Adaptive Curmudgeon

Billy and Doogie had just started mopping the floor when ECTO1 nearly plowed into the store. Achmed blinked in confusion. Doogie looked pensive. Billy beamed. Nothing says America like a private freelance ghost extermination team.

“Who ya’ gonna’ call?” Billy asked aloud.

“DON’T SAY IT!” Twitch erupted through the door, arms flailing.

“You drive a 1959 Cadillac hearse with a movie franchise logo on the side and you don’t want to hear the catch phrase?” Billy sneered.

“GHOSTBUSTERS!” Doogie shouted, grinning.

Twitch grabbed a bag from a nearby display and threatened to assault Doogie with a Super-sized Funyuns Pack.

“What on earth is a Ghostbuster?” Achmed interrupted.

Everyone paused, they all turned to Achmed.

“Really?” Billy growled.

Achmed suddenly felt very far from home. “Don’t throw coffee at me, I beg of you.”

All eyes turned to Billy’s three remaining cups, still steaming hot. Twitch focused on them like a laser. “COFFEE! NOW!!” Twitch reached for Billy’s coffee. “Nope.” Billy swatted Twitch like a gorilla might brush away a Chihuahua. Twitch fled to the coffee aisle and found it empty.

“IT’S ALL GONE!”

“Do you always speak in all caps?” Doogie teased.

“I got some coffee right here.” Billy warmed to the pitch.

“NEED IT!” Twitch staggered over Billy’s mop bucket and began pleading which, as is common these days, was a combination of whining and angry demands.

“One dime!” Billy cackled “Junk silver, two and a half grams melt value ought to do it.” He held out his hand as if everyone is carrying bullion. Incensed, Twitch grabbed one of Billy’s boxes of K-cups and waved it in front of the register’s UPC reader.

In an undisclosed location monitoring software which had been silent for weeks went apeshit. A logic statement had changed state! The NSA analyst leaned forward in his chair. He clicked a few keys. Monitors lit up with real-time video feeds. He grinned with malevolent satisfaction as he picked up one of his “special” phones. He loved using those phones!

“Get a chopper in the air. Now! I’ll brief you en route.”

Back in the store Achmed was wondering why the register had suddenly stopped working. Apparently, trying to sell more K-cups than the store actually had (by scanning one of Billy’s boxes a second time) had crashed the system.

Meanwhile Twitch was backing away from Billy while still clutching the box. Billy started stretching his neck in anticipation of some light aerobic exercise.

“You,” Doogie scolded “make bad decisions.”

Twitch’s arrival, like all of Twitch’s arrivals, was a whirlwind of chaos presaging the greater tragedy to come. If Twitch had been a skilled driver, his screeching, sliding, sirens-wailing near crash would be a manly ode to Dukes of Hazard Americana. Alas with Twitch, it was just another near miss on the road to inevitable disaster.

To the squirrels, who knew human nature sufficiently to wreak havoc on individuals but lacked the slightest understanding of culture, it was a shock.

“Holy Shit! Billy called the Ghostbusters!” chittered Mary.

“No, Doogie warned us.” Terry moaned, “They’ve been sent by the NSA!”

“The NSA can deploy the Ghostbusters?” What a terrifying power their unseen enemy wielded!

The squirrels were frantic. It was time for drastic measures. “Bart, get in there and retrieve Doogie!” Terry ordered. Doogie was a valuable asset in what might become a desperate battle.

The squirrel’s head games had never been entirely effective with Bart. Apparently racist bears were unmoved by sweet disco harmonies. “Screw that! I ain’t going out there to get my ass shot off by three guys with unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their backs.”

Twitch erupted from the vehicle, leaving the lights on, door open, and engine idling. He stumbled on the curb, bounced off a trash can, and, with the grace and dignity of a pinball, entered the store.

Bart and the squirrels looked at each other. There was only one Ghostbuster, and he wasn’t even carrying his Proton Pack! He looked like the sort of pasty weakling that would get beaten up by the roving packs of twelve year old fans of fantasy role playing games. This is apt because Twitch, who often sought work at Comic-Cons, had recently opined “Orcs are what happens when eighth graders don’t do their homework” and had wound up beaten into submission by a group of twelve-year olds taking a break from their favorite adventure; “Orc Wars.”

“He’s white…” Terry hinted,

“Racist bastard!” Bart slipped out of the car and trotted toward the glass door.

