When the box of stuff arrived in the huge grey palace of the central committee, the officials prodded and sniffed the contents, before passing it on, perplexed, to the scientists. In air-tight rooms with reinforced glass windows, the stuff was burned, frozen, melted, cut, blended, squashed and exploded with careful measurements being taken. As the scientists gathered their results, they became afraid. So did the central committee as they read the report. They had no choice but to present their findings to the glorious leader — a big old man with a deep voice and grey hair from the burden of ruling the country all his life. ‘What?’ he raged, ‘a thing of no use, it is not possible!’

Ewan Morrison, the celebrated author of Ménage and other novels, presents his first short story for children, an allegory full of humour and scathing satire. Think Brothers Grimm meet George Orwell.

Stuff – A Tale For Children

Once upon a time there was a poor farmer who found some stuff growing in his garden. He had no idea what it was or how it got there. It didn’t even look like a plant. It seemed sort of solid but also kind of liquid when he touched it and it didn’t really smell of anything.

He took it inside and showed it to his family. ‘What you think this is?’ he asked.

‘Give it to me, me, me,’ said his youngest daughter, ‘it’s a toy.’ But it was neither cuddly, nor soft, nor like a pet or a doll so she threw it down.

‘Oh, that old stuff,’ laughed Grandpa, ‘it’s for my arthritis.’ And he smoothed some on his joints. But it did not ease his pain.

‘It’s obviously for me.’ The vain teenage daughter said, and dabbed a little of it on her wrists and behind her ear. But it did not smell of anything or make her feel more glamorous.

‘You’re all silly, I know what it is, it’s for cooking!’ said the jolly wife and threw it into the stew. But when they tried to eat it was a bit like chewing modelling clay or Blu-Tack, but without even the flavour, and they all felt rather sick.

The young son — whose name was Tom and who had been a bit sheepish till now, said, ‘Sorry, but I think it might be the stuff I made a wish for last night.’

‘Bahhhhh! Enough of this nonsense!’ shouted the father, who grabbed all of the stuff and threw it on the fire.

They all sat and watched the flames, waiting for the stuff to burn or something. But the stuff did not burn or anything.

The next day the farmer woke early and found that even more of the stuff had appeared in the garden. ‘What on earth is it?’ he asked himself.

‘Get rid of it,’ his wife said, ‘I don’t like having it round here, the neighbours will start gossiping.’

So the farmer picked up all the stuff he could and put it into two old boxes and loaded them on his rickety old truck and set out to the local dump. But it was a long drive, and the truck chugged and shook all the way and he had to stop for a rest. On a street corner, he saw a young man approaching.

‘What have you got there farmer?’ asked the young man — because they lived in a land where there were few things to go round and people often went hungry, and it was rare to see farmers with boxes of anything.

‘Oh, just some stuff,’ the farmer replied. ‘It’s completely useless.’

The young man looked shocked. ‘Nothing is useless,’ he replied, repeating what he had been taught since he was little, and growing ever more curious. ‘Go on, what is it really? Can I see inside the box?’ asked the young man.

Then the farmer realised that maybe he could trick the young man into taking the stuff from him, and maybe make a profit.

‘Well,’ the farmer said. ‘This is pretty secret stuff, not for just anyone.’

The young man looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching. He looked very interested. ‘Go, on, give me a peek.’ He went through his pockets. ‘I’ll give you two coins,’ he said.

The farmer shook his head.

‘OK, three coins and this ring from my finger,’ said the young man, ‘and I’ll take the lot!’

It was a deal. The farmer helped the young man lift down the two boxes of stuff and drove off, thinking that would be the end of it.

The young man was a crafty chap. As people passed him by on the street corner, he whispered. Pssst, I’ve got some stuff — the bosses of the country hadn’t let anyone have anything new in many years, and it was illegal to sell things without permission, so it had to be kept very hush hush. Very soon, a small crowd had formed and people were asking many questions in excited whispers. What’s it for? Will it help my hearing? Will it look good with my red hair? Will it mend my car? Does it stick things together? The young man kept them guessing and soon they were haggling. The people in this country did not have much money so they swapped things.

‘But what’s it really for?’ asked the baker.

‘It’s worth a leg of lamb,’ the crafty young man replied.

So for a little bit of stuff the baker gave him four loaves, and the cobbler gave him a pair of boots and so it went on. As there was less and less of the stuff, the price went up so that by the time he was down to the last bit of stuff, it was worth three silver rings, four pairs of boots, a churn full of butter and ten rounds of cheese — far too many things to even carry home. Suddenly, there was a voice from above him and all of the town-folk ran away. One of the men from the committee stared down.

