Apart Height? Say what?

Visions of forests, lakes, waterfalls and bikini clad girls swirl through my mind as the remnants of teenage memories and old man’s dreams efficiently wash away any logic that stubbornly claims ownership of my sleep.

And yet, through the colors and sounds of summer fun on mountain lakes, I recognize a noise that is out of place. My mind struggles to hear the noise between the laughter and raucous shouts of myriad memories. There it is again…a loud hissing noise, perhaps closer to a groan…or a growl? It fills the early morning quiet, and then is gone in an instant.

I recognize Sierra’s voice…distressed, loud…her big girl outdoor voice booming as she runs back and forth along the patio outside our bedroom door. This is not the same voice she uses when greeting the occasional stray dog that trespasses on our yard, and certainly not the voice that she uses to warn strangers that if they enter, they will be eaten….no, this was a voice I had not heard before…a voice full of urgency, pregnant with warning, and vibrating with uncertainty.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs, mostly unconvincingly. The mercury is creeping past 60 degrees and I know it is going to be another perfect day. One advantage of living here is the weather….beautiful one day, perfect the next. The alarm had not yet gone off, and I took a moment to be thankful that the shrill alarm would not disturb my dreams this day! Sierra’s barking, however, was another thing, bringing me back to almost wakefulness as it matured into a more aggressive warning.

I heard the strange sound again. This time it is closer, louder…and definitely more like a hissing growl than a groan. Very loud. It split the eerily quiet morning like a thunderclap…and then was gone once more. I could smell an odd scent hanging in the air…it was almost like sulphur and ozone, but not quite. I tried to place it as I had smelled it before but that part of my memory had not yet awoken…it was still at the mountain retreat!

Stumbling from bed, I went to the patio door where I was greeted by a very distressed Sierra. She hid behind my legs, shaking and growling. She peeked past me from time to time, the guttural growling raising the hairs on my arms and legs. I looked outside, and saw ….nothing.

Tuesday is trash pick-up day, I remembered…the fog slowly clearing as sleep became a faint memory. Sierra must be barking at the trash man as is her normal Tuesday morning ritual…but if that is the case, why is she cowering behind my legs and not down by the gate where can watch the trash man jump when she reminds him that this is HER place? Nope…it can’t be that…and besides…that doesn’t explain that haunting noise and the odd scent hanging in the air.

There is the noise once more. Closer now. Loud enough to waken the dead….and the scent is much stronger. I take a deep breath and with Sierra close to my side step out onto the patio. I look toward the direction of the sound, briefly wondering why the normal birdsongs are not present, but again see nothing. Sierra takes a step forward and immediately barks and growls, looking skyward. Following her gaze, I finally see it.

Hanging in the sky like it was attached with hooks was …well…as I was about to mouth its name, the earsplitting hissing/growling noise reminded me of dragons of old, and this image was magnified by the fire that was coming from the belly of this beast.

With growling and fire emanating from its belly, it continued to hang there….no more than 20 – 30 feet above our back fence….waiting to pounce if we moved a muscle. The colors in the bright morning light were blinding, such finery as to compete with the finest peacock. And yet, such fearsome sounds.

Sierra looked up at me as if to say…”I told you dragons were real….and now, here is one ready to swoop down and catch the unwary in its talons and take it away, never to be seen again!”

Ever so slowly, the dragon passed overhead….seeming to be no longer be interested in us. Sierra watched intently, growling stubbornly, as it left to find a less protected target.

Just like children, dogs do not need stories of monsters and dragons to convince them that such creatures are real. They already know.

“The “Katchers” were out early today”, I muttered as I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to my government issued height meter. The morning ritual of weighing myself had been enhanced by the need to check my height every day…my very survival depending on my being at least 5ft 10in tall!

Damn that Obama…damn Obamacare…damn “Apart Height” that march to slavery that Obama implemented in his 3^rd term….oh how I wish America had listened back in 2011 when she had the chance to end this tyrant’s power grab…but it wasn’t to be.

Looking at the calendar it hard to believe that it is already March of 2018….just 6 short years since Obama was re-elected for his second term. How could we have possibly been so blind to have re-elected this monster…and how could we have gotten to this point in such a short time?

Being something of a history buff, and needing to record the truth for future generations (the real truth – not the government truth as told by the state run media) I sat at my government issued desk, and pulled out my tattered diary with handwriting using homemade ink…faded and inconsistent, it was hard to make out some of the words …the paper was the best I could find, and the ink was only as good as the last batch I could make from the juices of government provided fruits and vegetables. The art of handwriting had become unnecessary in this utopian age of computers and keyboards….but nothing written on a computer could be kept from the all-seeing eyes of the government controlled media barrons….so for my own protection, paper and homemade ink was the only solution.

