There's a mirror on the wall; In it I see a different reality

aniseandspearmint:

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys:

dduane:

ms-demeanor:

It’s a smoky day in the postapocalypse. The fires never really stop, but there were a lot of masks thrown away during the pandemic, so most people have gotten used to raking through landfills and sanitizing their finds in the weak red sunlight. But breathing smoke through three layers of paper is draining and so is clearing the toxic soot off your skin when you make it back inside a filtered building.

It’s hard to get by - it’s Southern California, after all, and it was never meant to support a population this size. The water-deaths that happened in the first three months weren’t enough to relieve the barely-functional grid, and power has been down for two years. There’s nobody left to clear the cars that ran out of gas on the way out of town, so the only way to leave is on foot, and then where would you go? Nevada and Arizona don’t have water either, the 5 is a warzone, and it’s a long, long way to Oregon and you might get killed at the border if you make it that far.

Sometimes you dream about taking your bike down to the beach and finding a sailboat bobbing in the surf. You dream that you know how to sail. You dream that you brought enough food for the journey North when you took a day trip to collect clams in the surf. You dream that your friends are with you, and that you push the boat into the waves and make it all the way to Washington with good weather and clear skies and nobody else you love dying.

But you’re not at the beach, and there is no boat, and you can’t sail anyway. It’s a smoky day in the postapocalypse and you’ve got a cut on your leg that has turned a worrying color.

The Goldline Station closest to your house has become a kind of weekend market. It’s hard to walk along the freeways, and dangerous, but the train tracks are pretty clear. If you’re lucky, sometimes you can even get on a hand car and ride for a while if what you need isn’t at the local station. But you know the drugstore guy is always in the same shaded parking space by the dry fountain.

Drugstore Guy used to work at a drugstore. He figured out what was going on before anyone else at his store did, and filled his truck with everything that would fit, grateful that he’d brought his truck with the camper shell instead of his wife’s Prius. He managed to grab enough stock that lots of people around here survived things that people two towns over didn’t. He even grabbed the stock of vaccines, and has managed to amass enough in trade that he’s still got a refrigerator with full vials. You don’t want to know what a TDaP shot costs these days, and are grateful that you had a tetanus shot a month before everything went to shit.

The parking spot never has a lot of customers around it because Drugstore Guy doesn’t need volume. What the parking spot DOES always have is three huge dudes with very big guns chatting with their boss, sitting around a big cooler in beat-up beach chairs.

All of them perk up as you ride over. The huge dudes are very still and very hostile, but Drugstore Guy is smiling at you, his eyes crinkled above is brand-new, never-used masks. You hop off your bike and lay it down behind you, the missing kickstand is an embarrassing liability with these men watching you.

“Hey,” you say quietly, walking closer. “You got a Z-pak?”

“Sure,” says Drugstore Guy. “But I don’t think you can afford it. How about some penicillin?”

You shrug. “Allergic.”

Drugstore guy nods. “That’s rough. I’ve got penicillin like candy. I don’t have many Z-paks.”

You shift nervously from foot to foot. The wound on your leg throbs, reminding you of how far an angry red color had spread around it when you put a bandage on it before coming here.

“Z-paks don’t last forever,” you say. “You got any that are expired? I think I’ve got enough for that.”

He laughs. “They’re all expired. I still think you can’t afford it.” He looks behind you. “People who can buy my stuff don’t ride broken bikes.”

You shrug again. “It’s not broken, I just didn’t want to trade for another. Maybe I’m a little lazy, but I’m not cheap.”

“Alright,” Drugstore Guy says. “What’ve you got.”

You take your backpack off slowly. You know the big guys have seen the revolver you’ve got holstered against your ribs, but everybody at the market has a gun. You’re not worried about them seeing it, you don’t want them to think you’re going for it. You dig into the pocket that was resting against your sweaty shirt, the safest place to keep anything valuable you’re carrying. The plastic container you come up with is about the size of a playing card, and the silver dollar inside of it flashes in the sun. You pass it over for Drugstore Guy to examine.

The look he gives you, with what you can see of his face, can only be described as pitying. “I don’t know if you know this, kiddo,” he says, “but US Legal Tender really doesn’t mean much these days.”

You shake your head. The fact that it’s a dollar isn’t important. “It’s silver. It’s real. One ounce of silver, more than 99 percent pure.”

Drugstore guy looks at the coin in his hand and back to you, and back to the coin. “Even if it is 99 percent pure,” he says, “which you can’t prove, what the fuck am I supposed to do with silver?”

It’s hot and smoky and your leg is burning and his question throws you for a loop.

“It’s silver,” you say. “You know. Silver.”

“Buddy, I can’t eat silver,” Drugstore guy says. “And neither can anybody else around here. Who would I even spend this with?”

