Carnifex

Long Island, New York, 15 April, 2099

It wasn't bad enough that Detective Juan Alvarez, as a city employee, had to pay tax to the city of New York, along with the State of New York, and the United States. No, no; that wasn't nearly bad enough. Now he had to pay as well, after filling out a half inch thick stack of virtually incomprehensible forms, to Earth's United Nations.

Actually, it was worse than that. The UN didn't collect a single tax. This would have been too simple and employed far too few bureaucrats. Instead, Alvarez had to pay to the General Assembly Fund, the Peacekeeping Fund, the Food and Agricultural Organization Fund, the Arts and Humanities Fund, the Reparations to the OAU for the Loss of Human Capital Fund . . .

"For Christ's sake," Alvarez blurted out, putting his head down and running thick fingers through thinning hair, "my family were goddamned serfs to the Spanish. Most of my wife's were serfs to the English. Why the hell are we paying the descendants of people who made money selling slaves for having sold those slaves?"

There was no answer, of course, or none that would satisfy. The real, and unsatisfactory, answer was that money was collected to go to the Organization of African Unity, in order to employ bureaucrats who knew nothing and did nothing, and pad the accounts of the chiefs of state of the countries that made up the OAU and those of their families.

With a sigh, Alvarez wrote out a check and attached it to the Human Capital Fund return, then added those to the pile. The next form was the tax return for the Repatriation Fund for non-Islamic citizens of the Zionist Entity. This, however, was an optional tax, mostly paid by Islamics across the world. Alvarez crinkled up the form and tossed it into the wastebasket.

UN direct taxation was not something federally mandated, nor even approved. Instead, over the last fifteen years, a growing number of states of the United States had adopted UN taxation within their state tax codes. They received a percentage back, much as private corporations and companies did with the sales tax, for what they collected on behalf of the UN. There was talk of an amendment to the Constitution. Certainly the Supreme Court had been no help since it had unilaterally decided it was subject to the laws and rulings of various international tribunals.

"I could move down south," Alvarez said aloud. "They don't collect for the UN, yet. But . . . " He shook his head, no. The language of the American Deep South was now mostly Spanish, and Alvarez didn't speak Spanish. Not much work for a police detective in North Carolina who couldn't speak Spanish, less still in Texas.

"Besides, they're a mess down there; Mexico in confederate gray. I couldn't afford the bribes to get on a police force even if I did speak Spanish. No wonder great-great-grandpappy wet his ankles in the Rio Grande. No wonder . . . "

Alvarez felt one of those rare epiphanous moments that happen, sometimes, when two or three different little reminders hit all at once. The Jews are leaving Israel en masse for Terra Nova, and the more that leave, the more want to. When the going got tough in Mexico, not that it was ever likely to have been too easy, Great-Grandpappy lit out for greener pastures. And there's not too much fucking bureaucracy on the New World.

"Honey?" he called out to his wife. "I just had an idea . . . "