government had pretty much taken control of every aspect of human life. You could be sure that anything you did or could imagine doing had a law or an ordinance governing it. Needless to say, the legal system was completely snarled up by clever fellows pulling laws out of a hat, while the confused masses kept trying to muddle their way through a maze of rules and regulations that sometimes applied and sometimes didn’t, depending on what your standing was in this new social order.
There wasn’t much real food any more since Satano Supplies, a global seed company, had captured the world food market through its diabolically clever scheme of selling its genetically modified patented seeds. Then Satano went broke, and that wiped out most of the productive farms of the world through lack of seeds.
With food supplies so short, the Ministry of Abundant Living cut the monthly food credits in half for all unregistered elderly persons during its “Food for All” campaign. The rationale for doing this, they explained, was to give people like us higher self-esteem by making a personal contribution to those less fortunate. This deprivation, however, did nothing to modify my status or mollify my presumed failure for having to live on state charity, especially since we knew that our food rations had been cut to provide for the Global Guardian’s coalition armies who were fighting for the freedom of the oppressed people of Syraq (the new region formed after the obliteration of the former countries of Syria and Iraq). Most of us elderly lived in government facilities and had to try to make our rent each month. During winter, I had depleted my tiny reserves just to keep warm; the central heating in my building had long since given up the ghost.
The whole system of government assistance appeared to be based on some kind of mathematical formula, where our expenses each month always exceeded our income. I was convinced this was done just to keep us non-reggies in a constant state of anxiety and poverty. But this cut couldn’t have come at a worse time for us, as we all had fixed bills—which usually kept us struggling.
I was walking along so distracted by the weight of my daily concerns that I failed to notice a gaping crack in the sidewalk, tripped and nearly fell—which would have been a disaster for me had I fallen and broken my arm. For non-reggies, the state-sponsored free medical program was painfully difficult to access, time consuming and posed a real danger to your health should they find that you had organs that were compatible with those needing organ transplants. Non-reggies did not own their own bodies, but they technically belonged to the state. So stripping bodies of their vital parts for use by others deemed more worthy was quite common, particularly in the free public hospitals.
The deteriorating sidewalks and the boarded up shop windows were indications that I was at least nearly home. The government subsidized housing I lived in was really just a bunch of old apartments that the owners could no longer afford to keep; their land taxes and utility payments had often exceeded the value of the property. But the government granted them special tax breaks, and gave them generous food and fuel credits, as well as access to the privileged inner city housing units as a reward for turning them over. Some of the names on these rundown housing units were now almost laughable: Ivory Towers, Thornington Heights, Tranquility Manor.
In our area, access to the inner city was very restricted. You needed a special pass even to work there, but the jobs were all of the menial labor kind: cleaning houses and yards, sweeping streets, cooking and preparing meals for the privileged, gardening, or maintaining their hydro mobiles, which were very small cars that ran on water and solar power. They needed special permits to drive them outside the city, and the permits were outrageously expensive. Those who chose to go outside the city did so in the full understanding that they would likely get car-jacked and be beaten or killed in the process.
The fancy name of my dwelling, Melton Manor, did nothing to make the long climb up the old twisting stairs to my fourth-floor apartment any easier. The elevator had long since stopped working, and was now used for storage by Ms. Edna Sussex, our apartment manager. I was hoping that I might slip quietly by her apartment door unnoticed. No such luck! I was hardly past when her door flew open and she poked her head out.
“Oh, it is you! I thought so by the way you sneak around come rent time. I see you got a ‘Please report to your Citizens’ Wellbeing Office’ reminder on the e-bulletin board this morning. Can I assume you will finally accept reality, do what is right and turn over your apartment cards early? You can always donate your bonus credits for an early retirement to the Pet Loan Society, of which I am the local president.”
Around her feet were a number of cats, presumably in line to be loaned out for a price. Her apartment always had the unpleasant smell that too many cats living in close quarters can produce. Owning a pet had long since become so expensive that few but the very rich could afford to have one, or have the facilities to protect them from the hungry population, in spite of the fact that it was a capital offence for anyone to kill a pet for food. The Animal Rights Laws had become more punitive than human law.
Self-absorbed Edna always assumed a position of moral superiority in any conversation. Without hesitation or hint of humility, she boldly presented herself as the fount of all that was right and good, and was a self-appointed judge of all that she considered wrong. She lived in a two-dimensional cocoon-like world of her own making. According to her fixed view of things, I was an anomaly, a potential threat to myself and others, and most importantly, a danger to society. Edna felt that my “free spirit” needed to be held firmly in check—which she tried to do by the sheer force of her own all-controlling presence. I seldom contested the socially subordinate orbit that she automatically assigned to me, preferring to leave her views unchallenged, and I hardly ever openly confronted her. However, this day I did not feel inclined to let her obfuscated commentary on my life go without objection.
“Edna Sussex,” I replied, punctuating my point with the happiest smile I could muster, “I feel very much alive and wonderful. I plan to live forever! As God is my salvation, I intend to outlive you, this apartment, and this world with all its insane rituals, rules, and regulations!”
My defiant buoyancy in the face of her presentation of life’s blunt and brutal reality drove her to distraction. Sputtering and spitting like an alley cat dowsed with water, she blurted out indignantly: “Mr. Fairfield, stop your blasphemous mouth! The Force is the only hope of salvation you have, and without the provisions made for you by our Global Guardian, you would be out in the street. Your invisible God won’t save you then! I should report you! You’re a nut case from the Middle Ages! Insane as they come! You’re weird!—You know that, don’t you? You need counseling! You need therapy and rehabilitation. You need help! And…you need to come up with the rent or you will be out in the streets! The Sweepers will get you, which is just what you deserve!”
Her daily exhortation over, she punctuated her final sentence by stepping back into the gloom of her apartment and slamming the door, but not before she had stepped back onto the tail of one of her furry little friends, which let out such a loud vocal protest that the dramatic effectiveness of Edna’s diatribe quickly dissipated.
The Sweepers!—What a gang of ghouls most of them were; armed thugs in City Sanitation Department uniforms, whose assigned job is to keep the streets safe and clear of any garbage, using huge sanitation containers with hydraulic scoops. They are known to have swept up the homeless and the unregistered. The government had turned a blind eye to this practice since the people who disappeared were usually the disenfranchised members of what had become an invisible class. Sweeping had become a very profitable business for any who were willing to engage in it and profit from the sale of humans—alive or dead. Many people were swept up and sold to the large government factories that used unregistered people as free laborers in slave-like conditions with
