Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  He explained why he needed to do these stretches and motions every morning and dare not slack off on them. He turned and showed her his scarred back matter-of-fact, but didn’t tell the story of how it got like that. He wondered if her culture would have fixed him up better than his own doctors had, but she didn't volunteer anything about that.

  "Let's see what is happening in the world," he suggested and called the news and weather up, on the big screen in the living room, so they could watch as he worked out.

  The lead story was the current strained relations and tit for tat guerrilla warfare between China and Japan. The US had walked away, when the final confrontation had come between the mainland and Taiwan. What nobody had expected was the way Tokyo had intervened. Their self defense constitution and Japans insular past, had blinded everyone to the fact that they knew they had to act, or face absorption themselves at some point in time.

  Japan and Taiwan had simply declared that they were now co-equal states in a new nation and all their principles of self defense now applied to all components of that nation. Roger explained that, between comments from the reporter. It had all came down to one battle between a Chinese carrier task force and a single Japanese sub. The Chinese lost the whole force except a couple frigates not worth mopping up. One after-action report concluded that they’d probably lost one of their own subs to friendly fire.

  Martee tore her eyes away from the screen. Rog had noticed already she seemed stunned by the program. Maybe some of it was the hangover.

  "Friendly fire," she simply repeated and shook her head in wonder. "Only on this world, would you say that with a straight face."

  The program ended with the usual stirring theme, that started with a blare of trumpets and fading into insistent pulsing strings and brass, with a deep background roll of timpani. Martee hugged herself tight and rocked with the music, while the camera panned over dramatic footage of New York City.

  "Please, could you shut that off for awhile," she begged eyes closed." I think that's all I can take of it for awhile. I really didn't understand a lot of it."

  This wasn't the first time she seemed overwhelmed by things. "Sure."

  He told it to close.

  "Come on, let's have a bite," Roger offered. Done with his exercises, he donned a fresh shirt.

  "This I know," Martee said at the table, tapping on the honey jar with her finger. "People gather it and sell it for what I think you call a hobby?" she said uncertain, "but this I don't know and it is very good," she indicated the maple syrup. Roger explained to her how it was made.

  "Ugh, the aspirin tastes just like I expect medicine to taste," she said and swished the coffee around in her mouth, to wash the taste away.

  "The ride to this other town will take pretty close to an hour. Can you answer a few more questions as we drive? Roger asked.

  "Sure," she agreed. "If you could just not ask quite so loudly, it would help."

  Chapter 6

  When they left Roger closed the storm shutters on his cabin. He didn't think any aliens would know that was unusual, lots of summer places around here were closed up now. It just made it a little harder to break in while they were gone. He also set the alarm system to page him on his phone.

  When they reached the main road he turned right and uphill, a direction they had never gone together and eased along in no rush. They had the whole day if they wanted.

  "Martee, some of the things I see you do, some of your reactions, are pretty strange to me. Could you explain please why you get so intense when you have a meal? And why did you want to come here so bad? I find it hard to believe it was because Keith's has the best biscuits and gravy in the galaxy, much less my own humble cooking."

  "You may find it strange, Roger, but if you eliminate all the other competition from Earth, Keith's just might have the best biscuits and gravy in the galaxy. At least on civilized worlds. Do you remember how Mary said you contributed your toast to the world's hungry?"

  "Sure, but that's just a running joke between us. I said to skip the toast one day, when I first started going there, but the cook just sent toast out automatically, because that's just the way it is usually done. I gave her a hard time about children starving in Somalia, who would kill for that toast.

  There's a UPS guy that stops there for breakfast and she went over to him and cooked up a joke on me. After his breakfast he pulled his truck up in front of the windows, came in to my table with a next day envelope with Somalian Relief written in big letters with a marker, stuffed my toast in the envelope, gravely thanked me and roared off in his truck like it was really on its way. It was a pretty good joke, I have to admit."

  "How would you feel about a world – make that several worlds – where almost nobody would think that was a joke? Where if you left your toast uneaten on the table, strangers would be rude to you, or maybe even rude to you if you looked too well-fed and ordered up the toast in the first place? Where if you eat too well, or add items that are not really necessary to nutrition like pepper for your eggs, or coffee to drink instead of water, you are made to feel you are literally snatching the food out of some poor person's mouth?"

  "I'd think they were idiots. We have some people who think like that here. They look at any luxury item like a fancy boat and only see that the rich guy could have helped some poor people build a house, or send their kids to college. What they don't get, is when he bought the yacht the rich guy did help any number of boat builders pay for their home, or send their children to school."

  "I don't know how it is on your worlds, but here there is plenty of food. The trouble is not food – the trouble is lots of people with no money to buy food and they have no skills, or access to any resources, they can use to make the money to feed themselves. They basically have nothing to contribute worthy of pay, or there would be plenty of boats full of grain headed there to trade with them."

