SWNOVELS Chapter 12
You know how there are a lot of people with the same first name in the same extended family…Mary, Jonathan, David…the same thing with Khaled and his cousin Khaled or Claude. Same family name same given name…The author had recent and past criticism for using names of people he comes across like acquaintances, frenemies, Fremen, Firemen, or politicians…and so I being the author thought what if I dehumanize my characters by using a nine-digit number in place of an actual name that my dear readers could empathize or sympathize or even mistake my fictional character for a beloved friend…or family member…
Somewhere a George Foreman grill has just caused a grease fire…
Somewhere someone catches on to why using names from the author’s life pulls at the readers’ heart-strings and pulls this Ghost Universe closer to one with names that are familiar not Earth-Queen Mega Octave Five…opened her blouse and unclasped her bra from the front. She is wearing a sort of lingerie with a clasp in the front for the ease of her lover…Gemini-Jack Alpha Rhythm Two when they engage in foreplay before intercourse.
I guess that’s a big Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…where you imagined it takes two to tango would be.
And there stood Khaled next to Claude one day when Tam-Pam came to pray and get good and drunk afterward. The liquor store, the Circle K and some of the Arco gas stations convenience stores were family owned and Claude was one of the members of the family to operate their sort of family armored car service.
It seemed like a waste of gas but it confused anyone who tried to steal their family’s deposit…and other reasons to come to this backroom and pray the Holy Rosary. Seven or eight cars might pull up a couple of hours before the banks closed…two or three drivers in each car.
They all couldn’t fit in the backroom so they either stood in front or walked around Circle K waiting for the man with the bag…all the people went to different branches of the same bank all of those men had deposits but they divided the money unequally. Khaled’s family had ten or so businesses and the deposits were made each day. They all came to the Circle K…so the real danger was before they got to the Circle K…decoys with under one hundred dollars and two bags with all the deposits.
At the Circle K, Claude was the accountant…but he was also taking classes in Criminal Justice, accounting, and mathematics so he would be ahead of the game when he applied to join the Military…he didn’t want to serve this Kingdom that made a mockery of the Constitution of the United States of America, he wanted to serve his people, his America…like dating someone you wish to change or trying to change an evil system or government from within…he had similar ideals to Tam-Pam. Hope in restoration to the sanity of the United States of America if only they could ride out the storm of fascism. Where the mention of the name of the nation has the same feeling as the name of its citizens where we the people are because of the US Government and the US Government is because of We the People and the ideas are not separate.
In Kingdom America, King George is the face of the Kingdom. Whereas in the United States of America, anyone and everyone from the homeless woman who lost her shopping cart, the migrant farm worker applying for a work visa, Claude, Graves, Sol Druga, or Nancy Pelosi’s husband is the face of the people of the United States of America.
“My name is Khaled…but there are a few of us with the name Khaled Ali…my nickname is Claude…that’s what they call me, at least.” It must have been the way he said it that pulled every string in her heart and left a little moisture on Tam-Pam only where trashy romance novelists dare to elaborate.