You’re sweating, and your head hurts. “I’ve got gold too,” you say. You hadn’t planned on blurting it out like that. You didn’t want to use it, and had hoped the price wouldn’t get that high. “Real gold. 24 karat. A half-ounce bar. It was worth two thousand dollars before.”

“Yeah?” Drugstore guy says, “And what’s it worth now?”

You laugh, weakly. “A Z-pak, I hope.”

“Nope,” he says, and holds the silver dollar out for you to take. “What else you got?”

You’re swaying a little. You don’t take the coin back. “I - I’ve got some platinum and palladium, but you’d have to meet me-” you stammer.

Drugstore guy is looking at you like he’s worried now. Like maybe whatever you’ve got is catching. “Do I look like I’ve got a use for platinum or palladium? Do I look like I need to make a bunch of high-end electronics today?”

“It - it’s a store of value,” you answer. “Precious metals have been used in ancient Babylon and Persia and the Roman republic and in Medieval England and Ming Dynasty China. It’s - it’s gold.”

One of the big guys leans forward on his elbows, looking at you over his sunglasses. He looks a little more sympathetic than is boss does right now. “Do you have any eggs?”

“What?” You say. This whole excursion is beginning to feel more and more surreal.

“Jay’s right,” Drugstore guy says. “I could let a Z-pak go for two dozen eggs. "Or how about bullets? What caliber is your little pea-shooter there?”

“It’s a .38,” you say, “I don’t - I don’t have any eggs. Or bullets to spare.” God knows that’s true, you’ve got what’s in the gun and you haven’t even seen an egg in a year.

“Iodine? Bleach?” Another guard says. “How about hand-sewing needles? Or beeswax?”

“Coffee,” you say, out of nowhere. You have four cans in an insulated bin in your garage. “I’ve got a can of French roast. Still sealed.”

“Well now,” Drugstore Guy sits back in his chair, cheerful again. “That is worth a Z-Pak. Is it on you?”

Drugstore guy agrees to give you half the first dose from the Z-Pak and to hold onto the silver dollar as collateral while you ride home to get the coffee and bring it back to the market.

You’re feeling pretty worn out by the time you make the trade. Drugstore guy passes you the cardboard packet of antibiotics and the dollar coin at the same time.

“Are you all on your own, kid?”

“Maybe,” you say, defensive. “Why?”

“Because in spite of the mercenary nature of this exchange I am actually concerned about the well-being of my community and someone who shows up to trade with gold when they’ve got coffee seems like someone who could use a little help. We have a cookout on Sundays - it’s bring what you can, eat if you can’t - and there’s a few people who meet up at the library on Wednesdays to do a skills exchange. If you’ve made it this long surely you’ve got some skills that got you here, and clearly you could stand to learn a few more.”

Your mouth drops open behind your mask and all that you can think to say is “How does anyone know what day it is anymore?”

Drugstore Guy beams at you, and hands you a flier. It’s not printed, but stamped. There’s a map to a park and a promise of free, clean water to all who attend. “You ask. Today’s Sunday. Dinner’s at six.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

All of which is to say, Human Pet Guy, that there is very little you could do that would endear you to me *less* than tell me that I should listen more to my mother in law, who thinks that bigfoot is going to steal her grandchildren, about apocalypse survival scenarios. It is also to say that if you think that a silver dollar is going to be worth much more than a bitcoin in an actual survival situation you are Significantly More Wrong Than You Think.

The thing that metal hoarders don’t understand is that while, yes, fiat currency is an arbitrary agreement to exchange paper at an artificially set value *so is the use of metal as a tool of exchange.* The amount that a silver penny was worth in medieval England was arbitrarily set because the *intrinsic* value of precious metals is pretty far removed from most people’s daily lives so sometimes a piece of silver is going to be worth a lot less to someone than the twelve loaves of bread that the king had decreed *AND* because in all of the examples you listed counterfeiting was a huge problem in SPITE of being in a relatively high-trust situation, by which I mean that in situations where you have a well-formed society of people who trust one another and a rule of law and courts where people could redress wrongs you STILL had problems trusting the purity of the precious metals you were offered as currency and that isn’t something that gets any better when you’re dealing with people who are fighting over who gets to be the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla.

So yeah this may be an issue of me out-crazying you because I’m not coming at this from a perspective of “fiat currency is good” I’m coming at this from a perspective of “precious metals are actually pretty worthless as a survival strategy if you’re anticipating a society in which people will shoot you to take your diesel so start a compost pile, learn how to mend clothes, keep chickens, grow vegetables, and load ammo if that’s the society you’re worried about.”

…This.

“All of which is to say, Human Pet Guy…”

*scrolls back up*

*checks username*

Oh god it is

THIS

This isn’t to say it would be worthless forever, humans are pretty reliable in our love for shiny things, but it’s gonna take a lot longer than most of these idiots will survive.

And the first bits of shiny stuff that will gain trade worth again are gonna be jewelry (wire, chain, beads, etc) not coins.