Twitch MacGuffin made bad choices. The evidence of this was… everything. Twitch had, of his own volition, chosen comic book colorist as his career. He’d inexplicably expected this to lead to money, respect, and women; in that order. So certain was he of this decision that he’d amassed a mountain of student loans in pursuit of this skill. Then he publicly announced he would, for the purity of his art, eschew electronic media; which rendered him unemployable. Finally, he pushed himself off the cliff when he bought ECTO1. ECTO1 was a 1959 Cadillac hearse, rebuilt and outfitted (at outlandish expense) to look like the famous vehicle from Ghostbusters. Twitch had felt ECTO1 would be a handy marketing tool; which it wasn’t. He also thought it would impress women; which it didn’t.

Twitch, who was immensely broke, lived in ECTO1; which is to say he slept nightly in a monument to bad decisions. It didn’t help that Twitch, who tended toward depression, was sure that sleeping in a hearse was tempting fate.

As the aggregation of unwise ideas bore down on him, Twitch escaped into pathos. Always straying into the strange, he decided he was addicted to coffee. He embraced caffeine in the manner most people associate with heroin. He drank unnatural amounts of the stuff with the earnest resolve of a man whose problems will all vanish if only his chest explodes while already ensconced in a hearse.

He saw the convenience store ahead, calculated that he hadn’t had coffee for 43 minutes and decided to stop. Any lesser man would arrive quietly, park discreetly, and make an uneventful purchase. Twitch floored it, turned on the custom installed Ghostbusters lights and siren, and careened into a wild skid which narrowly missed the pumps. He came to a halt with a screeching of tires and groaning of aged suspension components.

He was directly in front of the glass doors with one tire on the raised curb. Twitch had, as always, arrived with the subtlety of a plane crash.

For years, Billy had chafed under the blatant misdirection of Federal Reserve Notes. “Here’s some green paper. Before you were born it was backed by gold but now there’s no gold in the vault and inflation chews your ass while you run on the hamster wheel. We’re neither a bank nor the government and there’s nothing you can do about it. Kings claim divine right, dictators win by war, politicians sleaze their way through elections, but we offer nothing. Not a damn thing! Suck it up; you abrasive little shit, you’re gonna’ scratch and claw and work and grovel to get what we offer… which is just a green slip of paper. Bend over and trust us like the peon you are!” Billy hated it. He’d experimented with various alternatives; bitcoin, silver bullion, cell phone minutes, ammunition, canned goods, pot, Krugerrands, handshakes, barter, and hope, but nothing worked. Now he’d finally seen the one true path of the K-cup. He was delivered from oppression. Peace settled upon him. Everything was going to be all right.

Doogie wandered in and joined him. This was unusual. He didn’t expect Doogie to expose himself to the cameras that were surely watching. Since he’d met the squirrels, Doogie had become increasingly withdrawn and paranoid. Considering that Billy was a full-fledged isolationist loner that lived and breathed in freedom like a fish breathes water, the fact that he thought Doogie seemed “off” was really saying something. But Billy was feeling magnanimous and started to share his newfound epiphany.

“Check it out!” Billy waved toward the pile of K-cups in front of the register. “They’re easily recognizable, unitized, durable, and denominated. I’ve found the friggin’ alternative to Federal Reserve Notes!”

Achmed craned his neck to hear. He was curious why the lunatic wanted so much coffee.

“What’s wrong with Federal Reserve Notes?” Doogie shrugged.

“But! For the love of…” Billy stammered.

“The greenback is backed by the full faith of the Federal Government.”

Splash!

Billy, with lightening like reflexes, flung a cup full of steaming hot coffee at Doogie. It hit him full in the face in a painful torrent! Doogie sputtered and waved his arms about.

Steadying his emotions into a complex combination of pain at the coffee and fear that he’d disobey the squirrels (and thus be deprived of Abba), he pivoted to the mission.  “I can haul all this stuff to the car. Hand me your keys so I can open the trunk.”

Billy was still upset about the ‘greenbacks’ event. You think you know someone… Mind the size of a planet and then this? What. The. Fuck?

Billy pointed at the flatscreen. “Hey what do you think about that?” It was scrolling an announcement that Republican budget cuts would adversely affect the safety of kittens in city parks. Doogie followed Billy’s arm and saw the screen. He was entranced. The colors, the scrolling bar, the pretty girl reading words while bracketed by photos of adorable kittens. It all made sense. Yes! This was definitely a true thing. He was suddenly concerned with those kittens and very angry at those nasty corporate fat cats who caused it all! It was important to say this very true fact and make Billy agree with it. “I think she has a cogent argument. If someone would think about the kittens…”

Splash!

A second cup hit already scalded skin and Doogie stumbled back.

