Jeff woke up in the morning with a horrible hangover. His first conscious thought was to rid himself of any visible evidence of the hangover, as the new prohibition laws were rather strict, and he didn't relish the thought of spending his 35th birthday in the stocks. He grabbed his bible and opened it, reading the requisite passage in Ezekial, logging carefully his notes in case the government questioned his commitment to the government's new Compulsory Religion laws. As he stumbled into the bathroom, he stubbed his toe. "Goddammit!", he yelled, before he could catch himself, and hoped that his outburst had not been overheard through the paper thin walls of his apartment. He was already on the government's watch list, as he had just been released from house arrest a month earlier for an attempted illicit homosexual love affair with what turned out to be a government informant. He certainly didn't need more of that.
He walked down the stairs of his apartment to the newly manicured lawn. The local evangelist was already about and handing out tracts. He recognized Jeff and waved. "Great," Jeff thought, "now he's going to ask me what I thought about Romans 1". But instead, the man's attention was turned quickly to the young girl on her way to school, whose dress, apparently slightly outgrown, was now dangerously close to the minimum length.
As he approached his workplace, Jeff could hear the other workers gathering for the morning flag salute. They surrounded the stocks where an older couple was on display for their noncompliance in last Friday's flag salute, as well as other offenses too petty to earn them the weekend in the slammer. Jeff stood at attention, hand over his heart, and desperately tried to call to memory the verse he was to read before the morning prayer. As the final words to the pledge were uttered, Jeff felt a tap on his shoulder, and was suddenly conscious of the Mariners cap he had neglected to remove before the salute.
"Damn", Jeff, uttered, hoping it was under his breath. It wasn't, and another notation was made on the pad of paper the gentleman carried with him.
"Not again", Jeff thought, waiting to receive the citation....
signing off,
Gideon MacLeish