Free New America by Jeremy Bates

day 0
    One of the great, and often
overlooked, perks of life is choice. Most people don’t think about how many
choices they make in any given day, let alone over the course of a lifetime.
But you make millions, likely billions…which means you’re of course going to make
a few stinkers along the way. However, another great perk of life is that you
often get to fix some of said bad choices. You drive through your neighbors’
fence because you thought it was a swell idea to pop down to the corner store
to pick up some more mixer for the vodka you were swilling—well, you can
rebuild the fence, or at least fork over some dough to have someone else fix
it. No real harm done. Yet sometimes there are choices that lead to
consequences that cannot be so easily fixed or forgiven. Society labels these
choices “crimes.” You often go to prison for such choices/crimes—where, because
of your questionable judgement in the past, you are severely limited in what
other choices you are allowed to make in the future.
    Bob Smith did not commit a serious crime from which there
was no turning back. His choice was perfectly legal. And in fact millions of
people had made the very same choice before him in recent years. Unfortunately,
this doesn’t necessarily mean it was the right choice to make, and whether
right or wrong, it will be one he’ll have to live with for the rest of his
life.
     
    ☼
     
    “Are
you sure about this?” I asked Maureen, my wife of fifteen years. We were seated
side by side in front of an empty desk. Hanging on the wall behind the desk was
a three-foot-tall print of a sun rising over Los Angeles—or was it New Los
Angeles?
    “We’ve already decided, Bob,”
she said.
    “We can still back out…”
    “We’ve already decided,” she
said, and there was a hardness to her tone, and what she really meant was: You. You’ve already decided. You got this idea in your head, you convinced me, and
now we’re going through with this if for no other reason than so I can say
I-told-you-so when it all blows up in our faces.
    I opened my mouth, but no words
came to me, because she was right. Regardless of who was the impetus for the
decisions that led us to this office today, the decisions were made. It was too
late to turn back. Too much had been set in motion. We had no choice but to
continue on the path we were on.
    “It will be fine,” I told
her.
    She stared ahead but didn’t
say anything, and I could see the tightness in her face, the fear.
    I slipped my hand into her
lap and took her hand in mine. I squeezed reassuringly. I didn’t think she
would return the affection, but she did, she squeezed, so tightly it hurt.
    Then the door to the office
opened behind us, and a woman’s voice said, “Sorry about the interruption,
folks. That was my daughter’s teacher. She’s fallen sick, my daughter, and—and
what do you care, right? Today’s your big day! Gosh, I’m so envious. I really
am.”
     
    ☼
     
    The
office was small, not much of a step up from four partition board walls and a
door. Sara Malik settled her curvy body into the empty seat behind the desk and
smiled at us. She was in her early thirties. She had brown skin, though no
trace of a foreign accent. Black curly hair framing a meticulously made up face
tumbled past her shoulders, the ends resting on a pair of large breasts. Her
pink top didn’t reveal any cleavage—the neckline rode up to her throat—but it
was made of a thin material, and tight, revealing the outlines of said large
breasts.
    “So,” Sara said, “you guys
must be so excited about today. Are you excited?”
    “A little nervous, to be
truthful,” Maureen said. She’d released my hand and now clasped hers together
on her lap.
    “Scared as hell,” I said.
    Sara nodded. “Which is
perfectly normal. Everyone experiences apprehension to some degree. It would be
unnatural not to, wouldn’t it?”
    She smiled again, waiting for
us to smile back. We didn’t. We were too