Billy’s Legacy

A libertarian fiction story.

By Tom Alciere

Entire contents copyright 2004 Tom Alciere

While this book is a sequel to Billy’s Reward, 
this book is much more suitable for children.

Contents

Chapter One: The Explanation
Chapter Two: Manchester, New Hampshire
Chapter Three: Yesenia
Chapter Four: The doorbell
Chapter Five: The News
Chapter Six: Melissa and Joe
Chapter Seven: Jennifer
Chapter Eight: Day Labor
Chapter Nine: Reckoning
Chapter Ten: More Clues
Chapter Eleven: The Funeral Home
Chapter Twelve: The Library
Chapter Thirteen: The Nurse
Chapter Fourteen: Biology Class
Chapter Fifteen: Presidents Day
Chapter Sixteen: The Nurse, Again
Chapter Seventeen: The Lecture
Chapter Eighteen: The Presentation
Chapter Nineteen: Sam
Chapter Twenty: A New Job
Chapter Twenty-One: New Premises
Chapter Twenty-Two: Banking
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Pitch
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Private Transfer
Chapter Twenty-Five: Private Money
Chapter Twenty-Six: Finally
Glossary

Chapter One: The Explanation
	
	Billy’s Legacy is a sequel to Billy’s Reward. 
	Billy’s Reward starts out with a traffic stop in an unidentified municipality in New Hampshire. The United States Supreme Court has actually ruled, and some cops actually believe, that if a driver commits any traffic violation, that supposedly gives the cops the right to search a passenger’s pocketbook. The court did not fool Billy Americano, however, and in Billy’s Reward, when cops try to pull such a stunt, Billy vetoes the unconstitutional search by borrowing one cop’s gun to settle the matter out of court.
	Billy is rescued from jail by an angel, in much the same way that the Bible describes the rescue of Peter the Apostle (Acts 12:6-11). Protected from recapture, Billy is able to visit television studios and explain, on the air, the justification for armed resistance and the right of the people to fight back to defend the rights that the government seeks to violate.
	Freedom Fighters demand that the government call off the War on Drugs and release all the P.O.W.’s, making it clear that they will make surprise attacks on random cops until their demands are met. This is known as Operation U.S.A. Freedom. The government is unable to take effective countermeasures because the government never knows who will strike, nor when, nor where, nor how, since the Freedom Fighters are not organized, and devise many ways to destroy cops. Typically, the Freedom Fighters get killed in the attacks, but not before they make the government pay a price, with cops’ blood, for noncompliance. New Hampshire is one of the first States to comply. 
	Committees for liberty organize openly. They only debate and define their demands, in exchange for which, they will sincerely appeal to the Freedom Fighters to cease and desist for 30 days in their geographic area. This gives guidance to both the lawmakers and the Freedom Fighters. The committees for liberty do not advocate, solicit, order, or otherwise attempt to persuade anybody to kill cops. They merely issue appeals not to kill cops. By pointing out the the New Hampshire Legislature has called off the War on Drugs, and urging Freedom Fighters not to kill any more cops within New Hampshire before the end of November, they do not specifically say that anybody should kill cops elsewhere or kill cops in New Hampshire after November. However, the New Hampshire Legislature is under intense pressure to repeal more unjust laws, in order to get the appeal extended.
	Many voters who never cared about the victims of unjust laws, start caring because their beloved cops will get themselves killed for enforcing those laws. They start to notice that there are candidates on their ballot who support liberty, candidates about whom their TV sets did not spoon-feed them any information.
	In November, a lot of candidates who support liberty get elected by voters who see this as the only way they can prevent the continued extermination of cops and total breakdown of law and order. Whether or not these new lawmakers are a majority in any chamber, they will have access to fellow lawmakers who have been opposing liberty, and will be able to explain libertarian positions to them in the cafeterias and elevators in the state capitols and in the halls of Congress.
	Because of Billy’s heroic actions, he gets to enjoy an ample number of angel girls who have a crush on him, and an ample number of slave girls who are at his mercy. The vivid descriptions of his enjoyment of these girls makes Billy’s Reward unsuitable for children. In Billy’s Legacy, sex happens but is not vividly described. 
	Billy’s Legacy starts in December, after the November election. Many of the new lawmakers have yet to be sworn in. Unjust laws remain on the books in Massachusetts, where many cops have quit rather than get themselves killed for enforcing them. As the story progresses, more and more unjust laws are being repealed.
	The reader might wonder why this chapter is not entitled, Introduction, Forward or Preface. The reason is simple: Nobody would read it.

Chapter Two: Manchester, New Hampshire

	A light snow was falling on downtown Manchester, New Hampshire. A clock on the nearby bank showed the temperature was -3° Celsius. Steve was bundled up against the wind.
	The crowd that had assembled on the city square joined in the annual chant, screaming “Ten!” in unison, directed by an electronic billboard flashing the numeral “10” in large figures and “23:59:50” in smaller ones.
	“Nine!” they screamed. Some people blew noisemakers, others just screamed.
	“Eight!…Seven!…Six!…Five…Four!…Three!” Bright rockets launched from a barge in the Merrimack River. 
	“Two!…One!” the chant continued.
	Then the figure “1” disapeared and the smaller display changed to “00:00:00”.
	“Happy new year!” everybody screamed. Fireworks illuminated the night sky, their blasts making the ground shake detectably beneath people’s feet. Strobe lights and lasers added to the colorful display.
	It was another New Year’s Day in Manchester, but this time, it was different, thanks to Operation U.S.A. Freedom. Yes, there were cops on hand, but there were fewer unjust laws, and the cops refrained from enforcing most of them.
	Steve Johnson finished his beer and tossed the bottle into a trash barrel. Then he recognized a classmate from Manchester South High School.
	“Hey, Steve! Don’t forget, we have school tomorrow.” Rick said.
	“No we don’t! Tomorrow’s a holiday!” Steve replied.
	“No!” Rick cried. “It is now the first of January. Therefore, tomorrow is January second.”
	The band played Auld Lang Syne and couples young and old slowly danced to the strains. Neither Steve nor Rick had anybody with whom to dance.
	A few minutes passed as people screamed and howled. Then people wandered into nearby taxis or taverns, depending on whether they wanted to go home right away or later. Some of the nearby cars could only be identified as taxis by the hand-made signs taped to the insides of the rear windows. These belonged to their respective drivers, who were out to make money on this night. Taxi medallions were still technically required, but the regulation was not being enforced.
	“A lot of cabbage tonight.” Steve told Rick.
	“What do you mean? I don’t see any cabbage.” Rick wondered.
	“Well, Rick, when you pack your bags, that’s baggage, right?” Steve explained.
	“Yes, that’s right.” Rick agreed.
	“And if you break something, that’s breakage, right?” Steve continued.
	“Yes, that’s right.” Rick agreed again.
	“And then when you take a cab, that’s cabbage.” Steve said. “See you in school tomorrow.”
	A nearby stranger joined in. “Did you hear about those high school kids who tried to order beers from the flight attendant on TWA flight 800?”
	Steve said, “No. What happened?”
	The stranger replied, “They got shot down.”
	Steve covered his mouth to supress his laughter. Rick observed, “That joke is too sick to laugh at, and too funny not to.”
	Rick got into a cab owned by one of the licensed taxi firms. Steve walked away.
	It was after a few blocks that Steve saw Yesenia Martínez sitting in a doorway. He recognized her from biology class.
	“Yesenia, are you okay?” Steve asked.
	At first, Yesenia did not respond. Then she slowly looked up and said, “Oh, Steve! Happy new year!” Her voice was slurred.
	“I don’t think you’re gonna make it home okay.” Steve said.
	“It’s cold out here.” Yesenia observed. She stood up, and Steve caught her as she started to fall back down.
	“What do you say we go now?” Steve suggested.
	“Sure. Let’s go. It’s cold out. Happy new year!” Yesenia agreed.
	Steve led Yesenia to a nearby car displaying hand-made “Taxi” signs, and helped her inside. Then he gave the driver his own address.
	When the taxi arrived at the apartment house where Steve lived, he helped Yesenia get out. Then he led her inside, and upstairs, where he unlocked the door and led her to a second-floor apartment. “My mother and father are in Concord tonight, visiting relatives.” he told her as he led her into the living room. “Have a seat. I’ll open the sleep-sofa into a bed, and you can sleep here in the living room tonight.”
	“Thank you, Steve. You’re a real sweetheart.” Yesenia told him.
	Steve helped Yesenia get onto the mattress. Then he helped her remove her shoes. “It’s -3° outside, Yesenia. It’s 22° in here. You’re much better off in here. I’ll get you a blanket.”
	“You’re a real darling.” Yesenia said.
	Steve then went into his bedroom to get some sleep. He set the alarm clock for 8:00.

Chapter Three: Yesenia

	Steve shut off the alarm clock and got up. He checked, and sure enough, Yesenia was still sleeping off the alcohol she had consumed the previous year. He took a shower and put on clean clothes, then shaved and brushed his teeth. 
	Steve had spent every waking hour of the night thinking about how to phrase everything. The first order of business, when Yesenia started to stir, was to bring her a large glass of cool drinking water.
	Yesenia opened her eyes and looked around. “Where am I?” she asked.
	Steve gave her the glass of water. “Drink this. The alcohol you drank dried you out. You need water first.” he told her.
	Yesenia accepted the glass and consumed the water. Then Steve recited his opening line. “I hope you didn’t take that as a rejection last night.”
	“I don’t remember. What happened?” Yesenia asked.
	Billy told her, “I brought you over here because I figured you might not want your parents to know you got drunk. You kept putting your arms around me and cuddling with me. It’s not that I didn’t want to. Believe me, I really wanted to. But you had been drinking so much. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think you were any less desirable, just because you had been drinking. It’s just that, well,…” He paused and took a deep breath. “I felt it might not be right, because I might be taking advantage of your drunkenness. Did I do the right thing?” 
	Yesenia’s brown eyes opened wide, and she took a deep breath. Then she turned and looked at Steve. “Oh, yes. That’s for sure. You definitely did the right thing.”
	Then Steve maneuvered cleverly. “I felt the right thing to do was to let the alcohol wear off, and then see if you’re still willing.” He had decided against “still want to” and “still interested” in favor of the lower threshold, “willing”.
	“Well, actually, no.” Yesenia said, shaking her head in disbelief.
	Steve maneuvered more, this time for pity. He let out a sigh and said, “It figures. A girl as desirable as you are would have to be drunk out of her mind to be interested in me.”
	Steve sat down on the side of the bed, next to Yesenia. She put her hand on his back. “Oh, now don’t say that.”
	“Why not? I mean, it’s true.” he replied.
	“Well, I just, like, couldn’t do that.” Yesenia explained.
	This time, Steve tried guilt. He sighed again, saying, “Well, if you absolutely, positively don’t want to, there’s obviously nothing I can do about that. It just means I lose because I did the right thing.” He paused for a few seconds to let that sink in. Of course, he knew Yesenia had every right to refuse for any reason or for no reason at all, but he subtly raised the standard to “absolutely, positively, don’t want to.” Then he asked, “Would you like some breakfast?”
	“Thank you anyway, but no. I don’t want to impose on you. Thanks for letting me sleep in your living room.” Yesenia answered.
	Steve took Yesenia’s hand in his, and looked her in the eye, saying, “I’m going to tell you the honest truth. I figure you might be hungry, and in a hurry to get home and have breakfast. It might be to my advantage to feed you here. I know a good recipe for hard-boiled eggs.”
	“Well, that makes you a regular cordon bleu chef. You know the recipe for hard-boiled eggs.” Yesenia joked.
	“Hey, it’s worth a try.” Steve admitted. “Oh, well, I guess I lose because I did the right thing. A girl as desirable as you are would have to be drunk out of her mind to be interested in me.”
	Yesenia put her arm around Steve and said, “Well, like, if you really want it that badly…” She sighed.
	“May I fix you breakfast?” Steve asked.
	“Sure.” Yesenia replied. She stood up and let Steve lead her to the kitchen, where he started boiling a pot of water. 
	Steve put his arms around Yesenia. She sighed, “Oh, what did I just get myself into?”
	“It’s okay.” Steve assured her. He hugged her and she hugged him back, and then he kissed her. “You’re beautiful.” he told her. “And, thank you, very much.”
	When the water boiled, Steve added six eggs. “Juice? Coffee? Milk?” he asked.
	“Juice.” Yesenia replied.
	Steve smiled a lot during breakfast. Then he led Yesenia to the living room, where he stowed the sleep sofa back into a sofa. “I want to spend some time cuddling with you. You’re beautiful.” They spent some time cuddling on the sofa. 
	“You look nervous.” Steve observed. “Are you afraid to touch me, because you think I’d get angry at you? That’s natural. Usually, you can’t just put your hands on somebody.” He unbuttoned his shirt and put her hands on his chest. Yesenia smiled. Steve said, “Thank you again, by the way. You don’t mind if I keep saying ‘Thank you,’ do you?”
	“Oh no, that’s fine.” Yesenia answered. She smiled again.
	Steve warmed up Yesenia. Then he led her into his bedroom.

Chapter Four: The doorbell

	Yesenia was just putting her clothes back on when the doorbell rang. Steve pressed the button. “Who is it?”
	“Sergeant Whalley, with the State Police.” was the answer.
	Steve and Yesenia looked at each other, astonished. Steve buzzed the buzzer. Then he told Yesenia, “Wait in my room. Keep the door closed. I have no idea what they want or how they know you’re here.” Yesenia sat down in Steve’s room, trembling.
	Steve went to the door.
	“Are your mom and dad home?” the cop asked.
	“No, they’re in Concord.” Steve said.
	“I need to talk to them.” the cop said. “Do you know where in Concord?”
	“They’re at my aunt’s house, with my older sister. Wait here. I’ll get you the phone number, because I don’t have the address.” Steve said. He went to the phone and found the number on the corkboard. He recited it to the cop.
	“That should be enough. I can look up the address with the phone number.” the cop replied. “Thank you very much for your help.”
	Steve closed the door as the cop left. Then he went to his bedroom. “I wonder what that was about.” he said.
	“I thought they might be looking for me. I mean, we are fifteen, and I never did go home last night.” Yesenia said.
	“If the cops are on their way to my aunt’s house, I’d better call them to let them know.” Steve said. He phoned that number.
	“Hello, Dad?” Steve said, “It’s Steve. Some cop was just here, looking for you and Mom. I don’t know what it was about or anything, but I told him you were in Concord, and I gave him the phone number there. Just so you know.” 
	“Well, we were just about to head out anyway, but we’ll stay put. It might be something important. Nowadays, we don’t have as much to worry about when a cop is looking for us.” Steve’s father replied.
	Steve said, “That’s right. I forgot. Anyway, I just called to let you know. Good-bye now.” Then he turned to Yesenia and asked, “How are we going to get you back home, anyway?” Steve wondered.
	“Can you call me a cab?” Yesenia asked.
	“Very well, then. You’re a cab.” Steve joked.
	“Wise guy! No, really, that’s how I’ll get home.” Yesenia said.
	“Well, I’ll call now. I guess we’ll meet again tomorrow, in biology.” Steve said.
	Steve called a cab and then he sat down with Yesenia and waited. He smiled at her. “Thanks again.” he said.
	Yesenia smiled and kissed Steve. “You’re welcome.” she replied.
	“Oh, yeah, let me get your phone number, before you go.” Steve requested. Yesenia wrote down the number and handed it to him. Steve wrote down his phone number for her.
	The cab arrived. Yesenia put her coat on, and then kissed Steve good-bye. She got in, and rode away, waving to him as she left.

