Eamon strained on the rope, pulling the cache high into the tree, above the reach of grizzlies. He needed that meat. Without it, he'd starve in the coming frigid months. He lashed the rope to a broken limb and wiped his brow. Hopefully, he'd reap the reward of his hard work.
Bushed, he sat at the base of the tree and carefully considered packing a pipe of his precious tobacco. He wouldn't die without it, but he'd sure miss it after it was gone. He pulled out his poke and stuffed a bit of the aromatic weed into a battered Irish Second briar. He'd live day by day, and when there was no tobacco, he'd live with that. Now, he'd enjoy it.
As he puffed the pipe into life, he savored the flavor. He liked that it kept the mosquitos at bay damn near as much as he liked the practically narcotic effect of the nicotine and the ritual of smoking a pipe combined. Maybe kinnickinnick would meet that need, when he had no more tobacco.
Relaxed and pensive, his body flooded with the endorphins that comes of hard work and the boost of nicotine, he considered his situation and how he got in it.
He'd been just another ordinary guy, with an ordinary job; ordinary dreams and ordinary vices, like the pipe. When the crash hit in '22 he scrambled for work like everybody else, but no one had any money to pay with, so he didn't get very far.
In less than two months he'd been homeless, living in his car. The cops would roust you if you were stupid and lazy and slept where it was convenient on public streets. But when you parked out of town, you spent a lot of gas getting back into the city to deal with food banks and the like.
Pretty soon he'd run out of gas. Unable to keep the car moving, he'd lost it when it got towed. Left with the clothes on his back, he ended up in the Baker St. gang, who commandeered an overpass as their fiefdom, protecting each other's stuff from the incessant and dangerous thieves that stole anything they could.
He'd been as pissed as anyone, and when the riots started he'd taken to the streets with the rest. Looting was a good way to get some necessary gear at first, but it didn't take long for the powers that be to crush the mobs decisively.
Then the President announced the Amero, a cryptocurrency like the Bitcoin, and he'd cheered like mad, because he thought the hard times were over. He hadn't liked Trump at all, but a blowhard with solutions was a better friend than a saint with nothing to get you off the street.
Eamon laughed at his naivete. He'd thought the new money would indeed get the nation working again, and solve his problems.
His real trouble started then. Hell, living under the overpass guarded by the Baker St. boys was the good old days!
The invasive biometric keys to the currency seemed appropriate, even necessary, given how hackers pretty much infested phone software at will, even if he hadn't liked his phone being able to scan his retina. You gotta do what you gotta do, and if that's what he had to do to get a paying job, then so be it.
He'd found work, and got paid in Amero, and it seemed like things were turning around, both for him and the country. It was menial and degrading, but it looked like he'd be able to afford a room before too long, and get out from under the bridge.
When the link to the President's American Ambassadors popped up on Fakebook, he'd signed on right away, grateful and wanting to add his little voice to the people that had been helped by the new currency.
That was where things had gone really wrong. At first, there were meetings online, 'chats' where people were sounded out on their support for the President. He'd been particularly enthusiastic, hoping for a better job.
Once he was in, the jobs had become pretty damn awful, even if the pay was good. Weird political skullduggery, posting lies about people, popping tires of the cars of those on the 'shitlist'.
Then he was told to kill some guy's dog. He didn't know why they'd told him to kill the dog, but when he went to do it, he couldn't. He told them to get somebody else to do it, but then he felt bad about that too, and actually stopped the bastard they sent from doing it.
That's when he was blacklisted. His phone was bricked. When he tried to borrow a phone to contact the Ambassadors, that phone bricked, and he almost got in a fight. He went to their offices to fix the problem, and found out there was a warrant for his arrest, when the clerk gloated that 'criminals like him' were fit only for prison.
Without his phone, he had no money, so couldn't buy any food, clothes, nothing. The Baker St. boys wanted him gone. The cops said he'd raped and killed a kid and had been asking where he was.
