The following is entirely a work of fiction.
Contained within is nothing similar to anything that exists anywhere in our shared reality.
If you believe you notice a similarity, you are incorrect:
A group of Shmamerican Schmoldiers walk into the small town of Schmogar, Shmafghanistan
Schmecial Schmorces Schmangers lead the way.
Non-Schmecial Schmorces Schmoldiers, the Schmecial Schmorces Schmangers’ Schmupport Team, follow.
Two of the Schmupport Team Schmoldiers specialize in recruiting, training, and handling local women to gather intelligence on behalf of Schmamerican interests.
Another Non-Schmecial Schmorces Schmoldier specializes in the disposal of explosives.
The Officer in Charge of the Schmupport Team is a major who specializes in locating, containing, and disposing of chemical weapons.
The town into which the Schmoldiers enter is in an uproar.
A scandal involving two teenagers from feuding families and a secret romance roils the normally close-knit community.
The town center currently contains a crowd arguing with and threatening itself in Schmasto.
The crowd ceases these actions as the unknown Schmoldiers approach.
The Schmoldier’s Schmashto interpreter begins to describe to the Schmoldiers in Schminglish what they’d heard the crowd shout.
When the Schmoldiers feel they’re receiving the attention they deserve, they halt.
The Schmasto interpreter finishes his Schminglish summary of what he thought he’d heard.
Now, no one is speaking.
In the silence, the eyes of a Schmoldier and a woman in the crowd meet.
Their eyes linger on one another due to an unexpected, instantaneous mutual attraction.
A man in the crowd observes the lingering.
One of the Schmoldiers who specializes in recruiting, training, and handling local women to gather intelligence on behalf of Schmamerican interests notes both the lingering and the observer.
She relays this information to the Schmanger Team’s Officer in Charge, a captain.
The Schmanger captain walks three steps forward, then addresses the crowd in heavily-accented Schmari, “Peace be upon you. How are you? How is your family? How is your health? How is your situation? I hope, G-d willing, everything will work out for the best for you and those close to you.”
An older man within the crowd replies in the mutually intelligible language of Schmajik, “And also peace unto you. You look well. Thank you for your presence. It’s good to see you in good health. I hope your family is also in good health. May G-d bless your family and your continued good health.”
The captain responds, “I am happy to hear of good health for all. Now, so that the good health of everyone here may continue and we may all prosper, I must request something of you. We are here searching for several individuals who live here.”
A member of the team holds up a hand-drawn sketch of a man with a beard.
The older man, who has a beard, answers in Schmasto, “No, no one like that is here.”
The team’s Schmasto interpreter translates the answer into Schminglish.
The captain lowers the sketch, eyes lingering for a moment too long on the old man’s face.
Dust blows across the silent space between the strangers.
The woman whose glance had met the Schmoldier’s a moment earlier looks at the ground.
The man who saw the glance glares.
The major, the leader of the Schmupport Team, adjusts her rucksack.
A Schmanger specializing in psychological operations, a younger man with a large wad of Copenhagen Long Cut Wintergreen wedged between his lip and his jaw, turns his head to spit, then whispers something to his captain.
Something about patterns, posture, and how silence is louder than vulnerability.
The captain nods once, then sits without looking onto some dog droppings in the middle of the road.
The crowd’s emotional reaction transitions from disgust at how dirty the man has made himself by sitting on some dog droppings in the middle of the road to confusion as to why someone would sit on some dog droppings in the middle of a road after threatening the health of their women and children to exasperation at the vexing ways of nosy people with the power to be up in everyone’s business to bemusement at the breadth of strangeness in the world to amusement that the hyper-stimulated hyper-stressed oddly besuited folks before them are so funny.
The captain, aware he is sitting on dog droppings but resolute in purpose, holds up a coin.
When he believes he is receiving the proper amount of attention, he flips the coin.
The coin lands on his palm.
The captain closes his fist.
“Let me tell you a story,” he says in Schmari, loud enough for the whole town square to hear. “A story that is not real. A story about a town that does not exist, in a country with no name.”
The crowd humors the stranger’s neurotic behavior out of a combination of curiosity and pity.
“In this story,” he says, “a boy and a girl fall in love. Like always, love is inconvenient, all-consuming, and unaffordable. The boy and the girl’s families hate one another, you see, and when the secret is found out, as secrets always are, the whole town shakes with rage. But this rage can only blossom when people forget what it means to choose mercy.”
The captain flips the coin again.
Again, he hides the results from the crowd.
“In this town,” he continues, “foreign soldiers arrive. Like us. Except not like us. Because in the story, they’re only symbols. Y’all understand the word ‘symbol,’ right?”
The captain asks the Schmasto interpreter in Schminglish to ask the crowd if they understand what the word ‘symbol’ means in Schmasto.
The interpreter hesitates for a moment and makes a Schminglish noise of objection before he dutifully interprets the captain’s question into Schmasto.
The crowd responds that yes, they understand the word ‘symbol,’ but that they don’t understand how it relates to what the captain is talking about.
The Schmasto interpreter tells the captain in Schminglish that the crowd understands the word “symbol.”
“Good! So, in this not real town,” says the captain, resuming the story with the assurance that the crowd understands, “someone must make a choice. Not between betrayal and loyalty. But between the illusion of order and the risk of peace. Between protecting what has always been and imagining what could be.”
The wind dies.
The woman in the crowd lifts her eyes.
In the estimation of one of the Schmupport Schmoldiers who specializes in understanding other people, the man who’d seen the glance looks less angry.
This information is relayed to the captain.
The captain stands.
He is covered in dog droppings, and looks very proud of himself.
The team stands together, and feels like heroes.
