Johnathan O'Sullivan [01]

    Johnathan chortled with joy as his new Ford Spider zipped around the staircase toward the top floor of the Hannity Housing complex. He passed under a filthy sign that had once said Floor 12. It was too dirty to make out the letters and even if it had been clean it would have done him very little good. Many years had passed since kids had been taught to read.

    He knew that he was on the right floor because he recognized the picture of the man with the black beard on the door of the first apartment. He pushed his Spider down the corridor as fast as it would go and then giggled as he came to an abrupt stop and the change in inertia pushed him forward. He eased the controller toward himself a little and the Spider crept backward a few steps. He reached up with his chubby little fist to knock on the door of the apartment with the picture of Mary's mom on the door.

    A dirty-faced little girl answered the door. She adopted an air of superiority the moment that she recognized Johnathan.

    "Can I watch your tv?" he wheezed.

    "I guess so," she replied with a sigh. She wished other kids in the laboring class wanted to watch tv with her, but they had their own tv and rarely left their apartments. Johnathan was on the other side of the door almost every time there was a knock, yet she still had a sense of disappointment every time she opened the door and found it was him.

    Johnathan was a year younger and he was oblivious to Mary's mild disdain --and Mary herself for that matter. All he cared about was getting in front of the telescreen and losing himself in the Technicolor panorama of commercials and five to ten minute adventures --which were basically also commercials. Or maybe he wasn't quite oblivious. Maybe he just realized, even at his young age, that as the son of unemployeds he deserved no better.


Mary Bramble [01]

    The class dynamics of their relationship didn't matter for very long once the tv was switched on. A commercial for McRonald's was on and Hotcha was singing and dancing about the joys of eating at McRonald's. They had each seen the commercial hundreds of times, but they sat rapt by Hotcha's beauty and waited to see what the changes would be.

    "Oooh! There it is!" Mary screamed. "She was wearing a new electric blue tank top this time!" Johnathan had spotted the change at the same time,but he didn't know how to articulate precisely what Hotcha was wearing. The screen cut to a shot of a Sizzling McRonald's burger and both children wanted one so badly they'd have killed to get one. They could still hear Hotcha's beautiful voice singing "Sizzle, Sizzle, Shake it!." Hotcha was eating a McRonald's triple with a look of euphoria on her face.

    Mary had 18 hours left before her mother came home from work and she intended to beg her desperately until she would agree to take her to McRonald's. She was worried that Johnathan might get to go before her and then he would gloat. Johnathan's mother would probably send him down to the Anheiser store for some C5 and then spend at least 10 hours being so high that she wouldn't know what was going on. But if she had any money left over after that she could conceivably take Johnathan to McRonald's. And that would be an insufferable humiliation.

    She waddled over to her Spider and lumbered into it. She suddenly felt irritated by Johnny being higher off the ground than she was and so she ratcheted her Spider up a little higher on its legs. Her Spider was a year or so old and the battery was starting to wear down. Her mother was going to have to buy her a new Spider soon. She took a quick glance across Johnathan's Spider for comparison purposes. His brand new Spider was already scratched and banged and food stained such that her Spider looked newer. Her Spider was dirty and faded and the pink paint was not nearly as shiny as the paint on Johnathan's, but she was satisfied that another month or so would be all that was required to reduce Johnathan's Spider to a pile of banged up junk. Unemployeds didn't know how to keep their things nice.


Laura Bramble [01]

    Laura Bramble trudged over to the myster. Her back ached powerfully. She inserted $1,500 into the shiny, new Pfizer myster. She had come to love the look of the beautiful blue logo that took her pain away and woke her up again for a short while. She had about 17 hours left to work and then she could finally go home and sleep.

    She started back to work checking her wrist messenger as she shuffled along. The messenger was very limited in terms of the messages it could convey. There were two graphical windows side by side that could display only pictures and graphics. She had known how to read in her youth but there was no more need, and something in all of the pain medication she was taking seemed to be making her brain atrophy. As she gazed down at the AOL logo emblazoned in between the two picture windows she was reluctantly grateful for its simplicity.