He realized the Ambassadors were going to take him out. This wasn’t a mistake. He was being set up because he’d not done their dirty work. They could use the Amero to control every aspect of his life, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
So, he fled the city and hit north, thinking Canada might be the place for him. It was the closest border to Bremeton, anyway. Once he got into the woods things were tough, but at least the problems were honest problems instead of lying evil people.
He'd walked for weeks, living on what he could scrounge and the odd bit of thievery from camps and isolated houses when folks were gone. He'd needed some things, and took what he needed, nothing more, but felt bad about it just the same.
When he found he'd made it past the border, Canada was no better. There was a different currency on the phones, different people running things, but it was the same program, and he was still locked out. His retina scan still bricked phones, and the Canadian cops were more prompt coming after him. Either they had less to do and more time to do it, or they were better at hunting down misfits.
He'd stayed out of towns and cities, and kept going until there weren't any roads, and no air traffic. When he found a good spot, he made a dugout camp lined with moss to protect him from the chilly nights and weather. He managed to trap a deer with a pitfall, and after laboriously dressing it out with a sharp piece of broken glass, had hung it in the tree.
He hoped it would get him through the winter. Seemed like there was no way to get out of the trouble with the Ambassadors. They could do anything they wanted, because everybody depended on them for money. No one would care what the truth was, least of all the Ambassadors. He was out here for good, looked like.
The pipe had been puffed into ash, so he tapped it on a heel to clean it out, and went to tuck into the warm, soft moss in the dugout to ward off the chill.
As he rose a sharp blow spun him around and smashed him into the tree trunk. Dazed, he saw his shoulder was almost torn off, and gushing blood. He couldn't see how he could bandage it, and stunned, just lay there watching the bright red blood soak into the mossy ground.
Odd, it didn’t hurt.
'I got the terrorist!' He heard an excited voice say and he turned to look. A group of civilians with hunting rifles had emerged from hiding in the brush, and were approaching incautiously.
'Woo Hoo! That bounty's gonna really...'
'Oh shit. He's still alive. Look! He's moving.'
They all stopped and pointed their guns at him...
I think this is one of the few times in my life I felt like I could not read fast enough. I had the feeling like I had to hurry and get to the end.
You are nailing it with your end time scenarios.
As I told you before I don't read much fiction, but because I read the other short story. I HAD TO READ THIS!
Imma hafta write a piece where the good guys don't die =p
I think it says a lot about me that all I've written of late involves the death of the protagonist.
Do you think any good guys can even survive in our world today? I think you are right on track!
I see that many are. I look to the future, however, and my own disavowal of hope colors my perception of the potential course our world will take. It says more about me than the world, IMHO.
All technology has potential. Whether it be used for good or for evil is down to choice.
And the only way to prevent a total wipe-out is to prevent a monopoly in technology or choice.
Your writing here is excellent and the story compelling.
Thank you for sharing.
You're kind. You're also right about monopoly, and how dangerous it can be to free people.
Thanks!
Chills down to my bone reading this, VC. Well done. The control and the subtle remark of how blockchain transparency can be used to disadvantage people. The power is ripe for the plucking.
The idea of a national cryptocurrency gone wrong made me wonder where you could hide from it.
The answer was 'No where.'
Aerial drones and facial recognition software make even the most remote wilderness just as easily surveilled as any town center.
Thanks!
I think we talked about the only way out will be underground!
On a different topic, you may well be interested in seeing this.
Helps to put a face to a name, or a real name to an @name.
Just the way the characters carry themselves tells us loads of information.
Thanks for the info once again.
Great story! These entries in the blockchains contest have been very sobering.
Thanks!
Brilliant! Yes, asymmetric information access is foundation of all authoritarian governing entities. Money is nothing more than representation of information regarding wealth, and controlling access points to money, effectively controls access to wealth. The security agent's duties resemble exactly the operations of the East German stasi and current US character assainations perpetrated by the luegenpresse and social media.
