He’d all but given up smoking. However, sometimes, when he was on edge, when he was confronted with an issue he wasn’t sure how to deal with, or one requiring more thought and consideration than his normal 'bull at a gate' approach, he took the opportunity to pause and roll up a smoke to give him a bit of breathing space.
While he pulled out his tobacco and papers, some of the indoSkidians started to drift away, bored with the situation. The gathering of newSkidians had piqued their interest briefly but they quickly discovered there was nothing especially interesting going on: it was just a bunch of newSkidians having a whinge.
“I’m not a politician by any stretch of the imagination,” Bruce said at last, “and if I was you, I wouldn’t let Mitch wind you up. He’s the real politician, and he has a lot of experience in being elusive with the truth.”
“Mitch was adamant that you were in charge,” said an MFYer. Bruce looked closer and noticed many people in the small crowd were still wearing MFY uniforms. He thought it was odd they found it so hard to let the MFY connection go. It crossed his mind they might find some form of comfort in the uniforms, like a small kid with a security blanket.
“Look, what did I just say? Mitch is a politician. He’s been a trained liar for years.”
“That’s not fair!” Mitch called out from the edge of the crowd which was where he had positioned himself. “That’s not a fair representation at all. Sure, I have had to make a few compromises in my time, but I have always tried to do the right thing by my supporters.. by everyone.”
“See what I mean? Look, let’s not dwell on the subject, otherwise we’ll still be here arguing tomorrow, and we'll get nowhere.” The crowd in front of him was now composed solely of MFYers, except for a few remaining indoSkidians and one bloke who had a hangdog look on his face. Bruce felt sorry for the guy, because he was smitten with Janice Chang and she was completely ignoring him.
“So, what is it I can do for you? Just remember I’m not a politician,” Bruce repeated. “I’m not setting myself up to govern the planet, but I am one of the few people connected to the command and control structure around here.” Bruce wondered if he had gone too far, but it didn’t seem to matter. “This means I can get stuff done.”
“So, you’re a bureaucrat, a paper shuffler then? Even worse.”
“Not really. Let’s see what I might be able to help with.” He expected to be inundated with demands, but his offer to listen seemed to have momentarily confused them.
“You have no right to keep us here,” someone stated.
“Why would you say that?”
“You’ve stolen us from our homes and sent us to an alien planet against our will!”
“Ah. Well, you’re wearing an MFY uniform so the only way you could have arrived here is if you were har... uploaded from the space port in Australia or one of the settlements on the moon or Mars. So, for starters, we didn’t take you from your home. You came here direct from one of our facilities which, let me remind you, you entered voluntarily.”
“It’s still an unlawful act, however you dress it up,” Bill called out. “Stop trying to say it isn’t.”
“It's illegal? No. You all signed an agreement, if memory serves, where it was clearly stated you would be considered for missions to Mars and the moon, but the MFY program could deploy you to any other destination it so decided, and which might be identified in the future. How many of you actually read and understood the employment contracts you signed?”
“We have been tricked and conned and are here against our will!”
“Oh, get over it Bill, didn’t you read your contract?” Morris spoke up in unexpected support of Bruce.
“You signed up just like I did,” another voice continued. “We all signed up to get out of the rut we were in. Most of us were happy to be part of the MFY mission for as long as we could, because we knew there was little likelihood of getting off the planet.”
Everyone surrounding Zarif Khan stared at him. Clearly, he must be possessed, they decided, and edged away nervously.
Are you doing this? Bruce asked the Transcendents.
Yes, I am. I thought it might help. The Transcendents sounded quite pleased with themselves.
Well stop it now, you fucken' idiot. The mouthpiece you have chosen is the only person in the group who isn’t a MFYer. This does nothing to support the case I am trying to make.
“Thanks, Zarif,” Bruce said gently, “I am sure you will all agree that's a pretty fair summation of the situation. We could have fired you all off to the moon or Mars. I can send you there if you like, but we chose to bring you here.” A few heads nodded in agreement.
Most of them don’t want to go back to earth. They’re starting to understand they could have a great life here.
“Do you really want to return to Earth? Or Mars?” Bruce asked Janice.
Janice had had plenty of time to think about her answer and probably had an advantage given she had been given an interface with Bert, her very own personal cloud computer.
“Back to the Mars settlement, fully dependent on technology you have no control over to sustain you?” Bruce pressed for an answer.
What these people really seem to want is a sense of belonging. You never told me what a bunch of social misfits most of them are. They are looking for a sense of belonging, the Transcendents repeated, and leadership.
That’s not me at all, I don’t know the first thing about leadership.
Well, you’re doing a pretty good job with this group so far.
“When I joined the MFY program, I wasn’t sure it would be successful, but it was the sense of a common purpose that excited me. We were all one hundred percent behind the mission,” Janice explained. The other MFYers mostly nodded their agreement. “A sense of a shared purpose and a future. That's what we need.”
