The Truth: The Devil's Puddle

Somewhere in Germany there is a stream and next to the stream there is a path. A small section of the path was flooded with water and a puddle formed. People call it the devil's puddle because it won't go away. It is considered a symbol of the power of nature, which uses its forces to confront people's being and actions and shows them where the hammer is.

The puddle used to be an insurmountable obstacle for hikers who wanted to avoid their expensive branded hiking boots becoming wet and possibly unusable. So the poor hikers had to turn around and look for another route. One day, fifteen-year-old Jason Schneider stood in front of the puddle and thought about how he could overcome it, also in the interest of the hikers.

He stole a mesh shopping cart from a grocery store, installed a bench for two people, stuck an old cell phone with Internet access in it so that passengers could surf the net during transportation time, and attached a Capri Sun holder with a straw to provide drinks. The self-built ferry was finished. Then he wrote “STYX” on the trolley with a sharpie and wondered whether any of his future customers knew what that meant or whether they were all stupid.

He also got himself a pair of waders with rubber boots to counteract the terrible moisture of the puddle. Eventually he opened his ferry business. The hikers happily accepted his service, but were reluctant to pay the one euro fee that Jason Schneider demanded.

“I’m not doing this for free,” he argued. "It's a hard job. Covering a distance of 1.20 meters hundreds of times every day, I can't stand such monotony without drugs. The ketamine, the energy drinks, that just doesn't exist. At first all these people were waving their Germany tickets around, but I told them that according to my terms and conditions, they could stick them somewhere else! I banned one from transport because he thought that such wording was allowed Terms and conditions are not included.”

After a while, an employee from the tax office appeared who wanted to check a business license. Jason Schneider drove him into the middle of the puddle and pushed him off the boat. And at the end of the summer he wanted to limit operations, but customers objected.

“The drugs drained me, the heat exhausted me and exams soon came up,” reported the young tailor. “Two hours each Saturday and Sunday seemed appropriate to me, but people stood at the puddle Monday to Friday and called me from their cell phone and lectured me that it's not going to happen with economic success as a start-up and in general, Generation Alpha, that's probably the height, and I should get my ass over here immediately and start the ferry service.”

The public order office viewed the activities with skepticism because apparently something was happening here for which no application had been made. My colleague Kasulke from Tax Office II had been missing for some time, and some people wondered whether there was a connection; after all, people who did something without authorization had criminal energy.

But initially people kept a low profile. The young man's ferry operation attracted tourists, influencers booked a trip, screamed with joy on their Instagram and TikTok channels, and the renowned ferry magazine From A to B certified the operation as a "refreshing concept to strengthen a traditional maritime form of movement."

But now the tide has turned. Whenever Jason Schneider opens his ferry, an official employee stands on the bank of the puddle and shouts through a megaphone: "I am prohibiting you from transporting people with immediate effect. Remove the vehicle from the water immediately."

Official reason: Schneider cannot provide evidence of any training as a ferry boatman, which is necessary in this country to generally maintain order. In addition, the business license and balance sheet are missing. Only Jason Schneider knows what became of Chief Financial Officer Kasulke, and there is no completed and signed form to be found anywhere.

Finally, the public order office is certain that it will ultimately win the argument: "If Mr. Schneider," it says in a seven-page letter, "doesn't wear down the bureaucracy, then climate change will. There will be more and more 'heat domes' with temperatures of 40 and more degrees. In the long run, the devil's puddle will dry up. The illegal ferry service will then be eliminated. The path will be dry and hot, and people hiking will use it to cover distances without the use of aids Use as you should.”