In Year XL of O.O.R.

Curt Mudgeon III

July, Year XL of O.O.R.

I am in serious trouble.  Yesterday, in its monthly visit, the neighbourhood Security Squad of the Community Organisation for Oompa Oompa (COOO) found a copy of the complete collection of my grandfather’s essays and memoirs.  I had carefully hidden it in the old attic furnace that had fallen in disuse after the interdiction of heating devices using hydrocarbons—that must have been about thirty-five years ago, with the enactment of Our Leader’s Executive Order no. 253.  I had removed the heat exchanger to make room for my grandfather’s archives.  There was no external sign of the substitution.  Only someone with time, equipment, and knowledge of old heating apparatus could have made the discovery.  I think that the inspector of the Ecological Compliance Agency did it on the last bimonthly inspection and ratted on me.  I should have gotten rid of the furnace, but moving it out of the attic required a large cut-out in the kitchen ceiling, the removal of a piece of a wall, and the equipment necessary to carry the unwieldy, heavy contraption out of the house.  I could not afford the cost of the permit, let alone the cost of the operation itself.  I could not afford either the tax collected for recycling the metal and the plastic parts.  I guess my father had kept the furnace for the same reasons.  I was only seven in Year I of O.O.R., but I remember that in the following years things drastically changed in our life.  We became poor.  In Year II of O.O.R., the Congress and a Constitutional Convention adopted the Congressional Socialist Caucus’s draft for a new constitution and its edict for the adoption of the new calendar.  Within one year, the press and the COOO Security Brigades, which had played a major part in Oompa Oompa’s election, persuaded forty states to approve the package and to grant to the president the hereditary title of Leader for Life.  In Year III of O.O.R., the name of the country was changed to the American Republic of the World.  Shortly thereafter, my father was beaten and jailed for having joked that “O.O.R.” meant “Oompa Oompa Reich” instead of “Oompa Oompa Republic.”  Joking about President Oompa Oompa was a serious matter, even though the joke meant nothing to most people as the schools had not taught history for some time.

Like his father, my father was a physicist.  As most scientists did, he worked on the government’s never ending search for an energy holy grail.  After thirty-nine years of overly generous funding and the use of the top brains of the country, this project was a failure.  It was a failure for not inventing new sources of energy that were cheap, practical, inexhaustible, and squeaky clean, as specified by the government.  The hopes placed on hydrogen technology came to an end when it could no longer be ignored that it was much too expensive and dangerous.  In Year XX of O.O.R., an explosion at the Oompa Oompa Illinois Laboratory, which killed eighty-five people and destroyed an entire building, sealed the fate of the hydrogen project.  Fortunately, at the time of the mishap, my father was away at his semi-annual, mandatory two-week Continuing Civic Education class in Oompa Oompa City, DC.  This is when we moved from Argonne, Illinois, to Livermore, as my father was re-assigned to the Oompa Oompa California Laboratory.   Having just completed the dissertation of my doctorate in chemistry, I moved in with my parents and found a job in a division of the OOCL.  My younger sister Jane, named after our paternal grandmother, was still in medical school but could manage a transfer.  Her good grades and citizenship qualified her for a slot in the reputed San Francisco Oompa Oompa Centre for Responsible Medicine, where she could specialise at the Psychiatric Institute for Civic Rehabilitation. 

Both Jane and I had gone through difficult times.  There was the matter of our ancestry, including our name and our looks, as we were both tall, had blue eyes, fair skin, and light brown, reddish hair.  That had put us in the “Anglo” ethnic minority, a category not much in favour in a country that had become very attentive to ethnic justice.  At school, we always had to do chores, like scouring the cafeteria and the classrooms, and once a month cleaning the solar panels messed up by birds and the weather.  Other kids did everything they could to make our work more difficult.   On weekends, we often spent a whole day to pick up garbage along the trails in the public parks.  We also had to attend night classes on diversity, the curriculum of which consisted of Islamic and African studies.  Another black mark in our records included our high IQs and the fact that we always outscored the favoured ethnic groups in academic tests, even those that were especially designed to make us fail.  Yet, things started getting better when my application to try out for the high-school track team was accepted by the local COOO Citizenship Committee, a member of which used to be a 400m record holder and had seen me train by myself.  My subsequent performance in national competitions and, later, two Olympics gold medals opened for me the door to higher education, the allocation of a scholarship, and a few precious perks during my graduate studies.  That included a government-provided car and fuel credits.  The car was a wee hybrid two-seater produced by the Government Motor Works.  It had a 300cc air-cooled two-cylinder methanol engine feeding two electrical motors mounted on the front wheels.  It was nice, even though its speed was limited to 30 mph and its cramped cab made impossible any sort of amorous behaviour on dates.  When most of the population had to ride government one-speed bicycles, the little car gave me status and caught girls’ attention.   Evidently, it could be used only for short trips.  This was not a serious constraint, as only the public People Transportation Agency’s trains, buses, and aircraft had to be used for authorised long trips, unless you were a high-ranking government official to whom limousines were always available.  My sister did well too by her involvement in the United-We-Help Corps, by her leadership in improving the effectiveness of the local COOO Security Squad’s collection of neighbourhood information, and by her selection for the national volley-ball team that won the Hugo Chavez Tournament of the Americas.  Recruited by the Oompa Oompa Maidens and Knights, Jane and I travelled the country for a year to bring the Yes-We-Shall-Triumph message to young people.  At the end of my graduate studies, the GMW car was returned to the motor pool of the state university.

