Gus Moreno lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he works a dead-end job to support himself and his soon-to-be bride. He hopes one day he'll never have to do the nine-to-five office gig ever again, preferably before he's dead. He reads and writes and enjoys exercising, which gives him the perfect excuse to eat everything in sight. His family calls him "The Garbage Disposal".

Pauper Patties (September 20, 2011. Issue 31.)

The commercial opened in a room completely white, a vibrant luminosity that erased all points where the walls met, so it looked as if the room wasn't a room but a giant white void that extended into infinity in all directions, as though Morgan Freeman were walking weightlessly in the white washed void when he stepped onscreen. One hand in his pants pocket, the other holding a cigarette.

He stood facing the camera, centered in the lens, cropped from the waist down. He wore a gray Roberto Cavali suit, wool voile, with a two-button jacket and two internal pockets, a rear slit, partially lined interior and straight leg pants. The shirt was ivory, the top button unbuttoned, no tie, as if Mr. Freeman had been up all night, thinking about something, running very important matters through his head, working things out, and he now stood before us tired and exhausted, but present, still with some dignity. And he looked into the camera with piercing, squinting eyes, took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke just off camera-right.

"Hello, my name is Morgan Freeman. And I am here, not as a spokesman, not as an actor, but as a human being reaching out to you and your family. Times are tough. Money is tight. Some of us have lost our jobs while others hang on by the thinnest of threads, struggling to stay afloat while providing for our spouse and kids. The ice caps are melting. Infant mortality rate is rising. Our country is in the midst of three wars that have no foreseeable end, and the shifting of international powers with China has occurred before we were even prepared for it. You're scared. I understand. This is not the world our parents told us about. These aren't the lives we were led to believe we'd lead. Everything is harder. The lines, the lines that define morals and ethics and spiritual certainty, where is the nostalgic America we grew up in?"

Track lighting in the studio reflected in Morgan Freeman's wet, red eyes, reflecting light into the lens that reflected back from his glare, reflected back into our living rooms. He looked down and took another drag, let the gray haze escape from his nostrils like smoke stacks as he ruminated on what he was going to say next, and viewers at home waited patiently, quiet even in own living rooms, or wherever else they were watching the Super Bowl. Conversations across America stopped mid-sentence.

"Here, at Pauper Patties, we've tried to remain an anchor of Americana for eighty years. Our flamed broiled patties have never changed. The secret sauce, always gratifying after a hard day's work in the factory, like your grandfather used to enjoy. Those long nights in the delivery room, waiting for the new bundle of life to enter your new family, Pauper Patties was there, with our crisp onion fries and spicy southwestern steak burger, because Pauper Patties burns the midnight oil. Always been that way. We like to think of ourselves as members of your family, your legacy. We've had some great summers, stood by each other through two world wars. Remember when you were sweet on that girl in your class? You took her out to Pauper Patties and shared a triple thick, Mondo banana shake blast, and you'd known you found the one. Well, we remember too. That's why, it fills me with great regret to inform you, America, and those of you in distant countries, that as of September first, Pauper Patties will be shutting down each and every one of its 30,000 locations across the world. It's been an honor and a privilege to have served you through all these years. We pray you have much happiness in your lives, and hope you continue on with a positive outlook in this crazy game we call life, and maybe, on a winding road somewhere in a land neither of us ever considered we'd find ourselves, we will meet again. Maybe a little older. Maybe a little wiser. But hopefully, we will still embrace one another as if we've never changed, because that is how strong our bond is. Farewell."

Fade to black.

No one moved or said anything. The next commercial, which was a trailer for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, went largely unnoticed because people were still leaning halfway out of their seats with jaws slackened and chewed barbecue wings falling from their lips. It began as a murmur, someone in New York who caught the commercial in Times Square with the other pedestrians passing by—he looked away from the giant screen and shook his head.

"They're closing Pauper Patties?"

And like a tsunami pushing past the levees, word spread from one coast to the other.

"They're closing Pauper Patties?"

"They're closing Pauper Patties?"

"Van a cerrar Pauper Patties?"

"They're closing Pauper Patties?"

