Chapter 6
Mitch and Melanie were married less than six months after Mitch moved permanently into the Retreat. Duncan, ever the adventurist, came back to the Retreat after one of his outings with a rock-climbing girlfriend named Amy. They had met climbing El Capitan together and shared a love for both the outdoors and the pursuit of freedom. The Retreat had specialists that taught classes in everything from hand-to-hand combat to wild edibles. Mitch worked his way through every class offered until he earned the expert grade and some, that he really enjoyed, like shooting and woodcraft, he worked and worked at until he made high expert and master levels. The Retreat kept expanding and expanding over the years as space and opportunity became available. Melanie, Mitch and Duncan spent many evenings over their scotch collection detailing the pros and cons of each strategy. Melanie and Duncan almost came to blows one evening over the farming division.
“That’s Communism, Duncan and you know it,” Melanie accused Duncan loudly.
“Look, Mel,” Duncan explained, “we have sold over a thousand acres to farmers who grow what they want, where they want and when they want. The farmers have large extended families and have been farming for generations. They sell to the national marketplace; they are the capitalists. We have thousands of acres of small farm holdings that are owned by small farmers who are more generalists in nature but who do not want the responsibility, stress and debt of a commercial operation. They sell the bulk of their crops to the community and into the local areas like Bovill. Again, all solid people who enjoy the safety and security of their community but are not taking big risks. I would call them the socialists, not a huge opportunity for gains but they also have a limited downside and can rely on the rest of the farming community during lean times. There are also people, who would be great for the community, who do not have either the capital or the knowledge of farming. They want to work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor. They aspire to someday own a small holding. We can hire a farm manager for Retreat owned land and give people the opportunity to work there on either an hourly basis or for a share of the crop. They will grow what we want when we want, we can provide them room and board and an upwardly mobile opportunity. It is what we did when we built the greenhouse complex; we sold a third to one operation, parceled a third to a bunch of owners like a co-op and kept a third for the Retreat and hired people to manage and work in it. Our housing works the same way; we have nine house plans, three were designed as mill worker houses, three were designed for mill managers and three were designed for mill owners and executives.”
“The returns suck for all the Retreat managed businesses and enterprises, Duncan; we do far better selling or leasing land and loaning money to private enterprises that we have a share in,” Melanie said.
Mitch interjected, “I agree with you Mel 100%. A private enterprise will always outperform a public one because the incentives of receiving all the fruits of your labor versus sharing some of them with the general public can create resentment but I also agree with Duncan and what I think he is trying to say is that sometimes we have to invest in people as much as we invest in corporations. The trouble is you cannot show an ROI on the value add to a person versus a business but the overall ROI to the Retreat is in the people quotient of the entire community and not in dollars and cents.”
“Did you two cook this up on your last walk about in the woods when you knew I could not come because this is crap?” Melanie huffed.
“Don’t look at me,” Duncan said. “You have far more influence over Mitch than I ever could, but he’s right. Our goal has always been 5,000 people maximum in order to fly under the radar. It’s already tough enough to tell them to please not vote. The only thing that leaves the Retreat anymore is the commercial goods and bulk crops and we have already earned more money than we could ever spend in multiple lifetimes. Almost every person at the Retreat has been a selected and recruited prepper but they have been people of means or entrepreneurs who needed a leg up and a small helping hand. We are leaving out the masses of working-class preppers who would give their left nut to come to a place like this. The whole darn town of Bovill wants to move here and we had to temporarily relocate the saw mill down there to stop from being overrun and leaving Bovill a ghost town. Mikey is building the mill houses in a warehouse and craning them onto the foundations; he is building thirty houses a month. Even the doctors in the hospital go out into the field on exercises. There is not a single person on the entire Retreat who is not all in and involved in the community. How many more gold bars do we need to put in the vault?”
Mitch and Melanie had slowly but surely been converting their assets into physical gold. Mitch took all his distributions from Olympus equal to what Devin, the CEO, took so their equity was always level. The Retreat had created its own banking system under Melanie’s legal guidance. It was illegal for anyone in the United States to have their own currency so the Retreat set up its own gold exchange and minted its own Retreat one ounce gold coins which was just a gold blank in the shape and size of a quarter and had the purity stamped on it. American dollars, which everyone called Treasury paper or T-paper for short at the Retreat, could always be exchanged for gold coins at the Retreat’s bank at the daily spot price of gold. Goods and services on the Retreat could be bought and sold with the coins being the medium of exchange but for tax purposes the goods and services had been bartered and traded as goods of equal value. The Retreat had gone back onto the gold standard and almost all trade was done with the coins as the medium of exchange. The Retreat had a marketplace similar to any Main Street in the United States; theirs even had a shipping store, a courthouse, a hospital and a school. Two community busses made the rounds continuously around the entire community. Personal vehicles were rarely used and bicycles and a few horses were the generally accepted modes of transportation. You could always tell when one of the outer perimeter Beverly Hills families was on the property because they were the only ones driving around in darkened SUVs. Both the Retreat full timers and the Beverly Hills residents looked at each other like useful idiots. Mitch even had one of the outer perimeter lots built out for any of the Olympus staff who wanted to visit.
