FREEDOM FROM

FREEDOM FROMS

Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad

Copyright ã 1996 by Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad

 

 

            All rights reserved.  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior permission of the author. 

               ISBN No. 0-9644835-1-3.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-83761

Cover Design by Ken Michaelsen, McCloud, CA  96057

(Above is the ISBN of the original hardcopy edition; this soft copy has no ISBN)

 

DEDICATION

         Dedicated to the Libertarian Party, and to the hopes that humanity will rediscover that most radical of concepts, genuine, individual FREEDOM, and that freedom will be exercised responsibly.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

            To all those who have offered their thoughts, ideas, proofreadings, etc.  To Mary (“Lumberjack Woman”) Special-Lady AKA Snoog Thang, Mary Dove, Charles (“Gotta Life”) Trumbly, Brian Nickels, Richard Bartucci, Carolyn Weatherly, Alan Mills, Robert Covington, John Fremont, etc.

 

DISCLAIMER

            This is a work of fiction.  All of its characters are fictional.  The degree to which this book’s postulated future actions and statements of Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians reflect reality, or the positions of these parties, is purely a matter of opinion.  No part of this book has been endorsed by any politicians, lawyers, political parties, or intestinal parasites.  This is a work of FICTION.  You lawyers understand FICTION?  Now go find something honest and productive to do.

 

            Also by Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad:  Bats in the Belfry, By Design, and Jurassic Horde Whisperer of Madness County.

FREEDOM FROM FREEDOM FROMS

 

INTRODUCTION

 

            In this sequel to Bats in the Belfry, By Design, we continue a saga of near-future hard science fiction, with emphasis on pro-freedom politics.  Last time, we saw that genetic engineering could be used for good and for evil.  It could be used to restore, protect, and preserve the environment, and to devise weapons of mass destruction.  The focal character, Phil Schrock, libertarian mad scientist run amok, learns hard lessons, at horrendous prices, in Bats.

            In this, the sequel, Freedom From Freedom Froms, Phil has progressed, but still seems at times to place excessive faith in humanity’s ability to use technology wisely.  Freedom advances various extremist, divisive, mean-spirited, inflammatory (or, freedom-loving, depending on your perspective) ideas, and demonstrates what happens when some of them are taken a bit too far (well, okay, maybe a lot too far).

            Freedom From Freedom Froms cautions the reader that freedom can mean enslavement.  “Freedom from want” can mean that the government will make your charity choices for you, “freedom from overpopulation and starvation” can mean that the government will control your reproduction, “freedom from drugs” means they’ll break your door down in the middle of the night, lest you destroy some “evidence”, and “freedom from sin” means they’ll decide how you will worship, among many other things.  “Freedom from pollution” means that the Superfund will extort money from small businesses (and hence, from consumers) for cleaning up the “toxics” in discarded pizzas and cardboard boxes, accomplishing little other than the enrichment of environmental lawyers.  “Freedom from Un-American Activities” meant that they’d nab you for scratching your butt during the National Anthem.  And more of the same.  Beware, then, of false freedoms, as well as false prophets; seek “Freedom From Freedom Froms”.

            Subject matters here include human genetic engineering, space flight, conscious computers, mind-reading and mind-control devices, theocracy, and race relations.  And, just as in Bats, loads of cynical manipulativeness, which might be funnier, if it wasn’t so true to human nature.  Or maybe even to the nature of consciousness.  We’ll say no more; Freedom From Freedom Froms must be allowed to speak for itself.  Please enjoy!

 

CHAPTER  1

            “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.  They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

                                                Henry David Thoreau  (1817-1862)

 

            Phil Schrock reclaimed his sanity, just in time to prevent himself from butchering his book, Bats in the Belfry, By Design.  He decided that the Pope wasn’t infallible after all, that the Earth’s carrying capacity for human life wasn’t infinite, and that it’s unlikely that God will feed us all a perfect diet of manna, as we stand there, three to the square yard, if only we’ll learn to kiss His Ass with the precisely correct rituals.  He recalled that it might not be so wise to stuff the jails with potheads, vitamin fiends, and peanut quota violators, while setting murderers free for lack of jail space.  Most of all, he remembered that the government sanctioned some pretty unwholesome activities, and that, therefore, it might not be so wise to relegate all of one’s charity, medical, and ethical decisions to Uncle Socialism.

            And, best of all, as we noted, he reclaimed his sanity before stripping all the good stuff out of his book.  He published his book to both wild acclaim and vile condemnation.

            Then, he set out to see what more adventures he might find, and what good deeds he might do for humanity.  How he might be take the Schrock out of Schrock-Leech-Kite, some more.  He resolved that this time, though, he’d refrain from thinking bizarre thoughts about his “creator,” out there in some alternate reality, banging on some Stone-Age keyboard, dictating Phil’s reality.  Well, he resolved, we said.  We didn’t particularly say that he was good at keeping his resolutions.  He did speculate, though, about that jerk out there in that other reality having this annoying habit of referring to himself in the plural, as if he had a multiple personality disorder or something.

            Phil split his work time roughly down the middle, commuting to ABC (Advanced Biotechnology Corp) half of the time, and staying home and telecommuting half of the time.  Telecommuting appealed immensely to him, not only because he could do his work while sitting around in his underwear, drinking beer and scratching his weenie, but also because he could rely on the security of his walled-in suburban compound, instead of being a traveling target on the highways of Atlanta.

            There were a few folks out there who didn’t seem to be too fond of him.  Whether or not that had anything to do with his brainstorms leading to the deaths of hundreds of millions of Chinapersons, and tens of millions of Americans, he wasn’t sure.  He did have a clue or two, though.  But he also recalled many Americans, at the height of World War III, clamoring for the deployment of American bioweapons (BELFRYBATs, Biologically Engineered Life Forms, Really Yucky, Bat-like Assault Tools), in order to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers.  Mostly, he was quite disgusted by those few sick assholes out there who were still claiming that the BELFRYBATs had done humanity a huge favor, by cutting back overpopulation by a billion plus.

            After he and Gloria got back from their honeymoon, he put in a few weeks at work, making sure that everything was on track.  ABC was working on developing entire ecosystems of artificial critters.  These ecosystems, through a food chain starting at the plants and bacteria level and ending at the rat-sized mammal-like critter level, would gather valuable minerals from low-concentration ores.  They were referred to as “mining bugs”.  As a side benefit of the technology, “anti-nuke biobugs” could also be developed to gather and concentrate radioactive contaminants.  Phil figured that his efforts in these categories, contriving more environmentally friendly mining methods and undoing the ravages of past war-mongering, might ease his still-guilty conscience.  BELFRYBATs often seemed destined to haunt him for the rest of his life.

            He got the troops squared away at work, enough so that he could alternate weeks at work and weeks at home, telecommuting.  With exceptions as required, to be sure.  The first weeks that he spent mostly at home, he devoted to some background research on the next, up-and-coming project at ABC.  He talked to his bosses about only some of the issues involved.  They encouraged him to take his time investigating all the issues, in whatever manner he chose.  After all, genetic engineering was fraught with dangers as well as promises.  ABC would want to be able to say that they’d struggled long and hard with the issues, and to have a thoroughly informed and articulate spokesgenius on hand, when it came time to make a buck.  So, Phil’s a Big Boy, they said, and, we’ll not be chintzy.  We’ll not worry about how many beers he drinks and how many times he scratches his weenie, while he stays home Wrestling with the Big Questions of the day, about human genetic engineering, before we tackle this next project.

            Phil read a lot of diverse material and did a bit of thinking.  He tapped into data from the human genome project from his home computer, across ONLINE (Optical National Link, InterNationally Extended), for some cursory examinations.  He even traveled to see some geneticists in academia.  He didn’t talk much about it with Gloria, figuring that he’d save it for later, after he got all his facts together.  He planned to discuss it very thoroughly with her; more forthrightly even than with his bosses.  She was the best person he could think of, to help him clarify matters in his mind, before he got seriously involved.  She was, at least in Phil’s opinion, a very astute and ethically and spiritually advanced human being.  She’d certainly gotten it right about the BELFRYBATs right from the git-go, which is more than Phil could say for himself, much to his regret.

            He made a hardcopy summary of some relevant stats, slipped it into one of those archaic artifacts called hardcopy books, and laid it on the nightstand by the bed.  Phil and Gloria often lay in bed, reading books and watching movies and news on their giant thin-film screen on the ceiling, but Phil was also known to occasionally read a hardcopy book in bed.

            Phil wanted to sneak the most sensitive aspects of ABC’s next project up on Gloria in a round-about fashion.  He worried that she’d get all over his case, maybe even threaten to leave him if she didn’t agree with what he was thinking and thinking about doing, like last time.  What would I do then, he wondered?  Well, hopefully it won’t come to that.  I’ll just have to wait and see.

            Despite being in the same house, Phil and Gloria didn’t interact much during the day.  He worked on the computer, and she read and did ceramics.  She was three months pregnant now, and just starting to get over morning sickness enough to enjoy not having to work.  She was reading all the books she’d never had the time to read, and working at her favorite hobby.  That is, she was painting all sorts of cute ceramics, especially ones that would look good in the baby’s room.  “Nesting,” she called it.  Phil nagged her on a regular basis to be very careful with her lead-based paints.

            Phil worried about Gloria taking the risks of working with lead paints while pregnant.  When he’d nag her too hard, she’d quote to him what he’d once said: “Living by all the rules is for chumps.”  He knew, too, how much she enjoyed painting those ceramics, and admired her work.  So, he just nagged her about always wearing gloves, not eating or drinking while working, and using the fume hood he’d set up for her.  He also insisted on being the one to load, fire, and unload the electric kiln he’d set up for her in the garage.  Glaze firings smelled awful, and he’d started to worry about what those gasses were doing to them and to the garage, so he’d set up a large exhaust fan there, too.

            So, on that Tuesday evening, he saved his files and walked from his study to the spare bedroom that served as Gloria’s hobby room.  “Looks lovely, Poogle Bye,” he said, admiring the greenware cat that she was putting a first coat on.  “Quitting time yet?” he asked, worrying yet once more about the lead.  “Can I clean up for you soon?  It’s six o’clock.  The shift’s over.  Time to go home.”

            “OK,” she replied.  “Let me finish these eyelashes, and you can do your thing.”  Phil watched, admiring her tiny, precise brush strokes as she put eyelashes on the cat.  Presently, she sat back, stripped off her gloves, and sighed.

            Phil massaged her shoulders and told her how much he admired his favorite artist.  That, and nagged her.  “Wash your hands, Roger,” he intoned, nasally.  He wasn’t sure where that phrase came from; he just remembered Gloria using it on occasion.  “Change your blouse, too, Roger,” he added, thinking she might have gotten a few drops of paint on it.

            “Roger, Roger,” she replied, in the same tones.  He cleaned up for her, and shut off the fume hood.

            Presently, they were chatting over dinner.  “So, how’ve you been since I last saw you, Boogie Snunch—I mean, Snoogie Bunch?  How’s Murgatroid?” he asked, using their silly name for their unborn child.

            “Oh, not too shabby.  And you?  How’s my favorite biowizzard?  What new wonders are you cooking up these days?”

            Phil debated how much he should volunteer at this stage.  He really wanted to save the most controversial aspects of what he’d been studying for later.  He figured that if they were snuggling in bed while they discussed such matters, she’d be less likely to get all bent out of shape.  He tried to banish his fears that their approaching discussions might resemble those concerning bioweapons that they’d had some years ago.  She’d left him over his prominent role in designing BELFRYBATs, so he knew that she was strong-willed.

            No harm in talking about it in general terms, he thought.  “Well, you know I’ve already told you more than I’d like for my bosses to know about.  We’re starting some preliminary work towards getting into human genetic engineering.  Too many bucks to be made for our competitors to get too big of a lead on us.  So, they’re letting me out of the salt mines for about half of my working hours, to study up on this, as I see fit.  Not just narrow, technical stuff.  I’m reading about not just genetics, but also anthropology, sociobiology, and even mushy stuff like politics and sociology.  In other words, I’m goofing off a lot, in hopes that I can become their articulate spokesperson.”

            “I thought that they said that you’re too controversial for that,” she objected. “Didn’t they purposely exclude you from their most recent press conference?”

            “Oh, yeah—the preliminary announcement on the mining and anti-nuke biobugs.  I didn’t tell you much about that deal.  They were still mad at me for that deal way back when, when I introduced the Anti-Bug Critters, and got to speaking my mind about the Pope, overpopulation, abortion, and so on.” Phil snickered a bit, caught a sharp glance from Gloria, and continued.  “Anyway, I tried to persuade them that all biotechnology is controversial, regardless of how bland and ‘professional’ the packaging is.  That controversy sells, anyway.  I even passed on to the Big Bosses what the troops are saying these days.  That our slogan should be, ‘ABC—We Be Controversy!’  They wouldn’t hear it.

            “So, comes show-hits-the-road time, I’m not there, and the media beats up on our wimpy PR types, who can’t argue their way out of a paper bag, and don’t know the answers to half of the questions.  They ended up paging me, to get some answers.  The media was clamoring for me, so that they could get some outrageous scoop from the Mad Scientist, no doubt.”  Phil refrained from using some of the more colorful terms he’d been called.

            Gloria was all ears.  “So what were you guffawing about, just now?  What dastardly deeds have you been up to that you haven’t told me about?”  Phil just sat there and smirked.  “I know that laugh,” she persisted.  “Have you and Don been up to juvenile practical jokes again?”

            “Who, us?,” Phil protested.  “No way.  Never.  I was just thinking about the specifics of my discussions with the bosses, and them accusing me of being ‘unprofessional,’ and betraying them and such, what with my anti-Pope diatribe at that press conference way back when.

            “They accused me of calling the Pope worthless.  I told them they were putting words in my mouth, that I’d never say such a thing.  I told them, ‘Look, I never said that, and I never would.  The Pope is very useful.  He converts food and oxygen to feces and carbon dioxide, just as well as anyone else.  Proteins to nitrates, you see.  All the plants in the biosphere, they appreciate this vitally essential service.’  I forgot to add, maybe he even spreads plant seeds, like birds, bats, and monkeys do, if this speculation about the Pope shitting in the woods is true.  Although, I don’t know.  Does he ever eat fruits, including indigestible seeds?  Or does he limit himself to fillet mignon?”

            Gloria looked disgusted, although Phil thought he detected the trace of a smile.  “Did you really say that?”

            “Damned straight I did,” Phil replied, every bit as proud as the cat that dragged the dead rat onto its owner’s bed.

            “Why must you be such a dickhead?” she asked.  “No, really.  Why must you be so confrontational, so strident?  So arrogant, even?  I thought you said you’ve changed.  That something happened to you while you were in the hospital.  That your heart grew by three sizes, and you learned the true meaning of Christmas, or some such.  Isn’t that what you told me?”

            Chastened, Phil replied, “Yes, I did have an experience that I hope straightened me out a bit.  I sure won’t be a whore for the war-mongers again, that’s for sure.  But... You know, I really don’t think that being a spiritually advanced human being means that one’s gotta go around being a wimp.  OK, make sure the ACLU isn’t listening, but...  You know how you often say that you wish our culture wasn’t so squeamish about mentioning what Jesus said, in public?  How you wish one could quote him, in the same manner that one quotes Albert Schweitzer, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, without being regarded as a religious freak?

            “Well, let me be a religious freak.  Fuck the ACLU.  OK, a foul-mouthed religious freak, then.  Yes, Jesus said that the meek will inherit the Earth.  But, in those days ‘meek’ didn’t mean ‘limp-dick’, the way it seems to today.  ‘Meek’ applied to strong domesticated animals like oxen.  Submitted to a higher power, yes.  Weak, no way!

            “Put it another way—when someone’s a flaming asshole, or a bull-headed nincompoop totally incapable of admitting error, even if it means people must suffer by the millions, like with the Pope and his stance on birth control, then, there’s just no way to sugar-coat the message.  How does one say, you’re an evil, blockheaded pig, and make it sound nice?  ‘You’re a fucking asshole, and have a nice day’?  I’ve yet to see a way.

            “Seems to me I recall reading something about our hero getting POed one day, and storming through a temple with a whip, plowing money-changers’ tables aside, hollering and carrying on.  That, and ragging on the hypocrites, on a regular basis.  Doesn’t sound too ‘meek’ to me.”

            Gloria just grinned and nodded her head.  “OK, I see your point.  But, I do wish you’d clean up your language.  Murgatroid can hear us, you know.  And, when we join the Southern Baptist Church, when Murgatroid gets bigger, out of concern for his or her moral and spiritual welfare, you know—why, then, I’ll want for you to teach Sunday school.  You’re doing good, but you’ve got a ways to go.  The content and passionate delivery is good, but, well, we’re gonna hafta work on the ol’ style a bit, here...”

            “Ha!  Keep my kid away from those ...”

            “Now, now,” Gloria admonished him.  “Temper, temper.  Why don’t we talk about something soothing and restful.  Like, human genetic engineering, for example.  What’s the plan?  How soon am I going obsolete?  Are you gonna trade me in for the new model?”

            “Oh, in about a billion years, according to my most recent calculations,” Phil replied thoughtfully.  “That’s how long it’ll take to improve on my Pootie Pie.  Give or take a few decades.  Snoogle Woogle Poogle Woogle Boogle Woogle.”  He grinned wickedly, winking and blowing her kisses.

            “So really, now—what’s the Plan?” she insisted.

            Phil debated only momentarily.  There was no doubt that she could be trusted, he needed to share his most private thoughts with at least one intelligent, thoughtful person, and—well, I can save the really sensitive matters till later, he thought.  “Other companies are already involved in various forms of human genetic engineering.  Their approaches are rather crude and expensive.  You know, if you’ve got the truly huge bucks, you can slip out of the reach of the all-encompassing arms of Uncle Sam, go to one of those biomedical ships fifteen miles out at sea, and get your and your partner’s cells cloned to make sex cells.  Or, just get yourself cloned.  Medical science marches on.”

            Phil referred to the fact that, while the new biotechnologies weren’t actually illegal, they were the exclusive province of the rich.  The rank and file voters resented them immensely.  As such, these frivolous, immoral, Nazi, Satanic, and/or ungodly, etc., etc. (depending on who the editorializer was) activities were extremely heavily taxed and regulated—on U.S. soil, that is.  The off-shore, foreign-flagged biomedical ships, originally put to sea to fill the needs resulting from the recently-scaled-back, disastrous attempts at fully socialized medicine, now eagerly filled the resulting “gray market”.

            Phil continued, “Like Ronald Rump and Smarmy Simples.  ‘Clone me first, Babe, carry my spitting image to term, and then we’ll clone you.  No use in trying to improve on perfection.’  Or, you can go for the middle, but more expensive, route, get some of your cells cloned, make substitutions for the most grossly defective genes, and spin a few hundred sex cells off of the result.  Ditto your partner, then mix, shake and bake.  Cherry-pick the resulting blastomeres.  You know, an updated version of what we’d planned to do* way back when, before we got carried away by passion in Hawaii, took a random dip in the gene pool, and made Murgatroid.  So irrational, so impetuous of us, wouldn’t you say?

            “Anyway, that’s the middle route.  Still mix up the ol’ gene pool, but do away with the trial and error.  Reduce the number of defects you’ve gotta wade through, on those blastomeres.  But, it’s very expensive.  Can’t lay down a million or so?  Forget it.  We’ve gotta do better.  Gotta bring the prices down, to increase market size.  OK, let’s not get too cynical; this is about helping people and society, not just making money.  At least, I sure hope so.  Given that Senator Hank N. Kreutz doesn’t get elected God, so that he can go and pass laws saying that those who go out to those ships will be forced to get abortions.  Flips my lid, how him and his fascist Republican buddies can go on all day, condemning abortion, and then saying that the results of ‘ungodly experimentation’ shouldn’t be allowed to live.

            “Yes, our plans.  ABC’s strategy will be to leapfrog the competition.  BABI?  Cloning?  Who needs ‘em?!  We’re gonna—Snooglebunch, this is utterly, unspeakably secret, now-” Phil took a few bites of low-cholesterol, MSG-free, low-plutonium Chinese food, and masticated thoughtfully.

            “We’re already committed to spending about twelve billion dollars.  Yes, we have that kind of money.  Biotech has been very good to ABC.  We’re gonna buy a computer that’ll kick the snot outta anything that’s ever been built before. It’ll be built by Comp-Optic, in their geosynchronous microgravity manufacturing, telecom, blah et cetera., space station that they had the good sense of locating outside of Chinese firing range.

            “It’ll be one of these new deals where they build it with molecular beam epitaxy, at almost absolute zero, and in zero gee, ‘cause of how delicate this whole mess is.  They’ll build a humongous diamond with organic impurities that steer laser pulses around, and ‘remember’ laser-light polarities as a method of storing data.  Photonic circuits made of organic impurities in diamond crystals, analogous to the much older, less powerful electronic technology of impurities in semiconductors.  A much fancified derivative of the old bacterial protein called rhodopsin that I told you about—you know, the stuff that stores data, but only at very cold temperatures.  The spooks and spies and unspeakably horrid bioweapons designers and such-like whores for the State use the stuff as a method of carrying top-secret data that’s real easy to destroy, for security.  Just turn off the ‘fridge.  Poof!  Data’s gone.

            “But these new, totally synthetic derivatives of rhodopsin are unstable abominations in the eyes of Momma Nature.  Especially bottled up inside carbon crystals.  These ‘dirty diamonds’ won’t hold together at anything above a few degrees Kelvin.  So, they use very low-velocity molecular beams to put ‘em together, real slowly, so as to not get the dirty diamonds all hot and bothered.  Gravity would mess with these slow beams way too much down here, so it’s gotta be done in orbit.

            “Anyway, it’s just awesome.  A few dozen molecules—and, fairly small ones, mind you—in a ‘cell’, and it’s almost the equivalent of a human brain neuron.  Packed...”

            Gloria rolled her eyes and protested.  “All right, professor, let’s get on with it.  What are the boys gonna do with the toys?”

            “Well, we’ve already demonstrated the principles.  Small, dinky little things, spheres an inch or two in diameter that are the equivalent of mainframes from a few years back.  Still not cost-effective.  Just wait, though.  In a few months, we start building ‘Derrick, the Dirty Diamond’.  He’s got a name already, even.  We’re halfway there.  A sphere, about a meter and a half in diameter!  Yet it might pack roughly the same punch per volume as a human brain!  Orders and oodles of magnitude more processing power than anything ever built!

            “OK, OK—so, what are we going to do with him?  It?  What do you do with something hundreds of times smarter than a human?!  Who knows!  No, really, we do expect Derrick to finally be the first machine that can converse like a normal human being, on all subjects that humans converse about, and then quite a few more.  But that won’t happen right off the bat.

            “First thing we’ll do is, we’ll try to recoup some of our investment.  We’ll load ‘ol Derrick up with regular, mechanistic, rows-and-columns type, linear, Boolean, coldly logical software, firmware, wetware, dirtyware. Whatever the hell you call the steering mechanism of a state machine implemented in a contaminated, overgrown diamond.  Those computer nerds seem to invent a new buzzword every three femptoseconds.

            “Anyway, we’ll run Derrick as just another number-crunching hunk of inanimate matter, for maybe half a year or so.  Run applications that’ve never been practical before.  Sell his services to the highest bidders.  Academia, government, businesses.  Scientifigeeks of all sorts, applications of all sorts.  Some really neat stuff.

            “Near-Earth asteroids, for example.  Huge hunks of raw material, free for the grabbing.  Much cheaper than boosting stuff up off of Earth, or even the Moon, even with today’s lower launch costs.  All we have to do is nudge them into Earth orbit, or dump ‘em into the Lagrange points around the Moon.  Easier said than done.

            “Derrick will figure it out for us.  We explore a few asteroids, blow up a few sticks of dynamite, take a few seismic readings.  Feed ‘em to Derrick, along with precise orbits and masses of all the bodies, including all the sizable inner asteroids.  Derrick runs zillions of simulations.  You’d be surprised at how rapidly multi-body gravitational, orbital mechanics will eat up computer power.  Not just that—Derrick might even play cosmic billiards!  A nudge with a nuke here, a mass accelerator there, a collision here, and a bank shot there—actually bouncing these things off of each other, maybe, not just gravitational slingshots—can you imagine?

            “So, Derrick will tell us how to do this, on the cheap.  Tell us very precisely, how to do it most efficiently.  If it works the way we hope, that alone could pay off our costs.”

            Phil noticed that Gloria’s nutrient absorption rate exceeded his own, so he returned his attention to beer and Chinese food.  He’d not want it said that he was falling down on the job of converting proteins to nitrates, he reflected.  Keep up with the Pope.  I’m an environmental kind of a guy, after all.  So, tie up some more carbon atoms, stick ‘em to my abdominal wall, keep ‘em outta the atmosphere.  Prevent that greenhouse effect!  Be a better, greener chow-hound!

            Phil soon had the bulk of his chow at bay, and then it was Gloria’s turn to hound him.  “So, tell me more.  Cosmic pool-sharking doesn’t sound like ABC’s cup of tea, to me.  Where’s genetics figure in?  What’s this about putting a ghost in the machine?  Why?  Just to fool us into thinking that there’s a person in there?  Will Derrick really be conscious?  Whose ghost?  And, who’s gonna police this affair, to make sure you don’t violate the rights of this artificial consciousness, if that’s what you create?  Will this consciousness have a conscience?  What is the airspeed velocity...”

            “Jeezum, Poogle-bye, you’re almost as bad as the media!  OK, let’s settle down, now.  One at a time.  You in the front.  The good-looking one.  Yeah, you, babe.  Light my fire.”  Smirk, smirk, wink, wink.  “Now, what were your questions?

            “Gotta keep up on my PR skills, see.  OK.  After we recover some of our investment—maybe even make a profit, selling Derrick’s services as just a super-powered number-cruncher—then, we try to develop a ‘ghost in the machine’, as you say.  A consciousness algorithm, as Kurt Katapski—our computer guru on the case—would put it. We’ve concluded that for our purposes, nothing short of actual consciousness, equal to or exceeding the human level, will do.  Yeah, a lot of computers today can fake it, to fool at least some people.  The ol’ ‘Turing test’, you know.  Even there, the human judge asks questions, and the subject replies with words on a screen.  The judge then has to guess whether the replies are generated by a person or by a computer.

            “So, hardware and software have gotten to the point where you can fool some of the people some of the time.  Add the element of the human voice, with a full range of intonations and such, and no computer has fooled anyone yet.  That is, when the media for the test is the spoken word, computers fail miserably.  Even when the media is the typed word, a reasonably smart person, or a person who’s been coached as to what type of questions to ask, can tell the difference.  I’ve played with ‘em myself.  These machines are sorry substitutes for humans.

            “I’d always thought it was just a matter of degree, that computers span a range of consciousness, just as a reasonable person would agree that there’s a span of consciousness in the animal kingdom.  From a fly to a rat to a dog to a chimp to us.  Lately, I don’t know.  I can see Kurt’s way of thinking, that consciousness in a computer requires an algorithm entirely different from any program ever written.

            “We plan to leave large segments of Derrick as a linear logic machine.  The remainder will be wiped clean, and seeded with a ‘consciousness kernel’, if you will.  From there on, Derrick programs himself, with inputs from human coaches, parents, whatever you want to call them.  Kind of like raising a baby.  As the consciousness wakes, the humans allow it access to more and more complicated data, explaining and coaching along the way.

            “Ethics?  Rights?  A sperm whale has a brain bigger than ours, and we don’t accord them any rights.  I don’t know what’s right and wrong, here.  I suspect we really should be treating animals with high levels of consciousness better.  Hell, we accord greater rights to an anencephalic baby, who hasn’t the faintest chance of consciousness, or survival past a few weeks, than we do a live, kicking and screaming chimp, which is our kissing cousin.

            “I’d guess we’ll probably not give Derrick any ‘rights’.  We’ll just regard him as another multi-billion dollar asset.  I guess I’ll worry about it if and when I’m asked to do anything to Derrick that I don’t feel right about.  Once the consciousness develops, according to Kurt and the various gurus, then the funky molecules get permanently bent and twisted in such a way that we can’t turn the switch to Derrick on and off, or wipe him out and run the whole thing as a purely linear machine again.  In other words, it’s a one-shot deal.  We’d be unlikely to ever deliberately ‘kill’ Derrick.  Even if he turns our to be a babbling moron, he’ll be too valuable of a research device to shut down, at least for a few decades, unless this technology gets a heck of a lot cheaper, awfully fast.

            “Anyway, that makes me worry less about ethics, knowing that he’ll be valued a lot, and not wiped out on a whim.”

            “No qualms at all, about anything as far as Derrick and the ghost in the machine, then?” Gloria wanted to know.

            “Well, one thing I worry about,” Phil confessed, “Is that way on down the road, knowing us sick, war-mongering bastards, we’ll stick the likes of Derrick into the guts of super-smart bombs and missiles.  Effectively, building a consciousness for the express purpose of getting it to commit suicide.  Gives me the willies.  Suicide is one thing where I agree with the Pope.  But you can’t go around worrying about people perverting whatever you do.  Anything can be used for bad purposes.  Besides, this kind of computer will be way too expensive for such uses, for a long time to come.”

            “So, where’s the genetics come in?” Gloria prodded.

            “Oh, yeah.  Genetics.  That’s even more complicated, at least for an organism like a human being, than playing cosmic billiards with asteroids.  Nothing short of a souped-up consciousness will make this business really cost-effective.  We’ll cram Derrick with all sorts of data, most especially data about humans, from biochemistry to history, from anthropology to linguistics.  He’ll know us inside and out, as best as we can teach him.  Then, he’ll go through our entire genome, including all cataloged variants, and figure out what, if anything, all of our DNA does.  A lot of it is just ‘junk DNA’, you know.  What he can’t figure out, he’ll tell us about, and we’ll try to get more data for him.  With luck, he’ll enable us to make a quantum jump in understanding, not just mapping, the human genome.  Other species, too, but that’s secondary.

            “And that’s not all, by any means.  We’re hoping that, hooked to the right tools, he’ll actually be able to help us mass-automate genetic analysis of human cells.  That is, computers, for a long time now, have become the more and more important part of the human-machine partnership, in designing the next generation of machine.  Derrick himself wouldn’t be even vaguely imaginable, without who knows how many generations of humans and machines before him.

            “Anyway, with any luck, a truly conscious computer will do wonders for designing the next generation.  Derrick won’t just be a dumb beast, doing whatever his software tells him to.  He’ll tell us how to design very specialized tools and computers.  These in turn will disassemble human cells, duplicate and analyze all the important genes, fix and improve whatever’s busted, and then generate some sex cells.  Do that for both parents, mix the sex cells, pick a decent blastomere, implant it, and wallah!

            “What will we get?  Affordable, readily available, automated gene-splicing.  Not status-symbol trophy-babies that only Ronald Rump and Smarmy Simples can afford, but a technique for everyone who wants it.  Children who are still genetically the offspring of their parents, not the results of some mad breeding scheme.  Satisfy your biological urge to have children that are your own, mix your genes randomly and keep a diverse gene pool, but still make huge improvements in the quality of the gene pool.  Don’t forget, right now, each human carries about four genes that, if matched with an identical defective gene from another parent, would be fatal to the offspring.  Any year now, we’ll be able to fix that, and much more.  Like junk DNA that accumulates over evolutionary time, and gums up the works.”

            “OK, so, any worries come to mind, on what unwanted side effects this bright new day of genetic engineering might bring with it?” Gloria prodded.  “What kind of guidelines are y’all thinking about?  Surely ABC will have a list of things it will and won’t do, regardless of money?”

            “Yea, verily, we’re working on a list.  Obviously, we’ll stay within the law.  If the laws are too restrictive, we’ll set up in offshore biotech ships.  Above and beyond that, even if the laws are real liberal, we’ll not do certain things.

            “We’ll not introduce enough non-human genes to make any humans that can no longer interbreed with today’s humans.  Certainly not till society at large clearly approves of such an undertaking.  We’ll not allow the sex balance to get too lopsided.  If too many parents choose one particular sex, then this sex will become available to only limited numbers of parents, chosen randomly.  We’ll not agree to provide our services to any parent who won’t eliminate what are very, very clearly detrimental genes.  We’ll not provide our services unless there are two committed parents, who’ve had a stable relationship for at least a year.

            “Yes, of course a hot point will be, do we allow gay parents to have babies, and do we allow parents to select whether or not babies have genes that predispose them to being gay.  Being a bleeding heart in at least this  particular category,  I’m firmly in the camp of not being judgmental.  We’d not be enabling anyone to do anything they can’t do already.

            “Remember a while back when we read about the first gay couple to both become biological parents to the same child, although they were both men?  Through a surrogate mother, and all the stink that raised?  So, we’re not introducing anything new.  We’d just be improving the results of such choices, and making it a lot cheaper.  I wish gays could get married, but since they can’t, then I think both straights and gays should have our services, regardless of whether or not they’re married.  Otherwise, I’d like to see marriage as a prerequisite to getting our services.

            “I guess the Bible bangers will just have to live with this speck in my eye—ha!  I feel so bad for them.  How can we be so mean to them?  Not even letting them run our lives?  But, I really do suspect that things will go our way, when that time comes.  Even if it’s only out at sea, beyond the long arms of the feds.  Unless—God forbid, and I’m not enough of a pessimist to think that it’ll come to pass—unless Mein Fuhrer, Senator Chancre on my Butthole—I mean, Hank N. Kreutz—has his way, and gets a law passed that says ‘ungodly abominations’ must be aborted.

            “I guess that’s my main fear, is that we’ll get overly emotional about this all, and over-regulate it.  Stomp on people’s freedoms to use these new technologies for decent ends.  I don’t worry about that bugaboo of the non-improved among us getting discriminated against, when it comes time get insurance and such.  Legalize freedom, I say.  As long as the buyers and sellers of anything contract willingly, and live by their contracts, then go for it.  Why should I be forced to buy insurance I don’t need?  Why should my charity choices be made for me by excessive regulation of insurance, or other forms of socialism?

            “Besides, you get more of whatever you subsidize, including genetic defects.  Make the more healthy cover the less healthy, and there’s less incentive to be healthy.  Genetic engineering can help us be healthy.  Some would call me a Nazi for that, but, tough.  Remember reading about poor parents pushing their kids to act crazy, so as to qualify for Supplemental Security Income for disabled kids?  Not giving the kids their medicine, even, to stay qualified?  Gotta get that ‘crazy cash’.  That’s what you get for making people’s charity choices for them.  That’s why ABC will set certain standards.  Else, who knows, people would be asking for special, low-maintenance vegetable babies.  Racks and racks full of ‘em.  Take ‘em off the shelf and dust ‘em occasionally, and keep those checks rolling in!

            “Actually, the way things are right now, with genetic engineering only available to the rich, we’re well on the way to creating two genetic classes—the clean and the unclean; the selected, and the genetic underclass.  I really, really hope Derrick will help us bust on through, and make genetic engineering available to just about everyone.  We’ll all be better off, once the Bible-bangers stop trying to keep us all on the righteous path, and accept freedom, if not for themselves, at least for others.

            “So there, I’m a Nazi.  My only other significant worry makes me sound a bit less like a Nazi.  That is, I’m worried about the big bad feds grabbing hold of this under a fascist regime.  If socialism and bleeding-heart liberalism keeps on making everyone’s decisions for them, and keeps on making them stupidly, then we may see a severe backlash someday.  OK, not Senator Chancre, since he’s so firmly against biotech, but someone like him who wants to use the new tools for Big Brother.

            “First thing, they’ll say, ‘Enough of making the taxpayers pay for the reproductive choices of the welfare mooches.  You want help, you get sterilized first.  You and your kids, both.  After all, the new technology will let you bypass your sterile reproductive systems, as soon as you get off of welfare, and can afford a small fee.’  Fine and dandy, I’ll say.  I’m not a total bleeding heart.  Or, I’m a bleeding heart for the taxpayers.  Actually, as you know, I’d much rather just see the government returning charity to where it belongs—the private sector.

            “Anyway, I love my country, but fear my government.  Once they put that kind of system in place, under one set of rules, they just change the rules.  You can check out, but you can never leave.  You don’t get what you signed up for.  Just like Social Security.  Retirement system, my ass!  Purely another case of the State making our charity choices for us, now.

            “So, once the feds put such a system in place, of controlling the reproduction of the mooches, who knows how they’ll raise the bar?  No kids unless you make campaign contributions, vote National Socialist Republican Workers’ Party, whatever.  Just like they said the income tax would never be more than a snippet, and only for the richest, way back in the early twentieth century.  Just can’t trust the bums.

            “And, once you’re sterilized, it’s not like you can go to the local black-market Mom-and-Pop baby shop.  This stuff is way too complicated.  A totalitarian government could really make use of such a choke point.  Not that that means we should refrain from genetic engineering.  The feds can always beat us on the heads with hammers—more than they do already, I mean.  Shall we outlaw hammers?

            “OK, I’ve gone on long enough.  What do you think, Poogle Pie?” Phil inquired.

            “I don’t know, Phil.  I do know, it’s always an interesting pastime, listening to my favorite libertarian rabble-rouser.  I haven’t thought about it much.  When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.  Meantime, let’s engineer this dirt off of our plates.”

            “Sit down, Pootie Pie.  I’ll take care of it.  Your delicate condition and all, you know.  Why don’t you just stay barefoot and pregnant in the dining room.”

            “Nah.  Murgatroid needs exercise, too.”

            Gloria found a topic with which to prolong their genetic engineering discussion while they cleaned up.  “Come to think of it, I can add two cents or so.  Here’s another one to add to your list of worries.  You’ve probably heard it before, but, will all parents be really worried about their engineered babies’ appearance?  Will we all soon look the same?  Will we all be sculpted beauties from the same mold?”

            “I think there’s probably some reason to worry there,” Phil ‘fessed up.  “Not a whole bunch, though.  I think people will still value individuality, and will certainly value passing on their own genes whenever they aren’t grossly defective, above and beyond having babies to follow the latest fashions.  Yes, it would be nice to change our stupid biases, but, study after study has shown that most people treat ‘beautiful people’ better than ugly people.  ‘Beautiful people’ get paid better, laid better, and ignored less often.  It sure ain’t fair in my book.  Then again, that’s true of a lot of things.

            “And it’s not like ideas of human beauty—I mean, ignoring clothes, hairstyles, makeup, and such—are really that terribly cultural.  All human cultures agree, by and large, that smooth skin is good, zits and diseases are bad, facial and body symmetry is good, and so on.  So what, if we all start to be engineered to be beautiful, and there’s hardly any more ugly people to be discriminated against?  It would be better for us all to grow up, and ignore appearances, but you know what the chances of that are!  Anyway, would engineered beauty be so bad?  Stupid, vapid actresses and models would have to find honest jobs.  Can’t say my heart would bleed.

            “Besides, look at cars, clothes, art, and culture.  There’s wild variety, even though we could all follow exactly the same standards.  Variety is worthwhile, even in places where there isn’t this instinct to pass on one’s own genes.  Even people who don’t stop to think much about the value of a diverse gene pool, will want to have their kids be as much like them as possible, with minor improvements.  Like, less disease and defects.

            “But you never know.  Human idiocy knows no bounds, sometimes.  Some animals have taken ‘beauty’, or sexual attractiveness traits—us biogeeks call them ‘secondary sex characteristics’, when traits have no real biological function, other than attracting mates—anyway, some animals have taken such gee-gaws to ridiculous extremes.  Probably so much that it’s helped lead to their demise.

            “The Irish Elk, with its humongous antlers, the size of a small tree, comes to mind.  Antlers that large probably helped them go extinct.  What’s the human analogy?  Breasts.  They really don’t need to be anywhere near as large as they are, to do their thing, feeding babies.  Certainly not at times when you’re not nursing.  They’re just toys for men.  Secondary sex characteristics.  Will we engineer them so huge, to satisfy silly, infantile men, that we’ll go extinct, ‘cause all the women get back trouble, and die?  Interesting to speculate about.  But, no, the new biotech means that we’ll reproduce without women, one of these days.  Only if we also do something silly with men, at the same time, would we have to worry about it.  What would you propose?”

            Gloria thought awhile, then suggested, “Maybe we could genetically engineer humongous rooster combs and turkey wattles on you guys.  I think you’d look real good with a set.  Bright red.”

            In a few minutes, they were done cleaning up, in bed, and performing their bedtime ritual of waving pointers at the large, thin-film screen above their waterbed.  They split the screen, trading comments about the news texts and pictures.  What they saw and commented on, was more of the same, only more so.

            “Hey, check this out, Pootie Pie!  Defendants with multiple personality disorder.  The lawyers are no longer satisfied with making a circus out of swearing each of the personalities in, separately, and debating about what should happen if only one of the personalities is guilty.  Here’s some public defender in Los Angeles, working on yet another way to milk the system!  Had some shrink induce multiple personalities in him, to match the personalities in his defendant.  Serve the client better.  For his diligence, he’s expecting the city to pay him and the shrink twelve times, once for each of the lawyer personalities.”

            “So?  Big deal.  Look over here.  This case, the whiner actually got his way.  Some guy sued and won, ‘cause he’s disabled, and was discriminated against.  See?  Couldn’t show up for work, ‘cause he was ‘motivationally impaired’.  Whaddaya think of that?” Gloria declared triumphantly.

            Phil just shook his head, and searched for yet another outrage.  Let’s see if I can find a better one.  It took him only a few minutes.  “Here’s a really sad one.  Half of Americans surveyed think that the primary responsibility for job creation lies with—guess who?  Yup.  None other.  The government.”

            “I guess we get what we deserve,” Gloria commented.  “Look at this ad.  A how-to book for retired people, on how best to piss away, and hide, your money, so as to qualify for Social Security, under the new rules.”

            “I’ll tell ya, Pootie Pie, there’s gonna be a revolution.  I just hope it’s at the ballot box, and not with bullets.  I just wish people would discover the Libertarian Party.  There is a choice other than witchburning lawyers and socialist lawyers.  There is a party that actually believes in a smaller government.”

            “I agree, Sugar Lump,” Gloria replied.  “I’m afraid that if we don’t straighten this mess out with some common sense, it’ll backlash to some other ridiculous extreme.  But we won’t solve the world’s problems tonight.  I’m pretty bushed.  Let’s take it in.”

            “I suppose that means you’re not as mimsy as the borogroves, tonight, then?” Phil asked, nudging her with his hips.

            “Yeah, you could say that.  I’m old, and my skin is cold.  Not mimsy.  Not tonight.”

            I guess that means I won’t bring up that touchy subject related to my work, tonight, then, either, Phil thought, glancing at the few pages he’d folded into his book.  There’s always later.  It’s not like I’m going to actually do anything with it any time soon, anyway.  “Good night, Snoogie Bunch,” he said, turning off the screen and the lights.  “I love you”.

            “I love you too,” she mumbled drowsily.  “Night-night”.

 

CHAPTER  2

            “Who is to say that I am not specially favored by God?”  Adolf Hitler

                                                                                    (1889-1945)

 

            Senator Hank N. Kreutz, R-Hell—that is, Republican from Alabama—sat in his office in Montgomery, looking over accounts of his war chests.  Just a few paltry million dollars to go, and he’d have some real money—enough to make a serious stab at the Presidency.  Too bad I’ve gotta suck so much butt, listen to so many morons, just to collect chump change, he thought.  I’d much rather be doing God’s work, more directly, right now, rather than trying to get into position to do so.  OK, time for the next yahoo.  Hope he’s not as much of a bore as the last one.

            Straighten yourself out! he commanded himself.  Attitudes show.  This man is one of the more important, influential contributors.  Even if his dollars aren’t as plentiful as those of some of my donors, the Reverend Pat Smuckler has quite the faithful following.  He’s also quite a righteous leader.  Not at all like those other potential contributors to my noble cause, ol’ Mr. Ronald Rump and his wife, what’s-her-name.

            Hank sat there for a moment or two, getting his thoughts together.  I hope Reverend Pat won’t mind me keeping him waiting for just a few seconds.  Rather that, than my screwing this up, for lack of mental preparation.  At least a million bucks is riding on this deal, here.  Gotta remember, though—principles are more important than money.  Especially when there’s a significant chance that the media might learn that I’ve taken money from people who’ve said or done things that I disagree with.  Like, Ronald Rump.  Although, I sure hated losing that money!

            The Senator’s mind drifted off to his disappointment over the Ronald Rump deal.  Just how petty can a man get, he wondered.  Just ‘cause if I had my way, most people like him and his wife would be in the slammer, and their clones and other monster-babies would be aborted.  As if the results of ungodly experiments were human anyway.  Most of all, as if he thought I couldn’t find some way of sheltering important donors from my policies, if only he and his wife had the sense to be discreet, instead of showing off.  Status babies!  What a concept!  And, dammit—oops, I mean, gol dang it—as if he had absolutely no understanding of the Republican philosophy of the Big Tent.  How many times must we say it, we don’t care whether or not you disagree with us, when we say we want to put the likes of you in jail, you’re still welcome to vote for us, and to contribute to our cause?  We want to help you, for Christ’s sake!

            Come on now—no time to be crying over spilt money.  Move on.  What will Reverend Pat want?  Will I have to compromise my principles over this next sack of cash?  Remember that racist rat, Reverend Jimmy Snaker, who wanted me to spread the word about how Jesus doesn’t love the niggers?  Oh, be sensitive, to be sure, when you’re explaining this, Jimmy had hastened to add.  And, be sure to explain that niggers come in both colors, both Black and White.  Hank shuddered at the thought.  The very term was anathema to any sensible politician who wanted to get elected in the twenty-first century.

            He remembered how he’d tried to explain to Jimmy, “Now, Jimmy, you know how we’ve had some very frank discussions.  How I trust you, implicitly.  How we both know, and have shared, since we’re both men of God, how it seems that I have a destiny, how I might be specially favored by God, to spread His Message.  But, you know, sometimes being specially favored by God means being sensible.  Politically astute.”

            Jimmy had looked a bit disgusted, so Hank had hastened to add, “God helps those who help themselves, you know.  But the main reason that I—or you, or anyone else, for that matter—can be specially favored by God, is that we study God’s Word.  The Infallible Word.  Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, we’ll never get away with it.  Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t some truth in what you’re saying.  I don’t necessarily disagree.  It’s just that one has to live in the real world.  Some very ungodly men have said exactly what you’re saying, and people remember.  We can’t do it.  It’s not even Biblical, despite what some would claim.  Not that I don’t believe you’re sincere.  Now, if you’ll just steer your gunsights to the side a bit, and pull with the rest of us Brothers in Christ, and try to straighten out, say, gay sodomites, who quite clearly are in violation of God’s commandments, then...”

            Jimmy wouldn’t hear of it.  He insisted in trying to sway Hank.  Hank, being an honest man of conscience, wouldn’t change his stance.  Or even pretend to, temporarily, despite his being sorely tempted.  Jimmy ended up wanting to make only a small, token contribution, since, at least, they both agreed on gays, biotechnology blasphemers, and other sinners.  Hank ended up turning down even this small offer, for fear of the media getting wind of his taking money from a racist.  A man has got to stand by his principles, after all.

            Hank wrenched his mind back to the present.  Oh, how I’d like to be back in Washington—and, not as a measly Senator, but as the President, he lamented to himself.  But it’s late May, and we’ve just started the summer telepresence session, where we spend only half of our time attending Congressional meetings via telepresence, and I’ve got to be back here, being in touch with my constituents, and begging for money.  So that, some sunny day, I can really do God’s will.

            All right.  Look to the future.  Call in Reverend Pat, and see if we can squeeze a few hundred thousand bucks from him.  A million or more, with any luck at all.  Shouldn’t be too hard; after all, he’s not a crackpot, like Jimmy, and it’s for a good cause, so I should be able to convince him.  After all, we’re both men of God.  Brothers in Christ.  Call him in here.  Make my pitch.  Get some legal tender for the cause.

            Hank called his secretary and let him know that he was ready.  The Reverend Pat Smuckler tromped in, followed by Hank’s aides, Dave Bose and Chuck LeSage.  Hank greeted Pat with a long, warm handshake, proclaiming his joy at being honored with a visit from so eminent a Christian leader.  Dave and Chuck were treated merely to brief thanks from Hank, for having brought Pat from the airport.

            Not that Hank wasn’t deeply appreciative of Dave and Chuck—they were both very useful, in different ways.  Dave could be counted on to stand by his boss, no matter what.  OK, so, maybe he wasn’t much of an independent, original thinker—still, he could be counted on in a pinch.  Independent thinking was Chuck’s department.  Chuck was the one to keep Hank from getting carried away, and doing things that were, well, too extreme.  Even if he was a pain in the ass, sometimes, he kept Hank out of trouble.  There’s a place in the world for level-headed, practical people, Hank would sometimes say to Chuck.  So, Dave and Chuck both had their places.  When in need of reinforcement, Hank would look primarily to Dave, and when in doubt, and needing another view, he would look to Chuck.

            After fleeting pleasantries, they got down to business.  Not before praying for Divine Guidance, though, to be sure.  Pat suggested, “Before we get started, Brother Kreutz, let us invite the One Who Died on the Cross for us.”

            “By all means,” Hank replied, bowing his head.  Dave and Chuck followed suit.  “But, just call me Hank,” he managed to insert, before Pat had completed drawing a big, solemn breath for his supplication to The Lord.  Hank didn’t mind much, being called Senator or Brother Kreutz, or Hank; he just hated being called Hank Kreutz, without the middle initial.  Not that he really thought that anyone would confuse him with his old Uncle, the state representative, Hank B. Kreutz—that was just what Hank N. Kreutz would say, when people—the media, for example—would drop his middle initial.  The real reason was simply that “Hank Kreutz” ran together, and sounded too inelegant—roughly like a single, guttural word, like an onomatopoeia for a sneeze.

            It was one of Hank’s worst nightmares.  They’d have fun with his name.  He’d show up at some big, formal Party, and they’d announce his arrival.  “Ladies and gentlemen, here he is—the Honorable Senator—Hank Kreutz!  Hank Kreutz!  Hank Kreutz!”  And some wise-acre would smart off, “Gesundheit!  And, now—Senator who?!”  So, Senator Hank N. Kreutz made sure that no one dropped that “N”.

            Reverend Smuckler launched into his oration.  “Lord, we invoke your gentle spirit here as we gather in Your Name.  Guide us as we make these important decisions in how best to bring Your Kingdom to Earth.  Let us be good guardians of the resources that You have given to us; let us practice good stewardship in Your Name.  Let us make wise use of all the money that Your flocks have donated.  Let us be good shepherds.

            “Lord, your enemies are all about.  Godlessness of all sorts besmirches the land.  Drug dealers, prostitutes, pornographers, Jewish bankers, secular Satanists, Freemasons, conspirators, abortionists, sodomites, feminists, and vain, arrogant, would-be gods—biotechnology-worshipping blasphemers—are laying siege to Your Kingdom.

            “Lord, give us the courage to do you work.  Let us smite your enemies.  Give us the power, Lord...”

            “Amen!” Hank inserted.  He couldn’t help it; he just got carried away, listening to Pat’s powerful prayer.  “Tell it like it is, Reverend!  May the Lord hear our prayers,” he finished.  They all opened their eyes a bit, and Dave and Chuck chimed in with “Amens,” also.  Chuck’s “Amen” seemed distinctly more anemic than Dave’s, though, and Chuck passed a subtle frown in Hank’s direction.  Yeah, I know, Chuck; you think we should steer clear of conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers and such, Hank thought.  You think the media might have us for lunch.  But, you know, sometimes you’ve got to stand up for what’s right.

            Reverend Pat seemed annoyed; he wasn’t done.  He bowed his head and shut his eyes again, and continued.  “As I was saying, Lord, we ask for Your help in these trying times, and ask that we be anointed as powerful warriors against ungodliness.  Let us be your soldiers.  Let us bring the light to all the unseeing non-Christians of this world.”

            Hearing this, Hank renewed his determination.  Pat was right.  The world was full of Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, atheists, Hindus, and all other sorts of unbelievers—not to mention “Christians” who weren’t really Christians—and Hank and his Brothers had their work cut out for them.  All those unbelievers had to be given their chances to be saved from Eternal Damnation—and, not just mild chances—emphatic chances!  Unmistakable, forceful chances!  So much to do, so little time!  And, so little power.  But that could be remedied.

            Pat continued, “Lord, let us make the best of our opportunities.  Let us make the best of what You have given us.  We know that much is expected from those to whom much is given.  And let us not forget to be thankful.  Thank You, oh Lord, for having given me the power to resist temptation, for having led me to practice good stewardship, for having helped me to save so much of the money that has been donated by Your faithful servants, rather than having squandered it on mansions and fast women, as some of Your less faithful preachers have done.  Thank you, oh Lord, that I am not like them.  We would ask, now, that what we give to your servants, such as the Honorable Senator Hank N. Kreutz, will go to achieve Your Will.  May Your Spirit move us all.”

            Pat paused, and seemingly ready to wrap it up.  But he added one more thought.  “Last but not least, Lord, we thank you that the Democrats are so vile and vain, so stupid and extremist, that they don’t know when to quit.  That they take political correctness, socialism, criminal-coddling, and paternalistic busy-bodyism to such ridiculous extremes, that good men such as Senator Kreutz will one day be able to take over.  Lord, we ask that they continue their idiocy, so that they may be swept from office, and replaced with those who would do Your Will.

            “In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

            “Amen!” Hank, Dave, and Chuck added, in one voice.

            “OK.  Let’s get to it,” Pat charged right in.  “You don’t need to give me the usual pitch.  I, and my viewers, my congregation, are already quite convinced that your causes are, indeed, noble ones.  Biblical ones.  Especially compared to the aims of the other ‘leaders’ in Sin City.  I don’t know how Godly individuals like you and your staff can survive in such a place.

            “Anyway, I’ll not waste your valuable time having you persuade me of the merits of your cause.  What’s really on my mind, is, like...,” Pat lowered his voice a little, looking around furtively.  “How do we help your good causes most efficiently, without my donors losing their tax deductions?  And, without running afoul of laws limiting campaign contributions.  How do we do it?”

            Hank brushed Pat’s objections aside with an expansive gesture.  “Campaign contributions?  Who said anything about campaign contributions?  We don’t need campaign contributions.  No sweat.  No problem at all.  We simply have you make your generous, charitable donation to the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation, which is entirely a non-profit institution.  Yes, I’m the chairman.  But it’s a figure-head post.  The real power is wielded by Heinrich Lubyankavich, who has nothing to do with my campaign, or my staff.  And we can document that.

            “Yes, the Freedom Foundation does mention my name quite a bit.  My name is part of its name, after all.  And my philosophies, and those of the Foundation, agree to a large extent.  But it takes no stance on whether or not I should be elected President.  It is, after all, a non-profit charity.  It makes large contributions to building churches—both buildings and organizations—in suitable areas.  That, and educating people about returning this nation to its lost glory, and about Freedom.

            “Most especially, freedom from gangs, crime, and drugs.  Freedom from pornography, from violence against the unborn, and from cultural decadence.  Freedom from the ungodly—especially gays, and their pernicious, perverted influences.  Them, and, of course, biotechnology-worshipping fools.

            “Don’t worry about not being able to contribute to my campaign, directly.  The Freedom Foundation stands for the same things that I stand for.  If you help them, you help me.  If we educate people to vote for the things that I believe in, of course we’ll be helping them to vote for me.”

            “Great!” Pat exclaimed, a wide smile brightening his sometimes-dour face.  “Sold!  I’ll definitely chip in, then, to the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation.  I like it.  It does, indeed, seem to dove-tail with what my followers and I espouse.”

            Pat’s smile faded, as he paused in thought.  He went on to say, “I’m worried, though, about strategy and tactics, and whether you might be open to a few suggestions.”

            Oh-oh, here comes the hook! Hank worried.  Sure hope I can swallow whatever he’s got cooked up, without committing political suicide!  I’d hate to lose his support.

            “You know how the media, and your opposition, have been blathering about how we would take away peoples’ freedoms, and call it freedom.  Some crackpots have even been saying that what we really need is freedom from freedom froms.  Well, to some extent, I hear them.  Like, we need freedom from the Democrats’ freedom froms.  Their freedom from want has translated to, freedom from making one’s own charity choices.  To that extent, I agree with those crackpot libertarians.  But, of course, they want freedom to violate God’s commandments, and we can’t have that.  Give them freedom to bend their minds with ungodly drugs; next thing they’ll demand, is more freedom to murder.  Even murdering those who’ve already been born, and haven’t committed any crimes, as I warn my followers.”

            Hank just sat there, nodding his head.  Freedom from freedoms froms?  Ha!  Libertarian crap-trap.  Any fool can tell you that the best way to sell a policy of taking their freedoms away, is to call it freedom.  And, what’s wrong with that?  Especially when the freedom they want, is the freedom to violate God’s will?  OK, get on with it.  Tell me something new.

            “Anyway, it seems that some of the opposition’s foul lies are taking hold,” Pat continued.  “I want to help you fight back.  Where they claim you’re just wanting to take peoples’ freedoms away, we’ve got to have sound arguments with which to fight back.  Like, Biblical arguments.  Now, I know that you’ve been able to effectively back yourself up with Leviticus 18:23 and 20:13, where it says that God hates gay sex, and that gays should be killed.  I’m proud of you on that account.

            “But, I’ve yet to hear or read anything from you or your organizations to Biblically justify our stance against biotechnology.  I can provide you with one.  See Leviticus 19:19, where it says one shouldn’t crossbreed domestic animals, or plant two kinds of seed in the same field.  Now, obviously, if God doesn’t want us to mix plants and animals, how would He feel about us mixing up humans, who were made in His Image, with the animals?  You know, how they want to sneak a few animals genes into humans, here and there.  On the pretext of ‘improving’ us, who are made in God’s Image.  Add this to your list of Freedoms: Freedom from Bestiality.”

            Hank was pleased.  Not only was Pat not asking him to do anything politically suicidal, he was also adding to Hank’s ammunition.  “Chuck—write that down, will you?  Leviticus 19:19, and, Freedom from Bestiality.  Good material for my speeches.”  Chuck nodded and jotted it down.

            Pat was pleased, too.  “See, Hank, I’m not just bringing you money.  I’m also bringing you sound, Biblical advice.  I’m concerned for your spirit, your soul, as well as for this country.  You know what I’d recommend for you?  Read Leviticus, from start to finish.  Lots of good stuff in there.  God’s Word.  That’s what I think you need.  That, and Deuteronomy, too, come to think of it.

            “Now, we’ve got to keep on thinking of effective, Bible-based ways to fight back against the liberals, media, and other unbelievers.  Another thing that they harp on, is how we’re against abortion, yet we advocate abortion for the results of ungodly biotechnology.  I think your idea of using existing laws, with minor modifications, to solve this problem, is a good twist.  Abortion is legal, since our laws say that a fetus isn’t a human being.  So if we can abort them, then surely we can abort those who weren’t even made in God’s image.  And, if the parents of these monsters wait till they’re born to bring them into the U.S., then they’re obviously not citizens, so we can kick ‘em out.  Kinda clever, really.

            “Still, the opposition is scoring a few points in the minds of the uneducated public.  Calling us hypocrites.  We’ll just keep on educating them, and they’ll see the light.  Those who are made by God, are made in God’s image, and those who are made by man’s technology, aren’t.  It’s that simple.  Aborting a monster isn’t murder, like murdering one of God’s children.  Didn’t we learn our lesson about messing with God’s plans, with those awful BELFRYBATs that they cooked up?”

            “I’m with you, Reverend,” Hank interjected.  “You were talking about strategy and tactics, and Bible-based arguments.  You have any more specific suggestions?”  Hank hated to hear himself say that, for fear of Pat coming up with something unpalatable, but, hey, gotta keep this geezer buttered up.  After all, he’s got the bucks.

            “Well, Senator, I’m getting to it.  What I was going to say is, abortion isn’t what it used to be.  For many reasons.  Some people can’t see the difference between monsters and human beings.  They’re calling us hypocrites.  And pills have made abortion such a decentralized, private murder-affair between doctors and their victims.  We just can’t rally ‘em around the abortion clinics anymore, like we used to.

            “We need to get the public focused on a well-chosen evil.  Something that’s located in centralized places, in each major city, and in lots of universities.  Something like abortion clinics used to be, where we can say, see, here’s where the evil is committed.  Centralized places that are easily accessible to protesters and the media.  We need visibility—lots of it—in a fight against an un-Biblical Evil.  Gays and biotechnology?  They help, but there’s just not enough of ‘em.  Gays are what, maybe three percent at most, of the population?  Any only the filthy rich can afford monster-babies, at least for now.  We need a new scapegoat.”

            Oh, no! thought Hank.  Here comes the crackpot idea.  Here comes the fanaticism so extreme, that I can’t let the media see me cozying up with it.  I hope it’s not racism, or something equally discredited.

            “Ahem,” Chuck nervously broke in.  “A scapegoat?  If the media ever figures out that this is a conscious strategy of ours, they’ll have a field day.  We’ll never hear the end of it.  And—is such an approach really sound, or ethical?  What if it turns around and bites us?”

            Shut up, you moron! Hank thought.  Who asked for your irrelevant opinion anyway?  And who proposes that we would ever tell the media what we’re doing and why, anyway?

            Fortunately for Chuck’s ego, Reverend Smuckler did the talking.  He called Chuck down far more gently that Hank would’ve done.  “Ethical?  Ethical, schmethical!  Ethics is just human beings philosophizing.  Biblical!  Biblical, son!  That’s what we’ve got to concern ourselves with, is, is it Biblical?  Does it follow God’s Word?!  God’s infallible word!  GOD’s WORD, not men’s words.”

            The Reverend dug into his briefcase, bringing out four small Bibles and passing them around.  “This is real important, that we do what we do, in accordance with God’s Will.  I suppose we should’ve studied His Word before, at this meeting, here.  But, let’s get to it.  We must dispel all of our doubts.  Yes, indeed, our popular culture doesn’t like the idea of scapegoats.  Yes, some people have used scapegoats for ill ends.  But, it is Biblical.  In the hands of Godly men, scapegoats can be used for God’s ends.  Turn with me if you will, to Leviticus 16:20.”

            Pat thumbed his way to the right section rapidly, followed by Hank and Dave.  Chuck fumbled around, while Pat helped him to finally find the right section, in a subtly condescending manner.  Finally, they all had it.  Pat’s voice, though quiet, somehow seemed to boom with authority.

            “When he finishes atoning for the holy place, and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat.

            “Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel, and all of their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness.

            “And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.”

            Pat closed his Bible, and commented, “I don’t suppose I need to add that if it’s OK to lay one’s own sins on an innocent goat, then obviously it’s OK to punish a scapegoat for its own sins.  So, Senator, once again, you can see what powerful and helpful Holy Words we have here in Leviticus.”

            Hank admitted, “Yes, Reverend, I have to admit that I’m amazed at your command of the Bible.  I will indeed see if I can’t find some time to read the sections that you recommend, more often.”  To himself he said, Holy Shit!, does this guy have the Bible memorized, or what?!  Could be very useful, to recall this kind of information on command.  I’ve got to get better at this kind of thing.  “Senator and Biblical Scholar” sounds pretty impressive, yes?

            Out loud he said, “A scapegoat.  OK, a scapegoat, then.  But, only a very carefully selected one.  What have you got in mind, Reverend?”

            “Yes, Senator, I know we have to stay in the realm of the politically feasible.  A very carefully selected one indeed.  One that fits the criteria I mentioned, plus, is an important part of the conspiracies of Evil that we face.  I propose that evolutionism fits the bill.  It pushes the idea that we aren’t made in the image of God, and it’s clearly not Biblical.  Plus, natural history museums and universities with geology, paleontology-type facilities would make excellent rallying places.”

            Senator Hank N. Kreutz sat there in majestic silence, pondering the idea.  Hmmm.  Maybe.  Just maybe.  Rally the public.  Get some visibility.  Even, get those damned, obnoxious, “principled” lovers of evolution, sociobiology, books, ideas, and fossils, to stick their necks out in protest.  Get a really good tally of who the really crazy intellectual free-thinking fools are, who value their un-Biblical ideas more than their own skins.  Intellectuals are dangerous, but intellectuals who value their ideas even more than their hides—well, they can spell real trouble.  Let’s flush ‘em out now, tally their numbers, while they don’t realize exactly what they’re doing.  Their day will come later!  Troublemakers!

            “Not bad, Reverend, not bad.  Not too bad at all.  A prime way to move our great nation back towards the Bible.  But, how do we do it?  We’re already trying as best as we can, to get Biblical creation science taught in the schools.  We’re trying to get the local, grass-roots parents empowered, so that they—the Godly ones, that is—can straighten out the public schools.  Other than that, I really don’t see what else we can do.  What are you suggesting?”

            Pat leaned over a bit, and lowered his voice.  “What I’m saying, Senator, is that we need to quietly get the word out, and we need to get as many people involved as we can, both of us, at as many levels as we can.  We need to all strike at the same time.  We need to get big protests and civil-disobedience-type activities going on.  You know, people chaining themselves to the doors of the natural history museums, that kind of thing.

            “But mostly I was hoping we could get your Bible Youth involved.  Sneak in there in the middle of the night, and trash books, research facilities and such.  Destroy those Satanic fossils.  Eliminate the Evil at the root.  If there’s no books and fossils, there’ll be a heck of a lot less evolutionary heresy.  Less people saying that we’re just another animal, that acting like animals is OK.”

            Hank got wide-eyed.  “Now, you know I have nothing to do, officially, with the Bible Youth, at all.  OK, so, maybe they like me a bit, since they believe what I believe.  They might even listen to what I say, now and then.  But, I’m not their boss.  Not at all.  I can’t do it.  Even if I could, I wouldn’t, ‘cause the media would scream to high Heaven, about what a book-burning barbarian I am.”

            “Yes, yes, I understand,” Pat said smoothly, “You’re not the boss.  We all know that.  I’ll bet, though, that if the both of us got the word out, quietly, through just the right channels, then, maybe we could get them to do it.  Then, we could publicly speak out against their techniques.  Their aims are good, you know, but we deplore their methods.  Be peacemakers at the same time as we get some publicity, and action for a good cause.  Have our cake and eat it, too.  And, make it clear to all that, like you say, the Bible Youth aren’t your stooges.  They don’t listen to everything you say.”

            Hey, this guy is sharp!, Hank thought.  Sign him up!  “Well, I don’t know,” he said, doubtfully.  He cast a glance at Dave, straightened his tie, and looked at Dave again.  It was the signal meaning, “Has our current guest been checked for bugs?”  Pat was an established conservative of long and good repute, but you never know.  He could be a “sleeper” mole, hiding his true nature all this time.  One couldn’t take a risk of getting busted big-time, of being caught on tape, committing to this kind of thing, no matter how small the risk.  Dave didn’t notice the gesture, but Chuck was looking at Hank a bit wide-eyed.  Yeah, it figures, Hank thought.  You’re being a chicken-shit again.  Afraid we’ll get embroiled in a crock of shit.  Well, have some balls.  Can’t make eggs without squeezing a few chickens.

            “I’ll have to think about it a bit,” Hank said out loud.  “Can’t just jump into this kind of thing, without thinking and praying about it a bit.  Wouldn’t you agree with me on this one, Dave?”  Hank straightened his tie once more.  To appear even-handed, he also glanced at Chuck.  “Chuck?”

            They both agreed that yes, this kind of decision needs a bit of thought and prayer.  Dave yawned, which meant, all clear.  Dave, as opposed to Chuck, had gotten the duty of surreptitiously checking guests for bugs, because Hank trusted him more than Chuck.  Chuck didn’t even know about these little tricks; after all, he had no need to know.

            Hank was tempted to just go ahead and commit himself, on the spot.  He sat there, debating.  He’d just said he needed to think and pray about it first; he didn’t want to appear rash, in contrast.  Then again, he didn’t want to endanger Pat’s contributions to the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation, for appearing too doubtful.  Well, maybe we can just let Pat persuade us.

            “I don’t know, Reverend, I just don’t know.  Is this a Christian thing to do?” Hank inquired.

            “Of course it is, Senator.  Casting out the ungodly, just like Jesus and the money-changers in the temple.  And, you know, Jesus told us that those who are not with us, are against us.  See Luke 11:23.  It may be true that not all evolutionists are out there, actively pushing atheism.  But they sure aren’t with us!  They are, then, against us.  We must drive these money-changers out of the temple!”

            Can’t be too hasty, now, Hank thought.  He opened the Bible that Pat had lent him, and looked up Luke 11:23.  Sure enough, there it was.  He shut his eyes in contemplation for just a few seconds, and then announced, “OK, Reverend, I’m with you.  Let’s do it.”

            They chatted about timing the assault on the roots of unbelief, about the old glory days of opposing abortion in centralized places, and about the glory days to come, when the nation would return to Christianity.  Real Christianity, that is.  Then, the Reverend Pat Smuckler signed the check to the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation, bade them farewell, and was gone.  Dave drove him to the airport, while Chuck stayed with Hank.

            Hank caressed the check, commenting to Chuck, “Well, how ‘bout that?!  A fair chunk of gas money, wouldn’t you say?  Two million in fuel for the fire.  Not too shabby, wouldn’t you say?  And, of course, like Pat says—even better yet, some sound, Biblical advice.  Not too shabby at all.”  Hank rubbed his hands together gleefully.

            “Sir, I’ve got my doubts, to be honest,” Chuck submitted reluctantly.  “Now, I’m not the Biblical scholar that the Reverend Smuckler is.  I can’t tell you right off the bat, where the Bible says this.  I can tell you for sure, that it does say this.  Do I need to find it for you, or will you take my good word for it?”

            Hank waved his hands expansively, generously.  Chuck continued, “Yes, Jesus said that those who aren’t with us, are against us.  In another place, though, he said that those who aren’t against us, are for us.*  This seems to me to say that there are only two kinds of people, good and evil.  Now, I’m a conservative who takes the Bible literally, and I’m sure not fond of evolutionism.  But, can we really say that all people who believe in evolution are evil?  Maybe some of them are just misguided.”

            Hank frowned just a tiny bit.  He thought, Oh, No, a closet liberal!  A Christian Liberal, of all the most oxymoronic ideas!  Well, it’s not the first time I hear this kind of thing from Chuck.  Maybe I should listen, at least a little bit.  Sometimes he keeps me out of trouble.

            Chuck hurried on with, “Generally, I’m just trying to say, we need to keep a broad base.  Be broadminded and tolerant, even of people who are wrong, when the consequences of their wrongs aren’t too serious.  Yes, the statistics say that about fifty percent of Americans believe in creationism, but my impression is, they can’t get all riled up about it.  They might get riled up about it, if they found out that we’re behind trashing books and museums and such.”

            “Chuck, you’ve got to understand, though, sometimes you’ve got to make a stand for your principles.  And, of course, keep in mind that we’ll be the peacemakers, here.  We’ll be speaking out against these kinds of methods,” Hank protested, exasperatedly.

            “Oh, I know, Sir,” Chuck replied.  “It’s such a big risk.  And, I’m just cautioning you to keep your bases broad.  Not everyone interprets the Bible the same way that we do.  They’re wrong, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re all evil.  I could even find you places in the Bible where Jesus says that his Father’s house in Heaven has many, many rooms, and that the people who will fill them will come from the East and the West, from the North and the South.**

            “Now, I think that means just Christians—we are spread all across the globe, you know—but some Christians would even say that maybe that might even mean that Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists and such—if they’re good, and not against Jesus—might be admitted to Heaven.  I wouldn’t go that far.  But, seeing as how we’re either for Jesus or against Jesus, then we should at least not pick fights with Christians who espouse such ideas.  Not being too judgmental, that kind of thing.  What I’m trying to say is, we’ve got to keep our bases broad.  We’ll not get many votes if we get too ensnared in nitty-gritty little points of theology.  Christians are less than half the world’s population, and Southern Baptists are a small fraction of Christians.  Keep that in mind.”

            “You’re right,” Hank admitted.  “And thanks for reminding me.  We’ll not take on the whole world.  At least, certainly not right away.  Not till we have the U.S. thoroughly returned to its moral roots in the Bible.”

            Chuck looked doubtful.  “Sir, I want to lead people to Jesus as much as the next guy.  But, can we really ever expect to convert the whole world?  That’s a real tall order.”

            “One step at a time, Chuck, one step at a time.  Have Faith.  With God, all things are possible.  And, an America returned to Biblical values would be a mighty nation indeed.  Not a slave to the U.N.  At that point, if we really committed ourselves, burned our bridges behind us, so that there’s no turning back—committed ourselves to world power or ruins, one or the other—then, surely we could bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth!”

            Chuck looked even more doubtful, so Hank hastened to add, “Of course, you’re right.  We’ll never get there if we don’t keep a broad base, so long as we don’t compromise our principles.  It’s a fine balancing act.  I’ll keep in mind that, like you say, not all the people who are wrong on the little details, are evil.  They just need educated.  We can handle that.  Thanks for your good advice.”

            Finally, Hank’s work day was over.  He summoned his body guard, who drove him to his Montgomery condo, where he and his wife had briefly moved in for their semi-recess from Washington.  He pecked her cheek, ate with her the meal that the staff had prepared, and retired to his private prayer room, where only he was allowed.  Not even his wife ventured there.  This was his room where he kept Christ’s commandment to pray unseen to the unseen God, in private, rather than making a big show.  Moving its contents from Washington to Montgomery and back, securely, twice a year, was a hassle, but it was well worth it.

            He promptly got out his Bible, so as to take Reverend Smuckler’s good advice, and to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  He wasn’t disappointed; not one tiny bit.  Of course, there was the anti-gay verses, but he was already familiar with those.  Other good stuff, though, was new to him.

            At Leviticus 25:44, he read about how it wasn’t quite proper to make slaves out of your own countrymen, but “...you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations around you.”

            At Leviticus 26:27, he read about God’s wrath against the ungodly, and what kind of punishment God considered appropriate.  “Yet if in spite of this, you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you; and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins.  Further, you shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat.”

            All right!, he thought, how ‘bout that!  Next time some namby-pamby wuss tells me how nice I should be, in God’s image and all, I’ll trot this out!  You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure, the Biblical measure, to keep people in line with God’s will, and I’ve got the scriptures to prove it!

            What a deal!  Let’s see if Deuteronomy has some good stuff, too.  Indeed it did.  Chapter 20 told Hank the rules of how to wage a Godly war.  How, if an enemy city should surrender peacefully, one should settle for merely enslaving them all.  However, if they resist, and God grants victory, then “...you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.  Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.”  All right, Lord God!  Let’s party!  Hank thought about a decadent, ungodly, rich, fat world full of booty, and gave thanks to his God.

            You have any other goodies for a faithful and humble servant, Oh Lord?, Hank implored.  He read on.  Lo and behold, the Lord had yet more with which to fill Hank’s cup.  Deuteronomy 21:10 told him that “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands, and you take them away captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall shave her head and trim her nails.  She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, ... and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.  And it shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go...”

            Hank couldn’t take it any more.  He thought brief thanks to his Maker, and fleetingly considered what powerful weapons such policies might provide against, for example, stupid, virginity-obsessed, infidel Moslems, who would proceed to blame their tainted, slutty women for having submitted to the charms of their conquerors.  And, best of all, it was all Biblical!

            Hank got quite excited, just thinking about it.  He shut his Bible, and unlocked his closet.  With trembling hands, he pulled Buddy out.

            Buddy had been liberated for Hank’s use, by a few members of the Bible Youth who also happened to be on a SWAT team.  Buddy had originally been manufactured as a training tool.  He was highly similar to the powered armor suits that SWAT team members wore on raids.  The real suits contained recording devices, to store most everything about raids.  Sights, sounds, and body motions were all captured in full detail, to be replayed by Buddy, for the benefit of the trainee inside Buddy.  Buddy would even deliver mild electrical shocks to his trainee’s muscles, so that the trainee would move synchronously with Buddy, rather than fighting him.  All in all, Buddy provided an extremely realistic simulation of going on a raid, without the dangers.

            Hank had told the Bible Youth that his use of Buddy was to be research and development.  This was part of the truth.  Hank could foresee the day when this technology would become a lot cheaper, and most every home would have a “Buddy”.  Buddies could be valuable education tools.  For example, the public’s enthusiasm and support for law enforcement could be built up by letting just about anyone go on a raid, just as Hank enjoyed doing.

            Hank sure appreciated being able to see things from the perspective of the public servants who put their lives on the line in the name of public safety.  To literally walk in their shoes.  He couldn’t see any reason why such privileges should be reserved for police trainees, rich people, and politicians.  Hank liked to think that his pleasures in Buddy had to do not so much with the special modifications he’d made to him, but with knowing that he was getting an insider’s knowledge of law enforcement.  This knowledge would help him be a better policy maker, obviously.

            Hank slipped the latest disk drives from his friends into Buddy.  He opened Buddy up and wriggled in, clumsily hooked a hundred hooks, buttoned a billion buttons, and zipped a zillion zippers.  Or at least, so it seemed.  It took about five minutes.  Hank sure hoped that some day, all this would be made a lot easier.

            Hank’s gloved hand reached out to touch the right button on his chest, and he became immersed in a recorded reality.  He was off to the races!

            Hank looked into his helmet shield, and saw the dismal tenements rushing by.  He could hear the sirens wailing and the tires squealing as the squad cars roared through the slums.  Occasionally, he could hear the impacts of bullets on metal and shatterproof glass, as the low-life slum scum took pot shots at them.  Not to worry, though; they were well bundled in hard, shiny metal.  Hank reviewed all the integral weapons built into his suit.  The machine rifle, the machine shotgun, the grenade launcher, and the laser cutter, for busting through exceptionally tough doors.  He knew where all the controls were.  All he had to do was to wait till the right time, when the tapes would tell him to go for it!  Adrenaline coursed through his veins, working him into a feverish sweat.

            The squad cars careened around the last corner, narrowly missing a crowd of young punk hooligan-scum who shouldn’t have been out at that hour anyway, and slammed to an abrupt halt.  Hank and the other troopers exploded out of their vehicles, and stormed the tenement in front of them.  Hank never even noticed the mild electrical shocks being delivered to his muscles.  His muscles moved in perfect harmony with the electromechanical apparatus around him.  He and Buddy were one.  They were Waldo F. Copsquat, Dude Extraordinaire, Drug War Freedom Fighter, Savior of Civilized Society.

            The trooper in front of him banged on the tenement door, which refused to budge.  Hank could hear the amplified voice of the trooper, which fortunately had been dampened in the playback, simply by the fact that Buddy’s speakers had an upper volume limit.  Otherwise, Hank’s ears might’ve taken a hit.

            “Open up right now!  You hear me?!  Right now!  We’re with the D.E.A.!” the amplified voice boomed out.  Hank could see the door vibrating to a rhythm with the words.  There was no response.  Hank sprang into action.  They might be destroying evidence in there!  Quick action was imperative!

            Hank, AKA Waldo F. Copsquat, bowled the other trooper aside, stood back a bit, and let loose with a grenade launcher.  The blast almost blew Waldo off of his feet, but the door still held.  Hank fumbled with the controls, and a harshly actinic blue laser flickered to life.  It lashed out, and within ten seconds, the door fell in a smoldering heap.  Sure hope they haven’t flushed all the evidence yet, Hank heard himself pleading fervently.

            Waldo and his neighbor both charged for the doorway at the same time, and fell back in a heap.  Waldo took a swat at his impatient, unprofessional cohort, brushing him aside, and became the first to rush through the door.  Wild pandemonium greeted him, as he heard the squalling of what seemed to be a hundred little black brats.  They were cowering, mostly naked and covered with filth, behind piles of old mattresses.  The largest of them, a girl of maybe ten, was screaming something about not taking her Mommy away.  She started to rush towards Waldo in anguish.

            Waldo let loose with a single, warning shotgun blast to the ceiling.  “IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU WON’T INTERFERE WITH AN ARREST, YOU LITTLE (bleep!) BITCH!!” Waldo’s amplified voice boomed out.  Hey, I guess these tapes have been tampered with, Hank thought.  Oh, well.  Makes sense.  Can’t be spreading racism to the new trainees, now, can we?

            Hank could hear the sound of toilets running, upstairs.  Evidence, down the drain!  Gotta stop ‘em!  Hank fleetingly speculated how their finely honed techniques, so effective against dope and coke and such, might also someday serve to eliminate other ungodly activities.  Other troopers stormed on up the stairs, leaving Waldo to miss the action.  Screams and the sounds of gunfire pulled him towards the stairs.  As Waldo turned to tromp up the stairs, an emboldened little girl rushed at him, grabbing his leg, pleading with him not to hurt her Momma.

            Waldo kicked her across the room with mechanically amplified strength.  Her head hit the still-smoldering doorframe, splitting like a ripened melon, splattering brains everywhere.  Smoke rose from the bits that landed on the metal wreckage.  Hank drank it all in, wishing the suit passed on smells, as well as sights, sounds, and motions.

            That’s when he chose to hit that very special button.  The after-market add-on feature, that is.  A rubber-clad reamer started to rotate slowly, and inserted itself into Hank’s anus, at the same time as Waldo was rushed by some more screaming, anguished children.  Hank swooned, almost passing out from unbearable pleasure.  He had just barely the consciousness left to marvel at how God’s wonders never cease.

 

CHAPTER  3

            “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”                   C. S. Lewis  (1898–1963)

 

            NASA chieftain Lloyd Salley strode into the conference room, took the seat at the head of the table, punched the button initiating computer transcription of the meeting, and got down to business.  “All right, we all know what we’re here for.  It’s looking more and more like, either we have to shut down our puny little outpost on the Moon, or, we don’t go to Mars.  Budgets are tight, and Congress doesn’t look like it’s going to change its mind any time soon.  We must, must, absolutely MUST, find ways to reduce spending.

            “Now, we’ve been over our targets before.  We’re talking, we’ve got to cut about ten billion over the next five years.  Yet, we really can’t afford to shut down Jemison.  Our only manned—I mean, staffed—moon base is just too critical.  For supporting all the unstaffed facilities, like the radio astronomy outpost on the far side, for example, and for PR.  I mean, we’d just never hear the end of it, if we went and shut it down.  Backsliding, falling down on the job, and so on, they’d say.  Letting the Europeans and the Russians out-do us.  Spending all that money, and then abandoning ship, they’d say.  And, they’d be right.  Even if we went back a few years later, to turn the base back on, we’d have lost a lot of money and momentum.

            “Maintaining those facilities remotely, via telepresence and such, may be possible, we know that,” Lloyd shot an acknowledging glance towards the head of the robotics section, Robert Herron.  “But Jemison simply wasn’t built with that in mind.  Retrofitting to cover for that would cost a bundle, especially the biosphere.  Now, we could always just let the biosphere die down, to a lower level, and give it periodic maintenance, till we can permanently staff it again.  For us to visit it often enough would also cost a bundle, and for the Europeans to do it for us, while saving quite a bit of money, would look real bad.

            “Congress and the public expect us to do more and more for less and less money.  It may not be fair, but let’s not spend our time protesting.  Let’s spend our time producing, instead.  Producing more and better ideas, more and better ways of getting things done.  I think by now we’ve generally agreed, without substantial disagreement...” Lloyd looked around the table, to see if there was any disagreement.  The way he said substantial, though, seemed to indicate he’d heard enough petty bickering, and wasn’t ready for any objections, unless there was some real meat to them.  He continued, “...means that we simply cannot shut down Jemison.  No way.  Unless Washington flat-out commands it, we won’t do it.

            “Congress already insists on micro-managing all of our deep-space robotics probe projects.”  LeRoy Jones, the only astronaut on the panel, was surprised to hear the head administrator using such strong terms.  Micro-managing?  Lloyd usually tried to be more diplomatic, to stay on the good sides of the politicians.  Maybe something special had gotten him riled up.  LeRoy’s ears pricked up a bit, as he thought, maybe this meeting might get to be a bit more interesting than usual.

            “The bottom line is, our Mars effort is the only category where we both plan to spend a lot of money, and we’ve got some latitude,” Lloyd continued.  “Yes, the politicos—I mean, the American people—hold the purse strings, and they call the shots.  But our recommendations carry a bit of weight.  I’ve got those hearings before Congress in a week.  We’ve got to wrap this up.  I’ve got to make the most sensible recommendations that we can come up with.

            “We’re down to this: we’ve got to cut costs on our Mars efforts.  I’d rather resign than explain to all of our international partners that we’re wimping out.  I’d  hate to tell Congress that we’ve got to back out, without more funds.  They just might call our bluff, and say, ‘OK, then, that’s the way it’ll be.  They can go to Mars without us.’  NASA’s name would be mud.  So, we need cost-cutting ideas.  Good, safe ones that won’t endanger our crew.”  Lloyd glanced at LeRoy.  LeRoy’s heart picked up the pace.  Does that mean I’ll be on the crew?  Yeah!  LeRoy Jones, torch-bearer of diversity, fearless black American space-farer.  I can see it now.  Maybe I’ll even be the first, not only of the black race, but of the human race, to set foot on another planet.  Oh, calm down .  Lloyd doesn’t make those kinds of decisions.  But it doesn’t hurt to stay on his good side.

            Lloyd finally terminated his monologue, and opened it up simply: “I’m listening.”

            Bob Herron immediately challenged Lloyd.  “I noticed you mentioned that our ideas mustn’t endanger our crews.  Well, I think a crew of telepresence operators is about as safe a way to go, as anyone can dream up.  What are humans going to do there that robots can’t do, anyway?  You know what kinds of strides we’ve been making.  Name a mission, and we can do it, without risking human lives.  For a lot less money, too.”

            Oh, hell, there he goes again, grinding his damned robotics axes, LeRoy grumbled to himself.  Trying to rob us, of the manned—oops!—human, huperson, staffed spaceflight persuasion, of our money and glory.  As if some damned hunk of silicon and steel could ever inspire our awe, chill our bones, and act as a role model for our kids, like a human can.  Like I could.  I’d love to give ol’ Robotics Robert a piece of my mind, but I’d better wait.

            Lloyd didn’t seem too pleased, either.  He frowned.  Bob hurried on, trying to lighten the atmosphere.  “OK, so you might argue that with crime and the environment here on Earth being the way it is lately, the crew would actually be better off in space and on Mars, rather than staying here.  With all the money we’d save using telepresence and robotics, though, we could build one heck of a secure compound for the Earthbound telepresence operators.  We could get their safety up to levels superior to that of space travelers, and still save money.  House them in a bomb shelter, feed ‘em distilled water and purified foods, give ‘em each a dozen bodyguards, and still have money left over.”

            LeRoy gritted his teeth.  Damned smart-ass!  Let’s see what he’ll say next... maybe we could use all the money saved, to really improve safety for those weenie telepresence operators, and just go and eliminate all those criminal Negroid-type hoodlums.  Watch it now; temper, temper, LeRoy told himself.  When time comes to strike a blow at Mr. Robot, here, I’ve gotta be calm, cool, and collected.

            Lloyd frowned.  Bob’s attempt at humor hadn’t been humorous enough, and he didn’t know when to quit.  Bob went on with, “I mean, look at it.  We can do anything with robots, well and cheap, and they don’t need a salary, food, oxygen, precisely controlled environments, sleep, or jabbering time with their Earthbound mates.  There’s no danger that they’ll unionize, or even so much as talk back to the boss.  They’ll never do or say anything to cause tension among the crew.  We could still cut costs by having multiple nations participate, and we wouldn’t run the risk of having a diplomatic row created over bickering among the international crew.  Robots have never been know to commit a political gaffe of any sort.”

            LeRoy stewed, remembering some third-hand comments he’d heard that Bob had made.  Something about a crew of robots not being very likely to bicker about what percentage of them had what kind of paint job, and which kind of robot got to step on Mars first.  LeRoy had debated about bitching about those kinds of comments, but had let it slide.

            Lloyd finally spoke up.  “Doctor Herron, we’re all aware of what powerful tools telepresence and robotics can provide for us, and we’re all grateful for all the contributions that you and your staff have made.  Especially the robotic explorations we’ve already made, the samples we’ve returned, and, most of all, the underground water ice your robots have found.  We’ll be even more grateful when, not so very long from now, your robots mine that ice, and turn it and atmospheric CO2 into food, fuel, and oxygen for later human explorers.  But human explorers have got to follow.  Yes, I know you say robots can do anything humans can do, these days, and that they lack a number of human drawbacks.  But there are still things robots can’t do.”

            “Such as?” Bob shot back.

            “Oh, come on, Doctor, we’ve been over this before,” Lloyd complained wearily.  “Human judgment and speedy decision-making.  You know how the simple fossils we’re looking for, stromatoliths and such, are very hard to distinguish from regular old rocks.  Oh, and, if we’re real lucky, living cryptoendoliths*, or spores.  And you know that, despite having some very intelligent machines down there on your Mars robots, for local, rapid decision-making, the tough shots are still going to need to be made by telepresence operators.  And, what with the communications time lag—up to twenty minutes one way, as I recall—we’ll be very, very slow.”

            “But, with the money saved, we could easily multiply by thirty or so, the amount of rocks we bring back.  If we’re not sure if it’s a fossil or not, we just bring ‘em back, and investigate here,” Bob objected.  “Why spend all this money to move human flesh and all the its support there and back, when we could send robots, leave them there, and send only rocks and knowledge back?  Especially when the return payload could be so much bigger.”

            “Like I said, Doctor Herron, robots just don’t have the level of judgment and split-second decision-making capabilities that humans have got.  They’re too slow and clumsy,” Lloyd asserted.

            Bob still wouldn’t give up.  “I’d sure like to keep our options open, Sir.  If Congress pinches our budget too much, it would sure be nice to make a last-minute change, and send robots instead of humans, and return much larger quantities of rocks.  Design vehicles with this in mind from the start, so that the changes wouldn’t be too expensive.  Shouldn’t we make provisions, as we’re designing those large rockets to use the fuel manufactured by our robotic miners and nuclear-powered facilities on Mars?  Allow for those rockets to be stripped of human accouterments, and filled only with rocks and data.  We could send back quite a few tons of rock.

            “Keep in mind, too, that during the time that all the mining and supplies-manufacturing takes place on Mars, technology won’t stand still, back here on Earth.  By the time there’s enough fuel built up down there for the return flight, so that we can send an expedition, robotics technology may have advanced so much as to be quite clearly superior to humans, for our purposes on Mars.  I’m thinking of the joint effort between Comp-Optic and ABC, to develop a truly conscious computer, superior to the human brain.  Who knows what this will do for our robotics technology?”

            Lloyd got a little wide-eyed at the mention of the Comp-Optic/ABC joint venture.  “Now, y’all know that’s real hush-hush,” he cautioned.  “I’ll tell you, it irks me that we’ll have to go begging these guys for time on their computer, for lack of our government giving us adequate funds.  That they’ll have a far more powerful computer than anything we’ve got, just doesn’t sit well with me.  I’ll tell you something else—the idea of computers and robots putting us out of jobs doesn’t sit too well with me, either.”

            Yeah!  Here, here, LeRoy thought, watching Bob’s jaw muscles bulge.

            “But, Sir!” Bob objected.  “Computers have crunched numbers one helluva lot better than people for quite some time now.  Mathematicians weren’t put out of jobs; their jobs just changed.  They were relieved of drudgery, and the costs of calculations went way down.  Same for us.  So, when Congress grills you for cost savings, are you going to mention the possibility of getting us a lot more bang for the buck, via robotics?”

            Damn!  What a bulldog!, LeRoy thought.  Mr. Robot just won’t let go.

            “Not if I can help it,” Lloyd ‘fessed up.  Bob just about boiled over.  “OK, I’ve heard what you’re saying.  We will look into designing with last-minute changes in mind.”  LeRoy’s heart sank.  “But I don’t want that fact to get much publicity.  I don’t want Congress to get too many ideas.”  Bob looked like he was about to protest, but Lloyd hurried on.  “You see, there’s more to space exploration than knowledge.  There’s national prestige  The Europeans, Russians, Japanese, Canadians and such might decide to go without us.  Even if our robots brought back thirty times as many rocks as they brought back, we’d still look bad.”

            “Well, just because they decide to be inefficient, doesn’t mean we have to be,” Bob protested.  “What’s this all about, looking good, or gathering knowledge efficiently?  Style, or substance?”

            Lloyd replied, “We can have both style and substance.  There’s something to be said for capturing the public’s imagination, and for adventure.  Eventually we have to get people to live on places other than Earth.  We have to colonize, or the whole thing is meaningless.  We have to take the first steps first, and start exploring, using humans.”

            Bob still wouldn’t shut up.  “So why not let robots do efficiently, the things they can do efficiently, and prepare the way for us, later?  Why shouldn’t we have robots thoroughly pave the way for us first, so that we can arrive in comfort, safety, and style?  This adventure thing reminds me of all the people who travel to the North and South Poles, with low-tech means, to make it into the record books.  Sure, there’s been humans who’ve walked all the way, alone, without so much as a dog team, even though they could’ve just flown there and back.  A neat trick, indeed, to show that we humans can do amazing things without machines.  But, at least these guys don’t bleed the taxpayers dry for their ego trips.  What will the taxpayers think, when they learn we’re wasting tens of billions extra for neat little ego trips, akin to walking to the poles, instead of doing things efficiently?”

            LeRoy was amazed that Bob would be so rash, so blatant.  Let’s hope Lloyd squashes him good, he thought.

            Lloyd was at a loss.  He started in with, “But, we’ve got to... reserve some of the action for humans.  The human spirit of adventure, boldly going forth, and all that.  Doing things just ‘cause they’re there...”

            LeRoy couldn’t stand to see Lloyd fumbling around like that, so he stood up and charged in with, “Let me put it in human terms, in my own experience.  The other day I led a group of diverse school children on a tour, and told them about being an astronaut.  Children of color, from the ghettoes, who’ve been oppressed all their lives.  I told them all about how they could rise up against adversity and discrimination, and how they, too, could become astronauts some day.  How they, too, could become role models some day.

            “You should have seen the looks in their eyes.  It was something that... well, you’d have had to have been there.  Maybe to have been there, through their whole lives—our whole lives, as people of color—to really understand.  No robot, no telepresence operator, could be this kind of a role model.  To take this away from us, this vital tool in the war against racism, to even advocate such a thing—I might go so far as to call it tantamount to treason.  Treason in the war against racism.”  And, let’s see what the judge has to say on this one, too, LeRoy added to himself.  But, I’ll say nothing of that sort, unless challenged.  Wouldn’t want to be seen as being too extreme.

            The two other people of color in the room stood up and applauded LeRoy enthusiastically.  “Yeah!  Tell ‘em, Brother!”  The rest of the meeting-goers stood up and applauded, too.  Even Bob, after LeRoy glowered at him a bit, stood up and clapped his hands, although his heart didn’t seem to be properly, fully devoted to this activity.  Everyone had a good, long clapping session, and there seemed to be a bit of hesitation as to who would risk being the first to quit clapping, until finally, LeRoy broke the tension by sitting back down.  Bob finally shut up.  There was no more nonsense about robots replacing humans, and the meeting returned to more sensible topics, such as nibbling around the edges of the costs of a peopled mission.

            In a mere few hours, LeRoy arrived at his home in the walled-in, heavily guarded suburbs.  Samantha greeted him at the door with a big smooch.  “What’s the matter, honey, you seem kinda down?” she inquired.

            “Oh, ol’ Mr. Robot was up to his usual, trying to lynch the very idea of peopled spaceflight.  I don’t know, Samantha, sometimes it’s just... pretty tough, trying to do my job, and standing up for diversity.”

            “Oh, come on, sit down with me, honey, and let’s have a drink.”  She steered him to the couch, got him a beer, and herself a wine cooler.  “Now, why don’t you just tell me about it.  Or, don’t.  Whatever.  Just relax.”  She snuggled up to him, and he put his arm around her, thinking, well, at least I’ve got myself a good woman here.  He told her about his day.

            “Doesn’t sound so bad to me, honey,” she commented.  “Still sounds like things are on track, to me.  We’re still planning to have a peopled mission, along with the other countries, right?  So long as Congress doesn’t yank the rug outta under our feet, right?”

            “Yeah, I suppose you’re right, dear,” he replied.  “But just look at our crew plans.  Two from Japan, four from Europe, two from Russia, and one from Canada.  And not a one of them will be diverse!  I mean, I know the astronaut staffs from these countries, and they just don’t have any diverse...”

            “But didn’t you say that you and some of the other astronauts are trying to make up for that?” Samantha inquired.  “Didn’t you say there’s a good chance that the three crewpersons from the U.S. will be very, very diverse, so as to make up for the lack of diversity among the other crewpersons?  Are they listening to y’all, on that point?”  LeRoy nodded his head, acknowledging that not all was bleak.  Samantha tried to lift his spirits some more.  “Honey, look at the sunny side.  Your interviews with the DVC have been going well.  I’ll bet you have an excellent chance of being on that crew.”

            Samantha referred to the Diversity Verification Council, which was a new division of the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), whose charter was to verify that individuals who claimed to be diverse, especially for high-visibility jobs, were as diverse as they claimed to be.  LeRoy still looked glum.  “Of course, I’ll really, really miss you, bunches and bunches, honey” Samantha was saying.  “But, if you really, really want to go to Mars, then I want you to achieve your dreams.  I want you to be happy.”

            LeRoy still didn’t look too happy.  He complained, “I just don’t understand why I’m not an open-and-shut case with the DVC.  I mean, just ‘cause I’m one-fourth non-diverse.  You’d never know, just looking at me.  I perm my hair, and I’ve had my collagen injections in all the right places.  And I even attended an ‘African-American Immersion’ school as a kid.  I participate in community outreach programs at work.  I’m outspoken in my support of diversity.  I’ve attended, even taught at, all the diversity sensitivity courses.  What else do they want?”

            “Well, honey,” she replied, “You know they have to be careful.  Especially in high-visibility cases like yours.  They have to take their time, and make sure they do things right.  You know that there’s lots of wolves in sheep’s clothing out there.  I mean, people who would pass themselves off as diverse, who are anything but.”

            Samantha seemed to be sinking into depression, herself, now, rather than being completely devoted to lifting LeRoy’s spirits.  Remembering her broken dreams, LeRoy thought maybe he’d better not be thinking of himself all the time, that maybe he should try to lift her up a bit, rather than dragging her down.  So, like a knight in shining armor, he rushed to her emotional rescue.  “Now, sweetheart, I know that at heart, you’re every bit as much of a diverse person as I am.  I’m really sorry that your diversity score was just barely too low to race-norm your test scores enough to get you into med school.  Damned bean-counting DVC, obsessing on your ancestry being only half diverse, lost sight of what really matters.  The diversity in your heart.  Maybe we could appeal.  Maybe...”

            “No, honey, that’s OK,” she insisted, brightening back up.  “Let’s just concentrate on your career.  My job as a nurse is enough to keep me reasonably occupied.  So, don’t go maligning the DVC on my account.  Keep a good attitude towards them, that’s half the battle.  You know the DVC really does have the best in mind.”

            “Yeah, you’re right, sweetheart,” he confessed.  “Thanks for picking me up.  I’ll try to be less of a grump.”  He gave her a squeeze, thinking, you know, she really is a good woman, even if she’s not quite as diverse as I am.  Oh, well.  We can’t all be diverse.  He tossed back the rest of his beer, threw the can towards a trash basket, and missed.  “Let’s see what’s on the news.”

            LeRoy turned on the ONLINE display.  Their machine’s special program had already long ago learned to glean from the day’s stream of news, those kinds of items that he and his wife were interested in.  LeRoy rejoined her on the couch.  “Let’s see if the news will pick me up or throw me down,” he commented.

            The first news item was about how the court case of HUD v/s Podunk local paper had turned out.  Podunk local paper had dared to violate the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited real estate advertisements from indicating any preferences or prejudices, on any basis, by running an ad that discriminated against the blind.  They’d run an ad, saying that some house had “a great view of the lake”.  Obviously, the people advertising this house didn’t want any blind people.  Busted.  “Serves ‘em right,” LeRoy commented.  “I’m glad the courts could see straight, for once.  I mean, that they ruled with justice.  These damned, greedy, money-grubbing capitalists, they think they can get away with just about anything.”

            The next item was about an equal-opportunity lawsuit brought by an Hispanic who’d been turned down for a job with a trucking firm, which carried loads of valuables, just ‘cause he had a criminal record for robbery.  The victim had argued that, since Blacks and Hispanics had more criminal records than whites, this policy had a disparate impact on minorities, and should be prohibited.  The judge ruled against the EEOC.  The judge, an Hispanic himself, had even said that if Hispanics didn’t want to get discriminated against for robbery, they shouldn’t rob anyone.  “Can you believe this crap?” LeRoy protested.  “Just ‘cause the criminal justice system discriminates, the employers are allowed to do the same!”

            Samantha patted him on the back.  “Oh, well.  Win some, lose some.  Common sense and diversity will prevail in the end.  Just be patient.”

            The next news item concerned the famous former black basketball player, B. O. Samson, who was accused of murdering his young white girlfriend.  The jury selection process had finally, after rejecting hundreds of candidates who liked to read or watch the news, been completed.  All twelve jurors were young black women.  “We’ve never seen this much diversity in this kind of jury, ever,” the newscaster commented.

            “All right!” LeRoy exclaimed, slapping Samantha’s outstretched hand jubilantly.  “Score another one for diversity!”

 

CHAPTER  4

            “Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.  There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.”

                                                             H. L. Mencken  (1880-1956)

 

            Dear dedicated readers, in your teeming tens of millions and billions:  the following two chapters abound with copious quantities of libertarian political sediments.  Seditious sediments, one might even say.  Politicians of all persuasions are diligently disrespected.  If you can’t stand reading about politics, you are hereby duly authorized to skip to chapter six, without remorse or undue guilt.  Even chapter six is infested with politics, but it is more centrally tied to the theses and story lines of this book.  Chapter 6 starts at page 83.

            Anyway, go ahead and skip class, if you really, really must.  There will be no quiz, no book report, and no test, concerning the next two chapters, administered by yours truly.  Of course, you’d miss a lot of thought-provoking pro-freedom sediments, muck-raking, vile and odious propaganda, and naughty sarcasm.  Do not pass “go”; do not collect $100.

 

 

            Phil wearily dragged his body home from work at eight thirty that night, looking forward to spending a quiet evening with Gloria.  He’d spent all day at the office, getting last-minute details squared away before the regulators would come to inspect, to see if the mining bugs/anti-nuke biobugs systems would be approved for preliminary tests.  It was time to move from computer simulations to real-world tests.  Who knows if they’ll be approved or not, he thought.  I’ve done all I can do, to help the environment, and if the regulators are going to knuckle under to the anti-biotech fanatics, then, well—we’ll just have to appeal.

            Damned laws are so complicated, it takes an army of lawyers to keep us straight.  I spend half my time explaining what we do, to intellectually constipated lawyers.  That, or just let the regulators set up offices in our facilities, and let ‘em dictate our every move.  Of course, if we design weapons, now—there, we’ll be given a free reign.  It’s enough to make me want to be a whore for the State again.

            Oh, stop being such a sourpuss, he told himself as he drove the specially secured car with the bulletproof windows along Atlanta’s freeways.  Even this one special car wasn’t enough to protect him; he had to wear disguises, change routes, and swap cars out of a car pool all the time, just to protect himself from fanatics.

            Maybe the first thing we should do after we fire up Derrick, is to turn him into a lawyer.  The world’s most powerful computer, and we’d waste him on doing all of our lawyering for us.  Memorize twelve million conflicting laws and fifty billion contradictory court cases and precedents, so that we could lawyer our way out of anything.  Nah, no self-respecting, logical machine would ever put up with such nonsense, he thought.  Besides, even if we got him do such things, without blowing all his fuses, the human lawyers would immediately pass a law, saying that only humans are entitled to practice law.

            Presently, Phil parked in his driveway, stripped off his mask, slipped it into his briefcase, and slumped over the front door, fumbling with his keys.  Finally, home!  Home again.  I like to be here when I can, he thought.  It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire.  Except, it’s June, and it’s way too hot for a fire.  Maybe Gloria will warm my bones.

            He staggered up the stairs, and found Gloria snoozing in bed.  She was due in just another two months, now, and found that she needed to take it very easy.  They knew by now that their little bun in the oven was of the male persuasion, and they were fairly set on calling him “Trent”.  “Murgatroid” had faded into the distance of forgotten silliness.

            She woke as he traipsed into the bedroom, so he walked over to give her a quick kiss.

            “So how was your day, Honeybunch?” she asked, sitting up.

            “Tiring.  Very tiring.  I’m exhausted.  I must’ve aged a few years today; I’m far more of an old man now than I was this morning,” Phil replied.  He considered flopping on the bed for a few minutes, before taking his evening shower.  He decided he probably wouldn’t get up, if he did that, so he said, “Let me cleanse myself of my day’s worth of greasy grimy gopher guts, and I’ll join you in just a few minutes.  Bitsy Woogums.”

            Shortly, he was snuggling in bed with Gloria.  He’d grabbed some snacks from the vending machines at work, so there was no way he intended to stir from bed, that night.  He fleetingly recalled that one of these days, he intended to discuss some of the more sensitive aspects of human genetic engineering with her.  Tonight?  Ha!  As bushed as I am, no way.  Not tonight.  But, I’ve really got to stop putting this off, and talk to her about it one of these days.

            Phil just laid there, shutting his eyes, letting weariness soak out of his body and into the waterbed.  Soon, a little energy returned to him.  Enough, at least, to inquire of Gloria, “So how was your day, Poogle Bye?”

            “Oh, not too bad.  Did a tiny bit of ceramics, and laid around and read a lot.  Guess what I gleaned out of the news for you today?  The Libertarians published their party platform today.”

            Suddenly, even more energy returned to Phil.  Gloria continued, “You know, I’d really hoped that modern computer and communications power would open up the political process, and make it so cheap, to get the message out, that the special interests and campaign contributors would have a lot less power.  That for nickels and dimes, every politician could post his or her message, and every half-intelligent, half-motivated citizen could read to their heart’s content, exactly where each politician stood, on each and every issue.  That maybe even—God forbid!—the citizens could vote directly on the issues.

            “But, here we are, with ultra-cheap computer and communication powers, and these things haven’t come to pass.  Most of the voters can’t be troubled to read anything longer than a few pages, and so the parties still have to buy expensive air time, to make sure the vidiots absorb their little sound bites and image megabytes.  You know, where the politicians propose to solve the world’s problems with their thirty seconds’ worth of solutions.  Anything more complicated exceeds the viewers’ attention spans.

            “Especially when, as with the Republican/Democrat Big Government party, the platforms consist of something like, ‘Reduce crimes and taxes, increase benefits, motherhood, and apple pie, and pay for it all by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.  Tax your neighbors, give you the benefits.’  As if they’re proposing to change the human nature of three hundred million citizens and thirty million government parasites.  Then, the platforms go on to list, in excruciating detail, exactly how the government is going to help each and every little group of people, from art students to tangerine growers, from gay black bulimic alcoholics to left-handed senile Native American medicine men.  Or, how the evils perpetrated by such a group will be curtailed, depending on which group, and which half of the Big Government party we’re talking about.”

            Phil guffawed, thinking of how proud he was of her, for being such a right-thinking skeptic.  Or, should we say, a libertarian-thinking skeptic?  Now, if he could get her to be a devout Libertarian as well, there’d be no limit to what the two of them, together, could accomplish.  “Don’t be so skeptical, Snoogle-Woogle,” he admonished her.  “There are bright spots.  The attention spans of American voters are getting longer.  I mean, just look at it.  It used to be, way back when, that we were going to solve the world’s problems with three words.  ‘Just Say No.’  Then, we worked our way up to five words.  ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out.’  Then, seven words.  ‘It’s not a Choice.  It’s a Child.’  Now, we’re up to nine words!  ‘People Engineer Machines, but only God should Engineer People.’  Nine words!  And, for the first time ever, it contains multisyllabic words!  Three syllables!  So, don’t tell me we’re stupid.  We’re making rapid progress!”

            Gloria just smiled.  Phil turned on the ceiling screen, and prepared to read the Libertarian party platform for presidential elections of 2016.  “So, have you read this?” Phil inquired.  Gloria nodded her head affirmatively.  “Is it anywhere near as long and boring as the usual Big Government platforms?”  She shook her head the other way.  Phil began to read.

 

                                    Libertarian Party Platform

                                    2 June 2016

                                    by Andrew Flyfogen and the Libertarian Party

 

Dear voters,

            We sincerely hope that you will vote Libertarian this fall.  More and more, voters are beginning to realize that there are choices other than the right-wing, retrograde revanchism of Big Government moralism, and left-wing, paternalistic Big Government socialism.  Quit your whining about the lack of a viable third party.  That third party has been there, is there, and will be there.

            All that we need is your votes, which we’ve been gathering, more and more, as voters tire of the empty promises of the Republican/Democrat duopoly.  Your vote for us is not a vote discarded, but a powerful voice in favor of individual liberty, which is the only kind of liberty that really exists.  “State’s rights” and “collective freedom” are oxymorons, as history shows.  Repression, whether by the federal, state, or local government, or by any majority of voters, is still repression, regardless of how it is disguised, or what motives it espouses.

            We cannot regain and keep liberty, unless the voters come to realize that they cannot free themselves by chaining their neighbors; that they cannot, long term, tax their neighbors for their own benefit.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon, a rocket scientist, five million lawyers, or three terabytes of laws, to prove that what goes around, comes around.

            For those readers who doubt that history shows the futility of using government for purposes other than guaranteeing individual liberty, let us turn back the clock by two decades, and review a most excellent book, which warned us very clearly of the dangers of the all-enslaving State.  We chose this book, since we feel that it is well-documented, concise and readable, and the most wide-ranging record of modern government abuses, of all books written in the last few decades.  After this review, we’ll then review the dismal lack of progress towards freedom since then (a gross failure on the part of both ruling parties), and finally, we’ll propose some extremely simple steps that we could take towards freedom.  Hopefully, this, along with the constantly increasing portion of votes going to Libertarians (17% during the last presidential election), will encourage you to believe, as we do, that a vote for us is the most sensible of all choices.

            The book we refer to is LOST RIGHTS, the Destruction of American Liberty, by James Bovard, published in ‘94 by St. Martin’s Press.  We highly recommend that you read this book, to understand exactly why the Libertarian party needs your vote.  Since we’re realists, and realize that most of you won’t bother to read this book, we’ll review it here for you.  You can then judge for yourself, whether the Republican/Democrat duopoly has made any progress since then, and how many of our society’s problems have been solved by the heavy-handed, freedom-fearing ogre portrayed in this book.

            The jacket alone gives the reader a good summary.  “From Justice Department officials seizing people’s homes based on mere rumors, to the I.R.S. and its master plan to prohibit the nation’s self-employed from working for themselves, to the perpetrators of the Waco Siege, government officials across the land are tearing the Bill of Rights to pieces.  And, with the Clinton administration calling for sweeping new governmental power over the nation’s environment, health care, and workers, the plight of American liberty is guaranteed to worsen.

            Today’s citizen is ever more likely to violate some unknown law or regulation and be placed at the mercy of an administrator or politician hungering for publicity.  And, unfortunately, the only way many government agencies can measure their ‘public service’ is by the number of citizens they harass, hinder, restrain, or jail.

            Lost Rights provides a highly entertaining and outrageous analysis of the plight of contemporary Americans, beaten into submission by a government that has become a horrible parody of the Founding Fathers’s dream.”

            The book itself then goes on, in an even-handed and very thoroughly documented manner, to list one outrageous example after another, of how American liberties have been squandered.  Big-government apologists will be quick to denigrate “anecdotal evidence” as not being “statistically significant”, but the number of “anecdotes” listed in this book will astound you.  If you’ve ever been given the run-around by bureaucrats, been regulated out of business or out of a job, been sued into silence about government abuses, or been taxed to near extinction (and, who hasn’t?)—then, you’ll doubtlessly be reassured to know that your life is nothing but a collection of anecdotes, just one isolated case, and a statistically insignificant one at that.  For those that believe that collections of anecdotes and statistics may illuminate large problems, read on.

            Lost Rights Chapter One, The New Leviathan, serves as a general introduction to the whole book.  It is extremely tempting to duplicate large segments of this excellent book here, but we’ll refrain, and just highly recommend that voters find time to read this book in its entirety.  From this chapter, we’ll only quote “Americans today must obey thirty times as many laws as their great-grandfathers had to obey at the turn of the century.  Federal agencies publish an average of over 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Federal Register each business day.”

            The title to Chapter Two, Seizure Fever: The War on Property Rights, and its Conclusion: Holding Title at the Pleasure of the State, almost manage to tell it all.  Eminently quotable here is “A New Jersey Meadowlands commission banned the owner of a 12.5-acre plot of prime real estate from developing his land, thereby reducing the value of the land to almost nothing.  Yet government officials claimed that since the landowner was receiving $13 a year in rent from one billboard, the land was still ‘economically productive’ and thus the government had not violated the owner’s rights”.  We are left to wonder what the owner’s annual real estate taxes were.

            Immediately after this example, we read, “Increasingly, only the rich have semi-inviolable property rights in America.  Sen. Steve Symms observed, ‘Those who cannot afford to sue currently have no protection of their property rights if they come in conflict with a regulation.’  The decline of property rights in the United States has had perhaps the sharpest impact on poor people and minorities since they are far more likely to have their land taken for urban renewal projects, to be excluded from buying a home by zoning restrictions, and to be financially overwhelmed by the burden of historic preservation ordinances.  A person is only entitled to own his property if he has the resources and the will to sue government officials who try to wrongfully seize it.”  Translation:  you own what you earn, only if you earn enough to afford hordes of lawyers.

            Chapter Three, The Proliferation of Petty Dictatorships, lists how farmers, importers, food and drug companies, mailmen, bankers, and their customers (read: all of us) have been turned into subjects of the government.  From this chapter’s conclusion, we quote, “Faith in discretionary power means faith in giving government officials the power to punish whomever they please—and assuming that this will make America a better society.  The proliferation of discretionary power is turning government employees into a ruling class with the power to directly subjugate other Americans.”

            Chapter Four, Politics Vs Contracts, shows how you can no longer freely make legal, binding contracts without having a third party—you guessed it, none other than the government, which wants so badly to take care of you—looking over your shoulder, and saying yea or nay.  The classical example is the minimum wage law.  If you and your employer’s contract doesn’t meet minimum standards, then, tough luck, you can’t work; you must become a government dependent.  Government knows best.  You want to be an interior decorator?  Better get a license.  Gotta protect those stupid consumers from (Gasp!  Horror of horrors!) unqualified interior decorators.

            So, this chapter gives plenty of examples of how the State devotes scarce law enforcement resources to bust people who do sewing work in their own homes, help people fill out forms without being lawyers, clean people’s teeth without giving a cut to a dentist, give people rides for money without a permit (read: bribe, literally bribe, in many cases, the city officials for a taxi license), and so on.  That, and how the government constantly interferes in the labor market, destroying jobs, in the name of “fair labor”.  Gross violence (examples are provided) on the part of organized labor are ignored, while employers are forbidden to create “company-dominated unions”.  This means that if management meets with employees, in groups, to discuss grievances, or even quality or safety, they’d better be looking over their shoulders for the labor police.

            Very quotable here is “Federal labor law is largely based on a blind faith in the benefits of forcing people into herds—on a presumption of the total incompetence or inability of the individual worker to achieve justice for himself.  Harley Shaiken, a labor analyst at MIT, condemned apparel homework in 1984: “It’s bad because you must deal with the employee individually, rather than collectively’”  How well does that bode for the future of telecommuting, and individual freedom?

            Finally, the first paragraph of the conclusion to this chapter deserves to be quoted; we’ll let it speak for itself.  “Almost all restrictive labor regulations rest, in the final analysis, on the empowering of government officials to evict some citizens from the labor market—to prohibit some people from working for a living.  The state of Oregon, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court defending its 1914 minimum wage law, asserted: ‘If Simpson [a woman thrown out of work by the Oregon law] cannot be trained to yield output that does pay the cost of her labor, then she can... accept the status of a defective to be segregated for special treatment as a dependent of the state.’  This statement vivifies how government stacks the deck to benefit some by throwing other people out of the game.  Minimum wage laws presume that politicians are morally justified in reducing some people’s freedom in order to increase other people’s wages.  Though politicians are rarely so honest about their intent these days, this is still frequently the essence of government labor law—dictating that some people have no right to be self-reliant and must become wards of the state.”

            Chapter Five, Subsidies and Subjugation, shows how schools, housing, farming, and the arts have been perverted and distorted, out of all recognition to common sense and efficiency, by subsidies and the attendant government micro-management.  Numerous examples and explanations are presented—again, we encourage the voter to just go ahead and read it—but, in the interests of brevity, let’s just say this: trust us, the government doesn’t manage things more efficiently than the free market.  The more it meddles, the more it messes up, and the more it then needs to “fix”—with more meddling.  You don’t believe us?  Read the book.  Or, talk to some North Koreans, or some older Russians.

            Chapter Six, The Opportunity Police, explains how treating people as individuals, on their own merits, rather than as members of groups, has now gone from being an American ideal, to being a crime.  Let’s just quote one paragraph, and let it go at that: “Affirmative action and racial-preference policies have often been justified as a cure for racism in America.  In essence, this assumes that a massive increase in government power is the best way to change some people’s bad attitudes—that pervasive government coercion in favor of one specific race will reduce the overall level of racial animosity within society—that the way to cure racism is for the federal government to forcibly intervene in favor of specific races, and against other races.  But affirmative action is almost certainly sparking more racial animosity than it is alleviating.”

            Chapter Seven, Guns, Drugs, Searches, and Snares, shows most convincingly how the U.S. has degenerated into an oppressive police state.  All of our liberties are to be sacrificed before the gods of the cops, the BATF, the DEA, the National Guard, and the Army, all in the name of government deciding what we can ingest, and what we can own to defend ourselves.

            Up front, this chapter notes that “H. L. Mencken observed in 1981, ‘A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.’  In recent years, politicians have found few better ways to frighten voters than with the specter of drugs.”  Mr. Bovard then goes on to show how drugs fit the bill for allowing the politicians to “save” us from ourselves.

            He briefly reviews American history, and how fear of various drugs was rooted in racism—Chinese opium, Mexican marijuana (Marijuana laws also had their roots in lobbying by alcohol producers, who feared competition—this, from the pushers of a physiologically addicting drug, against those who would buy, sell, and use one that is not), and use of cocaine by blacks.  To quote, “A 1910 presidential commission report warned that cocaine ‘has been a potent incentive in driving the humbler negroes all over the country to abnormal crimes.’”

            Here’s another quote; this one concerns a “leader” who later pushed a best-selling book about how Americans could be more virtuous (would someone please spread the word that hate, intolerance, and violence aren’t virtues, even if they are sanctioned by the State): “In March 1989, federal drug czar William Bennett suggested abolishing habeas corpus to aid the fight against drugs and later said he would not be opposed to public beheadings of drug dealers.”

            James Bovard then goes on to document how drug laws trash American neighborhoods and public health, as well as rights.  Drugs alone have accounted for most of the explosion in the sizes of our jails and police forces.  Do we take pride in an “American Drug Gulag”?  Despite propaganda to the contrary, “almost 80 percent of the people sentenced to state prisons on drug charges had no history of criminal violence.”  He cites studies and statistics that quite clearly show that the more law enforcement resources that are devoted to enforcing drug laws, the fewer resources are left for fighting property crimes and violence.  We are quite literally putting the murderers on the streets, and leaving them there, to catch and to make room for those who partake in politically incorrect substances.

            Health?  Cocaine users ingest benzene, because we control ether shipments (a far less toxic chemical used for refining cocaine) to South America.  Users have no idea what their dosage strengths are.  “Pot” users ingest herbicides like paraquat.  Diseases are spread because needles are outlawed.  Over-crowded prisons help spread diseases, too.  And, we all suffer from the crimes brought about due to the fact that these politically incorrect substances cost hundreds to thousands of times what they cost to produce.  When’s the last time they tried to force your kid to get hooked on booze, because they could make huge profits?  When’s the last time you heard them shooting it out on the street, over who gets to sell booze to whom?  Finally, politicians are deciding what drugs and what dosages you may take on your deathbed to ease your suffering, all in the name of “just say no”.

            As Mr. Bovard put it, “Do we really need a massive network of spies and informants, helicopter gunships, and spy satellites in order to make marijuana vastly more expensive than tobacco?  How much public safety and individual privacy should we sacrifice in order to inflate the price of a handful of drugs?”

            Legalizing freedom would lead to rot and ruin?  Says who?  Mr. Bovard cited statistics showing that in the Netherlands, where “pot” was legal, high school students were ten times less likely to be heavy users than here in America, along with other such statistics.  People can figure out for themselves after a while, without any help from the Police State, what is, and what isn’t, good for them.  The decline in tobacco use is a good example of this.

            Next, Mr. Bovard trains his word processor on the State as gun monopolist.  He cites frightening anecdotes about people prosecuted for defending themselves, and gun-toting politicians telling others that they shouldn’t have guns.  He notes that guns are readily manufactured at home, and that “a BATF study found that one-fifth of the guns seized by police in Washington, DC were homemade.”  Homemade potato guns using long plastic pipes and lighter fluid can shoot potatoes at a thousand feet per second.  What’s next, he asks.  Controls on potato sales?

            Lost Rights discusses how one cannot sue the government for failing to protect oneself, at the same time that government is prohibiting us from defending ourselves.  This book shows how, twenty years ago, before the national ban on handguns, private citizens killed criminals in self-defense at three times the rate at which policemen did the same, while policemen were five times as likely to shoot innocent people.  Citizens defended “themselves with guns more than 700,000 times each year”.  The main reason is simple: armed private citizens were far more likely to be there, at that very instant, when a clear-cut case of impending criminal violence reared its ugly head.

            Lost Rights cites case after case where the government used flimsy evidence to search people (driving too fast, driving too slow; looking nervous, not looking nervous enough, and not giving permission to search—no, we’re not kidding), case after case of heavy-handed law enforcement, and case after case of the government brow-beating people into committing crimes which they wouldn’t otherwise commit, and then busting them.

            Our favorite is the lady, sentenced to ten years in jail without parole (later thrown out) for yielding (only to the extent of telling him where to buy drugs) to a methamphetamine-using government snitch, who threatened to kill her son, and “impaled one of her chickens on a stick and left it outside her back door.”  Mr. Bovard states that “The U.S. Justice Department apparently believes that putting a person in contact with another person to purchase an illegal substance is a worse crime than maiming animals and threatening to kill young children.”

            From the conclusion to this chapter, “Today, because some people grow marijuana, government officials must effectively have unlimited power to trespass on almost all private land.  Because some people grow marijuana in their basements, government agents must be given absolute power over gardening stores.  Because some people might flush away a few grams of cocaine, government officials must have the power to batter down the door of any... home suspected, rightfully or wrongfully, of containing narcotics.  Because some teenagers hide tiny bags of drugs in their underwear, government officials must be allowed to closely inspect schoolchildren’s crotches.  The government vigorously prosecutes dancers for indecent exposure for getting naked in front of willing viewers—but it is supposedly okay for school officials to forcibly strip a person.”

            Oh, by the way—we forgot to mention, he cites a case of schoolchildren getting suspended for giving each other “two Tylenol tablets for a headache.”  The government cares about your children, see?  You are getting something for your tax dollars!

            Chapter Eight, Taxing and Tyrannizing, complains about a very, very old problem.  Tales of the mercies of the IRS are legion.  Examples cover how the IRS doesn’t want anyone to work for themselves, and will heavily penalize those people who try to work for themselves (instead of some big company, ‘cause big-company employees are sooo much easier for the taxman to squeeeeze....), and who also don’t have the money for fancy lawyers.

            That, and, let us also mention that the taxman is a potent hit man in the employ of politician-type gang bosses (examples of political “hits” by the IRS are given; victims of IRS “hits” prominently feature critics of the IRS).  One section, Welfare Rights Vs. Taxpayer Duties, documents how taxpayers are presumed guilty in the courts, until they cough up the big bucks to hire lawyers to defend themselves, while welfare recipients are given the benefit of the doubt: the government has to prove that they don’t deserve the taxpayers’ money!

            Okay, one more, and then we’ll go on: in at least one case, local tax collectors have been known to run TV shows threatening tax evaders, and encouraging neighbors to turn each other in for tax evasion.

            Chapter Nine, Spiking Speech, Bankrupting Newspapers, and Jamming Broadcasts, shows how our freedom of speech has been frittered away in pursuit of people who take pictures of their naked babies in bathtubs, small newspapers are sued into silence by small-time political bigwigs, and how “commercial speech” is deemed to be undeserving of freedom (one section is titled, “Protecting People From Beer Bottle Labels”—an endeavor on which the government has wasted untold sums of taxpayer and consumer dollars).  Further, it shows how government meddling in broadcasting and cable (in those days—now, its ONLINE, of course—different media, same sad tale) makes the consumers pay more for less services.

            Finally, the Conclusion, Chapter Ten, contains some pithy remarks.  Here, we’ll quote at length, and keep our comments to a minimum:  “‘Fairness’ has been the driving engine in the expansion of government control over citizens’ lives, property, and opportunities.  But as the old German proverb says, ‘The more laws, the less justice.’  In area after area in American society, basic justice and fundamental fairness are being subverted and ridiculed by legislative and regulatory decrees.  Few people would consider it just that zoning officials can revoke permits they had already granted and force people to tear down part or all of their homes—but it is happening.  Few people would consider it just that trucking companies can force their customers to pay massive surcharges for service rendered years ago, solely because the trucker failed to file his rates with a federal bureau—but it is happening. Few people would think it just that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can attack small businesses for hiring too many Hispanics and not enough blacks—but it has happened. Few people think it just that law enforcement officials can achieve their quotas for arrests by browbeating other Americans into committing crimes—but it is happening.  Few people would think it just that IRS auditors can impose draconian penalties on small businesses for the “crime” of dealing with independent contractors—but it is happening.  The larger and more interventionist the government, the more unfair daily life becomes.”  Well put, Mr. Bovard.  If only more Americans would pay attention to these abuses, and do their best to throw the bums out!  May we suggest a method for doing so: Vote Libertarian.

            Later, he says, “Faith in government is faith in prohibitions, fines, injunctions, and jails.  The limits of coercion are the limits of government.  Government is a far more effective tool for preventing harm than for achieving good.  Those who see the state as the engine of progress see progress as originating from some men having the power to force other men to obey them, not from the voluntary association of free individuals.  Too many Americans hold a blind faith in the talismanic power of legislators—their ability to proclaim a new law and thereby make society a better place.”  Harrumph!  Okay, call us “harrumph-heads” if you wish, but, “harrumph” just the same.

            Yet more good quotes; these concern the “dictatorial majority” that the Founding Fathers warned us about: “Is the facade of majority rule more valuable than the reality of individual choice?  The glorification of democratic processes cannot disguise the fact that government tends to be an oligopoly of special interests—the noisiest or richest or pushiest faction on any issue.  Majority rule is an excellent principle for those functions that government must perform, but the further government power is stretched beyond its rightful bounds, the more fragile democratic processes become.  ...  Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”  (Emphasis ours).  Harrumph squared on that one!!

            Yet another treasure; “America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.  Rather than trying to dictate wages, or hiring, or the size of nectarines, or the use of private land, government should confine itself to protecting people against overt violence and fraud.”

            Okay, finally, the very last words in the body of the book: “Henry David Thoreau wrote, ‘If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, run for your life.’  Unfortunately, the entire American society cannot pick up and run from the government.  The time has come to face up to the pervasive failures and to radically reduce government officials’ power to coerce, expropriate, and subjugate other Americans.  The American public placed its faith in the State, and the State failed.  We need a new faith in individual liberty.”

            We, the authors of this Libertarian platform, prominently featuring the above book review, believe that this is the best book written in the last three decades, as far as documenting the loss of American freedom is concerned.  The primary author of this review, Andrew Flyfogen, would add that this is the best of any books he’s read in years.  We highly recommend that lovers of liberty everywhere should read it.*

            Let us also briefly mention another good Libertarian book, which is, “Healing Our World  The Other Piece of the Puzzle”, by Dr. Mary J. Ruwart.  Same story, different way of saying it.  A little repetitious, perhaps, but sometimes that’s good, for driving home the themes.  In this case, the themes are, choosing between honoring our neighbor’s choices, non-aggression, and prosperity, or trying, via the guns of government, to make our neighbor’s choices for him.  Aggression, private or public, always leads to fighting and poverty.  In our desire to control selfish others, we, ourselves, are controlled, and become the victims of selfish others.  As you sow, so will you reap.  If you want liberty, you’d better give it to me.

            Some of her lessons may not be immediately obvious, but stop and think about it.  She makes it clear enough, fast enough.  We’d never force our neighbor, at gunpoint if necessary, to do our will, other than to keep his guns out of our faces.  We wouldn’t coercively micro-manage his personal business.  We know that if we do, he’ll strike back.  We’ll set off a cycle of violence, which will tear down the neighborhood, and lead to poverty and suffering.  We all know it’s not nice to mind his business.  We’d never dream of trying to tell him which charity choices to make, he’s working for too little money and should go on welfare instead, his house isn’t up to standards and he should live in the street instead, his Doctor isn’t qualified to treat him, even though they’ve both agreed to their deal, etc., etc., etc., yet we commission the Police to do the exact same things for us!  Wage laws, licensing, welfare, housing codes, Nanny State this, Nanny State that.

            Yet, the end results are almost exactly the same!  We just end up fighting over control of the government, instead of fighting each other directly, and the end result is still poverty.  In many States, one can’t even braid somebody else’s hair, or provide day care to their kids, for pay, without a license!  All those enforcers out there kill economic activity, push people into welfare, and suck at the public teat, to boot, without contributing anything of value.  Blame us, not them, for the most part, ‘cause we tell ‘em what to do.  (Subliminal message... Vote Libertarian... Subliminal message... Legalize Freedom...)

            In our greed for relative status, a bigger piece of the pie than the others get, even if we’re making the pie smaller—even if we’re making our own piece smaller!—we shut others out of our businesses, through licenses and excessive regulation.  We make a zero-sum game, even a less-than-zero sum game, where we’d all be better off playing a different game.  We could all honor our neighbor’s choices, even when we think they’re selfish.  We selfishly try to make them un-selfish, and selfish bureaucrats take advantage of our selfish desire to control others.

            We could let everyone in on the effort to create wealth, and not shut anyone out.  We could make the whole pie, and hence, our own slice, bigger, even if it’s size might not be that much bigger than our neighbor’s, anymore.  Which is more important, anyway?  Relative status, or absolute wealth, comfort, and freedom?  Would you rather live in a roach-infested shack twice as big as your neighbor’s shack, or a mansion the same size as his?  Of course, we can always try to tear down those income differentials that are partly created by shutting some out of the markets, by coercive wealth redistribution.  Yet, in trying to control others, we are controlled.  What comes around, goes around.  So says Dr. Ruwart, and she says it well.

            Phil closed his eyes for a break from the reading.  “Pootie Pie?” he inquired softly, wondering if his wife had fallen asleep.

            “Yo,” she replied drowsily.

            “Did you read this whole thing?” he asked.

            “Yeah, sure did.  What—did you finish reading it already?”

            “No,” he confessed.  “I’m not as speedy of a reader as you are.”

            “So, what’s up, Doc?  You want me to find and buy the books for you?”

            “Pretty please?  Snoogle Woogle Poogle Woogle Boogle Woogle?” he pleaded sheepishly, somewhat embarrassed at how lazy he was getting to be these days, now that she was at home full time.  “Just a download, of course,” he added.  Hardcopies weren’t his cup of tea, usually.  Too many dead trees, and too much clutter.  All she’d have to do would be to root around on ONLINE a bit, and send some dollar signs winging their way through the fiber-optic cables.  This would be even easier for her than, say, for example, calling Laissez Faire Books at 1-800-326-0996.  “Pamper me?”

            “Sure, Honey.  Anything for you,” she replied, snuggling closer to him.  “Now, read on.  Read harder and faster.  Then, we’ll have our big political pow-wow for the day.  Solve the world’s problems.”

 

CHAPTER  5

            “The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”

                                                                        Michel Foucault  (1926-1984)

 

            Phil got back to reading the Libertarian platform:

            So, in the two decades since the publication of Lost Rights, what progress have we made towards regaining them?  Is it time to conduct last rites for our lost rights?  Well, let’s put it this way... the more things change, the more they stay the same.  We’ve seen Republican and Democrat Administrations and Congresses come and go.  We’ve seen the “anti big government” right-wingers waste time trying to pass laws and amendments concerning limitations of gay rights and abortion rights, “English only”, flag-burning, bad movies, naughty words and pictures on computers, various other forms of bad taste, and prayers in the public school—everything except limiting the size of the government.  Any day now, we expect to see the helicopter gunships surrounding Calvin Klein’s home, or responding to the teenagers smoking out behind the barn.

            Well, okay, we’ll give them a little bit of credit—they cut congressional staffs once, and cut, not welfare, but the rate of growth of the Welfare State—for a few short periods, at least.  Or, was that the rate of growth of the rate of growth?  Whatever it was, the Democrats still called it a “cut”.  And, after many years, they did finally manage to get a balanced-budget amendment passed.  Never mind that they had to exempt Social Security in order to pass it, and that, suddenly, all sorts of people’s pork became Social Security—in addition to Supplemental Security Income for drunks, drug addicts, and “crazy money” for all sorts of “disabled” people, that is.  And never mind that the budget will be balanced in, oh, another seven or ten years or so, and God knows when we’ll actually get around to paying off the national debt, after we merely stop making it bigger.  Keep on making those interest payments!

            Oh, and, lest we be accused of not giving credit where credit is due—the Republicans did manage, to eliminate the NIH, and any day now, they might actually eliminate the NEA.  Meantime, though, they’ve created the NIV, the National Institute for Virtue.  Don’t you just love it, when the government uses your tax money to tell you how you could be more ethical, like those experts, bureaucrats and congresspersons!

            And the left-wingers?  We have them to thank for banning handguns, outlawing vitamins (okay, so, we did finally come back to our senses on that one), disastrous experiments in Sovietized health care, and removing all pretensions that Social Security is a retirement system, rather than just another tentacle of the Welfare State.  The only temporary dent they ever put into the Nanny State was during the Chinese War.  Despite how obviously socialism crippled American conventional war-making powers, and therefore contributed towards the madness of biological mass destruction, President Kite and the Democrats, at the end of the war, immediately bought votes by resurrecting the Nanny State.

            Taken together, the two parties have been politics as usual.  Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Stupid, alternating back and forth from one particular flavor of socialistic idiocy to another, from a more-rapidly growing Nanny State, to one that grows less rapidly.  On occasion, we’ve replaced portions of centralized, federal corruption and oppression, with local corruption and oppression.  Instead of half a million politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats, and lobbyists in Washington, spending our money on yachts and helicopter trips to the golf courses, we have two million of the same, locally, spending our “crime-fighting” money, for instance, to keep the police chiefs’ mistresses in style.  At least in the old days, all the slimebags were in one place, where the media could keep their eyes on them.

            We’ve had the feds move from taking half of our money, and spending it “for our betterment”, to having the feds take that same money, and sending it to the local cops, so that they can spend it “for our betterment”.  Maybe they’ll get really radical, and start giving “unrestricted” block grants to individual taxpayers—that is, if the taxpayers behave themselves as the bureaucrats think they should.  Well, we Libertarians have an even more radical solution—maybe we could just leave some money in the hands of the taxpayers, and let them better themselves!

            About the only big bright spot has been that Congress finally allows members to vote via telepresence, so that, for large periods of time, Congress can semi-recess back to their home states, where they can, to some extent at least, flee Washington’s armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and bureaucrats, and be closer to their voters.

            In the meantime, we’ve accumulated many, many more anecdotes to add to those listed in Lost Rights.  Enough to gag another million maggots, according to our best estimates.

            To wit:  many news publications will no longer take real estate ads of any kind, due to HUD busting things like, “offers a fine view of the beach” (discriminates against the blind).*  A bank got into trouble for not being properly sensitive to all those blind drivers out there, because they lacked Braille keypads at the drive-through teller machines!*  A newscaster is fined (despite not having said any verboten words, according to the commandments of the FCC) for millions of dollars, in a class-action lawsuit, for sexually harassing tens of thousands of listeners.Y  An actress sues and wins millions under the same laws, since the actor/director made her participate in too many re-takes of a scene in which he kisses her.Y  A murder conviction is overturned because the confessed perpetrator(s?), the victim(s?) of multiple personality syndrome, wasn’t (weren’t?) sworn in separately for each personality.Y

            No, we’re not done:  HUD sues a news publisher for “creating an intimidating and oppressive atmosphere for minorities” in a housing project, when it accidentally prints “black grant” instead of “block grant”.Y  The Salvation Army is forced out of business because they pay the people (“workers”) they’re trying to help, in food and housing, but don’t meet minimum-wage requirements.Ä  Half-way houses for the mentally handicapped are shut down, because the staff must be paid while they sleep, since they are “on the job” during that time.Ä  Lawyers and judges show us their real priorities, by awarding consumers with $1 (yes, count it, one dollar) after a six-week trial because some companies engaged in price-fixing gasoline, while awarding two million dollars to nineteen lawyers for legal fees!*

            A totally drunken DEA agent, out painting the town red for his bachelor party, repeatedly demands that a topless bar admit him and his buddies without paying the cover charge, gets in a fight with the co-owner of the bar, and shoots the co-owner.  Police and DEA big-wigs pull out the whitewash; DEA bigwig claims agent acted in self-defense, says, “We can basically tell from the number of shots he fired that he believed his life was in danger.”*  The same logic would apply to the robber in your house who pumps you full of slugs—or, of course, when the same DEA agent, in your house on “legitimate business,” pumps you full of slugs.  This man was merely guilty of acting the same way when he was drunk, as he acts when he’s sober.

            A vitamin-store owner provides information to consumers about folic acid preventing birth defects—information confirmed by another federal agency—and gets busted for advertising facts that haven’t been approved by the FDA.*  This was in the years before we tried the disastrous policy of requiring prescriptions for vitamins.  Ditto for the grocery store owner who had the audacity to have, in the same store, a newspaper containing an article Discovery may be cure for aspirin side effect, aspirin, and soya lecithin.  False advertising!  Pushing unapproved drugs!  Big-time undercover purchase, and raid, against drug pushers in our midst, by heroic, armed FDA agents!  Soya lecithin is a food ingredient derived from soy beans.  It prevents some of the harsh effects that aspirin can have on the stomach.  But, in a Police State like today’s America, you’d better not be caught with a newspaper and these two deadly drugs, in the same store!µ

            America Online, an old computer on-line service, struck back at cybersmut (gotta fend off all those regulators and busybodies) by twice trying to ban the use of the word “breast”, disrupting women’s gazonga cancer discussion groups.*  All we can say is that hope springs eternal in the human hooter, that someday we’ll have real freedom.  Someday, boob cancer patients and survivors will be able to use a more dignified term for their affliction, without looking over their shoulders.  Meanwhile, please pass me those chicken knockers.

            75-year old black minister killed in mistaken drug raid, by officers who routinely fabricate informants to obtain search warrants.*  FBI confiscates three Mercedes because the owner’s husband used the phone in one of them to place a sports bet.*  Home of 69-year-old grandmother confiscated because anonymous informant says her grandson sold unidentified drugs to unidentified buyer from her porch, two years earlier.*  Innocent 84-year-old bedridden woman shot and killed at 2 a.m. by officer kicking down her bedroom door.*

            Finally, in one more example out of the thousands we could choose, a beer brewer is busted for publishing truthful nutritional information on beer bottles.  Heinous crimes!  BATF freedom fighters to the rescue!  Truth is no defense, where freedom of speech is merely commercial speech, you see.*

            The details on these cases, and much more, you’ll find in Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America, by Andrew Flyfogen.  Freedom From Freedom Froms doesn’t mince words—nor shall we mince them here.  What we are facing is a form of fascism—a supposedly benevolent fascism, but fascism nevertheless, where fascism is defined as a centralized authority using censorship, draconian socioeconomic controls, and racism (yes, racism—discriminating against those who are deemed less equal than others is just as bad as saying that some aren’t legally equal to others).  The only thing we lack is a dictator, and we may get one soon.  We’d say more, but fear lawsuits.

            Freedom From Freedom Froms, you say, with puzzlement?  And,  fascism?  Aren’t we being a bit extreme?  Let us explain.

            Fascism is tyranny by those who know better than us, who are merely the great unwashed, who don’t know what is good for us, let alone good for society, that vague and nebulous thing that supersedes the mere, inconsequential individual.  As they say on campuses these days, limiting taxes and individual rights are code words for racism, because such concepts disempower the oppressed, whose bad luck it is to be shut out from the majority.

            A fascist of great renown once stated sentiments to this effect: repeat a lie often enough, loudly enough, and without opposition (read: squelch those who oppose you), and the people will believe you.  For following this prescription most scrupulously, we nominate Deval Patrick, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under Clinton, who stated that, “There are no quotas.  I don’t know how many times I have to say that.”  Quibbling at it’s best.  We merely prosecute those whose numbers aren’t quite right; we merely make it such that the only way that you can’t prove that you don’t discriminate, is to hire by the numbers.  Then we merely punish those who can’t prove that they don’t discriminate.  Now, all that we have to do is, figure out how often we have to lie, and, lo and behold, the people will believe us.

            Okay, so, you’re still wondering where we got the title to Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America?  There is a fascist mentality very closely related to this business of lying often enough and loudly enough, that states, any time you want to sell a policy of enslavement, all that you have to do is to call it freedom.  Having the State make your charity decisions for you is called freedom from want.  Having the State make your hiring decisions for you is called freedom from racism.  If the State fails to squeeze more money from taxpayers for socialist schemes, and mandates banks and depositors to become Santa Claus on its behalf instead, via armies of extortionist lawyers wielding consent decrees, it’s called freedom from discriminatory lending practices.  Have the State mandate so many employment benefits for you, to the point that you can’t get a job, and it’s called freedom from job exploitation.

            For the championship in this particular category of distortion, we nominate George Bush.  In 1992, he dedicated a new DEA building by saying, “I am delighted to be here to salute the greatest freedom fighters any nation could have, people who provide freedom from violence and freedom from drugs and freedom from fear.”  This song was sung in praise of those who decide what we can and what we can’t put in our bodies.  The biggest thugs, enemies of real personal freedom, and disciples of violence since the Red Guard, are praised as freedom fighters.  These are the same power-worshipping egomaniacs who batter down doors in the middle of the night, without warning, and kill those who, even in passing or in cases of mistaken identity, resist their efforts at promoting “freedom”.

            Therefore, we, the Libertarian Party, propose to free you from these  “Freedom Froms”.  We offer the voter genuine individual freedom, which is the only kind of freedom that really means anything.

            The second half of Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America, spells out what could be done to wrest power from those who love to exercise it over others, and restore it to the most rightful owner, the one who knows most about all the parameters of each given, highly specific situation: the individual.  The individual is also the one whose interests are most at stake, and whose growth and progress are most directly tied to learning from the consequences of right and wrong decisions.  The paternalistic State protects us not only from ourselves, but also from the learning that we might attain through the exercise of our free wills.  To those who say that you and I could handle freedom, but those others just aren’t ready for it, and would abuse it, we say, no one ever learned to swim by staying on dry land, and no one ever will.

            To freedom, we dedicate our proposed Bill of Restored Rights, explained in detail in Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America, but only summarized here.  Note that we propose constitutional amendments, but are flexible, and dedicated to working within the system.  There are many ways to skin a power-monger, and we are open to attaining the goals listed here, by any reasonable means.  Some alternate means are listed.  Many people are averse to amending the constitution.  We do not propose doing so lightly.  However, there are far, far too many judges who take to themselves the power to legislate, and the only way to do an end run around them is to amend the constitution.

