Communism Without Coffee
Copyright© 2026 by A duck named TEF
Chapter 7
“In a different life, I was a regular shop-worker. A ‘Go-to’ administrator for a small machine shop. I literally wrote our policies, our regulations, all the paperwork was my jurisdiction and I loved it. Vendors would call me, customers had my number saved, our partners would only work with me as the owner and operator of the shop was an engineer through and through.”
“I loved it. Coming in every morning, the smell of grease and gears permeated everything. It was heaven! When we were short on staff I was allowed to de-burr and ‘babysit’ the plasma laser. This really was the best job ever, and I finally felt like I was settling into a real ‘adult’ life.”
“My mother wasn’t too happy about it, thinking such a dirty shop was no place for a woman, but at least dad supported me. He always did though, I guess I was a bit of a daddy’s girl in addition to being a total tom-boy growing up.”
“That day was pretty normal to begin with. The whole shop was working on a big government project, ITAR* compliances were in full effect. I was going to be personally taking the product out of state to an ITAR compliant shop that would do the required finishing chemical conversion coating on the product so we could then send it off to the customer.”
“This was the biggest job we had ever done since my hiring just a year and a half ago. My boss told me it wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work I put in to get us compliant. To say I didn’t feel an immense amount of pride in that alone would be an understatement. Of course I was proud of all my work, but this was a highlight.”
“I went back to the office later that night to make sure everything was in order, I’d be driving the items in a few hours so I could get to the out of state shop when they opened. The sooner we got this in, the sooner it would be finished, and thusly, the sooner we could get it to the customer and get paid. Everything was perfect, product loaded, I was ready to hit the road! I always did enjoy long drives.”
“The day was clear, sunny, warm, and of course that meant road construction would be taking place. With any luck I was early enough to miss most of the traffic that would inevitably pile up. I-90 can have some pretty brutal traffic jams if you hit it at the wrong time. Not to worry! I have music, and music is life. As long as the station didn’t go out I would be fine, right? Of course.”
“Well, it happened around lunchtime. My usual lunchtime that is, I had gone through a different timezone by this point. Traffic was piled up. New road work between a cliff and a mountain. I didn’t like getting caught in the passes on a good day in this big-rig, let alone road work.”
“My fears were well placed that day.”
“No one had expected it, but when does anyone expect a massive earthquake? As soon as I felt the initial trembling I just knew, this is it. I can remember hearing rumbling, squealing, metal crushing under earth, and screaming. It was both fast and slow at the same time. People tried to run out of their vehicles to no avail, everything was swept up in a chaos of dirt, rubble, and crushed machinery. It all went black.”
“I don’t know what exactly woke me up, but it must have been something of a shock. My head was pounding and my body had that odd weak feeling you get when you wake up from a nightmare. I was still buckled in my truck, dirt had covered the bottom, having entered through the broken windows, but I could see, like I wasn’t buried in mountain muck from the earthquake.”
“The belt all but disintegrated as I went to release myself, strange, I thought. The door swung open easily but squealed in a rusty protest. It looked as if nature had taken over the whole thing.”
“No, not just the truck, I couldn’t recognize the landscape at all. Just how powerful was that earthquake that it would practically level the whole mountain range? I know I was deep in the passes, mountains and rivers all around. This place was ... Apocalyptic!”
“I didn’t know it then, but I had just traveled into a future where I would meet my soulmate, and vow to destroy him in order to save humanity.”
The house was small and on the edge of ruin. It was deep in the populace common area, where most of the common people were jammed into. Public housing areas like this were all over crowded. Easier to keep the cattle in one place in order to maintain strict control.
Everyone had the same amount of space as their neighbors had. Everyone maintained the same status quo. Everything was gray and impersonal.
Individuality wasn’t officially unlawful, but it wasn’t looked well upon either. From the day they were born, there was no individual celebration, or reward. There wasn’t exactly individual punishment either.
Humanity was a group unit. Survival was a group effort. Everyone pulled their weight or everyone suffered.
’Ab unoquoque pro facultate, ad unumquemque pro necessitate’
The declaration was everywhere the public would see. A visual reinforcement of one’s place within society.
The house had this saying etched within the slowly crumbling outer stone façade. It was in small lettering directly above the threshold. This house had once been a public building. As time took its toll, the public house was converted into one of many designated living abodes.
This house was now assigned to Designation 02121985-1 Robert Theodore Edwards. He and his wife had two children. They would not have wanted a third even if house-holds could have more than the legal two. Until one left to fulfill their place in society or died, the Edwards were subjected to clinically reinforced celibacy.
Not that it mattered much to Robert, he didn’t want to bring anymore life into this dismal world, his wife shared this sentiment. The only reason they had two was out of obligation. It was seen as one’s duty to procreate in order to maintain a well populated work force. Robert didn’t want to raise any more alarm toward his family or himself than he already had as a child.
He was never a normal child. Robert was exceptional, like the uncle he never knew about until he confronted his father all those years ago.
Robert could see things others never picked up on, or perhaps he saw things in a way no one else could. He didn’t know exactly, it could be both. He was able to pick up on lessons much faster than his peers, and found himself bored in school often.
In the cover of their home, his father would help him with advanced subjects a child of his age should have had nothing to do with. It was dangerous to hide such exceptionality from the officials.
Eventually Robert began to question why things were as they were. His father told him about his uncle, how he was kidnapped by the officials and never heard from for years, until his body showed up one day, in the center of the town, strung up by his ankles, dead. Written on his chest was his sin against the echelons.
‘Blasphemy’
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