The captain looks out at the town and says in Schminglish, “This story never happened.”
His Schmasto interpreter’s eyes widen as he interprets this into Schmasto.
The older man laughs and nods. “No,” he agrees. “It never did.”
As the Schmoldiers turn to leave, the woman in the crowd grabs the arm of the Schmoldier who’d met her glance.
“Please.” She says to him in Schmasto.
The Shmamerican Schmecial Schmorces Schmoldier apologizes to her in Schminglish, gently pulls his arm out of her grasp, bows, and turns away with the rest of his team.
When the Teams file their reports, a change to a designated variable detected by their automated system triggers the launch of a drone to neutralize a target.
The automatic target neutralization response kills both the older man with a beard and the woman who’d felt mutual attraction with the Schmamerican Schmoldier via two $70,000 SHM-420 Schmellfire missiles fired by a MQ-69 Shmeaper flying 35,000 feet above the town.
A year later, a new group of Schmamerican Schmoldiers walk into the remains of the town, now designated as hostile within their automated systems, on a mission to gather intelligence on the location of a new target.
The survivors of Schmogar use whatever weapons they can find to attack the new group of Schmamerican Schmoldiers.
Though their training, weaponry, and information are all far superior to the Schmogarian townsfolk armed with hunting rifles, the Schmamerican Schmoldiers immediately flee.
Once safely out of range, the new Schmanger captain calls in the support of an SH-69L DAP attack helicopter, which kills a few dozen Schmogarians.
An HC-130 kills a few dozen more.
Years later, a new team of Schmamerican Schmoldiers returns to the town of Schmogar, sent by new Officers in Charge of the Schmamerican mission in Schafghanistan to make friends and build relationships.
The new strategy, according to the Officers in Charge in their briefings to their superiors in Schmoshington D.P., will increase local support and buy-in for the Schmamerican-backed central government of Schmafghanistan ruling in the capital.
Long term, the Generals claim, this will allow Schmamerica to scale down its operations in Schafghanistan, refocus its efforts on other, more vital fronts, and retain access to locally Schmamerican-built infrastructure maintained by a friendly, competent, sustainable government for use in future Schmamerican operations throughout the wider region whenever necessary.
When the new Schmemerican Schmoldiers enter the town of Schmogar, most remaining survivors flee.
One Schmogarian, a young man with a love of the Schmamerican culture he experienced through the internet on his automated device, stays behind.
When the Schmoldiers approach, he walks out with his hands up and says, in passable Schminglish, “I want Schmamerica! I am help!”
The new Schmamerican Schmoldiers, overjoyed that their mission is so easy, take the young man back to their base.
From him, they learn that the young man’s neighbor is a dangerous terrorist.
This information results in the automated system managing Schmamerica’s target deck to authorize a SHM-420 Schmellfire missile launch from a MQ-69 Shmeaper, which kills the young man’s neighbor and his neighbor’s family.
Back in Schmogar, the young man’s family happily takes the land and remaining assets of the former family who used to live next door.
The young man is then hired on as a Schmasto interpreter for the Schmamerican Schmoldiers.
Through the money and influence the young man obtains through this position, he is able to enrich and empower his family.
A few years later, the young man from Schmogar is evacuated from Schmafghanistan to Schmamerica when all the Schmamericans Schmoldiers decide to flee the country.
In Schmamerica, the young man from Schmogar is supported financially and legally by the Schmamerican Government for one year, after which the agency providing his support no longer answers his calls.
Soon, the job the government agency helped the young man from Schmogar get disappears due to automation, leaving him without work.
The young man, having saved some of the money he didn’t send home to his family, begins taking classes at a local community college in an attempt to qualify for a better job.
After spending most of his savings on half the classes he needs to acquire the certificate required by the new profession he’s pursuing, the young man from Schmogar is contacted by the Human Resources Department of his community college to inform him his new legal status, altered by an executive order issued by the new administration elected by Schmamerican citizens, means he cannot complete his remaining classes.
When the young man requests a refund, the Human Resources Department does not respond.
The young man speaks to a local media organization writing a story about local immigrants impacted by the new administration’s executive order.
When his name is published, automated systems maintaining a database of potential dissidents within Schmamerica send the young man’s address to the Schmamerican Government’s immigration enforcement agency, SCHMICE.
Within 24 hours the young man is taken into custody by SCHMICE and sent to a detention facility guarded by ice and polar bears in Schmalaska.
Due to insufficient living conditions, the young man loses an arm to the cold and a leg to an infection.
After a year in detention, the young man is sent back to Schmafghanistan.
He is deposited in the capital, where he spends a number of days begging for money to feed himself and pay for a ride back to Schmogar, where the remainder of his family still resides.
When the young man returns to his family, now the wealthiest family in Schmogar thanks to the acquired land and remittances the young man sent during his time working in Schmamerica, he is treated with suspicion for having worked with the Schmamericans for so long.
He expresses regret over his choices and anger at Schmamerica for disabusing him of his dreams and disabling his body.
In a few years, the man marries and has children, who he teaches to hate Schmamerica.
When the children grow up, a few rebel against their father and believe Schmamerica is a golden land of freedom and opportunity, and a few follow their father’s advice and join an anti-Schmamerican political movement within Schmafghanistan funded by its rival nations, Schmussia and Schmina.
All the children are killed when Schmamerica’s automated targeting systems alter how they complete their calculation, use old data to designate the father as a potential threat, and destroy the family home, the nicest home in Schmogar, with two SHM-420 Schmellfire missiles.
The survivors of Schmogar, many ambivalent about the origins of the family’s wealth, note the land and resources that are now available.
Modern Issue 