    The first message had a picture of a sneaker in the message window and a Nike logo in the sender window. It was spam, a junk mail message from Nike. It reminded her how much her feet hurt and for a moment she thought wistfully about how good a new pair of Nike sneakers would make her feet feel. The second message was from Ford and the pictorial message reminded her that there was a new Spider model available for kids. She enjoyed the junk mail messages but she became anxious about the need to rush back to work. She flipped through 7 more junk mail messages very quickly, desiring each product as she went. She flipped the next button again and this time in the message window there was a McRonald's logo and in the sender window there was a picture of her daughter Mary's chubby little face. She smiled. After work she would take Mary to McRonald's.

    Somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain was an altruistic sense of joy that would come from pleasing her daughter. But very much at the forefront of her thoughts was the Quad-burger she was going to consume herself. She might even decide to get two if she could afford it. Something about going to McRonald's reminded her of her youth. Her father had taken her there when it was still called McDonald's and it had other characters besides Ronald McRonald. There was a purple thing and a thing with a big black hat. She tried to remember but it was so hard. It seemed like those were happier times but that didn't make any sense. The world was obviously better now.

    She stopped trying to recall because getting lost in thought like that would get her fired. She rushed through her last three junk mail messages and switched off the messenger. It had cost her $90 to check her messages; her supervisor was glowering at her menacingly; but all she could think of was that tomorrow morning after work she would sink her teeth into that burger and life would be so wonderful while she tasted it.

    Her back already hurt again as she went back to work. She lifted Mrs. McNeeley onto her side and winced as her back protested. Mrs. McNeeley shrieked at her as the rush of cold air hit her naked backside. Laura ignored her protestations and swabbed the feces from her with an even colder damp rag. She watched the time clock on the bed's digital readout hoping the time bar would move faster. She strained to maintain Mrs. McNeeley's massive girth with one arm while she swabbed and wiped with the other. The time bar finally hit full and Laura released her. Mrs. McNeeley came crashing back down onto her back with a thud. She started crying. All of the patients in the LovinCare Corp facility had their own way of protesting their treatment. Mrs. McNeeley was a crier. "You shouldn't treat me that way!" she bawled. "My son used to be the President! The President of the United States of America!"

    Laura ignored her and moved on. Mrs. McNeeley made that same declaration every time it was time for her cleaning. In some part of her brain it sounded plausible. She did feel like she remembered a president named McNeeley, but she couldn't figure out where she would remember him from. Robert J. Minton was the president. And he had been the president before the reorganization and ever since. There had been presidents back before 1WG when there were still countries, And she had lived in the country called the United States. But as nearly as she could figure there had been three Presidents of the United States: Ronald W. Reagan, George W. Bush and the other one. Why could she never remember his name? She cursed her failing memory as she began to lift and scrub the next obese mountain of flesh. Ms. Bradford squinted hard and farted loudly as Laura wiped her. She had been saving it up and wished she had another to unleash against the callous treatment of the young LovinCare worker.

    Laura couldn't understand the resentment of the large old ladies. She figured that they should be happy that their families were Relations class and they could thus afford to keep them in a LovinCare facility. Laura was obese herself and she knew that as a member of the laboring class she would simply die when she became unable to care for herself. She cursed herself for how much her mind was wandering and placing her job in jeopardy. She tried to concentrate on her work.

    As she resumed scrubbing the mounds of flesh she began to fixate on the McRonald's Quad burger she would have at some point in the future. She didn't mind this thought as it didn't distract her so much from her work. Then suddenly the name that had eluded her popped back into her brain. The other president of the United States had been Sean J. Hannigan. She tried to form a mental association between Hannigan and the Hannity Housing complex where she lived since the two names sounded similar. She didn't want to forget the names of the presidents. It was important to remember.


Sean J. Hannigan [01]

    Sean J. Hannigan cursed the fog as he stared out of the immense plastiglass front of the Sean J. Hannigan airport. On most mornings he would fly here and draw comfort from the sight of the 200 foot tall letters that spelled out his name. Today he could see the outline formed by the light strips around the letters but he wanted a perfectly clear day so he could see the letters as they were intended to be seen. Today, of all days, there should be clear skies. In a matter of hours ExxoMo would be launching a hostile takeover of BMI Relations and his insides were churning over it. The fog's interference with his view of the enormous silver letters was flustering him much more than it should.

