retirement job, America circa 2025

retirement job, America circa 2025

fiction
edward w pritchard

I was extremely lucky to get the job with the City of Barberton when I was sixty eight years old over at the train station along the canal and the River. I sleep in a small train observation station along the tracks about ten by ten feet square. I am luckier than most for after the hyper inflation of 2018 wiped out pensions and savings most of us are happy with a roof over our heads and any source of income is welcome for the young in America do not much condone the elderly working.

I monitor the trains as they run west toward California carrying rocks and other hard commodities like pieces of cement, slag and anythings that can be converted to fuel in China. China is literally buying the complete terrain of America. Various types of rocks are stripped off the American terrains  put on trains and the rumble across America to be shipped to China to be manufactured into alternate fuel sources; for oil is now scarce. I said I monitor trains but actually my main job is to watch the pieces of stone and rock that line the sides along the railroad track. They are very valuable and many people are tempted to steal them. They are needed to cushion the vibration of the heavy trains, as no other source is available that works as well as a cushion, but they are valuable for export , one small rock is worth ten dollars, a small fortune to the poor in these difficult times. To guard the rocks along the track I carry a rifle and am sad to report I have killed at least twenty people in the last year alone many women and some young teenage children. I sympathize with their poverty and misery but since I wish to live I must do my job to survive.

Last Thursday I was walking at the extreme Southern edge of my territory in a woody area along the River and my back was to a fence that extended in front of and behind me for about a half mile. It is out along the old lime and molybdenum pits formerly kept by a large Barberton industrial chemical concern. About fifty thousands deer were coming down the hill, eastward from near the high tension towers jumping the fence mostly, although it was soon torn down, and heading dead East. I was not alarmed by the large herds of animals because sometimes mass groups of animals were rounded up, driven to a slaughter station and then shipped to China or India.  Myriad other kinds of animals in very great numbers and herds were following the deer, including rabbits, woodchucks, dogs, and numerous other kinds of animals native to America and not yet extinct. Two extremely large military helicopters of the G class, the green monsters, were driving the animals presumably to the stations south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be slaughtered and shipped to China and India for food.

The first helicopter when it saw me tasered me with a DNA scan and I collapsed to the ground. Luckily I guess, my DNA, was clean because they did not kill me, although the second helicopter circled once. They flew off and let me alone and I wasn't mortally injured by the helicopters or by the movement of the animals.

Later, I got a small workers compensation award for the DNA taser scan, with an apology, since I work for the railroad, a quasi government agency. With the Workers comp ward of $750 I am going to buy a battery powered DVD player so I can watch old television shows in my hut when off duty.

The apology of sorts I got from the helicopter pilots and crew that tasered was some fresh possum meat from the Pittsburgh slaughter plant that they commandeered before it was shipped off to the Orient. The helicopter crews and I both are civil service, section 96, supplying hard goods to China and I heard they felt bad about DNA tasering one of their own, for it is a very painful process.
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