Plenty And To Spare

A Natural Resource, which had been almost entirely transmogrified into urban pollution and luxury goods, approached the Minister of Depletion with an urgent request for succour.

"This is outrageous," said the Minister of Depletion as the remains of the Natural Resource crawled like a terminally damaged cockroach through the holy portal of his office. "Not content with filling the room and hardly leaving me space enough to breathe, you are dirtying the walls, scraping the ceiling, interfering with the furniture and blocking a fire exit. The bodyguards will escort you from my Palace of Austerity, and you will please have the goodness to come back when your condition has attained a more governable degree of severity."

"Alas, sir, you are mistaken," said the Natural Resource; "thanks to decades of exploitation, I am barely large enough to fill one of your chairs, let alone crowd you out of this humble yet spacious suite."

"Perspective is everything in these matters," said the Minister of Depletion; "the burden of my responsibilities to the soldiers and stockbrokers of tomorrow means that my eyes are focused almost entirely on the future."

"So I observe," said the Natural Resource, gazing closely at the watery little orbs whereby the Minister of Depletion attained his visionary perspective. "Indeed," it continued, "a couple of Executive Directorships, located at the limits of your foresight, appear to have precipitated some remarkable adjustments in your sense of scale."

Thus reassured that the Natural Resource was much smaller than his charitable vision led him to believe, the Minister of Depletion had it cooked into a hamburger which he fed to his daughter live on television in order to prove that there was plenty and to spare.