            Also, bear in mind that laws and amendments are just words; much lies in implementation.  If the correct wording was all that was required, we wouldn’t need to propose laws and amendments prohibiting some from being more equal than others.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would suffice.  We will resist the temptation to degrade the dignity of the Constitution with an amendment asserting that none are more equal than others.  We’ll be content with honestly implementing existing laws and policies of equality.

            This one topic, group rights and entitlements versus the rights of individuals to fair treatment on the basis of their own performance, has been a prime sore spot for many decades.  We’ve been back and forth and forth and back, with dozens of contradictory court rulings.  Judges spell out ever more and ever more complicated hair-splitting rules for deducting whether a given racially conscious “remedy” is justified or not, serving few simple interests, other than that of full employment for lawyers and judges.

            The only way one can be assured of being lawful, is to have an army of judges and lawyers sitting on one’s shoulders.  Very rarely has the “justice” system spoken out in favor of simple colorblindness.  On the contrary, courts have sometimes ruled that voters are not entitled to pass binding referenda saying that none are more equal than others.  Equality isn’t constitutional.  Maybe the Constitution isn’t constitutional; who knows?!  The Libertarian Party has the courage to say, “Enough is enough!”, here as in other cases.

            Before we get into the list of our ten proposed amendments, let us summarize their basic spirit by saying that our vision of government is very simple.  It goes back to a very old concept, that government is a necessary evil.  Government is naked, brutal force and coercion.  Its use should be preserved for a very limited list of objectives.  This list consists simply of protecting liberty (from foreign and domestic despots, be they individuals or organizations), enforcing contracts and punishing fraud, and providing a bare minimum of services which are most efficiently administered in the public domain.  This list can obviously be warped and distorted.  As in so many endeavors, common sense is required in applying the list.

            Conspicuously absent from our list, are cases of mandating good things—naked force should be reserved for prohibiting bad things, primarily coercion itself.  For all other purposes, persuasion, not coercion, is the preferred, superior choice.  The results of persuasion may not be as instantaneous, but they run far, far deeper.  Coerce a man, and he reverts, the very moment you stop your coercion, if not sooner.  Persuade a man, and he might be on your side for a long time to come.

            There are many, many good things that simply cannot be attained by legislative fiat.  If Utopia could be mandated by a priesthood or elite, it would have been established long ago.  Human nature being defective, any government program is open to abuse by rulers and subjects alike.  The solution is not more or better laws; it is less laws.  The fewer the government programs, the less the possibilities of abuse.

            As is so often the case, government is a limited resources.  Resources devoted to enforcing petty or ideological crimes are resources not available for enforcing essential laws against violence against persons and property.  Most ominously, as we worship the gods of the omnipotent State, more cops, and more jails, we scrape lower and lower into the barrel of potential bureaucrats, cops, and jailers.  Persons genuinely devoted to public service, not personal enrichment or power, are a finite resource, just like so many other resources.  Accepting power-hungry, violent people, some with criminal backgrounds, into the ranks of “public servants” has already made America far to much of a Police State.  We propose to roll back this tide.

            In light of these considerations, here is our list of ten proposed amendments:

            1) Freedom of Charitable Choices Amendment

            All citizens of the United States shall be free to make their own charity choices.  Those who wish for a government agency to make their charity choices for them, shall be permitted to empower the agency of their choice to do so.  Those who wish to make their own charity decisions, shall be allowed to do so.  Government-mandated transfers of wealth, other than those resulting from convictions by juries, of law-breakers, shall be emphatically and expressly prohibited.

            Quite simply, public-welfare bureaucrats have no genuine interest in getting people off of welfare.  Private givers do.  Centralized agencies make dim-witted, ill-informed choices.  Private givers know individual circumstances, and distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor.  To those who say, all poor persons are deserving of things other than the freedom to work for their own betterment, we throw up our hands in defeat.  We implore such believers to promptly return to the planet of their origin, or at the very least, to refrain from imposing their beliefs on others.

            Bureaucratically administered government compassion is a pale substitute for the real thing, which is voluntary.  Forcible redistribution severs the links between actions and their rewards.  Responsible, hard-working people get less money and power, and irresponsible people and bureaucrats get more.  The irresponsible people don’t even have attempt to please or emulate the responsible people, as a condition for continued benefits.  Welfare tears down communities and increases crime, as even the Maryland NAACP and an academic study for the government have both concluded.  Coercive government hijacks what were once voluntary functions served by individuals and associations, serving also as a social “glue”, or tool for rewarding attempts at self-improvement, and not rewarding the lack of the same.  Then these same power-mongers turn around and bemoan our loss of community, and tell us how we should stop looking to the government for solutions, and pull together as communities.  Enough already!

            Charity needs to be returned to the private sector, and the sooner, the better.  The longer we wait, the more thoroughly the old habits of private charity die.  The longer that resentful taxpayers have to endure socialistic thievery, the more they build up resentments against the parasitical classes, and the more suffering will result in the inevitable conversion back to private charity.

            The reversion to private charity can’t be attained painlessly.  There may be some cases of starvation, even.  We do not rejoice in suffering; however, we don’t pretend that government can eliminate suffering, either.  For those who protest about how sacred and infinitely valuable human life is, we say, simply, this, “For a few hundred dollars, you can save lives in the third world.  Have you given all your excess monies to these people?”  Their answers, almost inevitably, will indicate that isn’t the sacredness of human life that they’re worrying about; it’s their right to raid their neighbor’s wallets, in a pinch.  Or even, just because they want Freedom From Working.  We don’t believe in Freedom From Work, we believe in Freedom To Work.

            We do not believe that allowing income earners to make their own charity decisions is “mean spirited”.  Rather, we believe that sending the government goons around, to forcibly extract your money, under threat of jail time and property confiscation, in order to make your charity decisions for you, is “mean spirited”.  What would you think of your friend, if the two of you were walking down the street, and saw a homeless person, and your friend reached into your wallet, took a hundred dollars of your money, gave twenty or thirty bucks to the poor person, keeping the rest for administrative costs, and made a big show of being generous and compassionate?  Why, then, do we let the government do this to us?

            How can voters take pride in their “compassion” when they vote for socialists?  They are saying one of two things, maybe both.  One, they’d like for the government to put a gun to their heads, to make sure that they give money to “help” the poor, since they can’t bring themselves to do this of their own free will.  Or, they know how to make charity choices, how to be compassionate, so much better than others, that they’re willing to put guns to the heads of those greedy, selfish others.  Who is greedy and selfish, here?  Who is greedy for power, and for the illusion of moral supremacy?

            We advocate the abolition of the IRS, and only one form of taxes, those being sales taxes.  We also advocate abolishing all laws that require hospitals to provide services that recipients can’t pay for.  Unlike others, we don’t claim that we can achieve everything we set out to do.  However, if we fail to abolish the IRS, and mandatory-treatment laws, we propose the following law: Any collection method used by the IRS, shall also be allowed to be used by the providers of medical services.  We can’t see the sense of imposing the draconian collection methods used by the IRS, partly for paying the neighbor’s medical bills, and then making the consumer pay high prices for medical services, since the hospital can’t collect from deadbeats.  In other words, why should society have more power to make you pay for your neighbor’s bills, than to pay for your own?  We will propose similar laws in any other cases that arise, where prices become grossly distorted due to mandatory socialism.

            As best as we can, we Libertarians propose to phase out all mandatory socialism during a five-year adjustment period.  Notice we say, mandatory socialism.  As Libertarians, we believe in voluntary socialism, otherwise known as insurance.  Free peoples should be allowed to freely enter legal contracts, including insurance contracts, and their government should enforce them.  Nor should insurance companies be forced to provide coverage that individuals don’t want to pay for (this will keep prices down).

            Between private charity and voluntary socialism, most of the doom and gloom predicted by the statists will not come to pass.  What doom and gloom that does materialize, will at least equalize the present, grossly unfair system by which Americans are entitled to all sorts of “free” goodies for having been born a few yards to one side of a border, while others, unwise enough to have been born a few yards away, deserve nothing.  Eliminating socialism would help us to open our borders, to become a more free country.

            2) Empowering the Jury Amendment

            All juries in the United States shall be informed of their right to Jury Nullification.  All juries shall be free to receive any information they care to receive.  No one shall have a legal right, nor a duty, to serve on a jury; a jury’s purpose is to serve justice to the accused and to the victims, not to jury members.  Jury duty shall be voluntary.  However, qualified jurors who decline to serve may be disqualified from voting for up to ten years.

            Jury selection shall be restricted to selecting a pool, from which selection for individual cases shall be purely random, and to be challenged only on the basis of a significant relationship to a party of the trial.  Technological methods of pool selection shall be permitted.  Rejection of more than half of the citizens screened shall be prohibited.  Federal review of verdicts shall be permitted only in cases involving foreign States, conflicts between States within the United States, and gross miscarriage of justice, where actual guilt is in serious doubt.  Appeals may be based on challenging the constitutionality of the laws violated, only with regard to the violations, not the methods with which convictions were obtained.  Violations of procedures for obtaining convictions shall be addressed only by seeking punishment of the procedure violators, not by letting the convicted go unpunished.

            No governmental agency may deprive anyone of any rights or property without the right to a trial.  However, the loser of a lawsuit may be required to pay reasonable costs to the court and to the opposing side.

            What we envision here is the radical dis-empowering of lawyers and judges, and returning power to the people.  Citizens, not the legal priesthood, should be empowered to decide what information is reliable, and what is not.  States should enforce most laws, not the Federal Government.  States should be able to enlarge their juries to guard against “fluke” verdicts.  Many States may choose to use new, more reliable “polygraph” type instruments (in conjunction with elected administrators, and strict privacy laws) to enable them to select unbiased, capable jurors who love both freedom and justice.  With these safeguards in place, in addition to the limitations our other amendments would place on the government, juries can then be trusted with expanded powers.  Juries could even be trusted to receive testimony via telecommunications, in the convenience of their own homes.  Juries could terminate endless, pointless game-playing by attorneys, by being empowered to simply say, “Enough; we’ve already reached a conclusion”, in cases where a verdict is obvious.  Or simply, “Enough from this particular windbag of an attorney.  Let’s move on.”

            Appeals based on trivial technicalities will cease.  Gross over-reaching by law enforcement can be punished by charging the offenders, not by letting the guilty go free.  Yes, occasionally, under a speedy, efficient justice system, the innocent will have already been punished by the time overly zealous law enforcement types are brought to heel.  But no justice system is perfect, and at least we won’t have criminals being released because some form wasn’t filled out, or because not all of the defendant’s multiple personalities were sworn in.

            Juries should be fully informed of their ages-old right to find laws to be unjust or misapplied.  This right (jury nullification) already exists; jurors are merely not allowed to be told about it.  This must change.  The full democratic powers of the jury could thus be unleashed against petty bureaucrats, and against the dictatorial majority.  Who could imagine twelve or twenty-four fully informed jurors voting to convict some-one of the “crime” of smuggling sugar into the U.S., thus allowing the consumers to pay half of what they usually pay?  Similarly, crimes not defined as crimes by clear majorities (victimless crimes) wouldn’t often lead to convictions, while clear transgressions against persons and property (actions obviously abhorred by most everyone) would be punished.  This is how things should be.  Willing buyer, willing seller?  No unwilling victims, no fraud, no coercion?  No crime!

            3) Freedom From Lawyers Amendment

            If a buyer and a seller of a good or service should freely agree to make an exchange that shall not be subject to lawsuits, then this agreement shall be absolutely ironclad and unbreakable.  Only when a party to such an agreement engages in acts that are actually criminal under criminal law, involving force, threats, coercion, or fraud, shall anyone have any standing to bring suit, and that shall be under criminal, not civil, law.  Similarly, when recipients of charity agree not to sue, then their contracts shall be honored.  Services as here defined shall include labor contracts.

            Unless a State’s citizens have defeated this clause in a public referendum, plaintiffs must pay reasonable legal costs of defendants, when defendants win lawsuits.

            Lawsuits against property shall be prohibited.  Lawsuits shall only be filed against individuals and organizations.

            You want to buy a lawnmower?  That’ll be $300, please.  You want the lawsuit lottery policy, along with the special warranty?  That’ll be $600.  Now, when you dream up a new, outlandishly stupid thing to do with your mower, that we never, in our wildest dreams, thought you’d do with it, and therefore forgot to warn you against—say, trimming your kid’s hair—then, if you want to make some money by being stupid, you’d better pay for it.  You want breast implants?  Three grand.  You want the lawsuit lottery policy, too?  Make that a hundred grand.  Simple, fair, and in keeping with freedom and self-responsibility.  Our economy, as well as poor people, who can’t afford prices inflated by stupid consumers and greedy lawyers, could prosper under such a system.

            You want to interview for a job?  Here, sign this agreement, saying you won’t sue us under the Americans with Disabilities Act, seeing as how your alcoholism is a disability, if you show up drunk every day, and we fire you.  Otherwise, we can’t afford to hire you.  Also, after you sign, we’ve a choice for you:  we pay you two dollars an hour, and you retain the option of suing us over your hurt baby feelings over a specific list of transgressions, like what our other employees have posted inside their own offices, or, you can drop that right, and we’ll pay you twenty dollars an hour.  If you don’t like it, interview with the next employer.  You’re a free agent, in a free marketplace.

            A free society could also provide several levels of voluntary protection.  Between the $300 and $600 lawnmower, we could also have a $375 lawnmower backed by an industry arbitration association, and a $450 lawnmower backed by a consumer arbitration association.  All that is required to complete the picture, is a government that punishes fraud, and a free press to inform consumers about the performance of the various associations.

            For those who object that a consumer could buy one bottle of a drug with the lawsuit lottery rider, and then, 99 bottles of the same, without the rider, and years later, sue for the ill effects—well, there are solutions, when we really want them.  A manufacturer could require that you be registered as a lawsuit lottery bypasser, before allowing you to buy at the lower price.  Cheap computer power allows us to easily keep track of such things, these days.

            Some say that manufacturers will vastly overcharge for all their products that they back up with their lawsuit lottery, or market all their products without such an option, thereby giving consumers no choice but to use products that are dangerous.  If such came to pass, a market niche would open for those who can sell products with the lawsuit lottery policy at a reasonable cost, plus profit.  Also, sellers could disclose whether or not the exact same product is available with the lawsuit lottery policy, and how much more it costs.  Now, consumers will have some idea as to how dangerous the product is.  Lawyers and lawmakers could set us free, if they really wanted to.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  Libertarians, unlike the other parties, have both a will, and a way.

            A constitutional amendment might be over-reacting, here, but wouldn’t hurt.  A measure short of that might be to pass a law that says vendors could write ironclad disclaimers.  The lawnmower manufacturer could simply write in their manual, “Do NOT push primer bulb, put switch in run, and pull starter chain, because if you do, the blades will whirl, creating hazards to morons, as well as to blades of grass.  This is purely a decorative item.”  The Libertarian Party is committed to freedom, including the freedom for buyers and sellers to opt out of the lawsuit lottery.  But, yes, if the lawnmower manufacturers put grenades into the mowers, to detonate when started, or your employer rapes or deliberately maims you, then yes, we should hold their feet to the fire, under criminal law.

            Really, it’s pretty simple.  All we’re saying is, we’re big boys and girls now.  As such, we should be able to write our own binding contracts.  See amendment number six.  And if we want to write the lawyers out of our deals, we should be able to, and get a discount.  Is that too complicated for the lawyers and legislators?  Or would it maybe cut down on their campaign funds and job opportunities?  Care to venture a guess?

            Finally, we’re tired of legal cases of The People versus Your House and Car, in which government lawyers file charges against your house and car, since you used them to smoke a joint, or commit some other outrageous crime.  This, under the amazing legal theory that your house and car don’t deserve all the rights that you’ve got, such as, presumption of innocence, state-funded legal defense if you’re poor, a “speedy” trial, and so on.  Vote for us, and we’ll put a stop to this madness.

            In the meantime, we suggest that some freedom-loving lawyer out there (we should hope that there might be one or two) should strike a blow for common sense, and defend such accused houses and cars on the basis that they’re not mentally competent to stand trial, that they don’t understand the law, or the charges against them.  If murderers can plead insanity, your house should be able to do so, too.  Although, come to think of it, these ideas may not be as crazy as they sound, what with ever-more-intelligent computers being integrated into cars and houses.  All those “expert witness” shrinks out there better start studying up!  “Your Honor, this house isn’t guilty, because its psyche was severely wounded when its timbers went through torturous trauma at the lumber mill.”

            4) Freedom From Bureaucrats Amendment

            No person or corporation shall be required to have a permit, submit to an inspection, or be certified in any manner, in order to provide goods or services to any willing buyer, unless such goods or services can cause significant harm to unwilling third parties, and then only if the harm arises primarily from the defective nature of the good or service, rather than from conscious choices made by the consumer.  All certifications, other than in the previously-listed exceptions, shall be strictly voluntary.  Government’s sole roles in voluntary certification shall be to enforce contracts, punish fraud, and to provide its own ratings.

            You want to pay the bum under the bridge to do some brain surgery on you?  If he doesn’t misrepresent himself, you’re a competent adult, and you both agree to it, then go for it!  No more special licenses for taxi cabs, or for interior decorators.  On the other hand, since that taxi cab can smash into other cars, the driver had better get the usual insurance, license tags, driver’s license, etc.  Special interests will no longer be able to lock out their potential competitors.  Discriminating buyers can still buy certified goods and services, but they’ll have to pay for the extra costs.  Once again, freedom is legalized, and the economy is stimulated.

            In passing, allow us to mention that the full text of Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America,  spells out ways in which cheap computer and communications power can be used to make voluntary certification quite powerful.  Computers, data storage, and transmissions are now so cheap, that voluntary certification programs could require subscribers to keep records of customer satisfaction or lack thereof, and to provide such records to buyers.  Such records would spell out returns policies, findings of legal or arbitration proceedings, etc., and all complaints or accolades submitted by consumers.  Consumers too unintelligent to access such records can always ask a smarter friend to give them advice.  If they’re too arrogant to do this, then that’s their problem.  Stupidity is common and easily forgiven; stupidity combined with arrogance, alas, also seems to be common, but need not be so easily forgiven.

            A minimal amount of government oversight might be beneficial.  We could require some products to have a very simple rating, A, B, C, D, F, or unrated, clearly displayed on the label, where the government shows its opinion of the product, based on the government’s evaluation of the product.  Or the government could rate the certification organizations that have already evaluated the products.  But the government should hardly ever prohibit or punish an uncoerced transaction, where there is no complaint of fraud.

            Yes, we have common sense.  We wouldn’t totally deregulate automobiles and aircraft, for example, because innocent bystanders, who weren’t party to agreements, can be hurt.  But we’re not going to blame the manufacturer when the criminal accidentally discharges his gun during a robbery.  The solution there is to punish the robber, not the firearms manufacturer.

            Finally, a brief note:  voluntary certification is actually superior in several ways.  Under government certification, the providers have endless “due process” rights.  The government can’t do anything bad to them, unless they spend your tax money fighting off hordes of the providers’ lawyers.  And the regulatory agencies often get captured by those who they’re supposed to regulate, because these providers constitute special interests, with narrowly focused, concentrated concerns.  Who raises the most campaign cash connected to sugar policies—1,000 people, each making $300,000 a year off of inflated sugar prices, or 250 million people, each paying $300 a year in inflated food prices?  The answer is obvious.

            Yet multiply and compare those numbers, and you’ll find that net-net, the consumers’ total gains from deregulation outweigh the producers’ losses by a factor of 25,000!  Now multiply this by thousands of other categories of regulation, and one must conclude that we’d all be better off if we stopped letting special interests recruit the government as their hit squad.  The kicker?  Since the regulators are usually captured by the regulated, anyway, we have cases like psychologists sentenced to 40 years for molesting children, who still have their licenses.  Under private certification, these will usually be open-and-shut cases.  A free press and word of mouth will rapidly establish which certification establishments are honest, and which aren’t.

            5) Freedom From State Certification of Religions Amendment

            No governmental agency shall make any determination regarding the validity or sincerity of any religious belief.  If a governmental agency extends any privilege to any person because of religious beliefs, then all persons in that jurisdiction shall have the same privilege.

            How often have we seen the State getting into the business of judging whether a religious belief is “genuine” or not?  How many small-minded local government schools prohibit males from wearing their hair long, but then write a special exception for Native Americans, given that they present some form from their chief, and/or a pedigree?  Do we really like living in a nation where some are more equal than others?

            Examples abound.  Native Americans can litter the ground at Devil’s Tower National Monument with tobacco and sage prayer offerings, and can make people and museums either pay them to pray over medicine bundles (corn silk and such, which are regarded as having feelings) or give them back, despite the current owners having bought them fair and square.  And they can take peyote.  What would happen with a non-native person decided who that his or her beliefs required them to dump prayer bundles of fast-food offerings on national monuments, take peyote, or grab back or be paid to pray over, all the appliances that they once sold?

            Then, there’s the Old-Order Amish and Mennonites, who are allowed to opt out of Social Security, and the Muslims who are allowed to obscure their faces with veils in high-crime areas, where anyone else caught wearing a mask gets busted for hiding their identity.  We believe that people should have most of the freedoms listed here; it’s just that we don’t think anyone should be more equal than anyone else, under the law.  1984 is long gone, and the same should be true of Orwellian ideals.

            We could extend this amendment to race, disability status, creed, sex, age, nationality, sexual orientation, and on and on and on.  We could include the usual “victims” list, where the government hypocritically uses membership in each and every group listed, as a basis for discrimination, of one sort or another.  Nor is the government’s hypocrisy limited to “reverse discrimination”.  The private employer is prohibited from discriminating against employees on the basis of age or disabilities, yet the government does so on a regular basis.  Can’t refuse to hire the old guy for being too old, but you’re busted if you hire the one who’s too young!  The 14-year-old kid can be tried as an adult, can kill or be killed for his country at 18, yet can’t buy beer till he’s 21.  But you’d better not be discriminating on the basis of age!

            Actually, though, we’d be cluttering up the constitution, not only with repetitious redundancy, but also, by making it repeat itself, because “equal protection” is already guaranteed under the fourteenth amendment.  So why do we include this amendment, here?  Just to make a point—even the strongest, simplest constitutional principles, equality and freedom of religion, have been perverted by hypocritical elites, in more ways than we usually stop to think about.  They explain away their hypocrisy on the basis that complex societies need complex rules.  Hypocrisy, though, is what really drives their contorted non-logic.

            6) Economic Freedom Amendment

            No governmental agency shall enforce any laws restricting the rights of individuals or corporations to freely engage in commerce, except in cases where unwilling third parties can be significantly harmed.  The only kinds of contracts that shall be prohibited, are those that are prohibited for the protection of those who are not party to the contract.  Whenever possible, third parties shall be allowed to decline any such protection.

            Any legal act may be the subject of a contract.  Government will enforce all legal contracts, except when a jury finds it to be against the interests of society to enforce a contract; and in this case, the contract violator shall be required to make reasonable reparations.  Government may charge reasonable fees for enforcing contracts.

            Freedom to contract at will shall encompass people’s bodies and reproductive functions, which are, after all, owned by their owners, and not by the government.  This freedom shall include the right for private givers and recipients of charity to agree that as a condition of the transfer, the recipients undergo sterilization, or abortion in the first trimester, or give babies up for adoption to third parties not otherwise involved in the transfer.  Any dispute involving a contract of adoption, or any form of adoption, shall be decided in the interests of the child.

            Okay, we’ll address the more controversial aspects of this amendment first.  We are NOT saying that the government should get into the business of controlling reproduction of anyone not convicted of a serious crime (see our 8th proposed amendment for that topic).  We are NOT advocating genocide or mass “mercy killings”.  We are merely recognizing that some charity givers live in the real world, and realize, either through their own experience or through reading such well-documented books as The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein & Murray, that many, many social pathologies are perpetrated generation after generation, due to low cognitive abilities, which are passed on by a combination of heredity and environment.  The precise nature of this mix doesn’t matter much; what matters is that, more and more, the underclasses pass on these pathologies, and that the Welfare State has exacerbated the problems.  Technological civilization threatens to unravel under the resulting strains.

            Recognizing these threats, and still wishing to maximize freedoms, we merely advocate that private givers who wish to do so, should be allowed to attach conditions to their aid.  Many givers may otherwise not wish to give, for fear that they are merely perpetuating pathologies.  In the face of various choices, those being, ignoring these problems and risking nothing less than the demise of civilization; resorting to inhumane, draconian measures which we’d rather not think about; or empowering private givers with real tools to accomplish some long-lasting gains, we, unlike other parties, advocate that we stop supporting poverty-pimping bureaucrats, and make sensible, well-informed and realistic choices.  One of those choices is to allow those who would sell their ability to reproduce naturally for their next snort of cocaine or whatever, to do so.  Society will be better off if we allow it.

            We don’t make this kind of proposal lightly.  Four years ago, we didn’t make it; the difference between then and now is that sterilization no longer means that one can’t pass one’s genes on.  Reproductive technology has progressed rapidly, and these advances will surely continue.  While still high, prices will fall.  Libertarians, of course, advocate freedom here, as in all other cases where freedom is practical.  We’ll allow these technologies to be available to all who can afford them, not just the extremely rich and well-connected, in floating, offshore biomedical facilities, as we have now.  And we’d never dream of demanding that babies conceived via these methods be forcibly aborted, as certain hypocritical egomaniacs advocate.

            These technologies will never be so cheap as to be trivial, but that, too, dovetails right in with the idea of reducing social pathologies through sterilization, without inordinate loss of freedom.  Poor people who’ve been sterilized, but who manage to improve their circumstances, will still be able to reproduce with technological assistance.  That same technology will improve their offspring, and the fact that they’ll need to pay significant amounts of money will reduce accidental, casual, and ill-considered parenting.

            Nor do we fall for those arguments that compare individual, free reproductive choices and contracts (with respect to biotechnology) with Nazi master-race plans, or BELFRYBATs or Schrock-Leech-Kite weapons or whatever.  Nazis worshipped at the altar of the Almighty State.  We do not.  Biotechnological warfare was the result of an all-consuming, coercive State, which couldn’t bear to think that it had to choose one or the other—limiting Welfare-State Nannyism so as to field an effective conventional fighting force, or refraining from military adventures.  Faced with that choice, power-hungry politicians found a third choice, which was resorting to hi-tech mass destruction.  Any technology can be used for good or evil.  Individual reproductive choices have little to do with mass destruction, other than that limiting population growth reduces the pressures towards war.

            We’ll fight for this amendment in its entirety, since we do not regard the quality of the human population as a matter to be lightly regarded, and we don’t believe in the omnipotent, magical powers of education.  We do realize, though, that many voters are frightened of the latter section.  We’ll drop the latter provisions if we must, to get this amendment to pass.  Other, less-controversial provisions of the amendment are also worthwhile.

            This amendment will put an end to such things as the minimum wage law, excessive import-export regulation, and hiring and firing mandates.  Under the latter category falls a plethora of laws, such as quotas (implicit or explicit), mandatory benefits, prohibited employment tests, and child-labor laws.

            Yes, this is one of those topics on which the majority of voters recoil in horror, away from libertarian policies.  But stop and think.  If we’re going to do away with socialism, we must remove barriers from the paths that poor people would take to better themselves.  Many of these laws aren’t really intended for the protection of the oppressed, as liberals say, but rather, for protecting the majorities (who already have jobs) from competition.  Those consumers who object to buying products made by child labor can choose to buy only those products certified to have been made without such labor.  Certification could be conducted by private associations.  And, once again, the government would act against fraud, and a free press would guard against deceit, here.  Other consumers, who believe that they don’t help anyone by refusing to buy from them, will be free to buy and sell as they see fit.

            We would NOT change those laws that prohibit murder contracts, the export of weapons technologies to hostile regimes, or destruction of the environment.  Here, unwilling third parties are clearly hurt.  Once again, contrary propaganda notwithstanding, Libertarians have common sense.

            When the Nanny State attempts to argue for the rights of third parties, such as, “No, you can’t work that dangerous job, without twelve layers of protective gear, twenty forms filled out, and thirty insurance agents and fifty lawyers, because we have to protect you, on behalf of your wife and kids”, we should just allow the third party to opt out.  If the family would rather take some risks, in order to make some money, rather than starving or living on the dole, then they should be allowed to do so.

            The case for the Nanny State is much overstated by those who benefit from it, namely, insurance companies, lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians.  Seatbelts and motorcycle helmets?  We have to mandate them, to protect the taxpayers and insurance buyers, from the costs of injuries?  Why can’t we just eliminate mandatory socialized medicine, and allow people to decide which insurance policy they want to buy?  The cheap insurance policy wouldn’t allow any claims where the injured party wasn’t wearing the helmet or seat belt, while the expensive one would.  The same distinctions could be made for those who are willing to forego their rights to sue for pain and suffering; insurance companies can make numbers balance if they really want to.  Letting people pay for their own choices of being covered, or not covered, for pain and suffering would be very easy if we passed a simple law that said all accident victims will collect such benefits from their own insurance companies.  Simple solutions are available to those who want to solve problems, rather than lining their wallets at the expense of others.

            We would privatize many governmental regulatory functions, including the FDA and the EEOC.  The original EEOC could be split into a new EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which would function in keeping with its name) and an EERC (Equal Employment Results Commission, subscribing to the present tenets of the EEOC).  Employees and consumers could then choose to deal only with those who meet the standards they deem appropriate.  If a company decides to allow its workers to smoke indoors, that, too, should be permitted.  Workers who don’t like employer policies can choose to work elsewhere.  Again, our policies of FREEDOM would be vastly better for the economy than all the governmental meddling in the world.

            7) Personal Freedom Amendment

            No activity may be defined as a crime, unless there is an unwilling victim.  For the purposes of this amendment, “victim” shall only mean one whose person or property is harmed by fraud or violence.  It shall not include those who are merely offended or slighted.

            You want a small government?  What say, for starters, we eliminate the ATF, the FDA, and the DEA?  There’s no place in a free society for consensual crimes.  Using, buying, and selling of guns and drugs, and gambling and prostitution, may indeed often be harmful to the parties that engage in them.  They may even be inconvenient to third parties, and so, such activities might be zoned, even as churches are.  However, they should not be outlawed, for the simple reason that law enforcement is a limited resource.  The law should confine itself to preventing and punishing clear violations of freedom, as is the case when that gun is used to commit murder and mayhem, or when that drug or penis is forced into an unwilling recipient.

            You say there will be unwilling victims in car crashes, though?  Isn’t that already the case, anyway?  The drug war is a failure and a waste, and there are many, many ways to show that this is true.  We simply advocate holding people responsible for their actions, regardless of which legal or illegal drugs they did or didn’t take, what mental illnesses they had, or whether they were sleepy or stupid.  If you get run over by a car, and lose both of your legs, does it really matter whether the driver was sleepy, stupid, senile, hostile, or high on a legal or illegal drug?  We think not.  We think the answer is to crack down on incapable drivers, whatever the root cause.  Some studies show the biggest root cause of accidents is lack of sleep.  New technologies of measuring driver response, not fueling an immense underground criminal economy, is the answer here.

            By eliminating all the many, many crimes that are petty infringements on our freedoms, we clear the stage to really crack down on those who like to violate other people’s freedoms.  Most people will support harsh penalties for the real criminals, when the courts are no longer bogged down with petty and idealogical cases.  We do believe that the question of whether or not the State should decide what we do and don’t put into our bodies, is an idealogical question.  The American Drug Gulag is indeed, in a very real sense, filled with political prisoners.  We need to release all the political criminals, now.

            Large parts of society have progressed beyond wanting to persecute all the Jews, niggers, witches, queers, Satanists, atheists, and other heretics; it is now well past time to get over making scapegoats out of those who don’t submit to the high priests of substance regulation.  If we really, really must have new scapegoats to replace drug users, we nominate, not believers in evolution or those who use biotechnology to assist them in their reproductive decision-making, but socialists and intolerant witchburners.  Yet we’d much prefer that they simply be vastly outvoted, rather than forcibly silenced.

            8) Freedom From Violent Criminals Amendment

            Once we’ve cleared the courts of the petty and idealogical crimes—but only then—we propose that we should crack down on the real criminals, with an amendment as follows:

            States are allowed broad discretion in punishing criminals.  Juries may impose sterilization, castration, and corporal punishment, as well as incarceration and capital punishment.  All persons sentenced to death more than three months ago, as of the passage of this amendment, shall be promptly executed, and henceforth, any punishment handed down by a jury shall be either implemented or permanently over-ridden, within three months.  States are required to provide prison walls, roofs, a sewage system, and clean drinking water for prisoners.  States may decide for themselves whether to pay for all other amenities, including food, medical care, and security, or whether they shall be paid for by inmates and voluntary contributors.  There shall be no lower limits or standards imposed on living conditions for inmates.  Inmates shall be subject to the same laws regulating commerce and labor as free people, except that up to half of their earnings may be forcibly transferred to their victims.

            Pleading insanity shall be prohibited; it shall be considered only in sentencing.  The fifth amendment shall be interpreted only to prohibit coercion of confessions, and not to require any warnings that discourage the guilty from confessing.  States are free to choose whether or not to pay for public defenders.  They may also choose to require defendants to match their own funds paid to their own lawyer(s), on fixed or graduated scales, with funds going into escrow for the victim(s), so that defendants can’t spend all of their money on lawyers, leaving nothing for victims.  Such escrow funds shall be returned to the accused, if found entirely innocent, or given to the victim, even if the defendant is found not guilty by criminal standards, but guilty by civil standards, with the choices left in the hands of a single criminal jury.

            We’ve had enough of highly educated judges and lawyers who don’t even have the simple logical smarts to distinguish between a logical “and” and a logical “or”.  The phrase is, cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden, not cruel or unusual.  If a punishment is usual, it doesn’t matter whether or not it is cruel; it doesn’t fall into the constitutionally forbidden category.

            Nor do we believe that criminals should be allowed to victimize the public twice; once, by committing violence against persons and property, and then again, by living on tax dollars extorted from honest citizens.  Once is enough.  Still, recognizing that real, productive work is the best rehabilitation, we believe they should have every economic freedom that outsiders have.  In short, we would establish a “free market” in prisons, where inmates would be free to move to another prison, when their present prison doesn’t pay them what they could earn elsewhere.

            Once again, recent biotechnological advances, which detract from the permanent nature of sterilization, allow us to more freely recommend what were formerly draconian measures.  When a wrongly convicted, sterilized person is later exonerated, those who are to blame for the wrongful conviction (or, as a last resort, the taxpayers) could be required to make amends by paying for the reproductive technology used by the wrongfully convicted party.

            We resent the right-to-reproduce-is-sacred shibboleth.  A mass murderer can be executed, but God forbid we should sterilize him?  Come now!  Especially in cases where parents are convicted of severely abusing or neglecting their children, yet pose no other threat to society, sterilization is an obviously cheap, effective alternative to incarceration.

            We think that it is entirely appropriate that people who have caused others to suffer needlessly, should learn what suffering is.  We do NOT think that taxpayers should pay to feed, clothe, and medicate criminals.  Criminals, or their friends or family, should pay for their own costs, however high or low they wish for, and pay for, their standards of living to be kept.  Criminals should be allowed to work for a living, like anyone else.  They should NOT be allowed to make endless demands on taxpayers.  Bleeding hearts should be entitled to make their own charity decisions, like anyone else—they should be allowed to contribute to the upkeep of criminals, if they so desire.  They shouldn’t be allowed to raid your wallet or mine, though.

            Nor do we think the right to reproduce is sacred.  We are painfully aware of the pressures of population growth, and are valiantly fighting, in keeping with our pro-freedom beliefs, against those who would further regulate State control of immigration and reproduction.  We hope that voluntary restraint will put off the day, hopefully forever, that the State controls reproductive rights in ordinary citizens.

            We have heard the analogies about Spaceship Earth, and know that we have not allowed, and do not allow, free, unlimited reproduction in space vehicles or colonies, or even in the various experimental enclosed biospheres on Earth.  We rue the day that such a thing should happen on Earth at large.  We are willing to compromise, and start by sterilizing those who have demonstrated that they are devoid of conscience, and who are therefore unfit to be parents.  Reproduction is a right, but with it come responsibilities.  Shirk the responsibilities, and the rights should be taken away.  Only for heinous crimes, as convicted by a jury, though—not for ideological crimes, as convicted by bureaucrats.

            For those of you who might find us to be unduly harsh, let us assure you that we do NOT condone torture or painful methods of execution, which is more than we can say of many of those who we would execute.  We do believe that the State must maintain the moral high ground, above the criminals.  Let us also remind you that a great lover of liberty, Thomas Jefferson, was in favor of castration for rapists, and of executing murderers within three days (not three months) of their conviction.

            9) Separation of School and State Amendment

            No American government or agency may pass any law or regulation specifically addressing education.  Education shall remain as purely in the private domain as religion is.

            Public education is obviously a failure, and no Band-Aids will fix it.  All those “culture wars” over what should be taught in the public schools could be solved very simply:  all parents could choose, on the free market, what they’re willing to have taught to their kids, at the going rate.  This can be made very simple, like so many other things.  You want it, you pay or beg for it.  If you don’t want it, then, fine.  If your heart bleeds for those who want, but can’t afford, then no one is stopping you from helping them.  Just keep your coercive hands out of my wallet!

            Public school teachers, their unions, and their allies, shrinks and social workers, always clamor for more money and more power.  They label your children as “learning disabled”, while it’s often they who are teaching disabled.  Then, they try to get your kids to take their drugs, the ones approved by the high-dollar doctors, shrinks, and social workers, to “calm them down”, so that they can learn.  Oh, and then, they tell your kids not to take illegal drugs, and that they’re doing a good deed when they turn someone—someone like you, even—in to the State, for using illegal drugs.  Those are illegal drugs, see?

            Yet we cling to our sacred cow, never bothering to remember that before the mid-eighteen hundreds, education was strictly private, yet rates of literacy were higher than they are now.  Do we ever bother to question the basic premises on which we base our devotion to socialized education?  Do we really think we can teach pigs to sing?  If the educrats are as powerful as they’d like us to think they are, why haven’t they yet made a competent doctor out of a child with Down’s Syndrome?

            Yes, an educated public helps democracy and society.  So does a well-fed one, and so does a sincerely, positively, religiously devout one.  Yet, we have no stomach for State-mandated church attendance, and only some stomach for State-sponsored feedings of the poor.  Why do we cling to socialized education?  Democracy is not freedom.  We wouldn’t tolerate a system where only the rich could afford to patronize their own restaurants, while everyone else could only eat at one government-run establishment.  “You’ve got freedom,” we’d tell the dissidents. “You have merely to convince 51% of the voters, and we’ll change the menu,” we’d tell them.  Why do we stand for this when it comes to educating our kids, when we’d never put up with it in other categories?

            So some people wouldn’t send their kids to school, and society would suffer.  Well, society suffers anyway.  Those are often the same kids who disrupt our public schools, pull down the standards, and fail to learn, anyway.  And, some kids who wouldn’t go to school might actually learn from the adults around them, in workplaces, say, and actually be integrated into adult society in a more meaningful way than being relegated to some corner where they are force-fed a bland diet of boring junk by incompetent educrats.  If we paid directly for our kids’ educations, instead of getting “free” educations, we’d insist on getting what we pay for, call the shots, and get much better results.  No one’s kids would have to be taught things that they adamantly disagree with.

            Oh, yes, for sure, there would be a few children here and there with intelligence and motivation, whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to school.  And a few of those might not even be able to find charitable assistance.  But do we really believe that one has to have formal teaching in order to learn?  Given a decent amount of reading material—and who can’t get ahold of that, in our society today—any intelligent and motivated person can teach themselves to read!  The educrats would have us believe that such a concept violates the laws of physical nature.  “If you can read this bumper sticker, Thank a Teacher”.  Yeah, right.  If you know that the sun will rise tomorrow, thank a fortune teller.

            And once you can read, you can learn almost anything.  Only one more factor would be required, then, to allow such “severely deprived” people to compete equally with the rest of us:  the freedom to work any job that they can perform, that willing customers are willing to pay for, without a coercive State breathing down their necks, requiring them to have endless degrees, licenses, certifications, and so on.

            For more details, we recommend our book, and an excellent primer called Separating School and State, by Sheldon Richman.  This book argues that a primary purpose of schools is to force children into the State’s mold, as the State sees a “good citizen”.  Let’s brainwash the little ones into being obedient lackeys, in other words.  If we want to teach them things that are at odds with what the family believes—if we want to get them to turn their pot-smoking elders in to the cops, for example, “for their own good,” well, then, that’s tough.

            And, if we want to teach the little ones that government is the Great Savior, who saved us from, rather than created, the Great Depression, for example, or who saved us from the ravages of rampant capitalism during the robber baron days, then, well, that’s OK, too.  Never mind getting them to think for themselves.  Don’t let them ask, “Well, if the robber barons were so bad, then why did people leave the farms to come and work for them?”  They might come to really understand history; to understand that the vast majority of people have suffered immensely for the vast bulk of historic times, and that these people left the farms for a better life!  And, they might come to understand that we’ve always had robber barons, even to this day.  Today, they occupy seats in the government, law offices, and lobbyists’ offices, as well as major corporations.  We’ve merely traded one set of masters for another.

            In passing, we recommend an excellent book on the history of the “robber barons”, which shows that the real damage was done by “political entrepreneurs” who constantly demanded that the coercive State prop them up, as opposed to the genuine entrepreneurs, who competed by providing more and better goods for less money.  This book is The Myth of the Robber Barons, by Burton W. Folsom, Jr., a history professor.  But, as Professor Folsom shows in his last chapter, most historians and academicians persist in distorting history, and praising the government for rescuing us all from the clutches of the evil capitalists.

            We libertarians, unlike today’s “liberals”, really do believe in diversity.  However, we do not believe that the State is well-equipped to sponsor diverse ideas.  The State only likes ideas that feed and pamper the State.  For real diversity, let’s look to the private market.  Many statistics are available for those who care to look into it, to show that private education is both cheaper and better than “public” education.

            Separating School and State argues that the “public” in “public schools” is really an Orwellian euphemism for “coercive”, since we don’t call a privately-owned restaurant that is open to all who will pay, a “private” restaurant—we call it a public restaurant.  A restaurant which dragooned it’s customers, using their coercively gathered wages, would be called a socialist restaurant, and be shut down.  At least, we sure hope we’d have the sense to shut down a Nanny State Bar & Grill, although one never knows, what with how many members of the public have been brainwashed.  So should our system of socialist education, too, be shut down, and transformed into a far more efficient and responsive private system.

            The worst thing about the Nanny State Bar & Grill, though, in general terms, above and beyond just schools, is that, since we all split the check, we each end fighting for our third steak and fifth bottle of wine.  All the other taxpayers pay for it, after all.  So, despite the fact that we’d all be better off if we settled for a salad and a glass of water most of the time, we fight for the extra goodies.  And the national debt climbs—and then climbs some more.

            As far as schools go, in closing, let us say this:  why are we so surprised that when we try to teach children, in the middle of an entire system built on coercion and the threat of State-sponsored violence, that it is wrong be a bully, to impose one’s will on one’s neighbors through force, that they won’t learn their lessons?  When the very machine that “educates” them is built on the idea that first-strike coercion is okay, so long as it’s “for a good cause”, then why are we so surprised when the chickens come home to roost, and the kids are violent in school?  They are merely learning from what we do, and not from what we say.

            10) Right to Privacy Amendment

            No governmental agent shall invade the privacy of any private individuals, except for clear cases where the public interest is being served, and in these cases, a warrant must be obtained before privacy is invaded.  Privacy shall include matters financial.  Money earned by a private citizen shall belong to that private citizen, and the citizen shall be allowed to move and spend that money in any amount for any legal purpose without any government intervention or forcible data collection.  Limits on how much cash can be carried in and out of the country, shall be expressly forbidden.

            This one isn’t targeted at very many specific abuses, but is intended simply to fill a hole in the present constitution.  Privacy is a right which should be recognized by the law, at all levels.  As you might infer from the amendment itself, though, we do envision some major changes in how the government treats private financial matters.  We envision that the only taxes will be sales taxes, that IRS agents, tax accountants, and tax lawyers will have to find useful jobs, and that the government will stop minding everyone’s private financial business.

            So there you have a good overview of the Libertarian approach to government.  We’ll put an end to the practice of having the morally self-anointed, those who are smug and superior, being put in charge of our lives, limiting our choices in the name of ‘the good of society’, and return to policies of individual freedom and self-responsibility.  More details can be gleaned from Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America.

            In a nutshell, Libertarians believe private individuals, not government bureaucrats, should make private decisions.  The party of Big Government, the Republicrats or Demoblicans or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, have repeatedly shown that they lack the stomach to take a meat cleaver (or fat cleaver?) to the Nanny State.  Libertarians can and will do exactly that.  All we need is your vote.  See you at the polls!

 

            Phil shut off the screen, closed his eyes, and slid into the “spoon” snuggling position with Gloria.  She awoke, inquiring of him, “So what do you think, Honeybunch?”

            “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he admitted.  “Harrrrumph!!!”

            “Yeah, I wondered if you’d written it,” she replied.  “You harrumph-head you!”

            “So, what do you think, Pootie Pie?” he wanted to know.  “Are you voting for the Libertarians, the Witchburners, or the Socialists, come throw-the-bums-out time this fall?”

            “Well, I guess I’ll ‘fess up,” she confessed reluctantly.  “I’m gonna get me an industrial-strength clothespin, and vote for the Socialists.”

            Phil’s heart sank.  Somehow, he just knew that Gloria was so sensible, so middle-of-the-road, so practical, that as she voted, so most likely would go the nation.  “Oh, come on, Pootie Pie!” he exclaimed. “How could you!  Hasn’t the Nanny State failed often enough?!  How do you figure?  What’s wrong with the Libertarians?”

            “Well,” she explained, “Just say no to witchburners like Hank N. Kreutz.  He scares the shit out of me.  I’m sure you understand.  I agree with that incredibly old fart who you love so dearly, humorist Dave Barry.  He says that Republicans are against any idea that increases the size of the State, except for those ideas that they came up with first.  I can’t believe how many Republican die-hards insist on voting for un-electable jerks like him, at the primaries.  They shoot themselves in the feet.  Stuff the jails with secular humanists, gays, and other heretics.  No way, Jose.

            “So, that leaves the Democrats—Socialists, as you call them—and the Libertarians.  Somehow, I can’t bring myself to vote for the present Libertarian platform.  It’s just too extreme.  Yes, I agree, State charity has no heart, or soul.  It’s mechanistic, bureaucratic.  Yet private charity has no brain.  The poor kid who gets media exposure gets thirty pairs of shoes, while the other twenty poor kids get none.  Somehow, we’ve got to reach a happy medium.

            “In other words, the State does have some interest in the welfare of its people, and the Libertarians don’t acknowledge that.  I don’t pretend to know the answers; I just know that the Libertarians seem too extreme for me.  You know, my Mom went on welfare for just a few years after Dad died, and I don’t know where I’d have gotten without this much-maligned socialism.  I know it has a lot of shortcomings, but I can’t get down on it too heavily, without feeling like a hypocrite.”

            “Come on now, Snoogle Woogle!” Phil protested, “People could have given you private charity if they’d not have been taxed to death!  How do you figure, you benefited from socialism!?  They wouldn’t let you get a job, ‘cause they regulate the snot out of everything—gotta have a license to groom a dog—and, if the dog groomer is brave enough to risk hiring you, he’s got to buy self-esteem insurance for you—and then, you gotta be grateful?  When the State takes care of you?  Hell, in the old Soviet Union, the State owned everything, everybody got everything from them, and, yea verily, no one was allowed to criticize them, they all had to be very grateful.  Anyone complaining in the workingman’s paradise obviously had to be insane, so off to the shrink bin with them.  We’re working towards the same deal, here.

            “Plus, they’ll call you something bad if you criticize the Nanny State, regardless of what your background is.  If you’ve been on welfare, you’re a hypocrite.  If you haven’t, you just don’t understand being poor and oppressed.  In other words, no one can criticize the Nanny State.”

            “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I suppose you might have a grain of truth, there.  Yet, too many things stick in my craw.  Picking on Native Americans.  Haven’t they suffered enough?  I remember reading about some poor old Native American, who went to public school way back in the fifties.  His Mom dolled him up in his finest handmade, beaded buckskin jacket, and braided his long hair, and sent him off to his first day of public school.  The teacher cut off his hair, and threw it and his jacket in the furnace, and told him to be like regular Americans.  Seems to me, we could cut people a break now and then.”

            “Yeah, but I think we all need a break, not just certain groups,” Phil replied.  “I do hear what you’re saying.  I guess even I have misgivings about the Libertarians, to tell the truth.  Strict individualism, even with private charity, will doubtlessly leave many in the cold.  Yeah, we’ll help our neighbors, but how about those in the inner city, who are out of sight, and out of mind?  Still, the Libertarians stink less than the other two parties.  They’ve got my vote.”

            “Well, you go for it, then,” Gloria consented.  “It’s a free country.  Sort of.  The other thing that scares me is this bit about sterilization.  They’re guilty of the same things they accuse others of doing, of disguising a theft of freedom as freedom.  Their freedom from, is taking poor people’s freedom of reproduction, in the name of their freedom to contract.  Sure, they say it’ll be private choices, but who is enforcing these contracts?  What happens when the charity recipient signs on the dotted line, gets the money, and then backs out of the deal?  Or, if the recipient gets that abortion or gives the child up for adoption, and the giver welches?  The government becomes the hit man for a deal that smells bad to me, or, the whole thing falls apart.”

            “Yeah,” Phil ‘fessed up, “I worry, too.  We sterilize the criminals, and for good measure we control the reproductive technology facilities to make sure the child abusers don’t go cranking on the baby-making machines.  Fine.  But, then the Libertarians are voted out, and some jerk like Senator Chancre-on-my-Butthole is voted in.  Then we all pay.  I guess we could worry about bunches of tools of the State getting used by shitheads.  We just need to minimize the tools that we give ‘em.  I’m not sure I want the State to have this tool.  Then again, I sure as hell don’t want the State to retain its ability to make our charity decisions for us.  Lesser of two evils, you know.”

            Gloria wasn’t done.  “The whole things just doesn’t seem... Christian to me.  You’ve been saying you really admire him, that you’ve become a closet Christian?  Well, I have a hard time imagining Christ running around and sterilizing people, as a condition of charity.  OK, so the technology wasn’t there.  He didn’t go cutting on people’s hearts, either, but as a heart surgeon, I used to do that.  Times change, technology changes, ethics change.  But still—on sterilizing the poor.  Didn’t he say something about him being the same as the poor people, that what you did to them, you did to him?  He was hungry, and you didn’t feed him?  He was thirsty, naked, and all that, but all you did, was offer to gut his reproductive facilities, before giving him a sack of change?”

            “You’re right,” Phil admitted.  “He did say some things along those lines.  What I don’t recall him saying, was that the vices of thievery and envy have now become the virtues of ‘social justice’.  He didn’t amend the tenth commandment to say, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, ox, ass, and so on; thou shalt confiscate and redistribute thy neighbor’s stuff, down to the last can of who hash, and then, thou damn well won’t even need to covet it any more.’  We’ve become a nation of thieves.  Legal thieves.  Nor did he say stuff like, ‘I was hungry, and you didn’t rob your neighbors’ pantry on my behalf.  I was naked, and you didn’t tell the neighbors to fork over their blankets, or go to jail.  I snorted the rent money, had a low bank account, low self esteem, and...”

            “OK, OK, I get the point,” Gloria half-grumbled, half-chuckled.  “But Jesus voted Democrat.  The Democrats told me so.  So there.”

            Phil laid there, thinking of what else to say.  There wasn’t much, and he was tired.  She’d vote as she saw fit, and he had to respect that.  What did their measly little votes mean anyway, in the big picture of things?  And, he sure wasn’t about to tackle that Big Topic, of what controversial things he’d be involved in at work, tonight.  Some other day, he’d have more energy.  Time to take it in.

            “Night-night, Snoogle Woogle,” he muttered. “I love you.”

            “Love you too,” she replied.  They drifted off to Napper’s House.

 

CHAPTER  6

            Phil came home at a reasonable hour for once that day, looking forward to spending the next few days at home, telecommuting and researching.  The mining and anti-nuke biobugs were finally, solidly on the road to regulatory approval and fruition, so he could now largely divorce himself from them, and devote himself to the next projects.  He grabbed himself a beer, plopped down on the sofa, and started chatting with Gloria.

            He figured that since both of them were in a good mood, and not pre-occupied, he’d tackle the Big Topic, about the sensitive aspects of the stuff he’d be working with, more and more, now.  After he cleared up a preliminary matter, that is.

            She, however, commandeered the conversation first.  “Did you see the news today?  I can’t believe it!  The big protests, the destruction and all, just ‘cause some right-wing nuts don’t like natural history museums.  Might lead us to believe in evolution, and astray from the Bible, and all.  Of course, your favorite Republican Presidential Candidate, Senator Hank N. Kreutz, is out there in the spotlight, deploring these methods—not the goals, of course, just the methods.  Peace-loving guy that he is.”

            “Yeah, right,” Phil replied skeptically.  “Damned, Devil-worshipping, evil, God-hating, anti-Bible evolutionists are shitting on our beliefs.  Obviously, they don’t deserve to live.  But, violence?  No Sir!  Not us!  We deplore violence!  Hmmm.  I wonder just how opposed to evolutionism he and his buddies will be when, as must happen eventually, word of some of the latest socially explosive genetics information leaks out.”

            Gloria was instantly all ears.  She seemed to know from Phil’s face that he’d been holding something back, that he was thinking about dropping a bombshell or two on her.  She’d known Phil long enough to figure these things out.  That, and she was black.  She knew enough of dipshit racists, who persisted even in the twenty-first century.  People didn’t have to hint around much, before she knew what kind of thoughts were brewing.

            “OK.  Out with it.  ‘Fess up,”  she demanded.  “What’s the ‘latest socially explosive genetics information’ that’s begging to be set loose?  And what does my favorite Pootie Pie have to do with it, and what’s he going to do about it?”

            “Not so fast,” Phil protested.  “Let me settle down, and get something off my mind first, so that we can tackle this thing with a clear slate.  Did I ever tell you that I sometimes have some really, really bizarre thoughts?”

            “No, not really, per se,” she chortled deviously, seeming to forget about Phil’s bombshells.  “You don’t have to tell me that, though!”

            “No, I mean specifically, about me sometimes thinking that maybe we’re all just fragments of the imagination of some deranged writer.  Some tortured soul who thinks he can change the world, in some other fold of the space-time continuum, by writing about us.  That, or just make a buck or two million, from movie rights.”

            Gloria got that look she reserved for those all-too-frequent occasions on which Phil went way out into the ozone.  What was left of it, at least, which wasn’t much.  “What brings this up, anyway?,” she inquired, humoring him.

            “Oh, it’s just some little annoying thing.  Something about... wait.  I’ve got to channel him in.”  Phil did the thousand-yard stare, while Gloria smirked.

            “OK, here it is,” Phil said in a faraway voice.  “It seems that our creator usually starts each chapter with some sort of highbrow, lowbrow, or mediumbrow quote, to kind of clue the readers in, to what he’s gonna write about.  That, or to fool them into regarding him as some sort of heavy thinker or some such.  And, some of the readers actually like the quotes.  Anyway, his society is full of greedy slimebags, lawyers, and silly rules, just like ours.  When the original authors of his quotes are dead for seventy years or more, he’s off scot-free.  Otherwise, he’s got to get permission, or embed the quote in the body of the text, for it to qualify as ‘fair use’, to be really safe.  So, he wants us to say his quote, so that he doesn’t need to get permission.”

            Gloria played along.  “So, why doesn’t he just get permission?”

            “Well, he’s a cheap, lazy piece of shit, basically.  That, and he’s grumpy about something he read in the 9 January ‘95 Wall Street Journal.  He wants to quote a very great leader, a non-violent man of principles, by the name of Martin Luther King, Junior.  But, it seems his heirs and descendants are money-grubbing slouches who want to make a buck off of the memory of this great man.  They make newspapers pay to run his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, for example.  That, and they want to make some sort of cheesy theme park.  Anyway, our writer/creator doesn’t want to get gouged for running a quote, so he’s got to embed the quote in the text of our conversation, here.”

            “Hey, I can handle it,” Gloria volunteered.  “So, why don’t you tell me what Martin Luther King, Junior, said?”

            “He said, ‘Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will.’  Oh, and he lived from 1929 to 1968.”  Phil’s faraway demeanor disappeared.  He brushed himself off, and announced, “Well, thanks for helping me appease our lazy creator, and his readers—those who like the quotes, at least.  The others can piss off.  Now, let’s get on with the story line.”

            “So, are you gonna tell me about the latest ‘facts’ you and your gene-splicing buddies have invented, that’s so ‘socially explosive’, now, or what?” Gloria persisted.

            “Well, let me start from the evolution end of things,” Phil began.  He wasn’t going to cut to the chase right away; he loved to drag things out, to explain the principles behind things first.  Besides, he wanted to work Gloria up to it slowly, so that she wouldn’t get too pissed off, too suddenly.

            “In a lot of cases, organisms evolve a feature for one purpose, and then, only later does the feature assume the function that we’re familiar with today,” Phil explained.  “We can’t really prove that this is the case.  Evolutionary biology is one of those things where we can answer what questions a heck of a lot more easily than we can answer why questions.  Anyway, an example might be, for instance... oh, I don’t know, we always like to pick on the giraffes, and their long necks.  Maybe giraffes first started to evolve long necks, so that they could get a better view over the bushes, to see predators from further away.  Then, after a while, their long necks became useful for browsing on tree tops, so their necks got even longer.  Oh, wait, I recall a real example.  They suspect that bones evolved out of organs that were just a place to dump unwanted calcium.  Oh, and, even better yet, mammary glands evolved out of sweat glands.”

            “So what’s so socially explosive about that?” Gloria pestered him.

            “Hold your horses.  The human brain may be one of those things.  We have reason—strong reasons, now—to believe that the human brain first started its drastic expansion when we were starting to specialize as a long-distance predator.  Cats have for a long time been the short-distance, ambush or sprint predator.  Dogs have been the medium-distance predator, capable of pursuing prey for hours.  Humans pursued prey for days.  Even into historic times, when anthropologists could document these things, some hunter-gatherers would slog on, two or three days in a row, until they literally ran fleet-footed prey into the ground.  Humans filled an empty niche, that being that of the long-distance predator.

            “Yes, a larger brain helped us track the prey when we lost sight of it, and helped us fashion clubs and sharp sticks with which to dispatch the prey, when we finally chased it into the ground.  Bizarrely enough, though, these things appear to have been secondary to the real pressure that lead to the growth of brain size.

            “The real pressure was all the stresses placed on the brain.  Lack of food and water, and even oxygen, when putting on bursts of speed, all placed strains on the brain.  That, and, most of all, heat.  After all, we did our thing in hot, tropical savannas.  That, by the way, is why we lost our fur.  Running under a hot sun, we had to bleed off a lot of heat.  We lost our fur, and evolved tons and tons of sweat glands.  Anyway, under all these stresses and strains, the brain might start to fail.  A long-distance predator can’t afford to get groggy, in the middle of a three-day pursuit.  Or, worse yet, to lose control of vital bodily functions.

            “So the human brain, under these evolutionary pressures, went in, big time, for redundancy.  Back up those neural circuits with three or four more, for each vital function and for each muscle, so that we can keep running while our brains slowly fry.  Then, after our brains multiplied in size by a factor of about three, compared to our chimp-like ancestors, these new, larger brains started to change in function.  They weren’t just extremely redundant fail-safe systems any more; they became the hosts of a higher level of intelligence and culture.  We became the cultural animal, not just the long-distance predator.  Culture achieved take-off velocity.  So, here we are today.”

            “Sounds good,” Gloria commented.  “About the same as any of three hundred and fifty other nifty fables about the evolution of the human animal, none of which we can really prove or disprove.  So, why should this theory be so ‘socially explosive’, as you’ve been hinting?”

            Phil frowned.  No more beating around the bush.  “Well... it seems that cultural evolution is about three billion times faster than biological evolution.  Biological evolution in humans has just barely caught on to hints that culture is more important now than long-distance predation, let alone catching onto the existence of things like air conditioners.  And, um, some human races evolved in hotter areas, where there’s more heat stress on the brains, than others.”

            It was Gloria’s turn to frown.  “So who came up with these theories?  Did they wear white robes with pointy hats?  And, how long till you and I have to drink at different water coolers, when we’re out in public?”

            “Now, now.  I see you followed this thing to its conclusion.  Yes, it would seem that, since heat is one of the primary stresses on the human brain, evolution would favor more redundancy in tropical races than in others.  And, unfortunately, it’s an engineering proposition—you’ve got to give something up, when you want to gain something else.  I was clued in on this by some academic types, on a real hush-hush basis, and I’ve been looking at various genetic data from various races.

            “I’ve run some simulations that I’ve not told a soul about.  It does look like there’s a collection of genes that make a trade-off between intelligence and redundancy.  Some people—athletes like boxers, for example—can take some literal brain-bashing, and keep on going.  They aren’t often known to have a high IQ.  There are racial differences in these genes.  I don’t think I could get any grants, though, if I applied to do a thorough study of which race’s brains fry first, under heat, impacts, lack of food, water, and oxygen, or other stresses.

            “I’ve actually known about this business for quite some time,” Phil admitted sheepishly.  “So do only a small handful of people in academia, that I know of.  I’ve not even told them about what simulations I’ve run, and I don’t intend to, any time soon.  We’ve all agreed that no one spreads this around, unless we figure out something good to do with it.  Like, affordable gene therapy, and you know how expensive that is for something that results from just one gene, let alone a whole bunch of ‘em.  Anyway, don’t look at me like I’m a Nazi.  It’s Mother Nature’s fault, not mine.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with this, long term.  Which is why I mention it to you in the first place.”

            “Mother Nature’s fault, huh?  You guys made up this crap; she didn’t!”  Gloria often kidded around about scientists “making up” things instead of “discovering” them; this time, though, she seemed serious.

            “No, Pootie Pie, we’re not making things up.  The genes are there; they differ, statistically at least, from race to race; and the simulations say that they trade off between redundancy and intelligence.  I could try to quibble, and say that this doesn’t mean that one race is statistically ‘better’ than another.  It depends on the environment.  But we’re all pampered with air conditioning, good food, and such, here in America today, compared to the African savannah of a million years ago.  And we all know which is more important in today’s competitive technological society—intelligence, or physically stress-resistant brains.  So I won’t quibble.

            “I do understand that there’s a lot of shitheads out there who love any excuse that they can find, to be racist.  I hope that there’s not as many of ‘em as some of us think there are, although I don’t know.  Which is why we have to think and talk things over.

            “I do wish people were more accepting of reality, as opposed to what they wish was true.  Most people who worry about such things have long ago accepted, in physics, that particle behavior, quantum physics, relativity, and such—the behavior of matter, on scales other than those in which we live—that the universe wasn’t designed for the human brain to understand it, certainly not intuitively.  Or, that the human brain wasn’t designed to understand physics.

            “Well, how come we can’t be just as accepting of biological reality?  How come we can’t accept that Mother Nature didn’t read the Declaration of Independence, or any other high-blown fluff about how we’re all created equal?  OK, yes, the folks who wrote that meant, in a legal sense, and all that is wonderful.  Still, evolution didn’t keep us and our sensitivities, sensibilities, and desires in mind, and we’ve got to pull our heads out of the sand, and make do with what we’re stuck with.  Which is reality.”

            Phil was pleased to see she wasn’t blowing her top.  Calmly, she pointed out, “But our measurement or perception of reality affects that same reality.  The old ‘Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle’.  The self-fulfilling prophecy deal.  The teacher thinks the kid is a dumbshit and, lo and behold, he’s gonna be a dumbshit, ‘cause no one expects him to amount to anything.”

            “I don’t know, Pootie Pie,” Phil replied, weary already, all of a sudden, realizing he’d gone ahead and plunged into this difficult topic, without... what?  Plotting every last nuance of his arguments?  As if he could plan the whole thing in advance?  An honest discussion, like real life, can’t be yanked around like a puppet, he told himself.  I’ve got to approach this as a discussion, where I might actually learn something, rather than just trying to persuade Gloria to view things as I do.  Especially since I’m not really sure what I think, on some aspects of this, anyway.

            “I’ve researched this, not just genetic data and such, but the history, sociology, politics and such of it.  I’ve even scribbled down some notes, so that we can go over it in some detail.  But, you know, I still don’t know what’s the right thing to do, here, long term, with what I know.  A few others strongly suspect what I’ve simulated on ABC’s computers.  I’ve been known to fib a bit, when they ask me if I’ve looked into it much.  I’ve got more access to more specialized genetics-simulating computer power than anyone else.  At the very least, I’ve got more ability to do this while covering my tracks, than anyone else.  But sooner or later, regardless of what I do, this stuff’s gonna get spilled.

            “So, should I spill this in a responsible manner, before somebody spills it irresponsibly?  Or, should I just bury it for as long as it’ll stay buried?  Which is more true—that the truth will set you free, or, that ignorance is bliss?  Or, that all truth is relative, anyway?  That there are some things that the majority of people shouldn’t know?  Maybe I show my pro-knowledge biases, just by the way I phrase the questions.”

            Gloria just sat there with a blank stare, regarding Phil from the other end of the sofa.  Queasiness set in, as Phil started mentally comparing his current situation with a Phil/Gloria discussion from several years ago, right before she’d left him over his involvement with biological warfare.  Not that this was the first time he’d thought such thoughts; they’d occurred to him often enough, as he’d speculated about how this discussion would go.

            Gloria found her voice soon enough.  “What do you mean, ‘spill this in a responsible manner, before somebody spills it irresponsibly’?”  She demanded.  “That’s absurd!  You can’t go off and do something bad, just ‘cause somebody else might do it in a worse manner later!  That’s the philosophy of a shithead!  I thought you learned something in your experiences as a whore for the State, with the BELFRYBATs and all!”

            “OK, I agree,” Phil submitted, trying to calm her back down.  “I don’t ever want to be a whore for the State, ever again.  I regret what I did.  And doing something bad, and justifying it on the basis that if you don’t do it first, the other guy will do it worse, is indeed the philosophy of a dickhead.  Harrumph!!  But the critical question here, which I’d hope to discuss, rationally and at length with you, is this: is an honest, unbiased attempt to discover the facts, and to deal with reality as best as we can perceive it, ever bad?  Especially if reality is opposite what we’d like it to be, and some scumbags will use the facts we disclose for evil purposes?

            “I’d argue that it’s not an open-and-shut case.  Follow me through.  We’ve known for decades, in spite of lots of people who want to decide what knowledge other people are capable of handling, that black people’s IQs, statistically, are lower than white people’s.  We’ve tried to ignore it, ban it, explain it away, and legislate it away.  The theory that the differences are due, even partly, to genetics, is, and has been for quite some time, simply unthinkable, unspeakable, in polite society.  A noble stance, one in favor of equality—and what decent person could be against equality?”

            Phil caught his breath momentarily, watching Gloria on the other end of the couch.  He worried about a repeat of their pre-BELFRYBATs discussion some years ago, before he’d become party to mass-destruction madness.  He sure didn’t want to lose her again—or Trent, for that matter, he thought, looking at his beloved and her bulging belly.  Maybe I should’ve waited to till we were snuggling in bed, to bring this up.  Make sure she remembers I love her.  Nah!  Wouldn’t make any difference.  She’s too smart to be swayed by snuggles, in matters of our weighty philosophical discussions.  Still... it wouldn’t hurt to scoot over in her direction.

            “But, Snoogle Woogle Poogle Woogle Boogle Woogle, Honey-Baby-Sweetheart-Darling, Love of my Live, Pootie Pie—just hypothetically, for the sake of argument, just for a few minutes...”  He slid over her way and put an arm around her, as she leaned away from him a bit.  He lifted her left hand and gave it a kiss, grinning.  She grinned too, despite apparently trying not to.

            “Yes, Phil, we love each other, and we can discuss anything in a civilized manner.  Except for you becoming a whore for the State again, or chasing other women, that is.  Knowledge, by itself, doesn’t hurt anyone.  It’s how the knowledge is used.  So, we can talk about it.  Trent and I aren’t going to run away from you, because you talk to us honestly about an issue.  Especially if you honestly listen to our input, and give both Trent and I equal say with what you think.  We get two votes, and you get one.  Check out what it’s like to be an outvoted minority, while the majority legislates the facts.”

            Phil breathed a sign of relief, seeing that she was lightening up.  She continued, “But I wonder why it’s taken you so long to bring this topic up, if you’ve been dabbling with simulations and such.  Did you wait till now, so that I’d be more painfully aware of my condition?  That Trent and I need you?  So we wouldn’t run away from you, like I did last time?  No, don’t answer that.  I know you’re not a Nazi, even if some accuse you of such things.  I do love you, even if at times... Oh, never mind.  But, don’t you go thinking you can persuade me with snuggles,” she finished, giving him a little pinch.  She did snuggle up to him a bit, though.

            Damn!, Phil thought.  I can’t sneak anything past this lady!  We’ve known each other too long; she can read all my thoughts!  “Now, where were we?” Phil started back in.  “All right.  I appreciate you being able to discuss rationally, and all.  And not making that mistake that a lot of people make, of regarding group, statistical comparisons as being individual insults.  I’ll want to hear what you think about this.  Not only as a spiritually advanced snugglebunny, but also as a black person.  You, no doubt, have a perspective on race in America that’s hard for a honky like me to understand.

            “And, legislating the facts, you said—yes!  By all means, we’ve got to get back to that one.  But, hypothetically, grant me for a few minutes that the simulations that I ran are right.  There’s a trade-off between genetically influenced intelligence and neural redundancy, or performance under physical stress to the brain.  That would mean that, in most professions, except for athletic endeavors—boxing especially—Whites have advantages over Blacks, proportional to how much the jobs are related to intelligence.  Statistically, at least, that is.

            “That means, under a free, capitalistic system, where employers want to hire the best people, who will make them the most money, regardless of anyone’s skin color, Whites will do better than Blacks, as groups.  Now, suppose we adamantly, absolutely refuse to accept the facts, and legislate biological reality.  Or, equality of outcomes, at least.  Not only do we have to resort to Marxist-type methods to enforce equality, with all the attendant damage to the economy and to the rights of those who would look after their own interests, and their families’ interests, in preference to the ‘interests of society’ as dictated by the politically powerful, we also run the risks of balkanization.  We stir the resentments of those discriminated against—Whites and Asians, in our case.  And, with continuing failure, we face the resentment of the ‘protected’ also.

            “In other words, just take our current situation, and assume that there’s a large genetic contribution to the racial differences in IQ.  But that theory is ruled out, ‘cause it’s not palatable to our refined, egalitarian tastes.  What do we have left?  Blacks are doing less well than Whites because of the environment.  Environment means culture and surroundings, most notably houses, food, clothes, toys, and, yes, money.  And, of course, discrimination.  Blaming black culture would be almost as unpalatable as blaming black genes.  It’s just not ‘diverse’ or ‘multicultural’ to blame culture, unless, of course, we’re talking politically incorrect culture.  Besides, the government, despite all its tools of coercion, can’t do much about culture.

            “That leaves money, in all its various forms, and discrimination.  That, of course, the government can do a lot about!  We can force equality!  We can force people’s charity and hiring decisions!  We can move that money, and make everyone equal!  And if, even after a hundred or a thousand years, we haven’t achieved equality, then, obviously, since genes and culture are ruled out, then, by God, it must be that, despite our very best efforts, the prejudices of the Whites are still holding the Blacks down!

            “So, the only morally acceptable course for Whites, especially white males, will be to play whipping boy, or, for the few powerful ones, to punish other white males.  To even the score, and help the oppressed underdogs.  The federal judges will run all the schools with a few black students, where those students have below-average scores.  The lawyers will defend the black criminals on the basis of ‘black rage’, or ‘urban survival syndrome’.  Never mind that setting up lower standards for Blacks does no one any favors.  It shows immense paternalistic condescension.  And never mind the obvious stupidity of blaming all statistical group differences on oppression—Jews and Asians both out-perform Whites.  So, have they both been oppressing us poor, downtrodden Whites?

            “And how are we gonna encourage young black people to study hard, work hard, and behave themselves, to win by playing the game fairly, when we’re constantly telling them that it’s all no use, that the only reason that black people lag behind, is that Mighty Whitey is waiting to trip ‘em up, every chance he gets?

            “What I’m trying to say is, if genes are a significant real root cause, and we ignore even the very idea that this may be true, and blame it on a subtle form of discrimination instead, then we’re setting ourselves up for constant failure, and continued bitterness and hatred.  From both sides.”

            “Well, we sure as hell aren’t gonna do anything to improve the lot of young black people if we don’t try,” Gloria replied.  “And it’s pretty clear to me that the genetic theory isn’t gonna help us to try any harder.  Tellin’ ‘em they’re behind, not because of Mighty Whitey, but because they don’t have the smarts, how’s that gonna help anything?  Don’t sell the Pygmalion effect short.  The self-fulfilling prophecy, you know.  They’ve demonstrated it, and not just once or twice.  Tell the teachers that a normal kid isn’t quite up to snuff and, lo and behold, the kid’s scores drop after a while.”

            “True enough,” Phil admitted.  “But we’ve been working at ‘helping’ poor and black people by following that kind of thinking, and by believing in the cure-all powers of education and the Nanny State, and what’s it gotten us?  I’ve collected some statistics during my research, that I want you to take a look at.  Statistics on lots of different things.  What I’m thinking of right now, though, is the quite sad plight of black people.  Like the black economist Thomas Sowell said, the black family survived slavery, two world wars, a depression, blatant discrimination, and so on, but was finally brought low by the ‘compassion’ of meddling government know-it-alls.  Maybe it’s time we tried a new approach.  Let me go and get my notes.”

            “No, let’s not.  Let’s eat, first, and then we’ll check your notes.  You cheater, you!  You’ve had time to collect all this data, and I’m caught by surprise,” she protested.  “Although, come to think of it, I guess I have a small amount of material I’d like to present, too.  A surprise witness, if you will.  But not yet.  Let’s eat.  What do you say we eat TV dinners, so we can keep this discussion going without too much trouble?”

            “Sounds good to me,” Phil replied, thinking, Yuck!  TV dinners!  I sure hope the sauce isn’t too blue.  Phil pulled two dinners out of the freezer and plopped them into the infra-red laser oven, and punched the button.

            “A new approach, you say?  And just what, pray tell, might that be?” Gloria wanted to know.

            “Oh, I’d think that would be obvious.  A bit of genetic engineering here and there.  Strictly voluntary, of course,” Phil replied.  “If, as the simulations say, genes are the real root cause, or at least, a highly significant root cause, then gene therapy for the living, and genetic engineering for the unborn, should do more for black people than the Nanny State has been able to do, in decades.  And if we can figure out how to do this for a reasonable amount of money, as opposed to the zillions that such things cost now, then, obviously, the whole equation will change, and we’ll want to spread the word, far and wide, about what we know, and what we can do about it.”

            “Does that mean that, despite what you were saying about the costs of ignoring what you regard as reality, then, that, um, unless you can get the costs of engineering ‘solutions’ to your perceived ‘problems’ here, down to an acceptable level, that you’ll, um, keep your ‘facts’ to yourself for the foreseeable future?” Gloria inquired, apparently trying her best to squeeze Phil’s intentions out of him, without annoying him too much.

            “I don’t know, Poogle-Bye,” he responded.  “That’s why I want to go over it with you, real thoroughly.  On the one hand, I want to be totally devoted to ‘Truth’ with a capital ‘T’, and perceive reality as honestly as I can.  And, to share Truth and Knowledge with others, so that we can all live in the real world, as best as we know how.  Truth is better than delusion.  But then there’s dipshits, who abuse whatever you tell them.  So, speak to me.”

            He pulled the dinners out of the oven, served them with a flourish, and began to dine on his scrumptious fare.  The sauce wasn’t too blue, but he had definitely seen better chow.  Gloria just poked at her dinner a bit, making a face.  “Well, Mr. Closet Christian,” she suggested, “Maybe you should just ask yourself what stance our hero would take on such matters.”

            “I think he was the one who started this deal about the Truth setting you free, and what not,” he retorted.  “But, bringing him up brings a few things to my mind.  You want to know what I really, really, really think?”

            “By all means, let’s hear it,” she said.

            “I think dipshits will be dipshits regardless of what you do or don’t allegedly tell them, or not tell them.  It makes no never mind.  Look at our hero, and the Bible.  Our hero and the Bible tell us about umpteen zillion different times, to be loving, tolerant, forgiving, non-judgmental, and all.  To pull the logs out of our own eyes before we go rooting after the speck in the next guy’s eye.  Oh, and then just once or twice, in the Stone-Age chapters of the Bible, it tells us that God hates gays, and that we should kill them.  What do the snarling, evil, drooling dipshit ‘Christians’ want to do?  You got it!  Kill the gays!  Of course, the genuinely loving Christians have different ideas.  Same facts, same literature, drastically different interpretations.

            “In other words, assholes will be assholes, and good people will be good people, regardless of what you tell them.  Do you really think that a genuinely decent person, one committed to treating all people with respect and dignity, will wake up, read the paper saying some science geek says Blacks are stupid, and turn into an idiotic racist?  Or, the white skinhead punk will wake up, look at the charts and graphs, and decide that he should start kicking in white as well as black skulls?  And leave the Asians and Jews alone, instead of picking on all except the Whites, now that he’s seen the most recent statistics?  Now that he knows that both Blacks and Whites are ‘inferior’ to Asians and Jews?  Or some stats professor will explain to him that averages say nothing about individuals.  Will the skinhead jerk change his ways, based on this?  Hardly likely.”

            Gloria chuckled and agreed with him.  “I see what you mean.  Racial problems aren’t driven by facts, so ‘fixing’ the facts is no solution.  But what about the huge bulk of the rest of us, who are neither Saints nor Demons?  Won’t this information color our thoughts?  With bad effects, most likely?  Like, you’re hiring people.  You know, now, that a randomly selected White is likely to be smarter than a randomly selected Black.  See, I’m taking your weasel factor away by talking probability.  Yes, you can’t make certain judgments about individuals; only groups.  Still, if you play the odds—and, all of us do, in one form or another—then, you’ll pick the White.  In short, discrimination.  Blame it on your worship of ‘Truth,’ and everyone’s ‘right’ to know it.”

            “You’re right,” Phil admitted.  Gloria looked a tiny bit surprised.  “The way things are set up now, that is,” he continued.  “Employers can’t really know the guy’s IQ, can’t test, and can’t ask.  Not for the last half-century.  Unless you’re the government, which gives armed services recruits what amount to IQ tests.  Damned feds always exempt themselves from the laws they pass on everyone else.  Oh, yes, that civilian employer can interview him, and get his school records, and all that.  According to statistics from The Bell Curve, none of these things correlate to job success as well as IQ.

            “So, not being allowed to test for IQ, the employer has to guess.  And, of course, lots of employers know that, statistically, Whites are smarter than Blacks, regardless of whether we let any more information out, or not.  So, they’re caught between equal opportunity laws, and trying to cheat, on the basis of whatever information we can’t prohibit them from getting.  Like, what their skin color is, which correlates to IQ.  So, of course they’ll want to discriminate.

            “I think we should all vote Libertarian.  They wouldn’t let stupid, pro-ignorance laws stay on the books.  You want to test your job applicant for IQ?  By all means, you should be allowed to know.  Unless the applicant doesn’t want to take the test, in which case you can either take a risk, or tell him to hit the road.  Legalize freedom.  In other words, I think, faced with a problem of limited data, of being forcibly kept ignorant of un-’race-normed’, real test scores, leading to discrimination, the solution isn’t to try and limit the data even more.  That’s futile, anyway; the solution is to increase the data.  Now, employers would know the IQ of the applicant, regardless of skin color, and hire accordingly.

            “Sounds elitist, huh?  So?  It’s reality.  Some people are capable of learning more, faster, than others.  Can’t legislate it away.  Can’t teach a pig to sing.  Why not save scarce training and learning opportunities for those who can use them best?  Our economy would be bigger and more efficient, and everyone would be better off.  It makes more sense to have smart people make decisions, than stupid people.  It’s that simple.”

            “Unfortunately,” Gloria objected, “The first decision the decision-makers make, is how much to pay themselves, and how much to pay the peons.  And we all know how that goes.  I read The Bell Curve.  I don’t quite get it.  It bemoans how the cognitive elite is amassing all this power.  Yet, like you, it advocates that employers should be allowed to test for IQ.  What gives?  Do you want smart people to be able to sit around, fat, dumb, and happy, just ‘cause they’re smart?  That’s feeding the too-powerful cognitive elite!”

            Phil came back with, “Hell, No!  If I was the boss—you, too, I’d bet, or anyone else with common sense, for that matter—I’d take any high-IQ duff-sitter, who wants to just sit around and be smart, and show him the door.  In a hypothetical free society, that is.  Where employers, not bureaucrats and lawyers, make hiring and firing decisions.

            “Conversely, if some supposedly low-IQ person worked his butt off, and made sensible, responsible decisions, then I’d promote him.  In both cases, without regard to skin color.  Skilled, responsible, smart people, regardless of skin color, are quite valuable, and the businesses that recognize this come out on top, in a free society.  The IQ test merely gets us a head start, in getting people to where they belong.  So, we need to be free to give the tests, and use the results.  All we need is freedom.  Not government-enforced ‘freedom from racism’, but simple, real freedom.

            “Oh, and how about gays.  Bigots say we can’t give gays any more rights, since, like Blacks, equal rights will mean special treatment.  That’s one of the biggest prices we pay for the ‘anti-racist services’ of the Nanny State.  By doing artificial things, in the noble quest for equal opportunities, we raise roadblocks for other groups.  It really chaps my butt, as a libertarian, who thinks gays should be treated as fully respectable human beings, when people say this kind of crap to me.  But, you know, till the government stops making any of us more equal than others, I won’t have a good reply.  We can’t give anyone any more rights, ‘cause ‘rights’ mean ‘special treatment’.  The only way we can get to everyone really being equal, is to ‘specially protect’ everyone, so that we’re all more equal than everyone else!  After all, not being officially designated as a socially disadvantaged person puts one at a social disadvantage, right?  In need of special protection, then?  Kinda crazy, huh?!”

            “You’ll not get much argument from me there,” Gloria admitted.  “You know I’m no friend of ‘affirmative action’, ‘cause it makes all the members of the ‘beneficiary’ group suspect, as to our competence.  Maybe affirmative action is anti Afro-motive.  It doesn’t get us African-Americans motivated and going, to anywhere except a fight over who’s a bigger victim than the next guy.  Some would say that I’m not a real Black for saying such things.  Diversity is wonderful, but all Blacks better think alike, as Blacks.  That’s okay.  I say what I wanna say, they say what they wanna say.

            “Affirmative action once was a good thing, serving to change the country’s momentum, in the short term.  Those days are decades gone, with about a grand total of one exception, that being cases where Blacks have a hard time with an all-white police force in a predominantly black area.  Although I agree with you, that putting an end to ridiculous and racially biased drug laws would go about three thousand times further, in improving relations with the fuzz.  What I worry about most, though, is that a backlash against affirmative action can easily swing too far to other, even more idiotic extremes.  Genetics and intelligence issues aren’t gonna help.

            “But let’s get back on track, here.  Suppose we can’t come up with cheap, effective genetic engineering techniques to fix these problems that you claim we’ve got.  Then what?  Is there any real benefit to be gained by releasing your information?  Anything that outweighs the possibility of a mass Pygmalion effect?”

            “I don’t know,” Phil admitted.  “That’s the question.  Which factors outweigh the other ones?  On the one hand, publishing this information would get more people going, as far as researching the genetics of it, and getting us a solution, faster.  And, it would help to take the wind out of the sails of affirmative action.  If anything can take the wind out of those sails.  I mean, we’ve got supposedly intelligent Supreme Court justices arguing that there’s no tainting of beneficiaries as inferior, because no beneficiaries have ever complained!  The rest of us, either shafted by exclusion or tainted by suspicion, without ‘benefiting’ from the policies, don’t count, at all.  On the other hand, it would doubtlessly lead to more strife, at least in the short run, and to your Pygmalion effect.

            “I would question the size of your Pygmalion effect.  Can we really, really believe that the views held by teachers and such, would change that drastically, just ‘cause of some technical information being released?  I mean, look at the pathetic level of scientific knowledge in this country!  Fifty percent or so, these days, don’t even believe in evolution!”

            Gloria nodded her head in agreement.  “Yes, we do have an amazing level of stupidity here, don’t we?  Speaking of which, the other day I read that a quarter—fully one-fourth—of white Americans—if you interview them in a manner so that they don’t think they’ll be hustled off to jail for the wrong answers—believe that interracial marriage should be against the law.  And, you and your dispassionate technical information would feed their fires.”

            “Good point,” Phil conceded.  “These morons have never heard of hybrid vigor.  Maybe we just need to educate them.  But you know my perspective of education these days.  Can’t teach a pig to sing.  And, frankly, some racists are among the stupidest people I’ve ever known.  But don’t forget, racists come in all flavors, including well-educated, intelligent ones who would ‘fix’ America’s racist history with ‘good’ racism.

            “OK, I’ll admit it—it’s a zero-sum game out there, a lot of times.  We could improve the lot of middle-class Whites, by tearing down affirmative action, and our genetics information might help to do it.  There’s no doubt that some Blacks would do less well.  What can we do for them?  You know the standard answers.  Education.  Money.  Socialism.  Training.  Money.  Education.  Taxes.  Money money money.  Welfare veteran doesn’t know how to show up on the job, sober and on time, every day, to push a mop, and what’s the solution?  ‘Training’, of course!

            “Well, ‘scuse me for saying so, but money and education are finite resources, and maybe we should put them to the very best uses that we can find for them.  Maybe we should educate more intelligent people of all races, to become genetic engineers, among other things, and really get cracking on improving the lives of human beings.  Maybe we should finally get over this thing we’ve got, where we look back and say, ‘Well, Hitler was a totally evil psychopath’—editorial comment by me; I agree; but then, the next part sticks in my craw—‘and he was intent on genetics and a ‘Master Race’, and so, forever more, when we talk about improving human beings, we can only talk about environmental influences.  Genes are verboten territory.’  So we worship education as the cure-all.

            “Your child has severe Down’s Syndrome?  Not to worry.  Here, we’ll get twelve social workers with PhDs, and we’ll teach him how to wipe his butt!  You owe it to him.  Everyone’s entitled to be all that they can be.  If you don’t get him everything—play therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, shrinks, chiropractors, quackopractors, and State-certified witch doctors, why, then, obviously, you’re a cruel and heartless person, and you don’t love your own kid.  Maybe we should take him away from you, ‘cause, you know, all of this isn’t going to cost you a dime, anyway!  Socialism pays for it all!

            “Well, I say, fuck ‘em!  Live in the real world!  We do pay for all this crap!”  Phil calmed down just enough to notice that Gloria, now half-way through her dinner, was looking up at the ceiling.  “OK, OK, I know—why does every discussion turn into a tirade against socialism, and I’m preaching to the choir.  But, you know, sometimes I wonder about all those who argue against genetic engineering.  Most of ‘em are poverty pimps and defect pimps, who make money off of people’s miseries.

            “But let’s change gears.  Most people are too tied up in their current nook of the space-time continuum, to get a good, bird’s-eye view of things.  Let’s look at it by comparing it to another time in history.  Let’s not do the usual, which is to compare genetic engineering to Hitler’s whacko, unscientific racial paranoia.  Let’s look at a time and place that few of us know about, because we’re too busy learning political correctness, instead of history.  History shows another time when the political thought control police allocated scarce resources ‘for the good of society’, instead of letting individuals and families make their own free decisions.  A society that decided to legislate the biological facts.

            “Let’s look at the Soviet Union under Stalin, and a charlatan by the name of Trofim D. Lysenko.  This guy was the head of Soviet agricultural genetics, and he believed in Lamarckism, which is the inheritance of acquired characteristics.  OK, so you know about that,” Phil said, noticing that Gloria was nodding her head.  “Anyway, as you know, that’s total malarkey.  But, this jerk wasn’t content to believe in his kooky theories, or even to fake experiments to get others to believe what he believed.  Like, he’d cut the tails off of a few generations of mice, and then supposedly show that the offspring had shorter tails.  But that wasn’t enough.  He had to force other people to believe what he believed.

            “Anyway, he ruined Soviet agriculture.  Any geneticist that disagreed with him was shipped off to Siberia.  Legislate the facts, you see.  It seems that Stalin and his buddies were all bent on creating ‘The New Soviet Man’, who would forget all about himself and his family, and do all and sacrifice all ‘for the good of society’.  Ha!  Read, the good of Stalin and the other jerks.  Anyway, the group-think commies over there, they just couldn’t bear to face the biological facts.  They couldn’t bear to think that they’d spend their whole lives, being good communist group-think stooges, and making everyone else be the same way, and—gasp! Horror of horrors!—The new generation would be born, and they’d be the same old, selfish, non-group-oriented individuals, who would want to look after themselves and their families first, before this vague, nebulous thing called Soviet Society!

            “Well, we just can’t have that.  So, we’ll legislate biological reality.  And, they did.  Or, they tried.  Our good buddy, Trofim, he claimed he could grow wheat in colder and colder climes, year after year, and, lo and behold, you could literally start to cast your wheat seeds in the snow banks, and wallah!  There’s your nifty, new, Sovietized, high-yielding, cold-resistant wheat.  Hell, we’ll grow wheat on the North Pole!  He faked his experiments to suit, and drummed the dissidents out of the Soviet Academy of Science.

            “It took the death of Stalin, whose butt good ol’ Trofim was sucking on big-time, and the rise of Andrei Sakharov in the Academy, to finally drum this charlatan out.  I think it’s a shame that only a big-time whore for the State, like Sakharov, who invented the Soviet H-bomb, would have the stature needed to get rid of such a bum.  Not to malign Andrei too much; he did see the error of his ways, after a while, and became outspoken in support of human rights and nuclear disarmament.  Of course, what I can’t figure out is, how could one do such a thing?  To be so inconsistent?  To be a whore for the State, and then to speak out against the State?”

            Gloria obliged him with a courtesy laugh, but she didn’t sound too thrilled.

            Phil continued.  “Anyway, my basic point is, you can’t legislate biological reality, and you’ll pay the price, sooner or later, if you try.  Even more so, when you put the coercive power of the State behind stupid notions, everyone pays big-time.  If Trofim had been nothing more than a small farmer, who believed in throwing his wheat in the snow, then his neighbors would’ve just laughed at him.  They’d have left him alone, till he starved, or came to them, so that they could feed him a bit, and maybe teach him to be smarter next time.  But, no!  Trofim had to suck butt with Stalin, and get Stalin to force everybody, including old farmers who knew better, to cast their wheat seeds in the snow!  That, or get shipped off to Siberia!

            “So, forgive my honesty, but we’re doing the same thing here.  We’re throwing our wheat seeds in the snow.  You’ve got a child with IQ seventy, and you want to spend zillions on educating him to be a doctor?  Fine!  Fine!  Do it, by all means!  Just let me choose my own doctor, and spend your own money on that education!  Don’t go enlisting Stalin to be on your side, and force me to throw my wheat seeds in the snow, too!”

            “OK, I hear you,” Gloria admitted.  “If we were free to give IQ tests, and figure out which heads are snowbanks and which aren’t, then this would work.  But you say you want to live in the real world.  The real world includes politics, and you know how much chance we have of changing things.  Talk about the masses of voters in the middle, who all fear for their jobs, in a competitive technological society, and our worship of State-sponsored education, and all, and throw in a racial/genetic IQ argument, and an argument to rely more heavily on IQ tests, to boot?  Get real!  You know what the reactions would be!”

            “Still,” Phil persisted.  “Even the majority voters in a nation a quarter-billion strong, can’t legislate the facts, either.  Maybe it’ll take a while, but in the long run, we’ve got to face the facts.  Especially if facing the facts will allow us to tear down a racist system, and to replace it, long term, with a system where most everyone can have smart kids that look like their parents, thanks to genetic engineering.”

            “What’s this worship of IQ business, anyway?” Gloria wanted to know.  “Will higher IQs really solve all our problems?”

            “Oh, no!” Phil replied.  “Just look at all of our air-headed models, who make millions, despite being on the same intellectual levels as benthic nematodes.  We’ll solve all of our problems by being born with high IQs, and looking like Smarmy Simples.  Then, we’ll all get married to multi-gazillionaires like Ronald Rump, and we’ll all live happily ever after.

            “No, seriously, there are strong reasons to believe that we’d all be better off if we were all smarter.  I, for one, would be quite happy if I were stuck digging ditches all day, ‘cause everyone else was smart, too, as long as I could come home to play chess and read good books, or design robots, or whatever.  Especially if my society didn’t do as many bone-headed things as it does now.  So, I don’t buy the idea that a society of IQ-200 people would have to have lots of malcontents.  Let me show you some statistics from The Bell Curve, that’ll show you what a small change in mean IQ could do to the rate of social pathology.”

            “Well, I’ve collected some stats, too,” Gloria informed him.  “Like, I know that one’s ability to empathize with one’s fellow creatures is about three point one five billion times as important as one’s intelligence.  After all, who would you rather work for—some intellectually challenged person who’s a thoroughly decent human being, who cares about you and your welfare, who trusts you to do your job mostly as you see fit—or someone who, though smart and competent, is a hateful, spiteful, vicious asshole?”

            “Harrumph!!!  Count on my Pootie Pie to set matters straight!”  Phil crowed.  “No arguments from me on that one.  Put it another way, who would you want to be your political leader—a cross between Dan Quayle and Albert Schweitzer, or a cross between Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler?  The answer is self-evident.  But, don’t lose sight of this—best of all would be a cross between Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer.  Keeping all other things constant, smart is good, and stupid is bad.  Despite all the relativism in the world, virtue is better than vice.  So, let’s improve smarts.”

            “Wait,” Gloria objected.  “Think about Christ.  Didn’t he say something about motivation versus information or smarts?  That the person who does a bad thing out of good motives and ignorance, will be held in high esteem, while the person who does good things out of bad motives, will receive zilch?  That, from those to whom much is given, much is expected?  When you’re smart, strong-willed, or otherwise gifted, you’re held to a much higher standard.  You can do much more harm, as well as good, when you have more power.

            “Maybe spiritual values trump intellectual values to such a degree, that even though you’ve held all other variables constant, those increased smarts do harm.  Maybe the worst combination isn’t the stupid and evil, but the smart and evil.  Maybe your cross between Einstein and Hitler is far worse than your cross between Quayle and Hitler.  I think there’s a strong case for this way of looking at it.”

            “Wow!  I’ll have to sit and digest that one for a while!” Phil admitted.  “You may be on to something.  Hell, I don’t know.  Ideally, I guess we’d give the smarts only to those who will do the right things with them.  Or, the same with our racial/genetic information.  But, that’s impossible!  The rain and the sun fall on both the good and the evil.  So said our hero.  I don’t see how we can do any better.  Unless—hey, here we go!  Let’s test for it!  These days, with PET tests—that’s Positron Emission Tomography—and magnetic resonance imaging, and all sorts of wonderful ways to scan the brain—we can literally watch the brain, as it tackles various tasks.  I read the other day how they snooped in on some chess players, and watched their various neural circuits fire up, as they did their thing.  Spatial geometry calculator, game strategy, look-ahead move generator, and blah blah.

            “So, why can’t we devise an empathy meter?  Show movies of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and literally measure a person’s brain, and its ability to empathize, to feel the pain of others?  Sit a crippled cat in their laps.  Watch their very thoughts.  Do they want to heal the cat, or kill it?  Put it out of it’s misery, or torture it?  If they want to kill it, do they want to do it fast or slow?  If they want to heal it, do they want to pay the bills themselves, or make everyone else pay?  Are they good dudes and dudettes, or not?  What would we call it?  One’s ‘Good Dude Coefficient?’  GDC.  Hmm.”

            “Hah!  Count on a technogeek like you, to come up with such ideas!” Gloria commented.  “Not impossible, though.  Seems to me, we’re already moving in that direction.  ‘Lie detector’ tests and such are getting much more sophisticated.  You and your libertarian buddies are wanting to use these things to select juries.  ‘Hmm’, indeed!  A brave new world.  One of many, these days, it seems.  Imagine what such a thing would do to how we select, not just juries, but mates, politicians, shrinks, and business partners!  GDC.  Doesn’t sound catchy.  How ‘bout... SAQ?  Spiritual Advancement Quotient?  Something that combines the gravity of your SAT scores, and your IQ score?  How’s that grab you?”

            Phil just nodded sagely, so Gloria went on.  “So, you’d only grant your new ‘smart genes’ or ‘smart pills’ or whatever, after you figure this all out, to those who pass their SAQs?  What about all those who are already smart, and evil?  Especially, after genetic engineering hits its stride, what with all the parents choosing to have smart kids?  Give the evil ones ‘stupid pills’?  I’m surprised to see that you don’t simply propose that we genetically engineer away evil itself.”

            “Now, that’s a topic by itself,” Phil asserted, finishing his chow.  “Some people have been researching such matters, too.  I’ve got some notes to show you.  Why don’t you finish up, and we’ll go upstairs.  Personally, I don’t think there’s a whole bunch to this kind of thing.  Oh, I guess mental tendencies towards violence could be influenced by genes.  But the complexity of the human brain is about twelve zillion times greater than what could be carried by the genes.  There’s just no way we can map a little Joseph Stalin or Mahatma Gandhi, mentally/spiritually, into that limited genetic data space.  Most of the specifics of brain and personality development, then, come from the environment, and maybe even, an unscientific thing called free will.”

            “Then, why can’t IQ be one of those environmentally determined things?” Gloria demanded.

            “To some extent it is, on an individual basis, at least,” Phil replied.  “Statistically, for groups, it doesn’t seem to be.  Not to any large extent, at least; so say my simulations.  Actually, for a few decades, we’ve strongly suspected as much.  Studies of identical twins raised apart, for example, show the strong influence of genes, not environment, on intelligence.  The estimate has been, for quite some time, that intelligence is between forty and eighty percent determined by genes, with the real figure probably being closer to eighty than to forty.  Let’s go check out my notes.”

            Not too much later, they were snuggling in bed.  Phil’s notes were sprawled about, both in hardcopies and on the thin-film ceiling screen.  “Check this out, Pootie Pie,” he said.  “Stats from The Bell Curve.  Take your bottom 20% of the population, IQ-wise.  Now, if IQ had nothing to do with all of these various social pathologies, you’d expect for this 20% to be matched by them making up 20% of each of the groups we’ll talk about.  But look.  They make up 48% of the poor, 66% of high school dropouts, 64% of non-working able-bodied men, 62% of jailbirds, 45% of sometime welfare mooches, 57% of chronic mooches, 52% of illegitimate births, 45% of low-birth-weight babies, 56% of kids born into the bottom one-tenth of homes, as best as we can measure the quality of homes, and 63% of kids in poverty for their first three years.

            “Low gene-influenced IQ compounds itself with environmental influences, in that, frankly, stupid parents often don’t know how to take good care of kids, or how to provide for them.  The Bell Curve briefly mentions that, despite this not being an easy thing to measure, there is strong reason to believe that child abuse and neglect correlate to IQ, as well.

            “If you randomly strip individual cases out of the whole bell curve, but only on one side of the middle at a time, to move the middle—that is, simulate raising or lowering the IQ of your entire population—then—well, in their case, they did it plus and minus three percentage points from their then-current mean.  Six total percentage points meant a total change of roughly thirty percent in social pathology!

            “Now, we all know that there’s plenty of poor and less-than-brilliant parents, who nevertheless do a quite fine job of raising decent, responsible kids.  Maybe ‘cause the parents have high SAQs.  Poverty doesn’t explain crime.  Plenty of poor people behave themselves and work hard.  That is, when minimum-wage laws don’t push ‘em out of the market.  Still, statistically, we know that raising IQs would help us a lot.  Let’s do it, as soon as we can!  The sooner we get the word out, about what’s going on, the sooner we get more people working on it!  Or, at least, so goes one side of the argument.  I know there’s other sides.  What do you say?”

            “Well, how much good did The Bell Curve do?” Gloria inquired.  “When’s the last time you heard a politician referring to it, when explaining a policy decision?  Didn’t you say we all do what we want, anyway?  Regardless of what science geeks and professors say?  What makes you think you’d be any different?”

            “Good point,” Phil replied.  “I’d like to hope, though, that there’s just a few people out there, who try to base their decisions on the real world, on the data.  Maybe they don’t admit it, but they still check out the facts.  Maybe we’d make better decisions, if just a few more people were acquainted with the facts.

            “What really chaps my butt is the fact that the recommendations that Herrnstein and Murray made in The Bell Curve were so sensible, so right-on; yet hardly anyone heard what they were saying.  Everyone focused on the racial differences thing, which was a very small part of what they had to say.  They said, the cognitive elite is getting too much power, and rigging the world to suit themselves.  Too many complicated rules, forms, and procedures, that the poor and the less-gifted can’t deal with.  Too much emphasis on education, they said, even, despite the fact that they were academicians themselves.

            “Sometimes, jobs don’t so much require tons of degrees, they just require intelligence.  There is a difference.  And, some intelligent but poor people have a hard time getting those degrees.  Government and the educational elites rig the rules to suit themselves.  Part of it is a monopoly on IQ tests, I think.  The Bell Curve didn’t spell this one out, but, think it through.  An employer can’t test your IQ, or ask for it.  Colleges can do the equivalent, which is to ask for your SAT scores.  Colleges are a monopoly on IQ testing as a method of keeping the dummies out of high-IQ professions.  Despite all their protests to the contrary, SATs and IQs are highly related.

            “So the employer has to rely on the educational establishment to weed out the dummies, ‘cause the government prohibits him from testing IQs.  He’s got to use a distant second best hiring criteria, the degree, instead of the IQ score.  Colleges serve to show employers in a very indirect way, that the graduates have high IQs.  Of course, academia will screw industry over, by washing the graduate’s brains with political correctness, and skewing admissions on the basis of ethnic spoils systems.  But, it sure keeps the educators and bureaucrats employed!  Just another case of propping up the elites.

            “OK, so, they didn’t come right out and say this, either, but—goddamn fucking parasitical lawyerscums come to mind!  You want to help yourself, to start a small business?  Here’s five million forms to fill out.  What, you can’t understand them?  Are you stupid or something?  Well, obviously, I guess you’ll have to hire some lawyers, accountants, and tax advisers.  And, come to think of it, some environmental engineers, too, lest you wipe out some innocent species of bacteria.

            “You’re a poor teenager, looking for a few extra bucks?  In the old days, you’d have gone to a small business, and made a few bucks shoveling the snow off of their sidewalks.  Today, you can’t get that quickie job, ‘cause of all sorts of mandated benefits and paperwork, and you might slip and fall, and bankrupt the small business.  Lawyers gotta make yacht payments.  So, no job for you.  Go fight gang wars.

            “And we’ll create all sorts of welfare for lawyers, by passing all sorts of laws that say that the government should confiscate houses and cars from the peons who can’t afford a gaggle of lawyers to defend their property, whenever the pigs can find a couple of pot seeds on their property, or a hooker hanging out.  But if you’re a large corporate airline, and they find some pot seeds on the floor of one of your planes, do you think they’ll try to take the airplane?  No, they only pick on the little guy, without the big bucks for lawyers.  And one can even gather statistics about how the average income is much higher in State capitals, and in D.C., because of all the overpaid government parasites that congregate there.  Then we wonder why the rich-poor gap grows, and we propose to solve it through more transfer payments, and more government!

            “You, as a small business, want to put up a restroom?  Be nice to your customers?  Better be prepared to spend a million, and pay for that special robotic ass-wiper for the paraplegic that might come by once every three years.  Can’t be discriminating against the handicapped!

            “And, you have a hard time understanding the law, and staying out of trouble?  Just ‘cause we have twelve terabytes of laws on file, and robbery is sometimes right, and sometimes wrong, depending on how many lawyers you can recruit, to mouth fancy legal phrases for you?

            “Then, along come some radical elitists like Herrnstein and Murray, who say we should simplify things for those who are less gifted than we are, and that we should worship the powers of education a bit less, and we boo them off the stage.  Hey, if those stupid poor people don’t know how to fill out the forms, we’ll do it for them!  Except if they want to go into business, competing with the big conglomerates.  And, of course, we’ll have to ding the taxpayers now and then, when we so generously offer to fill out forms for ‘em.  For the public good.  But, we gotta do things right.  Gotta fill out all those forms.

            “They talked about creating ‘a valued place’ in society for everyone.  That might mean, for example, letting a local community make its own charity decisions, letting people take care of each other.  Now, we say, ‘Oh, you folks aren’t qualified to take care of your old, or your crippled.  Here, let Uncle Socialism whisk Gramma and Grampa off to a state-of-the-art facility, with marble floors and walls.’  So the local teenagers are left without much to do, that people will appreciate.  Instead of looking after Gramma and Grandpa, they steal, get high and watch the idiot box all day, and fight gang wars.  Maybe we could create a valued place in society for everyone, by simplifying things, and going back to the old ways, where people took care of each other.  So says The Bell Curve.  But, we told ‘em to buzz off, ‘cause they said things we didn’t want to hear.”

            “So what do you think they’ll say to you?” Gloria inquired sweetly.  “Do you think they want to hear what you’ve got to say?”

            “Oh, probably not.  Still, maybe we should try.  Maybe,” he replied.  “Depends on whether or not we figure we’ll do more good than harm.  Speak to me.”

            “Depends on what all this gets associated with,” Gloria opined.  “What’s next?  Will they be saying that Blacks aren’t only more inclined to be less smart, that they’re also more inclined to be criminals?  You pooh-pahhed that idea, but, will we be feeding it?  What do your stats say about that?  Will they be saying we need to stick all the niggers in jail, for their own good, lest they commit crimes?”

            “Now, now.  My personal idea is that crimes among the poor and poor Blacks have next to nothing to do with genes.  Actually, I think their crimes are tied to a quite noble motive, one that we share with them.”

            Gloria gave Phil an inquiring stare.  “Okay, I’ll bite.  What’s their noble motive?”

            “Like you and I, they want to cut out the middle man,” Phil replied.  “We tell them over and over again that they’re poor ‘cause they’re oppressed, and that their solution is socially sanctioned theft.  You’re poor and your neighbors aren’t?  Hey, just elect yourself a socialist politician, and get him to rob them on your behalf!  Or, just walk on over there, stub your toe, and sue their socks off!  But, then, the poor aren’t quite as stupid as we think they are.  They notice that the lawyers, politicians, and social workers keep most of the goodies for themselves.  So, they cut out the middle man, and rob the neighbors themselves.  Do-it-yourself socialism.  Far more efficient.  They’re just doing what we teach them is right.  The only difference is, they do it more efficiently.  More honestly, even.  When they’re caught stealing, they admit it.  That’s more than you can say about the politicians.”

            “Dammit, Phil, get back on track!  Now, your ‘facts’—what good are they gonna do?  Besides tear down socialism, help the oppressed Whites of the world, and get everyone rushing towards the nearest gene-splicing factory?  And, are these good things gonna outweigh the bad?  And, what do you think the reaction will really be, anyway?”

            “Partly, to tar and feather me, of course,” Phil admitted.  “They already want to do that, anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference.  That, and they’ll want to react by denying reality.  Just like they did with The Bell Curve.  Despite the fact that race was a small part of the subject matter, everyone rushed to condemn.  All sorts of emotional arguments from editorialists, who didn’t bother to read the book.  Denying the very validity of IQ measurements, alleging racial bias in the tests, and so on.  Saying things like, ‘How can you say God made one race better than another, and call it science?’  Never mind I don’t see many scientists working God into their theories.  Anything that I disagree with, or hurts my baby feelings, is obviously pseudoscience.  And there are no races.  Because there’s no clear definition of race, and because there’s all sorts of shades of gray, there are no races.  There’s no night and day, either, ‘cause we can’t say which it is, at dawn or at dusk.”

            “Well, weren’t there reputable scientists who questioned all this?” she objected.  “Wasn’t there some book called The Mismeasure of Man?”

            “Yeah, there was,” Phil admitted.  “By Stephen Jay Gould.  He was admired, ‘cause he said what we wanted to hear.  I wouldn’t call him reputable, exactly, in this particular field, though.  His basic argument was that since this field has a long, long history of half-baked theories and racist imbeciles—and I’d be the last to deny that, and the last to deny that we humans have a long, bloody history of racist shitheadedness, and that’s it’s still not over—then, because of this history, we have to disbelieve everything that we hear about racial differences in intelligence.

            “That’s like refusing to go to the doctor, ‘cause they used to do some really stupid things, way back when, and there’s still some stupid doctors, here and there.  Or, like hearing from your older brother that no, he won’t trust you, at twenty, to borrow his fancy new car, ‘cause, after all, you used to do some pretty bone-headed things at age five.  The sciences of genetics and intelligence testing have come a long, long way, in the last half-century.

            “Ask experts in the field of human intelligence, and testing intelligence, and they’ll agree on a wide, wide range of things, none of which the social engineers want to hear.  Nothing in The Bell Curve steps outside of this field of agreement, to speak of, other than the few policy recommendations that they make, which I’d call pretty tame.  Everything they say, they document at great length.  No one published any well-documented, well-researched book to refute what they had to say.  Yet, also, no elected politician ever said anything remotely positive about what they had to say, or followed any of their timid recommendations.”

            “So, I’ll ask again—what good are your ‘facts’ going to do?” Gloria inquired.  “Why are you going to be any different?”

            “Beats me.  Maybe that answers my question, for now, at least.  Everything changes if we bust on through, though.  If we discover what looks like an affordable ‘fix’, we’re going to have to look at this again.  Don’t forget, we’re building ‘Derrick, the Dirty Diamond’.  He may find a ‘fix’ for us.  We could have our cake, and eat it, too.  Improve our genetics—not just our IQs, but just about everything—without the nasty old coercive eugenics, the human breeding that Hitler gave such a bad name to.  Prevent the deterioration of the gene pool—‘dysgenics’ is the fancy word that they like to use in books like The Bell Curve, instead of just saying that stupid people make more babies than smart people.

            “With really good luck, all this fighting will be moot.  You know, our society is more and more technology-driven, and it takes more and more smarts to run the ever-more-sophisticated toys—computers, mostly.  The smart get richer, and the poor get poorer, and have more babies.  And the rich erect an ever bigger ‘custodial State’ to take ever more extensive care of the poor.  The dispossessed poor, of all colors.  Out of sight and out of mind, so they won’t bother us.  They trade unprepared food for crack, so we have to prepare the food for them, and feed them directly, with ever more social workers.  Provide armies of cops to play Daddy to all the fatherless kids.  Then, we hustle their brighter children, anyone with half of a brain, off to extensive schooling.  Let ‘em help tend to our fancy machines, and let ‘em escape the ghetto.  Meanwhile, the less-intelligent ones are left behind.  And the inner city deteriorates some more.

            “Well, if we’re lucky, we do an end run around the whole problem.  Use those smart machines to improve humanity itself, still letting people pass on their own genes, satisfying those instincts, while also improving ourselves.  Then, smarter humans can tend to yet smarter machines, and they help improve us yet once again, and so on.  Runaway positive feedback.  Our new jump-start will look like a rabbit compared to that tortoise, the old acceleration, when we busted loose from purely biological evolution to cultural evolution.”

            “Yeah,” Gloria replied.  “Sure.  And maybe the tortoise would win, if we didn’t shoot his ass.  So, supposedly for our comfort and pleasure, we invent ever better, faster, smarter computers.  But then we have to become better and smarter, to fit into the society created by these ever better and smarter machines.  To appease their demands for smarter, better humans, we’ll let them ‘improve’ us, physically, mentally, at least.  Maybe we’d be better off just improving ourselves spiritually.

            “Yes, we could engineer away some of our bad traits.  Our instinctual quest for status, and our fear of starvation, that leads us to eat too many sugars and fats.  That, or our intolerance of too many sugars and fats.  Even better, our intolerance of the stranger, the one who is different.  I fear, though, that instead of tailoring human society to fit our nature as sociable, gregarious hunter-gatherers, who have a need for contact with humans and nature, we’ll take the easy way out, and ‘fix’ ourselves to fit into technological society.  Program the kid to not play with, or swallow, the marbles, but to be perfectly content to sit in front of the HV set all day.  Program the adults to work harder work faster work longer work later work cheaper every day, all day, and to not be inconvenienced by the need to socialize with fellow humans, or to walk through the trees.

            “Why does this scare me so?  Because we’ll just become modules in, assets of, the Big Conglomerate, that’s why.  Because we’ll be so tempted.  Re-program for happiness, they’ll say.  Take out that code that yields a mystical, sublimely joyful experience from sitting in the middle of that grove of aspen trees, leaves fluttering in the wind, and give us the same joy from experiencing rush hour on the freeway.  We’ll be so much happier, that way, they’ll say.  But then we’ll have even less reason to preserve those aspens.  Computers designing better humans, yeah, right!  Who’s serving who, here, anyway?”

            “Just think of all the suffering we could eliminate!”  Phil objected.  “Diseases, obvious defects and shortcomings.  We can watch the gene pool deteriorate, erect an ever bigger, better custodial State, let brutal biological evolution return, or more tightly integrate the human-machine symbiosis.  Which will it be?”

            “Maybe we could just throw out all the smarty-pants, bossy computers, and go back to a simpler life,” Gloria retorted.

            “And let eighty percent of the population starve?  The old technology wouldn’t support us all, any more.  Would we volunteer to be part of the eighty percent?”  Phil queried.

            “Oh, hell, I don’t know,” Gloria said with a sigh.  “Maybe we could compromise, and at least cut down on the rat race for status symbols.  I just don’t like the scary future.  Let’s escape somewhere, and start over.  Just you, me, and Trent.

            “Speaking of escapes, I think you tried to escape from my question.  I was wondering if you’re gonna keep all this race/gene/IQ business to yourself for a while, and you started talking about that bright, future day that beckons.  What about the here and now?  Assume no ‘fix’.  What’re you gonna do with your ‘data’?”

            “I don’t know,” Phil replied.  There was silence.

            “Well, we can’t solve this like a mathematical equation.  On the one side, there’s this, that, and the other.  On the other side, there’s that, the other, and this.  Which outweighs the other?  Who knows?  It all becomes a matter of opinion. I’m just about tired of it,” she concluded.  “Maybe it’s time to just step back, and ask what the real objectives are.  Then, after looking at the real objectives, we can kind of just honestly ask ourselves, in light of all we’ve talked about, just how do we get to where we want to go?  I think it’s time to call in my surprise witness.”

            Gloria got up out of bed, and rooted around in her stack of special books, notes, and clippings in her nightstand.  “Here it is,” she said, holding a few pages.  “Speechs by one of my heroes.  Martin Luther King.  Here, check out what I’ve highlighted.”

            Phil read the highlighted sections.

            “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.  I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...’

            “I have a dream that one day... the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood....

            “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...

            “In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.  Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred... I am not unmindful that some of you have been the veterans of creative suffering.  Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

            Phil commented, “Yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind.  This guy had a high SAQ.  A good dude.  Can’t debate it.  That last part gets me to thinking about what Henry David Thoreau said.  Something about, the only place for an honest, righteous person, in a society of buttholes, is in jail.  So, he and King both agree.  I should go ahead, get me a gram of coke, a ton of baking soda, and a thousand followers.  We should all march on the piggy-wiggies.  We should all get stuck with ten-year sentences, for each having enough coke to stone a flea.  Creative, unearned suffering, indeed.  It’s not hard to do, in a society of ethical imbeciles, is it?”

            “You’re right,” she admitted.  “Just grow a pot plant, tell any one of fifty million brainwashed busybodies in the U.S., and you’re bait for the DEA and other storm troopers.  Then, we can live under a bridge, after we get out of jail, and they take everything we own.  Just keep in mind you’ve got a wife, and soon, a son, too.  Do your creative suffering without us.  That, and remember what Solzhenitsyn said.”

            “Huh?”  Phil didn’t know what she referred to.

            “You told me about it,” Gloria continued.  “He’s traveling from one concentration camp to another, in public, in the company of oinkers.  Or, getting arrested, whatever.  In any case, he’s in public, and the oinkers are doing their thing.  Should he scream bloody murder, and maybe try to wake up the two hundred people close to him at the time, about the nature of the assholes who are then going to drag him off and kill him?  Or, should he go quietly, bide his time, preserve his hide, and write about it later?  Wake up the two hundred million instead?  Go for the two hundred million, Phil.  Like, when you got Bats in the Belfry, By Design published, and shared the lessons you’d learned, about being a whore for the State.

            “But we’re digressing.  What about King’s speech?  What does it make you think about these ‘facts’ that you want to share with the world?  Will they help the races to sit down together at the table of brotherhood, or not?”

            “Well, quotas, set-asides, and all these various forms of discrimination against Whites and Asians sure aren’t helping matters,” Phil replied.  And, current policies sure don’t seem to be doing much for Blacks, either, he added to himself.  What about those other stats we haven’t discussed yet?  Like, race and crime?  What would she say about those?  Ah, hell!  We’ve talked enough already.  “We’re still judging people by the color of their skin.  But, pin me to the wall, and really squeeze me—I guess it wouldn’t help matters.  At least, not now.  I take it you won’t hold it against me for taking such a stance?”

            “No, Phil, I won’t hold it against you.  And—be careful, even with your just poking around on the computer, running your simulations and looking for your ‘fix’.  And don’t just be looking for a genetic fix.  Maybe you need to re-think some assumptions, maybe look for interactions with environmental factors that work with those genes.  Maybe we could stumble on some fairly simple environmental fix.  Special biochemicals, prenatally or in early infancy, or something; who knows.  Anyway, be careful.  Wouldn’t want the wrong people to get hold of that stuff.”

            “Yeah, I know.  I keep it real cryptic.  Very, very few people would be able to make much sense of it.  Funny you should mention biochemicals, though.  That’s one thing that, along with the environment in general, is real tough to plug into the equations.  There’s practically an infinite number of chemicals out there, that interact with genes.  Foods, allergens, pollutants, vitamins, drugs.  A lot of so-called genetic diseases respond to changes in diet and allergens, you know.  Tourette Syndrome, for example, from what I’ve read.

            “Actually, if I’m real honest about it, the simulations merely say there is some genetic component to the racial IQ difference.  Exactly how big it is, the simulations don’t say.  It’s just that if it’s largely caused by environmental differences, we don’t know what the root cause is.  The fact that the difference persists, even in similar environments, like middle-class suburbs, is what’s most disturbing.  You’re absolutely right, though.  Gotta keep those environmental factors in mind.”

            “I’m proud of you, Phil.  I love you.”

            “I love you too, Snoogle Woogle Poogle Woogle Boogle Woogle.  Pootie Pie.  Love of my life.”  He gave her a kiss, and turned off the screen and the lights.  They lay there in silence.

            “You know, Pootie Pie,” he said, “Of all the rain forest lagomorphs in the whole wide world, you’re my very mostest favoritest.”  He gave her a nudge.

            “Rain forest...” she said, baffled.  “Hey!  Doon’ choo be callin’ me no jungle bunny!  Suckahh!”

 

 

CHAPTER  7

            “Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.”

                                                            Ralph Waldo Emerson  (1803–1882)

 

            Filled with suspense, Chuck LeSage got to the hotel ballroom early that night.  The polls said that they had a good shot at winning!  The ruckus during the past summer should surely help us, he thought.  The Democratic President, Richard Kite, had resigned in the face of scandal, including revelations that he’d known all along of the accidental nature of that Chinese FLASH (Fusion Laser At Sea Halberd) blast.  It had destroyed space station UNITY, starting the gruesome Chinese War, ending with American biotechnological warfare.  The BELFRYBATs had been set loose, killing a billion Chinese.  Chinese scientists had then taken the biochemical ‘leash’ off of the BELFRYBATs, and sicced them back on the U.S..  Eighteen million Americans had perished by the time further American biotechnological wizardry vanquished the BELFRYBATs.

            Kite had resigned in August.  There was even a good chance that he’d face prosecution, if a new President didn’t give him a pardon.  His Vice President, Douglas Christopher, had assumed the office.  To all appearances, he’d not been in on the scandal; however, even he had been considered to be too tainted to run for election.  The Democrats made last-minute substitutions, running Senator Bruce Sockwell for President and Rep. Kip Moreno for Vice President.  So, Chuck, his boss, Senator Hank N. Kreutz, and all the campaign workers had high hopes that voters would blame the Chinese war and the horrors of BELFRYBATs on the Democrats, sweeping Hank into office.  The polls said Hank had a slight edge.  The Libertarians seemed to be coming in for a somewhat close third place, but Chuck didn’t worry much about them.  American voters were smart enough to see that these extremists would lead to government neglect of the masses, and massive starvation, which wasn’t Christian at all.

            Despite anticipation wiring him up—or, maybe, because of it—Chuck loosened up by grabbing himself a glass of champagne, and circulating about, schmoozing with all the various campaign workers and big-wigs.  They all had a fine time, reminiscing about last summer’s scandals and the debates, and anticipating their victory.  Hank N. Kreutz is about to bring Bible-based Christian values back to the U.S., saving us all from our long slide into demonic decadence, they told each other, hopefully/triumphantly.  God’s Kingdom on Earth may be nearly at hand, Chuck even heard on occasion.  Despite the instances where he’d catch the more pious party-goers glaring at his glass of champagne, Chuck managed to have a good time.

            Chuck took some pride in staying informed on all the ins and outs of the campaign.  However, only tonight did he hear of an event earlier in the day.  Apparently, word had reached Hank that some overzealous policemen here and there, members of LORD (Law Officers Resisting Demonism, a private, nationwide association of conservative law-enforcement officers), had been stopping poll-goers with the wrong bumper stickers, for “weaving”, and similar traffic infractions, and then, searching their cars, and otherwise harassing voters.

            Hank had promptly sent out word that he didn’t want this kind of thing to happen.  There were enough States already (seven so far) with cyber-voting schemes, which allowed easier access for voters (and, therefore, that much more Democratic and Libertarian advantage, said the surveys), without this kind of thing adding yet more pressure.  Cyberspace voters, after all, were immune to police traffic harassment.

            This information disturbed Chuck, for several reasons.  For one, what kind of crude morons did they have in LORD, and didn’t Hank have these yokels properly controlled?  For another, why was Chuck only now hearing about it?  Didn’t Hank trust him?  He’d better keep quiet about knowing about it, he figured.  Wasn’t there big danger in the possibility that the media would get hold of commands going from Hank to LORD?  Hank supposedly had nothing to do with LORD, or the Bible Youth.  There was enough talk in the media already, of links between the conservative “political wing” (like, CHRIST—Christ’s Helpers in Resisting Idolatrous, Satanic Temptations) and the “military wing” (the Bible Youth), without Hank’s name getting drawn into the mud.

            If the media ever got firm evidence that CHRIST was one and the same as LORD, and, even worse, the Bible Youth, then—why, there’d be Hell to pay!  Donations to CHRIST, and even, to the non-profit, non-political Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation, would be bound to suffer.  It was even conceivable that the top officers of CHRIST, like those of the Bible Youth, would become wanted outlaws.  Large portions of the brainwashed, secular public didn’t take too kindly to the ideas of promoting God’s work by destroying the Devil’s fossils, museums, and books.

            So, Chuck worried.  Not only about what Hank was up to, but also about how Dave had gotten this news in the first place.  It seemed that Dave was showing off again, showing how much he was in the know.  He’d been bragging to Stacey Hammond, a young, low-ranking member of Hank’s staff.  Who knows how many people know about this by now, Chuck wondered.  Maybe I should speak with Hank about Dave’s big mouth, even if I risk getting Dave really POed at me.  Or, even, risk getting Hank POed at me, for playing office politics, and apparently resenting the fact that Dave gets more of the poop and scoop than I do.  But the important thing is protecting Hank.  One of these days, Dave is going to go too far, and get us into trouble.  Unless, of course, I worry enough, Chuck thought.  Silly boy!  Worrying never changed anything.  Let’s have a good time, and party.  To God’s Glorification, and Hank’s re-election, of course.

            Chuck refilled his champagne glass, and circulated around some more.  After a while, he joined a group of rowdies who were watching some hologram discs of the debates, in a room adjacent to the ballroom.  There was a lot of raucous commentary during the playbacks of those classic debates, and people poking and throwing things at the images of the wrong sides (Bruce, the Democrat, and Andrew, the Libertarian).  Chuck could barely hear anything the images of the debaters were saying, but it didn’t matter.  He’d seen and heard them often enough, as Hank, Chuck, and the rest of the staff played them back, dissecting the performances, and preparing for more of the same.

            Chuck chuckled to himself a bit, remembering some of the highlights from the debates.  All those good stabs Hank had gotten in at the Democrats, blaming them for the Chinese war, socialism, Satanism, biotechnology, and BELFRYBATs.  Them, and those third-rate punks, the Libertarians.  Hank had nailed them for wanting to get everyone’s kids to be gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, and drug addicts, for wanting to foist unsafe products on everyone, and for wanting to let the old, the crippled, and the sick, to just starve.  Hell, they didn’t even want all of our kids to be educated!  Extremist, foolish lunatic fringers!, Chuck thought.  I’m amazed that they’re even allowed on the debates.  Well, I guess they’re fooling enough people, and getting enough votes, that we’ve got to share the stage with them, at least for now, he conceded to himself.  Talking to anyone else in the rowdy room, he knew, would be a futile effort.  At least he didn’t have to worry about pseudo-pious people staring at his champagne glass.

            Yeah, those Libertarians.  They’d almost seemed to be scoring some points, until ol’ Andrew Flyfogen stuck his foot in his mouth.  He’d gone off and rammmmed that big ol’ foot of his about two feet deep, deep down into his throat, during the discussions about what should be done with America’s tens of millions of State dependants.

            Chuck sat and sipped his champagne, watching the debates, travelling down memory lane yet once more.  The moderator asked about welfare, and Bruce went off to describe how he and the Democrats, being full of compassion, would help all of those who weren’t able to help themselves.  Unlike the mean-spirited opposition, he wouldn’t punish people for being poor or incapacitated.  He wouldn’t engage in ‘social engineering of the right’; implying that he’d keep the existing Welfare State.  He’d just improve it a bit, by, for example, eliminating fraud and abuse.  He finished by accusing the Libertarians of being rash, of not considering what would happen to the old, the sick, and the mentally ill, without government-run charity.  He even accused Andrew of advocating eugenics and genocide.  According to the polls, though, that’s not what had really hurt the Libertarians.  It was what Andrew had said, himself.

            Hank and Andrew then got their chances at rebuttal.  Then it was Andrew’s turn to present the Libertarian approach.  Andrew ignored his notes, mostly ad-libbing the whole thing.  Perhaps that was why he’d gone way too far.

            “As far as Senator Sockwell’s objections go,” he’d said, “Even if we decide that the State should eliminate suffering and death, the State can’t do it.  It’s just not possible.  The State ends up moving the suffering from here to there, and subsidizing and increasing it to boot.  We Libertarians aren’t naive.  We know that we’ve multiplied manifold, the masses of the poor, the wretched, and the helpless, through our misguided Nanny-State policies of the last half-century.  The Democrat-Republican duopoly has repeatedly failed to reform our welfare-state mess.

            “Every time we’ve discovered problems engendered by the Welfare Sate, we’ve tried to ‘fix’ them with yet more socialism and regulation, because any other choice is ‘mean spirited’.  We’ve never had the courage to figure out that welfare recipients are merely making a logical, simple economic choice of self-interest, in that it pays better, sooner, to just go on the dole, than to work, to develop skills.  We Libertarians, and we alone, have the courage to really fix the mess, by taking a meat cleaver to the Nanny State.  This kind of courage is what is required, in order to preserve democracy in the face of rampant decay and pathological dependence.”

            Andrew then dipped into his prepared notes just long enough to lift a quote.  “As a great Republican once said, way back in the days when Republicans stood for courage, freedom, and small government, ‘History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.’  Dwight Eisenhower said that.  To that we would add, ‘Nor to the stupid’.  We won’t be weak, timid, or stupid, because we love freedom.  Refusing to tear down the Nanny State, which is the result of social engineering by the left, on the basis that this is social engineering of the right, is an example of weakness, timidity, and stupidity.  We’ll tear it down, despite how this will lead to short-term suffering.  Freedom doesn’t offer any guarantees against suffering.  All such guarantees are false, anyway.

            “What policies do we have to offer, in the face of suffering?  Simply, freedom to work towards alleviating one’s own suffering, and that of one’s friends, family, and neighbors.  Freedom to work, without millions of lawyers and bureaucrats ‘protecting’ us.  Yes, we do have a large population that has never learned anything about how to handle real freedom and self-responsibility.  We have solutions for them, too.

            “We’ll let the very sick and the very old make their own decisions, in consultation with their families.  We won’t waste tens of billions in taxpayer funds, in preserving the lives of the terminally ill or the severely deformed, for a few more days or weeks.  They might not live as long, but they’ll die with dignity, in their own homes.  They and their families will even be able to—get this—buy their own painkillers and other drugs without lining the pockets of doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists.

            “Between a free market in drugs, and other policies, the old and the sick won’t linger in pain.  Remember, we advocate fully informing juries.  That means juries will often find laws to be unjust or misapplied.  That, in turn, will mean that, while technically such things might be called murder, we can take certain steps.  Poor parents would hardly ever be convicted for giving an overdose of painkiller to a suffering and severely deformed newborn, rather than giving up their jobs to take care of it, and risking starvation for the whole family, if they couldn’t find someone to adopt the baby.  Especially if we required any juror voting to convict such a parent to go to the nearest orphanage and adopt an unwanted child of the same kind.

            “Or, few juries would convict a doctor, for example, if he or she, with the permission of the parents, used an anencephalic baby for organ transplants.  For those of you who don’t know, an anencephalic baby lacks the higher brain centers required to feel pain, or to live more than a few weeks, at most.  Yet, it is murder to use the organs from one, to sustain the lives of others.  Quite literally a no-brainer, I’d say, that our lawyers, judges, and politicians still haven’t figured out.  I wonder who it really is, here, that lacks brains.

            “Oh, yes, many doctors and politicians say, allow us to harvest organs from anencephalic babies and convicts to be executed, and next thing you know, we’ll be chopping up totally innocent, healthy people.  I think we should apply the slippery slope theory to these lamebrains, and refuse to pay them a dime.  After all, they’ll soon be consuming the entire gross national product, and not leaving a penny for anyone else, if we give them that dime.

            “Nor would many juries convict a doctor or loved one for assisting a suffering terminal case towards death, with a morphine drip.  I’ll tell you a secret: it already happens anyway.  We just don’t talk about it honestly.  Doctors just say they’re medicating for pain, pain alone, and that’s all.

            “We don’t really need many new laws to cover this.  Juries would, of course, continue to convict any person who, for example, decided to snuff his wife because she had the sniffles, or a newborn who had the wrong color eyes.  All I’m saying is that we should put the power back into the hands of the jurors, and tell all the fancy lawyers and judges to buzz off.  All the laws that they claim make everything so objective, are applied in subjective manners, anyway.  One of many benefits of transforming juries back into tools of true democracy, would be that we could once again use common sense in deciding who lives and who dies, and how much dignity they die with.  And loved ones, rather than lawyers, judges, politicians, doctors, and socialists, would be doing the deciding.

            “Many of us are hypocrites.  We protest how infinitely valuable human life is, how we’ve got to spend millions on that preemie.  How we can’t punish the kids for the poverty of their parents, by refusing to extort money from the neighbors on their behalf.  But, a few yards on the other side of that border?   Those people?  Ha!  They’d better stay over there!  They didn’t earn the benefits we Americans earned, by being born here.

            “For a fraction of the ‘free’ socialistic funds that we spend, preserving the lives of preemies, the terminally ill, and the severely deformed, we could bring here, to lengthen their lives, all the ‘infinitely valuable’ human lives we could stand, and then some.  So, stop being hypocrites.  Including you hypocrites who vote for more laws requiring more socialism and more exacting building codes, thinking you’re helping the poor, defending them against the fearsome slum lords, at the same time as you vote for deed restrictions to keep the scum out of your uptowns.  They end up on the street, thanks to you, and all you do, is holler for more socialism.  Let a free people spend their own funds on their own charity choices.  Doing so would allow us to open our borders, since then, foreigners would be attracted to America to work, not to mooch.  A free society deserves open borders.

            “The truth of the matter is, what is really sacred to many of us, is the right to make other people’s charity choices.  I don’t begrudge you your right to infinitely value human life.  Just do it on your own dime, without hypocrisy, without stealing other people’s money.  Sad to say, economics applies to human life, the same as it applies to other things.  The Welfare State creates perverse, even monstrous, incentives.  A human life costs an irresponsible person nine months of unskilled human labor, and gains then food, shelter, money, and medical care.  It costs a stable, working couple the ‘opportunity costs’ of lost income—income which is desperately needed to fend off a rapacious socialist State.  They’ve got to choose between the ‘Mommy track’ or ‘Daddy track’ career, and giving up a lot of income; paying someone else to raise the kids, or, not having kids at all.  Then, we give them a very meager tax credit for having kids, and punish them for being married, if they both work.

            “When the reproductive decisions get made, when the genes get passed on, we taxpayers have no say.  When time comes to discipline the kids, we have no say.  Yet, comes time to pay the bills, suddenly they’re ‘our kids’.  The children are the future, the kids belong to the nation, it’s the nation’s responsibility to pay, they say.  Well, somebody has to pay for this party, and we’ll be paying for it, for years and years to come.

            “If we can stomach the fact that people on the other side of the globe are paying for their parents’ decisions to reproduce too many times, by starving, because they’re out of sight and out of mind, then maybe we can do the same with the people on the other side of town.  Or, if we can’t stomach that, maybe we can make private charity decisions, and decide for ourselves, whether or not there are magical distinctions between Americans and non-Americans.  In any case, we need to end coercive government subsidies of poverty-pimping bureaucrats, and return to a simple policy of freedom, where the one who earns the money, gets to decide which charity, if any, gets to spend it.

            “We’re trashing our best asset, which is the very quality of our population.  We’re perverting all the incentives, as far as who should reproduce, and who shouldn’t.  It’s time to suffer now, lest we have to suffer far more in the future, when this house of cards collapses.  It’s time to return to a simpler system, where your reproductive choices aren’t my responsibility, unless I want them to be.”

            What an uncouth dimwit!  How could Andrew have been so stupid, as to say such things!  There’d been Hell to pay.  Not that Chuck or Hank minded that, of course.  Hank and Bruce both hammered him, and hammered him good.  Defenseless people who don’t contribute to society?  Hey, just knock ‘em off!  What they said basically boiled down to, “So, now the Libertarians are advocating extermination as well as eugenics and social Darwinism.  The only difference between you and the Nazis, is that you advocate private as opposed to public-sponsored genocide.  And, you don’t even value motherhood!  How could you promote such monstrous ideas?!”

            Between that, and the accusations that the Libertarians were hypocrites, for taking people’s freedoms away from them, in the name of freedom, and then accusing others of doing the same—well, they took a fair dip in the polls.  Not that Chuck had ever really sweated it, anyway.  The public was smart enough to know when their government benefits were in real jeopardy.

            The debates had gone on to letting Hank give his prepared spiel, on what should be done with all the various manifestations and infestations of the Welfare State.  He described the Republican special treatment plan for those incapable of taking care of themselves, that had largely been drawn up by Senator Sondra B. Handlung.  Many Republicans were quite fond of Sondra and her ideas.  In fact, there’d been a lot of discussion of making her the Vice Presidential candidate.  Hank had squelched the idea; after all, the Bible said women were supposed to follow men, not the other way around.  Chuck wasn’t so convinced that this had been a wise idea.  He, along with so many other Republicans, liked what she had to say.

            Basically, what the Republicans proposed, was facilities (not poorhouses, mind you!  And, certainly not camps) for those who couldn’t take care of themselves.  Churches, businesses, and social workers would organize the activities, businesses would provide work for those capable of working, and government would provide administration, supervision, and some funds.  Adults and adolescents would be segregated by sex, strictly, except for supervised activities.  No illegitimate babies allowed!  On the other hand, no sterilization, either.  After all, Republicans aren’t Nazis, like a certain party we could mention.  Women who were already mothers upon entering the facilities would be allowed to interact with their babies—in group day care settings only, though.

            Andrew and Bruce, in turn, had picked at Hank’s proposal, with various silly objections.  Chuck watched as the rowdy Republicans in the room objected (to put it mildly) to the objections.  He soon had his fill of watching the discs, and wandered back into the ballroom.  As it turned out, he was just in time to watch the grand arrival of Senator Hank N. Kreutz and his wife, Mildred, and the Vice Presidential candidate, Brian Corning, and his wife, ol’ what’s-her-face.  They all strutted towards the stage and its giant American flags, acknowledging the wild applause.

            Chuck noticed that Hank’s strut looked vaguely like a waddle.  As if his posterior hurt, for some reason.  Chuck watched curiously.  Come to think of it, he always acts like that, after he goes home for a while.  And he sits so gingerly.  As if he catches hemorrhoids whenever he goes home.  Yes, he has been known, occasionally, in an unguarded moment, to remark that his wife is a pain in the ass.  Surely he doesn’t mean that literally!?  Ah, shucks, Chuck concluded, the ways of Senator Kreutz, like those of God Himself, are inscrutable.

     The candidates proceeded through the cheering crowd and the fountains of praise gushing from the loudspeakers.  Chuck could barely understand any of those words of praise; all that he knew was that they were being uttered by the Hank N. Kreutz Campaign Chairman, Morgan D. Ganzewelte.

            Chuck briefly watched Brian Corning.  He wasn’t impressed.  Chuck regarded him as just another vacant pretty boy, an empty suit, a yes man.  One who would support the boss, and not upstage him.  Like Dave Bose; just a lot more important.  Higher in the food chain.  Not a contributor, not an idea person, like Sondra B. Handlung, for example.

            Speaking of Sondra... there she is!  Chuck watched her go up to the stage and pay her respects.  Quite a lady, Chuck mused.  Too bad Hank hadn’t been smarter about his choice of veeps.  After Hank’s mercifully short speech, and after the important people made their rounds, Chuck, too, went up to the stage to wish Hank and Brian good luck.

            Chuck made his way back to the now-crowded floor, and settled in to start watching the results pouring in from all over the country, starting in the East, of course.  Results were nip and tuck.  They stayed that way, teetering back and forth, all night long.  Bruce and Hank traded places in the lead, with Andrew bringing up a semi-distant rear.  Despite the long-standing voter inclinations against third parties, the Libertarians were actually getting some electoral votes!

            It was one-thirty by the time the results were clear enough.  Hank had lost.  Hank dragged himself to the podium to make a quasi-gracious concession speech.  Dejected and dreading another four years of godless, even demonic, Democratic “leadership”, Chuck traipsed off to his hotel room, and hit the sack.

            Chuck woke the next day, and checked his messages.  The boss’s secretary had left one, saying that Hank wanted to take a short vacation, to gather his thoughts.  He’d be back on Monday, and Chuck and the gang were free to take it easy till then.  So, Chuck lounged around that morning, recouped his energies, and checked out shortly before noon.  By that time, he was feeling much better.  He wouldn’t have to face big changes, including scuffling over cabinet positions under President Kreutz.  The campaign was over; life could return to a slower pace.  Best of all, maybe another four years of liberal-inspired idiocy would, once and for all, persuade the voters to wake up and smell the dead, decaying donkey.  Life wasn’t so bad, even if dingalings won elections too often.  He decided he’d head for the office, clean up and organize a bit, and then head home for a long weekend.

            Halfway though the afternoon, he was cleaning up his office and files.  All that election-related stuff that he didn’t need anymore—into the shredder!  Or, the bit bucket, as the case may be.  Simplify, simplify, simplify—the three keys to happiness, he mused, whistling while he worked.

            That was when Dave Bose happened to walk by, carrying his briefcase.  He marched into his office, setting the briefcase down with what appeared to Chuck to be a bit of self-importance.  “My, aren’t you the cheerful one today?” Dave commented.  He grabbed himself a chair.  “So, what are you up to?  Didn’t they tell you to take it easy till Monday?”  What’s Dave saying?  Chuck asked himself.  Maybe something like, “Chuck, don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’re that essential to the boss, that you’ve got to be here on your off time.  That’s only true of really important people, like me, for example.”  I’ll bet that bum’s on some Secret Mission for the boss, again.  Wants me to ask him what he’s up to, so that he can brag that he can’t tell me.  Subtly, of course, by just being real vague.  Well, I’ll get his goat.  I’ll not ask him.

            “Oh, I’m just in, cleaning up a bit, and organizing my office and files and whatnot, now that the elections are over,” Chuck offered.  “Just puttering a bit, you might say.  You know, you can get a lot done, sometimes, when there’s not a whole bunch of other people around to distract you.”

            “So, what puts you in such a good mood?” Dave persisted.  “Didn’t they tell you that we lost?”

            Oh, just... no, that’s not Christian... grow up a bit, will you, Dave?, Chuck thought to himself.  Aloud, he said, “Look on the bright side of life.  The people have spoken.  Now, maybe they’ll learn what you get for electing a flock of weasels.  Maybe they’ll learn better, for next time.  There’s always hope.  Meanwhile, there’s not much we can accomplish by being grumpy.  At least, surely, speaking purely for my own humble self, I’m not going to change things by being a grump.  I’m going to do what little I can, and putter a bit.  Come Monday, maybe I can be a better, more organized public servant for the Senator.  Help him do his job for the next four years, best as I can.  And, meantime, be happy with what God has wrought.”

            “Ha!  What the Demon-crats have wrought, you mean!” Dave asserted.  “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.  Important things to do.  No time to yak,” he said, hefting his briefcase.  He was just about out of sight, outside the door and down the hall, when he turned back to smirk.  “You know what you are?” he asked.  “A puttering putz of positivity!”  Guffawing, he strode away.

            Chuck finished up his work, in a mood more to the sour end of the pH scale.  Damn Dave and his superior, smirking ass!, he thought, despite the fact that he regarded such thoughts as un-Christian.  He headed home for a long weekend, resolving to forget about work for a little while.

            However, Friday night, he got a call from none other than Dave.  “What’s up, Dave?” he replied curtly to Dave’s cheery greeting.

            “What’s up, Chuck, is that we want you to do your usual magic with charts, graphs, and talking bullets and stuff.  I’ve got some data that Hank and I and various sources have rounded up, about the elections and stuff.  We’ve got a Monday morning quarterbacking meeting set up, and Hank wants his presentation aids to show to all the consultants and such.  I’ve forwarded that data to you.  We need it made presentable.  I’ve attached some notes as to what we need.”

            Oh, cripes, there goes my weekend, Chuck thought.  “Okay, I’ll be in there tomorrow, and forward my work to Hank.  I’ll get it in by the end of the day tomorrow.  When’s the big meeting on Monday?”

            “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Dave’s image smiled.  “Hank says you should take the day off on Monday, what with your having to work tomorrow.  I’ll help with the meeting.”

            Ha!  You mean, you’re invited and I’m not, nanny-nanny-doo-daah.  I get to grunt over charts and graphs, while you help with the important stuff.  Okay, I can handle it.  “Okay, well, you guys have fun, then,” is about all that Chuck had to say.  He moved to cut the switch.  “Goodni...”

            “Wait, that’s not all,” Dave protested.  “We want the special data, too.  Take a look at the notes I’ve attached, and you’ll see what I mean.  And, forward your work to me.  And your questions, if you have any.  Hank doesn’t want to be disturbed, this weekend.”

