yustyoking

Achilles Heeled – Part 1

[ A paperback of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged turned up at the library in the used book section. Browsing my way through Ayn’s turgid prose, I searched for the exciting parts I remembered from my youth. I found them. Atlas Shrugged is a stupid book, infantile in its perceptions, but none-the-less a major achievement: It’s impressive to see how much verbiage can be packaged as declarative sentences, written back in the 1950’s when both writing and typing required lots of manual labor. So, in celebration of 57 years of Atlas Shrugged, here’s the parody. Enjoy! – Kevin ]

*****               *****               *****               *****               ***** 

“What about Pluto Kratz?”

The bum, smelling of whisky and bad breath mints, shambled towards him in a suit that barely maintained a semblance of JoS. A. Bank. The result of years spent sleeping in alleyways atop plastic bags of other people’s garbage, the cloth was now a mosaic of black tar stains and brown blotches of congealed fat. Encircled by a miasma of putrid odors capable of turning away a rabid dog at 50 feet. Whatever designer label it came from, the apparel now hung lifelessly upon the bum’s emaciated frame.

“Why Charles Atlas?” asked the bum. “Who is the Coney Island bully who kicked sand in the face of a 97-pound weakling?”

So unnerved was Skylar McDonald, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his billfold and handed the bum a $10 banknote and two food coupons.

“It would be nice,” smiled the bum with teeth so gnarled and ugly, Skylar was forced to look away, “if your charitable contribution could take the form of a  cash-only transaction.” Stoically, the bum returned the pink coupons to Skylar’s trembling fingers. Giving the bum another tenner, Skylar hurried down the sidewalk. The blinding yellow rays of the sun fought valiantly to penetrate the smog immersing the city, but alas, to no avail. Everything was bathed in a sickly orange light.

A quadricopter book company delivery drone caromed off an office building and crashed on the sidewalk in front of him. Nabokov’s Lolita spilled onto the pavement.

Looking upward, Skylar shuddered at the ten story high banner hanging from a skyscraper on the opposite corner. With her brutal likeness staring down at Skylar in grim satisfaction, the leader of the free world smirked above the legend Big Kahuna Is Watching U.

Soot was both the natural smell and ambience of the city, the cracked walls of pigeon-crazed office tenements sprouting like mushrooms from the earth, fecund, multi-faceted, virtually indescribable in their 40-story diversity. Needless to say, Skylar felt dread. Irreproachably. Irrevocably. Like, totally, man.

Had it always been this way? mused Skylar. He couldn’t remember. You elect a Socialist mayor and things go from bad to worse. That much Skylar was sure of. Thinking no more of global warming engulfing the planet, the frightening visage of the bum who had accosted him this morning, drought conditions in the midwest, colony collapse among the bees, Muslim terrorists, Palestinian intransigence or his own precarious financial situation, Skylar pushed his way through the revolving door at the street entrance to the Mercury Mercantile Association Building. Everyone knew bee die-off was due to Communist agitation. Clutching his briefcase across his chest in both hands, nowhere near the start of his work day, Skylar was already bathed in sweat.

Chestnut Hill sat in the 11th floor conference room facing the East River and vaped on a trad peppermint e-cig. Out of politeness, she extended the elegantly inlaid mahogany box of e-cigarettes across the table to the little man with the bristly hair-do and thick glasses.

“What?” he asked. “No. I don’t smoke.”

Both of them absent-mindedly folded yellow cash register tape into 6-inch loops that could be squashed flat and stored. Even an employment interview required a bare minimum of blue-collar labor. That was the law. The Railroad Administration produced tons of cash register receipts every day. A semi-permanent record, each tape needed to be unwound from its plastic spool, neatly folded in 6-inch lengths and pressed flat.