	Chapter Five: The News

	It was early afternoon when Steve heard the keys rattling in the door. It was Rob and Sandra Johnson, his father and mother. 
	“So, how was the party at Aunt Beth’s last night?” Steve asked. 
	Rob and Sandra just frowned. Rob sat down on the sofa, unaware that one of Steve’s female classmates had slept on it for a few hours that morning.
	“Steve, have a seat.” Sandra said. Steve sat down next to them.
	“What’s up, Mom?” Steve said, trying not to look guilty.
	“A cop from the New Hampshire State Police was just up at Aunt Beth’s. It took them a few hours to notify us, because your brother Andy didn’t have any identification in his pockets. He was killed in a crash in Nashua early this morning.”
	Steve was stunned. He couldn’t speak. When he finally could talk, he observed, “So that’s why a State cop was here this morning, looking for you guys.”
	Nobody could speak for a few minutes. Then Steve asked, “How did the crash happen?”
	Rob answered, “We don’t know yet. There’s still an investigation going on. There’s a limit to what they can tell us. However, it looks like Andy was on foot, and got hit by a truck.”
	“I wonder what happened. He was only twenty-two.” Steve said.
	The doorbell rang. Sandra got up to press the button. “Who is it?” she asked.
	“Sergeant Whalley, with the New Hampshire State Police.” was the reply.
	Sandra buzzed the buzzer. A minute later, the cop was at the door. 
	“Hello. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, sorry to bother your family again, especially at a time like this.” the cop lamented. “However, there is an investigation going on, and I need to speak to family members.”
	“Come on in.” Sandra said, giving the required permission to enter the apartment. The cop walked in.
	“Steve, I need to speak with you, since you’re a member of the immediate family.” the cop requested.
	Rob and Sandra left the living room while the cop and Steve chatted.
	“Did he have any emotional troubles?” was one question.
	“Well, he wasn’t having any luck getting a date. I remember, he was here on Christmas Day, and I asked him for some advice about that, and he said, ‘You’re asking the wrong guy. I haven’t gotten laid in like, the last four years, and that was a hooker, the day I turned 18, to celebrate my birthday. It looks like, for once in my life, I’m finally going to get a date for New Year’s Eve.’ That’s exactly what he said.”
	There was a pause while Sergeant Whalley wrote it down. Steve wondered, “Why would emotional problems enter into a motor vehicle accident investigation?”
	“These are just questions I have to ask.” the cop replied.
	There were a number of questions. Steve answered them all, as best he could.
	Sergeant Whalley also spoke with Rob and Sandra. He asked to see their identification, so he could document the names of the people with whom he spoke. For the same reason, he asked them if Steve was really their son, Steve. He asked a number of questions. Then he asked them, “Did Andy have any emotional troubles?”
	“Well, no. He always seemed well-adjusted. He was a happy young man. Except he didn’t have a girlfriend. But, other than that, he was fine.” Sandra said.
	“That’s about right.” Rob agreed. “He seemed like he was okay. He didn’t have a girlfriend, but he had no real, serious problems.”
	The cop wrote it all down. He asked more questions, writing down the answers. 
	Rob observed, “This was the first New Year’s Eve after Operation U.S.A. Freedom forced the New Hampshire Legislature to repeal the drug laws and liquor laws. It must have been a crazy night for the police.”
	Sergeant Whalley replied, “Actually, things went more smoothly than before. The taverns were able to stay open all night, so there wasn’t a sudden rush hour. There were plenty of taxis, so people weren’t tempted to take their chances playing Blotto Lotto. The taxi license restrictions weren’t being enforced, that would have required a person to insure a taxi and license it for a year, just to drive it one night. Plus, the penalties for DWI are much higher now, and that was a deterrent. Underage kids were able to drink in supervised settings. The radio stations all broadcast the appeal from the State Police, urging everybody, if you’re going to drink, first make sure you have a way to get home. People weren’t kicked out of taverns, either, because they could just stay there. Before, the taverns were required to kick the drunks out into the cold, and a lot of them tried to drive home. This time, a lot of them were allowed to stay inside and sleep on the floor.” Then he thanked everybody, and left.
	Rob said, “The body is still in the morgue, Steve. There has to be an autopsy before there can be a wake. That may take a few days.”
	Steve asked, “How is Jennifer taking this?”
	Sandra replied, “Your sister is just as stunned as we are. You know she and Andy were very close.”
	Rob said, “I remember when Jennifer was in second grade and Andy started first grade. She was so cute, being protective of her younger brother.”
	Steve observed, “The fact that Andy is still in the morgue may work to our advantage. It gives you guys time to select a funeral home. We can check out their web sites, and visit them. We don’t have to make a rushed decision.” Then he walked away, into his bedroom, and closed the door.

Chapter Six: Melissa and Joe

	It was early in the evening on New Year’s Day. Rob and Sandra were fixing supper. Steve and Jennifer were following the news on the internet. There was a fatal crash under investigation. They were able to glean some details.
	The doorbell rang. “Who is it?” Sandra asked.
	“My name is Melissa, and I need to speak to you.” the woman replied.
	Sandra looked at Rob. “I don’t know. It’s up to you.” he said. She buzzed the buzzer. A minute later, a man and woman were at the door.
	“It’s about Andy.” the woman said. “I need to talk to you people.”
	Rob let them in. They sat down on the sofa. Steve and Jennifer walked in and took seats.
	The woman explained, “My name is Melissa. I just got a visit from the New Hampshire State Police. They found my phone number in Andy’s pocket this morning. They didn’t find identification. They came to my house to ask me some questions. Then I saw it on the news. Once I had a full name, I was able to look you people up. This is Joe.” She pointed to the man next to her.
	“Maybe I can explain this more easily.” Joe said. “Last night, I was sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Manchester, near the theater. A man walked in and spotted Melissa.”
	Melissa joined in. “Andy knew the title of the book I’d be reading. That was the signal, so we would be able to meet. It was a blind date.”
	Joe spoke again. “The man walks in and meets this woman, Melissa. He wants to take her to the concert at the theater. She wants him to sit down and chat. Reluctantly, he takes a seat, because he has no choice. She asks him where he’s from. He says, ‘I live in Nashua.’ She asks him if he’s from New Hampshire all his life. He dodges the question, asking her again if they can just go to the concert. She asks where he is from originally. He says, ‘Well, anyway, could we go to the concert?’ She smiles and says, ‘Tell me  where you are from originally.’ He says, ‘No. Could we please just skip this and go to the concert?’ She smiles and says, ‘I just want to get to know the guy I’m dating. Where did you grow up?’ He looks at her right in the eye and says, ‘What part of no don’t you understand? No means no! Now do you want to sit there and interrogate me, or do you want to go to the concert? Like, for the fifth time, can we please just go to the concert?’ She got all bent out of shape and said, ‘I wouldn’t go to a concert with you if you were the last man alive.’ She stands up and gets ready to walk out. I looked at her and said, ‘I’m free tonight.’ She looked at me and smiled. I said, ‘It’s only a concert. Let’s go.’ She liked the idea. So we went.”
	Steve posed the tough question. “Did it even occur to you that maybe he didn’t want to answer your question? Like, he asked you several times if he could politely dodge the question, and you wouldn’t let him, so then you got angry when he dodged it impolitely. It’s called assertiveness.”
	Melissa replied, “Well, all I wanted to know was where he grew up.”
	“So you kept asking him a question that he didn’t want to answer, and then you got angry because he didn’t want to answer it. Who in their right mind would want to admit they grew up in Connecticut?” Steve said.
	Rob said, “So maybe he was angry that Melissa wouldn’t go on the date with him. But how would that explain a truck hitting him?”
	Joe explained, “My guess is, he walked into the path of the truck. What else would he be doing on a ramp to the Everett Turnpike? I think that’s what they’re investigating.”
	“This happened on a ramp?” Sandra asked.
	“Yes, the ramp that leads from Middlesex Road in Tyngsborough to the F.E. Everett Turnpike in Nashua.” Joe replied.
	“Well, Andy never was a racist.” Rob said. “I don’t think he was any angrier just because his date runs off with a Negro man.”
	Joe observed, “Not at all. In fact, get this. When we were getting ready to leave the coffee shop, Andy gets all furious and walks up to me. I thought the situation might turn violent. Then he handed me the concert tickets. He said it was sold out, so I would need them. He gave them to me for free. I couldn’t believe it. Then he just walked away.”
	Melissa started crying. Joe comforted her. “Oh, come on, Melissa, what did we do?”	
	Steve joined in. “What didn’t we do? The guy hasn’t gotten any in four years. Now it’s the end of another entire year that he hasn’t gotten any. So, naturally, we have to throw a humungous party to mark the occasion. We have to assemble on the city square, fifty thousand strong. We have to hire a technician to synchronize the chronometer against an atomic clock in Washington, D.C., like we’re rocket scientists launching the Space Shuttle, but we’re just marking the occasion that Andy ends another year without getting any. We even count down the seconds. When else, during the year, does anybody care what’s in the seconds column? When else, during the year, can you get an all-circuits-are-jammed recording when you’re calling the Time Lady? And then at exactly that moment, T zero, twelve o’clock straight up, the stroke of midnight, U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock time, everybody explodes in one massive celebration, uninhibited because we’ve all been drinking, everybody starts hugging and kissing in public, and slow dancing to Auld Lang Syne, showing Andy what he’s missing. How could we possibly do a better job of intensifying his anguish? What didn’t we do?”
	“Well, I don’t think the celebration was just to show off what people like Andy can’t have.” Joe suggested.
	“Oh, of course not.” Jennifer said. “We’re all celebrating that we have a new number to write down when we fill out the rent check.”

Chapter Seven: Jennifer

	The second of January was a sunny, chilly day in Nashua. Dozens of ragged people waited in line outside the cocaine store on West Hollis Street, waiting for the place to open at noon.
	Volunteers from a local Christian mission walked up and handed out literature offering rehabilitation services for people who wanted to quit drugs. Half the people in line refused the papers, the other half accepted them and then threw them onto the sidewalk.
	A dozen young women, all dressed attractively, walked up. They caught the eye of every male in the line. 
	“Ooh, ain’t she pretty.” one man said. 
	That woman stopped. “You like what you see? Let’s talk about this. Follow me.”
	“Hold my place in the line.” the man asked, then followed the woman as she led him down the block. Then she stopped.
	“My name is Jennifer.” the woman said, “If you like what you see, you can have it tomorrow night, free of charge. However, you have a choice to make. You can get back in that line now, or you can follow me.”
	“You serious?” the man said.
	Jennifer replied. “Absolutely. I can show you a better way than killing yourself with cocaine. But you’ll have to make some changes. I’ll show you how. And since I’m telling you that you can have it, I have to mention, ahead of time, that I’ll require you to use a condom. I don’t mean to be rude, just truthful, because that’s part of the deal. Now you have a choice. You can get in my car, or you can get back in line.”
	“Well, I’ll get in your car.” he said. “My name is Tony.”
	Jennifer drove to her apartment and showed Tony in. “Like I say, you have to wait until tomorrow night. You have to let me lead you and tell you how to pull yourself out of the hole you’re falling into. You’ll also have to shave tomorrow morning. Do you have a place around here?”
	“No.” Tony said. “I lived down in Massachusetts. I got evicted from the rooming house for nonpayment, so I’m homeless. I hitch-huck to Nashua to buy cocaine because there’s no laws against it here. They still haven’t relegalized drugs in Massachusetts yet, so it costs more there.”
	“How do you like my apartment?” Jennifer asked.
	“It’s beautiful.” Tony replied.
	“How do you like my car?” Jennifer asked.
	“It’s beautiful.” Tony replied.
	Jennifer explained, “I got all of this by earning it. Life is not easy. There are other programs where they take you by the hand and give you guidance, or hand you everything except what you need most. You need an attractive female who gives you some, free of charge. I’m a member of the Nashua Libertarian Temple. We follow the religious doctrine of the Libertarian Church.”
	“I thought the Libertarians were a political party.” Tony said.
	Jennifer explained, “There is a political party by that name, too. But we’re the Libertarian Temple, which is a religious organization applying the tenets of the Libertarian Church.” 
	“Oh, I see.” Tony said.
	Jennifer explained the deal. “Now, tonight, you’re going to have to stay at the shelter run by the temple. Tomorrow morning, you rise at 4:30 and shower, and dress in clean clothes. You go to Labor Ready and sign in. They don’t even require identification anymore, because the feds are too scared to bust businesses in New Hampshire, now that the local cops won’t help them if there’s a shoot-out. Labor Ready will send you out on a job ticket. You go out on that ticket. Do a day’s work. It will be tough, but remember what you can look forward to, tomorrow night. After work, I’ll drive us to the movie theater, and I’ll buy my ticket, because you’re obviously not rich. But you buy yours. That way, you can respect yourself. We can cuddle in the theater and get comfortable being close to each other, before we return here to my apartment.”
	Tony looked at Jennifer. “So you want me to work tomorrow?”
	“It’s for your own good. We can help you to a point. Now, you brought money for cocaine with you?” Jennifer asked.
	“Twenty dollars. That’s all I have in this world.” Tony replied.
	Jennifer noted, “And you were going to spend everything you have in this world on some powder with which to kill yourself? Well, I have a better idea. I’ll drive you to the supermarket. You buy food for yourself. No drugs. No alcoholic beverages. No cigarettes. Just food, for today, and for tomorrow’s lunch. I’m a smart shopper, so I’ll teach you how to save money. Labor Ready does not pay well, so you need to save your money. I’ll require a full accounting of all your money as long as I’m helping you. That will be part of the deal.”
	Tony looked at Jennifer. “We’re going to the supermarket?”
	“Yes. Rest assured, like I said, tomorrow you can have this. I am definitely single. I will give it to you. It won’t be forever or anything. I’ll help you find a girlfriend, too. So, let’s go to the supermarket.”	
	Tony and Jennifer got into the car again, and went to a nearby shopping plaza.
	Jennifer said “This store is run by rich businesspeople. Now, think about this. If they could cut their expenses by one percent, without doing anything wrong, or losing any sales, do you think they’d do it?”
	“Probably.” Tony said.
	“Well, look at this.” Jennifer said. “If you go out on a job ticket and buy a can of tonic at lunch, it might cost you eighty-five cents. Here, you can buy the supermarket brand of tonic, and it works out to twenty-five cents a can. The difference is sixty cents. If you work at Labor Ready, you’re lucky to clear sixty dollars in a day. So by saving sixty cents, you cut your expenses by one percent. You need to save up your money. You cannot afford to drink. You’re so broke, that if this place offered you a job right now, you would have to turn them down, because you cannot make it until your first paycheck. Labor Ready will pay you right away, after you finish your shift. Oh yes, you’ll need four dollars for transportation. That’s what the workers who have cars charge the workers who ride with them, two dollars each way. Oh yes, they can pay you cash, or a check, but if you want cash, there’s a fee, one dollar plus any change on your check. Ask for a check. The shelter will cash it for you.”
	Tony bought a six-pack of the store brand of soft drink, which New Englanders call “tonic.” He also selected a submarine sandwich and some fruit. He brought all of his selections to the automated cash register.
	“Here’s one thing you always want to do.” Tony told Jennifer. “These automated cash registers ask if you want English or Spanish. Always select Spanish.”
	“Why?” Jennifer wondered.
	Tony explained, “Well, some big shot at the company’s home office will view the stats, and let’s say a majority of the customers pick Spanish. The company will think they need bilingual help, and Spanish signage. Selecting Spanish will throw off the count on them. That’s the reason to do it.”
	After Tony paid, Jennifer drove him to the shelter run by the Nashua Libertarian Temple, and she checked him in. Then she went home.

