Now Can We Buy Killarney?
Self-publishing a short science fiction story that I wrote in 2018, updated about a year ago, which has now become extremely topical.
I am publishing this 1700-word story because it is yet again become topical, but I would advise against trying to read too much into my political beliefs from it. I wrote it because I found the idea funny. I revised it in 2025 because I found more entertaining things to include. I no longer find the situation funny but I feel like this is may be as topical as it will ever be, and I don't like my chance of getting published in professional markets in a timely manner.
Now Can We Buy Killarney?
An Open Letter Regarding the Taoiseach’s Response to the President’s Generous Proposal
To: Government of Ireland,
Dublin, Republic of Ireland
CC: Taoiseach Saoirse O’Connor
Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Mr. Vincent Hess, Esq., MBA, CLC
Personal Attorney to President Kevin M. Fergus, Sr.,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC
To the Government of the Republic of Ireland,
President Fergus was greatly dismayed by your Taoiseach’s response to his proposal to purchase County Kerry in southwestern Ireland. The President’s proposal would have been a win-win for all parties involved. The Government of Ireland could pay off some of the crushing debt it acquired after the most recent financial crisis, the United States would gain a permanent base to project power, and the inhabitants of County Kerry would be freed from the crushing burdens of European Union membership.
In response to President Fergus’s exceptionally generous good faith proposal, Taoiseach O’Connor replied, and I quote “President Fergus should ask Bing Crosby how one might buy Killarney.” This appears, in part, to make light of President Fergus’s controversial but entirely merited posthumous award of a Presidential Medal of Freedom to the late, exceptionally great singer Bing Crosby. However the Taoiseach’s remark also appears to be a flippant reference an old and now-irrelevant pop song Crosby once sang: “How Can You Buy Killarney?”
In that song, an American’s generous and good-faith attempt to purchase Killarney—a town within Country Kerry—is compared to attempts to purchase several supposedly unpurchaseable items. I feel it falls to me to point out, as President Fergus’s personal attorney, that not only have countries traded in land for all of human history, but that it is now possible to purchase every item in the song, and for many of these things President Fergus or his inner circle of friends and family have played an important role in bringing this about.
“How can you buy all the stars in the sky?”
Surely you must be aware of President Fergus’s plans to encourage space exploration? While adhering to the Outer Space Treaty for the Solar System, President Fergus—in consultation with his close personal friend and advisor, ZdarBound CEO Marnum Drench—in drafting the Act to Encourage Interstellar Occupation and Use. AEIOU allows any person who funds a manned expedition to an extra solar system to claim that system for the United States and assert their property rights over the entire system for a nominal registration fee of 3.4 million.
Effectively, the cost to purchase any star in the sky is the cost of sending a manned expedition plus the $3,400,000 registration fee. The cost to purchase all the stars in the sky is merely the cost of each star multiplied by the total number of stars. If you can tell me how many stars are in the sky and how far from Earth they are located, I can provide you with an estimate on how much they would cost to buy. Further, as you must surely know, ZdarBound is the industry leader in the field of of interstellar probe launches, with plans to launch a manned mission to Proxima Centauri by the end of the decade. I have consulted with Mr. Drench, and he has professed himself willing to equip these expeditions at cost plus a merely nominal service and planning fee of $420,000 per expedition.
“How can you buy two blue Irish eyes?”
You must also be aware of the controversial art of Cennet La Pierre, creator of murals and sculptures from plasticized body parts? One of her most famous works — “Smiling Irish Eyes” — is a mural composed of 270 pairs of eyes, all taken from people who identify as Irish. Fully a sixth of the eyes in the mural come from residents of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and two fifths of the eyes in the mural are blue.
Though the work is currently on loan to MoMA, the owner of “Smiling Irish Eyes” is in fact the hedge fund WilcoBurns. As part of an effort to diversity his assets, President Fergus has recently acquired a 34.8% stake in WilcoBurns. As such, it would therefore appear that he has, in fact, recently acquired the equivalent of just over 13 blue Irish eyes.
“How can you buy a fond mother’s sighs?”
The emotional labor services (ELS) industry has been one of the great success stories of our time. In the decade before President Fergus took office, the industry was already growing at an already impressive rate of roughly 6.3% a year, well exceeding the national economic growth rate of 2.7%. However under President Fergus, the demand for social workers, sex workers, surrogates, and therapists has boomed, and the ELS industry has grown by 15.4% over the past year alone, a near tripling of the numbers under his loser predecessor.
One of the new professions which has emerged in ELS has been the parental surrogate profession. Parental surrogates help orphans to cope with the loss of parents at an early age; adopted children come to terms with biological parents they may never meet; and the children of abuse, neglect, and general dysfunction come to terms with their imperfect parents. Out-of-pocket sessions generally run around three hundred dollars for an hour, and a fond mother’s sigh would be included in any session where a maternal surrogate deems it necessary.
