I step into the shower and turn on the spray.  The water's cold, damn cold.  The federal regulations on energy consumption have knocked me down to one decent tank of hot water a week.  But who am I to complain?  So what if I'm out busting my ass for a living, installing toilets and soldering pipes, actually providing a service to America?  So what if I get a decent shower?  I guess all the hot water is reserved for those who produce all the hot air in Washington these days.

After the icy shower, I dry off with a frayed cotton towel which has seen better days.  The poor thing should have been retired, just like me, but neither of us have that luxury in this day and age.  My "owners" can't afford to let me retire, so why should my towel?

I walk downstairs into the living room.  There, on the couch, is Billy Torrens, the twenty-something starving artist the Federal Housing Authority has mandated that I take in as a tenant.  He doesn't say much, and his food stamps keep him out of my icebox, for the most part.  He grunts at me as I pass by, blocking his view of the television momentarily.  I grunt back and wish I could sell the television to buy a new towel, but then Billy would sue me for infringing on his Constitutional Right to Television.  Seriously, read the Bill Of Rights.  The Supreme Court said it's in there somewhere.

I step into the kitchen and see a mess of corn flakes scattered all over the old table.  Billy again!  If my dear wife were still alive (God rest her soul), she would have done something about that punk, and the Feds be damned.  I, however, have always been a good, upstanding citizen, playing by the rules, changing with those rules, even when I might disagree.  With that in mind, I ignore Billy's mess.  Let the punk contract leprosy and maybe he'll start picking up after himself.

The little magnetic calendar stuck to my fridge is out of date, so I tear off the page to signal the start of another month.  God, it's already October 2048.

I'm feeling like toast today, so I look in the bread drawer only to find an empty bag.  The punk ate my loaf, and I'm only allotted one per week.  I won't be able to charge another loaf to my Fed Card until next Monday.  So, I must go without.   What else is new?

I find a few eggs left in the fridge and heat them over the electric range.  I throw them onto a metal plate and eat them quickly, not able to taste them, since my Medical Profile denies me the use of salt.  Never mind that I'm perfectly healthy, and have no signs of heart disease.  Some experts designed a test that said I wasn't allowed to have salt, so I feel lucky to just have plain eggs.

I stop in my den for a moment before heading out to work.  I click on the monitor sitting on my desk and access the net.  I'm welcomed by the usual Party Propaganda as I log on.  "Welcome to the Patriot's Web, a service of the Federal Communications Bureau.  FedCom: We Work For You."  I used to laugh at that slogan, later sneered in disgust, but now I just ignore it, like I do most everything in life these days.

I log into my email, and find half a dozen letters of interest.  One is a statement from Social Security, informing me that if I work until I'm 85 I will be able to collect $290 a month in benefits.  Hooray.  Never mind I pay more than that each month right now in Payroll taxes; money that I should be collecting now for retirement.  Instead, it's going to feed Billy the Leech, and a billion other welfare bums.  But I digress.  That's not the way for an honest working American to think.  I've got a good job, and provide a service most others cannot provide.  I have enough to eat, and own my own home, sorta.  I should be content, and do what I can for the good of the many.

Three other letters are from my kids.  One is from Karen, who recently joined the Peace Corps, despite my strongest recommendations to the contrary.  She's about to ship out to Iraq to help feed starving Kurds along the Turkish border.  I'll just be glad if she gets back without being bombed by one of those terrorists over there.  That's what we get for switching tactics all the time.  We're in, then we're out, in, and out.  It's like a porn movie, for crying out loud!  Why the hell couldn't we just stick it out?

The next letter's from my oldest son, Kenny.  He's the good son, the one who took after the old man and got himself a real job as a professional plumber.  Turns out he's had to move (again) because of federal rezoning laws.  Apparently, there were too many Plumbers in Saginaw, so they moved him back down to Detroit.  I'll never understand these new "job zones" the feds have set up.  I'm just lucky to have been grandfathered in.  They don't move me around to suit their regulated job market.  They move the market around me, while they wait for me to die, hopefully before I collect any of that precious Social Security.

The third letter's from my younger son, Greg.  The deadbeat.  He reminds me of Billy the Leech, only not as clean.  I'm actually surprised to hear from him, since I haven't in about two years.  I can't make sense out of half the letter until I read the second to last paragraph, saying he was checking into another Methadone Clinic today.  I guess he was pretty strung out when he wrote the thing.  Of course, the Feds will pay to rehab him, again, just as they paid him money to feed his addiction for the last two years, which followed his last visit to their clinics.  Damn it, Greg, why can't you just grow up?  Maybe if big brother would stop picking you up, you'd get your hands on your bootstraps and do some tugging, yourself.