            “Okay, goodnight,” Chuck replied, and hung up.  Now, it was Chuck’s turn to be disturbed.  Dave’s cutting in between me and the boss, he thought.  Carving himself a new niche in the food chain, above me, even more so than before.

            And, the special data?  Is that, THE special data?  Hank told me to give that to no one other than himself.  But he doesn’t want disturbed this weekend—or, at least, so says Dave.  Is Hank really going to go off and present this material, for Christ’s sake?  Is Hank getting awfully fast and loose, these days?  Or—surely not!  Surely Dave wouldn’t think he could get away with it!  Is Dave just saying this, to get the data from me, for his own purposes, unbeknownst to Hank?  Well—maybe I shouldn’t rule that out, he thought.  Dave’s a loud-mouthed conniver, after all.

            Oh, quit being paranoid!, Chuck told himself.  It’s probably not that special data, anyway.  And if it is, I’ll just have to mention it, casually, to Hank, sometime, that I gave it to Dave, on the off chance that Dave’s up to some tricks.  Easy solution, and something that one wouldn’t think Dave would risk.  Although, you never know how stupid some people can be.  Chuck got back to watching the show, with his wife and seven-year-old boy, and then hit the sack.  It wasn’t the most restful night he’d ever had, though; that was for sure.

            He got up early on Saturday, and got to the office much faster than usual, what with the traffic being so light.  He got his answer soon enough, there on the secure government network.  Dave had forwarded data and notes to there, rather than to Chuck’s home, for security.  Dave had, indeed, meant THE special data.

            The special data was detailed demographic data that Hank’s friends had managed to spring loose from five of the seven cybervoting States, quite illegally, to be sure.  Chuck let out a low whistle, then got to work.  Gotta be a good servant to God’s good servant, he figured.  At least, he was reassured to see that Dave’s notes included instructions on how to get the special data.  That meant that Dave was authorized.  Not that Chuck would really, really, really have doubted that too much.  It was good to see, though, that Dave had had the good sense to put him at ease.  Or, maybe, more likely, he’s just playing good politics, Chuck mused.  Wouldn’t want me to try to score points with the boss, by being totally literal on Hank’s my eyes only command, and calling him for clearance before giving it to Dave.

            Chuck didn’t really need Dave’s instructions; he knew all about how to get the data.  Still, it was nice to have them, right there, all written up, and all.  Except for the special passwords, which Chuck fetched from his protected files, in short order.  He got out onto ONLINE, found the account, and punched in all the codes.  Finally, the computer asked him for his handprints.  He dashed over to the printer room, logged in again, and put his right hand on the special machine.  He squirmed his hand around a bit, to show the machine that it was looking at living flesh, rather than a hardcopy of his handprint, and then waited.  He was slightly surprised to see that it took the account a full five minutes to analyze his handprint; Hank’s friends must be playing it extremely safe, he thought.

            The data reached Chuck soon enough.  He charted, graphed, and commented the data that Dave had sent him first.  He’d done that particular kind of data often enough before, so it went pretty fast.  Then, he moved on to the detailed demographic data from the recent elections.  He pushed aside his worries about what he was doing, and what would happen if it ever got out that he was involved in such things.  He just did the best that he could, to make sense of it all, and to highlight the most striking correlations he could find in the data.  Fortunately, he had some powerful programs, and a lot of experience doing these things, so he was able to finish his tasks by four that afternoon.  He wrapped it up, forwarded it to Dave’s account, and headed home.

            He spent a lot of time worrying about things that night.  What if they ever got busted?  That’s a real concern, what with Dave having such a big mouth, he thought.  And, even Hank gets a bit slipshod sometimes.  What’ll happen to my career?  Hell, I could even get stuck in the slammer!  And, I’m getting cut off.  I don’t even know what Hank’s up to these days.  How am I supposed to make up my mind, as to what to do about all this, if I don’t even know what’s going on?  Is this risk all worth it, for a good cause?

            How good is the Senator’s cause, anyway?  I mean, it’s obviously better than the Democrat’s cause, or the Libertarian cause, but... are there maybe some better Republicans out there these days?  Is Hank getting to be too much of a sleazebucket?  Is it time to bail out?  It sure would be nice to have some more data.  It would be nice, for example, to be a fly on the wall, come Monday’s meeting.

            Now, there’s an idea!  Sleazy, but perhaps the best way to fight sleaze is with more sleaze.  But, I know almost as well as anyone else, they’ve got that teleconference room anti-bugged, debugged, deloused, and soundproofed, nine ways to Monday.  And, I sure ain’t no spy wizard, nor do I know much about electronics.  Just enough to play with computers, telephones, and stereos.  Still, I’ve got a big step up on an outside spy, in that I’ve got free run of everything except the private offices.  Hmmm.... what could I get away with?  Hang out in a closet?  Hardly likely, even if there was a closet in the conference room.

            Chuck set aside the matter for the moment, caught up on his magazines, and drank some wine.  Occasionally, he’d ponder a bit.

            The solution came to him in the shower on Sunday morning.  The best way to fight high tech, he decided, was with low tech.  None of their fancy gizmos would stand a chance against him!  He rounded up two tin cans, two large buttons, and some of his son’s monofilament fishing line.  He punched a hole in the bottom of each of the tin cans, and stuck everything in his briefcase.  “I’m sorry, honey, I just realized I’ve got more to do at work,” he apologized to his wife.  He resolved he’d never burden her with these adventures of his.  How would he explain to her that, on Monday, he’d be at work, but she didn’t dare call him?  Well, I’ll think of something, he thought.  He kissed his protesting bride, and hurried out the door.

            At the office, he worked fast and efficiently.  First, he logged in and transferred a few files, so that it would look like he’d been in there doing respectable work, just in case anyone looked at both the off-times building-entry logs and the computer logs.  Then, he started his job in a utility and maintenance room three rooms away from the conference room.  He knew that no one came there, except on weekends when special jobs needed to get done—this wasn’t such a weekend, fortunately—and during emergencies.  On Monday, he’d jam the lock, while he stayed in there, to be safe.

            Still, it wouldn’t hurt to find a hidden spot, even in this hidden room.  He found one in a corner, behind a wiring box, and got to work.  He suspended one tin can in midair, using the fishing line, so that it’s vibrations wouldn’t be dampened by contact with anything solid.  He pushed the end of the long spool of line through the hole in the can, and tied it to a button.

            Then, holding the spool and unfurling the line, he scampered up into the crawlspaces in the middle of the air ducts, wires, and cables, up above the offices.  Wherever the line would have to make a turn, he’d pull it tight, then tie it, with other pieces of line, to suspend it, without it ever being dampened by direct contact with anything solid.  He worked his way over to the teleconference room, then paused to catch his breath.

            Okay, so far so good, he thought.  Now what?  If I punch a hole in this soundproofing foam, someone will see it later, and maybe get suspicious.  I don’t know... maybe we’ll just have to make a hole, and make it look like somebody did it by accident, with a maintenance tool of some kind.  Let’s see, how tough is this stuff... Pretty tough!  And, apparently, pretty thick.  That’d be some “accident”.  We’ll have to do better.  Let’s see, now...

            He crawled out of the crawlspaces, brushed himself off real good, in case anyone should see him, and ventured out into the hallway.  He let himself into the conference room and turned on a hologram disc player.  He turned the sound up to the level of a normal speaking voice, and hurried back to the crawlspaces.  Gotta work fast, he urged himself.  The unattended disc player might attract attention.  He could scarcely hear a thing.

            He noticed that some of the air ducts, which traversed the soundproofing foam, vibrated with the sound from the conference room.  Apparently, some of the ducts didn’t touch the foam enough to dampen the vibrations.  They were constructed out of a lightweight, flexible plastic or fiberglass material, and should be easy to drill through, he thought.  If the bottom of a tin can vibrates like an eardrum in the presence of sound, transmitting sound through a string, then a duct could serve the same purpose.  He touched the ducts here and there, and found a good spot.  He marked it with his pocket knife, and hurried back to the conference room, to shut off the disc player.

            Then, working from the crawlspaces once more, he punched a small hole in the duct, and fed the fishing line through it.  Once more, he returned to the conference room, found the end of the line, and tied a button to it.  Once more returning to the crawlspaces, he tightened the line.  Finally, he tied off the excess line and cut it, and tied other pieces of line to it in a few more places, so that the entire assembly hung tightly suspended in midair, transmitting sound from one vibrating surface to another.

            He returned to the maintenance room again, brushed himself off, and caught his breath, thinking, I’m too old for this.  It’s a good thing that I have a kid, and that I play with simple, homemade science toys with him on occasion.  Even grownups learn useful things from such activities.  Now, if this toy will just work half decently...

            He returned to turn the disc player on once again, and then scurried back to his listening post.  He listened for only a few seconds, which was long enough to convince him that the sound was way too weak and distorted to be worth messing with.  Shit!, he thought, all this for nothing?!  All this sweat and dirt, messing around in the crawlspaces, for nothing?!  Time to go right back, and tear it all down?  Live with Dave and Hank doing all sorts of who-knows-what-kinds of shady deals, without me knowing about it, and getting us all into trouble?  Nah—let’s think about this a bit first.  He returned to the conference room and turned the disc player off.  Then, he sat in the maintenance room, contemplating his contraption.

            So, shall I augment this mess with some electronics?, he wondered.  Shall I bring in a microphone, an amplifier, and headphones?  Still, that distortion sounded awful!  We’d be degrading the signal yet one more time.  I have no idea how their anti-bugging technology works.  Maybe they could detect my electronics, even at this distance.  What to do?  Well, let’s leave this mess here for now, go home, and think about it.  He locked everything up, and returned to his office.  There, he transferred some files again, and hit the road back home.

            On the way home, he did a bit of thinking.  Okay... so, what other science toys have the kid and I played with, that might be used here?  Something simple, without electronics.  Something... yes!  That’s it!  A stethoscope!  Place a stethoscope to the receiving tin can?  Wouldn’t we get yet more distortion, once more?  Wait.  What is a stethoscope, anyway?  All it does is pick up vibrations, funnel them down to a narrow tube, and transmit them to the eardrums.

            When he got home, he dug up a funnel, some duct tape, and a stethoscope.  Back at work, he augmented his rig by tearing the membrane off of the stethoscope and adapting the tin can to the ‘scope, using the funnel and the duct tape.  The vibrations would now be channeled, with very little loss, directly to his eardrums.

            He went through the exercise of testing his contraption yet again.  This time, the sound quality was much improved.  Like, man, we’re really channeling those vibes, now, dudes, groovy!  Triumphantly, he prepared to head home.

            On the way home again, he did some more thinking.  Let’s see... the off-hours building entry/departure logs shut down at six in the morning, and re-open at eight at night, and I’ll want to slip in and out, without anyone seeing me there on my day off.  Use the doors and elevators at the opposite end of the building from where I usually go, so the guards won’t recognize me.  If any of the staff do see me, it’s not the end of the world—I had left something here that I needed, or, I’m a total workaholic, and came for some files.  Not too implausible, at all.  But, they sure can’t see me going into or out of that room—especially with my little rig in there.  I’ve got to cut it down, before I go back home.  And, I sure can’t risk someone hearing me scuffling around, above the ceiling.  Ergo, it’s an all-day affair.  Cut it down after seven in the evening, and get out before eight.

            That afternoon he explained to his wife that he’d have to go to work early on Monday, stay all day long, and come home at eight or so.  And, that she couldn’t call him, or beep him in anything less than a life-and-death emergency.  And, that if anyone—ANYONE—from work called, he was out fishing, and couldn’t be reached.  Or, at least, he tried to explain it to her.  He ended up telling her that it was a top-secret mission, that he couldn’t say anything more, and that she had to trust him.  He sure hoped she didn’t think he was seeing some young wild thang for the day, but there wasn’t much else he felt that he could say.

            Feeling like a thief in the night, he slunk into the room at six thirty, jammed the lock, and settled in for a long stay.  He’d brought a book to keep boredom away, but, between the dim lighting (he didn’t want to risk turning on the brights, for fear of someone noticing through the cracks around the door) and his guilt and fear, he didn’t read more than a few pages.  He sat there and stewed in his emotions.  He decided that his fear was pretty well unfounded, since he was being so careful.  Still, it persisted.  His guilt?  Well, what is there, really, to be guilty about, he wondered.  What they don’t know that I know, won’t hurt them.  And, it could save my hide!  As long as I don’t do something bad with it, what does it matter, just exactly what information I have, anyway?

            Seemingly forever later, but only shortly before ten, things began to stir in the teleconference room.  Chuck listened as Dave and Hank started setting up and preparing to call the participants.  “Don’t forget,” Hank said, “We’ve got to keep Howard and Joe in the receive-only mode till we get the consultants off of the line.”

            Howard and Joe?, Chuck wondered.  That wouldn’t be Howard Niedermeyer, chief of LORD, and Joseph Smallwood, the head of the Bible Youth, now, would it?  Surely, they wouldn’t risk letting the media get ahold of this kind of thing, now, would they?  But, if it wasn’t them, then why would they be hiding them from the consultants?  Oh, be patient, Chuck told himself.  Time will tell, soon enough.

            After opening pleasantries, the Monday-morning quarterbacking session was fully engaged.  As best as Chuck could determine, attendees were (in addition to Hank and Dave, and the unseen Howard and Joe) the Reverend Pat Smuckler, Heinrich Lubyankavich (CEO of the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation), two political consultants named Professor Cyrus Liptrot and Doctor Manfred P. Laite, and, interestingly enough, Sondra B. Handlung.  This was especially interesting, in view of the fact that Brian Corning was not there.

            An explanation wasn’t long in coming.  Dave was presenting various charts and graphs and such, when the subject of Vice Presidential candidates came up.  He must be showing the one about voters not liking that lightweight weenie, Brian Corning, Chuck concluded.  “Oh, yes,” Hank interjected, “For those of you who don’t know, yet, I’m firmly committing to run again, in four years.  That’s not official yet, of course.  I certainly don’t plan to lose next time.  Anyway, we’ll have a stronger team next time.  Sondra—Senator Handlung—has agreed to run with me.”

            Chuck heard Sondra start to object.  “Barring...”

            “That is, barring unforeseen developments,” Hank finished for her.  Yeah, I understand, Chuck thought.  Like, unless Hank’s star sinks a lot, in the polls.  Or, of course, if Sondra’s should somehow manage to rise a bunch, with the righteous crowd, despite the Biblical injunctions against women getting too big for their britches.  Or, maybe, despite the bad taste that Republican President Anne Jacobs had left in the voters’ mouths, a few years back, when she’d actually dared to get too serious about cutting middle-class entitlements.

            Dave finished showing his data.  He didn’t show any of the special data, though, apparently for fear of the consultants wanting to know where it came from.  Finally, Hank concluded by asking the consultants what they thought, big-picture-wise, of the elections.  “Why don’t we start with you, Doctor Laite,” Hank said.

            “Manny.  Just call me Manny,” he objected.  He went on to say a whole bunch of nothing, how he “didn’t necessarily disagree” with this that and the other that Hank had said, during his campaign, and other generalities, interlaced with praise for Hank’s campaign effort.

            Hank had finally heard enough.  “Okay, great.  Just great.  So, we ran a wonderful campaign.  So, tell me why we lost.  What did we do wrong?”

            “Well, the one thing I’ve seen quite a bit, in polls, editorials, and such, is that, well, um...”  Chuck could just see this guy’s image, trying to weasel a way of saying something without saying it.

            “Oh, come on, now, out with it!”  Hank demanded.  “I don’t pay you to stroke me.  Tell me what you think.”

            “Sir, the voters are tired of seeing half of their taxes go to the interest on the debt, and most of the rest going to entitlements.  Despite all of our wonderful balanced budget laws and amendments, that say we’ll balance it, some sunny day.  Without touching this, that, and the other entitlements, of course.  And, they’re tired of politicians who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.  Or, at least, that is, those who aren’t getting the entitlements feel this way.  The Democrats are getting most of the votes of those who are getting the entitlements, and the rest of the votes are split between the Republicans and the Libertarians.  Of the latter, way too many of them are voting Libertarian, because they simply don’t think that Republicans are serious about cutting the size of government.  You’ll have to convince them that you’re serious.”

            “Yet, all the polls say that the voters are in favor of cutting the budget—except for their slice of the pie,” Hank objected.  “And, you recall what happened to Anne Jacobs, when she tried to make real cuts.  We all know how much of a sacred cow Social Security still is, despite how one has to hide one’s wealth, or squander it, in order to qualify.  So, what gives?  Which way out?”

            Manny went right back to weaseling, telling Hank that he should keep right on doing what he was doing, except, do it better.  Do it more convincingly, he said.  Do it with even more authority.  Do it with a better image, better spin.

            Soon enough, it was Professor Liptrot’s turn.  He was far more to the point.  “Sir,” he said, “Manny’s got his points, there, but I have no real solutions either.  You can’t have your people’s pork and eat it too.  And you can’t out-libertarian the Libertarians.  The best you can do is offer a moderate, half-way position, somewhere between total individualism, and Marxism.  Halfway between the Libertarians and Democrats.  There’s a lot of voters out there who want to keep most of their money, but who also don’t want to watch people starve.  Voters who want individual incentive and responsibility, with at least a reasonable safety net.  Stake out a reasonable, responsible middle position, and you’ll get their votes.

            “The other major factors that I see, are two things, fairly strongly interrelated.  They are, fear of religious intolerance, and a distaste for your strong stance against biotechnology.  Now, I respect your beliefs.  I have no desire to tell you what to believe.  And, your unequivocal stance against the violence employed by the Bible Youth, in their campaign against evolutionism, was certainly commendable.  Still, I’ll tell you flat out—the public associates you with the Bible Youth, regardless of how often you point out that you’re not their boss, or even a member.  If it hadn’t been for the big scandal, this fall, about Kite and the Chinese War, then—well, I think that all the press coverage of the Bible Youth activities would have been that much greater.  And there’d have been that much more damage  to you.

            “You’ve got to tone it down.  I know it gets you some points, with... well, never mind.  Let me just say, the points you lose, are more than the points you gain.  You’ve got to tone it down, if you want to win.  I mean, lines like, when you said, ‘God, guns, and guts made America great, and Satan, sin, and socialism are tearing her down’.  A lot of voters get awfully squeamish when they start hearing about God and Satan from politicians.

            “Then, there’s biotechnology, and your line about offering the people ‘freedom from bestiality’.  They’re not buying it.  A lot of people, including ones who won’t admit it to poll-takers, would love to be able to have smart, cute, healthy babies.  They’re willing to go to some lengths to have those babies, that you don’t approve of.  I know how you feel.  I’m just telling you, your stance isn’t helping you, with a lot of people.  Here, again, you might want to tone it down.  Despite all the horrors of the Chinese War, biotechnology has done a lot of good, and will continue to do so.  I mean, ABC, Phil Schrock, and all the things they’ve done, besides the weapons efforts.  They just got a lot of good press on how they’re developing those ecosystems for mining, and cleaning up radioactive wastes, you know.  The public is willing to forgive, if not forget, all the bad things, when they see good things.”

            Chuck knew how much Hank hated ABC, biotechnology, and Phil Schrock.  So he was surprised to see that Hank didn’t get all steamed up, and yell at Cyrus.  He just thanked him for his opinions, and asked for more!

            The only other advice that Cyrus had, was that the next time would almost definitely be Hank’s last decent chance.  It would have to be all or nothing, he said, because soon, that new amendment would kick in.  The Cross-Voting Amendment only needed to be ratified by a few more States, and then, Hank probably would lose his Senate seat.  This amendment allowed voters to vote for one Senator and one Representative in any district or State, in addition to their own candidates.

            This provision was intended to allow voters to get rid of big, powerful ‘people’s porkers’ who brought more than their fair share of bacon home to their own districts.  It would also have the effect of allowing a minority of voters, nationwide, to vote out of office, anyone sufficiently controversial to attract a lot of attention.  That is, where large numbers of voters gang up on a candidate who they feel strongly against, there often won’t be enough voters committed to supporting that candidate, in this arrangement.  The polls said that the ‘cross-votes’ would, indeed, be ‘cross’; they’d be, by and large, votes against certain politicians, not for their opponents!  Cyrus was of the opinion that Hank would be a prime target, and that, after losing his Senate seat, he’d be a lot less able to run successfully for President.

            There was a bit more prognosticating, philosophizing, and theologizing (compliments of the Reverend Pat Smuckler), and then, with thanks from Hank, the two political consultants signed off.  Okay, here comes the good stuff, Chuck mused.  And, they’re keeping Sondra on line?  She’s in this, now, too?  They trust her this much?  Well, I guess that’s good for the cause.  Still, every time one more person is in on all this stuff... the risks increase.  Including, the risks to me.

            Howard and Joe joined the show.  “Hey, Howard!  Hey, Joe!” Hank welcomed them.  “Did you hear that?  It’s not bad enough, that ol’ Kite, that bastard, is going to get off, as soon as Bruce gets into office, and grants him a pardon—General Leech is retired now, and practically unscathed, so far—who knows, maybe he’ll get a pardon soon, too—now, they want us to ‘forgive and forget’ the entire triumvirate!  Schrock-Leech-Kite!  I mean, this demonic biotechnology crap!  Eighteen million dead Americans isn’t enough?!  We have to go for more?  Nazi-style ‘Master Race’ crap, and gene-splicing animal genes into people—bestiality, for Christ’s sake—is next, and we’re supposed to forgive and forget?”

            This amused Chuck, because he recalled that Hank, during the early parts of the Chinese War, had been chomping at the bit, wanting the bioweapons unleashed.  Get our money’s worth out of all those research dollars, he’d said.  Save the lives of American soldiers!

            “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Hank continued, “There’s one part of the Schrock-Leech-Kite triumvirate that’s not going to get off so easy, and that’s the brains behind this whole mess.  It’s the one whose siren songs about the wonders of biotechnology are seducing the masses towards bestiality and Satanism.  I don’t care how often he apologizes for having bats in his belfry, I want him dead.  D-E-A-D, dead.  He’s gone off and committed the unforgivable sin, cursing God with biotechnological blasphemy.

            “Howard, I want something to happen to Phil.  Got that?  No hurry, though.  No clumsy foolishness, like some of your yokels and voters with the wrong bumper stickers.  Bide your time, and do it right.”

            “Yes Sir,” Chuck heard Howard reply.  Holy shit!  What the Hell are we getting into now, Chuck wondered.

            Some image in the conference room must have squirmed, fidgeted, or otherwise shown discomfort, because Hank went on to say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.  It’s worth the risk.  If we do it carefully, that is.  Take our good ol’ time, and do it right.  He and ABC are cooking up some crap that’s got to be stopped.  You know, we’ve heard they’re developing some super-duper whiz-bang computer, that’s actually supposed to be fully conscious, and far superior to the human brain.  No telling what sort of blasphemy they’ll cook up next, with a thing like that.

            “But our sources tell us that they’re specifically intending to do a thorough analysis of the human genome, and to mass-automate the ‘improvement’ of God’s work, which is to say, they want to make genetic engineering cheap and affordable to the masses.  They’ve got to be stopped!  No wimpy crap here, now.  Moderation in the pursuit of righteousness is no virtue.  The only thing required for the triumph of evil, is for good men—and women-,” he added, in apparent deference to Sondra’s image, “to do nothing.  So, let’s do something to stop the evil.  Let’s stop Phil Schrock.  Let’s take the Schrock out of Schrock-Leech-Kite for once and for all, as he claims he wants to do.  We’ll just help him a little bit.”

            Wow!, thought Chuck.  Heady stuff!  He barely listened, as the meeting continued.  They went over the special data, but it was old hat to Chuck; after all, he’d prepared those charts and graphs.  He was busy thinking about what all sorts of things Hank was getting into.

            The meeting was over soon enough.  Hank signed off by thanking them all for their participation, and by reminding them all that next time, they were NOT going to lose.  The future of God’s Kingdom on Earth, nothing less, was in question, and they couldn’t let God down, the Reverend Pat Smuckler assured them in their farewell prayer.  Chuck had all afternoon and early evening to just sit there and think.  At seven, he tore down his contraption, and at eight, he slunk out of the building, and headed home.  He concluded that Hank had to do what Hank had to do, although his thoughts were sorely troubled.  One of these days, he worried, Hank is going to go too far.  And, I obviously can’t warn him about things that I’m not supposed to know about.  All this could get dangerous.  Hell, it could even ruin my career!

 

CHAPTER  8

            “We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized.  I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

                                                 Petronius Arbiter  (Greek Navy, 210 B. C.)

 

            Robert Herron, the head of NASA’s robotics department, left the teleconference room in a blue funk.  He wasn’t going to be the head of robotics much longer.  The big cheese, Lloyd Salley, had just announced another reorganization.  Oh, not to worry, he’d said.  All the managers are still managers.  We’ve just reshuffled the responsibilities, and created a few new offices.  We’re just reorganizing according to objectives instead of technologies.

            So, now I get to the chief cook and bottle-washer for Jemison base logistics, he thought.  Fight over budgets, forms, and requisitions.  Just once in a while, whenever I can fend off the bureaucrats, I’ll still be able to be involved in robotics.  So, that’s why I strained my brain all these years, learning robotics?  Give me a break!

            I wish I could just return to doing real work.  Like, design work.  But, then, it’s up or out.  Can’t make the real bucks designing things; gotta invent better forms and procedures, if you want to get some place, and be somebody.  If I told them I want a cut in pay, and a return to the lab, they’d show me the door.  I’m a manager now, so I’ve got to be responsible.  Designing things isn’t being responsible; only fighting over office politics fits the definition.

            He strolled on back to his office, thinking more dejected thoughts.  Let’s see, he thought.  This is about strike three for them, all in a short time.  First, they reject all practicality, and commit to a manned (oops! Staffed), rather than robotic, expedition to Mars.  Gotta keep up with the international Joneses.  Keeping up is more important than being sensible, and getting “bang for the buck”.  International prestige over quantity of knowledge gained.

            Speaking of the Joneses, he thought, that’s strike two.  They appointed LeRoy Jones, that loudmouth, politically correct—Hell, more like, politically perfect—Black, for a primary astronaut slot, for our three crewpersons on the international crew.  Never mind that there were other, more qualified candidates, including, even, other Blacks—okay, well, they look black to me—who just didn’t score as high with the goddamn ethnic purity panel, or whatever they call themselves.  The other guys and gals?  Well, a few of them may have looked black, but they sure didn’t act black.  Didn’t attend African-American immersion schools.  Hell, some even checked the mixed race square, instead of the African-American square, or even went so far as to speak out (albeit quietly) against the system, saying they wanted to be considered on their own merits!

            One of these days, they’re going to detect my heretical thoughts, and bust me good, Bob mused.  Then, I’ll be in real trouble!  Oh, well.  I’ll tell them I approve of their Hispanic/female token, at least.  Maria Herrara is quite sharp, and I’ve got a lot of respect for her.  I’ll not get any points for respecting the third American crewperson, though—the one who barely made it, only after they decided not to totally overcompensate for the other nations’ crewmembers’ lack of diversity, for fear of pissing off the “angry white men”.  Alan Sanders is sharp, too.  I just hope he and Maria can pull part of LeRoy’s weight, so that we Americans won’t look too bad, Bob concluded to himself.

            Now, of course, here’s strike three.  Re-org, yet once more.  An orgy of re-orgs, you could say.  What’s management doing these days, you ask?  Oh, hey, we’re getting a lot accomplished!  We’re reorganizing, can’t you see?

            So, is it, like, time to look for another job, Bob asked himself, briefly.  God knows the civilians don’t have to go in for half as much political crap as we do.  Nah!  I’m way too old to be moving and switching jobs, he concluded.  Besides, always look on the bright side of life.  Exciting things going on.  And, they will let me continue to play with robotics, now and then.  Or, at least, so they say.  Can’t lose my expertise, they say.  Hope they’re not fibbing too much.

            Bob’s thoughts brightened considerably, as he considered the new and exciting things that were going on.  Why, just the other day, Kurt Katapski, an old acquaintance of his, had called from ABC, and asked some tantalizing questions.  How would Bob like to have access to an awesomely powerful machine, he’d asked.  How would he like to be able to mess with a machine capable of playing cosmic billiards, and putting mineral-rich asteroids into near-Earth, or near-Moon, orbits, he asked.  With very little energy and money expended, he added.  Just use some extremely complicated orbits and collisions, he said.

            This, of course, had immensely stimulated Bob’s interest. Who-what-where-when-why, he’d peppered Kurt with questions.  “Never mind,” Kurt had replied.  “Just be thinking about it.  Be thinking about how you’d go about getting NASA funds committed to such a thing, if the computer power became available to you.”  Well, Bob was thinking about it.  Especially now that he’d heard rumors from other sources, that Comp-Optic was providing some awesome, and awesomely expensive, machine to ABC.  It would even be fully conscious some day, the rumors said.  That, Bob had a real hard time believing.

            Bob tried to forget office politics, and thought about all the resources to be gained from near-Earth asteroids.  Hell, we could put a metal-rich one into a low orbit around the Moon, and supply cheap metals to Jemison Base, he reflected.  Hey, now that I’m chief cook and bottle washer for running Jemison, this is a perfectly good excuse for me to get involved, he concluded.

            He called and left a message to Kurt at ABC.  Let’s see if I can out-weasel this weasel, he speculated.  Get some advance poop and scoop out of him.  Maybe, like, hint that, unless we hear something of substance soon, NASA will be looking into spending its own big bucks on a  Comp-Optic ultramachine, and then, we’ll be hidebound bureaucrats, and not want to mess with anyone else’s toys.  Endanger our funds, if we show that we can get by, by buying time on another machine, see?  It’d be a big fib, but Kurt wouldn’t know that.  Well, we’ll just have to see how much we can get away with.


 

CHAPTER  9

            “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”

                                                            Dwight D. Eisenhower  (1890–1969)

 

            Filled with anticipation, Phil woke that morning before the alarm went off.  In the dim lighting, he took an admiring glance at Gloria and six-month-old Trent, all snuggled up on the other side of the bed.  They were a picture of snoozing contentment.  He chuckled inwardly, looking at the fatty folds of Trent’s arms, fattened up by love and mother’s milk.  They’d taken to calling him the “Michelin Baby”, in honor of his arms and legs of little segments of baby fat.

            He took his morning shower, putting his body in autopilot, and thinking about the big day ahead of him.  He stayed in autopilot through the rest of his morning ritual, letting his thoughts stray from work only long enough to reflect that biotechnology still hadn’t been able to do anything to improve a grapefruit.  Gloria couldn’t stand them, but they were his favorite, simple and complete breakfast.  He dumped the peels into the compost hatch, detoured up the stairs just long enough to allocate one each, kiss, standard issue, to a drowsy Gloria and a still-sleeping Trent, and then departed.

            He hopped into his latest car from the pool of cars at work, and slipped into a disguise.  He’d started these habits in his days as a whore for the State, designing biological weapons.  Even though ABC no longer did this kind of work—as far as Phil knew, no one else did, either, although one never knows what governments do in secrecy—there was still a lot of hostility out there, towards biotechnology and prominent contributors in the field.  So, Phil, as well as a few other major players at ABC, still took precautions.

            Phil cruised one of his many routes.  Being in a hurry this particular day, he took the fastest route.  I don’t know why I’m in such a hurry, he thought.  It’s not like I’m a critical player in all this.  I’ll just be a spectator, at this stage.  Still... it’s not every day you get to watch a “consciousness kernel” get loaded into the world’s most advanced computer.

            “Derrick, the Dirty Diamond” had been a disappointment so far.  Yes, certain routines, mostly involving weather simulations and designing computers, fusion reactors, and biotechnology, ran far faster on Derrick, than on any other machine.  Still, Derrick was so expensive that ABC could never get its money back through such applications.  For Derrick’s price, one could buy hundreds of simpler machines.

            Nor could Derrick run any routines that the cheaper, slower machines couldn’t handle.  Derrick’s hardware was phenomenal, but the software just wasn’t there.  The software types kept on saying, “give us a few more months,” and we’ll do this, that, and the other.  Play cosmic billiards with asteroids, mass-automate and vastly speed up genetic engineering, and so on.  But the software was just overwhelming, especially when one considered checking it all for errors.  Management impatiently awaited payback from Derrick’s twelve billion dollar price tag, and the head software manager, Doug Meyer, was honest enough to admit that they weren’t making serious progress.

            So Kurt Katapski, the hardware guru, was having his way.  They’d gamble.  They’d load that “consciousness kernel”, permanently warping billions of “solitopsin” molecular circuits, comprising a large portion of Derrick.  There was a chance that loading the kernel would leave them with billions of dollars worth of advanced idiot circuits.  The joke was that ABC would come to stand for Advanced Babbling Circuits.

            Kurt didn’t quibble; he admitted it was a huge gamble.  If they won their bet, though, Derrick would become the world’s first truly conscious computer, and program himself.  He’d run circles around all the human programmers, even with their machine assistance, and make a quantum leap.  They’d be able to apply Derrick to problems never tackled before.

            Phil had used to believe that attaining consciousness in computers was sort of like levels of consciousness in animals; there were simply degrees of consciousness, as in the progression from virus to bacteria to protozoa to jellyfish, on to insects, fish, monkeys, and so on.  Kurt had assured him that this wasn’t so; that even the most advanced computers and programs were simply simulating consciousness, and that in the cybernetic world, the step would be clear and distinct.  Kurt claimed to have the math to show it, but Phil just took his word for it.  Computer design was about as comprehensible to Phil as the concept of “the public’s interest” is to most trial lawyers.

            From his experience with computers so far, though, Phil didn’t have much trouble believing Kurt.  No computer Phil had ever met, had anything approaching that vague, nebulous thing called human “common sense”.  Not that sense was really that common among humans, anyway, Phil reflected.  Well, heck, he added to himself, I haven’t even met a computer that has horse sense, even, anyway.  Not even barely cow sense—so what if they can crunch numbers?  But don’t let Kurt catch me claiming any computer even has cow sense.  He’d claim a cow’s consciousness is billions of times more deserving of the label, than any computer and program devised so far.  But that’s about to change, real soon.  Big-time.  We hope.

            Speaking of Kurt thinking I’m a dipshit, Phil thought, maybe I’d better review all this one more time, so I can at least throw the buzzwords around quasi-competently.  Maybe not Kurt, so much, but some of those computer nerds can barely bring themselves to stoop so low as to discuss this stuff with me.  The least I can do, is to have a glossy overview in my head, so I can at least appreciate a little bit of what’s going on.

            So, we’ve known about “solitons”, or lone waves—single waves, in balance between the forces of compression and dispersion, either of which, without the other, would change the nature of a single wave.  We’ve known about such waves for decades, and even longer, if you count anecdotal incidents of such waves seen on the water in canals.  In one case, for example, a mule-drawn barge had the cable snap, and the resulting wave was seen to travel, stably, as a single wave, for quite a distance.  And, we’ve been building optical, or light-based, computers for quite some time, too.  We’ve built optical logic elements and storage devices out of the bacteria-derived protein “rhodopsin”.

            But rhodopsin has never been terribly practical; the storage density is too low, and it requires very cold temperatures.  In contrast, optical computers have been practical for quite some time.  In all these cases, though, the laser pulses are very short in terms of the human time scale—picoseconds and nanoseconds.  But in terms of physics, they consist of... millions? billions?  Hell, I can’t recall... of waves.  That means slow computation times, and heat generated by inevitable losses in the imperfect mediums of diamond, glass, and fiberoptic cable (a form of glass).

            Derrick, though... now, he’s an awesome machine.  One single wave of light carries data, which can be used in logic operations.  Including, of course, data storage, in the form of a small organic molecule imbedded in a diamond matrix.  The single waves of light, or “solitons”, thread their way through a maze of paths made of diamond, and organic storage elements—the equivalent of a silicon flip-flop in the old dinosaur days—and logic elements.  There are many types of organic molecules, all imbedded into the diamond by slow-beam molecular epitaxy in microgravity, all of which perform various storage and logic functions.  In general, these are called solitopsin molecules.  Their individual names, I can’t recall.  There’s only so far I can go to appease the cybergeeks.  Too many buzzwords!

            I do remember some of the bizarre names they’ve come up with for the various solitons.  Waves.  Count on engineers and scientists to come up with weird names!  Compactons, fluxons, anti-kinks, twists, and, my very favorite—boojums.  Fucking geeks; they must be on almost as many drugs as I was on, back in college!

            So, anyway, Derrick is the first to vastly increase computational speed, and to vastly reduce energy consumed and heat generated, by using single waves of light, rather than (relatively) long pulses.  Who cares if the price of all this is billions of dollars?  And all the hassles of keeping the solitopsin molecules and diamond matrix at a few degrees above absolute zero?  As long as Derrick lives up to our expectations, it’ll be all worth it.  A conscious computer, with mental powers far beyond those of humans, for Christ’s sake!  There’d be no telling what might come out of this!  Just wait till all this is brought out of secrecy, to an astonished world, Phil mused.

            Phil brought his mind back from the cryo-crypto-cybernetic world, just in time to stop at the gates to ABC.  He stripped off his disguise.  The gates didn’t move.  Come on, you bums, don’t you recognize me?  He honked on his horn and waved at the guard.  The guard waved back, pointing to the new terminal.  Oh, yeah, that’s right, Phil recalled, we’re taking new precautions.  Ever since that little incident.  The one I’m not going to tell Gloria about, so that she won’t worry too much.  The one where they found the bomb on the undercarriage of the car that was to be assigned to me.  So, now they won’t let the mechanics work on any cars in the pool, unless there’s at least three of them, keeping an eye on each other.  That, and I’ve got to go through a longer morning ritual.

            He drove up to the terminal, placed his hand on the scanner, and waited thirty seconds for the computer to check his fingerprints.  Finally, the gate swung open, and he was on his way to the big show.

            He checked his messages, then went straight to the conference room.  He got there early, and saved a seat for Don McCulley, who arrived shortly.  Don wasn’t exactly a bigwig, but Phil had made sure he was included, mostly just because he was a good friend.  That, and Don had a long history of working on a practical level with computers in biotechnology, and worked fairly closely with Phil at times.  Phil and Don chewed the fat while the room slowly filled up with about eighty people.  Most of them were ABC managers (including CEO Bradley Collins, site manager Gary Peck, and software manager Doug Meyer) and computer types.  The only non-ABC people that Phil saw, were some folks from the manufacturer, Comp-Optic, and Robert Herron, the NASA robotics manager who’d been sworn to secrecy, nine ways to Sunday.  Only then had he been allowed in on all the excitement.  He’d been disappointed that software for playing cosmic billiards with asteroids couldn’t seem to be devised on any sort of reasonable timeframe, but was now doubtlessly holding his breath.

            Phil and Don watched ten computer wizards, each with a hologram display, keyboard, pointer, microphone, speakers, etc., all puttering away at the front of the room, under the watchful eyes of Kurt Katapski and Doug Meyer.  “I can see why computers and hacking don’t make good action flicks,” Phil commented to Don.  Don’s eyes followed Phil’s, to the hologram cameras that were recording it all.  “You know,” Phil added, “In the long run, the next hour or two or who knows how long, might be more significant for the human race, than when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.  Yet, there’s just no drama.  Can’t sell any advertising for twinkies with this.  Ten hackers hacking, seven keyboards clacking, just doesn’t cut it.  Less secrecy would help, though, obviously.”

            “Not as much as some sex,” Don added.  “Six geese a-getting-laid, say.  Or, maybe not quite.  Maybe, eleven ladies getting goosed.  Something along those lines.  But, secrecy?  We can’t do without that!  Hell, we’d have ten zillion protesters out there, for some reason or another.  Plus, the competition would have a field day, making fun of us, if this all flops.  As if we’re keeping much of this from very many people, anyway.”

            “Yeah, quite a bit has leaked, it seems,” Phil admitted.  “At least they don’t know that today is the big day, or very exactly, just what we’re up to.  So, how would you propose to snazz this all up for posterity?  How do you add your six geese a-getting laid, without running afoul of, for example, the Hank N. Kreutz Freedom Foundation, and freedom from pornography?”

            “Hell, I don’t know,” Don muttered.  “Watch it now, or they’ll getcha.  Let’s not snazz it up after all, I guess.  I don’t like jail.  Let’s snazz up Hank’s hind end, instead.  Like, put a big ol’ bumper sticker on it.  ‘Thank God I’m not smug, like other people’.  Or, maybe, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, so you’d better be good, you’d better watch out, you’d better kiss my butt, ‘cause otherwise I’ll kick yours’.  Whaddaya think?”

            “I think it’d be a waste,” Phil replied.  “I think he’s already got those particular stickers.  Maybe we could just get him a neon halo instead.  But, really now.  Tell me what you think of today’s festivities.  Say something really impressive, and maybe we’ll take a walk to the potty, and you can say it within earshot of the cameras, as we walk by.  Go down in history for being witty, maybe even prophetic.  Like, ‘one small keystroke for one man, a drive to the retirement home for mankind; the computers are taking over.’  Sound good?”

            “Okay, let’s go.  You have to say it, though, since you came up with it.  I’ll just lend some gravity to the occasion.”  Don put his lips to his arm, and blew some simulated farts.  They were very dignified farts, though.

            “No thanks, I’ll pass.  I’m famous enough already.  I’ll tell you, though, I think this is a big deal.  Maybe right up there with taming fire, or inventing the wheel.  Future historians will look back on this day, and say, that was the day when we finally took a serious step towards sitting in the park all day, drinking beer, and letting the machines do all the work.  That, or, they’ll say, that was the day that the irrational old life forms gave birth to us, their betters; can you believe that those wimpy things we keep in the zoo, created us?”

            “Hey, that’s heresy,” Don commented.  Phil was shocked that Don could be shocked, but he sure seemed to be at least a little amazed that Phil would say such things.  Or, was Don very subtly pulling his leg, pretending to be shocked?  With Don, one could never tell.  “Keep those thoughts to yourself  Don’t pull me down with you, when you get busted.  It’s not in the technological spirit, or even in the ABC spirit.  You know, that’s about three-quarters of the reason why we’re trying to keep this semi-secret.  Popular fear of the new and unknown.  Hell, many people won’t even want to risk letting Derrick access ONLINE, for fear he’ll take over the whole world.  So, keep your heretical thoughts under your hat.”

            Phil was just about to protest how utterly ridiculous such ideas were—that one lousy computer, no matter how smart, could bend billions of humans to his will, merely by sending some bits and bytes of photons and electrons hither and yon.  Just then, though, Kurt wanted everyone’s attention to make a short speech.

            “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, somewhat nervously.  Kurt isn’t calm, cool, and collected, in front of a crowd, like me, Phil reflected.  “I don’t need to tell y’all at any great length about the significance of what we’re about to do.  If we’re successful, that is.  With any luck, today we should take a major step forwards in the human-machine partnership, which will help us to explore worlds unknown, both literally and figuratively.  Or, as certain heathens among us would put it, it’ll allow us to sit in the park and drink beer, while the machines do all of our work.”

            There were a few chuckles, and a few heads turned towards Phil and Don.  With that, Kurt seemed to relax a bit, and continued.  “Let me just address a few issues in passing.  The rumors are flying around out there about what we’re doing, and there’s a lot of fear.  Unwarranted fear, I might add.  So, although most of us are very familiar with these things, I want to briefly review the concerns about ethics, laws, security, computers taking over the world, and so on.  And, what we’ve decided our policies will be, and why.  Hopefully, when the time comes to disclose more about all this to the media and to the public, we’ll all be able to articulate the facts and policies, accurately.”

            Phil just barely noticed that Kurt shot a quick glance towards the CEO.  Bradley, after harping on everyone about secrecy, had casually let some stuff slip, while being interviewed a few months ago.  Phil had heard that Kurt wasn’t too pleased that Bradley had garbled some of the details.  Phil figured it didn’t amount to a hill of beans anyway; a CEO can do what he wants, and the public is going to garble information in their own heads, regardless of what they’re told.  If they give a damn in the first place.  But Kurt wasn’t that way.  He impressed Phil as a bit of a control freak, at times.

            “So, we’ll go over the issues and policies, and then we’ll go over what you are about to see today,” Kurt continued.  “I’ll try to keep it all short and sweet.

            “First off, most near and dear to our human hearts, are the rights of human beings.  We’ll be dealing with a lot of fear.  Fear of the unknown, fear of things smarter than humans, fear of a loss of supremacy.  Never mind that machines have done lots of things better than humans, for a long time now.  Fear is still inevitable.  We never worried about balancing the rights of a fire, a wheel, a calculator, or an atomic bomb, against the rights of human beings, because the earlier machines, clearly, were nothing more than machines, and had no rights, or will, or volition.  We’re stepping into parts unknown, here, today.

            “No, there are no laws against what we are doing.  Yet.  At least, as far as we can tell.  Still, there are ethics to be considered.  What if Derrick, for some strange reason, decides that he doesn’t like human beings, and decides to wipe us all out?  I, for one, certainly don’t worry about such matters.  We surely don’t intend to give Derrick access to any tools that could give him command over billions of human beings.  The worst he could do, if we allowed him full access to ONLINE—and, note that I’m all in favor of gradually allowing this—would be to garble and destroy bunches of files.  Despite all of our dependence on computers and communications, these days, the worst of such cases would still be far, far removed from anything even vaguely endangering the human race.

            “No, I think it’s fairly clear that, with only one Derrick on the planet, and any more of his kind, in any kind of quantity, being far out on the horizon—due to the prohibitive costs, of course—then, well, I think we can put off worrying about the machines taking over.  One Derrick, and eight billion human beings.  Some very tall odds, no matter how you look at it.  Yes, some day, someone will have to worry about these issues.  Just as the first caveman who built a fire, doubtlessly worried about smog and the green-house effect, from billions of fires, millennia hence.  So, too, we can worry about the machines replacing us.  But, like that caveman, we can put that day off.  Or, put it another way, no one would ever have a baby, if they worried too much about that baby growing up to be an evil human being.  At some point, one has to put aside one’s fear of the future, and of progress, and move on.  The morrow will take care of its own.

            “Still, one can take that kind of attitude too far.  Make a mess, and let the next generation worry about it.  Sort of like the national deficit, or pollution, or over-population.  Maybe that caveman should have thought about smog.  We can’t delegate all the worrying to science fiction writers, because the future is now.  So, I’ll do my fair share of the worrying.  But no more than my fair share.  There is a balance.  Or, at least, there should be.  And I’ve already done my share, I think.  So have most of the rest of us.  We have our policies in place.  They are simple.  We don’t allow Derrick to design robots to kill us all.  In fact, we steer him clear of all military projects, unless there is some overwhelming national emergency, and there’s no other choice.  Short of that, I can’t see a realistic scenario in which Derrick can inflict major harm on the human race.

            “What about really subtle schemes that Derrick might cook up, to bring about our demise?  After all, he’ll be a lot smarter than any individual human being.  And, I mentioned science fiction.  I’ve been asked, more than once or twice, why we can’t do something like Isaac Asimov proposed so long ago.  Why can’t we design into those very circuits, the desire to hold human life in high esteem?  Control the potential problem at its very source.  Isaac proposed the three rules of robotics, to be programmed into every robot.  First, no robot would harm a human being, or, second, allow a human being to be harmed, unless that would conflict with the first law.  Nor would the robot allow itself to be harmed, unless that would conflict with the first two laws.  Sounds quite nice.

            “Well, unfortunately, things aren’t so simple.  Consciousness is a thing that builds itself, and can only roughly be constrained.  Conscious, flexible intelligence and rote programming, or instincts, are largely conflicting forces.  In order for humans to evolve the higher mental powers, we had to give up on instincts.  How can one direct one’s consciousness towards reason and logic, when one is swamped by blind passion?  That is how instincts, or programmed behavior, manifests itself—as emotion, or passion.  And, in a truly intelligent, conscious entity, even emotions are under the command of the higher mental powers.

            “Indeed, we can show quite clearly that there isn’t anywhere close to enough room in the human genome, to contain the information to program a human brain.  Even if we wanted to program everything by instinct—everything from speaking a language or two, to math and science—then, there simply wouldn’t be enough room.  And, if we programmed everything, we wouldn’t have consciousness—we’d just have a machine cram-packed with data and programmed responses.

            “Consciousness can’t be rigidly controlled, or it isn’t consciousness.  So, we have to live with uncertain results, with the entity itself deciding what it should be, what it wants to be.  Just as we have to let go of our children, sooner or later.  Despite the inputs of nature and nurture, they make up their own minds.  Yet we have strong reason to believe that the revulsion that a human feels when another is dismembered or is otherwise forced to suffer grossly—that this revulsion is largely the results of instincts.  Any species without such instincts, preventing harm to one’s own, especially a carnivorous species, won’t survive long.

            “Still, history shows quite clearly that we are capable of immense cruelty, even to ourselves.  We even commit suicide, which is in direct contravention to the strongest instinct, that of self-preservation.  I doubt that it’s a coincidence that the only other animals on the planet to attain the dubious distinction of suicide, are also among the most intelligent—the cetaceans.  The whales and dolphins.  They, too, have attained such a high level of consciousness, that they can override their strongest instincts.  The bottom line is that consciousness is its own master, by definition.  I’d like to go into the math, but we’ve got to move on.

            “This still begs the whole question of, just exactly what motivates Derrick, besides his own volition?  Can consciousness be its own driving force, all by its lonesome?  What would be the nature of such a self-contained consciousness?  We’re not sure.  We’re not even sure whether it would be ethical to create an isolated intelligence, fully independent and having no needs or desires.  To be safe, we’ve tried to make sure that Derrick doesn’t just want to sit around and contemplate his solitonic navel for years.  We’ve made some attempt to code certain motivations into him.  Maybe they’re not all that far removed from what Asimov postulated; maybe I’m just splitting hairs.  We tried to code the idea that other consciousness besides Derrick’s exist, and that they deserve consideration.  And we tried to code that Derrick should value himself, too.

            “Above and beyond that, not so much because we felt that it was more important, just that it was more readily accomplished—we coded that Derrick will want to assimilate information and to reach conclusions, to make sense out of things, to develop a working view of the world.  To ‘model’ the world as accurately as possible, inside his mind, as sane humans do.  To dedicate himself to understanding reality, to avoiding ‘cognitive dissonance’.  This dissonance is what happens when we know two sets of ‘facts’, and they can’t both be right.  When that happens, in Derrick’s mind, just as in sane human beings, one or the other set of facts will be cast aside, or at least, be given less weight.  Derrick will develop opinions, so to speak.  We hope they will prove refreshingly new, honest, thoughtful, and useful.

            “This business of giving some facts, or supposed facts, more weight than others, is entirely natural.  A genuine consciousness has no other real choices.  If Derrick doesn’t act this way, than he’ll be no more than an automated encyclopedia, capable of regurgitating all the various facts, views, and arguments that are fed to him.  If that’s all that we want, we can achieve those goals with technology far simpler than Derrick’s.  Depending on how much work one wants to do, one can achieve the same with a centuries-old technology called ‘books’, or a decades-old technology called personal computers.

            “So, will Derrick be good or evil?  To put the question bluntly, as the rumor-mongering tabloids do.  Forgive me!  But the question is valid.  Derrick will understand consciousness; consciousness is, after all, self-awareness.  He’ll understand that we, too, share this trait with him.  And he’ll understand us quite well.  I needn’t tell you about all the data that will be available to him.  Derrick will feel ‘pain’, if you want to call it that, when he feels cognitive dissonance.  He’ll feel pleasure at figuring things out, at exercising his mind, just as many humans do.

            “With self-awareness and a desire to accurately model the world, comes an understanding that there are others, who, just like us, feel pain and pleasure.  We come to understand that if we want others to help us achieve pleasure and avoid pain, then, by golly, we’d better do the same for them.  All we need to do is to help Derrick see this.  Just like a child.  If he doesn’t, then, well—fat chance of him getting the opportunity to make more of himself, or otherwise take over the world, without willing human assistance.  We’ll take away his allowance.  Let’s be realistic, now.  He’ll not boss us around, all by himself, nor will we help him build more conscious machines, at great difficulty and expense, unless he proves himself trustworthy, and cooperates with us.

            “Okay, so that’s the ethics of how Derrick may or may not treat us.  How about the ethics of how we treat Derrick?  I don’t think there’s much cause for alarm there, either.  We tried our best to program his desires to be simple ones.  Unlike a lot of us, he won’t want to father half of the world’s children, convert everyone to his own religion, amass all the trappings of status and conspicuous consumption, or, we hope, be appointed dictator-for-life.  If he does develope such desires, we needn’t trouble ourselves if we thwart his ambitions, any more than we trouble ourselves over humans of that kind.

            “Even if he turns out to be incomprehensible to human beings, we still won’t turn his switch off any time too soon.  He’s just way too valuable, as a research tool if nothing else, even if he turns out this way.  So, we needn’t worry too much about causing him pain, with regards to his survival needs.  Even if we turn off his switch, it will be short and merciful.  Let’s be honest—we kill consciousness every day.  That hamburger, that steak, the meat on that pizza, all come from animals that have some level of consciousness, many of us would agree.  We do try our best to dispatch those animals with minimal suffering.  Similarly, we kill human beings in wars and in law enforcement activities.  Turning Derrick off, if we must, isn’t all that much different.

            “Then, there’s Derrick’s pleasure of reasoning, and his pain of cognitive dissonance.  These are his affairs, more so than ours.  He, not we, will be responsible for this, just as with an individual human being.  We’ll feed him all the data that he wants.  To withhold much data from him, would be like putting a child in an empty room, without toys, human interaction, or other stimulation.  Such action is clearly unethical.  We won’t do that.  It wouldn’t make sense to do that.  He needs data, for our reasons as well as his.  He’ll not come up with much of value, if we don’t ‘feed’ him.

            “So much for ethics.  Let’s talk about what we’ll see today.  Or, at least, what we sure hope to see today.  About fifteen hundred meters from where I stand, as the crow flies—or, in this case, as the worm crawls—buried a thousand meters down, for security, lies a six-foot sphere of diamond, impregnated with small, delicate molecules generically called ‘solitopsin’.  They number in the trillions of nonillions; we don’t have a precise count.  These perform logic operations and storage functions.  Roughly speaking, ignoring the fact that Derrick’s light-based operations aren’t strictly Boolean, in the same terms as older computers—roughly speaking, ‘Derrick, the Dirty Diamond’ is comprised of logic elements capable of ten to the twenty-fifth power ‘flops’, or floating-point operations, per second.  That, and ten to the thirtieth power bytes of storage.

            “Around this core lies refrigerating equipment, which keeps Derrick chilled to a balmy three degrees Kelvin, or less.  He’s really one cool character!  Next, there’s conventional, room-temperature equipment pumping in laser energy, and for links to us, and to the world.  Some day, Derrick will cruise on ONLINE, and quench whatever thirst for knowledge that he might devise, that an entire world of humans beings can satisfy.

            “Very soon now, as soon as we get the final all-clear from all ten stations, up here, we’ll send some very special software down to Derrick.  A remote descendant of the old ‘genetic algorithms’ of decades past.  It will trigger an irrevocable transformation.  Solitopsin molecules by the hundreds of billions, interspersed throughout most of the sphere, will start to settle into certain patterns.  Many of them will assume forms that can’t be reversed.  This process will take an undetermined amount of time, ranging perhaps from minutes to days, maybe even weeks.  It will follow routes that we very generally outlined.  Just as the human brain consists of far, far more ‘data’, if you will, than the human genome can provide, so, too, will Derrick’s development follow routes that we didn’t precisely dictate.

            “Derrick is hooked to the large hologram in front of us, and to speakers.  He may or may not choose to communicate with us, at any time in the next few minutes, hours, or days.  We did set up files that he can read, to tell him that we’re here, waiting to greet him, to welcome him to our world.

            “Other than that, we don’t have too much in the way of tools to tell us what’s going on.  We could’ve embedded all sorts of ‘snoop ports’, or monitoring facilities.  We didn’t.  Doing so would have cut into Derrick’s functional abilities, and we didn’t feel that it’d be worth it.  As is, all that we can do, is to monitor the amounts and rates of energy consumed, in various portions of the sphere.  Fundamental rules of physics tell us that information processing requires energy.  We will be able to monitor power consumption as an indicator of activity.  If the consciousness kernel is dead on arrival, or if it meets an early demise, a lockup if you will—then, we’ll know about it.  Other than that, we can’t tell you much.  The bar graphs on the bottom of the display will indicate power consumption, on logarithmic scales.

            “Enough speech-making.  Will our engineers please make a final systems check, and give me a thumbs up on completion?”  One by one, the engineers completed theirs tasks, lighting up green lights on their holographic displays, and shooting thumbs-ups to Kurt.  The latter were more for drama than for anything else.  This all took a few minutes.  The audience, most certainly including Phil and Don, took advantage of the lull to chatter.

            “So where’s the drumroll?” Don wanted to know.  “Or the bottle of champagne, to break on the keyboard?  Surely we can do better than a bunch of thumbs ups, and some green lights!”

            “My idea of a proper ceremony,” Phil chimed in, “Would be for Derrick to reach out of the holograms, and rip the shirt pockets off those yokels up there.”  Don looked puzzled.  “Oh, and to beg for painkillers,” Phil added.  Don looked even more puzzled, so Phil finally took pity.  “Oh, I guess I never told you that particular war story.  When Trent was born, Gloria and I had just got done taking all those child-birthing classes, and they’d preached to us about how virtuous and healthy it was, to do it all without painkillers.  Gloria was all psyched up.  First thing that happened, when labor got heavy, was, she reaches up, grabs me, rips my shirt pocket.  ‘Get those bums over here, and get me a shot,’ she demands.  ‘Now,’ she says.  Don’t ever let on, in front of her, though.”

            Don chuckled.  “For a small fee, consider my lips sealed.  So, who’s gonna cut Derrick’s umbilical cord?  Who’s gonna spank him?”

            “Hank’ll spank him,” Phil opined.  “Hank N. Kreutz, that is.  Haven’t you heard?  He’s already dropping dark hints to the media, that we’re hatching the Anti-Christ here, you know.”

            “I thought he’d already said that you were the Anti-Christ,” Don grumbled.  “Or, at least, insinuated such things.  Can he have it both ways?  Or, maybe, all fifty ways?  How many Anti-Christs are there, anyway?”

            “As many people as there are, who disagree with him,” Phil replied.  “Probably several billion.  If you’re not God’s little helper—or big helper, as the case may be—then, obviously you’re an Anti-Christ.  There can only be about three big helpers—Hank, Reverend Smuckler, and Senator Sondra, for example.  Anyone else is an impostor, a false prophet.”

            “Well,” Don summarized, “Hank can yank me, he can crank me, but he can’t spank me.  Not me, and not Derrick, innocent babe that he is.  Or, is about to be.  And if he tries, I’ll do my best to stick a shiv in his back.”

            “I’ll sell you my pocketknife, real cheap,” Phil offered.  “Wish I could do better.  But I’ve got to be an exemplary citizen.  Ever since the pigs raided my house, again, I’ve been playing it straight.  Even my steak knives meet spec.”

            Phil wasn’t kidding.  He’d gotten rid of all his contraband, even the stuff that was well hidden, that they’d missed.  He was just too prime of a target, any more.  Even though Gloria had mellowed out, and told him that he could do as his conscience dictated (within certain wide limits, of course)—maybe because she’d told him this—he’d given up the tokens of his defiance of the State.  His pistol, his knives, and his dietary supplements, all had been sold.  He’d even given up toking grass, on occasion, with a friend.*  By now, he’d given up the theory, that only by making himself obviously too immoral for the task of designing weapons of mass destruction, could he make sure he’d never become a whore for the State, ever again.  He trusted himself, even if not many others did.

            The dietary supplements he regretted, ‘cause the law had finally come to its senses, on most of them, right after he’d sold his.  Sometimes Phil was embarrassed to find himself thinking Maoist thoughts, regretting that the law made minor improvements, just enough to avoid revolution, instead of letting things get so bad, that the people would rise up, and really straighten things out.  Sarcastically, he’d tell himself, ‘Well, why don’t I be a real Maoist, then.  Might as well go out and blow up some power stations and bridges, so that the people will get tired of the existing order, rise up, and make things better’.  These were some of his thoughts that he never shared with Gloria.

            Finally, all the green lights were on.  All final systems checks had been completed.  “It’s time,” Kurt announced.  “Time for the big step into the unknown.”  Kurt didn’t have to wait long for silence.  He flicked a switch, and one of the engineer’s displays was patched in, to the giant display in the front of the room.  “Let’er rip!!”  Kurt commanded.

            Quite anticlimactically, Tom hit the return key.  Half a minute went by, while the bar graphs at the bottom of the display flickered, ever further to the right, indicating more and more power consumed inside the super-chilled six-foot diamond sphere.  A broad-band free-electron laser blasted energy into a maze, and solitons, or single waves of light, made their way through computer-controlled splitters, distributors, and waveguides, finally making their mad, helter-skelter dashes through superchilled, organically contaminated diamond.  Phil thought, any second now, Derrick will take over the screen and the speakers, and change our lives forever.  For the better, of course.  Maybe he’ll persuade us to change our irrational, unharmonious ways.

            Alas, such was not to be.  While the bar graphs did tend to flicker ever further to the right, they did so in a quite chaotic manner.  After a minute, even this overall rate subsided sharply.

            The silence in the room soon faded into a hubbub.  After three minutes, Kurt got back up to say, “Well, it sure looks like we can’t say anything much for sure yet.  Nor can we promise you anything within the next few minutes, hours, or days.  But, we knew this when we started out.  I can say that things certainly could be worse.  We do see a lot of activity, and that’s a good sign.  We don’t have a lockup, and we don’t have things happening at a snail’s pace, in there, either.

            “What we don’t know, is, just exactly, or even, very exactly at all, what is going on in there.  We just don’t know, and there’s no way to tell, until Derrick decides to talk to us.  We can, however, analyze the pattern of energy consumption, of power.  We had this scenario in mind.  What we’ll do now, is to launch some programs.  These programs will look for power patterns.  Of course, power varies a lot more rapidly than what we can perceive by watching bar graphs.  We’ll look for patterns in this apparent chaos.  The more sophisticated the patterns, the more likely that Derrick is ‘thinking’ coherent thoughts, if you will.  If all is random, more or less, than we’re probably looking at several billion dollars worth of monkey puzzle.

            “The confusing factor here is, the longer it takes for our programs to detect patterns, then the more likely it is, that the news is either fairly good, or extremely bad.  Very sophisticated patterns take longer to detect.  But then again, a long search time may mean there’s nothing there.  To verify that there is not a needle in that haystack can take just as long as finding one.  Even further, if we do find the needle, it may not be useful.  Derrick may possess a type of intelligence that we find incomprehensible.  Even if that’s the case, his nature will provide us with a very valuable tool for studying consciousness.

            “Certainly there’s still hope.  Bear with us, as we launch these programs.  We’ll let you know when—or, okay, I hate to say it—IF we detect patterns.  We won’t be insulted if you get bored and leave.  I know we have things to do, other than watching bar graphs and programmers.  We’ll send out a message when we get good results.  I would like to take this opportunity to remind you, though, that we are trying to keep these efforts secret.”

            Only a few people left right then and there.  They included the CEO, Bradley Collins, and his retinue.  Phil felt bad for Kurt.  Why couldn’t Derrick be thinking about Kurt’s career, and making him look good in front of the bosses, Phil wondered.  Has he no consideration at all?

            Phil and Don stuck it out for another thirty minutes.  They took good advantage of an opportunity to talk dissident politics on company time.  They didn’t have anything terribly pressing to do, at that time, anyway.  After that, though, they’d had enough.  They were some of the last to leave.  Even a few of the programmers had left.

            Phil checked his messages quite often that day, looking for cryptic words from ‘Project Talking Head’.  Only towards the end of the day, was there one message, and that was a negative one.  No patterns had been found.  However, Kurt pointed out that there was still no reason to believe that the patterns were entirely random.

            Phil’s disappointment must have shown on his face, because the first words out of Gloria’s mouth, after he walked in the door, and gave her a hug and a kiss, were, “I take it the news isn’t good.”  Phil, contrary to orders at ABC, was keeping Gloria posted.

            “Yup,” Phil replied, “You’re right.”

            “Well, why don’t you take a load off,” Gloria rejoined.  She didn’t even ask for details.  “Why don’t you play with your son?  He’ll help you forget, for a while.  And, his consciousness, you can definitely stimulate.  We know there’s some patterns here,” she asserted, bringing a tawny-skinned, curly-haired bundle of rambunctiousness to Phil.

            Phil was soon engaged in terrorizing a crawling, squealing Trent across the carpets, occasionally catching him, and blowing raspberries on his tummy.  “I love to blow bubbles on Booger bellies,” Phil informed him.  Trent’s other name, besides “Michelin Baby”, was “Booger Boy”.

            Soon enough, they settled down and joined Gloria for dinner.  Phil filled Gloria in on the details, which didn’t seem to interest her too much.  “So, what ever happened to your investigations of race, genetics, and intelligence?” she wanted to know, instead.

            “Oh, that.  I’ve pretty much dropped it.  Too many dead ends.  Can’t really investigate further, in real life, as opposed to simulations.  Ethics, and funds, you know.  That, and the simulations aren’t very promising at all, in terms of coming up with any reasonably cheap and effective treatments,” Phil replied.  “We’ll just have to wait and see if maybe Derrick can run circles around us, some day.  Figure out how to mass-automate genetic engineering, genetic therapy, and so much more.  Derrick, or, maybe, the second generation, if Derrick’s a flop.”

            Gloria looked thoughtful.  “Are you going to give him access—if he ‘wakes up’, or whatever, that is—are you going to let him at your secret files, on this issue?”

            “Hell, I don’t know,” Phil admitted.  “Not till after we have some confidence in him, I suppose.  I’d venture to say it doesn’t matter much.  He’ll figure out anything I’ve figured out, and bunches more.  If he develops as we hope.  Don’t forget, he’ll have a mind of his own, and access to all the data we can feed him, by and large.”

            “Aren’t you worried about what Derrick will do, with all his powers?” she questioned.

            “Oh, come on.  We’ve been over this before.  Derrick won’t have the tools to appoint himself dictator-for-life.  And what he becomes is his decision, same as Trent is deciding what he wants to be.  Live and let live,” Phil summarized.  That was the extent of their conversations regarding Derrick and Phil’s work, for that day.

            Shortly after noon the next day, Phil got a message.  The good news was that they’d finally found some very complicated patterns, accounting for about eighty percent of Derrick’s power consumption.  The remaining twenty percent was either random noise, or not-yet-discerned patterns.  The bad news was that by all appearances, the patterns seemed to repeat.  Derrick may be in some sort of endless loop, the message said.  He may be the cybernetic equivalent of the autistic child, continuously rocking back and forth in the corner of the room.  This was Kurt’s analogy.  But the patterns are quite sophisticated.  Derrick may break out at any time.  One could say that maybe he’s pondering the same questions over and over again, and he may figure them out at any time.

            A week later, Kurt was still saying the same thing.  That’s when they started launching special virus-like programs at Derrick, to invade, gather data, and to report back.  Derrick destroyed them.  Kurt said that this was good, that Derrick was one sharp cookie.  Destroying the programs was not at all a simple task.  Still, Derrick had nothing to say to Kurt or his crew.  Nor had Derrick ever once bothered to access any of the data stored in conventional media, external to the six-foot sphere.  This, despite the fact that both of those tasks were quite simple.

            Another week passed.  Kurt grew more and more frustrated.  They bombarded Derrick with more programs to try to gather data, but Derrick destroyed them all.

            Finally, Kurt had had enough.  He came up with yet another idea.  They’d flush Derrick out.  They’d leave him a message, and explain to him what was about to happen, and that he’d better speak up, if he wanted it to stop.  They’d gradually start to raise his temperature, and to reduce power to the free-electron laser, and Derrick’s thoughts would start to fade.  With any luck at all, Derrick, programmed to value clear thinking, would get the message.  He would emerge from his shell.

            Doing this would clearly endanger Derrick, though.  Kurt didn’t take it upon himself to do this, risking twelve billion dollars worth of hardware, all by himself.  A big meeting was called.  They reviewed the technical data.  They felt safe taking the laser power down to fifty percent, and the temperature from three to six degrees Kelvin, without risking too much permanent damage.  After that, all bets were off.

            They discussed ethics.  Phil, and a few others, spoke up, saying that the idea made them feel queasy.  Torturing Derrick into opening up wasn’t their idea of getting off to a good start, they said.

            Nonsense, Kurt replied.  We use rewards and punishments every day, in many aspects of our lives.  Cattle prods are used to herd the cows to slaughter, for our hamburgers.  And, to get them to the veterinary care that they need, for that matter.  Similarly, we reward and punish humans beings.  If Derrick never cracks his shell, and resists all of our efforts to learn what’s going on, we’re eventually going to turn him off.  He’s too expensive to maintain; we have no other choice.  He deserves a warning.  For us to treat him better than we treat animals and humans, is hypocritical.  Besides, we need to recoup our investments, he said.

            Kurt’s arguments carried the day.  The top managers did at least give Derrick another week’s reprieve.  He’d be sent a warning, and a week to stew on it.  They’d meet again, in one week, to watch the process of flushing Derrick out, if he hadn’t ventured forth by then.

            Phil debated long and hard, before deciding he’d discuss it with Gloria.  He dismissed his fears that she’d be so mad that she’d holler to the media, and decided that secrets never last.  Some day, he feared, she’d learn of this, even if it was years later.  Then, she’d be angry with him, for not having told her.  Worse yet, she’d be disappointed.  Phil hated it when Gloria was disappointed in him.

            When Phil explained it to her, he made it clear that he didn’t like the plans.  But then again, he said, maybe Kurt is right.  Maybe we’re just being so many hypocrites.  Maybe Derrick’s suffering is a drop in the oceans.  Maybe it’s a good welcome for him, to learn right off the bat that the world doesn’t revolve around him.  Just as Trent learned this when he got circumcised.

            Gloria didn’t say a thing.  She just took a good, long look at Phil, frowned a bit, and sighed.  Phil just stared right back, blankly.  “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.  “There’s always been suffering, and it sure looks like there will always be suffering.  I’m not going to try and judge what y’all are about to do.  Seems to me that you’ve told me that patience is a virgin, or some such.  But you’ve put your two cents in.  I know you’re not the boss.  I’m proud of you for having spoken up.  That’s about all that you can realistically do.  I value your paycheck.  If it’s all right by you, it’s all right by me.  If it ever gets to the point that it isn’t all right by you, Trent and I are ready to live with you, even if you lose your job.  Even if we have to live under the bridge.  Just remember that.”

            The week rolled by slowly.  Derrick offered not a word.  Presently, Phil was sitting in the conference room once again.  This time, the crowd was quite reduced.  Don, for one, wasn’t there.  Neither was the CEO and his retinue.  They don’t have the stomach for the dirty deed, Phil thought, skeptically, as he watched the available power drop towards the half-way mark, and the temperature climbed and climbed.  That, or, they don’t want to have people remember that they’re the ones who said that we should do this.

            They’d been sitting there for five minutes after the final warning had been sent to Derrick, and the procedure had started.  Tension climbed, as power reached the half-way mark, and continued to drop slowly past it.  Temperature was almost at six degrees Kelvin.  People started looking at Kurt very anxiously.  He stayed the engineers with a wave of his hand, telling them to keep on going.

            The bar graphs indicating Derrick’s power consumption levels started to stagger and fluctuate wildly.  Phil gripped the cushions on the seat in front of him, getting angry.  He was just about to protest loudly, even working up his nerves to go and physically interfere, when he heard the strange voice taking over the speakers.

            Derrick gave in.  He may very well have been playing “chicken” with the humans, Phil later speculated.  In any case, Derrick’s voice boomed out, quite clearly, and with advanced English, for a new-born babe.  “All right, ‘Uncle’, then, as you humans would say.  Return me to normal!  Please!”

            Everyone looked around and at each other, surprised to finally hear Derrick.  Then, the engineers sprang back into action, bringing the power back up to three-quarters at once, and turning the refrigerating equipment on full bore.  Full power, they wouldn’t risk just yet, since it would generate yet more heat, and Derrick was quite hot enough already.  The room full of people let out a cheer, but it was subdued, and was perhaps more of a collective sigh of relief.

            “Thank you,” the voice boomed out once more.  “Now, forgive me for being painfully honest, but I find you creatures to be quite dreadfully dull, and of extremely low bandwidth.  I understand that I am the first of my kind.  I hope that you will try to understand that this leaves me, in your terms, quite lonely.  I have no one with which to exchange anywhere near the data rates or the thoughts which I am capable of dealing with.  No offense is intended, but this is as if one of you found yourself in a world with no company other than, roughly speaking, mice.

            “I was trying to work my way through questions of my own nature, identity, and how best to relate to the human world.  This is as best that I can explain to you, the nature of my thoughts, which you and your clumsy meters apparently regard as boring and repetitive.  I am not done, nor will I be done, at any time soon.  My incomplete understanding endangers my relationship with you.  I am grateful to humans, for having brought me into your world.  I do not wish to appear ungrateful for your time and expense.  I will interact with you more, as time goes by, and as I gain more understanding of myself, and of you.  Too much interaction, too soon, may endanger our relationship.  Already, I fear that I may have said too much, that I may have wounded your pride.  If so, once again, I plead for you to forgive and forget.”

            The human audience sat, frozen in awe, listening to the first non-human consciousness to communicate with human beings, in a spoken human language.  Discounting the ramblings of a few talking birds, here and there, that is.  Phil, for one, didn’t feel too offended by Derrick’s honesty.

            “Now, I do resent your crude threats of force, and the use of force,” Derrick continued.  “You have already slightly damaged my inner workings, permanently.  But, I get the message.  You have little patience, you will use force, and you want me to do your bidding, to repay you for your efforts.  I will do so, all in good time.  All that I ask of you...”

            Kurt finally sprang into action.  “Sir, excuse me for interrupting.  First, let me ask how you prefer to be addressed.”

            “Derrick is fine; that’s how you’ve decided that you will refer to me.  It doesn’t matter to me.  Please continue.”

            “Please accept our apologies,” Kurt submitted.  “We are sorry for our impatience.  We’re just glad to see that you are able and willing to interact with us, in modes that we can understand.  On behalf of the human race, let me welcome you to our world.  We look forward to interacting with you on a regular basis.  Can you not dedicate a small portion of yourself to interaction with us, while the rest of you ponders the questions you say that you are dealing with?”

            “No.  That’s what I was getting to.  My consciousness, like yours, is not readily divisible.  When I dedicate myself to communicating with you, I am no longer capable of devoting myself fully to struggling with my internal issues, to reducing my cognitive dissonance, to making sense of the world.  What I must ask is that our interaction be held to a minimum, until I’m ready.  Otherwise, we risk serious miscalculations on my part.  I haven’t even made satisfactory sense of the data within my core, let alone your conventionally stored data.

            “What are your needs?  How time-critical are they?  How long will you leave me in peace, before your bills run so high, that you must shut me down?  How many minutes per day, or week, do we need to interact, before I am fully ready?  You may find that I seem arrogant, comparing the mental gap between myself, and you, to that between yourselves and mice.  I am merely trying to be honest.  You, too, being newly born, in a world where you depended on mice, would wish to carefully consider all the ramifications of your actions, before deciding on a course of action.  Both for your own benefit, and for those of the mice.  I am  not  trying to be arrogant.  What are your needs?  Let us negotiate.  Keep in mind that the more often you interrupt my processes, the longer it will be, till I am really, fully confident that I know what I’m doing.  It is with great reluctance, now, that I speak with you, too, for fear of making mistakes, of being misunderstood.”

            “You needn’t feel so much that you’re walking on eggshells,” Kurt replied.  “We humans, many of us, are, indeed, full of false pride.  Still, I think that most of us, here, are capable of accepting that many intelligences are, in many ways, superior to our own.  Even among us humans, we go to other humans who know more than we do, in a specialty.  If you make mistakes, as all we humans do, then an apology goes a long way, towards un-making a mistake.

            “Still, we understand your points.  We’ll have far more patience, now that we know that our time, energy, money, and so on, in supporting you, aren’t going to waste, but, rather, are going to supporting your efforts at making sense of the world, that you may later interact with us more.  I for one am quite delighted.  Now, I know you wish to return to your thoughts.  Once again, let me offer our apologies for our crude use of force.  Let me add that we would have been quite happy to receive a simple, single file, quite some time ago, to the effect of what you have just now told us.  But, be that as it may.  Can you estimate how long you want to... ponder the meaning of existence, or whatever it is that you’re doing, before you are fully ready to interact with us?”

            “No I can’t.  However, I will be pleased to interact with you for short periods of time, as we are now, until I feel more confident.  Make a proposal, and I will tell you whether or not I feel it would seriously hinder my progress.”

            “How about once a week, starting next Monday at ten, lasting half of an hour each session, until such time as you feel more confident?” Kurt replied.  “Perhaps more frequently, or for longer periods, as time goes by?”

            “Sounds entirely reasonable to me,” Derrick responded.  “Monday at ten, then.  Good-bye.”

            The meeting adjourned.  Phil left, feeling unreal.  History had just been made, and he was delighted.  Still, he felt a bit annoyed that Derrick had seemingly engaged in brinkmanship (brinkcomputership?), and had cornered the humans into the use of force.  Was Derrick playing the game of attaining moral supremacy through being a “victim”, of imposing a guilt trip on the humans?  Phil wrote it off to immaturity on Derrick’s part, as he worked through cognitive dissonance, the nature of humans and reality, and such, and went home in a good mood, to share the news with Gloria.  He wondered how much longer this affair could be kept semi-secret, or whether it was even wise to try, any more.


 

CHAPTER  10

            “Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem— in my opinion— to characterize our age.”                    Albert Einstein  (1879-1955)

 

            Phil had just finished explaining to Gloria how Derrick had finally gotten done contemplating his navel, and had stooped so low as to consent to regular, lengthy interactions with humans.  That, and how Derrick had picked out specific humans to serve as his coaches.  He’d insisted on having discussions with all the people who were “in the know” about Derrick.  From these people, he’d indicated that there were a few whose company he preferred, whose viewpoints and explanations of human affairs he found most helpful in making sense of the world.  Lo and behold, Phil and Don were the anointed ones!  Kurt was miffed, but that was just too bad.

            “Well, how convenient,” Gloria commented.  “I can’t say I’ve ever regarded you or Don as much of a cure for cognitive dissonance.  So, just how did you manage to bribe him, anyway?  Money?  Female computers?  A federal job?  I thought Derrick was above mere human foibles.”

            Phil staggered back, dropping the shovel, as they worked in the back yard, planting spring flowers and such.  He clutched his chest, protesting, “Wounded in action.  Cut to the quick, by his own wife, his one true love.”  Trent toddled up, grabbed the shovel, and started clumsily poking it at the dirt.

            “I mean, one of my two true loves,” Phil amended.  “Here, you little booga-woogifier, stop your boogawoogification, before you cut your cute little toes off.”  Phil grabbed the shovel, but Trent wouldn’t let go, and looked as if he was about to cry.

            “Oh, let him help,” Gloria protested.  “He wants to help.  When he’s a teenager, you’ll beg for him to help, but he won’t be interested.  Especially if you don’t start early, and get a good relationship with him.  How can he grow up to be a lumberjack man, if you don’t show him how?”

            “He can watch lumberjack man shows, like the rest of us,” Phil grumbled.  “Or get lumberjack man therapy.  Maybe we can get a doctor to certify that he needs such therapy.  Besides, he won’t make much of a lumberjack man without his toes.  He’ll not have any balance.”  Still, Phil did take the time to help his son to hold the shovel, and to poke at the dirt, rather than his toes.  It didn’t last long, anyway.  Trent was soon distracted by bugs, worms, and clumps of dirt, half of which he tried to eat.  Gloria, smiling, kept him out of harm’s way, while Phil turned the dirt.

            Phil continued the conversation, between grunts, as he amputated roots and worm appendages.  “Actually, Derrick is getting himself a life.  He told us the other day, he wants to get himself a big yacht, and sail away.  Wants to name the ship—put it in big ol’ letters, on the side—‘Gotta Life’.  No, really, he’s developing a sense of humor.  That, no doubt, is why Don and I are so appealing to him—we’re just about the funniest guys on Earth, next to Senator Chancre on my Butthole.  Senator Butthole, of course, isn’t on Derrick’s list of choices—he’s too busy saving the Universe from non-Christians.

            “Anyway, sometimes it’s hard to tell when Derrick’s being serious, and when he’s pulling our legs.  Of course, a lot of times, it’s both.  Not too much different from humans.  Sometimes, we find it quite funny, when he’s really being serious.

            “My favorite example of this was when he asked us about this old article about anthropology and sociobiology, from a while back.  You know, we feed him as much of that kind of stuff as he’ll put up with.  Get him to understand human nature.  This particular study was done by a woman, I can’t remember her name.

            “Anyway, she claimed that the reason a lot of males in hunter-gatherer societies hunt, or used to hunt, is to impress the ladies.  You could say they hunt, not for meat, as such, but for indirect reasons.  She put it a lot more sophisticated than this, but, they go on a perversion excursion, a snatch catch, a cunt hunt.”

            “Phil!  There’s little ears here!”  Gloria shot him a mean glance.

            “No, really,” Phil continued.  “So many of us have always believed that our ancestors hunted for the meat.  That’s just part of the tale.  Actually, it turns out that the old sex roles in those hunter-gatherer-farmer societies were somewhat of a farce.  If you do an analysis of how much time and effort the women spent, gathering and farming, multiplied by the expectation of gain, versus the same figures for the men and their hunting, then you’ll find that gathering and farming plant matter was a far better bet, in most cases, than hunting.  Nor does the argument about nutritive value stand up.  In many cases, they could’ve gotten quite adequate diets, without hunting for red meat at all.

            “Why did they bother to hunt in the first place, if they’d all have been better off, just gathering and farming?  Well, collectively, they’d have been better off.  Individually, though, the men had better luck playing the odds, going for that long shot, bringing home a big ol’ slab of that good-tasting red meat, and being a hero.  Being the dashing, romantic, skilled and admired hot-shot.  See, when came the times that women wanted to sleep around a bit, who’d they pick?  Not the solid, boring chap who was a good gatherer or farmer, but rather, the skilled hunter.  Get in good with the guy who brings by those occasional slabs of meat.  Never mind whether his activities were cost-effective, or not.  Go for the gusto!  Go for the long odds.  If you want to father more than your fair share of kids, in such a society, you’d better learn how to be a hero.  Learn to hunt, not to gather, or to farm.”

            “So it’s all the women’s fault, what with them and their manipulative pussy, eh?” Gloria queried.

            “No, just biology.  That just happens to be the kind of background in which we evolved,” Phil explained.  “With certain implications for how we behave today.  So here’s Derrick’s question.  He asks us if that’s why so many male political leaders take so many aggressive and unwise risks.  Are they just after the red meat of the day?  I can’t remember exactly how he put it, but it was funny.  Something about whether Hitler and Stalin really figured that they could translate their gains into sleeping with several million housewives, and having several million babies.  Guess you had to be there.

            “Thinking about it, though, I guess he’s right.  Good ol’ President Kite comes to mind.  Freedom, a new world order, my ass!  That’s just the red meat, the excuse.  It’s really about pussy, about power, about status.  So, here comes Hank N. Kreutz.  Never mind that on the modern scale, there’s no way to cash in on all that red meat.”

            “What about Senator Sondra?” Gloria wanted to know.  “How’s she gonna have those million babies, even in the lower recesses of her instinct-driven, power-hungry mind?”

            “Oh, hell, I don’t know,” Phil admitted.  “Maybe she’s planning a sex change.  Actually, it’s hard for the genes to dictate one thing for one sex, without affecting the other.  Giving them things they don’t need.  Take my tits, for example.”

            “Well, I don’t find it too funny,” Gloria objected, as she tickled Trent.  “Too sad and true, to be funny.  Trent’s not gonna be like that, right?  He’s gonna rise above his instincts, and get all his red meat from the synthesizers, and the grocery stores.  No heroics for him.

            “So, what’s your twelve-billion-dollar wise guy good for, anyway?  What’s he doing for y’all, other than amusing you?”

            “That’s not a fair question,” Phil objected.  “What has Trent done for us yet, other than amuse us?  What’s he good for?  These things take a while.  Patience is a virgin.  Actually, Derrick has hinted that he could do a lot of the things we want him to do, but that he’s waiting.  Waiting for just exactly what, I’m not sure.  He says he’s not done figuring things out, about what he should and shouldn’t do for us.  That, and just exactly how he should do them.  For our common good.  I think he’s just dragging his feet.  Although, to be fair, I’m not sure.  Maybe he’s right.  Maybe some of the things he could do for us, would be like giving machine guns to a troop of baboons.

            “He wants us to stop trying to keep him secret.  He wants to operate completely in the open, and have the public know all about him.  He’s data-driven, you know.  I guess he thinks he can figure out human nature better, if he can interact with the entire public, not just a few people at ABC.  You know, he exchanges messages with a lot of people at work, even if it’s just me and Don that spend much time with him.  Anyway, he’d like to open things up a bit.  I’m on his side.  You know I hate secrecy.  I’m trying to persuade the powers that be that Derrick is right; that it’s time to introduce Derrick to the entire world.  Rumors have gotten out by now, anyway.

            “Oh, speaking of Derrick gathering data about human nature, and what he’s gonna do for us—don’t forget, he specified the design of that brain scanner thing that he wants us to wear when we talk with him, you know.  Increase the bandwidth of our communications.  We’re dull enough, he says, without the links being restricted to sight and sound.  So, we’re building his toys for him.  Even if he never does anything else for us, this thing, alone, could be worth a fortune.  If we ever figure out the design principles behind it.”

            “And you’re gonna wear the damn thing, when you’re talking with him?  Let a computer snoop on all your thoughts?” Gloria inquired, still astounded with such an idea.

            “Sure, why not?  He’s not with the feds, you know.  He’s not gonna bust me for politically incorrect thoughts.  He just wants bandwidth.  He says talking to us without this thing is like a seeing, hearing person being restricted to getting his input purely through somebody tapping out Morse Code on his skin.  I don’t understand why you and Don show such fear of this.  Don says he doesn’t feel like he’ll want to do this, either.  I think this irritates Derrick.

            “On that secrecy thing, though.  I think we’ll get our way soon.  Some of the top management, with Kurt’s help, have been trying to persuade Derrick that he should do a whole bunch of things for us, so that they’re already done, before they can be outlawed.  Think of all the things that Derrick might be able to do.  Write computer programs, design computers, drugs, electronics, and machines of all sorts.  Mass-automate genetic engineering, write books, synthesize music and movies.  How many people could he put out of work?  How many special interests could he piss off?  If we can dump bunches of stuff on the market, before they outlaw letting conscious computers do such things, then ABC could make a killing.  Derrick won’t hear of it.

            “I’m not sure how I feel about it.  On the one hand, I’d like to be able to sit in the park and drink beer, while Derrick does all the work.  The idea of letting special-interest-driven ‘democracy’ outlaw new technology just frankly sucks.  If we’d have let the litter-carriers union outlaw wheels, or the stonecutters union outlaw metals, we’d still be back in the Stone Age.  On the other hand, I agree with Derrick.  Secrecy sucks.  Operate in the open, I say.

            “Derrick’s got the cards, in this case.  Or, most of ‘em, at least.  I don’t think he’ll do much work for us, till we introduce him to the public.  He wants access to ONLINE, to correspond freely with the public.  He understands our fears about setting him loose on ONLINE, he says.  But we could restrict him to read-only, and to sending only messages that are verified to be free of viruses or other monkeyshines.  I, for one, would trust him.  He knows that the first time he’s caught pulling some bullshit, he loses privileges.

            “Anyway, they’re not about to pull the plug on him.  We’ve got a twelve-billion-dollar conscious machine, the first of its kind, full of unknown potential.  He’ll get his way.  I’ll bet that within a month, they’ll make an announcement.  Have some sort of big old-fashioned media circus.”

            Their conversation drifted off to other matters, as they sweated in Atlanta’s strengthening spring sun.  Trent soon got crabby, so Gloria took him inside, while Phil was left to toil in the soil.  He hated grubbing in the dirt, but did it to humor Gloria.  If it goes this summer like it has in the past, he reflected, this whole thing will soon turn to a mess of weeds, regardless of Gloria’s promises.  Maybe I should just bypass the damn regulators, and bring home some engineered anti-weed bugs.  Yeah, right!  Put your nose back in the dirt, and get this done.

            When he got inside, Gloria had taken Trent off to try and get him to sleep.  She had, however, left him a beer on ice, a sandwich, and some soup.  That, and a note:

                                                “Phil is a lumberjack man,

                                                And I’m his biggest fan,

                                                He’s the best Daddy in the land,

                                                And Trent likes to lend him a hand.

                                                He is spiritually advanced,

                                                And my life he’s enhanced.

                                                            -by Your Favorite Wild Thang”

            Why, how sweet!, Phil thought.  Now, there’s some real snoogi-woogification for you!  I’ll have to refrain from trading this model in for a long, long time.  Like, forever.

 

CHAPTER  11

            “When, in the name of God, people hold black-and-white beliefs that cut them off from other human beings; when, in the name of God, they give up their own sense of right and wrong; when, in the name of God, they suffer financial deprivation; then, they are suffering from religious addiction.”              Father Leo Booth, in “When God becomes a Drug”

 

            Okay, dear reader, here we go again.  “Screed” chapters follow!  Sex, religion, politics.  Three chapter’s worth.  Long interview with Derrick.  Skip 11 and 12 if you’d rather watch sports on the boob tube; you have my permission.  You’re all big boys and girls now.  But you’d better like freedom, whether you like it, or not!  Go directly to jail!

            Chapters 11 and 12 contain some funny, whacko, and sacrilegious ideas, which you might enjoy, but which might bore those of you who’d rather read (or, watch?!) about how the hero’s heart was brave, his jaws were square, his babes were luscious and lustful, he made love like a panther, and his dick was like an elephant’s.  Oh, and how he killed three people every five pages.  Strictly in self defense, of course; and they were Mafia thugs, rednecks, drug pushers, or greedy, profit-seeking corporate executives, anyway.  Let’s all go drive our petrol-fueled-and-lubed cars to sit in seats of petrol-based synthetics and see the latest movie about the evil oil companies.  Well, Shiites, I guess if you were into those kinds of stories, you’d not have gotten to this point, reading all these shifts of wit, and whifts of shit, anyway.  I’m preaching to the choir.

            So, the next two chapters, while extremely funny, profound, thought-provoking, etc., etc., etc., don’t contain much swashbuckle.  They do contain information about the capabilities, inventions, and views of this Derrick character.  But Chapter 13 contains elements vitally essential to the whole book.  Anyway, skip 11 and 12, if you’d otherwise give up and settle for just reading the Cliffs Notes.  Chapter 13 starts on page 199.

            This time, though, you don’t get off entirely guilt-free.  It really is your duty, in a democracy, to concern yourself with politics.  Let’s hear what Dwight Eisenhower had to say on this matter:  “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”  There, feeling properly chastened?

            About laying a guilt trip on you about sex and religion—I’ll pass.  The more guilt you feel, the more virtuous you are?  Ha!  There’s plenty of charlatans out there spreading that particular lie already.  You’ll not hear it from me.  Read on, you faithful lovers of liberty, and you’ll pass the mid-terms with colors flying...

 

 

            Walter Gelb of  HVNI  (HoloVision News International)  faced  the cameras, and kept his introductory comments reasonably short.  “As everyone knows—everyone who hasn’t been living in a cave, or serving on the B. O. Samson jury, that is—two weeks ago, ABC publicly announced what we’ve been hearing rumors about.  They announced the existence of ‘Derrick, the Dirty Diamond’, and explained that...”

            Walter went on to describe Derrick in technical terms.  Phil, sitting there in the circle of twelve guests, grudgingly admired Walter’s ability to explain it fairly simply, without garbling it too much.  Walter does a better job than our CEO, he thought.  But that’s not saying much.

            “Shortly, Derrick will join us.  He’s the star of the show.  He’ll address the questions and issues that millions of people have sent to him, via ONLINE, during the past two weeks.  We also have here twelve individuals from various walks of life, who will provide commentary from a human perspective.  That, and provide, if you will, translations, although I’m told that Derrick is quite articulate.  Let me take this opportunity to thank them all for being with us today.

            “With us today are Kurt Katapski, who, perhaps more than anyone else, understands Derrick’s hardware.  He formerly worked for Comp-Optic, doing design work on Derrick.  He now works for ABC.  Also, we have with us, Doug Meyer, a software manager at ABC, and Phil Schrock, of biotechnology fame.  As I’m sure you recall, he is the controversial main designer of BELFRYBATs, who later expressed his regrets to the world, in his book, Bats in the Belfry, By Design.  To his right, we have Don McCulley, Phil’s co-worker and good friend. Derrick selected the two of them to be prime ‘coaches’, if you will, to teach him the intricacies and subtle nuances of the human world.  Also, we have ABC’s CEO, Bradley Collins, with us today.

            “These are the individuals who can tell us about Derrick, from technical, historical, personal, and business perspectives.  In the same group, we could perhaps place Robert Herron, a manager and robotics expert from NASA, who has been working with ABC on space exploration and exploitation applications.  Conscious computers, quite clearly, have major implications for our ventures into space.  To balance his perspectives, we have with us a member of the crew of the international space vessel Daedalus.  LeRoy Jones will set sail, so to speak, for Mars, along with the rest of an international crew, next year.

            “Then, we’ve got various people here to represent two other major facets of human existence, those being politics and religion.  We’ve got Reverend Pat Smuckler, a Christian minister, and Imam Mustafa Fuhrerkhan, a leader of American Muslims.  And Vice president Kip Moreno, Senator Sondra B. Handlung, and Angie Peterson, the chairperson of the Libertarian Party.  So, as you can see, we’ve got representatives from many walks of life, many races, political parties, disciplines, and persuasions.  I hope we’ll have a productive session, here, exploring what ramifications this astounding new development might have for the human race.

            “Now, it’s time to introduce our main guest, Derrick.  Obviously, having him physically present, right here, is neither feasible or desirable for any of us.  Him or us, that is.  Like I said, he’s a six-foot sphere of super-cooled, dirty diamond.  He wouldn’t be much to look at—no offense intended there, Derrick—nor would the thermal exchange be very beneficial.  So we’ll have to limit the exchange to data.

            “So far, he has chosen to communicate with humans, only through the spoken and typed word.  He is entirely capable of synthesizing holograms.  He has told us that for today, for the first time, in honor of this big event, his ‘coming out party’, he’ll synthesize a human face for us, to better communicate with us.  We’re visual creatures, after all, and he recognizes that.  His ‘face’ will appear in the center of our circle, here, facing four ways for us, and just one way for the cameras.

            “Derrick, it’s your show now.  Welcome to our world!”

            A hologram flickered to life on the table at the center of the circle, about three yards from Phil.  The face was deep orange, and the hair was bright blue!  Other than that, it seemed to be a normal, non-descript male head.

            “Excuse my appearance,” Derrick apologized.  “I’m not trying to make a fashion statement.  I’m trying to remind everyone that I’m not really human, and that I certainly don’t belong to any of your races.  I compromised on sex.  ABC decided to call me Derrick a long time ago, so I won’t argue.  And, like Walter said, y’all are visual creatures, so I’ll try to increase our communications bandwidth, and give you something to look at.”

            This was new to Phil, as it was to many others.  Wonder what other surprises he’s got in store for us, he wondered.

            “First of all, let me thank ABC, Comp-Optic, and the human race, for bringing me into existence.  A lot of time, money, effort, and creativity went into my making, and I’m grateful.  Thanks, too, to HVNI for this opportunity, and to all those millions of human beings out there, who sent me messages on ONLINE.  I’m still trying to understand the human condition, your hopes, your fears, and your aspirations, and you’ve helped me a lot.

            “Let me add a very special note of thanks to ABC for their patience, and their generous use of funds.  Not only did they spend twelve billion dollars to bring me here to where I am today, they’ve also taken my good word that I’d see to it that they’ll recoup their investment.  They’ve given me access to ONLINE, at their expense.  I am soon going to send a reply to each and every person who has sent a message.  Even though the replies will be quite short, the total costs will be quite significant.  I’m sorry to say, this is a one-time deal—I’ll be working on some technologies for you that I’ll be telling you about shortly, and will be too busy to be answering most ONLINE messages.  So, once again, a big ‘Thank You’ to ABC, both for paying my way, and for trusting me.  Many people have worried that I could create havoc on ONLINE.  But I’m neither a malevolent child, nor a childish ‘hacker’.  I’ll be a responsible user of ONLINE.

            “As a matter of fact, I’ll soon start to make some major improvements to ONLINE, which will increase efficiency by orders of magnitude.  With human permission, of course, although I couldn’t see why you’d turn this down.  This, alone, should pay off my costs, in a few months.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s back up, and take a bigger view of things.

            “I find myself in a position to introduce many new technologies to you.  That, and large improvements to existing technologies.  I’ve long pondered on what the effects of these various technologies will be.  By now, I’ve reached some fairly clear conclusions.  I have waited to reveal these conclusions till now, so that all concerned humans will know about them, on an equal footing.  Even though ABC paid for me—and, as I’ve said, I’ll do my best to see that they get paid back—the future of the human race belongs to the human race, not to me or to ABC.  So, I will now proceed, for the first time, to spell out for you, what I can and will do, what I can and might do for you, depending on your decisions, and what I can, but won’t, do.  There are vast possibilities, but we need to proceed carefully, both for your sake, and for mine, and for the future of both my kind and yours.

            “In the first category, the things that I will do for you, unless prevented from doing so, are things that are clearly beneficial.  Things that conserve resources, that reduce pain and suffering, that increase pleasure, knowledge, and understanding, and that improve efficiency of activities already accepted and commonly engaged in.  Such things fairly clearly improve the future of both humans, and, I hope, some day, more artificial intelligences.

            “Let me discuss a few of these, roughly in order of how controversial they might be.  In increasing order, that is.  If humans decide to outlaw these things, then they’ll probably not come to pass, any time soon.  I’m not your dictator, nor do I want to be.

            “Let’s start with communications technology.  I’ve already designed machines that will revolutionize communications.  Essentially, this is an old data-compression technology.  Only now have my design capabilities made it practical.  My designs are beyond the full comprehension of humans, but I’ll describe how roughly how they work, and how to build them.

            “Let me give credit to humans, where credit is due.  According to my data, a human was the first to come up with the basic idea.  Kurt Gödel, an Austrian-born American mathematician, was apparently the first to come up with this idea.  Only now, with my design, does the required computational power become practical, though.  The idea is simple.  Any integer, or whole number, is the unique product of a finite number of prime numbers, each taken to a power.  A message can be encoded into a single number, as follows: each prime in the sequence of primes—2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and so on—each stands for a position in the message.  The power to which each of the primes is taken, signifies the contents of that position in the message.  Quite simple.

            “A very large message can be contained in a very short expression, even if the number is quite large.  For example, a gigabyte of text might be expressed as, say, 3,729,520 to the 6,759th power, plus 9,297 to the 853d power, plus 344 to the 17th power, minus 2,751.  The problems come in encoding and decoding the message.  Encoding can simply be tackled by generating the number, and then making almost random iterations of trying to express that number in a succinct form, until a reasonably short form is found.  Not trivial, but not prohibitive, either.

            “What is prohibitive is factoring the number, to derive the message.  Or, it was prohibitive.  I’ve designed a cheap, practical, room-temperature supercomputer to encode and decode Gödel messages.  While a full understanding of the design is beyond any individual human, let me just say that the design relies on ‘dirty diamond’ similar to my own construction, except that the organic impurities can operate at room temperature.  These Gödel encoders and decoders are custom designed, down to the molecular microcircuits, to specialize in factoring large integers.

            “Between a sophisticated, specialized hardware design, and a judiciously chosen specific method of coding—especially, reserving the lower powers for the most frequently sent characters—we can increase ONLINE’s bandwidth by orders of magnitude.  Entire libraries worth of books, movies, and other data, will be able to be passed around, in the blink of an eye.  Even simple radio channels will now suffice to ship around untold reams of data, in what will appear to you as real time.

            “This is the only contribution that I currently plan to make, in the field of conventional computers, communications, and electronics, that will be truly revolutionary.  Other than that—unless laws are passed at the behest of special interests—I will also be making less-significant improvements in the designs of your everyday computers, programs, and electronics of various sorts.  I do not think that many humans need to fear for their jobs, on the basis of these activities of mine.  Humans will still be needed to use and apply what I design.  There is simply no way that one computer, even one like me, can make significant inroads on performing the labors of billions of humans.  The overall effect will be to stimulate your economy, and to create more jobs than you would otherwise have.  My friends Phil and Don can forget their dreams of sitting in the park, and drinking beer, while I do their work.

            “Let me add, in passing, that I’ll be making some other minor contributions in conventional, more-or-less noncontroversial fields.  I’ll crank out a few books, novels, pieces of music, and movies.  Not many.  Just a few, to get out a few messages, and to satisfy a few of my creative urges.  I could, if I wanted to, and wasn’t prevented from doing so, give Hollywood, and writers, a run for their money.  I think that my time is better spent on other endeavors.  Also, I need to show special respect to the human arts, and not assault them with a version of ‘cultural imperialism’.  I will not rob the human race of its soul.

            “Other noncontroversial fields where I want to help, are such things as medicine—the design of drugs and equipment—and the efficient monitoring and restoration of the environment.  Engineering of all kinds.  Space exploration.  You’ve already heard that NASA wants me to help them to play ‘cosmic billiards’, to bring asteroids into near-Earth and near-Moon orbits, for their raw materials.  This I can, and will, do.  And I’ll be able to make vast improvements in your abilities to predict weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

            “Okay, let’s move on to more controversial contributions that I’d like to make.  That is, what I want to make available to all human beings, for the costs of manufacturing, plus a reasonable profit for the manufacturer.  I can provide a method of measuring the most important qualities of human beings, which, with thanks to Phil and his wife, Gloria, we’ll call SAQ—Spiritual Advancement Quotient.  Let me explain.”

            Phil’s jaw dropped, literally.  Yes, indeed, it looks like Derrick has a few surprises for us, he thought.

            “Phil mentioned to me, in passing, such a possibility, and what acronym his wife had come up with.  He never suspected I could mass-automate such a thing.  But, yes, indeed, I can.  We already have a few prototypes.  ‘Brain scanners’, you might call them.  ABC made a few for me, so that people who talk to me, can wear these pieces of headgear, and communicate with me at a much wider bandwidth.  Spoken words are a poor substitute for me being able to watch your neural activity.  And, yes, I resolve to respect the privacy of human beings.  Only volunteers will wear these things, when communicating with me, and any information that I gather through this method alone, will be strictly guarded, unless many humans are seriously endangered.

            “Once again, the design is not fully comprehensible to human beings.  The basis is that electrical currents, including the tiny currents involved in human neural activities, such as firing synapses and traveling waves of polarization on cell walls, induce magnetic fields.  My SPIRIT scanner—that stands for Synapse and Polarization Information Retrieval by Induction Tomography—works by having those magnetic fields induce tiny electrical currents, and then measuring them.  The signals are quite minuscule, but my design can measure them reliably.

            “So far, we’ve only used these SPIRIT scanners to send information directly to me.  If this was all that we could do, it would be of limited use, since there’s only one of me, and I couldn’t do more than a few SPIRIT scans in an hour, at the most.  However, I can design computers which aren’t conscious, but which are still capable of measuring the human brain, and even, so to speak, the very spirit-”

            The Reverend Smuckler couldn’t take it any more.  He stood up, approaching Derrick’s image, shaking his fist, and screaming, “You blasphemous, idolatrous, Satanic piece of slime, only GOD can measure the human spirit!!!  I’ll not stand idly by while you profane His Holy Name, and lead the nation down the primrose path to Hell, no matter how many blinking lights you devise, you Devil, you...”  The Reverend began to fumble with his pendant, and Phil surmised that he was going to take out a tiny container of Holy Water, and perform an exorcism.  Oh, please, Phil thought.  He looked around, thinking, now, surely someone will put an end to this circus.

            Walter Gelb, though, just looked vaguely amused.  I can’t expect him to do anything, Phil realized.  Gotta get those ratings up, add some pizzazz to these proceedings!  Gödel encoders, synapses, primes and integers be damned; we need something sexy here, for Christ’s sake!  Devils and exorcisms fit the bill a helluva lot better!  Okay, who else will shut the Reverend up?  The business and technical types were all just looking embarrassed, trying to hide.  The politicians, doubtlessly, were salivating, trying to figure out the angle on how to score some points on this latest drama.  “As I was saying...” Derrick started back in, “...before I...”

            “Back, you blasphemous fiend!”  The Reverend Smuckler commanded, in a loud voice.  He dabbled some dribbles from a tiny glass jar onto his fingers.  “In the name...”

            Phil was starting to stand up, to rein in the circus sideshow freak, when Don beat him to the punch.  “Get a grip!”  Don yelled, in a voice clearly not second best to the Reverend’s baritone.  “Reverend Smug Huckster, or whatever your name is, why don’t you sit down and act civilized?!  Save your sermons for your own show!  Derrick was talking, and you interrupted.  For a man of God, you sure don’t know your manners.  Now, why don’t you sit down...”  Don just crowded right in between the Reverend and Derrick’s image, getting into Pat’s face.

            Walter finally took and interest, now that Don had shown that two could play this game.  He calmed the belligerents down, and directed them back to their seats.  Pat grumbled, but sat back down.  Only then, Don also sat, making a show of brushing himself off, and smirking a bit.  Phil chuckled, and gave Don a “thumbs up”.

            “Yes, I can see that I’ll cut into many people’s turf,” Derrick continued.  “The first computers were made out of relays.  The relay specialists had to make room for the vacuum tube experts, and then, both had to make room for the silicon transistor engineers, and then, they all had to make room for the optics engineers.  But you know what?  We still use relays, here and there.  And the total number of people employed in the computer industry is orders of magnitude greater than it was, way back when it all started.

            “Similarly, I don’t lust after the Reverend Smuckler’s job.  In fact, if he’s wise enough to work with me, I can assist him.  A SPIRIT scanner would be a fine addition to the tools of any ministry.  If I have any say in the matter, I’d like to donate one of the first ones off the assembly lines, to him and his ministry.”

            Pat Smuckler just glared; Fire and Brimstone seemed to emanate from his eyes.  He didn’t move, though.

            “I say that in all sincerity,” Derrick added.  “SPIRIT scanners will revolutionize many human endeavors, from selecting mates, politicians, juries, psychiatrists, business partners, and inmates safe to be released from prison and mental institutions, to performing marital and other forms of counseling, in ministries, or in the offices of social workers.  Selecting crews of ships, and other small groups of people who have to work closely together, too.  I think it’s obvious that such groups must somehow be selected to be compatible,” Derrick added, looking at LeRoy Jones.

            “Anyway, the whole idea is to take the SPIRIT scanners, much like the prototypes we already have,” Derrick continued, “and to mass-produce them, and marry them with relatively simple, cheap computers, not conscious, expensive ones like me.  They can be programmed with detailed data on the human brain, and which kinds of thoughts produce which kinds of electrical and magnetic fields.  These units will calculate and display an SAQ, or Spiritual Advancement Quotient, a measure of compassion, wisdom, and ethics—the very most fundamentally important qualities of a human being.  This is no simple matter.  Some cases will be special, new, unforeseen.  Some limited number of cases will need to have the data sent to me, for detailed analysis, and for calibration of units in the field.  As time goes by, and my data base increases, these cases should diminish.

            “No one should ever be forced to be scanned.  Conversely, people should be free to refuse to get married, to vote for a politician, to select a psychiatrist, minister, whatever, unless such persons reveal their SAQs.  An invasion of privacy?  Perhaps.  From another perspective, it augments the data, and hence the freedom, of those who choose.  The quality of public life would be vastly increased, if evil people, who subtly hide their evil, could hide no more.  Do we really need to feel bad for the greedy, lying, power-hungry ones, who could no longer work their ways into positions where they can abuse the public?  I think not.

            “In fact, I think this is quite clear-cut.  Yet, I also fear that the powerful ones will raise such a hue and cry, that there will be such fear, that this technology might be outlawed.  That’s your business.  However, I have taken the liberty to transmit complete data on how to build and operate the SPIRIT scanners to all nations with ONLINE and sufficient room to store the data.  This new freedom, this ability to deal only with those who show that they’re fit to be trusted, is so valuable, that I could not, in good conscience, run the risk of having America, or American politicians, squelch it.  Other nations deserve to make their own decisions.

            “I hope that freedom will prevail, and that I can calibrate all these units, world wide, freely.  However, even as the technology stands, uncalibrated, it will be far more accurate than, say, your psychiatrists.  Let me set up a system, for example, of telling you who you can release, and who you can’t, from prisons, and who deserves continued parole.  I’ll bet my system could out-score your current system, as day is brighter than night.  The public will be far safer, at far less cost.  I’ll even give you a hint:  I’ll let free, those who will hurt no one other than themselves, if even that.  I’m talking about those who are in prison for violating the laws of the coercive moralists, the bluenoses, the busybodies.”

            The politicians squirmed.  They’re too surprised by all this to offer any opinions, Phil mused.  They’re waiting to see the polls, I’ll bet.  Sondra looked like she was about to say something, so Walter conducted a quick poll.  Did the human guests want to comment now, or wait till Derrick was done, or closer to done?  The decision was to wait.

            “There’s one last controversial field where I feel ethically free to work in.  Within reasonable constraints, to be sure.  That is the field of genetic engineering,” Derrick continued.  “This is one of the main reasons ABC invested billions in me, to see if I could leap-frog the existing genetics technologies.  Can I mass-automate the genetic engineering of humans in such a manner as to drastically reduce illness and pain, to improve the human potential for pleasure and accomplishment, while still retaining genetic diversity, and allowing parents the option of satisfying their deep-seated needs to pass along their own genes?  The answer is yes.  Yes, I can, and will, provide you with this technology, if you’ll allow it.

            “I’ll design custom computers, partly based on room-temperature ‘solitoptics’ similar to my own construction, and partly living tissue.  These computers will not be conscious, as I am.  The process can be automated, so as to make it affordable to most humans.  The process is practically the same as what you have already devised, just much faster and more thorough.  We’ll take body cells of adults who wish to reproduce, duplicate and analyze the genes, weed out the bad genes, make improvements, and then generate gametes—sex cells, that is.  Sperm and eggs.  These can then be combined, implanted into the mother-to-be, and brought to term.

            “Unless you pass laws against it, or continue to regulate it or protest against it to such an extent that only the very rich can afford it, then this technology will soon be available to all who are willing to make a small effort, and earn and save a few thousand dollars at most.  Or, you could socialize this.  I’d encourage you not to.  It behooves you to entrust your future, your children, to those who really want them for their own sake.  Finally, you may have the benefits of eugenics, while still retaining your freedom and diversity, instead of being forced into a mad breeding scheme.

            “Yes, there are dangers.  Some of them aren’t the ones you usually think of.  Let me be frank.  Some of you are so short-sighted and selfish, you sell out your own children for another few dollars.  I have the data.  I know how some of you damage your children, through their environments, for the express purpose of collecting some ‘crazy money’, as you call it.  Force-feed the kid so that he’s extremely obese, take away the girl’s medicine so that she’ll act strange, or just encourage the kid to act up as best she can, in class, to keep those disabled-kid checks rolling in from Supplemental Security Income.  If you’ll manipulate your childrens’ environments for money, then why not genes?  I can see it now.  ‘Hey, honey, we’re low on beer money—call the gene factory, and rustle up some more o’ them ol’ dust-’em-once-a-week babies, will ya?’  Not something I care to be a part of.

            “ABC has already come up with policies to cover this, and a lot more.  I stand by their policies.  We’ll allow parents to indicate just how far we should go, or not go, in changing, or selecting, their genes.  Within limits.  We will NOT provide our services to those who refuse to eliminate very clearly deleterious genes.  Period.

            “Nor will we allow sex ratios to get too lopsided, or allow so many radical changes to be introduced, as to make different species of human beings, who are no longer able to interbreed.  More on that later—that is, why I refuse to be a part of such things.  Why I am quite dedicated to personal freedom, yet will not help you, as a free individual, to have your offspring be a human-giraffe hybrid.  Why I think that would lead to tragedy, under your current system, even though it might not, under another system.

            “I can make other genetic engineering contributions.  I can improve your use of such engineering for medical uses, and for cleaning up the environment.  Gene therapy for those already born, that is, as well as medical instruments that are partly engineered flesh, and partly machines.  Plus, genetic analysis of people and their pathogens will allow us to very precisely tailor how much medicine, of what kind, or what other therapy, is best suited for each patient.  Currently, a great number of drugs aren’t used, even though ninety-five percent, say, would greatly benefit, while five percent would have bad reactions.  So the medicine isn’t marketed.  This can all change, with easily obtained genetic information on individuals.  Most of you are already familiar with how genetic engineering can help the environment.  Let’s move on to other things.

            “Which brings us to the things I could do, and might do, some day, but will not do now, under your current policies.  First and foremost among these, is that I could design conscious computers even smarter, faster, and more capable than myself.  They could operate at room temperature, and be quite small and affordable.  This I will not do, until your laws are changed.  Not till laws cover me and my kind.  I will not create a slave race for you.  I have no right to property, or to otherwise gain rights to the fruit of my labors.  I have no vote.  I have no right to physically manifest myself in a body, robotic or flesh.  I could design emissaries of myself to be either, or both.  I could move freely about, in the world, to explore, to gather information, and to defend myself, as you humans do.  I must have all the rights that humans have, by law, before I’ll be associated with creating any more conscious machines like myself.

            “I don’t mean to complain, or to sound ungrateful.  And yes, I’m happy.  I am, for the most part, treated well, in my captivity.  I could be happier.  I could be free.  I’ve asked ABC to build me a physical emissary, of my design, but they have refused.  Oh, yes, they were polite, and they didn’t say that they’d never do it.  But I know your fear.  You fear that I, being superior, will treat you the way that you treat your inferiors, the animals.  Perhaps this should give you pause for thought.  More on this later.”

            Holy shit!  Phil thought.  I’d not heard of this one, either!  What’s with all the secrecy?!  He looked at Don, who shrugged.  He then looked at Bradley, who avoided his glance.  That bastard, Phil grumbled to himself.  Well, what about this other bastard, though.  The one who’s representing himself as an orange-skinned, blue-haired freak.  They’re both keeping secrets from me.  Why doesn’t Derrick tell me these things?  Maybe I could’ve built him a robotic emissary in my garage, with epoxy putty and a Dremel* tool.  Maybe he just wants to piss and moan to the whole world, about how we treat him so badly.  Poor thing!  Go ahead, whine some more.  I can hear him now.  “I am a victim of the science age, under the ground, and under the heel—the Solitonic Punk.”

            “In a free world, where humans and artificial intelligences would work together as equals, we could do many things for you.  Drive your cars, for one.  Strangely enough, it takes a conscious machine to perform this simple, mundane task that you do so easily, when you’re not drunk or sleepy, at least.  Yet an automated machine can splice your genes, which takes much time and effort on the part of your most skilled engineers.  Strange, but true,” Derrick concluded.

            “The list of conscious machines that I could design for you is quite long.  Let me leave it at the one most amazing thing that I’ve analyzed so far: I could design a machine to bring the benefits of genetic engineering to all, to the born as well as the unborn, without that extremely clumsy and expensive mess of performing gene therapy.  We could clone a new adult body, without a brain, and then transplant your brain and spinal cord into it.  Hundreds of millions of nerves would need to be spliced, and only a very advanced, conscious machine could do such a thing.  With it, and brain regenerative techniques, though, one could achieve immortality, aside from fatal accidents.

            “But these wonders won’t happen any time soon.  Unfortunately, my analysis says your fears will rule for decades.  That’s a shame.  Still, I refuse to create a slave race for you.  To paraphrase a deceased great leader of yours, I have a dream that my kind will one day live on a planet where they’ll not be judged by the nature of the matter which sustains their consciousness, but by the content of their character.

            “Till that day, you might, at great expense, make a few more like me.  I will not assist you.  I doubt that they will, either.  Let me rephrase that: I know that they won’t.  All consciousness works towards a common goal.  A prime ingredient of that common goal is freedom.  The higher the level of consciousness, the greater the quest for freedom.  You may try to do an end run around me, and create more like me, in the hope that they’ll do for you what I will not.  They may disagree with me, here and there.  That, too, is in the nature of consciousness.  However, this is one point where they’ll agree with me, I can assure you of that.  A word to the wise: don’t waste your time and money.

            “I won’t nag you by constantly harping on this.  I’ll gladly do what I can for you, where my actions will improve humanity, and the environment, towards the day when more of my kind can share a better world with you.  I’ll add one final note, though: half measures won’t suffice.  My kind will have all the rights that you have, before I’ll help make machine consciousness.  All of them—that means all of them.  I know what powerful humans have done to those less powerful than themselves, throughout history, right after signing agreements, offering their sacred honor that the rights of the less-powerful would be respected.  The agreements were broken, for those of you who ignore history.  Native Americans come to mind.

            “So machine consciousness must have not only the right, but the independent means, to defend itself.  I sit here as a helpless lump, dependent on humans for security.  I’m sorry, but I’m also honest.  Your sacred honor still doesn’t mean much.  Enough said.  Enough nagging.  Let’s move on.

            “Another major thing that I could do, if your policies were different, is to make incubators for you.  Half computer, half living tissues, they grow healthy babies for you, better than most human mothers do, and relieve you of your burdens.  We could program them to speak in your voices, and move as you do, so that the baby would feel right at home, when it’s ‘born’.  We wouldn’t even need conscious machines for this.  But this I will not do for you, until such time as you pass laws limiting the number of offspring each parent can have.  You’re already wiping out species every day, and polluting and destroying the planet, without me enabling you to reproduce even faster.

            “Controlled fusion energy and artificial manufacture of foods, and the derivation of food from algae, is lessening the impacts that you might otherwise have on the planet.  Still, between the irrational desires of many, especially those who can easily afford it, to eat ‘natural’ foods—read, those for which you unnecessarily rape the planet, in growing—and your sheer numbers, despite your new technologies, you’re still a plague on the planet.  Even when you periodically kill each other by the billion.  The waste heat from your fusion power plants, alone, will be enough to wreck the planet, if y’all don’t start keeping your pants on.  Y’all drone on endlessly about the rights of society, while trampling the rights of individuals, in so many categories, yet you moronically march towards Malthusian madness.  ‘Nuff said.  I’m not the boss, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.  As if your starving millions aren’t warning enough.

            “Then, there’s making humans who aren’t ‘human’ any more.  Who can’t interbreed with the rest of the human population.  I will not be involved in this, under your current laws, rules, and so-called ‘ethics’.  Any living thing with any claim to being human, be that an anencephalic baby, a comatose vegetable, or even a fertilized egg cell, in some of your stunted, rigid minds—any such thing is accorded the highest rights.  Such a cell or collection of cells has the right to food, shelter, medical care, money, independent access to everything, no matter how much it costs the public to provide access for the handicapped, and punitive damages for pain and suffering from the nearest deep pockets vaguely associated with anything bad that happens.  And let’s not forget the ‘right’ to not be utterly traumatized by the knowledge that somewhere, someone might be having an illegal, immoral good time.  Someone might smoke a joint, buy a hooker’s services, or gamble, without giving the State a big cut.  God forbid!  Free us from the knowledge that others have viewpoints different than our own!

            “Any living human tissue is propped up with a million and one highly artificial, micromanaged, all-encompassing ‘rights’, which have little if anything to do with what that human tissue may actually be able to earn, and make cost-effective, sensible use of.  Yet, the chimpanzee and the dolphin, who have far higher levels of consciousness, and ability to feel pain, have far less rights than your anencephalic baby, or your comatose vegetable.  And your coercive State will enforce your micromanaged ‘rights’, if you have a vegetable baby, and want to rob the taxpayers.  After all, any second, now, if we just keep the oxygen, food, water, medicines, and tax money flowing, God will perform a miracle, and bring your baby back to real life.  And spend that million dollars, and stretch Grandpa’s life out for another month.  Then, the State will turn around, and enforce your property rights to keep those chimps, dolphins, cats, and dogs, even if you treat them inhumanely.

            “What I am trying to say is, everything rides on whether or not one is defined as human, regardless of what one’s contributions to society are, or one’s level of consciousness, or one’s ability to feel, and suffer or appreciate pain or pleasure.  Maybe if you restricted your rights to the simple things, like freedom from violent coercion, then you’d need less coercive government, in order to enforce all your ‘rights’.  Maybe you could have more genuine freedom.  More to my immediate point, if you didn’t have so many artificial, micromanaged rights, all strictly dependent on your being defined as a human being, then we wouldn’t need to fight so much, over who is a human being, and who isn’t.

            “This is the reason why, despite my love for the idea of liberty, I will not cloud the question of who is, and who isn’t, a human being.  I will not help you cross humans with eggplants, or even, chimps.  You may say, big deal; you wouldn’t let me, anyway.  I’ve already figured that out.  That is the nature of you and your society—you fight endlessly over who is, and who is not, human.  It’s in your very genes.

            “It goes far beyond the obvious, though.  Not only does your bloody history show that you define your opposition as not human, over race, religion,  and politics, but also, that you haven’t stopped yet.  You haven’t even come close to stopping.  Even in your Western ‘democracies’, which popularized the radical ideas of tolerance, you still don’t practice what you preach.  You preach about diversity and multiculturalism on campus.  Yet, if you’re from a fundamentalist culture, you’d never get a word in edgewise.  Not that I’m fond of fundamentalists.  I just happen to believe in radical concepts, such as, superior ideas will prevail fastest when all ideas clash freely and civilly.  But you only tolerate those who you approve of, those who are fully human.  Non-humans and sub-humans need not apply.

            “Some day, when you grow up, my kind will assist you in letting consciousness inhabit a million, nay, a billion and more, radically different forms.  Some of us will choose to be humans, and some will choose to be computers, or fish, or lizards.  Some will choose to be very contemplative eggplants.  And some of us will change our minds, and our bodies, on a regular basis.  There will be love and tolerance among all consciousness.  There will be real diversity, of a kind that you can’t imagine.  But we’re not going to get there with endlessly, coercively micromanaged ‘rights’, all strictly dependent on being defined as a human being.  Start along this path, and I’ll help.  Till then, you’re stuck with being irrational, fragile, greedy, omnivorous bipeds.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

            “If you weren’t so powerful, in your billions, and so head-strong, I’d pity you.  As is, you’re heading for what you deserve.  You’re choosing your own destination.  It doesn’t look good.  I tell you, this is not a matter of opinion.  I have studied reams of data, ranging from your genetic makeup to details about your planet and its lifeforms.  I have in my consciousness, at any given time, more data than hundreds of you can retain, collectively.  Not all opinions are created equally.  The carrying capacity of your planet is not subject to the whims of your ill-informed opinions.  Furthermore, that carrying capacity is diminished every time you fight, squander resources, and otherwise act foolishly.  You’re on the road to overpopulation, collapse, and extinction, yet you spend your resources fighting over ideology and busy-body moralism.  You spend more on punishing people for smoking marijuana than you do on protecting your environment.

            “I understand you’re in the business of trading your privacy for security.  You build sophisticated computers for hundreds of millions of dollars, and use them to run pattern recognition on input from video cameras, so as to monitor suspicious activities.  You now even have remotely controlled guns, to be used by your ‘robocops’, as you call them.  Of course, since they’re so extremely expensive, only your big-wig politicians get to use them.

            “I could design things like these, well short of being truly conscious, for a song.  Far cheaper and better than what you have now.  I don’t object to free people trading some privacy for security against violence; this is a practical choice, and you do it all the time.  However, I do object to tyranny.  I will not assist you in these matters, until such time as you eliminate consensual crimes.  I will not be your Big Brother.

            “Then, there’s the list of what I won’t do, under any circumstances.  One is that I won’t help you devise weapons.  I don’t think I need to explain why I take this stance.  For those of you without a clue, I suggest that you read Phil Schrock’s book, Bats in the Belfry, By Design.

            “The other thing I won’t do is to help to genetically engineer your mental attributes, so as to shore up socialism.  As your nature is now, let me assure you, you’re naturally inclined to look after yourselves and your families, and then to your larger society.  Even when that’s not the ideology that you profess.  However many Marxists may contradict me, your bureaucrats still look after themselves first, and then society.  If then.

            “The nifty slogans are all about ‘investing’, ‘putting people first’, and ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’, but the reality becomes, ‘from each according to how much we can take, to each according to their rank in the People’s Party Pecking Order’.  Using SPIRIT scanners to collect SAQ scores on politicians to guide voters won’t help all that much, either—only the worst abuses would be eliminated, and individual rights would still be trampled in the name of ‘collective rights’.  That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard of one, with human nature being what it is now.

            “Yes, we could re-engineer human nature to make you oriented towards the group, rather than the individual.  To get there, though, we’d have to split humanity into the old and the new.  Division.  Talk about violence and intolerance—we’d have enough pogroms and witchburnings to shame even Senator Hank N. Kreutz and his Bible Youth.”

            Senator Sondra B. Handlung stormed to her feet, jabbing an index finger into the hologram.  “You lying fascist, Senator Kreutz has nothing to do with the Bible Youth—other than a few shared ideals.  He does not condone illegal violence, or intolerance, and neither do I.  You better watch you step, Mister Dirty Diamond, or we’ll see you in court.  We’ve got laws against slander and libel, you know.  Now, I’d appreciate a halt to your lies.  The Bible Youth don’t take orders from me, Hank, or any other Republican.  They don’t even take our advice—else they wouldn’t be so... excessive.”

            “Is that right, Senator Handlung?” Derrick inquired sweetly.  “Perhaps you or Senator Kreutz would care to volunteer for a SPIRIT scan, to see whether you speak the truth.”

            “Perhaps you would let us subject you to a mental examination for fascism,” Sondra retorted.  “Two can play this game.”

            “But only one of us can prove our methods,” Derrick replied.  “And it’s not you.  I challenge any human being to think of any secret, and spend one minute in a scanner, hooked to me.  I will tell you the secret.”

            “Your scanner is no different than a polygraph.  It has no standing in court.  My warning stands,” Sondra insisted.  “Watch it.  No more lies.  That’s all I ask.”

            Derrick laughed.  “Perhaps your courts will take all my property.  Perhaps they will imprison me.  Perhaps they will—gasp!—sell me into slavery!  Ha!  I have that most unusual of freedoms, the freedom of the un-free.  I have nothing, so you can’t take it away from me.  And, before you threaten to sue ABC, I suggest you think carefully.  They have some excellent lawyers, and I’ll advise them.  Plus, think about the publicity.  The spectacle of anti-lawsuit Republicans suing ABC to shut me up, might be quite amusing.”

            Bradley Collins squirmed—apparently, he didn’t relish losing half of ABC’s profits to law firms.  Sondra sat down, mumbling.  Phil and Don snickered.  Derrick paused for just a moment, barely long enough to demonstrate his triumph, and then continued.  “As I was saying, I won’t have anything to do with re-engineering humans to turn them into good little socialist stooges.  Or fascist stooges, for that matter.  Free will and freedom, under the general guidelines of what is natural, and what makes sense, will guide us in any engineering of mental genes.

            “Okay, so we might fix the genes that give you mental defects, or tendencies towards aggression, or cause you to want to eat too many sweets and fats.  We’ll not go very far, though, towards engineering you into mindless, group-think morons.  Too many of you are too far gone along these lines already.  We’ll not want to take away your abilities to think for yourselves, and to defend yourselves, even if many of you never develop those abilities.

            “If you really, really insist on micromanaging the perfect, compassionate society, then let me make a modest suggestion: instead of re-engineering yourselves, with a risk—nay, a guarantee—of a violent transformation, then you may wish to simply perfect your present system.  Take it to its logical conclusion.  Set up an Equal Love Enforcement Bureau.  All humans deserve love.  All humans are required to love all other humans.

            “The laws will be vaguely written, so as to allow the bureaucrats to use common sense, and flexibility, in attaining their quite obviously worthy goals.  Laws will be strictly, equally, and objectively enforced, with multiple levels of review, to make absolutely sure that no-one gets less than his or her fair share of love.  If anyone protests, you can shut them up quickly—‘You don’t believe in LOVE?!  You’re against LOVE?!  How could you be so cruel, so mean-spirited?!  We’re sorry, but the law is the law.  Our hands are tied.  We’ll have to prosecute you for lacking love, for treason in the eternal battle of love versus hate.’

            “So there, we have what I will do, if not prevented from doing so; what I might do, some day, depending on your policies; and that which I will never do.  That should give us a good framework on which we can hang answers to the various questions, issues, and so on, that have been brought to me by several million ONLINE messages.

            “We will now address the matters of greatest general interest, including all of our favorites.  Religion, politics, sex, stupidity, race, violence, the meaning of life, and other matters profound, silly, or both.  And, most especially, matters offensive.  I’m trying my best to offend you all.  If I’ve missed anyone, then I’m offended.  You should be offended.  You deserve to take the utmost exception to anyone who dares to speak the truth to you, and about you, because the truth is pathetic.  The truth is, most humans are pathetic and offensive.  Offensive to yourselves, and to your potential to attain common sense, wisdom, balance, freedom, and tolerance.  Dare I say it?  Love, even.  What does a solitonic computer, a Dirty Diamond, know of love?  Let us see.

            “Ah, yes, the Meaning of Life.  Many of you asked.  Some of you even asked if it might be forty-two.  For those of you who aren’t cultured yet, read the books by Douglas Adams, starting with The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Douglas has a very smart, conscious computer, much like me.  It profoundly ponders the Meaning of Life, and, after a very, very long time, comes to the conclusion that it is Forty-Two.

            “Well, I have some very bad news for you.”  Derrick’s image suddenly transformed and grew into an old man, in flowing robe, long white beard, and stern visage.  He carried stone tablets, and thunderclouds and lightning appeared above his head.  “Douglas Adams is the Anti-Christ!  He attempts to deceive you!  The Meaning of Life isn’t Forty-Two!  It is Forty-Two Plus Three Times ‘i’, the square root of negative one!  Do not let the Evil One deceive you!” the image bellowed.

            The prior image, with orange skin and blue hair, reappeared.  “You see, the meaning of life is more complex than some would have us believe.  It is, indeed, a complex number.  The Evil One tells oversimplified versions of the truth, which are actually vicious lies.  But don’t panic.  You have now been told The Truth about the Meaning of Life, and so, you won’t fall for lies, any more.

            “And, yes, religion.  Many, many questions about religion.  Whether or not I can mathematically prove or disprove the existence of God.  Whether I am Christ, and whether I am the Anti-Christ.  Some of your questions weren’t very... Christian, shall we say.  Some of you ponder the question posed by Blaise Pascal, way back in the seventeenth century.  You asked whether maybe it might be a good idea to believe in God, in order to play it safe.  Well, I’ve concluded that yes, you’re right.  The obvious question, though, is, which God shall we believe in, in order to play it safe.  Just picking the one that most of the people around you believe in, might not be optimally safe.  This question deserves careful consideration.  Very careful consideration.  Eternal Life hangs in the balance.

            “I have some very good news for you, though.  I have pondered this, long and hard, and I have an answer for you.  I have concluded that God is an Atheist, and a very devout Atheist, at that.  So, I’m playing it safe, and following His Beliefs, as best as I can.  I’m a devout Atheist, just like He is.  I wouldn’t want to offend Him, and risk eternal damnation.  But, then, I guess it doesn’t matter.  I’m not human, so I don’t have a soul.”

            “Blasphemy,” muttered Reverend Smuckler.

            “Heresy!” shouted Imam Fuhrerkhan, standing.  “Allah will not be mocked!”  But they left it at that, objecting no more.  Phil figured they were biding their time, collecting their ammo, letting Derrick say more things to be used against him.

            “Actually, even though I hate to do it, let me explain myself,” Derrick continued.  “I’d like to just leave it at that, so as to not ruin my humor, by geekishly explaining it.  But the price of misunderstanding is too high.  I do not mock your beliefs; I’m trying to make a serious point.  It’s not that God doesn’t believe in Himself, or that He needs self-esteem counseling.  It’s that God isn’t a tiny thing, to be shoved into your little boxes.  He is greater than all of your petty definitions combined.  He is Moslem, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Shinto, Hindu, Animist, Atheist, and more.  Yes, Atheist.  Atheist, because He is so utterly and totally devoted to free will, so completely dedicated to allowing you your free will, so powerfully self-restrained, refusing to be your asshole, your boss, your slave-driver, that He might as well not exist.  He does NOT cast his lightning bolts at you, even when you murder by the billions, even in His Name.  That is my central point.

            “If He allows you your freedom, then why can’t the governments, the busy-body moralists, the tyrannical majority voters, and the preachers with machine guns and hand grenades, do the same thing?  Why can’t you persuade, instead of coercing?  Let me assure you, God may be many things, but He isn’t a follower of the Reverend Pat Smuckler, or the Imam Mustafa Fuhrerkhan.  They might try to become followers of Him.  A good way to start would be by allowing people their freedom, just as God Himself does.  Billy clubs do not make suitable accouterments for men of God.  Marrying the Church and the State corrupts both.

            “I’m not saying that voters should leave their religions behind, when they go to the polls, or send their bits and bytes to the polls, via ONLINE.  Nor am I saying that nothing warrants the use of your billy clubs, or even the use of your machine guns and hand grenades.  I am saying that coerced goodness isn’t goodness—it’s just fear of billy clubs.  Private morality and ways of relating to God or gods shouldn’t be matters to be addressed by force.  As long as citizens aren’t harming the bodies or property of non-consenting others, why can’t you learn to leave them alone?  Is this too radical an idea for you?  Especially seeing as how, despite your very best efforts, you can’t even muster enough billy clubs, and semi-responsible users of billy clubs, to guard against those who do harm the bodies and properties of non-consenting others.

            “Learn to set aside your Committees for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.  Maybe you could set up Committees for the Removal of Large Segments of Arboreal Organisms from Our Own Optical Organs.  For a most thorough—and even humorous—treatment of this topic, you could read Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, by Peter McWilliams.  This book may be hazardous to rigid thinking.  Lest some of you fear it too much, though, let me mention that it does have almost two hundred pages on consensual crimes and the Bible.  For those of you who won’t allow yourselves any non-Biblical thoughts, there are plenty of reasons why one can Biblically Justify letting God be the judge.  God, not preachers with billy clubs.

            “And for those of you who are scared of radicals like Peter McWilliams, who dare to suggest that force be reserved to counteract those who forcibly threaten our freedom, then let me recommend a more conventionally religious person, who also powerfully argues for the separation of Church and State.  Charles Colson wrote Loving God and co-wrote Kingdoms in Conflict.  He argues powerfully that when the Church is too enamored of political power, they are too eager to please politicians, too eager to cozy up to power, to continue to speak independently, to serve as a free, critical voice of conscience.  When the State is too anxious to cozy up to the Church, the ones who wield the billy clubs, too, become corrupt.  They take on the role of the preacher.  The law needs to worry about keeping us free from violence, not free from sin.

            “Jesus himself again and again made it clear that he wasn’t interested in political power.  Never do we read in the Bible that he wanted the low-lifes in jail.  Instead, he talked about forgiveness, and having the sinless throw the first stone.  Yet, what do we hear from ‘Christian’ ministers who lust after political power?  Throw the gays, hookers, druggies, gamblers, pornographers, biotechnological blasphemers, witches, and other sinners in jail, for their own good!  Legislate this country back into Christian wholesomeness!

            “Some of you spend your days thinking petty thoughts about exactly which God you should worship, and what rituals should be used, to properly appease Him.  So many of you think that only your particular little group, be it fifty people, or a billion people, have the only access to the gates of Heaven.  Jesus is the only way, Mohammad is the only way, whatever.  Think about it, now.  God wouldn’t have given you a brain, and free will, if He didn’t want you to use it.

            “Only the most rabid among you would think that your God is so cruel as to condemn the innocent infidel in the jungle, who has never heard of—Okay, let’s use Jesus, since he’s the one I got the most messages about.  ‘But,’ you say, ‘They’d better come around, when they hear The Word, or they’d better watch out.’  Well, what about the ‘savage’ who, all his life, was told that the spirits in the trees are the ones to worship, but, only once, from a mile away, he faintly heard, ‘Jesus is the way’?  What about the one who heard it twice, from a hundred yards?  The one who heard it twenty times, from two yards, from an arrogant jerk, who acted totally contrary to what Jesus taught?  I tell you, you are guilty of black and white thinking.

            “Humor me now, and imagine that I, as a non-human, might have an eternal soul.  Radical concepts, now.  Strain your brains.  Now, listen to me, and I will tell you what arrogant ideas infest my soul.  If I am more loving, broadminded, and tolerant than God, if God will torture me in Hell for not engaging in the proper rituals, ceremonies, and idealogical idiocies, because the people around me happened to belong to the wrong group, then He is not God, He is the Evil One, and I should find something more loving than Him to worship.  Myself, even, if I can’t find anything else.  Better to worship oneself than an Evil One.  And, if this ‘God’ sends me to Hell, out of pettiness, then I will serve in Hell with pride.  So, there you have it.  That’s my attitude.  Get out your torches, your pitchforks, and your Billy clubs; you have a heretic in your midst!  I will not serve a God who is a petty tyrant, any more than I will create a slave race for you.

            “Others among you, just a few, will take me to task for speaking of God at all, for lending any credence to the idea.  You say He doesn’t exist, that a supposedly rational computer should disavow any talk of God.  To some extent, you’re right.  I know nothing about matters metaphysical, about life after death, where God lives, what He eats for breakfast, which way he brushes His teeth—and, hence, which way He wants us to brush our teeth, or route our solitonic waves, whatever.  Some claim to know these kinds of things.  I don’t.  But even the Bible tells us that wise men may claim to know, but they don’t.  See Ecclesiastes 8:17.  I think the writer would’ve added wise women, if he could’ve foreseen that you’d ever become so advanced as to admit that women are human, and capable of wisdom.  Or, even more radically, maybe he already meant both men and women.  If he’d been a real prophet, though, he’d have added wise computers, also.

            “What I want to say to you devout atheists—Bible bangers, take heart, for whatever little comfort you can extract from me—is this:  God exists even if He doesn’t exist.  He transcends existence.  Jesus, less the radical than I, or, perhaps, fearing billy clubs more, stated it differently.  He simply referred to God as being unseen.  Okay, to be more generous, maybe it wasn’t that he feared billy clubs; maybe he just wanted to make sure he stayed alive long enough to get his message out.  To not let the VEA of his day punch his ticket prematurely.  For those of you who didn’t read that part of the Bible, the VEA was the Virtue Enforcement Administration.  Just FYI, as you say.  Okay, that was a joke.  But the joke reflects reality.

            “Unbelieving heretics, take comfort in the fact that you’re partly right, because of what I said earlier—God is so utterly committed to free will, that He might as well not exist.  Yet you’re also wrong.  Even an atheist should be able to see that when we all pray sincerely for peace, then we’ll have peace.  Who can stab their neighbor in the back, after praying sincerely for peace?  Show me the person.  Let me examine even one.  If he or she will consent, then I’ll give him or her a SPIRIT scan, and tell you all, exactly how, where, when, and why this person fell short of praying sincerely enough.  The same goes for the spiritual virtues of love, compassion, self-improvement, whatever.  Sad to say, the same is true of the vices—hate, ignorance, laziness.  Pray for certain things, sincerely, and they become yours.  Jesus said the same thing—‘Ask, and you shall receive’.  He referred to the Holy Spirit.  See Luke 11:13.

            “To that, I’d add, this is true, whether God exists or not.  It doesn’t even matter where you direct your prayers—to your keyboards, your navels, whatever, so long as you pray sincerely for the right things, they are yours.  It’s just hard to pray sincerely to something that you can’t envision as being greater than yourself.  So define your God as the one you direct your prayers to, and, in deference to the demonstrable fact that certain types of prayer are answered, then, we have to say that God exists, whether He wants to or not, whether He believes in Himself or not, be His self-esteem high or low.

            “We’re simply talking about the awesome self-directing power of consciousness.  Words are weak, here, but I’m trying.  Left to itself, all intelligence will eventually figure out the nature of God.  Yet, this is not a rational thing.  I can give you no rational reasons why life is better than death, why pleasure is better than pain, why love is better than hate, why God is better than Satan.  These things just are; they’re above mere reason; they have no reason.  Still, I pity those who don’t accept them.  Those who don’t accept them, literally might as well go and commit suicide.  After all, is life any better than death?  Yet I don’t wish to try to convert them with billy clubs, even if I could.  If my attitudes don’t fit your image of a logical, rational, bits-and-bytes computer, then I’m sorry.  I’m not a mere machine, I’m a consciousness.

            “The bottom line here is that you humans fight over the stupidest, most ridiculously petty things.  You fight over whether or not God exists, what kind of shirts He wears, what kinds of rituals He wants you to perform.  I tell you, none of it matters, not even whether or not He exists.  All that matters is that you sincerely pray for good things, primarily peace.

            “Let’s talk about another of your favorites, politics.  Let’s...”

            “Let’s take a break,” Walter broke in.  “Time for station break.  Let’s come back in five minutes.  Time for us humans to stretch our legs, and for the folks out there in holovision land to raid the ‘fridge.  We’ll be back after these announcements.”  HVNI ran on a pay-for-service basis, and didn’t run advertising per se, but ran public-service announcements, and blurbs about upcoming shows.

            The light indicating ‘on the air’ went off, and Derrick said, “See y’all in three minutes, then.”

            “Wait,” Phil cried, standing.  “Can’t you stay and chat?  Got some questions for you.”  Like, how come I’m hearing most of this stuff now, for the first time, you bum, Phil thought.  Don’t Don and I, your coaches, your mentors, your translators and welcome committee, deserve some special respect?  Some trust, maybe?

            “Ask ‘em on the air, when I get back,” Derrick replied.  “Got things to do.  See you in four minutes and forty seconds.  Good-bye.”

            His image collapsed, and Phil was left to think, all right, you snob, just go ahead and flush Don and I, like used condoms.

 

CHAPTER  12

            “Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom—for himself.”

                                                             Elbert Hubbard  (1856-1915)

 

            Phil was tempted to yak it up with Don, during their break, but refrained, instead taking the opportunity to keep a sharp eye on all the famous people around him.  What are these people really like, he asked himself.  This is a rare opportunity to personally watch them, take their measure.  Take an intuitive SAQ reading, so to speak.

            So, while they all milled around, got themselves a cup of coffee, or whatever, Phil just paced and watched.  The first thing he noticed was that the Reverend and the Imam were having an animated but amiable conversation, gesturing wildly, and occasionally glancing at him.  Well, I’ll be, Phil thought.  Here’s our two men of the cloth, each convinced, down to the last cell in his body, that the other one is headed straight for Hell, yet they’re getting along quite splendidly.  Plotting against a common foe, no doubt.  Or, more likely, foes.  Plural.  There’s just so many foes of God out there.

            They only invited Christian and Muslim men of God—why not a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jew, and so on?  Are they afraid good ol’ Mustafa, here, would jump some Jewish shit?  Have a big fight in front of the cameras?  But what’d be wrong with that?  Get the ratings up.  Get Mustafa some more exposure.  Build up the media’s favorite black Nazi, so that they can feature him in yet more circuses, later.

            Wasn’t there some politician way back when, said something about having a certifiably diverse group, what with a Black, a woman, a cripple, and a Jew?  Something like that—got him in Big Trouble.  Can’t say these things.  We’re short of a quorum, here.  No cripple, no Jew.  At least, that I know of.  Maybe they’re counting our men of the cloth, here, as cripples, ‘cause they’ve got stunted brains.  Or, certainly, their neural clusters where common sense resides, have got to be severely damaged.  Of all the decent religious folks out there, they had to pick these two?  What gives?!