    It was probably something about the way the fog served to remind him that he was no longer president. When he had been president of the United States he would have called the weather net and gotten rid of the fog if it bothered him. Now the fog was one more thing that he had no control over. His life seemed to be overwhelmed lately by things beyond his control.

    He turned his head away from the plastiglass viewing window and caught sight of Karen Krystol. She was young, blonde, beautiful and already a Captain in the ExxoMo PCA, and a high ranking member of the policy board for the ESPCA. He wanted to just snatch her and take her into a restroom and force himself on her. Of all the ways in which the world had changed the one way that really bothered him was that women seemed to control everything now.

    His wife, Sharon Shafer, dominated him sexually. He was allowed to keep a mistress for the purposes of stress relief, but those were the only two women he had been able to bed in more than a decade. It angered him greatly. And he was too much of a coward to attempt to violate the arrangement his wife had imposed upon him. Sharon Shafer was a high ranking member of DarqueOps. How high ranking he could only speculate, but he was fairly certain that he could not so much as kiss another woman without his wife knowing about it.

    Karen was looking at him impatiently. He could see in her eyes that she was rapidly losing any respect she had ever had for him. She probably saw a withering old man when she looked at him. Oh how he wished he could spirit her into the restroom just over her left shoulder and show her how much of a man he still was.

    Karen was using a hand radio to prepare the other ExxoMo PCA officers to disembark even though he had not yet given her the order to do so. Everything seemed to be going wrong today. He had half a mind to start screaming at the young Miss Krystol but he doubted it would do any good. Ultimately, ExxoMo was either going to acquire BMI Relations today and it would be a good day or they would fail to and it would be an awful day. Solemnly he began walking toward the exit of the observation tower of the Sean J. Hannigan airport as the ExxoMo PCA cleared the area of civilians.


Sharon Shafer [01]

    Sharon Shafer held a mirror in her left hand and a printed report in her right hand. She was a very busy woman and she rarely took time to indulge in self-pity, but this morning she had locked herself in her office at DarqueOps HQ to do precisely that.

    She stared at the numbers on the report but they remained unchanged. Tomorrow's report would change a bit but in the wrong direction. The report was an official life expectancy report. It was telling her that she was old. She consulted the mirror. It was telling her the same thing. She still felt healthy and vital and strong; all of the surgeries she'd had made her look younger; but her age was still what it was.

    The life expectancy for an American woman had reached 85 back when she had been the 1st lady. But it had fallen precipitously in the decades since then. Some of it was her own doing since she was in the business of re engineering society by purging the excess population. But even excluding all of the accelerations, executions and genocides there was a worrying downward trend on life expectancy.

    The life expectancy for unemployeds was now 36.717 years. That number was inconsequential since there was a plan in the works to exterminate most of unemployeds soon anyway. The life expectancy for the laboring class was at 38.008 years. The life expectancy for the Relations class was 52.375 years.

    Some people in the Establishment viewed it as a separate class, some just viewed it as the upper end of the Relations class, and others didn't much care. But since the Establishment class didn't exist in any official capacity, and since there was no precise means of determining who was in it and who wasn't, there were no statistics compiled for it. She could give the order and have the statistics compiled if she wished to do so but she felt like she had a good enough idea without tempting fate by compiling a report which ought never be compiled.

    She decided that the Establishment lived a good five years longer than Relations and that gave them 57 years. And that was her age. From now on she was living on borrowed time. She did not want to die. Ever. She found the idea that some part of her body would simply fail to work properly absolutely intolerable. She should be able to buy a new body. She was Sharon Shafer after all. She fancied herself the most powerful woman on the planet. For all the good it did her. She could not even guarantee that she would live to be as old as her husband --or even outlive him at all for that matter. The sudden realization that she could die and he would live out the rest of his days enjoying the ExxoMo empire she had built was almost too much to take.

    Sharon flung the mirror across her expansive office and heard it shatter on the floor. She was not in the mood to do any DarqueOps work. She canceled everything on her schedule for the day, switched on the giant screens on the wall and set them all to monitor ExxoMo so that she could watch the bidding for BMI, and then buzzed her receptionist and ordered her to come into the office.

