Dog Logic

by Tom Strelich

typically an illegal forced to work in the fields and then killed by the cartel at the end of the harvest as a cost control measure.

No kilt, no sporran, no bagpipe or geologist pick, nothing to distinguish him in the procession, just another faceless,

However, each episode ended with the mathematical models predicting a tragic and unsatisfactory end to each of the sample populations primarily by murder, starvation, cannibalism, and under-age smoking.

He noticed that while they quickly grew accustomed to and even mastered the technical innovations they found on the surface like ATMs, talking cars, bigger TVs, Skype, GPS, and watching movies on your wristwatch, all things that were classically futuristic; they were much slower however to recognize and internalize what was generally considered social progress and cultural growth: some of which they considered comical such as baggy pants with underwear showing, some of which they considered vulgar such as butt cracks, and feminine hygiene ads on TV, but most of which they considered toxic and not only questioned but openly rejected.

Only now faded away to a mere curiosity of western civilization, a relic of a less enlightened and more judgmental time, to make shelf-space available for self-esteem, participation trophies, rights to choose, and social justice.

He knew that shame must still exist since he’d felt it deeply the night his father died: it washed over him in waves of self-contempt with each inexplicable and inappropriate spasm of insuppressible laughter which finally stopped when he saw his father’s soul fall away from his motionless form and then drift lazily across the room and then up, where it lingered for a time as if saying goodbye, only to fade slowly into the knotty pine ceiling directly overhead.

Congress was treated like jury duty, and the Supreme Court would meet once a year at the miniature golf course if there were any constitutional questions to be considered, though there never were since the entire population had memorized the constitution and no special priesthood was needed to explain to them what was written in plain English for any normal person to read and understand.

It was merely a curious relic with nothing of value to offer, an obstacle standing in the way of her bright future. She would own the future now no matter what. And she would start with the Li’l Pal and the renegade past buried beneath its folds.

The yearning to return to heritage type values wasn’t a manifestation of a deeper desire, it was a deeper desire unearthed and validated by their exposure to a stealthy tectonic of crowdsourced Mustard Seed reality TV shows that were proliferating across the internets.

Evidently, the past, as represented by Mustard Seed, was a major contributor to the nascent desire for a return to the heritage-type values.

For example, the Department of Energy had resolutely dismissed OSCNOIDS as a complete and utter hoax even though hundreds of thousands of DIY OSCNOIDS reactors were safely and quietly pumping out electricity for houses, farms, and businesses all over the country and around the world and almost everyone knew someone who had or was building one.

Courtney was disappointed that the masses were either too stupid or too evil to understand the good she was trying to do them, to free them from the past and a potential President Fucknose.

There was nothing explicit or traceable, there was no master plan nor any coordination required since the enforcement arms of the various Government agencies knew what was expected of them.

A weak plume of smoke snaked up into the sky and eventually braided itself with the smoke strands from the three helicopters.

Maybe it should just leave us alone; maybe those Mustard Seed people were onto something.

“You need to send a clear message that this type of behavior, or actually misbehavior, will not be tolerated, at least not in this administration.”

“But I love this country, and I have a sworn duty to protect it, and its institutions. And leaving those people to continue life as they are, content, ungoverned, without consequence, sends… a message to… well, to everybody, domestically and internationally.”

There were still some i’s to dot and t’s to cross, but everything was in order and the legal precedent for killing Americans had been long ago established in Afghanistan, Sudan and the like; this was a regrettable but necessary step to ensure national security, so they were bullet-proof and no amount of pissing and moaning from preppers in fly-over country would change that.