The United States of Air: a Satire that Mocks the War on Terror by J. M. Porup

prepared to scatter at the first sign of the Sushi Gang.
    Such suffering. Such unnecessary squalor. All because of their addiction. Because of those evil food terrists at the French Food Mafia. My Twinkie broke into song, and I gripped the steering wheel tighter. Fatso was the greatest threat the air-eating world had ever seen. He had to be destroyed.
    He had to be.

Six
    It was a notch in the Prophet’s tape measure the day the ATFF captured Bakin Cheez Burgher VIII, a.k.a. Rat Boy. Heir to the Fat Boy Burger franchise, and great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Bakin Cheez Burgher Sr., the founder and much-reviled head of that calorie-distribution ring, the youngest Bakin Cheez became famous as his own company’s best customer. When the ATFF froze his assets, he fled to Switzerland. Or tried to, anyway. This was before the Prophet closed the borders. We caught him only because he was too big to fit in a first-class airline seat. He argued with the flight attendants long enough to delay takeoff. By that time the armed ATFF squad had limped aboard the plane, resting every few feet to catch their breath—that body armor is heavy, let me tell you—and escorted him back to the gate.
    “This man is a symbol of what is wrong with our country,” the Prophet declared in the Thin House Rock Garden. He had replaced the dead rose bushes with Stonehenge-like slabs of West Virginia granite. “Look at him.” He turned and drilled a finger at Mr. Burgher VIII, who lay on his back, chained to a flatbed truck. “Eight hundred putrid pounds. Those great folds of fat. The slobbery jowls. The demented eyes of a crazed food terrist.
    “The mouth was not made for eating!” the Prophet roared suddenly. “It was made for consuming God’s own air. And Mr. Burgher here is going to learn to eat air the hard way, whether he likes it or not. When we are done with him, he will be a role model of what any citizen of this great nation can be: thin.”
    He gave a signal, and the Skinny Service driver turned the ignition. The flatbed truck hummed to life.
    “Off to Fat Camp with him. Off to Fat Camp with all you food terrists out there who can’t understand three simple little words: ‘just say no.’
    “And to those of you who say, ‘slow down.’” Exaggerated finger quotes. “‘Let us not go to extremes.’ I say to you: we have come to this hallowed spot” —and he swept a hand at the Rock Garden behind him— “to remind America, the Land of Air, of the fierce urgency of now. This is not the time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
    The Prophet’s words rang in my ears as the three of us limped through the Foodville toward Rat Boy’s hovel. The fierce urgency of now. That I understood. Twenty-two and a half hours to find Fatso. No one was ever more fiercely urgent than I was at that moment.
    On our way through the shantytown we passed numerous emaciated bodies covered in swarms of writhing maggots. Amazing the lengths you French will go to weaken our faith. Employing Hollywood special effects artists—members of
La Résistance,
your network of domestic
saboteurs—
to construct such lifelike corpses. The maggots! The smells!
    “Please, sir.”
    A man whimpered in the mud. He lifted his outstretched arms as we passed, and grabbed hold of Erpent’s trench coat. The SS agent jerked away.
    “Well?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
    The man licked his lips. “A crumb,” he whispered. “I beg of you. A crumb. That’s all. To taste food once more before I die.”
    “You’re not dying,” Erpent snapped. “All you have to do is believe.”
    “In eating air?” The man cackled and nearly fell over.
    “This is a land of equal opportunity,” I scolded the man. “There’s enough air for everyone.”
    “Are you for real?”
    “You dare doubt in my presence?” The SS man yanked his Laxafier from its