    During their eight year stint in the White House Sharon had built DarqueOps from its infancy. It was the next logical evolutionary step that Corporations should have their own autonomous intelligence agency. She had a knack for the work and had risen through the ranks so quickly that by the time she was done serving as first lady it was a simple matter to have her husband installed as the CEO of Exxon/Mobil. And in no time at all they had built ExxoMo into the most powerful corporation in the world. Now Robert J. Minton's Infocation corp had overtaken them in every way. She hated the man with a burning passion. If her husband could manage to acquire BMI Relations without screwing it up the day might still turn out to be a good day. But for now she was consumed with a general hatred for everything around her.

    Ms. Li, her receptionist, came into the office with a grave look on her face. She walked slowly across the hardwood floors to Mrs. Shafer's desk. Sharon Shafer gave her a silent look that confirmed her worst fears. Ms. Li was a very devout Catholic girl from Indonesia. What Mrs. Shafer wanted her to do was a grave sin. But she had no choice in the matter. She choked back silent tears and tried to fake a smile as she began to disrobe and reveal her taught young body to to the warm, sterile air of the opulent office.


Elizabeth Cohen [01]

    Liz Cohen picked up a Magazine with a solid white cover and 128 blank white pages. She keyed a magazine code and date into the back and then flipped it over to watch bemusedly as the liquid crystal paper transformed the cover from an empty white rectangle to the cover of People Magazine.

    There was a close up picture of Sharon Shafer on the cover. Sharon had been her old mentor. Much of what she knew about Relations had come from Mrs. Shafer. Liz had worked directly under her at Omnicom and had been her partner once on a McRonald's campaign that featured Hotcha the video music star. The videomercial for Sizzle, Sizzle, Shake It! had been number one on the charts for over a year. The videomercial was still played in fact. It had to be some kind of record for the longest running and most popular videomercial since the reorganization.

    Gazing at the picture of Sharon Shafer, Liz rekindled within herself the sense of pride she had from having played such a major role in McRonald's ability to raise the capital to acquire Yum Brands and Subway Inc. She felt like she had been personally responsible for the world functioning as it should.

    She broke with her tradition of examining the magazine sequentially from cover to cover and instead flipped right to the article on Sharon Shafer. The photos of her looked so young and beautiful even after so many years. Mrs. Shafer had aged beautifully and looked as commanding and charismatic as ever.

    The article itself contained no new news to anyone who followed Relations as carefully as Liz was required to. But she was glad that the lower level Relations class workers would be reminded of what a benefit Mrs. Shafer had been to the world.

    Liz paused and took a leisurely walk over to the window which extended from the floor to the ceiling. She gazed out at the new San Fransisco skyline. All of the new buildings looked so beautiful to her. So uniform and so perfect. The city of San Fransisco had been completely destroyed in the war on miseducation. Very few inhabitants of old San Fransisco were alive today, she was a rarity.

    Liz Cohen had been born in what used to be the country of Vietnam and she had been adopted by the Cohen family here in San Fransisco. She could remember all of the ugly buildings and the big ugly bridge from her childhood. It was all a mangled mash of colors and styles of architecture that didn't match. New San Fransisco was perfectly uniform and unfailingly corporate. A city-sized monument to corporate purity.

    Her next stop on her leisurely walk around her office was the vanity sink. She caught sight of her Asian features and cringed. She'd had her face reconfigured as best she could. Her nose was now more narrow and her eyes more circular and her complexion lightened. She could still tell that she had been born Asian however, and she hated it. She took her long blonde hair out of its pony tail and feathered it with her fingers. She was now surgically blonde but she feared that her hair still had an Asian limpness to it. She put it neatly back into its pony tail and washed her face and attempted to regain her serenity.

    Her serenity was what she felt gave her the edge in Relations work. High level Relations was very fast paced and stressful and yet she had always been able to tune out all non essential elements and find her calmness. She felt that calmness was something she was especially proficient at selling. The people wanted calmness yet none of them understood how to tune everything out and get it like she could. So she would sell them the image of calmness in consuming a McRonald's burger or a Taco Pizza. And the people would go mad buying it with every dollar they could find.

    That thought reminded her to get back to work. Calmness and serenity was one thing but she was bordering on dawdling now. She had very important work to do so she went back to her desk and set aside the magazine and took up her workpad.

