zgh-5326 woke up at her scheduled time.
it was 15-day. cornflakes and orange juice for breakfast.
zgh-5326 got up and made her bed, with perfect hospital corners.
she opened the little door in the wall beside the bed and the conflakes and orange juice were there, just as they should be.
she sat on the bed and began slowly consuming them. she liked to eat slowly, so that she would not be finished before the news arrived.
there were still some soggy flakes in her bowl and a third of the juice in her glass when the big screen on the wall in front of her flashed on.
it was news time. zgh-5326 was in no hurry.
she finished her cornflakes and put the empty bowl back in the wall. then she took the glass of orange juice and approached the wall.
a soft rubber chair unfolded up from the floor and a tray popped out from the wall beneath the screen. zgh-5326 sat down on the chair and put her orange juice on the tray.
both the tray and the section of the wall beneath the screen were filled with buttons and switches. zgh-5326 pressed a green button marked "go" on the wall and moving pictures appeared on the screen.
a rocket ship appeared in a bluish green sky. it dropped some bombs on a city filled with large round buildings.
white words flashed on the screen.
prime minister tyt-l-7895 of avildia announced today that the avildian army and navy had opened its spring offensive against baraldia.
angry mobs supporting barildian independence gathered outside buckingham palace. queen boadicea ii issued a short statement calling for calm.
prime minister barry-67 issued a shorter statement calling on both sides to return to the conference table.
the white words faded away and were replaced on the screen by red words:
your thoughts?
3,567,890,933 citizens are beeping now.
zgh-5326 pressed a blue button on the wall marked "beeps" and the screen was filled with a jumble of blue words:
uhh-457: sammy here. the barildians are subhuman dogs who lost their right to exist long ago! wipe out every mother and child! they have been stinking up the planet for way too long!
lpd-78412 : more lies from the pathetic remnants of the imperialists.
gfe-99006 : it's all lies. anybody who believes any of this garbage should be ground into sausage and shipped to the prisons on pluto.
890-67: read your bible! read the book of daniel! it is all coming to pass!
frg-78 to trt-p-44: that's what they want you to believe, you moron!
ufe-7073: give it up, you pathetic slobs! we are all dead meat already!
gedw-55: queen boadicea should have her head chopped off and her fat flabby carcass dragged through the streets.
at this, zgh-5326 pressed a button on her tray marked "1 to 1" and all the statements except the last one disappeared from the screen.
there was a set of typewriter keys on the tray in front of her, and after taking a sip of her orange juice she began typing on them. a few seconds after she typed them, the words appeared on the screen:
zgh-5326 (anna the avenger) to gedw-55 (hammering hank): hank, you continue to disgust me. it is one thing to disparage the legitimate aspirations of the barildian people who have suffered decades of oppression at the bloody hands of the resurgent imperialists
the words she was typing on the screen began to slow down…
suddenly a message in bright yellow flashed on the screen:
zgh-5326 typed "sorry" then:
you stupid, hank, you stupid dummy. i can't waste my time on you.
then she pressed a white button marked "c" for clear and the words disappeared and the news came back on.
the pluto parrots defeated the hong kong hellcats 6-5 in ten innings in the second game of the new season.
zgh-5326 was not interested. she considered her next move.
zgh-5326 was a loyal member of the "a" team, one of the two main teams in the solar system. there were thousands of teams, and even a few hundred million solitary souls who were not even on a team, but most citizens were either on the "a" team or the "b" team.
each team supported a strict set of positions.
the "a" team supported, among other things:
the barildian rebels against the republic of avildia.
high taxes, especially on churches
more vitamin c in the daily meals, and less salt, and the complete abolition of meat, even on christmas and world peace day
no religious missionaries on interstellar explorations
more courtesy from the robots delivering meals and other necessities and more quiet in the corridors
the abolition of violent sports and games
the "b" team took the opposite side on all these and others, and was especially fervent on resuming universal military training, at least for males.
the next largest, but much smaller "c" team, advocated the return of "love" and "romance" and direct contact between humans.
zgh-5326 finished her orange juice. as she got up to put her glass back in the wall she heard a humming noise in the corridor even though meal time was over. a robot.
some whiner must have put in an "emergency" call for some little thing. couldn't she have any peace and quiet?
though she had of course never seen any of the other inhabitants of her building, she felt they were a bunch of uncultured lowlifes and she really wished she could move some place nicer.
*
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