Chapter Eight: Day Labor
	
	It was 4:30 in the morning, on the third day of January. On this day, the new members of the U.S. Congress would be sworn in, many of them supporters of liberty. To Tony, however, it was an important day for another reason.
	A staff member woke up the men sleeping in the shelter. Tony showered and shaved, then dressed and sat down at the table, eating some of the food he had bought.
	At 5:15, a van pulled up, and the men got in and rode to Labor Ready, staying inside the warm vehicle until the place opened at 5:30.
	At 5:30, a car pulled into the parking lot and a man got out. Men got out of the van. The man who had emerged from the car took out his key and opened the front door. Everybody else had to stay outside until he reset the alarm. Then he let them all in. 
	Tony signed in and then completed some forms. He enjoyed the free coffee and watched television. 
	At 6:30, the dispatcher called “Tony.”
	Tony walked up. “I’m sending you to Sample Name Products Company. It’s assembly line work and pays eight dollars an hour. Here’s your slip. You’ll be going with Fred.”
	Tony met Fred. They didn’t bother to shake hands. “I got the blue car out there with the Georgia plates.” Fred said. Tony took his food bag and walked out to the car, waiting outside it.
	It was 6:38 when Fred drove Tony and himself out of the parking lot. They arrived at the site at 6:53. Tony paid Fred two dollars and went inside.
	“They work until three thirty.” Fred said. “Meet you back here then.”
	Tony checked in with Arnold, the supervisor. “I’ll show you where the break room is. You can put your food in the refrigerator there, and hang your coat. There’s a lunch truck that comes if you need anything.” Arnold said. “Let me get your ticket. You start at seven.”
	Tony put his food bag in the refrigerator, hung his coat and followed Arnold to the factory floor. Arnold explained, “What you’re going to do is, you take one of these boxes and fold it up, like this. When one of these units comes off the conveyor, you put it in the box. Then you slide it to Charlie, and he puts the lid on it and fastens it shut. As soon as you slide it to Charlie, you need to build another box, to have it ready for the next unit.”
	Arnold walked away. The training was complete with four sentences. Tony folded a box and put a unit into it. He folded another.
	“You with Labor Ready?” Charlie asked.
	“Yes, I am.” Tony replied.
	“I started here with Labor Ready. Then I got hired. That was a year ago.” Charlie told him.
	Tony could not resist sarcasm. “Imagine, you did such a good job, they promoted you all the way up to, get this, employee!” 
	Tony folded boxes and put units into them. He kept looking at the clock on the wall. There was one thing keeping him going. Jennifer promised to give it to him tonight. Hours passed. How long could he stand standing? Finally a buzzer indicated it was 9:30 break time. Everybody went into the break room. Tony enjoyed a can of cold tonic and some granola bars from his food bag.  Another buzzer sounded. It was 9:45.
	Tony returned to “his” work station and folded a box. He waited a minute for the next unit to come off the conveyor, then he placed it into the box. Minutes seemed like hours. The clock seemed to move very, very slowly. Another buzzer sounded. It was 11:30.
	Some people had food in the refrigerator in the break room. Others went outside, to the lunch truck. Tony ate the submarine sandwich from his food bag, and drank another can of supermarket brand tonic. Everybody knew everybody else, except that Tony knew nobody and nobody knew Tony. 
	Another buzzer sounded. It was noon, time to go back to work. 
	Tony returned to the assembly line and continued working away. 
	At this time, in Washington, D.C., the new members of Congress were being sworn in. Nobody at the factory seemed to care.
	Once in a while, Tony would see Fred walk by, with a pallet jack, moving a pallet of something from one place to another. Tony pressed on. Would Jennifer be good for her word? Would she really give it to him, as she said? Tony wondered to himself.
	Time dragged on, but eventually, another buzzer sounded. It was 13:45, time for final break. Again, everybody sat down in the break room. Again, the break seemed to fly by. At 14:00, another buzzer sounded.
	Tony returned to work, but now there was light at the end of the tunnel. Ninety minutes to go! He continued folding boxes and packing units.
	At 15:20, Arnold came around. “Here’s your ticket. I signed for eight hours. It says three thirty, so don’t leave until then. I’m just giving the ticket to you now, so you won’t have to wait once the buzzer sounds. Can you work tomorrow?”
	Tony hadn’t even thought about that. Tomorrow? Then he replied, “Yes, sure I can.” He could always back out later, or not show up. 
	Arnold said, “That’s good, because I think we’re going to need you. You did good work today. Thanks a lot.” 
	Tony smiled. He kept folding boxes and packing units. The buzzer at 15:30 was greeted with howls and cheers.
	Tony went out to the blue car with Georgia plates, and waited for Fred to unlock it and let him in. He picked up a dime that was on the ground. As he sat down in the car, he drew his final two dollars from his pocket and gave the money to Fred. He didn’t say a word about the work. Fred just drove back to the Labor Ready office.
	It was 15:44 when they arrived at the office. Tony walked in and signed back in, presenting his signed ticket. “Check or cash?” the dispatcher asked. 
	“Check.” Tony replied. He got a check for $55.64. When he left the office, the van pulled up, and brought him back to the shelter.
	A volunteer at the shelter looked over the check. “I need you to sign the back of it, please.” he said. Tony signed his name. The man counted out twenty-seven two-dollar bills, a Sacagawea dollar coin, a half dollar coin, a dime and four cents. Tony counted and pocketed the money. The man said, “Obviously, you did a good job today. However, you’re going to need clean clothes now. We can offer you some clean clothes right now, on loan, while we wash your clothes.” Tony agreed to the deal. He showered and changed into the clean clothes and transferred everything in his pockets. 
	Jennifer arrived and led Tony to her car. They went to the supermarket again, and Tony bought a toothbrush and food for the next day. Then Jennifer drove him to the theater, where they watched a comedy movie and got comfortable cuddling with each other. Then she brought him to her apartment.
	Tony’s heart was pounding faster and faster. “Thank you very much for this.” he kept saying.
	Jennifer replied, “The idea is to help you improve your life. Yesterday, you were so down, you couldn’t see next week. You just wanted to spend your last twenty dollars on a quick fix. I personally don’t mind giving it to a guy, for a good reason, and helping a guy kick the cocaine addiction, is a good cause. Women enjoy sex, too.”
	“There must be other women in the congregation of the Nashua Libertarian Temple. Do they all do this?” Tony wondered.
	Jennifer explained, “Oh, no. Not at all. Not any more than every Christian woman is a nun. This is just something some of us do, applying the principle of voluntary action to solve society’s ills. You don’t just need a place to stay and food, like most charities would give you. Most charities don’t require you to stay off harmful drugs to continue receiving hand-outs, and even if they did, then the hand-outs wouldn’t be a strong enough incentive. You can see my apartment and my lifestyle, and you know you can achieve it, if you work at it, but it takes so long to see results like this, and you needed immediate results. Well, anyway, let’s do it.”

Chapter Nine: Reckoning

	Tony took a shower and dressed himself. Then he went to Jennifer’s living room. “You do have a nice place.” he said.
	“We have to do some arithmetic.” Jennifer explained. She took a sheet of lined paper and a pen.
	“What do we need to figure?” Tony asked.
	“Let me see your pay stub.” Jennifer said.
	Tony produced a pay stub showing $55.64 net pay.
	“Now, you received fifty-five sixty-four, right?” Jennifer said, writing the figure on the sheet of paper.
	“That’s right. The guy at the shelter paid me in two-dollar bills.” Tony replied.
	“Now, at the supermarket, you bought a toothbrush and food for tonight and tomorrow.” Jennifer continued. “The total came to twelve seventy. That leaves forty-two ninety-four. You paid seven dollars for your movie ticket, so that leaves thirty-five ninety-four. Let me see that you still have thirty-five dollars and ninety-four cents.”
	Tony counted out the money. There was $36.40. “I had thirty-six cents in change left over after I paid the guy with the car, for my ride to work today. Plus, I found a dime in the parking lot.”
	Jennifer said, “Remember that on Fridays, you’re going to need to set money aside for food for the weekend, and for Monday. You can stay at the shelter, but eventually you will want to rent a room, and then an apartment. You’ll need to save up your money for that, and because if you get hired by a company, you’ll need to work a week and then wait until the following Friday to collect your pay. Since you’re a beneficiary at the shelter, they’ll cash your check. It doesn’t matter what company you’re working for, or what bank the check is drawn on. Practically all companies are good about paying their workers. As long as you keep up the good work, I’ll bring you here every day that you work, and I’ll give it to you. I will also go over your money situation. I will not give you or lend you any money. You have to earn it. And if you mess up, and have a relapse, it’s over between us. This should be a powerful incentive to keep you off cocaine.”
	Tony gave Jennifer a hug. Then they got in the car, and she drove him to the shelter.

	Chapter Ten: More Clues

	Sergeant Whalley started talking to Rob and Sandra in their living room. Steve and Jennifer took seats. “There are some more things I can tell you about at this time. We have reconstructed some details of Andy’s final hours. He was in Manchester at midnight, when the new year started. He took a taxi from Manchester to a strip club in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts. He paid for it with a gift credit card that a bank sent him, for using their credit card. That’s how we were able to trace the transaction, which went through at nine minutes past midnight. I talked to the cab driver, and she said she required payment up front, and that company takes credit cards. That puts him in Manchester at nine past midnight. Well, he spent the rest of the gift card at the strip club, drinking. He didn't need his ID to get in, because they weren't checking. They knew that even if they lost their license, it was just a few days before the new legislature gets sworn in and repeals the liquor laws, so they won't need one. Apparently Andy left when they closed. It’s not that far from the strip club to the place where the crash happened. Now, there is the explanation that he lived in the condo complex off Spit Brook Road in Nashua, and one shortcut there is to take the left turn off Middlesex Road in Tyngsborough, onto the F.E. Everett Turnpike in Nashua, and then he could walk down the Exit One ramp in Nashua to get to Spit Brook Road. However, his injuries indicate that the front of his body was hit by the truck. The back of his head and body hit the pavement. 
	“Now, that stretch of ramp, of course, is off-limits to pedestrians. There was a report at 2:17 by a Nashua Police officer, that a pedestrian was walking up the ramp. There was little the officer could do, however, because the pedestrian was still in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I spoke with that officer, and he said the pedestrian seemed to be just standing there, watching the traffic go by. This is consistent with what the truck driver told me, that Andy waited as two cars ahead of the truck went by, and then Andy stepped out in front of him.”
	Rob and Sandra were shocked. Rob held Sandra and she cried on his shoulder.
	Sergeant Whalley continued, “There’s one more problem. There may have to be an investigation by the Massachusetts State Police.”
	Sandra asked, “Did the crash happen in Massachusetts, or in New Hampshire?”
	“We’re not so sure.” Sergeant Whalley explained. “We had a surveyor draw a line, due west, from the monument on the east side of the Daniel Webster Highway. It looked certain that the impact happened in New Hampshire.”
	Rob joined in. “But the line doesn’t run due west. That’s the Hazzen Line of 1741, retraced in 1894, and it runs slightly northwest, about two and a half degrees. Check the map.”
	“Exactly.” Sergeant Whalley said. “Because of that, when the surveyor went back out around noon on New Year’s Day, it appears the impact may have taken place in Tyngsborough. They established the line precisely, the next day, and we can’t really tell on which side the impact occurred, but Tyngsborough would give concurrent jurisdiction to the Massachusetts State Police.”
	“And then any criminal charges would be filed in the Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge.” Sandra said.
	Rob mentioned, “They ran into that problem when the Pheasant Lane Mall was being built. They surveyed off a monument by the Merrimack River, along the railroad tracks, and went due west. That gave them more land in New Hampshire. Then they surveyed again, going northwest, and found the corner of one store protruded across the line, so they truncated that corner of the building plan, so that the entire store would be in New Hampshire, and they’d avoid the legal uncertainty of having interstate premises. It was also a problem when a drunk driver killed a ten-year-old girl on the Everett Turnpike, on the first of October, 1989. The police assumed the crash happened in New Hampshire, because it was north of the ‘Welcome to Massachusetts’ sign. The defense lawyer raised the issue of jurisdiction, and the jury had to tour the crash site and see that, yes, it happened in New Hampshire. The girl’s father had stopped there to put on his helmet.”
	Sergeant Whalley said, “Maybe it was just a coincidence that he was at that spot, when he saw a suitable truck to walk in front of, or maybe he planned it that way, just to mess us up. Or possibly he picked that spot so if a police cruiser happened along, he could step across the line, and they’d have no jurisdiction. We do see that with hitch-hikers, once in a while, where they stand right on the line, and we just drive by. By the way, New Hampshire would have jurisdiction in a homicide if the body is found here, regardless of where the assault took place.”
	Sandra sighed, “It looks like there might not be any criminal charges, though. Not if Andy intentionally walked in front of a moving truck.” She broke down and cried on Rob’s shoulder.
	“That’s the preliminary finding.”	 Sergeant Whalley said.
	Steve said, “If he was so depressed, he had nothing to lose. I think he should have become a Freedom Fighter, especially down in Massachusetts, where the cops still enforce so many unjust laws.”
	Sergeant Whalley replied, “Well, in my opinion, that would only make sense if his misery was the fault of the government. Then, he’d be retaliating against the deliberate wrongdoing of the government and its cops.”
	Rob turned to Steve and said, “Steve, the Freedom Fighters didn’t solve all the problems in society, you know. On New Year’s afternoon, the cops in Portsmouth went into a crack house and removed three dead bodies.”
	Sergeant Whalley said, “On New Year’s afternoon, the cops in Chelsea, Massachusetts went into a crack house and became three dead bodies. My wife once told a Congressman she’d rather I remove a dead body than become one.” Then he closed his notebook and left. 

