The United States of Air

Chapter One

Look at how fat I am. Isn’t it disgusting? Here. Let me pull up my shirt. See? Zoom in that camera. Can all of you see? How much fat I can pinch? And don’t you go telling me that’s loose skin. Just because I have an eighteen-inch waist doesn’t mean I’m not fat. I know what fat looks like. It’s my job. Or used to be. Before I became ambassador to France, I was plain old Jason Frolick, Special Agent for the ATFF.

That’s the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Food, for all you ferrners out there watching. It was my job to put food terrists in Fat Camp. And the kinds of fat I saw! A reminder every day why the Global War on Fat is so important. Thank the Prophet for the Amendment. No, not that Prophet. I mean President Jones. We all call him the Prophet. If it weren’t for him, our country would still be enslaved to addictive caloric substances, otherwise known in ghetto street lingo as “food.”

What’s he saying? Come on. Translate for me, already. By the Prophet’s empty belly, you’d think an advanced country like France would have learned how to speak English by now, and how to eat air.

Fat Camp. He wants to know more about Fat Camp. Is that it?

And no, I’m not irritable because I’m hungry. That’s French propaganda and you know it. That’s what this news show is, right? A thinly disguised propaganda machine? Next you’ll be telling me that food is not a drug, and that no one can eat air.

Oh, for eating out loud. You mean that so-called undercover documentary? By whatzizface, the BBC journalist? Or should I say, French saboteur. Just listen to the guy.

“People are starving to death. Hoarding food, eating in secret, denouncing their neighbors. Selling everything they own to buy precious calories on the black market. Corpses whisked away at dawn by special cleanup crews.”

I mean, come on! Those dead bodies are obviously fake. Probably filmed on some movie lot right here in Paris. It’s lies like this that have forced us to censor the Internet, so that you ferrners cannot infect our people’s faith with doubt.

Now where was I… Fat Camp. Thank you. Our finest achievement. I am so proud of our network of re-education facilities. From coast to coast, dedicated military personnel help citizens, free of charge, get the monkey off their backs. Our trainers teach the air-eating technique pioneered by the Prophet and set forth in his ground-breaking book Food-Free At Last. But even more important, Fat Camps offer sanctuary from temptation. A place where you can go to reinforce your faith. Because even the slightest doubt will destroy your ability to digest air—and on an air-only diet, that can be fatal. Nowhere else I know is so conducive to breaking the shackles of addiction and setting yourself free.

Because that’s what it’s all about. Freedom. Abraham Lincoln freed the blacks from slavery. The Prophet freed us from the Tyranny of Food. No longer must we be slaves to our appetites. We are free to become pure spirit, undiluted intelligence. Souls unstained by orange cheese puff smears, stray dollops of pizza sauce or mashed-up French fries.

In doing so, he set us all free. The entire human race. That is why I’ve come here, to France, as your ambassador, to bring you a message of hope—glad tidings of great joy—that you too can be free. I call on all of you, everyone out there watching now, in every country round the world: rise up! Rise up, and break the chains that bind you to your dinner plate. Eat air. Drink water. Have faith. That is all you need.

You are laughing, sir. You claim to be, what? France’s most venerated and distinguished newscaster, whatever your unpronounceable name is? I remind you, sir, of Gandhi’s words: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Not laughing anymore, are we?

Let us be clear. I am here today with a message. From the Prophet himself to the people of France. The rest of you ferrners out there too. The Prophet is the Leader of the Food-Free World. And France, I am sorry to say, is stuck in her oldey-worldey, food-addicted, pleasure-loving past. A time is coming when you will have to choose. You are either with us, or you are against us. Which is it going to be?

Don’t bother to translate that, whatever he’s saying. I’m not interested. I’m not asking for an answer now. I will say only this: attempts to depose the Prophet and reinstate the Tyranny of Food in our country, as the French Secret Service tried to do last month, can only result in war. Because of you French, we almost lost everything.

But I forgive you. It’s not your fault. It’s the food talking. All these baguettes and cheeses and wines I see you people eating. My heart aches to think how you must suffer. That’s why I agreed to come on this news show. I understand, from painful personal experience, how hard it is to break the cycle of addiction. At the Prophet’s personal request, I am going to share with you my own struggle against food.

If you’ve tried to lose weight, if you’ve tried to free yourself from the seemingly inescapable vicelike grip of appetite masquerading as hunger—come closer. Yes, you. Here. Huddle around the television and learn that you are not alone. Because I used to be just like you. Eating every day. Unable to stop putting food in my mouth. Dancing to my stomach’s tune.

Nor is my struggle over. Even now, three years since the Prophet came to power, and the Amendment passed, my faith is not complete. I still suffer from—but how can I say this? I must. The Prophet has ordered me to tell you. Of my secret shame. It is only with your help, all of you out there watching, that I hope to finally be able to hold my head up high.

How can you help me, you ask? You shall see. But first, let me tell you of my own journey. How I came to know and love the Prophet’s words, to embrace the path of eating air, and from my humble beginnings as an ATFF agent, became the ambassador to France, and the Prophet’s spokesman to the world.