“We’re only rescuing you from yourself, ma’am,” spoke Officer Howard earnestly, responsible for the check in. “What if, say, I ran up to Starbuccaneers just above us and Barista Wanda — or whatever her name is; I just made that up — Wanda, say, gave me a free coffee this morning, on the house just for being a cop. And then let’s say I take a couple of sips and then give it over to Officer Brendan, and Officer Brendan gives it to Officer Ferguson, and Officer Ferg — well I think you get the point. Pretty soon there’s free coffee all over town and Starbuccaneer’s is not making a dime off of it, business closed. So you see it’s dangerous, really dangerous, to offer stuff for free in a capitalist economy. Say, if we were in China or Cuba it would be different.”
“But we’re not anywhere,” Bermuda (Atlantis High Priestess) countered. “We’re right here. In Aisle of Palms on the Jeogeot continent. Neither here nor there.” Kind of like the Azores, she thought to herself.
“Well,” said Officer Howard back, taken aback a bit, “I don’t know about *your* user but *my* user comes from the good ol’ red white and blue US of A up there in the Americas, no communism in sight. Er, except for Cuba as I think I mentioned before. Anyway–”
“*Anyway*,” interrupted Bermuda, eager to get this over with and be locked inside her cell, safe from what she senses might be a growing mob. “I believe I get a phone call?”
“Indeed, ahem, indeed you do,” said Officer Ferguson, suddenly tired of lecturing the virtues of trickle down economies. He indeed got his coffee free from Starbuccaneer’s this morning from someone named Wanda, indeed shared it with Brendan who shared it with Ferguson and on down the line, everyone in town with their required caffeine high and no one else visiting Wanda this morning. Like the Loaves of Bread story from the Bible, Howard being a modern day agogo Jesus. Yet he still didn’t know he had that power. Too bad he didn’t also have the Savior’s power to resurrect himself because, after the decaffeinated 3PM afternoon break mob led by Jittery Joe was finished with him, he’d need it to continue.
“Let’s GET HIM!”
“YEAAHHHHH!!”
Sunklands 