	Chapter Eleven: The Funeral Home

	Jennifer and Steve were outside the funeral home, chatting privately.
	Steve said, “I can’t believe it! You brought home some cocaine addict, whom you didn’t even know, and the next day, you gave it to him!”
	Jennifer replied, “How well did you know Yesenia?  She had a drug problem, you know.”
	“What are you talking about?” Steve asked.
	Jennifer said, “You recognized Yesenia only because she happened to be in your biology class. The only thing you knew about her was that she was a legal resident of the school district. You didn’t even know what country she was from. You told me she was from Puerto Rico. Then, when I met her, she said she was born here in New Hampshire, and her family is from the Dominican Republic. You brought her home when she was under the influence of alcohol, and alcohol is a drug.”
	Steve protested, “Well, that’s different!” 
	“How is that different?” Jennifer asked. “She was so drugged, she didn’t even remember what happened.”
	“But I’m a guy.” Steve said.
	Jennifer challenged him. “Oh, let me guess. It’s okay for you to have sex with a girl you don’t know, but it’s not okay for her to give it to you? Is it okay for you to have sex with three different girls in one night?”
	Steve replied, “Sure, it would be.”
	Jennifer said, “Then why wouldn’t it be okay for me to have sex with three different men in one night? You guys are cutting your own throats when you put down females for giving it to guys.”
	Steve said, “But, I mean, Yesenia isn’t a cocaine addict. She may have gotten drunk on New Year’s Eve.”
	Jennifer said, “Look what happened to Andy. He couldn’t get any, and he walked out in front of a truck and killed himself. Well, when guys turn to cocaine, they’re killing themselves, too. It’s usually just a bit slower. They still die. They turn to cocaine to cope with their failure to get laid, just like Andy turned to alcohol. The autopsy report came back today, and you know very well, Andy was drunk as a skunk. There are plenty of cocaine rehab programs out there, but none that offer the guy what he really needs.”
	“How do you know Tony was doing cocaine just because he couldn’t get laid?” Steve asked.
	“Because, when I offered it to him, he gave up cocaine. Given a choice between cocaine and me, he chose me.” Jennifer replied. “If some young lady had made a similar offer to Andy around two o’clock New Year’s morning, we might not be here now.”
	Then Jennifer hit Steve with a tough question: “Or do you think people who abuse cocaine are the children of a lesser God than the people who abuse alcohol? Do you think people like Tony are worth less than people like Yesenia and Andy?”
	Steve could not answer the question. He could not speak.

Chapter Twelve: The Library

	Yesenia was sitting in the Manchester South High School library, reading a book, when Taisha walked up. “Just to let you know, Yesenia, this afternoon’s meeting of the Virgin’s Club has been postponed. It will be a week from today.”
	“I can’t go.” Yesenia said.
	“You have something else planned?” Taisha asked.
	“No, but I mean, I can’t go.” Yesenia said.
	“You mean…?” Taisha asked.
	Yesenia nodded and smiled. “Yup. New Year’s Day. I can’t go.”
	Claudia smiled and leaned over. “How was it?”
	Yesenia grinned and started whispering to Claudia. She wasn’t whispering softly enough, though. A boy two tables away spoke up. “Excuse me, but, um, if you don’t mind, um, please don’t describe it to me if you’re not going to give it to me.” Two other boys at his table started laughing at the comment. 
	Yesenia’s face turned bright red. Then she called the boy over to her table. “I’m not going to describe it to you, and I’m not going to give it to you, either. I have a boyfriend now. He’s in my biology class. But I might be able to help you. Do you have a girlfriend?”
	“No, I don’t.” the boy said.
	Yesenia said, “I can let you call me on the phone, and we can chat. If I hear a girl griping about how difficult it is to find a guy, then I can try to fix her up with you. I know how important this is. What you do then is, you take her to the movies, go see a comedy movie, and you laugh your butts off, and then you have something to talk about, to get the conversation started.”
	“Cool. My name is Kevin.” Kevin wrote down his telephone number and gave it to Yesenia, and she gave him hers.
	“Give me a call.” Yesenia said. “Remember, I’m not going to go out with you. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
	“Hey, thanks.” Kevin said.

Chapter Thirteen: The Nurse

	It was the thirteenth of February when Yesenia visited the nurse’s office at Manchester South High School, complaining of nausea and lightheadedness. The nurse took her temperature and her pulse, and then he gave her a cup to produce a urine sample. Yesenia brought it into the bathroom, and emerged shortly afterwards, giving him the filled container.
	“Why don’t you just lie down for a few minutes.” he said. He didn’t tell her why he wanted the urine sample.
	After a few minutes, the nurse explained to Yesenia, “Zero pink bars means an invalid result. One pink bar indicates no pregnancy. Two pink bars indicates pregnancy.” Then he showed her the test, with two pink bars.
	Yesenia was shocked. “I’m …pregnant?”
	The nurse calmed her down. “Yes. Now, don’t panic. Pregnancy is a perfectly normal condition of the female body. When was your last menstrual period?”
	“The day after Christmas.” Yesenia said. 
	The nurse checked on a chart, and said, “Your thirty-nine weeks due date is 25 September. Do you know who the father is?”
	“Steve Johnson. He’s in my C period biology class.” she replied. “Oh, I could kill him!”
	“What for?” the nurse asked. “Did he rape you?”
	“No. But now, like, I’m a fifteen-year-old single mom. And I just know he’s gonna ditch me.” she said.
	The nurse pointed out, “There’s where you’re messing up. If you already judge him, when he hasn’t even gotten word yet, and you’re already angry at him, your anger will drive him away. Who wants to date a girl who is angry at him?” Then he said, “Sometimes the parents drive the guy away. They’re furious at him, and what guy wants to go to a girl’s house when her parents are furious at him? You have to set all that aside. Would you like me to have him paged up to the office, and I’ll break the news to him?”
	“Sure.” Yesenia replied.
	Then the nurse asked, “Then can I phone your mom and tell her?”
	“Sure.” Yesenia agreed.
	The nurse suggested, “Try to remember that Steve won’t be able to love the baby before the birth. You will love the baby whom you feel kicking inside you, but Steve can’t even see the kid yet. He has to hold the kid. After I break the news, then he walks out of the office and sees you standing there. You must set aside any and all anger, look him straight in the eye, and say, ‘I’m still yours if you’re still mine.’ That’s the best offer you can possibly give him. You do have one way to keep Steve interested, and you’re already pregnant anyway.”
	The nurse had Steve paged to the front office. When Steve got there, a secretary told him to go to the nurse’s office.
	Steve arrived at the nurse’s office, and the nurse greeted him. “Have a seat, Steve. You know something? I’ve been a father for the past nine years. Children are awesome. It’s a tough, challenging job at times, Steve, but take it from me, being a father is very rewarding also.”
	Steve replied, “Well, I won’t have to worry about that for a few years.”
	Then the nurse broke the news. “Guess again. Yesenia is due in September.”
	Steve’s eyes popped open, and his jaw dropped. “She’s …pregnant?”
	The nurse replied, “Affirmative. Now, don’t panic. Here’s where some guys mess up. I’m not really supposed to get involved in these things, but the school is going to be privatized at the end of the school year anyway, due to Operation U.S.A. Freedom, and I’ll be looking for a new job, so I have nothing to lose at this point. Before, too many regulations would prevent me from providing personal guidance. First, remember that if you break up with Yesenia because you got her pregnant, you don’t get out of paying child support, but you do miss out on a lot of the rewarding parts of being a father, like helping the baby learn to walk. Second, if you break up, then the next thing you have to do is find another girlfriend, when the one you already have is perfectly good. And if she’s having your baby, you couldn’t ask for a better girlfriend than that. By staying together, you avoid the heartbreaks at the end of every dating relationship, and the dry periods between them. Finally, don’t forget that you can still flirt with other girls. You can walk up to your buddy’s girlfriend and show her a picture of the baby. Girls love that. They melt, and they smile for you. They admire you for sticking with Yesenia, and you don’t need to ask them for a date, because you have Yesenia. And nothing is more innocent than showing pictures of your baby. This all may be overwhelming to you, the idea of sticking together indefinitely, but just take it one day at a time. By the way, Yesenia is waiting in the next room.”
	Steve walked over to her. She looked at him and said, “I’m still yours if you’re still mine.”
	Steve replied, “That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.” They hugged each other. 
	The nurse phoned Yesenia’s mother. “Mrs. Martínez? This is the school nurse, and I’m just phoning to break the news that your daughter, Yesenia is going to have a baby in September. Yes, we know who the father is, and he has done nothing to suggest he would deny paternity. One of Yesenia’s classmates. Steve, that’s right. Something I need to point out, here, Mrs. Martínez. If you don’t want your grandchild to grow up without a father, if you don’t want Yesenia to have to be a single mother, then whatever you do, don’t try to drive these two apart. It would make no sense to break them up and make Yesenia find another man to raise her child, somebody less attached to the kid than the father is. Furthermore, let Steve do the right thing, because he wants to. When the time comes, it will be much better if Steve is there in the delivery room because Yesenia needs him, and he’s worried about her, than if Steve is there only because you demand it, and he’s only worried about meeting your standards, when it’s impossible. You cannot afford to be angry at him.”

	Chapter Fourteen: Biology Class

	It was the fourteenth of February. Steve and Yesenia went to the front office just before home room, and asked to speak to the principal. “Could you please make this announcement, just about three minutes after the bell rings to start C period?” Yesenia asked. 
	Steve handed the principal the note. He read it, and smiled, then he looked at them and said, “Yes, I’ll read it. That will be at 8:57.” 
	Steve and Yesenia went to their home rooms. 
	At 8:49, the bell rang to end B period, and students left their classrooms to walk to their C period classes. Steve and Yesenia arrived outside Room 219 at 8:51, and waited in the hall. 
	By 8:53, there was almost nobody in the hallways. Yesenia opened her bag and removed the maternity shirt, putting it on over her regular shirt. The word, BABY was printed in big letters on the front, and an arrow pointed down, toward her belly. Holding hands, Steve and Yesenia walked into the classroom just before the bell rang, and Steve said, “Good Morning, Mrs. Ayotte.”
	The teacher looked up. Most students didn’t greet her like that. Steve and Yesenia marched up with their heads held high, smiling proudly. They broke hands behind Mrs. Ayotte’s desk. Everybody noticed.
	Mrs. Ayotte commented. “Well, I guess you two have done your biology homework.”
	“Happy Valentine’s Day!” a number of students said.
	Mrs. Ayotte said, “Let us get on with today’s lesson, then. We are discussing how plants respond to stimuli such as sunlight.”
	At 8:57, the principal read the announcement. “May I have everybody’s attention, as we have a very exciting announcement to make at this time. Two students from our sophomore class, Steve Johnson and Yesenia Martínez, have asked us to share with all of you, some very special news. They’re going to have a baby in September.” Then he added a comment of his own. “We wish all three of them the very best.”