“We got the contract for the D.C. Purple Line,” Chestnut explained didactically. A millennial, she had graduated from Harvard and become one of the first to grab the brass ring under the black president. That was ten years ago. Now she was head of the Railroad Administration: railroads, light rail, metro and streetcar systems. According to the new federal program, they all came under her jurisdiction. “This is what happens,” she always commented ruefully, “when you elect a Socialist president.” The press, of course, christened her “the rail czar” and made her sound like a bull dyke in heat. There was good reason for them to call her “cynical Chestnut Hill.” There was no room in her world view for Latinos marching down Broadway shouting “Help!” in Spanish. Even though she had put on 20 pounds, with her rosy Irish milkmaid complexion, high cheekbones and pointy English nose, Chestnut was still an attractive woman. And only in her late 30’s. “Attractive and brilliant,” people said about her, sneering. Bank vice presidents listened to Chestnut Hill.

“I’m offering you the anchor position,” she now emphasized for King Whitlow’s elucidation. “Manager of the Bethesda, Maryland station, right at the base of the Purple Line. I repeat. Position: Manager. There are people who would kill for this job.”

“I don’t want it,” replied Whitlow nasally. He reached for another roll of cash register tape.

Chestnut’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re a little young to retire at 50,” she surmised. “You’re the best we’ve got. Why not take the job?”

“I… don’t… want… it,” Whitlow replied evenly, looking half asleep, fingers busily making loops in the yellow paper.

“Why? What are you gonna do instead?” jeered Chestnut, blowing clouds of vapor in frustration. “How much is SNCF offering you? Are you going to work for DB, Deutsche Bundesbahn? Really, however much they’re offering you, I’m authorized to meet it.”

“It’s not the money,” the older man said petulantly. Stacked by his right elbow, there was already a mound of folded paper half a foot high.

“Okay, what’s the fucking secret?” Chestnut asked, out of patience.

“It’s not secret,” Whitlow replied bitterly. “What about Pluto Kratz?”

They met in the room with the clocks on all four walls, showing the current time in 20 different capitals of the world. A railroad runs on time. Chestnut pulled her most trusted lieutenants around her— Russ Wayne, Pyötr Taggert, Rolls Royce, Sven Polson, Skylar McDonald, Bruce Ogilvie. The night shift left nothing to chance: Heaps and heaps of yellow paper graced the conference table, waiting to be folded. “That little twerp Millwot— ”

“King Whitlow,” corrected Russ Wayne and then shut up.

“Yeah, well. Whatever. He has refused my offer,” Chestnut announced grimly, hands clasped to the armrests of her chair to keep from reaching for an e-cigarette. “He may be the best, but he said ‘no.’ ”

“Why?” ventured Skylar, shocked at the news. Shocked. “How much are the Germans offering him?”

“It’s not that,” Pyötr Taggert chimed in helpfully. “He refused our offer in protest over the stalemate in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Once again, the Jewish occupier—”

“What?! That can’t be right!” Wayne and Royce both tch’ed.

“I have the floor! May I please finish?” Pyötr asked petulantly.

“I’m not Finnish,” remarked Polson. “I’m Swedish.”

Everyone ignored Polson.

“The Israeli occupier has once again blocked statehood for the poor little Palestinian people,” Pyötr exclaimed. “No wonder Walnut refused our offer. BDS— ”

“King Whitlow is his name, if anyone’s interested,” said Russ Wayne.

“BDS— as I was saying. Boycott, divestment, sanctions.”

“Be that as it may,” Chestnut replied icily, “there will be action this day!”

Turning from the surly cashier behind the counter of the lunch line, Ogilvie spotted his friend. She sat at a near-by table, a young, blond woman in a drab white blouse, her blue eyes staring at him like pointy little daggers. Suddenly, her face dissolved into a mask of total merriment. Wrinkling her nose, her bow mouth formed a cute little O. “Ha ha ha ha ha! ” spit her ruby lips.

Feeling himself floating, floating, Ogilvie approached her table. “M-May I s-sit h-here?” he stammered like a schoolboy.