  Martee sighed. "This is so difficult. You tear apart the whole basis of rule and social order in our worlds, in a handful of words and you are right."

  "Surely you have some people who can recognize what a lame argument that sort of philosophy is?"

  "Yes, but it has gotten entrenched over several thousands of years. The children are taught very early that is the right way to think and are made not to express anger or contempt for other children, except when they are accused of taking more than their fair share, or want to be treated special because they show more ability or talent in their lessons. If anyone has anger inside, they watch the others very careful for these things, so they can release all that anger."

  "Wow – you just described a perfect formula for mediocrity. Do you know what a nail is?

  Martee checked her computer for mediocrity, then for nail to be certain. "A friction fastener for wood?"

  "Yep, you got it. The Japanese have a saying – "The nail that sticks up will be pounded down," he illustrated with gestures. The idea being not to elevate yourself above those around you and draw attention to yourself or you will be chastised. Bet the kind of folks you have running the show would love that saying."

  "They have a very similar saying for the children on my world. They say – ‘The bump in the road will be run over until it is ground down, by those following the righteous path.’"

  "Lovely, a whole world run on guilt, instead of fear. So what do you do if some poor sap doesn't get the message and insists on butter and jam on his toast and gets a big gut? Toss him in prison for bucking the system?"

  That required some study and notes in her computer.

  "We don't have many prisons," she finally answered. "They would be considered wasteful. The government isn't exactly like yours. It's more like what you'd have if all the big companies each had a person on a committee, that decided what was good for everyone and some of the really big companies, would have two or three, because they have a much bigger responsibility for supplying things to people."

  "Fascism and market share it's called here," Rog informed her.


  "Anyway," she said, while she added that to her computer, "if someone made a display of wealth by having something that people in their pay grade don't normally have, like a ground car or an air car, first of all their neighborhood safety warden would call their boss and have an audit done of their income and purchase record, to see if they have illicit income."

  "If they found everything in order and the person was just skimping on everything else, to spend almost all his pay on one luxury item, the man's boss or a co-worker sent by the boss, would have a talk with him and explain how disruptive it was for him to do that. All the pay grades in a big company usually live in the same tract of company housing, or big apartment building and if one of them has something the others doesn't it sows discontent.

  "Now, I've seen a company move the person up to a pay grade that fits the life style he insists on displaying, if his bosses feel they really need the man. But more often they will drop him a pay grade as punishment and if he really doesn't have a good attitude about it they may fire him. You don't want to be fired on the world where I live, believe me."

  "Why is that so bad? No unemployment insurance?" Rog asked.

  "No insurance of almost any kind," Martee answered. "It encourages fraud and profiteering. Having insurance would foster independence, just like working for salary only. You are expected to work for a company and they will take care of your needs before any cash income. Even when insurance is available, buying very much is considered a sign you don't trust your company to take care of you. People are offered a package that includes almost all the necessities of life and just leaves you a little cash money. People who live off their hobby by raising some exotic food or making something at home, are thought dangerously independent too."

  "So let me guess. People have to shop in a company store and draw against their account for everyday things like groceries?"

  "Very good. I'm surprised you figured that out so quickly. And you can get cash like the bills you got so upset over at the restaurant, but you tell payroll you want them to print some out for you. When government controls all the printers and who can own them, you don't have to worry as much about unauthorized copies. If you stole a printer, then you need ink and paper and the sale of those is all tracked too."

  "A lot of people work for the government, so their script is issued by the government, but there isn't a big supply of it for everybody to use like here. Some agencies and companies print them with an expiration date and if they aren't cashed in the credit goes back to your account and the note is void, so there isn't a bunch of it out there floating around. You can't save them up. Some you have to sign, to validate where you spend them."

  "That all sounds like it is intended to avoid a hot economy. Restricting the money supply always keeps a lid on development. But, Dear God Martee, don't tell our government anything about perishable bank notes. They'd embrace the idea, but forget the part about the unused value going back in your account. It would just be another hidden tax on people who let them expire."

  "We also have money orders and checks you have to sign. And we still have some companies like coal mines, that pay some of their wages in script, or have a line of credit good only at the company-run store." He smiled and broke into song – "Saint Peter don't you call me... 'cause I can't gooo…I oweee my soul…to the company store!"

  "Oh please. Sometime soon will you sing the whole thing for me and allow me to save it on my computer? This is a very advanced computer," she bragged. "It can make audio recordings. I'm allowed to buy such things because I am an academic."

  "That's odd. Multimedia capabilities are just sort of expected on a laptop nowadays. I mean, people just expect to be able to save songs and watch movies. I think maybe we've gotten further ahead in computers than you are aware. I can get the song for you when we get back home off the net. Ernie Ford or somebody else can sing ‘Sixteen Ton’ a lot better than I can. How much memory you got in that thing? Can you put stuff on removable media?"