While I am not permitted to say whether President Fergus himself avails himself of such services, I am authorized to say that five of his seven children see a parental surrogate weekly and have found the service to be incredibly useful.
“Nature bestowed all her gifts with a smile: the emerald...”
It has always been possible to purchase emeralds, and prices for uncut emeralds range from two dollars a gram to two hundred depending on the quality. I will note that Wilco and Burns counts several emerald mines among their assets, and it is widely agreed that these mines produce some of the finest quality uncut emeralds money can buy.
Indeed, the President’s beautiful and exceptionally talented daughter, Liana Fergus Ioannides has recently launched her line of Fergus Green® eco-conscious emerald jewelry, using only emeralds sourced from the family estates of the esteemed Mr. Drench. I have spoken with Liana, and she has agreed to offer the Taoiseach any piece or set of pieces from her already-reasonably-priced Fergus Green® line at cost. We hope Taoiseach O’Connor will accept this offer as a show of good faith on the part of the president and his family.
“… the shamrock…”
You might assume that being everywhere and nearly worthless, it is difficult to purchase shamrocks. However I can assure that Amazon offers seeds for a buck fifty, and a seller on Etsy offers a shamrock in a custom-painted pot for six ninety-nine. I will email the Taoiseach affiliate links for these items, in the event she might wish to purchase them for herself.
Moreover, you may be aware that the Fergus Foundation’s media arm—Fergus American Freedom Media—has recently acquired Upton Broadcast Network, whose assets include rather large network of AM radio stations. While most of these stations employ the talk radio format, what you might not know is that they include WDVF, a Country and Irish Station based out of Quincy, Massachusetts, which goes by the nickname “The Shamrock.” The Shamrock is quite influential among the Irish community of Boston, and we advise Taoisech O’Connor to carefully consider whether she wants its management for her or against her.
“… the Blarney.”
I’m sure you are aware that Liana Fergus Ioannides is in, in addition to her demanding job as CEO of the Liana Fergus Corporation, currently managing the Fergus Foundation on the president’s behalf while he engages in the demanding work of running the Greatest Country on Earth. You must also know that the current owners of Blarney Castle have run into a series of financial difficulties, seeing as your own government rejected offers from the owners to purchase the Castle and its grounds during the last financial crisis.
What you may not know is that Mrs. Fergus Ioannides has recently entered a preliminary agreement to purchase the Castle, together with its grounds, from the current owners. While the agreement preserves Blarney Castle as a museum and gift shop, the Fergus Foundation has drawn up plans for a suite of time shares and luxury condominiums on the grounds, to be known as The Chieftain at Blarney.
The condominiums will start at 6.3 million dollars, and time shares at $419,999, though Ms. Fergus would be happy to arrange a trial week for the Taoiseach at cost, as well as a complimentary round of golf on the future Blarney Course. I would note that, because this is a condominium/time-share arrangement, not only has the Fergus Foundation purchased the Blarney, but it will be possible for anyone who has not completely failed at life to purchase a small stake in the Blarney.
“When you can buy all these wonderful things...”
As you can see, it is entirely possible to buy all of these things, many because of the tireless work of President Fergus himself, or his loyal family and friends. With that in mind, I would like to say that, despite the rudeness of the Taoiseach, President Fergus is still very interested in arranging the purchase of County Kerry, and believes it would be to our mutual benefit.
In the spirit of friendship, I wish to take it upon myself to cordially remind you that any situation which is not to the benefit of the United States and President Fergus must necessarily be to our detriment—and that President Fergus does not take lightly the actions of those who conspire to harm his interests and those of his country. I would further remind Taoiseach O'Connor that the Republic of Ireland as for a century now relied on the protection of NATO while refusing to join it and I would ask her to consider how that position worked out for the government of Malta.
As such, I would like to restate the question, to once more ask the Taoiseach and the Irish Government:
Now can we buy Killarney?
Yours sincerely,
Vincent Hess Esq., MBA, CLC
I wrote this story in 2018 when I realized that everything in the song “How Can You Buy Killarney?” was either purchasable or very plausibly would be purchasable with current trends in culture and economics. At the time Trump’s interest in buying Greenland was simply a pretext/hook for that context. Still the advice that I most consistently got from my writing group was that I needed more menace at the end, which I could not see how to do. I rewrote the story in 2025—also expanding the role of the Elon Musk analog to account for current events—and this time my writing group thought it worked pretty well as it was, but I had other priorities and did not try to publish it, especially given the wait time for genre markets that are now being flooded with AI fiction. Given how topical this has suddenly become, I have decided to self-publish on this blog.