is enough to make your mouth shrink smaller than a mosquito’s bottom – and gone searching for them in the least likely place they would be, guessing that because no one else had ever found them, that was exactly where they would be. She was the first person in living and half-dead memory to go down to the dungeons and, sure enough, there were berries growing and glowing everywhere. And that was where she had found the tiny door that led into the Caves of Huge Darkness.
25 See The Floods 7: Top Gear.
26 Great minds think alike, because Maldegard sent him a coded text message at that moment saying exactly the same thing.
27 We will NOT be naming the person who did not think Yuk.
28 They probably weren’t actually complaining. It’s just that their mating calls sounded like they were. So did their singing, snoring and territorial calls. Though of course, if you are the only very small beetle in a world full of dinosaurs with very big clumsy feet, you would complain. I suppose if everyone called you a louse you’d complain too.
29 There had been similar cries from behind bushes, deep in forests and several places where this sort of thing should not have been happening.
30 Have you ever wondered how many people at any given moment are actually going to the lavatory around the world? I know I haven’t, but let’s work it out.
There are around six-and-a-half thousand million people in the world. Now if you calculate that going to the lavatory takes about five minutes over the course of a day, and five minutes is point-three-five per cent of a day, then you can say that at any single moment of any single day, point-three-five per cent of the world’s population is going to the lavatory. That means there are over twenty-two million people having a poo or a wee at the same time. So if we say that half of them were clutching a handful of toilet paper, that is eleven million screaming people – probably the loudest noise ever heard on earth. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Actually, it probably makes you wish you could stop thinking.