Bruce realised the newSkidians were looking to him to provide some direction, and a new mission. These were upper echelon MFY team members, who had been in line to go into space, or were part of the key support and operations teams. Their skills made him feel inadequate when he reviewed their profiles. Standing in front of them, he really felt like the backblocks hillbilly character he liked to pretend he was. And there they were, looking to him for guidance.
This wasn’t about insurrection. These people were searching for fulfilment and something useful to occupy their time, Bruce realised and relaxed a little.
Perhaps not all the newSkidians felt this way. There were only a small sample of them in front of him, but they had given Bruce an idea of how he could add value to the work he was doing, gaining a sense of fulfilment himself.
His cigarette had died, so he lit it again and stared at the glowing tip thoughtfully.
“Look,” he began, “there’s a long-term plan coming, but it’s not fully formed yet. But this was once a working farm, and there was a decent garden over there behind the barn. Maybe you guys could make a start on working out what the future looks like by putting the farm and the garden to rights.” Bruce knew what they were all thinking - “none of us knows anything about farming or gardening.”
“Trev here has a dry stock farming background of sorts for a start, he can provide direction regarding that side of the operation.” It would do him some good to get off his fat backside. Bruce thought.
Much to his own surprise, Zarif Khan stepped forward. “My extended family had a market garden before...” He didn’t want to dwell on the fate of his family or explain how helpless and powerless he had felt at the time. “I can look after the garden if others can help me out.” He looked at Janice, hoping that she would join him. She would then learn what a capable man he was and how he could provide for her, while they nurtured their relationship. Zarif was uncertain about how he would go about this, because he had never been alone with a young woman without a chaperone.
“I worked on my uncle’s farm when I was a kid,” someone else piped up.
It took Bruce a little by surprise at how easy this was. Sure
, there would be the odd disgruntled punter, but if he could get most of them doing something useful instead of having untold spare time to moan and whinge all the time, this would be a good thing.
The delegation broke up and people started to coalesce around Trev and Zarif, ignoring how Zarif had apparently been temporarily possessed by demons a few short minutes ago.
See how easy this was?
How much did you influence them?
Nothing to do with me. They just need something useful to do.
The few remaining indoSkidians were still confused about the drama which had quickly resolved itself. Most of them wandered off when they heard that physical effort was required. indoSkidians weren’t used to getting their hands dirty. Still, one or two of the more intrepid indoSkidians made the right noises about getting involved without committing themselves. Janice paused and was about to say something to Bruce and then thought better of it. She turned and joined the group of people clustered around Trev, which bitterly disappointed Zarif.
Then there were only two MFYers left standing alongside Mitch.
“I can see what you are trying to do here, but we're not interested in the garden or chasing a few cows around,” Bill said, assuming Stig was thinking along the same lines.
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I want to get access to the underlying computing infrastructure regulating and controlling all the networked systems on this planet,” Stig interrupted Bill before he could respond. Stig’s request confounded Bill, who belatedly realised he was in danger of being left alone out on a limb if he wasn’t careful.
“I’m convinced there’s a form of sophisticated super-computer operating somewhere, a technology far in advance of anything I have ever seen or heard of, and I want to work with it. There must be a command and control centre. That’s where I want to be.”
Is there? Bruce asked.
Not in the sense this fleshie…
NewSkidian, please.
Oh, very well. What’s in a name anyway? Not in the sense the newSkidian is thinking. I’m not ready to allow him access to the MPU because he seems determined to hack into and gain control over it. Give me a day or two to organise something to keep him busy.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Bruce told Stig, “give me a few days and I’ll see what I can sort out.”
“Sounds fine to me.” Stig nodded at Bill, who after a moment’s hesitation, opened his mouth, then thought better of it and followed Stig back to their beer.
Sue who had come to the door to see what all the commotion was about. “Well. I’ll be off then,” Bruce told her. “I’ll bring Little Bruce with me next time for a visit. I am not sure he will want to stay. He’s quite a wilful young man when he wants to be, so it might take a few attempts.”
“Thank you, Bruce,” Sue replied, “I appreciate you being so understanding.”
“Not a problem. See you in a few days.” He started to walk out of the settlement, back up the hill. The fewer people who saw him disappearing back to earth through his personal wormhole the better. He didn’t want anyone trying to force their way in, demanding to be repatriated to Earth.
Opinion Piece - Is the President suffering from the early onset of dementia?
The most egregious parts of Donald Chump’s personality - his racism, his misogyny, and his lack of scruples and ethics - have been on display for decades. These traits have long been part of Chump’s unapologetic public persona, which has so annoyed the Liberal media over the years. Even his election to President wasn’t sufficient to mend relationships he had been relentlessly driven to destroy over a lengthy period.
