The Taxman Cometh by Jim Greenfield (the lemonade war series .txt) 📕

“You said they were black,” the supervisor said.

“Actually I didn’t say they were black. I’ve never seen them and I don’t know what color they are. I only asked if they’re black. Not whether they are normally black, as in, from birth, but whether they are black as a result of the blow which they sustained, y’know, like my eye.”

“Nevertheless, any intimation that an agent’s balls are black, I construe that as a disparaging comment.”

“So then, do you also construe it as a disparaging comment to refer to my eye as being black?”

“No, eyes and balls are different.”

“Well, do you think there’s something wrong with being black?”

“It’s not, no, I never—”

“That’s racist,” Samson accused, figuring that was a good way to go on the offensive.

“Well—” the supervisor stammered, “I, I, uh—”

“Look, I’ll tell you what,” Samson interrupted. “How about we cut through this racial digression so we can move on to a more pertinent topic? Agent Mess, I mean Special Agent Mess, I withdraw the question and apologize for asking if your balls were black. Okay? And you know what, as a good will gesture, I’ll even go a step further. I apologize for letting my face get in the way of your fist as you were swinging it through the air the other day.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment as the supervisor and Mess reacted to this unexpected twist. Actually they didn’t react. They were indifferent, as reflected in their body language, and complete absence of any facial expression that could be identified with particular emotions. They sat in identical postures with their feet squarely on the ground, their knees apart at a manly distance, wearing indistinguishable fedoras, and similar expressions on their faces. Samson looked back and forth from one to the other repeatedly, as it dawned on him; something wasn’t right. “Wait a second,” he asked. “Are you guys related?”

Mess and the supervisor, suddenly animated and on guard, as if someone had uncovered a secret they wished to keep hidden, shook their heads and simultaneously said, “No.”

The supervisor quickly changed the subject. “Special Agent Mess,” he asked, “did you receive two hundred thousand dollars cash from Mr. Samson?’

Samson continued to look back and forth from one to the other incredulously. “You sure you guys aren’t related?”

Mess ignored Samson’s interruption. “Not that I recall. I’ll have to check my records.”

“You don’t recall? You have to check your records? For two hundred thousand dollars cash?” Samson asked.

“Now, Special Agent Mess, have all your enforcement actions with respect to Mr. Samson been in compliance with the Plan for Universal Compliance?”

“The what?” Samson interjected.

“Of course, sir, everything was by the book,” Mess replied, still ignoring Samson.

“The Plan for What?” Samson repeated. “Universal Compliance? What the hell is that?”

“Okay, son, good work,” the supervisor said.

“You called him son!” exclaimed Samson.

“No, I didn’t!” insisted the supervisor, as Mess simultaneously asserted, “No he didn’t!”

“Yes, you did! He’s your son!” Samson persisted.

“No he’s not!” said the supervisor again as Mess said, “No, I’m not!”

“You’re his father!”

“No, I’m not!” from the supervisor and “No, he’s not!” simultaneously from Mess.

“I’m wasting my time,” said Samson. He stood up and stormed out.

As he walked out of the office, through the reception area, he again passed the big picture of Darth Vader. Maybe it’s not a joke, he thought. As he went out into the parking lot, Samson’s mind began working on intellectual constructs to put the bizarre events of recent days into a framework that would make sense of all the weird stuff that was happening to him. He came up with a variety of alternative theories, or maybe more accurately, rough drafts of alternative theories, not as yet thought through in any detail, as to why the world suddenly seemed so strange and hostile. The world had always seemed strange and hostile, but this was a whole new level of strangeness and hostility, better organized and operating from a higher level than the random, ordinary run-of-the-mill strangeness and hostility he’d experienced in the past.

Several possible theories, varying in degrees of plausibility, vaguely flashed through his mind, in those few minutes, most of which seemed to be derived from movies and modern works of fiction. His initial theories included the following:

1. He had fallen down a rabbit hole.

2. The movie The Matrix was real. Someone would soon offer him a choice between a red pill and a blue pill.

3. The movie Star Wars was real. The dark side of the force was now ascendant throughout the galaxy. Pictures of Darth Vader would soon start showing up everywhere.

4. The U.S. government had been overthrown by a coup d’état, staged by a bunch of whack jobs in fedoras, and the news media hadn’t bothered to mention it.

Of these alternative theories, the fourth seemed closest to a plausible reality. Nevertheless Samson recognized that all his notions about the underlying causes of the rapidly deteriorating circumstances of his life were infused with a strain of paranoia. Not that paranoia is necessarily bad. There are times when a healthy dose of paranoia can keep you on your toes, alert to the real dangers that surround us all. Paranoid suspicions aren’t exactly alleviated, however, when high level government officials make arbitrary assertions of authority based on mysterious laws like “catch twenty-three,” which no one had ever heard of but that purportedly, according to said government officials, give them unbounded power to do whatever they damn please, or make passing references to some undefined “Plan for Universal Compliance,” a term which, coming from the mouth of an IRS supervisor, had a disturbingly sinister ring to it. It didn't help to discover that the government was sending in sexy female undercover spies on search-and-destroy missions against ordinary citizens.

He wasn’t sure about the explanation, but he was certain reality had been altered. Perhaps the veil of illusion had been stripped away, and he was seeing the inner workings of the real world for the first time. He wished he could wake up in his bed and find that this was all just a bad dream. But if he couldn’t return to his old familiar universe, then he’d need to figure out how to survive in this alternate one where he had begun to understand that dark mysterious forces were at work behind the scenes exercising power in ways that were not perceptible to the common man. Whether the dark side of the Force was suddenly ascending, or whether there was some more prosaic explanation for this bizarre new reality, was something he would have to figure out later.

Publication Date: 05-01-2014

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