Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Jonesy stamped my ration ticket with a raincheck and date chop. I had been looking forward to a cheeseburger. I got out a ration ticket for a soyburger (actually soy mixed with black bean) and kept my face straight. It didn’t do any good to get mad at Jonesy, he had no choice.

Also, the “secret” policemen were a couple of chairs over on the lunch counter.

“Sorry about that,” Jonesy stated, “the meat’s been reassigned for our brave soldiers.

My smart assery got ahead of my common sense and took over my mouth, “Is that the one against the godless Commies or the soulless capitalists?”

Agent Ratski answered, “the ruthless foreign invaders.”

Ratski was actually decent for an SP. His comrade wasn’t and was looking like he’d be happy to come over and give me an attitude adjustment.

Ratski added, “Of course we’ve pushed them back to their country, but the negotiations to end the war are being dragged out by the Brazilians’ intransigence.”

My mouth went in gear by itself again, “But the Brazilians are neutral.”

“The President invited them to help arbitrate,” Frias, the other SP, explained.

“Ah,” Jonesy, Ratski, and I chorused.

We sat quietly and waited for our meals. I looked at my vaccination booklet. It had a raincheck ticket for my bubonic plague 7 vaccine. The airborne illness had a 40% mortality rate and 10% permanent damage to the nervous system and internal organs rate. The vaccine had a 25% percent bad reaction rate, including failure. I needed the vacc stamp for my real job, but it was rationed due to difficulty in production. Meanwhile, I hung on working day to day muscle jobs and government emergency subsidy checks. Just don’t be surprised I couldn’t tell you which emergency.

It was Frias, strangely, who addressed my problem, “I wish the Party chiefs would stop trading out their squeezes long enough for the docs can get our vaccinations caught up.”

I didn’t react, I didn’t trust him not to be setting me up. Ratski looked at me, “You got your piece in case terrorists attack, right? Frias and me might need help if shit goes down.”

“Yeah,” I answered. About that time our lunches arrived. There were a couple of strips of bacon in my burger. I hadn’t ordered them, but Jonesy was a good guy. Ratski bit into his soyburger and grinned. Frias opened his burger, a meat burger he had flashed his badge to get, to put some salsa on it. There was no bacon.

The emergencies never end, and the arbitrary power of the government never ends. Everything is rationed, maybe because it’s short, maybe just to keep us psychologically involved in the struggle. But I get to carry a pistol and every now and then someone like Jonesy puts some bacon in a soy burger for people he thinks deserve a break. Our freedom hides in these little grace notes.

 

Mr. Perez notes: For years I went on principal that politicians who support gun rights are pro liberty, or at least not dangerously anti. So for some reason my warped brain imagined a world where meat is rationed and people eat soyburger, we're always at war with some enemy, there are secret police, your rations are always being diverted, there is a plague so serious as to require a vaccine mandate but not enough vaccine, but hey, people absofrikkenlutely have the right to pack heat.