Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Community

He was doing his part to undermine the government’s economy. He wasn’t paying his taxes. He laughed at himself: He considered not paying his taxes as his patriotic duty to the cause of liberty. He didn’t mind keeping the extra money, either. He was running a small illegal business and helping people fix their homes. That was something small to undermine the government. He owned a shotgun illegally. That was something. He would do more once he got the chance.

But, now the time wasn’t right for bold actions...like the shotgun. Ed knew he would end up doing more than his current tax cheating and small business. He didn’t want a lifetime of regret for not doing enough like Dmitri. Besides, he had seen these government bastards up close. They had tried to ruin him. It was payback time. Just not right that second. When the time was right.

To be the most effective gray man possible, Ed decided to fool the government into thinking he was a loyal subject. He would quit talking about how he hated them. He would even put up one of those Freedom Corps signs in his yard. All the government suck-ups had them. They were like the “National Recovery Act” signs people had in their homes and businesses during the 1930s telling everyone that they were supporting the government’s various economic controls. Yes, Ed would laugh every time he pretended to support the government while he was using that supposed support to blind them to what he was really doing.

He sat back and looked at Dmitri. Gray men like him had done a lot. Ed could do the same. There in West Seattle he couldn’t exactly hoist a Don’t Tread on Me flag. His FCard would be taken away and he’d get arrested for something, probably for having that shotgun. What would that accomplish? Dying was a pretty bad survival plan.

Instead, Ed would choose to survive. He would hollow out the government economy a tiny little bit by having a side business. He would slowly and quietly build up a network of fellow sympathizers. He wouldn’t directly ask them if they opposed the government; he’d get to know them and decide whom he could trust when the time was right. Then they would do what Dmitri did.

Ed looked at Dmitri, who was still deep in thought about what more he could have done back in the Soviet Union. Ed smiled and said, “Dmitri, I have some vodka. It’s Stolichnaya. Imported from Russia. Would you care to make a toast to the United States government and all they are doing to help us in this unfortunate time of need, and how they can count on us to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to see them succeed?”

Dmitri smiled. Ed was talking like a gray man now.

Professor Carol Matson sat in her little house near the University of Washington in Seattle and stared at the clock. It was moving so slowly. She realized she was procrastinating. She had to force herself back to finishing the work she had in front of her.

Grading student papers. Yuck. She’d been grading them all day and now it was late. That was the part of teaching she hated. She loved the students, but hated grading papers. She also hated the petty backstabbing of faculty politics.

Oh well. It’s what she needed to do to have the job she loved: teaching Latin literature influenced by Simon Bolivar. He was a Latin American revolutionary in the early 1800s. Carol was in a very specialized field of study. In fact, she was one of seven scholars in the world who studied this subject fulltime. She was kind of a bid deal in the world of Bolivarian literature.

How had she gone from tiny little Forks, Washington to being a Bolivarian literature professor at the University of Washington? Like her brother Grant, she had gotten the hell out of Forks. She was brilliant, so she got a full scholarship to Columbia University. She took the opportunity in a heartbeat to get away from the poverty and abuse there in Hickville. She gravitated toward Latin studies because, although she was white, she felt the plight of the Latino. She understood being poor and trapped in a socioeconomic class where people were oppressed. Her dad was a total dick, but he was right about politics. She was a socialist like her dad. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

She got her master’s degree in Latin Literature at Stanford and got her PhD in the same from Harvard. She loved the recognition she got in school. She was always at the top of her class and every paper she wrote was published in a scholarly journal. She was addicted to academic success. She did everything she could to keep achieving.

It took a toll on her personal life. Actually, what personal life? She moved around a lot going from Columbia to Stanford to Harvard. She had no time whatsoever for dating. Men were mostly evil, anyway. The oppressors. Most of the guys she met in her academic world were either gay or total wimps. In fact, looking back at it, she had never really met a normal guy. Most of her female friends and professors were lesbians and constantly told her how bad men were. She wasn’t into the lesbian thing—not that she was judging.

After a series of short teaching jobs at various little colleges throughout the country, she finally landed back in Seattle at the University of Washington. She liked it there, and she was on the tenure track. She loved living in Seattle. People there were…well, progressive like her. No rednecks around. She loved walking her dog in the amazing parks in Seattle. She loved the food at the organic grocery store. She loved the lattes. She loved the whole Seattle experience. It was the exact opposite of Middle America in Forks. That’s where everyone was stupid and bigoted. She looked back at her life. She had accomplished everything she set out to. Life was good.

Then the Crisis started. All the conservative politicians, the rednecks who ran the country, even when Democrats were in charge, decided to get some votes by punishing public employees. That’s how the Crisis started. The conservatives decided to slash the budgets and lay off public employees like…university professors. The voters were so greedy. They wanted more money for their pork rinds and NASCAR. Idiots. They wouldn’t pay their fair share of taxes so people could be educated. So shortsighted. If there aren’t any Bolivarian literature professors, how can a society be truly educated?

It was no surprise that the people rose up during the Crisis. By the “people,” she meant the public employees being unfairly targeted for the draconian cuts. She joined the unions in their protests, but she never got violent like some of them did.

Carol, as a proud socialist progressive, had never liked the government. It was so corporate and reactionary. But, she had to admit, during the Crisis, the government was doing the best it could. There were shortages at the stores, but that was to be expected. Fat greedy Americans shouldn’t expect to get everything they wanted on demand, so shortages would actually teach them a lesson. She had been hungry for a while several days go, but it wasn’t the government’s fault. It was using its emergency powers to go get these teabagger “Patriot” militia whackos.

Then the government finally did what it should have done years ago: nationalized most of the economy. What took so long? Carol was especially happy about the FCards. What a brilliant solution, converting bloated retirement accounts of the rich into food for the masses. Simon Bolivar would be proud.

She and her brother Grant weren’t close. He was an OK guy and she wished him the best. He would probably say the same about her, but they were so different. She couldn’t stand his politics. What a hillbilly knuckle dragger he was. All that conservative crap he was always talking about. And he was religious. He had fallen for every lie the capitalists had put out there. It was sad, really. But whatever. He wasn’t hurting anyone.