Chapter Fifteen: Presidents Day

	Presidents Day was cloudy and cold in Nashua. Steve and Yesenia were visiting Jennifer at her apartment. Yesenia showed Jennifer some photos. “This is my quinceañero, back in October. This is my mom. Here’s another picture, of me with Dad’s family in the Dominican Republic last year.”
	“So how’s your new boyfriend, Tony?” Steve asked Jennifer.
	“He’s not my boyfriend.” Jennifer said. “It’s just a temporary situation. But, since you asked, he got hired at the factory where Labor Ready sent him. He passed the drug test. He started there last week, making ten fifty an hour. This coming Friday, he gets his first paycheck from there. I’m proud.”
	Steve said, “I thought they had to wait, like three months or something, before they could hire temps. That’s what Andy once told me.” 
	Jennifer explained, “Most temp agencies work that way, but not Labor Ready. There’s no waiting period and no fee. Labor Ready just wants to be notified first, so there’s no question whose insurance applies if there’s an accident.” Then she went on, “Would you two care for a beer?”
	Steve replied. “No thanks. I don’t want to drink in front of Yesenia, when she can’t have one.”
	Jennifer said, “Oh? Has Yesenia learned her lesson about alcohol?”
	Steve broke the news. “Actually, that’s not it. She can’t drink any alcoholic beverages for the next few months, because she’s pregnant.”
	Jennifer’s jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. Yesenia nodded and said, “It’s true. I’m having, …or should I say, we’re having a baby in September.”
	Steve taunted, “And did she tell you about her new boyfriend, Kevin?”
	Yesenia protested, “Will you cut that out! I’m just trying to help the guy out, and help him find somebody. We chat on the phone. He’s not even my type.”
	Steve continued, “And when are you two going to get married?”	
	Jennifer interrupted. “Look, Steve, the last thing she needs right now is trouble in her relationship with you. That’s no way to treat the girl who is having your baby. But she’s doing something very important, helping a guy who doesn’t have a girlfriend, giving him advice and maybe fixing him up with somebody. Look what happened to Andy.”
	Steve replied, “Andy was twenty-two years old. Kevin is fifteen. It’s not like Kevin is going through the same thing.”
	Jennifer looked Steve in the eye and said, “Steve, let me tell you something. On 10 February 1999, a fifteen-year-old student from Nashua High School shot himself in the head in Hollis. He had just broken up with his ex-girlfriend and was in a new school, where he wasn’t having any luck finding her successor.”
	Steve asked, “And you figure that’s why he did it?”
	Yesenia interrupted, “Check the calendar, Steve, and see if there was any special, important day about to happen. Let’s see now, Sherlock, why would a guy who doesn’t have a girlfriend be despondent on the tenth of February? Gee, I don’t know! Why don’t we take a walk through a shopping mall some time on the tenth of February and see if we can spot anything that might be kind of depressing to somebody who is on his own. Like, duh.”
	Steve suggested, “What they need is a dating service for kids our age.”
	Jennifer said, “The problem is, there are too many up-tight people out there. Like, it’s positively scandalous, a seventeen-year-old boy taking his seventeen-year-old girlfriend to the movies! Worse, he turns eighteen before she does, and this dirty old man, a grown man eighteen years old, continues an affair with a seventeen-year-old, underage minor! Good Heavens, call the police! Worse than that, he’s taking her to the theater in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, across the State line! And when they turn the lights down low in that theater, they’re gonna kiss! Oh, somebody call the F.B.I! So, until Operation U.S.A. Freedom gets that straightened out, I think Yesenia has the right idea. Unofficially help people get fixed up.”
	Steve said, “Speaking of Operation U.S.A. Freedom, I hear there’s going to be a lot more jobs in New Hampshire now.”
	Jennifer explained, “There’s no more zoning restrictions. Developers are planning a lot more demolition and construction. That will bring more jobs. Also, people can start small businesses in their homes. Before, only people with lots of starting capital could open a business. A lot of absurd restrictions are gone, now, too.”
	Steve asked, “Like, what?”
	Jennifer said, “Well, I remember when I used to work the overnight shift at Wal-Mart. They had to make an announcement at 23:00 every night, telling people under eighteen that they had to punch out and leave. The idea was, they had to be able to get up in the morning, and go to school, so they could get an education, and earn a living. Of course, they already had a job at Wal-Mart, and they were already earning a living.”
	Steve replied, “Yeah, but that’s a job working overnight at Wal-Mart.”
	Jennifer said, “It was good enough for me. It’s good enough for them. The government wanted them in the government-run indoctrination centers, where they could learn all about the imaginary numbers in the math book, instead of working at their jobs, learning all about the real numbers on their paychecks.”
	Yesenia joined in. “My dad is setting up a new business at home.” she told Jennifer. “He may be able to give Steve a job there, too. He’s going to run a money transfer service for people sending money to family members in places like the Dominican Republic. Before, a lot of government regulations prevented people from doing this. He has money in the bank in the Dominican Republic, and he’s going to receive money orders in the mail at home in Manchester. Then he’s going to accept the money orders, and transfer the corresponding amount of pesos from his account in the Dominican Republic to the bank account of the payee. Instead of getting their money in cash, delivered at home, they get it in the form of a direct deposit.”
	“That sounds like an excellent idea.” Jennifer said.
	Yesenia explained, “I’m helping him learn about the computer stuff, because he has to log onto the bank’s server to transfer the money. He also has to sell the dollars for pesos, and to do that, he needs to find the best rate for electronic funds transfers. He’s going to charge one dollar per transaction, and also profit from the difference between the wholesale rate he gets and the retail rate the customer gets. As he turns profit, he can plow it back into the business, and expand to offer service to more countries.”
	Jennifer asked, “Will he get a better exchange rate when he transfers larger amounts on his wholesale transactions?”
	Yesenia replied, “Not necessarily. The idea is to work with the retailers in the Dominican Republic, the ones that need U.S. dollars to settle their import invoices, so he can provide them with the dollars they need, instead of their having to go to the bank. By selling direct to the buyer, he can cut the bank out of the middle. A by-product of this is that he can transfer U.S. dollars from his account here in New Hampshire to the U.S. dollar account of the supplier, to settle the invoices. The retailer doesn’t need to buy a check and mail it.”
	Jennifer said, “You know, Steve, you’re going to need to continue your education. The city is selling Manchester South High School this summer, and most likely, whoever buys it will be buying it to run a school. Probably a lot of the staff will be hired there. There’s going to be a lot more educational opportunities, when the government-run indoctrination centers aren’t preventing them from thriving. I mean, Manchester South High School is about one hundred percent subsidized with stolen money, and not many legitimate schools can compete with that. What this means is that you’ll be able to take the business courses you need. You’re a father, and you need to support your new family.”
	Steve said, “I hear college is going to be very different now. Kids were spending five hours a day studying and then eight hours drinking. Now, they’re going to be spending five hours studying and eight hours working, to support themselves and pay their way through college. The State government was really just subsidizing drinking.”
	“They’re also going to be breaking the courses down more.” Jennifer said. “Students will be paying their dormitory rent and tuition one month at a time, and the courses will be one month long. They earn the money during the month working their jobs, to pay for the next month. Course credits will be adjusted, of course.”
	Jennifer continued, “One more thing you can look forward to, Steve, is much lower rent. There’s no more zoning restrictions. There will be no artificial limits on construction, so rents and house prices will plunge to their natural levels. Some apartments are going to be built without parking, so people without cars can save a lot, too. The increased population density will be good news for the bus lines, too, because it means more people waiting at each bus stop.”
	Steve observed, “Maybe it won’t be long before there’s work, school, and home all on the same block. If there’s no zoning restrictions, then a school can set up, and provide housing, and businesses can open nearby. This gets rid of the mentality that says, ‘Let’s spread everything far apart and make it impossible to get anywhere without a car.’”
	Jennifer replied, “The big oil companies won’t like that. People won’t need cars. Heating costs will be lower, because apartments can have a heated apartment above, and below, and left, and right, and face a heated hallway, leaving only one side exposed to the cold. A single-family house is exposed to the cold on all sides except the ground, and that raises each family’s heating costs.”
	Yesenia asked, “What if somebody sets up a school, and they’re not really qualified?”
	Jennifer explained, “That’s something prospective students would need to check. Is the school accredited? But if you’re running a school, would you rather hire qualified teachers, or unqualified ones? If you start your own school, would you want to teach something you know about, or something about which you know nothing? It’s pretty tough with technology courses, because the material changes so fast.”
	Steve joked, “Satan set up some schools, and the State said he wasn’t qualified to run them, because he was not in full possession of his faculties.”
	Jennifer said, “Steve, getting a decent education and a decent job is all the more important now that the government welfare programs are being eliminated. The government isn’t going to keep paying people not to work. Before, the government was forbidding people to open businesses in residential areas. Some people would rather pay welfare taxes to support somebody without a job, than let the person open a tailor shop in their neighborhood. Now, things are different. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Billy Americano and the other Freedom Fighters for forcing the government to stop violating people’s rights. Now, you need to save up your money as a cash reserve. Don’t count on Yesenia’s folks to help you out. What if they run into problems? They may need to turn to you someday.”

Chapter Sixteen: The Nurse, Again

	Yesenia was at the nurse’s office, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. The nurse let her lie down. 
	“Has the baby made things difficult?” he asked.
	Yesenia replied, “Well, I really don’t see how in the world I would ever take care of a baby. I’m not ready yet. But I found this place in Fort Worth, Texas, where they’ll let me stay, they’ll provide me with free pre-natal care. I know that’s important to you. And then they’ll help place the baby for adoption.”
	The nurse replied, “Now I’m really glad the school is closing anyway, and I have nothing to lose giving you personal advice. Who told you that you’d be an unfit mother?”
	“Well, they have these outreach counselors.” Yesenia replied.
	The nurse said, “Yesenia, you should be smarter than that. I mean, you gave up your virginity after intense pressure by a smooth manipulator. Now you’re gonna give up your baby after intense pressure by a smooth manipulator? Whether you’d be the best mother in the world, or the second-best, the point is, that’s your baby. Imagine how a mother feels when her baby is missing. That’s how you’ll feel, every day, if your kid is adopted.”
	Yesenia observed, “They don’t seem like bad people. They take good care of the girls.”
	The nurse replied, “That’s good business. Just like a dairy farmer taking good care of the cows, giving them shelter and food, veterinary care. What dairy farmer wants the milk to be contaminated? The cows get to walk around in the pasture and moo with the other cows. But the farmer just wants the milk to sell. Same way as the adoption industry. They just want that baby to sell.”
	Yesenia said, “They don’t sell babies. They place them.”
	The nurse replied, “Kind of like the dairy farmer who gives away free milk, but charges seventy cents a liter as a service fee. They’re selling those babies, Yesenia.”
	Yesenia mentioned, “A lot of people can’t make a baby.”
	The nurse said, “But God gave you one. Ain’t your job to provide babies to the infertile couples in the world, Yesenia. In a lot of those cases, they chose to put off having a baby, to pursue their career. They chose to be greedy instead of breedy. They could have made do with an older car, but they insisted on a brand new car, their favorite color. Now they can adopt an older child, but they want a brand new child, their favorite color. In other cases, it’s even worse. They chose an abortion, because the timing of the pregnancy didn’t fit nicely into their career plans. Now, they want a girl who knows better than to do such a wicked thing, to deliver her precious baby into the hands of baby-killers. That’s some cases, not all, but don’t feel any duty to provide them with a baby.”
	Yesenia replied, “Maybe you’re right. I think I’ll keep the baby.”
	The nurse replied, “One other thing, Yesenia. You said pre-natal care was important to me. Well, it should be important to you, too. Have you seen a doctor yet?”	
	Yesenia replied, “Yes.”
	Then the nurse asked, “How does Steve feel about adoption? He’d have to sign some papers, too.”
	Yesenia replied, “I haven’t discussed it with him yet.”
	The nurse said, “Talk it over with him, and ask him how he really feels. Operation U.S.A. Freedom has changed things now. The future is much brighter for people in your situation. I’m not saying it will be easy. It’s not. But life is made of challenges like this, and imagine how happy you’ll be when your baby starts walking. You won’t have those high rents like before. Steve will be able to work at a job, and go to school. What you two need is a coach. Somebody to tell you how to handle all of this. Steve also needs you, to help him stay away from drugs, and to help him cope with his situation. Has he been supportive?”
	“He tells me I’m doing a good job. I guess that’s supportive.” Yesenia replied.
	“Be careful not to expect too much from him.” the nurse warned. “Like, if some woman in your family may have been pregnant, and the father drove her to all the pre-natal doctor visits, and now you subconsciously resent that Steve doesn’t drive you to the pre-natal doctor visits. Well, he can’t.”
	“Well, thanks for the advice. And good like finding a new job.” Yesenia said.
	“Actually, I found one. I’m starting there next month, part-time. I’m going to finish out the school year here, and then go full-time.” The nurse said. “It’s a maternity home being run by the First Libertarian Temple of Concord. New Hampshire is a safe haven for pregnant refugees, underage girls whose parents are trying to coerce them into having abortions. The law has been changed here, so the State asserts jurisdiction over pregnant non-residents who are in New Hampshire. Even if she’s just passing through New Hampshire, between home in Maine and an abortion mill in Massachusetts, if she jumps out of the car at the tollbooth in Hampton, and runs up to a State Police trooper, she can demand asylum in New Hampshire. Parents like that are the scum of the Earth anyway. But they do exist, and two of the girls at the maternity home took asylum in New Hampshire. Two others lived in New Hampshire, and their parents want them back, but can’t get them, because of the new law. The others are girls and women in unplanned pregnancy. You can stay there if you absolutely have to, but try everything else first. Always try to provide for yourself before you ask for any charity. Me, I think you just need good guidance.”

Chapter Seventeen: The Lecture

	Manchester South High School was closed for Spring vacation. At 5:15 on Wednesday morning, Jennifer picked up Steve and Yesenia. Yesenia’s parents were still sleeping. Jennifer drove to the Labor Ready office in Manchester. They waited in the car until 5:30, when a man pulled up and got out. After he opened the office, dozens of ragged people walked in. Jennifer, Steve and Yesenia walked in. They poured themselves complimentary coffee and took seats in the waiting room.
	At 6:00, the dispatcher started handing out job tickets to workers. But Jennifer, Steve and Yesenia did not sign in.
	At 6:20, the dispatcher called the names of three men, saying to the one who owned a car, “I’m sending you to the construction site in Bedford where you worked yesterday. I’m sending these two also. It pays eight dollars an hour, you guys, and it starts at seven o’clock.”
	The two men without cars spoke to the one with the car, who replied, “Sure, I’ll give you a ride, but you’ll have to make the usual payment for gas.” 
	“Can we pay you when we get back? We’re broke.” one replied.
	“Well, okay, as long as you agree to be paid in cash, not a check, so you can pay me here in the office.” the man offered. Both men agreed to the deal.
	The dispatcher asked, “Do any of you guys have hardhats?”
	They looked at each other and one replied, “Nope.”
	The dispatcher issued them hardhats on loan. “Required on any construction site.” he said.
	By 6:30, half the waiting room had been dispatched to jobs. Jennifer, Yesenia and Steve overheard one man lament to another, “I could have gotten sent out yesterday, but I didn’t have bus fare.”
	At 8:00, Jennifer said, “Let’s get in the car.”	
	Steve asked, “Why did you bring us here?”
	Jennifer answered, “Because I wanted to show you what drugs do to people. Liquor is a big one. These people’s idea of job security is a repeat ticket where they need them all week. Any kind of vice, whether it’s gambling, drinking, cocaine, leads to that dead end, and it’s pretty tough to pull yourself out of it. You two have your whole lives ahead of you. Yesenia, did you watch the final game of the 2004 World Series, on 27 October 2004?”
	Yesenia was puzzled by the question. “Yes, I did, but what does that have to do with it?”
	Jennifer said, “Manny Ramírez is from the Dominican Republic. What did he say when they handed him the World Series MVP trophy?”
	Yesenia remembered, “Something about how, in this life, you pick your own destination.”
	Jennifer noted, “That’s right. He speaks Spanish better than he speaks English, and I think he meant, destiny and not destination. But the point is, it’s your choice. Steve, you’ll have it pretty tough at first, if you’re working at a job where you have to stand all day, or walk all day, because in school, you sit. But take pride in doing a good job. Wherever you work, look out for the employer. You’re on their side, unless they’re doing something wrong. Be a contributor, not a drain. Pull your own weight, and then some, and always have a back-up plan, or that’s where you wind up.”
	Yesenia said, “That’s especially true now that the government welfare programs are being shut down.”
	Jennifer said, “That’s truly a good thing. People who don’t want to eat at a church soup kitchen don’t mind collecting food stamps from the government, because they feel they’re entitled to them, by law. But it’s a hand-out, either way, and it’s bad for you, bad for your self-respect. It’s  also bad for your freedom.”
	Steve asked, “How are hand-outs bad for freedom?”
	Jennifer replied, “When the tyrants want to make an unjust law that will put you out of work, violating your rights, you protest less if there’s welfare you can fall back on. Lawmakers themselves feel it’s okay to vote people out of jobs, because there’s welfare available to them. You two don’t want welfare. You want jobs.”

