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The document was discovered by a public welfare officer conducting a routine search of a barn in southern Ohio.
He immediately forwarded it to the Department of Universal Investigations, in Denver, where it was analyzed by a TSA computer on loan from the NSA Federal Guardianship Force On Behalf Of The People II.
Linguistic comparisons were run. No matches were found.
A search was initiated under the direction of the federally funded Ohio Victim Society.
Three weeks later, Citizen John Q Jones A-53-7D was arrested on a defunct Roundup Ready corn plantation outside Gary, Indiana.
The North American Regional Council Committee For Anthropological Symmetry and Neo Cultural Diversity held a preliminary hearing in a conference lounge at the abandoned Ebola O’Hare Airport in Chicago.
The document was read out loud by a Clerk of the Court.
It was titled: Freedom and the People Who Hate It:
“They try to attack freedom, but in the process they make themselves into more grotesque versions of themselves.
“They’re leeches. They’re incapable of making up their minds. They hate freedom, but at the same time they’re desperate to attach themselves to some symbol or person that represents it.
“They feel trapped and they are—but not through the actions of anyone else. They’re drowning in their own juices.
“They’re afraid. They can’t stand on their own. They can’t become known for a single idea of their own.
“They join groups, knowing in advance, deep down, that the whole enterprise will become a failure for them. They’ll never find what they’re looking for.
“Eventually, they will find something: a leader who is a psychopath, who seems to embody power, but who is merely looking to draw in followers and make them into servants.
“This isn’t a political drama. It’s a personal one: life against death.
“The person who hates freedom is against life and for death, no matter what he says, no matter what he does. He can’t escape.
“So he does what he does. He passes death around. He may dress it up and disguise it; he may turn it into the most elevated humanitarian sentiment; but it’s still death.
“When even this fails to satisfy him, he descends to a lower level, and joins the whole of society, which is teeming with people who are becoming robots. They inhabit the full range of the political spectrum, regardless of platforms and ideals.
“They are self-created machines. They babble, support, defend, deny, and all the while they’re living in a world of extinct symbols.
“They’re in the mass, the collective.
“They’re utterly dependent on one another, and they trade the dependence back and forth, like obsolete currency.
“Now and then, they see lone boats of freedom moving by, and they desperately reach out, not knowing why. Climb on board, sink the boat; they’re unable to make the distinction.
“Freedom isn’t a given. It never was.
“It isn’t only an idea. It requires a person who can wear it and make it mean something.
“The winds come and go. The rain comes and goes. The boat keeps moving.
“Who’s steering it?
“No one knows. No one else knows.
“Only the person steering it knows.”
The six members of the Council Committee breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm themselves.
They turned to their chairman, Francis X Muhammed Schwartzman Ragan Hochslinger, who nodded, folded his hands under his chin, and pursed his lips.
“Yes,” he said. “I thought we had bred this sort of sentiment out of the body politic a long, long time ago, but apparently a mutation still survives, and it must be treated, it must undergo therapy, in order to reduce it back down to a virus, after which we can develop a vaccine, and therefore in that sense it is quite valuable and must be handled with great care, so as to preserve it in purified form. Naturally, everyone in this room will be quarantined for 42 days, to ensure we are not infected, and as for the author of the text, he must be transported to a secure P-6 facility, in utter silence.”
The Chairman glanced at Jones.
But there was no one there.
Aside from the Council Committee and the National Police Officer Guards, the room was empty.
Where was Jones?
The same thought suddenly appeared in the minds of the people in the room:
Had Jones been present and then vanished? Was there a John Q Jones?
No one seemed to know.
***
(Freedom and the people who hate freedom reprinted here with permission of the of the author.)
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