Achmed froze, there had been too much weird and he couldn’t process it all. Working nights at a convenience store, he was jaded to the depravity of most of humanity. But K-cup man had brewed eleven cups of coffee just for the purpose of burning the face off another customer?

Doogie was in too much pain to do anything but Billy had a plan. He roughly grabbed him and shoved his face in freezer. Doogie dimly registered a desire for a Dove bar. Then he sighed as the soothing cold calmed his skin. Alas the respite was brief. In less than a second Billy hauled him up by the belt and shoved his face toward the clerk.

“This guy!” Billy demanded. “Is he racist?”

Doogie blinked. The words came out of his mouth unbidden. “Yes. He’s white so….”

Splash!

When the third cup of coffee hit him, facts started reconnecting in Doogie’s mind. How could tax policy get a cat out of a tree? Since when was the cat/tree interface a Federal issue? How can you denounce a man you’ve never met as racist?

Billy was shouting at him again. “If I put on a dress and self-identify as the queen of England, what am I?”

Two thoughts fought for primacy in Doogie’s mind. Self-identity is always followed by assent. But if he agreed that Billy could be the queen of England he’d get a face full of coffee. He tried to sort it out…

Splash!

“You’re thinking too long. The answer is ‘I’d be fuckin’ nuts’. What’s wrong with you? Have you been drinking? Are you high? What the fuck is going on!?!”

Doogie’s mind was whirling. “It’s all crazy! Kittens! Racists! Russian collusion!”

Splash!

Doogie desperately tried to think of anything to make it stop. His face was on fire, coffee had splashed down his neck and his eyes were watering. Billy kept shouting questions inches from his ear.

“If I say two plus two is five what’s the fucking answer?”

Blinking back the pain Doogie tried to answer correctly. “Everyone is entitled to their interpretation…”

Splash!

“The answer’s four. It’s four. It’s four even if I’ve got a goddamn army. It’s four even if I drive a Rolls Royce. It’s four even if you’re told otherwise by a chick with enormous…

Something clicked in the middle of Billy’s exposition. Moving quickly, he grabbed “Genetically Improbable Sluts”, riffled through it and held up page 43. He positioned it inches from Doogie’s nose.

Doogie, sputtering with pain and confusion from the hot coffee assault blinked. He focused. There was something in front of his eyes. Kittens? Squirrels. Oh my….

“Hello? Are you in there?” Billy was shouting.

Doogie was slowly processing the scene from page 43. There was a lot to process… though all of it was nude.

“Um. Er.” Doogie was entirely out of thoughts. That’s the power of sex… well at least it was the power of page 43.

Billy was still working Doogie’s mind over with a figurative tire iron. “Are you concerned about that woman’s carbon footprint?”

“Polar bears and…”

Splash!

Doogie reeled back and for the first time, registered a new emotion… anger. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re…”

Billy shoved the page in front of Doogie’s eyes again. The page drilled through Doogie’s psyche and he suddenly could think of nothing but tits. Just like that, 63 hours of concentrated mind-altering programming faded into nothingness.

“What are you thinking about?” Billy demanded. He was about to cuff Doogie hard.

“They’re real and they’re spectacular.” Doogie beamed.

Doogie grabbed the magazine and held it before the clerk. “Yes, spectacular.” Agreed the clerk. It was a self-evident truth. Also, he was afraid the K-cup man would start hurling coffee at him.

Billy cocked his head to the side.

“Are you sure? Are you thinking about her carbon footprint?” Billy held another cup of coffee in his hand, swirling it menacingly.

“Um, who cares about carbon.” Doogie was flipping to page 44. He was not thinking about carbon.

“Kittens? Russian collusion? What’s a dollar worth?” Billy hissed.

“A dollar is worth anything you’ll give for it. I’m not sure where the kitten thing came from.” Doogie was wiping coffee from his face. The clerk handed him a bag of frozen daiquiri mix which Doogie gratefully accepted and pressed to his burned forehead. He tossed the magazine on the counter alongside the pyramid of K-cups and tentatively probed his lightly burned nose.

“You sure? I can do this all day.” Billy sipped coffee and leered.

Doogie looked at the remaining coffee. A cup in Billy’s hand, 3 steaming hot cups of coffee waiting on the counter, and the scattered remains of 7 cups around his feet. “Did you brew eleven cups of coffee in anticipation of throwing them in my face?”

Achmed blanched. That’s exactly what he did! K-cup man was a not merely a random lunatic but a coldly calculating menace! They oughta’ lock him up!