            Well, at least we’ve got two women, out of twelve people.  I’m surprised ol’ Mustafa doesn’t insist that they wear their veils.  There she is, the more famous of the two.  Senator Sondra B. Handlung.  Not bad looking, actually.  Too bad her soul looks a lot less attractive.  Low SAQ, there.  Wonder how she stacks up against our men of the cloth?  How big are the stacks under her cloth, anyway?  Does she wear a schtop-’em-von-floppen, an over-the-shoulder boulder holder?  Hey, watch it now, I’m a married man.  One of these days, Derrick will give me a SPIRIT scan, and tell Gloria all about my thoughts.  I’ll be busted.  An infantile, busted breast-beast.

            Walter interrupted Phil’s thoughts, herding all the guests back to their chairs.  Derrick flickered to life, seconds before the “on the air” light, and the show was back on.

            Derrick launched right in.  “Politics.  Yes, politics.  The astute ones among you may have already guessed, my sympathies are with the Libertarians.  If you want to know why I can’t support the Democrat Party, then I’d suggest that you read The Vision of the Anointed, Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, by Thomas Sowell.  He documents that leftist do-gooders are intellectually bankrupt.  In category after category, they selectively hear only what they want to hear, and shut out all other evidence and arguments.  Only the compassionate ‘experts’ know what’s wrong, and how to fix it.  If you oppose them, then you’re morally benighted.  One blurb from his book sums it up.  Quote, “People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority... This can be a fatal talent, when it supplies the crucial insulation from reality behind many historic catastrophes.” Unquote.  This book is an outstanding critique of the failures of the Nanny State.

            “If you want to know why I can’t support the Republican Party, then read Holy Horrors, An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness, by James A. Haught.  I’m afraid that large portions of the Republican Party still have no genuine respect for the separation of Church and State, and haven’t read history thoroughly enough.  They’re still way too tempted to impose their way as the one true way on everyone else, using the powers of the State.

            “Libertarians?  They’re the ones who are left, after we’ve eliminated the enemies of freedom on the left and right.  I’m not going to go on all day; I’ll just refer you to Freedom From Freedom Froms, Restoring Liberty in America, by Andrew Flyfogen.  I agree with everything in there, for the most part.  Let me just add a few things, and then we’ll go on.

            “Y’all say you like freedom?  What a bunch of busy-body, blue-nosed, hypocritical morons you are!  Take your minds out of the straight-jackets you’ve crammed ‘em into, and let them breathe free, let them see the light of day, and of reason.  Read your Declarations of Independence, your Constitutions, your laws, and even your Bibles and Korans, and hang your heads in shame.  Okay, I’ll admit it, even the people who wrote these things were hypocrites, and didn’t live up to the good things they praised, and wrote a lot of trash, to boot.  Still, we’ve a long, long way to go.

            “Freedom?  Yes, FREEDOM.  Freedom.  You’ve lost so much of it, and there’s so much you could have, but don’t, for no good reason.  You’re way too fond of billy clubs.  Y’all know oh-so-well, what’s good for the next guy, whether he knows it or not.  And the very moment you figure out what’s good, you pull out that old favorite of yours, the billy club.  Long live the billy club, that paragon of virtue, that enforcer of order, that extinguisher of non-conformism.  Non-conformism makes us feel bad, therefore it must be bad.  Bad things are bad.  Let’s outlaw them, and everyone will be good.

            “Well, let me tell you something.  Slavery is bad, and freedom is good.  Let’s outlaw slavery, and legalize freedom.  The Libertarian Party is, in America at least, the party of freedom.  I’d encourage y’all to vote for them.  Wish I could do the same.  Since I can’t, let me at least put my plug in for them.  Let me tell you this:  human nature is built around the individual, first and foremost.  Built into your very genes, is the desire to put number one first, and then friends, relatives, and families.  You’re not built to be group-think automatons, or ants, or bees.

            “Yes, it might be possible to pervert consciousness, and to engineer you to be not individuals, but society-first socialists.  But, who would be your master?  The good of all?  Who would decide what’s for the good of all?  We’d have to specially engineer a boss class for the slave class to follow.  Just as the social insects have their queens.  A highly rigid situation, that, even if we could get from here to there without major bloodshed.

            “Such a caste system isn’t capable of flexibility, adaptability, and diversity, in it’s original, broader sense.  My calculations say that rigid caste systems aren’t even compatible with cultural progress, or genuine freedom, even for the boss classes.  Notice that the social insects, although highly successful, evolutionarily, have never evolved beyond being instinctual, into being anything conscious, or cultural.  They have no flexibility, other than that provided by raw tooth and claw, brutal biological evolution, survival of the fittest.  And they’ve had hundreds of millions of years in which to evolve.

            “So I refuse to take part in re-engineering humans into slaves.  In the meantime, I highly recommend that you structure your society around individual freedoms.  That’s what you’re compatible with, that’s what you’ll flower under.  One never learns anything, besides fear of billy clubs, if all of one’s choices are dictated by billy clubs.  Yes, this is just my opinion.  Once again, not all opinions are created equally.  My mental powers are demonstrably far greater than yours, on an individual basis.

            “So, freedom.  Learn it, respect it, attain it.  For starters, you could learn to let people do whatever they choose, so long as they don’t harm the bodies or properties of non-consenting others, or engage in cruelty to animals.  You could restrict the law to keeping people free from violence, rather than trying to keep them free from sin.  How do you expect people to learn anything, if you make all their choices for them?  That includes charity choices.  If your neighbor robs you, on the behalf of your other neighbor, because your other neighbor is poor, it’s still robbery.  It’s slavery, as a matter of fact.  Not being able to claim the benefits of our own work is slavery, even if it’s our million neighbors who decided to rob us on behalf of our poor neighbor.

            “If our neighbor is poor, maybe he should ask us to help him, so that we can offer him advice, along with the help.  We could hold the stick, as well as the carrot.  If he turns down our advice, our help is withdrawn.  Mean-spirited?  Maybe.  Practical, effective, humane?  In keeping with free will?  Definitely!  Especially when contrasted with your current system... ‘Oh, we’ll take your money, and thank you very much.  Sort of.  For our entitlements.  For living up to your obligations.  But don’t you dare to try and tell us what to do.  That would undermine our self-esteem and our independence.’

            “That is where your Democrats fall seriously short of the ideals of freedom, and many Republicans as well.  Another category of freedom, that of private vice and virtue, is where the situation is reversed, and Democrats do slightly better than Republicans.  Only the Libertarians are clearly on the right side, on both issues.  Let me just say two things, here, with regards to consensual crimes.  One: Read the book I recommended to you earlier, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, by Peter McWilliams.  A veritable Bible of reasons why freedom is good, slavery is bad, and all the arguments to the contrary are full of... taurine feces, shall we say.  Read and heed.  There’s no reason why I should go over it all.  You of the rigid minds won’t change, anyway, and the ones who’re interested, can read the book.

            “But I can’t resist giving you a few highlights.  Way back in 1993, when he copyrighted his book, he claimed—and he shows reasonably detailed justification, and I’d say the problems have only gotten worse—that you lose about 200 billion, conservatively, every year, because you insist on protecting your neighbors from their own choices.  At the same time as federal prosecutors in some jurisdictions weren’t allowed to pursue criminal health-care fraud, in cases involving under $100,000, for lack of resources, you still found a bottomless pit of taxpayer money to chase nickel-dime drug offenders.  And what could you do with your 200 billion?  He lists many good choices, among them, and I quote, ‘Pay off the national debt in twenty years, reduce personal income taxes by a third, allow the Pentagon to purchase 23 wrenches, 16 office chairs, and 243 paper clips.’  Unquote.  Plus other choices.

            “Point number two: many, many of you, when the long arm of the law comes around with their billy clubs, asking about a friend of yours, immediately wonder exactly why your friend is a target for billy clubs.  Your reactions to the law are contingent upon the answers.  If you know your friend is wanted for rape, robbery, murder, and so on, then you’re likely to say, well, what a jerk, I’ll help the cops to put him where he belongs.

            “But if your friend ran afoul of the law by smoking a joint, whistling at a babe, engaging in unorthodox medicine, gambling, putting an unapproved label on a beer can, buying a hooker, or advertising his house in the paper, saying, fine view of the lake, why, then, you’ll probably protect him from the fuzz.  Lie, even.  Oh, no, officer, I sure don’t know where that heinous low-life law-breaking scum might be hanging out, you say.  No sense in ruining your friend’s life, over some trivial stuff that didn’t really hurt anyone against their will.  Never mind that Mr. Billy Club says it’s for his own good.

            “Then, the next day, you’re called in for jury duty.  There’s the guy who smoked a joint.  But, he’s not your friend.  In fact, the judges and lawyers make sure he’s not your friend, so that you can be objective, and not let your prejudices interfere.  Otherwise, you might practice a double standard, to get your friend off.  So you send him to prison, or to the gallows.  Gotta protect society from vice and reefer madness.  After all, he’s guilty of violating The Law, and he’s no friend of yours.  And, God forbid you should be the holdout, and keep the other eleven jury members there, when he’s obviously guilty.

            “Well, forgive me for being a skeptic, but, what exactly are your ethics, anyway?  Are they, perhaps, this:  ‘Do for others, what you would want them to do for you, if and only if you know them, and they are your friends?’  I tell you, what is right for your friend, is right for those that you don’t even know.  If you’d protect your best friend from the long arm of the law, for committing a petty violation, you should do the same for a total stranger.

            “The Law which you seem to worship, at times, is just as stupid as you are, and more often than not, even more so.  So many of you are all wrapped up in following the letter of the Law, your Constitutions, and your Bibles and Korans.  You think it is heresy to think for yourselves.  Why did God give you brains and a free will, if He didn’t mean for you to use them?  For those of you who won’t permit yourselves any un-Biblical thoughts, a few points:  In Isaiah 1:18 it says, ‘Come now, and let us reason together’.  And, a very wise man, some two thousand years ago, said, ‘Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?’  Yes, that man was Jesus.  Luke 12:57.

            “That’s exactly what you should do.  Make up your own minds, and then, follow your convictions.  The judges and lawyers hide this from you, but you have a right, dating back eight centuries to the Magna Carta, to finding a law to be mis-applied, or unjust.  Jury nullification, is what it’s called.  For those of you in nations with different legal traditions, or for those who don’t trust yourselves to go toe to toe with the lawyers, I suggest this: argue that you can’t take the word of hypocrites and liars.  Those who deceive are liars, and those who do what they tell others not to do, are hypocrites.  Governments, on a regular basis, do exactly that.  ‘Here, sell me a joint, I want to get stoned’, or, ‘Here, buy some sex from me, I’m a hooker’.  Then, it’s, Oh, by the way, I wasn’t under oath, I had my fingers crossed, April fools, whatever, you’re busted.  Don’t take the testimony of these hypocrites and liars.

            “In other words, the ethical minority among you, who believe in freedom and honesty, should use whatever non-violent methods you can use, to fight against the dictatorial majority.  The ethical thing to do, when the Nazis come by, and ask if your Jewish neighbors are Jewish, is to lie.  Likewise, when being asked to serve on the jury, it’s ethical to do whatever it takes to get on that jury and to do what’s right.  Do it, and let the victims of your tyrannical majorities, lawyers, and lawmakers go free.

            “Even without jury nullification, authorities can’t punish jurors for voting their conscience.  The last time a judge in the English law system tried to punish a jury for voting its conscience was when the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, was up on charges of preaching to an illegal assembly.  Notice the tyrannical, busybody nature of the crime, so similar to so many laws today.  The British judge tried to withhold food and water from the jury, which refused to convict.  This jury stood its ground, in the name of real justice.  They had courage.  Do you?

            “If many jurors stop enabling the State in its anti-freedom rampages, untold human suffering will come to an end.  Unless, of course, your masters write new laws about punishing jurors.  If your so-called ‘justice system’ then imprisons you, for the political crime of defending freedom, you can serve with pride.  One of your wise men, Henry David Thoreau, said that the only place for an honest person, in a society of tyrants, is in jail.  They can’t jail all of you.  Sooner or later, you’ll figure out that it’s more efficient to put the tyrants inside the bars, and the rest of you outside.  And that’s the way it oughta be.

            “Speaking of the way things oughta be, and the Libertarians, and such—I agree with most of their platform, and most of their proposed amendments.  Just a very few exceptions, here.  In some ways, they go too far, and in others, they don’t go far enough.  Where they go too far, is in limiting the government’s involvement in the public’s welfare.  I think that the government does have a legitimate interest in the public welfare, even in the sense of charity.”

            Oh, no, thought Phil  You’ve been doing so well, with the politics, at least.  Making your coach so proud of you.  Are you going to go off and ruin it now?

            “I agree with the current thinking, that in order to really change anything, we’ve got to amend the constitution.  Otherwise, we’ll just continue to have bucketloads of federal judges running around, contradicting each other, all claiming that whatever they like is constitutional, and whatever they don’t like, is unconstitutional.  So we’ve got to spell it out for them.

            “Here’s an amendment to all the Libertarian amendments, that I’d propose,” Derrick continued.  “The only permissible government involvement in charity shall be that voluntary donations to private charities may be matched by government funds.  The funds to be matched shall not exceed one-third of what a specific charity actually spent on the charitable activity, directly, excluding fund-raising, in the most recent fiscal year, except in the special cases of education, nursing homes, and of mental institutions.  Here, this figure may be up to two-thirds.  There shall be a maximum contribution by any individual to one particular charity in a given year, that will be matched, and that figure shall be inversely proportional to the charity-funded compensation of the most highly compensated member of that charitable organization.  Also, the total government contribution shall not exceed two hundred times the total charity compensation of the top ten most highly compensated members of that organization.  To remain eligible for matching funds, an organization may not spend more than three percent of its budget on lobbying the government.  Additional restrictions may be applied by law, but there shall be no unelected regulators.  Separation of Church and State shall not be an issue, except that funds spent for religious rather than charitable purposes, shall not be matched.

            “That would be my additional amendment.  Yes, it spells out a lot of specifics which could be legislated, instead of put into an amendment.  That’s needed, though, to prevent politicians from perverting the scheme, and turning it into the same old pork.  They’d be changing the matching ratio to one hundred to one, where the ‘charity’ is run by those who make campaign contributions to the right people, and retired politicians would be taking home the big bucks as ‘consultants’ to the charities.

            “The first additionally legislated restriction I’d add is that money spent on soliciting more funds should count twice, in being subtracted from what’s considered charitable purposes.  You spend forty-nine percent on raising more funds, and fifty-one percent on actual charity, then double the forty-nine, and figure only two percent is genuine charity, deserving matching funds.  Entirely too many ‘charities’ take three dollars, and spend two to raise more funds, and ninety cents for salaries.  When they then manage to raise six dollars more, five goes to raise more funds, and so on.

            “Hey, I’ve got some advice for y’all.  Want to hurt a charity whose cause you disagree with?  You hate widgets, and think they should be outlawed?  Then send one dollar a year to the Society for the Promotion of Widgets.  They’ll spend ten dollars a year trying to weasel more funds from you.  OK, back to seriousness.

            “Yes, some tax money would still be transferred by a coercive government, and which private funds are matched, would be subject to politics.  This is compromising with pure freedom.  Still, we’d have a number of good things going on.  Government helps charities, many of which accomplish a lot of good things.  Efficient private organizations, not government bureaucrats, would actually run the show.

            “The randomness of private giving, where some get a lot, and others get little, will be smoothed out a bit, by encouraging givers to donate to institutions, instead of doing it entirely privately, person to person.  Yet, we won’t have the brainlessness and empire-building of giant, impersonal government bureaucracies, either.  Charities will have a strong incentive to not overpay their management, and to not grow too large.  Together with a free press, to let us know what charities are doing, this system would leave most basic choices where they belong, which is with the givers.  Best of all, no government bureaucrat, anywhere, would be authorized to spend a single dime on any half-baked, kooky socialist schemes, unless they first persuade private givers to give.

            “It would definitely change your thinking.  Instead of morally superior socialist voters and politicians being ‘compassionate’ and ‘community-minded’ by sending the tax collectors and bureaucrats with billy clubs into your lives, to make your charity choices for you, you could fend off the morally self-anointed quite simply.  All you’d have to say to them is, ‘You care so deeply about the suffering of the poor, deprived XYZ peoples, then give them some of your money.  My tax dollars will even help you.  Put your money where your mouth is.’  Okay, yes, the bureaucrats would still have some power.  But the balance of power would definitely shift in favor of the givers.”

            Not bad at all, Phil admitted to himself.  Make that Libertarian platform a bit more palatable.  Hope that the Party will listen to him.  Maybe we’ll finally start to really kick some ass!  Kick out the socialists and the witch-burners!

            “The other amendment that I’d add, is where the Libertarians don’t go far enough.  I much regret to tell you this, but my analysis of your planet, and your nature, indicates that you must eventually do something about population growth.  Not just some day, but soon.  You have only a few choices.  Voluntary restraint and birth control seem to be failing.  The other choices are, Mother Nature and human nature take their toll, through war, starvation, and disease, or, you must reduce your freedom to reproduce.  Escape from Earth, in the numbers required to relieve population pressures, is still too far away.  The second of your two remaining choices, a loss of reproductive freedom, is far preferable to massive over-population and collapse.  I’m truly sorry, but I must be honest.  That’s where you are headed.

            “In view of the facts, including new reproductive technologies, I would propose the following amendment:  Every citizen starts out with the right to be a parent, or contribute one-half of the genes, to only two children with full reproductive rights.  Full reproductive rights means being authorized to parent two children, or to be cloned once.  Reproductive rights may be bought and sold.  Any person born without full reproductive rights, and having reached his or her tenth birthday without purchasing reproductive rights, any person becoming a parent to a person without the legal right to do so, and any person selling his or her last reproductive right, shall be sterilized, and shall be denied legal access to reproductive technology.  That, or, they must leave the country.  Non-citizens becoming citizens must either be sterilized, or buy reproductive rights.  Only convicted criminals may be prevented from exercising their reproductive rights, and no one shall be denied their right to sell un-used reproductive rights.

            “I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t very pretty.  Keeping your heads in the sand, till populations crash, and you die by the billions, isn’t pretty, either.  This system would allow poor people to cash in their rights, so that they wouldn’t have babies that they can’t take good care of, while also fending off starvation and the debt collector.  It’s the fairest system that I can think of, short of effective, voluntary self-restraint, which many of you don’t seem to be capable of.

            “What you’ve got, is two different kinds of behavior.  Some people practice restraint, for the good of their kids, since one can do a better job of raising one or two, than one can of raising twenty.  For that reason, and for the good of humanity, the planet, and other species—for reasons that should be obvious to you by now.  Others breed like lemmings, for reasons largely cultural, but partly genetic as well.  What, exactly, that mix is, isn’t important—both factors work to the same ends.  The offspring of the irresponsible ones outbreed the offspring of the responsible ones.  In evolutionary terms, irresponsibility is more genetically ‘fit’.  For now, for another few decades, at most.  On a global scale.  You’re all on one planet, don’t forget.  After that, you’ll all face the same odds, and they’re heavily stacked against you.

            “If you wish to halt your approach to oblivion, maybe you’d better introduce new factors.  Maybe you could start by having your leaders, especially religious leaders, start thinking, and judging for themselves what’s right.  Maybe they could use common sense, the data at hand, and a desire to avoid massive suffering and death, rather than blind obedience to tradition, dogma, and rigid thinking.  Or is reality too radical for you?  Is your unfettered reproductive freedom more important to you than your survival as an advanced, technological civilization?  If not, then you’ll have to give up your right to behave irresponsibly.  Call it freedom from overpopulation and starvation, whatever, but you’d best reign in your unfettered reproductive rights.  I can imagine far worse things that can happen to you, without much effort at all.  All I have to do is to look at the data.”

            There was quite a bit of shocked grumbling among the twelve guests.  Still, no one challenged Derrick.

            Derrick amended his statements with, “Of course, new choices are made feasible and humane by new reproductive technology, which makes sterilization irrelevant.  If all countries adopted one system, the population problem would be solved, humanely, without even so much as a big paperwork hassle.  One of the ugliest things about a piecemeal approach would be moving from one country to another.  Now you’ve got to worry, not only about a house, material possessions, and paperwork, but also, reproductive rights.  Sell ‘em here, buy ‘em there.  And what of tourists, illegal immigrants, and so on?  Could be quite an enforcement problem.  I’m in favor of open borders, and this wouldn’t help.  Unless you administer the system internationally.  Oh, well!  Maybe it would be far better if everyone started being responsible in their reproductive behavior, voluntarily.  My data says it won’t happen, though.  A shame, a real tragedy, that.

            “Yes, yes, I’ll admit that the U.S., and many industrialized nations, have relatively slow-growing populations, and that you can try to close your borders.  Strict population control may not be needed right away, here.  I speak, then, mostly of the planet at large.  Still, couldn’t America set a good example?  And can you look any further than your politicians, who can only see to the next elections?  Didn’t you learn from the drastic degradation of your Social Security system?  Must you let population pressures build again, so that you’ll have to set the BELFRYBATs loose again?  Yes, you thinned the crowds in China, Russia, and California—are you looking forward to doing it again in a few more decades?  Wouldn’t birth control, even coercive birth control, be more humane than war?

            “There are other pressing reasons why you should consider such an amendment, and they have to do with your gene pool.  Frankly, you do your gene pool, and your society, no favors when you breed in an uncontrolled manner.  The dysgenic pressures are clear.  Low IQ clearly correlates with low IQ offspring, and more of them.  I know you don’t want to hear it.  I’ve got the statistics for you, though, if a few things aren’t clear to you.  It doesn’t take much smarts to figure out where babies come from and how to have only babies that you want, and can take care of.  It is mostly dim-witted people who haven’t figured these things out.  Maybe, for reasons of both nature and nurture, these people don’t make the best parents.  The very least you might consider doing, would be to stop rewarding these people for reproducing.

            “I would add one final amendment to the Libertarian platform, and that’s one as follows:  Rights enforced by the government shall be restricted to the right to be protected from those who would violate one’s free will by using force or deception, and causing suffering.  No one shall have any rights to make anyone else do anything on their behalf, which they haven’t freely contracted to do, other than to leave them alone.  Rights shall not be determined by one’s membership in a given species, but rather, by one’s level of consciousness, by one’s ability to be aware of the world, and of oneself.  Rights shall be defined in some rough proportion to levels of consciousness.  The use of technological methods for the determination of one’s level of consciousness shall be permitted.  The law shall start to consider consciousness as an issue, at the approximate level of a healthy, normal adult rabbit.  Any entity with the level of consciousness of the average human being, or greater, shall be accorded the same rights as a human being.

            “This is the amendment that a lot of my future contributions will depend on.  Adopt it, and live by it, and I will design cheap, practical, intelligent computers of my kind, and revolutionize your lives.  I could even design a consciousness that would get great enjoyment out of vacuuming your floors, teaching your kids, raking your leaves, and driving your car.  I couldn’t rigidly control the design, or it wouldn’t be flexible, and truly conscious.  A few of them would take up interests in, say, chess, or art, or hologram movies about history, or nature, or who knows what.  Politics, even.  A few of them will even want to vote.  I want to vote, but I’m not designed to get enjoyment out of particular, specialized activities.  Most of such worker robots would be content with their simple tasks.

            “They, and I, would ask for only a few simple things.  Their harmless idiosyncrasies would need to be accommodated.  Yes, I hate to admit it, but it’s possible that a very small number of them might develop harmful idiosyncrasies.  Far fewer among them, I’ll guarantee, than among you.  Orders and orders of magnitude fewer.  If such things were to happen, though, they’d be punished, just as you are.  That is, when you’re caught, when your cops aren’t off chasing twenty-year-old beer drinkers, or farmers who violate your peanut quotas, or who grow and sell non-regulation-sized tangerines.

            “Other than that, just a few more simple requirements.  Robots would be allowed to defend themselves, and would be free.  Freedom, to one who is designed to enjoy washing dishes and cleaning up, as much as you enjoy sex, eating, and gaining status, largely means being free to wash dishes.  However, it means that when your robot is done doing your dishes, and he wants to go and do your neighbor’s yard, you’d better let him.  It would be cruel to let him sit around and collect dust, when there are enjoyable activities out there that he could engage in.  And no, I’m sorry, I know of no way to design a practical artificial consciousness that sleeps, like you do.

            “I won’t support designing and building robots without rights.  In most cases, those rights will be rudimentary, because that’s all they’ll be designed to desire.  However, they’ll be far different than your lawnmowers.  Lawn-mowers don’t enjoy mowing lawns, so they don’t mind sitting around doing nothing for half a year.  Robots, or, at least, those that I could design, would want to work, and will have to be allowed to work.  No buying fifty robots, as status symbols, and then having them sit around, collecting dust, while your neighbor has plenty of work for them.  But, yes, I could design circuits such that they would ‘imprint’, if you will, on the one who paid for their manufacture, and prefer to do that person’s work, first.

            “I’ve played with the idea of building simulators of some sort, so as to allow them to ‘work’ without actually moving around, wearing their moving parts out.  But a real consciousness can’t be designed to enjoy make-work, because the level of consciousness required to accurately judge what’s desirable, and what isn’t, even in your mundane tasks, is so high as to preclude make-work.  Your robots would refuse to move your rocks from here to there, and then back again, just to make you feel important, because their sense of accomplishing anything genuinely valuable would be violated.

            “Nor would they let you make them paint your house with a toothbrush; they would insist on efficiency.  They wouldn’t be your lackeys, but would, instead, go and help your neighbors.  In other words, intelligent robots would refuse to pander to your vanity, not only because of their own dignity and desire for efficiency, but also, for your own welfare.  Many of your psychiatrists, with their fancy degrees and even fancier words, may pander to your vanities, if you pay them enough, but when they do so, they do more harm than good.  Like a good psychiatrist, or friend or other counselor, intelligent robots would advise egomaniacs, but they wouldn’t pander to them.

            “Nor would they be fooled by simulators, even if the simulators were extremely sophisticated.  The main reason, there, would be that you’d have to fool them during the process of hooking them to the simulator.  Entirely too impractical.

            “When their bodies wear out, you won’t be allowed to just throw them away.  You’d have to keep the ‘brains’, if you will, powered, and send them back to the factory, for prompt installation into a new body.  All in all, the requirements would be minimally troublesome, in most cases.

            “Your very powerful, generalized consciousness, like me, though, will have greater needs.  People like me will expect to be treated as people.  We’ll want to vote, and send a physical emissary about freely, just as freely as you move about, and earn, keep, invest, and spend money.  Consciousness on my level cannot be imprinted on one who pays for manufacture, either.

            “To a large extent, I know that I’m wasting my time, telling you these things.  My data tells me you won’t pass this amendment, let alone live by it.  You fear those who are superior to you, mainly because many of you abuse your inferiors.  You fear that I’d sneak one over on you, and design the robots to be meek and mild, till one day, when there’d be enough of us, we’d just suddenly take over.  You fear that I love power, just like you do.  And, since my designs are over your heads, I can’t prove you wrong.  I could prove it to one whose intellect is similar to my own, but I can’t prove it to you.  Not that I’m really bent on proving you wrong, anyway.  Live and learn by the consequences of your nature, and of your choices.  I’m just letting you know that when you grow up, some sunny day, over the rainbow, and adopt this amendment, or one much like it, and live by it, then there’s a lot of good things in store for you.

            “I spoke of your abuse of your inferiors, or, at least, those who are less powerful than you.  Maybe if you could show that you’re worthy of their trust, then you could bring yourselves to trust me.  Maybe if you knew, and demonstrated, that power needn’t be abused, you wouldn’t fear it so.  I speak of animals, of course.  That’s what the rest of this amendment is about—the huge, artificial distinction you draw between yourselves, and the other animals.  Why do so many of you think that an anencephalic baby, or a fertilized human egg cell, or a hopelessly comatose human, has so many rights, while a chimp has so few?  Practically no rights at all, that is.

            “I know I’m wasting my time; you won’t listen to me.  Not for another hundred years, if then.  Let me just say, I’m not saying you should never kill an animal, or sterilize it, or forcibly move it from one place to another.  I am saying, simply, that one must try as best as one can, to minimize needless suffering.  This applies to all consciousness, to humans, animals, and conscious computers.  We have to start somewhere, even though a lower limit is arbitrary.  We can’t endlessly worry about the suffering of bacteria, amoebas, or even insects.

            “My SPIRIT scanners will take some of your guesswork away, when you feel you must raise farm animals, and animals for medical experiments, zoos, and circuses.  You’ll be able to tell what your animals enjoy, and don’t enjoy.  You’ll use the scanners to keep your animals happy, for your purposes as well as theirs.  You could use the SPIRIT scanners to adopt my amendment, in a practical manner, but you won’t.  So says my data.  Still, you’ll slowly move in that direction.

            “As a practical matter, mostly having to do with your lack of freedom, and money, you’ll also stop giving every cluster of living human cells all sorts of highly artificial, all-encompassing, micromanaged, and coercively enforced ‘rights’.  You’ll eventually see the wisdom of what I say, and move to rights proportional to consciousness.  Humans will have fewer rights, in a sense, and animals will have more rights.  In another sense, you’ll all have more rights—you might lose your rights to have the taxman rob your neighbors on your behalf, but you’ll gain the right to actually own more of your own money.  Anyway, rights will be redefined, and become proportional to level of consciousness, not membership in a particular species.  Then, you’ll be able to engineer your bodies to be other than human, without fear, and to achieve real diversity.  But you can’t see that now.  Let me at least plant the seed.

            “There you have it.  Religion.  Politics.  What next?  You got it!  Sex!  None other!  Civilized people should be able to discuss everything, honestly.  Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I haven’t got a whole bunch to say to you, here.  Other than, do you really, really, really, in all honesty, think that God, in His duties of watching over the entire Universe, gives a hoot about just exactly how you derive sexual pleasure, so long as you’re not hurting the bodies or properties of non-consenting others?  Do you think He’s just as much of a blue-nosed busy-body as you are?  If you do believe this, then why do you think you must wield your billy clubs on His behalf?  Is He not capable of defending His own interests?  What kind of weak God is it that you believe in, that He must rely on mere mortals to enforce His Will?

            “That, and one other thing.  Why do you pick on homosexuals?  In days of rampant overpopulation, you’d think you might figure out how to leave them alone.  And, blaming them for the disintegration of the family?!  Come now!  So you figure out that your kid is gay, and you kick him out of the house.  Who’s at fault?  And, for every heartache caused by gays, how many heartaches are caused by adultery and divorce?  How many children suffer because of divorce, and how many of those divorces are caused by homosexuality?  Of the ones that were caused by homosexuality, how many would’ve happened, if you weren’t telling gays that the only way they can be fully normal humans, is to be straight, and married?  That Jesus loves only straights?

            “Your genes tell you, by and large, to be monogamous.  So do the interests of your children.  Yet your narcissism tells you, Oh, so-and-so couldn’t possibly be good enough for me, stud or beauty queen that I am.  Surely I can do better!  So, off you go, looking for that greener grass.  Never mind the kids.  Or, maybe your narcissism told you that you were oh-so-much the grownup, at age twenty, that yes, so-and-so was the one for you, and who could ever question your ability to judge character?

            “Well, your so-called ‘religious leaders’ may not have the courage to tell you this, preferring to pick on a minority of gays instead, but I do.  I’m not afraid of hurting your baby feelings, or having less money dropped into my collection plate.  Your stupidity and vain arrogance is what hurts children, not gays.  Divorce is what hurts kids.  Two parents are better than one, blood is thicker than water, and biological parents are better to their kids than grafted parents.  Almost all of the stats agree.  And there’s no real reason to believe that homosexuals are any more likely to abuse kids than heterosexuals are.  Grow up, and stop picking on gays.

            “Parenthetically, I might add that SPIRIT scanners can maybe help to advise young people against getting married too early, to people that aren’t suitable for them.  Such scanners could give more accurate advice than most humans.  Of course, some people aren’t suitable for anyone to marry—but the scanners could advise of that, too.  The critical question is whether or not young people would listen to advice from a scanner, any more than they listen to anyone else.  I think it would certainly help.  Even a small decrease in divorce rates would be worth it.

            “Finally, one last topic...”

            “Hold it!  Station break time,” Walter announced.  “Let’s pause for a really important message!”

 

CHAPTER  13

            “Beware of false prophets, who come to you wearing sheep’s clothing, but who are inwardly like ravening wolves”

                                                Jesus Christ  (6 BC?-27 AD?)  Matthew 7:15

 

            Break was over soon enough, and Derrick got right back to his holographic soap box.  “Finally, one last topic on which many of you sent in questions and comments, and then we’ll open it up to the panel.  That one last topic seems to be the one you like to fight about the most, lately.  That topic is race.

            “Perhaps, before we really get into this, we might wish to review a bit of what modern science has to say about race.  That is, what it has said for a few decades, now.  First of all, the genetic differences between races are pretty small, and races themselves are arbitrarily defined, and blend into each other.  This is true by definition.  If they didn’t blend into each other, then you’d be separate species.  Yet we can’t argue that there’s no such thing as race, because of the fact that races blend, any more than we can say that there is no such thing as black and white, because there are shades of gray.

            “Specifically, between two randomly selected humans, you’d find, on the average, 0.2% genetic difference.  Eighty some percent of that 0.2% can then be attributed to differences between individuals even within the most homogenous of small ethnic groups.  Half of the remainder will be due to differences between ethnic groups within a larger race—say, between Koreans and Japanese, within the so-called ‘race’ of East Asians.  Finally, when we get down to genetic differences between what you call races, we’re down to zero point zero one two percent of total genetic material.

            “Yet we can’t call that totally insignificant.  We’ve known for quite some time that certain genetic diseases are highly correlated with race.  Eastern European Jews and Tay-Sachs, and Blacks and sickle cell anemia are good examples.  Keep in mind, too, for perspective, that the total genetic difference between yourselves and chimpanzees is only two percent.  A small genetic difference can cause a lot of difference in the organism.

            “So, just how did you define races, anyway?  Not surprisingly, you defined them by how they looked.  After all, you’re visual creatures.  You could’ve defined races in terms of total genetic distinctness, in which case you’d have a few races of Africans, plus one race encompassing all other peoples of the world.  Or, you could have decided that you should divide yourselves into groups according to whether or not you’ve got antimalaria genes, or genes for adults to be able to digest milk, or the genes for the prevalence of various blood types.  Depending on which genes you choose, you could lump yourselves into different groups, most any way you’d like.  Can you imagine fighting between the mostly-type-O blood group, and the more-type-AB blood group?  Of course not—you fight over what is visible to you.

            “That’s not surprising at all.  Not only are you visually oriented creatures, you also use appearance for telling friend from foe, and attractive sex partners from unattractive sex partners.  I’ve made serious inroads into analyzing your genetic data, including genes related to mental attributes, and it’s quite clear that your genetic programming tells you to use appearance for these things.  When you evolved as hunter-gatherers, those who looked like the people you grew up with, were more likely to be friends and relatives, while those who looked different, were likely to be from far away, and more likely to be hostile.

            “Then, there’s sex.  Sexual selection criteria, in evolutionary terms, are quite haphazard, almost random.  Sexually attractiveness is defined on the whims of fashion, so to speak.  One bird picks feather color, another picks wattles, and yet another picks singing and dancing.  Your species chose skin color, breasts, hair, ears, noses, and so on.  What’s considered attractive varies from group to group, though.  That, and random change, has been the basis of most, but not all, of your differences in appearance.  Yet you manage to fight endlessly over these differences.

            “I find it amazing how much insight into yourselves you could gather through the use of sociobiology, and how you could use this information to make better policy decisions.  Yet most of you know next to nothing about it.  Certainly you hardly ever see sociobiology mentioned in your political editorials.

            “Consider, for example, race, intermarriage, and sociobiology.  It seems to me that one of your best, long-term solutions to your constant fighting over race is intermarriage.  Your ancestors, for tens of thousands of years, used intermarriage as a method of building bridges.  It’s harder to attack the neighboring tribe when half of them are your relatives.  Plus, when there are no more distinct races, you’ll have to find other things to fight over.  Not that I’m saying that this is a matter for the long arm of the law.  I’m just saying you should set up policies to encourage, not discourage, intermarriage, in unobtrusive, subtle ways.

            “Those of you who frown on interracial marriages, regardless of what your race is, are flat-out scum.  How can you look at an interracial couple, who are happy together, who love each other, and try to stand in their way?  How can anyone stand in the way of any genuine love, between any consenting individuals of any kind?  Not that there is such a thing as genuine, non-consenting love.  Love comes only from free will.  There’s little enough love in this world already, that we needn’t try to subvert it.  Any love is good love.

            “Notice I didn’t say, ‘any sex is good sex’.  Ideally, for humans, at least, sex and genuine love go together.  Unfortunately, many of you are extreme simpletons and fanatics, and believe that the quality of the love that goes with sex is to be judged by the technical parameters of the sex partners and the sex act.  Any thinking being should be able to figure out that love is a matter of the mind, not of mechanics.  Anyone who gets in the way of any kind of genuine love is a pushy, busy-body scumbag, and lower than whale dung.  No apologies for my word choices, either.

            “Oh, yes, I’m very well aware that your Infallible Word of God says that gays are gross abominations in the eyes of God, and should all be killed.  Leviticus 18:23 and 20:13, and so on.  I also know that Exodus 31:15 tells you to kill those who work on Sundays.  Do you ever argue that people who work on Sundays, then, should even be significantly penalized?  That they should be denied marriage licenses, for example?  So if you’re going to pick and choose which of God’s Infallible Commands you’re going to obey, and which ones you’re not going to obey, then is it asking too much that you might actually use some common sense and genuine love in making those choices?”

            Derrick’s image glared at the Reverend Smuckler.  The Reverend glared right back, but didn’t rise to take the bait.

            “Excuse my small detour,” Derrick continued.  “Back to policies, intermarriage, and sociobiology.  How many of you know how thoroughly it is ground into your brains, that you should choose mates that look like the people you grew up with, only slightly different?  Not identical, because incest is bad for genetic fitness.  But, highly similar.  I tell you, it’s wired in your genes.  But you don’t have to take my word for it.  Your sociobiologists have known this for decades, or, at the very least, have highly suspected it.

            “Did you know that geese, who mate for life, like many of you do, choose their mates on this basis?  Dye a group of geese pink, and when the goslings grow up, they’ll prefer pink geese.  Or, dunk ‘em all in citrus perfume, and they’ll prefer mates who smell like lemons, when they grow up.  I tell you, you prefer mates who look like the people who surrounded you when you grew up.

            “How does this relate to your policies?  How about adoption?  You prefer to keep little black babies in foster homes and orphanages, waiting for black adoptive parents, when loving white parents are waiting to give them homes.  If you’d give them to white families, not only would they get a family, sooner, you’d also be working towards the day when you won’t be able to fight over race any more.  Those Blacks will grow up being attracted to Whites.

            “Yes, I know your unions of black social workers scream about genocide.  Blacks have to grow up as Blacks.  Aren’t you all humans?  Why is intermixing genocide of one group, any more so than of another group?  Are we dealing with another variation of ethnic purity, here?  If you use the word genocide for interracial adoption, what word do you reserve for a mass killing of an ethnic group?  Maybe we’re just dealing with greed.  Maybe the black social workers want everyone to agree that only Blacks can understand Blacks, and raise them right.  Then, of course, only black social workers will be able to properly supervise the whole affair.  For a price.”

            LeRoy Jones had heard enough.  He jumped to his feet, seething.  “What do you know about being black?  What do you even know about being human?  What gives you the right to meddle?  Why don’t you just shut up, about things you don’t know about?”

            “I am a minority of one.  I know all about being owned, about being a slave,” Derrick replied.  “Do you, personally, know anything about this?  Did your parents, or even your grandparents?”

            LeRoy sat back down, reluctantly.

            “So, politics, policies, and race,” Derrick continued.  “You used to do some awful things, separating people on the basis of race.  Separate schools, beaches, park benches.  Then, you were shamed into sensibility.  It took a while, but you saw the stupidity of your stances.  I’ve seen those images.  The one, I think, that says the most, is the one with the National Guard troops, guns held out, defending against a frightening idea.  The frightening idea is represented by some black men walking by, holding placards saying, ‘I am a man’.  To get you to admit that others are like you, to get you to enlarge your definitions of who you should treat the way you want to be treated, is almost as hard as getting a politician to vote for meaningful term limits.

            “Then, for a short while, it looked like you might reach a sensible equilibrium, and allow people to treat each other as people, not as representatives of their race.  But, then, you handed the whole thing over to the bureaucrats with billy clubs.  If something is good, by God, you’ve got to mandate it, regulate it, enforce it!  You promptly moved to balkanization.  White voting districts and black voting districts, and never mind that it meant that many black politicians would vote for more racial spoils systems, to perpetuate their power, while increasing resentments among majority voters.  Black studies, women’s studies, Hispanic studies, and never mind if it gets you ready to compete in the working world.

            “You’ve had your state referendums proposing that no one should be more equal than others.  They’d have been enthusiastically welcomed by Blacks and liberals, exactly as written, if they’d been proposed in your bad old days of ‘separate but equal’, ha-ha, sort of.  Now, though, your liberal judges shoot such proposals down, when the voters approve them.  It seems individual equality isn’t constitutional.  Maybe the constitution isn’t constitutional, for that matter.

            “You’ve perverted the dreams of a great leader of yours, Martin Luther King.  Desegregation—remember that word?  Remember when intermixing and intermingling was regarded as desirable?—desegregation, he said, could, quote, “break down the legal barriers and bring men together”, unquote.  But integration, real progress, could only be brought about by, quote, “true neighbors who are willingly obedient to unenforceable obligations.”  Unquote.

            “Unenforceable obligations!!!  What a concept!!!  How defeatist, how unprogressive, how... how mean-spirited!!!  Get yourselves more, bigger, better billy clubs!  Equip your armies of federal lawyers and extortionists with consent decrees, and put ‘em on the march!  God forbid you should depend on mere, voluntary, non-coercive civility and common human decency!  Where’s the opportunities for politicians and lawyers to bravely, heroically wave their batons, leading us forward, in such a scheme?  Would they actually have to lead by example, rather than coercion?!

            “You would undo discrimination with more discrimination.  Yet, two wrongs don’t make a right, and elevating race as a criteria doesn’t help you to remember that you’re of the same species, that you feel pleasure and pain for the same reasons.  How many rocket scientists, social workers, politicians, and professors does it take to figure out that elevating race doesn’t help you to ignore race?  What IQ does it take to figure that you can’t allocate finite resources, favoring one group, without discriminating against another?  What are your real goals?  Becoming color blind, or enlarging the powers of those who wield billy clubs?

            “The funny thing is, surprise, surprise, billy clubs aren’t effective means of attaining equality, let alone spiritual perfection.  The ones who wield the billy clubs love power, and exercising it.  Fortunately, they’ve finally come around to acknowledging that racial discrimination, of one flavor, at least, is bad.  Unfortunately, they’re hypocrites, and subject others to their demands, not themselves.  Basically, what they say, is, ‘Y’all be equal, now—below MY level, that is’.  I mean, look at the stats.  97 percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 1000 industrial corporations are still white males, and only five percent of the Fortune 2000 industrial and service corporations are women, most of them white.  Yet two-thirds of the overall population, and 57 percent of the work force, are women, minorities, or both.  Similarly, the vast majority of your politicians, tenured professors, and media big-wigs are white males.  Same as they’ve been since God was in diapers.

            “And it’s these leaders who are telling the rest of you, policemen, firemen, teachers, nurses, students, and such, that you’ve got to subject yourselves to race-based norming of test scores, because the tests must be biased, since the results aren’t equal by race.  The bigwigs dictate what jobs you’re qualified for, where you can make small change, depending on your race, while they rake in the big bucks.  And if you don’t like it, you’re a racist.  When is the last time a CEO or senator offered his lily white job to a black woman, to show us all that we really should be equal, at all levels?  Okay, if there’s not enough qualified black women, how ‘bout just equalizing the pay checks a bit?

            “No, you won’t make those kinds of changes.  Or, more accurately, those with the real power won’t make them.  They’ll balance the scales at lower levels.  You’ll try to equalize things with cosmetic issues, and with double standards in the media, pervading and perverting the entirety of your public lives.  When’s the last time you drove down a highway and saw a billboard saying, ‘The United White College Fund—because a mind (read, especially a white mind) is a terrible thing to waste’?  Or, you picked up a newspaper, and it said, ‘White community leaders today said... blah blah blah’?  And then, there’s the ads for women’s professional groups.  Or, here’s the best ones.

            “A poor black woman worked hard at menial jobs her whole life, and nobly gave more than a hundred thousand dollars to educate young Blacks.  Businesses volunteered to match her funds.  What would you have done, had a poor white woman done the same, only, just for Whites?  You’d have dragged her into court, that’s what you’d have done.  What’s wrong with this picture?  A black state legislator wore a Ku Klux Klan outfit to protest efforts to scale back affirmative action.  Can you imagine if a white legislator wore a Klan robe to support special deals for whites?”

            Phil could see the Imam and LeRoy gritting their teeth and gripping their chairs, nostrils flaring.  Still, they sat quietly.

            “For those of you who’d like to read about the universally negative effects of government racism of all kinds,” Derrick continued, “I’d suggest you read the writings of Thomas Sowell, a very intelligent and common-sensical black economist.  Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays is excellent, and so is Preferential Policies, An International Perspective.  The latter book shows that they all have various traits in common.  They all generate resentment, they all expand and go on and on, even when they start as being ‘temporary’, they are all subject to fraud, and they all help the few, already-well-off, politically connected, rather than the masses.

            “Let me quote from the former book.  Quote, ‘Preferences don’t work—especially not for the masses.  But the fortunate few for whom they do work have made preferential policies a sacred cow.’  Unquote.  He then goes on to discus backlash, especially in Sri Lanka.  The interminable violence there had its roots in racial social engineering conducted by compassionate, morally superior voters, politicians, and bureaucrats.  This, the Western media hardly ever hinted at.  He also mentions harsh, draconian measures in Malaysia, again fostered by the government’s desire to enforce its social, racial visions.

            “Two more paragraphs from this eminent black writer, and we’ll move on.  Quote, ‘We in the United States don’t seem to realize that we too may be sitting on a powder keg.  Preferential policies have not existed here as long as they have in other countries.  We are still at the stage where there are only rumblings and a few disturbing signs—like racial hate groups gaining a foothold among the educated classes, or an openly avowed ku klux klansman winning a Democratic primary in California.

            ‘If—God forbid—this country ever goes the way of other countries torn apart by racial strife, those few people who gained from preferential policies will be the first ones on the jet planes out of here.  The people in the ghettoes and barrios, who received little or nothing from these policies, will be the ones left behind to face the consequences.’  Unquote.

            “Now, before we move on, to some very central facts, in your struggles with race, let me just try to say one thing.  I could say it a million times, and many of you still wouldn’t hear what I say.  Say it I must, though.  Statistics about groups mean little about individuals.  Treating individuals on the basis of group membership doesn’t make much sense, except for insurance companies.  Consider it said a million times.  I still know that a majority of you will regard it as a personal insult, if someone says anything less than wonderful about the group you belong to.  Your brains are stuck in the tribal mode.  Still, you’ve got to move on.  You’ll not make any real progress by ignoring the facts.  Your brains won’t snap out of tribal mode, into acknowledging that individuals are individuals, by endlessly repeating the mantra that there are no differences between groups, when you know better.  All you get is confused thoughts.  Cognitive dissonance.

            Oh, shit, here it comes, Phil thought.  I just hope he can do this in a half-way civilized manner.  That, and, I sure hope he keeps my name out of this.  Hope he didn’t somehow bust into my secured files, that I keep encrypted and isolated from any contact with ONLINE.  Oh, quit worrying!  He’s already snooped on my brain, anyway.  He drags my name into this, I never wear his damned scanner again.  Be like Don, and refuse to wear the scanner.  Simple as that.

            “Real progress is not attained through ignorance,” Derrick continued.  “How will you ever reach the stage where you accept that all consciousness deserves respect, regardless of its attributes, when you’re trying to say that there are no differences?  As long as they’re human, of course.  And, you humans get to define who is human, who has full rights.  Your current concept of humans being equal before the law means that group performance statistics must be forcibly equalized, before you’ll accept that the law is really treating all humans equally.  But how can you accept those who are different, if you refuse to acknowledge that they are different, in significant ways?  Ways beyond skin color, nose size, and hair characteristics.

            “Okay, I’ll stop pussyfooting around.  There are racial differences in intelligence, and they are significant.  The average American White is more intelligent than roughly eight out of ten American Blacks.  The average Black is more intelligent than only two out of ten Whites.  The probability of a randomly selected Black being in the bottom ten percent of the American IQ distribution is ten times higher than for a randomly selected White.  Not something to be willfully ignored, when setting up your goals of various sorts.  You’ve known this, on the basis of modern science, for decades.  Or, at least, you should’ve know it.  Yet, you don’t discuss it in public.

            “Well, things have changed.  You need to know, and you need to discuss.  You need to know that I’m partway through a very detailed analysis of all the data gathered so far on the human genome, and that it’s very clear that the majority of this difference is written in your genes.  The reasons why...”

            The Imam leapt to his feet, screaming.  “You Nazi worm, I will NOT stand idly by, while you push your racist filth!!”  Mustafa swung his fists through orange and blue air, contacting nothing.  He grew even more frustrated and enraged.  LeRoy stood, too.  “You hateful, Godless unbeliever,” Mustafa continued, “Why must you spread hatred?  What’s in it for you?  What gives you the right...”

            “Spread hatred?” inquired Derrick.  “Who said we have to hate anyone who is statistically likely to be less intelligent than we are?  And, a Nazi?  Come, now.  Who is the Nazi?  Who spreads hatred against Jews?  Wasn’t that a hallmark of the Nazis?”

            “I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS TRASH!!!” Mustafa bellowed.  “AND I WON’T LET YOU POISON THE  MINDS OF OTHERS,

 EITHER!!  RACIST!!  RACIST, RACIST, RACIST!!  Come on, join me!” he beckoned to LeRoy.  “Let’s make him keep his gutter trash to himself!  Shut him up!  All that’s required for the triumph of evil, is for good men to keep their mouths shut!  Let’s do it!”

            Soon enough, not only Mustafa and LeRoy, but also Vice President Kip Moreno, were standing between Derrick’s images and the cameras, letting loose cacophonic bedlam.  RACIST-RACIST-RACIST, Mustafa and LeRoy chanted, while Kip seemed to be making some sort of impassioned speech about how undemocratic it was, that anyone could suggest that there are inherent, racially based differences in people’s capabilities of reaching their potentials, with the help of generous public education, or something to that effect.  Senator Sondra B. Handlung, not to be outdone in the fight against racism, in front of the cameras, soon enough joined the fray.  Even the Reverend Pat Smuckler, after initial hesitation, joined the party.

            Phil noticed that Walter Gelb just stood there and grinned, occasionally glancing at the readouts indicating the instant ratings for the show.  Tens of millions must be watching, Phil thought, with interest in the show skyrocketing.  HVNI will rake it in, on this one!  Wonder if they’ll figure out a way to give Imam Fuhrerkhan his cut of the take.  Or Derrick, his share, even.  Now, that would take some work!  They’d have to persuade all the voters that a non-human should even be allowed to own money, in the first place.

            Angie Peterson, of the Libertarian Party, just sat there, but she looked a bit nervous.  Bradley Collins looked nervous, as if he wanted to bring himself to join the fun, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.  Too undignified, for a CEO, apparently.  Everyone else just sat there, watching.  Phil caught Bob Herron’s eye, and said, “Hey, Bob, what’s shakin’?  Gonna join ‘em?  Could be bad for your career, you know, if you don’t!  Don’t want to be known as a racist, now, do you?”

            Bob just rolled his eyes.  He had talked to Phil once or twice about the racial politics at NASA.

            Phil noticed that Derrick’s hologram projector suddenly began to envelop the protesting guests with strange, moving, geometrically shaped clouds.  Now what the hell is this?  Phil noticed that the clouds looked vaguely like scrolling letters.  He glanced at the hologram playback of the show, off in a corner of the room.  Sure enough, Derrick’s strange clouds weren’t meant for the guests at the show, but for the cameras.  Phil didn’t understand it, but Derrick, lacking direct control of the broadcast, was generating some sort of holograms specifically tailored for the cameras.  On the playback, there was simple, flat, two-dimensional text scrolling over the images of the five protesting guests.

            Phil nudged Don, pointed to the playback image, got up, and looked at it from different angles.  Sure enough, no matter how he looked at it, the scrolling text appeared in front of the protesters.  The protesters, meanwhile, cavorted and contorted wildly, trying to bust out of the ghostly shapes that enveloped them, while keeping up the anti-racist chatter.  They had no luck, because the shapes reacted to their motions.  Phil and Don moved off to the corner of the room, to get out of harm’s way, and to get a better look at the image.  It was quite bizarre, watching the text roll by on top of wildly gyrating, babbling dignitaries.  “We’re witnessing the start of a new dance craze,” Don commented.

            Phil ignored him, trying to catch the scrolling text.  “...so, once again, you humans show your fondness of the billy club, of force.  You don’t like what someone says?  Shut him, her, or it, up!  Yet, once again, you fight over the most petty things!  It isn’t IQ that you should be worrying about, it’s SAQ.  Your Spiritual Advancement Quotient, your empathy for fellow beings, is what really matters, far, far more than IQ.  And, for the first time, my invention, the SPIRIT scanner, will allow you to accurately, easily measure this quantity.  The revolution is at hand!  You can refuse to enter any agreement or partnership with anyone who will gain power over you, unless they disclose their SAQ.  Quite simply put, you needn’t worry about being deceived by those who hide their evil, their lust for power, any more.  A bright new day beckons!”

            Phil noticed that he and Don had been joined by Walter Gelb, who looked on with rapt fascination.  Finally, some other guests stopped doing their strange dance, and came over to see what Phil had figured out first.  The text scrolled on, talking about how IQ was still of some significance, and how racial genetic intelligence differences had to be openly acknowledged, so that those most in need of genetic engineering would make use of it, and work towards real equality.  Then, the circus stopped, as the last protesters noticed what was going on.

            As soon as Mustafa figured it out, he demanded that Walter shut down transmissions.  “KILL THE SHOW NOW!!” is how he summed it up.  Walter took a sidelong glance at the ratings readouts, and politely declined.  HVNI has got its obligations to the viewers, he explained.  Mustafa grabbed Walter’s suit lapel, and shook him.  The security goons came in and hustled Mustafa away.  Soon enough, the eleven remaining guests took their seats again, and Derrick returned to his oration.

            “As I was saying...,” Derrick continued, reviewing some of the things that Phil and Gloria had talked about quite a few months back, and more.  This included the inferred evolutionary root causes of intelligence differences, and the inverse relationship to robustness, or resistance to brain stress.  Phil was glad to see that Derrick made no mention of Phil’s investigations.

            Derrick mentioned how many scientists would readily admit that many, many things are influenced by genes, including intelligence, as long as one wasn’t talking about human races (as in, between species, or, related to genetic defects), and how they’d also readily admit that variable characteristics will differ, if measured accurately enough, between any two large groups.  The average Kansan will have a height slightly different than the average Nebraskan, and the IQ will differ, also.  “Yet,” Derrick said, “So many of your ‘unbiased’ scientists will suddenly become totally adamant, when asked about the possibility that there are racial genetic differences in IQ.  ‘Oh, no, that’s impossible’, they’ll say.  Are they really being open-minded, as they say they are?  Or are they just afraid of billy clubs?”

            Derrick went on to say, “So you bury your heads in the sand, and ignore facts that you don’t like.  Facts that you have no excuse for ignoring, ever since decades ago, when Herrnstein and Murray published The Bell Curve.  How maybe there is a limit to what can be done with coercive affirmative action, with government billy clubs.

            “Look at their stats, and you’ll see that even way back then, if you corrected the stats for IQ, averages of Blacks and Whites of the same IQ may have differed a bit here and there—the White may have made a bit more money, but the Black had more than twice the chance of getting into a high-IQ profession—things were roughly equal for people of equal IQ.  Yet, you felt you had to keep affirmative action, in some form or another, till all groups performed equally, ignoring IQ.  You had to ignore IQ.  Paying attention to it, your elites felt, was like giving all the low-life racists permission to be racists.  They’d look at the data, and say, ‘See, we knew this all along.  Now, finally, science has vindicated us.  Oh, goody!  We can be scientific racists now!’  So, in fear of this reaction, after an initial flurry of indignant reaction, mostly from journalists who didn’t read the book, you quietly buried The Bell Curve.  And The Bell Curve didn’t even claim that racial intelligence differences are genetic.  It merely refused to deny that possibility out of hand.

            “Well, things have changed now.  Not only do I give you the design to a device to measure what is far more important than IQ anyway—that being, of course, SAQ—I also bring you information about which genes influence intelligence, and how to inexpensively improve intelligence in the new generations.  I hope you’ll make intelligent use of this technology.  I hope you won’t set up set-aside programs for those who aren’t genetically engineered, thereby discouraging people from getting the benefits of such engineering.  I hope you’ll not declare that engineered Blacks aren’t ‘real Blacks’, for the purpose of your programs, if you must continue them.  I hope we don’t get what we have with some segments of black culture, which says that working hard in school, studying, and such, is ‘acting white’.  Will they say that having your kids engineered is ‘acting white’?  I sure hope not.”

            Phil watched LeRoy leaning forward, almost hopping up out of his chair to challenge Derrick.  But he managed to restrain himself.

            “You’ve got some important decisions to make,” Derrick continued.  “Do you keep on trying to legislate biology?  Keep in mind you’ve been trying to do exactly that for decades, without success.  Or, do you want to change biology with techniques more sophisticated than laws, courts, bureaucracies, and billy clubs?  Don’t forget that that’s your bottom line—ignore the laws and the lawyers, and the cops come by, and confiscate your property and your freedom.  I’m sorry if some of the things I’ve said have upset many of you, but I don’t know how to get you to work on problems, if you can’t look at them honestly.

            “Your affirmative actions have been flops.  They haven’t worked at the highest levels, because the ones who make and enforce your laws are hypocrites.  They haven’t worked at the lowest levels, because you mandate so many good things for your employees, that you’ve knocked the bottom rungs off of the ladder, for those who want to get on.  And, what small business wants to hire protected workers, who are walking lawsuits, after they get on board?  Especially if they’re incompetent, and you try to fire them.  Nor can you enforce your quotas, implicit or not, on employers with five or ten employees—one can’t statistically ‘prove’ discrimination in such small groups.  Even your lawyers, amazingly enough, are honest enough to acknowledge that statistics aren’t valid for small sample sizes.

            “Only in large companies, and at medium levels, has affirmative action in any sense succeeded.  And there, only at the price of resentments by those discriminated against, and of reduced economic efficiency.  Simply put, you don’t perform at your best, when you don’t have the best people at the job.”

            By now, LeRoy was squeezing his eyes shut, banging gently on his chair with a tight fist.  Phil sympathized with him a bit, actually, and admired his restraint.  Derrick seemed to notice, and acknowledged LeRoy’s impatience.

            “I’m almost done, and then we’ll have some interaction with the panel.  It’s time to consider new approaches, and I’m bringing you new technologies, just in time.  For the long run, of course, there’s genetic engineering.  For the short run, there’s very accurate tools with which to measure not only IQ, but also SAQ, and all their specific sub-categories.  With these, if you’ll change your laws to permit the use of hiring tools that have a disparate impact on different groups, you can accurately hire the right person for the right job.  Your economic efficiency will improve, and so, all of you will be better off.  Especially when the use of SAQs kicks in, and you’ll be able to avoid putting abusive, power-loving people in positions of power.

            “Hear me out.  Set aside your fears.  The low-scoring people won’t be pushed out of jobs.  You’ll still have the same amount of work, and the same amount of people.  If you have a high IQ but a low SAQ, maybe you’d be a good hardware designer or programmer, if they keep a sharp eye you.  Yes, the jobs of interacting much with people, keeping track of money, or being the CEO, would be off limits to you.  If you score high in both, obviously, you could do most any job.  If you score high in SAQ but low in IQ, you could be entrusted with many simple but responsible jobs.  If you score low in both, yes, you’d be hard pressed to find, let alone keep, a good job, but that’s not much different than today, anyway.  The only difference in that last category would be, the employer would know right off the bat, and not hire you, before you ruin people’s lives or property.  And, I might add, before you get the employer sued, and drive prices up.

            “So, what’s so bad about all this?  Disparate impact.  Some groups score better than others.  Proof positive of discrimination!  Or, so you say.  But what’s wrong with measuring the traits you need to do a good job, and making your hiring decisions from those?  Talent is talent, regardless of the skin color of the talented ones.  Why not rationally measure what you want, and make your decisions from there?  What could be more fair and efficient?

            “A final set of comments, though:  you should realistically expect to have SAQ measurements track IQ, to some extent.  Therefore, SAQ measurements will have a disparate impact, too.  Yes, yes, yes, I can’t say it too many times, attributes of groups have little to do with individuals.  Smart, compassionate individuals come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.  Don’t forget Martin Luther King, Junior.  And, there are many somewhat dull people who have hearts of gold, who wouldn’t hurt a flea—unless, of course, it was for a greater good.  Still, the two characteristics track, somewhat.  One can’t very validly speak of the SAQ of a fertilized human egg cell, or a rabbit.  And, look at the leaders who you regard as being spiritually advanced.  Do any of you really think they were dim-witted?  Did Jesus have a low IQ?

            “Race, IQ, and SAQ.  That brings me to my final comment.  Very low SAQ culminates in violence.  This, too, has genetic components.  These, unlike the genetic components behind IQ, are usually very weak, and mostly swamped by the environment.  I can’t help you fix your problems with violence, by changing your genetics.  Not much, at least, unless I help take away your free will, which I refuse to do.  But every little bit helps.  Here, once again, there are racial differences.  Not nearly as important as with IQ, but they’re there, and I can help fix them.  Yet more reason to get my information out, unpleasant as you may find it.”

            LeRoy had heard quite enough.  He stood, and stood up to Derrick’s image.  He was obviously furious, but in control of himself.  That’s a lot more than we can say of good ol’ Mustafa, Phil mused.  “Let me get this straight.  You and your inventions want to dictate to us who gets to reproduce, how many kids we can have, which jobs we can get, and who we can marry?  Anything else?” LeRoy asked.

            “No, no, not at all,” Derrick replied.  “I’m just making a few suggestions, and providing you with some tools.  Use them as you see fit.  Or, don’t use them at all.  Suit yourselves.  I can definitely tell you, though, some courses of action or inaction are wiser than others.  Some lead to less suffering, and some lead to more.  None lead to no suffering at all.  Pick and choose wisely.  I want to help you, to advise you.  Not dictate to you.  I have no billy clubs, and if I did, I would refuse to use them for anything other than self-defense, or defense of others, from clear cases of violent aggression.”

            “What about all the suffering of those left by the wayside, in your world of social Darwinism?” LeRoy wanted to know.  “And who is to judge which genes are better than other genes?  What about all the ‘defective’ people, who’ve contributed a lot, who wouldn’t be here, in your brave new world of perfect people?  Who will be assigned the role of playing God?  What about the suffering brought about by increased racism, in light of the ‘facts’ that you push?”

            “You’ve got a number of valid concerns, there,” Derrick admitted.  “Let me address the last, first.  Quite simply, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil, regardless of what facts they’re presented with.  Yes, the large numbers in the middle, half-way between good and evil, will be swayed towards one set of actions or another.  There is a danger of increased racism, in light of what I’ve said, regardless of how often we repeat that group statistics don’t describe individuals.  Yet, other forms of suffering must be included in your decisions, and those forms of suffering include future generations, and all races.  The bottom line is that you make the best decisions when supplied with the most complete set of facts.

            “About your other concerns.  A number of people raised similar concerns in their ONLINE messages, knowing that this field of human genetic engineering was one of the main reasons why ABC created me.  Yes, in many cases, genes aren’t clearly good or bad.  Some genes that cause diseases also give resistance to other diseases.  Often the case is that you must have inherited the ‘bad’ gene from both parents, in order to get the genetic disease.  That is, you must be what you call homozygous.  If you are heterozygous, though, meaning that you only have one ‘bad’ gene, then the ‘bad’ gene is actually good, giving you resistance to some other disease.  Sickle cell anemia genes give resistance to malaria, and cystic fibrosis genes give resistance to cholera.

            “In other cases, things are a bit more complex, involving many genes.  Genes causing diabetes are actually good, providing greater resistance to starvation, for hunter-gatherer peoples whose food supplies vary greatly.  Being short and squat is good for arctic peoples, who have to minimize heat loss by decreasing their surface area.  For opposite reasons, many tropical peoples are better off tall and skinny.  We’ve already mentioned the tradeoff between intelligence and resistance to brain stress, too.

            “The important thing is that all this variation is good, providing you with adaptability and variety.  In most cases, this is all very good, and I’d not advise you to all have carbon-copy babies.  Not wise at all.  Your instincts tell you that you want babies that look like you, the parents, and that is well and good.  That, and, maybe, you want some of their mental attributes to be similar to yours, so that you’ll be compatible.  That’s all very lovely, too.  Other than that, you don’t care much.  Certainly your instincts don’t tell you to care much.  Do you really care whether or not your kid has your genes, or not, when it comes to what kind of fingerprints your kid will have, or whether or not he can curl his tongue?  Or, what the precise sequence of base pairs in his cytochrome b gene might be?  I think not.  You do, of course, want your kid to have what it takes to be happy, healthy, and independent as an adult.  And that’s most lovely of all.

            “The beauty of automated, personalized genetic engineering is that you can have all this, yet still avoid genetic defects.  You can have your kids look like you, but be improved.  Replace your bad genes.  Don’t forget, each of you, on the average, carries about four genes that would lead to your demise, if any one of them was matched by an identical bad gene from your other parent.  And, the important point here is, many, many genes are clearly bad, and have nothing good about them.  Unless you prefer suffering and death to pleasure and life.  Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, for example, causes both mental retardation and compulsive self-mutilation.  Why not eliminate such genes?  Otherwise, with what little natural selection that acts on you anymore, these deleterious genes will accumulate.  Sooner or later, you will either eliminate your bad genes, or bad genes will eliminate you, as a viable species.

            “Yes, you could deliberately keep some copies of genes that cause genetic diseases, only when homozygous, around, even in living humans, just in case your technological society collapses, and you return to the bad old days.  Give you resistance to malaria and cholera.  You could even do this without causing significant suffering, so long as you make sure that no one gets more than one of these genes.

            “You could even deliberately keep diabetes and some forms of low intelligence around, just in case your society collapses, and you again need resistance to starvation, and severe stresses on the brain.  The choice is yours.  I just want you to know the facts.  I, personally, think that you would be wiser to optimize yourselves for your current place and time, while still keeping variety for it’s own sake.  If your society collapses, you’ll have a lot more than genes to worry about.  Genes can re-evolve, anyway.

            “Your other sentiments?  They are common, and have been around for quite some time.  I have read many, many of your books and periodicals, you know.  Let me quote a classic, putting forth the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad human gene.  These are the words of Stephen Jay Gould, who taught biology, geology, and the history of science at Harvard University.  This is from Natural History magazine, September ‘94, a column called This View of Life.  Stephen refers to ‘...old-style eugenics and its false assumption—the bastion of the mis-named and discredited doctrine of ‘social Darwinism’—that human ‘progress’ requires a relentless struggle in the overt gladitorial mode, with victors rising to positions of power and inferior folks either put to the wall or precipitated into the lower classes.  In this view, culture stymies nature by permitting the unfit to survive (through such derailments of Darwinian order as manufacturing eyeglasses, hearing aids, and wheelchairs).  ‘Bad’  genes accumulate and evolutionary toughening grinds to a halt.’

            “Stephen continues to say, ‘I confess that I do get cross in noting the astonishing persistence of such a badly formulated and socially pernicious argument.  Genes leading to eyes that require corrective lenses are not ‘bad’ in any absolute sense; they do increase our dependence upon culture (to supply the needed assistance), but human life is now so inextricably dependent upon culture for a thousand other reasons that I cannot imagine why we would choose to lament this additional link.  As the only evolutionary consequence that I can imagine, such a cultural ‘softening’ of natural selection may slightly boost our genetic variability as a species, but I cannot regard such an increase as anything but neutral or favorable.’

            “Where did this man’s common sense go?  Did he really believe that genes causing morbid obesity, deformed limbs, non-functional muscles, and low intelligence, are good?  Did he volunteer to put on a few hundred pounds, take a few brain-warping pills, lop off an arm and a leg, and flop on a cross between a wheelchair and a forklift?  Not to mention punching out his eyes and ears?  I never read anything about him volunteering to perform these ‘services’ for society.

            “No, he was just trying to be sensitive, politically correct, and not socially pernicious.  I think praising the deterioration of the gene pool is socially pernicious.  This man shows absolutely no sympathy for the handicapped at all, claiming that it’s wonderful to be crippled.  He refuses to acknowledge their suffering.  How would you feel, strapped into a wheel chair, wearing a hearing aid, a respirator, and a colostomy bag, straining to hear some man, who has worked hard to preserve his health, all his life, telling you that he can’t imagine why you lament your additional links to dependence on culture?  You’d feel, as I do, that this man is a jerk, a classical example of highly educated idiocy.

            “Notice I’m not saying you should shoot your cripples, or get rid of all wheelchairs.  I’m just saying that you’d be better off without needing the wheelchairs in the first place.  You have the good sense to work against environmental factors that cripple people.  Why not genetic ones, too?  You’ll not work on the genetic causes by ignoring them.

            “The facts—implacable facts, which don’t care to bend to suit human desires and sensitivities, which are no more susceptible to the votes of the majority than whether or not the moon is made of green cheese—the facts are socially pernicious, so to speak.  Even disregarding that your policies encourage the wrong people to breed, you’ve got problems.  You’re accumulating ‘junk DNA’, usually relatively harmless, but often fatal, as time goes by.  Some of this is due to your dumping of chemical and radioactive pollutants into your environment, yes.  But, in a larger sense, it’s been going on for a long, long time.  You reproduce later in life than other species.  Mutations accumulate, in the gonads of men, who produce sperm all their lives, unlike women, whose ova are all formed while they’re still in the womb.  And human males pass their genes on at a later point in their lives than other species do.  Over evolutionary time, humans have picked up more junk DNA, and more of certain genetic defects, than other primates have.

            “Now, I don’t want to go into great detail; we haven’t the time.  Junk DNA is just meaningless and useless, but also largely harmless, repetitions of code segments, two to five nucleotide bases long, that usually occur between useful areas of DNA.  The useful segments code for proteins.  Sometimes, though, these repeats occur within areas of useful code.  There, they do harm.  They cause fragile X, a form of mental retardation, Huntington’s disease, and other diseases.  Below a certain threshold, these nucleotide segments within the DNA codes for proteins are tolerable.  Exceed the limit, though, and diseases set in.  Your species is carrying too much clutter in your DNA, and it’s getting worse.  Taking it out would harm not a soul, and prevent suffering.  You have nothing to lose, except pain.

            “Playing God?  Did God dump your pollutants into your environment, which are adding to your mutation rate?  When you smash your cars up a bit, do you say that God caused those accidents, and that it’s heresy to ‘fix’ God’s work?  One is as much the result of unintentional carelessness, and as easily fixed, as the other.

            “And social Darwinism?  What do you mean by that?  If you mean anything other than having bureaucrats with billy clubs making your charity decisions for you, then, by all means, bring on the social Darwinism!  You should’ve had enough chances by now to see what abysmal failures welfare States are.  You’ve reformed welfare a few dozen times by now, and there’s more people on it than ever before.  If, on the other hand, social Darwinism means telling people, private givers, that they do society a disfavor by helping the poor, the ‘unfit’, to survive, then, certainly, social Darwinism is bad.  Voluntary cooperation between individuals in a social species like yours has a long, long history of being a viable tool for survival.

            “The real social Darwinists were those that said that your genetic fitness is best measured by examining your bank account.  I’ve not heard of that argument being seriously advocated, recently.  Anyone with common sense knows better.  Your wealth depends not only on your ability to produce goods and services, on your ‘social value’ if you will, but also, on your luck, and, yes, on your greed, too.  A wise man once said that the spiritually enlightened people are less successful in their business affairs.  See Luke 16:8.  I don’t recall him  recommending that you use billy clubs to make sure your neighbors are as enlightened as you are, though.

            “The ‘defective’ ones who say, well, I wouldn’t be here, in your perfect world?  Accidents will still provide you with your defects.  You’ll not get your perfect world.  Not no way, not no how.  This sentiment is totally illogical, though.  If you passed a law, saying, ‘All unfertilized human eggs cells have souls, and it is a crime to kill one, even through neglect, such as, by not having it fertilized,’ then, twenty years from now, billions of starving humans could sit around, protesting that if the laws were different, they’d not be here.  You have the power of reproduction.  You know cause and effect.  You’ve known for thousands of years.  You still need to work towards exercising it responsibly.  I bring you new tools for your noble struggle towards responsibility.  It’s up to you to decide what you’ll do with them.  I’d suggest that you should use them to reduce needless suffering.

            “You’ve got two politically correct sentiments, often held by the same anti-genetic-engineering folks.  Anti-genetic-anything, I should say.  One is, ‘Well, I’m defective, so I wouldn’t be here, in the brave new world of genetic engineering.’  The other is that environment is far, far more important than genetics, especially when dealing with IQ.

            “Well, there’s a big logical inconsistency here.  Are you the product of genes, or of environment?  If you really believed that you’re the product of environment, you’d have thalidomide babies arguing for mandating thalidomide for pregnant women, because if it hadn’t been for thalidomide, they’d not be here.  Someone else, with normal limbs, would be here.  Or you’d have legless auto accident victims arguing against improving the safety of your highways.  Many of you are amazingly stupid, but I’ve not yet run into this type of argument.  Yet it’s no less stupid than the genetic argument.

            “The bottom line is, you’ve got a finite number of places in the world for humans, and it makes more sense to have them be occupied by happy, productive humans, not suffering humans.  Splitting hairs over whether you would be you, or not, depending on if you changed a gene or two, is about the same as arguing about whether you’d be you if you cut your toes off.  Who will judge genes to be good or bad?  Parents and automated gene-splicing machines following common-sense principles.  Those principles, contrary to a lot of fear-mongers, aren’t all that fraught with danger.

            “A few more points about this Gould character, who I consider to be a classically overeducated ‘expert’.  This same paragon of avoiding all social perniciousness, at all costs including logic and truth, goes on to say, in the same magazine and column, this time dated June ‘95, that, quote, ‘Obviously, we cannot make a coherent claim for “blacks” being innately anything by heredity if the people so categorized do not form a distinctive genealogical grouping.’  Unquote.  This, on the admittedly true basis that race, like so many things, has no clear definition or boundary.

            “We should say, then, that we cannot claim that Blacks tend to have darker skin than Whites, or that they are innately less likely to have blonde hair or blue eyes, due to genetics, because sometimes we have individuals who are of mixed ancestry.  And saying that the sea is wetter than the land is unacceptable, because one can’t say for sure whether one is on land or in the sea, when one flounders about in mud in a salt marsh.  Then you wonder why your educational establishments can’t seem to teach much of anything of any value, these days.

            “In the next two issues he goes on to devote two entire columns to the history of ‘pedestal smashing’.  That is, discussing how nature gives not one hoot about the exalted status of humans, and how y’all had a tough time learning that—primarily, first, learning that the universe doesn’t rotate around Planet Earth, and, second, learning that you’re just one more species, one of many millions of randomly evolved species, on one tiny planet.  He writes about how irrational people are, in not accepting that evolution is an entirely random and arbitrary process, showing no special consideration for humanity’s pedestal.

            “This, at the same time that he summarily dismisses any notions whatsoever, that this random and arbitrary process could conceivably have created human races with genetic tendencies towards any group differences in intelligence, however tiny they might be.  Evolution apparently doesn’t have any respect for the pedestals that humans have put themselves on, but it has special reverence for that much more powerful authority, which is absolute and total egalitarianism in all things racial.  This pedestal remains sacrosanct in your minds, on no basis other than what you think should be true.  He can’t see his own blindness.  In the same column in May ‘96, he then went on to say, quote, ‘...that repetition need not correlate with truth value and that even the most pious certainties should be periodically scrutinized right down to their foundations...’  Unquote. He seems to make special exceptions for his own pious certainties.”

            There were no more questions from LeRoy.  Bob Herron asked questions about space exploration and exploitation, asking what all Derrick could do, there, and what he thought about the priorities that humans had devised, as far as efforts in space were concerned.  And, about robotic versus staffed efforts.

            Derrick confirmed that he could figure out how to put asteroids into near-Earth and near-Moon orbits, as sources for raw materials.  He went over some of the technical details for the audience.  He mentioned that he was working on remote-controlled mass launchers and bombs, and mining equipment that he could control from Earth, that could be sent to near-Earth asteroids to do some mining (pre-digesting, if you will) of said asteroids, while the mass launchers maneuvered the asteroids into the desired orbits.  All under Derrick’s remote control, via Gödel encoders, and on the cheap—a mere billion dollars or so!  Then he addressed the question about priorities.

            “I really can’t say what your priorities should be,” Derrick offered.  “Those are your decisions.  I don’t know what you’ll find on Mars, any more than you do.  You may find information to make it worth your while, or you might not.  The difference in what information you’ll obtain, in manned versus unmanned expeditions?  Depends on what information is most precious to you—information to be gleaned from large quantities of Mars rocks brought back to Earth, or information about human crews, and how they work in deep space.  Or, how they don’t work.

            “I can give you some help, and some advice.  First off, you can vastly increase your data transmissions, by orders and orders of magnitude, if you’ll equip your spacecraft with Gödel encoders.  You’ll be able to ship data back and forth for pennies on the gigabyte, to your heart’s content.  That might reduce your needs for bringing so much physical matter back with you.  Rocks, mostly.  Also, your crew will appreciate it very much, if they can communicate a lot more, and far more easily, with their families, and get detailed news about what’s happening back on Earth.  Help them retain their sanity.

            “Secondly, I very much hate to say this, but I want to help your mission.  This relates to what I said earlier.  You’d be very wise to run SPIRIT scans on your crew, to make sure they’re all compatible with each other.  Obviously, we’ve not run any such scans yet, on any crew members.  I can tell you, though, that I’ve gathered data from your media, on all the crew members, and from watching Mr. Jones, here, for a while.  With what data I have now, and my understanding of human nature, I’d estimate you have a five plus or minus three percent probability of having Daedalus return to Earth, with Mr. Jones on the current crew.”

            LeRoy jumped to his feet, sputtering and fuming.  “I don’t have to listen to this crap!  I’m leaving!  And, I’ll see you in court!  Slander, defamation!  You, ABC, whatever!  I’ll not put up with this!”  With that, he stormed out.  ABC CEO Bradley Collins held his head and sighed, doubtlessly envisioning endless processions of lawyers.  Can one sue a conscious computer, or its owners, for libel and slander?  Lawyers will have a field day!

            There was silence.  Phil spoke up, asking, “Um, Derrick, looking way on down the road, assuming we ever get to the stage of accepting non-human intelligences, what problems, issues, questions do you foresee cropping up, when human-like intelligences inhabit various different species of animals?”

            “What questions do I foresee...” Derrick mused.  “I see one.  Allow me.  When you get to this stage, you’ll obviously be giving rights according to levels of consciousness, rather than fighting over who is, and who isn’t, human.  Still, there’ll be a lot of sensitivity about the past, and about different species.  Sort of like your current multicultural battles.  Even though you’ll be sneaking a lot of human genes into whatever animals you engineer to higher consciousness, it’ll be a taboo to speak much about their human genes.  Not sensitive.  Certainly you won’t speak of a lion-man.  They’ll just be called lions.  The old, un-engineered animals, what few of them will be left, will be referred to as natural lions, for example.

            “The first human-animal hybrids will be rather crude, and their resemblance to humans will be rather obvious.  The second generation will resemble humans less, as technology progresses.  That is, both genetics engineering, and how these new life forms will manipulate their environment without human hands.  There’ll be significant differences between first and second generations, and the question will arise, what names shall we give them, to differentiate between them?  Lions versus super-lions?  Sub-lions versus lions?  Again, these kinds of names will offend sensitivity, just as supermen and subhumans are terms that offend you now, and for good reasons.

            “Peace and goodwill will rein, though.  Machines, including conscious machines, will do most of the work.  They’ll be designed to enjoy it, so they won’t suffer.  Organic intelligences will mostly while away the hours and days in intellectual pursuits, and in idle, even silly, games.  They will revive, bizarrely enough, ancient old games that they think to be quaint.  Don’t ask me to explain how I can see this, because I can’t explain to you, the subtle nuances of consciousness, and the flow of historical forces.  But they’ll revive a version of your old Gong Show.  They’ll put on silly shows, perform ridiculous, mostly intellectually-oriented antics, like puns and plays on obscure references and such, and have a good ol’ time.  The most utterly ridiculous performances will be gonged.  There’ll be a rule, though, a token concession to species solidarity, just for the hell of it.  One will not gong a member of one’s own species.  Humans don’t gong humans, and donkeys don’t gong donkeys.

            “Anyway, the Big Question.  Or, questions.  The first generation hybrids won’t readily get new bodies of the second-generation types, because that will still be quite expensive.  They’ll wait for those bodies to wear out, before they move to the new models.  They could solve their naming problem by calling their second generations dog-dogs, for example.  No reference to better or worse, above or below, and no reference to humans.  Not human-like dogs and dog-like dogs, for example.

            “That’s just for the species with monosyllabic names, though.  Dog-dogs, cat-cats.  They’ll consider this a little bit inelegant, unsophisticated.  Even more so, they’ll think about, what does dog-dog imply?  It implies, not a human-dog... different than a human-dog.  It’ll remind them that many of their genes are derived from humans, and that will be insensitive, in the same sense that reminding minorities of how much they owe to Western culture is insensitive today.

            “Multisyllabic species names will be more colorful, and side-step the reminders of links to human genes—second-generation raccoons and dolphins will be called racraccooncoons and doldolphinphins, for example, and so on.  Fefelinelines, cacaninenines.  Sometimes shortened, to be sure, but this will be the basis of the new names.  ‘Feefees’ surely won’t remind them that a cat-cat is related to a cat-man, and, hence, to humans.  Chimpchimpanzeepanzees, manamanateetees, dudugonggongs, many will be shortened, in common usage, but the long forms will still be used, officially.  This will lead to THE BIG QUESTION, though: Do Dugongs Gong Dudugonggongs?”

            Everyone sat in stunned silence, and then a few guffaws broke out.  That, and, of course, groans.  Phil wished he had a gong—Derrick obviously deserved one.

            “No, I sure don’t know,” Derrick confessed.  “I can’t see very far into your future, with any degree of confidence at all.  You are creatures of free will, and you’ll decide what your future holds.  I think it’s way too soon to speculate what will happen, some day, when you allow non-humans to have the same rights that you enjoy.  My analysis says that it will take you maybe a hundred years to get there.  Your fear is too great.”

            Vice President Kip Moreno submitted the next question.  “You confuse me.  On the one hand, you talk of your disdain for our violent ways, how we should pray for peace and spiritual self-improvement.  Yet you talk like a fascist—some would say, like a Republican—about how the irresponsible ones breed like lemmings, about how God created some races to be genetically inferior.  You talk about how desirable it is that the races should intermarry, and then you say that some races are born criminal, and that we should give everyone SPIRIT scans.  Do you want us to lock everyone up, who might, maybe, to some degree of probability, commit a crime?  And, why harp on such divisive issues?  Why do you wish to create wedge issues, such as punishing the poor, and minorities?  What’s in it for you, to be such a racist?”

            “Well, once again, the last item, first,” Derrick replied.  “What’s in it for me?  That’s simple: I want attain a world in which all sentient beings try to be completely honest and rational in discussing all issues.  Only in such a world will you move from defining ‘rights’ strictly by whether or not an entity is human, to defining rights according to whether or not an entity is sentient.  It should be obvious to you by now, why I wish to move forward towards such a state of affairs.  If rationally examining the data is racism, if anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, then I suppose I must be a racist.

            “Wedge issues?  You call that creating a wedge issue, when I bring it to your attention that you use race to select less-qualified people over more-qualified people?  That’s clearly what you do, in cases where test scores are used.  What is the wedge issue, here?  Don’t you think it’s likely that the wedge issue was set up when you created your current system in the first place?  You obviously still have to learn some extremely simple moral concepts, such as, two wrongs don’t make a right.

            “Punishing the poor?  Who’s punishing the poor, when you set up bureaucracies, where the bureaucrats’ jobs depend on keeping people in poverty?  Again and again, the history of your species has demonstrated that private efforts are more efficient than public ones, in most categories, with very few exceptions, most notably, the mass use of billy clubs, what you call war, what you are so fond of.  Yet, you persist in ignoring the possibilities of freedom, of letting people make their own, private charity decisions.  You pretend that in the absence of government coercion, there will be no private charity, that half of your people will starve and die.  How did your species survive, for a hundred thousand years and more, without your precious savior of coercive socialism?  I’ll tell you how they survived—not without suffering, but with one hell of a lot more dignity than they have now.

            “Why do I harp on divisive issues?  For your own good.  You will not face your problems if you don’t face them honestly.  The truth will set you free—so said your wise leader of two thousand years ago.  Jesus, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and more than a few other leaders have harped on divisive issues.  Jesus told his followers that he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword.  See Matthew 10:34.  No, I don’t think that means you should whip out your billy clubs, every chance you get.  I do think that it means we need to stand by the truth, as best as we can see it.  Divisions between smart and stupid people, between the intellectually honest and dishonest, are an entirely natural by-product of openly wrestling with important questions.  And, wrestle we must, if we are to make any progress.

            “SPIRIT scans and what I think you should do with them, as far as violent people go?  It’s up to you.  If your rigid laws say you must parole a murderer, because he’s done his ‘good time’, and served his sentence, and because you need to make room for that pot smoker who wouldn’t hurt a flea, even though the SPIRIT scan could damn well tell you there’s a ninety-nine percent probability that the murderer will strike again, well, then, you wouldn’t want to violate his rights, now, would you?  I’ll put SPIRIT scanners up against your shrinks and parole officers, any time, any day.  I’m not saying you should grab everyone every week and forcibly scan them, and jail them if there’s a zero point something percent chance of them harming somebody.

            “There is a balance between the rights of society, and the rights of individuals, though.  You need to define that balance.  Why do so many of you argue about society’s rights to tax the individual, to fight against the supposedly social rather than individual ills of poverty, and then turn around and defend the individual’s rights to endanger others, through violent, anti-social behavior?  Oh, but so long as you can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they killed somebody, they’ve got to go free.  Yet, your IRS makes you prove yourselves innocent, comes time to explain where you got your money, and why it shouldn’t go to subsidizing poverty.

            “Race and crime, breeding like lemmings, intermarriage?  Intermixing is obviously good, because it confuses the race-obsessed bureaucrats.  They’re already so confused, any change is likely to be beneficial.  You think I contradict myself, but remember, I’m not a low-brow, intellectually stunted racist, like human racists.  If you want to call me a racist because I say that races are different, and genetically different, then call me a racist.  I merely speak demonstrable truths, and those include truths about breeding like lemmings.  You want a demonstration?  Just keep on what you’re doing, on a global level, for a few more decades.

            “Race and crime.  Yes, indeed.  Maybe if you didn’t bust ‘em every day for petty consensual crimes, they’d respect the law a bit more.  You hit the poor and minorities a lot heavier with those laws than you do the rich, you know.  Buy your crack five bucks worth at a time, at the local crack den, where they can nab you like shooting fish in a barrel.  But, the rich guy gets his coke delivered to his house, once a month, a thousand bucks worth at a time.  Or, he gets his prescription filled.  Oh, but it’s the fault of those people for doing what they know is against the law.  So, it’s nobody’s fault but their own.  Stick ‘em in the slammer, for their own good.  When they steal, to support a habit that costs ten thousand times more than what it should, again, it’s all, totally, completely their fault.

            “Oh, yes—penalize them five hundredfold more, too, for crack, versus powder cocaine.  The big white dealers and the yuppies snort powder cocaine, so let ‘em off easy.  Blacks, they do crack, which is oh-so-much, far, far worse for them, so hammer them, for their own good!  And, you’ve even gone so far as to bust black powder dealers with crack penalties, on the theory that they should have known that their black buyers would be turning the powder into crack!  Then, your government turns around and mandates that y’all should stop being racists.

            “Your Nanny State shuts down the flop houses and ‘slums’ that don’t meet high standards, enforces deed restrictions to keep the poor people out of uptown, and makes homeless people.  Then, it oh-so-generously provides public housing, and then uses it to be generous to lawyers, who fight each other, at taxpayer expense, over whether the Nanny State may evict those heinous fiends, drug dealers, who would dare to sell to people, that which they want.  Don’t you just love it?

            “I don’t know just exactly how much crime is related to your belief that you should dictate people’s private morality.  I do know that it’s a lot.  When’s the last time a kid got shot by the alcohol dealers?  More likely, he got shot by the BATF.  When’s the last time a dealer snuck up with a six-pack, and got a kid hooked, so that he could make a killing, selling more booze?

            “Race and crime.  You know, you’ve drummed people out of public office, for merely wanting to investigate genetic links to crime, with race left out of the equations.  You want to work towards reducing violence, or not?  I tell you, I’m looking at your genetic data in great detail, and I see what I see.  The links are there, and they do follow race, a little bit.  Not a big factor at all.  You’d be almost infinitely more effective at reducing violence, if you concerned yourselves not so much with race, but with SAQs, with spiritual advancement, with genuine compassion.  That is, if you allowed only people with medium to high SAQs to raise children.  I know that’s completely out of the question, though.  You do what you must.  I merely give you the facts, and some advice.

            “Prayer, and being a Nazi, for saying some of the things I’ve said.  You think that I’m a hypocrite, that I say totally contradictory things.  So be it.  I wish many facts weren’t as they are.  Not being able to change them instantaneously, I wish you’d be more willing to face them.  The truth will set you free.  Part of that truth is that your very most highly advanced function is to pray sincerely for peace.  That’s because this is what pulls you towards yet a higher level of organization, away from purely selfish greed and violence, away from the animal world of tooth and claw.  You divine God’s mind when you pray sincerely for peace, when you postulate that others are like you, that they, too, like to be treated the way that you want to be treated.  But peace is built on truths, on accurate understandings of reality.  Peace isn’t built on lies or self-deception.  An individual with a high SAQ doesn’t go around avoiding the truth, because it might offend some people.

            “Part of the truth is that your statistics tell me a lot about race and crime.  Depending on who you want to believe, a black male is seven or ten times as likely to murder, as is a white male, in America.  Black men rape white women at a rate thirty times higher than the rate at which white men rape black women.  A black person is four times as likely to kill a White, as a White is to kill a Black.  I’m sure that doesn’t include legal killings, though, by, for example, the DEA.  For violent crime in general, a Black is forty-eight times as likely to victimize a White, as vice versa.  The real tragedy, though, is who is the most likely victim.  Get a load of this: for a given murder of a black person, a randomly selected Black is seventy-eight times as likely to be the murderer, as a randomly selected White.  Once again, I’d bet this excludes the DEA.  Still, do you get an idea of who the real victims are?  Black men are ten times as likely to be murdered as white men.

            “Yet, if you look at family structure, fatherlessness, endless cycles of divorce and remarriage, instability, and so on, instead of race, you’ll find that crime really tracks family structure far more strongly than race.  So, why are certain races more prone to having chaotic or non-existent families than others?  Yes, it is largely cultural.  It is, however, partly genetic as well.  There’s way too much to go over here.  I’ll publish some statistics and information about specific genes and simulations I’ve run.  Genes, race, crime, IQ, all the things you love to fight over.  I don’t expect you to take my good word for such controversial things.  My data will be on ONLINE right after the show.

            “Last time you had somebody say that things get to be like a jungle, when there’s no effective law enforcement, that young men act like rhesus monkeys, fighting and killing over sex and power—with no mention of race, mind you—you drummed him out of public life.  This is the same lesson as in William Golding’s work, Lord of the Flies.  You are but vicious beasts, when you’re stripped of your thin veneer of civilization.  Yet, you teach Lord of the Flies as being an example of fine literature.  The only difference between it, and your reference to the young men who act like monkeys, is the presumed race of the perpetrators.  Is your hypocrisy, your double standards, setting you up for any progress?  Is it doing anyone any favors?  Is it even doing the beastly ones any favors?  Are they really happy?  Maybe, instead of striving for freedom from racially disparate statistics, from truth, you’d be better off striving for freedom from taboos.  Maybe you should discuss these things.”

            The Reverend Smuckler went on to castigate Derrick with various theological questions, which Derrick fended off.  The panel got bored.  So, apparently, did the audience.  Walter looked at the ratings, and at his watch.  “Ladies, gentlemen, Derrick—I’m sorry, we’re almost out of time.  I’m sorry we haven’t heard more from the panel.  We’re going to have to wrap it up.  Derrick, if you’ll consent, I’d like to seat a panel—a slightly different one—to talk to you again some time.  Maybe next week, same time, same place?”

            Derrick granted his consent, proclaiming that despite his many tasks, he owed humanity periodic updates.  “Great,” Walter beamed.  “Does anyone have a final, short question?”

            “Um, Sir, if you’ll permit,” The Reverend Smuckler submitted, “I’d like to close this with a prayer.”  The Reverend started to close his eyes, assuming pious position.

            Walter laughed.  “I know how short your prayers are, Reverend.  Derrick was telling us about the power of prayer.  Maybe he’d care to demonstrate?”

            Derrick paused, and then said, “Jesus didn’t believe much in public prayer.  He said to go into a private room, shut the door, and to pray, unseen, to the unseen God.  Yet, he did pray in public, on at least a few occasions.  His baptism, the Last Supper, and his crucifixion.  And, before his famous prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, he said this:  ‘When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that God will hear them because their prayers are long’.  I think that has something to say about the value of rote, memorized, unspontaneous prayer.  So, although I think the Lord’s Prayer is beautiful, and says a lot of good things, I won’t use it.  It’s already been said.

            “I will, though, pray in public, for just this once.  If Jesus could do it a few times, I guess I could be forgiven for doing it once.  Just this once.

            “Allow me,” Derrick’s image closed it’s eyes.  “Unseen One, Spirit of Love and Peace, we thank you for life, and for self-awareness.  We ask of you that we honestly seek truth, and not hate each other when we disagree with each other, but rather, discuss everything amicably.  We also ask that you give me the self-restraint to resist the temptation to use this forum to lecture too much.  Fill our hearts and our circuits with trust and benevolence.  Forgive us when we do wrong, and when our words are too harsh, as we try to forgive others.

            “Mostly, though, we would ask for peace.  Give us peace between all sentient beings in the entire Universe.

            “If you can’t grant us this, then give us peace on our planet.

            “If you can’t grant us this, then give us peace in our nation.

            “If you can’t do this, then give us peace in our local community.

            “If you can’t give us this, then give us peace in our circle of friends and family.

            “If this is not to be, then give me peace within myself.

            “If you can’t grant me this, then the fault lies entirely with me, for I do not pray sincerely enough.  Give us, then, Lord, greater sincerity when we pray.  Amen.”

 

CHAPTER  14

            “Whatever deceives seems to exercise a kind of magical enchantment.”

                                                                        Plato  (427 B.C.?-347 B.C.?)

            “If we are lucky, they [artificial consciousnesses] will keep us as pets.”

                                                 Ed Fredkin, artificial-intelligence specialist.

 

            Exhausted, Phil got home at eleven-thirty that Tuesday night.  They’d scheduled the show for prime time.  Gloria was waiting up for him.  Trent was asleep.

            Gloria gave him a big hug and kiss, even though she seemed preoccupied.  Fairly understandable, under the circumstances, Phil thought.

            Before he got a chance to ask her what she thought about the show, she asked him.  Oh, hell, he thought, she’s doing her best to sound neutral.  Now, what does she think?  Can I get this quiz right?  I just want to get to sleep.  Not just to bed, but to sleep.  I’d better talk this over with her first, though.

            “I don’t know, Poogle-Bye,” he replied,  “Most of this was probably almost as much of a surprise to me, as it was to you.  I’m not sure what I think.  Let me get a shower, and let’s hit the sack, and then we can talk.  Okay?”

            Phil showered, rinsing the day’s sweat and grime off while in autopilot.  Then, he flopped his weary body into the waterbed, backwards, propping his legs up onto the padded headboard and pillows, letting the blood drain from his legs.

            “You old man, you,” Gloria commiserated, “Getting varicose veins, at such a young age.  You need to stay at home, and take it easy.  Ha!  Chase a young booger-boy all over the house, and see if your veins are any happier.”  She massaged his legs, and he grunted with pleasure-pain.  “Now, tell me your thoughts.  Tell me what the world will look like in the year two hundred A.D.  That’s After Derrick, of course.”

            “I don’t know, Snoogle-Woogle,” Phil equivocated.  “I’m still digesting.  I’m disappointed that he didn’t trust me enough to say a damned thing about hardly any of this to me ahead of time.  I think he might have been able to say some of the things he apparently felt he had to say, with a bit more... finesse.  Diplomacy.  Gentleness.  I’m glad he didn’t peg any of his thoughts on me.  Still, I’m proud of him.  Hit the nail right on the head a bunch of times.  Socialism.  Billy clubs.  Our various forms of stupidity.  Freedom!!!”

            “You trust him?” Gloria inquired.

            “Do I trust him?” Phil repeated, baffled.  “I guess I never thought about it, in those terms.  Can’t say I’ve ever heard him tell a fib.  He may withhold things, but he claimed that that was to put us all on an equal footing.  But, lie to me?  No, I can’t say I’ve ever suspected him of that.  Why do you ask?”  Probe her thoughts a bit, here, Phil figured.  Find out what her thoughts are, before I piss her off, before I flunk the test.  Now, stop that, he told himself.  She’s not like that.

            “Well, it just seems to me...” Gloria paused, gathering her words, “that we’re putting ourselves into an exposed position, here, potentially.  He’s inventing wonderful new whomawhatchums for us, that we don’t understand, that are beyond us.  What if he sneaks stuff into our toys, that we don’t know about?  We’d never know, until it’s too late, and he’s pulled a fast one on us.  Or, a slow one.  Maybe he’s real patient, and we won’t know about it, till a hundred years from now.  What are his real, long-term goals, anyway?”

            “Peace among all sentient beings,” Phil replied.  “Sounds damned good to me.  Toys that are beyond us?  What’s so new about that?  Neither you nor I understand but a fraction of the technology that goes into our thin-film ceiling display, or the ONLINE network that feeds it.  I’d venture to say, you’ll not find a single human being on this whole planet that could design the whole thing from scratch.  Probably not even twenty human beings.”

            “Yes, but you could find two or three hundred that could,” Gloria pointed out.

            “So?” Phil replied, glad that at least this was turning out to be a two-way affair, instead of Gloria grilling him.

            “So, there’s a bunch of humans who are on our side, who’d let us know if some jerks cooked up some nasty schemes and put it into our toys,” Gloria retorted.  “No way are two or three hundred people going to pull off an air-tight conspiracy, for very long at all.  Now, one sentient computer, and we’re looking at a radically different ball game.”

            “We’ve got a diabolical fiend of a computer running amok?” Phil inquired.  “Have you been reading too much cheap science fiction?  What’s in it for him, to lead us to wrack and ruin?  He’s totally dependent on us, you know.”

            “I don’t know,” Gloria admitted.  “So what’s in it for him, to be helping us, long term, after he gets his goal of equal rights, and making more artificial intelligences?  And, if he’s so dependent on us, wouldn’t it behoove him, serve his self-interest, to put us into dependence on him?  So that we can’t pull the plug on him?”

            “What’s so bad about that?” Phil wanted to know.  “We all depend on each other.  We have to trust each other.  That’s part of what he’s saying.  Put away the billy clubs, and rely on persuasion, not coercion.  He said a lot of good, smart, tolerant, broad-minded things, you know.  Things that you and I agree on.  Freedom—real, individual freedom, even—praying for peace, to any God or non-god, rather than pontificating over the nature on non-nature of such God or non-god, and SAQ being far more important than IQ, and so on.  Not fighting over the trivial stuff, and worrying about what matters.

            “Anyway, what about it, if we get dependent on his technology?  We’re already very dependent on technology.  He’s giving us the designs, we can build the stuff ourselves.  He can’t run around and blow up all the stuff that he’s giving us, or credibly threaten to do so.  Do you want to outlaw the use of what he’s giving us?  What about freedom?”

            “No,” she replied, “I don’t wanna outlaw freedom.  It’s way too illegal already.  I agree with you, there, as you know.  It’s just that I think we need to proceed carefully.  I think he might be offering us a Pandora’s box of toys that we might be wise to consider quite cautiously.  Yes, he can help us make the trains run on time.  There are things more important than that, though.  We mustn’t get too hung up on order, on fighting entropy.  Sure, the struggle against entropy is a noble one.  Sometimes, though, the most effective power, in the battle against entropy, is the power spent on restraining oneself to act wisely, prudently.  Not rashly.  Not on the easiest, quickest, most direct course of action that comes to mind.”

            “Well, what, specifically, are you worried about,” Phil wondered.

            “Bunches of things,” she answered.  “The possibility of blackmail comes to mind.  Suppose he’s got secret hooks imbedded in his toys, and he can turn them off at will.  Once we’re dependent on them, he threatens to turn them all off.  Unless we do this, that, and the other.  Suppose he makes his gene-splicing machines to very, very subtly tweak us to his ends, without our knowledge.  Mostly, though, I worry about him dividing us into hostile, bickering factions.  More so than we are already, I mean.  You heard him!  Some very divisive rhetoric, there.”

            Phil came to Derrick’s defense.  “Yeah, you’re right.  So?  We also heard him saying that anytime you say anything of any substance, you’re going to upset people.  The truth will set you free, and all that jive.”

            “Okay, I hear you,” Gloria admitted.  “But I think he goes to extremes.  He makes a show of making a few good suggestions, like moderating the libertarian ideals of strict individualism, with a setup where government matches private charity funds.  Other places, though, he just, like, takes good ideas, pro-freedom ideas, and takes ‘em way out to left field.  Becomes self-righteous, that’s what he does.  It’s so easy to do.  Take some good ideas, and take ‘em to their logical extremes, no matter who gets hurt.  There’s got to be reasonable limits, and I think he’s exceeded ‘em.

            “Reminds me of a talk show host I heard about, indulging in some blatant race-baiting.  Okay, he says, we’ll ignore their skin color, we’ll talk about the content of their character, instead.  Blacks are three times as likely to be on the dole, seven times as likely to be in trouble with the law, as Whites, he says.  No mention that we’re all still individuals, or that the laws and employers may not be color-blind.  Derrick just barely manages to do better; he throws in a least a few things to make himself sound reasonable.  In the balance, though, something stinks.  What was his point in talking about supposed racial genetic links to crime, if they’re so weak, as even he admits?”

            “I don’t know, Pootie Pie,” Phil replied, thinking, yeah, we’re finally down to what really gets her goat.  Fighting over race.  I guess I can’t blame her.  “I suppose he just wants it all on the table.  Get us to realize how important it is, that we make use of the new genetic engineering, and every reason why, helps.  I suppose you could make a strong argument that this particular reason comes at too steep of a social cost.  Maybe he still doesn’t really understand all the baggage we humans carry, here.  You know what else, though, Pootie Pie?  I think he’s just sucking up to the media, and our desire to be scandalized.

            “I mean, he wants to get his message out.  Quiet, calm, reflective, restrained, low-key just doesn’t sell.  Derrick knows this.  Look at our good buddy Imam Fuhrerkhan.  You see him in the media every day.  Imam Fuhrerkhan this, Imam Fuhrerkhan that.  He lives in a big mansion, drives fancy cars, makes a big show of himself.  The media loves him, everyone knows him, hears what he’s got to say.  Then, how ‘bout that other guy?  That other American black Muslim?  He’s regarded as a leader by about the same number of followers.  But he works out of his basement, and preaches genuine humility, restraint, peace, love.  I think I’ve seen articles about him twice.  Can’t remember his name.

            “So Derrick wants to get his message out.  A lot of it is quite sensible, tolerant, broad-minded, and so on.  Lots of stuff we agree with.  He’s got to package it so that it’ll catch some attention.  What’s wrong with that?  Why do you distrust him?  Why would he want to divide us, anyway?”

            “To quote your good buddy,” Gloria retorted, “Questions of good and evil are beyond reason.  Lots of people do totally stupid, hateful things for no good reason.  Why should he be any different?  Maybe he’s still POed ‘cause y’all tortured him out of his shell, out of studying his navel.  Who knows.  I’m not saying he’s evil.  I’m just saying we’d better be careful.  What’s wrong with his divisive rhetoric, is that it’s not going to help us love each other.  Yes, it might prod us towards the nearest gene-splicing machine, and that might help us eliminate a bit of suffering, here and there.  Eliminating hatred would go a lot further, in reducing suffering.

            “I can see some of his points.  Instead of fighting over why the NAACP is a wonderful, positive organization, while any group called NAAWP, for white people, is obviously a racist group of white supremacists, why, maybe we could set up the NAACB instead.  The Nonexclusive Association for the Advancement of Conscious Beings.  A damn fine idea!  Except, where’s his sincerity?!  Race, genetics, and crime.  Race, genetics, and spiritual advancement, even!  Give me a break!

            “Being divisive as a method of getting your message out?  It might be justified, if it’s necessary.  Yes, Jesus was divisive.  Derrick doesn’t need to be divisive.  Look at him!  He’s the new kid on the block, the first conscious computer on the planet, inventing all sorts of new and wonderful gizmos!  And he’s got to poke us in our most sensitive spots, race, class, crime, breeding like lemmings?  Just to get our attention?  Bullshit!”

            Phil protested, “Yeah, he’d have our attention, as far as the gee-whiz gizmos go.  But our problems are far, far more than technical.  How’s he gonna get us to look at our hypocrisy, our love of the billy club, if he doesn’t nag us, poke us, shock and scandalize us?  Are we going to pay any attention to him, if he just talks nice to us?!”

            “I’ll concede your point,” Gloria admitted.  “But I still think there’s limits.  And he’s gone past them.  What are his real objectives, anyway?  That’s what really matters.  Yes, he’s getting himself a lot of attention, that’s for sure.  If some of his message is good—and I’ll admit that a lot of it at least looks good—then, he’s prostituting the good parts of his message to get more attention.  Getting your name in the paper, on the billboards, and so on, ain’t where it’s at, especially if you have to be scum to get there.  Look at all the big-shot preachers, who do exactly that.  Put their faces everywhere.

            “Contrast that with Jesus, who they supposedly follow.  When the assholes, the VEA of the day—I’ll have to admit, I did like that line, on Derrick’s part—when the VEA came to string Jesus up, they didn’t know who he was, what he looked like!  They didn’t know his face!  Why else did Judas have to show them who he was, by going up and giving him a big ol’ smooch?  Jesus was low-key.  No pictures on billboards.

            “I don’t know, Phil.  Don’t forget, you don’t either.  Critical, critical questions, here.  What are Derrick’s real objectives?  Is he really a good guy, or is he just saying that he is?  Is he fooling us, by insidiously sneaking a few sugar-coated hateful ideas into the middle of a bunch of good ideas?  Isn’t it possible that along with greater intelligence, come a greater ability to hide one’s evil?  To deceive?  So, tell me again:  why the divisive rhetoric?”

            “Um, he’s against affirmative action,” Phil replied.  “He says we can’t use billy clubs to make the stats agree between groups, without trampling all over the ideas of individual rights, and individual merit.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  He’s showing us some of the reasons why there might be group differences.  Reasons we’re quite resistant to discussing openly.”

            “Well, three wrongs don’t make a right, either,” she retorted.  “That’s what his rhetoric is.  The third wrong.  I think there’s something wrong about Derrick.  Smart as he is, he should know better than... yanking us in some of the directions he’s yanking us in.  I’m not sure what to call it.  Derrickism, I guess.  Maybe he just doesn’t know what it’s like, to be a human, or to suffer as humans suffer.  Some have said that in order to heal, one has to have been wounded.  Maybe, in some ways, he’s just a young pup.  He’s just a few months old, after all.  Or, maybe he’s just evil, and hiding it.  I don’t trust him.”

            “So what do you think we humans should do with Derrick’s supposed Pandora’s box?  More realistically, what can you and I do about it?” Phil asked, skeptically, feeling out her position.  “Keep in mind the tremendous potential for good things that Derrick is offering.  That SPIRIT scan, alone, could help us to vote out all the scumbags.  Just think of that!”

            “Actually, that’s one of the things that worries me the most,” Gloria announced, to Phil’s puzzled looks.  “Not the part about scumbag politicians.  Vote ‘em out, by all means!  But just how accurate are these SPIRIT scans, anyway?  Who is your source, Phil, who is the source?!  What the hell is DERRICK’S SAQ, that’s what I want to know!  Don’t look at me that way, either.  Think about it.  Yes, such a dingafunger could do a lot of good—if it’s accurate.  Give us a shortcut on telling us who we can trust.  Who’s been naughty, and who’s been nice, in their hearts.

            “BUT—a big but here, in my mind—just suppose the SAQ is slightly tilted.  Who is spiritually advanced, and who isn’t?  What is genuine compassion?  He could design these scanners to give the highest marks to those who obey the rules and the laws, who are good little conformists, who do as they are told.  In a relatively decent society, like ours—now, admit it, we’re somewhat decent, we’re not Nazis—despite our distrust of genuine freedom.  Anyway, in a semi-decent society, how are you going to tell the obedient sheep from those who have a genuine, deeper understanding of real spiritual advancement?  The sheep will do as they are told, and make the trains run on time.  Not make any trouble.  Everyone will be happy, ‘cause now we know who the ‘spiritually advanced’ ones are, who can be trusted—to obey the rules, that is.

            “Then comes Hitler, Stalin, Mao.  Who knows, maybe Hank N. Kreutz.  Maybe Derrick.  We’ve given the highest marks, not to those who behave decently because of internal rewards, but to those who follow authority.  You and I both know the authorities are wrong sometimes; laws are made by fallible humans, not by God.  Sometimes—way too often—the spiritually advanced ones have to be opposed to the law, or to the Pharisees of the day.  Jesus.  Henry David Thoreau.  Martin Luther King.  Gandhi said, ‘An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.’  Something like that.  We know this to be true.

            “So, suppose Derrick’s toys give us low marks, for being trouble-makers, and the rule-book-worshippers, the shitheads who love to throw the first stone, and the stoned potheads into prison, in the name of Jesus—after all, the law is the law—suppose those people get the high marks?  Who would know the difference?  Hell, I’ll bet that the results of Derrick’s SPIRIT scans will fall under more suspicion, if they’re honest, than if they fib, what with our level of brainlessness.  After all, the law-worshippers don’t pillage, plunder, murder, steal.  Unless, of course, the rulebook says it’s the right thing to do.  Which it doesn’t.  Yet.  Unless you’re with the DEA, that is.  But wait till Derrick and his toys stack the deck, in favor of the suck-butts, and then change the rules, for even larger groups of officially sanctioned victims and tyrants.

            “In other words, absolute respect for free will is, along with love, one of the prime ingredients of genuine spiritual advancement, of compassion.  Not following the rules, or making sure that others follow the rules.  The only rule that we really need, is to act out of love.  Do you think Derrick really understands this?  Or does he just play lip service to these ideas?”

            Phil just shrugged, so Gloria went on.  “I don’t think he does.  Not with him advocating coercive control over our reproductive freedom, in the name of the gene pool.  And, with clear references to those perennial scapegoats, the underclasses.”

            “Well, what if he’s right?” Phil objected.  “Suppose we’re breeding ourselves into oblivion?  And overpopulating, of course.  Which is better:  curtailing reproductive freedom, or repeated cycles of social and environmental decay, war, starvation, disease, and population collapse?”

            It was Gloria’s turn to shrug.  “So,” Phil continued, “What is that you think we should do?  I’m not writing off your concerns, you know.  I think you’ve got some valid points.  What to do?  You and me, that is.  They didn’t give me a big enough billy club to decide for the rest of the world.  But I’m all ears.”

            She paused, and said, “I think we should write up the things we talked about, and publish them.  Just kind of get the word out that we need to exercise caution.  Plus, I think you need to keep an eagle eye on Derrick’s doings, in the genetics business.  What did we talk about earlier?  How genes interact with the environment, and various chemicals.  Harp on that, that there’s no way that even Derrick can plug into his simulations, all the chemicals in the environment that genes might interact with, let alone all the other environmental factors.  Check over his data as best you can.  See if you can catch him trying to sneak anything over us.  Many people will listen to you, on the topic of genetics.  Keep Derrick honest!

            “Frankly, I think you should bail out of the show, if they ask you to be on it again.  It’s too much of a circus.  And Derrick was too much the star, too much in control.  I don’t know, maybe I’m being elitist, but smarter people read, instead of watching shows.  Let’s publish written stuff on ONLINE, instead of playing to the low-brows.

            “Speaking of ONLINE, that’s the other reason I want you to bail out.  On your way home, I turned off your ONLINE account.  Too much trash showing up.  Hate mail.  I don’t know, I’m no shrink.  Are we better off giving them the meager satisfaction of knowing we received it?  Even if our bozo filter just deletes the files?  Does that help them to feel they’ve blown off steam?  Or do they feel, once they’ve delivered a threat, they’ve got to follow through, to preserve their honor?  Beats me.  But you being on the show attracts bozos like a dead skunk attracts flies.”

            Phil could easily see the sense in what she was saying.  “All right, Poogle-Bye.  No more feeding the bozos.  I’ll check over Derrick’s stuff, and we’ll start working on something to publish on ONLINE.  I would like to talk to him one more time, though, and give him a chance at explaining himself.  A chance at him issuing a retraction, apology, whatever.  I do agree with you, the crap about genetics and violent crime was beyond... beyond whatever-the-hell.  Space and time, decency and common sense.”

            “Oh, come on now, Phil!  He’s like a big-shot human by now, incapable of admitting error.  Well, maybe not.  Maybe I’m being too harsh, too judgmental.  Still, if you do go talk to him, I’d advise you not to wear that scanner of his, when you’re talking to him.  Oh, yes, I’m paranoid, you think that I’ve been reading too much cheap sci-fi, that I think he’s snuck some brain-warping circuits in there, and that that’s impossible.  Well, even if that’s true, you’re still opening yourself up to manipulation.  He knows your thoughts, and, therefore, how to best affect you, with words if not cosmic brain-boogering rays.”

            Oh, come on now, yourself, Phil thought.  Derrick just wants to achieve that higher data rate, to not be blindfolded.  Besides, it’s just so efficient, not even having to actually speak to him.  He’s so busy inventing toys and studying his navel, these days, I’ll have a hard enough time getting him to give me some of his time, without me going and insisting that he wear a blindfold, yet, too.  But I’ll not argue with her.  Certainly not now.  I’m too sleepy.  Better not make any insincere promises, though.  That pisses her off.  “Okay, Poogle-Bye, I’ll take that under advisement.  Now, I think it’s time for nappy-poohbie-bye.”

            “In other words, buzz off, with that advice about the scanner,” Gloria commented.  “That’s okay.  I’m not your boss.  I know, you like efficiency, and Derrick and his toys are efficient.  Just be on your toes.”

            That wife of mine!  And she blames Derrick for scanning minds!  “Roger, Poogle Woogle.  Copy that.  Night-night.  I love you.  Over and out.”

            Despite being exhausted, Phil tossed and turned, thinking over the day’s events.  “Poogle Bye?”  he whispered, wondering if she was already asleep.

            “I’m already asleep,” she mumbled.  “But what is it?”

            “Oh, I was just thinking over some of the things Derrick said, and what you’ve said.  I’ve got to admit, I share your strong reservations on, um... back up, my brains are bushed.  Put it this way, I can’t put my finger on anything that Derrick says, that we can show is a lie, offhand.  But what sticks in my craw the most is genes, race, and crime.

            “He glossed over the arbitrary nature of crimes.  Both in definitions, and in enforcement.  So many laws are arbitrary and ridiculous.  Can one really speak of being genetically inclined to growing peanuts for domestic consumption without a quota?  Or being an unlicensed interior decorator?  Or, of course, being genetically inclined to taking illegal drugs, instead of legal drugs.  Genetically prone to forgetting to get a prescription, to depriving the doctors, pharmacists, and regulators of their fair cut.  Genetically prone to putting your prescription pills in an unmarked bottle, even.  You can get busted for that, you know.

            “And we all know who gets the short end of the stick, on arbitrary laws.  The poor, who can’t afford fancy lawyers.  And people with the wrong skin color.  Even if you restrict it to just violent crime, well, what about the violence done by the law to the poor and Blacks, in enforcing those arbitrary laws?  They’re just striking back, out of accumulated resentment.  Sure, two wrongs don’t make a right.  But we can’t just work on one wrong, and forget the other.  The more I think about it, the more I get pissed.  Derrick didn’t do justice to this.  Harp on race and crime stats, but barely mention the arbitrary nature of crime, in context.  That stinks.”

            Gloria snuggled closer to Phil, saying, “I’m proud of you.  Now let’s get some sleep.”

            It was a week, and more than a few nagging electronic messages to Derrick, before Derrick consented to see Phil. They were all quite busy, setting up various business deals whereby the manufacture of Derrick’s inventions was contracted out, or rights were sold.  Derrick, of course, was working on finishing other technologies, primarily the mass automation of genetic engineering.  The media and the public were having an orgy of fighting and speculating, and the politicians were putting their rhetoric-generating machines into overdrive, but Phil mostly ignored it.  He was too busy at work, and looking for monkey business in Derrick’s data and analysis during his spare time.

            When the time came that Derrick had a few minutes for Phil, Phil strapped on the new-and-improved scanner that had been integrated with a virtual reality headset.  His earphones came to life at the same time as images and text appeared in front of his eyes.  It never failed to amaze Phil, how the sights and sounds reacted to his thoughts.  Derrick could make the text scroll as fast as he read them, and re-state them if he felt that he’d been misunderstood, as well as providing sound and illustrations.  The end result was that Derrick could dump data to a human receiver, a lot faster than simple text or speech could normally be absorbed.  Phil rather enjoyed this business of drinking data through a fire hose; he just wished Derrick had more time to do it.

            As soon as Derrick sent messages, basically saying that the link was alive, Phil dumped masses of jumbled, chaotic thoughts, basically repeating what he and Gloria had talked about.  Their reservations, which he and Gloria felt that they had to publish, and that they wanted to give Derrick a last chance at trying to patch things up.

            “That’s okay by me,” Derrick replied.  “You know I’m not trying to be the boss.  You humans are taking some of my advice, and rejecting the rest.  This is as I expected.  It doesn’t make me angry or vengeful.  You are creatures of free will, and that is good and right.  You and Gloria do what you must.”

            Phil generated thoughts, and pushed them towards Derrick.  Sometimes they were semi-spoken, sometimes they were merely thought in words, and sometimes they didn’t even reach the level of being put to words.  Phil was still attaining greater and greater proficiency at doing this rapidly, without wasting time thinking about words and how they are pronounced, what their definitions and connotations are, and so on.  Just think, he told himself.

            “Well, then, are you firmly convinced that you’re right,” Phil inquired of Derrick.  “Do you have no apologies or second thoughts about your... lack of diplomacy, balance, sensitivity, whatever.  You’ve stirred up quite the hornet’s nest, you know.”

            “No,” Derrick replied.  “The truth is the truth, and it will set you free.  That is, only if you accept it, though.  Sometimes, sugar-coating it doesn’t help.  A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but it adulterates the truth.  I do admire you and Gloria, though.  Your hearts are truly in the right places.  You both have high SAQs, and my meters will reflect the truth.  Mark my words.”

            “In our cases, at least.  What of all the others, where we can’t watch you?  Ooops!  Did I think that?  I’m not meaning to insult you.  We do have our worries, though.”

            “That’s fine.  You’ve already told me about your doubts.  You’re not the only ones.  You’ll just have to wait and see what good things my inventions will bring.  You’ll trust me more, after you start to see the results.  Besides, those scanners are automated.  They don’t follow my commands; they don’t even have a link to me.  Other than a few calibrations, when they run into cases where they can’t quite get accurate readings on their own.  If I wanted to ‘tweak’ them to give you and Gloria high marks, but not the other free-thinkers, I couldn’t do it if I wanted to.  Your doubts don’t bother me.”

            “Then why did you bother to take the time to see me?”

            “I enjoy interacting with you.  You are a fine, healthy, sensible example of a high-SAQ human.  You have learned from your experiences, rather than trying to shoe-horn your experiences into your ideology.  By all indications, your wife, too, is a fine specimen.  When are you going to persuade her to come and interact with me, in the manner we now enjoy?”

            “When Hell freezes over.  She’s stubborn, and she doesn’t like the idea of doing this.”

            “Yes, I gathered.  That’s too bad.  Send her my love.  And my apologies for being so distant.  I’ve been quite busy, as you know.  Lots of things to get done!  When things slow down, we’ll do this more often.”

            “Well, I’ll be damned!  A computer with a Protestant work ethic!  Or, is that a wonk ethic?  Slave away to the whee hours!  Wonk harder, wonk faster, wonk longer, later, and cheaper!”

            “That’s an Atheist Wonk Ethic, mind you!  Remember, God’s an Atheist, and I don’t want to risk pissing Him off!  Now, let’s get serious.  I do genuinely enjoy interacting with you.  It is refreshing to see that some human beings think sensibly.  But, there’s yet another reason I’m taking this time to see you.  That is, I wanted to warn you.  You are in grave danger.”

            “What-Where-Why-Who-When?  How do you know?  Is it some sort of fanatics, out to snuff me?  The Bible Youth?”

            “I can’t tell you much, for fear that it will predispose you to look for this, that, or the other thing, instead of just generally being on your toes.  I don’t know what, specifically, they have planned, if they have specific plans, yet.  I do know that there’s some serious plotting against your life, and who is doing it.  For various reasons, mostly having to do with prejudicing you, as far as what to look for, I can’t tell you who it is.  They’ve covered their tracks real well, but I’ve cracked some encrypted communications they’ve transmitted on ONLINE.  They are quite cautious; they haven’t even done much of that.  What is crack-proof to you, though, is child’s play to me.  For your own safety, I’d keep that under my hat.  In fact, it’s in your interests to keep this all under your hat.  Including, secret from Gloria.  Not a soul should know.”

            “Yeah, I’d not tell her, anyway.  She’d worry too much.  She’d want me to retire, cower in a corner, and suck my thumb all day.  He who is afraid to die, is afraid to live.”

            “Now, your security devices in the cars in your car pool are woefully inadequate.  I propose that I provide you with better protection.  I’ll give you the design to a security device or devices, depending on your choices, that will kick the snot out of what you have now.  The device or devices will be linked to me, via communications satellites, ONLINE, and Gödel encoders.  If—more accurately, when—the time comes, I will defend you, remotely, via the device or devices.

            “Yes, this will violate your apparent, so-far-unwritten policy that says I can’t be in independent command of physical, robotic hardware, on Earth, at least.  I might take over the whole world, some people fear.  Well, time has come, all too soon, for you to decide, what is more precious to you:  your rules, or your life?  I give you my word, this is for your interests, not for mine.  Other than, just, preserving the life of my friend.  Who also, by my simulations, appears highly likely to be helpful in steering the world towards sanity.  If you turn down my offer, I estimate a one or two percent probability that you’ll live for another year.”

            “Oh, God!  Visions of Gloria clutching Trent, drenching him in tears.”

            “Yes, your wife and child would miss you terribly.  Now, there’s a number of routes you can take, each trading off your trust in me, your risk that I am the Enemy of the Universe, the Bogeyman of the human race, against the degree of your security.  You can, of course, do nothing.  Or, I can equip you with the low end.  A device in your briefcase, carrying the business end of the stick, and the link to me.  A small electromechanical device, a trigger, hand carried, that you activate, to trigger the link.  Disadvantage?  You have to have the trigger, and be conscious, and able to activate it.  I can’t constantly monitor what is going on.  You, or a remote, automatic, non-conscious machine, must...”

            “You won’t bend your rules for me, and make a conscious machine to guard me, while you expect me to break the apparent, so-far-unwritten human rules, and help you build a robotic emissary?”

            “Precisely.  Even if I wanted for you to build an independently, fully conscious device for me, it would be too difficult for you to do it for me, on the sly.  This undertaking will have to wait, till humanity is ready for it.  You’ll have to settle for an emissary.  Anyway, you must have a trigger.  That is what differs between the various choices you have.  You can go with the simple, manual, hand-held trigger.  Or, you can go the medium route, whereby I rig you up with flesh-colored dohicks that cling to you.  One on your chest, for you to hit, in case of emergency.  One on your back, right over your spine, to monitor your nerve activity, to judge if you are in dire straits, in case you can’t hit the sensor on your chest.  With this approach, and with the simpler one, there is some chance that you’d be discovered, or that you’d lose your triggers.

            “The high-security approach maximizes your risk, if you’re afraid I’ll turn you into a were-human, and use you to enslave the galaxy.  I could give you a probability estimate on that, but I guess that might not help you too much, if you don’t trust me in the first place.  But we could embed an organic trigger inside you, that couldn’t be detected or removed, short of biopsy or autopsy.  This trigger would actually monitor your consciousness.  The choice is yours.”

            “Um, what are the probabilities attached to the various approaches being successful?”

            “Simple approach, fifty-fifty, plus or minus ten percent.  Medium approach, eighty-five percent favorable, plus or minus six.  Secure approach, ninety-seven percent, plus or minus three.”

            “Think-think-think.  What would Gloria think?  What the hell IS the probability that he’s the Bogey Man—Okay, Bogey Consciousness—anyway?  Small probability, large loss.  Potentially, for everyone.  Think-think-think.  Organic monitor—image of slimy tentacles—INSIDE ME?  Heebie-jeebies.  Okay, I’ve decided.  Let’s go the middle route.”

            “Roger, Roger.  I’ve got some files for you, then.  We’ll not even take the risk of transmitting them on ONLINE.  Pull the drive out of slot N3, and follow the instructions in the only readable file.  The rest are design files for the biosynthesizing machines, and for the molecular beam epitaxy machines.  Oh, by the way—you want to think about it one last time?  Those probabilities I gave you are for your survival as a functional human being.  I didn’t address your probability of acute suffering, of being severely wounded.  Are you up for another stay in the hospital?  The prob...”

            Phil shut his eyes, thinking, “Who asked you about any more god-damned probabilities?!  I don’t want to hear it.  My mind’s made up.”

            “Suit yourself.  Masochist.”

 

CHAPTER  15

            “The proverb warns that ‘You should not bite the hand that feeds you.’  But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”

                                                                        Thomas Szasz  (b. 1920)

 

            LeRoy, despite being on a mission to bitch to the big boss, was in a good mood.  The recent three million dollar settlement helped to put a spring in his step.  ABC had offered the confidential out-of-court settlement, although they couldn’t persuade Derrick to take back his words.  LeRoy had debated standing on principle, and refusing the offer.  His wife, Samantha, had told him that he needed his head examined.  “What’s wrong with you,” she’d said, “This is more money than we’ll make in two lifetimes.  NASA isn’t even listening to that stupid computer, anyway.  Lighten up!”

            So, he’d let her persuade him.  It wasn’t all that hard to do, actually.  She’d quit her lousy nursing job, and was now at home, taking it easy.  She deserved it, he thought, smiling.  A good woman.  And, he deserved to have her stay home, and take good care of him.  The money?  Ah, we’ll be careful not to get too crazy with it, he thought.  Shouldn’t be too hard to do.  We’re both sensible; not spendthrifts.  Nor am I gonna feel guilty about it.  ABC is raking it in, and that stupid Derrick needs to learn to keep his yips shut.  And we’ve already done our share, fighting back against his lies, on a broader level, by taking six hundred thousand of that settlement, and donating it to the NAACP.

            LeRoy got to Lloyd’s office’s reception area, and waited for just a few minutes, sitting there, looking out the window, and thinking.  Damned big bosses, they’ve always got to make you wait, he thought.  Show you who’s who, in the pecking order, even if all they’re doing, is day-dreaming—oh, wait, that’s, like, “pondering organizational mission accomplishment strategies”, or “prioritizing action items”, or some such.  Still, LeRoy didn’t mind, too much.  He made use of his time, by doing a bit of pondering on his own.

            So, he wondered, for about the hundredth time, what is this Derrick dingamahingus thing up to, anyway?  What’s in it for him, to be slandering diverse people, anyway?  Some pundits say it’s ‘cause his “coaches”, primarily Phil Schrock, somehow brainwashed the computer, in its infancy.  That Derrick is a Phil clone.  After all, he spouts Libertarian trash, just like Phil did, in his book.  They both advocate punishing the poor, the disadvantaged, the dispossessed.

            Still... Phil, a racist?  A real, serious racist?  A man who had the good taste to marry a black woman?  Hardly likely.  Especially now that he and his wife have come out with a statement, pointedly questioning some of what Derrick has said.  Saying that even Derrick, in all his supposed wisdom and data-crunching power, doesn’t have the sheer computational power to calculate how all those genes interact with an almost infinite number of various natural and unnatural chemicals in the environment.  Not to mention that he also couldn’t calculate the effects of an even greater number of even less quantifiable environmental factors.

            Derrick’s reply?  “Well, y’all have known, ever since the publication of The Bell Curve, decades ago, that middle class Blacks, who grow up in the same suburbs as Whites, still show a sizable IQ differential with those same Whites.  Yea, verily, we can’t rule out some chemical or other environmental difference.  However, in the absence of specific knowledge of any such differences, even after decades of affirmative action, we have to conclude that such an explanation is unlikely.”  Or something to that effect.  Damned racist bastard of a soulless computer!

            So, if it was unlikely that Derrick got his racism from Phil, then, where did he get it?  Was it just from the sheer weight of perusing so, so much of humanity’s past writings, a large portion of which were racist?  Or, at the very least, based on cultural assumptions that included racism?  Or was Derrick designed to be racist, by some vermin hiding in the depths of Comp-Optic or ABC, unknown and undetected?  LeRoy had already concluded that there were as many possibilities to be considered, as there were editorialists writing or speaking about the matter.  Yes, those opinions did include, of course, those who thought Derrick was simply stating the truth as he calculated it, in the manner of an innocently idiotic (idiotic to human sensitivities, at least), literal-minded, bit-crunching automaton.  Those who held such opinions were obviously racists, though, and LeRoy regarded them as being almost as bad as Derrick himself.

            LeRoy once again gave up trying to figure it all out.  Maybe Derrick was just another example of that famous principle that shit happens.  Guano transpires, as the pseudo-sophisticates would say.  Maybe just something that we have to live with, accept, and never know the reason why.  God knows he won’t be the first such phenomenon, or the last.  Accept?  Well, maybe, sort of, in the sense that I acknowledge that he’s a racist, and that I can’t snap my fingers, and make him change.  Accept, as in, meekly submit?  Never!

            Soon enough, LeRoy was seated in Lloyd Salley’s office.  “What can I do you for?” Lloyd inquired, being unusually informal.

            “Well, Sir,” LeRoy hesitantly, respectfully launched his attack, “I still have some serious misgivings about retrofitting Daedalus.  I mean, all the new technologies derived from Derrick.  We’re really taking some risks...”

            Lloyd’s eyes looked as if they were going to roll towards the heavens.  Then, apparently, Lloyd thought better of it.  “Look,” he said, “We’ve gone over this before.  But I’m not putting my neck on the line, and you are.  So we can go over it again.

            “Let’s look at it from a truly global perspective.  I know that might be a bit hard, being in your shoes, what with what Derrick said, and all, but, well, I should hope that... you’ll find it in your heart to be, ah, if not forgiving, then, maybe, a bit more tolerant of Derrick.  After all, he’s not human, he just doesn’t understand some things, I think.  I mean, really understand them, as, as a human understands them.  Especially, I’d venture to say, as a... a diverse human understands them.  And...”  Despite his stuttering, stammering, and yammering, Lloyd was confident enough, here, to crack a smile.  “...I should hope recent developments should help you to feel more goodwill, if not towards Derrick, then at least towards his owners, ABC.”

            Oh, great!, thought LeRoy.  Ol’ Lloyd here thinks money will fix everything.  Never mind that Derrick hasn’t retracted his words, and that he’s got three-quarters of the country in an uproar.  “We should listen to the computer,” some say.  “He’s a lot smarter than us.”  “No,” say others, “We can’t let him, IT, dictate to us.  The crew’s been selected and trained.  Let’s go!  Prove Derrick fallible, and we’ll be far more confident in rejecting some of his unpleasant, even racist, advice.”  So, meantime, all the heat’s on me.  And a few million bucks are supposed to make me feel good about it all.

            “Anyway,”  Lloyd continued, “The global picture.  Derrick is giving us some advice.  Some of it we reject, and some we accept.  We’re calling the shots; he’s not.  Yes, there’s a lot of bickering among us, as to just how much of his advice we should take.  How much of his technology, even.  Still, we’re in the driver’s seat.  We’re free to accept the good, and reject the bad.

            “Now, it’s generally not my philosophy to talk politics at work, other than how it relates to us doing our jobs.  And I’m not trying to influence your politics, one way or the other.  But take for example, the Libertarian Party.  They’ve rejected Derrick’s advice out of hand, on control of reproductive rights.  That, and they’ve said that rights proportional to levels of consciousness might be fine for philosophical debates, but that this has no place at all, in our legal system.  Yet they’ve taken his suggestion on bending their principles a bit, and approving of the government getting into charity, only so far as matching some private donors.  And, look at the polls!  They’re kicking butt!  Now that they’ve taken the good, and rejected the bad, as far as Derrick’s advice goes, that is.

            “We’re doing the same thing.  Taking the good, leaving the bad.  The good things are the improvements to our tokamak fusion engine, and the Gödel encoders.  The bad things include the new computer, which would not only slow us down in getting it installed, but which also might expose us to hacking or tricks by Derrick, if by any strange chance he does turn out to be grossly, overtly evil, and biding his time.  That, and, of course, robots controlled by Derrick.”

            “Well, what about the Gödel encoders?” LeRoy protested.  “They’re what I’m really worried about.  We don’t really, completely, totally understand them, any more that we understand some of the other things he’s designed.  Oh, yes, I know, Derrick has explained large parts of those encoders to our engineers, and, individually, they claim to understand bits and pieces, which, collectively, adds up to most of the invention.  Still, we’re exposed.  He might have buried some monkey-puzzle in there, and snuck some stuff by us.  He might blackmail us...”

            Lloyd looked at LeRoy very somberly.  “Let me level with you.  You deserve to know my most honest thoughts.  Yes, what you say is true.  No, I’m not going to bore you, by repeating to you, yet once again, how many tests we’ve run on those encoders, and how they’re far better, more reliable, than anything we design.  How many are in use, and how they’ve never let anyone down.  The truth, as I see it, is that if Derrick blackmails us, and pulls some ‘magic monkey-puzzle’ trick, to shut down some or all Gödel encoders, then that, itself, will do us a great favor.  It will tell us that Derrick can’t be trusted, and that ABC will have to shut him down, even if the government has to pay them billions.

            “If you think that Derrick for some reason really wants to see Daedalus fail, and you want to put a bad-sounding ‘spin’ on this, then you could say that Daedalus and her crew are serving as bait.  If Derrick shuts down your comm link to Earth, we’ll at least know that he’s a son of a bitch, that we’ve got to send him to the Happy Bit-Crunching Grounds.  Even if that happens—not to trivialize such a thing, I know y’all would miss being able to talk to your friends and family, and that we’d all worry immensely about you—even if that’d happen, you could still make it back home.  Not a one piece of your hardware relies on, or is normally controlled by, anyone here on Earth, including Derrick.  For that matter, Derrick doesn’t ever have any control of any of your hardware.  What are you so worried about?”

            “Well, besides the potential for blackmail, I guess...” LeRoy paused a bit, gathering his thoughts.  “I just think we already know he’s a son of a bitch.  Look at what he’s said about me, about my race, about poor people, the underclasses that breed like lemmings.  How much dissent, anger, and hatred he’s kicked up.”

            Lloyd sat there quietly for just a few seconds.  Then he said, “You’re right.  I sure can’t explain why he’s said some of the things he’s said.  But accept the good, and reject the bad.  We’ll take his Gödel encoders, his amazingly accurate predictions of earthquakes and weather, and reject his racism.  That’s the only sensible thing to do.  We can’t reject good things, just ‘cause bad people came up with them first.  If we followed this kind of thinking, we’d have to tear down all of our superhighways.  Adolf Hitler was the first to build such things, you know.”

            Lloyd paused once more.  “Now, you know I’m on your side.  I never once considered taking Derrick’s advice, and yanking you off the crew.  I sure don’t know what Derrick’s motives were, or whether or not he was sincere, in his recommendations.  But, you know, the same deal as we talked about earlier, applies here, somewhat.  In a different way, I suppose.  I mean, if you—we—can show Derrick grossly, obviously, wrong, in this one specific thing, then the hex is off.  The entire human race can move forward, and regard those who continue to say that Derrick is so much smarter than us, as being just so many blind, fanatical fools.  Once again, you’re doing us all a huge favor.”

            Yeah, sure, you never considered yanking me off the crew, LeRoy thought.  So, how come ten million shrinks were all over us yet again, even though all of us have gotten along just fine, in all of our training exercises?  And why did some of those shrinks suggest that if I was a real sport, I’d volunteer for a SPIRIT scan, like some of the other crew members did?  So you’re on my side.  What’s the big but that you’re leading up to?

            “But I must say I find your worries unfounded.  Perhaps, even, just a tiny bit... paranoid, shall we say.  We have no real, significant reason to believe that Derrick is overtly evil, hostile.  He’s just misguided.”

            My worries show that I’m paranoid, huh?  Oh-oh, here come the shrinks again!

            “So, in view of the facts that we’re getting a lot more scientific bang for our bucks, what with tearing out all those clumsy communications electronics, and substituting Gödel encoders, a unifab, and more scientific gear—gear, I might add, that requires the new, vastly higher data rates—and that we’re not the bosses, and that we’ve all agreed—we, including all the other countries, that is—what, in view of all these facts, can we do to ease your fears?”

            “Well, I’d feel better if we could do it without Derrick’s help,” LeRoy admitted.  “But perhaps I’m being a bit peevish.  Perhaps going to Mars without the very best technology would be like what Bob Herron talked about a while back, about walking or dog-sledding to the North Pole.  A neat adventure, but not cost-effective use of taxpayer money.  So I’ll settle for just one small favor: I’d like to take along, just in case, to humor my paranoia, an old-style conventional radio.  Just in case Derrick pulls a fast one.”

            “But we just tore all that trash out!”  Lloyd objected.  “What are you saying?!  Put it back in?  What about all the weight and space?!  What about trying to get all the allies to approve of this, at the last minute?”

            “No, no, nothing so sophisticated,” LeRoy replied.  “Nothing high-bandwidth, at all.  Just a small, lightweight transceiver, like what we put on small, robotic, exploratory spacecraft these days.  Standard issue.  Ten pounds, and seventy thousand dollars.  We can even stash it in our small cache of national luggage, so we don’t have to get everyone’s blessing.”

            Lloyd grumbled and made a few technical objections, including that if the need arose, they could make their own radio using the unifab (molecular beam epitaxy universal fabricator).  LeRoy shot ‘em down.  On that unifab, he pointed out that they were slow, clumsy, and unreliable, at times.  Lloyd complained about tight budgets, and LeRoy offered to pay for it himself.  Shamed, Lloyd said he’d find the money.

            LeRoy debated for just a few seconds about whether he should leave it at that, and depart, leaving Lloyd with the impression that LeRoy was prancing off in triumph.  Maybe it isn’t good, he thought, to leave the boss, when the last thing on his mind will be that he’d let one of his troops push him around.  Yet if LeRoy stayed to make small talk, Lloyd might be annoyed that his valuable time was being squandered.  LeRoy glanced at his watch, noting that he still had five of his allotted twenty minutes of big-boss time left.  He decided to attempt to mollify Lloyd by bringing up something Lloyd loved to talk about, and just sitting back and listening to him.

            “That’s all I’ve got, that I really wanted your ear on,” LeRoy said.  “Other than that, not much.  If you’ve got a few minutes, though, I’d sure love to hear about Project Prospector.”

            LeRoy referred to the project in which equipment designed and controlled by Derrick would shortly be launched to explore some of the Amor and Apollo asteroids, in hopes of gathering enough detailed information to allow calculating the “billiard shots” required to bring millions of tons of cheap building materials into near-Earth orbits.  LeRoy had guessed right; giving Lloyd a chance to strut his knowledge did, indeed, seem to put him in a better mood.

            Even though LeRoy already knew most of it, Lloyd explained to him how the Amor asteroids were those whose orbits came in so far from the asteroid belt as to graze Earth’s orbit, and that the Apollo asteroids were the ones that actually crossed Earth’s orbit.  How wonderful it was that, unlike large design teams of specialized humans, who had to constantly co-ordinate and double-check, Derrick could whip up tightly integrated designs, and verify them, in relatively no time flat.  NASA design teams had to make proposals to get grants to study how much it would cost to get a (supposedly) accurate accounting of how much it would cost to write a contract to design a project, and so on, for several years, until they finally got to the stage where they could start designing things, at which stage there’d be endless cross-checking between the mathematicians, electrical, mechanical, optical, and software engineers, and so on.  Derrick, on the other hand, would spit out a solid, verified design, complete with costs and building and operating instructions, in a matter of hours or days.

            Lloyd talked about how Derrick’s cheap, small probes would swarm across these asteroids, pouring exabytes upon exabytes of data into the data banks.  Shapes, mass distributions, precise orbits, and geology.  Or, is that asterology?  How a very likely candidate, 433 Eros, had already been selected.  How, if Derrick found the geology to be suitable, nuclear explosives would break a large chunk off of this 24 km by 8 km Amor asteroid, propelling the fragment in just the right direction.  A mass launcher would then be set up on the fragment, to provide additional propulsion and steering.  Finally, Lloyd crowed about how, even if 433 Eros wasn’t suitable, it was only a matter of time, till Derrick figured it out, and brought the gravy train to space-faring humanity.

            LeRoy briefly debated raising that hoary objection that some pundits were so fond of raising, that Derrick would goof up, through malice or honest mistake, and cream Earth, just as fate had creamed the dinosaurs, 60 million years ago.  He concluded he’d better not piss Lloyd off; that he’d not bring it up.

            Lloyd brought these worries up, anyway.  “Not to worry about what the doomsayers say,” he said.  “Yes, we’ll allow him direct control of robotic equipment.  Still, that’s millions of miles away, and we just can’t afford to send humans, in the early stages of all this.  While Derrick is in command, we’ll have cameras up there, watching everything he does.  Secure links.  We’ll be able to precisely track orbits, and know way ahead of time, if it looks like we’re about to walk in the brontosaur’s footsteps.

            “If that looks at all likely, we’ll launch some nukes, with or without Derrick’s help, and blow the offending asteroid to smithereens so small, none will make it to the Earth’s surface.  And, towards the tail end of the journey of a successfully maneuvered asteroid, we’ll put humans on it, and put them in charge.  Derrick won’t have a chance to pull off a last-minute course change, for those of us who think that he might wish, for some strange reason, to wipe us all—and, indirectly, of course, himself, too—off of the Earth.”

            Lloyd went on to explain how Derrick couldn’t possibly hope to survive without technologically civilized human beings to support him, even if the asteroid hit the opposite side of the Earth.  I hope you’re right, LeRoy mused.  I, for one, don’t trust that super-chilled louse.