“Sit down, silly,” she giggled in that strangely nagging voice of hers. Nailing him with her 1,000 watt blue-eyed stare. Ogilvie stumbled into the seat opposite her. Sometimes, delirious with pleasure, he felt like he was dealing with a 12-year-old. “How are you?” she quietly sang, kicking off her high-heeled shoes under the table. She had already finished folding seven yellow rolls of cash register tape. “Such strange weather we’re having. It’s so hot,” she suggested. Immediately, her right foot shot up to Ogilvie’s crotch and her little toes began pressing… pressing… pressing at the fabric of his trousers. Her eyes grew larger. Larger. “How are things at the office?” she whined.

“We’re replacing Hendricks as manager of the Metro station in Bethesda, Maryland. On the Purple Line, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. With Zim Bobway from Syracuse!” he blurted, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest. He reached for a roll of cash register receipts on its black plastic spindle.

“That’s nice,” his friend frowned, a sweet furrow materializing between her sky-blue eyes. Munching on lettuce with a white plastic fork, she commanded Ogilvie to please continue.

“Zim’s being flown in tomorrow. By management. On board a secret flight into La Guardia. Nobody knows about it!” Ogilvie babbled, folding the yellow paper into 6-inch lengths, grateful that his little friend let him prattle away without recourse, his penis engorged like a watermelon, her sweet toes kneading his swollen, aching crotch. Those toes! Those pearly digits painted with pink nail polish. Kneading, squirming, pulling, pressing. Satiated, he had never felt so secure, so loved, so alive!

He stared at her helplessly. She gazed at the ceiling, at the walls, pressing his crotch under the table with her right foot. She was so sweet, so angelic. Ogilvie couldn’t remember when he’d first met her. It seemed to him that she had always been there lurking in the background of his life. All he knew was how much he loved talking with her in this otherwise antiseptic, noisy, inhospitable lunch room of the Railroad Administration. Even while folding cash register receipts, he felt joy. Being with her meant he was no longer alone.

After dinner with his 73-year-old mom, Skylar spent a half hour folding cash register receipts and then texted his younger brother Maurice, a Major in the U.S. Air Force: * Regards from supper club Pericles. The lambchops & seafood stew exquisite. Tartufo for dessert. Mom suggested I text & torture U re what U R missing. LLBK *

LLBK. Long Live Big Kahuna. The only way to make sure that the NSA let a text message go through was to include some super-patriotic reference. As for the supper club, prescient to the coming shortfall of foodstuffs and potable water, ten years ago Skylar’s mom had insisted that he take out a lifetime membership. Skylar and his mom were now among the few people in the city who managed to eat well.

Maurice replied almost instantly: * U 2 R truly evil! I am just now on my way home after flying Reaper drones in formation. Tricky. I look forward 2 leftovers and anything else I can forage. In summary U, & especially mom, R EVIL! Enjoy! I miss U both. *

Selecting erotic software manufactured privately for use on the Xbox 880, Skylar turned down the lights, settled onto the couch and reached for the dildo-shaped joystick. Stroking the flesh-colored, rubberized surface with his fingertips, sensors set the built-in motor to vibrating. A programmable virtual memory chip simulated actual learning, as the joystick recorded user preferences and constantly sought new ways to please. “Mein liebchen,” crooned the sound system, as naked, nubile German fraulein avatars popped three-dimensionally from the screen and began serenading Skylar’s supine body.

“Well?” Chestnut demanded, slapping an old-fashion slide rule against her thigh rhythmically.

“He wasn’t on the plane,” Russ Wayne reported. “Nor was he on the flight manifest. I called Syracuse. Looks like somebody shanghai’d old Zim on the way to the airport!”

“Nobody knew we were bringing him down here. I need to fill that Metro station manager slot in Bethesda pronto. It’s as if somebody knows our every move. So the bastards kid-napid Zim,” she concluded, using the popular new pronunciation. “I’m always amazed how politicians find ways NOT TO DO what they wish to avoid.” Blushing in frustration, she stared out the window at the East River. “We’ll see how much the bastards want for poor old Zim.”

