April 6: And What Goes Around Read Free Page A

entered a luxury rehabilitation
facility for the treatment of game addictions.
    April flicked down through more headlines. Unrest in Kenya
again, and Korea and Sri Lanka. A container ship missing in the Indian Ocean,
soccer riots, a new treatment for a tropical disease, a breeding pair of
extinct rhinoceros birthed from elephants using frozen gametes. The European
Union banned natural leather in sports balls and decreased the size of bananas
which could be sold legally.
    What
did any of it mean? Why was most of this even considered news? She frowned at a
sudden suspicion.  Maybe it was really entertainment disguised as news to avoid
dealing with the real thing. It seemed beyond integrating to usefulness.
Perhaps the intelligence snippets Chen and Eddie sent her through Jeff would be
more useful. She flopped the pad on her stomach again though, and looked out
the port first, weary of focusing so long on the screen for such little return.
    The sun was much closer to the moon, the crescent of
bright moon narrower, but the Earth still hadn't made its appearance from
behind the other edge of the moon. At least not the bright part. It was busy up
by the new ring. Shift change was near and there were guys from both shifts
present. April picked the pad back up and changed to the files Jeff's
intelligence people sent along. It wasn't their primary mission. But they'd
been told to look for items of economic interest and pass them along.
    T.R. in North America, she didn't really know who that
was, said that quite a few grocery stores were now not just limiting the number
of sale items you could buy but putting signage on the shelf to limit the
number of regular items in stock one could buy. He noted this was something he
saw while doing his own grocery shopping. If you took too many items to the
checkout the computer refused them.
    Chen's contacts in China informed him black market doctors
were becoming very common in all of Asia. The official systems were backlogged
to the point appointments were too far out to do you any good. By the time you
could see a doctor you were either well on your own or dead. Unless of course
you had political pull or the funds to bribe your way up the list. The breakdown
in government meant many doctors turned to this when they weren't paid. Since
government snoops were good at finding unregistered businesses from observing
walk in traffic most illicit docs did house calls only.
    Trade items widely recognized as black market currencies
shifted with scarcity. A piece of old 14 gauge wire a quarter meter long was a
common item called a 'twist' acceptable in trade. People wore them as a
bracelet to a flea market or grey market to signal they would trade without
cash. That was better not to say out loud. It court it was almost an admission
of intent to commit tax fraud.
    A common soft drink container full of rice as a trade item
was popular in Japan. It was an easy  standard way to sell by volume and
approximate weight. One man took to spraying contact adhesive inside the bottle
and filling it with rice. Then he poured out the loose rice in the middle and
filled it with wood chips and sand. However, he went to a market that wasn't
distant enough and was recognized. Worse he had one of the fake bottles on him.
The crowd was not amused. He survived however.
    Liquid laundry detergent in the smaller sizes continued to
be a staple of barter in North America, particularly in the large cities. It
was stolen so often some stores kept it behind the counter.
    At the very bottom of the economic system returnable beer
bottles were still used in parts of Africa and the Philippines. The bottles had
stable recognized values far from the larger towns.
    This was more interesting than the usual news channels. It
spoke to the official currency not serving its function. That and chronic
shortages. She had to talk to Jeff about making Solars in fractional
denominations. If people were hungry enough for money they could trust they