I find myself crying at the end of Greg's letter and I force myself to stop before the chip imbedded in my neck gives off any irregular readings.  That's all I need, some shrink a thousand miles away reading that I've had an emotional spell, and ordering me onto Prozac.

I finally get to the two business letters I have.  Both are small job orders from the Federal Labor Bureau, which now handles most building and housing maintenance.  If a homeowner needs something done, they submit a work request to the Bureau, which in turn forwards it to a licensed businessman in the area.  I do the work, the homeowner signs off on it, and the Bureau pays me whatever their current scale is for a particular job.  It's a good, efficient way to do business, for the government.

With the job orders in hand, I step outside into the cool autumn air.  The leaves are blowing off the trees, and I expect to see a frost any day now, but that's October in Maine for you.  So much for global warming.

I pull out my key card and push a button to unlock my 2036 Chevy Pixel, a cramped, rusty minivan powered by an electric motor.  It's not a bad car, really.   Plug it in the wall at night, and it will carry me and my full compliment of tools fifty miles before needing a recharge.  The Labor Bureau never assigns me jobs that are outside of a fifty mile round trip, so I need not worry.   Where do I have to go that this underpowered electric contraption can't take me?  It's not like I'm a Senator, or anything.  A long distance drive is out of the question.

I cruise down the suburban roads, and catch myself before hitting forty.  It's all thirty five zones around here, and if I hit 5 miles over the limit my GPS will register with the nearest police server, and issue me a ticket.  I can't afford one of those.  Not on a working man's salary.

The first job's five miles down the road.  Some old lady needs her tub regrouted.  The next call's another five miles away, to install a new tankless water system for the high school.  Man, I wish I could afford one of those nifty things for my house.  Maybe if the Labor Bureau paid more, and didn't deduct all those taxes.  But, then, who'd pay for all the remarkable social reforms of the past forty years?  Who would fund Greg's rehab, or pay the Labor Bureau officials to push their buttons, and who would pay for Billy's foodstamps?

Yes, it is an honor to serve, and I must remember that.  It is Patriotic to pay taxes, and earn what our superiors in government deem appropriate.  If we were left to our own devices, we would just waste all that money anyway.

I'm done with work right around three in the afternoon, so I go home and read an old Mickey Spillane mystery novel.  It's one the Diversity Board hasn't yet classified as "hate speech," so I'm still allowed to read it.  Though, from the way Mike Hammer's talking, I don't expect it will be long before they start sending this to the shredder.

After a couple of hours I go to my computer and check for today's payments.  It turns out the old bag refused to sign off on her grouting job, so I get burned on that.  I could send in an appeal, but they'd just jerk me around for a year or two, and then side with her, since the customer is always right.  At least I got paid for the water heater installation at the school.  Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars was the current scale, minus Social Security, Federal Employment, and a number of other taxes.  In the end, I got thirty bucks, which would roughly pay for the electricity I used to drive there and back with the electric car the government supplied for my needs.

I click off the monitor, trying not to drive my heart rate up.  The stupid Bio-Chip will have the doctors cutting off my eggs next!  Besides, there was nothing I could do about it.  It was the way the world worked.

I passed through the living room on my way upstairs, passed Billy who hadn't moved from the couch all day, and crawled to my bed, ready to sleep another night, knowing I was serving for the benefit of the State.

But, as I lie here in bed, I remember a time when things weren't this way, when the government didn't control every aspect of our lives, and didn't take ninety percent of our income for taxes.  I remember a time in my youth when people worked at their chosen professions and weren't assigned work areas by government.  It was a time when a free market decided the price of goods and labor, not Federal Agencies, and a man was able to keep more of his earnings, though everyone still bitched about the taxes.  I suppose we always have.

Yes, there was a time, forty years ago, when I was twenty-six, a young upstart seeking change.  I was young, and change was all I had in my pocket at the time, so it seemed the right thing to do, to chant "Yes, we can."  I heard those words, and believed in the promises that followed, none of which were delivered afterwards, of course.  At least, not as advertised.

Back then, I was too young and foolish to know that you should never believe a presidential candidate's campaign promises.  I didn't care to dig deeper, see how they voted or what they actually believed in before their presidential façades were woven by spin doctors.   I just heard the promise of a better tomorrow, an end to war, and free healthcare, so I voted for the man who promised "change," and I got what I voted for.

That was just the catalyst, the beginning of "change."  Successive elections brought more and more of that horrible change, until I woke up this morning, on my sixty-sixth birthday, to find a mess of a country that would have made my parents shoot themselves.  Of course, if they were still alive, they wouldn't be able to do that, since nobody owns a gun anymore, thanks to pervasive firearms regulations.  We can't have unwitting citizens owning guns, can we?  They might do something stupid, like shoot a federally-licensed mugger.

If only I'd known forty years ago what I know now.  Maybe my vote would have changed, and things would have turned out a little different.