Turning to the first page of the diary I note that things happened very quickly.

As soon as the votes were counted on November 8, 2012  and it was apparent that Obama was going to win by a small margin, he leapt into action, calling Congress together and setting out his agenda for the next 4 years.

Three days later, explosions at an oil refinery in Houston killed 17 workers and pumped clouds of noxious and highly poisonous gases into the air. The evacuation process was hampered by Hurricane Samantha which blew ashore as a category 5….never known to have happened at this time of the year before. A day earlier the hurricane had destroyed 3 deep drill oil rigs in the Gulf, spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the gulf every hour, in what is now hailed as the worst oil disaster the world has ever known.

(Some time later evidence was found that may have linked the oil rig disasters and the refinery explosion to a shadowy group known as “Cold Fish”, an eco-terrorist group with ties to Rahm Emmanuel and the Obama administration, but none of this could be proven.)

In any event, Obama sprang into action, closing down all oil operations in the country until further notice. The EPA was instructed to ensure all operations ceased and given authority to close down all refineries, all research activities, all drilling activities…anything that even smelled like it could be related to oil closed down.

The price of all on the global markets reacted almost instantly reaching a high of $680 a barrel. By the time this oil reached the gas station as gasoline, it was priced at $34 a gallon!

The American economy stopped overnight.

Obama could not believe his fortune…within days of winning re-election he had been handed the ultimate tool for the fruition of his long term goals.

In short order and with the full support of the unions, he nationalized the energy industry, the motor vehicle industry and the finance industry. Farming and food production followed. Education and the media were the second to last to feel the swiftness of his actions.

And finally, medicine was nationalized.

This was left to last as he already had significant control of the industry through Obamacare…and that is where we, the people, made our biggest mistake.

You see, while it was clear that the balance of power had changed…that fewer people chose to work for a living, instead choosing to vote for a living (hence Obama’s re-election)…it was not clear how Obama was going to keep the economy running, even a socialist economy needs workers, and with more and more people choosing not to work, it did not take a Rhodes Scholar to understand that disaster was not far away.

But there was Obamacare…therein was the solution.

With Obamacare it was possible to mandate what level of care should be provided…and what would not be provided.

How could Obama use this to his own ends?

His first thought was that the elderly could be denied treatment until they had served a certain number of months or years working for the government….a neat idea except that he also understood that the elderly and the sick would not be the most productive. No...he needed a better solution.

He needed a way to get control of the lives of the young, the healthy, and the strong.

The solution came to him one night as he was sipping Crystal Champaign and watching the March Madness basketball games.

He noticed that the taller players may have been getting more of the ball, but it was the shorter players that were setting up the plays, had more energy, were faster and really were the engines of the team.

The engines…the engine….his mind saw an opportunity…what if the energy of the smaller people could be harnessed to work in the factories, the farms, the mines….what if we could use these “engines” to drive our economy?

And with that single thought, the tragedy of “Apart Height” was born.

It was simple really….

Use Obamacare to mandate that every person must register with their health provider and that on their 18^th birthday they must present themselves for a government provided free medical exam. As part of that exam, everybody who was under 5ft 2in would be deemed to be in need of specific medical care, including a regimen of physical activity combined with a diet of high proteins, limited starches and daily vitamin supplements.

It was in the best health interest of these short people to be assisted through this health problem….the government would provide all their needs…while they worked to build the cars, the farms, the furniture, the entertainment that a civilized society needs.

Apart Height….it soon became apparent that many people over the age of 18 were also shorter….and Obama had a very elegant solution.

Since the country was now nationalized and everybody worked for the government, there was no longer any need for income taxes…the IRS had thousands of trained agents who no longer could justify their existence as tax collectors. They could easily be retrained as “Katchers” and sent out to locate anybody under the 5ft 2in height limit….catching them and transporting them to the special government facilities that would look after these folk.

And so it was…Katchers were dispatched far and wide in search of short people.

But the people were addicted to stuff…their demands for more and more free stuff became stronger and stronger….and Obama knew that his reign would only last as long as he could keep his addicted people happy.

To give away more free stuff…he needed to produce more…and to produce more, he needed more workers.

But that was a simple problem…it was easy to slowly increase the Apart Height limits…so each year since 2013, the height limit was increased. Slowly it crept up, until today…where it stands at 5ft 10in.

Where will it be next year? I suspect somewhere over 6ft!!

And all the time, more and more people are being taken by the “Katchers” to work in the production houses controlled by the government…while less and less people were tall enough to avoid the forced labor regime.

But an addicted people is a hungry beast…ravenous for freebies, and a never ending desire for more, more, more…

It happened in February 2018….the great Apart Height Escape.

You see, Obama had forgotten that intellect is not dependent on size. He forgot that man strives for freedom and when he is pushed far enough, will do anything to protect that freedom.