‘Selling something without a permit are we?’ The committee man said, ‘what is it, lad?’

The young man was struck dumb. ‘I don’t know,’ said the young man, ‘it’s just … some stuff.’

‘Hmmm. You’d better come with me.’ Said the committee man. ‘Leave the cheese, all these other things here and bring that so-called stuff with you.’

So, the young man was led through the grimy streets to the grey town hall, down the long dusty corridors to the big dark office. There he was made to stand before the five members of the committee: old men in grey suits who were the only ones allowed to decide the price and use of things and what punishments should be given to those people that broke their rules. The young man trembled as he handed over the stuff. The committee men took their time touching, squeezing, sniffing and shaking it.

‘It’s for cleaning floors,’ the old man with the stooped back finally pronounced.

‘Nonsense, it’s for making bombs,’ declared the angry-looking man.

‘No, no, it’s obviously a kind of hair restorer,’ said the baldy man.

As they could not agree they became more and more cross.

‘You shall pay us three sheep, a cow, a bicycle and ten rounds of cheese as punishment’ they told the young man. He nodded, thanked them, apologised and went to pick up the remaining stuff — but they snatched it away. ‘And we shall confiscate this!’ they said gruffly.

The young man was glad to be set free of the stuff and as soon as he was out of the office, he ran for his life.

The committee wanted to be rid of the stuff as it seemed to spell trouble. They decided to send a sample to the bosses in the big city. They thought that was the last they’d hear of it.

When the box of stuff arrived in the huge grey palace of the central committee, the officials prodded and sniffed the contents, before passing it on, perplexed, to the scientists. In air-tight rooms with reinforced glass windows, the stuff was burned, frozen, melted, cut, blended, squashed and exploded with careful measurements being taken. As the scientists gathered their results, they became afraid. So did the central committee as they read the report. They had no choice but to present their findings to the glorious leader — a big old man with a deep voice and grey hair from the burden of ruling the country all his life.

‘What?’ he raged, ‘a thing of no use, it is not possible!’

He scattered the papers from his desk. ‘You have one month to find a use for this thing’, he screamed. ‘And keep this stuff secret! Or I shall send you all to rot in the darkest coldest prisons.’

The top committee member did not want to rot in prison so he passed the stuff onto the second member of the committee. But he did not want to touch it, either, so he passed it onto the third member. And so it went on, with no one taking responsibility and everyone passing the stuff down the line till finally the junior office managers took the stuff home and told their wives about it. They then passed the stuff on to strangers. With every passing the stuff got broken into smaller pieces and spread to more and more people. It was as if it grew and multiplied. Soon everyone in the country had heard of this secret stuff and wanted to catch a glimpse of it.

Every day, the glorious leader stared at the piece he had kept for himself in the secret drawer of his desk, and it tormented him. As the month passed, he took to his sick bed. He raged and screamed at his assistants. Everything in his country, from the tallest building to the smallest grain of sand, had to have its place, its use, its price fixed, its purpose known. Nothing was ever wasted. Millions of lives depended on this system. A thing of no use could shatter everything.

When the glorious leader heard of how the committee had let the stuff escape to everyone in his country, he had them executed. And the first committee too and the young man and the farmer and his wife and the teenage daughter and the old grandfather, everyone, in fact who had ever come in contact with the stuff, all killed by bullet. Only the little boy, Tom, escaped, by running and hiding.

The glorious leader screamed to his assistants that all trace of the stuff had to be erased. Buying the stuff or even talking about it was punishable by death. Spies would listen to phone calls. Children would report on their parents if they mentioned the stuff. He had a vast hole dug in a hidden place, and the stuff was to be thrown in there and buried forever. The glorious leader stood by the deep hole gazing down. As a gesture he was to throw in the bit of stuff that he had, but he could not bring himself to do it. In fact no one could. No one came to throw in their stuff. This was because as soon as the stuff had been made illegal everyone wanted it all the more. They whispered about it in dark corners. Those that had not even seen it, agreed to hide it for those that had it. Groups got together to defend their stuff.

Soon, police and secret agents were being fought by angry mobs. Thousands took to the streets with banners shouting: ‘WE WANT STUFF, WE WANT STUFF!’ They had heard so many things about it: it was a cure for sickness, it made you look younger, it made your car go faster. They dreamed of stuff. With spades and rifles and bricks they attacked the Glorious Leader’s palace.