    For months she had been working on paystub design for Manpower Inc. Manpower was the corporation that hired, fired and paid all of the Laboring class in 1WG. Every week, every laborer in the world was receiving a paystub with their cash that she had improved upon. She was individualizing everything about the paystubs, from the ads they had on them, to specific warnings and encouragements. For years paystubs had reflected specific warnings based on what the worker had done wrong. And encouragements would be vague accolades whenever it became necessary to take some of the workers' rights away or add to their duties. But now Liz and the team that worked under her at Rubicam Relations Intercontinental Incorporated were engineering paystubs that admonished and encouraged based on the workers' own psychological makeup. Workers who were more easily motivated by telling them that they were stupid would get admonishments telling them that they were stupid on their paystubs (and then there would invariably be ads for Infocation educational products underneath --Infocation was Rubicam Relations' parent company).

    She was now working on personally tailored encouragements. The trial program had worked fantastically and improved production by 1.33% vs. a control group. This stood to make a huge impact on the CFT(Capital Flow Totals) of 1WG. Lots and lots more money would change hands and land in corporate coffers. She was doing the subtle work that increased the health of corporations across the board. Again she swelled with a sense of pride.


Robert J. Minton [01]

    Liz had been hard at work on the paystub reconfiguration for about twenty minutes when the red alert alarm suddenly went off. The next moment a 3D projection of Robert J. Minton appeared in the middle of her office.

    "Employees of Infocation Corporation and all Infocation Subsidiaries, be advised that Infocation has just placed a bid for BMI Relations of $53,800 per share. You will be alerted to developments in the bidding process as necessary."

   Then the image disappeared and Liz waited for it to reappear. It reappeared almost instantly. "Executives and officers of all Infocation subsidiaries, as you have just heard, we have entered a takeover bid for Burson Marsteller Intercontinental Relations Incorporated. Please divert all fluid capital resources into the Infocation acquisition fund immediately."

    Liz Cohen had already done so. All officers with financial clearance had probably already funneled every available dollar into the acquisition fund. But they liked the imperious nature of the projection of Mr. Minton that reminded them to do so. Liz Cohen had an extra charge of excitement because she owned thousands of shares of BMI Relations already and if a bidding war was breaking our for the Relations firm she was going to be a lot wealthier by the end of the day.

    The 3D projection disappeared again and then to her absolute astonishment it appeared again. "Ms. Cohen," it addressed her directly. Suddenly her heart rate accelerated and she began to sweat all over. She became conscious of the fact that Mr. Minton was seeing a 3D projection of her and she began self-consciously fidgeting with her hair. Through a dry throat and with a wavering voice she replied "Yes?" meekly.

    "What do you know about Sharon Shafer?" Mr. Minton demanded. "You've worked with her before. Would she bring DarqueOps into a bidding war?"

    "Well, I don't even know for sure if Mrs. Shafer is in DarqueOps for certain."

    "Don't be stupid! OF COURSE Sharon Shafer is in DarqueOps, but obviously you don't know the answer to my question."

    With that the projection disappeared again. Her shell-shocked eyes remained fixed on the place where Mr. Minton's projection had been with a look of contempt upon his face. She suddenly hated herself. She wished she could call her words back into her mouth and try to answer the question again. She could have at last tried to guess about what Mrs. Shafer might do. Mr. Minton seemed like the perfect human being to Liz Cohen. He made the world function properly, and she had been given an opportunity to assist him and she had blanched and given a weaker answer than Mr. Minton needed. She was deeply, deeply ashamed.

    She saw her reflection in the window to the right of her desk and she cursed her Asian features again. And then cursed her parents for having adopted her from such an awful place as southeast Asia full of such hideously ugly people. Why couldn't they have just had her the natural way and then she could be Jewish like her sister Janet. Better yet, why couldn't she have been born into a proper Christian family like almost everyone else she knew. She was sure that Mr. Minton hated to look at her foreign looking face, and hated her because of it.

    Mr. Minton actually cared very little about Ms. Cohen's appearance. He viewed her as a commodity. She made money for Infocation so she necessary. If there was anything he hated about her it was the fact that he suspected she had sexual thoughts about him. Robert J. Minton viewed himself as a proper Christian in a world of sinners. He was chased, still virginal at age 46, and intended to remain that way always. Human sexuality was repugnant and he felt that all of his success in life was directly attributable to the fact that he spent all of his time in pursuit of power while others distracted themselves with the pursuit of sins of the flesh.

