Story: Zoltan

After a subway wreck young baby crawled from the ruins and went deep into the tunnels and was soon enough adopted by a society of rats. He grew big and strong. The rats named him Zoltan. He loved his little rat comrades, who taught him everything he needed to know about life in the big city.

Eventually Zoltan went above ground and into municipal politics. In the mayoral election, he appealed to human voters with his ecological attitude—but he never forgot that his real constituency was the rats. He was elected by a large majority.

After he became Mayor, he proceeded to do everything possible to make life better for his rat friends. All of the skyscrapers were torn down in favour of small wooden houses. The people liked it, even though the project denuded the surrounding area of forests (no plan is perfect). Cement sidewalks and asphalt streets were removed to reveal the earth below, dogs and cats were allowed to run wild, and garbage was dumped in large open pits. Flowers grew. So did disease.

The rats flourished in the wooden houses and dirt streets, enjoying life and being rats. Many people died in the inevitable plagues. Zoltan felt that was reasonable natural selection. Despite everything, while the surviving citizens regretted having elected Zoltan, in the next election they voted him in again, figuring that at least with him they knew what they had.

Story: The Politician Who Got Smarter

When Charly Humble was elected to Parliament, his IQ was 134. After eight years in office it dropped to 129. When he was elected Prime Minister, it sank to 98.6.

But then a terrorist blew up a building. Charly toured the wreckage, made a speech and looked strong. His approval ratings shot up, and something remarkable happened: the higher his approval ratings climbed, the smarter Charly became. His IQ was 98.6 on the day of the bombing, but after showing up at the site and looking like a leader, it rose to 115. After speaking on tv about standing up to the terrorists, it rose until he became almost as smart as he had been before he entered public life.

Using his new intelligence, Charly realized the connection between his ratings and increased brainpower. Knowing that if there were only a few more events, he would become a genius, he decided to start a war. It worked--but only at first. The war dragged on until his poll results plummeted, followed of course by a similar sharp drop in Charly’s intelligence. When he became an idiot he did the smart thing and stopped the war.

He eventually retired. An honourary degree stabilized his intelligence, and his public pension was significant.