Carol had been following the events of New Year’s Day and the day after. She tuned into NPR, which always had good news on. NPR was broadcasting that some police stations were hit by the terrorists on New Year’s Day. She rolled her eyes at the teabaggers — New Year’s? Really? They were so unimaginative. “New year, new bosses,” was probably their message. How juvenile.
NPR commentators discussed how the teabaggers were attacking police stations to steal guns. That made sense: the Neanderthal teabaggers loved their guns — and using guns to impose their narrow views on everyone else.
NPR was reporting that, in a weird set of coincidences, some government officials were killed in apparent home invasions by street criminals. The break-ins were probably just to get some food to eat, Carol thought. NPR explained that people who broke the laws, usually greedy people thwarting the Recovery, had their FCards revoked and probably were stealing to eat. Just follow the laws, Carol thought, and you’ll be taken care of. Society was a compact where the people agreed on the laws and punishments for breaking them; break the laws and society doesn’t need to take care of you. It was only fair. Revoking FCards from lawbreakers was how the authorities were helping people make sure to follow the laws.
Lastly, NPR mentioned that there had been some attacks in Olympia, but the legitimate authorities put it down and were firmly in control. NPR said to expect some teabagger propaganda soon with altered photographs claiming to show they had taken Olympia. The police captured some documents in which the teabaggers detailed their plan to falsely claim that they took Olympia. That was just like the teabaggers, Carol thought. The only thing they have is lies. Who would believe those so-called “Patriots”?
Carol forced herself to turn off NPR so she could get to sleep and get to work well rested. She was careful to quietly go into her bedroom. Her little off-campus house was full of new houseguests. Her first set of guests in June, Maria and her two adorable little boys, Enrique and Fabiano, were refugees from Los Angeles after the riots. They were undocumented immigrants and the good people of southern California, unlike the rednecks in Texas, tried to accommodate as many of them as possible. But years of underspending on social services and public infrastructure in California meant there weren’t enough resources for them down there. Seattle gladly took them in, and Carol volunteered to house them. They were issued FCards and lived with her until right before Thanksgiving. Then they were given jobs in eastern Washington at a potato processing plant. They were sad to leave but understood that everyone needed to do their part for the Recovery.
This freed up Carol’s little house for more houseguests. Right before Christmas, she received word that she’d be getting a family from Olympia. She wasn’t told much about her new family, a nice couple with two high-school aged sons, due to security concerns. Apparently, the mom in the family worked for some important state agency and the family was relocated to a safe place like Seattle. They didn’t talk much about Olympia, but it sounded to Carol like things had been rough on government officials down in Olympia over the previous few weeks. Not everyone was pulling their weight for the Recovery, it seemed, and there were some greedy people jealous of officials who were working hard to help people. The mom still worked for the state agency in the offices they took over at the University, and the dad volunteered for the FCorps. The sons had joined the National Guard and were preparing to start training. They were a very nice family.
Carol appreciated the extra FCards the family brought to her house. As public employees, all four of them had a generous amount of credits, which was good because food and little luxuries were becoming harder to find in Seattle. They were still available, it just took some searching. The mom, in particular, seemed to know which stores had things. The alternative was the black market, which seemed to be gaining strength every day. It was becoming common for people to openly buy and sell from the little stands that were popping up on street corners. Everyone knew the buying and selling, usually by barter and without all the necessary permits, was illegal. Yet no one seemed to shut them down, except occasional ones who were made into examples. Carol made her first illegal purchase at the end of December. She really, really needed some pretty wrapping paper for a winter solstice gift for her new houseguests. She traded a pound of coffee she purchased with her FCard for the wrapping paper, which was adorned with cute little reindeer. It was for a good cause: she was brightening up her houseguests’ holiday after they had to relocate.
Carol tried to be as quiet as possible when she tiptoed from the living room into her bedroom. As she walked by the two sons sleeping on the couch and floor, she wondered why her family, mainly her brother, couldn’t be like them. Nice. Helping in the Recovery.
Chapter 312
Life in Forks
It was almost midnight in Forks and Steve Briggs was getting ready for tomorrow. It would be January 3rd tomorrow and would be another day in Forks of… surviving. But, in reality, his day tomorrow would consist primarily of just visiting with people. There wasn’t much to do this time of year in the near-constant rain and long periods of darkness; no gardens to tend, no decent hunting, and few fish in the rivers. There were things to repair, but usually no parts, and routine patrols to go on in town, but life in Forks meant doing a whole lot of nothing.
Surprisingly, this was just fine with Steve. The Collapse Christmas in Forks had been monumental. The whole town seemed to pull together. Carolers strolled through the streets singing Christmas carols. People gave each other meaningful, but simple, gifts. And there was that fabulous after-dinner moonshine sipping session after Christmas dinner at city hall. It was not a bad way to spend the winter.
People weren’t eating as well now as they were in the fall or especially summer, but the majority of people stored food from the times of the year when it was plentiful. Not all of them did, and some who did didn’t store as much as they should have. Everyone was losing weight, which wasn’t such an awful thing. Steve had to admit that country living before the Collapse put on the pounds. Big country breakfasts made sense when people worked hard physically all day logging or doing something similarly as exerting, but before the Collapse, that wasn’t exactly the way of life. People just ate like it was. When the Collapse hit, people became physically active in ways they had never been before, while no longer having access to a grocery store full of sausage, butter, and gravy mix. It became common for those XXXL shirts to start draping over men and women like an oversized blanket on their now-L frames.
Crime was still a sporadic issue, but there was no looting. Shooting people early on worked, as much as Steve wished it hadn’t had to happen. Now, with a couple months of the Collapse behind him, Steve could see things differently. The pre-Collapse shitbags in town (and there were quite a few) could be shitbags when the living was easy, when the EBT cards had money on them and the store had plenty of Doritos. Now it was much harder to be a shitbag. They got over their lazy lifestyles pretty quickly now that they had to actually work and no one just handed them anything. Oh, sure, it took a period of adjustment and some of the shitbags never adjusted, but they were quickly shunned by the community or, in some cases, shot when they were caught stealing.
Steve was especially happy to see some of the young people change their shitbag ways and… grow up and become productive. He had to admit it was hard to be a young person in pre-Collapse America and not give in to the shitbag lifestyle. They were told, starting in middle school, that it was okay to get “public assistance.” In high school, the schools were one-stop social service centers preparing the kids for a life of public assistance if that’s what they chose. And there were almost no jobs for them, so who could be surprised that so many got on the dole? He went from being mad at them to feeling sorry for them. It was so obvious that politicians created this. They got votes from people for “caring” and providing “public assistance,” and they got votes from young people, the few who bothered to vote, to keep free stuff flowing. Those “caring” voters and young voters were often just enough for the side proposing even more spending to win. Now, after the Collapse, it was so obvious to Steve.