2 WHEN THE COUNT IS GOOD (2)

The time to let Moa find a place to park his moped, I'll allow myself to open a parenthesis to deliver some elements of understanding of the events.

The pump attendant was called Vilpers Haunaj but being a completely secondary character in this story, which isn't even sure to appear again, I won't develop any further.

His client was a soldier called Moa.

He was the only son of a family of the upper middle class settled in the countryside, not particularly wealthy but with a good savings capacity, a little conservative but it was often like that in rural areas, owner of their own house and with a dog he had the privilege of choosing the name: Wouaf.

His family was united despite the few extramarital affairs of his parents. He even still had three of his grandparents, his grandfather – his father's father, having been killed during a duel, this practice which was very fashionable at one time but which passed into obsolescence before soon being prohibited with the war which brought its share of worries and required a large number of living men. It cannot be said that Moa was truly affected by this death which occurred some fifteen years before his own birth.

At school, he was a rather mediocre student, not the worst even if his teachers agreed that with a bit more efforts, his results would not have increased significantly. He was neither a dunce, nor the classy troublemaker. He just didn't have a real future; in fact he had no interest in anything related to roller shutters, a crime of lese-majesty at the time. His education continued without rebound, he was like a star in a cloudy night, we knew he was there, somewhere but hidden by an abundant amount of water droplets suspended in the atmosphere, obstructing the very vision of nocturnal animals, yet known to discern even the smallest quantity off photons; it was like this, at least until the war broke out.

His fate was turned upside down.

He was seventeen years old when, having since long lost all illusion about life, he decided to enlist in the army. Wouaf had died a few weeks earlier and his father refused to take a dog again. Notwithstanding the reluctance and even the lively protests of his parents who threatened to disinherit him, he joined the nearest camp, in a neighboring town, like all the lost ones of his kind. Since then, he did not often have the opportunity to see his parents, even though their relationships had since abated and now remained cordial.

For Moa, this camp was a real boon. Freed from the family shackles, he could finally taste the joys of autonomy. He even adopted a hamster which he named Little Hamster because unlike the dog, the cry of the hamster was difficult to transcribe in the form of onomatopoeia. He no longer had it today because although quite honorable, a hamster could not live more than four years. He spent a year in the camp, a year which was undoubtedly the most difficult of his entire life and at the same time, the best.

He learned what life was like, making his bed squared and the meaning of the word prolegomena. He also discovered there the values of friendship and camaraderie, meeting those who would become his best friends like Fonth Endoh, the girl of the gang, sadly mistaken by his own regiment as an enemy and deceased on the field of honor on the southern front, Sodor Ipar who was currently serving a prison sentence for having flamed a roll of triple-ply fleece toilet paper in front of a hierarchical superior, or Zohol Ogyk, the armless guy who became one-legged and returned to civil life on the pretext that he was no longer of use for anything in the army and who, according to the latest news, thanks to the exceptional mobility of his left toes, exercised the noble profession of scribe, and last but not least Anguiss Ouroch, the one to whom he was closest but who had since passed to the enemy.

They had scoured so many puppies; they had peeled so many quintals of potatoes until the day when, finally, they were judged fit for combat. According to their instructors, they were the best promotion to ever graduate of the camp. At the same time, they had launched this training.

Nevertheless, Moa underwent education there with flying colors, even finishing as the promotion major, a title he bought with his savings placed in a very profitable SICAV. If their paths had separated according to assignments and lifestyle choices, Moa really had fond memories of the graduates of this promotion.

He was passionate about fine mechanics and when he had to choose an assignment, he did not hesitate a moment and headed for the third regiment of motorcycles, along the northern flank. His family lived far away, but this front had the advantage of being the quietest at the time.

His other savings, placed on the stock market of 'Jantalulu', one of the great leaders in the tractor rim, and 'Tonfrom', the agro-industrial giant in cheese production, enabled him to choose his position.

He was going to be the regiment's counter and it was in this function he was since employed in the army.

His role was to count the number of deaths in the third regiment. When he took up his service, the first day, he was entitled to a hazing, a tradition which had been lost since, and a complex mission, the death of two Siamese brothers he could not count correctly. Otherwise, on the whole, the first few months had turned out to be rather calm: a corpse from time to time, sometimes two, rarely more, which left his eye acclimatized to the jousting conditions.

Since then, the refrain had changed; the losses were massive with often several dozen victims. And when the enemies launched a violent attack, it could reach new heights. And you had to see the state his comrades were found, mistreated; he always had to be attentive, well focused so as not to count several people if a corpse arrived in several pieces. It was however a position of responsibility, it was even quite unimaginable with hindsight that it was entrusted to a beginner, as it was important for the management of human resources.

The daily surge of violence and the increasing complex task resulting from barbarism almost made Moa regret the promotions that were offered to him at the beginning of his career and that he had refused, especially the last that his direct superior could give him.

This promotion was an old matter and no career development had been offered to him for several years now but as his position was really considered serious, he had been offered a position as a bicycle saddle sweeper, the former sweeper going on maternity leave.

At that time Moa did not want to leave his post too late, after the truce allocated at the end of the day, just to be able to do his shopping and had declined the offer. Sweeper was a pretty ingrate function from a time point of view, the work really started only at the end of the maneuvers, when all the equipment was repatriated.

