Funny Story

Lohbado returned home, after spending five years in the Cha region of the Po Valley, where the Ooo people created a village under a glass dome, concealed within a sand dune of the Saraha Desert.

They went there to withstand radio-active fallout from the Battle of Armegedon, or World War III. The Ooo people got their name from zero, zero, zero, a computer code used to wipe out all incriminating data

about how weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and bankers seized vast quantities of money and engineered nuclear disaster in order to wipe out poor and alienated people who posed a threat to theocracy.

Unfortunately for the Ooo, the nuclear diaster did not work out according to the computer simulated model. They'd gone over the disaster countless times in the simulator. However, human error, once again, presented an unseen problem. A small amount of radiation leaked into the domed community in the desert and affected the brain, causing memory loss, disorientation and confusion. This was a small sickness compared to the destruction of two-thirds of the world population

Central Government continued to function from North America. A lot of people were out of work, due to the disaster. Lohbado, one of the survivors, reached a point where he was no longer able to pay the rent and had nothing more than sixty dollars. He saw an Internet job ad, requesting anyone with teaching experience and willing to relocate, to apply as a Trainer for the Department of Regulation. Lohbado went for an interview and got the job. Central Government flew him to Timbuktu, where he transfered to a Regional Government plane, which took him to the Cha region of the Po Valley.

His mandate was to bring about Standardization. The Minister of Regulation Mandate, (MRM), was to teach the Ooo people everything they would need to know in order to function in post-Apocalyptic society. He was given a specific set of standardized skills to teach these once-powerful leaders who had been reduced to mental disorder as a result of their greed and evil doing.

Ironically, nobody cared about the Ooo anymore. Out of sight, out of mind, was the attitude. Because these people had been connected to government, they could not be ignored, without creating a scandal, should neglect ever come to light. In other words, the Ministerial training program was a form of lip service to the problem of what to do with a handful of bewildered people stuck in an air-conditioned glass dome in the middle of the Saraha. The Minister of Regulation had much wider concerns, for example, to restore social stability and repair the heavily-damaged banking system. The leader of Central Government was also president of Central Bank.

Lohbado was glad to have stumbled into a decent paying teaching position, with benefits. He was prepared to deal with hardship, but unpleasantly surprised to discover he would be working alongside a collection of oddballs and weirdos, like himself, each with strong opinions about what the Minister of Regulation expected and how to impose Standardization.