Boomsday

Prologue

“Thank you, Wendy Wong in Washington, for that report on the deteriorating economic situation.

“In Florida today, another attack on a gated community by youths protesting the recent hike in the Social Security payroll tax.

“Several hundred people in their twenties stormed the gates of a retirement community in the early hours this morning. Residents were assaulted as they played golf. Demonstrators seized carts and drove them into water hazards and bunkers. Others used spray paint and garden implements to write slogans on the greens.

“One such message, gouged into the eighteenth green, read: ‘Boomsday Now!’ The word refers to the term economists use for the date this year when the first of the nation’s seventy-seven million so-called Baby Boomers began to retire with full Social Security benefits. The development has put a tremendous strain on the system that in turn has sent shock waves through the entire U.S. economy.

“A maintenance worker at the golf course said it might be, quote, weeks before residents were able to play golf.

“In other news today, the vice president has shot yet another lawyer, this time, he says, in self-defense.…”