However, in recent years, Chump has become an even more extreme version of himself, an even more divisive and ridiculous figure to anyone with a modicum of common sense and decency. The behaviour accompanying the shift could be closely correlated with dementia and a general cognitive decline.
President Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 83, though he began to manifest symptoms much earlier. Researchers have combed through records of off-the-cuff speeches that Reagan delivered and found a significant decline in his mastery of language. By his second term, Reagan’s speech showed a deep drop-off in the use of unique words, a marked increase in the use of non-specific nouns (thing, something, anything), an uptick in filler words (well, so, basically, actually, literally, um, ah), and a greater use of low-imageability, high frequency verbs (get, give, go, have, do).
Chump seems to have parallels in all these areas. He has become notorious for his word salads, incomprehensible soliloquies delivered at the speaking level of a fourth-grader. He frequently falls back on words like “tremendous” and often drags on without using specifics. Chump often speaks at length while saying nothing, which to be honest is a common characteristic of politicians. He has a habit of ignoring his carefully scripted speeches and going completely off the reservation.
At seventy years old, Chump is the oldest person in the United States to be elected president. His father Craig was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years before his death in his mid-seventies. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “age, family history and heredity” are the most important risk factors in developing the disease. Most sufferers start to show signs of the illness at age sixty-five.
Remember when Chump forgot he’d sent a mission to Automedon? When it just slipped his mind to sign an executive order during an event created for this explicit purpose? When he couldn’t locate General Smith, his chief of staff, who was sitting directly across from him at a media briefing? When he initially tried to sign the order upside down and an aide had to diplomatically turn the folder around for him, so his signature would be the right way up? These things don’t seem like innocuous senior moments.
Chump also seems to exhibit other signs of Alzheimer's listed by health organizations. Moodiness, paranoia, belligerence, and erratic behaviour are all key indicators of the onset of dementia. Chump’s past inappropriate Twitter ramblings, his belief his phones are tapped, and his quickness to anger, as described by his staff, all fit the bill.
“I'm not saying Ronald Chump has dementia,” Bill Brighton said during a recent segment on Chump’s mental state, “but my mother has dementia. She lives in the moment. She forgets what she said a day ago, a week ago. She has forgotten how to read and write. The word from the White House suggests Chump struggles to read the briefings his staff prepare for him. Has Chump forgotten how to read and write? We can't have a President who behaves like this. I repeat. I'm not saying he has dementia. I will leave that to his physician to figure out.”
“Ronald Chump is the poster boy for Alzheimer’s disease,” former NFL player and medical marijuana proponent Kyle Turley said, weeks after Chump’s inauguration. “He has early onset of Alzheimer’s disease and it is starting to show. He behaves like some ex-players who have taken one knock to the head too many.”
“What he’s doing is totally erratic.” Turley added. “His decisions and the way he talks are not presidential. And I want more than anything for him to behave like a President, not an ignoramus who seems determined to destroy the institution of the Presidency and embarrass us internationally.”
Congress could invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and form its own body to evaluate the President’s fitness for office without impeaching him. However, this is unlikely to happen because Chump's party holds the majority in both houses.
However, even amongst his own party, there are grumblings about the way he has used Executive Orders to implement policies which are in many cases the exact opposite of those he campaigned on. His latest calls for a living wage and centrally funded standard health care have caused outrage, even amongst the supporters who stand to gain the most from these initiatives.
The clause says: “Whenever the Vice-President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide or transmit to the President pro tempore o
f the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
Some might argue replacing Chump with the Vice-President would be a backward step, given Bob Shilling’s much-touted ultra conservative views on health care, education, and intolerance of equality for women in society.
It might be better to get rid of them both and start all over again.
Twelve
“The public will think I am a complete imbecile!” Chump complained loudly.
“I’m not sure I would go as far calling you an imbecile, or a moron, but you’re certainly a fucken' idiot. Other people who don’t know you like I do might be less charitable.”
“How can you say that? I have served this nation to the best of my ability for most of my adult life. What’s more I have managed to be elected to the highest political office in the land. I am the most powerful man in the world. I can’t be an idiot!”
General Smith sighed. Chump really was an idiot. His physician had raised real concerns he was displaying early signs of dementia. There certainly had been least a decline in his cognitive ability.
“Has it slipped your mind, once again, that you didn’t get here by yourself? For most of your business and political career you were a useful show pony for various interest groups who used you to promote their own agendas, including I might add a shady group of Eastern European bankers who may or may not have been connected to the Russian mob, and probably the Russian government. Don’t get me started on the Libertarian nutcases you’ve been listening to with the other half of what’s left of your brain. Fortunately for the people of this great nation, these groups have been superseded by a more powerful force, which as far as you are concerned is embodied in me.”
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