    Robert J. Minton had become the youngest president of the United States at age 29 by amassing such power that he could alter the make up of what he felt was an antiquated document, the U.S. Constitution. And after presiding over the United States as its commander in chief through Holy War II, he saw fit to dissolve it. The entire Constitution and then the United States of America itself for good measure.

    Mr. Minton sat at the head of a lengthy table in a darkened conference room in the headquarters of Infocation Corporation. Directly across from him was a wall that was taken up entirely by an illuminated vibrant blue flag. In the center of the flag was a large, white number 1. Along the bottom of the flag was a row of corporate logos. This was the flag of 1WG, One World Government. One World Government had been a huge leap forward for corporations, it got rid of many of the old rules that interfered with business. And there had been one president of 1WG since its creation in 2031: Robert J. Minton.

    Directly to his right sat Mr. Minton's mother, Ruth. She was chairman of the board of directors. There were two other men and four other women who made up the board of directors but they were inconsequential; spectators. Mr. Minton's mother was the only director who dared speak, and she would always differ to her son's decisions. His will was absolute. Infocation had a board of directors only because all corporations had one. But they knew better than to have an opinion without permission.


David Cohen [01]

    David Cohen opened his shutters and looked out on Gemilut Chasadim, a region that had once been the nation known as Jordan. After Holy War I it had been known as greater Israel. And since the reorganization, it had been known, simply, as part of Zone 8.

    It was a sandy oasis. A desert flower that he and his wife called home. His house was modest as compared to his wealth. He believed that refraining from ostentatious displays of wealth made him a good Jew. A young Arab boy came running up to the house with a tote and left it on the front doorstep. He went out onto the front porch to retrieve it. It contained his Starbucks coffee and his McRonald's Kosher breakfast. As he sipped his Coffee he took up a blank stack of newspaper sized papers and ordered a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

    He flipped to the financial and watched the hot box where the liquid paper was continually updating the price per share of BMI Relations. BMI Relations was the top story and it had a great many columns dedicated to it and they were rapidly changing as he tried to read. He locked the news columns so that they would remain static while he read them but his eye kept being drawn over to the continually rising price per share of BMI stock in the hot box. He smiled. His daughter Elizabeth had advised him to buy stock in BMI Relations over a year ago and today he was very happy that he had listened to her.

    He thought about his daughter Elizabeth, or Liz as she now preferred to be called. He wondered where he had gone wrong with her. It had been almost 5 years since she had renounced Judaism and announced that she had become a Christian. Christianity seemed like such a silly religion to him. He couldn't figure out how the world had gotten to be so full of them. Still, the Jews had benefited from their association with them. The Jews' alliances with the Christians during the holy wars was the reason that Judaism still existed and all of the other non-Christian religions did not. Some Jews were worried that there could some day come a Holy War III and the Jews could be the target of Christians as they had been a century before in World War II. David Cohen was sure that was just a bunch of worry over nothing. The Jews had done and would do nothing to provoke the Christians and the Christians would let them alone in peace.

    In a lot of ways Gemilut Chasadim and old Israel and all of it had been built by Christian dollars. Christian evangelicals were convinced that once the Jews controlled all of the Holy Land and demolished the Al Aqsa mosque and built a temple atop it that it would bring the rapture and Jesus would walk once more on the Earth. All of the money and military that they contributed to old Israel had seen to it that all of that had come to pass. And yet, as far as David could tell, there was no Rapture. And none seemed to be on the way. But the Christian evangelicals began backpedaling and saying that perhaps Biblical time was hard to understand and relate to Earthly time and that perhaps the Jews needed to inhabit the Holy land for a while in order to bring about the Rapture. A year, two years, fifty years? They couldn't say. But they remained convinced that the Rapture would be a long soon. It all seemed rather silly and he lamented the fact that he could raise a daughter that had bought into any of it. Maybe it was because she was adopted he thought.

