The Brave New World 54 Food for Though

Li Yang and Harper and Charlene Lee stood in the block-long lineup to collect food distributed out of the army truck parked at the end of their street. It was an unseasonably warm day: it was warmer out, with the sun shining, than it was inside their apartment. But one of the things they'd learned while standing in the lineup was that heating would soon be switched back on for a few hours every day.

Almost everyone in the lineup was talking about the news they'd heard on TV on Sunday - the day before. And almost everyone was speculating on the amount that would be paid out under the new guaranteed income program. The general view was rather pessimistic.

"Those assholes will take any chance to rip us off," said a tall black man in a red beanie and black windcheater. He stood just a couple of people down the line from Li Yang and the Lees, and they heard every word he said. There was a murmur of agreement from people around him. Emboldened, he continued:

"We'll be lucky if they match what they used to pay in welfare. And y'all heard about everyone switching to the new currency. They'll use that switch to rip us off even more, you'd better believe it."

"But they said everyone will be allowed to coin their own money as long as they register," a voice piped up further down the line of people.

"That's just another trick to rip us off," the man in the red beanie said. "Yeah, you can start your own private little mint. But the coins have to meet all those requirements and anyway you're to turn over half - half, d'you hear? - of all the coin you make to the revenue people."

"I'm applying to be one of those new tax collectors the moment they begin hiring," said another voice. "That's gonna be much better than owning ten fucking mints, for sure. I heard that they gonna get a fat cut from the take."

"Let me tell you something, brother," the man in the red beanie said gravely. "You become one of those new tax collectors, you'll shortly become a corpse. Or a fucking cripple. Those guys, they're gonna run into some serious aggravation."

"Bullshit! Everyone will be kissing their asses. You can lose the guaranteed money on their say-so."

"We'll see," the man in the red beanie said darkly. "We'll see."

The long lineup rippled as people at the front left it bearing cartons filled with army rations, and everyone took a couple of steps forward. The people who had collected their food hurried home, clutching the cartons tightly and ignoring questions thrown at them from people waiting in the lineup. They were in a hurry to get home and eat, and the cartons were heavy: each contained fifty MREs - in army parlance Meals, Ready to Eat. And each of the foil packs containing the meals weighed between five and seven hundred grams, depending on its contents.

Once they'd carried the heavy carton home, most people would rush back to rejoin the lineup, hoping to get another handout. Li Yang had noticed the line of people waiting wasn't getting any shorter: new people joined it as fast as people got served. At this rate, the truck would soon be empty. He'd agreed with Harper that they would return for seconds after they'd taken their food home. But now it seemed they might have to give up on that plan.

Unlike the man in the red beanie, Harper had been very optimistic about the potential offered by minting their own money. Li Yang had pointed out that smelting the needed alloys and making coin casts was bound to be a difficult process, far too specialized to be successfully executed by a couple of amateurs. But Harper said:

"And that's why we won't be doin' any coin casting. We're gonna hammer them out. We just need a couple of dies, one for the front and one for the back of the coin. Aluminum is soft. And it's all over the place. A bag of empties and you got a kilo of aluminum, enough for a hundred coins. Ten grams per coin, like the man said."

"He said that coin will be worth one cent."

"He also said that this will buy much more than it used to. He said that money will have real value once again. You heard the man as well as I did."

It was true. The problem was, Li Yang did not trust that man as much as Harper did. When he watched Olaf Troll explain the new currency on TV, he felt he was looking at someone at least slightly crazy. The grey-faced Jewish guy that came on afterwards to do some more explaining didn't inspire confidence, either. He'd looked as if he might die at any moment.

"The cans aren't pure aluminum," said Li Yang.

"So what? We just make the coins heavier and thicker. As long as they contain ten grams of pure aluminum, everything's fine."

"We'll need a shitload of cans to make a dollar for ourselves, considering we get to keep just half of what we make. And you forget that the moment you register as a minter, you lose the guaranteed payout."

"We'll make more money than those payouts. You'll see. We can make copper coins, too. Ten times as valuable."

"Copper is harder than aluminum."

"It's soft enough to work with a hammer."

Charlene did not take part in that discussion. She'd just watched and listened silently. And when Harper turned to her for support, she said:

"You better get your ass in gear, Harper Lee, and start collecting those cans right away. Plenty of other people will get the same idea, I bet."

That had shut up Harper for the rest of the evening. Very early the next morning, he set out on an expedition to collect as much precious scrap as possible.

He didn't find any. Charlene had been right: lots of people had the idea to start their own coin minting operations. But Harper's sally that morning had the benefit of him coming across the army guys distributing food just as they were getting started. He ran back home to get Li Yang and Charlene and by the time they got to the truck, the lineup stretched all the way down the block.

The soldiers worked fast, though, and just twenty minutes later they each got a carton of army rations. Charlene staggered and nearly dropped hers because of the weight.

It was a lot of food. When they got back to the apartment and read the labels, they found out each meal had 1200 calories, or slightly more than half of what an adult would require per day. The fifty meals would last them a month. And Charlene had gotten lucky: through some administrative mixup, her box contained HDRs, or Humanitarian Daily Rations. These delivered 2,200 calories each.

The rations also contained matches, tissue, toilet paper, salt, pepper, sugar, and instant coffee. Their food supply secured for at least a month ahead, they returned to the lineup for another handout, but it was quickly obvious there won't be any. The army truck drove off amidst angry shouts from the crowd, the soldiers at the tailgate stiff with anger at the insults hurled their way. Just a moment earlier, people had been tearfully thanking them as they collected their cartons.

When they were about to reenter their apartment building, Li Yang nudged Harper's arm and pointed down the street.

Three men were crossing the road. One carried a baseball bat, and the others had half-full plastic garbage bags slung over their backs. Their shape suggested they contained plenty of cans.

"Yeah, well," Harper said sadly. "It was a nice idea while it lasted. But we'll think of something else, won't we?"

"You bet we will," said Charlene, sounding very upbeat. "And right now we'll all sit down to a nice hot dinner. There is some kind of magic powder in there that you mix with water to make it boil."

They climbed the stairs to their apartment and were about to go inside when they heard noises from the floor above. The floor that had been closed off by the building inspector. The floor on which they'd hid their implant kits and hiber beds and documentation scrolls.

"You get going with the food," Harper said softly to Charlene. Then he and Li Yang ascended the stairs as quietly as they only could.

They'd made sure the striped tape forbidding entrance was stretched across the staircase almost exactly the way the inspector had left it. And it looked untouched.

They stood on the stairs below it, undecided. And then they heard a cat meow.

It appeared on the landing a moment later. It was almost skeletal with starvation: skin, bones, and huge imploring eyes. It looked at them and meowed so sadly, so pitifully that Li Yang grimaced with discomfort.

"Come here, kitty," Harper said softly. The cat hesitated; then it meowed again, and cautiously approached them.

"Come along," Harper said to the cat, then pulled Li Yang's sleeve and started descending the stairs. Li Yang followed him, and so did the cat, keeping at a distance from the two of them.

"What are you doing?" Li Yang hissed at Harper. "That cat's just another mouth to feed."

"It's a small mouth," Harper said. "And this cat might yet be very useful."

He opened the door to their apartment and looked at the cat, cautiously hanging back on the landing.

"Come on in, kitty," he said. "Welcome to your new home."

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