“Are you pissed off at corporate shitheads?” Billy prompted.

“Which ones?” Doogie asked. It was the most lucid voice he’d used in the entire encounter.

“The ones who won’t pay their fair share.” Billy swished his coffee, exuding menace.

“That’s bullshit. Whom defines fair share? What’s wrong with accumulating wealth?” Doggie was genuinely confused at the question.

“Welcome back.” Billy was satisfied. His friend was sane again.

“What’s all this about?” The clerk asked dubiously. Mostly he was wondering if he’d have to mop the floor after the menace had thrown coffee all over everything.

“Abba.” Doogie shuddered. “It’s all about Abba.”

If you think it makes perfect sense to brew eleven cups of coffee and hurl them in the face of someone who’s been exposed to excessive and unhealthy bullshit, you might want to click below:

The music returned. Doogie pleasurably nodded his head with the sweet melody. In the nearby convenience store Billy glanced over, saw Doogie smiling, and went back to whatever he was doing.

What was left of Doogie’s intellect knew the squirrel’s plan would never work. Nobody knows what they don’t know and the squirrels had no idea what a man could do. Doogie was male, intelligent, thoughtful, brilliant, kind, and inquisitive. But he wasn’t particularly manly. The squirrels, with the huge blind spot inherent in being gynocentric, didn’t recognize the gulf between male and man.

Doogie was male. Billy was a man. Doogie might, with luck, acquire the Subaru; use Billy’s trust to betray him. But that would be his undoing. Whether it was apparent on the outside, or even logically congruent with the modern world, Billy saw himself internally as a romantic hero. Billy’s soul was equal parts cowboy, warrior, and Norse god. He ached for the climactic showdown that would turn a mundane life’s story into a grand saga. Doogie or anyone else, who lit that fuse would rue the day. You do not “rustle” a cowboy’s horse. You do not steal a warrior’s sword. You don’t fuck with Thor!

If Doogie managed to steal the Subaru, he would have done all three; which would be the end. Billy would react, without hesitation, without mercy, without uncertainty, and without handwringing. Fish swim, birds fly, and Billy defends his stuff. Today, Billy’s sky was blue, take his car and his sky would be revenge. He was among the last dwindling portion of males who were still men.

Ironically, getting shot at by cops (the squirrel’s carefully designed and woefully inadequate double cross) wouldn’t faze Billy. He’d assumed all his life that someday someone would try to gun him down; whether it was cops, Russkies, or tentacled aliens would make no difference to him. Should a couple overconfident Barney Fife clones cross Billy’s Rubicon he’d bob and weave and come up firing himself; not something the average security officer expects. After a body count somewhere between Rambo and Terminator he’d unass the scene and disappear to one of his countless pre-planned bug out points. There he would bind his wounds and enjoy a dramatic moment where he’d swear to the Gods of the Free Market and vow on the grave of Adam Smith that revenge would ensue. Then he’d begin the hunt. Doogie shivered.

Perhaps that was fate? Billy never fit in at the University, it’s not a place where men feel comfortable (as opposed to males, who go there to hide from the burdens of men). Would Billy find personal fulfilment in a story of betrayal and ensuing retribution. The words sounded right for Billy’s world. He might enjoy the adventure. He’d love the chase, excel at the killing, and possibly make a very poetic warrior/monk eulogy for his slain adversary. It would be delivered silently and directly to Billy’s complex internal pantheon. Billy would stand reverently at the shallow grave where he’d put Doogie (or whatever was left of him) and solemnly recite something deep and soulful. He’d offer this to the competing influences of Odin, Ayn Rand, and the free market. Then he’d wax his Subaru like a Ronin Samurai tending to his katana and drive away; substituting fifth gear on the freeway for a saddled horse riding into the sunset. Maybe that was the true nature of things. Doogie could have been born specifically to give Billy a reason to think pensive thoughts while roaming the earth seeking vengeance, then solace, then enlightenment… in that order. Doogie couldn’t be sure. Billy was a bit “off” and a genuine romantic so it seemed right. Then again, Doogie was under the influence of disco. Disco makes odd ideas seem clever.

The music was interrupted, “Implement the plan now.”

Doogie sighed, it had been a good run. Now he was going to betray his friend and likely die at his hand.

Doogie stepped out of the car and breathed the night air. The scent of nearby pine trees mingled with hints of spilled unleaded. It was his last few moments on earth. Best to savor them.