A thought-control agent under contract to the city, basically a gun for hire, blond, 23-year-old Lisbet was sick of this job that entailed folding paper. She got amusement, exercising her power over poor Ogilvie, but anything would be better than the mind-deadening paper chase included in this assignment. Cash register receipts? Pul-lease! Printed in hard copy on paper? Get real! How primitive can you get? Trolling the back alleyways for drug dealers, prowling the strip joints, illicit clubs and after-hour speakeasies of the city, was a good bit more dangerous, but AT LEAST IT WASN’T BORING. A technology from the 1800’s, Lisbet found the Railroad Administration extremely boring.

“And then this expatriate Russian bitch writes novels portraying individual entrepreneurs as supermen! According to her, Socialism is the root of all evil,” groused Ricky Smith, sitting at a sidewalk table in front of Joe’s Coffee House in The Village. Normally, Lisbet wouldn’t tolerate Ricky’s facile opinions. The fact that what he was saying, sitting there in his black leather jacket, struck Lisbet as trenchant, showed just how innately empty her life had become.

“What’s the problem, Ricky?” she asked, taking a seat. Imagine, a whole day without any goddam yellow paper to fold! Amazing!

“This bitch authoress is attacking Socialism,” Ricky exclaimed in that innocent, naive way of his. “Control of the economy provides the proletariat with security and long-term advancement. Anything short of that is treason!”

“Ricky,” Lisbet sighed, getting up and turning to go. “Give it a rest!”

Zim Bobway, a railroad executive and all-around fixer, awoke lying on his back inside a pine box. It was pitch black, but Zim had no problem smelling the pine only an inch or two from his face. When he tried to move, Zim found he was bound head to foot. Gradually, he realized that the stench of urine was quickly becoming overpowering. He had wet himself. Forcing himself to stay calm and think rationally, he wondered when they would come for him. But what if nobody came?

Vacillating between righteous indignation and abject terror, Skylar answered a federal subpoena, logging onto the Ethernet to give Congressional testimony in the case of The Find and Kill Cult. Mercifully, at least one committee member sensed Skylar’s predicament and gave him some breathing room by soliciting an overview of the national situation by a fuddy-dud sociology professor from Harvard. The professor’s description: Since only half of one percent of the population had accrued any real wealth— houses, condos, stocks and bonds, boats, planes, horses, jet skis, island retreats— the vast majority of the great unwashed had to devise entertainment free of undesirable overhead. Abandoning low-cost pursuits, people found and created their own so-called    no-cost activities.

Then it was Skylar’s turn to elucidate on the attitudes and mores specifically related to Find and Kill: “Paintball without the guns!” he began. A stony silence greeted this revelation. Clearing his throat, Skylar decided to avoid all analogies in the future. “Donning inconspicuous clothing,” he explained, “participants stalk one another through the cavernous canyons of the Financial District between    2 a.m. and dawn.” Members had created all kinds of rankings for themselves. Anyone who repeatedly avoided getting tagged before sunrise while still managing to sign in and leave a thumbprint at each “station” in Lower Manhattan moved up from beginner to novice to skulk, leopard, stealth and, finally, grand master.

A leopard, Skylar tried to define the finer points of the game to this group of elected officials who apparently feared that any activity this unregulated represented a clear danger to public order and morality. The Socialist chairman said as much: “I am appalled! What you are describing is barbarous. What you’re doing goes against the very grain of American society. This is thoroughly disgusting! It’s reprehensible!”

As the cult’s oldest practitioner, the other participants had asked Skylar to be their spokesperson. “It’s just a game!” he found himself pleading. “We don’t hurt anybody,” he claimed. Without appreciable success. The Congressmen asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to initiate an investigation.

“Anyone having this much fun in secret,” declared the committee chairman ponderously, his bushy eyebrows furrowed in censure, “must be breaking the law!”

And what of the phantom creature Pluto Kratz? Everyone participating in the hearing felt his presence. Strange, disquieting rumors placed him in Altoona, Pennsylvania one day. Then Oilville, Virginia the next. Beijing. Stockholm, Sweden. Tibet. Even living over a garage on Euclid Street in Washington, D.C. Unable to nail him, the government went after the small fry instead.