  "I'm not sure how to express it in your terms. I could record most of one of your days of sound if I used it all. It's all internal; nothing is removable."

  "That's all?" – Roger made a rude noise. – "I'll set you up with something better and you can keep this one just for English if that's all the memory it has."

  "Are you rich, Roger?"

  He had to think about that a bit. What he finally came up with was neither yes or no: "I'm comfortable. I might have to work for a living, some time down the road. I'm not independently wealthy in the sense of being set for life, to buy just anything I please and never have to be concerned about it. Some months lately I spend less than I earn in interest or payments, so I suppose that if I were really frugal, I could consider myself retired. But I suspect I'll want to do things eventually, that will require me to make some money," he predicted.

  "However, you are certainly no special burden if you are worried about that. I bet if we stuck our heads together and thought about it carefully, we could both make some serious money. If we compare what our two cultures have and move things from one side to the other, it will be profitable. Am I right?"

  "Yes I'm sure that is true because as I already said they want to cut off artifacts from this world. But if I worked with you to do that I'd be a smuggler. I'm already a criminal for coming here with no permit. Are you sure you want to make yourself a criminal like me, by association?"

  "Doesn't that seem a minor matter, compared to whacking your cops and disposing of them?"

  Martee made another entry. She didn't ask the obvious. She seemed to have understood whacking simply from context.

  "You know we don't have to smuggle anything physical," he mused. "I bet we could do just fine if we limit ourselves to information. There have to be books and movies and things like computer games, that would be real curiosities to your people."

  "Oh yes," she laughed heartily. "There is a market for that, but they are much more afraid of that, than any physical thing you could smuggle out. What sort of thing do you think they are most concerned about, to confiscate and remove from the public eye?

  "I don't know – pornography? – stuff like gemstones? – luxury items if that's what people are not allowed to have? Damn – the way you act probably cookbooks," he joked.

  "Yes!" she agreed. "Maybe you do get it. A cooking instruction book and what is worse a cookbook that tells about all sorts of things they never heard of and then a canister of that Montreal steak seasoning and some of that black pepper and a little bottle of the Maple syrup you served me this morning. When it ran out and they couldn't get anymore, it would sow huge discontent. A song like you just sang, would gather untold anger at the company store."

  "Do you know what really started this police crackdown and trying to isolate you people?" she asked him.

  "I'm so confused I'm scared to guess. Toilet paper?" he quipped.

  "You could probably sell it," she admitted. "Nobody sells it with little quilted designs, or scented, or ‘squeezably soft’ like it says on the package in your bathroom. But what first really upset them were jeans."

  "Blue jeans? Pants?"

  "Yes, people stationed here started to wear them home. Pretty soon everybody knew if you used your entire personal property shipping allotment to take jeans back, you could make more money than your entire salary the whole time you were stationed here. Then they tried making a law that prohibited the import of native clothing of any kind. That just made it more attractive and ran the price up. People would actually wear jeans under normal pants to smuggle them. Sometimes two pairs, they were so greedy. So the companies tried to make their own blue jeans at home, so people wouldn't have to smuggle them."

  "How did that work out?"

  "Didn't you see my clothing I wore, the first day you saw me?"

  "Sure," he agreed, not wanting to insult it.

  "Come on," she insisted. "Tell me what you really thought of it."

  "Hmmm, do you know what a refugee is?"

 
; "Someone who is seeking refuge?" she offered from the PDA, but it didn't sound like she really understood what it meant.

  "Yeah, we have so many wars there are often huge crowds of people that flee the fighting – sometimes they run for their lives with just what they have on their back. They make what are called refugee camps, where they shelter these people and try to contain them. Often try to keep them from mixing with the local population and upsetting the local labor markets. If they are lucky things will settle down and sometimes they can go back home."

  "They feed them whatever they can get cheap and make them live in tents with very few comforts at all. They usually dress them in all sorts of worn mismatched rags, that people have thrown away. That's what the guy I shot and you both looked like to me at first glance. That or somebody who dressed from the thrift shop at a local charity where – again – the clothing was discards and people gave it away for pity."

  "The items I wore, were what a specialty clothing manufacturer, a hobbyist working at home called his Earth-Line. Very expensive clothing, made to try to imitate clothing from here that had been smuggled out, before they cut it off. Only the upper pay grades could afford such things and it was a real stretch financially for me to buy them, so when I came into town I wouldn't be too obvious. It was considered just barely acceptable for them to waste resources to dye the items such festive colors, when it doesn't really make them perform any better."

  "Festive colors?" Roger bit his tongue firmly.

  "Roger, please try to imagine. For generations people have worn ugly simple garments that were the natural color, or if they were synthetic usually plain black. Who knows how to do any different? Remember how you said people who bought fancy boats, helped support all the people who make them?"

  "Yeah, still makes sense to me."

  "But what would happen if nobody bought a fancy boat for a long time – for generations?"