The Smiths and Joneses (9 page)

The second officer runs a wand-like device over Sean saying, “No explosives, no gunpowder, no known weapons on his person. Personal X-Ray shows nothing hidden under his skin.”

“Tommy, heel.”

The dog jumps off of Sean; he walks over to the first officer staring at Sean. The first officer tells Sean, “You can stand up straight now, do it slowly.” Tommy sits while keeping his eyes on Sean.

“Sir, you may put your hands down and turn around. Here is your ID back. In the LSA when a home alarm sounds there are policies that are followed. Talking, except for responding to questions, isn’t done. Being within four feet of an armed officer is also not allowed. We realize you didn’t know this. I understand you were given a packet of do’s and don’ts when you crossed the divide. In the future, follow all of the instructions given you by a member of the national police force or a member of the LSA DepLIES. Do you understand?”

“Yes officer.”

Sean looks the officers over; he notices while armed with some kind of stick; they don’t have any traditional side arms. He asks, “Officer is it permitted to ask a question?”

“Sir, that depends on the question, if your question crosses into the restricted area we are bound not to respond. What is your question?”

“I notice you don’t have side arms, do LSA police officers not carry weapons?”

“Sir, we carry ‘stun-sticks’ that will knock anyone of any size out, we also have knockout spray that can reach fifteen feet. We don’t carry firearms on our bodies so a criminal can’t take said weapon off of our person and use it against innocents.”

“What happens if you’re called to a crime scene where criminals are using firearms?”

“Sir, firearm usage has decreased every year since their total outlawing and turn-in, eleven years ago. If the situation warrants, we do have firearms locked in our vehicle. It takes both voice and fingerprint to open the secure safe where our firearms are stored. The opening of the safe sends a signal to our office. Every time it’s opened we have hundreds of pages of paperwork to fill out, I assume we’re not too much different from your local police; we hate paperwork, so please don’t tell us any of your crew from the USA smuggled firearms into the LSA.”

“No officer, we didn’t.”

“Good, we hate paperwork, and a firearm is many hundreds of pages of paperwork, we might have to let our dog play with you if we thought we were facing an all-nighter of paperwork. If you follow our laws, you’ll have a nice visit. Now we have to perform a quick check of the home. If we find nothing, we’ll be on our way within thirty minutes, and you will be able to return to your recording. Remember, no recording is to be performed while we are on site, or of us. It’s a breach of LSA national law to record peace officers or officers of DepLIES. Is that clear Mr. Hannd?”

Unknown to the LSA police, Sean had a microdot camera built into his glasses. It didn’t transmit. It recorded and stored the video on DDR7 micro memory bubble cells built in the frames. Sean didn’t say anything so the entire event could be recorded.

“Yes officer it is. May I ask, did you go house to house to take people’s firearms?”

“Sir, firearms in the hands of untrained civilians is a formula for disaster. We knew we had to remove these weapons from our streets if we wanted our children to have a chance to grow up safe. Unlike the USA, we in the LSA care about our children. We started with the registration act which ordered everyone with any type of firearm to register them. Months later we started using the list to call in the firearms, we purchased the firearms from their owners. We didn’t take them; we purchased them. If someone didn’t want to sell us their firearms, they could keep them and pay the new national tax imposed on the firearms. The tax started at 300% of the firearms value and went up 100% a year. It had to be paid in cash on January first. Most people couldn’t afford to continue to pay the increasing amount of tax. In addition, laws were passed making it illegal to sell ammunition to citizens. Gun ranges were outlawed so even if someone decided to pay the firearm tax, they couldn’t get ammunition for their weapons, nor were there any legal locations to use their weapons. Soon they owned a very expensive unusable weapon. By the seventh year, we estimate we recovered 98% of the privately owned weapons.”

“Officer, what about the illegal weapons, like the ones gangs used?”

“We collected them when we arrested someone committing a crime. We couldn’t search everyone walking down the street we thought was in a gang, which would have violated their rights. We installed cameras, microphones and a new technology which triangulated gun shots to locate street weapons. We later updated the cameras with ultra-wideband radar that can detect a gun on a person as they walked by a street lamp camera, we also got their picture which enabled us to pick them up at our convenience. We think we collected most of the weapons on the street.”