It is quite tragic, yet believable, that the Western corporatocracy would be indifferent to the proper training and the long-term retention of their security operatives. Well trained, highly skilled internal security agents are extremely valuable to proper functioning of a state; they are not the easily replaceable fodder of the military or the police. I suppose we live in an era, and will likely continue to live in an era, of inelegant governing methods that rely purely on obtuse force application. Such waste of resource, like the protagonist in the story, is downright sinful.
That brutish execution of political ends is endemic in Western corporatism, generally, I note. I visited a doctor for a wound on my knee that didn't heal. He took a sharpie and drew a cross on it, gave me 4 vials of unguents, and told me to apply a different one to each of the four quarters of the lesion, and call him after the weekend.
One of them seemed to be working, and he prescribed it.
While this was seemingly a blatant exercise in admission of ignorance, I found it vastly preferable to the more common practice of doctors of pretense to omniscience, in which they would say 'Ah, it's this you have, and this will fix you right up.' Then, as each unguent serially fails, they prescribe the next, until they hit on the one that works, or your leg falls off, whichever comes first.
Give me honest ignorance and experiment to discover the facts any day! Rather than ignorance, it is the pretense of being infallible that is most bestial and rude. This quality is remarkably evident in political discourse, in the need to divide 'us' against 'them' and so create political power.
That brutish execution of political ends is endemic in Western corporatism, generally, I note. I visited a doctor for a wound on my knee that didn't heal. He took a sharpie and drew a cross on it, gave me 4 vials of unguents, and told me to apply a different one to each of the four quarters of the lesion, and call him after the weekend.
One of them seemed to be working, and he prescribed it.
While this was seemingly a blatant exercise in admission of ignorance, I found it vastly preferable to the more common practice of doctors of pretense to omniscience, in which they would say 'Ah, it's this you have, and this will fix you right up.' Then, as each unguent serially fails, they prescribe the next, until they hit on the one that works, or your leg falls off, whichever comes first.
Give me honest ignorance and experiment to discover the facts any day! Rather than ignorance, it is the pretense of being infallible that is most bestial and rude. This quality is remarkably evident in political discourse, in the need to divide 'us' against 'them' and so create political power.
They don't call it medical practice because it's an exact science, but because they are practising on us.
I often ask my customers...... would they write me a check, if I told them their kitchen had a 50 percent chance of recovering when they hired me to remodel it.
but that is exactly what we get from Dr's and Lairs, oops I mean Lawyers....maybe?
I mispronounce that word 'lawyers' alla time.
It almost always comes out 'liars'.
Grrr! Steemit is broken again. I keep getting multiples when I post a comment. Dunno why it's happening, but I'm actually getting in the habit of writing it, copying to clipboard, posting it, and then canceling the post when I get the error message.
Sorry about the double post.
Another great story! When hubby found it, we read it right then. I just now have the time to comment.
I heard that before, back when we had our premarital counseling class. One of the ladies in the class works at a bank and confirmed that they already have Amero dollars printed and stored ready for the North American Union - Canada US and Mexico being one nation.
That said, it's not far fetched to have Amero crypto coin instead...
I tend to collate bits of information that inspire me when they coalesce into a vision of what could come of them, lately usually rather grim predictions.
I find it not likely to be coincidence that The Economist's prediction of the collapse of fiat paper currencies and replacement with a global currency was this exact year, either.
Well, the bits and pieces of information is out there for us to piece together. You're one of the gifted ones to see them and piece them together.
My husband and I talk about these things and like you, grim predictions. We're not pessimists but the way things are now, it's only going to be worse leading to "correction" (hahaha like a TA analysis). Seriously, there are no coincidences...
Great work here @valued-customer .. it almost feels so close you could reach out and touch it, one wrong decision away .. the blockchains of today morphing into the shackles of tomorrow. Indeed for those with freedom in their hearts, a world of chains will leave nowhere to hide. A great addition to the contest .. excellent stuff!!