Billy venerated a car worth eight grand, solely because it was his. Doogie knew this was a force multiplier in Billy’s favor. Even when the car wasn’t in play he was no slouch. He’d faced melee with a crazed transvestite MMA fighter simply because he wanted to protect Doogie (who he, with apparent justification, felt was helpless). Anyone who’d stand up to Janice’s epic fury based on a strange version of Chivalry is six shades of fearless. Turn the dial to eleven by involving the Subaru and Billy might win a bare-knuckle brawl against Godzilla.

Meanwhile Billy could be seen within the store. He was cackling with glee, prancing back and forth stacking piles of K-cups in front of a dumbfounded clerk. Doogie chuckled. This was Billy’s Church of Freedom. He was probably lecturing the clerk about fractional reserve banking and the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The clerk was surely baffled. Doogie smiled. If he was going to get beaten to death for car theft there couldn’t be better man for the job than his friend; the happy freedom warrior who’s obsessed over fiat currency. It was going to be a righteous death.

If you think plots involving a romantic, free market, libertarian, cowboy, samurai, Norse God, college dropout with an unhealthy attachment to vengeance and his Subaru is less of a cliché than yet another fucking superhero movie, you might want to click below:

[Edna would like to point out that run-on sentences are the hobgoblin of the unevolved mind.]

The entire staff of the new tri-county, anti-drug, community interdiction, special programs, environmental task force team, pilot project were pensive. All two of them.

Their “stakeout” wasn’t helping. After various home appliances and a cat had flown from the window of their intended target, they knew they were in over their heads. Janice, the locally popular, and by all accounts unstable, transvestite MMA fighter was throwing serial fits in his/her/its apartment. If they tried to bust the human trainwreck at this juncture (for any one of the thousands of illegal, grey market, probably dangerous, and definitely unholy concoctions he peddled) the best they could hope was the drywall they got kicked through would be thin.

But if they didn’t make a bust soon it was back to cleaning outhouses at the Parks Department!

The phone rang. Their buddy at the local police dispatch, who they plied with donuts to get the inside track, had a hot tip. There was a big bust going down! Tonight, during the MMA match, a gang of drug dealers was going to trade a new Audi for a suitcase full of heroin.

It was going to be fun! The campus cops were all signing up for overtime. The local police were going to use their cool drug interdiction van. The Sherriff was going to bring his SWAT truck. The local press might have a helicopter lined up. It was the party of the season. Be there or be square.

The fellows pondered for a minute. They didn’t have any cool tactical gear. You can’t go to a party without proper attire. With the creativity of people who really hate cleaning outhouses, they formed a plan. One of them grabbed the phone and called a pal at Fish and Wildlife who handled poachers.

“Hey Ed? You there?”

“Yep, what’s up fellas? I thought you were chasing drugs?”

“We are. There’s an awesome drug bust coming up and we don’t have any cool tactical gear. Seize anything big lately?” (It’s a perk of the enforcement of Game Laws that anything used in the commission of a game violation is seized by law enforcement. This is why trophy elk are generally shot from some of the nicest trucks in town, often with impressive high-end firearms. In one storied case, a nefarious criminal somehow used an antique collectable double barreled shotgun to kill an out of season trophy elk from the seat of a new jet ski. The shotgun auctioned for enough to outfit a new truck with a lift kit and 33” Super Swampers. Ed used the truck to trailer the jet ski to all the regional interagency team building exercises. Everyone loved Ed.)

“I dunno’ guys. Anything involving the University is probably total crap. It could turn into a circular firing squad.”

“Did we mention the criminals are racist? We could bring you along so you get in the newspaper article about it.”

“Racist? That’s different!” Who wouldn’t want to be in the newspaper article about nabbing a racist?

“Yep, literally Hitler! So, what do you have?”

“I can set you all up in every kind of camo you’d want. New boots and hats and vests and everything. Probably matching outfits. Maybe you can sew on nametags to make it look real professional.” (A local outdoor clothing store had inadvertently trafficked in a forbidden sailfish mount someone found at a garage sale. Ed had enough clothing to outfit an army and it would really look like an army too.) “And then there’s the thing from the bust last year.”

“What’s that?”

“Somebody was using an antique Gatling gun with a laser sight.”

That sounded weird. “Really? Are you sure?”

“Look, it killed a deer OK? And besides, the media people will say ‘machine gun’ and paste a Wikipedia photo of a truck mounted minigun or something. What do you say? It’s really fun to shoot.”

“OK. Let’s do it.”

If you think a Gatling gun with a laser sight is a logical tactical solution to raccoons in your garden, you might want to click below:

“Bullshit”, Doogie thought, “is there no power that can stop it?”

