Eschatologically

 

“According to an old legend King Midas once pursued the astute Silenus, Dionysus' escort, throughout the woods without being able to capture him. When, finally, he fell into the king's hands, this asked him what was for a human being the greatest of all goods, the biggest of all privileges. Inflexible and without a motion fell silent the demon. . “,
---Friedrich Nietzsche

All of the world's money, in all its existing forms, suddenly was seen and smelt, as it was changed into human excrement.
Individual reactions were too diverse, but all marked by an intense perplexity. The banker was counting his cash, when bills melted and made soft, pasty, slipped down from his hands. Astutely, he didn't give an order to throw the thing into garbage, because he soon noticed that all of his patrimony had then assumed this new way of being-in-the-world.
Beggars, shantytown-dwellers, and wretches of all kinds began enthusiastically to eat vegetables, weeds, earth or whatsoever could make them defecate abundantly.
All existing gold turned into a mild, sweetly ill-smelling kind of yellowish feces, resembling that of little babies.
Rumors arose that governments, intending to maintain public order, would soon print new paper money. By doing so, they would be then obliged to exchange old money---eschatologically transformed---for the new one. To each citizen would be warranted the right to permute his fecal portion for a new monetary amount.
Nonetheless, every attempt to coin dollars, yuans, yens, pounds, euros as well as any other monetary unit, resulted inexorably in the same shit.
Bank checks, even if correctly written, evaporated immediately after being signed, becoming fetid flatulencies.
As a consequence of these rumors about the exchange of excrements for new money, crowds began to drain out cities' sewers. Some people bottled up their intestinal gases, or tried to do so, certain that they would become rich by alleging to have lost large amounts of money as checks.
The irrespirable milieu of banks was soon carefully hygienized. All pickings that remained as rests of excrement or farts were meticulously stored inside the most hermetic vaults. In newspapers, supposed specialists announced their finest abilities as smart connoisseurs of the also well distinguishable" smell of U.S. dollars, European euros, Japanese yen, and British pounds. Although at that time it was evident that no one could state anything about the true value of these once-strong currencies, the economists seemed still to breathe amidst the same atmosphere previous to the unusual cataclysm.
Meanwhile, bankers and millionaires were waiting anxiously for a telex, or even for any kind of rumor, concerning whatever might have happened in Switzerland. In this country, differently from all others, news agencies had silenced completely from the first moment of Eschatos or Skatos (scholars were still debating which could be the most appropriate name for this new age). Nobody, not even frontier's guards nor spies, could give any information about what had happened to the Swiss franc. Had it changed into the same dejects? Nothing was known regarding the giant amounts of dollars and gold stored inside the banking houses of Zürich, Genève, and Basel.
Another rumor appeared in newspapers: an extraordinary meeting of the United Nations, followed by an immediate Security Council's resolution, would have deliberated on whether to date all excrements using radioactive carbon (C14). Only this way would it be possible to assign the just value to what had been gold or paper money before that ominous July day. All nation-members would have signed such a declaration, excepting Switzerland, whose diplomatic staff was alleged not to have received any information about what was happening inside their country. Nobody gave credit to such statements, and the once peaceful and trusted Swiss people soon became the target of serious suspicion Submerged into an ocean of uncertainties, human beings went on storing up their feces within those hated plastic bags, under blankets, within refrigerators, or even in the open air of their apartments or houses. No one used latrines anymore, neither were newborn's shirt-tails thrown away as it was usual before. Everyone tried to accumulate the biggest portion of that thing everyone was presuming to be the long-expected wealth.
There were then indications that people were getting used to living with what, a short time ago, was seen as the most repugnant of their products. Odors were being termed and even felt milder, more suave, perfectly supportable ''Maybe we were excessively polite” people said.
On the Andean Highlands, military strategists took power through a new coup d'etat. Nothing suggested that silver had been hit by the eschatos' plague. The new president decreed that thirteen thousand tons of silver coins should be immediately minted. That was Intended to be exported as money for worldwide circulation On one side should be imprinted, in high relief, the bust of that general who had taken power Just for having conceived such a great Idea As for the other side, one should not forget to pay homage to eschatos, the catastrophic event that would create a once-unimaginable opulence and power for ''all the hearts and minds of our nation’s citizens''; on it there would be imprinted the typical contour taken on by human feces when placed naturally on the ground, twisted as a spiral shell. Heads and tails.
The Andean failure gave rise to another coup d'état, since a quick decision was needed and the disturbed general seemed unable to make any pronouncement to his people Radical disinfection of El Palacio de La Moneda (The Coin's Palace) was not postponable. Thousands of tons of those pretty and fragile, almost good-smelling human lees---into which had turned all the noble metal after being coined---required a fast and radical cleaning out. Maintaining the shape of coins and the intended printed images, all silver had still become excrement, similar in all its characteristics to the acholic lees of people suffering from hepatitis.
The new way to deal with the wealth of nations came, paradoxically and at last, from another Emergent Nation. Its old and wise Minister of Economy, a fat and clumsy man, was respected all over the world as one of the most prominent brains in economics. He announced an infallible plan, to be revealed as soon as possible.
The solution shouldn't take too long, since the entire world was suffering serious damage from that overwhelming monetary crisis.
The most honorable society ladies, so constrained for having to keep under rigid guardianship that strange new shape taken on by their jewelry and goods, pressured their husbands and governments.
As for poor people, they were perishing by the millions, victims of an illness similar to cholera, as a consequence of eating, or trying to eat, all kinds of matter, from green trees' branches to plain earth. They faded away and the moribund ones kept on trying not to lose any drop of the precious liquid that they expelled. Suddenly, the fore-mentioned minister declared in a press release that his stratagem was already written. He was just awaiting an answer to a secret communication he had addressed to the Swiss government. After that, only the presidential sanction would be needed and all should be solved.
It should be clarified that the generalized mistrust concerning the Swiss people was then focused on speculation about a terribly powerful weapon, perhaps a biological one, cultivated in the Alps and then scattered all over the world for hegemonic intentions. That would be the cause of Eschatos or Skatos (some were still debating it). That would explain the absolute silence in communications media from that country for months. After the plague was over, Switzerland would emerge as the most powerful nation on Earth. People dreamed, then, of the gold, the silver, and those huge amounts of dollars, euros and yens remaining above those high mountains, amid glaciers pine trees and lakes.
Inside socialist countries something a bit different occurred, which were soon interpreted as complementary to the "fecal revolution": every paper sealed by state officials also turned into shit. A little hard and compact, like that of chronically constipated people, but the purest shit.
That minister, who after all was able to save mankind, deserves minute consideration. Perhaps by his submerging into the circumstances and fluids that surrounded him, can we understand how the saving deliberation could emerge from his brain.
He was then the most fetid person on the planet Earth, even without carrying any remains of the old money. Although he took prolonged baths and used excellent French perfumes, even this wasn't enough to free his body from that awful ill-smell. This latter seemed to be intensified as the hours passed. His presence or absence was known by all people in a city where he had recently been. His plane was recognized even if flying several miles above the ground. Just through smelling.
Here follows the text of his deliberations, which could then be literally copied by many other ministers and chiefs of state.
It was quickly sanctioned, under a regimen of martial law, by the President of the Republic:

