it never rains but it pours

No sooner than I get home and settled back into work after being shot, I get a service summons and have to take ANOTHER two weeks off work.

This year my service summons was to be a Circuit Court judge. I suppose to other people this might seem unusual but on La-A the law is very simple, and most ten year 0lds understand it. And every citizen is called on to take his turn in the barrel. Each year you spend two weeks doing a job in the government, and your employer must continue to pay you during that time. This is completely voluntary; you can be excused if you're dead, feebleminded, or a democrat. But I repeat myself. Actually, hardly anyone shirks the service. Each person takes the task they have been assigned very seriously, and whether it's a judge or a clerk, and most everyone is happy to take the little vacation from the regular job. Last year I took a job for two weeks as a health inspector.

Anyway, we do our volunteer jobs happily, because it means we pay almost nothing in taxes- as a matter of fact, the tax burden here is such that immigration is limited to family members and Hopkin-F patients. And we like that just fine.

So I have been a judge, for a while. The cases I'm seeing aren't difficult nor is application of the law complex. I'd talk about the cases- there is nothing against that- but they are so boring I have to drink extra caffeine to stay awake during the trials. At the end of which, the plaintiffs are pretty well comfortable with the verdict before it's even handed down. As a general rule, we're a law abiding bunch.

As an aside, the miscreant I dropped several weeks ago was an offworlder who, it turns out, was here trying to organize a union. he had been able to get zero support, anywhere, though he was on fire to "help" the workers of La-A. he finally went off it and started shooting. Until I took him out of commission.

Freaky.