	
Chapter Eighteen: The Presentation

	Steve and Yesenia were chatting with Yesenia’s father, Carlos Martínez. “You cannot live here, Steve. I know it’s what you and Yesenia seem to want now, but I’m going to keep you two together by keeping you apart. If you two have a disagreement, it is much easier to walk away if you live somewhere else. The effect of a disagreement can be much worse if you have to stay in the same apartment together. But Ileana and I do want you to visit often. Work out your disagreements in a way that won’t break you two apart. I am glad you want to go with her to buy maternity clothing today. I understand Jennifer is arriving soon to pick you two up and give you a ride to the mall.”
	The doorbell rang. Carlos said, “I have a prospective investor visiting, and I need to make a presentation.”
	Carlos welcomed his guest, and ushered him into the living room, giving him some papers. The doorbell rang again. Carlos buzzed Jennifer in, and told her, “I have a guest right now, Jennifer, a prospective investor, and I need to make a presentation.”
	Jennifer was curious. “May I sit in? You said you might hire Steve, and I’d like to learn about this kind of business, since I’m taking business courses.”
	“Make yourself at home, Jennifer.” Carlos said. “Mi casa es tu casa.”
	Jennifer took a seat.
	Carlos said, “The way this business will run is, we will receive money orders in the mail, sent by people who want to support their family members in the Dominican Republic. If it’s a U.S. Postal money order, we can put the document up to a special light and verify the watermark, and that it is not raised or altered. We are working it out with the private money order companies, where we can electronically present the money orders to the banks they are drawn on, and they will credit our accounts at their banks. This allows up to learn if one of these money orders is fraudulent, in a matter of seconds, because the bank will let us know if there’s a chargeback. And if the money order is good, as practically all of them will be, then we transfer some Dominican pesos from our account at a Dominican bank, to the bank account of the payee, as specified by the sender.”
	The prospective investor posed a question. “What are the advantages of this service over the other ways to send money?”
	Carlos replied, “Well, the advantages over mailing a money order to the Dominican Republic is that this system is more secure. Inposdom is plagued by thefts. Furthermore, this system is faster, because it takes less time for the mail to arrive here. Versus the wire transfer services, this system is much less expensive. To send one hundred dollars to the Dominican Republic through those services, you’d have to pay five dollars in commission and a five dollar fee. We will charge only one dollar. We will offer the same exchange rate that they’d get buying pesos retail. We’ll make about one percent by buying pesos at the market rate and then selling them at the retail rate. The customer will also have to pay for a money order, which at the post office costs ninety cents, or at the store, whatever they charge. Check cashing services tend to offer good prices for money orders, typically fifty cents, because they want people to take them instead of cash. It allows them to cash more checks with the same amount of cash, so they make more money.”
	Then the prospective investor asked, “What are the disadvantages of this service, versus the other ways to send money?”
	Carlos explained, “Well, let’s say your mother needs money fast, so she doesn’t get evicted. If you can bring cash to the store and wire it, she gets the money the same day. With our system, there would be a delay in the mail. There’s also the disadvantage of revocable funds, which you wouldn’t have if you mailed a money order to the Dominican Republic or wired the money. If you use our service, we transfer pesos to your mother’s bank account. Let’s say she’s behind on her car loan. Well, the bank would seize the deposit, to apply to the overdue loan, and so your mother would not have to money to avoid eviction. We are definitely not trying to put the wire transfer services out of business, just offering a more economical alternative for the majority of situations. Finally, I must point out that old habits die hard. People are in the habit of mailing a money order to the Dominican Republic or, more often, wiring the money from a local store, for delivery right to the door of the payee. It will take time for them to understand that it’s usually better that Mama gets one hundred eight dollars next week than one hundred dollars today. This is a new opportunity, because prior to Operation U.S.A. Freedom, the federal government imposed too many restrictions in order to invade the privacy of the people.”	
	The prospective investor said, “Well, thank you for the explanation. I’ll review the papers you provided me, including the business plan, and I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow.” Then he shook hands with Carlos, and left.
	Jennifer mentioned to Carlos, “Operation U.S.A. Freedom has opened up the financial services industry. I was just thinking, you and I could open a banking company as a partnership. We would no longer need a State charter. We would not need to incorporate. The partnership could hold investments in escrow as collateral for the deposits, so if either one of us went personally bankrupt, the depositors would not lose, and the creditors could not touch the investments of the banking company. We’d have a big advantage over the corporate banks, because corporations are subject to taxes, while individuals are no longer being taxed. The Freedom Fighters enforced the demands of the committees for liberty, that the government stop violating the God-given rights of the people, and corporations have no God-given rights, only State-given rights.”
	Carlos replied, “There are plenty of banks out there. What advantage would we have over the others? What niche would we carve out?”
	Jennifer answered, “Transaction efficiency. I know how to program a secure server. By offering on-line payment services that are more affordable than the banks offer, we can cut in on their business. There’s plenty more we could discuss if you have time.”
	Carlos said, “Let’s first see how my prospective investor feels about the present offer. By tomorrow, I’ll know if we should discuss your plan, or if I’ll go forward with mine. I am glad they repealed the Patriot Act, though. I believe that was passed in response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. on 11 September 2001.”
	Jennifer said, “Actually, there was no terrorist attack on Washington, D.C., just an unconfirmed report of a car bombing at the State Department, which proved false.”
	Carlos replied, “American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:45 in the morning.”
	Jennifer replied, “The Pentagon is not in Washington, D.C. It’s across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. You can’t trust the news media. They lied again.”

	Chapter Nineteen: Sam

	Steve was accompanying Yesenia on a prenatal visit. They were walking from Yesenia’s home to the clinic when they came up behind a man who was struggling to move his wheelchair.
	“Would you like a push, sir?” Steve offered.
	“I would love one. Thank you.” he replied.
	“You’re such a gentleman.” Yesenia said as Steve started pushing.
	Steve said, “Actually, I’ve been learning from Jennifer. You know how she’s always talking about libertarian solutions, people doing private charity instead of demanding government programs. Bureaucrats could spend a hundred thousand dollars on a fancy bus that can handle this wheelchair, or I can push it for nothing. I’m lucky I’m able to walk.”
	“I was able to walk until January.” the man said.
	“What happened?” Yesenia asked.
	The man replied, “I was in a crosswalk, with the ‘WALK’ signal, when a Mass.-hole came up from behind me, turned right on red without even stopping, and ran me over. He got out and started yelling at me for walking out in front of him.”
	“What’s a Mass.-hole?” Yesenia asked.
	“He was from Massachusetts.” the man replied. “Before Operation U.S.A. Freedom, I would have been evicted from my apartment for non-payment while the case was pending. It might have taken years. Now, all the drug cases are gone, and the courts handle cases much faster. I got my insurance money, but the driver didn’t have enough insurance to cover the damages. He had the amount required by Massachusetts law, but that wasn’t anywhere near enough.  I worked in construction, so naturally I can’t keep my job.”
	Steve asked, “Where are you going?”
	The man replied, “To the clinic up the street.”
	Yesenia said, “That’s where we’re going.”
	Steve asked, “Did you have uninsured motorist coverage yourself?”
	The man replied, “No. They only sell that with liability insurance policies, and I don’t own a car. Even if I did, it would be a rip-off. I mean, that idiot from Massachusetts has no right to make me lose thousands of dollars by carelessly running me over, but he also has no right to make thousands of people lose a few dollars having to buy uninsured motorist coverage. Either way, innocent people are being ripped off. He’s going to jail, and I’m glad.”
	Yesenia said to Steve, “Steve, you know how your sister is always talking about voluntary, free market solutions? Well, I think I see an opportunity here. Let’s talk to Jennifer and my father about getting this guy a job working for Remesa Banking Company.”
	The man asked “What’s that?”
	Yesenia replied, “It’s a new banking company that handles remittances. Remesa is the Spanish word for remittance. They get money orders in the mail, and these can be processed by a person who is wheelchair-bound, working at a desk, using a computer.”
	Steve said, “I like that idea.”
	The man said, “I’d be glad to consider that. My name is Sam, by the way.”
	Steve wrote down Sam’s name and telephone number, giving Sam the telephone number of Remesa Banking Company. He pushed Sam’s wheelchair to the elevator. “This is as far as we go.” he said. 
	In the hallway, workers on ladders were replacing fluorescent tubes in the ceiling fixtures. Steve asked, “Are you one workers’ compensation?”
	“No. Why?” one replied.
	Steve explained, “Because they put you on light duty.” Then he accompanied Yesenia into the clinic.	
	“My aunt Miguelina is now a nurse-midwife here.” Yesenia said.
	“I thought she was a waitress.” Steve said.
	Yesenia explained, “She was a waitress, after she married my uncle and moved here, but in the Dominican Republic, she was a nurse-midwife. She is fully qualified, but she just doesn’t know enough English to pass the test in the United States. A lot of Spanish-speaking health-care professionals were unable to work in the United States for that reason, and that caused big problems for Spanish-speaking patients, who had trouble finding specialists who could speak Spanish. In many cases, they had to go to a doctor who spoke only English, and in some cases, misunderstandings created serious problems. I mean, people can die if they can’t communicate with the doctor, while a Spanish-speaking doctor was forbidden to help them. That’s the government for you. The clinic tested my aunt, with the help of a medical interpreter, and she helps Spanish-speaking patients, now that a license is no longer required.”
	Steve observed, “Operation U.S.A. Freedom is saving a lot of lives in a lot of ways, and that’s just one of them. Too bad the New Hampshire Legislature demanded that the Freedom Fighters exterminate so many cops first. The Freedom Fighters were willing to accept the Legislature’s surrender much sooner.”
	Yesenia mentioned, “Repealing the licensing laws was not a big demand of the Freedom Fighters or the committees of for liberty. It was a result of the Freedom Fighters putting pressure on the voters to elect candidates willing to comply with the demands, and those candidates tend to be people who support liberty generally. So, once in office, they took it upon themselves to repeal lots of unjust laws.”
	Yesenia went to the reception window and gave her name. The receptionist said, “Have a seat.” 
	Steve went up to the window and said, “Did you hear about the rhinoceros who decided to go to medical school, and got arrested for trespassing?”
	“No, I didn’t.” the receptionist said.
	Then Steve explained, “He was on a hippocampus.”
	The receptionist groaned at the pun. Then she said, “You know, one of the benefits of Operation U.S.A. Freedom is, if you’re 18 or older, you can sign an organ donor card, and you can override the objections of your family, if you get it notarized.”
	Steve replied, “That’s a good thing. I heard the law required the family’s permission before. This will save lives and alleviate the shortage of organs.”
	Then the receptionist said, “After a liver retrieval, a hospital dealt with a furious family by showing them the notarized organ donor card, and you know what they said?”
	Steve took the bait. “What?”
	The receptionist said, “Signed, sealed, and de-livered.”
	Yesenia’s name was called, and Steve accompanied her into the room. She enjoyed the startled look on his face when he heard his child’s heartbeat.
	“That’s my kid in there!” Steve said.
	The nurse-midwife wrote down the name of some vitamin pills Yesenia should take, and gave Yesenia the note.
	After the visit, Steve and Yesenia went to a nearby pharmacy. They waited behind a woman at the window, who was buying dozens of bottles of various remedies.
	The pharmacist asked, “Is this for export, or for somebody who cannot read English?”
	The woman replied, “Yes, it is for export.”
	The pharmacist enquired, “What country?”
	“Cape Verde. In my country, a lot of medicine arrives in checked luggage.” she said.
	The pharmacist punched some data into the computer, and then said, 	“I don’t have a translation in Criulo. It says here to offer you a translation in Portuguese.”
	The woman explained. “That would be fine. In my country, everybody speaks Criulo, but we read and write everything in Portuguese. So please, give me the instructions in Portuguese. I can make photocopies, one for each bottle.” She accepted the medicine and the instructions, paid for the merchandise, and left the store.
	Steve wondered, “Is this something new, providing medicine instructions in other languages?”
	The pharmacist replied, “Yes, it is. Before Operation U.S.A. Freedom, it was illegal for drug companies to provide translations of the instructions. It would be inconsistent with their legally required admonition to read and follow label instructions. That caused problems, of course. We had a woman from Haiti whose ten-year-old child wound up in the hospital because he didn’t get better taking the cold remedy she bought. The word, infants on the label looked like the French word, enfants, which means, you know, older children, so he didn’t get enough medicine. Now, the drug companies are also allowed to use the metric system, so there’s no wondering whether ‘T-S-P’ means teaspoon or tablespoon. As for the morons who pretend they cannot understand the metric system, they have to resort to using droppers graduated in milliliters, and dispensing the number of milliliters the instructions say to dispense. Terribly complicated for them, I must say. This was a victory for us intelligent people.”
	Yesenia said, “I wonder how many people died from those government-imposed misunderstandings.”
	The pharmacist replied, “Before Operation U.S.A. Freedom, these vitamin pills you’re buying would only be available by prescription. Now, all the prescription laws are repealed.”
	Yesenia gasped, “A prescription for vitamin pills?”
	The pharmacist replied, “Yes, it is true. I even remember when, in the 1990’s, any child who could reach the coin slot on a vending machine could buy cigarettes, but it was illegal to sell nicotine chewing gum without a prescription.”
	Steve asked, “Are there people who shouldn’t use it?”
	The pharmacist explained, “Yes. Non-smokers.”
	Yesenia laughed, “Gee, I never would have guessed nicotine chewing gum was contraindicated in non-smokers. Good thing the government was there to protect them!”

