Tax Audit

This story was originally published on Substack.

Roko Penuba felt a chill across his spine as he listened to his voice messages.

“Our records detected discrepancies in your tax filings. An audit is in order.”

Next thing he knew, he was driving beyond the city limits, towards a facility miles off in the desert, isolated and detached from the comforts of his neighborhood. Roko drove there in a hurry, but the situation thrust him into a state of confusion and worry. Under what pretext were his taxes not to their satisfaction? After all, he had a tendency, in all his activities, whether at work, at home, or in his hobbies, to dot his Is and cross his Ts, never forgetting to mind his Ps and Qs either.

By the time he arrived at the address, he worried that he had not arrived on time, because there were no cars there besides his. As he glanced around, he was then greeted by a man whose face, without expression, seemed to resemble an android or a wax statue rather than a person.

“Roko Penuba, just in time for your audit. Follow me, please.”

“Does anybody else use this facility?” Roko asked with a tremble in his voice.

“Certainly,” said the man, in a manner that did not reassure Roko’s anxieties.

The building resembled an airport terminal or a space station. Was this really a tax office? Where are all the accountants and assistants? On the ceiling, there was a skylight in the shape of a circle, letting sunlight in to bathe the facility, from its doorways down to its hallways, which seemed to split again and again into a labyrinth of architecture.

So they entered a room the size of a closet. Each sat in a chair, a table between the two of them, looking at each other.

“May I ask what’s going on?”

“Certainly. Records show that you have engaged in activities which we would like answers to.”

“Um, okay,” Roko gulped. “If I made a mistake, I apologize.”

Then a nurse came in, dressed in scrubs, a mask over her face, and eyes that never met with his. Roko’s nervous system started to ring. Alarm bells were going off, but in a way, he also felt there was nowhere to go to from here. I will just go along with this and hope for the best, he thought to himself.

The man asked him to grip two cans with both of his hands. The cans were hooked to a machine with a meter that measured abstractions that he could not make heads or tails out of. Then the man began with a questionnaire.

“Have you engaged in acts of defiance?”
“What are your thoughts on our lord, the emperor of the galaxy?”
“Do you consider yourself a dissident?”

It was at that point that Roko made his discovery. This was no audit. It was a deception from the government. Why were they asking him these things? How long had they been spying on him? He had to make an escape. So he bolted from the chair, letting go of the cans, punching the man as he fled to the door. But the nurse was there, waiting for him. She shrieked in his face with a tenor that resembled a banshee from hell, a scream which disarmed him and sent him into a state of shock. It was then that the syringe went in, straight to his chest. It was full of glycol, and he could feel that chill in his spine begin to spread into his heart, his lungs, his brain, and his eyes. Everything was fading. Darkness overwhelmed his perception.

The next thing he knew, he was seated in an airplane. The DC-8 had other passengers in it. He recognized the faces. They were people he knew from his rallies he went to every midnight. He thought he practiced the utmost discretion when attending all those book club meetings, where rebels like him discussed overthrowing the tyrant that ran their lives with impunity. Now they were all frozen. Muscles completely stiff, in a state of entrapment, watching as the windows outside showed something that brought fear into their eyes.

They were nearing the surface of that that planet known as Teegeeack, seventy percent water, with no life as of that time. They were nearing a patch of land with a formation of destruction and fire. It was a volcano, and it erupted with lava. With no capacity to move, the passengers sat in that plane, shivering beneath their lips, as it plummeted, flying into the pit, their bodies now burning from the heat that surrounded them.

. . .

“What a ridiculous story,” Belinda cried out. She was seated there, surrounded by a sea of naive fools, all of them listening to their beloved commodore as he recounted the story of OT-III. “I’ve been funnelling my life savings to you for this? Jesus Christ, is this some fuckin’ asinine bullshit…”

Mr. Hubbard seethed with rage at her insolence. “Guards,” he said with a yellow-tinged smile, his voice mirroring that of someone who had read too many fantasy novels in his lifetime, “take her away.”

And soon, two devotees of his, in sailor’s clothes no less, came and promptly kicked her out of their Dianetics discussion.

Belinda was so flustered and angry at herself. How could she have been duped into believing any of that. Little did she know, that in a past life, she had been duped before.