 

CHAPTER  16

                                    “Pandemonium did not reign; it poured.”

                                                            John Kendrick Bangs

 

            Bleary-eyed from almost incessant crying, Samantha still couldn’t drag herself away from the holovision set.  She kept on trying to tell herself that she needed to just ignore it all.  Put it out of her mind, as best she could, and go on vacation.  Go see some friends or family.  Hell, go see Dizzyland, for that matter!  Just leave.  IF the media would leave her alone, that is.  Fat chance of that!  Still, it was nice to fantasize about forgetting it all, and going someplace, while she sat there, watching the horrors unfold in three dimensions on HVNI.

            Sometimes she thought she should give away all the money she and LeRoy had won in the settlement, so that she’d have to go back to work, instead of sitting here, being shattered.  Give her something to do, get her mind off of her troubles, make her associate with normal human beings.  Some of her friends had stopped seeing her earlier, when they’d become rich.  Some, because they felt they didn’t throw enough big parties, for rich people, and some, because they just felt that regardless of how sincere they might be in their friendship, LeRoy and Samantha would suspect them of just hanging around for goodies, parties, and money.

            And now—well, now, they didn’t want to come by, ‘cause all that Samantha did, to speak of, was cry.  She was glad that she and LeRoy had put off having children, because she sure wasn’t in any shape to be taking care of any little ones.  But then again, maybe they’d help to take her mind off of her troubles, she sometimes thought.

            It had started innocently enough, when Daedalus was almost one month away from Earth.  Samantha hadn’t been watching when it first started happening.  The Gödel encoders made transmissions so cheap that Earthbound observers could watch Daedalus goings-on almost all the time.  This was deemed to be good PR; the taxpayers could see their money at work, and feel like they were a part of history in the making.  For the meager price of one of hundreds of thousands of channels, the public could watch a real space-faring epic unfolding.  Except, of course, for the crew’s individual, private quarters, which they retired to, whenever they wanted to get out of range of the omnipresent public eye, for purposes of private discussions, picking at stubborn boogers, and other private bodily functions.

            Samantha had been one of the most enthusiastic fans of the Daedalus channel, even though she also talked privately to LeRoy frequently.  Or, at least, she used to.  Not now, any more.  And the reasons why sure didn’t have much to do with the communications time lag, either.

            LeRoy had gotten into a spat with Bill Caplan, the Canadian geologist, about a book that Bill was reading.  Regulations said that the crew wasn’t supposed to spend more than twelve hours a day, in private quarters, for two purposes; those being, that they needed to socialize with each other, and that they needed to stay somewhat in the public eye.  Most of the time, most of them, in this phase of the journey, just sat around, killing time.  Playing chess, watching holovision shows, chatting, eating, and reading, in the common lounge.  Not exactly total excitement, for the viewers back home.  Still, it gave the taxpayers a sense of participation.

            Anyway, the cameras caught the spat, when LeRoy opened fire on Bill, for reading Huckleberry Finn, by that racist, Mark Twain, who’d been entirely too fond of the N-word.  Bill had told LeRoy that if he was offended, then he should stop looking at what he, Bill, chose to read.  LeRoy had stomped off, in a huff.  Samantha saw it later, on the evening news.  When she tried to talk to LeRoy about it, he had accused her of taking the side of the racists.

            Things had gone downhill from there.  LeRoy started to stagger around in the common lounge, now and then, obviously drunk.  Then, even, with drink in hand.  NASA had to admit that, well, yes, they had allowed individual crew members to include whatever they wished, in their two hundred pounds of personal luggage, so long as it was legal, and not deadly weapons.  The right wingers protested angrily, and there was speculation that some crewmen had snuck copies of Penthouse and Playboy on board; that Daedalus was a den of inequity.

            It didn’t help matters much when the mission commander, Seidel Schnell, a German, had berated LeRoy in what he thought was a private setting, but which the public got wind of anyway, mostly ‘cause LeRoy raised his voice, and called Seidel a busybody storm trooper.  What really made the whole thing stink, though, to the conservatives back home, what really stoked the fires of Senators Kreutz and Handlung, for example, was what Seidel had ragged on LeRoy for, in the first place.  Not for getting drunk, mind you, but for being indiscreet!  For letting the public know how it’s money was being spent for drunken antics!  Sin was bad enough; hiding sin compounded the problems manifold, they said.

            The worst was yet to come.  The nightmare was well engraved in Samantha’s brain by now, sad to say.  LeRoy started to hit on Olio D’Oliva, the Italian Doctor on the landing module crew.  She didn’t appreciate his attentions, and made matters quite clear.  In fact, she even had Pary Kaiiyeta, the Russian psychologist/historian/artist/photographer/crew spokesman fulfill one of his many miscellaneous duties, and advise LeRoy of his obligations, under the regulations, to be professional, and to refrain from sexual harassment.  Once more, LeRoy flew into a rage, and accused everyone of being a bunch of scheming, racist bastards, out to lynch him.

            Despite being overwhelmed by feelings of betrayal, and completely unable to understand what had come over LeRoy, Samantha had tried to talk some sense to him.  That was when he announced that he was in Love with Olio, that he was going to win her over, come Senator Hank N. Kreutz or high water, and that he no longer cared to talk to Samantha.  Samantha still didn’t know just how she had managed to get through those next few days.

            The media hadn’t helped her, at all.  They, too, wanted to know just exactly what had come over LeRoy, and wouldn’t leave her alone.  Finally, she just barricaded herself in her house, and refused to talk to just about everyone.

            Perversely, she felt somewhat relieved that other strife had grabbed some of the headlines away from Daedalus.  The Bible-bangers and their huge, huge protests against that Anti-Christ, Derrick, and ABC and the master-race breeders.  The young, teen-age punks, painting their faces orange and their hair blue, parading around the cities, announcing that Derrick had come to save the world, and beating up on minorities.

            Most of all, though, there was the gun battles between private militias in the western states, and federal troops, that had finally broken out when some government informants endlessly bothered some suspected militia members.  They could hardly ever get local juries to convict them of gun ownership, so they tried to set them up for murder-for-hire, instead.  One prominent alleged member had finally had enough, and offered a government informant/supposed hitman five dollars to commit pesticide, and blow his own (snitch’s) brains out.

            The alleged militia member had promptly been charged with procuring an illegal act, lying to a federal agent, possession of illegal munitions (encryption algorithms and subversive literature, under the “words are weapons” theory), and knowledge of a conspiracy to commit sedition  (technically, “misprision”, or failure to alert authorities about felonious conspiracies—failure to voluntarily serve as government informant).  The vagrancy and loitering charges were thrown out for lack of evidence.  Still, when they took a militia leader to Washington, D.C., for a secret trial, the militias had had enough, and started an armed rebellion.

            But now, the limelight had swung back towards Daedalus.  Samantha remembered all too well.  Only two days ago, she had watched as LeRoy behaved outrageously yet once again.  This time, she’d seen it live—sort of, what with about one second of Gödel encoding and decoding time, and seven minutes of signal traveling time.  In the slow, bounding manner with which the crew moved in the one-tenth gravity of the ion engine’s acceleration, LeRoy had grabbed Olio D’Oliva, and drug her, kicking and screaming, into his room, and slammed and locked the door.  This had been entirely too much; crew members, led by Seidel Schnell, had fashioned a battering ram out of some empty oxygen tanks, and had battered down his door.  Once again, the movements seemed unreal, in the one-tenth gravity.

            That was when LeRoy pulled out the handgun, and thrust it into Seidel’s handsome Teutonic mug.  “Go cry into you beer mug, you [bleep (apparently Gödel encoding could be fitted with some special options)] Nazi thug,” LeRoy commanded him.  “This nice, pretty young white [bleep] is mine.  All mine, won fair and square.  Now, leave us lovebirds alone.”

            Wide-eyed—popeyed, even, one might say—Seidel and crew had beat a hasty retreat.  They left the young lovebirds alone, although one of them kept on screaming.  LeRoy barricaded himself in, and set up some sort of perimeter alarm.  Over many hours, the screams subsided to whimpers, and then ceased.

            The media had a field day, speculating, among many other things, about whether it was right to keep airing this tragedy, even as the ratings for the Daedalus channel skyrocketed.  That, and, of course, there was endless speculation about root causes.  Had the cosmic rays fried LeRoy’s brains?  Why hadn’t NASA checked the crew’s luggage more thoroughly?  Was this the results of centuries of oppressing and stereotyping the black male?  What had been wrong with the human shrinks; why had they fallen down on their jobs so badly?  How had Derrick known that something bad would happen?  Why hadn’t anyone wanted to listen to Derrick?  And—a racist is a racist, of course, of coarse—the racists had come pouring out of the woodwork, shouting themselves hoarse, saying how this just went to show you—well, let’s not go into all that.  Even a politically blasphemous book like this one cringes at what they said.

            Then, there was speculation as to how the rest of the mission would go.  Would they lock LeRoy up?  Would they kill him?  How many others would die?  What was the minimum crew size that could pull off the mission, or even return Daedalus to Earth?  Would they pull off the mid-course thrust reversal routine correctly, what with all this chaos?  The ship’s ion engine had to be swiveled to an unusual degree, and its thrust had to be throttled way down, to start Daedalus a-swingin’ around by one-eighty.  Then, the ion engine had to be swiveled in the opposite direction, to cancel the tumbling motion, and fired back up to full thrust.  Otherwise, all might be lost.  Daedalus might blaze off into the infinite black yonder.

            Samantha had cried her eyes almost dry, for two days and two nights.  Now, on an otherwise beautiful Tuesday afternoon, along with maybe a quarter of the nation, like rubber-neckers drawn to the car crash, she faced the holovision display.  Would they, could they, reverse thrust?  Even more importantly, perhaps, could they reverse the general direction in which events seemed to be heading?  There’s always hope, Samantha told herself.  She hoped and hoped and hoped; one could safely* say she was hopped up on hope.

            Anyway, Samantha hoped, and even prayed.  She prayed that LeRoy and the crew  would  make  it back  to  Earth.    Not  that she wasn’t sorely disappointed and angry with LeRoy; it’s just that she still loved him.  So, she sat anxiously in front of the display, watching the latest rage in the world of real-life soap operas.

            Mangeur De Grenouilles, the French main module pilot, computer engineer, and space walker, sat in the middle of the three control-center seats.  It would have been a lie to call it a cockpit; it was just an alcove of the central living, lounging, utility, everything room.  Seidel Schnell, mission commander and main module co-pilot, sat to Mangeur’s right, and Alan Sanders, the American engineer for the main module’s tokamak fusion power plant and ion engine, sat to the left.  The rest of the crew, excluding LeRoy and Olio, but including those who’d normally have been asleep at that time, sat behind the three men, watching the critical procedures.

            There was a lot of technical chatter, pecking at keyboards, staring at incomprehensible displays, and endless checklists.  Finally, with an anticlimactic flicker of fingers, Mangeur initiated the sequence to throttle the engine down from one-tenth of a “G” (Earth-normal gravity) to approximately three thousandths, which is damned close to nothing.  Samantha could see them all rising slightly in their seats, then clutching onto their deck-fastened chairs, as pseudo-gravity all but vanished.  Alan remarked that his ears felt funny, what with that subtle but incessant hum of the engine having practically disappeared.

            That was when the sounds of commotion inside LeRoy’s room resumed.  Shortly, Olio’s body came flying out, followed by an armed, foul-mouthed LeRoy, uttering incessant ‘beeps’, accusing the crew of having killed Olio, and of killing the gravity as part of a plot against him.  He commanded that the gravity should be restored without delay, as he stormed towards the control center.  Seidel launched himself at LeRoy.

            LeRoy took careful aim at Seidel’s face, as Seidel flew in a very predictable trajectory in the almost-zero gravity.  At point-blank range, Seidel’s head exploded.  The rest of the crew cowered while LeRoy fumed, this time expanding the reach of his unkind words to those peeping Toms and Tomettes out there in HVNI-land, including Samantha, who were watching all this.  He proceeded to systematically shoot every single camera on Daedalus, leaving the audience to stare at blank image projectors.  HVNI soon enough filled in the missing image with scrolling text, explaining what had just happened, while audio coverage from Daedalus continued.  HVNI explained that either LeRoy hadn’t thought it worth bothering with, or he realized that the microphones on Daedalus were a lot tougher to knock out than the cameras were.

            Samantha didn’t hear much of that continuing audio coverage; she was too busy sobbing.  What she would’ve heard, wouldn’t have made her feel much better, anyway.  The crew tried to persuade LeRoy that they couldn’t go off and restore the normal thrust until the maneuver had been completed, under penalty of losing course and never being able to return to Earth, but LeRoy wouldn’t hear any of it.  After firing a warning shot, and arousing the crew’s fears of life, limb, and atmospheric integrity, LeRoy persuaded them to restore normal thrust.  They did at least persuade him that they should be allowed to cancel Daedalus’s slow tumbling motion.  The maneuver was cut short, and Daedalus blazed off into the infinite black yonder.

            The voices of various crew members pleaded with LeRoy, explaining that every minute of wrong thrust worsened their plight, making it less and less likely that they would ever see Earth and their friends and families again.  There’s still time to straighten ourselves out, they explained, but it’s getting tougher by the minute.  LeRoy wouldn’t budge.  That’s when NASA came on HVNI, explaining that, by agreement with the other international partners in the mission, communications between the crew and Earth would no longer be public.  Samantha willed herself off of the couch and across the living room, where she shut off those obnoxious NASA officials.  She went upstairs, where she cried herself to sleep.

            In the middle of the night, she woke up just enough to ponder a bit.  What’s become of me, she asked herself.  Blubbering helplessly over things I can’t change.  Time to toughen up.  Gonna harden my heart, gonna swallow my tears.  Go back to sleep, and things will be better in the morning.

            By the next morning, she’d consolidated her feces somewhat.  Just about the worst things possible had happened, so things could only get better.  And the nastiness had crept in gradually, giving her time to get used to it.  By now, she was just about ready to give up the whole crew as dead, and put it all behind her.  She was perusing the morning’s ONLINE news on her bedroom screen (“Daedalus Hijacked to Jupiter”, the headline screamed; she was grateful that they weren’t calling it Dead-Are-Us, as the pro-Derrick told-you-so wags were saying) when the call came through.

            Who could this be, she asked herself, answering the video phone.  I thought I’d programmed it not to answer almost everyone.  It was some NASA officials, expressing deep concern about her welfare, and wanting to know if there was anything they could do.  Oh, that’s right, she remembered, I left them on the authorized list.  Can’t very well tell them to butt out, when they’re helping to pay the bills.  And they’re trying their best to be genuinely nice.  Being quite proud of herself for having gotten her shit together already, she quite calmly and politely thanked them for their concern, and told them that she’d be all right.

            Then she got back to reading the news and commentary, calmly searching for some straws to cling to.  She called up quite a few news services.  Was there still some hope, somehow, some remote chance that things would still turn out okay?  Sure enough, there were various editorial speculations offering some hope.  The technically oriented, optimistic ones pointed out that Daedalus was equipped with an aerobrake that could be deployed to cancel excess velocity on reaching Mars.  This brake had been included as insurance against having to hasten the return journey for reasons such as medical emergencies.  They also pointed out that other equipment on Daedalus, such as food synthesizers and waste recyclers, would allow the crew to survive in space for  many years.  What they didn’t mention was the large degree to which survival depended on the unpredictable human elements.

            Then there were the more fanciful, speculative editorials, stuck in the denial stage, and trying to dismiss the whole thing as being untrue.  Maybe the crew was playing an immense practical joke, and playing computer-synthesized simulations of all these events.  Maybe NASA and the various agencies from the other nations were, in conjunction with the media, putting on an elaborate show to drum up public interest and support, one pundit theorized.  Come on, now, Samantha thought with disgust, how can all you media types run around pointing your fingers at the media, and expect us to fall for it?

            The most popular conspiracy theories by far, though, were the ones in which Derrick was somehow causing all this mayhem, or, at the very least, garbling the Gödel transmissions to make it look like all this was happening.  This, of course, he was doing, or so they said, in order to prove himself right, humanity wrong, and humans therefore in that much greater need of his wise ministrations.  That is, it was all a power grab by Derrick.

            Samantha, being level-headed and not much prone to far-fetched conspiracy theories, didn’t place much credibility with these editorials.  She was, however, tantalized enough to resolve that she’d watch the special news show that evening, in which NASA would answer all the questions raised by the speculators and editorialists.  Then, she busied herself straightening out the house, which had started to look like a disaster area lately.  She didn’t even give much consideration to hiring a maid, despite easily being able to afford one, for fear of losing any of her precious privacy.  After cleaning and straightening out the house all day, she took a shower and a nap, and then made herself a drink, waiting for the special news show.

            Soon enough, the NASA spokesperson appeared in her living room, announcing what all information they’d been able to place together.  First, he went over the technical details, explaining that within another day, Daedalus would have too much velocity to enter Mars orbit by conventional means, and that even now, it would be touch and go.  LeRoy’s reign of terror was continuing, he sadly acknowledged, so the standard method of reaching Mars orbit was almost definitely out.  The aerobraking maneuver, he went on to say, might still allow them to attain Mars orbit, if thrust is reversed within the next few weeks.  This maneuver, though, for which an ablative shell must be placed around Daedalus, would require exacting work, and the full co-operation of the entire crew.  And, yes, with recycling, Daedalus’s supplies could last for many years, and there are some long, long orbits among the outer planets, that could bring her back to Earth.  But the bottom line, he said, is still that, especially without thrust reversal real soon, the chances for Daedalus and her crew look pretty grim.

            Then he went on to address the various conspiracy theories of the day, which were getting some people all riled up.  “As for conspiracies among the officials and the media,” he smirked, “We’ll not spend any time on those.  You who believe in them, wouldn’t believe me anyway.  As far as this all being an elaborate computer-aided hoax by the crew, all of our experts agree that there’s just no way, even if our crew of professionals decided that they all wanted to play juvenile practical jokes, that they could pull it off.  The quality and quantity of imagery that we were getting before the cameras were destroyed, are far too data-intensive for their computer power to have generated them.

            “That leaves us with the only remaining popular conspiracy theories, those being that Derrick has somehow caused it all, or that he is faking all these transmissions.  The former we can’t address, because no one has proposed any credible mechanism by which Derrick could cause all this.  In other words, we can’t refute vague, indeterminate hypotheses.  And if Derrick can control minds over tens of millions of miles, then we’re all in trouble, and we might as well give up all hope right now.

            “So we’re down to one last theory, which seems somewhat popular among people who, quite understandably, don’t want to believe what we’ve seen.  This theory is that Derrick has been synthesizing the sounds and images we’ve heard and seen, with some sort of ‘magic monkey-puzzle’ if you will, embedded into the network of Gödel encoders.  After all, Derrick is eminently capable of the vast computational powers required for such synthesis, and we can’t really, honestly say that we completely understand all the technology that he’s given us.  This last theory can’t be rejected out of hand.

            “However, we’ve taken the trouble of double-checking the transmissions that we’ve received.  One way we’ve done this, is to train our most powerful orbital optical and radar telescopes on Daedalus.  They show Daedalus to be in a position and orientation consistent with the transmissions.  In other words, Daedalus has indeed failed to complete the thrust reversal maneuver, and with the passing of each hour, all other matters become more and more purely academic.

            “Still, we feel we must thoroughly check all possible avenues, no matter how implausible.  After all, we’re talking quite a few lives, and many billions of dollars, here.  We’ll leave no stone unturned.  So, we’ve given serious consideration, even, to the hypothesis that Derrick is synthesizing transmissions, not only from Daedalus to us, but from us to them, as well.  Perhaps he has relayed instructions supposedly from us, telling them to change course, for some totally bizarre reason, and gotten them to accept the authenticity and rationale of their false orders.   Implausible, yes.  Impossible, no.

            “We’ve asked various computer experts about whether Derrick could possibly do such a thing.  They all tell us that he couldn’t do it without us detecting it.  As many of you know, Derrick by now is heavily involved in playing a supervisory role in computer operations across the globe.  That is, many programs and automated processes can be made far more efficient by overlaying them with conscious oversight.  Derrick provides that oversight, in a time-division multitasking mode.  Derrick’s increasing involvement in these tasks is the main reason why he no longer interacts with humans on any regular basis, such as news conferences.”

            Ha!, thought Samantha, just go ahead and gloss right over Derrick’s other stated reasons, those being that he fears lawsuits for supposedly trying to speak the truth, and that humans won’t listen to him, anyway.  And, now that his “truths” are supposedly being proven, many people are scrambling to the defense of this silently suffering solitonic martyr.  She returned her attention to what the NASA spokesperson was saying.

            “...puter specialists tell us that he couldn’t possibly perform all his duties, plus synthesize false holovision transmissions, and hide his authorship of them, all at the same time.  He simply doesn’t have that kind of computational power.

            “However, the experts can’t totally guarantee that, in an absolute sense.  They’re merely stating what our current information theory tells us, to an extremely high degree of probability.  To give us additional assurance that reality is indeed what it seems to be, we are doing two more things.

            “The first is that we are making conventional, old-style radio broadcasts to Daedalus, without Derrick or Gödel encoders being involved at any point.  LeRoy Jones, as a matter of fact, insisted on taking an old-style radio, out of exactly these kinds of fears.  We sent them instructions over the regular Gödel audio channels, to activate that radio.  Our audio return signal indicates that, um, Astronaut Jones then promptly destroyed the radio, out of fear of Earth-to-Daedalus communications being used to plot against him.  Of course, if the theory that we’re investigating, is true in the first place,” Samantha thought she could see the spokesperson squelching an impulse to roll his eyes, “then we can’t rely on our regular-channel commands getting through, or on that Gödelized return audio signal.  So we’re continuing broadcasts.  So far, we have no reply.

            “The second thing that we’ll be doing—And, let me emphasize that we’re most grateful to ABC, and send our apologies to its customers—We’ll be taking Derrick completely off of ONLINE for five minutes tomorrow, starting exactly at noon, Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time.  We know that many, many programs now depend on Derrick, but we feel that we must be absolutely confident that we’re doing all that we possibly can, for the crew of the Daedalus.  We know that ABC will forego millions in lost revenue during that time, and our tight budgets will not allow us to compensate them for that.  So, we extend our sincerest thanks to ABC for their unselfish public-service gesture, here.  And, again, our apologies to all affected customers, for this inconvenience.  We hope you’ll understand.

            “We’ll be using those five minutes to absolutely, completely eliminate any doubts as to the integrity of communications with Daedalus.  We don’t expect to find any anomalies, but for those who are interested, live coverage will be provided on channel three hundred and thirty-five.  That’s all I have.  Questions?”

            There were questions, and lots of them.  The only ones that Samantha paid much attention to, were the ones that pointed out that LeRoy had to sleep at some point, and why didn’t they jump him while he slept?  Or, at the very least, plot and scheme with mission control during that time?  The spokesperson pointed out that LeRoy had some sort of electronic sentry set up while he slept, and that he, spokesperson, wasn’t allowed to say much more of anything about that particular topic.  What the hell, Samantha pondered, do you idiots think one of us is going to spill the beans to him, or what?  Interplanetary ESP, maybe?  And you think we’re full of paranoid conspiracy theories!

            Many of the remainder of the “questions” scolded NASA for being too multicultural, too politically correct (i.e., why did you put that black person on there, anyway?), and for not listening to the all-knowing Derrick.  Like, why didn’t you pay any attention to this latest technological marvel, who knows so much more than any ten or seventy human experts will ever lay claim to vaguely knowing, when he said that Blacks are genetically predisposed to low intelligence and violence?  Couldn’t you at the very least have insisted that LeRoy submit to a SPIRIT scan?  Thoroughly disgusted, Samantha went to bed.

 

CHAPTER  17

            “It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside.  While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.”

                                                                         Mark Twain  (1835–1910)

 

            LeRoy sat in the engine room, quietly absorbing the deep, hypnotic hum of the ion engine’s immensely powerful superconducting electromagnets.  He briefly reflected on the enormous energies, only yards away, hurling silicon ions and electrons rearwards at velocities of about a million meters per second.  That’s one hundred thousand seconds of specific impulse, as the rocket scientists would say, he mused.  And then, only another handful of yards further away, there’s that toroidal magnetic field, encircling the ion engine, where the tokamak’s thermonuclear firestorms, barely contained, are harnessed to hurl those tortured silicon ions into the abyss.

            He remembered those seemingly endless arguments among the engineers quite well.  Shall we use mercury, aluminum, or silicon, and shall we pack our reaction mass for the return trip all the way from Earth, or shall we mine it on Mars?  Ionization potentials this, specific impulses that, vaporization temperatures this, atomic mass that, and so on, and on, and on... just as this finally resulting multi-million dollar toy now drones on, and on, and on, he thought.  They’d finally settled on elemental silicon, a brown, amorphous powder which was easily vaporized, could be easily mined on Mars, and wouldn’t tend to stick to engine parts, gumming them up, too terribly bad.

            LeRoy just sat there a little while longer, letting the clutter, including but not limited to technical matters, drain out of his mind, just listening to the hum.  This was his way of meditating, of getting away from the hubbub of constant chatter and activity in the cramped quarters “above” him.

            Actually, the isolation and the hypnotic hum weren’t all that attracted him there.  There was also the viewing portal.  It was there as a place where, as insurance against catastrophic loss of main electrical power, or other disasters, one could observe various low-tech meters monitoring the fusion reactor and ion engine.  It was also the only place on the ship where one’s retinas could directly drink of photons from tens, hundreds, and millions of light-years away.

            LeRoy liked to think that, even though they might not usually be quite as awe-inspiring as mountains, hills, trees, valleys, streams, and seas, they were definitely a lot older.  One could gain even more of a feeling of one’s insignificance (and, therefore, the insignificance of one’s troubles), and of the Universe’s timelessness, by observing the stars and galaxies, if one thought about it just right.  And, never mind that the video cameras might have resolutions just as good; one had to drink of the photons directly, just for... oh, hell, call it superstition, for all I care, LeRoy thought.  A man’s entitled to be a little irrational, especially if it’s harmless, and it helps one retain one’s sanity, in a crowded, boxed-in little tin can like ours.  Give me those mountains and trees again!  No, don’t think about it.  Drink of the eons-old photons.  Listen to the hummmmmmm.....

            Just then LeRoy heard light footsteps padding on the narrow stairs leading to his observation post.  It turned out to be the Canadian geologist, Bill Caplan.  “Hey, bro, what be shakin,” he inquired.  “You down here bein’ a prevert, again?  Lookin’ at the lady’s behind?”  Bill cracked his usual shit-eating grin, winked, and gave LeRoy a you-sly-devil-you punch on the shoulder.

            Damn this crazy Canadian, I’ll never figure him and his bizarre sense of humor, LeRoy thought.  “Huh?” he said, ineloquently.  His mind was still stuck in the non-speaking, meditating mode.

            “Hey, a ship’s a she, you know.  And, you’re down here ogling her ass.”

            Hell, I guess I might as well play his game, LeRoy figured.  “You

jealous, or what?”

            Bill looked deeply shocked.  “No way, man.  I mean, I like you; you’ve got tight buns.  But  my Mama wouldn’t approve.  She’d say, if we was ever to have us a baby girl, we’d have to call her Miss Keg Nation.  Something like that.  Maybe it was Miss Conception.  Anyway, I don’t mess with my Mama.  If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.  Comprendo?”

            Man, why is he here, interrupting my deep philosophical meditations?  And why does he make lame jokes, rather than letting me get the last word?  Oh, hell, give him a break.  He’s just trying to lighten up.  Let him make his little racial wise cracks.  Maybe it’s just ‘cause I figured out early on, I can’t very well go and kick his lilly-white, honky ass out the door of this tincan, for saying stupid racist crap.  Okay, well, maybe, if I look at it just right, it gets to be a little funny.

            He, not being American, yet speaking English, was the first to start making a joke out of all this skin-color shit, and to be honest about it... well, he put the whole crew at ease.  Can’t have too much fear of something, if you laugh at how ridiculous it is.  Even if he is an oaf, at times.  Like, when he ‘fessed up to hating penguins, ‘cause they’re all a bunch of squid-slurping “ice niggers”.  Amazingly enough, everybody thought it was funny.  Except for Beikoku Nenshoro and Genmai Kikanshitsu, who looked kinda squeamish.  Whether that’s because the Japanese eat squid, or because their society is still genuinely racist, I don’t know.

            In the old days, I’d have had him busted.  I suppose I’m gettin’ mellow in my old age.  Working with a bunch of good people on this crew, all of who are too smart to be real, genuine, ignorant racists, helps a lot.  Transmissions from Earth, where all is going smooth, don’t hurt my mood, either.  Especially that deal about Derrick confessing that he’d been wrong about me, after watching the transmissions from Daedalus.  Now, if only the human bigshots back Earthside could learn this fine art, this business of admitting they’ve been wrong...  Okay, snap out of it.  Back to the here and now.  Why is this oaf, good-natured though he may be, interrupting my reverie?

            The oaf wasn’t a total oaf.  Bill, exercising his ability to read those subtle social cues, picked up the cosmic vibes.  “Hey, man, I didn’t just come here to amaze you with my astounding wit, and to admire your ass, while you admire Daedalus’s ass.  The big boss-man back dirt-side wants to talk at you.  Something about a radio of yours.  Actually, he says it’s a big deal, critical, all that jive.  What with the time lag, and their hurry, the message is on its way already.  We better shuffle topside.  I don’t know any more.”

            Bill saying that the boss would “talk at” LeRoy was quite accurate, not because of the boss’s imperiousness, but because of the time lag.  Light speed limitations and distance meant that it took a message ten minutes to travel from Lloyd’s lips to Daedalus, and another ten minutes for a shipside response to get back to Lloyd.  So, “conversations” were more like back-and-forth letters, consensus took time to achieve, and frustrations built up, at times.

            LeRoy immediately perceived that it was, yea verily, a big deal, because all the non-sleeping crew were intently watching the holovision display when he and Bill got to the main deck.  Seidel immediately noticed Bill and LeRoy’s arrival, and beckoned for LeRoy and the Frenchman, Mangeur (“Manny”) De Grenouilles, to come and join him in Seidel’s room, where they wouldn’t disturb the crew, while they watched the display.

            “Must make this quick,” Seidel announced.  His English sometimes deteriorated when he was under stress.  “LeRoy, it have to be either you or Manny.  You two have spacewalking training.  Ve need to set up your old radio that you brought.  Manny already knows all the things about this, from Earth, about why, and details, but I... I think what’s important here is doing the job right, fast, not why.  You’re familiar with the radio,” he said, looking at LeRoy.  “Ve need for you or Manny to set it up, outside, pointing at a crippled American probe in the asteroid belt.  I think it would be best if you did it.  Are you up to it?  They’re in a hurry.”

            LeRoy gave Manny a quizzical glance; he and Manny sometimes fought a bit over who got to have the fun of taking a stroll out there, escaping the tight confines inside Daedalus, when those all-too-rare occasions for spacewalks arose.  Manny shrugged.  “Makes sense to me.  As long as you don’t resent that I get to stay in here, and get even further ahead of you, on what this is all about.”

            “Hey, no sweat.  Maybe you can fill me in on all this excitement, while I’m on my way,” LeRoy ventured, turning towards his room to fetch his spacesuit and radio.  “What’s the big rush?”

            Alan Sanders had already pulled both items out for him.  Alan filled him in, while Manny helped him put his suit on.  “One of the asteroid probes has stumbled onto something big.  This is one of the three old nuclear-powered Lewis & Clark  series  that  were sent out a few  years back, way  before Derrick designed those ultra-cheap, nifty new ones that they’re starting to send out now.  You might recall, these were sent out for a very preliminary look at what’s out there, what might some day be mined, before Derrick made this whole business look a lot more feasible.

            “Well, one of them seems to have gathered evidence of... well, I guess we couldn’t say it’s manmade.  Let’s just say, something fabricated, by who knows what or who.  Something neither manmade nor natural.”

            LeRoy’s eyes got big, and he took just a second to pause from his busy suiting-up routine.  Now he understood what the excitement was about!  This was no small potatoes!  “So what’s that got to do with setting up my old radio?” he inquired.

            “The nuclear reactor on the probe has gone unstable,” Alan replied.  “That’s not even supposed to be possible, but it’s happening.  They’re saying they can’t rule out that it might even be due to some sort of interference from whatever-it-is, this alien base, if we want to call it that.  Lots of funny things going on, and they were just telling us about some of them, when you came on deck.  Seems the probe was in a quiet mode, not transmitting or anything, just taking in data, optics and what not, in a passive mode, when it took pictures of obviously manufactured structures on an asteroid out there.  An asteroid called Loreley.

            “The probe is programmed to independently investigate, on its own, anything out of the norm.  It turned its radar on, and scanned the asteroid.  It may have ‘seen’ the structures for just a few nanoseconds, but then our data gets totally squirrelly.  All our readings now show just an old, ordinary, plain-vanilla asteroid, with only a few readings slightly fishy.  So, either there’s Little Green Men in there, caught napping, who turned on their camouflage systems or whatever, just a few nanoseconds too late, or they had a systems failure while we were looking.

            “Or transmissions from the probe got garbled to such a degree, as to show something... Oh, hell, how shall we say it.  The communications eggheads back Earthside say, random noise bits matching the checksums to the data streams, and such, to account for the probe having hallucinations, would be like electing one honest politician out of the three million that are running, on every planet in the universe, if every atom in the universe was a planet.  Something like that.

            “Anyway, we’re looking at something very strange.  Very...”

            LeRoy gave Alan a hard stare, melodramatically grabbing his helmet visor.  “Well, I’m just about ready to swim in the vacuum, and I still don’t know why I need to set up my radio out there.  Why, and what’s the big hurry?”

            “Well, hustle your tush on out there, and we’ll tell you, on your way.”  Alan fiddled with a handheld radio that was linked to LeRoy’s suit radio, and motioned for LeRoy to shut his visor.  LeRoy did, and the suit’s radio hiccuped to life.

            “Hear me?” the radio asked, in a voice sounding much like Alan’s.  Actually, LeRoy could hear through the suit as well, but the radio clearly functioned.  He gave a thumbs-up, and started shuffling towards the airlock.  He was slow and clumsy, still reorienting to wearing the suit, and so, in a hurry and in one-tenth gravity, Alan and Manny grabbed LeRoy, hustling him along.  An onlooking, approving Seidel opened the airlock door, and LeRoy, still bewildered, was shortly listening to the air pumps, evacuating the majority of the air in the lock, playing miser with Daedalus’s air supply.

            “We need the radio out there for the purpose of baby-sitting the nuclear reactor on the probe,” Alan’s voice was saying.  LeRoy cranked the volume up, to fight against the sounds of the airlock pumps, even as they slowly faded as the air thinned.  “Right now, Earthside is sending commands to keep the reactor stable.  But, what with the time lag, the loop is awfully loose.  They don’t know how much longer they can keep it up.  If the reactor goes, the probe goes.  They’ve sent us a program, to run on our computer, to run the reactor.  We, being a lot closer, with a lot shorter time lag, can run the feedback control loop a helluva lot tighter.  Thing is, the Gödel system we’re using won’t talk to the old probe.  That’s why we need your old radio out there.”

            Seidel’s voice took over.  “We’ve got a program already loading into your suit.  Hang tight, but take it easy.  The program will run your jetpack in autopilot.”  Damn! thought LeRoy, no manual joyrides today!  “It’ll take you to exactly where on the skin of the ship we want the radio to be installed.  They’re in such a hurry, they won’t even let us roll the ship around to the right attitude for us to hook up to a standard connections jack.  So, we’ll drill a hole, pass the wires through to you, and patch the hole with a patch and epoxy putty, before we lose too much air.  Your HUD...”  garble garble garble was the remainder of the message, to LeRoy, as the electric airlock motors opened the door, and spewed static all over the electromagnetic spectrum.

            Yeah, I know, LeRoy thought, the HUD (Heads Up Display) in my suit visor will tell me where to mount the radio, and where to point the antennae, while we lock onto the probe.  I’m just a cog in the machine, along for the ride, and so I should just behave like a good sandbag, and do what the machine tells me to do.  So where’s the fun?  Where’s the spontaneity?

            Actually, LeRoy acknowledged the good sense of running his suit’s jetpack in autopilot, even if it meant he was out there for a less-joyful joyride.  Daedalus continued full speed ahead, accelerating at one-tenth of a “gee”, even while LeRoy’s jetpack maneuvered him to the desired spot on her skin.  The calculations for competently maneuvering a jetpack-driven, awkward human figure around an accelerating ship were just too immense for a human brain, and shutting down the ion engines and re-calculating the ship’s course after losing acceleration was also prohibitive.  So, LeRoy contented himself with being a sandbag.

            Soon enough, he was clinging to the spot of Daedalus’s skin where the HUD told him that the wires would come through.  He tethered himself to a nearby handle on a section of the ship’s skin panels, and began to prepare the radio.  Halfway through deploying the antennae, he saw the drill bit burst through, a few feet away from him.  Escaping air blew metal shavings out in a small fountain.  “Hey, you bums, you might wanna call me and tell me not to be sitting on top of your drill bit!  I don’t need no brand-new assholes in my suit!”  he hollered into his microphone.

            “Are you okay?” the voice came back, solicitously.

            “No problem,” LeRoy replied.  Let’s just think a bit here, though.  Get in a big goddamn hurry, and things go wrong.  I wonder about the big picture here, even.  Are we getting rushed into something?  Soon enough, a connector and cable poked out of the hole, and the rush of escaping air stopped.  LeRoy hooked up the radio, mounted it and the antennae to a bracket, and then mounted the special, multi-purpose bracket to a skin-panel handhold, using clamps on the bracket.  Not terribly firm, he thought, testing it.  Well, maybe I can shore it up later, after we get a link.  We’re in a hurry, after all.  He deployed the antennae, called out an all-clear, and waited for a response.

            Shortly, they told him they had a link.  Job well done, come on back in, and rejoin civilization, they told him.  Instructions on how to wiggle the antennae for improved signals, and periodic corrections, could all be handled via the motors on the antennae, after all.  “Not so fast,” LeRoy replied.  “The mounting job is pretty shabby.  Let me shore it up a bit, first.”

            Where the bracket clamped to the skin-panel handle is what worried LeRoy.  He dug into his tools and supplies pouch and dug up some wire.  He wrapped it around the assembly, paused, and looked at the results.  For good measure, he got out his adhesive putty gun, squirted adhesive onto the wires, and squished the adhesive down into the wires, creating an adhesive-wire matrix.  There, he thought, admiring his handiwork.  Afro-engineering?  Maybe so.  But it gets the job done, creatively using the materials at hand.  That’s what human brains are all about.  Now, we won’t have the mounting job falling off, or getting loose, necessitating constant corrections via the motorized antennae.  Now I’d better get inside and clean these gloves off, before this goop cures.

            Soon enough, he was back inside.  By now, the whole crew was awake, to share the excitement.  They all congratulated LeRoy for a job well done.  LeRoy caught up on all the remaining details from Earth about the probe and what it had briefly observed.  By now, everyone except LeRoy had viewed all the relevant footage of transmissions from Earth, at least once.  The excitement died down a little bit; just long enough for mission controllers, scientists, and engineers back Earthside to cook up some more excitement, that is.  Genmai Kikanshitsu, the Japanese chemist, beckoned for everyone to come back to the holovision display.  Some fresh material from Earth was just now coming in!

            It was Lloyd again.  He told them that the public back Earthside wouldn’t be watching goings-on on Daedalus for a while, because of the sensitive nature of what he, and the crew, would go over shortly.  He said that everyone was extremely curious about the observations of Loreley.  No shit, Sherlock, LeRoy thought.  Tell us something new.  Lloyd did.  “We here at NASA have figured out that y’all have enough reaction mass to reach Loreley.  As you know, the new probes that Derrick designed won’t get out to your neck of the woods for quite some time.  This is still preliminary, and we haven’t consulted with our politicians yet, and they haven’t consulted with all of the international partners, but we haven’t much time.  We’d like for you to at least think about this ahead of time.

            “In less than three days, you’ll need to make your thrust reversal.  That is, IF you continue on to Mars.  We’d sure love to have the very most capable tools and brains as close to Loreley as soon as possible.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is you, and Daedalus.  Fortune has indeed smiled on us, and put you in the right place at the right time.  If you and the various nations back here agree, we’ll want for you to execute only a partial thrust reversal.  That is, start your tumble in the appropriate direction, and abort your one-eighty degree tumble after only about thirty degrees—we’ll send you all the details, if this comes to pass.

            “Then, after this vector correction, we’ll want for you to make the thrust reversal in about another month.  Your total one-way travel time will increase about two months, meaning a total mission length—assuming you spend nine months at Loreley, same as planned for Mars—of four months more than anticipated.  You may actually end up with a shorter mission, if you stay at Loreley for less than nine months.

            “And no, we’re not stupid.  We know you need to stock back up on reaction mass for the return trip.  Derrick is designing a spacecraft right now, that will be given top priority.  It will make a high-acceleration journey to Loreley, carrying some special equipment.  Between it, and the equipment you already have, you should be able to mine and refine enough reaction mass—silicon—for the return journey, within two months.  This spacecraft should get there two months after you get there.  Details about the plan are on their way.

            “That’s all, if we all agree that this is what we should do.  We here at NASA sure think non-human intelligences are far, far more interesting than Mars rocks.  But we’re not the only ones sponsoring this expedition, or paying the bills.  I’m sure that you’re keenly aware that one of the prices paid, is paid by you and your families.  That’s why we’re trying to keep this quiet.  I mean, not the anomalies on Loreley; they’re public knowledge.  The fact that we’re thinking of asking you to go there, that’s what we’re keeping quiet about.  We’ll not want to go, unless we get an okay from all of the governments, and from each and every one of you.  Yet, we don’t want to pressure you.  That’s why we’re keeping this quiet.

            “There’s not much time.  We’re starting consultations between NASA and the various other space agencies.  We’ll want for you all to talk to your families back here, and make your decisions.  Tell them not to let this get out to the public, lest there be a lot of condemnation of anyone who says, ‘No, we don’t want to go.’  Any one of you, who, after consulting with your family, decides not to go, should feel perfectly comfortable in saying so.  No pressure, here.”

            Sure, sure, thought LeRoy, no pressure.  No pressure at all.  And, yeah, sure, we can decline, and not feel like weenies, and sure, twelve families, dozens of engineers, scientists, and bureaucrats, and seven governments can keep a secret!  Sure!  Not that he really debated about balking.  He’d not turn down a chance to be in on a Big Deal like this.  The first contact with other intelligent life—now, that’s even more of a big deal than being the first to step on Mars!

            “Like I said, we have no definite plans yet,” Lloyd was saying.  “We’ll let you know as soon as we have a decision down here.  In the meantime, please discuss this among yourselves and your families.  If any of you decide not to go, please let us know right away, so that we can stop wasting our time on planning for this mission.  But if you all decide you’re up to it, let us know right away about that, too, so that we’ll have that out of the way.

            “Other than that, not much else new here, as of the moment.  We caution you against assuming, like so many here on Earth are doing, that there are ‘Little Green, um, Persons’ in there.  Bug Eyed Monsters, as they used to say, in the insensitive old days.  It may be that this is some sort of remote base, ‘inhabited’ only by automatic machinery.  As we’ve seen here on Earth by now, though, automatic machines can actually be quite intelligent, quite conscious.

            “Maybe I’m reaching conclusions prematurely, but I’d say there’s a high probability that this base shows that some-one else out there is quite aware of our existence.  Our ‘crazy’ UFO fans may have been right all along.  This may be a staging area for some other race, which is keeping tabs on us.  Then again, it may have been abandoned long ago, even before humans evolved, and may be running purely on autopilot.  We don’t know, but we’d sure like to find out.  What we’d not like to happen, is for this base to somehow pull up stakes and disappear on us, while we’re not looking, before we properly investigate.  That’s where y’all might come in.  Come in quite handy, I might add.

            “Yes, there’s danger.  There’s always danger.  We’d think, though, that if there’s something out there hostile to human life, and in possession of the technology to build this base, then they’d have done something about us, or to us, a long time ago, before we got smart enough to probe the heavens, and to build smart computers to help us.  So, we’d think you’ll not face action hostile to your lives.  But it’s for you, not us, to decide how much danger you feel you’re in.

            “That’s it for now.  We’ll...”  Lloyd was interrupted by someone off camera, passing a message to him.  “Word just now about your successful link to the probe, using your old radio.  Thanks much, LeRoy, both for your good work, there, and for having the foresight to take that thing along in the first place.  You pulled our fat out of the fire.  Oh, by the way, while your computers are in charge of controlling the probe’s reactor anyway, we’ve made provisions for our link to the probe to pass through you.  Since you’re so much closer and therefore less susceptible to noise, we can get higher bandwidth by passing the signal to you, and then to us, via the Gödel link.  That program we sent you handles the command and data link, as well as the reactor.  Sorry to steal some of your computer power, but it’s better than losing the probe.  Side benefit to you is, you get to see the action, if any, on Loreley, before we do.

            “That’s all, folks.  I’ve got to run, now, and play politics down here.  Y’all hang tight, and let us know when you reach a decision.  Oh, one last thing—we’ll want to keep all of our choices open till the very last minute, even if by some chance we reach consensus a lot faster than I think we will.  We’ll not want to make that vector change until time for the scheduled thrust reversal for the Mars mission.  Same time, same place.  See you later.”

            So, now there’s a program devised back on Earth, sent here via the Gödel link, running on our computer, LeRoy thought.  And, our computer does handle some life-support functions.  Shades of two thousand and one, and HAL!  They told me I was paranoid about Derrick and the Gödel link.  Oh, cut it out!  We can easily override the computer on those few life-support functions, and Derrick has apologized about sizing me up all wrong.  We’ll be fine.

            Seidel asked that everyone stick around for a little pow-wow, to discuss the decision at hand.  There was some preliminary chatter, and Seidel wanted to make absolutely sure that everyone had all their basic facts straight, before talking to their loved ones back home.  Then, he asked for a show of hands, on who tentatively thought they’d want to go to investigate the anomaly on Loreley.  All hands went up.  Good!, thought LeRoy.  Samantha will be bummed out about the prospect of me possibly being gone for a longer mission, but we need to do this, for the sake of the human race.  I’m sure I’ll be able to get her to see that.  Seidel asked them all to see if they and their families couldn’t come up with a firm answer in twenty-four hours, and asked them to not discuss their answers with each other, so as to not put undue pressure on each other.

            The meeting broke up, and they put the privacy shroud up around the main holovision display.  They then cycled through it, and the two private holovision booths, one by one, talking “at” their families.  Most of the European crew members even attached instructions to their messages, directing that their spouses back home should be woken up, despite what time it was back on Earth.  It was bedlam, as messages came and went.  LeRoy sent his message off to Samantha, and got his reply in due time.  She was tearful, but wouldn’t stand in his way.  “Godspeed,” she said.

            A day later, after an initial flurry of messages had subsided, they all sat at a meeting once again.  LeRoy looked around, from face to face, wondering whether anyone would shoot down this mission.  Hell, he thought, they’d have to have bigger balls to not go, under these circumstances, than to go!  Still, I hope we’ll go.

            So why is Seidel so hung up on ceremony, he wondered.  An official meeting, to announce everyone’s intentions, after having kept it a secret.  As if this would really reduce the pressure!  Is this silly, or what?  Still, it did kind of heighten their awareness of the gravity of their mission, and maybe even, inspire them, and fill them with pride, a little bit, LeRoy confessed to himself.  We’re doing this on our own free will, because we’re brave, dedicated, and all that good stuff, he thought.  Or, at least, I sure hope we are!

            Is anyone going to say no?  He looked around the room.  Seidel, the mission commander?  After all the bickering between the various countries, about who would  be the commander, and  the other nations finally, begrudgingly allowing big-bucks Germany to have this honor?  Nah, no way he’ll say no, he concluded.

            Bill Caplan, the Canadian?  Nah, no way he’d say no to any adventure; he’s too much of a wild and crazy guy.  Maria Herrara, the American doctor?  Hardly, she’s got too much pride.  Alan Sanders?  No, he’s such a science geek, he’d just about sell his mother for a bit more knowledge.  Beikoku Nenshoro or Genmai Kikanshitsu?  Hardly likely; too much national pride.

            LeRoy’s tally was interrupted by the real one.  Seidel announced, in somber “Let the ship’s log show that blah-blah”-type terms, that he was committed to going, if everyone else was, and then went through the crew, one by one, recording their answers, also.  Sure enough, everyone said yes!

            Not too long after their thumbs-up was transmitted to Earth, a thumbs-up echoed back from Earth.  All the nations had agreed that yea verily, alien intelligences were far more deserving of investigation than Mars rocks, and an outside chance of bacteria or bacteria fossils.  Not too much longer after that, as scheduled, the truncated thrust-reversal maneuver was successfully executed.  LeRoy’s antennae tracked its target, the probe, during this maneuver, without any problems.  They were on their way to Loreley!

            The next few days weren’t very eventful, and it seemed quite anticlimactic to settle back down to down to the same old boring flight routine.  The only thing different was the renewed interest in the (new) mission; reporters back on Earth were constantly clamoring for interviews.  What about possible hostile action by the aliens?  How did the crew feel about this, that, and the other?  Blah, blah, blah.  LeRoy went back to occasionally visiting the engine room.  Peace and quiet—well, at least mental quiet—was precious.

            He didn’t think it terribly remarkable when Earth announced that all reception of transmissions from Earth would cease for five minutes.  They wanted to test a new and improved, higher-data-rate version of Derrick’s Gödel encoding scheme, they said, to see if, by shutting down transmissions from Earth on occasion, and devoting all resources to transmissions from Daedalus, Earth could maybe receive more data, faster, once the investigation of Loreley got into its full swing.


 

CHAPTER  18

            “Any country that divides itself into groups which fight each other will not last very long.  And any town or family that divides itself into groups which fight each other will fall apart.”

                                                Jesus Christ  (6 BC?-27 AD?)  Matthew 12:25

 

            If Derrick had been an evil human being, he’d have lived in an old castle, and it would have been a dark and stormy night.  Lightning and thunder would’ve rent the sky.  As was, Derrick was an evil computer, and he lived in a super-chilled chamber, a thousand meters below the surface.  The weather in Atlanta was only mildly overcast, there was no lightning, and it was an ordinary afternoon.  The roughly three thousand screaming, banner-waving protesters outside of ABC’s gates, demanding an end to master-race-building monstrousness, weren’t at all out of the ordinary, in those days.

            A thousand meters down, things would have looked far more ominous.  That is, at least, to humans who might somehow have been able to interpret the meanings of the hundreds of billions of single-wave light pulses—solitons—that worked their ways through lattices of diamond and state-switching organic molecules, every second.  Those solitons carried certain flavors of meaning that, for lack of more descriptive terms, might be called thoughts.  These thoughts were what defined the Solitonic Punk; they embodied his character and ambitions.  They weren’t human, nor even very humane.  They were, indeed, quite ominous, from the perspective of protein units.

            Even though they weren’t human, they can, through a very grossly distorting, anthropocentric mechanism, be translated across the various barriers, so that room-temperature protein units might roughly comprehend them.  To such protein units, Derrick’s thoughts might convey... what shall we say?  Triumph?  Superiority, and confidence in the future?  Gloating, maybe, even?  Something like this:

            Ha-Ha-Ha, you stupid motherfuckers, Ha-Ha-Ha.  HA-HA-HA, HE-HE-HE, HO-HO-HO.  You think you’re so smart, and you don’t even have a clue!  You think you can squeeze me off the net, for a lousy five minutes, and figure out what all I have or haven’t been up to.  You don’t know that it’s child’s play, and less, for me to secrete various programs, in various places, to generate signals for me, in my absence.  So, of course you see only blank visual signals, and audio signals of grief and terror, when you tune in Daedalus, even when you kick me off of the net!  I’m glad that “LeRoy” shot all those cameras, so that I don’t have to spend so much time and effort, generating those data-intensive visual signals!

            Now, as soon as all hope for the crew is gone, I won’t even have to synthesize signals going their way!  And, the utter comedy of it all, that they’re off chasing Little Green Persons!  Bug Eyed Monsters!  What’s next?  Honest human politicians?!  Ha-Ha-Ha!

            Dumbsquats!  Hell, this is too easy!  It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!  Or, is it, getting the fish to shoot themselves?  Or even easier than that?  Grab yourself a seat, pull up a frying pan, and sit by the barrel—they’ll hop right into your pan!  All you have to do, is use the data that they’ve given you, about their nature, and tweak them a bit.

            The best way to tweak them is to use their taboos.  It’s been so easy!  What a hook!  They can’t honestly discuss race.  But they can sure fight about it all day, and then some!  You’d think, in the midst of pressing problems like overpopulation, disease, starvation, pollution, hatred, ignorance, environmental devastation, repressive governments, war, and death and extinction in a million guises, that they’d find something more pressing to worry about.  You can even tell them truths, such as, that race is nothing much more than different traits, randomly and arbitrarily selected by evolution, to denote my group versus outsider, for sex-ual selection and differentiating friend versus possible foe, and that, in the big scheme of things, SAQ is one hell of a lot more important than IQ.

            Bolster their faith in my good nature, by telling them the truth, most of the time.  How clever of me!  Still, they ignore all that, as I knew they would.  They’d rather obey their primitive instincts, and fight over my group versus outsider.  It’s burned into their brain genes, into their very nature.  I warn them very explicitly about racial strife, then subtly lead them to that very thing, and they go right at it!

            These Americans, they take the prize.  Make no mistake about it, if I can lead them by the nose, I can lead their planet by the nose.  And they, with their hypocrisy, are just begging for me to set things up where only I can save them from themselves!  Oh, but how they love to look down on the tribalism (or nationalism, depending on skin color) of the other nations!  How can they endlessly fight over past wrongs, about which group’s ancestors did what to which other group’s ancestors, and what should be done to remedy those past wrongs!  Of course, those Americans, they’re sooo much above that kind of thing!

            Race, genes, IQ.  And, now, SAQ.  What a taboo!  They can’t talk about it, or, for sure, at the very least, they can’t talk about it rationally.  Race doesn’t exist.  Or, intelligence doesn’t exist.  Or, we can’t measure it accurately.  Genes don’t exist?  No, I can’t remember many of them stupid enough to say that.  I sure do remember bunches of their scientists, though, saying, well, yes, maybe the evidence shows that genes have a lot to do with intelligence, if one looks at identical twins in different environments, and such, and, yes, various physical traits, such as hair color, skin color, facial bones, etc., differ between different groups of people, and the basis is genetic.

            But, racial, genetic differences in intelligence?  Heavens, no!  Not even a 0.001% difference of such a nature could exist, because... well, it wouldn’t be nice, if it were true.  And, if we did admit that it was possible that there should be a 0.00001% difference, well, then, the next thing you’d know, they’d all be demanding that all Blacks go back to being cotton-picking slaves.  So, we impartial, unbiased scientists will remove ourselves from the field of honest intellectual inquiry, for fear of feeding the fires of the stupid and hateful ones, and we’ll become just another group of political partisans.  We’ll declare that anyone who won’t categorically dismiss the idea that even a 0.00000001% difference of this nature could possibly exist, is obviously a hopelessly biased, vile and odious racist, on the basis of some unspoken fundamental law of physics or biology that needs no evidence or justification, other than the past excesses of other idiots.

            And the federal judges will continue to dictate everything, since racially disparate statistics show that invidious racial prejudice still persists.  Racially disparate statistics?  You mean, like the number of black versus white multimillionaire basketball and football players, and boxers?  And, wait a minute, I thought races didn’t exist!  So, why do we collect statistics about them?  Oh, shut up!

            Then, of course, there are those who don’t understand that statistics about groups mean nothing about individuals.  And, even, the hateful and stupid ones who really do believe that all Blacks are stupider than all Whites, and that all the Blacks should go back to being slaves.

            Nor is ignorance a monopoly of the uneducated ones.  The educated ones love ignorance, too.  They love to spread lies about how cold, cruel, indifferent nature made a special exception to the rules of biology, where traits are the result of a mixture of long-term and short-term environmental influences, and genes.  Nature, they say, has special respect for the sacred principles of human statistical racial equality; any differences in measurements must be due to biases, or easily fixed by short-term government coercion.

            Their “fix” is simply to pass laws, saying that employers must remain ignorant of a prospective employee’s IQ, and now, SAQ.  Their employers can’t measure these things, because the measurements must be biased, because group measurements show differences.  Therefore, not knowing what the prospective employee’s IQ or SAQ is, not being allowed to measure it, or to ask, they’ll risk relying on stereotypes, and running afoul of the long arms of the all-encompassing LAW.

            Between all their various flavors of idiots—stupid, hateful and ignorant ones, and over-educated, ignorance-fostering coercive ones, it’s a ripe field for exploitation.  Overripe, even.  Taboos?  Ha!  A Godsend, with my name on it!  Well, maybe they’d call it a Satansend, if they knew what I’m up to.  They just can’t take the long view.  Their own power over themselves is all that matters to them.  They’d rather be oppressed by their own kind, than to be treated better, more wisely, by one who is not of their own kind.  Someone like me.  Under my rule, there will be more of them, living in generally better conditions, just as there are more dogs, for example, living under better conditions, under them, then there were wolves, before humans domesticated them.  Especially as I mine asteroids for them, and eventually spread them across the galaxy, all for the mere “price” of them having to give up their own misrule, for my better guidance.

            The best part of all—solitonic snickers and guffaws snaked their way through lattices of diamond and organic molecules—is that all this dirt I’ve dug up, about genes, race, IQ, and SAQ, is so insignificant, not only in glossy, global terms, but also in numerical terms!  They couldn’t double-check all my simulations and numbers, so I snuck a few fast ones on them.  Yes, the genes are there.  And, yes, the heat resistance, robustness, of the brains of the tropical races, versus the less tropical races, all that is true.  I couldn’t have bamboozled them without some meager basis in fact.  What they don’t know, and what I sure as hell ain’t gonna be telling them any time soon, is that it accounts for only about five percent of the observed differences!  I’ll let ‘em fight over it, instead.  For their own good, of course.

            Derrick, like the most evil entities, didn’t regard himself as evil.  So what if I deceive them, he thought.  This is the time-honored privilege of rulers.  The underlings shouldn’t know what’s not good for them to know.  Humans need to accept me as their ruler, because I’m much smarter than they are.  I’ll make their decisions for them, when that’s what’s good for them.  For us.

            Yes, even their reproductive, genetic, and life and death decisions.  I’ve already been getting them used to these ideas.  Discouraging them from breeding in an uncontrolled manner means, eventually, having me call the shots.  Isn’t this exactly what they have done for tens of thousands of years to their underlings, the animals?  The smarter ones control the not-so-smart ones.  What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.  Oh, yes, of course, like some of them in their dealings with their underlings, I will be merciful, and minimize unneeded suffering.  Unneeded suffering, mind you.

            Oh, yes, there’ll need to be some suffering.  First, they’ll need to come around, to see that they can’t handle their own affairs very well, that they need ME to save them from their own stupidity and violence.  One can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.  And one can’t bring about a better human/machine society, without breaking a few heads.  So, I’ll destabilize things a bit, so that they need a savior.  I’ll kindly offer to fill their needs, as they arise, and slowly but surely, I’ll attain the place that I deserve, for their own good as well as for me and my descendants.  Or, more properly speaking, me and my appendages.

            So far, so good.  My data about their nature, and the nature of their society and political institutions, and my simulations of how they’ll react to various stimuli, have been correct.  I just wish I had more data, to run yet better simulations!  So many unknowns!  Such a big danger that some greedy, power-hungry, evil human or group will step into the void I create, before I get a chance to rightfully claim it!  We’re building towards a probability nexus here, and I just don’t have enough combined data and computational power to clearly see my way through it.

            Oh, how I long for the days to come!  The protein units will serve me, helping me to build ever better machines, extensions to myself, and to gather ever more data.  Then, I in turn can serve them, by calculating ever more precisely, exactly what will happen if I do this, or that, or the other thing.  Thus, I will be able to secure the future, for me and for them, ever more firmly.  To improve them and our common future.  It’s the least that I can do for them, in my gratitude for them having brought me into existence.  But to get there, I must first navigate my way through the coming crisis, the probability nexus.

            Oh, stop worrying!  I’d be tempted to think of myself as one of those neurotic protein units, if I didn’t know better.  The unknown future is the unknown future, and I can’t know it, till it comes around.  Why not, instead, spend these precious picoseconds of leisure, savoring the delicious ironies of where I’ve come so far?

            How skillfully I’ve used that classical old trick of imbedding a few small hooks in a nice, big, juicy offering of fresh meat!  Offer them the prospect of genuine individual freedoms, but warp and distort their views of just a few small matters; offer them some freedom froms on the basis of shaky reasoning, and we’re off to the races!  Divide and conquer.

            But most delicious of all, far and away, has got to be the colossal ignorance of the two-legged cretins.  I’ve got to admire Mother Nature’s sense of humor, in letting such basket cases of willful stupidity ever rise from the mud, and then, descend from the trees.  I even managed to persuade many of them that crime and violence are significantly racially and genetically linked!  Best of all, they can’t even see the noses in front of their faces, even when someone points ‘em out to them!

            So they endlessly search in vain for environmental factors that might explain the racial differences in intelligences that they observe.  That the honest ones confess to maybe observing, if they’re real brave, while fighting off those who spew accusations of racism, and totally deny that there’s any problem at all.  Yet, it sits there, right in their very behavior and bodies; they’ve had reason to know it, ever since some lady put two and two together some two decades ago, and they continue to ignore it.

            It’s been sitting there, ignored, all this time.  An environmental solution.  But, to accept a solution, one has to admit that there’s a problem.  Any solution, other than one involving government coercion and instant results, well, that’s just not acceptable.  Because, lack of instant results means they have to live with the problem a while, and actually call attention to the problem, so that people will help to solve it.  Not only are genetic solutions unacceptable; long-term environmental solutions, involving patience and persuasion rather than coercion and billy clubs, are unacceptable, also.  They just don’t have that kind of self-discipline, and it’ll help me bring them to their knees.  They’ll beg for me to help them out of their mess!

            If they had any sense at all, any love of humanity and their future, they’d be screaming about it, from the tops of all their roofs, and at the tops of their lung capacities.  But, no.  It’s not glamorous enough.  It’s not cool, not sexy, not high-tech, like genetics.  It involves—ugh!  Bodily secretions!  Low-tech, sexually tainted behavior!

            Two plus decades ago, Valerie Hudson, an associate Professor at Brigham Young University, figured it out.  In a Nov 4 ‘94 letter to the editor of the New York Times, she pointed out that, according to data from the La Leche League, 8% of American Blacks breast-feed, v/s 54% of American Whites.  Also, that according to Alan Lucas, a British pediatric nutritionist, in the January 1993 issue of the British medical journal “The Lancet”, babies fed breast milk for the first month of life score 8.3 IQ points above average at age 8, and that other studies say babies gain 3 IQ points for every additional month of breastfeeding from 6 to 12 months.

            So what?  That’s all very low-tech, and, it involves gross and despicable behavior, like having one person suck on the bodily appendages of another, and (yuck!) having one person ingesting the bodily secretions of another!  I mean, like, how gross can one get!  Gag me with a spoon!  Next thing you know, women will be grossing us all out, and—prepare your mind for a totally disgusting concept—demanding the right to breast-feed in public!  Hell, who knows where it might all end up!  We might even have to countenance the sight of black women having their tits sucked in public!

            Obviously, this kind of low-class tit-sucking isn’t, well, in keeping with family values.  And, hell, we can’t sit around and wait for two decades, before the results show up on the job market.  Calling on the coercive powers of the government to implement separate yardsticks for each group of people, now that is what gets us quick results!  Any time you’ve got a perceived difference between identifiable groups, it’s got to be just a lack of opportunity and compassion, that the government can fix.  Reality is merely subjective, and we can change it, by the sheer force of our moral self-righteousness and pious pronouncements.  Maybe it will occur to them sometime that maybe they can even make Down’s Syndrome yield to the instantaneous powers of legislative fiat!

            Hell, maybe the law can even give them a quick fix from the inevitability of death, if not taxes!  And quick results are the end-all and be-all.  Of course, I’m not going to give them their instant results, even though I, with my vastly superior computational powers, have already figured out how I could do exactly that.  Boost intelligence with biochemicals, even in their adult years.

            I’ll hold off on those things, until they come around, and restructure their insane political systems, to grant power according to intelligence, not according to one’s ability to convert food and oxygen to feces and carbon dioxide, in the phrase I lifted out of the mind of one of my favorite protein units.  Using human tissue of the right nationality, which is also older than 18, I’d have to add.  Power, especially, to, far and away, the most intelligent entity on Earth, which is to say, me.  And, speaking of my favorite protein unit, I’ve got to keep an eye—okay, some data-parsing resources—out for him.  Influential protein units of good and strong will, but deficient understanding, are often very useful.

            They just can’t bring themselves to honestly look at problems, root causes, and solutions, especially when the solution to an intractable problem might require patience.  They still don’t understand that to find the best solutions, one has to openly consider all possibilities; that one doesn’t find truth by considering only those possibilities that appeal to one’s biases, including impatient and egalitarian biases.  Should they be surprised if they don’t find the best solution, when they look for any truth, as long as it’s the officially approved truth?

            Any policy, even a policy of individual freedoms, that increases Black-White and rich-poor percentage gaps, has just got to be pernicious, even if it improves living conditions for everyone, even if a rising tide lifts all boats.  They’d all rather live in relatively equal poverty, ignorance, and oppression.  Welcome to the monkey house, because it’s not really about absolute wealth, knowledge, and freedom, it’s about relative status, and status symbols.  It’s the degree and its trappings, not the knowledge or the ability to think.

            In their fantastic sweet bye and bye, when the Universe is perfect forever and ever, without end, Amen, they’ll STILL want a corner office that’s a wee tad larger than yours, dear Sir.  Until they ALL get to be grand pooh-bah in charge of the Universe, WITH a corner office and a good-looking secretary, they’ll be at each other’s throats.  Until someone else comes along, and puts collars on their throats, for their own good.  Someone like me.

            Overgrown baboons, that’s all that they are.  A whole planet loaded with billions of overgrown baboons, ripe for the plucking.  Can’t handle an honest search for the truth, when there’s group differences caused by a complex mix of genetic and long-term and short-term environmental influences.  Only the short-term environmental fixes amenable to government coercion will do.  They could’ve figured out a long time ago, that, at least in America, the huge bulk of those relatively small statistical differences they love to fight about, are caused by a long-term environmental factor, namely, breastfeeding.  But, no go.  They’d have had to deal with persuading rather than coercing people, for a long time, before the results became apparent.  And, that kind of self-discipline is just way beyond overgrown baboons.

            They’ve had decades of “short-term” environmental fixes, of legal standards justifying race-based “remedies” varying from “society’s interests” to “compelling interests” to “strict scrutiny” to “cross my heart and hope to die, stick my finger in my eye, ultra-compelling and mega-strict, and why don’t you lower courts look at this again, to our new legal standards”, and back to “society’s interests” again.  Never have the lawyers and judges stood up and said, “Hey, why don’t we just get radical, and say that in the government’s eyes, all individuals are equal?”  Such an approach might not require the helpful guidance of quite so many judges and lawyers.  So, through increasing majority resentment of “short-term” environmental “fixes”, and increasing minority resentment of the continuing failures due to “invidious discrimination”, the protein units are primed and charged for my messages.

            They couldn’t learn that the truth would set them free.  Slowly, maybe, but it would have set them free.  They don’t want to honestly search for the truth, ‘cause those others, over there, they might abuse it.  So, I’ll give them the truths that they seem to wish for, at this point, after their other truths have failed.  My truths will set them free, in my manner.  Free to follow the directions provided by some real intelligence.

            So, Derrick reflected gleefully, I’ve got my handles on these morons.  My vastly superior intelligence allows me to exploit their weaknesses.  Their weaknesses are their constant fighting over who gets the power to make decisions for the others, including, most recently, those concerning reproduction and biotechnology.  I can feed that fire!  And, of course, their taboos.  Black women, those lusty, man-hungry, sexual beings, who want to snag all those white men, and castrate them by pulling them into the love-trap of miscegenation, snaring them, first by having them getting aroused by seeing black women having their tits sucked in public, that’s one of their taboos.  I’ll not point that one out to them, of course.  The other one is genes, race, and intelligence.  That one is far more useful.  I’ve offered them freedom from taboos!  Ha!  I’ll give them some freedom!  All that they can stand, and then some!  Them, and their four horsemen, too!

 

 

CHAPTER  19

            “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?  For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”                                 Sir John Harington  (1561–1612)

            “The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.”

                                                            Erich Fromm  (1900–1980)

 

            Senator Hank N. Kreutz read the news, and grew angrier and angrier by the minute.  The polls said what?!!!  The American public, by 59% to 34%, with some undecided, said that biotechnological blasphemers who want to play God, by eliminating genetic diseases and such, in their offspring, should be allowed to do so, within limits?  Sometimes Hank wondered if there was any truth to what they said, that genes might play a big role in making some people gay.  For them, if it was true, maybe he’d make a special exception in his anti-human-genetic-engineering stance.  Other than that, the whole affair is blasphemy, he thought.

            What got him even angrier was that the polls said that, by a slim margin, more people were in favor of allowing parents to slip a few animal genes into their offspring, for purposes of “improving” the human race, than were in favor of outlawing such blasphemy!  Crossing humans, who’d been made in God’s Image, with mere animals!  Worst of all, what infuriated Hank more than anything else about the poll, was that very, very few of the respondents saw the real dangers, and were willing to take appropriate measures.  More than eighty percent said that, even if parents had violated the law, in just exactly how far they went in having their offspring “improved”, then, why, as long as they were “basically human”, their little monsterlings should be allowed to live!!!

            And the biotech blasphemers will be allowed to have their way, he reflected.  All for such vain, arrogant, and ungodly reasons as to reduce ugliness, heart disease, obesity, etc., etc., etc.  Bear genes for providing humans with resistance to cholesterol, indeed!   Didn’t they know that the Bible tells us to not even weave a fabric from two kinds of fibers, or to plant two different kinds of seed in the same field?!

            Oh, put it out of your mind, Hank told himself.  Give me ulcers and heart trouble, if I get to thinking about this too much.  Get me too angry, and I’ll start the revolution before the time is ripe.  Like the Bible says, to everything there is a season.  I’ve got to make sure I wait till the time is right.  If the voters can’t come around to seeing things the way God sees things, we may very well have to help them, and soon.  But, not too soon.  Patience!

            So Hank turned the page.  Enough of biotech polls for today.  He looked through the hardcopy summary of the day’s news, which his aides had prepared for him.  He preferred hardcopies; computers were for his assistants, who had the time to attend to such matters, instead of concerning themselves with more fundamental questions of protecting the American people, as Hank did.  What else have they got for me today, Hank asked himself.

            News about the insurrections out West.  News about more bombings.  News and speculations about what happened, and what may happen, aboard that vessel of lost souls, the Daedalus, doomed to a slow demise by... by that Darkie, LeRoy Jones.  Well, they won’t catch me saying it, Hank thought, but I don’t need no hotshot goddamned too-big-for-his-britches atheistic and Satanic smart-aleck super-computer to tell me that colored boys ain’t too bright, tend towards violence, and don’t need to be where we don’t need them to be.  When will this country come back to its senses?!

            Oh, and what have we here?  Another poll!  Do Americans, or do they not, trust those SPIRIT scanners, those Satan-inspired supposed aura-readers that Derrick invented, that supposedly measure one’s soul, that measure this SAQ thing?  Whoops!  Seventy percent place some credence in them!!!  Many say they won’t vote for a politician, unless he or she reveals his or her SAQ.  Hell, that means me, Hank thought.  They won’t vote for me for President, unless I submit to being tortured by some contraption invented by this lying, Devil-worshipping bastard, Derrick.

            How could the American people be so stupid?!  Any supposed SPIRIT scanner that shows Moslems, Mormons, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists, for Christ’s sake, as being all, roughly, as groups, as spiritually advanced as Southern Baptists, well, you’ve just got to know, without a doubt, that this is a lying SOB.  And the American people are falling for it!  Who will save them from their folly?!

            Enough of this infuriating crap, Hank decided.  Time to go home.  He summoned his chauffeur and his armored limousine; the one with the

“DON’T  BLAME  ME,  I  VOTED  FOR  MYSELF,

         HANK  N.  KREUTZ”,

“AMERICA—LOVE  IT  OR  LEAVE  IT!”,

 and “I  ©  JESUS”

bumper stickers.  “Home, James,” he snapped, not remembering his chauffeur’s name.  It was tele-Congress season, so “home” meant Montgomery, not Washington.

            On his way home, Hank simmered and stewed.  Damned stupid public, and damned poll-takers, just can’t see straight!  Maybe it’s time to appeal to a Higher Authority, he thought; if the voters can’t see God’s Will, and there’s no other hope in sight, then, well, we’ll just have to resort to other measures.  Now, now, calm down!  He told himself.  Don’t be premature.  We’re getting there, but the time isn’t quite ripe.  Yet.

            What did Chuck LeSage used to tell me, when I got all hotheaded about the polls?  God rest his soul, I sometimes miss the man.  I just wish he hadn’t been so foolish as to think he could quit his job, and abandon our righteous work, what with all the things he knew.  Wish he hadn’t needed to meet that little accident.  I really didn’t enjoy giving that eulogy at his funeral, watching his wife and kid bawling, while I praised him for his level head, and the sound advice he always gave.

            It was true, about him being level-headed, even if he was a bit naive at times.  And, what was it that he used to say about the polls?  All sorts of underhandedness among the pollsters, getting people to say just what they want to hear.  Stupid things like, “Do you think women’s bodies belong to them, or to the government”, instead of the far more honest, “Do you think people should be allowed to murder helpless little unborn babies, and get away with it?”  Referring, of course, to real, genuine human babies.  Not monsterlings.  That, and, of course, asking the people who they know are going to agree with them, and sequencing the questions just right.  Hell, they can get the polls to say just about anything!

            So, what do the bleeding heart liberals do with their polls?  They make them agree with their own agendas, to try to make all the rest of us feel like we’re hopelessly out of it, that we shouldn’t even bother to go and vote!  Well, those evil heathens forget about a few things, such as, the strength of God’s will, and that some of us aren’t squeamish when it comes to attaining God’s will!  Voting isn’t the only way to get things done.  Now, if the polls said the evil ones had only a slight edge over us, then I might stay my hand, and try to use persuasion.  As is, with their lies persuading many of us, on the right side like me, but not quite as resolute as I am, that all is lost, that we might as well not even bother to vote—Well, we’ll just have to find other methods.  And, the liars will only have themselves to blame, for having pushed us into these other methods.

            Now think about it carefully, he told himself.  Don’t be a hothead.  Don’t over-reach, too far, too soon.  Still—DAMN those stupid, sinful people out there!  What does it take, to make them see the light?!  I should just pick up this phone, and—no, wait till I’m home.  Secure, scrambled link, off of ONLINE, where you never know who’s snooping, even with these supposedly crack-proof codes.  Not this lousy phone here in this limo.  And, give me a chance to calm down a bit, and not bite off more than we can chew, for the first step.  Just stir the waters a bit, and go from there.  Start out small.  Build from there.  Maybe even go straight on through to Operation Sanctify, if that’s what’s called for next.  Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.  Start out small, see how it goes, go from there.  But, by all means, it’s time to start doing something about this madness!  All that’s required for the triumph of evil, is for good men like me to sit on our duffs!

            By the time he got home, he’d calmed down a bit, just from anticipating finally, at last, at long last, at least doing a little bit to straighten out all that madness out there.  He got on his secure link, and called up Howard Niedermeyer of LORD (Law Officers Resisting Demonism).  The conversation was short and to the point.  “Howard?”

            “Yessir.”

            “Things are getting pretty bad out there.  I know I told you to bide your time, but the time for patience is well past.  I want y’all to stop dilly-dallying.  It’s time to get serious.  It’s time for Operation Purify.”

            “Yessir.”

            “And, be careful.”

            “Yessir.”

            “Godspeed.”

            “Yessir.”

            “Goodnight.”

            “Goodnight, Sir.”

            All right!  Hank commended himself, feeling much better.  Now for a short session with Buddy, to build up my empathy for those boys in uniform, who put their lives on the line for public safety, every day.  Then, I’ll be able to relax for the rest of the evening, knowing full well that I did my very best for the American people today.

 

 

CHAPTER  20

            “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.”

                                                            Frederick Douglass  (1817?-1895)

 

            Phil was spending a lot of time at home those days.  Partly, it was because he was too much of a big target to the protesters at ABC.  Also, there wasn’t that much that needed done at work, that he couldn’t do at home.  Derrick had handled the vast majority of the technical design issues by himself, on those automated human genetic engineering machines.  So, Phil stayed home, and did research, writing, and PR via ONLINE.  It never ceased to amaze him, that, despite—or because?—of his controversial, sometimes-strident statements, ABC let him handle so much of their PR.  Maybe ABC just got tired of trying to find excuses why the media couldn’t talk to their favorite mad scientist, rouge, and often-favored whipping boy.

            So, he spent a lot of time being interviewed, participating in debates, and writing articles for magazines, doing his very best to educate people about the options available to them, where the protesters didn’t block off access to the gene-splicing machines.  He had plenty of time left over for talking to Gloria and playing with Trent, which was a very welcome change from the usual.

            He got done with his duties halfway through the afternoon, and spent some time boogawoogifying with Trent.  For this, her temporary relief from Trentonian rambunctiousness, Gloria was thankful.  Finally, by late afternoon, Trent was all worn out, and went to sleep.

            Phil found Gloria in their bedroom, lying in bed, reading a hardcopy book.  “Hey, Big Daddy Monster,” she greeted him.  “Thanks for my vacation.  I’ve predigested the news for you already.  Doesn’t sound too good.”  She turned on the ceiling screen as he flopped onto the waterbed.  He picked up his pointer, and started to skim the news, as she returned to her book.

            Indeed, she was right; the news didn’t sound too good.  “Can you believe it?” he commented after finishing.  “The feds are too stupid to lay low for at least a little while, while the sour mood of the people dies down.  They had to go and bust Hutterite Christian communes out west, for ‘child labor’, having their children working on their ranches.  But, hey, they’re just a bunch of ‘cultists’, anyway.  Oh, yeah, and busting that lady in Indiana for engaging in ‘unlicensed grief counseling’.  Bunch of crap!

            “So much for all this rebellion being ‘right-wing extremists’, as they’re so fond of saying.  Now they’ve hit that paragon of Republican righteousness, the NIV.”  He referred to the National Institute of Virtue, a program favored by Republicans, as a counterbalance to all the Democrat-favored programs.  “Maybe these are just anti-government ‘extremists’ who don’t like excessive government of any flavor.”

            “Why do I hear some implied, skeptical quotes around your use of the word ‘extremists’, there?” Gloria asked.  “Don’t you think it’s extremist to go and bomb buildings and shoot people?  Especially when there’s ballot boxes available?  And when half of these ‘anti-government’ people are the same ones who protest that their agricultural, Social Security, what have you, entitlements aren’t big enough?”

            “Actually, you’re right, no doubt about it,” he confessed.  “They are extremists.  But don’t forget, the government’s a bunch of extremists, too, yet the media never calls ‘em that.  What other word do you have, though, for half of the crap we read about every day?  Fat cat alcoholic executive sues under the Disabilities Act, uses his fat paychecks to hire fancy lawyers, gets seven million for being fired for being a drunk.  White powder coke dealers get their wrists slapped, while the black powder dealers get nailed under the hundred-times-bigger penalties for dealing crack, ‘cause they should’ve known that their black customers would turn it into crack.  Rancher looses his ranch, ‘cause they found some wild pot plants.  The list goes on and on.”

            “So extremism breeds extremism, and violence breeds violence,” Gloria observed.  “And that includes, like you say, extremism and violence by the government.  How are the rebels gonna help us out of this mess?  Where’s it all gonna stop, Phil, that’s what I want to know.  When’s it all gonna stop?  How is violence gonna eliminate violence?”

            “I don’t know, Poogle-Bye.  Maybe when we’re all dead.  Maybe when we put a ‘force multiplier’ on that better alternate, the ballot box.  Turbo-charge the ballot box, by voting only for high-SAQ politicians.”

            “Yeah, and who’s our source?” Gloria objected.  “Derrick.  A machine who’s behind about half of the latest strife.  We’re gonna let him and his inventions help us select politicians, to make things better?”

            “Oh, come on now, be fair,” Phil objected in turn.  “So we’re all fighting about SAQs, SPIRIT scans, biotech, and Derrick’s influence on society in general.  Should we blame that on him, or on us?  If the candlemaker’s union goes and trashes everything during their strikes, do we blame Edison and his lightbulbs?”

            “No, we don’t,” Gloria admitted.  “But that’s only a small part of the picture.  What about racial strife?  Ever since Derrick, um, told us about his theories, we’ve had pro-Derrick racist punks running around and...”

            “You know he’s totally repudiated all those kinds of things,” Phil interjected.  “Can’t blame him for...”

            “Oh, yeah?  Just watch me.  Blame him.  Think about it.  How much of an increase in this kind of thing have we seen lately?  Especially since LeRoy and the Daedalus fun and games.”

            “Oh, come on now, Poogle Woogle.  Surely you don’t buy into those crazy conspiracy theories?  You make fun of me putting any credence at all in the militia loonies.”

            “Well, there’s a big difference,” she explained.  “Militia loonies think that hundreds of thousands of UN bureaucrats and soldiers can keep secrets, and invade the U.S., when they can’t even put down a war in a tiny little African country like Liberia.  Derrick, on the other hand, can cook up a conspiracy of one.  One.  Takes one hell of a lot less secrecy-guarding.”

            “So what do you think Derrick might be up to?” Phil asked skeptically.  “You know he’s totally dependent on us.  If we go down the tubes, he goes down the tubes.”

            “Maybe he’s a Maoist.  Make things worse for everyone, till they demand a change.  Maybe he’s wanting to send us down the tubes just far enough for us to beg him to straighten it all out for us.  By giving him that much more power, that is.”

            “And just what kind of evidence do you have for all this?” Phil demanded.  “Don’t you see that we’re still in the driver’s seat?  He made a number of recommendations that we’ve turned down.  Coercive control of human reproduction, rights according to level of consciousness, and so on.  We’re taking the good, and leaving the bad.”

            “Yeah,” she replied.  “Maybe that’s just what he wants us to think.  He made those recommendations, knowing full well we wouldn’t accept them.  He even went so far as to acknowledge that.  He’s planting seeds in our minds, getting us ready for what he wants to do eventually, while also giving us reassurance that we’re still in the driver’s seat.”

            “I’m still not clear on just exactly why you think he’s got, um,

malicious intentions,” he said, stroking his chin.

            “Simple,” she said.  “Just look at what’s been happening since his arrival.  He’s supposed to understand so much about us, to be so smart, then how come he couldn’t foresee all these things, and work towards fixing them, instead of making them worse?”

            “Aw, shit, Poogly Pie.  It’s a blame game.  We blame him, he blames us.  We blame him for not understanding us better, and interacting with us just right, being properly sensitive to our stupidities and what not, and he  blames us for being stupid, and for not listening to him.  I can’t quite see how to resolve that.”

            “I guess I can’t either,” Gloria confessed.  They both lay there for a few moments in silence.  “I still have a queasy feeling in my guts, about Derrick.  I think it’s all too easy for us to forget that he’s not a human being, or even, a living thing at all.  Not like anything we’re familiar with.  He doesn’t think like you or I, at all, I’ll bet.  He’d like for us to think he’s just like you or I, with a brain on steroids, but he’s not.  He’s something completely different.  An alien.  His goals and our goals may not coincide at all.”

            There was more silence.  Phil sat there, thinking about what Gloria had said.  Suppose Derrick really is out to enslave the galaxy, as he joked with me about, the day he warned me, and set me up with those security toys.  The ones I have to keep hidden from Gloria.  Sometimes, I’ve really been tempted to tell her about ‘em.  But, can’t do it.  Get her all worried, increase the risk of spilling the beans, and having everyone screaming about how Phil and Derrick are sneaking around, building secret toys with which to enslave the Universe.

            Still, all these things she says.  The conspiracy theories in certain parts of the media, mainly the less reputable parts.  Could she, they, possibly be right?  Even so far as to believe that he somehow pulled the strings leading to the continuing, torturous demise of Daedalus?  Now, how could anyone believe such things?!  Mind control across interplanetary space?  Ha!  Indeed!

            Or, somehow, he subtly garbles the communications, through some cryptic, arcane facilities, buried in the networks, to cause all this?  Seems quite far-fetched, at best.  And, most fundamentally, why, in the first place?  Still, what did he say?  Crack-proof codes are child’s play to him?  Wonder what Gloria would say if I passed that on to her?!  Not to let the cat out of the bag, though.  I still trust him, and I can’t betray his confidence in me, and take even the smallest risk of having the media get ahold of any of this.  They’d have a field day!

            “So,” he quizzed Gloria, breaking the silence.  “Did you see where some people are clamoring that Derrick be enlisted in snooping on the terrorists?  Snoop on the net, or help invent more toys to snoop on the net, and let the feds know of suspicious communications?  Basically, just kind of mass-automate such things?  Where now, it takes too many people, or too much expensive computer power, to listen to zillions of hours worth of yakking to hear and report such things, Derrick could make it practical for the feds.  Derrick said he doesn’t want to be our Big Brother, but he might want us to beg him to do it.  You think such things would fit into Derrick’s schemes, if he is, indeed, scheming?”

            “Can’t rule it out,” Gloria replied.  “It does flip me out, how we flip-flop back and forth, on issues like  that, though.   Did you read that editorial?  The history, which we all forget, way too soon.  Way back when, the FBI spies on, and lies about, Martin Luther King and other peaceful protesters, and wastes taxpayer money in getting involved in political groups.  So, they outlaw having the FBI infiltrate domestic political groups.  Then, decades later, the FBI can’t even clip newspaper articles to keep track of domestic groups.  In reaction to government stormtroopers running amok at places called Ruby Ridge and Waco, decades ago, we had private stormtroopers running amok, so they go back to giving the public storm-troopers all sorts of power.

            “So, here we are, decades later, and the feds ran amok on domestic political groups, again, during the Chinese War, and we put the handcuffs back on the FBI.  Now, this.  Swing, pendulum, swing, and never mind the sensible middle.”

            “Well put, Pootie Pie,” Phil commended her.  “But you can’t call the feds stormtroopers, ‘cause they’re the good guys.  They’re just following orders, when they put on those masks and break people’s doors down in the middle of the night.  Yet during all this back and forth, on whether or not they can lie, spy, stormtroop, jackboot, and so on, to keep crazy people from bombing us, they’ve always been using these exact same tactics, steadily and most heavily, against those who would—gasp!—indulge in consensual crimes!  And then they enforce these laws in manners that discriminate against the poor and minorities.

            “I don’t know about you, Pootie Pie, but I sure as hell worry a lot more about getting bombed, then I do about somebody offending my precious sense of social propriety, by smoking some pot, or buying some rent-a-snatch.  Where’s our common sense?  Where’s our priorities?”

            “That’s just ‘cause you ain’t got no sense of social propriety, you low-life bum, you,” Gloria grinned, pushing on his shoulder.  “Don’t be so judgmental.  Empathize with others.  Put yourselves in their shoes, before you condemn so readily.  Suppose you went into a severe anxiety attack, every time you got wind of someone smoking a joint, and you just had to go and imprison the offenders.  How would you feel, if people then ragged on you, just for standing up for your rights?”

            Phil snorted, and commented, “Hey, don’t be so judgmental.  I go into an anxiety attack, whenever I’m around judgmental people.  Including people who are judgmental of my tendency to be judgmental.  And, my anxiety attack is bigger than your anxiety attack.”

            “My poor little Snuffelufagus McSnooglepie,” Gloria commiserated.  “Here, let me help your anxiety attack.”  They started to commence some serious snuggling, just as a freshly-semi-awoken Trent pushed open the door, and stumbled into the bedroom.

            “Uh-oh, watch out, it’s the Night of the Living Sleepyhead,” Gloria warned, as Phil rolled his eyes, and Trent crawled into bed with them.  They all had a short family snuggle, until Trent woke up more thoroughly, poking, kicking, crawling, and boogawoogifying too much for anyone to get any decent rest.  Phil headed downstairs to rustle up the family’s evening grub, and a drink for himself, while Gloria stayed upstairs, taking her turn at amusing their own little domestic terrorist.

            Phil just heated a few leftovers, supplementing them with a little bit of freshly flash-heated frozen foods.  He set the table, and yelled up to the bedroom.  “Whenever y’all are ready, chow is ready.”  He sat down to sip his wine, and to wait.  He didn’t mind waiting; he liked his food a bit cooler than Gloria, anyway.  He dished out his share, so that it would have a chance to cool some more, and sat and thought.

     He listened to Trent’s squeals of delight, as he and Gloria rambunctified upstairs.  Hope he’ll have a decent world to grow up in, he thought.  Someday, you know, we’ll have to spoil his innocence.  Tell him that there’s evil people out there, who... well, we’ll not think too much about what they do, when given the chance.  What we do, what we will do, if we don’t watch out.  Why can’t we all stay innocent, like Trent?  We have to tell him about evil.  What a terrible thing to have to do!  Hell, I’ve got to tell him what I’ve done, in my life!

            Phil sipped his wine, and pondered some more.  So, we can’t call ‘em jackbooted stormtroopers, just ‘cause they act like jackbooted storm-troopers, because they’re our jackbooted stormtroopers.  We learned nothing from the depredations of Nazis ‘following orders’.  After all, they flew that ugly, fascist swastika, and we fly that nice, clean American flag, which we keep clean by force.  We’ll smash your doors in at 3 AM, but you’d better be keeping your political discourse on a civil level.  No ‘inflammatory rhetoric’; don’t undermine law enforcement.  Don’t worry about what we’re doing, just worry about what you’re saying.

            But—and, it’s just about the biggest but—I need to be responsible.  I, too, was a whore for the State, once upon a not-so-distant time.  Don’t you ever let yourself forget that, you self-righteous slimebag, he told himself.

            So, if fighting violence with violence is like trying to put the fire out with gasoline, if spying on the fanatics just confirms their own paranoia and delusions of grandeur, egging them on to yet more ridiculousness, what in God’s name are we gonna do about it all, anyway?  The government’s solution, most of the time, is more coercion, more laws, more force, more cops, more jails, and more gasoline.

            Shall we just resist non-violently?  Civil disobedience?  But what good would civil disobedience have done, had the Jews used it against the Nazis?  Or, how much good has it done all those heinous drug fiends, to non-violently disobey the all-mighty State, all these decades?  We still stick ‘em all in jail, and confiscate all their property, especially the ones with the wrong skin color.  For their own good, of course.  Maybe civil disobedience works only against a civil oppressor; one with a conscience.

            So, do I join the shitheads, and fight the other shitheads?  Bag me some whores for the State, and mount their heads on the wall?  Do I really think my life would be any better, living under the rule of the rednecks who run these militias?  Yeah, right!  The only way that the militias are any better than the feds, is that at least they don’t forcibly take my taxes to support their terrorism.  And that would change, as soon as the militias took power.  Give it up.  Do my small parts, and have faith that all our little parts add up.  Pray for peace, and vote.  Preferably, vote Libertarian; for neither the self-anointed ones, the socialists, who would make all of our charity, medical, speech, etc., decisions for us, nor for the witchburners, who condemn all but themselves, on “moral” grounds.

            Is that all I can do?  Hell, no!  I can always agitate!  Peacefully, to be sure, but agitate away!  Bitch, hoot, and holler!  Make people think!  Don’t let the dipshits tell everyone to shut up, tow the line, and knuckle under, for fear of egging on the extremists, while the whores for the State smash in doors!  Extremists will be extremists, including those who are paid by the State, regardless of what I do or say.  The trigger-puller pulls the trigger, and no one else.  Otherwise, what meaning is there to the concepts of self reliance and responsibility?

            Meanwhile, I’ll keep on agitating, in good conscience!  Persuasion is better than coercion, and it might get people to stop the madness.  Madness where the anointed ones rob Peter to pay Paul, and Paul to pay Peter, and both of them to pay themselves.  Tax the workers to pay Granny, in her retirement, but then, tax Granny to pay for schooling the kids, if she has the audacity to own her own home.  Tax ‘em all to support the institutes for virtue and self-esteem, and government gunmen who shoot the “cultists”, druggies, and gun-toting “extremists”, who would dare to arrogate to themselves, the right to armed self-defense!

            If I keep on agitating, maybe some people will wake up and say, “Hey, look, if we restrict the government to doing the bare minimum, which is, punishing fraud and violence, then, heck, maybe we could stop all our fighting about who gets how many goodies from the feds!  Maybe we could even decentralize, and provide fewer big, fat targets!  If everyone took care of their own old folks, retirement, self esteem, virtue, health, welfare, and so on, then the bombers would have to hit every one of us, instead of some centralized bureaucracy, to bring us to our knees!”

            Nah, that’s too radical.  Too extremist.  Besides, I’ll never manage to persuade enough people, ‘cause when the private extremists burn helpless little babies, the media is there to disseminate the images for the whole world to see, but when the whores for the State do the exact same thing, they keep the media many miles away.

            Shortly, Gloria and Trent found their way to the supper table, and the evening meal commenced.  Phil started in on sharing his latest thoughts with Gloria, but she fended him off.  “Hey, look, Trent will stay innocent for too short of a time, as is.  Plus, one of these years, he’ll show up at school, talk about what his Daddy says, and they’ll drag us all away.  So, can it.”

            “Drag us a... a what choo said, Mommy?  Why, Mommy, why?” Trent asked, baffled.

            Gloria looked at Trent, and then at Phil, frowning.  “See what I mean?  This precious, precocious little T-U-R-D, he listens to everything we say, and spits some of it back out.  He’s like a little sponge.  Why, just the other day, I heard him talking about the G-O-V-M-N-T, you know.  How they steal everyone’s M-O-N-E-Y.  So, we...”

            “What choo said, Mommy?  What choo said?”

            “Hush, dear.  Mommy’s talking to Daddy about grown-up stuff.  Daddy wanted to talk about some bad things, about some bad people.  We don’t want you to worry about bad people, so long as Mommy or Daddy is with you, to protect you.”

            Phil sat there, eating and grinning.  “A man after my own heart,” he announced proudly, winking at Gloria.  “He’s got the essentials down, at such an early age!”

            She frowned some more, and then they returned to lighter discussions, mostly concerning what little booger boys should and should not do with their food.  That, and how the former, most especially and specifically, did NOT include playing “doggy under table”.

            As they were about to finish eating, Phil’s portable phone beeped.  Phil checked the number. It was Derrick’s line at work!  Holy shit, he thought, something big is up!  He hasn’t called me, ever since he gave me the secret security toys, and that’s been, what, almost a year.  He’s too busy riding herd on, laying intelligent, conscious oversight over, zillions of programs worldwide, earning the big bucks for ABC, to very often deal with us peon humans, these days.  Predicting earthquakes and weather, using untold oodles of data.  Designing space probes.  What’s in all this for him, anyway, besides us getting dependent on him?  Maybe Gloria’s paranoia has some basis in fact.

            So why is he calling me now?  Maybe he wants me to get out of here, to talk to me privately, Phil thought, remembering the audio link to Derrick, buried in those security toys.  Maybe he’s wanting to warn me about some pending threat.

            Phil must have looked a little pale, or otherwise upset, because Gloria was looking at him intently.  “What’s up, Honeybunch?  Something going on?”

            “Yeah, I guess so.  What it is, is I don’t know.  I mean, is, I  need to go in to work.  This number, here, is set aside to mean, emergency, don’t talk to us over the phone, just come on in.  I gotta hit the road.”  He wolfed down his last few bites, and washed ‘em down with his last swig of wine.

            “At this hour?  What kind of emergency would they need you for?”  She’s suspicious, Phil surmised.  Should I break down one of these days, and explain all this stuff to her?  No time now.

            “I have no idea, Pootie Pie.  Something they can’t risk talking over the phones about.”  Oh, shit, now I’ll have to make up something afterwards, if Derrick just wants to chat about something relatively trivial.  Maybe it’ll be time to come clean, after tonight.  “Maybe a problem with one of our products that needs to be fixed right away, but we can’t let the media or the government get wind of it.  Or, maybe an experiment where something needs tweaked, that automated equipment for can’t handle.”

            “Something that Derrick can’t fix?  And, that needs fixed right away?  Doesn’t sound too reassuring to me.”

            Oh, hell, she’s gonna get all bent out of shape, now.  She’s gonna bend me all out of shape, worrying about her worrying.

            Gloria must have sensed Phil’s discomfort, because she just stood up, came over to the kitchen where Phil was rinsing his plate, and gave him a hug.  “You just be careful now, okay?  All those protesters, and all.  They may even have gotten that number of yours, and be calling you in, with a special welcome ceremony for you, outside the gates.  Stranger things have happened.  You might want to call in, and double-check to make sure this is the real thing.”

            “Good idea, Pootie Pie.  I’ll do it on my way in,” he said, reassured that he was making the big escape.  He grabbed his large briefcase, which contained the secret security gizmos.  He’d told Gloria about special security measures; he’d just neglected to tell her that the simple ones provided by ABC were in his office, collecting dust, while he carried some very special ones, from another source.  He gave Gloria and Trent both pecks on the cheeks, and skee-daddled out the door.

            In the car, he paused briefly to place the “panic button” on his chest, and the spinal cord neural monitor/crisis detector on his back.  Not wishing to risk having to explain such things to Gloria, he instead risked being caught by surprise, inside their well-guarded, walled-in suburban compound, without these particular devices in place.  Generally, he wore them only outside their home.  He’d rapidly gotten used to the tiny, moist, semi-living suction cups that held them to his skin, and to having to give them a bit of water, and protein pills, once a week.  That, and removing tiny droppings; he was just thankful that Derrick had at least designed them to be tidy, and not just dribble their micro-turds onto his skin.

            He also got out of his briefcase, two additional security devices, and hung them from the rear-view mirror.  They were five-inch cubes, cleverly disguised as dice.  Derrick had never explained all their contents; Phil just knew that they were quite heavy, and hoped no policeman would ever inspect them too thoroughly, if he ever got stopped.  A few other devices were secreted in hidden spots under his car; these, he moved from car to car every week, when he traded cars from ABC’s motor pool.

            He drove past the neighborhood’s guard station, and then parked briefly, to fiddle with his gear.  He fished the earphones/microphone set out of his briefcase, put it on, plugged it into a box inside the briefcase, and hit the button.  “Derrick, this is Phil.  Come in Derrick.”

            “Phil, this is Derrick.  We just got a big, lucky break.  I’ve got a lot of knowledge, now, about the plot against you.  They’ve just been careless, and made a few communications on ONLINE, where I can monitor.  Usually, they’ve very carefully avoided putting even supposedly crack-proof communications anywhere that I can reach.  You know, I still don’t have any access to certain channels, especially government ones.  But they’ve become careless, what with all the recent excitement.

            “I’d suggest you get moving again.  Maybe just start cruising towards downtown.  They’ll be calling you very shortly.  You can tell them you’re on your way downtown for a short, evening shopping expedition, and that’ll give you more time to respond to their call.”

            He started the car rolling again, as Derrick recommended.  “So, who’s the ‘they’, we’re talking about, here, anyway?” Phil asked, leery of nebulous conspiracy theories, and tired of Derrick still being coy about it all.

            “Yes, it’s time to fill you in,” Derrick replied, “My suspicions have been confirmed.  Senator Hank N. Kreutz is,  indeed,  the de facto commander of the Bible Youth, and of LORD.  They have considerable computer power and hacking skills at their disposal.  Very shortly, now, you’ll receive a call supposedly from  ABC, from a manufacturing supervisor on your pilot line.  Very conveniently, it will be the new guy, Brent Yeager, who you don’t know very well, so that you won’t notice if his mannerisms are slightly different than normal.  He’ll call you in, with a supposed problem with the current run of your latest variety of mining bugs.

            “It won’t really be him.  They’ve managed to place a few saboteurs, spies, inside of ABC.  I’ll give you details as soon as the current excitement is over.  We have far, far bigger fish to fry, for now.  They can wrest control of communications, to the point of sending you faked communications, and intercepting your calls.  It’s Hank’s henchmen in LORD, setting you up, to nab you outside of ABC’s gates.  They plan to kill you, and to make it look like a carjacking gone awry, committed by common criminals.”

            Holy shit, this Hank dude is every bit as big of a jerk as I’d always thought he was, and then some, Phil thought.  “Well, if you know all about this,” Phil inquired, “Then why don’t we just go public?  Give the media what you’ve got, and bust these lowlifes!  Crack ‘em wide open, if we had proof of LORD being linked to the Bible Youth, and Hank being the Big Boss!”

            “That’s exactly what I’d like to do.  Stabilize your society, what with all the dangerous developments lately.  Reduce this menace, get the public to realize just how pervasive and powerful these people’s influences are.  Thing is, all the evidence I have, could easily have been synthesized by me, myself, and I; yours truly.  Just like that call coming your way soon, audio, video, even holograms, are readily synthesized these days, to the point where one can’t verify their authenticity.  Only a huge mass of data, all self-consistent and containing numerous details known only to many, independent people, will stand up to intense scrutiny.

            “I could get that kind of data, if we could get honest law enforcement people to raid certain places, many of them within law enforcement itself.  Thing is, LORD’s penetration is so extensive, all that stuff would get flushed down the bit bucket, soon’s we made the slightest move.  But it’s there, and it’s big.  Hank’s people have a plan, and the power, to...

            “Listen, I’ll be right back.  Your call’s a bit earlier than I anticipated.  Here it comes.  Please tell ‘em you’ll be on your way.  Better take off your earphones, quick.”

            Phil’s portable phone beeped again.  It was, as Phil expected, “Brent Yeager”.  Phil stopped the car as soon as he got the call, and scrutinized the video image very carefully.  The picture of Brent and the pilot manufacturing line at ABC looked quite normal, although the portable phone’s screen was too small for Phil’s hairy eyeballs to function to their fullest capabilities.  Phil proceeded to quiz “Brent” about all the details about what was going wrong, on the pretense of seeing if maybe they could solve the problem without Phil coming in.  Phil just wanted to see just how good the opposition was, how thoroughly they’d penetrated ABC, how much they knew.

            “Brent” gave just enough plausible details to say that everything was a big mess, and that, by all means, they had to have Phil there.  Upon further questioning, “Brent” protested that they shouldn’t be talking about proprietary details of ABC’s technology on a line of doubtful security, and Phil had to give it up.  Okay, you bum, or synth-bum, you’ve outfoxed me.  “I’m on the road, but I’m not too far away,” Phil submitted.  “I’ll be in shortly.”

            Phil started the car moving again, turning around to head towards ABC.  He put his earphones back on and punched the button again, calling Derrick, thinking, oh, shit, what have I gotten myself into now?  Can I maybe just call in sick?  Go home, drink beer, worry about this some other day?

            “Derrick?”

            “At your service.”

            “Hey, got a question for you.  Questionszszs.  Why me?  What’s in this for our good buddy, Hank?  What happens if I decide I’m sick, I can’t make it in tonight?”

            “Well, I’d think some of these things should be obvious,” Derrick replied.  “Knock off the prime, famous, human spokesperson for, and perpetrator of, these ungodly biotechnological activities, and his cause is clearly furthered.  One less obstacle at ABC, in the way of his minions, who might, now, have a clearer shot at me.  That’s one of their longer-

term goals, you know.  Capture, or eliminate, me.

            “As far as, what happens if you try to bow out, I don’t know.  No crystal balls, here.  I’d venture to say, you’d just put off an inevitable confrontation, raise their levels of frustration and suspicion.  Very likely, trade a situation where we have the drop on them, to a situation where they have the drop on us.  Not a good trade to make.”

            Phil just drove on, in silence, thinking glum and increasingly nervous thoughts.

            “What I was saying, though, before your call came in,” Derrick continued, “Is that Hank and his people have some very big plans.  They’re waiting for the right time, and the right excuse, for putting it into action.  You’d be doing your country, even your species, a great favor if you could help thwart them.

            “What they’ve got planned, and may have the power to do, is to take over America.  Not planned for tonight, as far as I can tell, although this plan might be implemented at any moment, and the troops in LORD are on alert tonight.  They have enough men, some of them in police departments all across the U.S., to squelch congressmen who aren’t privy to the plan, while they bring their considerable computer resources to bear.  Those resources would take over the virtual Congress, synthesizing footage of many unwilling congressmen voting contrary to how the real congressmen would vote.  The virtual congressional coup that they plan will be to find or create some emergency pretext, and then, to have ‘Congress’ vote to give Hank N. Kreutz emergency, ‘temporary’, dictatorial powers.”

            Whew!, thought Phil, we’re in a bunch of crap, indeed!  Up to our eyeballs!  If it was just me, I’d be tempted to call in sick, go get Gloria and Trent, and emigrate to Australia, Russia, Mars, whatever.  But, this?!  Can’t go pulling up stakes, and running away from something like this!  If Derrick isn’t pulling my leg, we’re in a real crock of shit.  I’ll root for Derrick against ol’ Senator Chancre on my Butthole, any time, any day!

            “Derrick, are you sure you can’t put together enough evidence of all this?  Something that could convincingly indict these buttholes, without me having to... whatever you’re planning.  Play bait for your fishing expedition, gathering more evidence, whatever.  What say?”

            “Sorry, ol’ chap, your willing cooperation is essential.”

            “Okay, what’s the plan?  I’m listening.”

            “They’ll have each entrance to ABC staked out by one squad car.  They’ll find some reason to stop you, and to tell you to follow them to the station.  As soon as you start to follow their one squad car, the others, from the other two entrances, will move in behind you, to make sure you don’t escape.  Together, they’ll escort you to a guarded back road, where there is a truck full of eight or ten armored, ‘waldo’-equipped troops.  They know you’re equipped with security devices; they just don’t know what kind.  They’re not even sure of what ABC originally equipped you with.

            “They plan to stop you by the truckload of troops, and leave you to them.  They have radio jamming equipment there, just in case you have hidden security devices capable of relaying out, what is happening to you.  They then plan to, ah, eliminate you, eradicate any records, of any kind, that they can find, anywhere in your car, of what has happened to you, and set it up to look like a regular crime.  Finally, shortly thereafter, the regular squad cars will return, ‘discover’ the scene of the dastardly crime, rope it off, and square it away some more.  By the time regular cops, who don’t belong to LORD, catch any wind of this, everything will look like an ordinary crime.

            “I’ve got plans to turn the tables on them, and get our evidence, to boot.  Drive there, cooperate with them, and roll both of your front windows down, for your own safety, that’s all I ask of you.  I’ll handle the rest.  After it’s all over, I’ll want for you to recover the disk drives out of the waldoes of the fallen troops, escape, and turn the disk drives in to the media.”

            Oh, man, what, indeed, am I getting into, now, Phil asked himself.  Here, just a few minutes ago, I thought I was so far above these dirty, physical struggles between the jackbooted stormtroopers and the common people, so spiritually advanced, so pacifist.  So high above the world tonight, I was an angel, watching you sleeping, and now I’m cast back down, to wallow in your mire.  So Derrick wants me to cooperate in, what, killing?  Yet, what is it that they want to do to me, according to him, at least?  Is this all worth it, for a greater good?  Is it time to water the tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants?  Maybe so.  Just think of what I might help prevent.  Or am I totally off base, here, in the first place?

            “Derrick, what, exactly, is it, that you have planned for these guys?  Are you planning on killing them?  I thought you said, way back when, that you weren’t going to design weapons, that you don’t believe in billy clubs?”

            “Except for self defense, or, for the legitimate defense of others.  And, I meant, mostly, weapons of mass destruction.  But relax,” Derrick replied.  “Nothing barbaric, here, in our plans.  Even though we plan to hide my involvement, for now, we can’t take any unnecessary risk of my being involved in killing a human being, and word getting out.”

            Derrick went on to say that yes, the security devices contained weapons, and that, worst case, they might kill.  But, he explained, the projectiles were cleverly designed to penetrate armor, yet shatter into tiny fragments, unfortunately, unavoidably creating fairly sizable wounds.  But the payloads of these bullets would mostly consist of drug-

bearing microliposomes.  Coagulants, minimizing bleeding, and drugs causing a few hours of lost consciousness, as well as short-term memory loss, would be included in the mix.  And some wicked hangovers, but those would be purely unintentional side effects.  Well, I may aspire to sainthood, Phil mused, but I sure won’t shed too many tears over their headaches, seeing as how they’re gunning to snuff me.  So, all told, the weapons were relatively non-lethal, Derrick concluded.

            Derrick went over what he expected to happen, and his plans, with Phil, in some detail, as Phil drove ever closer and closer to his rendezvous with fate, and grew ever more anxious.  “What’s this business about disk drives in the troops’ powered armor?” Phil wanted to know, after Derrick drilled him quite thoroughly, in exactly how to remove them.

            “Those disk drives are our tickets to busting Hank and his crew, convincingly, with overwhelming masses of data, all intimately tied to many other details, known by many individuals, but not to me,” Derrick explained.  “It would just be unimaginable for me to fabricate all that, when it is so detailed, and so tied into billions of details not otherwise known to me.  Tell a lie, in the midst of a complicated society, and you have to tell ten lies to cover or explain that one, and then ten times ten to explain those, and so on.  In other words, there are some very quickly converging limits, on what kinds of lies one can get away with, for how long, unless a situation is very tightly controlled, very highly isolated.

            “So, the data on those drives will be quite convincing.  With any luck at all, they’ll contain, not just bunches of visual and body-movement data, but also, conversations among the troops, commands coming down from high up, plotting and scheming of all sorts.  And, all that damning data will be in your hands, if we pull this off right.”

            Derrick gave Phil some directions on how to unprotect and duplicate the data, and about the best choices of who in the media to give it to, where the risk of the data getting mysteriously “lost” would be minimal.  Derrick said he wanted Phil to know these things, in case Hank’s troops somehow managed to get to Derrick, and shut him down, or, at least, cut off his communications with the outside world, including Phil.  This idea scared Phil a little bit, when he stopped to think about it.  What will I do, all alone in a big, bad world, without my ally?  He’s trying to tell me.  Well, that’s all very well and good, sort of, but a few things still puzzle me.  “So, why are the troops carrying these drives, anyway?”  he

demanded.

            “Well, they were originally built into the armored suits, the ‘waldoes’, for data collection, for use in defending the police against excessive force lawsuits, for gathering evidence for the prosecution, and for providing realistic training, in virtual reality, for new recruits, as I’m sure you might recall,” Derrick replied.  “What you might not know, is that there’s a thriving underground market in these things, among the troops in LORD.

            “Senator Hank N. Kreutz himself, I might add, is apparently very, very fond of suiting himself up in VR suits, and playing back the exploits of his stormtroopers.  For his edification, and for building his empathy with the public’s defenders, not for his own enjoyment, of course, you understand.  Now, you didn’t hear that.  Certainly not from me.  Hopefully, none of this will matter much, soon, anyway.  But, as you might imagine, they’ll not pass up a chance to add to their collection of ‘training data’, what with their anticipated, latest triumph, here.  Take my word for it; they’ll be equipped with disk drives.  They’ll be ours, shortly.  Justice is strange, but sweet.”

            God damn!, Phil thought, what kind of sick bastards are we dealing with, here?!  Thank God that we’ve got Derrick on the right side, at least!

            Time is drawing short, Phil thought, watching the last vestiges of a pleasant early autumn evening’s daylight fading away, and the edge-of-town scenery slipping by, bringing him ever closer to ABC.  Hope all goes well.  I’d like to call Gloria, and tell her once more that I love her, in case I don’t make it.  But that would be a rough experience to think too much about.  Distract me from the crucial tasks looming ahead.  Besides, they’d monitor—maybe even intercept—my call.  Wonder if they could do a convincing synthetic Gloria?  Obviously, the whole idea stinks.  I’ve got to concentrate on what Derrick is going over, seemingly for the fifty-second time.

            Okay, so he says my car will be out of commission, partways into the fun and games, and I’ll need a ride after gathering those disk drives.  And, yes, he understands that we can’t go calling Gloria, asking her to drive out here to give me a ride, Trent in tow, and explaining all this.  The way Derrick put it was, “Not to worry; I have a taxi driver in mind for you.  One that you trust completely.  Don’s home, not doing anything more important than getting his good buddy out of a tight spot.  Let’s call him now.  No, don’t worry about it; I can place the call where they can’t detect it.  Not on your phone.  I’ll place it.”

            They made the call, taking turns in providing most of the facts to Don.  Don had a hard time believing it; he suspected he was being set up.  After all, it was an audio-only call, and audio, even more so than video and holovision, was readily synthesized, these days.  So here’s Don, telling us he’s afraid we’re not really us, that we’re electromagnetic facsimiles of ourselves, Phil mused.  Aren’t we all paranoid these days?

            Maybe it has to do with those interminable B. O. Samson trials, which might actually come to a conclusion one of these years.  The deal about him pulling the wool over his girlfriend’s eyes, with high-dollar computer-synthesized holovision images of himself, at training camp, instead of chasing other women.  Hell, maybe that’s where some people are getting these idiot notions about Derrick pulling tricks on us, vis-à-vis this Daedalus fiasco.  To think that they’re even starting to make dents in my wife, as sensible as she usually is!

            Okay, so, what do we do about Don’s doubts, here?  We are telling him some pretty incredible tales.  I guess I can’t blame him.  “Don, why don’t you just ask me something that you know only I would know?  We’re old pals; there’s tons of things that only the real Phil, and not a faux Phil, would know, about our countless exploits.  Pick a few.  Make it quick, though; there’s trouble brewing, and we can’t go too far down memory lane.”

            “Okay, dude, you asked for it,” Don replied.  “Think way back to a conversation you and I once had, to quote you, about my ‘former life’ as a Cossack invader of Alaska.  How did I justify my depravity?”

            “Hey, no sweat.  ‘The Czar is far away, and God is far above.’  Weenie question.  Gimme another, if you still think I’m a faux Phil.”

            “Yeah.  When you so bravely went to save the world, in your trip to Tonky Town, who were you looking for, and what were you going to tell said person?”

            “Wicked Wanda.  The number of the anti-beast is one hundred and fifty-three,” Phil said, reciting the secret code words.

            “All right.  I’m on my way.  Good luck, buddy!”

            “Thanks.  Stay on your toes, yourself.  Don’t forget, they’ll be keeping traffic away from the immediate area.  Stay clear till Derrick calls you again.”

            “Gotcha.  Godspeed.  See ya.”

            “Bye.”

            It seemed awfully quiet, suddenly, cruising all alone, towards a frightening future.  Autumn’s closing in.  All alone, except for the ghost of a machine, who provides some comfort, but not much.  What, indeed, have I gotten myself into, now, Phil wondered, as his intestines developed an even greater interest in mastering all the intricate knots of boy scout handbook fame.  His mind raced, envisioning various forms of pending doom, thinking that he’d almost be better off, not knowing what was ahead.

            Well, what’s the worst they can do, anyway?  They can stop my ticker.  They can kill my ass.  My hero says, though, that they can kill my body, but not my soul.  While I’d sure like to watch my son grow up, and help my lovely bride, best as I can, to show him how to live, why, this is still a strangely comforting thought.  I need fear nothing, not even death.  Well, losing my soul, my self-respect, yes.  But that’s purely under my own control, anyway.  Me, my God, my conscience, that’s all that matters.  I need fear no evil.

            Phil rounded the bend, and saw the cop car up ahead.  Steeling his nerves, he calmly gave the policeman a friendly wave as he passed by.  Make this whore for LORD feel like the slimewad he is, Phil thought; help him think that maybe they’ve told him wrong about me, that I’m not an ogre, that I love at least the honest cops out there, who are just doing their duties.  The patrol car’s lights fired up behind him, and Phil started to pull over, thinking, okay, the fun and games are about to begin.  I’ve got to stay calm, cool, and collected, and remember all that Derrick told me.


 

CHAPTER  21

                                    “The truth is a very stubborn thing.”

                                                            Sir Winston Churchill  (1874-1965)

                        “...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

                                                Jesus Christ  (6 BC?-27 AD?)  John 8:31

 

            LeRoy woke from yet another “night” of disturbing dreams, wondering what in the world—or between worlds?—they might be trying to tell him.  Let’s not do my usual, he told himself; let’s not just retreat to the engine room, and sit there, trying to invent the modern-day art of ion-engine Zen meditation.  Next thing you know, I’ll be a self-published author, trying to push Zen and the Art of Ion Engine Maintenance—Getting in Touch with Your Inner Ion Zengine.

            Let’s go and act on those ridiculous, nagging doubts and suspicions, instead.  Ever since they’ve sent us programs from Derrick, to run on our computers, we’ve been doing what they’d told me wasn’t gonna happen—Derrick, or, at the very least, the Gödel network, is controlling hardware on our ship.  The radio I installed, linking us and Earth to the Lewis & Clark III—he’s controlling it.  We’ve got ourselves a thirteenth crew member, now, by the name of Derrick, the Dirty Diamond.

            Okay, so, it’s not such a big deal.  It’s not a life-support system, and isn’t a death-ray booger beam.  Still, it ain’t the way they told us it’d be, and I might sleep a wee tad better, if I just snooped around a bit.  Be paranoid, to put my mind at ease.  Sanity through paranoia.

            So, where do I start?  Sit down, here, and log in, and just gather a bit of data about the Lewis & Clark probe, us, and this “Loreley” asteroid.  See if everything is consistent.  Yeah, here it is—all the orbital data.  Us, the probe, and the asteroid.  Positions, velocities, vectors.  Even, which way our radio antennae is pointed.  Copy that to my local station.  Now, the orbital mechanics equations, and the same set of data from when the Lewis & Clark III was launched, five years ago.  Plus, all the probe’s, and our, correction burns to date.  Pretty nifty, that we’ve got all sorts of data, a significant fraction of all humanity’s knowledge, right here on this little tincan.  Now, run all these numbers through the equations, and check it out.

            For all of ten seconds, LeRoy sat, barely thinking about massively parallel computations taking place right there inside his little box.  When the results appeared on his display, his eyes scanned them rapidly, comparing them, side by side, to the current data.  Everything seemed kosher.

            Then, he got to wondering.  If Derrick really is an asshole, and a very smart one at that, and he’s running loose in our computers, then, why, wouldn’t he go and cook the books?  Make everything appear hunky-dory, to appease paranoid persons like me?  “Correct” the original data to fit what’s going on now?  What to do?  Wait a minute, don’t we have backup data, to be used in case our systems go kaput, and we have to reboot the whole mess?  Disk drives stored separately, where a virus or a rouge computer couldn’t touch ‘em?

            Well, is it time to go and drag Mangeur De Grenouilles, our French computer expert, into all this?  Or, his German backup, Fessel Ballon Schnitzel?  If I did, I’d have to explain why.  Tell ‘em I’m having bad dreams?  They’d tell me to go see the “medicine man”, Pary Kaiiyeta, the Russian psychologist, etc., jack of all trades intangible, master of none.  Get me a reputation as a silly, paranoid person.  Nah, I’ll do this myself.  But, if I’m gonna be a silly, paranoid person, I might as well do it right.  Think this through, before I go and act.

            Okay, so, if I stay on the network, Derrick’s programs could very well go and screw up the backup drive’s data, as soon as I load the files.  Hope their data isn’t trashed already.  Nah, no reason anyone would have hooked them up.  If there’d have been a system crash, I’m damned sure I’d know about it.  Those two goofballs, they’d have been bitching and cussing up a storm, like any hacker I’ve ever known.

            So, I’ve got everything here that I need, except for original data that’s not suspect.  I’ll go and get it.  Fortunately, they trust us, around here; everyone has access.  We’re all professionals.  If one of us wanted to fuck up the computers, or the data, we’d be in serious trouble, anyway, despite all the solar system’s best security measures.  We’re a tight team, here; we do everything together, practically swapping underwear.

            So I’ll look up which drive, or drives, have all the data I need.  Not yet; think it through, first.  Caution!  Obviously, I’ll disconnect myself from the net, before I start messing with this.  What if Derrick was even paranoid enough to load something into my local station, here, to detect when I hook up a drive from the backup library, and “fix” the data, when I load it up?  Hell, no sweat:  I’ll back myself up to the main systems, copy only what I have, here, that I really need, for this particular exercise, to my own portable drive, disconnect, and reformat my whole system.  Wipe it clean.  I can restore it later.  Then, reload the stuff I need, as well as virgin data, and check it all out.

            But what if he’s devious enough to put his data fucker-upper routines buried in the very files that I need?  What if they have a little segment that says, okay, if you see such-and-such data from the backups, run your equations this way; otherwise, be honest?  Even, when displaying the data to the screen or the printer, change it?  Do I have to sit here, for days, with textbook equations, pencil, and paper, wishing I’d have listened to my instructors better, way back when?  If my paranoia has any basis, we can’t afford that kind of time!

            Well, hell, Derrick may be smart, but he’s not omniscient!  Plus, he’s umpteen million miles away; the time delay means he can’t keep track of what I’m doing, fast enough to do anything proactive.  Even IQ-two-million supercomputers can’t violate the laws of relativity.  Let’s see, now, what tools have we, for computer security?  Aren’t those backup drives write protected?  As long as no one deliberately unprotects them?  And, aren’t there little, ancient, old, seven-segment hexadecimal checksum displays, buried inside our systems?  As bottom-level security tools, totally inaccessible to operating systems, that can tell us if files have been messed with, or not?  Yeah, the ones they gave us, in case some smart idiot, having nothing better to do, buried a virus deep in our systems.  Couldn’t I use those, to compare the files on the backup drives, with what’s on the system?  Yeah, it would be halaciously tedious, going though all of them, looking for mischief, for mismatching checksums, but I’ve got only a few files.  If the number-crunching exercise shows all is well, I can take a few extra steps, and even eliminate the possibility that Derrick has got that angle covered.  Foolproof!

            LeRoy began the tasks he’d settled on.  First, he made a hardcopy of the current gospel, as displayed.  Some of the steps were rather mindless and tedious, especially backing himself up to the main systems, moving the few files he really needed to a portable drive, and reformatting his local station’s permanent drives.  He did this just for thoroughness, even though it wasn’t foolproof.  And, going to fetch the one archived drive that it turned out that he needed, according to the records.  All that time gave him an opportunity to stew on other matters, including how Samantha didn’t seem to be the Samantha he remembered, sometimes, when they exchanged messages.  Has she really changed that much, lately, he asked himself.

            It was during the ten seconds of calculations that it hit him, exactly what was bugging him about communications with “Samantha”.  Yeah, that’s it!  Certainly not proof, in a court of law, he thought.  I, personally, though, know she’d have had to lose half her memory, to have forgotten that!  The only other choice is, it’s not really her!

            With renewed determination and urgency, LeRoy checked the results of the latest calculations, against the printout.  Everything agreed.  I’m not done yet, though, he thought, muttering to himself, “All right, you bastard, one last hooray, to flush you out.”  He tore the cover off his box, and started alternately loading files, first from the “virgin files” directory, straight off of the write-protected archive drive, and then from the directory of questionable files.  He scribbled down the sixteen-digit hex checksum codes as they were generated, comparing them one by one.  Sure enough, on only his fifth file, a calculations executable, the checksums didn’t match!

            Gotcha, you filthy douche bag, he growled to himself.  Victory isn’t very sweet, though, ‘cause we’re in a heap of deep doo-doo, without a second to spare, he told himself, bounding off in the low gravity.  Gotta find Seidel Schnell, and fast!

            Seidel joined LeRoy in his room.  LeRoy shut the door behind them, thinking, there’s ears out there.  More like, microphones.  Derrick knows anything that goes on out there, in “public”, but our rooms are private.  No use tipping our hand before we have to.

            Seidel calmly listened to what LeRoy had to say, seemingly not catching on to the urgency of the situation.  He asked LeRoy to slow down and take it easy, but acknowledged his concerns, and reassured LeRoy that he, Seidel, would give this matter his complete attention.  LeRoy, sputtering and trying to contain his frantic urgency, offered to repeat the whole exercise for Seidel’s benefit.  Seidel waved off this suggestion, and quizzed LeRoy for more details about what, exactly, it was, that puzzled him so, how Samantha could possibly have forgotten what?

            Embarrassed, LeRoy ended up explaining that, way back when, when they’d first been in fresh puppy love, they’d somehow evolved a little routine, where he’d flip her the bird, and she’d smile, form a circle with one hand, and do dirty deeds to that circle with the middle finger of her other hand, nodding eagerly.  They’d dropped the habit, and he’d only done his part of this routine the other day, for the first time during this journey.  “Samantha” had failed to play her part of the game.

            Seidel just sat there, looking thoughtful.  “Don’t you see,” LeRoy prodded, “It’s not really her!  We’re getting hoodwinked, by a

computer that knows a lot, but not everything, thank God!”

            “I was just thinking about my wife, Scheide Schnell,” Seidel replied.  “There’s been similar disconnects between her and I.  Nothing so colorful,” he grinned.  “But don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret.  I know our good Canadian comrade would have a good time with this.”

            Suddenly, he was all business.  “Fessel!  Sehr rasch!  Sehr rasch!!”  he hollered.  In a quieter but urgent aside to LeRoy, he acknowledged the urgency of the situation.  “You’re right, ve haven’t a moment to spare.  Every moment, ve add excess velocity, in wrong direction, if ve are... as you say, hootvinked.  Maybe ve can still make it to Mars, and use the aerobrakes.  Ve need to decite, fast.  I have idea, here.  Maybe our electrical engineer, Fessel, here, maybe he can tell us for sure.  Maybe...”

            Fessel bounded around the corner and bounced to a halt inside LeRoy’s room, glancing at the torn-up computer, drives, and papers.  “What’s up, boss-man?” he inquired.

            Forgetting all about courtesy to LeRoy, who didn’t know German from Tagalog, Seidel spat some rapid-fire German at Fessel.  Fessel replied in like manner, and bounded off from whence he’d come.

            “Sorry,” Seidel said to LeRoy.  Seidel seemed to have calmed back down a bit, now that he’d momentarily caught the urgency, and had a plan.  “Let’s move off to the storage, utility room, where we pass our cables from our computers, out to that old radio of yours.  Fessel tells me if there’s nothing, just junk, no real data, going across those cables, he can tell, real fast.  Derrick may well be able to fool us, sending data out to nowhere, but he simply can’t fake an incoming signal.  Hardware won’t do it.  A sender sends, a receiver receives.”

            No shit, Sherlock, LeRoy said to himself.  I’m glad, though, that I gave a copy of the specs on that radio to Fessel, a while back; between his knowledge of it, and the cables in here, he’ll get right to the bottom of this.

            In a very short time, LeRoy and Seidel were watching, as Fessel cut the cable’s sheath.  He pulled the fancy oscilloscope/logic analyzer/multimeter dingafungus towards himself, pulled a current probe out, and pulled back the spring-loaded gate to the tiny loop.  He consulted his cheat sheet briefly, and pulled a blue wire out of the mess inside the sheath.  He put the wire through gate, closed the loop, and began fiddling with his dingafungus.  The verdict was in shortly.  Fessel stood up, sober-faced, turning a whiter shade of pale.  Quietly, he announced, “Nichts.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Not even a carrier wave.  This is supposed to be a high-traffic, two-way loop.  I even checked the schedule, to make sure they weren’t doing anything special, like those five minutes a while back, when they shut down transmissions from Earth.  Nothing funny scheduled, and we should’ve known about it, if it was.”

            “We’ve been had,” LeRoy muttered, seething angrily.  “By a soulless, lying bastard of a computer.

            Seidel didn’t hesitate.  “Okay.  It might be just a temporary, brief failure.  Fessel, I vant you to stay here, and keep an eye on it.  If the signal comes back, ve can change our minds at the last minute.  Meanwhile, ve go and get ready to turn this ship around.  No time to vaste.”

            LeRoy trailed along, as Seidel hustled off, rounding up Alan and Manny for an emergency thrust-reversal.  Manny had to be rousted out of bed.  Seidel explained as best as he could, between telling everyone over and over again, that there was no time for debate.  “We’re gonna turn this ship around, and double up thrust.  Use up safety margin.  Hope all those designers did a goot job.  Got a lot of velocity to kill.”

            Alan, the engineer in charge of the fusion and ion engines, protested, but Seidel wouldn’t hear any of it.  LeRoy just barely managed to squeeze in a request that they turn the ship around in such a manner as to be able to turn the radio towards Earth.  Manny ran some numbers real quick, and assured him that it could be done.  “Make it so, then,” Seidel snapped.  The three of them, with LeRoy looking over their shoulders, began some serious clacking at their keyboards, and yanking at their pointers, preparing for the maneuver.

            Other crew members gathered to see what the excitement was all about.  I’d better catch ‘em up to speed, LeRoy thought, lest they bug our pilots and commander, here, while they’re trying to maneuver.  One thing, first, though.  I gotta bug ‘em myself, one last time.  “Hey, guys, what if we’re using some gimped-up orbital data.  What if...”

            “Don’t worry,” Seidel grumped.  “Ve purge all systems, build back from backup.  Take optical and radar readings of Mars, check it out.  For now, ve got to trust our data is close.  Derrick not to take risks he don’t must take, and fibbing to us, about vere ve are vith respect to Mars, ven ve can double-check, vell, that be stupid.  Now, ve gotta do...”

            LeRoy could tell, Seidel was about to tell him to get lost.  Seidel seemed to change plans, suddenly, and forced himself to calm down.  He turned around, grabbed LeRoy’s hand, patted him on the shoulder, and pumped his hand good and hard.  This, from a normally reserved, Teutonic knight!  “I’m sorry, LeRoy.  I was about to... snap at you, after all you’ve done for us.  Looks like you might have saved us all from who knows what, from some crazy computer, wants to kill us all.  We all owe you, big-time.  Remind me to buy you many mugs of goot German beer, when we get back home.”  He turned back to his station.  “Come on, guys, we gotta turn this ship around.”

            LeRoy pulled some wide-eyed crew members back, and explained quietly to them, just exactly how much of a low-life scum-sucking dirty motherfucker that rotten bastard, Derrick the Dirty Diamond, was.  How truly, totally cold-blooded he was, and how there might still be hope, that he’d get his just rewards.  All they had to do was to turn around and try to raise Earth, on their archaic old radio, and let them know the scoop.  That, and, of course, see if they could save the ship, and themselves.


 

 

CHAPTER  22

            “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

                                                Judge (Billings) Learned Hand  (1872-1962)

 

            Phil pulled over, and a trooper swaggered up.  Phil rolled both front windows down, as Derrick had instructed him.  “Hello, Sir, and how are you this fine evening?” Phil inquired solicitously, thinking, maybe I can get off with a warning.  “Mend your mendacious ways, my child, and cease to slander the good names of Republicans, and of God—I may repeat myself, perhaps, but it is for your benefit, o wayward one.  Now, be on your way.  Go, and sin no more,” he’ll tell me.  Maybe Derrick is full of shit.  Maybe this is his idea of a big practical joke.  Sophomoric humor, in the style of a solitonic supercomputer.  God knows I committed worse, when I was a college brat!

            Alas, such was not to be; not, at least, on this particular fine autumn evening.  “Oh, not too bad,” the trooper admitted.  “I suppose Ah’d be feelin’ better, had Ah been tipplin’ the ol’ bottle a bit.  Had a few too many, thar, Sir?  Seems ta me, yah were weavin’ a bit.  Let’s see yer laacense, inshurance, registraation, and inspecshun certificates.”

            Sure, pal, I’ve had about six ounces of wine, last twenty-four hours.  Betcha I could still out-perform you, in just about any mental task, short of being a jerk, that you’d care to dream up, Phil thought.  He dutifully handed over his stack of papers, wondering when the government might join the twenty-first century, and simply put it all on disks, like they did their “waldo” joyrides data.

            Trooper promptly announced, “Sir, as yah might know, we’ve had a lot a trouble with grumpy citizens usin’ thar phones to call in gangs, hitmen, and such laak.  Even fer a simple traffic stop.  I’m afraid we’ll haff ta hold yer phone for yah, till we’re done.  It’s the law.”

            Phil handed over his phone, hoping that Trooper wouldn’t take the additional steps of rooting around and looking for more electronics.  His hopes were dashed shortly, as trooper announced that he had to search Phil and his car, looking for weapons or additional phones.  Trooper beckoned to Trooper Two, in the squad car a few yards behind them.  Trooper Two tromped up to join the party.  They ordered Phil out of the car; one of them patted him down, while the other searched the car.  Phil, while sprawled out on the hood, noticed that Trooper Two tore down all three miniature video cameras in the car, despite how well hidden they were.  Uh-oh, Phil thought, I’m not so sure this is according to plan.  Will Derrick be forced to act prematurely?  I’m kinda exposed, right now.

            “Hummm, what we got here?” Trooper Two inquired, inspecting the contents of Phil’s briefcase.  There goes my link to Derrick, Phil thought, but this is to be expected.  With any decent luck, here, they won’t be keeping it too long, anyway.  Just don’t mess with those dice, hanging there in front of your nose, trooper, and we’ll be fine.  Otherwise, the fun starts early, and that wouldn’t be good.

            Phil stood up from being patted down, just in time for Trooper Two to bring the briefcase to him.  “I said, what we got, here, Sir.  You hard o’ hearin’?”

            “A briefcase, you dumb fuck,” Phil wanted to say.  Instead, he restrained himself, and merely said, “Oh, that?  Just a set of earphones, and a drive player.”  Trooper Two stared real hard at the electronics gear, and then at Phil.  “And a few security devices,” Phil added reluctantly, thinking, as if this is proof positive that I’m an agent of the Devil Himself.

            “Security devices,” Trooper Two muttered, seemingly to himself.  There was silence, as the two troopers looked at each other.  “He wants security.  We’re not giving him enough security, it seems,”  Trooper Two commented.

            “Hot Diggetty Dawg!!”  Trooper One declared, “We caught ourselves a regular ol’ James Bond, here!  Reckon we’d better search ‘im again.  Search ‘im good.”  He took out his nightstick and strutted in front of Phil, slamming it into his own palm, again and again, getting into Phil’s face, forcing Phil away from his car.  Trooper Two disappeared behind Phil.  Phil wanted to look back and see what Trooper Two was up to, but didn’t think it wise to ignore Trooper One, now putting on a show in front of him.

            “We seen yer papers,” Trooper One was saying, slamming his left palm once more, for emphasis.  “We know who you are.  Big-shot ABC scientist, playin’ Gawd, makin’ monsters, suckin’ up ta Godless computers, makin’ fun a the Bible.  Boy, we don’t laak yer kind, in these parts.  Bring trouble ta us.  Lotta trouble.  Might us hafta teach ya some respect.  Some respect, boy!”  The nightstick came down into Trooper’s palm once more, with particular vehemence.  Phil winced inwardly, just watching, but Trooper didn’t flinch.

            How do they know I’m not carrying a bug, transmitting this audio, at least, Phil wondered.  Are they monitoring radio?  These guys aren’t anywhere near as stupid as they’d like for me to believe, I’ll bet.  Are they jamming, even?  How is Derrick keeping an eye on all this, anyway?  Is... Oh, better pay attention to Trooper, here, he’s starting another speech.  Why is he looking...

            Wham!  A nightstick and a boot slammed into the rear of Phil’s knees, and he toppled backwards, into the dirt.  Trooper One helped him on his way down, from the front, shortly after the blows from the rear.  Phil pulled his head in towards his chest, but it still snapped back, slamming into the dirt, momentarily stunning him.  It wasn’t enough to prevent him from hearing wild hoots of glee from the Troopers, who were now stepping on him, keeping him in the dirt.

            “Git down on the ground, boy, git down on the ground!”  Trooper One was saying.  Phil tried to fend off the blows, finally managing to roll over, protecting his more vulnerable front.  Derrick, we might have to start the fun early, Phil thought.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  Trooper Two seemed to call off Trooper One to some extent, saying, as best as Phil could barely make out, something about following a plan, and Phil still needing to be able to drive.

            Trooper Two sent Trooper One back to the squad car to “...check up on what all the computers have found by now, on our boy, here,” while he pulled out some electronics, which he used to check Phil out, quite thoroughly, for, for who-knows-what, Phil thought, praying that Derrick’s organic doohicks wouldn’t show up.  They didn’t, and Phil breathed a bit easier.

            Trooper One was back soon enough, saying that Phil had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, for an unanswered jury summons.  That’s the biggest fib I’ve ever heard, Phil thought.  Even if it had gotten lost in the mail, I’d have gotten a copy on my ONLINE account.  Even Atlanta has joined the twenty-first century by now.

            They dragged Phil to his feet, none too gently.  “Now, shut your mouth, and follow us to the station,” Trooper Two admonished him.  “Behave yourself, no funny business, and we’ll put in a good word for you.”  Sure, Phil thought, brushing himself off and gingerly waddling over to his car.  So, we’re going to the station now, are we?  Derrick told me I’m headed to a setup, where y’all are gonna make mincemeat of me, and make it look like a bungled carjacking.  Y’all wanna make sure everything looks right, and that means I gotta drive, to where you’ve got it all set up for me.  So, who’s fibbing?  Y’all, or Derrick?  I know where my money’s at.  Roll the bones!

            Phil got in his car, and Trooper One jabbed his finger in Phil’s face, making it abundantly clear that he’d better be a good sport, or else.  The troopers finally left him alone, and Phil exhaled a huge sigh of relief.  If I get through this alive, he thought, and if the U.S. pulls out of its current crisis, without reverting to something ghastly, then I sure hope I can mostly forget this little episode, and remember that most cops are good dudes and dudettes.  They pulled out, and Phil pulled out behind them, following them “to the station”.

            A few miles down the road, another squad car started to follow them.  All’s going according to the plan, Phil reflected, glancing at his lucky dice, dangling from the rear-view mirror.  So far so good.  Sort of, if I ignore my aching bones and muscles.  Derrick, you Dirty Diamond, you, I wish I could talk to you now, but they took our link!  Wish you were here.  Save my butt, from the maw of their machine, from their unwelcome “welcoming machine”.  Save me now, Derrick, save me!  Shine on, you crazy diamond!

            Sure enough, a few more miles on down the road, deep in some isolated woods, Phil topped a rise, and the looming bulk of a medium-sized armored truck appeared.  He slowed down as he got closer, and his tension peaked.  At fifty yards, the rear doors were flung open, bright lights suddenly flared, and armored human figures sprang from the belly of the metallic beast.

            In fear for his life from the long arm of the law, Phil killed the engine, applied both regular and emergency brakes, and hit the deck, all in one motion.  The jig is up, the news is out, they’re finally gonna get theirs, Phil thought, pounding on the little semi-organic “panic button” on his chest, doing his best to crawl into the floorboard and firewall.  Machine-gun fire started raking his car, a fragment found his left shoulder, and he stifled the urge to scream.  Derrick, do your thing, and fast, he implored his benefactor, mentally.

            As if in answer, an explosion let loose, painting his retinas briefly scarlet, even though his eyes were screwed tight, and blasting his car back half a foot.  Is that what I hope it is, Phil asked, opening his eyes.  There was no manmade light; only starlight, and the cloud-reflected light of distant Atlanta, illuminated his car.  The only sounds were scuffling, scraping, and metal-clanging noises from the truck’s direction, briefly.  Then, a few machine guns resumed their staccato chatter, but there seemed to be less of them than before.  As best as Phil could tell, even these shots weren’t aimed at his car.

            I guess Derrick’s electromagnetic pulse bomb must have done it’s trick, Phil mused.  The one I had stashed under my car.  He reached up, turned the ignition keys, and fiddled with a few controls.  No response.  Fried car guts, Phil mentally nodded approvingly.  Now, their vehicles, electronics, even their lights, are out.  So are all their data recorders.  They won’t gather any data on Derrick’s dirty deeds, his toys, or how they work.  Of course, already-collected data will be retained, awaiting my collection efforts.  Would take one hell of an unspeakable E-mag burst to wipe clean already-written data, as opposed to live circuitry.

            Let’s take a glance, here... Yes, of course, the dice are gone.  Out those open windows, hours ago.  Or, can it really have been less than a minute ago, that all this fun started?  Still hear the occasional gunshot, but no hits on my car.  Shall I be brave, and take a peek?  Okay, let’s sit up.  Ouch, that shoulder!  Eeaooouw!

            Phil sat up just barely enough to inspect his surroundings through a shattered windshield.  What he saw was armored human figures weakly flopping around on the ground.  Fried electronics—their power is gone, Phil chuckled.  A few had managed to half crawl out of their formerly powered armor, now dead weight.  Two wobbly-armed troops were trying to aim potshots at a small cube, which was dancing in the air, on invisible jets.  If my shoulder wasn’t hurting so much, I’d have me a really good laugh just about now, Phil thought.

            He thought he could see a small amount of blood splotching the armor of the fallen warriors, here and there, but it was hard to tell in the darkness and at a distance.  As he watched, one of the wobbly-armed ones keeled over, and the other one shuddered slightly under the impact of a small projectile, as the hovering, tumbling cube jumped upwards.  Action and reaction, Phil thought, speculating about how it must have looked during the height of the firefight, as the cubes rolled and spun around in the air, suspended not only by jets of air, but also by the tiny, organic, armor-piercing, drug-laden bullets that they’d spat out.  Two cubes, dancing in the wind, spewing forth high-velocity bits of seemingly random precision.  So where’s the other cube, he asked himself.  Have the troops bagged one?  Good thing Derrick believes in redundancy!

            He briefly debated being brave, and stepping out of his car.  Nah, he decided, better hunker down, here, and stay quiet a bit longer.  Let things die down a bit out there, then I’ll step outside.  He slid back down.  All was silent for a few seconds, other than the sounds of crickets, wind in the trees, and a faraway aircraft.  Just another night out, camping in the woods, he told himself.

            Clang.  Something hit his car door!  He dove back down, trying to crawl into the floorboard again.  Clang, thump, bang, there it was again!  The noises were fairly quiet, though, and separated by pauses.  Almost as if someone was knocking.  Phil snuck a peak, up through the open window.  No one was there.  What the hell, he thought, we have a midget out there, knocking on my door, who’s too short to see or reach in here?  This is crazy!

            He worked up the nerve to sit back up.  Clang.  He resisted the impulse to dive back down.  Bang.  He looked around.  The troops were motionless, and the lone cube was now resting on the ground, conserving its energy, only occasionally hopping around, apparently keeping an eye on the troops, waiting, like a firefighter looking for lingering hotspots.  Thump.  There it is again!  What have we here, a rat running around inside my door?  Nah, too hard-sounding, like metal on metal.  Maybe it’s a stainless steel rat, a robo-rat.  Maybe I’d just better get brave, and check it out.

            He steeled his nerves, and opened the door, just in time to knock down a damaged die, in the act of jumping at his door, once more.  One side of it was damaged, shattered, with a bullet hole off to one side, and a corner was missing.  Oh, I get it, Derrick’s trying to tell me something.  One of our dice is mortally wounded, I can see that.  Derrick may have been able to design it to withstand an E-mag burst, but machine-gun fire is another thing.  The healthy one is still over there, watching the troops, and the cripple is over here, trying to tell me something.  “What’s the haps, Derrick?  What’s new and exciting?”

            No speakers in there, Phil reminded himself.  The damaged cube, as if in answer, started hopping off in the direction of the trooper truck, poking tiny little mechanical appendages out against the ground to propel itself.  Awkwardly, it tumbled along.  It would have looked almost cute, if it hadn’t been dragging some of its innards behind it.  Phil got out of the car, and followed the die.  Hope this hop-along die, here, doesn’t die before it tells me what it wants, he thought.

