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Disclaimer: Any resemblances here to real people, places, institutions or events are purely coincidental. This is somewhat a work of fiction.

Fos continues...

Chapter 10

I did not relate this story to the council, but I wanted to share it with you readers of Mr. Jim's column. It happened in a place where I lived and it is a bit complicated, for I do not understand all the things the Big Things do.

Apparently, from the best I can gather, the Big Things make paper products for something called money. They hand other Big Things products they make and these Big Things give them this money in return. Why, I don't understand, but that is the way things seem to work.

This makes these products the Big Things make something called "valuable." Again, beyond my understanding, but that is the way it is. Anyway, when things are "valuable" the Big Things want to keep track of them--know where they are at, who has control of them and so forth. To do this, they put marks--I have seen these, they look like scratch marks--on everything they make. Some of the marks are thick black lines, some are thin--makes no sense to me.

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In this place, the Big Things made a paper product that was in small round rolls with a hole in the middle. Four of these rolls would be gathered together and placed in a clear film and the film would have the scratch marks on it. They would make many of these between each twinkle, so many that there were more than all the rats in the place.

One weekend I traveled about 10,000 quivers to see my cousins who lived in a store in a town where Big Things live. We got to talking and they told me they had seen some of the product I described above in their living place. Then they told me a funny story...

It seems as though some Big Things from where I live came in with a device of some sort and started reading the scratchings on the products there. Then they had a talk with the Big Thing that ran the store.

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The Big Things left and came back with some other Big Things that looked official--they were all dressed in uniforms and talked in loud voices. They all discussed the scratching again and the official Big Things took the store Big Things away with their front paws fastened behind their backs.

Apparently, the accounting was not correct on the product the Big Things had in the store. They had never given the place where I live money for the product. They used the word "stolen" to describe the product.

I was told by my cousins that the Big Things from the store were taken somewhere and locked in cages for a long time.

Something called an investigation was held--seems like it was sort of like our counsels. Many Big Things were found to have taken product from my place to other places without giving my place money. Many lost their jobs, some were placed in cages. Apparently the Big Things take it quite seriously when you don't give them money for their products.

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