ArcaMax

Two days ago, I went out to get trash bags because I needed trash bags, a prescription because I needed a prescription and cookies because I like cookies.

The kind young woman behind the drugstore counter handed me my prescription in a little white bag, stapled shut.

"Do you want a receipt?" she asked.

I go to one of those drugstores where the receipt is two feet long, offering 10% discounts on cheap makeup my wife won't use, two-for-one deals on Christmas cards in June and, very often, a coupon entitling you to three or four dollars off anything in the store. I spend those coupons on candy.

Still smiling, the clerk handed me maybe eight feet of receipt.

"Sorry it's so long," the clerk said. "It's the secret plans for the United States invasion of Canada."

"Gotta be a fluke," I mumbled to myself as I left. "Who would send top secret invasion plans to a drugstore? You'd have to be some kind of dope."

In a large, very brightly lit discount store full of people in their pajamas, I found the trash bags and a package of chocolate chip cookies. I bought the large package of cookies.

"What the hell," I mumbled to myself. "If we're going to war with Canada, I better start bulk buying."

I got to the self-checkout terminal, ran my two purchases over the code reader, and then tapped "Finish and pay."

Immediately the screen was filled with some kind of intricate drawing. I beckoned the pink-haired young man whose job it is to watch over the self-checkout.

"What the hell is this?" I asked.

The kid shook his head wearily.

"That's the plans for some kind of cloaking device that can make soldiers invisible to the enemy," he said.

"You sell that?" asked.

"No," he said. "It just keeps showing up on the screen."

The kid tapped the screen in a few places, and my grocery total reappeared.

"There's a guy who works in electronics," he said. "He plays Ultimate War with some dude named Hegseth. The Hegseth guy sent him a bunch of this stuff this morning."

"Is it Pete Hegseth?" I said. "He's the secretary of defense."

"I dunno," the kid said. "The guy in electronics says that's the guy's name.

"There he goes now," the kid said, pointing to a skinny blonde kid who was being walked out of the store by a security guard.

"That's not Pete Hegseth," I said.

"Naah," the kid said. "That's Colin, the guy in electronics. He must have been playing the game using the store's Wi-Fi. You get fired if they catch you doing that."

"Well, you should," I said, putting my debit card back in my wallet.

"Oh yeah," the kid said. "I like Colin, and he's always got good weed, but what if you were fooling around with the store's WiFi, and you messed up and sent next week's sales to everybody in town? It'd be mass chaos, bruh."

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Kindle, Nook, and iBooks.