Feeling Around This Novel Idea

 

Illegal Food 2024

Growing food plants is frowned upon.  I know that.  It demonstrates an independence of mind.  They don’t want us to be thinking that way.  In fact there is a sort of officer’s mob, under the dept of Ag, who inspects homes and yards looking for hidden potato plants and such.  Potatoes are easy to disguise as a decorative planting. The Ag guys are known to demand to see your basement too or your sun porch or wherever a food plant might lurk. 

Some neighbors do keep a couple of chickens. Not too many.  They do make sound after all.  No roosters!  That’s not many eggs, but a few and chickens can live on kitchen scraps and bugs in the yard.

The name of the game is to be subtle.  There are enough other noises for this to be possible, usually.

My parent’s place is  just outside of town.  They have a fairly large overgrown backyard.  No one bothers with landscaping now.

I figured that I could sneak in a few things.

My parents are among the dead.  I have a sister living.  We work on this survival thing together.

It’s like a game.  They try to kill us, and we try to live.

There are so many empty houses.  It’s pretty easy to get into them.  Dying people don’t lock up very well.  So, Lou and I, Lou is my sister, go looking for useful stuff sometimes.  Some people even had seeds that are still viable.  Clothing is not a problem.  We can’t buy new.  But we can usually find something in a neighbor’s house.

The inhabited houses still get electricity for a few hours per day.  The uninhabited houses are dark.  Of course, only canned stuff and some non-food items are useful now.  It’s been over a year since the lights went out in these houses. 

We search for candles too.  Sometimes there are batteries that are still good.  There are lots of soaps and toiletries to be gleaned also.  I don’t know what we will do when we can’t find what we need.

We still get water.  That still works.  We wash a lot of our laundry by hand and hang it out to dry. 

Neither Lou nor I have jobs.  So we get a little bit of credit from the state for some basic fresh stuff and some bills, like the water and sewer and the intermittent power. There is no cash officially.  I have heard about some home made currency being used in other places.  Of course, this would be criminal to official eyes.  There is also a lot of bartering among survivors.  So far, we have not participated.

We do ok, but we sure don’t know what to expect or what to look forward to.

???

So far it seems a little bland to me.