Hello, friends! Today, I’ve decided I wanted to take a look at a story about some very serious things with a very silly title. That story is “May Your Government Be the Center of a Smelly Dung Sandwich,” by Justin Short.

I couldn’t find a copy of the story online, but it can be found in the anthology Recognize Fascism, edited by Crystal M. Huff.

We start off with our unnamed narrator, having been thrown into prison for apparent drug offenses. They ask their cellmate what he’s in there for, and said cellmate tells him that its because he’d heard a song. Actually he’s in there for arson, but he says that the aforementioned song was why he burned a factory down. The narrator kind of thinks that he’s full of shit.

The next day, the narrator is released from prison and met by their coworker, Gam. The narrator doesn’t seem to like Gam very much, as they think that he’s a kiss-ass for their android overlords. I should probably mention that this takes place in the future, and the protagonist is basically an indentured servant on a planet called Chassis that produces electricity for a planet called Verdant.

Verdant is described as a lush, green paradise, but only rich people get to go there. But people who put in their time for thirty years eventually get to retire there! Which leaves out the protagonist, since you need to have a spotless record to get there. The narrator and Game talk about this, at least until an android tells them that it’s giving them extra tasks, since they have enough time to talk.

After the narrator works all the way through not just lunch, but dinner, the make it back to the place he shares with Gam and tells him they they have to get the hell off this planet before they cave in an android skull. Gam asks if they’re planning on going to Verdant, but the narrator tells him they wouldn’t go there if they paid them. He asks the narrator where they’re going, then, and they respond that they’re going to visit an old friend.

Said old friend turns out to be the dude they shared a cell with earlier. They ask him where he heard the song they were discussing earlier, and it turns out to be a place called Mundana. The narrator asks where on Mundana, and the prisoner asks for some Triton tobacco, to jog his memory.

Some time later (and after procuring their buddy some drugs), they head off to Mundana, briefly mentioning that they had to cash in every sick day they had to do it. Anyway, they make it, and head off to a club in the desert talking to a caterpillar-like alien.

The caterpillar knows why they’ve come, and warns them that he can’t just give him the song to anyone who shows up. Apparently, the song is “two minutes and fifty-nine seconds of pure, digestible anarchy,” and has managed to destroy whole societies. He asks why they need the song so badly, but agrees to hand it over when the narrator mentions verdant.

While handing over a recording, which is in the form of a red capsule, he tells the narrator what happened to the people who wrote and recorded the song. Turns out they were disemboweled, which the caterpillar finds highly amusing.

Anyway, the narrator gets the song, but is apprehended basically as soon as they get back. The androids know they went to Mundana, and that they must have been there for the song. The narrator, though, insists that they just went there for the nude beaches.

The narrator is thrown in a cell, where he poops out the capsule that he’d swallowed. He then hears the android who interrogated them approach, and fakes an illness to lure him in. Once there, they incapacitate and deactivate the android, before plugging the capsule into his voice unit and playing it.

This starts a full-scale riot among not only humans who hear it, but the androids as well. Some loyalists attempt to stop them but are overpowered, and the rioters take the planet.

The story ends with the narrator heading back to Mundana, and wondering what the people on Verdant will do now that Chassis isn’t supplying power to them anymore.

I hadn’t read anything by Justin Short before I started reading through this particular anthology, but I have to say that I like what I’ve seen so far. The story is about revolution, but in a rather irreverent way. It was kind of like reading a KMFDM song.

Which is kind of what this story is about: the power of art, particularly music, to inspire people to make a change for the better. That was basically the whole raison d’etre of the punk movement, which I think this story takes a little inspiration from.

I mean, who doesn’t like a little anarchy?