Doogie was engaged in the biggest intellectual duel he’d ever known. Bullshit is all powerful. He had to accept the truth. He’d already lost.

Mind manipulation works even when you’re aware of the situation. Doogie had known all along what they were doing. But they were devious creatures and each attack was just subtle enough that his ample mind could rationalize away what had happened. Each attack lead to the next, which was incrementally stronger. Eventually there was no going back.

Before moving to the next step, the squirrels administered a series of tests. Doogie felt an overpowering urge to “pass the test”. He was in deep and he couldn’t help himself. He might as well be a tenured professor.

“If a voter disagrees with you are they literally Hitler?”

It was a mechanical voice, synthesized in iSoftware running on an iDevice hidden somewhere in the car (Doogie had no idea where it was hidden). The signal was routed through the Subaru’s Bluetooth enabled radio, and sent straight to Doogie’s cerebral cortex.

Doogie winced. This was one of the hardest questions. He knew that anyone who was literally Hitler would be moustached, 128 years old, speak German, and be dead of suicide in 1945. But he let reason fade and emotions rule. As he’d been trained to do, he stuck to the narrative.

“Yes.”

“Excellent!” The voice agreed. Doogie let out a grateful sigh as six notes of Swedish disco floated through the speakers; his reward. Then the next question: “Why don’t we have electric cars?”

Doogie fought back discussions of energy density and battery limitations. “Big oil stops them.”

“Good. And if males and females are equal, which one is better?”

This was an easy one. It was the first lesson in the squirrel’s indoctrination regimen. There no longer was a juxtaposition in Doogie’s mind between equal and better. He blurted out the answer without thinking (which was the whole point): “Females. Better. Always.”

The squirrels nodded to each other. Bullshit was well established and functioning properly. Time to pull the trigger.

“What is the plan?”

“Get Billy’s keys somehow, deliver him to the stadium willingly or unwillingly, leave him to take the fall when the police strike, continue on to Portland.” Doogie intoned. Under the squirrel’s direction this seemed so right. It appeared the natural course of action. The logical part of his brain was overruled by the emotional. It felt right therefore it was right. Always do what feels good. Relax and enjoy the bullshit.

“Inform the police.” The squirrels ordered.

Doogie made the call. Reluctantly extracting his cell phone from its Faraday cage envelope and placing an anonymous tip that a certain Audi was to be sabotaged at the University stadium this evening. He gave the car’s license plate and warned that the criminal was almost certain to be armed. Just to be sure he hinted there would be drugs in the car. Mention drugs to a small-town cop and their eyes gleam with the promise of future budget requests. Adding icing to the cake, Doogie added “I hear he’s a racist.” That would do it!

Quickly Doogie hung up, turned off the phone, and stowed it away. The University was in a small town, a vandalized car would be the top crime of the fiscal quarter. Nabbing a car vandalizing, racist, drug dealer would improve everyone’s budget projections! Several overstaffed overlapping police forces, the University rent-a-cops, and the county Sheriff would be there. They’d probably freak out and shoot everything in sight, Billy, the Audi, passersby, and each other. Strange things happened when trigger happy bored people in overlapping jurisdictions are deliberately misled by the brainwashed.

While it’s true that no power can stop bullshit, donations can generate bullshit:

Billy glanced at the car again. Doogie was bobbing his head in time to some unheard song. Good. This meant there was time for coffee.

This was new. Instead of crusty unwashed industrial sized coffee machines with tanks full of hours old sludge, there was a sleek little device. It was a Keurig coffee maker. Next to it was a display of various K-cups and instructions on how to use it. The instructions were in every language known to man as well as pictographs for the ever-growing population of functionally illiterate zombies who can’t understand the simplest words. Billy, who was born in a world that didn’t need pictographs on a toilet paper dispenser, ignored the signage, glanced at the device, and understood its function in a millisecond. Did this creation control the entire coffee situation? He frowned, who lets a monopoly dominate their drug supply?

There were lots of K-cups; literally hundreds to choose from. Interestingly, they all had Keurig’s seal of approval, but some mixed in additional branding; Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, McCafe, etc… The invisible grounds within apparently taking on the cachet of its sponsor. How long before ghettos had a shootout for Nike branded coffee? Would toddlers be screaming for a K-cup with their favorite Disney princess? Naturally cautious, Billy wondered if he should double his hidden coffee bean cache? Then he noticed an off-brand cup that was virtually the same but just different enough to avoid a lawsuit. Whew! No worries with the monopoly thing.

He examined the cups like an anthropologist puzzling an exotic culture. What did they mean to freedom?

