During what has now become a series of routine preparations undertaken whenever a foreign party threatens to invade their country, the people of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia (GROG) made ready to go to the mattresses. Said Muiryast Hyünndend while changing circuit-boards on a battered but serviceable surface-to-air missile battery: “We used this baby to take down what few Russian pilots dared to fly at this altitude and in the winds coming off of these high plateaus.” Her job nearly completed, Muiryast went to banging around on the weapon's motorized servos with a ball-peen hammer until they seemed to function to her liking. “That should do it,” she said, wiping grease off her hands with an old, dirty rag. “Now, I go back to village and help the other ladies move pickled vegetables and other non-perishable foodstuffs deeper into the caves before oiling my AK-74.”
Similar efforts were under way in nearly every hamlet and village around this small, landlocked nation, including in its capital of Grig. This reporter watched as mountains of supplies disappeared every day into the hundreds of miles of winding passages that connect Grig to the nation's larger towns and to massive limestone caverns used by the local inhabitants since the Middle Ages to weather foreign aggression. “It didn't matter if they were Greeks or Persians, Mongols or barbarians, British or Russians – every time an enemy thought we had given up, another pack of crazed children armed with slender knives would climb up out of a spider-hole to hamstring entire battalions, slashing at the invaders' throats with shrill cries, the blood staining their soft, little hands,” said national historian and best-selling children's book author Dr. Aliyannda Grikochenka, chairwoman of Grig's own Historical Preservation Society. “The Americans are winding down operations in Afghanistan, our regional neighbor, which means that they will start coming after any countries that yet resist their attempts to install a Rothschild-controlled central bank. That will not happen, here; we Grigovians will keep our liberty, and remain sovereign.”
At least three dozen former officials have already been tried and sentenced to their choice of banishment or forced labor – or a combination of the two – for violating the country's constitution by attempting to pass legislation that would move the country off of the gold standard; their efforts, the nation's high court ruled, would have endangered its currency, the yind, and exposed its remarkably-stable financial markets to rampant speculation and outright money-grubbing similar to that which has brought entire economies to their knees, among them those of Iceland, Ireland, Spain, and Greece. Said economist Durdev Yvend, a financial expert who advises the national assembly on matters relating to debt and foreign investment, “The economic policies espoused by the Ynki and their ilk are unsustainable in the long run. If they would just let everyone else mind our own business and figure out what works best for us, we would all be better off.” Mr. Yvend paused on his way out of a gun-emplacement set into the marble base of a monument to independence from Soviet oppression, into which he and a half-dozen other men were carrying one canister after another of high-velocity machine-gun rounds. “The way it stands, though, the American economy survives only when the country is at war, and it has been making war on people whose countries are rich in rare-earth minerals, or crude oil. Since Grigovia is known for its vast deposits of lithium and, especially, helveticum, it does not take a genius to figure out whom they are going to invade next – us.”
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
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