“They seek him here, they seek him there, but where the Hell is he?” late night TV talk show hosts joked in their monologues.

To no avail. The man was a mystery wrapped inside a riddle placed inside an enigma.

And the clock was ticking. Loudly.

Achilles Heeled – Part 2

“Nicht vergessen.”

A gnarly old Jew with a hairy mole on his chin the size of a chancre belched raw garlic at Skylar McDonald, seated under the canopy at Shangri-La. Skylar decided to ignore him.

“Lampshades the Nazis made, out of human skin,” nagged the Jew.

“Leave me alone! ” swore Skylar, banging his fist on the table, bringing the young, pretty waitress who promptly asked him if he wanted another Tuborg.

“You mistake my meaning,” said the Jew. Seated at the adjoining table, he bent almost to the floor in a two-minute coughing fit. “The point is, they never caught on as industrial production, not the soap, not the lampshades. The manufacturing process proved entirely too labor intensive.”

Handing the waitress a blue food coupon, Skylar fled the Shangri-La. Only to succumb to the realization that the old man’s explanation was now seared into Skylar’s consciousness for all eternity. What a fool he’d been to think he could seat himself— unescorted— at a public watering hole without being badgered by some malcontent! Never again! Tomorrow, he’d buy one of those green and white buttons from the Manhattan Holocaust Museum that said “Never again!” He’d do it first thing in the morning.

“Nicht vergessen.”

Where had Ogilvie heard that? it seemed to come at him from out of the woodwork. At work, at home. A whisper. A thought. Half formed. What did it mean, anyway, “don’t forget”? Never forget what? Ogilvie wasn’t sure. He wished he had someone to talk to about it. Lisbet. He needed to consult Lisbet. He missed staring into her Carolina blue eyes. He missed exploding into his underpants like a geyser. But she had moved and left no forwarding address. She was gone. Who knew where? Ogilvie didn’t even know if she still lived in the city.

“Nicht vergessen.” Don’t forget. Everybody was an authority these days regarding World War Two… in Europe. Hitler, the Nazi war machine, the Reichstag fire, the Vilna ghetto, the camps: Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka… Hermann Göring. Nuremberg. Enough! Instead, Ogilvie made himself into an expert on the war in Asia. Pearl Harbor. The rape of Nanking. The occupation of Manchuria, which the Japs called “Manchukuo.” The Bataan Death March. Iwo Jima. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. “Fat Man,” the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The Allied occupation of Japan after the war. Occupational currency in Peso denominations.

“Hitler’s most intimate friends called Eva Braun ‘the Angel of Death,’ ” Stuart Clarke would say, quaffing a microbrew at the bar in the Birdland nightclub. Disco balls hanging from the ceiling bathed the patrons in a shifting kaleidoscope of colored light.

“One thousand five hundred Japanese soldiers had their heads cut off by the Sea Dayak headhunters of Borneo,” Ogilvie shot back, smug in his encyclopedic brilliance. “The natives prized Japanese skulls for their roundness, straight black hair and gold teeth.”

“Militarily, the firebombing of Dresden did not hasten the end of the war by a single day,” claimed Stuart Clarke.

“The hulks of sunken Japanese warships still litter the roadway at Subic Bay,” Ogilvie informed him.

Life was good.

The body was never recovered, but intuiting what had befallen Zim Bobway, Chestnut Hill arranged for the burial of an empty casket with full military honors. She had “Died in the Line of Duty” chiseled on his headstone. Forty New York City policemen attended the funeral, although the Socialist mayor complained “He was no cop! I thought he worked on the railroad.”

“All the live long day, chief,” answered the mayor’s executive assistant, a dapper fellow who may or may not have been gay.

