Things had been getting really bad in Greensboro. A leaked City study reported that Greensboro was the highest taxed city in all of North Carolina but no one knew where the money was going and the local media wouldn't report the story. Were it not for blogs and social media no one would have ever known.
Downtown, the Aliens were taking control of everything. Hourly parking fees were raised to $10 then to $20 and the Downtown restaurants, clubs and shops soon found they couldn't compete with shopping centers in the burbs that offered free parking. Because their buildings were empty, landlords could no longer afford to maintain them so they began to fall apart. As the buildings fell apart their property values plummeted so the Council voted first to double, then triple the extra taxes paid by businesses and property owners in the central business improvement district. Then the City Council, under complete control of the Aliens, passed regulations allowing the City of Greensboro to take legal possession of buildings in poor condition and auction them off to the only ones who still had money left-- the Aliens and a few humans who had themselves turned traitors.
With downtown almost completely dead they set about to destroy the suburbs with tax increases to pay to build roads through neighborhoods whose residents didn't want or need them. An entire neighborhood was destroyed to build what was said to be a giant sports complex on Franklin Blvd across the street from the North Carolina A&T University Farm and a fleet of bulldozers idled waiting to build a highway across the farm while an entire neighborhood and thousands of A&T alumni stood in protest. And yet with each passing day the number of protesters diminished as the bulldozers edged ever closer.
To make matters worse, there was no way to get anyone from outside to come in and help as the Tall Whites had hired one of the nation's biggest and most successful lobbyist organizations, Beatum and Snooker, to make sure no one in Raleigh or Washington had any concerns about what was going on in Greensboro. These guys had former congressmen, senators, chiefs of staff, generals, CIA directors, KGB agents and the President on staff.
All the while I was stuck on a mountain top with a giant dog and a motorcycle that recited poetry almost non stop. Sometimes I think he even got on the dog's last nerve. Every minute of every day I just wanted to get on that motorcycle and ride back to the shop in Burlington so I could help my partners and my friends rid Greensboro and Burlington of the Aliens once and for all. I even thought about becoming a suicide bomber, maybe stealing a big rig, a tanker full of 10,000 gallons of gasoline and styrofoam and driving it right through the plate glass windows of the first floor of their building. After spending 28 years in those rigs I knew I was good for one last ride.
I worried that perhaps I should have never asked Bobbie to help the guys out. Talking to Donny about that bomb really had me rattled. Yeah, I knew she could hold her own better than any of us old guys and most young men but the chic is young, she shouldn't be putting her life on the line-- not with her whole life ahead of her. She should be dreaming about marriage, white picket fences and babies, not Alien bombs attached to her motorcycle. All my life I've believed that wars should be fought by old people who have already had their time on Earth but what do I do when I get worried about my brother and my 2 best friends? I recruit a kid barely out of school and send her off to war just like all the rest of those cowardly old bastards who have run the world for as long as history itself.
So much for my taking the high road.
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When Donny didn't come into work on time the next morning Steve began to worry. Being late for work was something Donny just never did. Donny usually beat Steve to work and Steve lived next door to the shop. Donny was all of 10 minutes late when Steve started ringing both his home phone and his cell phone.
After Bobbie and Woolie got to the shop, Steve left straight away to make the drive to Greensboro to Donny's house while Bobbie and Wooley continued to call Donny from Burlington. When Steve arrived at Donny's house he noticed the front door was open even before he parked his bike on the street. As he walked to the door he shouted, "Donny, are you home?" expecting to at least hear Donny's 3 big dogs barking wildly but instead he heard nothing. Again, he shouted, "Hey Donny, you home?"
Hearing nothing he slowly looked around. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing seemed missing or out of the ordinary. The bed was unmade and it really just looked as if Donny and his dogs had simply gotten out of bed, walked out the door and kept going. Steve reached for his cell phone and dialed 911.
Continue to Big Bang Theory.
