FAR Future, Episode 66: Farewell, Sammy

Back to work, shortly after this post goes up. Happier times in the FAR Future?

Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Farewell, Sammy

Summer’s over, no doubt about it. We’re back to sleeping inside. At least it won’t be just us next summer… Kim and Serena at least should finish up their hitch(es) and come home this spring. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss having the house full of people. OK, I’ll be honest: I wish they were here to help cut firewood. Does that sound more like me? ;-) But that’s only half-honest. I expect Kim and Christina will be moving away next year, probably to Atlanta or maybe Athens (GA) or some other college town. Mrs. and Mr. Daughter Dearest are already out — they grabbed a place in town so DD can walk to school and teach. They’re talking about moving back to Seattle, but with fuel the way it is Dean has to do his training gigs remotely — and as long as he has a lectern, a video camera, and a decent Internet hookup, he can do that from anywhere.

The publishers are getting ready to start printing Christina’s biochem textbook. It will be available for the next school year, which is really something… and has already garnered her several assistant professorship offers from various colleges. Having done some work for Corettaville, which is probably going to take the first “Enclosed Community of the Year” award from ECHO this year, she’s also getting a lot of queries about doing consulting work for other wallyworlds. She’s not all that interested in consulting for a living, although she could certainly swing it, given the number of queries she’s had. Still, she would like to do occasional side jobs like that… she thinks it would help her keep her research practical and give her a chance to get out and see a little of the country (once things get a little more stable, of course).

With the junta gone, there’s suddenly more traffic than you’d expect going east and west on the highway just down from FAR Manor — mostly bicycles and walking tourists, but you see the occasional scooter. Someone opened up “Luke’s at New Hope Corner” — a sort of combination tavern and hostel for travelers who want some food or a place to rest — at the crossroads. Since it’s a 2-minute walk from the manor, Guillermo and I are getting to be “the regulars” there — Luke buys food from us (except beef, not too many people can afford that) for the business, so we have a good excuse to walk down there in the evenings and get the order together for the next day. He also brews a pretty good hooch, but we haven’t told the ladies of that reason to visit. As if they haven’t seen their two old men come wobbling through the door, with the evening’s revelry on our breath? Our old Happy Hound gives us an escort there and back, and enjoys the attention from the travelers (not to mention the scraps he gets from Luke).

Of course, the shale mining prisoners have been freed and sent home. I hope the people running the camp (and the rest of the junta, for that matter) are put to work mining shale themselves, under the exact same conditions they provided for the prisoners… yeah, vindictive. But we need to make an example of the junta, so nobody else ever gets any stupid ideas, which I suppose would mean we’ll have to go into Texas sooner or later. I understand that the cheerleaders at Fox Spew, and even a lot of the DC punditry, have bolted for their various ratholes or “gone to RoT,” as they say. I’m not sure where Shotgun Sam got himself off to… maybe he’s gone to RoT too, or he just wasn’t all that important and isn’t being bothered. Asset seizures have taken the place of taxation, at least for a few months.

The President and his caretaker government have been scrambling to get things to the point where we can have elections in two weeks, but now they’re talking about having a lottery: all registered voters ages 25 to 70 (you have to be 25 to be a reprehensible, so says the Constitution) get thrown into a hat and the “winner” gets to spend the next two years in DC, but I don’t know if they’d do the Senate that way or not. The election date isn’t specified by the Constitution, so as long as the elections happen soon enough to get the votes counted and the new congresscritters sworn in by January 3, no harm no foul. A lottery just seems a little drastic, but it would give the new reps a couple months to get their affairs in order and get on a train. As for the President himself, everyone seems to be content to let him serve out the current term (through 2024).

With the junta no longer a problem, outside of one (large) place, Sammy has pretty much stood down. Of course, there will still be samizdat for the Rotters who want it, but Sammy is redundant in the rest of the country since there’s a free press once again. Still, I wouldn’t mind if we keep an underground press in this country; Lord knows how quickly things can change. I think the new Congress will be doing a lot of clean-up, and it’s going to be important to have a news source that isn’t too chummy with either the old old gang or the new old gang. I just hope the new government can look beyond the junta’s trainwreck and start moving us toward some kind of civilization that doesn’t involve heavy dependence on fossil fuel.

continued…