Six years of government sponsored slavery was enough time for the short folk to organize, to plan, to create underground railroads ready to spirit them away when the time came.

And on one cool morning while the guards were still sleeping off the excess of the night before, a nationwide jail break occurred.

Short people ran for the safety offered by millions of tall folk who knew in their hearts that Apart Height was wrong….that they would rather die than give up their freedoms that way.

The addicted remained in their drugged haze, too fat and stupid to know what had happened or why….too tied up in the latest episode of Washington Wives to care about their own future, let alone that of their neighbor, friend or even their families. As long as the government teat was offered and they could suck, they were happy.

When Obama learned of the jail break he dispatched the Katchers….armed with automatic guns they were ordered to shoot on sight…and if a tall person got caught in the crossfire, so be it.

He would teach the people of America who was in charge. The benevolent dictator who fed the addictions of his people became the fearsome tyrant overnight.

As the machine carrying the Katchers moved away…I sighed quietly and settled in for a nap before writing today’s entry in my diary…..

Visions of forests, lakes, waterfalls and bikini clad girls swirl through my mind as the remnants of teenage memories and old man’s dreams efficiently wash away any logic that stubbornly claims ownership of my sleep.

And yet, through the colors and sounds of summer fun on mountain lakes, I recognize a noise that is out of place. My mind struggles to hear the noise between the laughter and raucous shouts of myriad memories. There it is again…a loud hissing noise, perhaps closer to a groan…or a growl? It fills the early morning quiet, and then is gone in an instant.

I recognize Sierra’s voice…distressed, loud…her big girl outdoor voice booming as she runs back and forth along the patio outside our bedroom door. This is not the same voice she uses when greeting the occasional stray dog that trespasses on our yard, and certainly not the voice that she uses to warn strangers that if they enter, they will be eaten….no, this was a voice I had not heard before…a voice full of urgency, pregnant with warning, and vibrating with uncertainty.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs, mostly unconvincingly. The mercury is creeping past 60 degrees and I know it is going to be another perfect day. One advantage of living here is the weather….beautiful one day, perfect the next. The alarm had not yet gone off, and I took a moment to be thankful that the shrill alarm would not disturb my dreams this day! Sierra’s barking, however, was another thing, bringing me back to almost wakefulness as it matured into a more aggressive warning.

I heard the strange sound again. This time it is closer, louder…and definitely more like a hissing growl than a groan. Very loud. It split the eerily quiet morning like a thunderclap…and then was gone once more. I could smell an odd scent hanging in the air…it was almost like sulphur and ozone, but not quite. I tried to place it as I had smelled it before but that part of my memory had not yet awoken…it was still at the mountain retreat!

Stumbling from bed, I went to the patio door where I was greeted by a very distressed Sierra. She hid behind my legs, shaking and growling. She peeked past me from time to time, the guttural growling raising the hairs on my arms and legs. I looked outside, and saw ….nothing.

Tuesday is trash pick-up day, I remembered…the fog slowly clearing as sleep became a faint memory. Sierra must be barking at the trash man as is her normal Tuesday morning ritual…but if that is the case, why is she cowering behind my legs and not down by the gate where can watch the trash man jump when she reminds him that this is HER place? Nope…it can’t be that…and besides…that doesn’t explain that haunting noise and the odd scent hanging in the air.

There is the noise once more. Closer now. Loud enough to waken the dead….and the scent is much stronger. I take a deep breath and with Sierra close to my side step out onto the patio. I look toward the direction of the sound, briefly wondering why the normal birdsongs are not present, but again see nothing. Sierra takes a step forward and immediately barks and growls, looking skyward. Following her gaze, I finally see it.

Hanging in the sky like it was attached with hooks was …well…as I was about to mouth its name, the earsplitting hissing/growling noise reminded me of dragons of old, and this image was magnified by the fire that was coming from the belly of this beast.

With growling and fire emanating from its belly, it continued to hang there….no more than 20 – 30 feet above our back fence….waiting to pounce if we moved a muscle. The colors in the bright morning light were blinding, such finery as to compete with the finest peacock. And yet, such fearsome sounds.

Sierra looked up at me as if to say…”I told you dragons were real….and now, here is one ready to swoop down and catch the unwary in its talons and take it away, never to be seen again!”

Ever so slowly, the dragon passed overhead….seeming to be no longer be interested in us. Sierra watched intently, growling stubbornly, as it left to find a less protected target.

As I watched the hot air balloon float serenely overhead, my mind searched frantically for a remnant of a dream ….but could not find it….

….it had something to do with short people…or tall people…or Obama….what was it?

While I don’t remember the details, I know that to re-elect Obama in November will be the worst possible thing that could happen to this great country.

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…..devereaux