Zim’s ghost, transparent as a shroud, haunted the grave, murmuring the epitaph Zim would have preferred:

*****          *****      I WAITED BUT NOBODY CAME      *****          *****

Skylar found Lisbet so easy to talk to. She was such a good listener! Just sitting there staring into his eyes. Listening. He found he could tell her anything. “I remember what it was like in the old days,” he reminisced. “When I was young… er, younger… We used to march in the streets chanting ‘Ask yer dad, ask yer mama! What d’we want? Get rid of Obama!’ We never actually accomplished anything, but IT SURE FELT GOOD!” Blushing, he laughed.

“You can feel good now,” Lisbet suggested, kicking off her shoes.

” ‘Scuse me?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Move your chair, silly! ”

Skylar moved his chair.

“You putrid piece of gefilte fish!” Chestnut ranted, stamping her right foot impotently. Skirting the wreckage of a U.S. Army MQ-5B Hunter drone splayed across the tracks, she wiped her forehead with a tissue and reached for an e-cig. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??? I don’t have time for this. I have to get to a Senate confirmation hearing for the person nominated to become the new manager of the Metro station in Bethesda!” The GPS on her smartphone watch indicated they were stranded somewhere on the Purple Line, adjacent to East West Highway, whatever that was.

Once upon a time, she simply would have called the White House and gotten choppered out of there. Ha! What a joke that had become. Even when Congress budgeted for the presidential helicopter fleet to maintain stand-by status, Chestnut had taken her fair share of abuse from exasperated air traffic controllers, thank you very much. “Ma’am, I can slot you in for 7 p.m. tonight,” they always claimed. And that was on a good day! Restricted air space, priority was given to ambulance helicopters, the presidential entourage, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, drones belonging to foreign embassies and whatever else the NSA decided to cast aloft at any given moment. Since Washington, D.C.’s traffic congestion was now ranked # 1 in the nation, automobiles were out. Chestnut was reduced, like 60% of the folks, to riding the Metro. When it ran.

Climbing laboriously around the front car of the train after tapping the metal wheels with a tire iron, clank, clank, clank, clank, Sol the white train driver said, “Madam, I do find your attitude somewhat offensive. Perhaps others are putrid pieces of gefilte fish, but not I! If you cut me, do I not bleed? No man is an island, cut off from the main. A bird in the hand can feed a family of five. Mankind is creative, but only God can make a Metro station. Better to be proud and right than not to be right at all.”

“Okay, already,” seethed Chestnut. As of this moment, Sol was still the only white Metro employee she had ever met. “Just fix the damn train!”

Wearing Giorgio Armani and working for an airline in the business of leasing executive jets, Ogilvie introduced Skylar to his wife. The cocktail party was a little stuffy, but everyone pretended to be having a good time, so as not to insult the host, who, after all, was the Sultan of Dubai. Ogilvie had wanted a little Asian beauty with whom he could cuddle. Someone to adore. Instead he found himself married to a female Hirohito. Within a week, she had gotten him to parley his railroad career into a lateral transfer to the airline industry. Sporting Vandyke facial hair, a shaved head and padded shoulders, this new Ogilvie was on the up escalator.

Sometimes people are their own worst enemy. Just ask the folks in what used to be Iraq or Syria. So when Skylar got a text message from his brother Maurice    * FYI – YR NEIGHBORHOOD UNDER ATTACK BY JIHADIS INVADING HOUSE BY HOUSE. EVACUATE! M. * Skylar was inclined to listen and obey. Less so his mom.

“I don’t hear any gunfire,” she groused.

“Don’t worry,” Skylar assured her. “You will!!!”

“This is my home. I have a right to live and die in my own apartment, not get shipped off to some refugee camp run by UNHCR.”

“Oh, you’ll die in your home, all right,” Skylar promised, rushing around like a madman, grabbing essentials: five gallon jugs of water, flashlights, batteries, blankets, sheets, plastic utensils, paper plates, canned goods, toiletries. His smart phone. His tablet. Identity papers. “GET PACKING!” her shouted at his mom. Who dawdled. Until she really did hear gunfire. One street away.