People took to Facebook and Twitter. The Pauper Patties commercial was the number one video on YouTube, with one million views in half an hour. 3,800 likes over 3,100 dislikes, because no one was quiet sure whether they were liking it based on the eloquence of the commercial or the fact that Pauper Patties was shutting down. People didn't know what to do. The second half of the Super Bowl felt moot. On TV, rows of people were exiting the stadium. Players weren't colliding into each other with the same tenacity as the first two quarters. They just didn't have it in them anymore. When the game was over and the Bears won, and when Brian Urlacher raised the Lombardi trophy and burst into tears, no one was sure what he was crying about.

Globally, Pauper Patties was the third largest chain of the fast food burger restaurants, behind McDonalds and Yum! Brands restaurants, which owned Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, and A&W. Pauper Patties' most popular sandwich was the Pauper Prince, which consisted of a quarter pound of meat grilled and seasoned with special herbs, topped with lettuce, tomato, special sauce, pickles, onions, and kept all together in two butter basted buns.

Wall Street was aware of the corporation's demise six weeks before the commercial. Analysts believed Pauper's advertising and marketing was to blame, honing in on only a male population between the ages of eighteen to thirty-five, rather than taking in a more global consumer base like a McDonald's or Subway. Falling stock prices prevented the Pauper Patties board of trustees from selling the company to an overseas conglomerate. Franchise owners began rebelling against the board's decision to offer the Two Pauper Princes for One Dollar deal, citing the discount as a loss in revenue. Consumers hated the chain's transition to sweet potato fries.

Minutes after the commercial aired, cars flooded drive-thru lines for Pauper Patties across the country. People ordered Pauper Princes by The Brick—The Brick being thirty Pauper Princes encased in a plastic lunchbox designed like those metal pales construction workers used to carry. People ordered whole value menus. The ninety-nine cent menus. Cashiers didn't have enough change to break all the fifties being pushed through the windows, all the fifties and hundred dollar bills. There were car accidents in the parking lots. In Ohio, Eliot Byrd was stabbed in the neck with an exacto blade after an altercation inside a Pauper Patties, where witnesses said he complained about the length of the offender's order.

There were stampedes. The demand never relented. People ordered Pauper Princes with no mayonnaise or ketchup in order to store them in their freezer. The main topics of Twitter and Facebook were how something as popular and delicious as Pauper Patties could falter. What hope was there for the rest of us?

Pauper Patties' CEO disappeared from New York, gone into hiding like the board of trustees. Its Vice President of domestic operations was forced to appear on CNN to explain the chain's sudden closing. Why couldn't they just shrink, shutter off franchises as opposed to closing the whole enterprise? There had to be options, other venues to explore. Not something as drastic as this, to take away our Pauper Patties. Wolf Blitzer was practically out of his seat, pleading with the Vice President of Domestic Operations, who leaned back in his chair on the opposite end, padding away beads of sweat on his forehead with his silk handkerchief. From his pale blue lips came the same regurgitated response he was coached to tell by Pauper Patties' human resources department. "We at Pauper Patties empathize with the public's shock and confusion. We exhausted every outlet before coming to this decision. Pauper Patties will still continue serving the public until September first, whereby all Pauper Patties locations will discontinue immediately."

What followed after binging on all-beef patties, your hands glistening with fry grease, after the kids collapsed onto the carpet and into food comas, was the guilt. You let it come to this. You, with your family trips and freewheeling spending, you just needed to try different foods, didn't you? You just had to have variety in life, and in doing so, a longstanding pillar was about to fall. You beat yourself up as the television entertained no one, your eyelids seizing opened and closed, pupils rolling to the back of your head as your body shut down on itself—things would never be the same again.

In the House of Representatives, Nevada's Terrance Marshall addressed the chamber of delegates seated on either end of him, Democrats and Republicans. He was a former pro tight end, and light curved over his shoulders as if he were the horizon, his head the sun, and he cleared his throat and leaned into his microphone, his constituents attentive because he never made an effort to take the floor.

"Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Speaker, last Monday I received an email from a Judy Prendergast, from Reno, Nevada. Ms. Prendergast is nine years old. She wrote to me as a concerned citizen, because her parents had informed her that Pauper Patties, her favorite place to eat, would be closing at the end of the summer. Ms. Prendergast asked if there was something her government could do to save the Pauper Patties. Could we, and I quote, 'Let them borrow some money until they could pay it back?'

