Chapter 7

Betsy was pacing around outside the construction site. The site engineer (Stan Kubrick) and one of the foremen (Jim Franklin) were there with her, wondering why she had literally dragged them away from their homes. Chuck was standing under a palm, enjoying the shade, while George was nervously licking his lips.

A man wandered by and stared at the group for a second. Finally, he approached and said, “Hey, Jim!”

“Hello, Kirk.”

“What are you doing here?” Kirk asked.

He had been working on the recycling plant until all work came to a stop. It was a shame because the job had been steady and paid well. Now, he was doing whatever odd jobs he could for cell phone minutes and trading them for fish down at the dock. The truth was that he was getting pretty tired of eating fish.

“I’m not sure,” Jim answered.

Showing up at his side, Betsy said, “We were waiting for you.”

“Me?” Kirk asked.

Handing Jim a key, Betsy said, “Why don’t you and Kirk go open the storage pod over by the main office?”

“Why?” Jim asked.

“I need a set of samples from it. I also need a table and chair from the office,” Betsy answered.

“What kind of samples?” Jim asked.

“You’ll see,” Betsy answered with a grin.

“Why should I do that?” Kirk asked.

It wasn’t that he had anything better to do, but he didn’t want to get roped into a project and get nothing out of it. There were a lot of people who were asking for help and giving nothing in return. He had learned the hard way to negotiate the cost of his services up front.

“Food.”

“Food?” Kirk asked.

“Yes,” Betsy answered. “Enough food to eat and to trade.”

“Sure, I’ll work for food,” Kirk said hoping he wasn’t going to get stuck with more fish.

The two men walked over to the storage pod. They didn’t rush over to it. They took their time. They felt like they were wasting their time; and, as a result, they moved slowly to waste even more time. Chuck chuckled at how the two men were acting.

Jim unlocked the pod and slowly opened the door. He was hit by a blast of cold air. He had not realized that the pod was refrigerated. He froze and stared at what was inside. Kirk looked over his shoulder and swore.

“There’s a fortune in here!” Kirk said.

Jim pulled out a one pound bag of flour. “This is worth its weight in gold.”

“Damn! There are even packages of yeast in here. I haven’t had bread in ages.”

“Eggs!”

“Where?”

Jim answered, “There’s a bunch of cartons of eggs over there.”

“Eggs? I’d kill for an egg,” Kirk said.

“Condensed milk. There’s condensed milk, too.”

“Are those bags of sugar back there?”

“You’re right,” Jim said looking at where Kirk was pointing.

Danny Rhodes walked over and said, “Hi Jim. The lady over there said you needed some help. She said that I could do some work for food.”

Jim handed Danny his keys to the office and said, “Hello, Danny. I need you to get a table and chair out of the office. Take them over to where the lady is waiting.”

“Sure,” Danny said before heading over to the work site trailer.

Jim asked, “Is there a box around here, Kirk?”

Kirk walked off a few steps and came back with a beat up old box that had seen better days, but had enough structural integrity left in it to carry a sample of everything in the pod. The two men started loading the box with a lot more energy than either man had showed before. Both men got excited when they discovered the three boxes of vegetable oil.

It didn’t take long for them to set up the table and lay out the goods on it. Betsy watched with a critical eye. When they finished, all three men stepped back and surveyed all that was on the table. The quantity of food arrayed on that table was extremely valuable and they knew it.

Two and a half weeks had eaten through the food reserves of almost every household on the island. The exceptions were the homes of a handful of survivalists, and a few Mormons.

Betsy said, “Every man who works for a full day on the recycling plant will earn one bag of flour, one bag of sugar, two packets of yeast, two cans of condensed milk, six eggs, a bottle of cooking oil, three pounds of fish, and a recipe book.”

The recipe book had tips and hints conveying practical knowledge about storing and preserving food that had long been forgotten in the modern world. There was even a section on how to start a batch of sour dough starter that would allow people to make bread in the future without having to worry about sources of yeast.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Kirk said.

Jim nodded his head.

For Danny it was a no-brainer. His family had run out of food a week ago, and had been scraping by on an occasional fish that he managed to catch or trade cell phone minutes for. He could already taste a fried fish dinner with bread rolls on the side. They’d have pancakes tomorrow for breakfast.

He said, “I’d work all day for half that.”

“I’m making arrangements to get some beef. Maybe we’ll get that later this week,” Betsy said.

“Beef? Lady, I don’t know who you are, but all you have to do is ask and anything I have is yours,” Danny said.

“All I want is a good day’s work,” Betsy answered.

Jim said, “All right. Let’s get to work. We’ve got a recycling plant to finish.”

Betsy turned to Stan and then said, “If you’ve got the numbers of the regular work crew, George can start making calls. You are back in business.”

“Thank God,” Stan said.

Betsy turned to George and said, “You’re in charge. Make sure everyone works, and gets paid.”

“I’ll make sure that everything goes okay,” George said.

“If there is any trouble, call me. I can be here in less than five minutes,” Betsy said.

“I will.

Betsy walked over to Chuck. The two went down towards the dock, where the garbage scow was moored. She hadn’t really had a chance to see it, much less inspect it and was curious about what she had purchased. Captain Jack was already over there looking it over.

Chuck asked, “How long has that storage pod been there?”

“Since the day before the fall,” Betsy answered.

“Have you got any more of them stashed around, somewhere?” Chuck asked.

“A couple dozen. Each one is loaded with a different assortment of food. Tomorrow, I’ll be handing out bacon, eggs, milk, flour, beans, butter, can’s of spinach, and cans of fruit cocktail,” Betsy said.

“You’d better be careful or you’ll end up with a food riot,” Chuck said.

Betsy said, “I can guarantee you that the crane operator will dump a girder on anyone who tries to steal their food.”

