The Good Fight

Samuel knew things. He saw things. People just thought he was another homeless bum begging for change to buy cheap 40s of malt liquor. They were wrong. He hated malt liquor. He did not even like beer all that much. He was a vodka man. He would drink beer if he had to. If the spanging was not lucrative that day, he would have to resort to the less than finer brews to dull his sensations of life. That was what life was all about, anyway - the ability to escape from it in an intoxicated haze. He had no insurance. He had no job. He had no way of getting a job at this point. He was too far gone. To compensate he kept going on the destructive path until it was a lifestyle. He felt no pity for himself and expected nobody to feel pity on him either. Unless, of course, it meant the difference between a bundle of pocket change and actual bills. He loved bills. They did not weigh him down as much as coins did. Even a gallon of Carlo Rossi weighed less than the pennies and dimes it took to buy it.

He chose this life. At least that was what he told himself at night, sleeping under a bridge or abandoned warehouse. He was not going to work for The Man. He would not be a pawn in their grand conspiracy. He was not exactly sure what that conspiracy was in fact, but he would not be a part of it. He had ideas. Most of them involved aliens. He had seen them, been abducted by them, probed by them, and returned to whatever field he might have been laying passed out drunk at the time. He had been gifted or cursed by them, also. He could not decide which. He could see them among us. He could see them for what they really were despite their human guise. From what he could tell of the people on the streets, he suspected there were more than one faction walking among us. He referred to them as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That old Clint Eastwood flick spoke a much more intricate message to him than it would to another. The Bads were trying to harvest the world for all of its resources, including human slave labor. The Good were trying to stop it. He rarely saw the Uglies in person, but he knew they were there. He even knew where they were. They were in the governement, in Hollywood, leading foreign nations, in hospitals, behind Wall Street, and any other important position with the power to subdue the culture of humanity. He saw them on television all the time making presidential addresses, telling us the news, delivering public service announcements. They were in the movies laden with subliminal messages to conform us to the society they needed us to be to overthrow our simple minds.

All of these are the reasons they kept taking Samuel for their experiments. He had a strong mind. He did not watch TV. He did not have a home or a job to control him. He was free. They needed to know why. They needed to figure out a way to quelch his superiority or suffer the resistance army him and others like him could bring. At first he tried telling people. He tried standing on his soapbox spouting poignantly about the evils of the other worlds, but nobody listened. They laughed at him. They mocked him. They lead him to the watering hole of fermented Russian potatoes. He would keep quiet until he needed to speak. He would watch and wait. He would find out who he could trust. He would look for the Goods and make friends with them. He would give them information about the Bads. Not the Uglies, though. They were too powerful. They were untouchable by his filthy hands. Plus, the Goods usually liked to reward him for his information. Those Goods were Extra Good. Not only was he fighting the Good fight, he was also being compensated with the bottle of his choice.