“Are these cameras and radar units still in use?”

“Of course, we’ve expanded the system to cover the entire area of the LSA.”

“Are you telling me, you have cameras looking at every inch of the LSA all of the time? Who could possibly check all of the images?”

“We use computers to scan the images. When an image is tagged for some reason, we send a car to investigate.”

“Is that how you knew someone in the Smith’s house yelled help?”

“Sir, every house has a security system that’s tied into the national system. Do you have any other questions? I need to assist my fellow officers in searching the house.”

“Officer, no other questions, thank you for your time.”

Forty minutes later the officers leave allowing the program crew and the Smith family to return to their home. The show starts broadcasting again and Sharon looks around saying, “They were very neat this time. Last time we had an accident they tore the house apart. Good thing you guys were here today. By the way, are you thirsty or hungry? Because of the show, we received extra ration stamps to provide you and your crew with refreshments. We didn’t know how many were coming. The government gave us enough of an increase to provide snacks for 10 people.”

Wolf, looking relieved, says, “Sharon, first of all, thank you very much. Please tell us how much you spent so we can reimburse you. Secondly, why don’t you explain the rationing stamp system? I’m sure those watching in the USA are interested in how the LSA minimizes waste and ensures people get the correct amount of calories and aren’t able to overeat. By controlling the amount of calories, we ensure people in the LSA don’t get overweight which causes health problems, increasing everyone’s health costs and reducing people’s quality of life.”

“Wolf, I’d be happy to…”

Before Sharon can answer, their home phone rings, the phone announces, “Attention, incoming call. Unknown caller, call disconnected. Call terminated.”

Wolf laughs, saying, “Sharon I think you should explain how the phone system works first, I can see Sean is confused.”

“Wolf, of course. Our phones don’t accept calls from anyone without a caller ID.”

Sean, responds, “I understand, you might not want to answer a call from an unknown number, but a mandatory disconnect, it seems to me that this takes away your right to decide if you want to answer or not.”

Sharon responds, “Surely I wouldn’t answer a call from someone I didn’t know, our phone system is programmed to do it for us. Why would anyone call without a caller ID?”

Sean quickly responds, “If the telephone company system software fails, will anyone in the LSA be able to receive a call?” 

“No they wouldn’t.  However, that happens very rarely, and people just call back.”

Sean asks, “Which telephone supplier do you use?”

“Our telephone and all of our utilities are provided by the LSA national government.”

Sean follows up, “Do you miss the ability to choose your own supplier?”

“Why? Before the divide, all of the companies were the same anyway. With the government running the utilities, we know we’ll be getting decent service. Our government supplies us with everything we need. Our taxes go to things we can see, use and hold in our hands.”

Sean asks, “Jason, Sharon, with so much being provided by the government, do you miss the ability to choose and make your own decisions? Do you feel like you’ve lost a degree of your freedom in exchange for goods and services?”

The Smiths look at each other, Jason responds for both of them, “Why do we need to be bothered about making silly decisions about what service provider to use? They were all the same. Trying to cut through all of their bullshit was a giant waste of time. Do we miss having the freedom to decide? No, we see it as a burden lifted from us. Why should we waste our time listening to various sales pitches from companies all lying about their so called excellent customer support? None have any idea what customer support meant anyway. How many calls do you usually make in order to get the simplest issues corrected? The government has helped us. The national government has saved us time. They have enabled us to have more free time. They have removed a lot of stress off of us.”

“As a follow up, what about the government knowing every call you make?”

“They knew all the time anyway; nothing’s changed so what’s the big deal?”

“Jason, Sharon, do you miss the various options you used to have?”

“Not really, most of the choices we had weren’t really choices. We thank the government for giving us more free time to spend with our family or on our hobbies or doing anything else we’d like to.”

Sean asks, “Do you feel any remorse being totally dependent on the government?”

