Tuesday, September 02, 2008

The Anti-Jeff: Part 1

Efficiency was the name of the game, and, frankly, the Jeffs were inefficient.

There were too many of them. They were clogging the country. Our benefactors, however, were solving the problem. They were rounding up everyone named Jeff and relocating them to JeffCenters, where they would be reprogrammed. Anyone who was good friends with anyone named Jeff had to turn themselves in for inefficiency inspections. It was thoroughly unlikely that we had contracted inefficiency from the Jeffs, but it was not impossible. Fearing for my own health, I gladly went along with the process.

It was when I didn't see my friends in line for JeffSpections that I became wary. I contacted the police immediately and reported the incident. The police informed me that, though they would get around to questioning my friends, they had bigger fish to fry: two Jeffs in our area had escaped capture. Naturally, I offered my own home as a base of operations for Operation JeffCap, but they were reluctant to take me up on my offer. Ultimately, they decided against it.

At first I was perturbed. I offer the police a perfectly good staging area, and they didn't accept. What had I done wrong? I had eaten my NoJeff pills (complete with Anti-Vitamin J), had carefully scrubbed all traces of Jeff from my house (with AJA-Approved "JEFF-B-GONE"), and had even joined the Anti-Jeff Youth Organization to educate the community on the dangers that Jeffs posed to modern society.

It wasn't long before I realized the obvious: the police wanted me to act by myself. They couldn't tell me my orders in explicit terms, of course, for fear of retribution from those damned lawyers ("Jeffs in disguise", I call them). By denying themselves the use of my house, however, they were preserving my cover. I could act like a rebel to locate the rogue Jeffs. I knew my friends were in it, probably hiding Jeff at their houses. I needed to get on the inside.

I started with Tim. He was a trusting guy, and we had been friends forever. Though I hated to betray him like this, it was a necessary price to pay. The Jeffs had to go.

I caught up with him at the mandatory government-sponsored Anti-Jeff fun and games day of mild amounts of excitement and thrills (AJFGDMAET). I approached him carefully; long exposure to Jeffs could have made him feral. He greeted me with a smile and a polite wave, and I forced a smile back.

"Hey, Sam!" Tim said, "how are you?"

The question was probably some sort of test. I did my best to answer it as a friend of the Jeffs would. "Good. Just like how Jeffs are. They're good people. Not bad. They aren't ruining the world. They don't play Ultimate Kitten, complete with kitten spiking when they score points."

He gave me a confused look. The man was an expert. I would need to try someone else.

Joe struck me as the obvious choice next. Though he was smart, he was often quick to speak. A slip of the tongue could be just what it took to unravel this massive, tangled web of deception and lies. The Jeffs would be exposed, and I would do it myself.

I had to be subtle about this. I approached Joe at government-sponsored thirty-minute midday meal. I decided to open with a joke. A rhyming joke.

"So, Joe," I laughed, "where are the Jeffs?"

"WHAT?!" he cried loudly, spilling his government-supplied apple-flavored juice. He immediately got up to leave, and I thought all was lost. As he walked away and I stared at my government-supplied chicken-like wing, I suddenly noticed something. He had left his tray, and on top of his tray he had left a piece of paper. I pocketed it quickly.

All day, I struggled to resist reading it. When I finally arrived home, I flung my backpack on the ground and ripped open the note.
I know you are a pro-Jeffer. If you truly wish to support the Jeff cause, put a red flag in the plant on your balcony. You will be contacted further at a later time.
My way forward was clear. I would discover the Jeffs and report their locations to the police.

It was only a matter of time.

9 comments:

Frances said...

hmm again kind of bizarre.
but very, very interesting. :D

Anonymous said...

Awesome.

Anonymous said...

i would avoid capture...



dxywwmp

Raptor said...

... wow. Excellent work, but... freakish.

Anonymous said...

I knew it was a trap...

Anonymous said...

We've got spies everywhere.

And by we I mean anti-Jeffs...

Anonymous said...

Why do they make people read 1984?? This is what it does to them.

Anonymous said...

LOVE THE PICTURE! Ultimate kitten?!

Anonymous said...

Hey! It's Brian!