Editor’s Note: Readers will recall that we are running a series of parodic pieces by Luke Haines. It is based on the Tolkien books and trashes Baby Boomers for screwing up the environment and the economy. The editors of LR Net are Baby Boomers, by the way. So surely Luke isn’t talking about us. Right? Of course Right.

I stumbled back into the Dwarf camp a few hours later, after a long and uncomfortable climb down the mountain with my britches stuffed with gold.

“How did it go?” asked Studly, eagerly.

I sighed. “I seems to me Boomer’s ruined education, housing and the whole environment around here,” I said, pointing to the blackened and scorched area around the mountain. “And people can only better themselves through a crooked system Boomer’s rigged to make money, having already exploited it for free.”

“Typical!” spat Trotsky, the Dwarf with the red cloak. “Boomer’s refused to take any responsibility for ruining everything about a system that offered social mobility, OR give up accrued wealth and privilege so that someone else can try to fix it.”

Trotsky had spent most of the Dwarves’ singing and beard-combing time on the mountain slopes trying to xerox his militant newsletter.

“The good news is that all the gold is still there,” I said. “We just can’t get our hands on it.”

“We could wait until Boomer dies off?” suggested Samey.

“Seems like Boomer’s gonna live forever, and never let anything change,” Trotsky said, gloomily.

“What if we build a hospital?” said Samey. “Boomer’s eventually going to get sick and without universal Elf Care the costs will be enormous. It’s expensive enough to provide end-of-life care under the current system, let alone the enormous strain dying Boomer’s going to put on the financial system. All the money will go to that and it will wreck any attempts Boomer’s made at saving it all up…”

“That’s a very good point and one that should be considered a lot more often than it is,” I said. “But it’s not much use to the rest of us right now. We don’t stand to profit from any of that, unlike Sue Tickle.”

 “Who’s Sue Tickle?”

I explained that she was a tall, sturdy looking woman I’d met at the Inn, and who ran a farm near Laketown and sold healing potions. Big Farmer Sue Tickle made a fortune off people getting sick.

I’d barely got through that tortured pun when our conversation was interrupted by an earth-shaking roar from the mountain behind us. “What’s THAT?!” Studly asked.

I winced. “I have a feeling Boomer just found out that there’s no such thing as Mythical Interiors Magazine.”

 

***

Luke Haines is a British writer whose idea of proof reading is checking the label on a whiskey bottle. He sporadically tweets as @lukedoughaines, and can be sent death threats, scorn, nude pictures and offers of employment via lukehaines85@gmail.com

He shares a name and temperament with the cult 90s musician, but isn’t him.

 

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