The Retreat was involved in dozens of prepper businesses on the property and sold all the goods under its Homestead brand. The Homestead brand was shipped country wide and its offices and shipping center was located in Boise, Idaho. For all intents and purposes, the Retreat did not exist and Mitch had his crack internet group scouring the web and dark web for any mention of Bovill or the Retreat and erasing any memory of its existence. When the Retreat was built, the US government had blurred the Google Earth map of its existence and the Retreat continued to pay Google to keep it that way. The Beverly Hill’s crew always complained that their friends could not find the Retreat because their GPS systems always sent them to the wrong place and road turn off; the Retreat kept paying Google to get them lost. Visitors always ended up stopping in Bovill to ask for directions and were given directions to the turn off, where the security gate staff would check their IDs and run them through the authorized visitor logs. The Fish and Game Department and the ATF had given up on the Retreat after dozens of their agents had been retired and the departments had successfully been sued by Melanie multiple times. The Department of Homeland Security had come sniffing around and had even flown a drone over the Retreat a few times but the Retreat defenses had detected the intrusion and now the crew no longer wore camouflage and carried rifles in the community. The armory and shooting range were built indoors and each cattle gate had been replaced with iron reinforced gates and had an armory and changing station placed at each one. The IRS didn’t care about the Retreat since nobody, on paper, lived there but every member of the Retreat received free tax preparation from the Retreat’s accounting department. The only person who ever challenged the Retreat was the Latah County Treasurer who saw all the new legal lots being created and could not, through physical appraisal, accurately assess the property taxes for the R
etreat. Melanie dealt with him by finding an exceptional replacement who was very well funded in the next election and received almost 10,000 votes from the area of Bovill. The Retreat’s population went out en masse and were excited to vote again. The County Commissioners and Executive took notice and wisely looked elsewhere. Melanie met with the new Treasurer and they arrived collectively at a generous valuation for the property and it was even paid five years into the future to avoid any issues and make the county very happy.
The Homestead brand became an industry leader in all its product lines. Their best seller was a wood fired combination cook stove and oven with a built-in hot water coil, recirculating tank and gasifier combination. The stove was cast iron and forged at the Retreat’s foundry. The product was UL listed on Melanie’s insistence. There was one in every home at the Retreat except in Beverly Hills. All the homes at the Retreat had the highest energy efficiency possible and all the heat, cooking and hot water could be done on the stove. The gasifier could run any gasoline powered equipment like a generator or could be used as natural gas for barbeques. The grid power was later augmented by six hydroelectric generators that could power the entire Retreat and all its commercial equipment and the water generator drive lines were routed to the water tower pressure column where it was filtered and provided pressure to the water system. Each home had a rain catchment cistern and had pumps and filters installed to provide backup water. Many of the homes also had solar arrays. The power and water systems had redundancies on top of redundancies on top of redundancies. The prepper and soldier mantra of two is one and one is none was constantly drilled into every resident. The Retreat had a judge to work the courtroom but it was the loneliest job at the Retreat and the bench usually had a “gone fishing” sign permanently attached to it. Disputes were settled between neighbors and civil infractions that could not be worked out amongst themselves went to the judge. There were no lawyers or rules of evidence and the old English common law rule was applied that the loser paid. Criminal matters were almost non-existent and punishment usually involved community service while wearing an orange jumpsuit. More serious criminal crimes were dealt with accordingly and hand-to-hand combat remedial training with the instructors was avoided at all costs. The ultimate punishment was banishment from the community. The Retreat Trading Company LLC had the first right of refusal on any property purchase and the sales prices for real estate were always known to everyone. They had never had to impose a sentence worse than special “instruction” from the hand-to-hand instructors for someone who had got drunk and hit his wife. The wife had paid better attention during training and had in turn kicked his ass; she did not want to press charges and the farmer had given up drinking on the spot but the judge had caught word of it, because he literally hears everything, and had passed summary judgement on the spot. There were no laws or police at the Retreat; common sense and decency was their law.
