Today was a pretty normal day for May. Normal, that is, until the moment she left her apartment and stepped out into, uh, something hard to actually describe.

At first glance, it appeared to be a normal hallway. Same as what she walked through yesterday, and every day before that, ever since she’d moved in. Somehow, though, it opened up into a full sized, completely functional seastead.

For those who haven’t spent a sleepless night going down the rabbit hole that is man made islands, seasteading is a political slash research slash speculative movement where a bunch of people make an artificial island, live on it, and try to get that recognized as a national entity. But anyway, May recognize this particular seastead because it’s so audaciously bullshit.

“Galt Island”, the official wet(get it?) dream of Rand lovers everywhere, was a design for a seaborn platform composed of hundreds of interlocking modules, each providing some kind of essential function. There is some suspicion that the goal was to make it look like Dagny Taggart, but apparently that was too gauche for even the most hardcore free-thinkers out there.

But, to refocus, it was actually real, and sitting outside May’s apartment. Somehow. Her response, of course, is simple.

“What the actual fuck?”

Her answer comes in the form of a man, walking over from somewhere else on the structure, and gesturing for her to come towards him. For some reason, he bears a striking resemblance to Karl Marx.

“Comrade, I need your help. I am engaged in a vicious debate, and to break the stalemate, I need an ally.”

“Wat.”

He stays there for a moment, and somehow, the raw need in his expression manages to convince her to abandon reason and get on the thing.

“This feels like a dream, which is the only reason why I’m committing to the absolutely stupid idea to go with a stranger into whatever the fuck this is.”

“That will have to be enough. Come, we must not tarry. I fear that Mills will finish destroying my fellow unions before we get back.” Faux Marx says, as he breaks into a power walk, presumably towards the aforementioned “Mills”.

“I’m sorry, what? You mean, like, legally, right? May follows, keeping pace pretty easily; he’s shorter than her by a bit, so it’s simple. Also, he’s declining to respond. Rather worrying.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Please tell me that he’s doing it in the legal sense.”

“That too. Now, ready up, we’re here.” They stop at a door, which he then opens to reveal what appears to be a WWII battlefield liberally sprinkled with podiums. All indoors. Somehow.

“Huh?? What the fuck did you drag me into, dude?”

Before he can respond(not that he seems like he’s going to), a voice cuts across the room, addressing them. “Marx! The ceasefire you paid for is up, and I see you’ve spent it not very wisely.”

“So you are actually Karl ‘founder of communism’ Marx? I’ve been calling you that in my head anyway but it’s good to get confirmation.”

He addresses May first replying, “What do you think? Silly question, comrade.” Then he continues, switching to Mills, “Mills Stuart Mills, the very creatively named descendant of John. You’ll find that I have good reason to bring this person along.”

“Well then. We’ll see. I call you to face me again, in the marketplace of ideas!” Mills bellows. He follows up by throwing a handful of coins at Marx, their edges sharpened to a hair-thin margin rivaling only that of restaurant profits.

“No forum can be properly productive without moderation, my adversary.” Marx retorts, blocking with a copy of the Communist manifesto, rejecting capital with an expression of ideals.

Without missing a beat, Mills fires back with cutting rhetoric, as well as a cutting edge technology: knives. “Centralized authority only serves to further the means of the bourgeois, no matter how much you try to check the accumulation of value. So, stop trying to fight it!”

Overextended as he is, Marx can only lament as the dagger enters his body, made sharper by the fact that his own theory has been turned against him.

May, understandably, has absolutely no idea what that was all about. She grabs Marx, trying to talk to him as he falls against a podium, slumping down.

“Holy fucking shit dude you just got stabbed, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“No, madam.” He labors for breath, mustering it up for only a few more sentences. “It is a killing blow. True communism has yet to be achieved, yet, laissez-faire economics reigns yet.”

“That is wrong in so many respects, especially with how ill defined we’re being right now.” She responds, while applying pressure to his wounds.

“Hah. I suppose, it would be. After all… I’m just some guy who read Marx and didn’t even understand him well.” Not-Marx coughs, blood coming up in a light spray.

“What the hell? Why do you look exactly like him, then?” May has honestly given up on trying to understand at this point, and is going to accept whatever comes next.

“My family business was styling facial hair.” He shudders, placing a bloody hand over May’s. “I have another thing to tell you.”

“Sure. That’s a thing now. I fucking guess. Okay? How crazy could it possibly be?”

“May. You… are the reincarnation of John Maynard Keynes.”

And then, she remembered. Her past life, her economics, her history, all of it. “Oh. This still makes less than zero sense, but thanks? Now I know that, for the fuck-all it’s worth.”

He coughs again, and looks at her intensely for his next, final words. “So you do. Now, I pass the mantle to you. Defeat Mills, and save economics. Please.”

“I…why? Why am I agreeing? I’ll do it.”

Without another word, but with a smile, he expires.

“Are you interventionists done yet?” Mill calls out, making the five syllable word into an invective.

May stands up, a fire burning in her heart(but nowhere else, thankfully). “I am. And Mills?”

“Yes?”

“You’re going down, like CPI in a depression.”