Small, portable, interchangeable, clearly labeled, long shelf life, distributing something everyone wanted, some were addicted to its contents, it was consumable, unitized… Oh My God!

Hastily, Billy jammed a cup in the dispenser. It produced an entirely adequate cup of coffee. He jammed a second one in and made a second cup. He sipped carefully. Both were identical. Interchangeable.

He dropped an unused K-cup from shelf height to the floor. He picked it up, shook it, stuffed it in his pocket, withdrew it, tossed it on the counter, tapped it with his finger, rolled it around a bit. Then he minutely examined it. Perfect. Unfazed by rough handling. Durable.

With shaky hands, he grabbed a “gourmet” brand from an upper shelf and made another cup. He sipped. Yes, it was slightly better. He made a few more cups, examining different types and qualities. Decaf, high end, low end, even one that made hot cocoa for the kids. Yes! They were all precisely identical to each other and slightly differentiated from others of different kind. Outstanding!

Interchangeable, durable, denominated.

Billy saw the whole shebang! When the greenback finally tanks… When they realize there’s not enough gold in Fort Knox to even pretend, when they realize there’s not even enough paper to back the digits, when they realize “full faith and credit of the United States Government” means jack shit… When a digit in an account that aggregates the idea of non-existent slips paper that haven’t represented physicality for generations… when the whole fractional reserve banking house of cards comes crashing down….

The K-cup could become currency!

Billy gripped the counter as the insight rolled around in his head. He had seen the heady heights of the truth and was literally awestruck.

“How much coffee can you possibly want?” Achmed interrupted Billy’s reverie. He waved at Billy’s eleven cups of coffee.

“All of it!” Billy grinned. Cackling with glee, he gathered up several dozen boxes of cups and dumped them in a pile next to his beef jerky.

Everyone knows Federal Reserve Notes are totally valueless. Fortunately, you can route them through PayPal (or Patreon) and I’ll turn them into genuine fiction:

As he assessed the store, Billy’s heart soared. “This is it!” He mused to himself. “This is the mighty engine of capitalism, harnessed at the yoke, existing only to serve me.”

He breathed it all in; flickering fluorescent lights, lottery tickets, cigarettes, antifreeze, maps, e-cigs, condoms, tabloids for the willfully ignorant, newspapers for the unwilfully ignorant, magazines about guns, motorcycles, and knitting. Gleaming aisles of every sugary concoction known to man, from Poptarts to powerbars, Necco Wafers to Nerds, Twix to Twizzlers, Skittles to Snickers, bubble gum to gummy bears. He gleefully noted the twin pillars of suburban sin: tobacco and porn. He basked in the amazing power of the free market. Bacon flavored potato chips. Tragic hot dogs spinning helplessly on their rollers. Matches, mayonnaise, microwave burritos. It was an abundance of everything. Fireworks, flags, and fidget spinners. Fifty varieties of beer filling a wall. The beer situated next to a case with eggs, butter, and milk. Next to that a freezer packed tight with bags of ice, mountains of ice cream, and frozen yoghurt derivatives for folks who want ice cream and can’t admit it. Next to that there was a colorful array of “sport drink” for people who don’t do sports. Then came energy drinks for people with no energy. This was accompanied by sodas in sizes ranging from large to massive.  On and on it went.

Billy savored the glory of it all. Cheese in stick form, meat in jerky form, cheese sticks and beef jerky shrink-wrapped together in a greasy dance of sodium enhanced shelf life. Five varieties of bottled water; each one with graphics intended to convey its unique purity. All in disposable plastic bottles. Sugar in every possible arrangement; pressed into jelly beans, formed into candy, sprayed onto popcorn, suspended into soda, etc… There were pre-shelled hard-boiled eggs for those who think shelling an egg is too much work. There were salads trapped in plastic boxes for the few with the willpower to slip past the beef jerky. There was a plastic basket of waxy apples for the occasional loon willing to eat an apple that had been manhandled by a thousand earlier customers.

There was nothing on any shelf anywhere that some busybody wouldn’t protest. Everything was fattening, wasteful, too large, “bad for you”, or otherwise deplorable. To which the American people had sneered, “Fuck off and hand me my smokes.” The place was a garden of freedom!

“This is my nation!” Billy thought. “This place is meant for my people. It is our church, the church of plenty. The place where anything you can possibly imagine will materialize from the universe and it will present itself to you… for money.”

“Looking for anything in particular?” A man in a blue polyester uniform was manning the cash register; the pulpit of the church of plenty. His plastic nametag read “Hello, my name is Achmed”.

