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I don’t know if my faith is being truly tested at this point, but frankly, it’s taking a lot to remain in such a position. The old saying of “There are no atheists in foxholes.”; well you have a mix when it comes to the homeless. There are ones that think that “the Watcher is a figment of one’s imagination, there can’t be a Watcher this malevolent to put us through this.” and then there are those who hope that “the Watcher will bring us through this...and into a better life.”
Our first job considering that we had nothing to our name was to go make sure that we had food in our stomachs and that meant raiding the fruit trees that weren’t the property of someone else. They also say poverty shows us who our friends really are. Because when life throws you a haymaker, everyone else ducks for cover in hopes that they don’t get hit...or they don’t catch what you have – the horrific malady of poverty might be catching.
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We hesitated to even look at dumpster diving because of the smell that it imparts to your clothing but when one gets desperate enough. Well...one has to deal with the smell in favor of the items that one can potentially collect from the dumpsters. Selling a good couch or two on consignment might put at least §600 simoleons in one’s pocket which might give us a chance to put some money away provided the banks would allow a pair of smelly people into their establishment. The only way that we had to get through this was to chock money aside to make sure that we were able to save some money and be able to pull ourselves out of this position that we were in.
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Talking to the consignment store owner allowed us to put two items on consignment a day of anything that we could locate at least until he was sure that we were able to give him something of value. We’d sell the two highest value items that we could and drop the rest. And we could sell insects at the science center, but even there was a limit. It had to be a value of minimum uncommon. The common insects had to be let go as there was no value in them. Fines were tabulated and at the end of the month they were added to the total taxes...and if one couldn’t pay them then things were taken from us.
The fines were levied as followed:
Selling Government Controlled Elements (Tiberium or Plutonium) - §50,000.00 and government seizure of all substances (in possession)
Selling Government Protected Species (Falcon, Spotted Sixam) - §10,000.00
Poaching - §5,000.00
Prostitution - §2,500.00
Polluting a Waterway - §1,800.00
Pets causing damage (digging up holes) - §1,500.00
Garbage - §800.00
Dog /Cat with no License – §800.00
Dog/Cat off Leash - §500.00
Loitering - §250.00
Licenses - Government License to sell Minerals - §25,000.00 (paid up front to be able to sell gemstones and metals.
Fishing License – §2500.00
For owning pets one faced other levies. Dog license – §800.00
Cat license - §300.00
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Yes, society had a way of making things tough for the homeless to do anything. If one wanted to have a pet to while away the time and keep one company, then you had to pay out the nose. You couldn’t just have an unlicensed dog or cat or one would end up having the pet get taken away. And frankly, the fact that society cared more for the welfare of the animal than the human who was on the street, showed just exactly how society thought that those who were on the street were nothing more than vermin on par with rats, cockroaches and other disease-carrying scum.
When we had a job, we were able to take care of our appearance, wear decent clothes provided that we got them at an outlet store. Clothes, again, were expensive and we didn’t go out every other week to buy new clothes. Frankly, River and I wore the things until they were nearly threadbare and needed replacing. Clothes weren’t really all that important, you can find clothing practically anywhere. The important thing was that we had a way to communicate (the internet) and a way to call and let the spouse know that we were going to be late (cell phone)...and a way to get from point A to point B...the car...and well...after we became homeless, we had to sell the car and we took what we could get for it, which was less than §5,000 which bankrolled our tent, a firepit and a small financial base from which to make sure that for the first little while we weren’t going to be starving to death. It was a matter of making what was left over grow into a bit of a nest egg to restart our lives in a better financial position than what we were in.
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We also still had to look for work, but who was going to hire a pair of homeless bums on the street? Society’s trust of us went when our money and roof over our head went. If you were out on the street, you were untrustworthy according to society whether the assumption was true or false. If you weren’t able to be trusted, you sure as hell weren’t going to get a job that paid you anything that gave you enough to live on. The owner figured that you were going to raid his cash box and float the first chance you got. With all that aligned against someone who had no roof over their head, was it any wonder that people turned to hard drugs and alcohol to cope with the stress and the emotional pain of trying to eke out an existence? Hey, it may not be the best choice in the world but whatever gets you through the day, right?
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But no, River and I weren’t going to resort to that. We were going to fight tooth and nail for what we could. Even if we had to dumpster dive, risking hepatitis and other potential illnesses just to put some money in our pockets. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. The fruits and vegetables coming off the trees and plants were not to be sold, they ended up in our pockets as food for us. We could sell fish to the market by poaching them from the lakes, rivers and ocean, provided the Department of Fisheries and Oceans didn’t catch us. It was a dice roll whether they would catch us or not. And we could consign things that we found provided that we could vouch for their quality.
It was going to be a struggle and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be easy, but River and I were not going to go down without a fight.
