An A Bit Sketchy Narrative

Jack sits in the back turret of a 1936 Boeing watching a pyramid blow up in space.

“This is just silly.” he thinks

He is right this is silly. There is no way this old pane should be in space.

“Who travels in space in a flying boat? Oh right, the chosen one” he says to no one.

The fact that he is the chosen one is still a little odd to him. There is nothing special about him, there is no reason the Shadow Gov’t should have tabbed him the chosen one. He is a simple guy, like everyone else he knows he was raised by television, television and a pack of wolves. So maybe he wasn’t so normal.

Being raised by wolves’ he always slipped through bureaucratic gaps. The machine always missed him. The pack made sure of that. Technically he isn’t even a person. He has never legally been born; there is no public record of him. Now that the files in the Shadow Gov’t have been destroyed.

He once tired to get a drivers license. The DMV burned down around him. He is starting to believe bureaucracy can simply not stand up to him. The Shadow Gov’t certainly couldn’t. All their members are now dead, leaving behind a solid infrastructure and a large sum of money. That got Jack to thinking.

Jack gets on the intercom.

“Harry, the Shadow Gov’t infrastructures, are they still around?” he asks.

“Yeah we are going to one to debrief and get supplies” the space monkey replies.

“What about the bank accounts, are they still around?” Jack asks.

There is a pause before Harry responds “ Yeah, they…”

“Dibs, I call them, they are mine, I call the money, and the apartment in New York, those are mine. I call them.” Jack interupts.

“Jack, damn it, this is not a ride to the mall. You can’t call shotgun on all the stuff you want. 5036 people just died, many of them my good friends. It is not right to casually call “dibs” on their hard work. Besides a lot of the money is tied up in really weird ways it is going to take a couple of years to find all of it and make it legal.” Harry replies

“Bull shit, you are just mad I called ‘dibs with all these witnesses, and you are trying to make it sound like a whole lot of hard work so I’ll give you some money. I’ll do that anyway. Besides why do we want to make this money legal, we’ll just have to pay taxes on it? We should stay in the shadows, and live in a cash environment. No one will ever be the wiser.”

“ That is not a bad idea, once again bureaucracy falls at your feet. It will still take some time, but we’ll split the money in fourths you, Johnson and me get a quarter and our rescuers get 25 percent as well. This should be ideal for all of us – young rich and untaxable. Since none of us exist legally.

Jack thought of that and smiled. How difficult reentry to earths atmosphere in a 1936 Boeing seaplane hadn’t crossed his mind.