Alone in his palace rooms, the Glorious Leader made one final call and commanded his army against the people — ‘Shoot to kill!’ he screamed. Terrified, he watched from his high window as his soldiers betrayed his orders and joined the protestors. A brick smashed his glass as thousands chanted. ‘WE’VE HAD ENOUGH, GIVE US THE STUFF!’

When the free people broke into the palace with their guns, they found the glorious leader on his knees on the floor weeping like a madman, trying to stuff all of his stuff into his mouth.

‘But … it doesn’t taste of anything.’ Were his final words as their guns put him out of his misery.

At first the people took to the street, singing and dancing. They smashed the windows of the old government stores and stole food and wine and boots and dresses. Then, dancing and singing they burned the factories and the schools and the offices.

But when the party was over they saw everything was broken. Who would clear it up, and where was the stuff? Where was it hidden and why hadn’t they got any more of it since their revolution? People started arguing. ‘I thought you had the stuff!’ Some shouted. ‘No, I thought you did!’ ‘Did you lose it?’ ‘Why are you hiding it!!’ A few thoughtful people among them said, ‘Look, but we’ve overthrown the tyrant, forget this stuff, we’ve got to build a new country.’ But nobody listened to them.

Then great problems arose. Now that they had burned the shoe factory there were no shoes to wear. Since they burned the crops there was no wheat for bread. ‘I will swap you my shoes for just a loaf of bread,’ pleaded a starving man. ‘I will swap you my car for a piece of cheese,’ pleaded another. All over the country it was the same. And the stuff — it could not be eaten, it could not be worn, it could not be burned to make a warming fire or fuel an oven.

‘Oh, woe is us!’ the people cried.

‘Where’s the bread and the cheese?’

‘Who will feed us now?’

Some said they should bring back the old leader, but it was too late for that. Just then, jets and helicopters arrived, and men from a foreign land stepped out in shiny shoes. ‘OK, where’s this stuff?’ they asked with loudspeaker voices and smiling faces with big white teeth. The people were afraid. ‘Will you feed us?’ they asked. ‘Yes, of course,’ the foreigners said, and lo and behold, huge containers of cheese and bread landed and burst open to feed and clothe everyone. Thud thud thud. And there were even tastier and more wondrous things, like wine and chocolate and TVs and fancy phones that didn’t need a wire. The people were overjoyed and tried to buy it all with their old money. ‘No, that’s worthless now,’ the foreigners said, ‘we’ll trade only for stuff, now stop hiding it from us, and go get it.’ And one of them nodded to the soldiers with their guns, and the people got the message.

So from all the secret hiding places, the people brought out their stuff and traded it for coal and ice cream and jeans. An old man stood at the head of a queue and handed over his lump of stuff. The foreigner handed him a loaf in exchange. But, the old man protested, ‘I paid a tractor for that stuff last year. I know what this is worth!’

And the foreigner said, ‘I ask you what is the value of anything? What is the value of a glass of water to a man in a rainstorm compared to a man lost in a desert? What is the value of a flower or a summer’s day? Of a human life? You people have enslaved yourselves so that you might keep the price of an apple constant. Nothing is fixed, everything is free to change and be exchanged. Even you.’

‘Alright, alright,’ moaned the old man, ‘at least give me five loaves of bread for it … it’s good stuff.’

‘One loaf, take it or leave it, there are many more behind you who want this bread,’ the foreigner said.

And so the old man swapped his stuff for the bread. Very soon all the starving, freezing people had sold their stuff for loaves of bread, then for peanuts. In no time at all the foreigners — and a few crafty locals — owned it all. They bought all of the factories and offices and schools and all the things that had been burned and then they set about rebuilding them. And the people were glad to have things working again, and to have jobs again, even though they were paid much less.

The foreigners then went back to their land taking all the stuff they had got with them, and leaving their soldiers behind. ‘What have we done wrong for you to take our stuff from us?’ The people cried and wept.

But they had not seen the last of the stuff. Big companies tried to make it into many, many things. Those that had bought TVs from the foreigners saw advert after advert for stuff in the foreign land. ‘Odour free,’ the adverts said. ‘Zero calories.’ ‘It does not grow old or rotten.’ ‘Forget low tar this is no tar.’ ‘Zero percent caffeine.’ ‘Zero carbon imprint.’

The palace where the glorious leader once lived was turned into a vast new shopping centre, selling the very latest in stuff at incredible prices. ‘It’s not a soap, it’s not a medicine, it’s not a toothpaste, it’s not a paint stripper. It’s a mystery. Have you got it yet?’

