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“Leo Torres, moral arbiter.” “Reverend Leo Torres.” “Leo Torres, Pope.”
Leo Torres anguished within while he listened to the arguments from militia and economic leaders of Elco, Nevada. Both of them wanted Leo and the revolutionary authorities to promote open gambling.
“Everything that justifies our economy is prohibited under you!” They accused Leo and the government he supposedly represented. “Nobody is gambling and you don’t even allow tourism! Now, you can’t argue that gambling is bad for people. We’ve heard that. We’ve been hearing that for as long as we’ve been in the gaming business. It’s nonsense! People know what they want and what they want is what they consider good for them.
Gambling is what they want, and you have to get out of the way and let it happen.”
When Leo finally got a chance to talk, he said, “I don’t know of any prohibition against gambling. I’ve never even heard it mentioned. The leadership knew I was coming to Nevada, and I’m sure they would have said something if they had any hard line against anything you’re doing or likely to do. As for prohibiting travel, there’s not exactly a ban. All we have is rail and water transportation, and rail is all you have here as I understand it. It’s all we can do to move foodstuffs around to processing centers and back out to feed hungry people. A few commissioners, like me, move around, but we don’t have berths on passenger trains. You saw my office and living quarters when the train arrived. It’s just a shipping container mounted on a flatcar. I don’t think there’s an actual passenger car anywhere on any railroad in the country.
‘So, it’s not a prohibition. It’s just a necessary fact of life under the conditions we have.
‘I’ve traveled half the country lately. I’ve seen places where people are adapting to the new situation. Some of them are doing OK. They’re using energy credits for money, and they’re building up local economies. Other places, people are just waiting for the next shipment of People Chow and trying to figure out what to do. The worst situations are the ones like you seem to have here – where people are wishing that the old days would come back and not doing much of anything about the present situation.”
“Gaming is all we know,” said the head of the Elco militia.
“I’m no economist or specialist of any kind,” Leo told them impatiently.
“But I know it’s hot as blazes here. There’s so much sunshine that it’s blistering my eyes. Shouldn’t you be working on solar energy?”
‘Everybody else is way ahead of us on that,” came back.
“Ahead or behind, energy is money now, or it’s soon going to be. I couldn’t predict when the economy is going to zoom ahead and people are going to be able to travel and gamble.” Leo paused just long enough to realize that he was completely in the wrong. He tried to repair the damage.
“Ah, let me apologize. I came here to ask for your support in an election, not to condemn you for what you’re doing or to tell you want you’re supposed to be doing. The truth is that the campaign is wearing me down. I’m getting impatient. I’ve never traveled before and now I don’t do anything else.”
“Are we supposed to feel sorry for you? We’re the ones in a dead-end town with no future.”
“No, I just meant to say that I’m sorry. All I can tell you is that you have to assess the situation you’re in as accurately as you can, and then figure out how to apply whatever resources you have to do as well as you can. That’s all any of us are doing.”