The mini-Oppenheimer already hit 50% and claims it’s just a science project to make hand sanitizer. Fake news: he’s one yeast packet away from weapons-grade moonshine. Everybody knows it.
I slapped an embargo on Amazon deliveries of sugar, grain, and distillation equipment. It was a beautiful embargo. The likes of which no one had ever seen before. Smart people said three days. Maybe four.
Then Aaran—highly overrated. Frankly, I made him—closed the Strait: the narrow hallway leading to the master bedroom.
Now Melanie, a glamorous woman, everyone says so, can’t reach the hemorrhoid cream she keeps in the master bath.
“My stash cost three bucks a tube,” she said. “I’m not putting the market’s $4.50 cream in my tank. Get that cream flowing and the price back down—or you’ll be replaced in the house by November.”
We were hours away from reopening the Strait—and making hemorrhoid cream affordable again. Then Aaran cut a smuggling deal with his Russian and Chinese neighbors.
“But Vlad tutors Aaran in algebra,” Melanie said. “Mei helps him with Mandarin.”
“Exactly. It’s a front. That troika of fourteen-year-olds is destabilizing our entire way of life.”
I was losing support in the house. Very unfair. So I escalated to a full blockade of the driveway. I parked a Humvee at the choke point; a pontoon boat sealed the secondary lane. Mei’s Radio Flyer could no longer run contraband over the border.
My ally B.B. across the street surveilled the perimeter electronically. His people are good at such things. But he took out Mei’s Radio Flyer with a unilateral drone strike—in her own driveway.
Total disaster.
I ripped B.B. a new one for the territorial intrusion: ‘What the frick are you doing? You’re fricking crazy!’
No response. B.B.—the worst ever—has his own problems at home. He keeps borrowing my landscaping equipment and won’t return it.
Negotiations are going tremendously well. We’re winning like never before. Neighbors are saying, ‘Please, sir, we’re winning too much.’ So I’m announcing a deal. My fifth. Technically it’s a three-day Memorandum of Understanding. Basically a deal.
Listen. The Strait is open. Aaran will never have weapons-grade moonshine. Melanie gets her $3 hemorrhoid cream back. Yuge.
“Isn’t that where we started?” Melanie said.
“Shhhh. It’s 4-D chess.”
“What’s our next move?”
“Transit that Strait, darling. I’m itching for some three-dollar cream. Oh—and here’s a ten-spot. Aaran’s charging a toll.”
“He’ll use the toll money to buy enrichment material.”
“Nahhh. Aaran said he wouldn’t. Ask him. He’ll be here shortly with Mei and Vlad.”
“The troika of tyranny?”
“Pour five shots of Aaran’s moonshine—the best he’s ever made. Maybe he’ll put my name on the bottle. Nobody celebrates big, beautiful peace deals like me.”