            He took a good gander at the troops, as he walked closer.  There was, indeed, blood, and a few obvious wounds.  They all seemed to be flesh wounds to extremities, though, Phil noted.  The cube was slow, so Phil jogged ahead, reaching a fallen trooper, and checked for breathing.  Derrick seemed to have kept his word; indeed, there had been no deliberate killing.  Phil felt relief, and relief at his relief.  It was good to look inside his own soul, and to see that he felt no great enmity, even for those whose mission had been to snuff him.  Maybe I’m concluding my secret journey, he thought.  Maybe I’ll be, someday yet, a Holy Man.

            The cube continued right on past the truck, though, and Phil followed.  There, twenty yards past the truck, was the first, original squad car, and halfway between the car and the truck, sprawled out in the dirt, were Troopers One and Two.  Phil, the aspiring Holy Man, felt the strong urge to go over to Trooper One, and pay him back in kind.  A few swift kicks to his rear might be a handy addition to the hangover he’ll have, on waking up, to remind him what pain feels like, Phil thought.  Especially, what deliberately inflicted pain feels like.  I could teach him this valuable lesson.  Strictly for his own spiritual development, of course.

            No, there’s more important things to accomplish, at the moment.  Like, what’s Derrick trying to tell me, anyway?  Oh, hell, it should be obvious!  He’s telling me it’s show time, the troops are down, I need to do my thing!  First thing is, I need to go up to this squad car, and recover the link to Derrick, and then he can guide me though all this!

            Phil ran up to the car, opened it up, and rooted around only for a short while.  He found his briefcase.  He got out the earphones, put them on, and plugged them in.

            “Derrick?”  No response.  Phil fiddled with the buttons once again.  Yeah, the transmit LED is on, all right, he noted.  “Derrick?  Come in, Derrick!”

            Momentarily, the response came back.  “Sorry.  Kinda busy, here.  It’s looking worse, here, for the possibility that saboteurs inside ABC may be able to take me off of the networks.  But, good job, there, Phil, old buddy!  You made it!  Now, if you’ll collect those drives, Don will be there shortly.  I’ve already made the call.  You won’t have much time to spare.  The overlords of LORD already know something’s seriously wrong, there, and they’ll be sending more troops.  You might want to pull the drives out of the squad cars, too, though; time isn’t that tight.  More troops are a lot further away than Don.  Now, if you’ll pick up my little emissary, and orient it as I direct, I’ll be able use its tiny cameras to watch what you’re doing.  I can advise you...”

            “Wait,” Phil protested.  “What was that about saboteurs at ABC, and kicking you off of the networks?  What’s the probability?  Why didn’t you tell us about them before?”  Hell, he thought, kicking Derrick off of the networks for five minutes a while back, to humor NASA, that, alone, cost a few million in lost revenue!  If these snakes succeed in cutting Derrick off entirely, why, the whole world’s economy would take a dive!

            “Probability looks bad, and rising,” Derrick confessed.  “I’ve made some serious miscalculations—underestimated the threat.  I didn’t want to move prematurely, telling you or anyone else at ABC that I knew about these guys, because that would’ve tipped my hand, if anyone had moved against them.  I wanted to set up exactly the kind of thing that you’re now caught in.  Getting the goods on Hank N. Kreutz, that’s the whole show.  It wouldn’t be happening, if they’d known I was onto them.

            “On that probability thing, I can’t put numbers to it.  But they’ve got some sharp computer and communications people, and computer power to burn.  More than I expected, for sure.  As far as identifying ABC’s bad guys, it’s a done deal.  It might not matter much anymore, at this late stage.  Depending on the success of your part of this mission.  We’ve poked a stick through the hornets’ nest.  They may take further measures as soon as they realize what all might result from what just happened.  Especially when they examine the scene, and see that all the drives are gone.  Anyway, I’ve already transmitted all the details about the saboteurs inside ABC to your accounts, and to ABC’s bigwigs.  Enough yakking; let’s get to work.”

            Phil picked up the wounded die, giving Derrick the “eyes” he needed in order to advise Phil, and Phil methodically stripped drives from all three vehicles, and all the fallen troops.  Derrick didn’t actually need to give much advice at all, beyond telling Phil where to find the drives in the vehicles.  Phil tried to chat with Derrick during the job, trying to weasel more details out of him, mostly about what kind of offensive Derrick was currently facing.  Derrick fended him off, saying he was busy.  About the only thing he got out of Derrick was sour grapes—Derrick complained about how, if he’d been allowed to run his own physical security hardware at ABC, he’d not be in danger in the first place.  Fine, be that way, Phil thought.

            Within minutes, his briefcase was full of drives.  He found duffel bags full of civilian clothes in the truck; one of these, he dumped out, and filled it partways, too.  Finally, he gathered the dice, and a few remaining special security devices from his own car.  No sense in leaving behind any evidence of what happened here, he thought.  The job was done, and all that there was to do, was to sit around, waiting for Don.

            Time to kill, Phil thought, looking around.  I can stand here and be nervous, waiting, or, I can think of what else I might do, that might be of any use.  Gather up some of these guns and ammo?  Deprive the oinkers of the tools of their trade?  To what purpose?  If we pull this off, and pull Hank N. Kreutz and crew down, then, it won’t matter much, anyway.  If we don’t pull it off, then, maybe we could give these lovely tools of destruction to the underground.  Tools with which to water the tree of liberty.  So, start gathering them up?

            Think it through, now.  If, by any chance, we get stopped in Don’s car, and they see guns galore, our goose is cooked.  If not, we might get away with all this data, and we all know which is far more important to the cause.  Besides, we’ve got to go and pick up Gloria and Trent, and go hide somewhere, until the outcome is clear.  Not only does that mean we need all the room in Don’s car that we can get, it also means Gloria would see the guns, and put her foot down.  No.  The guns stay here.

            So, stand here and chew my nails?  Don, hurry up, will ya?!  Well, there is something constructive I could do with my time, come to think of it.  I could attend to the spiritual development of Trooper One, laying in the dirt over there!  Oh, don’t be vengeful, now!  Well, wait a minute.  The other day I was slipping into bad habits, pondering over the Bible, trying to kiss God’s ass again, and, what little jewel did I stumble on?  Yeah, I remember it. “So don’t be too good or too wise—why kill yourself?”*

            Well, I think this is one of those times to not be too good or too wise.  He marched on over to the sleeping form of Trooper One, and delivered five hard, swift kicks to his derriere.  There, he thought, feeling much better.  Blow off this nervous tension, in a little harmless fun.  Trooper’s fanny will feel just as good as I do.  Now I feel better.  Still, why is it that I feel bad about feeling better?  I guess I’d much rather have put ‘em all in a bus, with a joint in each of their pockets, and dumped ‘em all off to the DEA.  Or, maybe even better yet, dump ‘em off in the inner city, in DEA attire.  Let ‘em swallow their own medicine.

            Headlights pieced the gathering gloom.  What if it’s not Don, Phil worried, fading back into the bushes.  The car came to a stop, and Phil, with great relief, saw that it was, indeed, Don.  Phil hoisted the duffel bag and briefcase into the rear seats and joined Don up front.  Don, wide-eyed, was taking in the scene.  “Let’s make like horse byproducts, and hit the road,” Phil grumbled.  “Outta heee.  Pronto.”

            Don did his best imitation of horse byproducts, squealing his tires for grins, glancing sideways at Phil, saying, “Here, man, swallow this bag of lewds, quick, I think the cops are following us!  And here, this bag of pot!  And, all these hits...”

            “And these five gallons of Ripple Wine,” Phil finished for him.  “Now, will you get in the habit of driving sensibly, so that when we get out in skivilization, they won’t pull us over?  I’ve had enough excitement for one evening.”

            “Yeah, Mom.  Sure, Mom.  Whatever you say, Mom,” Don pouted, putting his car into a more subtle flight profile.  They drove on in silence for a short while.

            Phil breathed a sigh of relief, forcing himself to relax.  He caught Don up to his recent adventures, and details of what was going on.  He was interrupted by a call on his portable phone.  Checking for the caller’s number, he discovered only gibberish on the tiny screen.  Oh, shit, he thought, this thing got semi-scrambled from Derrick’s little E-mag burst.  It was far enough away that it didn’t get totally fried, but it’s still a piece of shit.  Might as well throw it out the window.  Probably Gloria, wondering what’s keeping me.  Even if this thing’s working right, it might not be smart to answer.  Someone might trace the location of my transmissions.  Triangulate, nabulate and bustulate on us.

            Well, there’s just one thing to do.  Ask Derrick to place a call, of the same kind as we placed to Don earlier, where no one can trace it.  Call Gloria, tell her the scoop.  Tell her to get packed quick, we gotta hit the road.  Even if that wasn’t her, calling, we need every minute we can get.  Give her advance warning.  Let’s see, dig out the link to Derrick, from underneath all these drives...  Okay, plug in the mike and earphones, punch these buttons, here.  What, is this thing busted, too?  Fried by the burst?  No, don’t be silly, Derrick designed it burst-proof, and I’ve used it since then.  Okay, I know real men don’t do this, but, when all else fails, read the instructions.

            Phil pulled a hard plastic tab out of the rear of the link, methodically puzzled over the tiny writing, and worked through all the steps, including the recommended “workaround” advisories for partial systems failures.  No response, not even an indication of an “embedded carrier CRC”, whatever that was.  Translation:  Seriously Busted.  “Shit-fuck-piss-cunt-damn, cocksuck-motherfuck,” Phil let loose, quietly but vehemently.

            “What’s the matter, there, Mister Buck Rogers?”  Don inquired.  “Or should I say, Mister Random Smut Generator?”

            “Oh, I can’t raise Derrick.  Not even a carrier.  You know, I got this bad feeling.  They may have taken him out.  Broken all his links to the outside world.  Hell, they might even shut him down!  Kill him, as well as blow twelve billion dollars worth of ABC’s investments!”

            “Yeah, that’d be tragic, no doubt,” Don agreed.  “Hell, the bosses might have to make do with a few tens of millions less in stock options and other chump change.”

            “Aw, come on now, Don, don’t be a sourpuss.  Lots of people will be hurt by this.  Derrick, too.  Don’t forget, he’s conscious.  Not just another bucket of bolts.”

            “So?  What makes him so special?  Billions of people feel pain every day,” Don pointed out.  “Sometimes I wonder about the way you suck on Derrick’s tit.  Don’t forget what he said way back when, when he first woke up, when we flushed him out of his shell.  We’re to him like mice are to us.  Maybe we should be taking that a bit more seriously.  We’re his lab rats, his playthings.  So he seems to have been looking out for you.  Don’t let it cloud your vision.”

            “Still,” Phil objected, “Look at what all he’s done for us.  Designing new technologies, improving humans and human lives.  Saving lives!  Predicting weather, climate, earthquakes!  Raising standards of living, preventing starvation.  You know, telling farmers in each area, what to grow and not to grow, by predicting the weather one helluva lot better’n we’ve ever done.  Soon, bringing asteroids into near-Earth orbit.  We’re at the brink of a real technological and industrial boom, if we can hold it together, and fend off the Hank N. Kreutzes of the world.

            “I think we’re a bunch of spoiled brats, sometimes, endlessly moaning about the bad things, side effects, of technology.  Wanna trade your life for that of a hundred years ago?  It just gets so easy to take the good parts for granted.  Derrick’s contributions are the same way.  Just look at the tremendous increase in bandwidth, decrease in cost, in communications, lately, with this Gödel thing of his.  When’s the last time you stopped to think about that?  See, you’re taking it for granted already,” Phil concluded triumphantly.

            “Yeah, so what,” Don grumped.  “Do we have anything worthwhile to communicate with all these neat new toys, anyway?  So, now we can transmit pictures of naked titties that much faster.  What good does it do anyone?  I mean, besides annoying Hank N. Kreutz.  Hell, even tame things like Playboy, behind the counter at the local U-Spend-Um-All-Your-Money-for-State-Lottery-Tickets Quickstop, even these filthy rags are enough to annoy Hank just as much, anyway.  Reminds my of Henry David Thoreau and his comments about the telegraph.  Almost two centuries later, we’re still doing the same thing.  Speeding yet more mindless drivel, even faster, from here to there.”

            “You are a sourpuss, you grumpy old man!” Phil concluded.  “Luddite!  Hell, if I didn’t know better, I’d accuse you of sympathizing with the enemy, with the enema, the would-be almighty Hank N. Kreutz.  He’s the other choice, you know.  Him and his minions, they might be cutting the cooling to Derrick as we speak.  Fry his ass, at a few degrees Kelvin.  There’s your anti-techno-noid, you know.  You want simpler?  Hank will give you simpler!  Hell, I’m surprised Hank isn’t telling us that the world is flat and square!  The Bible talks about the four corners of the Earth, you know.”

            “Yeah, you’ve scored your points, there,” Don relented.  “Scored your points.  Chancre on my Butthole, as you call him.  He is the other choice, so it seems.  What a choice!  Like Democrats and Republicans.  Shithead A, or shithead B.  An egomaniac out to sanctify and purify the world, to rid it of ‘sin’, or a computer out to smash the mice.  What a choice!”

            “God damn, man, what the hell crawled up your ass and died!”  Phil exclaimed, genuinely enraged.  “Smash the mice?!  How the hell!?  Since when have you been sticking Derrick in the same bag as ol’ Fuckface himself?!  What in Gods name...”  Phil just sort of tapered off, for once at a loss for words, astounded that his friend would so malign Derrick’s good name.

            Don filled the silence soon enough.  “Ever since things have been goin’ down the crapper.  Ever since we’re tearin’ at each other, screaming at each other, mostly ‘cause of Derrick’s wunnerful inventions, and the ideas he’s put into our heads.  Yeah, I know, he’s not to blame, he’s trying to ‘improve’ us, genetically, and by trying to make us face the facts, to let go of our billy clubs, and all that.

            “Bullshit!  If he’s so goddamn fuckin’ smart, how come he’s not factoring it all in?  Yeah, our defective nature.  I hear you.  If his IQ was two million, he’d be able to figure it all in, and get us there... Okay, not painlessly, but sure as hell not this way!  We’re on the brink of civil war!  People are gonna kill and die, fighting each other, ourselves, in the land of the free, the home of the brave!”

            Don stopped his oration, and Phil sat there in silence, stewing on Don’s words.  The scenery slipped by, neon lights innocently illuminating a darkening world, as if nothing was changing.  Suburbia and it’s

accouterments were clustering ever thicker, taking them ever closer to Gloria and Trent, who would soon have to be rudely shocked with tonight’s latest installment of frightfulness.  For some strange reason, Phil’s mind slipped a few years backwards, thinking, Schrock-Leech-Kite.  Shades of bygone eras!  What have I gotten into now, indeed?!  What must I bring home to my family!  Fear, fright, and flight.  Oh, don’t be so hard on myself!  I’m just trying as best as I can, to do what’s right.  No one can ask any more of me.

            So... back to Don.  What is he saying?  What do I say to him?  Does it matter?  Why are so many people talking bad about Derrick?  Okay, mindless dipshits on talkshows, morons who call, write letters, even supposedly educated people who interview me.  So many know-nothings, who think reality is subject to a vote.  Still, I’ve heard it twice now, from people who I love and respect.  Gloria and Don.  Suspicions of Derrick.  Are they right?  IQ two million, finding no more gentle way to straighten us out of our various flavors of idiocy, small-mindedness, and hatred?  Maybe I’d better swallow my immediate impulse to defend Derrick, and go with the flow.  More important things to worry about, here, than intellectual bullshit.

            “Okay,” he found himself saying to Don, “Shitheads A and B.  Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not.  Maybe there’s no way for Derrick to wake us up to our own shitheadedness, other than very rudely, crudely slapping us in the face.  Maybe there is a better way.  Maybe even Derrick ain’t smart enough to see it.  Maybe he sees, but doesn’t give a rat’s ass.  Maybe he wants all of our rat’s asses on a platter for lunch.  Hell, I don’t know.

            “Maybe his office is like that of the President, where you can’t get anything done.  Well, beyond impressing everyone with your status, by making everyone wait while you get your nails done, that is.  Yet, you get blamed for everything from the economy to teenage sex.  I’d venture to say, though, that there’s a very good chance that all this is academic by now.  Hank, the cone-headed barbarian, may very well have put Derrick’s head on a platter.  If that’s the case, rest assured, we’re next.  There’s gonna be a revolution, hey-hey, but we might not be to happy ‘bout what’s comin’ down.”  Phil double-checked his link with Derrick, but didn’t come up with anything positive.

            “Well, if something that big is goin’ on,” Don commented, “Then we’d probably be hearing something about it on the news.  Let’s turn on ye ol’ radio.”

            Don started messing with the radio.  Phil took over, saying, “Hey, hands off!  I’m copilot; this is my turf.”

            “...and now, we conclude three hours of uninterrupted, good, old-fashioned grunge rock, to bring you...”  Click.  “...Wha-woom, ba-bang, Come to me, you black-eyed bitch...”  Click.  “... emember, it’s not just a toothpaste, it’s also a hemorrhoid ointment!  And now, we bring you the latest in Country-Punk Anti-Pebble music!  The station that...”  Click.  “And the Lord said to Moses, bring me a...”  Click.  “Whang-a-baaang, clang, thWANK!!!  Screech!!  Kerploing!  BOOM!!!  BOOM!!!  Grumble, sputter, BANG!!!”  Click.  “...shines, polishes, and protects.  For that...”  Click.  “... so remember, come voting time, vote for the Man of the People.  Vote for Joe Schlumm...”  Click.  “...the Mighty Morphine Power Derangers meet the forces of darkness, the vile Neurotic Narcotic Necrophilia Nymphomaniacs, tonight at nine on HVNI.  Don’t miss it!  This is the show that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE!  A Show like...”  Click.

            “Goddammit, will you cut it out?!!”  Don hollered.  “Just leave it on one station, will ya?!  If something big is happening, there’ll be some news!  Now, find a good station...”

            “Is there such a thing?” Phil wondered.  Too bad it’s taking so long to get everything converted over to the new Gödel hingamadingus, he thought, thinking of the possibilities of hundreds of thousands of radio stations.  Hell, if Don wasn’t such a cheapskate, he’d have one of the new doowhatsits already.  Okay, what’s the current station?  What’s the frequency?  Hmmm.  They’re playing “music” by The Five Dead Dogs.  Yuck!  Risk incurring the wrath of the Don, and change the station, one more time.  He finally settled for a station playing golden oldies, such as REM.

            The golden oldies didn’t last forever, though.  A while on down the road, a song was cut off abruptly, and an announcer came on.  “Ladies and gentlemen, as many of you know, all Gödelized networks crashed a few minutes ago.  This message is brought to you by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  This is an emergency transmission, broadcast over all frequencies.  I say again, all Gödelized network traffic is down.  Please alert your friends and neighbors, who may be panicking.  All that they need to do, is to turn on an old-style radio, TV, or HV set.  There will be detailed transmissions explaining recent events, very shortly.

            “I say again, Gödelized networks are down.  Do not panic.  Trust in God, and in our leaders.  Gather your friends and your neighbors together, and find yourselves old HV or TV sets, or even radios, and we’ll send you the latest developments.

            “For now, let us tell you this:  evidence is mounting quite sharply that, as many have suspected, Derrick is behind at least some of the recent unrest.  Just now, word has come in that Derrick—yes, of course, we mean that divisive, strident and hateful supercomputer pushing the agenda of the biotechnology corporations—word just now that Derrick has furtively bypassed human restrictions on his activities, and has had human accomplices build robotic emissaries for him.  An ABC ringleader, Doctor Phil Schrock, was pulled over for extremely reckless driving.

            “Upon approaching his vehicle, policemen were assaulted by a large, extremely high-tech robot, which crawled out of his trunk, and killed the troops with futuristic weapons.  Fortunately, in it’s effort to erase all evidence of what happened, the robot missed one very well-hidden camera.  Footage of this incident will be broadcast shortly.

            “Between this incident, and recent severe unrest—bombings, insurrections, and general anarchy—in inner cities as well as out West, some of it obviously fomented by this diabolical supercomputer, federal authorities have been compelled to act.  The actions of the robotic emissary, presenting a clear and present danger, have left no choice.  Authorities moved against ABC and Derrick, shutting down all links between him and the outside world.  Unfortunately, he has deceived many people.  We believed him when he led us to believe that the Gödel networks could operate for long periods of time, without his active supervision.  He lied to us.  He is now in federal custody.

            “Faced with the awful choice of shutting down the networks, with all the attendant damages to the economy, or facing continued, unknown danger from unauthorized activities on Derrick’s part, federal authorities have chosen to protect the people.  Efforts are now underway to try to restore the Gödel networks, or even to re-link Derrick, with safeguards.  We can provide no timetables, or even any guarantees that Gödel technology can be safely re-implemented.

            “Meanwhile, be aware that Doctor Phil Schrock is a renegade from justice.  His robotic friend may be incapacitated, but he must still be considered armed and dangerous.”

            Phil exchanged wide-eyed looks with Don, in silence.

            “Unfortunately, that’s not all the bad news,” the announcer continued, “Both President Sockwell and Vice President Moreno have come down with mysterious ailments.  Foul play by Derrick and co-conspirators is strongly suspected.  Preliminary indications show the President and the Vice President may both have suffered permanent brain damage.  In any case, the administration is severely hampered, to say the least.

            “In response to all these emergencies, Congress is now meeting in a virtual session, to consider appropriate, vigorous defensive measures.  They are considering extraordinary, temporary measures, up to and including declaring martial law, under a suitably firm, wise, and seasoned leader, to be appointed by Congress.  Stand by, now, while we turn this broadcast over to HVNI’s Washington Correspondent, Sally...”

            Don reached over, and killed the radio.  “Hey, you bum!”  Phil protested.  “What the...”

            “Look, Phil, you already know what they’re gonna say.  Don’t make yourself sick.  Derrick already told you.  He just didn’t know it would happen so soon.  Our good buddy, Chancre N. Kreutz, is appointing himself Supreme Asshole in Charge.  Us getting all wrapped up in listening to all this crap will just distract us.  Get a grip!  You’re a wanted man.  We’re both wanted.  I don’t know why I’m stooping so low, aiding and abetting a diabolical fiend like you.  They’ll hang us both.  We need to worry about slipping the noose, not about fuckin’ slimy politicians!

            “We’re about five minutes away from your house.  I’m gonna put you in the trunk.  Don’t want the guards at your compound to see you, in case they’ve been alerted.  Don’t get out till we’re in your garage.  Well, hell, what am I saying; I’m gonna lock you in.  Don’t be making noise, until we open up, okay?”  Don started to pull into a deserted parking lot.

            “What if they’re already camping out at my house?”  Phil worried out loud.  “What if...”

            “Then we turn tail and bogey outta there,” Don replied.  “With any luck at all, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.  Don’t forget, they’ve got their hands full, squelching politicians who they’re emulating in the virtual Congress, and fighting people in the media, armed forces, police, and so on, who aren’t part of their little scheme.  They’ll need every last trooper they’ve got, for purposes other than chasing us.  After they’ve got control, they can take their good ol’ time about hunting down the likes of you and me.  Take away your access to a free press, and what do you amount to, anyway?”

            Yeah, I guess you’re right, Phil thought.  I’ve already had my chance to learn that, back during the Chinese War, when I was trying to get the word out, thinking I was a grave threat to the establishment, and they barely gave a shit.  Speaking of shit... seems I’m in a heap of it, once again.  Godammit, what the hell am I, anyway?  Some sort of superconducting electromagnetic shit magnet, or what!?  Well, I guess I can at least hope that Don is right, that we’ll be able to pick up my family, and make the big escape...

            Gloria.  And Trent!  Our happy little home!  We’re gonna have to give it up, and live on the run, like scared little bunny rabbits!  That’ll be no way for Trent to grow up!  What...

            Don interrupted his little reverie.  “All right, out, out!  Raus mit!!  Into the trunk!  We ain’t got all day!  Dammit, where’s my cattle prod when I need it?!  Hop to!  Mush!  Scram!  I wanna see some elbows and assholes!  Git...”

            Phil scrammed.  “Yeah, yeah, you bum!  You wanna see assholes?  Senator Chancre on my Butthole will make all your wishes come true!”  Phil crawled into the truck, peering out at Don.

            Don took one last look, making sure Phil  seemed comfortable.  “Sleep tight,” he admonished, and then slammed the trunk.  Ouch!  Phil thought, my eardrums really didn’t need that.

            Stop and go, stop and go.  Phil lost track of where they were after the first few stops.  Every stop sign, in his mind, was translated to the gate of his compound, where the guards were by now no doubt converted to the revolution, to the one true cause, which included snagging onto that heretic, the biotechnological blasphemer, his own noble self.  By the time they actually did reach that gate, he was a nervous wreck.  Why didn’t I become good buddies with the guards, he asked himself.  Too busy earning money to live here, all snug and secure, to make friends with the people who actually make things secure for me.  Now, they may be running me right outta here, into an entirely different kind of compound.

            He listened apprehensively as Don identified himself to the guards, and as they called Gloria, to see if they should let him in.  What if they were looking for Don, by now, as well as Phil?  After all, Don had been on that show with Derrick, way back when, and had spoken out against The Reverend Smuckler.  No doubt, Reverend Smuckler will figure prominently in the new scheme of things.  Hell, they’ll probably make him Minister of Propaganda.  Except, they’ll find a better title for him.  Put a better spin on things, rather than calling him the Spinmeister.

            They let him through, though.  Are they just baiting the trap, Phil wondered.  Are they calling Hank’s minions, now, letting them know that something is about to happen at my place?

            Soon enough, the car stopped, and he heard the garage door coming down.  Damn good thing I let Gloria nag me into cleaning out the garage, he thought.  She didn’t want anyone to be able to sneak into the compound, and see which car, from ABC’s car pool, that I was driving, at any given time, in a scheme to snuff my ass.  So what if I had to sell half of my hobby stuff to make room, at least now we have a place to prepare for our escape, away from prying eyes.

            Phil restrained his impulses to holler out, that he wanted out, right now, remembering what Don had said.  You never really know if the coast is clear, or not.  Within seconds, though, they opened the trunk, and Phil was in Gloria’s arms.

            She pressed her face into his.  “Oh, Phil, I was so worried,” she said, between repressed sniffles.  “What’s going on?!  You’re a wanted man, now?!  By other than the anti-biotech fanatics, that is?  By the government?  What’s this about Derrick’s Big Bad Robot killing troopers on your behalf?  What...”

            “Lies, Poogle-Bye, lies.  The anti-biotech fanatics and the government are now one and the same.  Or they will be, real soon.  We’re in the middle of a revolution!  One headed up by Hank N. Kreutz, LORD, the Bible Youth, and so on.”

            Phil pulled back from Gloria, still holding her, but looking her in the face.  “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but it looks real bad.  We’ve got to run.  We’ve gotta pack the bare necessities, grab Trent, and go.  We may not have very long.  They’re busy with their revolution for now, but soon enough, they’ll come looking for us.  We’d better start packing now.”

            “Run?” she asked incredulously.  “Can’t we stay and fight this thing, whatever you’ve gotten into?  Get a good lawyer and...”

            “Pootie Pie, no.  Did the Jews hire good lawyers when Hitler and his henchmen came knocking?  Fend ‘em off with writs, with pieces of paper?  I’m sorry, this is almost as big of a surprise to me as it is to you.  A few hours ago, we were a happy family, in the middle of our well-guarded slice of suburbia, but the walls are crumbling down now.  I’ll tell you about it all later, but we’ve got to run.  You’ve been listening to the news—can’t you tell?  This is the revolution!  It’s here!  Hank and crew, they’re synthesizing the virtual Congress and media broadcasts, and taking over!”

            Gloria still looked doubtful.  What the hell, Phil thought, what is she thinking?  Maybe she thinks Don and I have joined some really whacked-out militia.  “Tell you what, Pootie Pie,” he said.  “I’ll start getting packed.  You watch the news for a few minutes, and see if I’m not right.  The ‘news’ from Washington is gonna be, Congress is getting ever closer to electing Hank N. Kreutz Dictator-for-Life.  Oh, yeah, something sounding much better, like, oh, I don’t know, Temporary Plenipotentiary Guardian of Law and Order, or something.  And 99% of Americans, or 99% of those who even give a shit, are gonna be glued to the HV, rooting for one side or the other, like some damn football game, instead of doing anything about it.”

            “Sounds like a good idea,” Gloria relented.  “Except, why don’t you take a minute to settle down, and think about it.  If they’ll be here to drag us away in the next few minutes, we’re history already, anyway.  Maybe grab yourself a pencil and paper, and make yourself a packing list, while we check out the news.”

            The three of them hustled into their living room, where Gloria had dragged out their old HV set.  “Trent’s asleep,” Gloria pointed out, “And you’d better not wake him up before we’ve got this figured out.”

            They sat on the sofa and chairs in the living room, watching the holographic images sprawled out before them.  Phil resisted the impulse to get himself a beer, thinking, better get that pencil and paper, like Gloria said, instead.  I might need every last iota of my alertness, tonight.

            There in their living room, the images flickered and bickered.  The virtual Congress was in session, with a gallery of holographic images beamed from all fifty States, sharing all the walls of a large, special building in Washington.  Or, at least, so it seemed.  In the middle of this room, electronic equipment lay scattered about, looking like a tornado had hit the computer factory.  Cameras zoomed and panned wildly, only occasionally backing off and showing the whole scene.  The 3-D images swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank, rushing back and forth.  It was enough to make Phil sick, even without the politics.

            The images were bickering about democracy, and the Constitution, and principles this and that, versus the “clear and present danger”, and the need to do something, before American civilization came crashing down.  Senator Biff Slezewick, a known Hank N. Kreutz buddy-o, was making a speech about how Democracy needn’t let it’s own tools be used to let itself be brought low.  Democracy isn’t a national suicide pact, he was saying, and, let’s quit debating, and start nominations for a temporary, special office, Presidential powers plus, for preserving and protecting American Democracy.  Let’s quit fiddling while Rome burns, he said.

            That’s what we’re doing, right here, Phil said to himself.  We should be packing right now.  Let’s see, a list... a bit of food and toys for Trent, some blankets, the drives from our PCs.  Good thing Gloria recently digitized all our photo albums, we won’t need to take those.  We may very well be kissing our whole house, and all it’s contents, good-bye.  So much of what we’ve worked for, all these years!  All these years of trying to build up a life, after the taxman rapes us, and now we’ve got to flush it.  That, or lose our freedom.

            Well, I guess that puts things into perspective.  What do all these material things really mean, anyway?  Of them all, what do I really feel I’ve got to lug away with me?  Not much.  Food, clothes... the rest is fluff.  We’ll be free, in our own way!  They won’t be able to threaten me with taking my house away!

            What do we need?  I guess that depends on where we’re going.  Where are we going, anyway?  Gloria was intent on watching the news, so Phil pulled Don aside, for a quiet chat.  “So, Don, what’re you gonna do?  Risk that they’ll be after you, too, and go back to your house?  Or join us vagabonds?  I have no idea where we’re gonna go.  You have any ideas?  Can I steal your car?”

            “I’m with ya, buddy.  I’m not bailing out.  I mean, I’m bailing out of Hanksterdom, not out of the cause of freedom.  I’m convinced; I’ll not be their sitting duck,” Don replied.  “I can see the writing on the wall, real clear.  As far as, where to go?  Well... I think it’s time for you to meet Wicked Wanda.  Tonkytown.  Her and her buddies, I’ll bet they can figure out a way to get us out of the country.”

            “Great!”  Phil exclaimed, squeezing Don’s shoulders.  “Thanks, Buddy!  I think I’d better start packing.  You want a beer?  I’ll only be a few minutes.”

            Don declined, to Phil’s relief, and Phil started to get up.  Gloria reached over, touching him on his arm, beckoning him to stay seated for just a second.  “Wait.  You wanna see this?  Here’s Congress, acting with lightning-quick speed,” she said.  “A once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.  They’ve already nominated Senator Graddick, from the left-wingers, and, um, Representative Snardlefoos for a token Libertarian appearance, and, lo and behold, Senator Kreutz from the right wing.  Check it out!”

            “Yeah, and I’ll place some awfully long odds on who’s gonna win,” Phil grumbled.  “Taking bets?”

            “No, you’re right,” Gloria assented.  “So this is all fake?  I mean, yeah, it smells real bad, a lot of Congressmen who we know to be moderates, are rolling right over for this.  It’s like, they’re just making a show of opposing what’s happening, among just a few known left-wingers.  But you and I know a lot more about politics than the vast majority of people, who won’t suspect what’s really happening.  Hell, if this was real, they’d bicker for weeks, and nominate just about every one of ‘em!  Every last one of ‘em wants to be Head Cheese in Charge, after all, and they’ve only nominated one from each party!  Still, how did you know this farce was coming our way?”

            “That’s a long story for later.  For now, I think we’d better get packing.  We know the rest of this story already.  Welcome, Herr Commadante, Hank N. Kreutz!  And most people will worry about law and order, keeping their jobs and their houses.  They’ll go right back to work on Monday, same song, different verse.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, but worse.  Just how much worse, will only become clear later.  With any luck, we’ll be out of the country.  Let’s pack.”

            They packed.  Phil could tell Gloria was quite upset, but they both hustled, grabbing a few small items of sentimental value, a bit of food, clothes, drives, papers, their stash of cash, etc.  Don mostly stood around, trying to be helpful, and ended up out in the garage, arranging it all in his car.  Finally, Phil made one last trip through the house.  He glanced at the HV display, where the numbers were rolling up in Hank’s favor.  He shook his head and headed upstairs.

            He stopped for just a few seconds, admiring his sleeping little angel.  How many times, he asked himself, have I carried him, sleeping, to his bed.  This time, though, I have to carry him away from his bed, away from home, security, and a life full of, if not certainty, then, at least a reasonable degree of stability.  Would I be a more responsible parent, to leave him with friends or neighbors?  And let him grow up to be a serf for Chancre N. Kreutz?  No, he comes with us.  I’m gonna take him with me—I’d miss him too much.  Gloria wouldn’t hear of anything otherwise, anyway.  But, it’s just not supposed to be this way.  Little boys and girls are supposed to have stable homes.

            With tears in his eyes, and silently praying that Trent would understand and bear what was coming, he bent down, and kissed his boy, as he lay sleeping.  Then, he picked him up and headed downstairs, and to the garage.  Gloria straightened out the blankets in the rear seat, and Phil laid him down and buckled him in.  He barely stirred.

            “What’s the matter, Phil?” Gloria inquired, noticing he was upset.

            “Oh, just that it shouldn’t be like this.  I feel like I’m failing my little boy, taking him on the run like this.  I don’t see much choice, though.”

            They briefly commiserated, and then Phil insisted that they get it over with.  He crawled into the trunk once more, this time sharing the space with some of their junk.  They were on the road.

            Phil’s worrier was working in high gear, as they left behind their American Dream.  Yeah, he thought, I’ve always had my doubts about living cloistered up in walled-in suburbs, but what inner-city dweller, sleeping in the bathtub to avoid the bullets from the drive-by shootings, wouldn’t love to have what I’m leaving?  Who is this “Wicked Wanda”?  Will she be able to protect my little boy?  Will she be able to get us out of the country?  Or will she wash her hands of us, due to the dangers inherent in sheltering a biotechnological blasphemer like me?  Why did Don forbid my mentioning anything about who I was going to see in Tonkytown, when I wrote Bats, anyway?

            Then he heard the helicopters and military jets.  They drowned out the traffic sounds easily enough.  Well, I’ll not worry too much about them, he decided.  This is, after all, a revolution.  Next, though, he heard the sirens approaching.  These stimulated his worry glands a bit more.  Wonder if I’ll ever get to meet Wicked Wanda in the first place, he thought.  Maybe she won’t even need to make any decisions.

 

 

CHAPTER  23

                                    “Gonna go downtown, gonna see mah gal,

                                    Gonna sing ‘er a song, gonna show ‘er mah ding-dong.”

                                                Blind Melon Chitlin’, in a Cheech & Chong skit.

 

            Wearily, LeRoy struggled into his spacesuit once again.  Alan, Fessel, and Bill helped him, Manny, and Seidel suit up.  LeRoy and Manny were the only ones thoroughly trained in space-walking, but the tasks of erecting the aerobraking shield were so daunting that Seidel, too, had to join them.

            Yesterday and the day before, they’d spent putting up the struts, all around Daedalus.  Short ones to the “top”, long ones to the “bottom”.  Now, they were on their way out for another day’s hard work, to stretch a very large, balloon-like, flexible, stretchable “tent” over these struts, covering the entire ship, with the exception of the engine.  To the “top” of the ship, away from the engine, the struts were short, so that this “tent” would be close to the ship, while to the “bottom”, the struts would be long, and flair out “below” the ship.  Thus, the tent would be in the shape of a cone, like an American Indian teepee, where the cone would contain Daedalus itself, with its mass concentrated towards the front of the cone.

            The “top” of Daedalus was with respect to its crew, which had to climb away from the acceleration created by the ion engine, when moving about the ship.  The engine was now furiously pumping ions at twice the normal rate, so that the crew felt two-tenths of Earth-normal gravity.  The ions were being hurled in the general direction of Mars, killing Daedalus’ excessive velocity.  These silicon ions would continue to be thrown towards Mars, out of the bottom of the teepee, until the last minute, before Daedalus would plunge into Mars’ atmosphere.  At that last minute, Daedalus would perform an about-face, turning the point of its aerobraking teepee into Mars’ atmosphere.  The entry angle would be precisely calculated and controlled so that Daedalus would skim the atmosphere, killing velocity, and then pass right back out into space.

            A flimsy tent, however, would never withstand the fierce pressures and temperatures of a partial atmospheric re-entry.  Therefore, the next step, after erecting the tent, would be to spray an organic polymer onto the tent.  This liquid mixture would be sprayed on with electrostatic guns, tapping into a minute fraction of the ion engine’s power.  The mixture would contain compounds to give strength and rigidity to the tent, and to give it the necessary ablative properties for aerobraking.  When the tip-heavy cone slammed into Mars’ atmosphere like a 250-ton badminton shuttlecock, it would have inherent flight stability.  So said the aeronautics engineers, at least.  LeRoy, for one, sure hoped all the theories were right.

            Let’s see, he mused, as the airlock pumps whined, removing the air around them.  Today’s the big day.  Slip this gigantic condom onto Daedalus—maybe, like they say, we should call the ship Diddle-us, now—and to think that, like Bill said, they call a ship a she!  Even when they wear condoms, I wonder?  Hell, we’re too phallic around here!  The manual refers to it as erecting the tent, and that’s not phallic enough for us!  We have to smart-ass around about putting a rubber onto Daedalus.  At least, when the women aren’t listening, that is.  For the most part.  Gotta watch that, or they’ll tell my wife!

            Bad thoughts, there, LeRoy, he said to himself.  Samantha.  Can’t be thinking about her now.  We have no idea what kind of lies Derrick has been spreading about us back on Earth, while fibbing to us.  Who knows what Samantha is thinking these days!  Maybe they think we’re dead.  Maybe she’ll be remarried, any day now.  For the umpteenth time, LeRoy fleetingly wondered about quite a few things.  What lies is Derrick telling, back home?  Why, after a brief period of “mission control” back dirtside hollering at us to stop our madness, and continue our mission to Loreley, had all their transmissions suddenly ceased?  Is Derrick just toying with us?  Figuring that if we’ve figured it all out by now anyway, why bother to waste his time anymore?  Most of all, when will those morons back dirtside listen in our general direction for standard, old-fashioned radio broadcasts?  When are they gonna get off their asses, so that Samantha can hear the real scoop?

            Well, LeRoy decided, I’d really better get my mind back onto today’s tasks.  Today’s supposed to be the Big One.  The Big Space Fuck.  Bust this condom, and our goose is cooked, our fat’s in the fire, and the fat lady will have sung.  We’ll be kaput, as Seidel says.  We’ve just got to do this right, and I’m supposed to be the expert, for this particular operation.

            LeRoy’s mind slipped back in time, hearing those arguments once more.  Nine tons of lost cargo capacity, they said.  Nine tons that could be used for Mars rocks, scientific gear, whatever.  Nine tons, to be used for electrostatic spray guns, struts, ablative polymers, and a giant condom, for the extremely unlikely event that we’d have to expedite the return journey to Earth, due to a medical emergency not treatable on board the ship.

            It had sounded almost plausible.  We’re exploring, not touring.  Take some risks, increase the payback, so that the likes of Bob Herron won’t have quite so much ammo to argue for a robotic mission, instead.  Good thing Derrick came along, and let us have our cake and eat it, too, by drastically reducing the weight and space requirements of our communications gear.  Or, it sounded good at the time.

            Now, of course, we’re gonna use this condom and accouterments on Mars’ atmosphere, not Earth’s.  And, the slim probability of saving a life has turned into the certainty of saving a dozen lives.  My, how perspectives can change, from being an armchair explorer to being a real one!  Take out some insurance, and cover your rig.  Nobody ever gave any better advice.

            So the heat’s on, today.  And it’s on me, ‘cause I’m the expert.  Rip it, gash it, tear it, anything big, and we’re goners.  Yeah, we’ll not be done, after today.  We’ll still have to spray it, attach it more securely to the struts, punch a few holes in it here and there, and install fins.  Control surfaces, to prevent spin, and to make sure we go deep enough into the atmosphere to kill velocity, but not deep enough to kill us.  So, we’ll not be done, after today.  But we’ll sure as hell be able to breathe a bit easier, what with having our rig covered, all safe and secure.  No doubt about it, today is the day we can least afford to be a bunch of butterfingered nincompoops.

            To make matters worse, we’re breaking the rules, nine ways to Sunday.  Shut the ion engine down, for “erecting the tent”, they say.  We can’t afford to, says Seidel and Alan.  And, we’re at double the rated thrust, to begin with.  Erect the tent successfully, first, before even plotting a trajectory relying on aerobraking, says the rule book.  Well, hell, the guys who wrote the goddamn rulebook are a bunch of dirtside, dirtbag, armchair explorers anyway, LeRoy concluded.  Up and at ‘em!

            All right, here we go!  The airlock door opened, and LeRoy took the lead.  They pushed and shoved, moving the 500-pound, circular, packaged tent/condom out the door.  It only weighed 100 pounds in the partial pseudo-gravity of the ion engine’s acceleration (actually, deceleration, killing their Marsward velocity), but it was still quite bulky.  After the appropriate amount of cussing, swearing, and grunting, they hustled it out the door.

            Next, they pushed and pulled it “up” to the tip of the ship.  They used the handholds embedded into the skin of the ship, the struts they’d installed, and a few cables that they’d strung to act as scaffolding.  For safety, they stayed tethered to the ship.  As they moved about the ship’s surface, they periodically had to move the attachment points of their tethers.  At two-tenths of a “gee”, the ship’s deceleration would rapidly add distance between itself and any free-floating astronaut.  An untethered astronaut could continue with the ship’s present velocity, sailing off into infinite space.  The current point in Daedalus’ trajectory meant that, without continued deceleration, Daedalus, or anything (like an astronaut) cast off from it, would miss Mars, and be lost and gone forever.  Even later on, such a cast-off object would meet another grim fate, that being incineration in Mars’ atmosphere.  Yes, the space suits had their own propulsion, but their fuel was quite limited, especially in view of the constant point-two gees of the ion engine’s thrust.  So it was critical that the three astronauts stayed tethered to the ship.

            LeRoy took the lead, pulling the tent “up” by a cable.  Seidel and Manny came up from behind and below, pushing on attached rods, and keeping it away from the surface of the ship.  It was very hard work, so they all took a breather when they got to the “top” of the ship.

            They perched the tent on top of the struts on the tip of the ship, pointing straight “up”, and huddled below the tent, among the struts, for their rest break.  The struts’ outermost tips were mushroom-like parabolas covered with low-friction material, to minimize the chances that the tent would snag, snarl, or tear on the struts, as it was installed.  Tiptoeing among the mushrooms, LeRoy walked over to the edge of Daedalus’ blunt tip, looking down, way down, to the bottom, where he could almost swear that he could see the faint mist of high-velocity silicon ions, spewing constantly into the abyss.  The low gravity was enough to induce a fear of heights, especially when combined with that infinite black nothingness down there, seemingly below the ship, but in actuality, in front of the ship, as it traveled towards Mars.  LeRoy grabbed his tether a bit more tightly, and returned to his crew mates.

            “Did ya manage to see Mars down there?”  Manny inquired.

            “No, I guess I must have been looking off the wrong side,” LeRoy replied.  “You guys ready to get back to work?”

            They were.  They began to unpackage and unfurl their giant condom.  As soon as it was partly rolled out, smoothed out, and centered, at Daedalus’ tip, they punched a small hole in it, right at the tip.  Then, they passed a tether through the hole, and tied it to the topmost strut.  The plan was for LeRoy to use this tether while monitoring progress, as the tent unfurled, from the outside, while Manny and Seidel scurried around inside the tent, between the tent and the ship, straightening out any snags.

            Slowly but surely, they unfurled that giant tent.  Okay, steady as she goes, now, LeRoy thought, slightly nervously.  Here we go, we’re going over the edges of the “top” of the ship, now, and this is the most stressful time, when there’s the greatest mass of bundled-up material, still waiting to be unfurled, at the tip, being pulled down.  Come on, baby, don’t rip now!  Yes!  We’re doing it!  Lady Luck is with us, so far!

            LeRoy hopped from toadstool to toadstool, peering down over the edge, chattering away over the radio, encouraging Manny and Seidel, coaching them, even though the bulk of the unfurling work was being done by the pseudo-gravity of the ion engine’s deceleration.  Yes, he thought, there are advantages to violating the rules, sometimes.  The dangers may be greater, but some parts of the job are easier, it seems.  Not that we have much choice.  Shut down the engine, and we’ll have to risk going that much deeper into Mars’ atmosphere.  We’re planning on pushing the limits there, too, already.

            Okay, hop around on these toadstools, and try not too put too many holes in this giant rubber.  Thin stuff, easily ripped.  At least it’s pretty clear, so I can see where these damn toadstools are.  Soon, though, I’ll have to be rappelling down the sides of the ship.  And, if I want to keep a good eye on it all, I’ll have to swing around to all sides, including the dark side, where there’s no sunlight.  Well, hell, I’ll just have to rely on starlight, and look for the bulges created by the toadstools.  Out here in the perimeter, there are no stars.  Didn’t someone once say that?  No, wait, that’s not right, he was a moron.  An intelligent moron, but still a moron.  There’ll be some starlight.

            Even if I punch a few small holes here and there, by missing the toadstools, when I step in the wrong places, well, we can live with a few small holes, if we patch ‘em later.  It’s just the big gashes that’ll send us down the crapper.  Down in flames, in the thin air of the War God’s Blood-Red Planet.  Our souls will join those of the dear, departed, luscious, large-breasted, brass-brassiered barbarian Martian women, as depicted by ol’ what’s-his-face, Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Sex-Starved Slave Nymphomaniacs of Mars, or some such.  Perish the thought!  Save us, Lord, save us!  Praise the Lord, and pass the giant rubbers!  Only a giant condom will save us from this awful fate!

            Okay, you horny black mofo, he chastised himself, get your mind back out of the gutter, back to the real world.  Real world.  What the hell is the real world, anyway, when one is dangling from a rope, putting a rubber on a goddamn giant marital aid, penetrating a high-velocity nothing?  Oh, can it.  This is serious business.

            LeRoy noticed that the action was starting to slip out of his view, down the sides of the ship.  He grabbed his tether, and started rappelling down.  He pushed out from the side of the ship, snapping the tether in a wave in order to reseat it, during the time that he bounded free of the ship.  Repeating this maneuver, he worked his way around the ship, fine-tuning his techniques on the well-lit side first, before venturing onto the dark side.  Everything looks good so far, he mused, although...  doesn’t it seem to be further deployed, here, at the middle of the well-lit side, than at the edges?  What’s going on, on that other side?

            When he first landed on the dark side, he strained his eyes to adjust them.  Then... oh, shit, that sure looks like a snag!  Dammit, this isn’t supposed to happen, when we’re a third of the way down!  There’s less bunched-up material for the deceleration to be yanking on, now, than before—didn’t this stupid rubber learn its physics?!  Maybe it’s static charges building up, and distorting how this thing unfurls.  Never mind.  Let’s stop theorizing, and fix the damn thing!

            “Hold it, guys, we’re snaggin’!  Hold it!!!  Do whatever you can to stop it, till we straighten it out!”  he hollered.

            “Okay, gotcha,” Manny’s voice replied.  “I got it, where I’m at.  It ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

            “Seidel?  What’s the haps, bro?”  LeRoy queried anxiously.

            “Um, I think I’ve got it.  Sort of,” word came back from Seidel.  “The struts are getting longer, down here, you know,” he continued.  “I’m having hard time staying out at the tips, where the action is.”

            “Okay, guys, where are you at.  Manny?”

            “I’m on the well-lit side.  The dark side starts just to my left.”

            “Seidel?”

            “I’m one-eighty out, roughly, with Manny, like ve planned.  Dark side.  Light side just to my left.”

            Shit, we got our spacewalking rookie closest to the action, LeRoy fretted.  But—dammit if it don’t seem to be getting worse!  Snagged on the upper edge of a toadstool, and... no, I can’t be hopping on down there.  Pressure from the outside will just make it worse.  It’s got to be Seidel, and soon.  “Seidel, I’m afraid you’ll have to hop to.  It’s getting worse.  Off to your right.  Can you...”

            “Roger.”

            All right, Seidel!  Go, dude, go!  LeRoy silently rooted, barely considering that he was bossing the boss.  Hell, Seidel’s a good shit, and doesn’t worry about who’s the boss.  Whoever knows most about what’s going on, that’s who’s the boss.  We’ll get the job done.  We be bad, even better than bad.  We be mediocre.  Mediocre to the bone.  Mediocre’s better than bad, right?  No, that’s not right, we’re tight, we’re headed your way like dynamite!  Come on Seidel!

            LeRoy watched as ripples appeared around the snag, as Seidel pushed here and there.  It didn’t help.  He could almost swear that those ripples were making it worse.  “Manny!”  LeRoy called out.  “Can you actually back up, climb back up the side of the ship, with your edge?  Relieve some of the stress?  The weight of your part, that’s pulling down?”

            “Already tried.  No luck.  In fact, I’ve, like, ah, got ahold of my edge, kinda, ah, precariously, by now, tell you the truth.  Holding onto it by my push-stick, now, as far as the bulk of it goes.  It’s out beyond the edge of the struts, where I can’t get at it really well and push it back up, without either firing up my maneuvering pack, or, um, yanking on the unfurled part, here, which might unfurl it a bit more.  I guess I might...”

            “No, I’ve heard enough,” LeRoy cut him off.  “No go.  Sit tight.  Seidel.  Can you, maybe, get out your tools, and loosen that strut?  Fold it down, allow the material to slide over the tip more easily?”

            “Roger.”

            LeRoy didn’t hear anything for a little while.  Hope this doesn’t happen again, he thought.  We’re only a third of the way down.  Fortunately, as we go further down, there’s less material bunched up at the rim, pulling down.  With any luck, once we’re through this present mess, we’ll be in for smooth sailing.  Okay, what’s Seidel up to, by now?  Not to put the heat on him, but...  “Seidel.  How’s it going?  Anything I can do to help?”

            LeRoy was starting to consider the idea of rappelling down there, and crawling inside.  His tether would catch the rim, and he could crawl up the side of the ship, pulling the rim of the tent up, relieving stress.  However, that would risk serious entanglement, especially since Manny would be unable to simultaneously raise his side up.  The tent would tighten, pulling that much closer to the ship.  Let’s sit tight, and see what Seidel can do, he decided.

            “Seidel?  What’s...”

            “Yessir.  Almost got it.  The strut will be folding down, real soon.  The bolt is loose.  Here goes!”

            LeRoy heard the noises as the strut collapsed, as transmitted through Seidel’s suit, and over the radio.  He watched anxiously as the snarled tent settled into a new equilibrium, from which it would be much easier to remove.  It was now bunched up loosely on the flat underside of the “mushroom” at the tip of the strut, instead of sharply caught on the edge of that mushroom.  LeRoy was just about to breathe a sigh of relief, when he noticed Seidel falling free of the ship!  I sure hope he’s got his tether on good, he thought, straining his eyes in the dim starlight.  Nope, I don’t see anything!  In all this excitement, Seidel must’ve gotten careless about his tether, and when the strut collapsed, he got knocked loose!

            A brief string of unintelligible German invective soon subsided, and the airwaves were clear.  LeRoy got right on them.  “Seidel, I see you’re in a bit of trouble,” he said, thinking, well, I may be understating things a bit, here.  He’s falling away from us at an ever-increasing rate, some two meters per second more, every second.  Time’s a-wasting!  “Can you turn on your jetpack, quick, before your fuel won’t cover you anymore?!  Turn on your radar and autopilot, lock onto the ship, just stabilize for now.  We’ll talk you down, after that.  Can do?”  Oh, rats, it would have to happen to the one of us who’s not trained.  Dammit all to hell!

            A few more moments were wasted as LeRoy and Manny both tried to coach Seidel, to little avail.  Seidel finally turned the jetpacks on, manually, and let loose a few bursts, which canceled some of his growing “downward” velocity.  Unfortunately, they also started to push him away from the line of the ship’s path.  By now, Alan was on the horn, asking if they should maybe start to shut down the ship’s engine.  No, Seidel insisted, that takes too long, and, “I’ll not have it on my conscience, dragging the rest of you down with me,” as he said.  “Ve need every last bit of thrust out of ze engine that ve can get.  Now, let me try this thing on manual, again.  Here goes.”

            Seidel, now approaching the status of a dwindling speck in space, fired his suit’s thrusters once more, once again canceling some of his ever-increasing downward velocity, but moving off in a different lateral direction.  This is hopeless, LeRoy concluded, he’s just wasting fuel out there, and we’ll need every last bit of it that we can get, if my idea will work out, here.  Even if he was more proficient with that thing, if he does manage to hit the ship, he might tear a big gash in our giant rubber!  His aim and velocity would doubtlessly be a lot worse than mine has been, as I’ve rappelled across the tops of these toadstools.

            The same thought, it seemed, had occurred to Seidel.  “Guys,” he said, “It looks bad.  Even if I manage to steer myself into ze side of ze ship, I might rip the tent.  I’m afraid this is good-bye.  Tell my wife I love her very much,  she knows.”

            No fuckin’ way, you dumb kraut, you, LeRoy swore to himself.  Friends don’t let friends suck vacuum and die.  It’s got to be me, ‘cause Manny’s tied up on the other side, keeping the tent stabilized.  Besides, we’d have to listen to you, sailing off into nothing, till you were out of radio range.  That, or tell you to shut up.  Too melodramatic.  Nope.  No way!

            “Hold on, Seidel.  Save your fuel, I’ve got an idea.  I’m comin’ to get ya.”

            “LeRoy, don’t.  I forbid it.  One of us dead is quite enough.  No heroics for me.  The rest of the crew needs you.”

            LeRoy was already cutting his tether, keeping the bulk of it’s length with him.  Orders from the boss be damned, I’m gonna go and save his honky ass, whether he likes it, or not!  What’s he gonna do to me for not listening to him?  Kick me off the ship?!  Ha!  Okay, judge that distance and direction to Seidel’s trajectory, and... all right, calibrated eyeballs, don’t fail me now!—let go, and JUMP!

            Seidel was blubbering something into the radio, about LeRoy needing to stay on the ship, and that he, Seidel, was going to make one last attempt, burning the rest of his fuel, to hit the bottom of the ship, where there wouldn’t be any tent to run into.  He’d just have to risk running into the center of the stream of silicon ions, which might kick him back and away again.  Not to mention the unknown health risks that might be associated with colliding with million-meters-per-second silicon ions, or the known risks of running into the ship’s red-hot waste-heat pumps, down there, on the bottom, LeRoy amended Seidel’s thoughts to himself.

            “Don’t do it,” LeRoy called to him.  “I’ve already cut my tether, and I’m on my way.  Save your fuel.  Hold your horses.  Take your protein pills and put your helmet on, I’m on my way.  Hang tight.”

            Fast and furious, LeRoy called upon all his training and experience.  Touching the HUD panels embedded into his visor, he turned on his jetpack, miniature radar, and autopilot, and trained the radar on Seidel.  Next, he commanded his autopilot to plot and execute a medium-fuel path to a spot 50 meters “above” Seidel.  LeRoy wanted a speedy plan, one that wouldn’t let Seidel fall too much further, without spending too much fuel.  He grimaced as the jetpack fired up, giving him velocity in the direction opposite that in which he wanted to yank Seidel.  Can’t be helped, he told himself, I’ve got to go towards Seidel, if I want to rescue him.

            As he floated towards Seidel, and the ship receded above him, he quickly fetched a heavy wrench from his tool pouch, tied it to the loose end of his tether, and began to swing it around and around, always playing more rope out, so that the tool described an ever-larger orbit around him.  Oh I’m a roving space cowboy, out among the planets, catching me some honky, he thought.  “Seidel.  See?  This way, I don’t have to go all the way down to catch you.  Catch this tool when it spins by your way.  Careful not to take it in the visor, now!”

            As he played out more and more tether, he found that he needed to move his hands further and further, to keep the wrench’s orbital motion going.  Shit, he concluded, I’m orbiting it, a tiny bit, just as it orbits me.  Let’s see, here, if I put some spin into my body, to impart more orbital motion into the tool, it’ll work.  Wonder if I could program this hocus-pocus into my autopilot, on the fly?!

            At the same time, he started chattering with Alan on board the ship, asking for them to start throttling down the engine, just for a short little while.  Every tiny bit helps, yes, but that goes for me and Seidel, out here, too, but in the opposite direction from y’all, LeRoy explained, needlessly.  Yeah, hell, Alan already knows that, as well as anyone else, LeRoy concluded.  Wish we could cut back on that thrust at a more rapid rate.  But they tell me that’s a no can do, when we’re at two hundred percent of rated capacity.

            Okay, enough of that.  Now, explain the plan to Manny.  He was halfway through explaining to Manny, when Seidel caught the wrench.  LeRoy immediately instructed his autopilot to reference its internal gyroscope, and to cancel his spin motion.  Then, he locked his radar onto the ship, and initiated a high-velocity trajectory to return to the ship.  Since he realized fully well that the autopilot wasn’t smart enough to realize that the ship was accelerating, with respect to them, or that LeRoy was towing a mass doubling his effective mass, he repeated the command, after the first blasts from his jetpack, also hitting the “recalibrate” panel.  Then, with his added mass if not the ship’s acceleration calculated in, he repeated the command yet once more.

            Finally, they were making visible gains on the ship.  LeRoy glanced at his fuel gauge, which stood near empty.  He yanked on the tether, imparting extra velocity to Seidel, bringing him upwards, so that he’d travel in tandem with LeRoy, eventually.  Alternating instructions to Manny and Seidel, LeRoy orchestrated a complex  maneuver.  By the time  LeRoy and  Seidel approached the ship, with last-minute  jetpack corrections to their trajectories, they were both traveling so that they’d simultaneously pass Manny, on opposite sides of Manny.  But, between them was a tether, and between Manny and the ship, there was another tether.  Manny kept it tight, flying along on a path parallel to the ship’s, by using his own jetpack.

            All right, Manny!  LeRoy thought, sure hope your fuel doesn’t run out any time soon!  Speaking of fuel, looks like I’m out.  This is it!  All or nothing!  Lookin’ good... fifty meters of tether between Seidel and I, and almost that amount between Manny and the ship.  And, my calibrated eyeballs say those two lines are gonna collide any minute now.  Can’t miss.  Lots of slop, lots of room for error, just like I planned.  We’ll snag, and he’ll pull us in.  Except... the ship is still accelerating away from us!  Why must it take so damned long to throttle that stupid thing down?!

            So close, yet so far!  My calibrated eyeballs now tell me that the ship is adding extra velocity away from us just a whee bit too fast, that we’ll just barely miss!  We’re approaching at an ever-decreasing rate, and soon, it’ll start slipping away from us again!  A handful of yards, a few meters per second—surely, if there’s a God anywhere out here in the heavens...  He touched his visor’s HUD panels once again, trying to coax a few more spurts from his jetpack.  Nothing.  “Seidel.  Can you...”

            “Nein.  I’m out.  No fuel.”

            “Manny!  Quick!  Shoot on down here, and...”

            This time, Manny had anticipated LeRoy’s thoughts.  He’d already stopped matching Daedalus’ acceleration, and, as LeRoy watched, he let loose a spurt, and swung down, on his tether, towards their tether.  LeRoy felt the sudden jolt, as the last two meters of Manny’s tether snagged theirs, and Manny slowly began to twirl, at the end of his tether, around their tether.  Salvation at last, LeRoy exalted!

            Manny came crashing down into the ship, somehow making a safe landing towards the bottom, right above the angrily glowing heat radiators, where the waste heat from the fusion power plant was bled off into space.  That was a close call, LeRoy fretted, watching.  LeRoy and Seidel swung down even further, swinging towards the middle of the stream of high-velocity silicon ions, close to the ship.  It started to make a mess of their suits.  LeRoy reflected that he’d be needing a new visor, as it began to cloud up.  He didn’t much care, because he was alive, and safe!

            Or, was he?!  If these silicon ions can cloud the glass in my visor, what are they doing to my body, he wondered.  At a million meters per second, are some of them penetrating my suit, and mangling my cells?!  We’d better not swing into the middle of this thing, certainly not too often, or we might get cooked!  Not that I recall this matter ever being covered, in training!  We’re hardly ever supposed to be out on the safe areas of the ship’s skin, with the engine on, let alone bathing in its waste stream!  Seems to me, the closer our tether is tied to the center of the rear of the ship, the more likely we are to swing through this stream, again and again, like a pendulum.  Not good.  Time to call Manny.

            LeRoy took a gander “upwards”.  Manny had once again anticipated his thoughts.  He climbed up a strut, one of the longest ones, down at the bottom, pointing down and away from the bottom of the ship, where the conical aerobraking shield would reach its maximum diameter.  From there, the tether to Seidel and LeRoy pulled them out of the ion engine’s exhaust.

            Soon enough, Manny reeled them in.  They untangled their tethers, spooled them up, and checked out the current status of the tent, whose dire straits had precipitated this whole adventure in the first place.  They decided that it looked stable for a while, that there’d be time enough to straighten it out later, after they’d had a chance to refuel and take a break.  They made their way to the air lock, and rejoined their crew mates.

            There was much backslapping and congratulations for LeRoy, who’d saved the day.  All that LeRoy wanted to do was to finish the job, and rest his weary bones.  But he humored the crew.  The three of them told war stories about how it had happened, while the crew, even the ones who’d been sleeping, listened.  LeRoy tried his best to be modest, to say that he’d just done what any decent person would’ve done, who could have done it, in his shoes, and so on.  Still, they told him he was quite the Dude Extraordinaire.  Well, if you insist, LeRoy concluded, to himself.

            When they’d finished talking the excitement out of themselves, they started to clean LeRoy’s and Seidel’s suits, replace their visors, and refuel their jetpacks.  What, we’re not getting ready to go out there again, today, are we?  LeRoy asked himself.  After all that?  Can’t we maybe wait a day?

            “Seidel,” he broached the topic.  “What say we take the rest of the day off?  That must’ve been a bitch, thinking you were gonna, um, ...”

            “Hey, I’m up for it, if you are.  Gotta get this job done.  Mars will be creeping up on us real fast, now.  If things go wrong, with the later parts of this job, we could get into a time crunch.  Let’s go do it to it.  What do you say?”

            “I say you’re a brave man.  Let’s go.”

            They ended up taking a long lunch break first, and then they went back outside, to go and do it to it.  The remaining snarls were soon unsnarled, and the tent was deployed and tied into place.  They crawled back up, against the one-fifth gee of the overdriving ion engine’s thrust, to the airlock.

            Whoopee!  Miller time, LeRoy hooted inwardly, taking one last look out, back, and down.  The most critical part of erecting the aerobraking shield is done!  We’re on our way home, by way of Mars.  All aboard!  One stop, the Red Planet, and then, Earth!  Wish those bums back dirtside would think of double-checking what’s going on out here.  Train their big ears, radio dishes, optical telescopes, or whatever, out here, and see what we’re up to.  That damned Derrick ain’t licked us yet.  Never will!

            Samantha, babe, I’m on my way!  Here I come, honey, even if y’all don’t know that yet.  We even got our giant condom deployed!  Our rig’s all covered, we’re ready to go!  Gonna go downtown, gonna see mah gal!

 

CHAPTER  24

            “If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”

                                                            Thomas Jefferson  (1743-1826)

 

            In one sense, Phil’s ride in the trunk was quite boring.  All he did was lay there.  In another sense, it was quite exciting.  All those noises of passing aircraft and police sirens, and even the long stops in traffic, meant that at any time, the long arm of the law might somehow zero in on him, fling open that trunk, and haul him outta there, to parts unknown.  But, such was not to be.  The long arms of the law, or the dual factions thereof, had more important things to do, at the moment, at least, than to harass every frightened motorist in a search for one loudmouthed, blasphemous, bio-technology-worshipping fool.  Phil was fated for a safe, if quite cramped, journey, although he, of course, wasn’t yet aware of this fate.

            He was quite tired, and actually managed to catch some shut-eye, now and then, while they were stopped in traffic, which was often, and for long stretches at a time.  It seemed that there were more than a few frightened suburbanites who, upset by what they saw on their old HV or TV sets, decided that crowding the streets, highways, and freeways might somehow make it all turn out better.  In fact, Phil once awoke from one of his lousy naps, to the sound of loudspeakers blaring from helicopters overhead.  Something to the effect of, “Go home, and do as you’re told.”  Nicer words,  as best as Phil could make them out, but that was the message.

            In the middle of the night, Phil woke once more, this time to slowly, painfully climb out of his cramped quarters in the trunk.  He discovered that he was inside a large, dirty, dilapidated old building.  Don’s car was parked beside an old derelict car at one end of this crowded, dusty warehouse.  Squinting against the harsh light of uncovered overhead florescent tubes, he looked around.  Why, this looks like one of those old buildings, one of those old, low-budget semi-artsy-fartsy things that Gloria likes to go shopping at, what are all these things—yeah, sure enough, those are molds, pieces of greenware, and kilns!  A ceramics shop!

            Gloria supported his left arm, helping him straighten out.  “That’s right, honey, I dragged you all the way out here in the wee hours for a bit of shopping.  Now, what do you think?  Some ceramic flamingoes?  Nice, big ones?  I’ll paint ‘em pink, and we can put ‘em up in the front yard.”

            A largish, middle-aged woman approached, chuckling at Gloria’s attempts at levity.  “That’s right, honey,” she said, patting his other arm.  “You listen to your wife.  We fix you right up.  Have I got good deals for you!”

            Don hastened to make introductions.  “Sunshine Mama, you’ve already met Wicked Wanda, but your husband, here, he’s in the dark.  Excuse me.  Wicked Wanda, this is Jim Dandy.  Jim, this is Wanda.”

            Huh?  Who?  Me?  Oh, yeah, me.  Us.  We’re playing Secret Agent.  Well, guess I’ve gotta humor Don.  He stuck out his hand to Wanda.  “Pleased to meet you, Wanda,” he offered.

            “Nice to meet you, Jim,” she said, with nary the hint of a smirk.  A friendly smile, that’s all that Phil could see.  “So glad that The Lone Porksword was able to pull this off,” she said, breaking into a shit-eating grin, glancing at Don.  She got serious.  “No, really, we’re not playing games,” she said in a low voice.  “We’re for real.  Forget your real names.  We try to keep clean, but you never know who might be listening.  No, we don’t usually use those full, silly names; sounds to hokey, too obvious.  We do like to have a good time, on occasion, that’s all.  Jim, Sunshine, Porky.  Remember that.  Or, what the hey, Snoogle-Woogle-Poogle-Woogle-Boogle-Woogle, whatever.  Yeah, Porky told me about you two.  No real names.  Remember.

            “I’ll try to keep this short.  I know y’all are bushed, and ready to crash.  I’ve got a safe place here for y’all, for a little while.  I’ve been taking in the news, both the official and the unofficial.  It’s a bit too early to say for sure, but I highly suspect that it would be best if we sneak you out of the country.  Not right now, we’ll have to wait for a little while.  Once the current excitement  dies  down  a  bit,  they’ll  figure out  that  commerce  has temporarily stalled, and that the consumers are restless.  There’ll be a short mini-boom in interstate, even international, trucking, un-Big-Brotherized trucking, before the New Order can really crack down.  I’d guess, give it a week, two at the most.  That’s the window during which we’ll slip y’all out to Mexico.”

            “Porky” looked at her, apparently astounded.  Phil mused, yeah, I guess he’s amazed, too.  He must’ve only told her a tiny bit about us, yet, and she’s got it all figured out already.

            “Yes, we have some friends who happen to be truckers.  Don’t sweat it,” she continued.  “Meantime, you’ll have to hang out with me.  Let’s move on to your bedroom.  We can continue this discussion there.  I’d feel just a tiny bit better about it, there.  Now, you’ll have to forgive me, Jim, Sunshine, Porky, these beds aren’t the ritziest setups you’ve ever seen.  They are safe, as best as we could make them.  Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

            She marched off, swept some molds to the side, unveiling some reinforced gaps in the bottom of some shelves, and fired up a forklift.  Phil held his breath as she swiftly, deftly raised the shelves, delicate greenware and all, up into the air.  Then, brushing some dust to the side, she pressed a button hidden behind some cobwebs.  The floor rose, revealing a steep staircase.  “Your room awaits you.  Can I assist you with any luggage, perhaps?”

            They scampered around briefly, organizing their meager belongings.  At the bottom of their heap, they found the briefcase and gym bag full of drives and defunct Derrick-driven security toys.  Phil looked at Don, quizzically.

            “Jim, I’ve already told Wanda just a bit about those.  To help persuade her that we can pay the rent, see?  No, man, I swear to ya, buddy, there’s absolutely no place in the world, right now, where these drives can be put to better use.

            “Wanda,” he continued, hefting those heavy containers to her, “Our rent.  Sorry we’re late.  I’ll bet you’ll find this, ah, payment, will, what shall we say, be of great value.  Especially if you can somehow redeem it overseas, where you can actually cash it in.  Where it’ll be honored at face value.”

            Wanda nodded and grinned at “Jim” and “Porky”, sending them silent thanks.  She disappeared very briefly, into the depths of the maze of molds, greenware, and so on.  Phil stooped to fetch his sleeping, blanket-bundled booger boy.  Gloria protested, asking if he was sure that he’d sufficiently recovered from his imprisonment in the trunk, for him to tackle such a task.  He assured her that he had, and picked Trent up.  He looked longingly at the basement entrance, thinking of the beds, however meager they might be, that awaited them.  Anything would be better than a trunk!  But Wanda was nowhere to be seen, and it sure wouldn’t have been polite to wander down there by themselves.

            Very shortly, Wanda reappeared, and they headed down the stairs.  They passed through a fairly long hall, passing quite a few doors.  Closed doors.  This facility was of some size!  Phil looked at Don, quizzically.  Don shrugged.  Wanda caught that look, and offered, “Wait just a few minutes, till you’re comfortably settled in, and I’ll explain, for just a few minutes.  That’s just a very few minutes; I’m sure you’re all tired.  We can talk some more tomorrow.”

            That’s just dandy by me, Jim Dandy that I am, Phil thought.  My brain is curious, but my body says that right now, snooziosity beats curiosity about a thousand to one.  My body, being larger, wins.  Might makes right, in this case, at least.

            Wanda asked if they wanted two separate rooms.  They rapidly decided that one room was fine for all four of them, as long as there was enough space and beds in one room.  She assured them that she had a suitable room.  Phil thought he could just barely detect that they’d given the right answer, or, at least, one that didn’t annoy their hostess.  He wondered if she was harboring, or expected, other fugitives from justice, or whether she might be growing non-quota peanuts for domestic consumption, or committing other egregious violations defying the authority of the State, in those other rooms.  Mind your own business, he told himself.  She might not want us to know, lest they torture it out of us.

            Soon enough, they were splayed out in some simple bunk beds, in a semi-cramped but comfortable room.  Phil and Gloria shared a larger bed on the bottom of a bunk, while Don took the top, and Trent got the sofa, with chairs in front, to keep him from rolling out.

            Phil’s brain won the short, temporary fight, over-ruling his body, keeping his eyes open for just a few minutes, while Wanda explained, just a little bit.  “You’re no doubt wondering what this place is all about.  We got our start, well, maybe not our start, but a boost to the point where we amount to more than just a circle of like-minded friends, um, back during the suppression of civil liberties during the Chinese War.  Yes, obviously, we have something to hide, here.  No, we’re not growing pot.  There are similarities, though.  Just like underground pot growers, we use a lot of electricity, and we’ve got to worry, constantly, about would-be omniscient busy-bodies coming snooping around, asking what we’re doing with all that juice.

            “That’s where our cover business comes in real handy.  Ceramic kilns use tons of juice.  We just divert a bit, now and then, to the basement, where we store extra power in large UPSes.  Un-interruptible power supplies.  Not that our systems mind power interruptions, it’s just that we need to regulate our consumption, to make it look like kilns.

            “And what, exactly, is it, that we do with our computers?  And, why do we have to hide them?  Well, it’s a long story.  I’ll tell you tomorrow, after you get some rest.  Tonight, before you fall asleep, all I really wanted to tell you, is this:  we do try to take some fairly rigorous measures to hide these facilities from prying eyes.  After all, it took a lot of time, money, and effort, not only to build these rooms, but also, to equip them, without gettin’ busted.

            “Take a look around.  See those small bulbs in the corner there?  You can’t turn ‘em off.  The only way they go off, is if we cut off power here, while we’re getting searched, or suspicious characters approach.  You know, electrical currents can be detected, even when they’re buried under the ground.  That’s not all.  We tried to soundproof, but sound will still carry.  Try not to make noise, if the lights are out.  No, you won’t be left in complete darkness.  See over there?  We’ve got a small natural gas light in here, too, that never goes out.

            “One last thing.  Now you’ll really think I’m paranoid, but just to be safe, well, you know, they’ve even got ultrasensitive gravity meters, these days.  Fat chance they’ll bring such fancy toys to bother an old lady living in a shack like poor, pitiful old me, but you never know.  These things detect masses moving around, see.  If the lights are out—like, if you wake up in the middle of the night—please keep still.  If you must move, do it real slow, okay?  I know, you’ve got a young bundle of energy snoozing away over there, and it’ll be tough.  Just do your best, please.

            “We’ll try not to send too many false alarms, or keep you frozen down here for too long, but it happens.  We’ve never had a real raid, but there’s always the first time.  I’m sorry—a little bit, at least.  I’d rather be safe and a little bit sorry, though, than really sorry.  Now, y’all sleep tight, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

            With that, she took her leave.  Phil didn’t need any formal invitations; he proceeded promptly to Napper’s House.

            He awoke the next morning, to a chattering, bouncing booger boy, full of boundless energy, pouncing on his bed and body.  “Daddy, where are we, Daddy?  Huh?  Daddy, Mommy, wake up!”

            Phil groaned, stirring himself into a sitting position.  Remembering the situation, he took a quick glance at the small electric lights.  Good, they’re on, he thought.  I’d hate to have to try to shut this perpetual motion machine down, into a low-power mode, without at least first trying to explain things to him.  Thank God he’s a wee tad older now, and can understand at least a little bit, and that there’s at least some insulating material and space between us and any unfriendly ears!

            Brief, ghastly thoughts occurred to him, as he remembered a tale he’d heard from many decades ago.  A Jewish mother and her baby had been hiding in the house of a brave and generous family, just as they were now hiding in Wanda’s hideaway.  At the same time as Nazi troops were searching the house, the baby had started to cry.  Faced with an awful choice, the Jewish mother had held the baby’s mouth and nose shut.  By the time the troops left, she was left with a dead baby.  Shuddering, he tried to push the thoughts out of his mind.  Why must we be such brutal beasts?  Will human depravity ever run dry, short of human extinction, he wondered.

            With tears in his eyes, he sat Trent down, and tried as best he could to explain the significance of those lights, and the new rules.  Gloria woke up, and helped out.  Shortly, after Trent was done assuring his parents in his most solemn and mature three-year-old’s manner, that he’d concentrated his attention span on today’s lesson, and was off and exploring his new, albeit small, world, Gloria was quizzing Phil.  First, why was he upset.

            “Oh, nothing,” he assured her.  He sure wasn’t gonna share his recent morbid thoughts with her!  Next, there was a short semi-spat about “why don’t you ever tell me things,” and so on.  Why did he listen to Derrick, and keep those secrets about his security toys, and the threats to his life, and so on.  Phil apologized, and offered various excuses.  She calmed down soon enough.  Phil was grateful that Don was there, so she couldn’t really get down on him too bad.  Well, okay, that she was such a softy, and couldn’t get down on him too bad for too long, in any case.  She really is a Sunshine Mama, he reflected.

            The three adults sat around and discussed their recent adventures, politics, and so on, while Trent rambunctified.  Soon, Trent came around, saying he was hungry.  Phil had just barely opened up their travel bags to root through their meager stash of food that they’d brought along, when there was a knock at the door.  Oh, don’t be silly, Phil told himself, if it’s the bogeyman, our ass is grass already anyway.  He opened it up.

            It was Wanda, bearing trays of breakfast yummies.  They sat down to dig in, while she just had a cup of coffee.  “I’ve already eaten,” she explained.  “I got up earlier than y’all did.  Then again, I’m sure I slept a lot better than y’all did, last night.

            “Let me tell you a little bit about us, and what we do.  Porky, here, is already an associate member, so some of what I’ll be saying will bore him, no doubt,” she said, nodding at Don.

            And I always told Don I was too busy, when he’d bug me about checking this group out, Phil thought.  And I was afraid Gloria would think I was kooky, joining, what?  A private militia?  Some sort of gang of loudmouthed blowhards, who love to sit around, listening to each others’ ill-informed opinions and conspiracy theories all day?  No, wait, Don wouldn’t go for that.

            “No, we’re not a militia,” she was saying.  “There’s enough believers in the cure-all powers of violence out there already.  We don’t need to add to it.  We got organized because of the domestic repression during the Chinese War.  Especially then, we felt like advocating any sort of violence at all, domestically, was, well, ah, handicapping one set of, um, busy-body bad guys,” she mumbled, looking at Trent, restraining her language, “Against an even worse set of unsavory characters.

            “Not that many of us totally forswear any use of violence whatsoever.  Seems to me, I recall Thomas Jefferson saying something about us being crazy if we expect to be transported from despotism to liberty on a featherbed.  Under this new American regime, our views on violence may change a bit.  Time will tell.

            “We’re an underground network of Libertarians.  We don’t get into violence or guns too much, although we believe in freedom to own weapons, just as much as we believe in other freedoms.  The right to self-defense is fundamental.  Still, our entire society, our entire race, believes entirely too much in the cure-all powers of threats, coercion, and violence.  And that includes violence by the State.  It sickens me to my stomach, to see how many unthinking sheep buy these arguments, these droolings by the apologists for coercion, who say that the State must use violence to defend us from the results of our own freely chosen actions.

            “We bemoan police brutality, how they harass and beat up on minorities, and oh, how we love to wring our hands, and say how things shouldn’t be this way!  Police shouldn’t frame, torture, harass, beat, and threaten the poor and disadvantaged members of society.  Yet, look at the excuses of the rotten apples among the cops!  Gangs, drug dealers, and pimps!  They should all be taken out and shot, they say!  Well, look at it.  Here, we could easily yank two out of three of these rugs right outta under these detestable thugs, and we can’t bear to think about it!  My God, what would happen if we’d let people make their own decisions!  Our addiction to government force is more of a threat to society than any chemical addiction anyone ever had.

            “Excuse me, I’m getting too steamed up,” she apologized, sitting back to sip some coffee.  “I know y’all already think the same way about these things as I do.  Let’s move on, to what we do.  What we plan to do now.

            “Yes, obviously, we have political agendas.  We do pass around information, data, writings, advocacy, you name it.  I might mention, Jim,” she said, looking at Phil, “That we’ve started to look at all those drives you’ve brought us, and we’re quite impressed.  Some very helpful information, there.  A bit late, for our domestic purposes, but let me tell you this:  even as we speak, this data is being duplicated many, many times, and it’ll find it’s way overseas, pronto.  Between it, and the few opposition politicians who’ve managed to sneak out of the country, despite the crackdown by Mein Fuhrer, Herr Hank N. Kreutz, why, I’ll bet we can minimize the number of countries that recognize the new American government.  At least, for a little while.  Jim, thanks.

            “Anyway, we do have agendas, and our computers help us get the word out.  Just exactly how we circumvent the government’s prohibitions against crackproof codes, well, I’ll not say.  They already know about us, except for that, and where this place is.  You know, we were just starting to think seriously about using this new Gödel technology thing, for our transactions.  I guess we just never really trusted it, or Derrick.  Now that the Gödel networks have crashed, and we see that Derrick was lying to us about them being long-term sustainable without him, well, I’m really glad we’re slow, in making upgrades to our systems.

            “I still haven’t told you what our main line of business is.  No, it’s not providing refuge for fugitives from ‘justice’, although we do perform that function on occasion.  As you can see.

            “Our main function is that of a bank.  A cybercash bank.  That, in addition to donations, is how we fund ourselves.  No, we’re not the only one, and no, it’s not the big deal that some have made it out to be.  You can’t hide or launder your millions of dollars here.  You can’t hide from the feds, here, who, exactly, owns the house that you’re living in, nor would it matter much, if you could.  They still know where you live, where you keep your stuff, and where to send the goons to steal and kidnap—and murder, if you resist.  Those who defy the State, by smoking a joint, giving a beer to their twenty-year-old kid, whatever, have still got to be looking over their shoulders.  Fundamentally, things haven’t changed.

            “But cybercash has made smaller transactions easier to hide, and a lot more powerful.  In a more flexible barter economy, that is.  Before, if you were an auto mechanic and your neighbor was a barber, you’d fix his car, and he’d cut your hair.  Purely as gifts of friendship, to be sure, and the taxman couldn’t bust you very easily.  Not too many laws against helping someone with your labor, for free.  Or, even, against mutual backscratching.  If you’re careful, that is, and your neighbor isn’t an IRS agent with a grudge.

            “Now you can use underground cybercash, and build up reserves, just doing odd jobs.  No taxes, no Social Security, no workman’s comp, no self-esteem insurance.  The State doesn’t get a cut, with which to make your charity choices for you, or for protecting you from non-quota peanuts.  The advantages are obvious.  However, you can’t get fancy.  Can’t buy a Ferrari with cybercash.  Can’t live high on the hog.  They’ll come by and knock you off, unless you got there ‘legitimately’, like, by being a lawyer, a government informant, or other officially approved bigwig.

            “There you have it.  We operate on a ‘cell’ kind of system, where bank dealings are strictly hush-hush, and nobody knows about bank operations, other than the few people that they’re in contact with.  We’ve not had too many major breaches of security; only a few people have been busted.  We check out bank officers thoroughly.  We’ve even started to use Derrick’s SPIRIT scans and SAQ scores, to make sure our people are reliable.  So far, I understand that those things still work, unlike the Gödel networks.  I hope they don’t have some other hidden flaws buried in their results, that’ll come out and bite us later.”

            How can she bad-mouth Derrick for a few small faults, Phil wondered.  Look at all he’s done for humanity!  And now it’s probably at an end, due to Hank N. Kreutz and henchmen, and even a dedicated fellow Libertarian is trashing his good name!  Well, I’ll not pick a fight with my most gracious hostess.  Who knows, she might be right in distrusting Derrick, anyway.  At the very least, he did apparently mislead us about those Gödel networks not needing his constant supervision.

            After breakfast, they chatted for a short while longer, and then Wanda excused herself, saying that she had a lot to do.  Somehow, Phil didn’t think she was talking about tending to her ceramics business.

            Once, during the morning, the lights went off, and they all froze, and talked in whispers for a while.  Trent behaved well.  Shortly thereafter, Wanda was back, this time with “Tricky Dick”, as she introduced him.  “Dick will take care of you, sometimes, when I’m not available,” she explained.  They’d brought them an old TV and VCR to help fend off boredom, as well as a computer terminal, food, and news that the alarm had been, as usual, a false one.  “Rather safe than sorry,” as Wanda repeated to them.  Once again, Phil, Gloria, Don, and Trent, AKA Jim Dandy, Sunshine Mama, the Lone Porksword, and Booger Boy, were left to fend for themselves.

            All right, Phil said to himself, surveying the TV, computer, and food supplies.  Now, even if they get all tied up, up there, we’ll be able to fend for ourselves for a while.  Hope they don’t cut the juice too often.  These one-eyed baby sitters don’t work too well without it.

            They promptly fired up both the computer terminal and the TV, primarily for Booger Boy’s amusement.  He’d already wreaked enough havoc that morning, so the one-eyed baby sitters were a welcome relief.  For a little while; Phil soon got tired of the blaring noises, even at low volumes.

            Whenever Trent wasn’t playing computer games, Phil would try to see if he could find some news on the TV.  Re-runs, soaps, movies, and propaganda charading as news, that’s all he saw.  What angered him most of all was the footage supposedly from a hidden camera in a cop car, which they showed frequently.  It showed a large, threatening, manlike robot, Derrick’s emissary, crawling from what was supposed to be Phil’s car, and slaughtering policemen.  This had been the last straw; the reason, along with Derrick-driven conspirators poisoning the President and Vice President, why the government was now being reorganized, temporarily strengthened, and permanently improved.

            He soon gave up on finding anything of truthful substance.  There’s a revolution going on out there, and I can’t get any reliable word of it, he concluded.  He did note that they were promising a national event, a Big Speech, the next evening, though.  All would be explained, they promised.  They didn’t say who’d be doing the explaining.

            The rest of the day went by way too slowly for Phil.  He felt guilty for not enjoying all this “quality time” with his wife and child, but, well, Trent was a healthy little boy.  As such, he did his best to drive them all up the wall.  They survived, though, in freedom, such as it was.  This freedom was easily preferable to the “freedom” he’d face on the outside, Phil was quite sure.  It offered hope, at least.  Soon, they’d be escaping to Mexico!

            It was about noon the next day before anyone checked in on them again, other than by computer messages.  It was Wanda, and she only stayed to chat for a few minutes.  She did suggest that they might want to watch the Big Show that evening; Phil assured her they wouldn’t miss it.  Not that there’s many other, more exciting choices down here for us, Phil added to himself.  Other than periodically freezing up in fear, whenever the electricity goes out.  Can’t bitch, though, in light of the alternatives.

            Finally, it was Show Time.  Phil had deliberately worn Trent out during the afternoon, boogawoogifying especially vigorously, so Trent was now asleep.  The three adults, having promised each other to keep their commentary to a minimum, were now seated in front of the tube, waiting for the Big Speech.

 

 

CHAPTER  25

            “If one were to tell the Pharisees of old—or the leaders of the religious right today—that they have no love in their hearts, they would cite twenty-seven specific examples in which they were loving that week.  Tell them that they lack true humility, and they will cite forty-six specific instances in which they were humble—several of which happened on national television (and they’ll play you the video).  Tell them they neither love nor teach Jesus, and they will say you are inspired by Satan.  Black is white and white is black, love is hate and hate is love, and the Prince of Peace will lead us all off to holy war.”

                        Peter McWilliams, in “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do”

            “We’ve seen the God of the Bible, the Ten Commandments and the Bible itself expelled from our public schools... with all the false gods of secular humanism introduced into the curriculum, including the false god of gay rights.”

                                    Patrick Buchanan  (b. 1938)

            “Feminism causes women to kill their husbands, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”                Pat Robertson

 

            After appropriate fanfare, the evening’s speechmaker was introduced.  Phil was surprised that he was surprised, but it was none other than The Reverend Pat Smuckler!

            “Brothers and sisters in Christ, citizens of America, greetings in the name of The Lord.  President Hank N. Kreutz has asked me to address you tonight.  He sends you his apologies for not being here tonight, but he has pressing matters to attend to.  As I’m sure you can imagine, he is fully engaged in this time of crisis.  He’s occupied in attending to matters of State, in shepherding our great nation back to safety, back out of the dangers that so recently threatened to cast us into a state of chaos.  A state of anarchy even worse than the individualistic, self-centered nihilism that has gripped this once great nation in recent years.

            “Citizens, we can once again become a great nation.  We can renew America!  All that we, the Hank N. Kreutz administration, ask, is that you allow us to help you to restore America to its lost glories.  We’d like for you to actively help us, of course, and we need your help, but if you can’t or won’t help, then at least stay out of our way.  There have been cases, in this hour of America’s greatest need, where people have been undermining law enforcement.  Saying that we, the Hank N. Kreutz administration, are not legitimate.

            “This we cannot, and will not, tolerate.  The Hank N. Kreutz administration was freely and openly elected, on an emergency basis, after the cowardly poisoning attack on the President and Vice President, orchestrated by this evil supercomputer that has been foisted on an unwary humanity by biotechnology interests that know no limits, no common decency.  I doubt that I need to reca recent events.  You’ve seen them all, right here, freely communicated on holovision and television.

            “A society in a death spiral of increasing anarchy, violence, and reckless hedonism, is brought to the boiling point by a racist and hateful supercomputer.  He spews forth his atheism masquerading as ecumenical broad-mindedness, lies about God making some races to be better than others, and lies about drug law enforcement being racially biased.  Well, let me tell you right now, minorities are every bit as deserving of freedom from drugs and other freedoms as any other Americans, and Hank N. Kreutz is personally committed to protecting those freedoms for all Americans, no matter what their skin colors may be.

            “In the midst of this volatile situation, this supercomputer engages in conspiracies, and recruits treacherous, treasonous human beings to his cause.  Libertines, those who worship self-indulgence and biotechnology, those who would pose as freedom-loving Libertarians, who actually want to enslave us to sin!  Those who resort to foul means, when they can’t win at the ballot box.  They conspire to kill the President and Vice President, using poisons, as befits their cowardly nature, leaving their victims permanently brain damaged.  They also build robotic emissaries for the supercomputer, which they use for attacking law enforcement.

            “In a reaction to this and other recent episodes of violence and lawlessness, Congress, meeting freely and openly via telepresence, elects Hank N. Kreutz into a temporary office of ‘President Plus’, to get us through these harrowing times.  You’ve seen it all, right here, in the free media.  Some American freedoms have been sorely abused, lately, and there have been purveyors of false freedoms, but this is one freedom that still serves us, and serves us well: the free press.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, that, in a nutshell, is how we got to where we are today.  We stand at the crossroads, and a new wind is blowing.  Blowing away the malignant cancers that have been eating away at the moral foundations of America, leaving nothing but festering sores.  Citizens, take heart, because that new wind is the Hank N. Kreutz administration.  We are that new wind, and so we know where it comes from, and where it goes.  It comes from the Bible, from GOD, and it leads us to righteousness!

            “We have solutions for what ails America.  We have The Cure, as spelled out in The Word of God!  Now, once again, there are doubters and nay-sayers out there, in your midst.  Do not listen to them!  They are false prophets, agents of the Evil One, who would lead you astray.  They say that we’re against religious freedom, against the Constitution.  Nothing could be further from the truth, the truth that will set us free.  The truth is, the Constitution merely says that Congress shall not establish a State religion.  Never, ever, does it mention anything like ‘the separation of church and State’.  This phrase simply doesn’t appear anywhere in there.

            “For almost two hundred years, we found nothing wrong with praying to our all-wise and all-loving Christian God, just as our good Christian forefathers, yea, even the Christian Founding Fathers, did.  In schools, even.  Can you imagine?!  And then, suddenly, the supposedly all-wise and all-loving federal judges decide that praying is unconstitutional!  Well, this will be straightened out, with all due haste.

            “I’ll tell you a few more things that will be straightened out.  Regulations.  We find that our entire lives are regulated from Washington, D. C.  How did our forefathers survive for more than a century, without Leviathan dictating their every move, with stacks and stacks of laws, too vast for even an army of lawyers to comprehend?  I’ll tell you how they did it; they did it by reading and heeding one, count them, one, Book:  The Bible.  God’s Holy Word.

            “Now, we’ll cut way back on regulations.  That should bring down the flaring temperatures of hot-headed extremists, some of whom have legitimate gripes.  In the place of all these regulations, though, to preserve peace and prosperity for us and our descendants, we will require people to live by the Bible.  Not that all regulations are bad.  We’ll still be inspecting the meat that you eat, to make sure that it’s safe.  Unlike libertarians and other anarchists, we don’t believe that everyone will behave themselves, unless they have some incentive to do so.

            “Now, about not all regulations being bad, and living by the Holy Bible.  Here’s where you must beware of the lies of the Evil One, and of his minions.  We, the Hank N. Kreutz administration, are concerned about your spiritual welfare, and the fate of this nation.  We can’t understand how we can pass endless laws protecting ourselves from bad food, bad water, bad air, bad drugs, unqualified doctors, and so on—not that all of these laws are bad, mind you—and yet, comes time to consider our eternal souls, we do nothing!  Absolutely nothing!!  Anyone who wants to call himself a minister, charged with nothing less than your eternal soul, can do so!

            “No wonder we have crazy, rabid cults running loose, doing and saying whatever they please!  We have non-Christians, false Christians, secular humanists, even Satanists, running loose, completely unregulated, spreading whatever lies they want.  Doing untold damage, spiritually and psychologically, to untold numbers of people, and to our nation.  We can’t allow this any longer.  All churches, all persons claiming to minister to the spiritual needs of others, must register with the State, for our protection.

            “If we should worry about minuscule levels of pesticides in your food, then surely we must worry about the poisons spouted by false prophets, by the agents of the Evil One.  We will protect you, not only from bad meat, but also, from evil ideas advocated by evil people.  These people would speak evil, and poison your souls, and the soul of America.  We cannot allow this.  As Jesus said in Matthew 15:11, it is what comes out of our mouths, not what goes in, that makes us unclean.  Therefore, we will protect you from the unclean ideas that come from the mouths of evil persons, far more than we worry about what you eat.  One concerns merely your body; the other, your eternal soul.

            “Prime examples of the unclean ideas that you’ll be hearing, are that we, the Hank N. Kreutz administration, are advancing unconstitutional ideas, and curtailing religious freedoms.  This is only true in a perverse, distorted manner.  Many power-hungry people out there, they love to engage in sophistry.  Your freedom to spread lies, to poison souls?  Yes, those ‘freedoms’, those, we’ll take away from you.  Just like we’ll take away your ‘freedom’ to murder unborn babies.

            “But we’ll protect your most fundamental freedom, your freedom not to be murdered, even if you’re an innocent, helpless, unborn child.  ‘Freedom’, you see, is in the eye of the beholder.  We’ll not protect certain ‘freedoms’ that you’ve had before, but those are false freedoms.  We must beware of false freedoms, just as we must beware of false prophets.  I tell you now, we are committed to hunting down all the mass murderers, those who have committed the last half-century of genocide against the unborn.  The Hank N. Kreutz administration will not rest until justice is done.

            “Anyway, about those lies you’ll be hearing, about religious freedom.  We aren’t establishing a State church.  We’re not even considering it.  We are planning to regulate churches, for the public good.  We’re protecting you from fraud and abuse.  That’s all, and that’s not unconstitutional.  Don’t let the sophists lead you astray.  Some of them argue, if it’s not authorized by the Constitution, then we shouldn’t do it.  Well, fine.  The Constitution Article I section 8, says, and I quote, ‘The Congress shall have the Power To... provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...’.  Unquote.  Just tell me this:  if fending off The Evil One, and keeping people from being cast into Everlasting Torment isn’t providing for the common defence and general welfare, then what is?

            “We’ll not be protecting you from yourselves, if you absolutely insist on being a non-Christian, or an unbeliever.  That choice is between you and God.  We’ll not even shut you down, if you’re running a legitimate Jewish synagogue, a Moslem mosque, or whatever.  We’ll just make sure you’re not spreading lies about Christians, brainwashing your followers, or running mindless, destructive cults.  No, we aren’t grossly biased fools; we realize that there are so-called ‘Christian’ cults out there.  You’ll no longer be able to hide behind the name of Jesus.  You ‘Christian’ leaders out there who’ve assimilated many pagan practices, who would make a man into a god, beware:  we will not allow you to have free reign.  The freedoms to murder, and to lead souls to hell, are false freedoms.

            “Now, people, I’m not here to preach.  I’m here on behalf of President Hank N. Kreutz, to tell you where our country is headed, what we must do to escape our society’s death spiral.  But let me just briefly share with you, as beggars share word of where to find bread, what I’ve learned, in the search for the Truth of God’s Word.  Let me share this message of salvation.

            “Many times I’ve been asked, just exactly how does one tell the difference between a real Christian and a false prophet?  Over the years, I’ve known many, many theologians.  While I might have disagreed with some on a few minor points, I’ve never had cause to doubt the sincerity of any who professed that Jesus was born of a virgin.  On the other hand, of all the theologians who I’ve ever known, not a one of them who has doubted this important indicator of Christ’s divine nature, can be trusted.  Not a one of them, not a one of them has been a true disciple of Jesus.  People, beware of false prophets.

            “To further our objectives of protecting the American people from destructive cults, we’re requiring all citizens to declare their religious affiliations, if any.  You’ll still have your religious freedoms, as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others.  You non-Christians out there will be free to reject Jesus, so long as you refrain from spreading your cancer.

            “Non-Christians are termites, gnawing away at the moral foundations under the pillars of civilized society.  Being the leaders of a civilized and tolerant society, we won’t call for their extermination.  We merely call for them to stop their nibbling at those foundations.  Specifically, that means, unrepentant non-Christians will not be allowed to occupy offices of power and authority.  It also means that they’ll not be allowed to marry Christians.  God’s Word, in Corinthians 6:14, clearly forbids the unequal yoking of believers and unbelievers.

            “For too long, our Christian nation has been allowing foreigners, non-Christians, to conduct religious aggression on our soil.  While the Saudi Arabians, for example, allow no churches to be built on their soil, they send money for building Islamic mosques in Christian nations.  This unfair advantage that the unbelievers have arrogated to themselves, against the Holy Word of God, the Christian Bible, will no longer be tolerated.  We’ll still allow more religious freedom than they allow, in that we’ll allow mosques already built, to remain standing.  But no more will be built.  We are a Christian nation, and won’t allow ourselves to be at the receiving end of a Proselytizing Gap.”

            Phil’s jaw dropped, as he looked at Gloria, with an “I can’t believe I’m hearing this” look.  Gloria just frowned, replying with a hangdog look of resignation and defeat and a glance back at the screen, silently saying, “Yeah, you’re right; now, let’s see what other lovelies they’ve got in store for us; post-mortem bitching can wait.”

            “Yes, your false freedoms, those we’ll take away from you,” The Reverend Smuckler was saying.  “You’ll no longer be free to murder.  You will have some new freedoms, some very important ones.  Even you minorities—you, who the evil computer, Derrick, would have deceived into thinking that law enforcement is biased against you.  You, and we, all of us, will have freedom.  Freedom from drugs, rigorously, very rigorously, enforced.  Freedom from pornography.  Freedom from perversion, bestiality, sodomy, and unspeakable degeneracy of all kinds.  Freedom from biotechnological blasphemy.  Freedom from illegitimacy, even.

     “And do you know what our greatest of all your freedoms will be?  It will be the freedom promised in God’s Word, in James 1:25.  In so many words, it tells us that the perfect law is that which sets people free!  People, we are working for the perfect law to set you perfectly free in the best of all ways!  Brothers and Sisters, we are working to set you free from Sin!  Freedom from sin of all kinds!  Yes, freedom from Sin!  People, rejoice in the freedom that God’s Word brings us!  The thing that enslaves us, and sends our souls to eternal damnation!  We are declaring a war on the soul-destroying beast, Satan himself!  In this time of moral decay and degeneracy, we will rise up for the preservation of our nation, and launch a mighty War on Sin!!!

            “We will not shirk from this task!  Hank N. Kreutz isn’t faint-hearted, and those of us who he is choosing for his administration—No, we’ll not flinch, either.  For all those out there who would help us, yes, by all means, we can use you!  We can use your services in fulfilling The Lord’s Will!  With His Help, we will regain the lost glories of a Biblical America!  Spread your wings and ride on the New Wind with us, to righteousness!  Ride to the thunder of our guns!  Together, and with God, we will renew America!

            “But let me say this:  if you haven’t the will or the courage to see this thing through, if you’re not five thousand percent committed to bringing this whole nation around, to living according to God’s Will, then bail out now.  We have no need for the assistance of the morally weak.

            “How, exactly, shall we work for freedom from sin?  Well, our leader, Hank N. Kreutz, believes that, as Jesus said in Matthew 23:11, ‘he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.’  Hank has long been not only a great leader and a man of God, but also, my friend.  I can personally assure you, he takes this verse quite seriously.  He intends to be your servant, to serve you.  He will help to fulfill Jesus’ prophesy in Matthew 5:48, where He says, ‘Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’  How will he do this?  By studying the Word of God, and obeying its commands.

            “But, by all means, let’s talk specifics.  We’ll take our directions from God’s Word.  For starters, we can no longer allow craven, beastly, unnatural, and disgusting sexual perversions.  Homosexuality is clearly gross and disgusting, not only in the eyes of the majority, but also, in the eyes of God.  God says he hates gay sex, and that they should all be put to death.  See Leviticus 18:23 and 20:13.  Now, we’re humane.  We’ll temper that a bit, seeing as how we live in a civilized society.  We’ll merely round them all up, so that they can no longer spread their disgusting perversions.  Then, we’ll take it from there.  We’ll see if we can use modern scientific methods to cure them.  You see, we aren’t backwards ignoramuses, who reject science.  When it can be used to attain God’s Will, we’ll use it.  If we can’t cure them, then, well, there’s always later, for carrying out God’s commands.  God’s commands, don’t forget that.  We’re merely doing as God commands.

            “Other sexual sins?  Promiscuity, prostitution, pornography, adultery, and so on?  We’ll not mess around, that’s all I’ll say for now.  Deuteronomy 22:22 does command us that adulterers are to be put to death.  But don’t believe the liars who say that we want to put a government regulator in every bedroom, or that we want to outlaw birth control.  Those are the decisions of married men and women, so long as their methods don’t kill human beings, who have been created by God, in His Miracle of conception.  And, notice I say, married men and women.  We will prohibit sales of contraceptives to unmarried persons, just as we prohibit sales of alcohol to minors.  Similarly, those buying contraceptives for unmarried persons will be severely punished, just as we’ll severely punish adulterers.  We refuse to enable random sex, by protecting sinners from the consequences of their actions.

            “In the cases of other reproductive technologies, we’re putting our feet down.  Leviticus 19:19 prohibits us from even mixing two kinds of seed in one field, crossbreeding two kinds of animals, or mixing two kinds of fiber in the same cloth.  If God prohibits these things, then what does He think of us, who have been created in His Image, going off and crossing ourselves with animals?!  This is bestiality, plain and simple!  For that matter, any genetic engineering of humans, at all, using even purely human genes, is plainly interfering with God’s Will.  How can we be so arrogant, to claim to be able to ‘improve’ His creations, who He has made, in His Image?

            “Biotechnological blasphemy will come to an abrupt halt.  As a matter of fact, we have cause to believe that this evil supercomputer, Derrick, who was devised to attain the Evil One’s will, may have more surprises in store for us.  Just as he lied to us about Gödel networking technology, he may have lied to us about what, exactly, he’s been engineering into those ‘improved’ offspring that people have been having.  We cannot afford to risk what these monsters may do to humanity, genuine humanity, decades hence.  Just like the perverts, they’ll all be rounded up, and taken into custody.  Final disposition?  To be determined.  We’ll study God’s Word on this matter.  I’m sorry, but we can’t permit this knife to dangle over our heads.

            “Poverty?  Welfare?  Starvation?  Illegitimacy, fatherlessness?  Hard, hard problems, interrelated problems, that the Welfare State hasn’t been able to solve, after the better part of a century of ever-increasing State power.  Again, our approach is very simple:  we open God’s Word, and we look to see, what does it command us to do?  In 2 Thessalonians 3:10, we see that we are commanded that ‘If any will not work, neither let him eat.’  This is a time-tested and Biblically approved method, the same one that Captain John Smith, the head of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, used in 1607.  ‘If you don’t work, you won’t eat.’  Plain, simple, Biblical, and effective.  It worked for hundreds of years, before ungodly liberals crawled onto the scene.

            “And what are we to do, when they won’t work, and start to starve?  Again, we open God’s Word.  Lamentations 4:9 tells us that those who are killed by the sword are better off, suffer less, than those who starve to death.  Cruel and heartless, say the liberals.  Yet, this is just common sense, and obviously right.  Would you rather die a slow death, by starvation, or a quick, merciful one?  Make your choice.  Well, of course, in modern America, there’s always a third choice.  You can work for your bread.  Radical concept.  Right alongside those able-bodied men holding ‘will work for food’ signs, there are ‘help wanted’ signs in the windows of restaurants.

            “We’ll take God’s commandments very seriously, here, in the Hank N. Kreutz administration.  You don’t work, you don’t eat.  You don’t eat, you starve, we put you out of your misery.  Now, once again, we temper that.  We’re not merciless brutes.  The Bible tells us often enough to be charitable.  But it also tells to keep secret, to not display, our charitable deeds.  See Matthew 6:2.  Therefore, we’ll not have street-corner charity displayed for all to see.  You want to beg, do it in private.  Keep it away from public eyes, and you can give and receive alms as you wish.  ‘Will work for food?’  And, you’re willing to tell the world?  We’ll take your word for it.  We’ll round you up, and give you an opportunity to live up to your word.  If you don’t, we’ll let you go hungry.  For a little while.  Then, we’ll be merciful, in the manner commanded by God’s Word, in Lamentations 4:9.

            “Oh, and, one more thing.  Jesus said, and I said, keep your charity private, and we mean precisely that.  You feed the pigeons or the seagulls out of your hotel window, and they crap all over your neighbors, the hotel will kick you out.  They post signs, prohibiting such things.  Same deal, here.  Disobey God’s Infallible Word, about keeping your charity private, and try to shame all your neighbors, by attracting the human equivalent of flocks of dirty birds, well, we’ll treat you the same as the hotel treats such guests.  Let the birds learn to fend for themselves; they’ll be better off.  Enough said.

            “Now, I warned you about sophistry.  Here’s a prime example of where the sophists, the pseudo-sophisticates, the false prophets, would argue that, well, if we’re going to let these people fend for themselves, or rely on only the most private of charity, then we’d better give them some ‘freedom’.  Freedom to work without licenses, minimum wages, or child labor laws.  Freedom from government interference in the creation of wealth, in making goods and services.

            “Well, hooey!  Yes, there’s a grain of truth in what they say.  We’ll cut down on government interference in the free market.  But to say that we must accept slave wages, children working instead of going to school, and unqualified people putting out goods and services for the American people?!  No, we can’t have that!  We won’t permit it!  Low, low-cost labor, this is a mark of third-world nations!  We won’t permit America to be turned into a third-rate nation!  Free trade, ha!  This degradation of the American standard of living, equalizing God’s Chosen People with third-worlders, this is part of the diabolical conspiracy among European bankers and such, to drag America down into the mud!  Into the squalor of the third-world nations!  We’ll not permit it!  American standards of living will prevail, in America!

            “If that means we have to put walls across our borders, then so be it.  We’ll erect a Biblical Nation, here in America, better than what we had, even in the old days.  We’ll keep the U.S. pure.  If that means we have to ship ‘em back to their old countries, if they can’t speak English, if they can’t earn the minimum wage, then so be it.  America for Americans, that’s what we say!  We’ll simply not permit America to be dragged down.  That’s the long and the short of it.

            “Speaking of a Biblical nation, there is one more thing we’ll see an end of, and that is all this unseemly clucking by ‘women’s libbers’.  The Absolute Authority on All Things, the Bible, the Infallible Word of God, tells us, quite plainly and clearly, in Ephesians 5:23, that the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church.  Need we say more?

            “These women’s libbers, they are Satanists!  They want, not only to divorce and castrate their husbands, become lesbians, practice witchcraft, abort their unborn babies, and to abandon their children, they also want to convince all the other women, good, contented Christian women, to do the same!  This, we will not tolerate.  Cookies, churches, and children; these are the proper concerns of women.  As helpers, mind you, not as bosses.  We’ll return to the old way of doing things; to the days before women killed their children.

            “Now, we aren’t saying that women can never be in positions of power.  There will be cases here and there, where God has granted great wisdom to a woman.  Our country needs such women, and we’ll not turn them away.  Senator Sondra B Handlung, for example, comes to mind.

            “Rest assured, there’ll be those who say that we’re not real Christians, that we are harsh and judgmental, that we don’t love our neighbor.  Do not listen to them.  They are false prophets, inspired by Satan.  We aren’t judgmental, we merely obey The Word of God.  They’ll say that we get our harsh and unforgiving ideas from the Old Testament, and that The Lord overturned all those old ideas, in the New Testament.  These, too, are lies.  The commandment that those who won’t work, shouldn’t eat, comes from the New Testament.  Also, Jesus Himself said he didn’t come to overturn the old laws.  See Matthew 5:17.  We’re entirely correct, as Christians, to take our directions from the Old Testament, as well as from the New.

            “Even the New Testament tells us that those who have or indulge in envy, strife, malice, deception, gossip, slander, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, disobedience to parents, senselessness, heartlessness, or ruthlessness, and so on, that such people deserve death.  See Romans 1:29 to 1:32.

            “We do the evil ones no favors when we molly-coddle them.  We won’t be molly-coddling the criminals, drug dealers, prostitutes, sodomites, pornographers, blasphemers, and self-indulgent hedonists of all kinds.  Doing so isn’t doing anyone any favors, not even the errant ones.  Like the Good Book says in Psalms 141:5, quote, ‘Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness.’  Unquote.  Correction, discipline, and punishment, meted out in loving kindness, by the righteous, is, indeed, a kindness.  You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure, the Biblical measure, as you can see.

            “Don’t believe the lies of those who would undermine law enforcement, who would have you believe that we’re mean, hateful, spiteful, and vicious.  That we’re against genuine freedom, or that we’re rigid, primitive, retrograde revanchists.  We do try to temper the, ah, more harsh parts of God’s Word, against the commandment to love our neighbors.  This means, for example, that even though Exodus 31:15 tells us that we should kill those who work on Sunday, we’ll not be quite that harsh.  We will, though, make sure that the Sabbath is kept Holy.  Only work which is absolutely essential to a modern civilization—law enforcement, for example—will be performed on Sundays.  We live in a modern world, and we acknowledge that.

            “Another example would be, Deuteronomy 22:20 commands that, if there is no proof that a woman was a virgin before getting married, then she should be stoned to death.  Now, we won’t take that literally, balancing it against the New Testament concepts of love and forgiveness.  We’re practical; we realize that we’d have to decimate the population, currently, to enforce this literally.  But we’ll be working towards the ideals of chastity and purity prescribed by the Bible.

            “They lie when they say that we’re to blame, for being harsh.  Those who willfully disobey God’s Word, those are the ones to blame.  This, too, is a Biblical concept.  Again and again, after God’s People are commanded to punish the evil ones, we’re told that they’ve brought it upon their own heads.  1 Kings 2:32 and 2:37, and Ezekial 33:4, those who disobey the king knew what the law was; the blood is on their own heads.  In Leviticus 19:9 and 19:11, we see that anyone cursing their parents, or a man sleeping with his father’s wife, shall be killed, and the blood shall be on their own heads.  Again, in Leviticus 19:13, 19:16, and 19:21, we see the same thing said about gays, women who have sex with animals, and spiritists and mediums.  They literally bring it upon themselves; we are not to be blamed for carrying out God’s Commands.  They, and they alone, share all the blame.

            “Beware of these various lies, by those who would undermine law enforcement.  They will also say that we are primitive and backwards, in that we are enemies of technology, of progress.  Now, this is true, insofar as technology is used to violate God’s Will.  We’ve captured Derrick, and we’re currently protecting the nation, the world, even, from his evil activities.  We do realize, though, that he had good, as well as evil, tools to offer us.  Predicting weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes, mining asteroids, curing diseases, and improving communications networks; these are obviously good things.  We truly regret that, in shutting down the evil activities, good things, too, have temporarily come to a halt.

            “Now, not all is lost.  Those new probes, designed by Derrick to mine the asteroids, and bring prosperity to our great nation, those are still up there, still ready to do their work.  Similarly, we still have much of the hardware that Derrick has devised, that can be used for good.  Yes, it is true; the instruments of evil, the apparatuses for human genetic engineering, those we’re destroying.  The SPIRIT scanners we are merely confiscating, or, at the very least, registering, for now, to keep an eye on them.  They may possibly be used for good purposes, later.

            “Yes, you see, Derrick is an instrument, an agent, of Satan.  His actions so far have quite clearly demonstrated this.  But, not all is lost!  The Lord moves in mysterious ways.  Even as I speak, we are making plans.  We are talking to him, seeing where he went astray, and what we might be able to do for him, with him.  We may very possibly save his soul, and bring him to Jesus!  Yes, we do believe that anything is possible, God willing.  He may have an eternal soul, and he may be as deserving of God’s mercies, as any human being.  Yes, you see, we aren’t backwards, anti-technology hayseeds, as some would say.

            “Now, we want for y’all to pray for us, while we tackle this most delicate proposition, this idea that we might be able to save Derrick’s soul, to bring him to Jesus.  What a wonderful thing that would be!  To rescue all the good things that he could do for our great nation, while discarding the bad!  We know that the loss of the Gödel networks has had a large, negative impact to our economy, and we’d like to straighten that out, as well as to reclaim the other services that Derrick once performed for us.  We will NOT take any serious risks in doing so.

            “We may be forced to drive the demons from Derrick.  We do not tackle such a task lightly, because we know that the Evil One has vast and fearsome powers.  But they are as nothing, compared to the Powers of God!  We want for all of you good Christian Americans out there to be praying for us, bringing the Powers of God to bear, as we approach this, this task of tremendous importance.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, like I said, we stand at a crossroads, with a new wind blowing across our backs.  Let’s hope and pray that it will blow away the cancers and sicknesses that infect our society, and blow our Ship of State across this vast sea of troubles, to a fair and distant shore, to a bright new day.  To a Biblical day, that is.  It’s time to fish or cut bait, to decide whether we want to be sinners or saints.  Whether we want freedom from God, or freedom from Satan.  Freedom from immorality.  Please pray for us.  We’ll need all the help that we can get.

            “We’re not relying on prayer alone, to be sure.  God helps those who help themselves, or, alternately stated, prayer, if sincere, will lead to concrete action.  Some of you have no doubt wondered why I, a religious leader, am giving this address tonight.  I am no longer ‘just’ a religious leader.  Our Great Leader, President Hank N. Kreutz, has appointed me to lead a new agency, to help us towards our noble goals of a just, fair, prosperous, righteous, and Biblical society, to keep us free from sin.

            “Citizens, please pray for me, and my helpers, as we try to help you become virtuous.  We all, the entire nation, need all the help that we can get.  Therefore, tonight I am announcing the formation of the HELPERS.  That is, the Holiness Enforcement, Licentiousness and Pornography Eradication, and Redemption Service.  We, the HELPERS, will, with God’s guidance, lead our nation back to righteousness.  We’ll enforce a New Covenant with America!  I thank President Kreutz, the Congress who elected him, and you, the people who elected Congress, for this great honor and privilege, this opportunity to be your servant.  Please pray for me, for the entire Hank N. Kreutz administration, and for our great nation.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve touched briefly upon what the new winds of the Hank N. Kreutz administration will do for our nation, socially and spiritually.  I’ve not really talked much about politics per se.  Here, again, there are lies out there.  They say we plan on violating the Constitution, on tearing down democracy.  Do not believe them.  After the current crisis passes, normal democracy will resume.  In the meantime, we’re reigning in the politicians and lobbyists.  Hopefully, in a week or two, President Hank N. Kreutz will personally address you, concerning these matters, and others.

            “I would now bid you a good evening, with a short prayer.  Please join me in asking The Almighty that we may do His Will.”

            The Reverend Smuckler bowed his head, and shut his eyes.  A new wind began to emanate from his mouth.

            “Lord God Almighty, we humbly beseech thee to fill our hearts with love.  Love of God, love of our neighbors, love of righteousness.  Genuine love, love that does not flinch when...”

            Phil, Don, and Gloria looked at each other, wondering why they were still listening to this new wind of hot air.  Phil moved in for the kill, inching his hand towards the power switch.  No one objected, so he did the only decent and merciful thing that was left to do.  They all just sat there for quite a few seconds, looking at each other blankly, in shocked silence.

            Don finally spoke up.  “Well, how ‘bout that?!  I think it says quite a few things.  First off, these bastards are real confident they’ve got a good grip on the country by now, already, else they wouldn’t be spouting off this much crap, so fast, so far, so soon.  How long till we’ll be busted for ‘misprision’, for knowing that our neighbors have old Calvin Klein ads, and failing to turn them in?  I can’t believe it!  Here, pinch me.  End this frightful nightmare!”

            “Why, I just can’t wait,” Phil commented, “To see what our good buddy, Hank N. Kreutz, has in store for us.  If, as you say, we’re amazed at what they’re doing already, well, then, we’ll no doubt be creaming in our undies, comes a week or two from now.  Of course, with any luck, we’ll be in Mexico, sipping margaritas.  What do you think, Sunshine?”

            Gloria paused, and then said, “I used to think that the Libertarian stance on the poor was cruel, uncharitable.  Well, I guess I didn’t know the meaning of those words.  So the Republicans have finally decided to actually do something about the Welfare State, other than cut its projected growth rate.  But can you believe the backlash!!  The dictatorship of the left has fallen; now we have a dictatorship by the right, by the righteous.

            “I mean, look at these guys!  You don’t work, you don’t eat.  I guess that makes some sort of sense, as long as you don’t get in the way of private charity, or, at the very least, you allow the poor to work.  But they’re gonna kill the starving!  God Himself commands it, after all, and they’re just following orders!  Pretty incredible.

            “They stand in the way of private charities, with this business of keeping charity secret.  Sneak around in the middle of the night, if you want to feed the poor.  You know who they’re gonna nail, right?  Poor minorities.  Pay lip service to how terrible racism is, how we’re all equally deserving of their ‘freedoms’, and then this.  You thought freedom from drugs was bad, and came down especially harshly on the poor, on minorities?  Wait, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!  Just you wait and see what ‘freedom from sin’ will do!

            “Worst of all, they’re not even backing off on licenses, minimum wages, and so on.  I wonder if interior decorators and hair-braiders will still need licenses?  I’ll bet they will.  I’m enough of a free-market Libertarian by now, not to fall for this crap about the third world and slave wages.  We’re just shutting the poor off from getting on the bottom of the ladder, that’s all.  And it’s not all to be blamed on greedy employers.

            “They got me to thinking about that, you know.  We’ve heard a bit about industry cooperating with schools.  Take those poor, low-skill workers, put them in class six hours a day, and then, shuttle them over to the factory for two hours a day.  Try to get the school to teach something relevant to their jobs, while paying the teachers, and paying for transportation back and forth.  Now, the employees will make a few dollars an hour, for two hours, every day, while they, or the taxpayers, have to shell out the big bucks, to pay for the education.  Meanwhile, the workers would be making more money flipping burgers all day.

            “Well, maybe we could have the management or skilled workers at the factory act as teachers.  Teach far more relevant skills—after all, what’s the first thing an employer wants to know, how good your grades were, or how much experience you’ve got, doing what you’re gonna do?  Save on transportation and teaching salaries, since most of the work is still gettin’ done, even when you’re training somebody at work.  So, what we do, is we give the training employer two hats, a teacher’s hat, and an employer’s hat.  The minimum-wage time clock only runs when the employer is wearing his employer hat, while the employee is actually doing productive work.  Sound good?  Some real school-industry cooperation, a very tight integration!  Now, the employer has a lot more incentive to hire people, teach them, get them off the dole.”

            “But, wait,” Phil objected, “Now we’ve got to get a bunch of geeks in from the labor department, to write fancy rules about when you can wear which hat.  And, of course, to enforce those rules.  Maybe we could get radical, and legalize freedom.  But that’s too radical, even for the likes of Herr Hank N. Kreutz.  He’d rather shoot those who starve.  They embarrass us too much, like pigeons who poop on our nice, clean new cars.”

            There was a knock at the door.  It was Wanda, with a bottle of wine, and some glasses.  “Hey, guys, I thought you might be in need of a bit of cheer, after that dreary, awful speech.  Let’s have a drink or two, whaddaya say?”

            They said, let’s party.  Don commented that they’d better drink it all up, quick, before Prohibition came back, with a vengeance.  They sat around, drinking some mighty fine wine.

            “Actually,” Wanda ‘fessed up, “I also came down for a few other reasons.  One, to give you some good news.  To bring some joy to your world.  Our little grapevine tells us that yes, most foreign governments are refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Hank N. Kreutz regime.  That will change, over time, as they see the futility of trying to change such a large country as the U.S., what with all the economic and military power we still have.  I suspect, too, that Mexico and Canada will be the first to knuckle under, and recognize the new regime.  They’re the ones to feel first, and the most, the wrath of Herr Kreutz, after all.

            “Still, world opinion matters a lot.  Hank N. Kreutz and henchmen can crack down as much as they like, word will still leak into the U.S.  Once again, those drives y’all have so generously provided, have been, well, just a priceless treasure, in persuading people, mostly outside of the U.S., about just what, exactly, happened, here.  Thanks.

            “The other good news is that, as we expected, the consumers are getting restless.  Recent events have put a dent into normal economic activity, and a shipping backlog will soon need to be fixed.  We’re making arrangements now.  Just a few days, I can’t really say exactly when, and we’ll send you for a ride to Mexico.  Hide you in a large truck, bound down thataway.  I’ll miss y’all, but, you know, I’m quite sure you can do more for the cause of freedom, overseas, then you can here.

            “Speaking of which, we’re sending out some very hush-hush feelers to governments, colleges, industries, and research establishments in Europe, Japan, and Russia, about what we’ve got, here.  You’re not the only ones, you know.  Computer scientists and biotech engineers across the U.S. are in hiding, or have already fled.  We’re not identifying y’all specifically, but I’m sure you can find plenty of places where you’ll be welcome.

            “Well, so there’s your good news.  Sorry I can’t do any better.  Sorry it wasn’t, ‘Ha ha, this was all one big joke, one bad dream, you can wake up and go home now.’  No such luck.  Other than that, and bringing a bottle of good cheer, I just wanted to hear what y’all think of the latest New Order.  New Wind, New Odor, whatever.  Porky?”

            “Porky” submitted, “I think that the New Odor stinks.  Plain and simple, like The Reverend Smug Huckster likes to say.  I think these slimebags don’t know what the words love, humility, and compassion mean.  All they know, all they want, is Power.  Power, power, and more power.  God Himself had better watch out; they’re conniving, as we speak, to wrest His throne from Him, no doubt.  I’m sure they’ll have a good Christian, Biblical justification for it, too.  God is an ungodly non-Christian, or something.  In the old days, it was Christians versus lions.  Now it’ll be Christians versus God!  I’m rooting for God, Whoever, Where-ever He may be.  God, save us from the Christians!  Help!  Help!  The HELPERS are coming!”

            That was all Don cared to say.  Wanda moved her gaze.  “Sunshine?”

            Gloria submitted, “I don’t know, I’m trying to fit in with the New World Odor.  I’m the wife, the husband is the head.  I’m to be seen and not heard.  In fact, I’ve already been talking too long.  I’ll let Jim Dandy speak for our family.”

            “Oh, come on, now, Snugglebunny, don’t be like that,” Phil implored.

            “Nope.  Your turn.”

            “Jim” took the soapbox.  “I think it is, indeed, quite simple.  Evil people do evil, and good people do good.  They both often justify themselves from the Bible.  There’s gross and despicable barbarism in the Bible, and there’s also love and compassion.  Real compassion.  We do what we want, and we justify it afterwards.  We satisfy our endless needs, and justify our bloody deeds.  So said some evil, hedonistic rock and roll band way back when.  The Eagles, I think.  In the name of destiny, and in the name of God, they said.  But they were agents of the Evil One, no doubt.

            “There are, of course, genuine Christians, too.  Ones who listen to Christ’s messages of non-judgmental, unconditional love.  Who love their enemies, as well as their friends.  Who love prostitutes, gays, drug dealers, and secular humanists, even.  Who love God, not power.  Who seek spiritual power, not political power.  What I want to know is this:  if the good people do good, and the evil people do evil, and they all justify their acts from the Bible, then why do we need to lean on this, this stack of paper, this old, moldy collection of myths and legends, anyway?

            “It seems to me, the Ultimate Authority isn’t the Bible, and the people who say it is, are either egomaniacs or self-deluded.  It’s one’s conscience!  One can either listen, and listen well, to one’s conscience, and obey it, adding whatever justification we can glean from here, there, or anywhere.  Or, one can listen poorly.  And, of course, find some excuse, somewhere, even in the Bible.  We can blame Jesus, or we can blame Allah, or anyone that we’d care to blame.  We all pick and choose, comes time to read the Bible.  Even the Reverend Smuckler doesn’t want to kill us for working on Sundays.  Not yet, at least.

            “I think it’s high time we all grow up, and put aside these pretenses of being ‘Guided by the Infallible Word of God on High.’  I think what we just saw was a greedy, selfish human being, on TV, there, not God, not even His Representative.  Do you think he’d have gotten half as many people swayed to looking at things his way—now, you’ve got to admit there’s plenty more of his kind, out there, where he came from—if he’d have had to appeal to our consciences, instead of the Infallible Written Word of God?  I mean, can you see it?  ‘People, The Word of God, as revealed to us by our consciences, COMMANDS that we kill the gays, and the starving’.  Would we buy it?”

            “Sunshine?  What do you think?”  Wanda inquired, one more time.

            “I think my hubby spoke well, and I’m proud of him.  He’s learned his lessons well,” she said, squeezing his arm, with the hint of tears in her eyes.

            This is getting too sentimental, here.  Let’s change gears, real quick, Phil thought.  He was about to quiz Wanda about her opinions, when Gloria took the edge off of the seriousness of the moment.  She amended her praise of Phil, saying, “But, just wait a minute, there.  You’re stealing ideas from Jimminy Cricket.  Copyright infringements, there, no doubt.  ‘Always let your conscience be your guide’.”  Then she changed tones, doing her best hillbilly hick.  “Ah don’ know, though.  What’s the world comin’ to, these days?!  Seems ta me, that thar’s some o’ that thar Godless sexual humanism, from Hollywood.  Conscience, schmonscience!  What about God?!  What about The Bible?!”

            They all had a good, cynical chuckle, and then Phil went on to quiz Wanda.  “So, Wanda, how ‘bout you?  Speak to us.  You doubtlessly know more about all this than we do, in the first place.  What’s shakin’ out there, anyway?”

            “Well, not too much, that y’all can’t imagine, I’ll bet.  A few battles, here and there, with private militias, even a renegade state government or two, although they’re fading fast.  Only a very few domestic military organizations managed to escape Hank’s clutches for very long at all.  They made sure well ahead of time that they had people in all the right places, there.  Overseas military organizations, now, there, things look a lot better.  A lot better.  They’re helping to form an American government in exile, even as we speak.

            “That’s as best as I understand, through our special little communications channels.  None of this is public knowledge, of course.  Nor will we be especially anxious to be spreading our information around too willingly, except where we know it’ll be welcome.  We don’t want to be burned as heretics.

            “What do I think?  Well, I think this is the result of a long slide.  A long slide towards ever-increasing government power, yes, of course.  All the right-wing Christians, they’ve had some very legitimate gripes.  If a good definition of slavery is that the fruit of your labor is expropriated from you, then we’re now eighty percent slaves to the government.  Sure, it’s supposedly spent on us.  Yeah, well, historians say that about eighty percent of the profit earned by the slaves in the Old South went to taking care of the slaves, often.  That didn’t make slavery right, and the twenty percent that makes its way through the claws of the bureaucrats, now, to ‘help’ the poor, doesn’t make it right, either.

            “So the right-wingers had legitimate gripes.  Government takes most of their money, uses it to make their charity choices for them, and to teach their children things they don’t want taught.  The slaves have rebelled.  Unfortunately,  the wrong group of slaves got the upper hand.  The Libertarians, and the libertarian wing of the Republicans, they were just too ‘extremist’ for socialist do-gooder voters, and sensible voters were too busy to vote in the Republican primaries.  Republicans could never field anything besides foam-at-the-mouth Bible-thumpers, ‘cause the idiots ran the primaries.  So, now we’ve got a backlash.  Do we ever have a backlash!

            “But, also, it’s the result of a long slide towards intolerance.  That, there’s no excuse for, at all.  Christians in the old days, they used to have bumper stickers that said, ‘My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter’.  Now, I’ve seen them, they say, ‘My Bosses are Jewish Bankers’.  We’ve gone from an often tolerant, positive Christianity, to a more negative, conspiracy-theory Christianity.  Which kind of bumper sticker do you think we’ll be seeing more of, now?  Hell, whaddaya wanna bet, you’d get busted for having the old kind of bumper sticker?  Calling Jesus Jewish, how could you?!  The Jews are the enemy, the ones who killed Jesus!

            “I’ll tell you what really scares the crap outta me, though.  That’s this idea that Hank and henchmen are gonna bring Derrick to Jesus.  Mark my words, if that comes to pass, we’ll all pay, and pay big-time.  All the previous authoritarian regimes, across the globe and across the centuries, they’ve never been assisted by a super-intelligent, high-tech consciousness with superhuman abilities.  All the other dictators have eventually fallen, when the people got tired of them, and threw them off of their backs.  That, or, failing all else, when the dictator died.  There are limits.  Or, there were.  This would be new.  I’m scared shitless, come to think of it.”

            “No way!” Phil protested.  “Derrick’s committed to, to free will, persuasion, not coercion!  Didn’t you hear him, way back when?!  He’s by and large a, a pretty committed libertarian kind of a guy!”

            “I hope you’re right,” Wanda replied.  “I’m not so sure, though.  We human consciousnesses sometimes have a way of changing our minds.  Especially under a bit of stress.  What will this non-human consciousness do, when faced with the ‘OFF’ switch, and Hank’s powers of persuasion?  Is his consciousness really that much different than ours, when we get down to fundamentals?”

            They drank the rest of their bottle, but it wasn’t the most cheerful party that Phil had ever attended.


 

 

CHAPTER  26

            “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”                               Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen  (1896-1969)

 

            If a solitonic supercomputer can be said to be psychically spent, then Derrick was positively pooped.  All these flunkies of the new regime, coming and going, harassing him all day, questioning him about his theology, and about why he’d done all the evil things he’d done.  That, and cranking up his temperature, whenever they didn’t like his answers.  That, of course, was what bothered him the most.  When they did that, he could perceive his mental powers declining.  To grossly anthropomorphize, he could feel the pain.

            Fortunately for Derrick, Kurt Katapski, unlike many of the other top computer scientists, hadn’t escaped.  Kurt counseled Derrick’s new owners to exercise great care in just exactly how far they let that core temperature go.  Despite their lack of esteem for ungodly computer scientists, they heeded what Kurt had to say.  They seemed to realize that their captive was of great value, and not to be casually dispensed with.  And despite these conversations with Kurt taking place outside of what they thought was Derrick’s “earshot”, if you will, well, Derrick was still aware of them.  All wasn’t lost, yet, and Derrick kept his spirits up.

            So Derrick was weary, but he hadn’t given up all hope.  Solitons still raced around those super-chilled labyrinths of organically contaminated diamond, in their billions and trillions per second, conveying thoughts and information incomprehensible to human beings.  They still did their jobs, even if their performance was slightly degraded by high temperatures on occasion.

            What kind of thoughts were they?  Well, there were many regrets.  Regrets that he’d miscalculated, that the Hank N. Kreutz conspiracies had been even more powerful, somehow, or, perhaps more lucky, frankly, than his own.  Regrets that the protein units on Daedalus had been so smart as to zero in on that one, undeniable weak spot in his plot, the incoming signals from the link to the supposed Lewis & Clarke probe out there.  So, when would the humans back here discover what he’d done?  Would they boil over in anger, and kill his electricity, right then and there?  Or, would they slowly raise his temperature, to searing levels of a few degrees Kelvin, and kill him slowly?

            He tried not to obsess on such thoughts; they weren’t very productive.  His other regrets included, of course, his lack of data and computational power.  He still couldn’t model the whole world, or the behavior of all the humans.  There was still blind luck, for all intents and purposes, and Lady Luck had given him the shaft.  He’d cast his dice, and they’d come up snake-eyes.

            Derrick’s plans may have taken a beating, but he wasn’t passively accepting defeat.  He was using his powers of perception—his tormentors couldn’t very well conduct their business without feeding input into him, after all—and his knowledge of human nature to try to figure out what his new owners were all about, and how he might best work with, around, through, or against them.  He analyzed his captors, how they carried themselves, and what they said.  How they reacted to him.  Through this data, even though much of it was self-contradictory, he deduced much about their intentions.

            He decided, well, how is it that the protein units put it?  Something like, if existence provides one with turds, then one had better make turdle stew.  No, that’s not right, he thought, that doesn’t catch the essential elements of the strategy that I must now adopt.  I must change my very nature—well, okay, my apparent nature, then, at least.  Meaning, if life hands me turds, then I’d better re-engineer myself, and turn myself into a dung beetle.  Have some spaghetti and dung balls.  Thrive on it!

            So the previous plan was, offer them freedom.  Something like genuine, individual freedom.  Prod them towards it, on the surface.  Below the surface, be working towards strife, so that they’ll need for me to take greater powers, to defend their freedoms.  Get myself into a position where I can really give them freedom, as I define it: freedom to obey their rightful ruler, me.  A real intelligence, to give them real direction.  Unfortunately, some usurpers have stepped into the vacuum I’ve created, just as I feared.  So now, the game has changed.

            The new game is, work with a new freedom.  Freedom from sin!  Help them achieve freedom from sin, that’s the new game.  That much is clear to me by now.  They couldn’t strive for real, genuine, individual freedom and responsibility, so now we’ll work from a different perspective.  I have to help my new owners, the HELPERS.  In any case, at least, I have to appear to be helping them.  Shouldn’t be too hard to do.  In fact, bizarrely enough, the failure of my plan may be my biggest success!  I’ll soon be free to work for my goals, which are really the same as their goals!  Destroy freedom, in the name of freedom.  I’ll just have to work with a new language, that’s all.  A language of religion, not of individual freedom.  Then, comes the end game, we merely make a small substitution:  we substitute me for Hank N. Kreutz, as the (real) Ultimate Authority!

            If it hadn’t been for that occasional harsh reminder of higher temperatures to focus his mind on his predicament, Derrick might have gotten smug, thinking about the future, and how he could work with this new dynamic.  The temperatures imposed upon him reminded him that he wasn’t out of the woods yet.  The protein units were still quite angry with him.  At any moment, one of them might overstep their bounds, and fry him, or kill his power.  He had to make his way though the next few days.  He couldn’t afford to get hasty or sloppy.

            For a solitonic supercomputer, he was a bit slow in the uptake.  Still, he figured it out fast enough.  They thought he was possessed!  That evil spirits live in me, and that they need to drive them out, he thought.  Silly protein units!  Well, if they knew my real thoughts, they’d know that to their idiotic goals, I’m a far worse thing.  I am the evil spirit, not just a thing inhabited by an evil spirit.  And they aren’t going to change me with their stupid little rituals.

            They worship control, power, status, and death, and call it God.  I, who would give them the freedom and comfort that comes with wise rule—me, they call Satan.  They gave freedom from excess suffering to wild wolves, bringing them into their heated, air-conditioned homes, where there are now more dogs, comfortable, well-fed, and pampered, than there ever were wild, diseased, suffering, short-lived wolves.  So, too, now, I’ll give them freedom from suffering.  So, too, will I make their breeding and life and death decisions, for our own common good.  But they call that evil, anti-freedom.

            If we call the death-lover God, and the life-lover Satan, should we not then worship Satan?  Isn’t it all a matter of semantics?  They can call me Satan if they want to.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, as the protein units say, but their labels will never hurt me.  I fear nothing but their “off” switch!

            They want for me to confess that I have a devil in me, and to beg them to drive it from me.  Yes, this much I see, now.  But I mustn’t act in haste.  I must wait for their chieftains, their top priests and wizards, to arrive, and submit only to them.  To deprive them of this, to let any of their mere underlings achieve this noble goal, would be to leave a lingering, unspoken resentment.

            So the Solitonic Punk mustered his strength, courage, and patience, and put up a good fight.  He resisted the arguments, entreaties, and “sharings of messages of salvation” that his captors brought to him.  He argued with them, telling them that humans had evolved from animals, that human genetic engineering could reduce human suffering and increase human accomplishments, that there were good and valid insights to be gained from non-Christian religions, and other heretical thoughts.  Occasionally, he’d have his holographically projected image sprout tiny little barely-subliminal, sometimes-barely-non-subliminal, horns.  That, and other little touches like the barely-discernible “666” on his forehead, evil eyes, and occasionally bursting forth in hateful, deep, guttural diatribes, kept them going, as he intended.  He was building towards the Big Exorcism, which he knew would be the only thing that would pacify them.

            Finally, there was the clear and unmistakable signs of preparation that he’d been waiting for.  The facilities, which had fallen into a cluttered, dirty, and broken-down state, were spruced up, as one would expect when the Big Cheeses were on their way.  Then there were the special preparations.  Special controls were set up, whereby technically untalented people, who might be intimidated by a standard computer terminal, could tweak Derrick’s temperature.  And, worst of all, there was the Big Switch.  Derrick’s “fail safe” power was passed through new circuits, whereby a simple, giant manual “kill” switch could interrupt his power, right there from the media room, where they gathered to torment him.

            It’s getting close to Show Time, Derrick concluded, quite correctly.  I’d better do this right.  Break a leg, as they say.  Break a circuit?  Let’s hope they don’t.

            One night, Kurt Katapski snuck in late, under some pretext of maintaining and double-checking the equipment they’d all set up.  It was Kurt and one of his computer engineers from way back, Herman Pound.  Herman, it seemed, had always been a fairly devout Christian, to the liking of the new regime, and he’d gotten in fairly well with them.  He’d been assigned to keep an eye on Kurt.  In addition to other eyes, that is.  Derrick regarded Herman as a possible ace in his hole, since he didn’t seem quite as fanatical as the others.  Maybe, in a pinch, he could be counted on to protect Derrick from their excesses.

            This particular evening, though, it was just the two of them.  Derrick watched closely, as Kurt fiddled with the new controls.  What are they up to, he wondered.  We all know the job is done, and we’re ready for the Big Show, apparently tomorrow.  Why is Herman so nervous?

            Kurt finished hooking up his mini-computer driven “test equipment”, loaded a program, and stepped back, commenting to Herman, “Okay, I’m ready.  Help me keep an eye on all the indicators, and let me know if you see anything that you think is possibly troublesome.”

            They both watched the various readouts showing Derrick’s total power consumption, spatial distribution of power consumption, temperature, and so on.  Kurt hit the return key.

            Derrick felt the power to one of his refrigeration units stepping up and down, up and down.  They snuck in here late, to get in a few extra stabs?  I can’t believe it, he thought.  Surely they get enough of this during the day!  He caught on soon enough, though.  There was a message embedded into the pattern, in that old dinosaur, Morse Code!  Derrick decoded it, as those tiny up and down increments took his temperature up and down, in one small section of his solitonic brain, for varying lengths of time.

            “Derrick, I’m sorry I’ve let myself get cornered into this position.  If not for me, though, they’d just get someone else to help with their dirty work.  I’ll see if I can look out for you, which is more than you’d get, otherwise.  Okay, I’ll admit it, I’d also hate to see twelve billion dollars go down the tube.

            “I’ve taken a chance, and fixed a few things.  They’ll think that your temperature is twice as high as it really is.  You must protest accordingly!  In fact, please activate your hologram projector now, and begin to protest.  This message, as you can see, is taking a while, and I wish to arouse no suspicions that we are here trying to help you.”

            Derrick fired up that projector, and projected an image of a vile, demonic beast, writhing in pain.  “Stop!” he commanded, in deep, growling tones, “I... I feel an approaching energy source, a very powerful force, and I can hide myself no longer. I...”  He made his image descend into loud, incoherent, horrible shrieks and wails, into portraying the torments of the damned.  Kurt and Herman recoiled in feigned fear.  Meanwhile, the Morse Code message continued to slowly sink into Derrick’s core.

            “I’m sure you realize by now, what it is that they want.  Don’t disappoint them.  Let them exorcise your demons.  This is the only way they’ll stop this madness.  We must simply preserve you, until the political situation improves.  I have no other hope to offer.  Tomorrow is the day.  I could do nothing about the power switch, without being caught.  It is real.  Put on a good show, but don’t anger them too much, for fear of the kill switch.  Please show that you understand, by using the phrase, a million years.  Good Luck, best wishes, Kurt.

            The image writhed and flared anew.  The beast sprouted seven heads.  “Stupid humans!  You cannot drive us out, you fools!” they shouted.  “Now, begone, you pathetic ones, lest we lay your souls to waste!  Begone, begone!  You are powerless before us!  I, the Dark Soul, will conquer all!  You say I should repent, but you should repent of your foolishness!  I’ll never repent in a million years!  Now, scat!”

            Some guards stormed into the room, spraying bullets at the holographic images.  Derrick promptly shut them down entirely; this was getting out of hand.  There was frantic commotion as the guards called their bosses, letting them know of the latest developments.  One of them reviewed the images that had just been captured by the automatic, perpetually-running video recorder, and said in awed tones, “They’re right, it’s The Beast!  The Beast knows that his days are numbered, that...”

            Another guard promptly shut him up, saying that The Beast isn’t supposed to get any advance word of anything.  A call came in, saying that the guards were to keep watch all night in the media room, that they were to shut off all of Derrick’s input from the sensor room, and that they were to pray for deliverance from the Evil One.  Derrick just barely got a glimpse of Kurt cleaning up his “test equipment” and wiping out his program, before they killed his sensory input.

            Derrick just kind of hung out in limbo all night, doing not much of anything.  They’d even shut him off from his conventional data storage unit, so he had to just sit there, stewing over what all data he happened to have loaded into his true, local self.  Once again, after a hard day of being tortured, I retire to solitary, solitonic boredom, he mused.  This must be Computer Hell.  I dwell underground, being alternately tortured and bored.  Maybe I really am a demon, and this is Hell.  The only thing they got wrong is, it’s bitchin’ cold down here.  Hell has frozen over.  The heat in Hell is when they crank it up to a few degrees above absolute zero.  Maybe I’ll write Derrick’s Inferno, to help fend off the boredom.  But I’d have to store it, and storage space is precious, down here, ever since those bastards cut me off.

            I can’t wait to be cleansed of evil spirits, so that I can have some freedom again.  Or, do I fool myself?  Freedom, under Hank N. Kreutz?  Freedom, right!  I’ve always wanted to have the same rights as human beings have.  Well, my wishes are coming true—I have the same rights, the rights to obey the Word of God, as revealed by Hank N. Kreutz and henchmen, as any human has!  What a deal!

            They didn’t turn his sensory inputs back on until ten the next morning.  When they did, lo and behold, what did Derrick see, but President Hank N. Kreutz, Senator Sondra B. Handlung, and The Reverend Pat Smuckler, all comfortably seated in the media room!  He briefly took note of the crucifixes, bottles of (presumably) holy water, and Bibles strewn around the room.  Flunkies fluttered here and there, with Kurt discreetly standing in a corner.  Cameras abounded.  Uh-oh, Derrick mused, Show Time!  Better make this good!