“I want an assault rifle, a tank of unleaded, a big gulp soda, a lottery ticket, a giant candy bar, a case of beer, a bag of weed, and a magazine with disgusting porn.” Billy requested. To him, it was almost a prayer. “I want it all, and I want it now.” He chuckled to himself.

“We don’t have any gun stuff.” The clerk took Billy’s request (made in jest) in stride. “But you can get a hunting license?” He waved at a pile of pamphlets. On the cover of the pamphlets was a photo of a man clad in camouflage flipping through a tiny book of regulations; with a dead elk at his feet. The man had a rifle slung over his shoulder in the manner of a model who’s never held a firearm in his life. The elk sported an enormous rack and probably grew up on a farm. None of them had mud on them. Billy snorted derisively.

Ignoring Billy, the clerk turned his attention back to a flatscreen on the wall. It was muted. He was reading a closed-captioned version of what passes for news. Apparently, people from a place he couldn’t identify were busily at war with their neighbors over something that either happened yesterday or in 1864. This was the fault of the American president, or congress, or global warming, or maybe all three. Possibly it was related to… the screen turned to an erectile dysfunction ad and the clerk’s mind dropped the thread. Now he was thinking about his dick.

Meanwhile, Billy prowled through the store bringing things to the cash register and adding them to a growing pile. His pile! Billy’s pile of shit that people disapprove of. Billy hummed to himself.

Billy took his time paying homage to the wonders of modern materialism. He glanced out at the car. As agreed upon, the animals were in hiding. Doogie was tapping the dash and grinning.

The pile grew. First came the 5-pound bag of sugar. He found it near the pancake mix. Who buys pancake mix at a gas station? Americans!

Then he added an assortment of beef jerky, a packet of sunflower seeds, a muffin, a case of cold beer, and ice for the cooler. Something was missing. After pondering a minute, he decided there wasn’t enough freedom.

He reached for the magazines and grabbed copies of “Concealed Carry Shopper’s Guide” and “Genetically Improbable Sluts”. The first claimed that this magazine would, for all eternity, solve the “autoloaders versus revolvers” conundrum. The second had a cover that would make a rutting weasel blush.

Yes… that’s good.

Then, because the recent proposition had passed, Billy tossed a bag of THC Gummy bears in the mix.

Freedom!

Remembering his initial purpose, he reached for his debit card. Now, should the invisible specter of the NSA be wondering why Billy had been acting out of character, it would see the sugar purchase and correlate it with his enemy’s dead Audi. Theoretically this mundane explanation (which was highly unlikely to be prosecuted) would throw them off the truth. It was Occam’s Razor; “pissed off jilted asshole nukes an Audi” is far more plausible than “sinister freedomista and his genius sidekick are harboring white collar fugitives in the form of lesbian activist squirrels and their pet racist bear”.

Before the clerk started ringing up his purchases, Billy decided he hadn’t purchased enough unhealthy addictive substances. Turning from the counter, he sought out coffee.

Like Billy, I love to buy freedom in heaps and piles. If you want to help, click below:

Billy stood before the big glass doors and smiled. It was an all-night convenience store. It was devoid of customers, except Billy. It was all for him!

He took a step forward and the doors opened noiselessly. Merely a matter of proximity sensors and motors but it felt like the building was welcoming him; indicating that he, Billy, was a full citizen to the nation of plenty within.

He was there to buy sugar and (more importantly) use a credit card while doing it. The sugar was for the gas tank of an Audi belonging to his ex-girlfriend’s (that bitch!) current boyfriend (asshole!).

Billy had mixed feelings about the sugar. The logic of committing a crime (vandalism?) and leaving a faint trail in that direction specifically to obfuscate much greater crimes sounds good, but only in theory. Once you’re doing it in reality, it seems like overthinking things is making you catch yourself on behalf of lazy cops. For that matter, the recent whirlwind of online purchases sent to random locations and epic levels of account shuffling, seemed only vaguely illegal and not clear cut like trashing a dude’s car. Billy sighed, that was the root of it. The car. He had to admit all his misgivings were just rationalizing his distress about the car. Billy was a man of morals. He was ethically troubled by injuring an Audi.

In a better world, he could just piledrive the twit who needed a good ass kicking and leave the innocent Audi out of it. But life is not ideal. He had to agree with Doogie that a property crime against an Audi was a small and likely ignorable event compared to someone found laid out cold in a parking lot.

People are strange that way.

Any donations will be taken to the Church of Awesome and exchanged for diesel and beef jerky: