in the house but I'll take out a loan from Big Brother.'
'You'll pay to eat whatever my girlfriend and I make?' Aria asks. 'We could teach you how to cook too.'
'And eat,' Matt adds. 'I may need to learn how to eat whatever incredible traditional delicacies I'm shown. Where are you from? What will you make?'
'I was born in India, but I'm Singaporean,' Aria says. 'I'm good at making Singaporean dishes. But food brings people together. So I'll need to make my food a little Arabic, like new spices are entering the country that's the leading dish and tossing it out would be incredibly irresponsible and counter-intuitive. I'm hungry. So are so many people around the world.'
'Yes,' Matt says. 'Many people are hungry. That gives me an idea: one mask can be shared. We can all dress, talk and act the same so that Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, and Russian political authorities won't know who's saying what here. Systems for positive and negative identification are overrated, and loss of identity underrated. Further, if people everywhere act like gay Malaysian politicians then the Malaysian authorities won't know who is and isn't one.'
'Okay, but why just one mask?' Aria asks. 'What if we want to have a group discussion? One mask can't be in many places, on many faces, at once.'
'I guess I just like the idea of sensing what you had for breakfast,' Matt says, shrugging and smiling.
'The smell of recycled breakfast alone,' Aria says, nodding. 'You must be hungry. But speaking of food, in the States - specifically in the north-east part of the country - counties are shrinking [3.]. They need new restaurants, and maybe gay [4.] Malaysian or Middle Eastern immigrants in disguise so that they look like old white men are the chefs required. They'll fit in by - ironically, given their origins - being LESS conservative. They can't be labelled failures if they're at least labelled both liberals and conservatives under the sun while wearing three-D printed masks, and further options for identification are endless since white men are so powerful. They can be labelled people from so many different walks of life that they need to run to make it clear: they ARE. The trick is to always do two things at once to avoid being identified with an activist of sorts.
'Right now, there are so many people in jails in the States [5.], not evil enough to be in prisons, and so these people - the least offensive - could be paired with immigrants and teach the immigrants how to act appropriately in society after first being taught how themselves by resident chefs of jails. It's all about the appropriate production and consumption of food. Producing credentials and identification, as edible paintings, can be for the sake of freedom of information and expression. Maybe each identification can belong to no less than three people: a person from jail, an immigrant, and a chef (call this small-scale research and identity fusion). Artists can talk to single talents out for special attention. The person from jail will likely stay in the States and so this person can be the speaker when it comes to dealing with sensitive international affairs (they don't need a residence in India or Malaysia, for one). The chef must remain hidden at all times. And the immigrant can serve customers well after adequate on-the-job training.'
'You haven't mentioned women much,' Matt says. 'How can I find women if I can't see or hear about them anywhere anymore?'
'A woman who trusts you will hand you her mask,' Aria says.
Matt nods slowly, finally woke.
_____________________
References
1 The Economist | Marching to a nastier tune https://www.economist.com/node/21778667?frsc=dg%7Ce, ["In the north-eastern state of Assam, where immigration has been a particularly divisive issue, chauvinist demagogues had for years outbid each other, claiming that anything from 5m to 8m intruders, mostly Muslim, had invaded from neighbouring Bangladesh. But when the state actually completed a costly count of its 33m people in August, only 1.9m of its inhabitants had failed to provide sufficient documents. Most of these “foreigners”—who can still contest their status at special tribunals—turned out to be Hindu."; ""There are an awful lot of Hindus, I’d guess 40%, who basically dislike Muslims and have no problem at all with this government’s approach,” says an American political scientist of Indian origin, who prefers anonymity (a subclause of the caa allows the government to strip émigrés of their Overseas Citizen of India status)."]
2 The Economist | Sex, lies and videotape https://www.economist.com/node/21778725?frsc=dg%7Ce, ["Twenty years ago, during Dr Mahathir’s previous stint as prime minister, he saw the younger and brilliant Mr Anwar as a threat and had him jailed on trumped-up charges of corruption and homosexual acts, which are illegal in Malaysia."; "Last year a video was circulated that purported to show one ally, the economy minister, Mohamed Azmin Ali, in bed with a man. Mr Azmin denies it was him. But if the personal attacks echo Mr Anwar’s past treatment, consider that nearly all political insiders believe pro-Anwar people to be responsible for the video’s dissemination."]
3 The Economist | Homesteading 2.0 https://www.economist.com/node/21778703?frsc=dg%7Ce, ["Vermont is one of many states with a population that is dwindling. Around 80% of counties across the country—largely those clustered in the north-east and Midwest—lost working-age adults from 2007 to 2017, according to the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a think-tank. Some 65% will lose working-age adults over the next decade. The scale of this decline is new, precipitated by an ageing workforce, falling fertility rates and less immigration. Population declines affect housing markets, municipal finance and local economies. Fewer people means less housing demand, tax revenue and business."; Graphic: Counting Counties]
4 MAP: Movement Advancement Project, SNAPSHOT: LGBTQ EQUALITY BY STATE, http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps
5 The Economist | Make it better https://www.economist.com/node/21778704?frsc=dg%7Ce ["In 2017 jails nationally handled 10.6m admissions, compared with just 607,000 who went into the country’s prisons. That is good for nobody. Crowded jails are a financial burden for counties. It cost $478m to run Michigan’s in 2017. Pew researchers point to evidence that people jailed or imprisoned, even briefly, are far likelier to be rearrested within two years than others who pass through the justice system but are not locked up."; "...wide disparities in jail populations between counties within states, which suggests that training for local decision-makers, such as sheriffs too fond of jailing people, or allocating more money for local health services, could matter as much as legislative change from above."]
Scoot Sez
The air quality in the house is above average, like that in the cabin of an average plane. Moving? (Smells can be emotionally significant). There are no pesticides [1.] used in this house outside of California. We're above the clouds? Instead, the smell of tamarind fills the air like Aria seems both sweet [2.] and sour [2.] without a mouth mask on, but she's wearing one still. Like she's a flight attendant on a plane before passengers. And now, outside the house more and more people are donning the mouth masks given the spread of the deadly coronavirus originating in Hubei province, China. But they're not thick enough to be parachutes. And if they're for show it's sad: emotional in-flight entertainment.
In the house only the scent of tamarind can be registered, so the people present are seemingly left in the dark, but their voices are not as hard to detect as the figurative light: they are not only free to vote - in fact, it's compulsory in Australia [7.] - but they can encourage others to do so as well, those living in other countries. But just how can, say, Palestinians vote for a new leader of Israel? They would have to first be citizens of Israel. They would, ironically, fervently vote against this. If there were planes present they would prefer not to board them. (Now, a flight is delayed by approximately twenty twenty seconds). And how can housemates vote for leaders of a faraway country? They can't, unless they know what they're doing: let's say they marry a person born in said country, live in said country,