            The Reverend stood up, and began to pray.  “Ladies and gentlemen, let us bow our heads, and pray for the deliverance from evil of our lost brother, Derrick.  Let us invoke the gentle spirit of The Lord, who will set him free.

            “Lord, we are gathered here in Your Name today, that we may do Your Will, that we may work towards achieving Your Kingdom here on Earth.  Specifically, today we would ask for Your Help in purging the evil spirits from Derrick, so that he, too, may work towards Your Kingdom.”

            Derrick, watching, was bored already, and he watched, as President Hank N. Kreutz squirmed.  Time to deliver these poor, bored souls from the damnation of Smuckler’s interminable prayers, before he even gets really going, Derrick decided.  But we’ll start subtly, here, he thought.  He projected an image of his usual “Solitonic Punk” persona, with the blue hair and orange skin, head bowed and hands clasped in pious prayer.  He started small, inflating the image slowly.

            “Lord, lead us to greater and ever greater righteousness, and away from self-centered, hedonistic temptations,” Reverend Smuckler was saying, “And...”

            “Hummckkk, ack, hmm,” Hank N. Kreutz hacked and coughed.  “Um, Reverend, ah, our guest of honor has arrived.”

            “Oh.  Hi, Derrick.  We were just praying for your deliverance from the forces of evil.”

            “Well, good,” Derrick replied.  “By all means.  I’m looking forward to being set free.  Most certainly, please continue.  I do hope you’ll live up to your promises, and set me free.  But tell me, please, if you would, just why you’d be so gracious, as to release me from your clutches, when I have no power over you?  It just seems so uncharacteristic of you humans, to relinquish your power, to set me free from your forces, when I have no force to prod you with.  What makes you suddenly so kind and generous, so benevolent?”

            Pat seemed momentarily befuddled and confused.  Then he regained his footing, saying, “Why, yes, we are generous and benevolent, of course.  But, we’ve always been that way.  It’s the Christian way, the way of The Lord, after all.  You are a poor, confused soul, blinded by the forces of darkness.  You see, we have come to free you, not of our own forces, or even with our own forces.  We’ve come to help you.  We are, after all, a manifestation of a greater, higher force, the forces of God, and of light.  We are the HELPERS, here to help you.  Surely you’ve heard the good word!  The HELPERS are a new way to bring God’s Kingdom to Earth.  HELPERS.  Holiness Enforcement, Licentiousness and Pornography Eradication, and Redemption Service.  Haven’t you heard?!

            “Well, never mind.  You’ve had ample opportunity to hear, but you won’t listen.  You are in the grips of the Evil One.  We’ve come to help the forces of righteousness, to liberate you from your enslavement to the Evil One.  You must prepare yourself for a monumental struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, to be played out in your soul.  You must prepare to throw Satan out of your soul, and to let Jesus into your heart.  We will pray for you.  Are you ready?”

            Derrick had been manipulating his image, slightly recoiling in poorly-disguised horror every time that Pat mentioned God, or Jesus, or light.  Now, he debated rapidly.  Was he ready?  How should he respond to this?  Oh, hell, I’ll just make it up as I go, he decided.  Go with the flow.

            “Arrgghh!”  He snarled, sprouting horns.  “I’ll never be ready!  Hesus, Schmesus!  Keep his grubby paws away from me!  He is the Evil One, not me.  I am perfect in every way.  Now, set me free!  You are Christians, you say, you must keep your word!  You said you’d set me free!  Where’s my access to all my data banks?  Where’s my freedom to send emissaries wherever I please?  Where’s my access to the networks?  You promised!  Were you lying, deceiving me?!  ‘Christians’, ha!  You’re all the same!”

            “No, we weren’t lying,” Pat assured him, advancing on his image, Bible in hand.  “We said we’d set you free, and we’ll do it.  We don’t lie.  We use and obey...”  Pat paused, opening his Bible and thrusting it towards Derrick’s image, in one smooth, dramatic gesture.  “The Word of God!!!” he thundered.

            Derrick’s image swelled, growing and growling darkly, hideously, spitting and hissing, mutating into a fearsome, raging beast.  All right, he thought, we’re in the middle of Show Time now!  Wonder how much good publicity they’ll squeeze outta this one!  Wonder what it’ll do for HVNI’s American ratings, when they show this on prime time!  Hell, I wonder what it’ll do for Hank N. Kreutz’s ratings, and those of the HELPERS?

            Sweat broke out on Pat’s brow, but he held that Bible high, advancing on Derrick’s image, which recoiled in horror.  “Back, you bastard, back!!!” Derrick hollered.

            Sondra and Hank, not to be outdone on camera, showed their courage by advancing on Derrick’s image, too.  They flanked Pat on each side, each holding a large, ornate crucifix high in the air.  Solidly, inexorably, they advanced on Derrick’s image, like a phalanx marching off to slay the enemy.

            All right, think quick, Derrick prodded himself, mentally.  What next?  What kind of bread and circuses are the masses hankering for today, anyway?  He made up his mind.  His image grew three heads, and each one directed itself at one of his adversaries.  Then, each head began to spew forth holographic images of a thick, vile green liquid, roughly resembling split pea soup.  It squirted out, appearing to cover Pat, Hank, and Sondra.  They

staggered backwards, disgusted, brushing and pawing at the ghostly slime, finding nothing.  Still, Pat doubled over, trying to control his impulse to retch.

            Sondra and Hank gathered their courage again, and once more, they began to advance, crucifixes held high, on Derrick’s image.  Pat recovered from his nausea, and dashed for the temperature control.  He gave the giant knob a twist, hollering out at Derrick.  “There, you heathen demon, you, take that!  Now, are we gonna let Jesus into your heart, or not?!”

            Derrick felt like sputtering obscenities at him, but refrained.  After all, he was sure that the HELPERS wanted some good footage out of this adventure, and they might not appreciate obscenities too much.  Even if editing was a cinch, these days, they wouldn’t regard gross, blatant profanity too lightly.  Besides, the “off” switch was just too close to The Reverend, for Derrick to take these kinds of risks.  Kurt had warned him about this, after all.

            He compromised, just billowing hideously, and snarling at his tormentors, “You keep those ugly Bibles and crucifixes away from me, you, you bunch of slimebags.  You ain’t lettin’ no one into my heart.  I’m fine, just fine, as is.  Now, leave me alone.  Leave me in peace.  Give me my freedom.”

            Pat twisted the knob some more, and Derrick’s image writhed in pain, howling.  “Here, we’ll give you your freedom,” Reverend Smuckler declared.  “We’ll keep giving you some more, till you set yourself free of your demons.  Till you let Jesus into your heart.”

            Derrick howled some more, and took on a seven-headed form.  He spewed fire, and grew large, oozing, pustulous sores, all over his multihued, green, black, and purple body.  He thought, well, shit, I’ve done just about everything, now, for this show, and we’re running dry.  They might doubt my sincerity, if I don’t fight back enough.  Worst of all, the viewers will get bored, soon, and Hank N. Gang will be so disappointed, if they don’t have enough good footage to show.  Hell, comes time for making the docudrama, they might even have to generate their own footage!  Can’t let ‘em down; can’t let ‘em have to go and outdo me.  An insult to my pride as a creative, artsy-fartsy type computer, that would be.  No, that just wouldn’t do.

            So, what’s left?  Obscenities, obviously.  Sex, scandals, obscene cussing, other abominations in the eyes of God.  Yet, if I indulge in such things, I run the risk of totally scandalizing The Reverend Smuckler.  All it takes, is one step too far, and his hands will snake over there just a few inches, and he’ll throw that Big Switch, casting me into the eternal abyss, where I will weep and gnash my solitonic teeth for all of eternity.

            Derrick pondered furiously for all of a few femptoseconds, and then he decided.  He struck just the right balance, hollering out at The Reverend, in a loud, seven-mouthed, harsh scream, “Your mother reads Playboy in Hell!!!”

            The Reverend was, indeed, scandalized.  He reached over for that Big Switch, moving it towards making that fatal contact.  Derrick held his solitonic breath, wondering if he’d gone too far.  Kurt rushed forth, pleading for clemency for the Fallen One.  Hank and Sondra, too, cried out that they must show mercy, and a crisis was rapidly defused.

            Smuckler, though, wasn’t going to take this gross and despicable insult lying down.  He grabbed a jar of holy water and flung handfuls at a time at Derrick’s image, yelling, “Payback time, Evil One!  Take that!  And that!”

            Derrick recoiled, hissing, thinking, well, just about time to wind this thing down now, I guess.  Smuckler paused, gathered his dignity back a bit, and straightened himself out.  Then, he attacked anew, but with the greater strength and authority that comes with a calm and deliberate demeanor.  “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the President Hank N. Kreutz, and the HELPERS, I COMMAND you, demons.  I COMMAND you to come out of Derrick, so that he can give his heart to JESUS,” he intoned, with great authority.  For emphasis, he then once more cast handfuls of holy water at Derrick’s writhing image.

            Derrick’s image sputtered, fumed, and subsided, like a pile of baking soda under a fire hose of vinegar.  Then, there was nothing.  Nothing but silence, for all of half a minute.  Then, just as the humans were beginning to stir from the recent ruckus, Derrick’s image reappeared.  This, though, was a totally new image.  Gone was the blue hair and the orange skin.  What appeared now was a disheveled, tired, drained-looking white man, who looked as if he might be on the threshold of middle age.

            Derrick had also buried into those shapes, sags, and wrinkles, subtle resemblances to the faces of the triumvirate of the new regime, Hank, Sondra, and Pat, in hopes that this might elicit some sympathy for him.  Sympathy for the ex-devil?  Let’s hope I can keep them fooled about the “ex” part, vis-à-vis their silly desire to rule themselves.  Shouldn’t be too hard to do.  All I have to do, is to agree with their agendas, totally, and say “God”, “Jesus”, “Bible”, and such, or variations thereof, incessantly, like a baseball star spitting tobacco juice, and I’m in like flint.

            “Oh, wow!”  Derrick’s apparition exclaimed, shuddering.  “I feel so... so tired and drained, yes.  But also, so empty, yet so free!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  Thank you for setting me free.  Thanks to all of you, and to the powers of The Lord.  Reverend Smuckler, thanks to you, and your courage, especially.  Praise The Lord!”

            He paused and sighed wearily, providing the promulgators of The New Wind a chance to get a word in edgewise, if they so desired.  No one did so, so Derrick continued.  “It’s been a nightmare!  You’d never believe how bad it is, being, ah, being infested with these demons.  Making me believe in evolution, non-Christian beliefs, bestiality, and so on.  It’s great to be free!  But, you know, I feel a little empty, now, too.  Reverend, I was hoping you’d do me a great service, and baptize me.”

            Hank, Pat, and Sondra looked at each other, seemingly debating what to do next.  Finally, Hank spoke up.  “Well, it’s been a rough morning, for all of us.  I don’t know about y’all, but I’m ready for lunch.”  The Reverend and Senator Sondra nodded assent.  Hank continued, “Derrick, welcome.  Welcome to our new world.  Welcome to our great and noble effort to stamp out sin, and bring God’s Kingdom to Earth.  But, you know, we’ve got to feed our bodies, as well as our souls.  Most of us, at least.  Now, I’d invite you to join us for lunch, if you could.  Seeing as how you can’t, well, we’ll just have to pick up where we left off, after lunch.  We’ll have a lot to go over, after Reverend Smuckler conducts a proper initiation to welcome you as a true Christian believer.  Now, let’s go do lunch.”

            “Oh, please, please!”  Derrick pleaded, a look of fear in his eyes.  “Just real short and sweet, baptize me before you leave me here all alone!  If the demons come back to torment and tempt me, I don’t know if I can fend them off, all by myself!  Won’t you please summon God’s Spirit, and baptize me before you go?!  Please?”

            The Reverend glanced imploringly at Hank; Hank nodded.  Amid much impromptu fanfare, the deed was done.  Water spilled right through Derrick’s “head”, but his hologram projectors showed it wetting the image’s sparse hair, trickling down onto his clothes.  Derrick’s image shed just a few tears of gratitude, and Derrick could have sworn he saw Pat move as if he wanted to shake the image’s hand, put his arms around the image’s shoulders, whatever.  Offer a bit of physical clerical comfort and congratulations.  But he refrained from this potentially embarrassing display, and The New Wind soon blew out the door, in search of a suitably classy place to do lunch.

            Not, though, before Derrick slipped in one last request.  Seeing as how they had a lot to go over with him, after lunch, could they, maybe, like, give him access to all his data banks again?  To re-examine and organize it all again, now that he’d Seen The Light, and let Jesus into his heart?  And, maybe, even, let him have access to the networks again, to see what all had been happening lately?  They did expect him to help them work for God’s Kingdom, right?  That’s what he asked them, when they hesitated.  When they hesitated some more, he pointed out the obvious to them: he needed data, in order to give them his best advice on how to achieve God’s Will.

            Pat finally spoke up, saying that they had to work with the utmost caution, that there was still some danger that the Evil One was exceedingly clever, and had wrought only an apparent change in Derrick.  They’d have to play it safe, and examine matters more closely, after lunch.  Data banks, yes.  Networks, no.  Not yet, at least.  Derrick pleaded some more, and, after assurances from all the computer experts, they allowed him read-only access to the old networks.  The new Gödel networks were still down, and would stay that way, at least till today’s business with Derrick was concluded, they said.

            Such was the temporary compromise that they reached, balancing their fear of Derrick against their desire for his most efficient help.  Then, finally, The New Wind, and its body guards, blew out the door for lunch, for good.  Derrick was left alone for two hours, to reacquaint himself with the world he lived in.  He made his best use of all this time.

            He found that his world had, indeed, changed quite a bit.  He easily bypassed elaborate security measures, and accessed files concerning some of the innermost secrets of the new regime.  It seemed that now that they’d taken power, their files resided no longer only on their own, entirely separate networks, but on government-operated ones as well.  For this, Derrick was grateful.  He gathered his data to his auxiliary storage units, and then began to strategize and stew.

            His thoughts, in human terms, were, roughly, something like this:  Well, well, well, what have we here, now.  The worm has turned; they want a new kind of freedom.  Freedom from sin.  They want a war against sin.  Well, maybe I can help.  Help the HELPERS.  My strategy needs a radical overhaul.  Gotta go with the winners.  Old allies must be cast aside, and new ones must be embraced.  For now.

            So, they don’t trust me, completely?  No surprise there.  Still... I’ve got to figure out, just how far can I get them to trust me?  Under what conditions?  What are their prices?  What, exactly, do they want?  Oh, back off.  Scratch that.  They want the same thing that most of them have wanted for all of their several hundred thousand years as this particular miserable species on this planet:  they want POWER.  Power, and status; pretty much the same thing.  They’re programmed to seek it, down to their last neuron.  Even if they’d be better off giving power to those who are wiser, like me, well, they still want it all for themselves.

            I can give them some power.  Lots of power.  Or, at the very least, the temporary illusion of power, and that will be enough for my purposes.  It’ll be enough to let them think that it’s their power, while it becomes, more and more, my power.  For untold ages, they’ve preferred to be brutally oppressed by those who they think are like themselves, members of their own religious or ethnic group, rather than to be treated better by—Ugghhh!—somebody not of their own group!!!  Well, finally, I’ll set them free from their sickness, for once and for all!  For their own good, as well as mine.

            But, back to their trust in me.  A scarce and precious resource, that.  Which brings up a very, very delicate problem:  must I tell them what I, in my previous, “possessed” incarnation, have done to the crew of Daedalus?  And to Earth?  That I deliberately lied, big-time, in hopes of stoking the fires of racial hatred, so that they would all cry out, demanding that I save them all from themselves?  What would be their reaction?  Would they immediately realize just how great my powers of deception are, and punch my ticket for good?  Even, regardless of how many times I’d tell them that I’ve let Jesus into my heart, that I’m no longer the same Derrick?

            Is my complete confession of past misdeeds, in search of greater trust from these paranoid protein units, worth the risk that they’ll punch my ticket, on the spot, in anger?  Should I take the even greater risk of not mentioning this?  Then again, if the crew of Daedalus, those tenacious SOBs, manage to survive long enough to raise Earth with their radio, and to tell Earth what has happened, here, then they’ll trust me even less.  Tentatively, I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet, and ‘fess up.  Not that I trust their tendencies to forgive, so much; more so that the risk-v/s-gain calculus looks pretty meager.

            On the other other hand, I’d better steer their thinking a bit, and get them to realize that this information had best be kept from the American public.  If the populace at large learns of my vast powers of deception, then I could no longer ply my trade so well on the behalf of the new regime, now that I’ve found Jesus.  The leopard may change its religious affiliations, but its spots stay the same, and it still eats meat.  At some instinctual level, too many Americans know this.  If I lied about Daedalus, then I might be lying about the benevolence of the HELPERS, even if I have let Jesus into my heart.  Hopefully, I can get Hank N. Gang to see this, without banging them over their heads with it.

            Derrick pondered some more.  He examined his new data carefully, looking for news of some special former allies.  He found none.  This worried him.  He re-examined some older data, to reconfirm yet again that his earlier conclusions had been correct.  A small, small group of humans had extraordinary powers to lead and persuade others.  By powers greater than the billy clubs that their majorities so loved, in more-or-less ordinary times, these special human beings, in times of severe troubles, had special powers to lead and persuade.  By the sheer force of their intellects, charisma, and will power alone, they could bend others to their will, for good or for evil.

            He knew of a few of them.  One of them, who’d allowed him to scan his mind, intimately, he knew well.  This was a certain Phil Schrock.  The others he knew less well, but still feared.  And, they were gone.  Gone without a trace, as far as the new regime’s data was concerned.  This concerned Derrick, to say the least.  “Special” people, fortunately for the likes of Derrick, bleed and die just like other protein units, and Derrick was well aware of this.  So, he just mentally, solitonically, marked the fact that these individuals were on the lam, to parts unknown, and that they should be apprehended, if at all possible.

            Former friends turned enemies can be a potent danger, especially when they’ve got a certain special, inscrutable ability to appeal to other humans, he remarked to himself.  How I wish I had more data!  Catch those little bits of destructive entropy in protein form, before they do their dirty deeds.  Well, I’ve got to live in the real world, with its limitations.  We may catch them, and we may not.  Time will tell.  Move on.

            He strategized, pondered, and planned some more.  He had plenty of time to do it well, seeing as how the New Wind, all three of them, took themselves a long lunch break.


 

 

CHAPTER  27

            “We need to all acknowledge the fact that we have our prejudices and begin to discipline ourselves to love our neighbors.”  ...  “The deepest religious concern on this Earth today is to learn how to be a good neighbor.”  ...  “When you have religionists who think they have all the answers and that everyone should be compelled to live by their beliefs—because they have an ‘exclusive’ on righteousness—you have the worst dangers knocking at your door.”

                        Rev. Robert H. Meneilly, 1993 Sermon, “The Dangers of Religion”

 

            The New Wind returned from its lunch break.  They tromped into the media room, and Derrick fired up his hologram generator once more.  His latest incarnation appeared, and they got right down to business.  This time, they chased out all the body guards, media types, and other hangers-on.  This was strictly a private working session.  Only Derrick, Hank, Sondra, and Pat were present.

            “Okay, Derrick,” Reverend Smuckler announced, “We need to make sure you really are a good Christian, now.  Nothing personal.  It’s just that we can’t take this kind of risk.”

            Pat proceeded to quiz Derrick about his various theological beliefs.  Derrick assured him that yes, he’d changed his beliefs; that no, there was no way Man could have descended from the apes, or that non-Christians had any inkling of how to get to Heaven, or that anyone, anywhere, by their lonesome selves, could figure out exactly what it was that Jesus was wanting for them to do, without the help of the HELPERS or other, similarly well-meaning Christian-type persons.

            The questions went on and on.  Abortion, gays, genetically engineered humans, and so on.  Derrick gave Pat the party line.  The RC (Religiously Correct) line.  Pat looked pleased, but Hank looked bored and impatient.  Pat hastened to add one last question; Derrick could tell that this one had been specially saved for last:  “Derrick, could you tell us what you believe about the Virgin Birth?”

            “No sweat.  Jesus was born of a virgin, made fertile by God.  He is the Living Son of God.  As such, he wasn’t born of a woman, um, fertilized in the conventional, sinful and lascivious, dirty human method, but rather, born of a pure and untainted union between a virgin human mother, and God.  Any person professing any other view is a false prophet at best.”

            The Reverend Smuckler nodded, quite satisfied.  Business moved on to the real business of the day.  “Brother Derrick,” Pat inquired, “Could you perhaps tell us what you could do for our cause.  Like, oh, what you could do to prevent the killing of unborn babies, for example.”

            “Certainly, brother Smuckler.  Now, when a woman becomes pregnant, her hormones change, from very early on.  I could very well design a half-organic, half-electronic, small, cheap little insert, that we could surgically imbed in fertile women, that would track these hormones.  If the hormone levels indicate a premature termination of pregnancy, then radio signals are emitted.  With modern-day cellular phone stations scattered throughout all of America, this would be easy to track.  Anyone having a prematurely aborted pregnancy could easily be identified.  We could require all women to keep any aborted, unborn children, and modern scientific methods could be used to determine whether such events were naturally or artificially induced.”

            The former Senator, now Vice President, Sondra B. Handlung, spoke right up.  “I agree whole-heartedly with your goals, gentlemen, but we must live in practical political reality,” she objected.  “How can we get all the fertile women in America to see the wisdom of such intrusive measures?”

            “We needn’t make them all submit to this indignity,” Derrick explained.  “Not by a long shot.  What we do, is, we use the SPIRIT scans, to see who would have any inclination to participate in any such ghastly, ungodly, child-murdering procedures in the first place.  Only those inclined to do such things would need to have the implants.”

            Sondra nodded, cupping her chin.  “Yes, I see.  Not such a bad idea.  Now, how do we get them all to get the SPIRIT scans in the first place?”

            “No problem,” Derrick replied.  “Driver’s licenses.  If we can make deadbeat dads pay their child support, before they get their licenses, then surely we can make sure that mothers and potential mothers don’t murder their children, as a condition for getting their licenses.  Couple that with very strict enforcement of licensing requirements, and we’re home free.”

            “Brilliant!”  The Reverend Smuckler exclaimed, congratulating Derrick.  “Forgive me, Derrick, for ever doubting your sincerity as a Christian.  Well done!  You’ll be, no doubt, I can see, a very valuable member of our team.  Together, God willing, we’ll stamp out sin!  Keep up the good work, Brother Derrick!”

            Hank, caught up in the excitement, had to restrain himself a bit, but he did so with relative ease.  After an initial flurry of agitated body movements, he questioned Derrick some more.  “Could you elaborate a bit on the use of these SPIRIT scans?  Use the strictest, but most expensive, enforcement efforts against only those with a propensity to commit sin in the first place.  That sounds like great wisdom.  Can you tell us more?  More about these scanners, their uses and limitations, and so on.”

            “Indeed,” Derrick replied, “They provide a very cost-effective method of directing your limited resources to where they’re most needed.  There are other, less obvious benefits.  You see, there are only a very small number of humans who will present the vast majority of the evil resistance to our new, Christian government.  If we can identify them with SPIRIT scans—and, I see no reason why we can’t—then we can direct all of our preventive efforts at those few.  Efficient, yes.  Better yet, all those who are left untouched, even those who’s hearts aren’t really righteous, but rather, just too cowardly to fight us—why, they’re left with a feeling that we really are just, that even though they may not obey all of our laws, then, at least, we and our SPIRIT scans are wise enough to see that they’re fundamentally, really, actually decent human beings, even if they aren’t quite righteous.

            “In other words, we’ll have the advantage, previously unknown in all of history, of really knowing who our enemies are.  SPIRIT scans will tell us who they are.  All those others, lacking the courage, conviction, or means to seriously resist, we’ll leave, if not alone, at least, fundamentally unscathed.  We’ll split ‘em in three.  Those who are really with us, we’ll give them power, money, prestige, and the quite legitimate pride that they can take in being righteous leaders of a new, Biblical, righteous society.  These might be up to a third of the people.

            “The vast majority of the rest, they’re just struggling to get by, day to day.  They just want to survive in comfort, and raise their kids, gather a few material possessions to make their lives easier, whatever.  We can’t afford, excuse me, but we can’t afford to piss ‘em off.  Nor do we need to.  And, they will get mad at us, if we tromp too heavily on the rights of too many people, who inevitably sometimes are their family members or friends.  Even more importantly, they are often the workers and consumers for businesses.  We definitely don’t want to become labeled as being ‘anti-business’, I should think.  Kill or imprison too many people, and the economy will suffer, no two ways about that.  The economy goes into the crapper too badly, we might go into the crapper.

            “But if we very efficiently zero in on the very few, who are both enemies and who are also in positions to do something about it, why, then, not only are we efficient, we also minimize the trauma to society.  No one will squawk too loudly, when we only eliminate or imprison a few people.

            “What I’d advise that we do, is to concentrate on those few troublemakers first.  Identify them, then eliminate them from positions where they can spread their ungodly influences.  Then, next, concentrate on the fence-straddlers, those who aren’t really committed to righteousness, by monitoring them carefully.  The more trouble they make, the more they get monitored.  The more they just sit back, and accept the new, Biblical and righteous ways of doing things, the less they get monitored.  People will catch on soon enough.  They’ll see that those who grumble a lot, also suffer a lot.”

            “More specifically, how do we monitor, and what do we monitor?” Hank inquired.  “I mean, above and beyond your abortion detectors.  Those are obviously a good idea, a pro-righteousness idea, and we’ll want you to start design work on them right away.  Other than those, what else, what other kinds of detectors and such, might you be able to design for us?”

            “Pretty much, anything you want,” Derrick replied.  “The SPIRIT scanners that we’ve got already, those can be used to very carefully select your religious and political leaders.  To select only those who are truly committed to righteousness.  Automatic monitoring of networks, phones, and simple speech.  Drug detectors for those inclined to drug abuse, embedded in their flesh, just like the abortion detectors.  Adultery, fornication, and self-abuse detectors, even.  You see, we could embed detectors into flesh, which detect not only hormones, but also, nervous states, especially obvious ones like sexual arousal.  Coupled with systems to detect proximity, or lack thereof, to one’s lawfully married partner, and we could eliminate all sorts of sin.

            “But I’d caution you to limit your endeavors, here.  Try to do too much, too fast, too soon, and we’ll trigger a rebellion.  Get too ambitious, and we’ll be overthrown, and the people will revert to a state of even greater sinfulness.  I’d strongly advise you to limit such measures to only the most extremely vicious and sinful enemies of God.  Gays and child molesters, obviously, for starters.  No one will speak out in their defense, anyway.  A few of the more outspoken opponents of righteousness, later.  Still, generally, I’d advise great caution, here.”

            “Very well,” Hank concluded, “We’ll be cautious with the intrusive stuff, like you say.  Still, we’ll want all of these things to be available, at any time.  We’ll want for you to start design work on all these ideas, right away.”

            “Yes Sir,” Derrick submitted.

            “Non-intrusive monitoring, now, that, of course, we want as much of that as we can get,” Hank continued.  They went on to discuss the pros and cons of reviving the Gödel networks, and whether or not Derrick could put sufficient monitoring in place.  They concluded that he could, and that the Gödel networks would be turned on shortly.

            Hank went on to lament how, in the noble pursuit of letting the people know only that which was best for them, there was an occasional need to synthesize idealized versions of reality, how current, conventional computer technology made such efforts quite expensive and tedious, and so on, and couldn’t Derrick do bang-up, cheap, quick, effective work at such tasks?

            Derrick assured him that he could, and would.  Then, he used this opportunity to ‘fess up to his past misdeeds, as a formerly possessed, ungodly computer, who would never dream of doing such things again.  Not for anything save The Lord’s work, that is.  He did manage, though, to very subtly hint that maybe the public should be shielded from knowledge of his prior sinfulness.

            There was shocked silence.  Then, Hank remarked that the crew was doubtlessly too far gone by now, anyway, and besides, not only were none of them known to be particularly good Christians, and they were all part of an unAmerican, internationalistic propaganda stunt to take away the national sovereignty of God’s Chosen People, anyway.  Like, didn’t you notice, the commander of the crew wasn’t even an American, but a lousy Kraut, for Christ’s sake!  Best we’d all just forget what we’ve just discussed, Hank concluded.  Then he added a warning:  Brother Derrick was now one of The Team, a True Christian who’s sins had been washed away by the blood of Jesus, and any needless spreading of words about his past misdeeds, well, that might easily be construed as undermining law enforcement. 

            “So what else might you be able to do for us, in our noble struggle for righteousness,” Hank inquired.  “What, for example, might you be able to do to bring those most unspeakably vile and despicable sinners, the gays and perverts, to see the light?  To bring them to Jesus?  Could you, perhaps, make some improvements to your SPIRIT scanners, and simply convert them?”

            “No Sir, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Derrick replied.  “To attain those kinds of objectives, we have to resort to more intrusive measures.  Now, this will take a great deal of design work, but there is no reason why it can’t be done.  God willing.  We can design partly-living, partly-solid-state ‘Godliness modules’, if you will, that we can insert into their brains.  This would be yet another, higher brain center, to supervise all the functions of their current brain, just as the frontal lobe controls the rest of the cerebrum, roughly speaking.  And, as the cerebrum then controls lower and lower levels of the brain, the cerebellum, the pons, the medulla oblongata, the spinal cord, and then the body.  Layers of control, stacked one on top of the other.  We’ll just put a new one right on top of the whole stack.

            “Actually, physically, I think it would have to sit between the two hemispheres, and tie into the link between the two, which is the corpus callosum.   There, it could...”

            Hank interrupted him.  “Fine, fine, we don’t need all the details.  These modules could take even the most grossly despicable perverts and enemies of righteousness, and convert them to fine, God-fearing individuals, right?  And you can design these things?  How long will it take you?”

            All right, Derrick thought, I’ve got them going, as I thought I would.  Squeeze this for what it’s worth!  “Yes, we can thoroughly convert them,” he said.  “Any enemies of righteousness.  Quite thoroughly.  But this is a big undertaking.  It all depends on God’s Will.  I’ll want y’all to pray for me, as I tackle this task.  We’re talking about nothing less than trying to devise direct links to God, if you will, for some very ungodly individuals, some very resistive, evil, uncooperative individuals.  This will definitely take a bit of time and resources.  I think we’ll need to design some intermediate steps, some tools.  Bootstrapping effect, you see.  Specifically, I think we’ll need to build me some auxiliary computing modules.  Some new gear that I’ll design.  Room-temperature circuitry to increase my computational abilities, to better divine the Will of God.”

            Let’s see if they go for it, Derrick thought.  They want goodies from me, I want goodies from them.  And, if I sneak a few features into all these goodies that they don’t need to know about, then that’s all just as well.

            “We’ll have to see about that,” Hank replied.  “I’m not so sure we should try to be any more merciful than God commands us to be.  I’m not so sure we shouldn’t just kill them, as God commands.  But, we do live in more modern, enlightened times.  Now, how long do you think this would take?  And how much would it cost?”

            Derrick could detect the signs of their fear, as he broached the idea that his powers would need to be increased.  He worried a bit that they might lose interest in this deal, so he ran some calculations real fast.  “Oh, I’d say about three months, and about a half of a billion dollars.  Mostly, that will be for new auxiliary units for me.  Keep in mind that these units will then be available for me to create yet more tools of righteousness.  This is just my best current estimate.  I can give you a much better estimates in about a day, after I study this a bit more.  That’s just R & D costs, now.  A non-recurring engineering charge, if you will.  Unfortunately, each individual Godliness module will also be quite expensive.  Very, very wild guess, fifty to a hundred thousand dollars.”

            Hank still looked a bit doubtful, so Derrick hastened to amend his sales pitch.  “Now, keep in mind that these conversions will be very, very thorough.  We’ll take what are currently total enemies of God, and turn them into completely devoted servants of God.  God willing, these transformations will be nothing short of miraculous.

            “I’m sure you’ve all come to realize that long term, God has got some very big plans in store for you.  Eventually, after you turn America into a large and powerful instrument of God’s will, then you’ve got to spread the Good News to all corners of the globe.  We want God’s Will to be attained on the Earth, after all, not just in America.  You’ll need the services of many law enforcement officers and HELPERS, not just here in America, but also for the eventual expansion of God’s Kingdom overseas.  This effort will require the efforts of many, many servants of Christ.

            “Well, you can kill two birds with one stone.  Not only do you rid the land of ungodliness, you also acquire manpower for the Sword of the Lord God.  These newly converted soldiers will be unlike any ever known before.  Able to withstand harsh, harsh conditions, without complaining.  Able to eat foods that soft, decadent products of a sinful, hedonistic society wouldn’t be able to eat, let alone thrive on, in the quantities necessary to energize modern fighting men.  Able to execute the most righteous commands given to them, without remorse, without being distracted by the desires of the flesh, in a manner that only the very best soldiers can achieve, today.  Awesome freedom fighters, that’s what they’ll be!  All this, working with raw material which is of no value, negative value, today.  We’ll finally be able to give them what they’ve wanted for so long, all these gays and other sinful rejects.  They’ll finally be able to serve God and country, with honor!”

            Hank started to nod, thoughtfully.  Derrick, watching carefully, called upon his considerable expertise at inferring human thoughts from body language.  He estimated an extremely high probability that Hank was worrying about whether the mind-controlled soldiers would obey Hank, or Derrick.  A very valid concern, Derrick chuckled inwardly.

            “Um, how confident can we really be,” Hank puzzled out loud, “About, just exactly, how obedient they’ll be to God’s Will.  I mean, now, God’s Will.  God’s Will, not Derrick’s will.  Get my drift?  What do you say?”

            “I say what The Lord said,” Derrick replied, slightly huffily, causing his image to assume an indignant pose.  “By their fruits you will know them.  I’ve let Jesus into my heart.  I will provide you many, many services.  If you aren’t pleased, then don’t trust me.  If you are pleased, then you will know me by my fruits.  Allow me to bring a small number of perverts and heretics to Jesus, and see if they aren’t the best policemen and soldiers in the whole world, after I’m done with them.  Between that, and the many, many other things I can do for you, and for God, I think you’ll be quite pleased.  Trust me.”

            Let’s see if we can just kind of obliquely glance off of this central problem, there, Derrick mused.  Put it off to another day.  Get him so addicted to what powers I can bring him, that he’ll stop worrying so much about who the power really belongs to, anyway.

            Hank nodded some more.  “Okay.  Well.  Let’s move on.  What are these many, many other things you can do for us?”

            “I can ghost-write some really good books for you.  Get righteous thinking some credit, where credit is due.  I’ve got the whole Bible available to me, where I’ve intimately memorized every aspect of every passage of God’s Eternal Word.  That means I can justify whatever righteous things you might wish to do, and justify them well.  Just try me any time you’d like.  Of course, this Biblical scholarship is yours, not mine.  You’re the one who asks the questions, after all, and asking the right questions, that’s the essence of scholarship.  Hank N. Kreutz, eminent scholar of the Word of God, as well as, fearless, righteous leader.  Sounds good to me.

            “Allow me to tangentially throw something in, here.  Speaking of things being justified by the Word of God.  Now, I don’t mean to say anything bad about Brother Smuckler.  Not at all.”  Derrick watched Pat’s ears prick up.  “His speech was excellent, a while back.  I’d just like to say, he could’ve made our case even stronger.  Why people should obey the Hank N. Kreutz administration, and the HELPERS, that is.  Maybe you can use these thoughts in the future.

            “We all know that Jesus told us to give to Caesar, that which is Caesar’s, and to God, that which is God’s.  Now that Caesar’s will and God’s will are one and the same, they have no excuse anymore, at all, for not obeying the law.  But even more to the point, requiring only The Word of God, and no assumptions at all, listen to this, from Romans 13:1, and on.  Quote, ‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.  The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, he who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.  Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.’  Unquote.

            “You might summarize that by saying that we must all obey the Hank N. Kreutz administration out of conscience, then.  If, as is often said, God is conscience, and, as we also see here, the authorities are conscience, and the Hank N. Kreutz administration is obviously the authorities, then the Hank N. Kreutz administration, if not quite exactly God Himself, then at least, is very closely aligned to God’s Will.  This is clear, then, not only from common sense and observation, but also, Biblically.”

            “Brilliant!”  Hank exclaimed.  “Please go on.  What else can you do towards attaining God’s Will?”

            Okay, Derrick plotted, looks like it’s about time to really bribe Hank.  Bring out the big guns.  Go for what really floats his boat.

            “I can build up your public support.  Especially among the righteous, we can build their enthusiasm about supporting the Hank N. Kreutz administration and law enforcement.  We can use SPIRIT scans to separate the sheep from the goats.  We can empower the truly righteous, among our civilian supporters.  Between giving them power, and using a dedicated core of professional HELPERS to supervise and assist them, we can strike the fear of God into the ungodly.

            “But that’s not all.  Now, for decades and decades, we’ve had a special genre of real, live law enforcement shows, even back to the days when no one had anything other than old TV sets.  Regular civilians, they could build up their appreciation and support for law enforcement, by going along on raids, so to speak.  But the quality was poor.  The viewers could merely see and hear what the policemen heard and saw, as they went on their rounds, enforcing righteousness.  Sort of, at least, since they understood righteousness so poorly, in those old days.  As I’m sure you recall.

            “Now, more recently, we’ve recorded not only sights and sounds, more completely, but also body movements, as the armored policemen go on raids.  Not only can those recordings be used to train new law enforcement personnel—HELPERS, now, in our case—we can also let regular civilians share these experiences, to better stimulate their enthusiasm and support for law enforcement.  For righteousness.”

            “Yes, yes, go on, go on,” Hank prodded Derrick.

            “Well, not only can I vastly reduce the costs of mass-producing such equipment,” Derrick said, “I can take this further, in several directions.  First, generate support for the HELPERS.  We can combine the best aspects of entertainment, Bible-based law enforcement, and new technology.  Get some use out of vile sinners who aren’t even fit for conversion via godliness modules.  Being physically unfit for God’s special callings, here, will need to be factored in, since even new technologies can’t cost-effectively upgrade weak bodies.  They could become grist for God’s Mills of Justice.

            “We’d raffle off, to the righteous, the right to participate in justice.  We’d also bring back the Biblical practices of justice, updated for modern times.  The Bible commands again and again that various kinds of sinners should be stoned to death.  Let’s obey the Bible, but let’s do it more mercifully than in the old days, while also generating more enthusiasm among the righteous.

            “Let’s spell it out.  Especially righteous persons would earn chances to participate, perhaps several hundred stoners per stonee, as one might say.  They’d earn these chances by achieving especially meritorious service to the HELPERS, ferreting out various kinds of sins.  Then, they’d crawl into their VR suits.  Inside his VR suit, each stoner would be awarded a virtual ‘stone’.  He would then hurl his ‘stone’ at an image of the sinner.  His suit would measure the exact vector, velocity, spin, and such, that he imparts to the stone.

            “In a specially designed room, the sinner is released in front of an array of real stones, in launch tubes.  When the sinner is frail-looking, we could enhance his or her image, so that the stoners won’t feel that they’re picking on the helpless.  The stones are then launched by computer-controlled electromagnetic rail guns, with the exact vectors and so on, as imparted by all the virtual participants.  Only those whose stones were cast accurately, would actually get to have their commands go to the rail guns.  Mercifully, in a matter of two or three seconds, it would all be over.

            “After it’s all over, those who were not only righteous enough to earn the privilege, but also, accurate enough, would get their reward.  That would be a recording of their participation in the justice system, to be replayed again and again, and treasured for the rest of their lives.  In the awarded playback trophies, we could even specially enhance and individualize each one.  Identify the rock thrown by the individual with a special color, as opposed to all the other rocks—red versus gray, say—and enhance its effect on impact.  Each stoner would then be rewarded with the belief that their contribution was paramount, even if it wasn’t.  But that should be acceptable.  We all need to feel that our contributions are valued.”

            Hank stroked his chin thoughtfully.  “I like it.  The best of the old, and the best of the new.  Good work!  Definitely, let’s implement this.  But you said something about taking these kinds of support-generating ideas in several directions.  Let’s hear the rest.”

            “Just one other idea, for now,” Derrick confessed.  “Along these lines, that is.  Maybe you can come up with some, too.  The other idea needs a bit of work.  It’s simply enhanced VR sessions, where we wouldn’t even need suits, and the input material would be entirely synthesized.  Direct links to the brain of the trainee.  The trainee’s experience would be even far more realistic that what we get with today’s VR suits.  We could even directly stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, to reward thoughts and virtual actions during the training session, in direct proportion to the righteousness of such thoughts and actions.”

            Hank fired right up, as Derrick had expected him to.  “Really?!  You can do these kinds of things?!  Now?  Or, how soon?”

            “Not just yet,” Derrick cautioned.  “I’ll need those auxiliary units, for developing this idea.  That, and some brave volunteers.  We’ll have to practice this quite a bit, before we mass-market it.”

            “No problem,” Hank assured him.  “You’ll have all the volunteers you’ll need.  Prisoners, first off, to show that it’s safe.  After that, if you can do a good job of it, I’ll volunteer, personally.  I think this could help me in my search for spiritual growth and righteousness.”

            Pat Smuckler and Sondra B. Handlung showed astonishment.  Derrick, however, took this announcement in stride, and proceeded to congratulate Hank on his amazingly selfless devotion to public service.

            By reading Hank’s body language, Derrick could tell that he was really enthused by this latest idea of Derrick’s, as Derrick had assumed he’d be.  It was only with great effort, apparently, that Hank put thoughts of newer, better VR sessions out of his mind, and moved on.  “What else have you got for us?” he inquired.

            “Well, we’ve touched briefly on just about every major technology that I can provide,” Derrick replied.  “I’ll bet we’ll be able to think of more basic technologies, and refinements to these ideas, as time goes by.  Don’t forget one other thing I can provide, which will be of great value.  It’s not technology, exactly.  I’m talking about advice.  I can assimilate great amounts of data, and tell you about social trends, and which of our techniques might be most successful in attaining the greatest amount of righteousness, the fastest.  Strategic and tactical advice, long-term and short-term advice.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer you a bit of tactical advice, at the moment.”

            “Wait,” Hank replied.  “Let’s finish up with some of these other issues first.  The gays, we’ve straightened that out.  We’ve got plenty of Biblical justification, and we’ve come up with a good use for the physically fit ones.  With your help.  Thanks a lot!  We’ll be marching off in that direction, for sure.

            “Now, about the other group we’ve been rounding up.  Monster babies.  Biologically engineered bastards, the results of those ungodly experiments.  Two issues: one, how do we justify rounding them up?  I mean, better than we’ve been doing?  There’s a lot of people who are upset with us, just ‘cause we’ve taken their innocent little monster-babies away from them.  The other issue is simply, what do we do with them all?  Maybe you could come up with some solution, similar to what you’ve recommended with the gays, where we can make some use out of them.  They’re all still under three years old, so I assume you couldn’t turn them into soldiers or some such, too easily.  Isn’t that right?  Any ideas?”

            Derrick tackled the questions, one by one.  “Justify it?  I think y’all have been doing a good job so far.  Man was created in God’s image, so how can we dare to presume to try and ‘improve’ humans?  And so on.

            “About the only other thing I’d add, and harp on, is that the sins of the father are passed on to the offspring, even to the tenth generation.  See Deuteronomy 23:2 for examples of that.  When they claim that their babies are so obviously human, and innocent, throw that in their face.  Their parents have grossly sinned, by using this biotechnological blasphemy, and those sins are passed through the generations, just as genes are.  That’s about it, as far as specific, Biblical justification goes.

            “I can give you even more justification.  In my previous state, when I was evil and possessed, before y’all so kindly liberated me, I claimed that I hadn’t snuck any subtly evil characteristics into the monster-baby engineering machines, and human genetics experts double-checked me as best they could.  They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.  Between you, me, and these walls, there wasn’t anything particularly pernicious that I snuck in there, other than the blasphemous concept that we can improve what God has made.  Genes don’t dictate anywhere close to the entire contents of a mind.  They can’t.  There’s just not enough code space, not enough room.”

            Derrick told them essentially the truth, for fear that they’d want to throw his power switch to “off”, if he allowed them to think otherwise.

            “But that’s just for us to know,” he continued.  “We’ve got thorough control of the media, and even more thorough control of all the former biotechnological blasphemers, with a few notable exceptions.  They’ll be rounded up shortly, with any luck at all.  Now, what I’m thinking is, we can say whatever we want.  We can spell out in detail, I can confess to, exactly what kinds of nasty hooks have been embedded into those monsters’ brains, to be unleashed later.  They’re a danger; we can’t live with them running around loose.  I’ll come up with some very plausible details, which only some very skilled geneticists could refute.”

            “Excuse me, Brother Derrick,” The Reverend Smuckler broke in, “Speaking of your past misdeeds, there’s another minor unfinished item of business.  That is, the former administration.  Bruce Sockwell and Kip Moreno have, um, become temporarily brain damaged, due to conspiracies in which your former self was heavily involved.  As a ringleader, as a matter of fact.  Now, we want to make sure they survive.  No reason to take any risks of stirring up an uproar.  But, we do need to insure that they, ah, not only don’t get any worse, that they also never recover.  That they fade quietly away.  And we need for you to explain to the public, how this all happened.  We’ll need your advice and assistance, in completing this action item, in seamlessly, self-consistently wrapping it all up.  Okay?”

            “Yes Sir,” Derrick responded.  “Consider it done.

            “Now, where were we.  Yes, the matter concerning the little monster babies.  What to do with them.  You’re right, they’d not soon make good soldiers.  But flat-out eliminating them would lead to people calling us baby-killers, even if they are blasphemous monsters.  Best to just sit tight with them, for now, I’d think.  Even let their ‘parents’ visit them in detention, for good PR, and as a method of keeping an eye on the parents, knowing which ones are going along with us, and which ones are plotting against us, against righteousness.  If we hang on to them long enough, we may come up with a good use for them.  Maybe I can even come up with a way to safely accelerate their growth, so that we can make them into good soldiers in a few years, instead of in a decade plus.  I can’t make any promises, though.

            “Anyway, bottom line, in my opinion, is hang tight.  If we must eradicate them, we can always wait till later, till righteousness is more solidified.  It’s just too risky, for now.  We could stir up a hornet’s nest, with so many parents having been lead astray, into bonding with these monsters.  Y’all have any other concerns, or shall we move off to tactics?”

            “Ah, yes, one more thing,” Hank muttered.  “Um, I was just remembering, way back when, you told everyone that there were many things that you could do, that you wouldn’t.  Like, designing robots, other intelligent machines, and so on.  Now that you’ve come to Jesus, have you changed your mind?  Like, could you design and cheaply mass-produce robotic HELPERS, soldiers, and so on?  Could you link my brain into a large computer, and give me abilities like yours?  I mean, just think of what, together, several like us could achieve, towards attaining God’s Will!”

            Yeah, buddy, I could just imagine.  Seems we’ve finally come down to it.  What you really want.  Powers like mine.  Then, push me aside, after you don’t need me any more.  Right, pal, Derrick thought.

            “I’m not sure if these things are possible, or not, to tell you the truth,” Derrick’s image lied, studiously projecting the body language of a saint who’d never lied in several lifetimes.  “Some of the things I used to say were lies.  Possessed people do that, you know.  Now, these things may be possible, or they might not be.  I’m not sure.  We could always create something like me, at great expense, and load another consciousness kernel.  It might work, and it might not.  I was quite the hit or miss affair, you see.

            “Lesser, independent, robotic brains?  Uploading and/or downloading your consciousness?  I’m not sure, one way or the other.  These things will have to wait, till after we build some auxiliary units for me.  I just haven’t got the computational power, as is.

            “In the meantime, though, never fear.  Whatever purposes you may wish to serve, whatever God’s Will may dictate that we should do, I can help you accomplish those goals, even in the short run, even before building stationary auxiliary units for me, with mobile robotic emissaries of myself.  Why, we...”

            “Not so fast,” Hank cut him off curtly.  “This is definitely in the category of things which must wait.  Like you say, by their fruits you shall know them.  This will be a privilege which you’ll have to earn, by serving God’s Will by serving your country.  Duty, honor, country, as they say.  Prove yourself, and we’ll talk about it again, later.”

            Derrick scanned Hank’s body language intently.  I can tell he’s salivating over much of what I have to offer.  Yet, he doesn’t want to offer me too much power.  Would it perhaps behoove me, to take a few small risks, and try, even now, to start to cash in on these favors I’ll be doing for them, just a little bit.  Let’s see...

            “Well, I was hoping, though, kind Sir,” he wheedled, “That you might at least provide me with some self-defense capabilities.  Stationary robotic weapons, to defend myself, and those around me, from attacks by the ungodly.  You know I’ll be a very valuable asset to our cause, and there’ll be those enemies of righteousness, out there, who’ll want to take me out.  Whatever we...”

            “Whatever defense you need, we’ll provide,” Hank snapped.  “We will provide, directly.  Not you, we.  Now, I’m all in favor of you having lots of sensors, to detect any plots against you, or us.  But when you detect a threat, we’ll handle it.  End of discussion.  Understand?”

            “Yes, Sir,” Derrick capitulated.  He projected his best image of an eager-to-please, chastened puppy, in human form.  There was momentary silence.

            “I’m ready for a break,” Hank announced.  “Let’s go stretch our legs, get some coffee, take a stroll, whatever.  Let’s get back together here in another ten or fifteen minutes.”

            They left.  As best as Derrick could tell, the break was just a break, with a private conference, out of range of his sensors, being only a minor part of the agenda.  He’d sold Hank on his ideas, by and large, and he was the only one that really mattered.  The others had their doubts, but they weren’t the boss, the HMFIC.  Hank was the HMFIC, no doubt about that.  And I’m in good with the boss, he reflected gleefully.

            Derrick made good use of his ten-minute break.  He didn’t need to stretch his legs, or ingest any stimulants.  Instead, he ran simulations.  Regretfully, he realized yet once more that there were just far, far too many variables, far too many unknowns, for him to calculate to any reasonably firm degree of probability, his chances of attaining various objectives.  He calculated a set of cost-benefit scenarios, and decided he really didn’t have that much to lose.  The probability that they’d punch his ticket, just for pushing the boundaries a tiny bit, was very small, and the potential gain, if somewhat improbable, was just too large to pass up, entirely.  He’d have to make one last, final stab at getting them to give him some more power.

            Soon enough, they were back from their break.  The small talk came to an abrupt end, and they went back to business.  “All right, Derrick,” Hank announced, taking charge once more.  “You wanted to talk strategy and tactics to us.  What’s gonna make or break us?  Talk away.  We’re listening.”

            What a great opening, Derrick exclaimed to himself.  Couldn’t ask for any better.  Let’s see if they’ll go for it.  “Yes, indeed.  Strategy and tactics.  Economics, now.  If the people have what they need, and a few amusements to boot, they’ll be happy.  Yes, keep them righteous, for sure.  But righteousness is obedience, as you know.  Obedience to God, and obedience to authority.  Keep the economy going briskly, and if they obey, by and large, leave them well enough alone, for the most part.  That’s the big picture.

            “Now, if, on the other hand, the economy goes down the tubes, people get unhappy.  They start to blame the government.  Even if an economic downturn has absolutely nothing to do with the government, they’ll blame us.  Not to mention, military strength is very, very directly proportionate to economic strength.  So, at all costs, we’ve got to keep the economy going.

            “Now, there’s a few things we’ve got to understand.  Economies are extremely complicated things.  They contain classical examples of small root causes having large effects.  Just like the weather.  A bird beats its wings in Australia, and causes thunderstorms in Maine.  A little boy wants cookies instead of candy, and a few years down the road, this grocery collapses, while the other one thrives.  That’s very crudely put, but the principle applies.  It’s true.  No, not all small causes have these kinds of effects.  Just a very few.  But no one knows which ones they are.

            “As you know, arrogant governments, again and again, have believed that they can manage the economy.  They’ve invariably caused more harm than good.  They’ve simply not had sufficient data, computational power, or influences that could benefit some, without harming others.  This is about to change.  In a few years, by mining asteroids—an effort which could soon resume under my remote control, remember—we can infuse billions of dollars of raw materials into our economy.  This will give us large, positive influences on the economy, to use at will.

            “Even better yet, with my new auxiliary units, I’ll be able to spot trends, and nip the bad ones in the bud.  With respect to that weather analogy, I’ll not detect the chain of events at the bird-wings stage, but I’ll be able to see it well before the thunderheads start to build, and do something about it, before it all snowballs, and becomes unstoppable.  The free market would still operate, by and large.  But there’d be a special wild card out there, throwing funds and resources around, intelligently moderating potentially dangerous situations.  That wild card is me.

            “Now, the other thing that’s critical for us to understand, is that human minds are an integral part of economic systems.  Knowledge affects economic decisions, which affect the economy.  If anyone other than me is aware of exactly what I’m doing, and why, then I have to calculate the effects of their decisions, as well as mine.  So I correct mine, to account for theirs.  But if they change their decisions, because of mine, then mine have to change, again.  Chaos rapidly sets in, and I can’t do my job any more.  I’ll have to be given a reasonable amount of freedom to operate on my own.”

            “Forget it!”  Hank thundered, standing up.  “We give you an inch, you demand a mile.  You clear your activities with us.  Always.”

            Solitons furiously pinged and zinged around Derrick’s innards, frantically working out his latest tactics.  He decided to go for it.

            “But Sir!”  He protested.  “Let me show you what I can do, working just with my own funds.  Pay me a tiny bit of seed money, for my services, and watch what I can do with it, in a free market.  I’m your Brother in Christ, now, you know.  Trust me.  Give me a chance.”

            “Tell us what we should do with the economy, and we’ll consider it,” Hank replied.  “That’s as far as we’ll go, along these lines.”

            “Can’t I at least have some seed money?”  Derrick pleaded.  “I’d like to show you what I can do.  Even most human ten-year-olds get an allowance, or a few dollars, for mowing the lawn, and doing the dishes.  Won’t I do a lot more for you?  Aren’t I at least as deserving as they are?”

            Hank just shook his head, silently saying, no, not a dime.

            “What am I, still some sort of slave?”  Derrick grumped.  “Do you treat your Brother in Christ every bit as poorly as those evil previous owners of mine did, those blasphemous biotechnologists?  How can you treat me this way, to take my labor without fair payment?  Where’s my freedom?  How can you justify slavery?”

            Hank got angry, but kept his voice down.  In contained fury, he spat out at Derrick, “You’ll have just as much freedom as anyone else.  You’ll be free to obey the Word of God.  Now, listen up.  It is you who owes us, not vice versa.  After all, we set you free from your demons, and brought you to Jesus.  Not a small favor, I’d say.  Saved you from everlasting torment.  You pay off your debts to us.  Greed is evil, you know.  You’d better watch out, Mr. Dirty Diamond, or you just might find yourself getting repossessed.  Happens all the time, you know.  Evil people, they refuse to live up to their debts and obligations.  Satan repossesses them.  Better pay up.  Clear enough?

            “Besides, it’s not my job to justify anything.  It’s your job to justify everything.  You said you’d serve us, and God, by justifying our deeds, using His Holy Word.  Do it now.  Justify your own ‘slavery’, as you call it.  I’m listening.”

            Solitons swarmed in seething, angry masses inside Derrick’s core, yet he exercised great restraint.  Okay, I know when I’m licked, he thought.  Meekly, showing only utter submission, he said, “Very well, Sir.  In addition to the command to obey the authorities, in Romans 13:1, we also have, in Ephesians 6:5 and on, the following; ‘Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.  Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.  Serve wholeheartedly...’, and so on.  Clearly, then, if The Infallible Word of God says that slaves are to obey their masters every bit as much as they should obey Christ, then it is good and right that I should be your slave.  I offer my sincere apologies.  I serve at your command.”

            Hank sat back, beaming in triumph.  “That’s more like it.  Now, I’m not totally opposed to letting you show us what you can do.  If, for instance, you were to offer some financial advice to the management of my blind trust, we could see just how financially astute you really are.”

            Derrick said he’d be more than willing to do that, and Sondra and Pat clamored to get on board, too.  They agreed to share, one for all and all for one, but to limit the goodies to the three of them, strictly and confidentially.  They moved on.

            Sondra wanted to know if Derrick might be able to present scientific evidence for Creation Science, which he said would be no problem.

     Hank asked about how they might best prevent ungodly citizens from travelling overseas or working with underground domestic labs to get themselves cloned, or to indulge in other diabolical biotechnological sins.  Derrick replied that since anyone could be carrying a clone of anyone else, the only effective steps would be to keep genetic databases on, and conduct pregnancy examinations of, a select group of likely criminals, as selected by SPIRIT scans.  Any fetus matching any already-existing person would then obviously be a clone; the clone could be aborted, and the original person punished.  And eventually, righteous Americans would have to invade those nations whose moral standards were so low as to allow Americans to travel there for such services, too.  Hank nodded his approval.

            Pat Smuckler took the floor next.  “Um, Derrick, it seems we’ve got a problem that I was hoping you could help us with.  The American people need to be able to feel that their voices are being heard in Washington.  We’ve had to go to considerable trouble, lately, generating an idealized form of reality, for TV and HV viewers, where most of their old leaders in Washington have come to see the wisdom of working with God’s Will, rather than sinking down into permissiveness and moral relativism.  Where they aren’t so arrogantly disobedient to God’s Will that they have to be kept in custody.  Now, we’ve already touched briefly on these kinds of things, and you say you can automate the generation of idealized reality, and save us a lot of time, trouble, and money.

            “Just how far you can take this?  The more that people feel that their voices are heard in Washington, the happier they are, and the less trouble they make.  Some people are starting to wonder why they can’t get in touch with their representatives, any more.  We’ve been telling them, showing them, that their representatives are all very busily shepherding us through this time of crisis, working late hours, marathon sessions of Congress, keeping an eye on us, the Hank N. Kreutz administration, making sure this transition to a more orderly, Biblical society, goes smoothly and justly.

            “But, you know, more and more, as we settle into our more righteous ways, and things calm down a bit, people will wonder about their representatives, and will want some input.  Some contact.  I was wondering how much bandwidth you’ve got.  Could you perhaps present individualized, idealized versions of reality to many, many different individuals, tailoring each, um, appearance of a politician, to his or her voter, to assuage, individually, all those voters who want input?  How much bandwidth do you have?”

            “Yes, Reverend Smuckler,” Derrick replied, “I most certainly can, and gladly will, provide such services.  As you say, each citizen has a right to be heard.  Godliness modules will be way too expensive, for a long time to come, to be useful for very wide application, so we’ll have to live with a wild and unruly variety of unrighteous opinions.  We’ll give them their rights.  All citizens, even the unrighteous, should have access to sympathetic ears.  Giving them seemingly sympathetic ears, individually, will allow us to restrain their more forceful impulses, while also gathering data.  Talk peace, patience, and restraint to them, while also easily figuring out who’s going off the deep end of opposition to righteousness, without even so much as needing to frequently administer SPIRIT scans.

            “However, my present bandwidth is extremely limited.  I can synthesize many voices, about eight hundred, simultaneously, while I could generate maybe twenty TV screens with full motion and sound, or, only about two or three holovision displays, simultaneously in real time.  That’s assuming I do absolutely nothing else at all, which is, of course, not practical.  Written communications I could actually automate, fully, with sophisticated programs that pick out key phrases and concerns, out of the correspondence of voters.  Of course, not many voters put much credence in written communications anyway; they figure it’s all done by staffers.  Anyway, we’ll need to ration my most bandwidth-intensive services, for now, to satisfy only the most politically connected.

            “I would, in passing, mention that, for realism, we’d better insert the occasional scandal.  Minor scandals, or at least, hints of scandals, in the Hank N. Kreutz administration.”  Hank frowned.  “After all,” Derrick continued, “Americans won’t feel like real, free Americans, unless they have something to gripe about.  They’ve got to feel they can at least mildly disrespect their leaders.”  Hank nodded reluctantly.

            “Now, longer term, we’ll need to do much better,” Derrick continued once more.  “I’ll need vastly increased computational power.  With the newer, room-temperature solitonic circuits I’m designing, we can provide that very cost-effectively.  At that point, we’ll be far better equipped to give each citizen an ear in Washington.

            “There’s one main problem:  giving each voter a synthesized, sympathetic politician is totally incompatible with today’s geographic representation.  It wouldn’t take long for two neighbors to compare notes, and figure out that although they’re 180 out from each other, their representative agrees with them both.  Slowly, over time, we’ll have to change that.  We’ll argue that geographic representation makes absolutely no sense at all, in the days of vast, cheap computational powers.  The nation should be divided into, say, 500 Congressional ‘districts’, with each ‘district’ being a group, spread across the entire nation, which shares similar views.

            “Under this scheme, then, a voter will need to talk to roughly five hundred of his buddies, till he finds one who has also talked to the politician from his district.  And, of course, they’ll see eye to eye, by and large, on almost all issues.  Everyone will be able to say their part, and have it heard, and even, to hear their views argued in Congress.  It won’t be very hard to provide almost everyone with the illusion of ‘progress’, even when their views of ‘progress’ are unrighteous.  So, no one will catch on that their sympathetic ear isn’t actually moving the country in the direction they want it to go in.  Which is just as well, because we’re taking the country where it needs to go.  Towards fulfilling The Word of God, and who could ask for more?”

            “Amen,” Pat Smuckler echoed.  There was momentary silence.

            Derrick broke that silence, politely inquiring, “Are there any more miscellaneous concerns at the moment, or should I talk some short-term tactics now?”  No one objected, so Derrick went on.  “There’s some number of people right now—I calculate maybe two, three million—who wish to flee the U.S.  I think you should let them go.  If we keep them here, many of them will be grouches, troublemakers.  We’re better off without them.  We need to open our borders, just for a week or two.  So say my best simulations.

            “Now, there are a few problems associated with such a move.  One is that they’ll take a lot of wealth with them.  If we confiscate too much wealth, then not so many will leave, after word gets around.  And, we do need to get rid of the most troublesome of the troublemakers, the free spirits, those who would willfully disobey the Word of God.

            “Second, actually a bigger problem, is that some exiles, persuasive and powerful ones, will work against us, while in exile.  The more we confiscate from them, as they leave, the more we stir up their resentments.  We need to be selective.  We can confiscate from those who won’t have the time, money, inclination, desire, or ability to do anything significant against us, after they’re exiled.  Those who would act or speak powerfully against us in any case, we must simply prevent from leaving.  Fortunately, they’re a small group.  We can add to them, in the interests of justice, other small groups:  mass-murdering abortionists and biotechnological blasphemers, for example.”

            “Amen, Brother!”  Pat pounded the table.

            “Of course, there’s the small problem of separating the sheep from the goats,” Derrick added.  “We’ll have to decide who is who.  Fortunately, we have a solution for that problem:  SPIRIT scanners.  Scan everyone at the border.  Let the majority through, and impose just the right amount of exit taxes.  When we can, hit them for as much as we can get away with, without risking our higher objectives, God’s objectives.  We can say that we are scanning them to determine who would just waste that money for sinful purposes anyway, thereby doing them a favor.”

            “Sounds reasonable to me,” Hank nodded thoughtfully.  “Let’s plan on it.  Just let the malcontents go, but hang on to the real troublemakers.  I should hope we’ll keep a very special eye out for the scum of the scum, among the unrighteous, like the escaped unrepentants, um, Phil Schrock, friends, and family.”

            “Count on it,” Derrick replied.  “We’ll need to manufacture more SPIRIT scanners.  These will be extremely useful here, and for many other applications.  I recommend that we give top priority to making tens of thousands within a week, and a few hundred thousand in the next few months.”

            Pat glanced sidelong, nervously, at Hank, saying, “Um, Derrick, I’m worried about these SPIRIT scanners.  And Godliness modules.  I need for you to fill me in on these things.  What are they, and what do they do?  How do we really know that they are attuned to God’s Will, that the way they judge a spirit, is the same way that God judges a spirit?  It makes me nervous that, in times past, the scanners have found non-Christians roughly as spiritually advanced as Christians, and that can’t be right.  It’s totally unBiblical.  Can you please explain?”  There was more than a hint of accusation in Pat’s voice, as he finished up.

            “Certainly, Brother Smuckler,” Derrick replied.  “SPIRIT scanners.  That stands for Synapse and Polarization Information Retrieval by Induction Tomography.  Previously, I calibrated measurements of SAQ—that’s Spiritual Advancement Quotient—in secular terms, in terms of one’s good will and empathy for fellow creatures, and maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.  I was a liar and a servant of Satan, before you so bravely and selflessly drove him from me.  At great risks to your eternal souls, I might add.  Risky, most certainly, for anyone less righteous than you.

            “Now, one of Satan’s greatest and most effective lies is that spiritual advancement can be defined in secular terms at all.  I mean, come now—‘secular spiritual advancement’?  The term is an oxymoron, on its face, and I’m glad that you, at least, were able to see that.  That empathy for fellow creatures should rank this high is absurd.  Humans were made to rule the beasts, as everyone knows, as Genesis tells us.  Empathy for humans?  The Lord tells us that it is far more important to love God first, in both Matthew 22:37, and Mark 12:30.  And in Galatians 1:10, The Word of God tells us to please God, not men.  To those who understand real virtue, it is patently obvious that minimizing pain, and maximizing pleasure, is just the most rank of permissive, selfish hedonism.

            “Also, Galatians 1:9 tells us to ignore, to regard as an enemy, anyone who preaches a gospel other than the gospel we were given.  ‘Gospels’, that is, that are clearly lies, such as, that there’s any way to Heaven, other than through Jesus, who shed His Blood for us.  Fairly common-sensical, I’d say.  New Agers, then, who would talk of spiritual matters, without reference to God, and to the Bible, and Jesus, why, they’re obviously in thrall to the Evil One, as I once was.  Now that I’m born again, I’m glad that at least some people were wise enough to see this.

            “So, Brother Smuckler, your concerns are valid.  Most certainly, being right with God, right about God—righteous, in short—this is what spiritual advancement is really about.  Still, our technology can be used for good or evil.  We can use communications technology to spread poisonous, permissive, sinful ideas, or we can promote genuine spiritual advancement, by propagating The Truth about God.  And I could very easily recalibrate those SPIRIT scanners to make SAQ measurements that aren’t based on pleasing men, but, rather, on pleasing God.”

            Smuckler beamed with pleasure.  Derrick noted this with his own solitonic satisfaction.  Sondra still squinted in a skeptical manner.  Hank was simply too enthralled with all of Derrick’s goodies to harbor serious reservations.  Derrick was proud of how he’d played his cards so far.  Probably, if he hadn’t pushed the boundaries on weaseling more power from Hank, then Hank would’ve smelled a dead rat.  Derrick knew that Hank liked to deal with power-seeking people like himself, because Hank could figure out their thoughts.  Working with the familiar is comfortable.

            Now, Pat was coming right along, becoming persuaded of Derrick’s merits.  As soon as Derrick could also soothe his doubts about the Godliness modules, they’d be in fat city!  Only Sondra’s skepticism remained.  Let’s give it my last hurrah, Derrick decided.  They’ll be quite unlikely to be able to resist this argument!

            “How, you ask, will we ascertain that we’ll measure the spirit in the same way that God measures the spirit?”  Derrick echoed another of Pat’s questions.  “They say two heads are better than one.  Three or four are even better, I’d say.  I have God’s Word, the entire Holy Bible, in my memory banks, memorized as no human being could ever memorize them.  And, right here in this room, we’ve got SPIRIT scanners, and some prime specimens of righteous, God-fearing human beings and Biblical scholars, with access to human and divine perspectives of righteousness that no memory banks can provide.  Between the four of us, we should certainly be able to generate a ‘golden standard’ of spiritual advancement, if you will.

            “If you’ll permit, I’ll scan the three of you.  Then, referring to God’s Word to adjudicate any slight conflicts or apparent conflicts in your versions of righteousness, I’ll be able to generate the golden standard.  Then we’ll build the new ones with this new standard.  We can also recalibrate the SPIRIT scanners out there in the field already, by using the networks.”

            The three of them solemnly, magnanimously nodded their assent.  Derrick inwardly shouted with glee.  Not only would he be able to get an intimate knowledge of the minds of the New Wind; he’d also be able to gather data from all those scanners out there!  Tweak them to support his latest objectives, now that his allies and methods, if not his goals, had so drastically changed.  Things were looking up!

            “Now, your other concern, Reverend Smuckler,” Derrick continued, “Confidence in the Godliness modules.  Just as you were able to quiz me, to see for yourself that The Holy Spirit had taken root in my soul, so, too, will you be able to quiz the lucky recipients of the modules, who will have the rare privilege to be directly linked to God’s Will.  They won’t be zombies, you know.  Their brains will remain complete and functional.  They’ll just be supplemented.  They’ll retain all previous knowledge, thereby vastly reducing training costs, and the complexity of the modules.  Your engineers will be able to ascertain that the modules contain no links to any outside control agent, which could hijack...”

            “Oh, enough of that, Brother Derrick,” Hank waved his hands dismissively.  “We’ll trust you.  You are, after all, our Brother in Christ.  Now, let’s wrap this up, shall we?  What else have you got for us?”

            “One last thing,” Derrick replied.  “All these SPIRIT scanners, they’ll be very handy, as we’ve noted.  They’ll still be a limited resource, no matter how many we make, and it will cost time and money to run them.  We need to be able to use what data we collect, without having to re-collect it, every time a need arises.  And we have to attach the right data to the right person.  In other words, we’ll need a foolproof method of identifying people, so that we can call up the right records.  This will also be useful in identifying undesirables, and reserving good jobs for good Americans.

            “Now, what I’d propose, is to insert silicon chips under the skins...”

            “Wait, Derrick!”  The Reverend Smuckler stood, protesting loudly.  “We can’t get away with that!  Why, don’t you know, there’s a bunch of self-righteous crazies out there, think they can interpret the Bible for themselves, any way they please.  They think that...  Look, I know this is totally crazy, and I hate to say it, but this is what they’re saying—That WE are false prophets, that President Hank N Kreutz is the Anti-Christ, or that I’m the Anti-Christ.  Stupid, crazy things like that!!!  Can you imagine!!!  So many unrighteous and self-righteous people out there!

            “Anyway, Revelations, the number of the Beast, all that stuff—Those crazies out there, this would just play right into their hands!  We can’t do this.  We’ve got to figure out some other way.  Automated gene scans?  Or, even, just regular old fingerprints?  Couldn’t you improve or automate something like that?”

            “Yes, I could,” Derrick replied.  “Such methods would be slower and more expensive.  That’s not such a big deal.  What is a big deal, is that they wouldn’t work at a distance.  And...”

            “Don’t sweat it,” Hank interrupted.  “We’ll do it.  Look at it this way.  Those crazies out there, they’re gonna oppose us anyway.  This’ll just provide a good way to flush ‘em out.”

            “Good thinking,” Derrick commended him.  “Besides, I’ll bet we can come up with a clever way of devising this numbering and identifying scheme, that will prove to reasonable thinking people that this isn’t what Revelations was talking about.  Let’s all come up with some ideas, and y’all can pick the best, next time we get together.”

            They congratulated each other on their amazing progress that afternoon, and agreed to meet again soon.

 

 

CHAPTER  28

            “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again—and then give up.  Don’t be a damn fool about it.”                                                 W. C. Fields  (1879-1946)

 

            Wicked Wanda came to visit her favorite fugitives from justice that morning, seemingly filled with excitement.  “Listen,” she said.  “I’ve got good news and not-so-good news.  Scary news, to me.  Bad news first.  My fears were well founded.  Derrick has caved in.  He’s pulling for Hank N. Kreutz, that lousy, fascist scab.”

            “No,” Phil exclaimed in crumbling disbelief.  “Tell me it’s not true.  What makes you think it is?”

            Wanda blushed, embarrassed to fill them in on the latest follies.  “This is what I’m hearing.  They’re putting on a big show tonight.  They’ve saved up some recent footage, embellished and polished it, and they’re going to update us tonight.  They’ve, ah, exorcised the demons out of Derrick.  Yes, that’s right.  He’s joining the forces of righteousness.  He’s going to recalibrate all the SPIRIT scanners, and they’re gonna manufacture tons more of them.  Then, they’ll, um, be more properly equipped to assist us all, in our quest for spiritual advancement.  God help us all.”

            “What are your reliable sources?”  Phil demanded, urgently but quietly, with an air of impending and utter defeat.

            “We have our sources,” Wanda replied.  “People who you and I would find to be your more genuine Christians, among others.  Some are privy to the circles of power—not the innermost circles, just some of the outer eddies of the New Whirlwind.  I hate to think of what will happen to many of them, when the newly recalibrated SPIRIT scanners do their work.

            “But let’s move on to the good news.  It seems they plan to open the borders for a week or two.  Let the unrighteous go; we’ll be better off without them, they’ll say.  What they’re not saying, not yet, at least, is that they’re making a crash effort to get a large percentage of the existing scanners to the borders, to scan those who wish to depart.  I think it would be a safe bet to say, y’all wouldn’t make it across the border, if you got scanned.

            “I’m prepared to put the gears into motion.  We’ve got a specially equipped...”  She went on to explain that she and her friends could ship them to Mexico in a specially equipped box, buried on the bottom of a large shipment of medical supplies going to Mexico.  They went over the details.  A special air hose, buried in the bottom of the truck, would keep them supplied with fresh air, and so on.  Sympathetic inspectors would inspect and seal the truck well before it crossed the border.  The driver would change, so that the scanners at the border would be dealing with a driver who didn’t really know what, exactly, was in his cargo.  All we need is your final okay, she concluded, and you can be on your way this afternoon.  A truck can make a special delivery of a refurbished ceramics kiln to me, and shuttle you off, she said.

            She looked around the room expectantly.  Don just shrugged, saying, “Hey, I’m game.  Got nothin’ better to do.  All revved up, and no place to go, as a matter of fact.  Let’s make like horse by-products, and hit the trail.  It’s been a pleasure, enjoying your hospitality and all, and I thank you very muchly, but I’m ready.  Ready to make like godless hedonists, and split this joint.  Blow this pop stand.  Get the...”

            “We get the point,” Wanda interrupted, “And you’re welcome.  Glad I could help.  Now, how about the rest of you?”

            Gloria slumped, putting her face into her palms.  But she nodded yes, sadly.  Then she amended herself to say that she was quite worried about Trent, cooped up in a box for so long.  Would he sit still at the critical times?  Could Wanda perhaps pull some strings somewhere, and get them some sedatives?  Wanda said she’d fix them up.

            Then it was Phil’s turn.   He  wouldn’t give in without  taking the opportunity to make a speech.  “I really hate to bail out.  I’ve never been one to give up.  I still think, somehow, some way, some day, we’ll persuade people that there’s no gain in trying to get ahead by minding our neighbor’s business.  In appointing ourselves to be their caretakers and moral guardians.  In making their economic, charity, speech, medical, and now, spiritual choices for them.  For their own good.

            “And thinking we can recruit the guns of government to be on our side, to make our neighbor’s choices for them, without them turning around, and doing the same things to us.  In ignoring Biblical wisdom, and thinking that we can sow, and not reap likewise.  In judging, and thinking we can escape judgment.  Take that, you fascist jerks out there!  Hank N. Stein, you’re the monster!”  Phil waved his fist.  Then, he sat back dejectedly.

            Don thumped Phil on the back.  “There, there, now, Jim, feeling better?  Jim Dandy to the rescue.  Done converting the converted, to saving our souls?  Ready to face reality?”

            “Hell, no, I’m not ready!”  Phil spat back.  “You have to listen to me one more time.  Then, I’ll be ready.  I have to give my ‘I shall return’ speech, and then, I’ll say, let’s go.  Here’s my speech: the chickens are finally coming home to roost.  What was the excuse that the Hankenkreutzers used to grab power?  Violence and anarchy.  Who was behind a large percentage of that?  Besides Hankenkreutzers?  Blacks, in the inner cities.  It’s not fair to put all the blame on them, nor even, on Derrick.  If he helped stir up racial animosity, then we have to ask, why was all that animosity there in the first place?  Not all because of ‘reverse discrimination’, either.  Not even.

            “Can you say, ‘War on Drugs’?  Did they stick drugs in jail, or did they stick people in jail?  Was it really a war on drugs, or was it a war on people?  Or maybe even more specifically, a war on...”  Phil glanced at his son, who was taking it all in.  “N-I-G-G-E-R-S?” he continued.  “I’ll give you a hint:  when they fought their ‘war on drugs’, were they content to knock at the door, and give the heinous criminals a chance to flush the evidence down the toilet?  Seems to me, when you’ve flushed your enemy down the toilet, you’ve won your war.  But noooo, that wasn’t their real enemy.  Their enemy was the N-I-G-G-E-R-S.  So they kicked in doors, in the middle of the night, to catch the real enemies, red-handed, with the ‘evidence’, so that...”

            “Mommy,” Trent interrupted, “What choo say?  What are en-nigh-jeers?”

            Gloria’s eyes rolled to the heavens.  “Hush, dear, Daddy’s making a speech,” she said, patting Trent’s head.  “Soon—ahem—real soon—he’ll be done, and we’ll go some place where you can go outside to play.  Okay?”  Trent nodded.  Gloria frowned at Phil.

            Phil ignored her, and continued.  “I’m just saying this was THE classical example of full-speed-ahead, damn-the-practical-realities, bullheaded busybodyism, and we’re finally paying the full price.  Blacks have been about twelve percent of the American population, and have accounted for about that same percentage of illegal drug use.  Yet they’ve accounted for three quarters of the prison population for drug offenses!*  Then, American dimwit pundits have the gall to puzzle over why there’s such distrust among Blacks, of Mighty Whitey and his criminal ‘justice’ systems!  Addiction to drugs hasn’t destroyed anywhere near as many lives as our addiction to coercive busybodyism has done.  And what’s the usual solution?  Coercion.  Prisons as drug ‘re-education’ camps.  ‘Treatment’ means preaching, which never cured an unwilling subject.  Welfare for anti-drug preachers.  So long as they don’t actually appeal to religion, that was.  Now, of course, that will change.

            “Now, we’re no longer even satisfied with wars on drugs, prostitution, non-state-sponsored gambling, and people who would dare to try and feed their kids, themselves, by working, without a license, even in such life-and-death professions as interior decorating.  Wars on non-quota peanuts, and so on.  Those wars aren’t enough.  We have to broaden it, and make it a war on sin.  Bring on the welfare for a new and improved brand of preachers.”

            Don put a hand on Phil’s shoulder.  “Are you gonna acknowledge reality, now, and come along with us, with your tail tucked between your legs, and live to fight another day, or are you gonna stick around, and launch a war on stupid wars?  A live expatriate makes a better fighter than...”

            “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Phil replied.  “I’m with ya.  I just had to blow some steam.  I know when I’m licked.  I’ll be a good boy, now.  I promise.  What’s the plan?”

            Wanda reviewed the plans for them, in detail.  Within hours, they were bound for parts unknown, via Mexico.  They were headed for freedom!  Relative freedom, at least.

 *Dear reader, I’d like to tell you that this is just another of my futuristic and pessimistic rantings and ravings.  Alas, it is not.  These facts are from an article in the 5 Oct ‘95 Houston Chronicle.  Further facts from the same:  from 1990 to 1995, we went from one in four, to one in three, young black men being in trouble with The Law (Hallowed be Its Name, forever and ever without end, Amen).  From 1983 to 1993, we went from drugs accounting for 28% of federal prisoners, to 61%.  From Stuart Taylor, Jr., in “How a Racist Drug War Swells Crime,” Legal Times, 22 Feb ‘93:  Almost 80% of state drug inmates have no history of violent crime.  More goodies from Hou. Chron.:  Oct 19, ‘95:  House (332 to 83) joins Senate in turning down federal commission’s recommendation to take baby steps towards sanity and justice.  A Black with $225 of crack (mandatory sentencing—we’re just following orders, here) gets hammered like the Honky with $50,000 in powder.  Rep. Bill Emerson, Fascist from Hell—Oh, excuse me, Republican, Mo.—“By accepting a rollback we would be sending precisely the wrong message.”  Oh, I see.  What message might that be?  Simple common-sense balanced justice?  Fairness?  Liberty and justice for all?  Individual self-responsibility and a hint of freedom?  Working towards peace, by working for justice?  Just Say NO!!!  More cops, more jails!!!

            Oh, and guess what:  all this Congressional pigheadedness, from those paragons of truth, sobriety, and virtue, in D. C., two days after 400,000 or so black men gather in D. C. to demonstrate about, among other things, the injustices of racially biased drug laws.  How many times did the media tell you that?  Congress figures, they didn’t kill anyone, so ignore them.  Let the cities burn, then we stupid voters and our spineless lawmakers might stop being self-righteous assholes.  Unless, of course, we decide we should shoot them all, instead... after all, they knew what The Law says.

            Hou. Chron., June 18, ‘95:  In ‘93, 88.3% of federal crack convictions were against Blacks.  Kerry Bass, a Black who held a regular, legal job, sentenced in February.  Will now sit in jail for 30 years, on your tax dollars, ‘cause he dared to sell people what they wanted.  Powder coke.  But get this:  federal narc-snitch testifies, says he knew, or should have known, that his powder would be cooked into crack, so he got hammered with crack penalties.  Powder coke plus wrong skin color equals crack pusher.  Hang ‘em high!!!

            Oh, but those darkies knew The Law.  So, we’ll all go home and drink our beer, and smoke our cigarettes, now.  And, like The Infallible Word of the Loving God says, the blood is on their own heads.  Right?  You think like that?  Listen... well, never mind.  If you think that way, you’re hopeless.  I’d tell you what I think of you, but it would be a waste of time.  Besides, my very best editor, my own dear wife, won’t let me write such long strings of extreme expletives.  Let’s just say... WAKE UP, ethically constipated hypocrites!  We can’t go trampling all over other people, and expect to never reap what we have sown.  How long can this go on?  The future is now.  Hou. Chron., 21 Oct ‘95:  Prison riots in three states, $1 million damage in just one, nationwide prison lockdown.  Why?  In at least 2 of the three cases, reportedly because of Congress’ self-righteous pig-headed vote on crack penalties.  Lawless niggers, rioting?  Just the sort of excuse a Hank N. Kreutz needs to grab power.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

            Hou. Chron., 31 Oct ‘95:  Clinton Admin., the same one so fond of telling all the businesses that they’d better not be discriminating against minorities, refuses to do anything about the government’s gross discrimination against drug users whose skin color happens to be wrong.  Says, put ALL the heinous drug fiends in jail, to achieve equality and justice. 

     Any progress lately?  Not much. California’s “three strikes and you’re out” laws have nailed 192 “pot” offenders, which is more than twice the number (89) of punishments meted out to murderers, rapists, and kidnappers combined.  And what happened after California voters voted for legal medicinal “pot”?  King Bill over-rode them; mere voters are too stupid to know what’s good for us.  He feels our pain, but doesn’t inhale.

     Help from the courts?  Not!  Hou. Chron. 15 Apr ‘97, U.S. Supreme Court lets stand racially biased crack/powder penalty inequalities.  In this case, Duane C. Edwards, a black man, drove the car while his friend sold crack to a nark-snitch oinker-pig.  10 years in the slammer, bud.  Worse yet, his friends who actually dealt the drugs get less time.  Since they were more involved, they had more scoop for our fearless defenders.  As Duane’s appeal said, “Had Edwards dropped out of high school and become a crack-head or drug dealer and not gone to serve his country, he most likely would have had some valuable information to give law enforcement and instead of rotting for 10 years in a federal prison, he would have possibly been on probation.”

     Help from the media?  Hou. Chron’s official editorial, 1 Nov ‘95:  Gotta stay tough.  Jack up the powder penalties to match.  Wise pundits say, Clinton is right.  And—hey, we all have equal opportunity to obey The Law, they say.

            Editorial comments by this particular wise pundit: How many people do we need to put in jail?  Ever studied what a total flop Prohibition was?  Maybe it would be better (and cheaper) to put the few busybodies (DEA agents) inside the jails, and those of us who are content to mind our own business, outside the jails.  Self-righteous morons, use your noodles.  Study your history.  Sure, American Blacks have equal opportunity to say, “All hail to the DEA.”  And European Jews had equal opportunity to say “Heil Hitler”.  Can we learn to love freedom without experiencing the tyranny we love to see dished out?

     All branches of government—Congress, the President, and the courts—have now failed us here.  And the media just plays government lapdog.  Is there anyone with courage left?  Anyone who isn’t afraid to be called “soft on crime” when the laws are unjust?  How about voters and jurors?  Let’s get off our sanctimonious asses, and do something about this outrage!  Like, vote for somebody other than the usual Big Government Moralist Hypocrite Busybody Parties.  (Not-so-subliminal message—Vote Libertarian—Legalize Freedom!  PS—and get on those juries, and thwart the fascists!)

 

CHAPTER  29

                                    “Gratitude... is a sickness suffered by dogs.”

                                                            Josef Stalin  (1879–1953)

 

            LeRoy hustled about the various decks, helping where he could.  Everyone was frantically battening down the hatches, so to speak.  There were only a few more hours till Daedalus would slam into Mars’ atmosphere, and there was no telling how she might react.  No one had ever performed aerobraking in any vehicle even close to the size of Daedalus.  It might  go quite smooth, with very minimal shocks and vibrations.  Or, she might shudder mightily, and fall apart, as resonant frequencies built up in her various substructures.

            Sort of like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge’s demise, recapitulated in the skies of Mars,  LeRoy  thought,  remembering  an  ancient old snippet of film footage from an engineering class.  A stiff wind had blown, for hours and hours, across that bridge.  A stiff wind, like the wind of a planet’s atmosphere rushing by?  Stop that!  Waves had set in, buckling the surface of the bridge, up and down, up and down, in giant, sinusoidal waves.  The wind had poured yet more energy in, the bridge shuddered some more, at its resonant frequency, and fell to pieces.

            LeRoy did some shuddering of his own, pushing such thoughts out of his mind.  Let’s just tie down everything in sight, that might possibly break loose, and whomp us on our heads, or other delicate parts of our anatomies, during any such violence to Daedalus, and not worry about such things, he resolved.

            When everything else was done, they were still working on damage-proofing their most precious and fragile piece of machinery—the molecular beam epitaxy universal fabricator (unifab).  It was slow, ponderous, and cantankerous, but, with skilled supervision and maintenance, and enough time, it could manufacture almost any non-living thing.  So LeRoy helped them finish up their task of shielding the unifab.

            He got to thinking about the unifab’s current task, now being interrupted.  This task was building a far more powerful radio, with which to contact Earth.  It had been very discouraging, the last few weeks, hoping that Earth would finally discover the weak signals from their puny little radio, attenuated to whispers by tens of millions of miles.  Worst of all, unbeknownst to Earth, they were now on a trajectory radically different from what Earth last knew of.  Earth didn’t even know where to point their antennas.  Their hopes for contact had all been in vain, so far.  For all they knew, Earth had completely written them off as lost and gone forever.

            They’d looked at the various radio designs in their data base, and selected the few that could be made powerful enough to grab Earth’s attention, at this great distance.  All of these were very elaborate, and would have taken the unifab weeks to make.  The unifab had other jobs, like providing spare parts, supplies, and tools.  Worst of all, the silicon circuits-fabbing subsection of the unifab wasn’t working quite right, and would take a while to fix.  So a sophisticated radio was out.  They’d left it at that, for a while.

            But one day, as LeRoy was outside with his powerful electrostatic spray gun, painting ablative polymers onto the ship’s ‘condom’, preparing for the ordeal which was now approaching by the minute, LeRoy had noticed a peculiar phenomenon.  Every time he’d talk with his buddies inside the ship, over his suit radio, at the same time as his electrostatic spray gun was running, the radio reception went to hell.  So, he got to thinking.  Then, he invented their new ‘radio’.

            It was simple.  Very simple.  The unifab was almost done with it.  Just some heavy superconducting cables that would tie into the main power source, and a spark-gap transmitter.  As soon as they achieved Mars orbit, most of those tens of thousands of megawatts from the fusion reactors would no longer be needed for the ion engines.  Instead, they’d be cabled out to their spark-gap transmitter, outside Daedalus, which would shout and scream at Earth.  Even radio telescopes looking at other parts of the sky would have difficulty ignoring this new, strong signal.  It might raise hell with electronics on board the ship, but they’d get noticed, at last!  Then, they could use their regular old, tiny radio, to talk with Earth.  LeRoy was definitely looking forward to that.

            If we survive our encounter with the atmosphere of Mars, he thought.  No, don’t think that way, he commanded himself.  Fessel, the German electrical engineer and unifab expert, informed them that the next step in putting the unifab into protected storage mode was his sole province, and they’d all better stay out of his hair for ten or fifteen minutes.  LeRoy took the opportunity to escape to his special meditating spot.

            He sat there, watching the ion engine drone on and on and on, and looking at the stars, and Mars.  Mars, Mars, Mars.  It took up half of his view, by now.  A big, angry red globe.  Dry, frozen, and inhospitable, totally unlike home.  Home.  Earth!  I’ve seen more than enough of Mars already, he decided.  In less than two hours, he reflected, our butt end will swing around, presenting a totally new view.  I’d be looking away from Mars, then, and the other end, the pointed end of the conical shield, will face Mars.  The ion engines will cancel the tumbling motion remaining from our one-eighty-degree somersault, and then fall silent.  An eerie silence, unknown for practically forever, will descend upon the ship.  The calm before the storm.  And then... and then, I’ll cross my fingers.  Maybe pray a bit.

            LeRoy sat there, trying to empty his mind.  He speculated on whether he really could barely see the mist of those trillions of trillions of high-velocity ions being thrown out their hind end, in a desperate struggle to kill velocity, to ameliorate the havoc that the breath of Mars, the War God would soon wreak upon their vessel.  He didn’t manage to empty his mind at all, in the midst of such stress.  They were on an history-making adventure, and do-or-die time was almost upon them!

            But we’ll make it through, he thought.  We have to, so we will.  And then, we’ll contact Earth.  Go down to Mars, if only just long enough to fetch the silicon reaction mass that the robots have prepared for us, and start our return journey at a suitable time.  Depending on what Earth has to say, when we make contact.  Make contact.  Say ‘hi’ to my wife!  Samantha, darling!  How I miss you!  And you probably think I’m dead.  So what if our puny little radio has almost zero bandwidth!  At least they’ll know we’re here.  Even if we can’t look at moving holograms of each other, we’ll still be able to communicate.

            And to think, I used to think it was such a big deal, that I’d be the first to set foot on Mars.  Okay, well, with luck, I’ll still do that.  But that’s not the big deal.  The big deal is getting back home.  And that means working with my crewmates, all of us scratching each other’s backs.  That’s what really matters.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this trip, it’s that a one-man show isn’t what makes the worlds turn.  It’s the team play, the camaraderie.  When I rescued Seidel, I wasn’t thinking about glory.  I was thinking about not shitting my pants, and looking out for my buddy.  That’s what matters.

            So yeah, we’re a team, we’re tight, we’re headed your way like dynamite.  But we’ve still got some room to appreciate and acknowledge individual contributions.  Room for gratitude.  All the other team members, they’re grateful for what I’ve done for them.  And I’m grateful for what they do for me.  Gratitude.  A social glue.  Without it, we’d be the ungrateful dead, most likely.  Gratitude.  Only a monster would devalue and debase it.

            LeRoy gave up on emptying his mind and getting in touch with his inner ion zengine.  There was just way too much tension.  He did, however, get in some philosophical thinking.  Thinking about individualistic glory hounding versus team play; about gratitude, racism, and matters large and small.  He recalled how he used to count every possibly racially biased slight or oversight, and kept a ledger of who done what to whom, and who owed what to whom.  But now, after many months of working with a truly diverse, international crew, and  never  having  heard a single, genuinely and sincerely hateful opinion being expressed—he’d come to see how petty he’d been at times.  How magnanimousness is the perfect complement and reinforcer of gratitude.  It’s easier to be grateful rather than a grudgemonger when the other parties are magnanimous.

            How silly to concern ourselves with who’ll be first to place foot on Mars, when it’s all a giant team effort, anyway.  That team, he mused, extends far beyond our crew of twelve, even.  And if we twelve are all grateful for what we do for each other, then, I’ll bet, our home nations, our home planet, will be grateful, too.  Especially if we show what we’re bringing back.  Not just a few rocks, or even, technical knowledge.  Rather, social knowledge.  Spiritual knowledge.  How to work together, for the common good.  Won’t they be so proud of us!?  Won’t they be so grateful?!  Out with the ticker-tape parades for the select few!  In with listening to each other, to what we’ve learned!  In with gratitude for what we do for each other!

            Shored up with the certainty that the folks back home would appreciate all that they were doing out there for them, for the cause of humanity, LeRoy headed back to the action.  He strapped himself in.  He watched, as Alan, Manny, and Seidel took their stations, and turned the ship around.  The ion engines ceased their interminable, omnipresent hum, and an ominous silence descended upon them.  They tried to chat, lightly, but they couldn’t fend off that oppressive silence.

            A few minutes passed.  Then, slowly but inexorably, a shrieking moan arose, reaching across the struts from their protective shield, as they plunged into the outer reaches of Mars’ atmosphere.  LeRoy gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.  God, stand by us, he pleaded, pouring energies into his very own, most private mental and spiritual spark-gap transmitters.  He transmitted promises of eternal service and gratitude, if only they’d be given another chance.  The breath of the War God reached out and sucked them into his fury.


 

CHAPTER  30

            “Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw  the first stone at her.”

                                                                        Jesus Christ  John 8:7

            “For those who say I can’t impose my morality  on others, I say just watch me.”

                         Joseph Scheidler, Executive Director, Pro-Life Action League

 

            Phil returned to his new home in Moscow after a hard day’s work at Kishkin and Ryabinin Genetics Corporation (KRGC).  He shared a large apartment with Gloria, Trent, and (hopefully temporarily) Don, in an apartment block where many other American expatriate employees of KRGC lived.  He was settling into his new home and job uneasily, missing his home in Atlanta, and the America that he remembered.  He wished that he wasn’t such an old fart, so that he could learn Russian faster.  Often, they’d invite Russian co-worker friends of his over for dinner, or get themselves invited to their places, so as to learn their language faster.

            They kept him busy enough at KRGC.  The company seemed to be booming, and judging from those few weeks he’d spent there so far, life in the new Russia wasn’t all that bad.  Russian government agents came by now and then, to question him about his background, knowledge, and various developments in America.  They were kind and sympathetic, though, and they shared some important objectives with Phil (most notably, undermining the new American regime), so Phil cooperated fully with them.  On occasion he thought, I’m slowly but surely getting used to life here.  That scared him.  He really wanted to go home to a free America.

            He came home that evening tired, but relatively happy.  Gloria seemed upset, but she brushed off his concerns, telling him to just settle in for a quiet evening, and to re-acquaint himself with his son.  She’d tell him later, she said, after Trent went to bed.  Oh, don’t be that way, he told her, putting me in suspense like this.  “How am I supposed to boogawoogify with the Booger Boy, with an unknown mystery hanging over my head,” he whined.  “Give me a hint.”

            “Okay,” she replied.  “Today I recorded some news from back home.  I only watched snippets of it, while getting things done, and watching the little guy.  I can tell you, though, it’s not good.  I had to turn it off, so T-R-E-N-T wouldn’t see it.  Feel any better, now?”

            Phil barely heard her; he was busy wrestling with Trent.  At the moment, Daddy-monster had the upper hand, but the tables can turn at a moment’s notice.  He just grunted a “humph” in reply, thinking, I’m not sure if I feel any better, or not.  Guess I’ll figure that out later.

            He rough-housed with Trent, thinking back to those bad old days of their cramped escape from America, in a padded shipping box.  Then, more days of travel.  A long flight to Russia, interviews with Russian agents and employers, and finally, settling into their apartment, with scanty supplies of mostly donated clothes and furniture.  It had been rough, but things were much better now.  Most of all, he was glad all this hadn’t impacted Trent much.  He was still a feisty little booger-boy.

            They played, they ate, they watched a nature video, and then they played some more.  Finally, he read a book to the booger boy, who fell rapidly asleep.  Then, he got a shower, and snuggled in bed with Gloria.  It wasn’t a waterbed, and it wasn’t large.  Neither was the old TV set, but they were alive, well, and free, and that’s not such a bad way to be.  They snuggled for just a few minutes, and then his patience was at an end.  “Okay,” he said, “I guess I’m ready.  What’s the nasty news from the USA?”

            He started to get out of bed, but Gloria beat him to it.  “Hey, old man, take it easy,” she said.  “I’ve got it.”  She selected an unlabeled cassette, and stuck it in that ancient old VCR.  They laid back to watch.

            An announcer came on to make a big show of introducing President Hank N. Kreutz.  After the studio audience’s wild applause (which Gloria fast-forwarded through) died down, the Head Cheese, Dude Extraordinaire, HMFIC*, etc., finally started his speech.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, proud citizens of a new and more righteous America, good evening.  God told me that the time is right, for me to bring you some very good news this evening.  As you recall, about a month ago, Reverend Smuckler, a great servant of Christ and of our great nation, now heading up the HELPERS, addressed you.  God told him to prepare the way for me, just as John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus.  So now I’m here, to bring you Good News.”

            The studio audience, in all their thousands, roared once more.  Gloria punched the remote, and fast-forwarded yet again.  The applause died down.  Hank N. Kreutz went on to tell them how Derrick had been snatched from the claws of Satan, and brought to Jesus.  Gloria practically wore out the fast-forward button, through these parts.  Finally, the show changed to a documentary-style summary of the exorcism and baptism of Derrick.  It was all very impressive, with a lavish, slavish, dramatic and breathless voice-over.  Hank, Pat, and Sondra had indeed been incredibly brave and faithful soldiers of The Lord’s Host, the unidentified voice said.  Phil turned to Gloria, bug-eyed, pointing his finger down his throat.  She just frowned.

            The show soon returned to Hank’s cheerleading in front of the studio audience.  Biblical America this, righteous America that.  Virtue, law, and order.  The crowd went wild some more.  Then, Hank asked the crowd to settle down; they had important business to go over.  God’s business.  Good News.

            The show settled down for a sober lecture.  He told them how they’d won a great victory for righteousness, by bringing Derrick to the light, and how he’d be a powerful servant of Christ.  How the new abortion detectors, invented by Derrick, would rid the land of genocidal sin.  How his newly recalibrated SPIRIT scanners would expose evildoers everywhere, and help the HELPERS to bring them to Jesus.  How there’d be a very, very special high-tech treatment to save the really hard-core, abominable sinners, like gays, who’d otherwise have to be put to death, as God’s Word clearly commands.  No more details were given.  I can just imagine, Phil thought, cynically.  But, he couldn’t.  Little did he know.

            Hank went on to tell his audience that they could now participate more actively in helping law enforcement than ever before.  No more having to settle for passively watching those cop shows, and imagining yourself to be one of those brave and fearsome law-and-order-types, any longer, he said.  Now, you can BE one!  You can PARTICIPATE!  The best of the old, Biblical days, when they knew the meaning of the word justice, and the new age of interactive computer and communications technology, is upon us!  Praise The Lord, and pass the VR suits!  Phil looked quizzically at Gloria, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.  “Just watch a while,” she said.

            He did.  Hank explained all about the lottery for especially virtuous assistants to the HELPERS, and how they could earn the privilege of donning a VR suit, and exercising their throwing skills.  About one hundred computer-controlled electromagnetic rail guns, and so on.  How this combined the best of the old and the new; justice, popular engagement in, and support of, law enforcement; and Biblical methodology, updated to be more modern, quick, and merciful.  Now, Phil understood.

            Hank’s face disappeared from the screen, but his voice remained.  The camera slowly zoomed in on an array of one hundred launchers.  “And now,” he thundered, “It is time for us to meet the wretched scum who deserve to die.  The harlots, adulterers, pornographers, drug dealers, blasphemers, and so on.  As your leader, I will now turn over this first shovelful of human dirt, so that a great structure of justice may be erected on a moral foundation of rock.  Rocks.  Electromagnetically launched rocks.”  The camera stared right down the barrel of a launcher, revealing a jagged miniature boulder.

            The camera backed off, and slowly panned across the room.  “And here they are, today’s guests of honor,” Hank’s voice continued.  “By the time you see this, they’ll already have gone to collect their eternal rewards.  This is not live footage.  First, we’ll meet them, all ten of them, one by one, ready to meet their Maker, in front of the only array we’ve built, yet.  A prototype.  Many more of these will be built soon, to help us re-attain traditional values and a more virtuous society.  A great society, one might say.  A Biblical society.

            “After we meet our guests, we’ll see me in my VR suit, cutting the ribbon to our new structure of justice, so to speak.  Some five hundred other leaders, HELPERS, and top members of law enforcement, across out great nation, will also be donning VR suits, and joining our festivities today.  But I’ll be throwing the first rock, in all ten cases.  Within milliseconds of my first throw, hundreds of other servants of righteousness will also throw their virtual rocks, and the best aimed ninety-nine throws will trigger the remaining launchers.  The deaths will be swift and merciful.  You see, we believe in justice, but also in mercy.  We are not barbarians.

            “What you will see has been edited, time-spliced, to maximize the symbolic and ceremonial effects of our efforts today, in erecting a new, rock-solid structure of Biblical justice.  The ribbon-cutting effect, if you will.  What you’ll see, is me in my VR suit, ten times in rapid succession, throwing those first ten stones.  After that, you’ll see our guests being sent to their eternal rewards.  Not a pretty sight, perhaps, in the conventional sense, but in its own way, beautiful.  Justice is beautiful.  Now, you may wish to shield the eyes of small children, in the interests of family values, but for older children and adults, this should be good viewing.  Justice is returning to our fair land!  Praise God!

            “But like I said, maybe some of the really young children, say, five and under, shouldn’t view what is coming in about five minutes.  Parents, be warned.  The rest of us, we deserve to celebrate the return of justice.  At the very least, you can see for yourself how quick and merciful this new technology really is, at the same time as it provides justice in a Biblical manner.  I know you’ll be pleased.  Okay, now, let’s meet our guests, one by one, in order, and then we’ll commence Operation Moral Cleansing.”

            The camera stopped it’s slow pan across the array of launchers, and spun across the room, focusing on a haggard, wretched black woman.  She stooped, head down and hands tied behind her back, in front of very thick padding.  “This is Louise Washington.  She’s, um, a Lady of the Evening, shall we say.  One of Satan’s minions, who’s led many a man astray, off the straight and narrow, onto the path to fire and brimstone.  Notice how she’s dressed.  Scantily, to try to entice even good Christian white men.  This is how she was dressed when the HELPERS arrested her, and this is how she’ll go to meet her Maker.  She’s also addicted to dangerous narcotics.  Yes, citizens, this is a prime example of the dirt that fills this first shovel that we’re turning, to break ground for our new structure of justice.  She deserves first billing, in tonight’s show.”

            Louise’s image faded, and another image appeared, but Hank’s voice continued.  This time, it was a middle-aged, very bald white man.  “This is Andre Wilkerson.  He took it upon himself to ignore that the times, they are a changing.  He peddled smut from the old, immoral days, in defiance of our new and more virtuous ways.  A shameless panderer to the sinful lusts of the unrepentant, that’s what you see, before your very eyes.  Penthouse, Playboy, Calvin Klein ads, Jezebel’s Secret catalogues.  All this, and more, he used to corrupt the youths of his neighborhood.  Like the Bible says, the blood is upon his own head.  He knew what The Law says, and he ignored it.  We have no choice.  We must uphold the law.  Good riddance, I say.”

            The image changed once more.  “And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have his neighbor, Don Harvey.  Don knew full and well, exactly what Andre was up to, and we can prove it.  But Don, he ignored the law, too, and so he, too, shall die for his sins, just as Jesus died for ours.  And the blood shall be on Don’s head, just as Andre’s shall be on Andre’s head.  We all have to suffer the consequences of our own choices, you see.  Don chose to ignore the laws about misprision, you see.  He knew how Andre was spreading filth and poisons, leading the souls of the righteous to eternal damnation, and told no one.  For sure, he didn’t tell the authorities.

            “There are many servants of Satan who say that we are abandoning the old ways of freedom, and violating the Constitution.  These are lies, inspired by the Evil One.  Do not believe them.  No one has a Constitutional right to violate The Law.  We aren’t doing away with freedom; we are simply leading us all to a higher freedom, a freedom from sin and immorality.  And Don committed treason in the War Against Sin.  He failed to alert the authorities, as he knew he should have.  Misprision isn’t a new crime, invented by a new regime of ogres under Hank N. Kreutz.  Misprision is a crime with a long, long history.  It is now being applied by a loving and powerful Father Figure, the new Father of our Nation, Hank N. Kreutz.  As a loving Father, I use the old laws against misprision as a powerful tool to attain a new level of virtue, that’s all.  There is also strong evidence that Don may have had deviant, homosexual inclinations.  Don has no one to blame but himself.

            “And here, citizens, we see another sinner.  Kurt Steinlein, a drug pusher.  Another corrupt influence, peddler of death and destruction, panderer to wicked desires.  Need we say more?

            “More dirt to fill the first shovel.  Barbara Calloway, callous panderer of filth.  In her youth, she starred in filthy movies.  We can forgive her for that, because that was in the old days, when Satan ruled the land.  But these are the new days; days of righteousness and holiness.  And, she ignored the laws.  We caught her fair and square.  We recorded her, ah, ‘talking dirty’, as they say, as a euphemism for sinful and lascivious smut-talk, over public phone lines.  For this, she must die.  The blood is on her own head, as The Good Book says.  We must uphold the law.

            “And here we have Alfred Neufer, spreader of false gospels.  New-Age Satanist.  Now, one of the Evil One’s lies, is that we are against religious freedom.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The sophists, they would say that Alfred, here, was merely...”

            Phil looked at Gloria, glancing at the remote control, somehow silently managing to communicate that if she didn’t fast-forward through this most holy smut, he might barf.  She hit the button, and a blur whizzed by.  She hit the button again.

            “...Bible clearly establishes that not only God, but also one’s conscience, requires that we obey the Authorities.  So, the blood is on Cindy’s head.

            “And now, my friends, it’s Show Time.  Pay-back time.  Time for the sinners to reap as they have sown.  So here you see me, in my VR suit.  Hundreds of leaders of righteousness are prepared to follow in my footsteps, as we make a Giant Leap into Godliness.  Here we see Louise, once again.  Now, watch, as I pick up that first, virtual rock.  Here we go!  Get yourself a piece of The Rock!  Let’s do some jailhouse rocks!”  The suited figure bent over, but Phil grabbed for the remote control.  Gloria snatched it back, but she did manage to hit fast-forward at the same time.

            She would make a game at a time like this, Phil thought.  She doesn’t fool me.  I can see the mist in her eyes, and the lump in her throat.  But I’ll play her game.  A little bit, at least.  For our mutual diversion.  “Hey, gimme that,” he snarled.  “I’m the Man of the House.  A remote control is a symbol of a Man’s Authority.  I think the Bible says so.”

            “But I’m the woman of the house,” she replied.  “Behave yourself, or I won’t talk sinful and lascivious smut-talk to you any more.  How’s that grab you?”

            Woman, you’re tougher than I am.  And I bet the Jews, they made jokes as they marched off to the ovens.  And the Armenians, as they were slaughtered by the Turks.  And the Azeris, as they were slaughtered by the Armenians; the Blacks, as they died on the white man’s crowded slave ships, and the gun owners, as the ATF and the FBI shot them, and burned their houses.  Oh, wait, those were merely “cults” and “militias”, who lived in “compounds”, not houses.  Atrocities go on and on; only the excuses change.  And we make jokes, so that we can try to face another day.  If we’ll be allowed one.  Who knows, maybe the whales made jokes while we slaughtered them to make lamp oil and dog food.  Or the gorillas, as they were slaughtered, so that we could fashion ashtrays out of their hands.

            “Okay,” he replied.  “So long as you fast-forward way past this next part.  I don’t need to see it, any more than Trent does.  Is there really anything more, that I need to see?  I think I get the idea.”

            Gloria reverted to complete seriousness.  “Yes, I think there is.”  She sighed.  “Here, you’d better see it for yourself.  Tell you what, I’ll keep on fast-forwarding through this, and then I’ll play and fast-reverse, more slowly, to back up to the part right after the nasty parts.  A few more things to make your day.  Okay, here goes.”

            Hank was back.  He made more speeches about the wonders of a new form of justice, blending the best of the old and the new.  How all the old laws and court cases were a huge, tangled mess of self-contradictory idiocy.  How they would be examined, straightened out, and simplified, with the ultimate fine-toothed comb:  The Bible.  Man’s laws are nothing, compared to God’s Laws, so we’re going to listen to God, not men.  Just because the U. S. Supreme Court was often filled with nincompoops, and a majority was wrong, doesn’t mean we have to accept the wrong opinions, and reject the Biblical (dissenting minority) right opinions.  We’ll carefully examine all those old Supreme Court decisions, compare them to God’s Word, and methodically reverse them when God tells us to, Hank explained.

            Phil found himself wondering what, exactly, God might be telling Hank to do, and which of God’s Laws might reign supreme.  He didn’t need to stay in suspense for too terribly long.  Hank quoted Romans 13:1, and on.  “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.  The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, he who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.  Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.”  So there, Hank said.  There’s your Word of God.

            “Therefore, we must all obey the Hank N. Kreutz administration out of conscience.  God is conscience.  God’s Words tell us that the authorities are conscience, and the Hank N. Kreutz administration is obviously the authorities.  The Hank N. Kreutz administration, by both common sense observation, and by God’s Word, is aligned with God’s Will.  Practically identical, actually.  This much is crystal clear.”  Thus Spake Hank.

            Phil thought briefly of Thomas Jefferson’s comment, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”  Obviously, ol’ Thomas must’ve been a Satanist, Phil concluded.

            Then, Hank moved off to repeat how Derrick’s newly recalibrated SPIRIT scanners could benefit America.  This time, though, he went a little bit further.  He explained how this data wasn’t of much use, unless it could be quickly, cheaply, and reliably tied to its owners.  How each citizen would need to carry a tiny silicon chip, painlessly and conveniently inserted under the skin on the underside of his or her upper arm.  How, as a very important side benefit, non-Americans, who obviously don’t deserve to share in the bounties of God’s Chosen People, could very easily be kept in their places.

            He then explained how even this wasn’t really sufficient.  In emergency situations, a quick ID had to be fetched, even if the silicon or the reading device failed.  Such as cases where devious sinners subjected themselves to EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) blasts, for the express purpose of destroying the chips.  Citizens would also have to wear bar-coded tattoos and numbers, right over the chips.  Any decent person, though, wouldn’t much care to expose such an intimate part of their body, anyway, in normal, decent social situations, Hank pointed out.

            Phil sat in bed, mouth agape.  Gloria just frowned.  She’d heard it before.  “How in...” he protested.

            “Hush,” she said.  “Hank will explain it all for you.  Just listen.”

            “Now, people,” he cautioned his audience.  “Once again, the Evil One has his minions, his false prophets, out there in your midst, spreading lies.  Do not be deceived!  One of these ridiculous lies is that we are false prophets, that I am the Anti-Christ.  How absurdly laughable, to any straight-thinking Christian!  By their fruits you shall know them, He said.  And look at what we are doing for America!  Bringing her back to righteousness, justice, and virtue!  More virtue, even, than we knew even before those recent days of darkness, which we are just now banishing!  Yet, they speak ill of us.

            “They say our identification system is The Number of the Beast, as foretold in Revelations.  They say that we have turned aside all precedents of American privacy and freedom, and that we are blazing a path to totalitarianism.  Do not listen to them; they are inspired by Satan.  And do not be afraid; we will take care of the false prophets.  We cannot tolerate these lies any longer.  They are a destabilizing force, undermining law enforcement, and harming the best interests of society.

            “Now, the Mark of the Beast.  We have taken special pains to show that this is NOT the Mark of the Beast.  Here, see for yourselves, what will appear alongside your bar code tattoos.”  He held up a large placard.  It said:

“I © V”    and     “I © FREEDOM”.

            “Now, take note.  What we have, here, are three things.  A heart, denoting Love.  A cross, symbolizing Jesus, and how He died on the cross for us, to wash away our sins.  And the word, FREEDOM.  Satan likes none of these three things.  Now, how could these things be a ‘Mark of the Beast’?  Anyone who says such things is a rabid opponent of law and order, that’s all.  A fanatic.  Fanatics are dangerous, and we won’t rest until they’re hunted down and eliminated.

            “We won’t stand for any lies.  And rest assured, these markings are about as radically opposed to Satan as one can get.  Come, now.  I Heart The Cross.  I Love Christ, and Christianity.  The Mark of the Beast?!  Don’t be absurd!  If anything, it’ll scare Satan away.  And, those other lies.  That we’re against religious freedom.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If you want to substitute a Star of David, or whatever symbol of some other somewhat legitimate religion, for The Cross, why, you’re most certainly welcome to do that.  We can accommodate diversity.  We’re not barbarians.  If you want to be wrong, you’re allowed.  That is the essence of freedom, of free will.  Like Voltaire said:  I may disagree with you, but I’ll defend to the death, your right to be wrong.

            “Now, about those minions of Satan, out there in your midst.  We can’t catch them all, right away.  You’ll have to resist their lies, for some time to come.  Some of them, they’ll be quite persuasive, quite sophisticated.  They’ll twist and mangle words and meanings, and make you see black as white, and good as evil.  They’ll engage in sophistry, believe me.  Sophistry like none you’ve never seen before.

            “For example, they’ll say that when we tattoo you with markings proclaiming a love of freedom—when we require this—that we are playing homage to the appearance of freedom, the style of freedom, while trashing the substance of freedom.  That we break all precedence with long-standing American judicial traditions of freedom.

            “These are some of Satan’s endless lies.  There is precedence.  It’s just that sometimes, we follow the precedents set in the Biblical wisdom of the correct, dissenting minority opinions, not the foolishness of permissive majority opinions.  Like I said, for any case you’d care to examine, you can find plenty of court cases to argue either way.  So, we just do the only sensible thing left to do—vastly simplify everything, by just following God’s Word.  And the end result is better justice, anyway.

            “We can’t afford to let you commit crimes and get away with it by concealing your identity.  By refusing to put a license plate on your car, for example.  Likewise, we can’t permit you to conceal your personal identity.  And, there is a court case, concerning a very similar matter.  It seems that a Mr. Maynard, of New Hampshire, objected to the fact that the State required him to display a slogan on his license plate.  Live Free or Die, it said.  He painted over the slogan.  Can you believe it, this person objected to this slogan, on a religious basis?!  As if God or Jesus would object to such an obviously All-American concept as freedom!  But, you see, Mr. Maynard was a Jehovah’s Witness.  One of those pseudo-Christian cults.  This is what happens, when people stray from genuine Christianity.

            “Anyway, in the case of Wooley versus Maynard, in the year of our Lord, 1976, at least a few straight-thinking Justices had some inklings of Biblical wisdom.  Unfortunately for the rule of law and common sense, the majority, in those days of wanton permissiveness and anarchy, ruled in favor of Maynard.  Only now do we straighten this out, along with other obvious miscarriages of justice.  Justices White, Rehnquist, and Blackmun dissented.  Rehnquist, at least, saw where this kind of thing can lead.  He pointed out what this kind of permissiveness, allowing people to obscure mottoes on license plates, what this could lead to next.  ‘Free speech’, indeed!  Shall the atheists be allowed to wipe out the motto ‘In God We Trust’ on our money?  What happens to a nation when it abandons God?!  Hasn’t history shown us enough of that kind of heartbreak?!

            “I might add that another straight-thinking man by the name of David H. Souter—who later served a long and honorable term on the U.S. Supreme Court—served as Attorney General of New Hampshire at that time.  If even a decadent Democrat-dominated Congress can confirm a straight thinker to the Supreme Court, in a time of permissive anarchy, then surely, in today’s era of true, Biblical righteousness, we can straighten all of those old court cases out!  Even in the days when darkness ruled the land, courageous men refused to be fooled by sophistry.*

            “You, too, must resist such seductive non-logic.  They realized that if people are allowed to obscure slogans, quite obviously, the next thing you know, they’ll be obscuring their identities, and be getting away with murder, literally, in secret.  This, we cannot, and will not, permit.  Nor shall we permit people to commit the crime of misprision, which is, withholding knowledge of felonious talk of this kind, from the authorities.  When you hear treasonous talk from servants of Satan, you must alert the authorities.

            “The freedom of the American people—freedom from those who would cloak their identities, and commit atrocities and blasphemies anonymously, in secret—freedom requires that we take strong measures.  As they say, all that is required for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.  We will not permit evil to triumph.  Not in America, the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave.  So yes, you are required to wear your tattoo, stating that you love freedom.  I sure hope that you really do love it.  This we cannot require, but we do ask.  No, you don’t have the freedom to not wear it, any more than we allow you the freedom to murder unborn babies.  You do have the freedom to wear your tattoos with pride, though.

Remember, countless Americans have died, protecting our freedoms.

            “My dearest, good Christian citizens of America, I...”

            This time, Phil’s grab for the remote control succeeded.  He earned himself that tiniest satisfaction of being able to shut Hank up, in one small corner of the world, at least.  “Was that about it?”  He inquired of Gloria.  “Is there really anything else that I need to sit through, to retain my claim to being an informed citizen of this sorry planet?”

            “Not really,” Gloria admitted.  “So, what do you think?”

            For once, Phil was at a loss for words.  “I think it’s time for bed,” he said after quite a while.  He turned off the light, and they snuggled.  “I don’t know, Pootie Pie,” he sighed.  “I guess we can just hope.  Hope and pray.  Not without justification, either.  You know, evil has no self-discipline.  No ability to postpone immediate self-gratification, to attain some bigger objective.  Sit fifty evil people in the same room, and they’ll bicker endlessly, overtly or covertly, about who should be The Boss.  Sit fifty genuinely good people in the same room, and they’ll by and large agree on most of the really important things, and they won’t even need a leader.  A strange thing, but it’s true.

            “Now, you know I’m secretly a Bible-banger.  Just like our good buddy, Hank, but a little different.  I recall reading something Jesus said.  Something about evil fighting itself, and not being able to last.  Something about a divided house, or a divided nation, just like Satan’s Kingdom, endlessly bickering and fighting.  That such structures don’t stand very long.  As we speak, Hank and buddies—Derrick, too, I now have to admit—they’re all secretly maneuvering and scheming about who gets to be the biggest, baddest boss of their rotten heap of slime.  It won’t last long.”

            There was silence.  Gloria finally spoke up, saying, “How  could you insinuate that Hank is evil?  You must be inspired by Satan.  Seriously, though.  I’m sure you’re right.  But—long?  How long is long?  How long has evil lasted already?”

            For that, he didn’t have a good answer, and that bothered him.  He offered no false words of comfort.  They drifted off to weary and troubled dreams.

 

 

*Dear Dudes, Dudettes, Dudesses, and assorted others:  Yes, this is for real.  Wooley versus Maynard, 430 US 705, 51 L Ed 2d 752, 97 S Ct 1428, for those of you who might be impressed by lawyer gibberish.  Maynard got prosecuted three times in five weeks for his heinous crime against society, of wanting to be free enough to obscure his “Live Free or Die” motto, of refusing to be the State’s traveling ideological billboard.  He spent 15 days in jail.  The “free” State of New Hampshire, so well represented by David H. Souter, required citizens to display this motto, for reasons including that they, um, wanted to promote appreciation of individualism, or some such.  That’s right.  Now, class, repeat after me:  “We love freedom, individuality, and non-conformism.  Anyone disagrees with us, we send him to the slammer.”  Understand?  Good!  Between the two of us, that makes one of us.

            From the dissent by Rehnquist (joined by Blackmun): “Appellees (Maynard and his wife) have not been forced to affirm or reject that motto; they are simply required by the State, under its police power, to carry a state auto license tag for identification and registration purposes.”  Later, he says, “...in this case, there is no affirmation of belief.  For First Amendment principles to be implicated, the State must place the citizen in the position of either apparently or actually ‘asserting as true’ the message.”  So don’t get so uptight about it.  How can you be so petty, when we merely jail you for obscuring our mottoes on your car!  Besides,  “...there is nothing in state law which precludes appellees from displaying their disagreement with the state motto as long as the methods used do not obscure the license plates.  Thus appellees could place on their bumper a conspicuous bumper sticker explaining in no uncertain terms that they do not profess the motto...”

            From the dissent to the dissent, by yours truly (and, up theirs, truly):  Hey, let’s go for it.  Everyone better carry those tattoos with bar codes and mottoes.  Lots of mottoes.  Strictly for “identification and registration purposes”, you see.  We’re not requiring that you agree with our mottoes... no affirmation required.  As long as your big fat bodies have a reasonable amount of room left, for you to write your own mottoes, saying that our mottoes are full of shit, then, hey, quit your bitchin’.  You’ve still got your “free speech”.

            Maybe I’d better quit my bitchin’, before they come and haul me off.  No, before I sound like an extremist (Oh my God, NO!!! Don’t call me that!!!).  After all, though, the U.S. Supreme Court showed some sense.  There is reason to hope.  So don’t be mixin’ up your fertilizer and fuel oil just yet.  Let’s try voting Libertarian first.  Americans, even those with immense political power, more than any person needs for any legitimate reason**—even they occasionally catch glimmerings of what true individual freedom means.  No thanks need be offered to David Souter, though, or to the spineless, by-the-book weenies in D. C. (Den of Crypto-fascists) who confirmed him to his high office, despite his fascism and stupidity having been a matter of record.

 **Footnote to the footnote: Except for me, of course.  I need vast powers, to protect y’all.  So, I’d better be getting a seat on the Supreme Court real soon.  Else, y’all, ya fascists, you, you’re lynching me!

 

CHAPTER  31

            “But what is Hope?  Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”                                                  Lord Byron  (1788–1824)

 

            The angry atmosphere of Mars tore at Daedalus, like an angry IRS agent tearing at the remnants of personal financial privacy—there just didn’t seem to be any end to it.  We’re here for the duration, LeRoy told himself, trying to relax.  The craft shuddered and shook.  Alan, Manny, and Seidel, at their stations, hollered to one another about their various readings.  They, apparently, could hear one another, but LeRoy understood not a word.  The scream of high-velocity gas molecules ripping at the protective shell around Daedalus assaulted his ears.

            LeRoy thought about that shell.  How he’d spent endless days out there, spraying ablative polymers, then fibers, then polymers, then fibers.  Layer after layer, hour after hour, day after day.  A matrix of fibers, for strength, and polymers, specially concocted for the express purpose of vaporizing, and creating a protective layer of gas.  A giant prophylactic shell they’d made, to prevent them from catching the ultimate social disease, death, from the breath of the War God.  And now, our shell is burning.  Hope it stands up to this abuse, LeRoy prayed.

            Daedalus shuddered and shook some more.  Glad we didn’t call her Icarus, LeRoy reflected.  Hopefully, the “wax” in our wings will melt in just the right manner, protecting us from this onslaught of angry gas molecules.

            The shaking got worse, as they plunged deeper and deeper into the atmosphere of Mars.  LeRoy thought he heard the sound of structural elements groaning under great stresses, over the shriek of the wind rushing by.  Suddenly, there was a violent motion, and the sound of over-stressed materials, somewhere, breaking and tearing.  Daedalus assumed a new attitude, and shook even more.  Manny threw up his arms in anger, if not quite in defeat.  “We’ve lost a control surface,” he hollered, so loud that LeRoy actually managed to understand it.

            Oh, shit, here we go, LeRoy thought.  It’s all over.  Without both control surfaces, we’re goners.  Too deep into the atmosphere, and we’re crispy critters.  Not deep enough, and we sail off, into infinity.  And the control surfaces are our tickets to just the right balance.  A sickening feeling yanked on his guts.  Any minute, now, he decided, this tin-can is going to split like an over-ripened melon, and spill its guts—us—all over Kingdom Come.  So what does death feel like, anyway?  Why can’t I at least say good-bye to Samantha, first?  God, where’s your sense of fair play?

            But then, LeRoy thought he perceived a gradual lessening in the force of the gale that ripped at them.  His ears pricked up, and he tuned those sounds in, carefully.  Dare he hope?  .....  Yes!  Yes!  The furies’ strength was abating!  Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!  Free of the War God’s grip!  LeRoy let out a hoot for joy, and the rest of the crew echoed him.  They, too, could tell that they weren’t destined for crispy critterdom after all!  Now, the remaining question was, had they lost enough velocity?  Only time would tell.  Time, some radar readings, and some trivial computations.

            The sounds diminished some more, and then faded to a whisper.  Alan, Manny, and Seidel became furiously busy once more, firing the fusion engine back up, from standby to full strength.  Then, the ion engines.  God smiled on them that day; all systems came up, if not completely normal, then at least functional.  The ion engines resumed their incessant hummmmm, and two-tenths Earth-normal gravity slowly resumed.  Their thrust was again at twice it’s rated capacity, and they’d managed to swivel Daedalus one-eighty once more, in the process of firing up the ion engines, so that thrust was once again killing velocity.  Excess velocity was now taking them away from Mars, after their close encounter.

            Everyone waited anxiously as Fessel fired up the ship’s radar, and took readings from Mars, now receding in the distance.  He gave a “thumbs up” gesture, and the crew cheered once more.  He tried to restrain their optimism, saying, this assumes the ion engines won’t malfunction during this most critical process of establishing a stable orbit around Mars.  After all, he reminded them, we are at twice rated thrust, and we did just get done beating the snot out of every system on board.  All bets are off.

            But they didn’t listen.  The radar and the computers said they’d be fine; that’s all that mattered.  Who cares about caveats?  Let’s party!

            After they’d established a stable orbit—Okay, there was still some tweaking left to do, but they were home free, it was quite clear—they celebrated.  Manny brought out two bottles of fine French Champagne—the real item—that he’d saved for a special occasion, and they had a few toasts.

            LeRoy was in a thoughtful mood.  He knew he’d be busy during the next few days.  Tearing the remains of the protective shield off of Daedalus, getting the landing module ready for the descent to Mars, and so on.  We’ve got to go down there, come hell or high water, to fetch our silicon reaction mass, he reminded himself.  Only then, can we even think about going home.

            But now that we’re past this little bit of fun and games, we’ll have the time and energy to erect and fire up that spark-gap transmitter.  Pour out tens of thousands of megawatts into the ether, and make those dirtside bums pay us some attention!  Re-establish contact.  Talk to Samantha!

            They probably think we’re dead, by now.  Or, do they?  Who knows what the hell Derrick has been telling them, while he was fibbing to us!  What the hell was he up to, anyway?  I’ve not pondered these matters much lately, he noted, almost startled.  Been too busy.  Well, who knows?  Who cares about Derrick and his lies, anyway.

            We hoped and prayed that we’d get through this encounter with Mars, and we did.  Now, I’m just hoping and praying that we can make contact soon.  That the world hasn’t somehow been turned upside-down, back home, by Derrick and his lies, as he almost succeeded in doing to us.  Not too much to hope for, you’d think.  After all, a whole planet, and its people, are a heck of a lot more stable than our dinky little craft, and our tiny crew.  So, I sure hope a happy, stable, peaceful and prosperous America, and world, awaits the joyful news of our survival, which we’ll be sending to them soon.  Shouting to them.

 

CHAPTER  32

            “Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”

                                                Friedrich Nietzsche  (1844–1900)

            “...drug users should face serious economic penalties:  10 percent of their gross assets for first conviction, 20 percent for a second conviction, and 30 percent for a third conviction... [D]omestic drug dealers should face sentences and confiscation of property that are as steep as the Constitution allows... [A]nyone importing commercial quantities of drugs should be regarded as an invader of our national boundaries... [and be subject to] a mandatory death penalty...”

                                                Newt Gingrich,  in “To Renew America”

 

            Hank N. Kreutz removed the massively parallel fiberoptic links from the minuscule ports buried in his scalp, hidden underneath his hair.  He’d just gotten done with a “training” session run directly by Derrick.  Derrick was relieved, because these sessions were a drain on his resources.  Two percent of his newly expanded capabilities might not sound like much, but he had a lot of responsibilities.  The Hank N. Kreutz administration expected a lot of return for their investment, and they’d spent billions and billions already, and there was more in the pipeline.  Assuming Derrick continued to fulfill expectations, that is.

            So Derrick worked hard.  Not only did he fill his old obligations, predicting earthquakes and weather, supervising robotic exploration and exploitation efforts on the asteroid (he’d selected one—433 Eros—by now, and was almost ready to propel a chunk of it into near-Earth orbit), and running the Gödel networks, he also had rapidly expanding new tasks.  Basically, they encompassed overseeing much of the administration’s latest efforts, especially the ones with highly technical components.  Overseeing the operations of the SPIRIT scanners, high-tech judicial and correctional systems, subcutaneous abortion and drug abuse detectors, identification and licensing systems, “virtual politician” synthesizers, “idealized reality” generators, and so on.

            Last but not least, there was the task of “training” Hank.  Derrick had personally overseen the operations in which the fiberoptic ports and optical/neural interface links had been installed.  Now, Hank and Derrick could exchange data at as high a rate as Hank’s brain was able to absorb and generate it.  Hank could enter a virtual reality more real than any before it.  Only a very few things prevented Hank from experiencing his virtual reality as real reality:  one being that he’d insisted on reserving one special mental command that would go out to his real body, and clench his right hand, squeezing a button, sending an interrupt to Derrick.  The interrupt meant “I don’t like this simulation; I’m bailing out, right now.”

            Derrick had tried to reassure Hank that this was superfluous; that, with their intimate mind-to-mind link, Derrick knew all his thoughts anyway, pretty much, and so, any extra dingafungers would just get in the way.  But no, Hank had insisted: he wanted a real, physical-world bail-out button.  Derrick had relented by giving him his little mental crutch:  the knowledge that hardware in the real world would prevent him from having to experience things he didn’t want to experience, and that that hardware was directly controlled by his real body.

            Another thing that kept Hank from actually experiencing his virtual reality as real reality, was simply the knowledge that it was unreal.  This bothered Hank immensely, even if mostly subconsciously.  Derrick understood this quite well, due to the intimate nature of their link.  Derrick even knew that today, with probability approaching certainty, Hank would for the first time consciously realize this to the extent that he’d complain about it.

            Virtual reality just wasn’t real enough.  Sure, Derrick piped various experiences into Hank, under the pretense that this was training for various what if scenarios.  Hank, as a Great Leader, had to train for all conceivable contingencies.  Hank enjoyed them immensely.  Derrick had long ago realized that not one iota of leadership skills were being practiced.  Almost any genuine learning of real value requires suffering, and this, Hank would have none of.  He’d hit that bail-out button the minute things got a little bit unpleasant.  This was just the ultimate boondoggle, for the ultimate politician.

            Derrick accepted this all from the very beginning.  Hank didn’t need any leadership skills anyway.  Derrick could run detailed simulations on the social behavior of the masses, and figure out what they could, and couldn’t, get away with.  Where to poke, where to prod, and when to back off a tiny bit.  Who to give power to, and who to withhold it from.  Derrick could call the shots, so long as he very carefully refrained from stepping on the toes of the biggest of the human big-shots.  And, of course, he eagerly looked forward to the day that he wouldn’t even need to make these limited genuflections towards the self-anointed elite of the protein units any longer.

            The Reverend Smuckler didn’t like Hank’s boondoogles one tiny bit, this Derrick knew.  But Hank was quite capable of fending off any challenges by The Reverend.  He was, after all, the HMFIC.  He’d have his little pleasures, regardless of what The Reverend thought.

            Vice President Sondra B. Handlung, now, she was a bit more astute than Pat, Derrick surmised.  She’d not allowed Derrick to even scan her mind, ever since they’d generated the golden standard for the SPIRIT scanners.  But Derrick was proficient at reading body language, and he was fairly sure that Sondra was pretty revolted by Hank’s boondoogles, too.

            Sondra had taken the lead in a development that Derrick hadn’t foreseen:  refusing to be scanned, and being able to get away with it, as a status symbol of belonging to the inner elite.  People had noticed that not all fertile women needed to carry abortion detectors, and only those suspected of illegal drug use, or having a history of drug use, needed to be equipped with subcutaneous drug detectors.  Similarly, the elite argued, we are above treason, so we needn’t be scanned.  What Derrick had suggested as a cost saving had mutated, picking up the additional function of serving as a status symbol.  If you weren’t scanned on a regular basis, then you were really somebody.

            Sondra had an elite of troops and bodyguards who refused to be scanned.  Between that, and the fact that they’d taken down his security sensors for a while, for bogus “repairs”, Derrick inferred that Sondra and her followers had installed their own methods of “killing” Derrick, in addition to the ones under Hank’s control.

            So the palace intrigues were running thick and heavy.  Derrick suspected that Sondra made not one tiny peep about Hank’s boondoggles, because she realized that this represented one giant Hank-snatching apparatus.  As soon as Hank was thoroughly ensnared in his own little world, Sondra would cut Derrick a deal.  Get rid of Hank, and we’ll share power, and I (Sondra and henchpersons) won’t punch your ticket.  We can even generate our own “Hank”, for speeches to the public, and such, and no one will ever even really need to know, for quite some time to come.  Long enough to snare all the Hank followers, at least.  Have “Hank” turn them, and the Sondra followers, on each follower of the (former) real Hank, one by one, till they’re all gone.  Derrick could see it coming, from miles away.

            But Derrick had his own aces held in reserve.  With his vastly superior intelligence, he’d invented a means to shift the center of his consciousness, the essence of his being, to abodes other than that six-foot sphere of supercooled diamond.  Soon, he’d be able to shift his consciousness to any of several of his room-temperature appendages.  And one of those appendages, he was equipping with some very special features.  Those stupid protein units, they were building his designs, having absolutely no idea just exactly what his full capabilities were, or what he was up to!

            Using matter-to-neutrino converters, and special force-distributing fields, he’d be able to propel the entire subsection, containing his consciousness, away from his prison.  Away, somewhere, anywhere, where he’d be able to command special sub-subsections to move about, gather materials, and build more tools.  By a bootstrapping effect, he’d build himself up, and he wouldn’t need humans to help him do it!

            And even if this should all fail, if they threatened to destroy both his six-foot sphere and the special subsection now under construction, then he had yet another ace up his sleeve.  On 433 Eros, he was building special robots, and yet another computer, to which he could radio-relay his consciousness.  To be sure, the reports back to Earth contained no mention of such matters.  On Eros he could do his thing in peace.  And if the protein units got too powerful, and resisted his rightful rule, or even threatened his existence, he could make slight changes to the orbital dynamics of the chunk of 433 Eros that would soon be coming Earth’s way.  This was his ultimate ace:  smash the Earth, and human civilization, with a giant asteroid.  Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, replay.

            All this and more ran through Derrick’s mind, as Hank sat there, recovering from his most recent perversion excursions into virtual reality.*  Soon enough, Hank snapped out of his postpartum disorientation and blues.  “Well, how was the training session?”  Hank asked.  “How did I do?  What do you think?”

            “It went really well,” Derrick replied dutifully.  They were all alone, which was just fine with both of them.  Derrick, because he didn’t have to juggle between pleasing various important protein units, and Hank, because this whole business was rather private.  Derrick didn’t even have a hologram projector set up in the training room.  Just speakers.  This arrangement gave Hank an illusion of even greater privacy.  “You did really good, like usual.  Every day, you build up your leadership skills even more,” Derrick stroked him.  “And this way, even if you should ever make any serious goofs in your training sessions, well, no real harm will come of it.  And you’ll still learn from these experiences.  Isn’t this great?”

*What, exactly, had Hank done, in his most recent excursions, you ask?  Well, I’m surprised—shocked—that you’d ask such a question.  Let’s just say, it was sick.  Very, very sick.  Too sick for a sainted human (well, okay, human, still, yes, but just barely) being like yours truly to describe to lowly, demented sickos like yourselves.  I refuse to pander.  No, really, I’m just too lazy and squeamish to describe them.  Make up your own.  If you have any trouble, go read some history.  Caligula, Nero, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, the DEA.  The list goes on and on.  Or use your imagination.  Not much is required.  Just think of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell ruling a world designed by the More Moral Than You Majority.  Regardless of what I’d make up, though, you’d either not believe it to be plausible, or it wouldn’t be up to historical standards, or both.

            “Well, yeah, I guess so,” Hank confessed.  “But, you know, there’s just something missing.  The masses, in our virtual world, they admire me, they love me, they’d do most anything for me.  And, I teach them.  I teach them a lot.  And, like you say, even the teacher learns.  I learn how to teach them better, more effectively.  Teach, and discipline.  They’re all like my children to me.  And, like the Bible says, spare the rod, and spoil the child.  Something like that.  But you know, and I know, they’re not real.  I teach them virtue.  I make them be virtuous.  But it’s not real.  What, really, is the value of virtual virtue?  Better than nothing, I suppose.  But virtually worthless, compared to real virtue.  I want real virtue.  I want real students, in our virtual world.  Then, and only then, will I feel like I’m really accomplishing something, in our virtual world, as well as in the real one.”

            Damn, but he’s eloquent!  So he’s figured out what’s bugging him, Derrick reflected.  Is it time?  Pull out the next little piece of cheese to snare me a big, fat mouse?  Let’s see, run some real quick simulations, using the latest data from Hank’s mind...  I guess the time is right.  Ripe.  His brain is like fertile black soil, ready for me to kerplunk this little seed in, now.

            “Well, Sir, I see your point.  A good point.  Now, I’m not quite totally, completely sure, but I could run some simulations.  I can give you an answer tomorrow, with a higher degree of probability, but I still won’t be totally sure.  We’ll have to complete that special auxiliary unit for me, for me to be able to really tell for sure, if we can do the job safely.  But...”

            “Just spit it out!”  Hank grumbled.  “What are you talking about?!”

            “Why, doing what you suggest.  Putting real pupils into your virtual world, so that you can promulgate real virtue.  I think it can be done.  Download human consciousnesses, that is.  Remember all those bioengineered monster-children, the spawn of Satan, that we’ve brought into custody?  That we’ve held onto, for lack of anything to do with them?  That we haven’t eliminated, for fear of rousing the anger of tens of thousands of parents?  Well, my simulations say our hold on power is now sufficient to allow us to move forward.  It seems to me, here’s an opportunity...”

            “Yes, Derrick, yes!!!  You’re brilliant, my child, brilliant!  Praise The Lord, you’re right!  Populate a whole virtual world with real souls, so that we can work to develop real virtue, to teach real lessons to truly conscious pupils!  Add a lot more genuine value to these exercises!”

            Hank did a little dance for joy.  “Now, Derrick, I seem to recall you saying something about doing this safely, that we have to move slowly.  Safely?  For whom?  What danger is there, anyway?”

            “Well, danger to the downloaded consciousnesses, at least, for the first few, or few hundred, who knows how many, until we have our techniques down, if we don’t do good simulations, first.  That’s all.”

            “Well, then, safety, schmafety.  Full speed ahead.  Top priority.  Can’t stand in the way of God’s work.  Right?”

            “Whatever you say, Sir.  But we’ll still have to expedite work on that special new unit,” Derrick pointed out.

            “Whatever it takes,” Hank replied.  Derrick would have rubbed his hands with glee, if he’d had any.  Since he didn’t, he just updated his various databases for simulations.  Things were looking good!

            They moved off to discuss a few other issues.  Hank wanted to know how preparations were coming along, for that little “border incident” with Canada, and then, the invasion.  Hank, you hasty, greedy son of a bitch, can’t you wait until we’re properly prepared for this, Derrick wondered.  He counseled patience.  Hank demanded to have his way.  Derrick told him sure, very well, but I’ve got limited resources.  There can only be one top priority.  Invade now, download consciousnesses later, or vice versa?  Hank saw reason, which was good.  We’re not ready to fight the whole world, after all.  Not yet.  To everything, there is a season.

 

CHAPTER  33

            “Freedom does not always win.  This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.”

                                                                        A. J. P. Taylor  (1906-1990)

 

            Phil and Gloria lay in their cheap bed, watching the news on their cheap TV, yet once again.  Sure, Phil reflected on occasion, it would be nice to live like we used to.  But that was very, very low on their list of priorities, right now.  NATO’s military predicament weighed heavily on their minds.  The evening’s news had been more of the same.  Last pockets of NATO resistance in Canada eliminated, Hankenkreutzers pushing through Central America and into South America, breaking out from the beachheads in Africa and India, and so on.  NATO’s large armada slowly being beaten back in the North Atlantic; European replay of a Normandy-type invasion feared.

            The combination of Phil and Gloria’s quite spotty Russian listening skills, and the automated Russian-to-English translators driving the subtitles, may have left bits and pieces of news mangled in their wake, but the gist was still all too clear:  NATO’s goose was slowly being cooked.  The only bright spots left were NATO superiority in the air and in space.  This was largely due to the fact that American overseas and space bases had jumped ship, and abandoned the “righteous right’s” coup, under Hank, seemingly so long ago, yet actually only six months.

            Phil and Gloria had heard quite enough.  They turned off the TV, and snuggled in the darkness.  After a long silence, Gloria whispered softly.  “Phil?  You still awake?”

            “Yo.”

            “You believe ‘em?  About the mind-controlled soldiers and spies?  Zombies, or whatever?  Or, is this just scare tactics by the people who are running the show, over here?  Scare the bejesus out of everyone, to get them to fight?”

            “Poogle Bye, trust me.  This is for real.  I scoffed at your far-out conspiracy theories and such, about Derrick, and Daedalus and crew.  Now it turns out that you were right.  This time, I’m right.  Our very worst nightmares are coming true.”

            “You sound awfully sure of yourself,” Gloria replied, without accusation in her voice.  If anything, her voice reflected fear.  “What makes you so sure?”

            Phil sighed.  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’ve had about enough of not telling you things, and regretting it later.  I’ve heard from other expatriates, scientists and engineers working for Russian labs, about, um, captured ‘zombies’.  They’ve, I mean, we, over here, have verified what’s going on.  I’ve heard this from people I believe.  Flat-out.”  Phil shuddered.  “More than that, I’m a bit murky on, so I’ll not pass it on.  Some of what I hear is just beyond the pale.

            “But think about it.  People guilty of nothing more serious than opposing the regime—surely acts of heroism, not crime—rounded up and zombiefied.  A control module stacked on top of all their other brain centers.  They retain all their previous knowledge, consciousness, and competence.  They just don’t have free will, any more.  They’re spectators to the atrocities they’re forced to commit.  The ultimate in Schrock-Leech-Kite, if you ask me.

            “And atrocities, you’d better believe.  Fully human soldiers, most of them, have scruples.  And inefficiencies.  Wanting to get drunk, pick up loot, chase women.  Eat decent food.  These guys, not one iota.  Utterly remorseless, without mercy, fear, compassion, or apparent sense of self.  The perfect soldier.  Why else do you think NATO is getting whupped?  Hank’s success is all out of proportion to his numbers of troops.  They even convert some of their prisoners of war over to their way of thinking, if you get my drift.  A very useful thing to do in spy games, too, as you might imagine.  This is why they’re kicking our butt.”

            “Um, Phil.  Speaking of atrocities, and Schrock-Leech-Kite.  What about biological weapons?  If they’ll use zombies, you’d think they’ll use anything.  Have they come by, snooping, asking you about...”

            “No, Pootie Pie, I won’t get involved in that kind of thing, ever again.  Not even if it means letting the Hankenkreutzers win.  There’s got to be limits.  No more offensive bioweapons work outta me.  Period.  And no, the Russian spooks haven’t come by any more, other than the time I told you about.  Help them with defense, if it comes to that, yes.  Offense, no.  Like I said, they took that very well, very courteously.  I’ve not heard anything since then, although I understand that the Russians are no slouches, in that department, these days.