    His natural daughter, Janet, was a fine Jewish girl. She had remained in Gemilut Chasadim and helped him oversee operations in the factory. David finished his coffee and took his breakfast with him and headed to the factory with a sudden urge to see his daughter Janet. Janet wasn't a highly ambitious, highly successful Relations executive with hot stock tips, but at least she was still here where he could keep an eye on her. After making a fortune in real estate David had moved the family here to the Middle East to capitalize on all of the available land that had resulted from the extermination of some 700 million Muslims during the first holy war. Here there was an unclaimed paradise. And she had left to go back to San Fransisco. Liz had assured him that San Fransisco was no longer populated by liberals and communists, but it was still populated by Christians; and that was just as bad in his estimation. And now she was one of them.

    As he walked along the path to the factory he spotted a Fly approaching. It was a newer one. A PCA Fly with big machine guns. It was heading directly for him so he stopped to see what was amiss.

    He was surprised to see a black woman land the shiny yellow Ford Fly a few feet away from him. Black people were rare, and here in Zone 8 he had never seen one before. Her Fly had a seal on it that identified her as a member of the FSPCA, Food Supply Private Corporate Army, and he wondered what business she had here, but just the same he raised his McRonald's Kosher bag by way of a salute to her.


Janet Cohen [01]

    Janet Cohen hated Arabs. She disliked the former Hindus and non-Arab former Islamists that were laborers in the factory also, but she had a particular hatred for Arabs. They were so hard to motivate. She imagined it must be because there were almost no unemployeds in Zone 8.

    On the network television that came from North America there had been a lot of discussion recently about how useless the unemployeds were and how the world might be better off if they were all allowed to starve to death. But Janet wished there were more unemployeds here to show the laborers how good they had it.

    Here in Zone 8 everyone that had been other than Christian or Jew was now laboring class or dead. As far as she could tell, the lack of an unemployed class competing for their jobs was making the laborers, and particularly the Arabs, very lazy and insubordinate. All that was asked of them was that they turn out an ever-increasing supply of Ray Ban sunglasses. For this they needed to work longer and longer hours with fewer breaks for the same pay, but they were fortunate to have jobs at all. In other Zones there were throngs of unemployeds that would be happy to have their jobs and indeed she had begun discussions with Manpower Inc. to see what it would cost to relocate masses of laborers from Zone 1 and create an unemployed class in Gemilut Chasadim out of the Arabs.

    There was one Arab girl in particular, Noura Nassir, that seemed impossible to motivate. She was 17 years old, always tired at work, and just as lazy as the days were long as far as Janet was concerned. Janet spied her on the floor now about to collect her pay.


Noura Nassir [01]

    Noura sighed as she counted the cash in her paycheck. The Paystub contained an itemized list of penalties, fines and deductions and it seemed that she was being paid less than half of what she was owed. And then before she knew it, Janet Cohen, the factory's overseer was standing beside her looking down at her angrily. She braced herself in case she was about to be hit.

    Instead Janet snatched her pay out of her hand and looked at it contemptuously. She would have ripped it in half if not for the sudden realization that her sister Liz had been responsible in some way for the paystub. She admired the workmanship of the paystub. The pictures were so simple that any laborer, no matter how stupid, should be able to interpret them. Janet handed the paystub back to Noura. Then she threw $1,000 of Noura's pay on the floor and pocketed the rest. Then she screamed at Noura for five minutes until Noura was reduced to crying at her feet and begging for her job. Janet screamed at her in Hebrew about how worthless she was as a worker and how she did not deserve to waste the air in Gemilut Chasadim.


Abdul Nassir [01]

    Abdul Nassir was a twenty year old newlywed. He missed his wife and wished he could see her but they had conflicting schedules. He worked at the Ford plant making Spider legs and his wife worked at the Ray Ban factory making sunglasses. There were only 8 hours per week where they were both home from work at the same time and some of that time was being eaten into as the Ray Ban factory had been asking her to stay late at work lately.

    Abdul felt inadequate as a man because even with both of their paychecks combined he could not afford to keep his wife fed and he did not want to go into debt. And as much as he loved his wife with all of his heart there were times when he simply could not wake up to spend time with her during their 8 hours. And there were times when she would be too tired to stay awake also. He so wished he could see her face but she would not be home from work for another 13 hours and he would be back at work at that time.

    He opened the door to his bedroom prepared to fall onto his bed and fall straight away to sleep. But there in the bedroom was Noura. She was hanging from a rope.

    Dead.



[next: Earth & Air, Wind, Water & Fire]

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