It is five years later, in XXV of O.O.R., that my father got in trouble.   Somehow he had gotten a pamphlet from Russia that explained how socialism, communism, and fascism were siblings of the same political family.  It also explained how, in twenty years, after a bloodless coup d’état, capitalism and the installation of a new constitution imposing strict limits on government powers and guaranteeing individual  liberties had made Russia the happiest and most powerful country in the world.  Father made copies of the pamphlet on an old, unregistered duplicator that he had painstakingly rebuilt and hidden in a cousin’s garden shack.  Caught passing copies to friends, he was arrested and sent to a Rehabilitation Centre.  Mother was arrested and interrogated for a whole week.  Jane and I went to testify for our parents, but only our mother was released.  She lost her job of biologist, and took a substantial cut in her meagre retirement benefits.  When father was released, four years later, he looked much older than his years and walked with a shuffle.  He never told us what had happen to him during those four years, but it was clear that he just wished to die.  He too saw his retirement benefits slashed.  Jane and I stayed with our parents to help them.  That also allowed them to keep their house, which the city council had found too big for them and wanted to assign to a large immigrant family from East Africa.  At that time, my wife Katherine was pregnant with Curt IV. A year later, mother died.  Independent assessments by Jane and by the medical technician assigned to our family had indicated a probability of brain tumour.  Although Jane insistently tried to pull strings, it took four months of wait in line for the availability of a state MRI machine to confirm the diagnosis.  By that time, it was too late to do anything about our mother’s condition, other than the prescription of strong pain killers.  Dad outlived her only by a few months.  Before he died, he gave me a copy of Grandpa Mudgeon’s memoirs and essays.  He did not tell me where they had been hidden because that could have compromised other people.

From before O.O.R. times, I remember Grandpa Curt, whom I called “Gramps.”  He liked to joke and always saw the humorous side of life.  He made for me paper boats that I could float in the bathtub, and paper airplanes with adjustable elevators that flew gracefully and could make loops.  He also told me stories of when he was a kid.  Although he was not able to dribble as fast as I, he could kick a soccer ball with dad and me.  He and Grandma Jane, whom I called “Mums,” played board games with me and let me win without being obvious.  Mums was soft and nice-looking.  She cooked stuff that I liked, even though I was then a finicky eater.  Growing up during World War Two, Gramps and Mums remembered the hard times, the pictures of death and destruction in Life Magazine, and the evils of communism, socialism, and fascism.  They grew up to be deeply attached to individual liberties and an imperfect capitalistic system that they knew was all around better to people than any other economic system.  They saw with great concern the growth of the government and the attendant shrinking of individual freedoms which culminated with the power grab of the Oompa Oompa administration and the ensuing inauguration of a new constitution.  It is ten year before the installation of the new regime that Gramps started writing his memoirs and a series of political essays.  The essays appeared on a world-wide computer network called “The Internet,” which at that time could be accessed freely for a modest fee by any computer user.  In those days, anyone could buy a computer of his choice without special authorisation and could use it without surveillance.  In Year II of O.O.R., the newly created People’s Agency for Truth in Information placed Gramps under arrest and confiscated his computer.  He was released after a couple of months.  His health was declining and he worried much about the future of the country.  He no longer had the heart to tell jokes.  He did not either putter anymore with woodwork, which he used to love.  He died at age seventy-eight.  Mums followed him in death a week later.  The autopsy report mentioned a heart attack at night while sleeping.  I know better.  I know that my grandparents had died of hopelessness

Thirty-eight years later, the People’s Agency for Truth in Information will find Gramps’s writings still egregiously subversive for daring criticising his government and expounding libertarian ideas.  It probably will find equally objectionable their description of an epoch when people could make a good living by working for privately owned corporations, when health care, electricity, food, clothing, and other goods of necessity were not rationed, and books were not censored.  The report of my insubordination will be passed along to the district office and from there to the state office as it is customary in cases of treason.  There is no way for Katherine, our two children, and me to escape anywhere. In addition to the surveillance by the neighbourhood COOO Security Squad, the Venezuelan immigrants who have been granted the use of half our house since the deaths of my parents would only be too eager to report an attempt to escape.  Besides, no travel would be possible without authorisation.  At best, I will lose my job, end up cleaning COOO Security offices at night for minimum wage, and do time in a Rehabilitation Centre.  At worst, … I  would rather not think about it.  I just hope that Katherine, who has an unblemished record of civic behaviour, will be able to keep her employment as a department head of the People’s Pharmaceuticals of California.  I also hope that my own record will not affect our children’s future. 

I heard that a resistance group has been formed somewhere in the southern part of the state.  Perhaps there will be an opportunity for me to join.  Yet, I have given up the hope that anything like the United States of America which Gramps knew could be brought back.  After forty years of Oompa Oompa rule with unrestricted immigration from Africa, Indonesia, Central America, and the Middle East, the population of the American Republic of the World has grown to more than five hundred and fifty millions.  The politics of ethnic identity have turned the country into a multitude of more or less autonomous ethnic fiefs the sole common attribute of which is an unfailing allegiance to the Leader for Life.   Because Islam is by far the country’s dominant religion, Muslims are pressing for making it the official religion and a requirement for citizenship.  They will likely succeed.  Oompa Oompa is now eighty-seven years old.  The rumour is that he has a terminal disease and will soon pass the power to his niece Saniyyah, who has been at the head of the State Secret Police for the past twenty years and thinks of herself as a reincarnation of Cleopatra. 

There is a knock on the door.  In the middle of the night, I know what that means.  I shall go quietly and try not to wake up Katherine and the kids.  I read somewhere that an American president once said that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” I guess no one listened.