In other countries, film supermodels posed, holding it. There was stuff for women, stuff from men, there was kid’s stuff. A movie star said she’d replaced her normal food with it and had lost almost half her weight. TV shows chatted about how stuff had changed people’s lives, with stories like: ‘My husband left me for a bit of stuff’.

Old nations fell as the desire for stuff went global. In every country people were queuing outside shops night and day. Sometimes there were riots. Pop stars sang about ‘the stuff of love’ and ‘freedom stuff’. Adverts convinced people to buy two or three bits of stuff; to throw their old stuff away and get some new stuff. Bankers bet on what the final use of stuff would be. But no one seemed to really care; in fact the more useless it turned out to be, the more mysterious it seemed.

It became the world’s most wanted and expensive thing, because it was running out. Scientists tried to re-make it in experiments, but they had no luck. Even though the stuff seemed to grow, it didn’t grow fast enough.

Pretty soon the foreigners returned to the land. This time they brought diggers and explosives, drills and men in shiny jackets with maps and many more soldiers. They blew up mountains and dug holes as big as lakes looking for stuff, but they could not find any more of it.

It was then that a young man came out of hiding. His name was Tom. You might remember him, but you wouldn’t recognise him because he had grown much older. He had been the boy whose father, the farmer, had first found the stuff. He had survived all these years on his wits. Now, he walked through the towns and cities and saw what stuff had done to people: there were flashy cars too wide for the roads; people being mugged for their stuff; there were ladies in fur coats passing by children starving on the streets. But even the rich did not look satisfied. Everyone had empty eyes, all craving the one thing they could not get enough of.

Tom knew what it really was. He was the only person who knew the secret of the stuff.

Tom took a train and went back to his old childhood house. It was a ruin now and the earth all around was full of holes. How could a country and everyone in it, go so crazy for stuff, he thought?

There was no one around so he took the last piece out of his pocket.

He stared hard at it. He sniffed it. He squeezed it. He tasted it.

It was as it always had been: completely useless.

He was sorry for having brought it into the world. For that was the truth of it. All those years ago, on that night before his father found the stuff in the garden, Tom had lain awake in his cold, scratchy bed, and wished for something to make his poor family happy. He tried to picture it. It would be warm, yes, but on hot days maybe it should be cold. It would be wet, but then again, or rainy days it would be nice to have a dry thing. Would it be big or small, sharp or soft?

He couldn’t make up his mind when he wished for it and so he wished for a kind of undecided thing, a thing with no qualities, an impossible thing; something so special, that it would make its owner special. It was, maybe a childish wish, but the very next day the stuff had appeared.

He still had a piece of it in his pocket. He had held onto it, all these years, even as its price had soared. He could have become a millionaire if he had sold it, but the idea made him cross. Such silly stuff and such a silly world.

He threw it into a hole in the ground and stamped the earth round it.

‘There,’ he said, ‘it is over and done with.’ He would tell them all that there was no more stuff. Imagine that, a world without people fighting over such selfish, childish stuff. Maybe now we can go back to a time where things are useful again, he thought.

He walked away, past the old house, past the old field.

But then he thought of it growing in the soil and of someone else finding it. He ran back to hole and dug it back out. He held it in his hand and wished he could crush it. But he knew could not. Try to burn it, smash it, explode it and it would still be there. It really was a terrible thing, not really a thing at all — just an idea that had become a thing. An idea people would kill and die for.

Just then he realised, maybe there was one way to get rid of it. If it was just an idea then if he thought really hard he could maybe make it vanish. He set the stuff back on the earth and stood back. He scrunched up his eyes and his brain and tried to picture it gone. He had to get rid of the stuff from the streets and the towns, from all the stores and all the adverts too. All the songs and TV shows about stuff, all the people who got rich on stuff, they all had to vanish.

It was hard work trying to get rid of all this stuff, but he struggled on, hour after hour, till his mind was drained.

He opened his eyes and the lump of stuff at his feet had vanished.

Tom felt relieved, but then a shiver ran through him and he felt hungry and alone. He said his goodbyes to his old ruined home and started the long walk back to the city. He wondered if he’d made everyone else’s stuff vanish too. Maybe the streets and everyone in them would look very different?

A whole new world without stuff.

Can you imagine it?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ewan Morrison is the author of three novels for adults — Swung, Distance and Ménage — as well as a collection of short stories, The Last Book You Read. He is working on a collection of stories called Tales from the Mall (which may include “Stuff”) based on people’s real life experiences in shopping centres. If you wish to contribute, we will pass on your details to Ewan. Otherwise, you can just buy some more stuff.