J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

“I want out,” he says, grabbing another Inclusivity Fry and demolishing it in two savage bites — I’m a little worried about his fingers — “I want a fucking steak that came off of a fucking cow; and I want to cook that steak outside on my own goddamned grill; I want to put 50 bucks of real fucking gasoline in my car, and drive anywhere I fucking please whenever I fucking please; and I want to run my air-conditioner all goddamned day, and keep the house at 65 goddamned degrees because I can, god damn it!”

Okie-dokie. I make shushing motions with my hands, but he seems to have run out of steam. He squidges a fry through the puddle of tomato-based Misery Sauce on the plate and stares at it, tiredly, “I want my kids to learn science, instead of feely handwavium. I want my son to be a boy, and do boy things. I want my little girl to be a little girl, and stop being angry and scared all the time.” he blinks at the fry, drops it on the plate. “Four of us. I’ll pay whatever…” I raise my hand, smiling at him.

“We’ve got this, Fred. So. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

Ten minutes after a visibly-relieved Fred has left, I hand the waitress five 200-denomination scrip notes that the Cali government laughably calls Callors for the bill; then catch her eye before slipping a folded twenty-dollar U.S. note into her hand. Her eyes get big — although I’m not sure if that’s because tipping is against the law, or because it’s technically unlawful to possess American money — the note vanishes, I wink at her, touch my hat brim, and slip out the side door.

Two weeks later, and the alarm doesn’t go off. Looks like we drew the short-straw in another “random” rolling brown-out. Sigh. Luckily I’ve been lying awake for the last two hours, as I always do before an op— excuse me, job. I’d make some snarky comment about how the rich areas never come up on the very-touted computerized randomly-generated schedule for power outages, but it’s hot, and I’ve got things to do.

Quick shower, and I’m waiting in line at the dispensería , chatting amiably with my fellow sufferers. The tech, a cute little Anglo girl, looks at my card, and frowns at me, “You get four ounces. For your asthma.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I smile, happily, just another happy customer.

“You’re smoking four ounces. Of medical marijuana. A week. For your asthma.”

Socialized medicine is expensive. Marijuana is cheap. And since most folks in Cali believe that marijuana is a miracle cure for everything from hamster clap to Mongolian rabies to brain cancer (and if I were a cynical man I’d point out that stoned people don’t complain… right up until they’re eating their salads from the roots up), the Cali Government has crunched some numbers, and you can get a medical marijuana scrip for just about anything.

However, not everything. She glances at her supervisor, a large, gruff Hispanic female, and unconsciously clenches her fists. I slide my Cali ID card across the counter. There’s a twenty-dollar U.S. bill paper-clipped to the back, and she glances up quickly when she sees it. I smile, gently, “I’ve got a really bad case of asthma. It’s okay, miss.”

She takes the ID, and murmurs, reflexively, “Don’t call me ‘miss’, Citizen…” she looks at the ID for a long minute, “…Athelstan King.” A quick blink, and she looks at me again.

Whoops. I might have found a History Major. She slides the ID back across the counter. The bill has disappeared.

“Sign here, please.”

I smile, scribble some nonsense on the form, take my quarter baggie, touch my hat-brim, and scoot.

Fred has a tiny little bungalow on the outskirts of San Jose, I’ve been parked down the street watching his house for the last four hours. Nothing trips my professional paranoia, but I’ve a professional dislike for Brownshirts.

It’s not that Cali doesn’t like people leaving the Country, but the ones that they wouldn’t mind leaving — welfare leeches, bums, and general useless layabouts — aren’t going to turn loose of the Gummint free teat. The folks that actually make money, and thus get taxed to a fair-thee- well, Cali quickly figured out that they can’t lose those folks and keep the free Government stuff flowing.

So. Me.

It’s been long enough. I climb out of my rental car, amble (maybe even stroll) up to Fred’s front door, and knock. Before my knuckles hit the wood for the third time, the door is snatched open, and Fred is standing there. Behind him, sitting on the sofa, a pretty woman, face drawn with stress, clutches two sub-teenage children to her sides.

I take off my hat, holding it at belt level — coincidentally putting my right hand next to the .32 NAA semi-auto hidden in the hat — and nod formally to the lady of the house, “Ma’am.”

“Don’t call me…” she stops the reflexive response, and smiles shakily at me.

“Kids. ‘Morning, Fred. Shall we get this show on the road?”

He runs his hand over his mouth, and nods, “Yes.”

I head back to the rental car, pull into Fred’s driveway and on into the garage as Fred raises the door, and then I step back into the living room. “Let me have everyone’s cell phones, please.”

What the vast majority of people in Cali don’t know, is that Cali geo-fences every phone in the country. It’s a simple algorithm, based on the plain and simple fact that people are creatures of habit. It takes 60 to 90 days of carrying your phone around, and the algorithm plots where you’re going to be most of the time. Take your cell-phone outside of your usual hang-outs — how far outside, I don’t know — and your cell-account gets flagged.

Mostly, a travel flag doesn’t get noticed or acted on — however, I’m pretty sure that flags on the accounts of people who make money probably get a reaction. “Reaction” being a Latin word for “Things Are About To Suck For Your Humble Yet Dashing Hero”, so no phones.

“Ma’am, did you call the children in as sick to their schools?”

Her mouth moves, without speech for a second, she swallows, and whispers, “Yes.”

“Good. Do the children have phones?”

“No, we never… no.”

I smile, hopefully reassuringly, “Good.” I step into the kitchen, spot the ‘fridge, hop up onto the counter, and toss her cell-phone into that stupid little cabinet everyone has mounted above the refrigerator. Why is that thing there? Can anyone actually reach it? I hop down, and put Fred’s phone in my pocket.

“Ok, folks, let’s go for a trip!”

We load into the rental car, buckle the kids into the idiot car seats, the family luggage into the trunk next to my backpack, and take off for the rail station. At the station, I look around the parking lot, and find a car with a parking sticker for one of the bigger Silicon Valley computer corporations. Little loop of duct tape, and the phone sticks nicely to the battery compartment of the vintage Toyota Pious. It’ll stay there for a couple of hours, before bouncing loose. Hopefully, in a San Francisco or Marin county parking lot.

There is no way I’m going to pry the Missus from the kids, so I hand her three train tickets, “Second car from the end. Find a seat near the middle, please.” I wave a finger gently in her face, “It’s going to be okay.” She tries to smile, takes a firm grip on the children’s hands, and walks towards the tracks.

I put my hand up, as Fred involuntarily takes a step after his family, “Cameras, Fred. Trust me. This is why you’re paying me a great deal of money.” Rigid, he looks at me, nostrils flaring.

I hand a ticket to Fred, and we walk around the front of the train. As we walk, I recite the day’s headlines from the paper, gesturing, to the four cameras I spot on the way, two men going about the day’s business. On the other side, we step into the men’s rest-room, and out of camera-shot.