“They should get the local police or the National Guard to protect this part of Manhattan,” she suggested crabbily. “We pay our taxes!”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

“Using profanity doesn’t make your case any stronger,” she insisted, even as Skylar dragged her to the SUV. “You elect a Socialist president,” she bitched, “and look what happens! Anarchy.”

“Please, please, please move your ass!” Skylar pleaded, pulling on her arm.

They drove three blocks before getting caught in traffic. “We’re going for a walk,” Skylar declared, breaking out the backpacks.

“I’m too old for hiking. I’ll sit here until the traffic clears. There! Look. The cars are moving again already.”

“No, they’re not. Now come on!” Skylar raged. Pedestrians were hitting each other with their fists, others were screaming along the sidewalks, someone waved a handgun, there was a shot, and people started running in a wild-eyed panic. The noise grew deafening, the dust choking. Hmm, thought Skylar, this must be The Big Apple! He pressed his mom against a soot-covered building, shielding her with his body. White-faced and trembling, she looked every one of her 73 years. “We should have voted Republican,” she observed.

The populace wasn’t totally defenseless. Every few blocks, there were stormtroopers from PayPal— paid by the bullet to fight— who engaged the jihadis in bloody little skirmishes that were no less deadly for being limited in scope.

Drones filled the sky, chattering like lawnmowers, eyeing everyone with spooky turret cameras.

Suddenly, Skylar and his mom were surrounded by jihadi rebels wearing camo and green headscarves. The rebels carried a mixture of captured M-16’s and AK-47’s. Amazingly, some semblance of order re-established itself. At gunpoint, people stopped in their tracks, silently staring. Including Skylar. A flamboyant, bearded fellow— shades of Che Guevara— a little older and paunchier than the rest, eventually came marching down the sidewalk. Accosting Skylar, he demanded, “Nu, bro? Who are you???”

“Skylar McDonald,” croaked our hero, desperately pulling out his wallet. Which almost got him shot dead by the nervous young militiamen.

“Man,” sighed their commander. “Don’t ever make any sudden moves. Man!”

“Yeah, um, sorry,” Skylar acknowledged sheepishly.

Ignoring Skylar’s proffered documents, the bearded rebel commander pulled out his handgun and marched up the sidewalk, shooting people in the head. “Free enterprise!” he announced. “We’re letting the market decide!”

“Oh, hey, what d’ya want?” called a Wall Street type in a dark blue suit, white shirt, silk tie and brown Gucci casuals, carrying a briefcase. “Are we talkin’ money here? If ya let us all go, I got a caseful. It’s all yours, brother… Sir.”

“Please!” said the commander, gesturing. “Approach.”

As soon as the broker got within ten feet, the rebel leader raised his gun and shot him between the eyes. Disillusioned, people began running for the nearest street corner. Amidst the ensuing carnage, the commander returned to Skylar and his mom. “How old are you, granny?” he asked.

“I’m 73!”

“To what do you attribute your longevity, madam?”

“Clean living and pure thoughts!” insisted Mrs. McDonald.

“This is true?” the commander asked Skylar incredulously.

“It makes it fucking Hell to live with her,” Skylar conceded.

Greatly amused, the rebel leader appointed a three-man detail to escort Skylar and Mrs. McDonald to a U.N. assembly point two blocks away. As soon as they were out of earshot, the three young men robbed Skylar and his mom of all their valuables. They let them keep their food, water and papers. Reaching the corner of 47th Street and First Avenue, they said, “Okay, you go!”

“Here?” asked Skylar, pointing. “There?”

“Yeah! Move ass! U.N. There!” replied the young men, losing patience.

Skylar and his mom rounded the corner and joined the throngs of people approaching the olive green trucks, khaki uniforms and blue helmets of the United Nations forces.

Getting acclimated to the camp, a tent city built on mud flats by the municipal dump, Skylar couldn’t believe how beautiful some of the young refugee girls were. They struck him as dumb as blocks of wood, but Skylar still wanted to fuck the daylights out of them. I must be traumatized by the war, he decided, resolved to get as much poontang as humanly possible. He wasn’t alone. Eating him up with their stares, some of the young ladies seemed to share his passion.