	Chapter Twenty: A New Job

	Yesenia and Steve introduced Sam to Jennifer Johnson and Carlos Martínez, partners who now operated the Remesa Banking Company. 
	Carlos said, “We have heard about you. Jennifer and I are eager to see if there’s some way we can offer you a job. Yesenia has been processing the work, but soon she’ll need to take maternity leave. Jennifer and I have been busy building the business, advertising and such. We can start you out at ten dollars an hour. Whether you stay depends on how well you can do the job.”
	Sam replied, “That’s a good offer. All I’ve gotten until now was charity offering me six dollars an hour.”
	Jennifer explained, “Your labor will probably be worth ten dollars an hour to us. Before Operation U.S.A. Freedom, small businesses were reluctant to hire somebody in your position, because they’d have to put you on their medical plan, and the cost was prohibitive. We won’t offer medical benefits. I don’t imagine you’ll find any reasonable rate now, either, because it’s obvious that your medical bills will be enormous. The lawmakers didn’t care if you couldn’t get a job, because they could just steal money from innocent people to give you welfare. A lot of welfare recipients actually thought they owed those lawmakers a debt of gratitude.”
	Sam agreed. “Why should a medical insurance company take a customer like me? My bills over the next month are expected to be in the thousands of dollars. That would be like a casino letting you bet on a roulette number after you see the outcome. You pay one hundred dollars, knowing you’ll get back thirty-five hundred.”
	Carlos explained, “This isn’t charity. We will be able to cut you some slack, with unpaid time off if you need it to go to the doctor, but business is business.”
	Sam accepted the deal. “Sounds like a good deal to me at this point. I’ll try to do a good job. Ten dollars an hour will soon go further than before Operation U.S.A. Freedom. Rents will be dropping. I never owned a car, but I always had to pay for the cost of a required parking lot, which the landlord passed along to me.”
	Jennifer mentioned, “Construction costs have actually gone up. That’s because new laws forbid contractors to emit loud noise in residential areas. Before, those laws only applied at night, but now, they apply at all hours. I don’t know who told lawmakers that people only slept at night. Lots of night-shift workers have to sleep in the daytime, but lawmakers never cared about their rights before. There are ways to build without making loud noise, but they cost more. However, construction is much more land-efficient, because there are no zoning restrictions.”
	Sam said, “I’m glad they’ve revised the building codes. Like you say, night shift workers sleep in the daytime, and it was illegal to build bedrooms without windows, because lawmakers wanted night-shift workers to suffer from light and noise. When I worked in construction, they also required us to install electrical outlets along the baseboards, so children could electrocute themselves by removing the protective plugs and sticking pins into the outlets.”
	A woman walked into the office. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I’m looking for a job. Whom do I see about getting an interview?”
	Jennifer looked at Carlos and then replied, “We are hiring, because we are expanding. We’ll be needing more and more people to process the workload. Do you have data entry experience?”
	“No, I’m sorry.” the woman answered. “I’m a mother. My name is Tina, by the way. I stayed at home and took care of the children while my husband went out and earned the money. Then he became a Freedom Fighter, and made the supreme sacrifice in Operation U.S.A. Freedom.”
	Jennifer was interested. “What happened?”
	Tina answered, “Well, there were so many battles in Operation U.S.A. Freedom, you may not have heard of this one. It happened last October. My husband got a job as a janitor at a police station in Brooklyn, New York, the 70th Precinct.”
	Jennifer asked, “Isn’t that the one where the cops shoved the toilet plunger up the guy’s butt on 9 August 1997?”
	Tina replied, “Yes, that’s the one. My husband’s first day on the job, he rolled a mop bucket into a room. The police captain said he couldn’t mop the floor, because they were just about to start roll call. My husband left the mop bucket and said he’d return later to mop the floor. The captain didn’t know my husband was holding his breath. Dozens of cops walked into the room, and some started gasping for breath. The mop bucket had ammonia and bleach mixed together. Cops tried to help their gasping brother officers, only to start gasping themselves. As they tried to flee the room, my husband was down the hall, firing at them as they stepped into the hallway. This kept the cops trapped inside a room with poison gas.”
	Jennifer said, “Kind of like Columbine, where the cops kept the students trapped inside a building with snipers inside it, except that the students didn’t deserve to die.”
	Tina continued, “Well, a detective came down the stairs and saw my husband perched in the hallway, gun in hand, ready to shoot the cops that might emerge from the room. My husband engaged the detective in a gunfight, but lost, and got killed in action, but he already killed seventeen cops.”
	Jennifer observed, “Pretty good yield for one Freedom Fighter. The government was using those cops as weapons of violence to intimidate innocent people into not exercising their God-given rights, and your husband took seventeen weapons away from the government.”
	Tina said, “Yes, and the publicity also taught more people this way to take out cops. People learned that they could recharge fire extinguishers designed for water, with ammonia and bleach, and spray it at a cop’s head, disabling the cop so the Freedom Fighter could capture the cop’s gun as a prize of war, and use it when the police dispatcher sends more targets. Billy Americano once pointed out that one advantage the Freedom Fighters would have was that the enemy would never know who would strike, nor when, nor where, nor how, and there are a lot of different ways to take out a cop. SWAT teams dressed in the best bullet-resistant gear in the world could still be attacked. Also, the news media reported the text of a note found in my husband’s pocket that read, ‘Vote wrong, cops die. Don’t like it? Don’t do it.’ This not only deterred members of the New York Legislature from voting wrong, it also deterred many voters from re-electing candidates who support unjust laws.”
	Jennifer said, “Carlos and I are partners. I’d like to hire you if he concurs. Carlos, what do you say we give preference to the widows and widowers of Freedom Fighters killed in action? A lot of businesses are run by enemies of liberty, and they give preference to the survivors of cops that got themselves killed enforcing unjust laws.”
	Carlos replied, “An excellent idea, in the hiring process, but we cannot keep workers who are unable to do good work. Business is business. We will hire them if all other factors are equal.”

Chapter Twenty-One: New Premises

	Jennifer and Carlos were visiting a building in which the real estate agent hoped to rent space to Remesa Banking Company.
	“The important thing is to be able to expand.” Carlos explained. 
	Jennifer said, “Yes, Remesa Banking Company is growing very fast. We’re getting more and more remittances in every day’s mail.”
	Carlos continued, “Furthermore, we’re going to be open around the clock.”
	“Well,” the agent explained, “you’ll like this place. There’s vacant office space on the second floor, and a club is next door, a place that’s also open around the clock.”
	The building occupied an entire city block in Manchester.
	Jennifer said, “We can pay you the rent in the form of a direct deposit to your account at Remesa Banking Company. That is the most convenient way for us. You can then log onto our server and transfer the funds to any of a number of commercial banks. We are increasing the number of our correspondent banks all the time. However, you can pay your expenses by logging onto our server and transferring your money from your account to the account of anybody to whom you owe money.”
	Carlos explained, “All deposits in Remesa Banking Company are backed by assets, corporate bonds that have the highest ratings from Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s. Independent auditors give us the best rating of any banking company as new as ours. We save a lot of money because we don’t need to have a mortgage loan department and a car loan department. We don’t even review loan applications, we just buy short-term corporate bonds and notes with the highest ratings.”
	Jennifer added, “And no government notes.”
	After touring the premises, Carlos and Jennifer could not resist visiting the club that could be their new neighbor.
	“Welcome to the Valentine Club. Admission is fifteen dollars.” a man told them.
	Jennifer explained, “I’m Jennifer Johnson, and this is my partner, Carlos Martínez. We’re looking at the premises next door. We’re with Remesa Banking Company and we might rent that space.”
	“Oh, by all means, come right on in. Let me show you around.” the owner said, asking an employee to cover the door.
	The owner gave them a tour of the Valentine Club. “Here is the table area. As you can see, lots of teenagers like to hang out in our club. Next, let me show you the dance floor. There’s a variety of the latest music, but it’s not too loud. The music comes from speakers on the wall away from the table area, so kids at the tables can chat. They can get up and play darts or billiards. We also have three small movie theaters, so we start a movie every forty-five minutes or so. The kids love it because breaking the ice is almost automatic. At first, I thought you two were a little old for this place, at this time of day.”
	Jennifer asked, “What do you mean, when you say, breaking the ice is almost automatic?”
	The man explained, “Well, of course, we would never think of operating a personal introduction service for minors under 18. We just happen to have the name, Valentine Club and we just happen to have a policy that management will seat you. The tables all just happen to be for two. We just happen to seat a guy in front of a girl, or a girl in front of a guy. We don’t introduce them or anything. Let’s say a girl is sipping a tonic, and she is by herself. All we do is seat the guy at the vacant seat at the same table. We do not specifically recommend to either of them whether they should start a romantic affair. Typically, even if they don’t like each other, they’ll get up and play darts or pool, and then they will ask to be reseated. We ask, ‘Together or separately?’ and if either of them says, ‘Separately, please.’ then that’s how the other one knows it’s over. The rejected one also gets reseated, and tries again. Naturally, we would not seat Carlos, at his age, at a table where a fifteen-year-old girl is sitting. The admission charge covers everything, the billiards, the darts, the beverages, the movies, fifteen dollars per admission. That way, we get away from the absurdity that the guy should buy things for the girl and create a feeling of debt. The movies give the kids some material for conversation. The employees sometimes talk to the kids who say they aren’t having much luck, giving them advice and tips.”
	Jennifer said, “This sounds like an excellent way to run a business. And you’re always open?”
	The man explained, “That’s right, we are open around the clock. If you look out front, you will see people getting out of taxis. A lot of people walk here. We do see different age groups at different hours.”
	Carlos asked, “Do you serve alcoholic beverages?”
	The man explained, “We serve beer and alcoholic punch. We have a strict policy, however, because it is good for business. Legally, we could serve anybody we want, but that would be bad for business to have people getting drunk and getting sick. If we won’t serve them alcohol, we’ll serve them the non-alcoholic brew. If you vomit, you’re barred for one week. If you misbehave, you’re out for a longer period, at the discretion of management. However, there’s nothing like sitting a guy at a table with a girl his age, to make him behave himself. Repealing the child labor laws has allowed kids to earn cash, and after work, a lot of them come here. It definitely helps keep the kids out of trouble. Sometimes we have irate parents coming in to lecture us. The morons want to rely on their daughter’s shyness as a method of birth control, to prevent teenage pregnancy. This place helps the girls get over their shyness and break the ice with the boys their age. That infuriates some parents. However, for the most part, our interests are the same as theirs. They want their kids to be safe, and so do we. On 20 February 2003, a devastating fire swept a night club in West Warwick, Rhode Island. About a hundred people died, many of them because they walked past the fire exits to use the front doors, by force of habit. Every so often, we make an announcement to our patrons that if a fire should occur, we want them to push to exit and sound alarm. Building codes only go so far. People have to use their heads, too. We don’t allow smoking, and that helps.”
	Carlos wondered, “Do you get the same number of guys and girls?”
	The man replied, “We target our advertising to the females. The guys know about the place, so we advertise to bring in the girls. The ads portray a girl telling another about this place. By the way, let me add that this place is educational also.”
	Carlos asked, “How is that?”
	The owner explained, “It’s one thing to order the kids to sit in a classroom and conjugate irregular Spanish verbs in the preterit subjunctive mode. But seat them at a table where the other one speaks Spanish, and watch them put it to practical use! They get mixed up because the Manchester native wants to dance ahorita. That means ‘right now’ in Mexico.” Then he paused to let Carlos speak.
	Carlos said, “But it means ‘later’ in the Dominican Republic, so the one from my country thinks the other one wants to dance later.” 
	 “Exactly.” the owner said. “Then there are the ones who think they are being asked if they consider themselves good looking.”
	Carlos spoke again. “Because guapo and guapa mean ‘good looking’ in the text book, but they mean ‘angry’ in the Dominican Republic.”
	The owner continued, “We have a lot of patrons from Brazil, and you should see the Manchester natives try to speak to them in Portuguese. Some of them actually get the hang of it, but usually they just chat in English.”
	Jennifer said, “I wonder why somebody didn’t open a club like this before Operation U.S.A. Freedom.”
	The man explained, “Zoning regulations would prevent it from operating in a residential area, within walking distance for a lot of the kids. They would have required a large parking lot, even though the patrons, for the most part, walk or ride in taxis. Most lawmakers were in bed with the oil companies, you see. Even before Operation U.S.A. Freedom, it was perfectly legal to serve non-alcoholic brew to people under 21, but in many establishments, management was malicious enough to impose a policy against it, often lying about it and claiming it was the law. Of course, they still can do so. But the big deterrent was that the owner would invest everything in the place and then the tyrants would pass an ordinance to shut it down, such as a curfew, or a law against midnight dancing, or a ban on all-you-can-drink beverage bars. Once the place opened, they’d go into panic mode and desperately look for some way to close it. Now, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen is on notice from the Manchester Committee for Liberty that if they pull a stunt like that, the Manchester Police Department will be exterminated promptly.”
	Jennifer looked at Carlos and said, “This would be an excellent place for Steve and Yesenia to visit, especially now that Yesenia is showing. That would send out a powerful message to the other kids. The girls would be reminded what can happen, and Steve would be setting a good example for the guys, what to do if it happens.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: Banking

	Sam was processing money orders at a table. Jennifer was talking to Carlos nearby. “The problem here is how to develop an encryption algorithm for secure on-line banking, one that’s unique.”
	Sam spoke up. “Why not just use one-time pads? That’s the most secure form of encryption.”
	Jennifer answered, “The problem with that is, how do you generate truly random numbers? The computer-generated ones aren’t really random, and a hacker could break the algorithm and log on, impersonating somebody else.”
	Sam said, “Well, look what happens when I open the calculator that comes with Microsoft Windows on this PC. Let me enter the number ‘1.001.’ Now, I type ‘y’ and ‘=’.”
	The number 1.001001000500333416741658356732 appeared.
	“That’s an irrational number. You can compute that to any number of decimal places. Also, I can hold down the ‘=’ key and watch the digits blur by. To make it random, you’d have to add some random digits after the 1.001 and then raise it to the power of itself. With your programming expertise, I’m sure you could figure out how to do that. But let’s think outside the box for a moment. All you need is to take a digital picture of some sand from the beach. That’s plenty random. You know, you could develop a machine that pours sand onto a flat trap door for about one second, then photographs it into a bitmap, then dumps that sand into a bucket below, then dumps more sand onto the trap door, taking another photo. When the sand runs out, reload it by hand. There’s plenty of randomness in the scattering of sand out of a bucket into another. Another way to generate a random number is by shuffling a deck of cards.”
	Jennifer liked the idea. “What I think I’ll do, is generate a random bit string that way, another random bit string raising a decimal to the power of itself, as you describe, and a third by just pulling tons of files off the internet. The server can crawl the internet, following links, and just pulling down tons of megabytes. Then take a gigabyte of internet files, a gigabyte of the computed bits, and a gigabyte of sand bitmaps, and add those binary numbers together.”
	Sam said, “Then you can take the sum, and shuffle the binary digits by shuffling a deck of cards. Your server reads the shuffled deck of cards, and shuffles every set of fifty-two binary digits the same way that the deck of cards is shuffled.”
	Carlos asked, “But how will we transmit the one-time pad to the customer securely?”
	Sam had another idea. “You know how you see all those free CD-ROM disks from internet services? Well, produce CD-ROM disks with the one-time pads on them. Let people use the disks to open deposit accounts, and then they fund the new accounts by mailing in money orders or receiving direct deposits. We don’t really care if people open accounts under fake names anymore. The advantage of using their right name is that they can recover their money even if they lose their data. We can still mail them a check to the name and address on their account. Only after we’ve verified their identity can we accept deposits of checks made out to them, though.”
	Jennifer and Carlos liked the idea. Then Sam offered another. “You know how there are companies that specialize in payroll service for other companies? Well, write the software that does payroll for free. Let employers transfer their money on our books, for free. Then they’ll need to have money in Remesa Banking Company, and Remesa gets interest lending that money out. Once the payroll goes through, the employees will have money in this banking company, and they can pay their bills on-line. You simply transfer the money from their account here, to the payee’s account here. The payees could move the money to a competing bank, but then they’d have to pay service charges to wire it back here if they wanted to spend it through our server.”
	Jennifer observed, “The potential there is almost unlimited! We could get landlords to accept the rent in the form of a credit to their account here, and they’d save the hassle of tenants paying at inconvenient times, and waiting for checks to clear. They can pay their mortgage lender the same way. If the mortgage lender won’t open an account here, we’d have to transfer some of Remesa’s money from our account to the mortgage lender’s account, at a bank where the mortgage lender does have an account. If we have positively identified the depositor, then the account paperwork can ask them if direct deposits to their Remesa account will be legal tender. If they sign saying it is, then anybody can pay any money they owe that person, by direct deposit. One account number for direct deposits, another for withdrawals, so they can give out their account number to somebody they cannot trust. Then there’s no disagreement about whether they paid the person, or when, because they can always check the banking records on our server.”
	Carlos observed, “You might think a factory in California would not want to be paid by direct deposit to an East Coast banking company they don’t even like, but there’s a good reason why they would. Let’s say a retailer is behind in making payments on invoices. The factory has to put the retailer on credit hold. Well, the retailer in New Hampshire could bring the day’s sales proceeds to Remesa Banking Company for deposit, then log onto the server and transfer it to the California factory’s account. This means, first of all, the factory can release the credit hold and start running the production line to make more money, and second, they have the money to pay their own bills, either on our server or by having it transferred to a California bank. If they pay the temp agency, then the temp agency can release the credit hold and start calling up workers, sending them to that factory again. There’s billions of dollars worth of checks in the mail at any given time, money that’s not doing anybody any good. Imagine the repo people taking everything out of a business office, and in the next day’s mail, there’s a check. Too late, and even if the check arrived in time, it would have to clear.”
	Jennifer observed, “The government had a lot of nerve imposing some of the regulations that prevented this in the past. They wanted banks to identify every depositor positively, to make sure taxes were reported accurately, when the government has no right to tax people anyway. Under the Patriot Act, banks weren’t even allowed to sell a money order without identification, even as the U.S. Postal Service was doing so. The feds imposed regulations saying just what identification the government approved. This made it tough to open accounts by mail. The government could have let the banks mail out the account forms by certified mail, restricted delivery, and the letter carrier would have to see positive identification to deliver the envelope, but that would make the postal union unhappy. They’d rather impose the homeland security burden on banks than on a federal agency.”
	Carlos said, “The State governments also had to repeal part of the cost of money orders. Some stores now sell them without even a fee. A tiny percentage of these become lost or destroyed. The issuer cannot write them off, though, because they cannot establish that the money order won’t be presented someday. State laws required the money order companies to hand this loot over to the State government as abandoned property, and the State government collected this hidden tax. Now, the money order company gets to hold it, and collect interest on it, so they are more profitable.”
	Jennifer said, “Let’s not fail to claim our credit in that. We’ve processed millions of dollars in money orders at Remesa Banking Company, and a lot of those senders would have mailed the money orders to the Dominican Republic, which is risky. We’ve helped reduce crime and the losses of the money order companies. Government policies in the United States promoted the theft of money orders in the Dominican Republic, and a lot of other countries, before Operation U.S.A. Freedom.”
	Carlos observed, “All they would have had to do was work with Inposdom, where one secure postal facility in the Dominican Republic would host post office boxes of the competing banks, and U.S. Postal Service machinery would identify letters addressed to that postal facility, placing them in separate bags, for more secure handling in transit. Government bureaucrats had no incentive to reduce the theft problem.”