The Retreat’s church was non-denominational and had started as a small congregation as the first residents had moved into the Retreat. The church had been expanded six times, once every year of the Retreat’s existence. The spiritual guidance was more ecumenical than liturgy based. Less on the bible and more about the morality that religion teaches. None of the Retreat executives were particularly hardcore in their religious beliefs and felt that finding the right kind of pastor was more important than finding the right kind of theologian. The pastor they found named Timothy was perfect and was more of a psychologist and cheerleader than a sin eradicator. Duncan always felt that more evil and death had been done in the world in the name of religion than any other ethos; from the crusades to the inquisition. Everyone, every Sunday, without fail, went to church. It was never mandated but it was a gathering of the entire community to enjoy communing with each other. It was people of a common bond sharing fellowship and was as much a social occasion as a learning and teaching one. Timothy was again perfect; there was a welcome, a short reading, a brief sermon, a song and some announcements. Twenty minutes max, money was never mentioned. Mitch and Melanie had given a generous endowment to the church and invested the endowment into Olympus. The church could not spend the proceeds on the endowment, even if it tried; it was simply too much money. Duncan handled all the charity of the community anyway making sure anyone that needed help received the opportunities for the extra income they needed. The Retreat itself and its principles became the foundation of its own beliefs and religion. The after church social and tea went on for about an hour and then people went home to get ready for exercises. Exercises were not mandatory but like church, everyone did them; peer pressure was a huge motivating factor. The Retreat was surrounded by a beautiful environment and lessons were available to everyone in almost every category: from butchering to gardening to archery, every life skill your grandfather and grandmother knew was taught. People learned canning, carpentry, metal working and electrical work.
Healthcare was another great debate amongst the trio of community leaders. The Retreat had three doctors, six nurses, two dentists, three dental hygienists, a compounding pharmacist and an apothecary. The trio had built them a state-of-the-art hospital.
“Screw that!” Duncan declared when they were discussing healthcare. “I am not buying healthcare for the entire community and I’m not selling them health insurance either. They already pay zero taxes and they do not have a single utility bill.”
“I agree!” Melanie declared. “Healthcare in the United States is ridiculous. We have built the hospital as a donation and endowed the church to take money out of religion; people figured this crap out before either government or insurance companies got involved.”
“Now hang on there you two,” Mitch implored. “I am as hardcore a capitalist as Melanie and Libertarian as Duncan, even if I come from San Francisco. All I ask is that we sit down with the doctors and follow their lead and recommendations before we determine something for everyone, on a subject we know nothing about.”
The trio sat down with the doctors first and asked them if they had to set up a healthcare system from scratch how would they do it. The three doctors, it turned out, were so disillusioned with the state of healthcare that they came to the Retreat because of that very reason. One of the doctors was a forty-something general practitioner and spoke to the trio.
“Look, I am a general practitioner, Vincent is a surgeon and Nancy is a psychiatrist. We have all three needs met. We ask of the community one thing and that is everyone is required to come to the hospital on a quarterly basis for a fee of one quarter of one of your gold coins. We will handle the rest. We will charge accordingly for our fees that we determine. I can give you one truism and that is it is far easier to keep healthy people healthy than to turn sick people into healthy ones. Our only goal is to make people so healthy that they don’t get sick. Injuries and accidents happen but again, rarely to healthy people. Health conditions diagnosed early can be dealt with easily before they become chronic. Every person will be accountable for their own health and they will pay accordingly based on their individual decisions based on their outcomes.”
“OK, Doc,” Mitch said. “We will spot anyone that can’t afford the buy in by funneling it through the church as a charitable donation. Father Timothy will work with you guys on getting everyone scheduled and any prior intel you need on your patients; for some reason he is very good at getting people to do what he wants.”
Two weeks later, Mitch came storming into the manager’s meeting and flopped himself into his usual seat.
“Been to the dentist, dear?” Melanie asked innocently.
“Motherfucker!” Mitch exclaimed. Mitch rarely if ever swore. “The hygienist found some plaque on three of my teeth and immediately ratted me out to the dentist. I was told it was a fine of one gold piece if “his teeth” looked like that at the next visit. They both pulled out some floss and showed me what I was doing wrong and actually watched me brush my teeth to make sure I was doing it right. I felt like I was six. What is this “my teeth” cra
p and I thought hygienists were supposed to clean your teeth for you for a fee; they should change their names to inspectors or the plaque police.”
“I guess you haven’t been to the doctors yet then,” Melanie complained. “I went and they told me my blood work came back low in Vitamin E and slightly elevated in cholesterol. He gave me a lecture about diet and exercise and required that I earn high expert on forest edibles and if my quarterly blood work wasn’t in line then I’d be out two gold pieces. High expert is like impossible with the naturalist and I’m always scared stiff at the final exam when she pulls out three identical looking roots and tells you that one is edible, one will make you toss your cookies and the third will cause you to pass out. I was all cocky the first time through, chose poorly and was worshipping the porcelain goddess for an entire weekend. I know the high cholesterol came from all that testing we did for the dehydrated food formulas we were trying out for our Homestead brand. I’ll be damned if those saw bones get my money on the next visit.”
Duncan was laughing at them both. “This is on you, Mitch. You set those health Nazis loose on our population. Everyone is getting set on a baseline and if you improve your health then you get a hall pass but if you regress then they charge you into oblivion until you get in line. I’ve noticed that the enrollment in our more physically intensive programs has gone up exponentially since the doctors came to town; there seems to be a renewed vigor towards physical fitness and nutrition since they got here.”
Two weeks later, Duncan came storming in. “Screw it, we’re closing the hospital!”
“What happened, Mr. Pillar of Health?” Mitch laughed.
The Retreat Page 6