"Yes, it is funny, but nevertheless, this tiny girl was looking for her government to step in and prevent her favorite fast food home from closing its doors forever. And here, in the email of a nine year old girl, we have the attitude of the American Public, that the government will step in and make things right. The attitude that, oh, someone else will save this or that, because there is no way they will let such institutions collapse. Because what would life be without the pillars we've grown so accustomed to seeing in our lives? Well, I wrote back to Ms. Prendergast. And I sadly informed her that there was nothing neither my constituents nor I could do, because Pauper Patties was an enterprise independent of government intervention. Pauper Patties was not failing because of the government didn't intervene. The government has no authority to prevent corporation collapses, just like it has no authority to end poverty or crime or famine all on its own. The government couldn't do anything to keep the lights on for Pauper Patties. I wrote to Ms. Prendergast, 'But do you know who can step in and do something about it? The people can.' The people can tear down political parties. The people can build industries and end hunger in America today, if they want to. If they want to, the people can rally together to affect the course of their lives as one collective consciousness."

Live feed of Representative Marshall's speech spread from CSPAN to MSNBC, to the local television stations, interrupting soap operas and reality court shows. Stay-at-home moms stopped feeding their children the Pauper Patties Fun Feast chicken fingers, craned their necks to hear Terrance Marshall interrupt regularly scheduled daytime talk shows and syndicated shows from the 1950's.

"The people can move mountains. The people can push their fingers into the moist soil to till the land, and like Jesus Christ said, feed themselves their entire lives. What are we here, in this chamber, but nothing but an invisible institution, when the people outside those chamber doors are as real as the stakes Ms. Prendergast writes about? So I pray, I pray that Ms. Prendergast understands the power inside those Crayola-thin fingers of hers, and calls for her mother to load them into the minivan to head on over to their nearest Pauper Patties, and buy all that they can, because that is how the people cast their ballots. That is how the people change their entire makeup."

Representative Marshall ended with a brief point on immigration reform, and the chamber exploded in applause. From living rooms across the country, people exhaled and let that tingling feeling of miniscule hairs rise along their spine and wash over them, taking over their vision, the rush of blood and immediacy, to where black spots popped into their fields of vision and they had to grip the banister or couch to support them because something was erupting inside them. Something they'd never felt before. Or maybe they'd felt it before, but it had been a long time since the feeling pulsated through their veins, like an atrophied muscle coming back to life under the skin.

Communities organized fundraisers catered by Pauper Patties. Parents scheduled birthday parties for their children in the Pauper Patties Fun Zone. The older crowd felt invigorated by the grassroots effort. It was the sixties all over again, people marching in the streets peacefully with their mouths stuffed with Pauper Princes, greased smiles, gathering to protect something they all believed in, not a political machine or a dogmatic belief system, but something as simple as a burger, a staple of their ways of life, and they were doing it for their children, and their children's children, because there were some things a person had to stand up for—draw your foot in the sand to say, No, not anymore. You won't push us this far. You could beat us, exploit us, rape us, tax us, train us, shoot us, scold us, jeer us, record us, test us, search us, detain us, force us, stab us, drug us, engorge us, starve us, explode us, fine us, shame us, study us, but you couldn't take away our Pauper Patties. You couldn't deny us what we wanted most.

People sold tee shirts with the Pauper Patties Prince made to look like Che Guevara, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi. Balled up Pauper Patties wrappers lined the streets and swept into the air on the highway through rush hour traffic, so the skies were in on it too, wafting Pauper Patties garbage high above the aluminum roofs of traffic like flags at half mast, the logos stretched and warped on a hundred different windshields, the design and face of the Pauper Prince projected on the faces of drivers and families inside their cars, staring blankly ahead, painted in the logo's red, white, and blue, like Pauper Princes themselves.

Channel seven news featured a high school history teacher who was eating nothing but Pauper Patties food until September first. "It's our own fault," he told the news crew. "We let the things right in front of our faces slip away, and now Pauper Patties is leaving forever. It's our lack of awareness to the things around us. Maybe Pauper Patties can see how much we'll miss them now, and they'll come back. Or maybe, we can get it to where they'll never leave."

Psychologists predicted a period of posttraumatic symptoms after the last Pauper Patties shuts down. They advised people to pay attention to friends and family who suddenly became withdrawn or agitated.

The people were made up of business men, flight attendants. They were children with juvenile diabetes, power lifters, truckers, politicians, parents, lovers. They cooked our meals, fixed our cars. The people grew fungus between their toes, picked at the boils on their feet. The people bore children that craved food. The people inhabited every inch of Earth until you couldn't walk a mile without having your nostrils plagued with char grilled flesh matted in lettuce, because the people were no longer just people. They were people with necessities. All of them. A faceless crowd of blurred features standing in lines all across the country. They were people tipping the scales for the common good. They burdened a mission placed on their shoulders voluntarily. The people wanted to fulfill prophecies. The people wanted to move mountains.