Chuck laughed and said, “I guess I’m worried about nothing.”

“You’re right to be worried. There are a lot of desperate men and women running around the island at the moment,” Betsy said.

Chuck said, “You know, there was a time not too long ago that if you told someone that you’d pay them with that little bit of food that they’d have laughed at you.”

In the days before the bank collapse, people budgeted a couple hundred dollars on groceries for the month. Working for Betsy for a month, they would be getting a couple hundred dollars worth of groceries.

“With nobody paying rent or a mortgage any more, and just about every other bill that would have shown up in the mail, gone; that little bit of food, is about the same as the wage they would have earned back then. Nobody may realize it, yet, but everyone is basically debt free.”

“Now that you mention it...” Chuck said thoughtfully.

In a way, a lot of people had a higher net worth now than before. There were an awful lot of people who had a negative worth at time of the financial collapse. Now they were worth nothing. In a sad way, being worth nothing wasn’t all that bad.

With the lending institutions wiped out, there was no way to collect any outstanding debt. Any bank that tried for even a minute to collect on a loan would find a line of angry people wanting to get their money back from the bank before they laid out one dirty penny as payment on a loan. Anyone showing up to repossess a house or car would probably disappear forever.

All of the major financial investment firms had all gone belly up. They traded in publicly held stocks, swapping digital money for paper slips of ownership while taking a bit off the top. Digital money was gone. The companies on which those paper slips of money conveyed ownership were gone. There was nothing to trade and nothing to skim.

Insurance companies, which had the majority of their assets in the stock market, were wiped out with the collapse. They couldn’t pay off even the smallest claim out of petty cash if they had to. No one was going to send them money even if they had it.

The major financial corporations might still exist in the eyes of the law, but the ability to enforce any banking laws had disappeared. Seven billion people, worldwide, weren’t going to be taken for a ride by any institution that had blown it that badly.

Anyone foolish enough to try and buy the assets of any bank, stock, or insurance company would find they had bought nothing except air. How many cell phone minutes was a dollar worth? How many cows would pay off a mortgage? The fact of the matter was that the dollar was not backed by anything other than the good word of the government. Now, in the matter of the dollar, the government’s word was worthless.

As a practical matter, effectively all debt had been forgiven.

He said, “It’s like someone hit a great big ‘reset’ button in the sky.”

“Yes, it is,” Betsy said.

The pair walked towards the dock holding hands. A few people checked them out, but it was more to see if they were a danger, than to see if they would be easy victims. There were a few places that were open for business. A small stand selling pineapples was open with a few people trading cell phone minutes for pineapples. Someone had killed a wild pig and folks were lined up to get some meat.

Not everything was privately owned. There was a government stand that was distributing processed cheese in exchange for cell phone minutes. There had been emergency stockpiles of food in the event of a major catastrophe. The Governor had essentially declared the economic meltdown a major catastrophe, and had ordered the food to be distributed.

There was also a long line in front of one of the government offices where people were getting work assignments for the day. The cleanup of the damage caused by the riots had been completed. Now, the state was paying people to improve the infrastructure. Roads were being repaired, parks were being landscaped, and empty buildings were being modified or torn down.

Chuck looked at the line in front of the government office. It seemed to him that the state was giving out a lot more minutes than there was food to buy with them.

Chuck asked, “What’s going to happen when there’s no food to buy with cell phone minutes?”

“Another Fusion Foundation ship will be here any day now. They’re bringing in a lot of food, and it will be turned over for distribution. The Governor is going to put people to work all over the island,” Betsy said.

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. I talked to the Governor and told her that it was her problem,” Betsy said with a smile.

“You just keep stirring the pot, don’t you?” Chuck said with a smile.

Betsy said, “You bet.”

“So is the Fusion Foundation trying to make a profit off the food?” Chuck asked.

“No. It’s just to keep lazy people who won’t work from getting access to food they don’t deserve. The Fusion Foundation will pay people to work, they’ll buy some stuff from the island, and they’ll turn back cell phone minutes to the state,” Betsy answered.

“What about people who can’t work?” Chuck asked.

“One of the Governor’s projects is to perform a survey to identify the elderly and infirm. Anyone who can’t work will be given an allotment of minutes to pay for food and to pay for someone to provide them with assistance. She’s way ahead on that issue,” Betsy said.

“That’s good.”

“I don’t know. I’m sure some of what she’s doing is going to turn out to be wrong, but at least she’s doing something,” Betsy said.

“I’m really worried about food,” Chuck said.

“There’s more than enough food for everyone. It’s just that the food is not where the people are. The Fusion Foundation is helping to solve that problem. They’ll keep at it until more folks realize that they can be part of the solution. It’ll take a little time, but the Bards are on it,” Betsy said.

“What do you mean about folks becoming part of the solution?”

“Well, there are empty trucks sitting around, because the drivers know no one is going to pay them. However, a couple of drivers will figure out that they can go to the source of some product, trade for it, and then move it to where the product is needed. It won’t be long before thousands of truck drivers become old fashioned traders, buying and selling goods while moving around the country. My dispatching company is working to make that happen.

“People who run warehouses are going to think about all of the merchandise sitting in those warehouses. One day, they’ll unlock the door and confiscate it. Right now, it’s basically salvage. They’ll be selling goods out the backdoor before you know it and buying stuff for when the market is better. A few factory managers will figure out the same thing. They’ll start the production lines again.”

“How do you know that?”

Betsy answered, “It happened in Argentina back when its’ economy collapsed. People moved into old abandoned businesses and restarted them. One group took over a bakery that had been closed by the banks and started baking bread. They were selling it to local customers and making quite a bit of money in the process. People are people. If it worked there, it will work here.”