Decree Number 001 (One) of Eschatos Era:Each and every citizen of this country, as well as foreigners who own temporary or permanent visa, tourists and diplomatic representatives, from now on ought to defecate exclusively in the sight of at least one member of the newly created Militia for Economic and Sanitary Inspection. Their fecal excrements must, immediately, be confiscated to the Public Coffers. The so collected amount will be refunded as fibrous food, preferably vegetables. It is up to the members of this Militia to qualify, to weigh and to quantify the dejects of every human being inside our boundaries. Complementary laws will treat such matters as techniques and know-how for these monetary transactions.The volume collected in this way will be deposited into the recently founded Central Bank for the Good Pepsis.Public servants from the M.E.S.I., from the C.B.G.P., and from intermediary instances, ought to defecate only in front of one of their immediate superiors, and will receive the same kind of payment.Each and every individual, foreigner or citizen of our nation, who traffics in or trades illegally human feces, will be condemned to perpetual prison inside the Defecation Chamber, where he will be allowed just to eat and to defecate until his or her natural death.To the Swiss ambassador will periodically be given notice concerning the volume and mass of our reserves.
    Professor F. Minister of the Economy

.. .till the moment when, forced by Midas, Silenus began laughing at bursts and uttered these words: ''Miserable human genus, that lasts just one day, children born by chance and made for hardworking.What do you oblige me to say? Words that would be better for you not to hear? The greatest of all goods is for you quite unattainable: not to be born, not to be, be nothing. The second of the greatest goods is however to die soon."

--Friedrich Nietzsche,The Birth of Tragedy § 3