For their last fiscal quarter, Pauper Patties posted record numbers, exceeding the generous predictions offered by Wall Street insiders. There were rumblings of potential buyers for the chain. Pauper Patties declined to comment.

September first was marked on every kitchen and office calendar with red felt-tipped pens. A small riot broke out when the first Pauper Patties closed in Portland, Oregon. Six were arrested, including one who was later hospitalized. People loaded up their vans and toured across the Pacific Northwest, moving from one Pauper Patties to another before that one shut down too. They made their own tee shirts and you could spot them in the parking lots, listening to the light rock FM station, but listening to it really loud. Someone posted the scheduled list of Pauper Patties locations to close before September first, and lines weaved out of location doors and circled around the building, people wrapped into the drive-thru lane as cars pulled through, those people in line handing meals from the window to the drivers.

They handed over their money with tears in their eyes, their fingers salted from fries, and then they wiped away their tears, agitating tear ducts. Dining rooms in Pauper Patties got so packed that people had to eat in their car or on the sidewalk, where they would stuff the last bit of burger passed their glossy, slimy lips, crush the wrapper into a ball and toss it into the street, only to get up and stagger to the back of the line again.

People had trouble sleeping from all the Pauper Patties they ate. Their stomachs creaked and vibrated like the hull of a submarine. Bathroom sinks were dusty with the left over powder of antacid bottles discarded and turned on their sides. People had trouble breathing. The new rumor was that Pauper Patties would come back in ten years under a new brand, but still people flocked to it. They handed over money, opened another wrapper and gritted their teeth to swallow the dry mass of flesh and butter bread, washed down with biting cola that only agitated their heartburn even worse.

But still they ate.

They did their part.

In a studio in Los Angeles, Morgan Freeman looked over a one-page script handed to him by an assistant. He sat in an elevated director's chair, wearing a navy blue Valentino suit. Crewmen worked to set up the white backdrop that would intersect with the white floor. He sipped his iced coffee and worked on the cadence of his words. The top page was riddled with notes about how his demeanor should be. He made sure to get a full ten hours of sleep the night before. He was shaved and manicured and fresh. The director approached Mr. Freeman and introduced him to the CEO of Pauper Patties, a Mr. Robert Fleischer, the third generation of Fleisher's to have presided over Pauper Patties since its founder, Herbert Fleischer, died twenty years ago. Mr. Freeman smiled, set down his script and coffee, and shook Robert Fleisher's hand, whose palm was soft and warm like hands after kneading dough.

"A pleasure to meet you," Mr. Freeman said, and picked up the script to wave between them. "Why do I have the inclination that this was prepared by you personally?"

Mr. Fleischer's tanned face pulled back into a smile, the way a Halloween mask wrinkles after you pull it over your head. "Pauper Patties has been very dear to my family. I wanted the message to be genuine."

"And it is, Mr. Fleischer. The people are going to love this. They're going to thank their lucky stars."

"The thanks is all to them. They saved us. The people spoke, and we've listened."

Crewmen and staff cleared off the set. Mr. Freeman and Mr. Fleischer shook hands again.

"Thank you for doing this again," Mr. Fleischer said.

"My pleasure. I'm honored to be the one to tell them Pauper Patties is here to stay."

On a cool September night, Mr. Fleischer awoke to his bedside phone ringing.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Robert, are you sleeping? It's two in the morning."

"What is it?"

"Listen, it's Neal. Tadahito Corp has made an offer."

"What?"

"They've agreed to our price tag."

"Oh my god. When?"

"Just now. Todd and I just got off the phone with them. Todd can't get the champagne bottle open."

"Oh thank god, we did it."

"We sold the company. It's a miracle!"

Morgan Freeman walked onto the white floor mat with his collar buttoned and powder blue tie knotted in a Windsor fashion.

Mr. Fleischer stood behind the director with his hands crossed, and he was smiling. The director yelled action, and inside his head, Mr. Fleischer thanked God for two things. First, he thanked God for man's ability to step in and change the course of the world, to be able to stand together and make a difference for the betterment of humanity. And second, he thanked God that man chose to focus that ability on a third rate, second class, burger joint.