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

holster. “I ought to laxafy you right now.”
    “No! No! Look at me! Lunge and chomp. See? Look at how much air I’m eating!” The man gulped down that life-giving vapor. “All I have to do is believe!” he shouted.
    Erpent lifted his Laxafier to shoot the man. I was moved to compassion. I put an arm on his elbow, drew the weapon back down to his side.
    “Doubters like him are destroying this country,” the SS agent growled.
    “Once he gets a bellyful of oxygen, he’ll be fine,” I said.
    The man shuffled away on his knees, shaking his head, lunging and chomping. My heart swelled to think that I had brought yet another person to the salvation of eating air.
    At the end of the muddy track stood Rat Boy’s hovel, a one-room shanty of corrugated iron with rust running in strips down the outside. I drew my own Laxafier. Green did the same. I rapped on the warped metal rectangle propped over the structure’s only opening.
    “I say, old boy, return hither in an hour’s time,” a voice inside drawled. “They have not yet reached a desired state of readiness.”
    I nodded to Green. Rat Boy, all right. He was one of those Americans—I mean, Airitarians—who thought everything in England was better than in the US. Of course, he’d never actually been to the UK. I’d read his file. The farthest from our God-favored land he’d ever been was a Fat Camp in Vermont. His manner of speech, so far as I could make out, was a badly remembered imitation of Masterpiece Theatre.
    I held my finger to my lips. I knocked again.
    “Don’t get your knackers in a twist, I’m com—”
    The words slid from his lips like a piece of rubbery bologna into the incinerator. He lifted the sheet of metal from the door and peered out, straight down the barrel of my service weapon.
    Green threw his arms out wide. “Why the face?” He clapped a palm against the man’s greasy, soot-stained shirt, and made a noise of disgust. He wiped his hand on his pants. “What’s the matter, Rat Boy? Aren’t you glad to see us?”
    “My dear chap, there remains much cooking left to be done,” the slum-dweller snapped. He pushed back the hood of loose skin that covered his eyes. “Will you not wait somewhere else? It makes my neighbors rather nervous.”
    The smell of burning hair wafted through the doorway, making my eyes water. Combined with the squalor around us, it sent my compassion into overdrive. The ghetto a few blocks away was genteel by comparison. Here shanty pressed close to shanty on the banks of the Potomacncheese. D.C.’s most miserable food whores slept in this Foodville. Poor things. Willing to do all sorts of unspeakable acts in exchange for one of Rat Boy’s rotisserie rodents. Lucky for them, though, they would never taste that chargrilled flesh. Their pimps ladled them each a bowlful of gruel once per day, just enough to keep the withdrawal pains from becoming unbearable, and confiscated any non-monetary payments before the woman could shove it down her throat—and the Prophet help the whore who tried. If only they could learn to have faith in eating air, they too could join the rest of the country in the Feast of Oxygen inaugurated by the Prophet when he took office. Then, and only then, would they be free to escape this riverside slum.
    “I say, don’t be a stranger. Do drop by for a spot of tea later, what?” the former fast-food heir said. He reached for the door, but Green leaned his shoulder against it.
    “I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” I said evenly. “We aren’t here to consume anything illegal.”
    I was ashamed of the truth and desperate to prevent it from coming out in front of Erpent and my partner. The fact is, a couple months ago, my Twinkies pulled a despicable stunt. I had come to bring Rat Boy some literature, when a swarm of Twinkies surrounded me and began to sing. They threatened to attack me. I still don’t know how they got from my basement all the way across town. They demanded I