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God, they're so wonderfully clueless, aren't they? Tom asked.

Reminds me of an old joke I heard, Jerry snickered.

What? Tom asked, interested.

Now, normally, he hated jokes. Especially the stupid ones that other kids in the orphanage told. They were usually senseless puns or something immature and related to human excrement. With Jerry (and most other adults, he suspected), however, a "joke" was usually something far more subtle and often cutting in nature.

It was too bad that about a third of the time, Jerry would refuse to tell him said joke – usually on the grounds that Tom was too young for that sort of joke. (In that case he wouldn't actually announce that he had a joke – he'd just snicker quietly to himself and refuse to explain why he was laughing.) Now, Tom didn't quite understand why Jerry could say that he was too young for something as simple as a joke and then lecture him on twenty-first century scientific principles, but who was he to judge? All of the jokes he had heard from Jerry so far would go way over the heads of the other eleven-year-olds in the orphanage. Perhaps those secret jokes in Jerry's arsenal were really just that advanced. Tom couldn't wait until he was old enough to understand them.

He didn't like a lot of people, and he certainly had no need for something as useless as love, but Jerry was quite an amicable and amusing companion. And since they shared the same mind, anyway, he supposed he should have gotten used to Jerry's presence sooner or later. They weren't exactly the same person, but they might as well be, and that was as good of an excuse for him as anything for liking a different person than himself. (Tom, personally, divided people into three groups – the useless, who were meant for subjugation, the useful, whom he allotted time to proportional to their levels of usefulness, and companions. Of the last group, there was only one person in there, and that was himself. And, by default, Jerry, who was also a part of him.)

So when Jerry said that he had a joke, it usually meant that something darkly good, or at least informative, was coming, and it would do him well to listen.

Either that, or dead babies.

All right. It's not so much of a joke as a life lesson, as said by this one Prussian general: "I divide my officers into four groups – the intelligent, the stupid, the hardworking, and the lazy. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. The hardworking and intelligent are fit for general duties. The lazy and stupid can have some use in menial tasks. The intelligent and lazy are fit for positions of highest command, for they will find the most efficient ways to complete a given task."

And what of the stupid and hardworking officers?

"They are a menace and must be disposed of immediately."

Tom snorted aloud and hastily pretended that he was sneezing.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/10972919/4/