However, over time, this function was quite popular, someone even killed to get it, unfortunately for him he got the wrong person, sparing the sweeper in favor of the person in charge of the carrot stock. If he was also a psychopath, Moa might have imitated him, as fewer and fewer bicycles were being repatriated in the evening and the timetable of a bicycle sweeper made jealousy increase in the regiment.

To sum up, Moa was a man with a banal childhood who became a dead count, viscerally punctual and regretting some of his past choices. Perhaps it was for these reasons that he was so bitter, with missed opportunities and inopportune use of his savings that would shut him up in the north when, if circumstances had smiled, he would bask in the south.

Above all, he was heckled by events which went beyond him, which went beyond the human dimension in general, war, what man did best with soft eggs.

…

The war, no one had forgotten how it started.

It happened in history periods that should not leave any traces, where ultimately everything went well. It was in this kind of period that people lived a few years earlier.

The economy was working well, the policy was stable, and there was even economic growth. The world headed straight for prosperity, full employment and the granting of a fourth week of paid vacation. People could almost make plans for the future. This situation even lasted for some time.

Very quickly, the man had invented the saw to be able to cut the branch on which he sat, and as that was not going fast enough, efforts of technological development allowed him to invent the chainsaw, noisier but more effective.

When everything was going well, men used to make the right decisions to destabilize happy balances and often it was for a dark story of buttocks. As it happened, the buttocks were connected to the big picture of macroeconomic mechanisms.

There existed many bilateral economic trade agreements and many international organizations governing the bulk of trade. One of the most important was called 2P2M for (P)roducing (P)latform of (M)eat (M)erguez bringing together the countries producing sheep merguez. Under stress in their internal market, they decided to impose exorbitant custom taxes on the import of rillettes. This measure was considered protectionist and contrary to the maxims of international trade by the countries of the League of Free Circulation of Products Derived from Geese, or LFCPDG which counterattacked by setting an embargo on certain products, notably merguez.

It was winter; people weren't going to suffer when the weather was not optimum for a barbecue, and what had to be a deterrent during off-peak periods escalated. Instead of reducing custom taxes on rillettes to more acceptable levels, one of the 2P2M member countries unilaterally decided to impose quotas for the production of fir-wood; the most used species in the papermaking industry and used to fabricate fleece triple-layer toilet paper. On their impetus, other countries joined and they gave birth to the Organization of Fir-Wood Producing Countries (OFWPC). It was world supply that suddenly fell.

Meanwhile, prosperity had brought comfort.

The standard of living had greatly improved and people could no longer imagine going back. When demand failed to adjust to new supply constraints, prices went up, it was inflation. At the highest of the crisis, the prices of fleece triple-ply toilet paper in pure fir-wood had increased tenfold. Little by little, inflation spilled over into other areas of the economy, creating various financial bubbles that threatened to explode and drag the world into a great recession.

The countries of LFCPDG could not accept this situation and they managed to convince a few other non-affiliated countries to join them in a new coalition.

The coalesced countries politically regrouped and gave birth to a new state which should be more effective in fighting this crisis.

Initially, governance posed some problems, on the one hand the king of the largest and most populous kingdom found it normal to become the embodiment of this state, which other heads of state, elected for some, and even competent for others did not wish.

Faced with the failure of collegial governance, the refusal of any type of pro-rata, it was decided to choose one governor; it only remained to agree on the method. An original method was implemented, the participatory democracy, which had now been forgotten. The citizens had to propose the method of designation that an ad hoc committee had to choose.

Initially, a first ad hoc committee was created to reflect on the establishment of the ad hoc committee which was to decide, and faced with the inertia of the technocracy, the heads of state decided to draw lots with various solutions.

Many solutions, however, were considered interesting such as orienteering, changing a wheel, or blind tasting which had since been used to recruit for the administration.

Fate decided that the problems of governance would be solved by whomever-the-one-that-pees-the-furthest.

Of course, the king of the old kingdom, of which Moa was a national, won the match, but can we speak of a match when you have a foreskin defect which allows you to reach distances close to eighteen meters?

In his enthronement speech, he shouted that it was really worth the trouble to linger with these kinds of games when the situation demanded action, that if they had listened to him from the very beginning, they would not have lost all this time but he was still happy to have won...

Anyways the regulated governance and the laws of the kingdom were globally adopted everywhere in the coalesced territory, keeping regional particularities to flatter the ego of the hackneyed and to spare their susceptibility. However, this did not bring balance in the international economic issues and the blackmail continued. The coalition no longer having any real alternative to exert pressure decided to declare war on the members of the OFWPC and their 2P2M allies. It was this conflict that had been going on for almost ten years.

Fronts were opened on many borders. Each regiment was in charge of a particular border. If in the south, the regiments had succeeded in gaining victory and forcing the enemies to sign armistices, the coalesced army occupying the enemy territory. But in the north the war continued, with three regiments sharing the line of demarcation. The third regiment Moa belonged to was in trouble with one of the toughest adversaries, incidentally the initiator of the OFWPC, located in the northeast of the country.

…