It took forever, but eventually, order was restored. Skylar and his mom got to return home to their apartment. All the food in the refrigerator was rancid, of course, due to power outages, but mercifully, their place hadn’t even been pillaged by marauders.

With palsied hand, Skylar wipes the sweat from his forehead and fingers the remote. This is it! No going back now, boy. Pluto Kratz is about to speak. On national television. From the suburbs north of Richmond, Virginia. “The end of the age of mysteries” as the pundits call it. All of it about to come to an end. Skylar pushes the red “power” button on the remote. An ad for cornflakes is followed by an ad for robotic lawnmowers. Skylar realizes he has the wrong channel. Eventually, he finds the infinitely pleasing, benign, kindly avatar of Pluto Kratz, beaming beatifically at him from the enormous screen. The use of enhanced imagery and pulse modification fills Skylar with an almost celestial sense of warmth and well-being. Sighing contentedly, he sinks into an armchair to listen, an idiotic grin puckering the corners of his mouth.

“My fellow Americans! I speak to you today about our common destiny. That which joins our great nation, rather than those petty issues which divide us. I am not concerned about myself. For me, a bowl of gruel, a copy of the Koran and maybe a bottle of vodka a day and I am good to go. I’m liberal that way. I’m not Hugh Hefner, I grant you, but Allah made both alcohol and virgins. We shouldn’t be afraid to enjoy our share of worldly pleasures.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about America! What plagues us now is chiefly a lack of vision. In the midst of street fighting with rampaging jihadists, war atrocities, starvation and a host of other human foibles, we need focus. Yes, it’s good to have water to drink, but you also have to know to what purpose the drinking of that water is to be put! Not all of life consists of quenching one’s thirst, I can assure you!

“Which brings me to the union of our military-industrial complex and civilian life. A streetcar, here in Goochland County, linking the Arthur C. Clarke Industrial Park in the northwest to the Goochland Civic Center in the south. Symbolizing, as it does, progress in human affairs. Technologically as well as culturally. This billion dollar project will create new jobs in the entire greater Richmond area! It will pave the way for growth at almost cancerous levels. It will attract commerce from every corner of our glorious planet! It will generate revenue for schools, old folks’ homes, public restrooms and other amenities previously unheard of here in Goochland. The last true oasis of human progress!

“By the year 2040, this project will have paid for itself twice over! Florida and California will lie under four feet of water, Arabia will be one endless desert, Asia will be an equatorial flood plain. The good news is, Goochland will experience economic growth and a favorable tax structure. I, Pluto Kratz, would sooner quit my job as a leader of men than burden the taxpayers of this great state with some underhanded, money-grubbing boondoggle. That I would never do!!! For me, the grandeur of the enterprise is way sufficient. Envision what we’re talking here: A 42-mile inter-county streetcar line along Route 250, linking Zion Crossroads in Louisa County to Short Pump in Henrico. With a 28-mile branch line north along Route 522 from Gum Spring to Cuckoo. IT CAN BE DONE!

“Commitments I have made to contractors in America and steel companies in Germany are wholly separate from this phenomenal undertaking. In scope. In character. In total. Those signed documents of economic responsibility have only a peripheral relationship to the monumental concept of the Goochland-Louisa-Henrico Counties Commercial Streetcar Public Transportation System.

“Wow! Double wow! Long may it thrive!

” ‘What does he want? What is he doing?’ I hear them whispering behind the scenes. THIS IS WHAT I WANT. The disarming of America’s Armed Forces, the dismantling of our school system, the dismemberment of our university education have all led inexorably toward this exemplary goal. Ein Volkstram, a people’s streetcar, a mode of transport as pleasing, fulfilling and unique as it is worthwhile. That’s all I want! The best for everyone! Until such later time as I get some other bee in my bonnet and propose something else.

“Thank you and goodnight.”

*****                    *****                    The End                    *****                    *****