	Chapter Twenty-Three: The Pitch

	Jennifer was talking to some big shot Wal-Mart executives in Bentonville, Arkansas. She said, “Our software will take care of your payroll issues, and we’ll give it to you, free. Ever since Operation U.S.A. Freedom, a lot of the government-imposed complications are gone. Like, you don’t have to withhold state income taxes or pay unemployment taxes. The important thing to remember is that this allows you to pay your associates every day.”
	One vice-president replied, “If we pay them every day, instead of every two weeks and holding back a week, we won’t have the use of that money.”
	Jennifer replied, “It’s no longer good business to run your company on your employees’ capital. They’ve earned the money. The excuse that it takes time and costs money to compute and issue all those paychecks is no longer convincing. Besides, a lot of people would want to work at your company, but they would have to wait three weeks to get paid, and that deters them. I recommend you give your employees a choice, get paid every day by direct deposit to their Remesa account, or every two weeks, by paper check.”
	Another vice president said, “By holding back some money, we retain for ourselves a security deposit that can prove useful in some termination situations.”
	Jennifer replied, “The vast majority of terminations will be improved, because you can pay the associate immediately. You also deter resignations if the associates get paid every day by Wal-Mart, but they would have to wait three weeks to get paid if they started work somewhere else. Paying daily relieves some of the upward pressure on wages. Furthermore, you might want associates to come in and work overtime on a Saturday, the first day of the pay period, but they’d have to pay for meals, transportation and child care that day, when they won’t get paid for twenty days. This might deter them from accepting the overtime.”
	Yet another vice-president said, “These things are true, and we’re always looking for ways to cut our costs and offer the lowest possible prices. I’m in favor of accepting this proposal.”
	Jennifer explained, “Remesa Banking Company will provide you with account start-up kits. Personnel managers in each store will participate in the process of setting up new accounts. They have already verified the applicant’s identity, for example. They would give the applicant the CD-ROM and the paperwork for transferring money over the telephone if the associate doesn’t have a home computer. Now, let me mention that a lot of factories can be convinced to accept payments by direct deposit to their Remesa accounts. You deposit money into thousands of different banks, some of them are our correspondent banks. You can transfer that money from your account to Remesa’s account, and then Remesa will credit the same amount to your Remesa balance. Then you can log onto our server and pay those invoices. Once you approve an invoice, then you need to log on and enter the information. After forty-eight hours, you can log back on again and effect the actual payment. The interval will prevent a hacker from accessing your account. If they log on and enter a fake invoice, you’ll catch it within those forty-eight hours, and prevent the hacker from being able to effect the final payment. If you need to effect a payment on less notice, more security procedures will be needed in those cases. This system eliminates paper checks. That’s important to some of your suppliers, since they receive paper checks and then have to wait until the checks clear before they can spend the money, and in the mean time, they cannot use that money to pay the temp agency the overdue balance, so they might not be able to bring in workers to run the production line to produce more product for you. We want to make all financial transactions faster and more efficient.”
	One vice-president said, “We have a lot of money in various banks, invested in long-term certificates, because we’ll need it to open new stores. Can you compete as far as interest rates with the big banks?”
	Jennifer replied, “No, we’re not specializing in long-term deposits. We want Remesa Banking Company to be the place where you put your short-term money, because of transactional efficiency. That’s our niche. If you’re investing millions of dollars for months or years at a time, you’re really better off depositing that money elsewhere.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Private Transfer

	Tina walked up to Jennifer and said, “We’ve just gotten a call from a bank in Texas. We’ve transferred a lot of money into accounts there, and they won’t let us transfer any more because we already owe them so many millions of dollars. They want us to settle the balance now, by wiring them the money on the books of the Federal Reserve System.”
	Jennifer explained, “We don’t do business with the Federal Reserve Bank. We order two-dollar Federal Reserve notes and all our coins through a commercial bank that does business with the Federal Reserve. As you know, any one-dollar bills and any bills larger than two dollars, we deposit. We keep two-dollar bills, Sacagawea dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels and cents in the vault. One option here would be to hire an armored car and load it with two-dollar bills and send it to Texas, but that would take time and cost money. That’s inefficient. Find out the names of their correspondent banks. We currently have a large positive balance at two of the big banks that private money orders are drawn on. That’s because we’ve been depositing the money orders electronically all afternoon into our accounts at those banks.  We’ll transfer our money from our account at one of those banks, to the account of the bank that called.”
	Tina asked, “But what if we don’t have a correspondent bank in common?”
	Jennifer replied, “What we do then is, we find a string of correspondence. We transfer our money to the account of another bank, which charges the first bank and credits the payee bank. We totally avoid the need to settle through the Federal Reserve System.”
	Ten minutes later, Jennifer phoned the bank in Texas. “I’m glad you called.” she said. “We just transferred fourteen million dollars to your account at another one of your correspondent banks. I just wanted to thank you for the call. We had a large positive balance at that bank, putting us at risk because if they failed, we’d lose our money there, but we’d still owe you. That would set us back a few months. If they fail later today, we lose less, because we’ve already paid you. In the future, feel free to let us know if there’s a specific correspondent bank you want us to settle through. That way, you don’t run into the same problem with the correspondent bank that you ran into with us, a positive balance getting too high. Maybe you’d prefer we transfer the money to your account at a correspondent bank to which you owe money. It is in everybody’s best interest to keep correspondent banking balances to a minimum.”
	 	
Chapter Twenty-Five: Private Money

	Carlos and Jennifer called a meeting of the employees of Remesa Banking Company. Jennifer made an announcement. “In a few weeks, we’ll be offering accounts in commodities contracts. In the past, these were all for limited terms. Now, these contracts are essentially redeemable at any time, for certain commodities. There are contracts redeemable for one kilogram of gold in New York City, contracts redeemable for one thousand kilograms of corn in Chicago, and dozens of other commodities available out there. Now that they are redeemable on demand, the contracts can be used as media of exchange. What we have done is, we have devised an index of these commodities. For about a million dollars, a person could buy the entire basket of goods; that is, they could buy the complete set of contracts, and redeem or sell them individually. The complete set is one million shares. Smaller amounts of money can buy proportional numbers of shares. The value of the shares will rise and fall with the value of the commodities for which they are redeemable, but the value will not fluctuate as much as the value of a single commodity. Furthermore, there’s a wide base of commodities to back the shares. There isn’t enough gold in the world to run an economy on gold. But gold is just one of the commodities in the package. Individual shares, of course, can be sold for dollars or anything else, but the big commodities exchanges only handle the wholesale quantities and will not deliver smaller amounts.”
	Tina asked, “Will these accounts be accessible through your server?”
	Carlos explained, “Yes, these commodities share accounts will be accessible through our server. Furthermore, you can tie them to a debit card and spend your shares. We anticipate that some merchants will start pricing their goods in shares. That’s because the shares are backed by something, while dollars are backed by nothing.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Finally

	Yesenia was visiting at the Johnsons’ apartment. It was 16:43 Eastern Daylight Savings Time when she said, “Steve, I need to get to the hospital.”
	Steve’s eyes opened wider. “Is it time?” he asked.
	“Yes, finally. It’s like I’ve been walking around with a ball and chain on me for all these months. Tomorrow’s my birthday, the fourth of October. If she’s born after midnight, she’s born on my sixteenth birthday.”
	Rob and Sandra drove Steve and Yesenia to the hospital and waited in the family waiting room in the maternity ward. Yesenia’s mother and father arrived an hour later.
	It was almost midnight when Steve was walking down the hall.
	“Any news yet?” Carlos asked.
	Steve replied, “Not yet. The contractions are closer. She needs a pitcher of water. That’s what I’m getting for her. Don't worry, though. Tía Miguelina says she's doing excellent.”
	Yesenia’s mother, Ileana Martínez, hugged Carlos. “Es buen muchacho. Va a ser buen padre para nuestra nieta.” she said, approving of Steve as a good father for their granddaughter.
	Pitcher of water in hand, Steve returned to the delivery room.
	It was 2:37 in the morning by the clock on the wall when a baby’s head popped out. Yesenia’s aunt Miguelina helped the child emerge. It was now 2:38. Another nurse-midwife looked at the clock and announced, “Thirty-eight!” to document the minute, for the record, and then asked Steve, “Would you like to cut the cord, sir?”
	Steve accepted the scissors and cut the umbilical cord. Then he asked, “When can I sign the birth certificate?”
	A nurse-midwife explained, “That won’t be for a few days. You sign the hospital form. In the mail, you’ll get what’s called a parents’ notification of a vital record.”
	Steve wondered, “Why do they notify my parents?”
	The nurse-midwife said, “They don’t notify your parents. You and Yesenia are parents.”
	Steve gasped. “We’re …parents? Like, I knew I was a father and Yesenia was a mother, but I never thought of us as …parents!”
	A nurse-midwife was completing a record. “If you want, we can get a Social Security number for the baby.”
	Yesenia agreed, but then hesitated when Steve shook his head in opposition. “Why not?” she asked.
	“The kid would get a New Hampshire number, probably starting with zero zero one. For the rest of her life, anybody who sees her Social Security number will know she’s from New Hampshire, which is none of their business. Filing out of State doesn’t help, either, since it goes by the mailing address on the original application. You should just pick some State, and a post office there, out of the ZIP Code directory. Use ‘General Delivery’ at that post office as the mailing address. She’ll get a Social Security number in that State’s sequence, to mislead anybody who would invade her privacy. Send a forwarding order to that town, but even if the envelope never arrives, her number is still fixed. Pretty soon, though, they’ll be phasing out Social Security.”	
	Minerva Ileana Martínez tipped the scale at 3.21 kilograms. Steve addressed the crying infant. “Hi there! It’s okay. You don’t have to cry. I can understand your concern, because this is your first day on the job, and you haven’t had a chance to learn the ropes yet. You’re on Planet Earth. I’m your daddy, and that girl over there is your mommy, and we’ll be your primary nurture providers. ¿Qué hablas, inglés o español? What do you speak, English or Spanish?”
	The staff laughed at the question.
	Steve asked, “Yesenia, may I invite everybody in?”
	“Yes, I guess so.” Yesenia replied.
	Then Steve asked, “Can I get you some food, now that you can eat again?”
	“Oh, yes! Thanks!” Yesenia said.
	Ileana and Carlos entered first, and could not conceal their joy.
	After a few minutes, Rob and Sandra entered. “We just felt it would be kind of crowded, and we wanted to give your mother and father some space.” Sandra explained. She took photos with the Martínez family’s camera. Carlos took pictures with Sandra’s camera.
	At 3:00, hospital staff moved Yesenia and the baby to another room, so they could clean the delivery room.
	At 6:30, Steve noticed Yesenia waking up again. “Here’s a telephone card. Would you like to phone your grandparents in the Dominican Republic?” he asked.
	Yesenia replied, “I think it’s still too early. Maybe in another hour.”
	Steve said, “But in your country, they’re an hour ahead, so it’s 7:30 there.”
	“Not really,” Yesenia said, “because the clocks here are an hour fast for daylight savings time, and they don’t change the clocks in the Dominican Republic, so we’re on the same time now.”
	At 8:00, Yesenia accepted the telephone card and dialed. “¡Hola, abuelita! Soy Yesenia que te habla. Ya dé luz a la niña. Sí, ella está bien.”
	At 8:30, Jennifer arrived. She held her new niece in her arms. 
	Steve observed, “Because of the Freedom Fighters, Minerva has a brighter future ahead of her.”
	Jennifer replied, “That’s only part of the story, Steve. Because of the Freedom Fighters, you are no longer prevented from taking good care of your daughter. Because you are a decent person, you are motivated to do your best. That’s the other part.”
	
	THE END

	

Glossary

Billy's Legacy

Andy - Steve's older brother, who dies on January 1st at age 22.

Arnold - Supervisor at Sample Name Products Company.

Carlos Martínez - Father of Yesenia Martínez, and partner of Jennifer Johnson in Remesa Banking Company.

Charlie - A worker at the Sample Name Products Company.

Claudia - A girl in the school library.

Fred - A Labor Ready worker who is so incredibly rich, he actually has his own personal automobile.

Ileana Martínez - Mother of Yesenia Martínez.

Jennifer - Steve's older sister.

Joe - The guy Melissa dated instead of Andy. See chapter 6.

Kevin - A boy in the school library, whom Yesenia tries to help get fixed up with a girl.

Manchester South High School - There is no such school in non-fiction. Steve and Yesenia attend it.

Melissa - Blind date of Andy's.

Rick - A classmate of Steve's at Manchester South High School, who meets him while celebrating the new year in downtown Manchester.

Rob - Steve's father.

Sam - A wheelchair-bound man whom Yesenia and Steve meet. 

Sandra - Steve's mother.

Steve Johnson - The fifteen-year-old guy who is the main character.

Sergeant Whalley - New Hampshire State Police sergeant investigating the fatal crash in which Andy died.

Taisha - A girl in the school library.

Tina - The widow of a Freedom Fighter, she gets hired by Remesa Banking Company.

Yesenia Martínez - A fifteen-year-old female classmate of Steve's. They share a C period biology class.