Bob looks at Sean with a confused look on his face, “Sean, why would we? The government, unlike a private company, isn’t going to go bust. They aren’t going to screw around like the private companies did. I remember before the split I had an issue with our cable TV provider, I wanted to cancel my service, they transferred me from person to person; they left me on hold for three hours. When someone finally answered the phone, they told me the billing department was closed. We don’t have these issues any longer.”

“Sharon, let’s get back to the ration system, can you explain to those of us in the USA how it works?”

“Sean, of course; none of us are hungry, we’ve reduced the numbers of people who are obese. While we’ve reduced the number of obese people, the USA and most-other first world countries has increased their number of obese people.”

              “Sharon isn’t the reason you have a lower number of obese people is because the government limits the number of calories a person can intake a day?”

              “The rationing system is designed to limit the number of calories a person intakes. It’s a well-known fact that food acts on the brain like a drug, hence we’re reducing food addiction. The government is limiting the types of harmful addiction we might encounter that would be detrimental to our health and well-being. It revolves around being equal. Every one of each age group is allowed a certain number of calories in a week. Everyone has ration software built into our ID cards. When I go to the food store, the shopping carts have scanners built in. I scan my ID card when I start shopping. My ID is set up as the primary shopper for food. I’ve entered Bob’s, Scott’s and Sissy’s IDs into the national system so when I shop the computer knows I’m shopping for four people - two adults and two children. Every item I drop into the cart is scanned against our IDs and our calories for the week. When our weekly caloric total is reached, my cart is automatically billed to my bank account. The computer on the shopping cart prints out the receipt, we can leave whenever we want to.”

              “What happens if you want to place additional items into the cart?”

              “The computer will not accept the item, if I try to leave the store with the not allowed item; the cart alerts the store’s management. I’ll be stopped and have to return the item.”

              “Sharon, what about if you’re going to entertain, like with us?”

              “Sean, that’s easy; I enter the dates and number of people into my kitchen computer it updates our allowable items.”

              “What if there isn’t really a party, you were just adding items to your family’s pantry?”

              “Sean, do you always look for ways to scam the system? I enter our guest’s names and the town they are coming from and the system checks their calendars. If those people are still home on the date of the party and we didn’t cancel it, the calories are deducted from my next week’s shopping. In your case, I didn’t know how many people were coming, or where you were from and since some of you are from the USA and not in our system. I simply entered the event into the system. The system knew of the program, so it was automatically approved, in fact it even suggested some items for us to purchase. You don’t have to reimburse us; the amount we paid is going to be applied as credits to our taxes. Since the government’s system is tied into everything, it’s a complete circle. It makes it so easy for me to plan a week’s menu and shopping trip. Anything I use up I scan in my kitchen computer which is automatically added to my shopping list.”

              “May I have a follow up question? What happens when you go out to eat?”

              “The waiter scans our IDs before seating us. Our IDs at a restaurant allow us to exceed the daily amount of food by a margin of 15%.

              “Sharon, couldn’t you go out to eat every night and become overweight by eating 15% above the daily minimum calorie counts?”

              “Sean, it’s not that easy. Everyone in the LSA has a caloric budget based on age, weight and level of physical activity. Most people can’t afford to eat out more than once a week. Those who can are taxed an extra 20% on their second night eating out in the same week. The third trip to a restaurant carries a caloric discount of 35%. We realized good health begins with what you eat. The more active one becomes, the more calories are allowed. By reducing the number of overweight people we’ve lowered the number of hospital visits, we’ve lowered the number of heart attacks and even strokes. You should really copy our system; your people would be much healthier.”

              “I guess the rationing system doesn’t allow many preppers in the LSA does it?”

              Sharon smiles replying, “Not really. In fact there are fines for holding more than 5 days of food. Before you ask about growing your own extra food, the DepLIES flies drones looking for small farms and vegetable gardens. One needs government approval to grow food. Fertilizer can be used as an explosive so it’s doled out by the DepLIES, permits and inspections are required. If a person gets the approval for a vegetable garden or small farm, they have a choice of giving the government 50% of the produce or having their rations reduced. This is to prevent people from hoarding food.”