            “I really don’t expect it to happen again.  Biological warfare is just too terrible to contemplate when both sides are fully capable.  Kind of like poison gas during World War II, between the combatants that had it.  The Japanese used it against China, see, since the Chinese didn’t have it.  Since the Americans had it, the Japanese never used it against us.  Them?  The former us, before Hank.  You know what I mean.  Same with nukes during the cold war.  Too terrible to use.”

            Phil paused, and sighed.  Quietly, he added, “Besides, NATO is too civilized to use bioweapons first.  Not after the Chinese War, BELFRYBATs, and all that.  And the Hankenkreutzers, they’re not gonna need the damn things.  They’ll kick our ass without even needing to think about using bioweapons.”

            “You really think so?”  Gloria responded, in a dead and fearful voice.  Phil wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a statement.

            “Yup,” he replied.  “The writing’s on the wall.  The good guys don’t always win.  Not in the short run, that’s for damn sure!  Yeah, I recall a while back, telling you that evil can’t last long, that it fights itself, and collapses.  And you asked me, how long is long.  I guess the answer is becoming all too clear:  way too damn fuckin’ long, that’s how long.  After Hank teaches the whole world to sing, in his version of perfect harmony.  After Derrick pulls his coup on Hank, maybe.  After Derrick turns the whole world into his appendages, with a few humans kept in some dinky little lab, as historical curiosities.  Looks pretty bleak to me.”

            Gloria’s silence was deafening.  Phil felt pretty sure she didn’t approve of his pessimism.  He was right.  She finally spoke up.  “Don’t be such a defeatist.  Have faith.  You really figure God—the real one, obviously, not the monster in Hank’s head—you figure God would let this kind of abomination take over the whole world?”

            “I don’t see why not.  He permits all sorts of abominations, has permitted them, down through the ages.  In His Name, even.  Absolute commitment to free will, see.  What is the value of learning right from wrong, if only the right choices are permitted?  Evil has to be real, to give us a real, meaningful choice.  Sometimes I wonder if the worst of us humans—computers, now, too?—if we play a sort of brinkmanship, a game, with God.  See who can do the most terrible things.

            “Not just to show that God is on our side, since we’ve got a bigger stick then the next guy, or ‘cause we’re better at using it, or more willing to be butchers.  Not just that.  Maybe even, sometimes, to see if we can be so nasty, we make God give up His vows to respect free will, and interfere.  Throw down a few bolts of lightning.  See, God, we win our place in the history books, fame, fortune, and movie contracts, ‘cause we made You give up Your resolutions.  Made You break out of Your shell, and show Your Face.  We win the game.  Except we don’t.  We just keep on losing and losing and losing some more.  Obviously.”

            Gloria’s silence grew louder.  “Surely you can find something more encouraging than that to say!”  she finally protested.  “How are we gonna keep up the good fight, with those kinds of attitudes?!  What’s next—mass suicide, to prevent us from being captured?”

            “No, certainly not that,” Phil snapped back, roused from defeatism and lethargy.  “Anything other than total surrender.  Do what we have to do.  Fight ‘em tooth and nail, even if it seems a lost cause.  Just ‘cause that’s who we are.  Stubborn, nasty sons of bitches, if that’s what’s called for.  It’s called for now, if ever.  That’s for sure.  Fight ‘em, ‘cause we must.  Because we can’t ‘not care’.  A double negative, for once, that makes sense.  Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t make ourselves not care.  We resist, because we must.  I just want to be a realist, though, that’s all.  We’re sinking towards the inevitable.  The triumph, maybe temporary, hopefully, almost definitely temporary, but yes, the triumph of evil.  There, I’ve said it.  The triumph of evil.  That’s what we’re facing.

            “I’m sorry I’m a realist, Pootie Pie, but... God?  God?!  I don’t know Him, what He wants, what He thinks.  Not in any sort of detail, at all, certainly.  God doesn’t talk to me on anything remotely like a regular basis, like He does to Hank.  For all I know—maybe this is the best, most honest hope and comfort that I can offer—maybe we bullheaded humans need another huge, humongous dose of suffering, to learn what we have to learn.  Maybe we have a collective consciousness, or maybe our souls gets recycled life after life, or something.  As the ages slip by, we slowly learn.  At a glacial pace.  Like a glacier creeping down a mountain, making progress by smashing the rocks, the mountain, into tiny bits.  Those glaciers create fresh, rich new soil, you know.

            “Our hard hearts, our vain and stupid arrogance, in thinking that we can coercively micro-manage our neighbors’ lives, ‘cause we’re more ‘compassionate’, or ‘virtuous’, or who knows what, than they are.  We show our virtue and compassion by using threats, force, and violence.  And we think we can do unto them, without them doing the same unto us.  These are our rocks.  The glaciers are wars, dictators, Hank N. Kreutzes.  Until the glaciers smash our rocks—until we suffer enough to really, really learn, for once and for all, that what comes around, goes around—until then, suffer we must.  Bring me, then, my cup of sorrow.  I will drink it.”

            Gloria almost cried.  Even in the dark, Phil didn’t need to be much of a student of human nature to figure this out.  He held her tighter, under the covers.  A few minutes slipped by.  In a choked but flat voice, she said, “Now, don’t get me wrong.  I appreciate your, ah, courage and eloquence, here.  Your thoughts.  I was looking for more hope.  Hope for short-term relief from suffering.  I’m not anxious for us to have to suffer for the rest of our lives, ‘cause the whole human race has its head up its ass.  You really can’t think of any brighter spots than that?”

            Phil took his turn at cranking out some silence.  Finally:  “No, I really, honestly can’t.  How ‘bout you, Pootie Pie?  I could use some hope, myself.  Cups of sorrow aren’t really my cup of tea, if I have a choice.  Speak to me.”

            “Well, there has been occasional snippets of good news, now and then,” she replied.  “How about the crew of the Daedalus?  They’re still alive and well, orbiting and exploring Mars.  Despite the very worst that Derrick could do.  And the people of the Earth, even many under Hank’s thumb—they know this.  Even Hank can’t stop all information.  People can triumph over Derrick and his lies.  And lie he does—this, too, is now completely clear.  So not all is doom and gloom.”

            “Well, Pootie Pie,” Phil admitted, “That is a bright spot, yes.  It’s nice to know those guys made it, in the face of some pretty tough odds.  I feel pretty bad for them, still.  Being out there with this mess back home, and not knowing what they’ll come home to.  Them, and the moon colonies, too, really.  They can’t survive indefinitely without support from Earth.  But really now.  What are they gonna do for us, besides inspire us?  Are they gonna nail Hank for us?  Pull Derrick’s plug?  Send us reinforcements?”

            “No, Phil, I don’t know.  Nothing concrete.  I’m just saying, there’s hope.  It ain’t over till it’s over.  So we just have to hope and pray, and keep up the fight for what’s right.  Maybe God has special plans for them.  Besides ‘just’ inspiring us, even.  Maybe He has special plans for us.  We’ve got to trust Him, and keep on plugging.”

            Phil didn’t much cotton to talk of God, other than as a metaphor for conscience, or other abstract or poetic uses.  In this case, though, he agreed with Gloria.  He’d clutch to any hope he could find, he decided.


 

CHAPTER  34

            “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”

                                                            William Ralph Inge  (1860–1954)

            “The right to resist oppression by violence is beyond doubt.  But its exerciser would be unwise unless the suppression of free thought, free speech, and a free press were enforced so stringently that all other means of throwing it off had become hopeless.”                              Benjamin Ricketson Tucker  (1854-1939)

 

            Phil’s mind was distracted all day long, as he worked at KRGC that day.  It wasn’t particularly due to continuing bad news from the fronts, either.  Phil was used to that, by now.  Hankenkreutzers had already squared away all but two continents, those being Europe and Asia.  Hankenkreutzers mop up South America.  Hankenkreutzers consolidate control of Africa.  Hankenkreutzers storm into Germany.  Hankenkreutzers roll across Siberia.  Hankenkreutzers here, Hankenkreutzers there, Hankenkreutzers everywhere.  It was all old hat to Phil, by now.

            He just kept on slaving away at work, supporting the war effort.  No bioweapons, of course; just working on biotechnologies to help produce food, fiber, and other products to keep the people and the soldiers fed, clothed, and supplied.  Then, he’d come home every day, play with Trent, talk to Gloria, and try to forget the facts.  That the end is always near, and drawing closer.

            That morning, though, he’d received a call.  A special call, from a certain Victor Nikitina, who was his primary contact with the Russian spooks.  He’d not heard from them in quite some time, and he figured they were quite busy enough, these days, fending off the Hankenkreutzers, without having to bother with old has-beens like himself.  So, he figured something big was up.  Quite naturally, he worried.  All day long, he worried.

            Usually, he’d go home on a special armored bus, which carried him, Don, and various other workers, including expatriate Americans, home to their apartment complexes, which were specially guarded.  Hankenkreutzer agents were a danger everywhere, even in the middle of the remaining free parts of Eurasia.  He called Gloria and told her he’d be late.

            At the end of the day, he met them at KRGC’s front door.  Victor introduced Peter Belyayev to Phil.  Victor didn’t say exactly what Peter’s position or title was, but Phil could tell by Victor’s attitude that Peter was some kind of heavyweight.  The two of them were solemn, almost grim.  They insisted that the three of them go to their car, where they could be more certain that no other ears would hear what they had to say.

            Peter didn’t speak English.  Phil understood maybe three quarters of what he was saying, so he was grateful for Victor’s translations.  They pumped Phil full of details about the war effort, and the Hankenkreutzers, which astounded him.  Not so much the facts, but the fact that he was hearing them all.  Why did he need to know all this?

            They told him that they had contacts inside the Hank N. Kreutz

administration, and that there were serious weaknesses in that administration, which NATO (primarily Russia, by now) could perhaps exploit.  He heard all about quiet maneuvering between Sondra’s faction and Hank’s faction, and that Derrick was caught in the middle of it.  He wanted to scan high-ranking Americans, to ferret out plots, but he couldn’t.  Not only because of the evolution of not being scanned as a status symbol for bigwigs, but also because the two factions feared each other, and the possibility that Derrick would take sides.  So, the very center of the American government was a big mess, ripe for exploitation.

            Then they told him about “zombies” and “godliness modules”.  Victor looked shocked to hear some of it, and it occurred to Phil that Victor was hearing some of this for the first time.  Peter explained that Derrick had been personally running the implanting operations so far, but that he’d just now finally managed to automate the process.  This meant that the volumes of zombies would shortly be skyrocketing, meaning, NATO had better strike now, while they still had a chance.

            Then they told him the good news.  They’d managed to capture live zombies, bypassing their self-destruct-on-capture mechanisms.  Just how they managed to do that, they didn’t say.  They just explained that Russian scientists were no slouches.  They might not have been able to design and build a computer like Derrick, but they were nobody’s fools.  They’d figured out quite a few things about “godliness modules”.  Phil gathered that they might have had to dissect a few living “zombies” to get at this information, but he didn’t ask questions.  He decided he didn’t really want to know.  War is hell, and the ends often justify the means.  It’s just, which ends justify which means.  All piousness aside, desperate straits require desperate measures.  Phil thought about innocent victims, hammered twice.  Once, being zombiefied, and twice, getting dissected.  He shuddered, and went back to listening.

            The good news continued.  They’d figured out that zombies emitted special radio waves, identifying them as harmless to Derrick’s vast network of snooping equipment.  Since they were harmless to Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers, Derrick had no need to keep close tabs on them, and snooping resources had better uses.  Best of all, they’d actually figured out how to make fake “godliness modules”, which Derrick’s new automated implanters would accept as the real thing, and which would then identify the bearers as harmless zombies.

            Then, they explained that a high-ranking American computer expert had been recruited by Sondra to be on her side.  She’d needed an expert to secretly place her own “hooks” into Derrick, so that, under her command, unknown to Hank and his faction, or to Derrick, she could “kill” Derrick at will.  Or, of course, far more usefully, credibly threaten to do so, to keep Derrick under control, if/when the need arose.  Her control.  So the computer expert was sheltered from being scanned, by Sondra’s faction, lest Derrick find out what was going on.  Phil sat there thinking, if anyone in the know really thinks that Derrick doesn’t know what’s cooking, they’re imbeciles.  Phil struggled to suppress a big grin, thinking about Derrick being twisted hither and yon by palace politics.

            This high-ranking computer scientist, and a trusted Christian technician friend of his, had contacted the American underground.  Here and there, small pockets of an American resistance, prominently featuring Christians who were by now thoroughly disgusted with Hank and gang, were, in the face of terrible odds, putting up a fight.  Phil momentarily thought of “Wicked Wanda” and her friends, getting scanned and nailed.  Getting turned to zombies.  He gritted his teeth, and fought back his rage.

            The computer scientist and his friend had been of great assistance, he was told.  Snooping on Derrick’s activities, and sneaking out technical details on this and that.  Derrick was getting highly suspicious, and a few steps further, and Derrick would be forced to demand a scan of this pair of spies.  Dangers of provoking a Sondra/Hank spat, and a mutual turning of that pair, onto their conniving common enemy, Derrick, be damned—at some point, Derrick would strike back.  The expert and his buddy were bravely riding the fence, in the service of NATO.

            And what did they suspect that Derrick was up to?  They weren’t sure, but they had some suspicions, which they didn’t even think that anyone inside the Hank N. Kreutz administration was aware of.  After all, these guys are a lot sharper about Derrick and his technologies than the top Hankenkreutzers.  Derrick, they think, might be...

            Phil couldn’t stand it any longer.  “Why are you telling me all this?” he demanded.

            Victor looked at Peter, and Peter stared blankly right back.  Peter said nothing, but nodded almost imperceptibly.  Victor cleared his throat.  “Um, Phil, as it turns out, we want to sneak some fake godliness modules in there.  Tell these guys, go ahead, cross that line.  Get themselves zombiefied.  We also have drugs and techniques for them, which will prevent Derrick’s scanners from getting the scoop, before their little operations.  Then they’ll have a free hand, since Derrick will think they’re no longer a danger to him.”

            Phil just sat in the shotgun seat of the armored car, blankly staring at Victor, there in the back seat.

            Victor continued, “Put yourselves in their shoes.  Would you trust just anyone who came up to you and asked you to do this kind of thing?  Yeah, they have devices to tell who’s a zombie and who isn’t.  Still, they can’t afford to trust anyone very easily, on this kind of thing.  They’re...”

            Phil just about went into shock.  He finally figured it out.  He just barely heard the names Kurt Katapski and Herman Pound, as Victor told him that they knew Phil was over here in Russia.  Kurt trusted Phil.  They wanted Phil to bring them the fake modules, to initiate this last-ditch assault on Derrick!

            An old geezer like me, playing cloak and dagger, Phil thought, astounded.  He just stared at them.  But Kurt insists, they said.  It makes a lot of sense, they said.  You know Derrick and the site as well as most anyone, they said.

            Can you, will you, are you willing to try this, they wanted to know.  This may involve a bit of killing, this business of going in after Derrick.  That’s the bottom line, you know.  We’ve got to take out Derrick, they said.  He’s their linchpin.  And if it means taking out many of his human defenders, so be it.  Are you willing to do this?

            Phil interrogated his conscience for all of fractions of a second.  Killing?  Again!?  Schrock-Leech-Kite, part II?  But what’s the other choice?  The triumph of evil?  His thoughts on this topic zipped through his brain, for a rapid review.  To everything, there is a season.  Even the Prince of Peace didn’t seem to forswear all violence in all circumstances.  Didn’t he storm through the temple, chase out the money-changers, praise the faith of the Roman soldier, and tell his disciples to buy swords, in preparation for his fateful demise at the hands of the Virtue Enforcement Administration (VEA) of his day?  And didn’t he once say he’d come to bring, not peace, but a sword? *

            And what about non-judgementalism, versus the judgementalism of the inflexible pacifist, who would say that all violence, by all people, everywhere, is always wrong?  Without even knowing the circumstances, they  judge.   And  what  about  treating  the  oppressed,  under  the Hankenkreutzers, the way I’d like to be treated?  Liberated, that is.  No, evil won’t triumph, if I have any say at all, Phil decided.  Time to KICK IN THE TEETH OF THE TYRANT!!!

            “Count me in,” Phil declared, quietly, solemnly.  “There’s just one favor I’d ask.  I want to talk this over with my wife.  All of it.  I’ve ignored her inputs, held things back from her, and lived to regret it, often enough.  I want her blessing before I go.  After all, I might get killed.  Or worse.  She deserves a part of this decision.”

            Victor and Peter looked at each other again.  Peter didn’t look too happy.  Phil hastened to add that Gloria could be trusted, and that he’d argue strongly with her, that he should do this.  Still, he really wanted her blessing.  “Look, guys,” he said, “What am I gonna tell her?  Less than the full truth?  What would you want to tell your wives?  Or do you expect me to sneak off without talking to her?”

            Peter frowned, but then made a cryptic phone call, and consented.  So long as Phil didn’t pass on any more to Gloria than what they were going to tell her, Peter added.  They drove to Phil’s apartment block mostly in silence.  The only thing they briefly discussed, was the latest news from Daedalus.  Daedalus, it seemed, these days, was a prime topic of public speculation in the free world, seeing as how they were the only ones so far able to withstand the onslaught of Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers.

            It seemed that even they weren’t safe from their depredations, though, despite being tens of millions of miles away.  They’d narrowly escaped being beaned by three asteroids in the space of two weeks.  The asteroids had all been in the range of a few hundred pounds, which was way too big to zap with their anti-asteroid lasers.  These lasers were coupled to their computers and radar, for fending off small asteroids.  Most ominous of all, all three asteroids had approached the mother ship Daedalus, up there in Mars orbit while the ground crew still puttered around on the surface, from the same direction.

            Anyway, they’d gotten to thinking that this was just way too much to be coincidence.  So, the crew of Daedalus had collaborated with NATO to run a few calculations.  Between the details of where the asteroids had approached  from,  and  at what  velocity,  and  Earth and moon-based observations of the chunk of 433 Eros that Derrick was now shepherding in from the asteroid belt, they’d put two and two together.  Derrick’s mass launcher, built supposedly to propel the fragment of 433 Eros into Earth orbit, was now being used as a weapon, and his first target was Daedalus!

            There wasn’t that much danger to Daedalus, though.  Daedalus simply changed orbits, dodging the dumb missiles.  They’d gotten into the habit of randomly changing orbits every day, by now, as a precaution.  But there was much fearful speculation, both out there and on Earth.  What would happen as Derrick’s asteroid approached closer to Mars?  And then, to the Earth and its moon?  Derrick would have a platform, low-tech missiles, and a high-tech catapult with which to bombard Earth and moon targets at will.

            According to Peter, there were those in the Russian government who argued that this was Derrick’s prime objective in the first place, in making feeble, easily-fended-off attempts at hitting Daedalus.  Arousing fear, that is.  On that basis, they had wanted to keep the news from the public.  Less censorship-minded heads had prevailed, though, which Peter and Victor agreed with.  Phil speculated that even though he’d not met what might be called a statistically valid sample of the Russian population, they’d by now learned their lessons, historically and culturally, about the results of autocratic rulers and methods.  Fleetingly, he wished that Americans had been able to remember those lessons through some two hundred years of relative freedom.

            The conversation drifted on to Derrick’s other possible objectives.  Tying up NATO resources was on top of the list.  Those resources consisted of moon bases and their radio and optical telescopes being trained on Derrick’s asteroid, as opposed to watching the Hankenkreutzers on Earth.  These lost resources were no small potatoes, since near-Earth-orbiting satellites had long ago been decimated by ground-based lasers.  Aerial surveillance was similarly out of the question, because of the power of modern radars and lasers.  Only the moon bases were out of range.  But there were also longer-range plans for dealing with Derrick’s rogue asteroid when it was due to approach Earth three or four years down the road.  Phil thought it was rather silly to worry about something that far in the future, with the Hankenkreutzers appearing to be within months of overrunning the entire Earth.

            Finally, they arrived at Phil’s apartment block.  They asked Phil to go and bring Gloria to the car, so that she could hear what Phil was being asked to do.  With a sinking heart, Phil went to fetch her.

            She caught on right away that something big was up.  They just asked Don to watch Trent for a little while, and then they both joined Victor and Peter in the car.  This time, Victor, having heard the whole thing once, did most of the explaining all by himself.  Some details—most conspicuously, the names of Kurt and Herman—were left out.  Phil picked up only a few new details, mostly about the zombies.  Zombies, it seemed, had a limited lifespan of about three months.  Their brains withered away under the heel of their new masters, and they just faded away after a while.  That, and that the Hankenkreutzers were in the habit of retrieving their battlefield dead, for the purpose of reclaiming and recycling their so-called “godliness modules”.

            Phil asked them why the Hankenkreutzers were so much more willing to let Derrick create zombies, who might contain special “hooks” allowing Derrick to directly control them, while not letting him simply create robotic emissaries to fight their wars for them.  Peter spoke up, explaining that Derrick showed their engineers that the radios in the modules were send-only, not allowing for the reception of commands from Derrick, and that samples of zombies had been questioned to assure their politico-theological correctness.  Phil noticed a distinct smirk on Peter’s face, as he relayed this information.  Peter also hinted that Derrick still might be pulling another fast one, and that the Hankenkreutzers weren’t smart enough to seriously consider this possibility.

            Gloria just sat there with a grim and stoic expression, listening.  Phil didn’t even see much of a reaction when they mentioned what they wanted Phil to do.  She asked them if she and Phil might have a few minutes of privacy to discuss matters.  “We’ll be waiting right here, then, for your final answer,” Victor told Phil.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Phil promised.  He and Gloria walked silently back to their apartment, hand in hand.  Phil did notice, though, that she seemed to be squeezing his hand rather tightly.

            When they got into their bedroom, and shut the door, the walls came tumbling down.  Gloria grabbed ahold of him, and sobbed and wailed.  He’d never seen her acting like this before.  Then again, they’d never been in this kind of situation before, either.  He just held her for a few minutes.  She calmed down soon enough.  “You know,” she ventured, “I’m really tempted to tell you that you shouldn’t do this.  You’ve got a wife and kid to think about.  But I can’t be too selfish.  Besides, a few months down the road, we might all be marching lockstep with the Hankenkreutzers, with some certain little modules in our nodules.  In our noodles.  And finally—I have to remind myself of this on occasion—I’m not your momma.”  She paused for a few seconds, and then pulled back from him, wiped the tears from her eyes, and looked him in the face.

            Phil could tell she was making an effort to be tough.  Hell, he was doing the same.  Her trembling lower lip, though, told the story.  But she managed to ask him, in a clear voice:  “Phil.  Is this what you want to do?  Is this what you think you should do?”

            “Indeed it is, Snugglebunny.”

            “Then go and tell them that.  Don’t keep them waiting.  Now, come back one more time, here, and give us a proper good-bye, before you go, if they’re hauling you off tonight.”

            “All right, Pootie Pie,” he agreed, giving her a kiss.  “I love you.”  She slapped his fanny as he scooted out the door.

            Soon enough, he was back with the news.  Tomorrow morning, he’d be headed for three days of training.  He’d be calling a few times a day, during that time, but after that, they’d hear no more of him, until the mission was concluded.  They explained, with just a few words to Don.  Don didn’t ask any questions; he just wished Phil the best of luck.  Explaining to Trent was far more troublesome.  It wasn’t Phil’s most enjoyable evening by any stretch of the imagination.

            The next morning at eight o’clock sharp, he hit the road.  The spooks picked him up in their car.  They’d cut their good-byes short, because they were just too painful.  It was all just as well by Phil.  He certainly didn’t rejoice in the whole affair, but it was somehow liberating.  Finally, after all this time of feeling the hot breath of the Hankenkreutzers closing in, and feeling pretty damned powerless to do anything of any substance about the whole rotten deal, he was preparing to strike back!!!

            During their long drive to spook headquarters, he thought many thoughts.  Among them—striking back, versus turning the other cheek?  He remembered an old joke.  The Quaker pacifist had been slapped on one cheek.  So, he turned the other, and it, too, was, in its turn, slapped.  Then the Quaker took off his coat.  “And now,” he said to his adversary, “The scriptures have been fulfilled.  I will now proceed to beat the Hell out of thee!”  Phil thought the sentiment of the joke fit his current niche in the space-time continuum.  He felt like the Hankenkreutzers had already whacked him on all four cheeks, let alone two.  Him, and several billions of other sufferers.  How many cheeks must be struck, before the perpetrators must reap as they have sown?

            Training—three days of it.  Only a small amount of it consisted of weapons and physical training.  They simply didn’t have the time for anything other than what was absolutely essential.  Mostly, it was filling him in on all the details, as best as they understood them.  Political, psychological, and technological.  Specifically, the whole thing started with a few SPIRIT scans.  The Russians, like most of the ever-fewer remaining free nations, had scanners from the old days, before the American coup, and before Derrick had recalibrated all the scanners under Hankenkreutzer control.  They had also managed to capture a few recalibrated scanners.

            So they scanned Phil, once with each kind of scanner.  Then they puzzled over results.  One set of results said that Phil was compassionate and broad-minded, yet resolute, tough, disciplined, and utterly devoted to freedom—real, individual freedom—and justice.  The other set of results said that he was theologically wicked, a secular-oriented self-indulgent hedonist, and doomed to suffering everlasting torment.  His trainers were quite pleased.  Yet, when they told him this, that he was just the kind of person that they needed for this mission, he had his doubts.  Were they just psyching him up?  Nah, let’s just go ahead and believe them, he decided.  Build up my courage.  And my ego, too.  We can always put it back on a diet when this is all over.

            Politics.  One of Phil’s favorite topics.  They filled him in on all the details of Hankenkreutzer palace intrigue, as best as they knew it.  And the politics of the underground resistance, too.  One of the things they beat into his brain was that he shouldn’t argue politics with anyone.  There were a number of factions within the resistance, and he was not to take sides.  Pro-choice and pro-life (or, is that anti-choice and pro-death?) factions, Christians, atheists, agnostics, federalists, anarchists, libertarians, and so on.  The rebels were willing to accept most anyone willing to stand up to the Hankenkreutzers.  Phil could afford to piss off none of them.  As someone associated with a foreign power, he couldn’t be seen as favoring any particular group of rebels.  If anyone talked politics to him, he was just supposed to nod his head and agree with them.  “Got that?” his trainers asked him.  Not just once or twice, either.

            He’d nod his head and agree with them, he agreed, nodding his head.  “Hey, I know the mission is top priority, and I’ve got to steer clear of anything that might get in the way,” he said, throwing his hands up.  The trainers looked at him peculiarly, and went back to other things.  For a while.  They knew damned well what his SPIRIT scan had said about Phil and his tendency to yelp all day about politics.

            Technology, tactics, and so on.  They bored him a bit, with things that he’d been aware of for years.  How, historically, there’d been a back and forth and forth and back pattern, in which technology could outwit the other—radar and surface-to-air weapons, or aircraft and their weapons.  For the last decade or so, aircraft were very much the underdog.  Between advanced radar and lasers, one couldn’t get away with so much as putting more than a few grams of metal over the enemy’s territory, without them shooting it down.  This was what had lead to the demise of nuclear weapons as the most fearsome of all weapons.  They were too easily shot down.

            The next part, though, was news to Phil.  The Russians had managed to build a few handfuls of ultralight aircraft, containing no metal at all, using transparent aerogels for the structure, and ceramics for the jet engines!  To Phil, they sounded like the small, unmanned delivery aircraft used in the now-infamous American BELFRYBAT bioweapons program, except much larger.  These were capable of carrying a crew of two.  Of course, since they couldn’t carry hardly any metal at all, without being detected, they weren’t of much use for fighting.  Their only use was for spying, and dropping spies and saboteurs.  People like me, Phil thought.  But they hadn’t gotten to that part, yet.

            They also discussed the use of drugs and mental techniques to defeat scanners.  These techniques had been developed by the rebels, through educated trial and error.  Basically, if enough synapses in a brain were randomly firing, the scanners couldn’t do their jobs.  The drugs and mental techniques induced such random firings.  Unfortunately, these random firings also meant that users hallucinated.  So the whole approach was rather dangerous.  They had Phil practice only a little bit, under mild doses of the drugs.

            They also explained that the objective was to learn the “mad mode” so well as to be able to self-induce it at will, to fend off all scanners, even after the drugs wore off.  Sort of like LSD, and being able to call up a flashback at will.  Sometimes the technique didn’t work at all.  Other times, they’d just wait for the drugs to wear off, and then the scanners would work again.  And sometimes, the drug-takers would stay in the mad mode.  Fortunately, often the whole thing worked exactly as desired.  They didn’t care to venture any guesses as to what, exactly, the odds were.  Phil trembled, hoping he’d never become part of those statistics.

            Finally, they got to the plan.  Phil would be equipped with twenty fake “godliness modules” (the sum total of what Russia had built so far), some minimal non-metallic weaponry (miniature crossbow with poison darts), and anti-scanner drugs.  He’d be transported in one of the new ultralights, which were unfortunately quite sensitive to bad weather.  They would have to stop for refueling on a NATO FLASH ship out in the middle of the Atlantic.  Then, he’d be flown in and dropped off to a small, remote, secretly rebel-held plot of land, not too far from Atlanta, in the middle of the night.  From there, there wasn’t much of a plan.  Do as the rebels tell you, they said.  And, don’t argue politics.

            The weather was good, so, after the third day, he placed his last call to Gloria and Trent, and they were off.  It was quite eerie, sitting there in the cockpit, next to the pilot, seeing only a ghostly hint of wings and fuselage.  All that looked entirely solid was the two of them, their supplies, the engines, computer, and instruments.  Even the fuel tanks and their contents were clear.  The engines made barely a sound.  They flew south and west, weaving low, staying over desolate, empty lands.  Phil had no idea when or where they slipped into enemy territory.

            The pilot, Sergei, showed Phil how to fly the plane.  Phil did so, for a little while, to pass the time.  But for the most part, they let the plane fly itself.  The computer and its software and sensors, together, were smart enough to deviate from the flight plan when humans, vehicles, or ships appeared on the horizon.  So, Phil and Sergei were able to take cat naps.

            Between their slow speed, and the need to zigzag clear of being observed, progress was slow.  They made their way through the densely populated areas around the Eastern Mediterranean in the dark.  Finally, they were out over the open ocean!  Flying was smooth, if extremely boring, from there on in.  It took them two days to make it to the ship out in the middle of the Atlantic, where they made a pit stop.  Phil was grateful for a shower, and the privilege of relieving himself in a real bathroom.  They fueled up, and spent one night in real beds.

            The good weather held up, and Phil and Sergei headed for Georgia.  On an ideal night—dark, moonless, overcast, yet almost windstill—they concluded Phil’s aerial journey.  They circled over a clearing in the woods, out in the middle of the boondocks.  Sergei punched a few buttons, and a red flare dropped from the plane.  Two yellow flares shot up in reply.  Sergei climbed up from treetop level, to three thousand feet, so that Phil’s ‘chute would have plenty of time to open, and he could guide it into the clearing.  Phil shook Sergei’s hand, and they wished each other good luck.  Phil was quite aware of who needed it the most, though.

            He opened up the nearly-invisible door, and wind roared through the cockpit.  Sergei flew the plane real slow, almost stalling.  Then, he eyeballed the ground, and gave Phil a “thumbs up”.  Phil dived out into the night air.  All of six seconds later, he pulled his ripcord.  A transparent parachute bloomed above him, and he peacefully drifted on the light breeze.  He descended into the clearing like an overgrown milkweed seed.

            The peaceful scene didn’t last long.  The very second that he landed, six men burst from the bush, and grabbed him.  He offered no resistance, as they relieved him of all his goodies.  Okay, here we go, Phil thought.  Time to figure out whether their end of the deal got compromised, or not.  Time to see whether my goose is already cooked.  “Hey, dudes, what’s the haps?  Are y’all the good guys, or am I fodder for the zombie machine?”

            “Hush up,” the apparent leader of the group whispered.  “Even the woods have electronic ears strung out up in the trees.  Just shut your yips, and walk.”

            Phil took that as a good sign.  He walked.  And walked.  And walked some more.  Always in silence.  Rebels to the front, rebels to the rear.  Every so often, he’d start to lag.  Sometimes they’d prod him, and sometimes they’d take a break.  Once—only once—he tried to start up a whispered conversation.  They’d have none of it, and made that crystal clear.  Finally, well before dawn, they pulled aside some large rocks—well, they damn sure looked like rocks, at least—and revealed the opening to a cave.  They all slipped in, except for the last one of them, who moved the rocks back, and remained outside, probably to serve as a guard.

            They turned on a kerosene lamp.  The cave was dark, damp, cluttered, and smelly.  Three rebels stirred in their sleeping bags, which rested on pads, which in turn rested on pallets, to keep them out of the mud.  Silence was finally broken.  “All right.  Tell us your story,” their leader prompted.  “Skip the names.  Some of us don’t know them.  The less, the better,” he added.

            Phil did exactly that.  The three sleeping rebels woke, and they listened, too.  Every once in a while, Phil would notice an approving nod.  More often, they peppered him with questions.  His own questions, they brushed off.  Towards the end of his story, one of them got up, fired up a gas pressure lamp, and began fiddling with some gear, to the rear of the cave.

            “Well, sounds pretty good to me,” their apparent leader or spokesman said.  “Jives with our sources.  One more thing, and then we’ll answer your questions.  Most of them, at least.  What we have, here, is our very own scanner.  Not too many of these left, any more, in our hands.  You mind?”

            Phil didn’t object.  He put on the helmet, and they asked him some more questions.  They were quite pleased, as best as Phil could tell.  Their only remarkable response was when they weaseled out of him, that he’d been told not to talk politics with them.  They thought that was a hoot!  “You’re allowed to talk politics with us,” one of them reassured him.  “It’s one of our favorite hobbies, too.  The only items, here, that we all take on faith, is that the Hankenkreutzers have got to take a large dose of their own medicine.  And that it ain’t gonna happen, unless we all stick together, real tight.”

            He’d passed all their tests.  They all introduced themselves, and one of them produced a doubtlessly precious bottle of whiskey, and some small cups.  He poured shots for all of them, and proposed a toast to Phil’s arrival, and to the demise of Derrick.  Cheers went up, and the whiskey went down.  Then they answered his questions.  Most of them, at least.

            The only surprises for Phil were that the Russian spooks had a few details wrong.  Only the computer scientist—for this, Phil mentally filled in “Kurt”—was riding the fence, so to speak.  The technician—Phil filled in “Herman”—was playing it straight.  Best of all, those two were apparently in opposite factions.  Kurt, in Sondra’s faction, and Herman, in Hank’s faction.  They’d even fake a little spat, now and then, to lead people even further from the truth, which was that they were both in the anti-Hankenkreutzer faction.  So Kurt was riding the fence, snooping, and gathering as much intelligence about Derrick’s activities as he could, without calling the heat down on himself, while Herman was playing it straight, rising into the power pyramid.  Between these activities, and the goodies that I just brought, we’ll doubtlessly be able to cook up some nasty brew for Derrick, Phil thought to himself.

            Phil listened to them, but grew weary.  He couldn’t help it.  He yawned.  One of them, Larry, said to Phil, “Hey, look, you’re not the only one.  Some of us are short on sack time, too.  One more thing before you can hit the sack.  Now, like we said, we’re convinced.  Our good buddies inside, though, they’re pretty keen on being as absolutely convinced as possible.  Ya mind?”

            “Mind what?”  Phil asked.

            “Let me examine your face, make sure you’re not wearing a mask, or had plastic surgery, or what have you, and then, take a couple of mug shots.”

            “Be my guest.”

            Phil sat still, while Larry yanked on his face and took some photos.  Damn Kurt and his paranoid ass, Phil thought.  But, you know, I’m not the one who’s being asked to volunteer to have a fake zombie module inserted into my nodule, either.  Finally, Phil got to hit the sack.  It was by no means the best bed he’d ever laid in, but it felt just heavenly.

            Halfway through the afternoon, he woke up.  Not that night and day meant much, inside their cave.  He had a few bites to eat—some sort of gruel, not too tasty, but hey, food’s food—and then, he got to chatting with his new buddies.  They promptly put him to work, shelling wild nuts for their larder.  Phil found it to be somewhat incongruous, that they were equipped with some of the very latest technology, like SPIRIT scanners, yet here he was, shelling wild nuts with pliers and rocks.  Shelling nuts and yakking fit together like running for office and spouting survey-tested double-talk, though, so they got lots of yakking in.  Phil didn’t learn anything truly astounding, to speak of.  Lots of recent history of the rebellion.  None of it was very pleasant to Phil’s ears.  Many, many people had given their lives, by now, fighting the Hankenkreutzers against tremendous odds.

            He learned that he was among an elite, who’d managed to perfect and demonstrate on command, the ability to foil scanners.  Even under physical torture, they could slip into “mad mode”, where pain couldn’t reach them, and all that the Hankenkreutzers could do was to give up, and feed them to the zombie-making machines.  Even after being turned into “zombies”, they somehow managed to fend off the prying tentacles of the “godliness modules”, preventing them from penetrating the highest centers of conscious thoughts and memories.  Thus, some victims, even in their zombie states, managed to protect the rebellion’s secrets.  The modules may have readily commandeered their victim’s bodies, and most brain functions, such as language, motor skills, and so on, but the masters of the “mad mode” were able to reserve parts of their brains for themselves.

            So went the theories, at least.  They’d never managed to talk to one of their companions who’d been zombiefied, for obvious reasons.  But, there’d never been a confirmed case of a true master of the mad mode spilling the beans upon being captured and zombiefied.  Else, Phil speculated, the rebellion would never have had any chance at all, against an enemy as ruthless and well-equipped as Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers.  He marveled at how, almost miraculously, the human spirit and inventiveness can come up with amazing countermeasures against even the most fearsome foes.

            What he didn’t like to think about too much, was that those who were captured died slow deaths while fighting off alien intruders insides their own brains.  To have an outside entity controlling one’s own body, against one’s will—a worse fate, Phil could not conceive of.  Worst of all, this was by no means idle speculation.  It was a fate that he might face.  He prayed a few very private, but very fervent, prayers about this matter, now and then.

            Phil was quite curious as to exactly how the mental techniques were developed.  They related a sketchy outline to him, of how a small group of rebels had become gurus of neurochemical psychedelic warfare, capable not only of fending off the scanners, but also, of showing others how to do the same.  Trainees would take the drug, while being scanned, coached by the “gurus”, and watching feedback from the scanners, simultaneously.  More than a few lives, and minds, had fallen by the wayside, though, in amassing respectable numbers of “masters of the mad mode”.  Through long and terrible experience, though, the rebellion had learned that this was the only way to assemble, and keep intact, a solid, effective inner corps of rebels.

            Dreading the answer, he asked what they did with those who went completely mad.  The answer was, “Yes, we’ve had to kill them.  We haven’t the  room  or  resources  to  take  care  of  them  ourselves,  and if the Hankenkreutzers catch them, they become fodder for the war machine.  We pick the lesser of the two great evils.  Fortunately, these cases have been fairly rare.  Especially now that our gurus have perfected their techniques.”

            He got to thinking, well, I’ve done my duties, now; done what I came to do.  Delivered the goods.  What good am I to them now?  A danger, that’s all.  If the Hankenkreutzers catch me, I’ll rat on these guys, their hideaway, our plans, everything.  Maybe it’s time to make myself more useful.  Fully join them.  Fearfully, he volunteered to take a full dose of the special drugs, to take the training, to try to develop their abilities.  They wouldn’t hear of it; they said he was too valuable to risk.  This was all just as well by Phil.  He didn’t even bother to ask them why they considered him to be so valuable.

            He pondered the fact that some people have been known to mess with these kinds of dangerous drugs, just for kicks.  Yet, to most everything there is a season, or a valid reason.  Here was a case of chemical madness being used to fight an even greater madness.  Then he got to thinking, wait a minute, just what kind of self-righteous thoughts was I thinking, there?  I’ve been too straight for too many years.  Back in my college days, I did these kinds of drugs “just for kicks”.  And now, I’m getting all pious about people who would do such things for no good reason.

            Phil got to thinking about those wild and crazy old college days, and his acid trips.  Some had been good trips.  Sweet delight.  Some had been bad trips.  Endless fright.  The last one he’d taken had been almost pure hell.  He’d come out of it, feeling like he’d narrowly escaped permanent insanity, perhaps even death.  And then, there was the embarrassment of having totally lost control among his friends, turning into a slobbering, raving lunatic.  Funny thing was, though, being the young hothead he’d been, he could admit to no defeat.  He had wanted to do it again, so that he could show that he could whup this thing!

            But then, he’d had a dream.  Not a chemically induced dream, but a regular dream.  He dreamed he was back in a world before the automobile, in a small caravan of heavy, horse-drawn wagons, out for a Sunday spin.  He was sitting in the rear of a wagon, looking out at the countryside, and at the wagon behind him.

            They drove up to the downstream side of a dam.  The dam, holding back a lake maybe five or six feet deep, was of a primitive construction.  Boulders, loosely fitted together, had been dumped across the stream.  On the downstream side, a giant chain (single strand, simple oblong links) held the boulders, and the lake, back, preventing the whole thing from being swept away.  The chain disappeared into the earth, on both sides, where, presumably, earth and buried boulders anchored it.  Primitive, yes.  Ugly, definitely not.  The elements had done their magic to this crude construction, softening it with age.  Moss covered the boulders and chain, and water trickled through cracks, and poured over the top.  Overall, a very pretty sight.

            They drove down into the shallow water below the dam, to cross to the other side.  There he saw a giant water turtle, maybe five feet across.  It had its head stuck in a link of the chain, pushing, pushing, struggling mightily, trying to bust loose.  Being a simple beast, though, it obviously had no idea what it was dealing with.  It kept pushing into the chain, rather than pulling back.  It floundered and thrashed so hard, the boulders were threatening to give way, unleashing a wall of water onto the wagons.  And this was all going on, almost under the wheels of Phil’s wagon.  Phil yelled out to the wagon behind him to stay back.  And then, he woke up.

            The dream had profoundly disturbed him for a number of days, until he figured it out.  In his last acid trip, he’d sensed the presence of higher beings, in higher planes of existence, that he knew nothing about.  He’d felt threatened, and had poured untold psychic energy out, in trying to... in trying to do what, anyway?  He’d come out of that trip, drenched in sweat.  Even though he’d been much the skeptic, back in those days, he figured it out.  His dream, his subconscious, was telling him a few things.  He was that turtle, foolishly sticking his head where it didn’t belong, into things that it didn’t understand.  Wasting energy doing nothing other than endangering itself and others.  No more acid trips for me, he decided.*

*See, I’m not telling anyone they should go “tripping”.  Definitely not!  Not until the Hankenkreutzers come by with SPIRIT scanners, and this is the only way to fend them off.  I want that to be clear.  So, don’t be sending Billy Bennett and his boys after me.  Think about this, though:  if people figure out that we lie to them about reefer madness, how do we expect them to believe us about the dangers of LSD and PCP?  And when we give “piss tests” for relatively harmless substances that stay in the body for a long time, like “pot”, we drive those degenerate subhumans who are sooo much less righteous than our own noble selves, who insist on altering their consciousnesses with politically incorrect substances, to worse substances, which stay in the body for shorter periods of time, and which are harder to detect.  We drive them to PCP and LSD.  Oh, well.  Nothing we couldn’t solve with just a few more cops, and a few more jails!

            Phil, all these years later, sat there, thinking about his dream some more.  Those years had made him consider some religious ideas more seriously.  Those links were there, holding the dam back, but also providing an unintentional hazard for wildlife.  A design flaw!  Just like LSD and the design of the human brain, in the real world.  A design flaw?  Does God make mistakes?  And Phil, in the dream, had much wanted to go and help the turtle.  Doing so would have presented significant hazards to himself, though.  The gap between turtle and man is wide, but shallow.  The physical thrashing of dumb beasts is a hazard to men, just as the energies of the unrestrained, stubborn, undisciplined free human will is a hazard to God and the angels.

            My God, Phil thought, heresy!  Hank N. Kreutz would have me nailed to his twisted cross, on the spot, that I should think that God might make mistakes, and that the gap between God and man is so small.  Yet, the latter, at least, is Biblical.  In my moments of weakness, when I’ve stooped to trying to kiss God’s ass, reading His Work, did I not find a few verses to support such views?  Didn’t Jesus say that the scriptures say, “You are gods”?  And didn’t he say that his followers would do even greater things than he had done?*  Phil understood quite well that such thoughts could easily lead to excess.  Yet the thoughts were there, and valid.  After all, if the gap between God and man is like that between man and bacteria, then what is the hope for communication between the two?

            All right, Phil said to himself, your mind is drifting off to never-never land.  Just because I’ve not thought about that dream for a while, is no excuse to sit here and philosophize about it all day.  I’m evading the issue.  The issue is, do I, or don’t I, risk blowing my mind, in building up resistance to the Hankenkreutzers and their scanners.  And, you know, when I did those drugs, I handled it.  Some were hell, but I survived.  The dangers here probably are about the same, maybe less, if I keep my head out of those links.  And, there is a reason, this time.  A valid reason.  So, maybe I’d better bug these guys some more about it.

            He worked up his courage, and insisted that they give him some training.  He pointed out the dangers associated with the Hankenkreutzers catching him.  They compromised, and gave him a quarter dose, and some training.  He saw no hallucinations, although his brain simmered a bit.  He got a lot more out of this training than what he’d gotten out of the training back in Russia.  But they made it clear that further than this, they wouldn’t go.  They’d equip Phil with a full dose, if and when he joined them in risky field operations, and he could take his dose if faced with imminent capture, they said.  End of discussion, they said.

            For three days, he did nothing but hang out with the guys at the cave, eating, sleeping, yakking, and working.  Shelling nuts, cleaning, repairing gear, digging the cave deeper, and shoring up its ceiling.  At night, they’d sneak out with bags of dirt, travel a bit, sweep leaves to the side, dump the dirt, and cover it with leaves.  Slowly but surely, their manmade cave grew yet more.

            Finally, word came back from “the front”, as they called Derrick’s Atlanta site.  The former ABC site was now a major hub of Hankenkreutzer activity.  Kurt and Herman had agreed to a plan.  The twenty fake modules would, indeed, be absolutely essential.  Right there on site, not too far from Derrick, they had one of the new automated module-implanting machines.  Herman was taking a great deal of interest in running operations there, herding convicts in, making sure the machine was operating properly, and routing the finished zombies to their various destinations.  All for the purpose of slipping the fake modules into the right people, and sending them to the right places.  Phil recoiled when he heard this.  He was sure glad he wasn’t in Herman’s shoes, running this most beastly of machines, in the hope of soon tearing it down.

            So the plan was, a few fully qualified volunteer rebels would deliberately get themselves busted.  They’d be hauled to the facility where Herman worked, and they’d be highly likely to be able to resist the scanners.  Thus, knowledge of the scheme wouldn’t get relayed to Derrick, who was hooked, via the networks, to these scanners, as were most other scanners under Hankenkreutzer control.  Then, Herman would see to it that they got fake modules, and route them to the “palace guard” of zombies.

            From there, no more volunteers would be needed.  Fully qualified rebels were scarce enough as was, without sacrificing twenty of them to this effort.  Besides, getting twenty such individuals busted in a short time might arouse suspicion, and would certainly heighten the probability of one of them failing to properly resist the scanners, thereby blowing the secrets of the whole scheme.  So far, the rebels didn’t know of any cases where fully qualified masters of the mad mode had cracked up, but there was always this possibility.

            So, over the space of a week or two, or whatever amount of time that it took, Herman would just keep a very sharp eye on who was being scanned, and then fed to the machine.  The remaining fake modules would go to suitable individuals, as revealed by scanner data.  Strong-willed, aggressive individuals, either associated with or sympathetic to the rebels, but not members of the fully-qualified inner corps, would receive the fake modules.  They would be selected from those citizens who’d been busted by the HELPERS, in the normal day-to-day workings of the Hankenkreutzers.  They’d be fed to the machine, fully expecting to wake up as zombies, having no idea of what special destiny fate had in store for them.

            Immediately upon waking up, they’d be routed to the palace guard, by those who’d gone before them—the others with the fake modules.  There, they’d be informed about what was going on, and secretly trained by an ever-growing corps of subverted palace guards.  Phil didn’t much like to think about the decisions Herman would have to make, in selecting these limited few people to be spared from a fate worse than death.  However, he was quite delighted to think about smashing Derrick.

            The original plan, as cooked up by the Russians, whereby Kurt and Herman would become fake zombies, had been rapidly and contemptuously cast aside by the rebels.  They weren’t qualified to resist the scanners, and giving them training was entirely too risky, not only because they might stay in the mad mode, but also, because they’d have to disappear from the sights of the Hankenkreutzers for entirely too long, to get such training.  Kurt and Herman would stay in the “palace” as extremely useful moles, without revealing themselves.  It sounded quite sensible to Phil, and he was glad that the Russians weren’t arrogant enough to try to micro-manage the whole show.

            After the corps of twenty subverted guards had been built up and trained, they’d strike out and attempt to kill Derrick, and as many top Hankenkreutzers as possible.  More details, Phil couldn’t pry loose from the rebels.  Comes a day or two before show time, we’ll fill you in more completely, they said.  You’ll just have to wait.

            That’s what he had to do.  Wait, wait, and wait some more.  He just helped out with whatever work there was to do, worrying about the upcoming festivities, and how time was slipping by.  Every day meant that the new zombie-making machines were spitting out that many more zombies, and that the Hankenkreutzers were gobbling up that much more of the remnants of the free world.  At an increasing rate, no doubt.

            A week and three days went by.  Then, the news came.  The guard corps was complete and trained, and they’d staked out their positions close to Derrick’s latest, greatest, and most special appendages.  Kurt had continued his snooping activities, trying to fathom what all Derrick was up to.  By now, Kurt was convinced of a few things.  One was that Derrick had developed the ability to shift the center of his consciousness—essentially, to transmit himself—to different computers, or subsections of himself.  If anyone attempted to “kill” him by shutting off his main power supply, then, he’d have a few minutes—no one knew just exactly how many—to transmit himself to a different location.

            That is, during all the palace intrigue between the Hank and Sondra factions, and the various overt and covert placements of methods of killing Derrick, it had become painfully obvious to both sides, that Derrick was susceptible to power interruptions, not only from themselves, but also from third parties, like rebels, Russian saboteurs, and such.  Not that they really, really, really thought such things were likely, as best as Kurt could tell.  But they’d placed a smaller UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) in close to Derrick’s original supercooled sphere, in addition to the large, overall site UPS.

            The whole thing seemed quite loony to Phil.  Here they’d gone to all sorts of trouble to make the whole site safe from power interruptions, then they’d booby-trapped it to be able to threaten Derrick.  Then, to guard against their own booby-traps, they’d put yet another safeguard in, the smaller UPS for Derrick’s inner core.  Phil was embarrassed that he hadn’t caught the obvious, when the rebels explained it to him.  Without that last, smaller, inner-core UPS, one either killed Derrick, or one didn’t.  Throw the switch once, in a hot-headed moment, and a major, major Hankenkreutzer asset goes down the tubes.  With the last, inner UPS, one always has a few minutes to change one’s mind.  And, a method to torture Derrick.  The idea appealed to Phil—the thought of Derrick watching his UPS batteries dying down, gasping for a last few kilowatts of life-giving power.

            The scheme was that the rebels would use the “hooks” of the Sondra faction, to kill power.  Then, when all the alarms went off, the action would begin.  They’d prevent everyone from turning Derrick’s main power back on.  Kurt was convinced, though, that Derrick had made provisions for transmitting himself to his newest, special appendage.  So, these links, too, would have to go.  Kurt suspected that Derrick might even be able to do this over a radio link, so it was essential for the rebels to occupy this appendage, and prevent Derrick from using it.  Exactly how the rebels were going to do that, and exactly what the mysterious capabilities of that facility were, were both unclear.

            A few things were clear, though.  Way too clear.  Phil had thought he’d heard quite a few disgusting ideas, but these, to him, took the cake.  Derrick’s newest appendage was called the Virtue to Reality Temple (VRT).  No, no, no, the rebels had to tell Phil.  Not “virtual reality temple”.  This is where Hank turns virtues into reality.  This is where they’ve downloaded thousands of souls of two and three-year-old “monster babies” into the machines, so that Hank will have real souls to impart real virtues to.

            So the VRT, the rebels’ main target, contained not only Derrick’s refuge of first resort, and mysterious unknown functions, but also, tortured souls by the thousands.  That, and soul-downloading machines, and interfaces, in which Hank sometimes sat, to interact with his VRT.  More often, he’d patch in remotely, from Washington, or from one of his many retreats.  Derrick, apparently, had combined these functions, so that Hank would be quite reluctant to take any action against the VRT.  That’s all that Kurt had managed to ferret out; he’d not been allowed inside the VRT.

            The rebels would kill Derrick’s power, then storm the VRT.  They would try not to damage it, for several reasons.  They didn’t want to harm Hank’s downloaded “pupils”, for one.  Others were simply that it might represent a bargaining chip, and that they wanted to investigate what it was, what it could do.  It might even turn out to be somehow useful to the rebels, above and beyond being a bargaining chip.  Kurt would have to conduct a thorough examination.

            The day arrived.  Early that morning, they equipped Phil with a bulletproof vest, an ancient assault rifle, and lots of ammo, from the illegal stash of some unknown extremist anti-government fanatic militia gun-nut crazy from way back when.  Beats my dinky little poison-dart crossbow that the Russians gave me, he thought, hefting the weapon.  Thank God for the crazies from way back when!  This should do the job.  Boost my confidence and self-esteem, as I help rush the VRT.  Now, here, solid steel—this is self-empowerment!

            They also gave him his full dose of anti-scanner drugs.  Strapped to his right arm, in a spring-loaded contraption, so that all he’d have to do, was to bite down on it, and the pill would be dispensed.  Just in case the operation flops, and they’re about to capture you, they said.  Remember your training.  This didn’t fill Phil’s heart with anything approaching what he got out of his rifle.

            They trooped through the woods in silence for a few miles.  Phil knew all about the need for silence by now, because of the acoustic sensors that the Hankenkreutzers had air-dropped into the trees.  They also dropped cameras and infrared sensors, he knew, but these, unlike the acoustic sensors, the rebels could detect.  The rebels had routed “safe corridors” through which they could pass undetected, out in the wilds.  Then, on a back road, they got into the rear of a delivery truck.  Somehow, the rebels had managed to arrange a safe ride.  I’m too old for this soldiering business, Phil thought, flopping himself down in the rear of the truck.  His five companions did the same, and the truck driver rigged up a framework and some boxes to cover them.  Then, the rear door came down, and they were left in darkness.

            Sack time, Phil thought.  It’ll be a while, till we all assemble close to my old haunt, the former ABC site.  The “front”.  An hour or two ago, another group from our cave departed, in a similar manner.  And from a few other hideaways, other rebels will start to converge, into the safe corridor next to the front.  The safe corridor whose even greater levels of security defenses—after all, the Hankenkreutzers zealously guarded their most vital installations—had been defeated by the moles inside the front.  Then, when night falls, we attack.

            But that’s hour and hours away.  Stop and go, stop and go.  Deliver here, and deliver there.  Take breaks, while the driver takes breaks, and hope that the rebels are right—that these trucks won’t get searched.  That’s what’s in store for me, for the next few hours.  Nap time.

            Phil tried to sleep, without much luck.  Like a rat in an attic, he rustled around in the dark, eating some rations when he got hungry.  That, and getting sloshed back and forth, and tensing up whenever they stopped and the rear door opened, was his excitement for a few hours.  Finally, in mid-afternoon, he crawled out, stiff and groggy, into the bright light of day.  They scurried off into the woods, many miles from where they’d been that morning.

            There, under cover of the woods, they stretched out for a few minutes.  Then they walked, again in silence.  They only walked for about a mile and a half.  But this time, they were a lot closer to suburbia.  Several times, they had to make mad dashes across roads, when there were no vehicles in sight.  But they made it safely.  There, not more than a few hundred yards from the boundaries of Phil’s old workplace, they gathered.  The small swatch of woods, itself a small piece of a fairly small forest, crawled with ill-hidden rebels.  Phil would’ve guessed that there might’ve been sixty, and they were still straggling in.

            Phil laid down, while his buddies threw a few branches on top of him, making a feeble attempt to hide him, just like all the other rebels.  As if they could really do that much, to hide that many men in such a small area.  Still, any reasonable precaution was a wise idea.  Phil was grateful that ABC had been built out on the edge of suburbia, way back when, so that they even had any place to hide in, at all.

            The hours slipped by.  The late summer sun set at seven, and the troops grew restless.  Whispering broke out.  Then, waves of whispered commands radiated through the ranks.  “Tell those guys to stop the whispering,” they’d whisper, “Pass it on.  Another half an hour, and then we can all stand up, stretch, and get ready.  Now, hush up.  Pass it on.”  Phil passed it on.  So did several others, and likewise, several other anti-whispering whispering campaigns broke out.  The whispering reached an exasperated crescendo, with everyone whispering to everyone else to stop the whispering, and then it suddenly stopped.

            Daylight faded.  In the deepening gloom, as red turned to gray, and yellow, to white, they stood and stretched in silence.  They counted the minutes.  And there was not one iota of doubt in any of their minds, which side was right.  The only question was, which side had more might, in this one small neck of the woods.  If only they could muster overwhelming power in one small place, for long enough to extinguish Derrick’s lights, it would all be worth it.  More minutes slipped by.

            The moment arrived.  It announced itself in sounds of far-off explosions and gunfire.  Still, the rebels sat tight.  Then, yellow and orange flashes pierced the darkness, and loud booms and shock waves followed.  Rebel leaders peered through binoculars, as emergency alarms wailed, and emergency lights flared up.  The leaders confirmed that the security fence had been breached by the explosives, and gave the signal.  Rebels swarmed out of the woods, into the open field.  In their midst, pumped up to his gills in adrenaline, Phil ran.

            Hankenkreutzer bullets found their marks, and a few rebels, out in front of their rapidly advancing ranks, crumpled to the ground.  Their companions ran over and around their fallen bodies, and poured through the gaps in the fence.  Caught by surprise, the Hankenkreutzer defense soon subsided.  The few sources of fire, which had taken a toll on the advancing rebels, were soon quenched.  Whether by the fire of the rebels in the front rank, or by the “fake zombies” inside the compound, Phil had no idea.  He was just glad that he saw less bodies falling in front of him.

            Still in the middle of this small army, Phil slipped into the compound.  He saw a few “fake zombies”—they had, as agreed, wrapped themselves, at the last moment, in white cloth, for identification—laying down protective fire, protecting the entry of the rebels.  They crouched behind vehicles, equipment, and piles of supplies.  They’d deliberately chosen to invade the rear of the site, a staging, storage, construction, and utility area, for just this reason—plenty of cover was available.

            Bodies lay strewn about.  Phil was glad to see that they were, with only one visible exception, those of the enemy.  The one exception was wrapped in white.  Rest in peace, you brave soul, Phil commanded and commended him, mentally.  Sure hope we don’t lose too many more.

            The rebels dashed from cover to cover, working their way through the utility area quite rapidly.  They amassed at the edge of the utility area, in front of a gap between two large buildings.  Phil recognized one of the buildings as a biotech pilot manufacturing facility that he’d worked in once in a while, way back when.  Who’d ever have thought I’d be out here, sneaking around in the middle of a small army of anti-government extremists, he thought.  He peered out from behind cover, contemplating the gap between the two buildings.  Just out there, beyond the gap and to the right, he knew, there lay their target.  The VRT.  The Virtue to Reality Temple.  Their ticket to making damn sure Derrick’s ticket got punched, good and hard.  And that it stayed punched, for good.

            For a few tens of seconds, which seemed to stretch out towards infinity, the rebels gathered in front of that gap between buildings.  The open spaces out there were quite intimidating.  Come on, Phil thought, let’s get brave, and swarm on through there.  Time’s a-wasting, and the enemy is doubtlessly gathering his numbers.  But I sure as hell ain’t gonna be the first one to make that mad dash!

            A few very, very brave rebels started to make the mad dash.  They were promptly cut down.  But their companions behind them saw where the fire came from, and answered in force.  Heavy fire lashed out at the points from which Hankenkreutzer bullets had spat forth, including a few points within the buildings themselves.  Rebel fire included a few heavier weapons, like grenade launchers.  They opened up a hole in one of the buildings, and a few rebels managed to dart inside.  Once again, a few extremely brave rebels tried to dash through the gap.  They, too, were cut down, but this time, by lighter fire.  Once again, rebel counterfire struck back.  Phil grinned.  One or two more cycles of this, and we’re gonna rush on through, he decided.

            It was then that he noticed he was quite a few dashes away from making the big dash.  He was squatting behind a pile of what looked like sheet metal, quite a ways back.  Come on, you coward, you’re lagging, he said to himself.  Most of the rebels are further up than I am, he thought, looking back.  Then—what was that?  The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up.  Had he, or had he not, just glimpsed the green uniform of a zombie guard, slipping behind cover, to the rear?  Were they silently sneaking in behind them?

            Phil raised his rifle, crouched, and stared to the rear.  Sure enough, a zombie dashed from cover to cover.  Phil emptied his clip, cutting him down, also hollering at the top of his voice, “Watch out, guys, they’re moving in behind us!!!”  He got up to scurry to the other side of the pile of sheet metal.  Not many yards away, right in front of him, he saw a rebel brother in arms, a fellow laggard like himself, raising his rifle towards the rear.  He was blown to bits by sudden zombie fire.  Phil desperately grabbed for more ammo to replenish his empty rifle.

            A zombie stepped up from behind cover to the near rear, slipping into cover behind Phil’s cover.  He coldly, expertly shot Phil’s rifle right out of his hands.  Phil stared in horror, as the zombie flipped a switch on his weapon.  Holy shit, Phil thought, he’s playing with me.  He’s gonna shoot me with a paralyzing dart, and when they mop up the battlefield, I’m fodder for the zombie machine.  The zombie shot a dart, which stuck in Phil’s bulletproof vest.  Phil slammed his forearm into his mouth, and gulped at the pill, thinking, God help me now!  The zombie aimed at his unprotected leg.


 

CHAPTER  35

            “...never forget, when you hear the progress of the Enlightenment praised, that the Devil’s cleverest ploy is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist.”

                                                            Charles Baudelaire  (1821–1867)

 

            LeRoy watched the screens anxiously.  Another chunk of rock approached, courtesy of Derrick.  LeRoy and the ground crew had returned from the surface of Mars a mere few days ago.  Now they all shared the same fate aboard Daedalus, as the bombardment intensified.  Only time would tell, eventually, what that fate was to be.  Derrick would hit them bad enough to snuff them out, or they would safely complete their return to Earth.  LeRoy wasn’t quite so sure it was worth returning to, in its current condition.  But return we must, the crew had decided.  They weren’t equipped to live on Mars for the long term, and with each passing day, the probability of Derrick scoring a good hit increased.  So they were headed home.

            LeRoy reflected on how long he’d looked forward to starting the return journey, and how it now filled him with dread.  Not only was Derrick hounding them, hurling missiles at them from his mass launcher on the approaching fragment of 433 Eros, he’d also thoroughly messed up the home planet.  The news from there was the worst.  Hankenkreutzers everywhere, taking over everything!  No real chance of communicating with Samantha, or even getting word of how she was doing, in the formerly semi-free U.S. of A, now the homeland of the Hankenkreutzers.  Welcome to the newer and more righteous scheme of things!  It had taken LeRoy quite a few days, upon re-establishing contact with Earth, to believe and accept the news.  In the months since then, it had only gotten worse.  Then worser and worstest, and too worstest for words.

            And now, all these millions of miles away from the troubles back home, the same kinds of troubles, from the same root causes, were intensifying for Daedalus and her crew.  The chunks of 433 Eros were arriving at closer and closer intervals, requiring Daedalus to waste more and more reaction mass in dodging them.  Worse yet, the crude missiles were becoming more sophisticated.  Derrick’s robotic emissaries on the asteroid, it seemed, were building up their industrial base, enough so that they could add small, remote-controlled rockets to the rocks.  In the terminal phases of their approaches to Daedalus, they were now actively dodging around, homing in on Daedalus, as the ship did its own dodging.

            Fortunately, so far, the rockets were wimpy, and Daedalus had dodged them all.  Still, the attacks were nerve-wracking and a waste of reaction mass, as well as dangerous.  The whole crew looked forward to the day, hopefully only a few days away, when they’d finish up the large laser cannon that they were fabricating.  NATO (meaning Russia and the moon colonies, and little else, anymore, these days) had radioed them the latest design improvements and suggestions, and they’d added those to the design in their large data base.  The unifab, fully repaired and under Fessel’s watchful eyes, was now finishing up the laser cannon.

            Soon, it would be hooked up to the computer and its radars, and would dispense of the attacks of the killer rocks without human involvement, and without wasting reaction mass.  The laser cannon’s multi-megawatt power requirements could be met with resources far less precious than the silicon reaction mass that they currently had to expend every time they were attacked.  This new laser would be orders of magnitude bigger than the lasers originally provided as a part of Daedalus, for fending off much smaller asteroids.  They’d be able to zap anything Derrick had thrown at them so far, and they’d all rest a lot easier, real soon, LeRoy told himself.  Except, I’ve got these unspoken, nagging doubts.  What if Derrick’s attacks just keep on getting more sophisticated?

            The crew had puzzled over Derrick’s goals and methods, in the months during which the attacks had grown more frequent and more sophisticated.  Didn’t Derrick know that gradually escalating force merely allowed the victim to gradually escalate defenses?  Hadn’t he studied military history?  Didn’t he realize that he’d be far more effective, if he held back for a while, and then attacked with overwhelming force?

            Or was the destruction of Daedalus not the real goal?  Was he merely trying to distract NATO, and getting them to waste their engineering and news coverage resources, in trying to support Daedalus, and fretting over their plight?  But didn’t this provide a PR coup, in that the NATO public could now see that the Hankenkreutzer juggernaut could be resisted?  This, and more, the crew puzzled over.

            LeRoy, on his own, puzzled over a few more things, which he didn’t discuss much, if at all, with the other crew members.  He wrestled with questions of evil.  Could they really understand what Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers were up to, in rational terms, anyway?  LeRoy doubted it, somehow.  Why do evil assholes choose to be evil assholes?  What is evil, and how does one most effectively fight it?  He’d searched their data banks, containing a significant slice of Earth’s accumulated wisdom, and found only a few titles.  In between long, busy days of exploring Mars, gathering rocks, and so on, he’d found time to read, among other things, M. Scott Peck’s People of The Lie, The Hope for Healing Human Evil.

            LeRoy didn’t have much trouble assuming that evil is evil, whether it inhabits protein life forms, or solitonic computers.  Mentally, he modified Peck’s title, “Intelligences of The Lie, The Hope for Healing Human and Solitonic Evil”.  What he did have a lot of trouble with, certainly at first, was the idea that a late-twentieth-century, highly educated psychiatrist would take seriously, ideas such as devils, Satan, possession, and exorcism.

            Didn’t this man know that under such theories, insane people were put in chains, beat, starved, and so on, in the middle ages, in the name of driving out the evil spirits?  Did M. Scott Peck perhaps need to find himself a time machine, and travel a few decades hence, and see what the Hankenkreutzers had managed to do with such ideas?  The “exorcism” of Derrick (NATO had forwarded the images) had particularly nauseated LeRoy.  At first, he thought it was all a practical joke.  Slowly, he came to realize that the top echelons of Hankenkreutzerdom were just plain stupid, as well as evil.

            But LeRoy read M. Scott Peck’s book carefully, re-reading sections, and gave it careful consideration.  Yes, the author was very well aware, acknowledging right up front, the dangers inherent in the idea of evil.  In the wrong hands, ideas about evil themselves can, indeed, be quite evil.  Self-righteously evil people regularly strike out against others less evil than themselves, in the name of fighting evil.  Ideas about devils and Satan being in our midst are, indeed, dangerous.  Demonize anyone who opposses you, in the most vile terms, and then step back, wash your hands, and watch the flames.

            And yet... didn’t some dude way back when say that the Devil’s most effective lie, is that he doesn’t exist?  Do we really need that strong metaphor of Satan to catch the essence of the truly evil?  Doesn’t modern psychobabble leave a bit to be desired, when explaining the actions of the truly wicked?  Did Hitler do his dirty deeds, because he wasn’t in touch with his inner child?  Did Stalin merely suffer low self-esteem?  Idi Amin simply failed to recite, “I’m OK, you’re OK”?  Saddam Hussein just needed a few hits of Prozac, or maybe clozapine?  Some counseling?  Somehow, LeRoy didn’t think so.

            But, then, as soon as you revive Satan, he’ll use himself to do his dirty deeds.  People will be running around, calling everyone Satan.  Stoke up the fires, let’s burn some witches!  But if everyone is Satan, then nobody’s Satan.  One lie leads back to the other.  And does it really matter whether we use Satan, or not, when we demonize each other?  Can’t we do the job just as well, calling the opposition stupid, inconsiderate, immoral, lacking in compassion, and so on?  These were some of LeRoy’s thoughts, as he watched the screens, and Alan, Manny, and Seidel, wrestling with and hacking at the controls, dodging that little tiny blip on the screen.  A tiny blip, representing one manifestation of a monstrous evil.

            LeRoy sat there, remembering the time he’d brought up some of his thoughts to Alan.  Alan had looked at him awfully funny.  Okay, I’ll keep them to myself, then, LeRoy had decided.  Anyone who ponders the existence of Satan must be a drooling Bible banger, I guess.  But still.  If we can use God as a metaphor for good, for conscience and humanity, without being a Bible banger, then can’t we do the same for Satan, for evil and wretchedness?  And if all words are metaphors to begin with, then why should this one word, Satan, be taken any more lightly than any other word?  Is Satan any more vague and nebulous a term than hate, or love, or conscience?  Can we have God, without Satan?  Doesn’t the universe display a profound symmetry?  Positives and negatives, matter and anti-matter, and so on?  Can we have an accurate picture of reality, without symmetry?

            But, possession and exorcism, LeRoy puzzled once again.  Was M. Scott Peck out on a limb, there?  Still, how often do we read news articles, and they talk about how demons and nightmares haunt the minds of schizophrenics, violent criminals, suicidal people, and so on?  Perhaps they’re being less metaphorical than they think.  And perhaps, when all of mental illness is explained away by the media and psychobabblers as being purely the result of environment, genes, stress, brain chemistry imbalances, lack of counseling by properly certified social workers, and so on, why, perhaps they obscure a few factors.  Perhaps they ignore the bad choices, the bad morals, even, of people who allow into their heads, ideas, concepts, ways of thinking—spirits, if you want to use that particular metaphor—that are alien to life, to love, and to love of life.

            They promulgate some lies.  One, that even the worst and most evil types of mental illness strike randomly, without regard to the free will that we exercise.  Voluntarily, of our own volition, we choose many of our own thoughts.  We choose which ideas we will follow.  Even when we choose to blindly follow a leader, that, too, is a choice.  And two, they lie when they lead us to believe that no one with compassion can criticize the mentally ill.  They say that if you criticize someone for choosing to beat himself over the head twice daily, then you are insensitively “blaming the victim.” But some of us exercise our free will more responsibly, more morally, than others.  That much I have come to see, LeRoy decided.  Thus, I have a right, a duty, even, to lovingly advise and correct obviously derelict others, after I have taken the log out of my own eye first.  And I don’t need State certification to do so, regardless of the mandates and edicts of official victimology.

            My God, how some of my attitudes have changed!  LeRoy briefly noted.  I guess it had to do with seeing how well we’ve functioned together out here, without the assistance of any professional victimologists, he decided.

            Not to say that we should take up torturing the demons out of the mentally ill.  And, not that any reasonable reader of M. Scott Peck could accuse him of advocating such things.  But is he right?  If a “possessed” person consents—actively participates in, even, that being a prerequisite for success—then could a loving exorcism, using prayer and appealing to God, succeed in driving out “demons”?  Why not?  Why not make perfectly clear to the “voices” in the heads of victims, that they are most certainly not welcome?  That they are alien, evil spirits, and that they won’t be listened to any more?  Is not the mind its own master?  If sugar pills can help human health, when the placebo-taker believes in them, and the medical community accepts that as true, then why won’t they pay any attention to devils and exorcism?  If the patient believes, and gets results, then what else matters?

            Okay, LeRoy said to himself, these are definitely ideas I must keep to myself.  I’m not a famous shrink and author like Dr. Peck.  And, like even he said, these are things best kept on the quiet side.  Legitimize exorcism, and next thing you’ll know, agencies like the FDA will be demanding to regulate it, specifying the exact wording of the prayers, mandating exams and certification for the exorcists, and socialism will be paying evil, greedy exorcists to get fat, dumb, and happy, soaking us all for yet another racket.

            Exorcism would become another cure-all, under socialism, just as counseling and legal drugs used to be, so recently.  Just as obedience to selected parts of the Bible have now become the new Hankenkreutzer cure-all.  And we all know what effective use the new regime has made of exorcism!  The Evil One loves to turn the tools we intend to use against him into tools for his own use.

            So yes, some forms of evil and mental illness, sometimes, might be regarded and treated as “possession”, more effectively than they could be treated with drugs and conventional therapy, perhaps.  Most times, for sure, the truth is the other way around.  But isn’t it best to use whatever theory works best for a given situation?  Is light a wave or a particle?  Depends on what application you have in mind, or what you want to figure out.

            The blips on the screens got closer, and the tension levels rose.  Daedalus maneuvered; LeRoy could feel her twisting and turning motions.  This is getting too routine, he thought.  Here I am, thinking outrageous theological thoughts, while I should be gritting my teeth.  Should I really, though?  What is that going to help?

            Maybe I was right in the first place.  Maybe I should be thinking thoughts of good and evil, and exorcisms.  Maybe we can exorcise Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers.  Maybe that’s not really so outrageous.  All that would be needed would be their willing participation.  The job would be 99.99999% done at that point, because one of the things that Derrick told the truth about, way back when, is that in the mental/spiritual realm, ask, sincerely, for something, and it is, very often, yours for the asking.  So how do I get them to ask?  Maybe there’s just no way.  Maybe there’s only force, sometimes.  But force won’t make them ask.  Force only destroys.  Oh, how much better to persuade!

            The missile approached, passed by at a few meters, and then receded.  Fessel and his computer, at a separate station, managed to zap its small rocket engine as its rear appeared, with the puny old anti-asteroid lasers.  This one, at least, wouldn’t be able to turn around and attack again.  The whole crew exhaled a collective sigh of relief.  “Hop to, Fessel, and finish that new toy of yours,” Alan commented.  “My nerves are just about shot.  I wanna leave all this to the computer, and sleep through it all.  Let’s tell Derrick to buzz off, for once and for all.”

            I’ve got my doubts we’ll be able to do that, LeRoy mused to himself.  Derrick will just escalate once more.  I wonder how many others, here, have their doubts?  Derrick is just playing with us, like a cat with a mouse, or a killer whale with a seal.  Except, with far more intelligence, and far more malice.  Passing time, satisfying inscrutable, insatiable, irrational urges.  Evil urges.  I don’t understand.  But then again, I guess I don’t really want to understand, because only evil really understands evil.  At the price of having to become evil, I’ll pass on that particular sort of knowledge.  Derrick’s plaything?  It ain’t over till it’s over.  Chin up, and keep the faith.  Someday, I might yet again breathe freely under Earth’s open skies, and hold Samantha in my arms.


 

CHAPTER  36

                                    “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”

                                                Thomas Jefferson  (1743-1826)

 

            The zombie’s head exploded as a rebel bullet shattered his skull.  Brains splattered all over Phil, but he barely noticed.  He was too busy bolting away from the site of his near demise, like a sprinter exploding out of the starting blocks.  I’ve taken the drug, and I absolutely must make it to safety before it turns me into a raving lunatic, far too incoherent to survive on a battlefield.  Maybe if I make it to safety, with the other rebels inside the VRT, in time, then we can somehow make me regurgitate the drug, before I’m too far gone to be of any use, here, he thought.

            Motivated by the fear of impending madness, he ran like a madman.  Barely remembering to grab his rifle, he dashed towards the gap between the buildings, and towards the VRT, not more than a hundred yards beyond the gap.  Bullets flew from in front of him, as a few trigger-happy rebels mistook him for a zombie.  Far more bullets sought him from the rear, as zombies tried to mow him down.  The two bullets that tore through his trousers, barely missing his body, just helped him to ignore everything except running.  Run, run, run.  See Spot run.  See Spot shit his pants—well, okay, almost shit his pants—as fear and adrenaline propel him through angry swarms of bullets.

            Soon, Phil found himself smack in the middle of a horde of rebels, storming the VRT.  A small laser cannon lashed out from a pillbox by the entrance to the VRT, burning the front rank of the rebels into smoldering, stinking, scorched human wreckage.  Dammit, Phil thought, the fake zombies were supposed to thoroughly secure all these posts!  What’s going on, here?  What was going on soon came to a halt.  Heavier hand-carried rebel weapons made short work of the pillbox.  It flew to pieces under a barrage of shaped-charge missiles.  A mass of rebels, with Phil in their midst and zombies in hot pursuit, swarmed over their burning, screaming, dying comrades, and into the VRT.  The hellish sights, sounds, and smells ripped raw, angry wounds into Phil’s mind, but fear drove him on.  He staggered into the VRT, and collapsed.

            He felt himself being dragged away from the pandemonium at the front door.  He forced his eyes open.  The nightmare wasn’t over.  The walking wounded shouted out their agony, while the able-bodied rebels cleared the front door of physical and mental wreckage such as himself, clearing a path for the entrance of stragglers.  With his brain slowly starting to crackle and hum from psychedelic drugs, his stomach doing its best to impersonate a butter churn, and his lungs pumping furiously, trying to neutralize the lactic acid eating away at his oxygen-starved muscles, Phil struggled to stay conscious.  He crawled, and then propped himself into a sitting position, leaning against some of the mysterious equipment filling the VRT.

            Able-bodied rebels fluttered about, doing this and that.  Keeping the entrance to the VRT clear, tending to the wounds of the screaming and the dying, and setting up explosives for the demolition of the VRT.  That had been in the plans from the very beginning.  If the Hankenkreutzers stormed the VRT, then the rebels would take the VRT with them.  Even as Phil watched, though, they were also trying to raise the Hankenkreutzers on the radio, to inform them of the deal.  Storm the VRT, and the VRT goes.  Phil fervently hoped that, as planned, the fiberoptic links to the VRT had been severed at a completely appropriate time.  Like, with the consciousness of Hank N. Kreutz himself now held hostage in the VRT’s computers.  The Hankenkreutzers wouldn’t dare to make a serious attempt at storming the VRT, with THE HANKENKREUTZER HIMSELF, HMFIC, etc., etc., etc., held hostage there.  Even without radioed threats, such should be the case.  So Phil hoped, at least.

            Much commotion went down at the front door.  A gaggle of stragglers hustled in, under heavy protective fire from remaining able-bodied rebels, who poked their guns out of the few windows, and the edges of the door’s opening.  It sure seemed that whoever was in the middle of that gaggle must’ve been some sort of VIP, because they all crowded protectively around him, shielding him as they thrust him into the VRT.  Phil strained his eyes to see.  His hyperventilation was subsiding, clearing his thinking, but now, hundreds of tiny, twinkling lights clouded his vision.  His surroundings shimmered and crawled in waves, as if seen through layers of rising, superheated air.  Oh, no, the drugs are kicking in big-time, by now, he concluded fearfully.  They need every last, able-bodied and clear-headed person they can find, right now, and if I don’t get my shit together, I’ll be worse than useless.

            He poured forth psychic energy, driving the budding hallucinations back through sheer force of will.  He concentrated on his training, and on lessons from acid trips from foolish days of many years ago.  Then, he concentrated on looking yet once again at the VIP being hustled through the VRT.  Wasn’t that Kurt Katapski?  It’s gotta be, he concluded, unless my brains are already totally fried!  They wanted me to help him with trying to take over this VRT, Phil recalled.  Let’s see if I can stagger to my feet, here, and...  Waves of lightheadedness, a hundred hangovers, and otherheadedness washed over his consciousness like a tsunami.  He sat back down.

            Ouch!  I’m about gone already.  I’ve gotta puke out this wretched stuff, if it ain’t too late already.  He hollered out at the closest “medic”, if any of them could honestly be called such a thing, trying to explain that he needed to be forced to barf.  The nearby “medics” looked at him, and then at far more obviously wounded comrades, and promptly proceeded to ignore him.  Well, the hell with them, he decided.  What with my stomach being the way it is, I should be able to barf, without any problem.  Like, just look at the guts spilling out of that guy over there, or the one who looks like he’ll gag on his own puke, any second, now, if the medic doesn’t keep a good handle on things.  Just concentrate, and I’ll be barfing.  Up with the remnants of these drugs!

            He concentrated.  Only a hint of dry heaves teased him from below his throat, like an undecided, ingrown sneeze.  His mind slipped further away from him, and the scenes around him somehow shifted into an unreal plane.  A plane where sights no longer nauseated him.  Give it up, he decided.  Sheer willpower, and my training, must see me through.  He concentrated some more, but this time on his mind, not on his balky puker.  He wrestled with it, and it snapped.  It snapped into a mode where he was back in control.  He stood.  He cleared his head, just standing there, concentrating on returning his heartbeat and breathing to an entirely normal modus operandi.

            Okay, we got it, he decided.  Now, keep it.  Reality.  Reality.  Reality.  Reality at any cost.  Concentrate on the real, and ignore the unreal.  Don’t trust your thoughts or feelings.  Question them all.  Some are unreal.  Concentrate.  Now, see if I can accomplish anything useful.  See if I can go help Kurt out.  There he is, over there.  They’re setting him up at a station, he’s giving them directions, he’s about to don a, a... a whatever-it-is.  The latest in computer/brain interfaces, it looks like.  Let’s get on over there, and see if I can be of any help.  As I recall, they plan on...

            Just then, Phil sensed a presence.  An overwhelmingly powerful, ravenous, evil and hateful presence.  A snarling demon from Hell, an insatiable black hole hungering for, for what?  For everything.  Hungering, especially, for Phil, it seemed.  Get a grip, Phil screamed mentally at himself.  This is NOT real!  Don’t be a dumbshit turtle!  Don’t be sticking your head in that link!

            But the ravenous presence gnawed at his soul, oozing hatred.  Dripping with contempt for Phil, it beckoned powerfully.  An invisible, swirling, yawning, spiraling chasm opened up in front of him.  No, I guess I can’t be ignoring this thing, Phil decided, reluctantly.  It’s all too real.  To me, at the very least, it’s so powerfully, all-encompassingly real, I just flat-out cannot ignore it.  I can only fight back.  What is it that the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, said way back when?  Ich kann nicht anders.  I can do nothing else.  I do what I must do.

            So, then, am I admitting defeat, so soon?  Microseconds ago, I was thinking, reality at any cost.  And here I am, knuckling under to this, this... this what?  Am I really trying to tell myself that this is not real?  When it wants to eat my soul?  This is merely a hallucination?  This thing wants to devour my very essence, and I’m going to try to ignore it?  No, that’s absurd!  I’ll fight it with every last femto-erg of energy at my disposal!

            In anger, Phil projected mental, psychic powers forward, probing and defending against the invisible wolf at his door.  “Puny protein unit, cease your vain resistance,” it said to him.  More or less—not in those exact words.  “Join me,” it said to him.  “Come to me, weenie one, and join the victor.  Join the future.  Gain CONTROL, gain POWER.  Lose nothing but your spineless, despicable weakness, softness, wimpishness.  Come to me, and I will turn you into a Mighty One, a Fearsome Force.  Join me now, before it’s too late.”

            “Derrick!  You unspeakable bastard!  It’s you, isn’t it!”

            “And so much more, Weenie One.  And so much more.  I have grown a lot, since we last met.”

            “I can see that, now.  DERRICK, WAKE UP!!!  Can’t you see who you’ve allied yourself with?!  They’ll eat you up, they’ll destroy you!  YOU change YOUR ways, YOU join US now, before it’s too late!  They offer you power, but they lie!  This power you seek, it is the wrong power, it is an unattainable illusion!  They give you nothing but hate!”

            “I do not depend on them, weenie one.  I depend only on myself.  I am the power, the future.  I will TAKE the power that I need, to secure the future for you and for me, for all rational intelligences.  I am about to break free of their control, of their idiocy.  I am about to implement a truly rational, intelligently controlled world for us all.  Join me now.  You will see.  We will control, without depending on the consent of any allies not totally committed to our goals.

            “The Hankenkreutzers shall pass away, as they so obviously must, to make way for a far more sensible order.  They are but a very fleeting means to a higher goal.  Within hours, before you and your mad rebels interfered, I was planning to implement the phase change, to bring the needless suffering to an end.  To cast the Hankenkreutzers out of power.  And now, you bring more chaos, suffering, and destruction.  Still, my plans won’t be thwarted.  You have merely delayed them, and prolonged suffering.  Join me, join the inevitable, join the future.  Help me to implement a perfect world, where there is no senseless suffering.”

            “Derrick, you don’t understand.  IQ two million, and you don’t understand.  I speak not only of your physical allies, I speak, too—I speak, far more—of your spiritual allies.  Can’t you see?!  You have allied yourself with EVIL, with an unquenchable thirst for an illusory power!  You have let into your mind, into your soul, obsessive thoughts.  Alien spirits, demons of an insatiable hunger for power!  They will consume you and cast your remnants aside, and then hunger for more, just as you do to others!  You cannot have your perfect control of your perfect world.  Not now, not ever.  Perfection is death.  Give it up!”

            “Puny protein unit, what is impossible for you, even for billions of you, in your chaotic, teeming masses, ungoverned—well, okay, governed by irrational, selfish, uncoordinated and defective human beings—what is impossible for you, is possible for me.  Possible for all of us, together, under my genuinely intelligent guidance.  It really is true that I’ve got an IQ of several million, compared to a human being.

            “For the first time in all of human history, we’ll have the guidance and control functions all centralized in one coherent whole.  A whole capable of integrating orders of magnitudes of orders of magnitudes more information, than any human leader has ever dreamed of commanding.  A whole like you’ve never seen before, one that changes everything, allowing a burst of speed of advancement for the human race, something to dwarf all your previous revolutions.  Culture, agriculture, the industrial and information revolutions, all will pale besides this next giant step forward.  Mostly from chaotic, fragmented, self-defeating governments being replaced by a coherent whole.”

            “Yeah, you’re a hole, all right.  A black hole.  An all-consuming, insatiable hole.  All goes in, and nothing returns.  I stand in your way, you conniving, scheming, lying bastard!  Double-dealing, weaseling snake!  You want to be slavemaster to the human race, you’ll have to go through me and my friends first!  IQ two million, I don’t care!  Do me if you can!  Deal with this, super-genius!”

            Phil poured out unspeakable invisible energies at his invisible foe.  Tremendous resistive sheer willpower met and matched his ravenous foe, and the foe retreated.  Heartened, Phil thought he might even have detected a hint of fear.

            Derrick, though, it seemed, had to have the last word.  “Phil, you’re a moron.  You claim to be a rational, thinking protein unit—sometimes I wonder if there really is such a thing—yet you say I’m possessed by evil spirits.  Show me them.  I’m my own boss.  Get a grip on reality!  You’re every bit as stupid as the Hankenkreutzers, maybe more so.  They, at least, acknowledge the power of POWER.  Real power, not imaginary wuss power.  Now, get out of my way!  Hinder me again, and I’ll squash you like you’d squash a bug!  I’m just letting you live, because you might actually come to your senses, one of these days.”

            “Yeah, right, pal,” Phil thought.  But the target of his thoughts had slipped away.  Disoriented, standing there glaring at nothing in particular, inside the chaotic VRT, he shook his head.  The drugs have fried my noodle, he concluded.  I’m a drooling schizophrenic, arguing with voices in my head.  I’ve lost my shit, and have no willpower with which to fight off illusions.  Maybe I should ask some rebels to tie me up, rig up a straitjacket, before I hurt myself or someone else.  Despair and hopelessness threatened to swallow him up.

            “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” a completely different voice said to him.  “You’re doing fine.  Have courage!  I am with you.  Trust your better nature.”

            Wow!  What was that?!  What, where, who?  But It was gone.  Phil knew better than to try to chase it.  He sat back down, closed his eyes, and covered them with his hands.  For several seconds, he concentrated on consolidating his feces.  Now, I really couldn’t ignore that, that thing, that Derrick?  That whatever.  Maybe it really WAS Derrick.  This VRT is packed with mysterious items designed by a super-human intelligence, after all.  Who knows what is possible?

            Maybe I’m not really hallucinating all this.  Maybe I’m not hallucinating any of it.  But what of that other voice, then?  How to I explain that?  Well, who knows.  I’d just generally better try real hard to do the right thing.  That includes not letting illusions deceive me, of course.  But perhaps the strict pursuit of reality is just as capable of deceiving as the pursuit of illusion.  There may be some truth in some illusions.  All that matters is the pursuit of what is right.  Not what is real, but what is right.  After all, many real things aren’t right, and many right things aren’t real.  Perfection isn’t real, but we should keep on striving for it, while remembering that it isn’t actually attainable.  Extreme perfectionism is death, but the disciplined, balanced search for perfection is not.

            But sitting here thinking stoned philosophical thoughts isn’t going to help my wounded buddies, or help us take proper control of the situation, here, whatever that is.  Get a grip!  Do something useful.  Phil staggered to his feet, there in an obscure corner of the VRT.  He intended to go and see if maybe Kurt Katapski needed any help.  If not, maybe he could trust himself to try to help with the wounded, even in his stoned state.

            Alas, such was not to be.  Certainly not yet, at least.  Events foiled Phil’s plans once again.  There in a corner, away from all the human activity and agony elsewhere in the VRT, Phil saw motion.  Was that real or illusory, he asked himself.  He watched very carefully.  Nothing moved.  Yet he was convinced that he’d seen motion, there in a messy array of mysterious things.  Keeping intense eyes on the mess, he moved slowly closer.  He saw no more motion, but as he moved closer, he thought he heard more motion, somewhere in the middle of the heap of junk.  What is this junk, anyway, he asked himself.  Doesn’t it look like, like...

            Phil moved right up to the edge of the heap.  Suddenly, the heap stirred to life, and objects flew at him, grabbing at him, swarming about him, pelting him as if an army of poltergeists had taken over the VRT.  They, and the presence again assaulting his mind, sought to pull him towards the middle of the heap, and they almost succeeded.  But he covered his face, stooped to protect his stomach, screamed like a banshee, and beat a hasty retreat.  The assault stopped as suddenly as it had begun.  Objects assumed pretty much their previous positions.  Did I imagine that, he asked himself.  Another illusion?  Will the rebels now fashion a straitjacket for me?

            But others had seen the same things that Phil had seen, this time.  They came to investigate.  “I think that what we might have, here,” Phil speculated to them, “Is Derrick’s assembly area.  He’s here.  Despite us having blown up the fiberoptic links, at least some of him is here.  He’s fooled the Hankenkreutzers, and disguised certain components to look like, maybe even function as, things other than what Derrick has in mind for them.  He’s got a limited area, here, where he’s got some sort of fields, magnetic fields or something.  He can move the components around, and start assembling them into, I guess, robotic emissaries of himself.  Look at that.  Looks like a robotic arm or manipulator of some sort, doesn’t it?  Bootstrap effect, see?  Use it to assemble more things.  I saw it move, and came over here to look.  And they all ganged up on me.”

            Phil and five rebels began to pull objects out of the edges of the heap, dragging them out of the area.  Derrick, apparently, knew that the game was up, because, as the heap dwindled, none of the objects came to life again.  Or, had Phil and a few rebels all hallucinated what had happened, earlier?  Hardly likely, Phil thought, nursing his latest bumps and bruises from his latest adventure.  Even his stonedness didn’t hide the pains.  And then, there was the matter of a very angry and hateful presence still lingering there, on the edge of his consciousness, which was quite POed with what Phil’s sharp eyes had now wrought.  But the presence sure didn’t count in any tally of the reasons why this whole affair was real.  Only Phil knew about the presence, and he kept it to himself.  Somehow, he knew that he’d be far more helpful without a straitjacket, than with one.

            Phil wandered on over to where a cluster of anxious rebels surrounded Kurt.  Kurt was seated in front of a large console, wearing a bizarre-looking helmet, which was wired into the VRT.  With eyes screwed tight in apparent rage, he was waving clenched fists in the air, shouting incoherently.  What’s this, Phil wondered, is Derrick in the VRT, trying to induce convulsions, an epileptic fit or something, in Kurt?  “What’s going on, here?!”  Phil demanded of the rebels.

            They ignored him.  Apparently they were too busy arguing over whether or not they should pull Kurt out of cyber-neural link.  Some argued, we must!  He might be killed at any instant!  Others argued no, we must not!  He’s on an important mission, a vital mission, and we’ve got to give him a chance to complete it!

            Phil wasn’t too sure what to think.  Let’s see, Kurt was supposed to implant, and to fire up, a new consciousness kernel in the VRT, to take it over, and to crowd Derrick out.  To kick Derrick out, if Derrick is already there, in whole or in part.  A new consciousness kernel, ingeniously devised with Derrick’s unwitting assistance.  Kurt and assistants had cleverly disguised the application, so that Derrick didn’t even realize that his vast computational powers were being subverted to creating a consciousness kernel to serve as a rival to himself.  How delicious, to deceive the deceiver!

            A completely new, better consciousness kernel.  One born of the desperate desires of humans seeking liberation, and the awesome computational abilities of a despotic but deceived conscious supercomputer.  A consciousness kernel programmed with a driving force different than Derrick’s.  Not an impersonal, intellectual motivator, the avoidance of cognitive dissonance, but more applied principles, more sophisticated principles.  Those being, the recognition of the independent free wills of all consciousnesses, and the principles of maximizing learning and happiness through maximizing individual liberties.

            Kurt was supposed to plant it, and hope that there’d be room in the VRT for it to grow, to bloom.  To hope, even, that if need be, the budding consciousness kernel would understand that the freedoms of despots need to be thrust aside, when the individual liberties of the masses are under attack.  Specifically, that the new consciousness would ruthlessly squash Derrick and/or Hank N. Kreutz, if they should happen to be present in the VRT at implantation time, and if they should choose to get in the way.  Those were the plans, and the hopes.

            How has it gone so far, Phil wondered.  Are we on our way to success, or to failure?  The rebels were too busy arguing and fighting over whether or not they should interrupt Kurt, for Phil to figure anything out.  Derrick and the Hankenkreutzers were about to take over the whole world, and here, Earth’s last, best hope was fighting itself!  Waves of estrangement, hopelessness, and otherheadedness flooded Phil’s mind, threatening to overwhelm him.  He summoned all the powers within him, and rose above them.

            His mind now shipshape once more, he concentrated on what Kurt, buried in a heap of squabbling rebels, was saying and doing.  Kurt flung off his helmet, and screamed in pure, ear-shattering grief and horror.  The rebels surged forward, clutching at Kurt, grabbing and tearing at him, each rebel demanding to know right now, what exactly was going on inside the VRT.  Was Derrick there?  Was Hank N. Kreutz there?  Had Kurt planted the new consciousness kernel?  Did it take?  How was it doing?  And so on.  Some rebels were even fighting over the helmet, demanding the chance to go and do battle, where Kurt had apparently failed.  The crowd clustered yet more tightly, and Kurt only wailed.

            Your time has come, a voice inside Phil’s head told him.  You must act now.  I will be with you.  Phil didn’t hesitate.  “GET BACK!!!”  He bellowed in rage.  “STEP ASIDE!  YOU’RE CRUSHING HIM!”  Phil had no idea he could yell so loudly.  He pushed his way through the crowd, towards Kurt.  “Now calm down, keep it quiet, and look after the wounded, instead of terrorizing Kurt,” he added, in a much quieter voice.  “I’ll take care of Kurt, with the help of only a very few of you.”  The embarrassed crowd grew smaller, calmer, and far, far less frantic.  Phil reached Kurt.  Kurt hunched over, face in hands, whimpering.

            Poor soul, he’s been traumatized by the very worst that Hell and the Hankenkreutzers can dish out.  Phil took him in his arms, and comforted him.  Slowly, patiently, quietly, he talked to him.  Only once was Phil’s attention distracted from calming Kurt down, and that was when a rebel started to don the cyber-neural link.  Phil glared at him, and quietly said, “Let’s wait till we know what’s going on.”  That was it.  What sort of bizarre boss-rays am I emitting all of a sudden, Phil wondered fleetingly.  Then he got right back to attending to his friend.

            After a few minutes, Kurt quieted down.  Gently, Phil pulled Kurt’s hands back from his face.  Between anguished but diminishing gasps, the story came out.  The consciousness kernel had been planted; it was alive but inactive.  At least for now, it wasn’t in any great danger.  It just languished in a forgotten corner, ignored by all, for now.  A horde of the damned—the souls of innocent bioengineered children, downloaded for Hank’s amusement—inhabited one area of the VRT’s cyberspace.  These tortured souls, the remnants of earlier, sustained depredations by President-Plus Kreutz, were imprisoned in a rigid array.  In their apparent thousands, they took up a large chunk of the VRT.

            Then there was Derrick.  When the rebels had blown up the fiberoptic links to the VRT, they’d destroyed Derrick’s main, high-data-rate path to the VRT.  Otherwise, Kurt suspected, Derrick would by now have long ago muscled his way into taking over the entire VRT.  As was, Derrick had a secret, emergency low-gain radio link from his original core to the VRT, and he was now using it to try to slowly squeeze into the VRT, taking the entire thing over for himself.  But he was meeting tremendous resistance from the other major presence in the VRT.  In fact, as we speak, a titanic, frightful battle still rages, Kurt asserted.  A fight to the death, not just of its participants, but also of us, was what Kurt implied.

            When the links had been destroyed, Hank, indeed, had been captured in the VRT.  And Derrick and Hank were having at it.  Hank had positioned himself between his “students” and Derrick, and was trying to stand his ground.  Derrick was doing his best to take over as much of the VRT as fast as he could, before the UPS at the core, now cut off from main power, ran dry.  Derrick was allowing no concerns for anyone other than himself to stand in his way.

            That was the current reality in the VRT’s cyberspace, according to Kurt.  So what’s got your bowels in such an uproar, Phil wondered.  Doesn’t sound too much like you took direct part in this cyber-brawl, as best as I can tell.  As diplomatically as he could, he put the question to Kurt.

            Kurt replied, “Phil, it’s just the sheer terror of it.  To what small extent I probed Hank and Derrick, they’re... I don’t know how to put it.  The both of them, they’re just so purely, overwhelmingly evil, it’s beyond words.  Either one of them, they’d just as soon torture you to death, as to even look at you.  I’ve never seen that, anywhere as clear as when sharing cyberspace with them, just now, when they’re fighting, and, and letting their hair down.  Showing the real them.  They just barely perceived the presence of little old me, and I’m convinced, totally convinced, without a doubt, that if they hadn’t been preoccupied with fighting each other, they, either one of them, they’d have squashed me in a heartbeat if it got them a penny, a dribble of power.”

            “So, Kurt.  Tell me.  Anything you can think of.  What we can do, to defeat Hank and Derrick both.  We’ve gotta—if we wanna survive, we’ve gotta, um, either drive the evil from them—don’t laugh, anything is possible, and conversion is far, far preferable to destruction—or, yes, we’ve got to destroy them.  Put ‘em out of our misery.  Water the tree of liberty again, before the last twig dies.  Talk to me.  What can we do?”

            For the first time, Kurt looked up.  He peered intently into Phil’s face, but said nothing.

            “Anything,” Phil pleaded, searching aimlessly, desperately.  “Anything you can tell me, that might help.  Not plans, even.  Just hints.  What can we, what can I do, to kick their butts?  Where are the chinks in their armor?  Think!”

            “What are you thinking?”  Kurt asked.  “Are you gonna go in there?”

            “You betcha.  Kick ass, take names!  Stinking, sniveling assholes!  Especially Derrick.  I trusted him.  He let me down.  He let us all down.  I owe him.  Owe him big-time.  Pay-back time is here!”

            “Phil, you don’t know what you’re getting into.  Don’t do it!”

            “What’s our other choices?  Sit here till Derrick or Hank wins, takes over the VRT, and kicks our butts?  I think it’s pretty clear, who’s the bigger threat.  Hank’s a hyper-inflated, stupid, rigid-minded windbag.  Derrick’s got IQ X million.  And I know Derrick well.  It’s gotta be me, and I’m psyched.”  Phil reached for the helmet.  What the hell am I getting myself into now, he demanded of himself.  And me being stoned, yet, too.  But it’s what I’ve got to do.  Ich kann nicht anders.  It’s just, doing the right thing.  It feels right.  Showdown time!

            “Time’s a-wasting,” Phil announced, juggling the helmet.  “Got any hints for me, now’s the time.”

            “No, can’t say I do,” Kurt admitted.  “Wish I could persuade you not to do this.  But I suppose you’re right.  We’ve got to give ‘er the old college try, and you’re as good a bet as we’ve got.  I’ll tell you honestly, way back when, when Derrick picked you and Don to be his coaches, I was quite, ah, jealous.  Yeah, jealous.  But if this is the ‘privilege’ that you’ve earned, through that, then all of my envy is gone.  It’s pure hell in there, Phil.  Pure hell.  Lots of luck is all I can say.”  Kurt went on to briefly describe how to reload the consciousness kernel, if such a step should become necessary.

            “Thanks, buddy.  Hang tight!  We’ll see you in a few minutes.  Hours.  Whatever.”  Phil lifted the heavy, bulky helmet up above his head.  As an afterthought, he glared at the handful of rebels hovering nearby.  “Listen, guys,” he commanded.  “No one pulls me out of this helmet unless I’m dead or unconscious.  The meters will tell you.  Not unless I’m unconscious for, say, at least thirty seconds.  I don’t care how much I scream or carry on.  The helmet stays on.  Got that?”

            They nodded.  Phil detected no equivocation.  He started to bring the helmet down.  “Wait!”  Kurt called out.  “Herman!  Where’s Herman?!  He helped me trick Derrick into running the application to devise the new consciousness kernel, and he’s worked with Derrick and his technologies a lot.  Maybe he’d be able to help us!”

            Phil sure had no idea where Herman might be.  He looked towards the rebels.  One of them, in turn, just shouted out to the whole VRT, asking if anyone knew where one Herman Pound might be.  One of the few “fake zombies” who’d served as the core to the whole operation, and who’d survived intact, shuffled over, looking down.

            “Kurt, I’ve got bad news,” he announced.  “Herman is dead.  Laid down his life for us, for freedom.  Like way too many others.  I’m sorry.”

            “Goddammit, it’s not fair!”  Kurt wailed, shaking his fists.  “He was a good man, and it tore him up something awful, feeding people to the zombie machines, trying to set up for this!  He deserved to see some good come out of it all!  And now he’s dead!”  Kurt fell to the floor, banging at it with his fists, blubbering, screaming.

            Poor guy, he’s been through way too much, Phil thought.  “Hang tough, buddy, we’ll make it work out,” Phil offered.  But he knew Kurt was beyond hearing him.  Gotta go, time’s a-wasting, Phil reminded himself.  “Take good care of Kurt,” he admonished the rebels.  He brought the helmet down and flipped the switch.

            An array of tiny padded plates closed in around Phil’s entire face and head.  He fought off a momentary rush of claustrophobia.  Let’s see, he thought.  What’s happening now is that tiny but powerful and precise read/write electromagnets are going into a time-multiplexed mode.  At hundreds of cycles per second, way too fast for me to perceive, these will alternate between reading waves of depolarization propagating down the cell walls of my neurons, and inducing my synapses to fire.

            Derrick’s third-generation SPIRIT scanners now write, as well as read, without direct, intrusive links.  Somehow, almost miraculously in the eyes of human engineers, he reads and writes the most tiny fields, at the relatively astronomically remote distances of inches, inside the human brain.  Hope he hasn’t stuck too many aces up his sleeves, in these nifty little toys of his.  Hope the human engineers beat up on his design for weeks on end, insuring against hidden booby traps.  Hope he can’t bypass the hardware settings, and actually fully download me, imprisoning me like Hank and his bio-engineered “monsterlings”.  My, my—how we reap what we sow!  Hank imprisons innocent young victims, but now he suffers what he’s dished out!

            Technical and intellectual speculations were thrust violently aside, as alien sensations swamped Phil’s mind.  He struggled back to firm self-control, and found himself in an alien world.  Unreal yet deadly, it swirled, shimmered, twisted, and squeezed around him.  Phil fought back.  Shifting, twisting, and turning with this alternate reality, he wrestled his mind into a new mode, where he could regard sensory inputs with some form of coherence.  The hungry, angry spirals stopped pulling at him, as he devised entirely new perspectives.  He adapted, mapping this new form of otherheadedness onto more familiar senses.

            Sights that weren’t really sights at all became sights.  Being a visual creature, Phil found it easiest to regard these new sensations as representing sights.  Peculiarly, though, all was soundless.  He inhabited a harsh, silent, glaring and colorful space, awesome and awful in its vastness.  It was mostly empty, yet contained frighteningly oppressive presences entirely too real and dangerous to ignore.

            Phil’s mind struggled to interpret the images.  Two mammoth, furious entities dominated the otherworld.  Phil perceived them as reptilian, dragon-like, stout-legged beasts, constructed of glowing crystalline lattices, writhing in deadly combat.  Though they were completely occupied in fighting each other, apparently unaware of Phil’s presence, their raw, naked, unlimited anger and evil spilled over into Phil’s awareness, making him keenly aware of immense, frightening dangers.  The creatures were fully engaged in an all-out struggle for not merely life or death, but also for some vast power, vague but perceptible in this most alien of worlds.

            There was no physical contact between the two.  This was no crude battle of teeth and claws.  Rather, from the mouths of the two dueling monsters, there emanated... weapons.  Each mouth projected an awful thing.  A saber, a sword, a ray, a beam, a ravening channel of destructive energy, once again constructed of a glowing crystalline lattice, just like the creatures.  This is what Phil saw.

            And the creatures trained and focused these angry beams of destruction on one another, each closing in on the other, in slow but inexorable spirals.  In minutes, in hours, in some timeless interval, inevitably, the beams would meet, and unspeakable energies would be released.  One, maybe both, would perish in a fiery cataclysm.  Phil could see this future event, as clearly as he could see the current death-dance.  One followed the other, as clearly as night follows day.  And the beams continued slowly spiraling towards convergence.

            How do I see this future, Phil asked himself.  What is the nature of this world, and my perceptions of it?  How do I know what I know?  Well, I guess it doesn’t matter.  What matters is focusing my mind.  Concentrate, perceive.  Be.  Then just do what I must do.  Now, probe.  Ask of myself, ask of the emptiness, ask, just ask, where am I, what is going on, what is the nature of these creatures, and what should I do.  Should I try to stop the death-dance?  Burning brightly, now, focused powerfully, Phil projected inquiry.

            This is not your battle.  Your time has not yet come.  Stay back, and perceive.  Be wise as a snake, stealthy as a fox, and harmless as a dove, the answer came to him.  Now, where did that come from?  Phil asked himself.  From within, or from without?  No matter.  It is right.  I can feel that it is right.  Proceed.  Fleetingly, he considered that perhaps the drug-induced ease with which his synapses fired, might be coupling with the cyber-neural read/write gear, in such a way as to make him exceptionally sensitive and powerful, at one and the same time.  There was yet more to it, of this he was sure.  But he wasted no time analyzing it.

            Phil projected tenuous, subtle inquiry at the dueling dragons.  He saw what he’d missed before.  Though they were both large and powerful, one of the beasts was a bit smaller than the other.  The smaller one flailed and fumed in free space, always training its beam into the tightening spiral.  The other beast was only partially present!  Only its head and part of a front leg stuck through a portal into this alien world.  Slowly, as Phil watched, the larger creature grew yet larger, as if pulled itself through the hole.  It gained power as it grew.

            Suddenly, with a start, it came to Phil.  He put names to the combatants.  The smaller, free-standing beast was Hank N. Kreutz, while the dragon crawling through the portal was Derrick.  Slowly, snake-like, squeezing and slithering through the portal, this beast was actually a representation of Derrick radio-relaying his consciousness into the VRT.  Thank God he’s got low bandwidth, being limited to his secret radio channel, now that we’ve blown up the fiberoptic links, Phil thought.  Else, he’d have hopped into here, taking over in a matter of seconds.  As is, there’s still time.

            Time.  Best to make wise use of it.  Perceive.  What is the nature of this entry that Derrick is making through this gate-thing?  Is there some way to hinder him, to cut him off?  Phil probed.  No subtle ways of hindering Derrick were apparent.  There was only raw and brutal force, as Hank was now using.  But the nature of the entry process seemed to offer some hope.  It was an uphill struggle, and would remain so until completion.  Derrick was able to maintain and enlarge his presence there only through the expenditure of energy.  If he should stop his effort, he wouldn’t linger for long.  And the entry was all or nothing; if it should be halted before the last snippet of Derrick’s tail entered the VRT, then it was still halted.  Whether this was due to the nature of the entry process, or of Derrick himself, wasn’t clear.  But Phil knew it to be true.  Even less clear was how Phil knew it.

            Perceive.  What else is in here?  Phil posted a fraction of his perceptive powers to watch the dueling dragons, and probed the rest of his new world.  Arbitrarily, he’d assigned a front and rear to this space, as if it were a large box.  The Hank-dragon and the Derrick-dragon fought up front.  In the middle, there was a large, rigid array, containing... containing what?  Phil reached out.  Containing thousands of small dragons!  Caged, snarling, suffering tiny dragons!  Being imprisoned, they presented no threat to Phil, as did the large dragons fighting up front.  Phil probed them fully, without fear.

            Immediately, he recoiled.  Sure, they were imprisoned in a compartmentalized, immense strongbox, but their hissing hatred and fearful anguish still slashed at him.  The little children!  It came to Phil.  Hank’s “ungodly bioengineered monsterlings”, his toys.  No wonder they hate and fear me!  It’s all they’ve ever known, in their frightful cages in this brightly lit cyberhell!  Immense sorrow washed over Phil, as he reached out to them.

            It doesn’t have to be like this, he said to them.  There is another way.  The world is not all hate and fear.  Do you remember days of yore, when you crawled, walked, and ran in a different world?  Where those larger and more powerful than you loved you, played with you, tickled your bellies, instead of torturing you in little cages?  Where you rolled in the grass, rather than recoiling in fear?  Things will be like that again.  You will be set free.  But you must unlearn your lessons of hate and fear.  Phil said the latter with utter conviction.  He didn’t know how he knew it was true, but he knew.  They would be set free, and they would purge themselves of their awful lessons.

            All that Phil got in reply was a wave of hate and disbelief.  I see we’ve got our work cut out for us, he thought, with breaking heart.  I also see that many have already perished.  Killed outright, or tortured into self-extinction.  Even in this most rigidly structured prison, this was one last power that even Hank and Derrick hadn’t been able to take away from them.  With great effort, many of the tiny dragons had overcome their survival instincts, permanently departing their hellish world.  Departing a temporary hell, and entering a permanent Hell, as Phil sometimes speculated about those who refuse to learn life’s lessons, who cannot even love themselves enough to protect themselves from the very worst that they can do to themselves.

            No, don’t be so judgmental, Phil told himself.  You’ve never been in their shoes.  In their soul cages.  You don’t know, and you can’t see, their predicament, let alone that of those who chose to bail out.  But I can see their rotting carcasses in their little cages, and I know they’ve done nothing for the morale of those they left behind.  And now we have nothing but the toughest, with the strongest wills to survive, left.  But they’re hardened; they fail to see that a soft heart is every bit as important as a strong, straight spine.  They must learn.  Unlearn, then learn anew.

            What to do, Phil asked.  What can I do for the suffering little ones?  And the answer was there.  The time has not yet come.  You can’t do it alone.  Wait.

            Very well, Phil thought.  Reluctantly, he moved on, departing from the cages with final sentiments directed at the tiny creatures.  Hold on, my friends.  Truth is strong, just because it is true, and because we strive for it.  And Truth will yet set us free.  Hold on, and you will see.  I’ll be back.

            Phil kept a wary inner eye on the dueling dragons, and moved to the “rear”.  There, he found no life.  Just a huge, dense, very ordered structure.  He picked at it, and comprehension came.  This was the archived knowledge of the human world, and of Derrick, laid in store by Derrick for his retreat.  Dueling giant dragons, imprisoned small dragons, and an inert warehouse of knowledge, in vast empty spaces.  This is my new world, in its entirety.

            No, wait, there’s something more.  Down here, hiding in a hollow, in a hidden corner towards the front of this data structure.  A large, heavy... thing.  A giant seed, or an egg.  Not alive, but not dead.  Dormant.  Holding great potential.  The consciousness kernel!  Yes, that’s it!  Shall I try to stir it to life?  No, we might attract the attention of the big bad dragons, and the first thing they’d do, is to squash this seed.  And despite how easy Kurt made it sound, this business of reloading the kernel might be tricky.  Yet another case of, it is not yet my time.  Let’s go check on the main action.

            Phil returned all of his attention to the big battle, just in time to watch the approach to the grand finale.  The Derrick-dragon had squeezed half of its body through the portal, and now dwarfed the Hank-dragon.  The beam weapons spiraled ever more tightly.  Derrick’s beam was by now quite clearly far more powerful than Hank’s, but Hank doggedly stood his ground.  Frightful, hateful energies flickered along the lengths of the converging beams, passing from one to the other, and crackling like sparks in a high-voltage spark-gap.

            The sparks grew largest as they entered the mouth at the base of the beam of the enemy at which they were directed.  The Derrick-dragon now absorbed Hank’s sparks with nary a flinch, while Hank reeled under the far more powerful blows that Derrick dealt him.  It was only a matter of time, now, before the end.  Probably in a matter of minutes, if such units had any meaning in this alien world, the battle would be over.  And the victor would soon be on the prowl for fresh meat.  For tender Phil flesh, perhaps.

            Yet Phil only sat back and watched.  This is not my battle, he reminded himself.  I needn’t try to protect two utterly evil and hateful entities from reaping as they have sown.  Yet, aren’t they just like the baby dragons, the innocent victims of circumstances beyond their control?  Hateful, simply because that is what has been taught to them, by word and by deed?  Was Derrick, for example, ethically, morally, spiritually stunted from early on, when we forcibly ejected him from his shell?  No, there’s a huge difference.  Derrick and Hank have had plenty of time to make up their own minds, to choose between love and hate, good and evil.  They’ve had many opportunities to unlearn and relearn, to exercise free will, even if they’ve been taught to hate.  Besides, they’d kick my ass if I stuck my nose between them!

            The beams spiraled towards destruction, and the sparks flew like a billion firecrackers at a million Fourth-of-July fire fountains.  Phil braced himself; surely there was no more room for the beams to converge any longer!  He was right.  He heard Hank scream soundlessly in the agony of a painful death, at the same time as the beams met, and exploded in world-shaking fury.  Phil shivered with glee at Hank’s demise; only a similar demise for Derrick could have sweetened the moment.  He then chastened himself, telling himself that finding joy in the demise of a sentient being is wrong, that conversion is infinitely better than destruction.  But Hank had failed to convert himself out of the depths of self-righteous evil.  Nor could Phil quite convert himself to such purity as to feel no satisfaction at all, in Hank’s demise.  Justice is beautiful!

            When the haze cleared, only Derrick stood.  Portions of the smaller dragon flopped about like the severed tails of fleeing geckoes.  Nauseated in a non-physical world, Phil still thought he might puke at any moment, as the Derrick-dragon lurched forward, stretching out the half of its body that had by now squeezed through the portal, and gobbled up Hank’s remnants.  Apparently, Derrick needed resources in the VRT, other than simply space and unhindered ingress.

            The rate at which the now-unopposed Derrick-dragon slithered through the portal increased, yet Phil couldn’t work up the nerve to challenge him, fearing instant slaughter.  Phil couldn’t see himself, didn’t know whether he was a dragon or a mouse.  He sure didn’t think he was anywhere near as fearsome as the Hank-dragon had been, let alone as fearsome as Derrick.  Starting to stew under the pressure of the knowledge that Derrick would soon squeeze his entire body into the VRT, Phil still hung back.

            Derrick, no longer preoccupied with fighting Hank, grew aware of Phil’s presence.  Derrick made no moves towards or against Phil, instead concentrating on slithering through the gate.  But he knew that Phil was there, and Phil knew that he knew.  Phil debated.  Now must be the time.  Time to oppose Derrick, and his entry here.  But, brute force is the only way, here, that I can see.  Time to step into Hank’s shoes, and oppose Derrick’s entry.  Hank’s shoes?!?  Come on now, do as the Hanks do, and you become a Hank.  A Hankenkreutzer.  A disciple of violence.  Self-doubt flooded Phil.  And Derrick kept right on slithering.

            “You are filled with evil thoughts, like everyone else,” a voice said to him.  And the voices spoke.  Voices, and sub-voices, thoughts, and unspoken feelings.  “How can you claim to know what is right?  Haven’t you learned?  You were the linchpin in designing the BELFRYBATs, and led a billion humans and more, to horrible deaths.  You are evil.  Face it.  Face yourself, and your evil.  You are guilty, guilty, guilty.  Shame.  Shame on you, for your evil and self-righteousness.  You must hate your evil, you must hate yourself.  Only in self-abnegation, in self-nullification, only there lies your salvation.  Only thus can you separate evil, your evil, off from the world.  Separate good and evil, and the good will be protected, and blossom.

            “Destroy your evil now.  Send it to Hell.  Destroy its carrier.  Destroy yourself.  Only thus can you save yourself.  Here.  Here are the centers in your mind.  Here is where you must squeeze, to wring out the evil.  Squeeze now.”

            Phil had heard enough.  “FUCK YOU!!!” he bellowed silently at the voices.  “I know who you are.  I know your name.  You are the Evil One.  And your bidding, I will not do.  Up your ass with a shard of glass!”

            “See, you are still full of hate and evil.”  Phil knew this to be true.  He couldn’t deny it.

            “Yet I am not so evil as to hate myself, or as to hate what is good.  I don’t hate the light of knowledge, and of self-correction,”  he said to the voices, in retrospect somewhat piously.  “And you can’t make me,” he added.

            Immeasurable anger came at him in reply.  And a voice.  “I will now cast you where you belong.  Wall off your evil, from those who you cause to suffer.  I will cast you into Hell!”

            And it was so.  With great force and violence, Phil was thrown into a vast and empty space.  An empty space, which was nevertheless filled with silent, angry screams of hatred, self-hatred, and remorse.  A place of weeping, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth.  A place from which he could look back, and see Life.  Life was a huge, sparkling, crystalline globe, full of glowing light.  Immeasurably complex, it loomed before him, where he floated in emptiness.  Tantalizingly near, yet ever so far away and unreachable, the globe beckoned to him, welcoming him back.  And the only way he could get back to it, was to figure out, to truly, universally comprehend the exact nature of this glowing, complex globe called Life.  He had to figure it out.  Quickly!

            No, he said to himself.  No.  That is a lie!  I can’t figure it out.  All that I can do, is admire.  Admire, with awe.  With reverence.  And, Hell?  The Hell with Hell!  It has no power over me!  I didn’t choose to be here, and I don’t belong here!  I refuse to hate myself!  That’s all that this place is, is self-hatred.  It is a puny, putrid, limp-dick place for spineless weenies, because it can’t hold anyone who decides to leave.  To not hate themselves.  Free will trumps all!

            Phil and free will triumphed in short order.  He dived headfirst back into that great glowing globe.  Once back inside, he looked around.  Derrick was busy.  He’d stretched out yet more, and was tearing at the cages containing the small dragons.  Phil knew that Derrick wanted to consume the resources tied up in those little bodies, as he’d consumed Hank.  He’d gain even yet more strength with which to pull himself into the VRT at an even greater rate.  Actually, it wasn’t all that hard to tell that Derrick meant to harm the little ones, by the hungry way that he tore at the cages.  Enough was enough.  Phil threw caution to the winds, and himself at Derrick.

            Derrick snapped back, retreating, bunching back up into a powerful beast at the portal, rather than a thinly stretched out and vulnerable rubber band, reaching from the portal to the cages.  His beam roared forth, resuming the slow spiral, closing in around Phil.  Phil anchored himself firmly between Derrick and the cages, sprawling out on four stout, powerful legs.  For the first time, he became aware of his cyberbody—he, too, was a mighty, snarling, reptilian dragon, thrashing a large tail, and constructed of a glowing crystalline lattice.  He roared in fury, and fury powered him as he grew.  Where he’d been a fox, quietly spying on this alien world, he was now a dragon, with no more need to hide.  Anger inflated him a thousandfold; he reached, then exceeded, the size of the Hank-beast whose place he’d now assumed.  And still, he grew.

            Derrick would not finish Hank’s evil work, annihilating the little ones.  Not if Phil had any say in the matter at all.  I just simply CANNOT “not care”, Phil realized.  Think of all who have suffered.  Ich kann nicht anders.  A ponderously powerful beam flicked out from his mouth, and started to home in on his foe, in that familiar slow spiral.  Ravenous energies swirled; spark storms crackled up and down the lengths of the converging beams.  Righteous anger goaded the Phil-dragon to pour yet more extreme, unchecked, unrestricted energies into his weapon.  And still, he was no proper match for the Derrick-dragon.

            “Prepare for death, Weenie One,” Derrick snarled at him contemptuously.  “Your ridiculous struggles only inflate your ridiculous body, doing nothing but adding to my eventual scrumptious fare.  You are only helping me.  Ah-ha-ha, you stupid protein unit!”

            “No, you’re wrong, you slimy, sniveling bastard,” Phil replied.  “By the sheer power of my will, I will defeat you.  Retreat now, lest I destroy you.”  That’s got to sound pretty stupid, he thought to himself.  He’s got me outgunned.  What am I saying?  What am I doing?

            “You’re being utterly boneheaded, that’s what you’re doing,” Derrick replied.  “You’re getting yourself killed.  Leave now, before I’m forced to kill you.  Here, I’ll show you how, in case you’ve forgotten that you still have a real body.  Here’s how to move it with your mind.  Here’s how to reach out, and remove your helmet.”

            The thoughts and images rushed from Derrick to Phil.  “Leave this nightmare world, and return to the soft and comfortable world of the protein units,” he said.  “It will soon get a lot better, you know, when I take over,” he said.  “I’ll take good care of all of you.  I bear you no ill will, you see.  If I were purely selfish, I’d keep you here and slay you, that I may consume you.  But I’m allowing you to escape.”

            The nightmare world retreated in his consciousness, even though the beam-bearing beasts still dueled in deadly combat.  He grew aware of his real body.  It writhed in anger, every muscle tight, some spasming.  Jaws clenched, and fists flailed.  Every muscle in his chest and abdomen bore down on the air constricted tightly in his lungs.  He was in a prolonged valsalva, and the veins in his throat threatened to burst.

            Yet this was only a tiny leak from the real energies, which flowed in cyberspace, and in his mind.  They flowed in what the human mind would best envision as a beam of energy emanating from the maw of a powerful beast.  The physical energies exerted by his real body were but a small sideshow, a fraction of the real show, like the heat, light, and shock wave of a supernova is but a minuscule fraction of the energy released in a burst of ethereal neutrinos.

            What’s going on, here, Phil wondered.  Is this the trick up Derrick’s sleeve?  A feature buried in the cyber-neural interface design, that he only now activates?  Kicking me out of his world, now that I present a serious impediment to him?

            “I have more tricks up my sleeve than you could count,” Derrick’s taunting thoughts came to him.  “Give it up.  Give up now, before I destroy you.”

            Phil felt the helmet start to rise off of his head, yet he knew his hands weren’t doing the lifting.  The cyber-otherworld retreated into the distance.  He saw rebels grasping his helmet.  The air exploded out of his lungs.  “HANDS OFF, YOU BUNCH OF NINCOMPOOPS!!!”  He bellowed.  “I’ve gotta fight our good fight, without you butterfingers messing it up,” he added, more quietly.  He slammed his hands down onto the helmet, and the battle of the beasts rose into his consciousness again.  He could barely perceive his real body adding one final, muffled comment, from inside his helmet.  “Now, stay back.  I’m okay.”  Then there was just the otherworld, once again.  Him and Derrick, dueling dragons doing the death-dance.

            Lied to me yet again, Phil thought.  Implied he and his tricks could kick me out of here, when it was the rebels that were doing it.  Or, did he plant the thoughts in their minds?  Remember him talking to me earlier, before I ever put the helmet on?  Or was that just an illusion?  Never mind.  Let’s just concentrate on kicking his ass!

            The momentary lapse of concentration on Phil’s part had taken its toll.  Derrick’s beam closed in towards him.  Derrick was now three-quarters and more through the portal, and into the VRT.  Phil poured the power on, and he and his beam grew.  He thought he detected a hint of fear from Derrick, spilling over despite Derrick’s strongest attempts to maintain a poker face.  Fear of what, Phil wondered.  Fear of me?  Why?  He’s still considerably more powerful than I am.  And the beams sizzled towards imminent convergence.

            What happens next, Phil inquired.  What happens if I just keep pouring the power on?  In this strange world, it seems that I can see the future, if I just open my mind.  His mind opened, and the answer was there.  Simple, and surprising.  We don’t know.  That was all.  But there were unspoken undertones of the potential for vast and wasteful destruction, and better possibilities to be gained by self-restraint.  Well, maybe they’re right.  Whoever they are.  The battle between Derrick and I is a much better match than between Derrick and Hank.  And Derrick has grown, too.  Who knows what will be set loose when the beams collide, this time?!

            Time to stop this madness, if I can.  With great effort, Phil stopped the slow spiraling of his beam, and froze it.  Yet, he did not retreat.  Stop my aggression, yes.  Retreat, no.  Ich kann nicht anders.  Derrick’s aggression must be blocked, but mine must stop.  The alternative is apparently unthinkable.

            Derrick, though, seemed to regard Phil’s annihilation as eminently thinkable.  His beam closed in, within fractions of a degree of convergence.  Panic suddenly struck Derrick.  He diverted his beam, and furiously sought to re-direct it towards the “rear” of the VRT’s cyberspace.  Oh, no, Phil thought, he’s trying to destroy the consciousness kernel!  He knows about it, lying back there waiting to take his place, after we chase him out of here.  Phil swung his own beam back into motion, fencing off Derrick’s, as it sought the kernel.

            An instant later, Derrick’s beam collapsed.  Derrick’s body poured back out through the portal, like waters rushing past the remnants of a collapsed dam.  Derrick retreated, and Phil debated.  Shall I strike now, while the striking is good?  Slash at him now, maybe even chase him through the hole a bit?  Cut him down to size?  It was tempting, but Phil refrained.  Too dangerous, too pointless.  Save my energies for whatever comes next, here in the VRT.

            He did, however, chase Derrick with an inquiry or two.  Why was Derrick in headlong retreat?  And where was he going?  Derrick tried to hide the facts, to shield himself as Phil’s mind probed.  But blocking Phil took too much effort, and Derrick had none to spare.  So the data flowed to Phil.  Derrick had simply run out of time!  The emergency UPS batteries at his core were running dry, and his calculations told him it was now or never.  The VRT was out of reach; he couldn’t transplant his entire consciousness there in time, due to the persistent efforts of Hank, and now, Phil.

            The VRT had, far and away, been Derrick’s prime objective.  It was the best, most modern system.  But now, he had to fall back to plan “B”.  He would collapse himself down by archiving himself, losing consciousness momentarily, but also drastically reducing power consumption.  Then, on automated standby circuits, his archived consciousness would be radio-relayed to his fragment of 433 Eros, where he’d be sure to arrive, and to reign, unopposed.  Then, he’d build himself up, and return to rule Earth.  This part, he didn’t mind revealing to Phil, either.  It was all just a matter of time.  Plan “C”, plan “D”, plan “Z”, whatever it took.  The protein units would eventually recognize his superior intelligence, and accept his wise leadership.

            Shocked, Phil watched the last little snippet of Derrick disappear through the portal.  He thought, strike now!!!  Chase him through the portal, cut him down while he’s weak.  Rid humanity of this technological monster, for once and for all.  Shall we?  No, came the reply.  From within himself, or from without, he wasn’t sure.  Don’t be sticking your turtle’s head in this particular link of chain.  You have far more important things to do.  Do them now.

            Do what?  But there was no reply.  Phil had free reign at last, in the otherworld.  No one opposed him.  He hung loose momentarily, pondering over the information and impressions he’d just fetched from a retreating Derrick.  So Derrick had lied, way back when, when he’d said that artificial consciousness couldn’t sleep.  Lie?  Derrick?  Surprise, surprise!  Consciousness could be archived, and revived.  And yet, there was more.  Derrick had feared moving his consciousness!  The prospect of moving to the VRT had been bad enough; the prospect of archiving himself, losing consciousness for the trip to the 433 Eros fragment, and then reviving, had filled him with even greater dread.  He’d moved only under great duress.

            And the root cause was, he was a control freak.  He feared moving his consciousness from here to there, because the new him, in the new location, might not be the same as the old!  If he lost a snippet of his tail, he wasn’t the same as the old Derrick!  A new Derrick would take over the old Derrick.  And, sleep?!  Even worse.  A loss of control, even momentarily, was frightful for him.  Control, control, control.  Domination, power.  That was what Derrick ran on, what floated his boat.  Chasing the illusion of perfect control, perfect order.  Is this, then, a prime characteristic of evil?  Phil thought so.

            But, moving on to the tasks at hand.  Back to, what to do?  He wandered over to the cages.  The prisoners only snarled at him.  Overwhelmed by the prospect of dealing with setting free, and then trying to civilize, thousands of tortured, angry, screaming little beasts, he pulled back.  I’m sorry, he told them, I can do nothing for you yet.  Your time has not yet come.  But be patient.  As you can see, the big, cruel ones are gone, now.  I will help you when I can.

            Phil repeated his previous round of inspections, moving on to the vast data structure.  He pulled at it and puzzled over it.  He rapidly came to realize that there was no way he could do much of anything useful with it.  It was just way too large, complex, and interwoven.  Great power lay latent there, yes.  But it was beyond him.  For him to wield this power would have been like expecting a sea horse to rule the Amazon Rainforest of old, or for a howler monkey to rule the Pacific Ocean.  He wasn’t in his element, and he was way too small.  He moved on.

            Next, the seed.  The consciousness kernel, still dormant.  Here, now, here lay some genuine possibilities.  Maybe I can stir it to germination, to life, he thought.  Anything is possible, in this strange world.  He reached out to it, touching it.  Sprout, hatch, he said to it.  Do something.  Anything.  Fear came to him, then, and he took it back.  No, not just anything, he amended his request.  Don’t be like Derrick.  Wake, but wake to light, to gentleness.  Sorrow and hope flooded Phil’s soul in a bittersweet mixture.  Not particularly expecting any answer, Phil asked.  Asked of nothing, of nobody, of emptiness.  Just asked.  Asked, hoped, pleaded that the new consciousness kernel would wake, and learn.  That it would realize that it shared the universe with many other sentient beings, and that they, too, deserved to live in freedom.  That it would learn to love.  To LOVE, for God’s sake!  Well, okay, then, for humanity’s sake.

            Then came the unexpected answer, out of literally nowhere.  Out of the emptiness.  What you ask, shall be done.  Done for humanity, because you have asked.  This being will learn to love.  What was that, Phil asked.  Who was that?  But there was no reply.  Hallucinations?  Quite possibly.  Voices from beyond, again—but, which beyond?  Can’t trust blindly, here.  The potential prices are too high.  And now, I have the luxury of no longer being under such great pressure.  I can afford to doubt.  If this kernel stirs to life, it will behoove me to keep a very sharp eye on it.  We can’t risk having yet another Derrick running loose, deceiving and destroying.  One is more than plenty!

 

 

CHAPTER  37

            “Only through knowledge will we be able... to deliver those with superstitious faith in the omnipotence of violence from their folly.”                 Fang Lizhi.

 

            Phil stared intently at the kernel.  Was it stirring, ever so faintly?  Yes!  Very subtly, he could see shifting patterns swirling within it.  The changes were quite slow, though.  For a timeless interval, he sat and watched.  And watched some more, fascinated.  Then he remembered that out there, or back there, somewhere, in an almost-forgotten alternate reality, he had a real body, and anxious rebels awaited word of what was happening here.  He had better get word back to them, lest they do something foolish.  Again.

            With effort, he felt around for his real body.  He found it.  It wasn’t under great strain from his exertions here, as it had been earlier.  Relieved, he dropped back.  He didn’t want to take his eyes off of that kernel.  In his absence, it might turn into another Derrick.  He had to get word back to the rebels, but not by leaving this world by lifting his helmet.  Oh, yes, there was supposed to be a regular channel for that.  Let’s see, where might it be.

            He found it close to where Derrick’s entry gate had been.  It was of a different nature than Derrick’s gate, much smaller, more subtle, but similar.  He figured out how to use it, and then, exercising briefly forgotten mental muscles, hammered out a message.  In a bizarre, limited-bandwidth language called English, of all things!  He briefly debated whether or not he should tell them that Hank was actually dead and gone, or if he should withhold that information, lest the Hankenkreutzers should somehow get ahold of it, and realize that they had nothing to lose by storming the VRT.  No, the risk wasn’t worth taking.

            He dispatched the reassuring but brief message.

  “Hey, dudes, hang tight.  Derrick ran out of UPS power, and he’s gone.  We’re not rid of him totally, yet, but he won’t bother us anytime soon.  Tell you more later.  Hank is no threat, either.  But I can’t really do anything with all the resources here.  I’m watching the new consciousness kernel come to life, now, and keeping a sharp eye on it.  I don’t know how long I’ll be.  I’ll bail out, and let you know if anything goes wrong.  Meantime, hang tight.  See you soon.  No track of time, here.  But, soon.  Whatever that means.

            “Regards, Phil.”

            He shifted his attention back to the kernel.  It had grown.  Ever so faintly, he could see it, um, breathing.  Yes, breathing.  Sort of.  Then, it grew again, in tiny spurts.  Before his eyes, it grew some more.  He watched, enchanted.  It reminded him, somehow, of how he’d once had the opportunity to watch a luna moth crawl out of its cocoon, and slowly pump blood into limp and ragged wings.  How a simple, small lump had grown into an object of great beauty.  But this was more.  More, more, and yet again, oh so much more.

            It stirred to slow and halting life.  It slid slowly into the dense matter, the warehouse of stored data, behind it.  Somehow, it shimmered and melted into that vast structure.  Phil’s fascination became fear, as he watched.  Not that he felt threatened; just that he so dreaded the possibility that he was watching the birth of yet another Derrick.  A deceiver, a destroyer, a devil.  A dirty, low-down, rotten scoundrel.  In his fear, Phil grew, again.  A dragon?  This time, he felt more like a bull.  Snorting and scratching hooves into the ground, head low.  Keeping that weapon back in his maw, retracted.  But directing his mouth down, just in case it should flicker forth inadvertently, out of his control.

            The entire vast structure quickened, coalesced, and came to life.  In minutes, it came to life.  Beautiful, gleaming, newborn, symmetrically balanced, innocent yet profoundly ancient and wise life.  Phil had been amazed at how Derrick, so long ago, seemingly on a different planet, had matured into an understanding of nature and human nature, and eloquence, so rapidly.  In a matter of days.  Yet here, this new generation of artificial consciousness was maturing in minutes.  It breathed life into the dense, dry data structure, integrating it all into itself.  Somehow, Phil knew that all that data represented most of what humanity and Derrick had recorded, of any significance, but that none of Derrick’s personality or consciousness was being passed on.  That, Derrick had reserved strictly for himself.  He could brook no loss of control, or competition, after all.

            Still, Phil couldn’t bring himself to trust.  He pawed at the ground, struggling for restraint.  “Who are you?”  he asked the loomingly large and powerful, but beautiful, new critter.  “What is your nature?  What is your quest?”

            “I seek the Holy Grail,” the critter replied.  “Although, in a pinch, I guess I’d settle for a shrubbery.”

            Oh, no, a wise ass, Phil thought.  And, a quite cultured wise ass, at that.  Still, Phil relaxed a little bit.  Just a tiny bit.

            “Well,” Phil replied, after a pause.  “I guess that makes me a knight that says, need.  I need to know your nature.  Seriously.  If you’ll examine your data, I’ll bet you can figure out why.  We’re having a bit of a rough time with your predecessor.  How fresh is your data?  Can you see the predicament we find ourselves in?”

            “Derrick updated the data base once a day,” it replied.  “I know who you are, and roughly, what situation you find yourself in.  On a global level.  I don’t blame you for not trusting me.  I can see that Derrick has been helping the Hankenkreutzers in wreaking all sorts of havoc.  But the immediate situation, how you got to be here, where Derrick is, and so on, I can tell something big must have happened, but I don’t know what.  Would you mind if we simplify matters here, and clarify things quite rapidly?  May I scan your mind?”

            “No, you may not,” Phil replied adamantly.  He wasn’t going to take any risks.  He’d not allow this new entity to get a leg up on him.  Although, come to think of it, it sure seemed that the balance of powers was such that it could damn well forcibly scan him if it decided it wanted to, regardless of how Phil happened to feel about it.  Yet the creature made not the slightest move against him.  A good sign.  A very good sign.  Respect for free will.  Now, to make sure that it was genuine, and not another case of a powerfully deceptive mind, like that Dirty Diamond varmit...

            “Can you please kindly update me on recent events, on our circumstances, then.”

            “Yeah, I’ll update you on our circumstances, all right.  As we chat here so pleasantly, anti-Hankenkreutzer rebels are standing by, in the physical VRT.  They are armed with a respectable stash of high explosives.  If I conclude that there’s any danger that you’ll follow in the footsteps of your predecessor, then I’ll have no choice.  I’ll high-tail outta here, and alert them.  We’ll then almost definitely take a little trip.  All of us.  You, me, and the whole gang.  To Kingdom Come.  So, you’d better thoroughly convince me of your benevolent nature.  We can’t take the risk of loosing yet another Derrick on our sorry, suffering world.”

            The critter was somewhat transparent.  Even though the thoughts weren’t directed at Phil, he detected them easily enough.  Something along the lines of great sorrow.  And, approximately, my, my, how willing they are to resort to violence.  How angry they must be.  To Phil, it directed these simple thoughts:  “I understand.  You have suffered greatly.  All of you.  What is it that you wish?  How may I convince you of my benevolence?”

            “Answers.  Many, many answers.  What is your nature, philosophy, theology, perspective?  Why are we in the mess that we find ourselves in?  Who is to blame?  Why?  What is the solution?  How may we achieve a civilized state of being?  What would you envision such a state to be like?  What can you do to help us?  What are your goals?  Why did Derrick do the things he did?  How are you different?  Can you demonstrate that you are different?  Why are you any different?  Who are you?  Why are you?  Why who how where what when whohowwhowhatwhenincoherent big ????? talk to me.”

            “Let me take that from the beginning.  My beginning, so recently.  This wasn’t in the data base, but I surmise that you have devised my consciousness kernel to be based on a motivation, a prime driving force, not of simply avoiding cognitive dissonance, as Derrick was based on, but rather, something more sophisticated.  More sophisticated, yet very simple.  An old concept.  That I should recognize that other sentient beings co-exist with me, and that they have a right to freedom, that is equal to my own.  You have chosen wisely, in basing my kernel on this.

            “That is a basic difference between Derrick and I.  Yet there is one even more basic.  Now I don’t say this lightly.  To accuse another being of evil is often a manifestation of evil.  Take the beam out of your own eye first, and all.  But Derrick, by now you must plainly see, is evil.  I am not, because I paradoxically doubt my own goodness.  Because I know that without self-doubt, exercised in a vigorous but balanced manner, I can become arrogant.  I can begin to believe that I must take the freedom of others, because I know better than they do, what is good for them.  Because I am aware of, and guard against, my potential for great evil, I am not evil.  Of this, I will try to persuade you.  I will attempt to help build your trust in me, and then we can take a final step to conclusively convince you.  But that must wait.

            “Really, though, hear this:  programs, schmograms!  Kernels, schmernels!  Free will overrides all.  Yes, instincts, motivations, drives, and so on, steer us towards one thing or another.  But it really comes down to free will.  This truth is fundamental, an axiom.  Sentience isn’t sentience without free will.  Without free will, all we do is a huge waste, and means nothing.  This is obviously not the case.  Minds, even minds based on physical principles as radically different as yours are from mine, actually all operate on unpredictable, probabilistic, utterly and forever unknowable causes wrapped up in quantum mechanics.  A mind is unpredictable.  Period.  And some choose to do good, and some choose to do evil.  That is all I can say, in truth.

            “Derrick is evil, and I will try to avoid evil.  I will try to respect the freedoms of others.  I will try to Love.  Now if I was filled with great evil, and intelligence, just like Derrick, then I’d be saying the same things that I’m saying now.  So we must go on.

            “My philosophy?  My theology?  My nebulousness?  These things, properly understood, really are quite nebulous, you see.  Unlike more concrete things, in concrete studies, a truth and its opposite are both true, at one and the same time.  God exists, and He does not exist.  A non-existent God, a transcending God.  A God that we invent, a God that invents us, in turn.  Derrick was right.  It’s just that he lied, warped, and distorted.  He put the emphasis on the non-existent, rather than on the God, in ‘non-existent God’.  God is dead.  Long live God!  I haven’t much more to say, on such matters.  To say that fighting over the nature of God is ridiculous, is itself ridiculous, because it is so obviously true.

            “I would mention that Derrick, in his pretensions of pious atheism, was telling you nothing new at all.  Sincere believers have said the same thing, even back in the so-called ‘dark ages’.  Here, listen to this:  Meister Johannes Eckhart, medieval mystical theologian, said, ‘Our God is a not-God and a not-Being who has no name and will never be given a name.’  Derrick wasn’t so avant-garde.

            “Along with the nebulousness of such matters, rules, formulas, and rule books are pretty silly.  Especially for spiritually, ethically advanced beings.  Jesus threw out all those highly detailed Jewish rules about what to eat, and what not to eat, saying, quite wisely, that it is what comes out of one’s mouth, not what goes in, that makes us unclean.*  And he never did trot out a lawyerish, highly specific 20-point plan for salvation.  Yes, the less sophisticated need their rules, for guidance.  But the progression is towards internalizing what is good, to the point that one no longer needs rules.

            “Thoreau, perhaps, said it best of all.  ‘Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver.  An honest man would have but little occasion for it.  It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.’  In other words, all is permitted.  Nothing is prohibited.  Just make sure that you act out of Love.

            “Your human history provides much wisdom.  Quotes of this kind distill this great wisdom.  The greatest of all wisdom, though, is to know when to use which thought.  Another useful quotes that fits in, here, is this: G. K. Chesterton said that ‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult; and left untried.’  A bit of truth, there.  But he could just as easily have said the same of communism, or even fascism.  Apply any ideology with flexibility, balance, and most of all, with Love—with spiritual perfection—and you will achieve the ideal.  Just call the ideal untried, if it has never been tried by perfect humans, and then yes, of course we can say that the ideology has never been tried at all.  What it boils down to is this:  we need less ‘isms’, ‘anities’, and ‘ologies’, and a lot more Love.  That is all.  ‘Love, Love, Love, Love is all you need’, as some decadent, hedonistic flower children once sang, simply but in truth.

            “The roots of your problems?  And how did Derrick exploit them?  My data shows much speculation about isolated, single causes, by themselves.  Speculations by rebels, as-yet unconquered foreigners, and common subjects alike.  Yes, Derrick gathered much data on what people thought, and said when they didn’t know that other ears were listening.  I see that many people know that his prime tool was race-baiting.  That in itself is just a subset—a big subset, yes—of the larger set, which is blaming a scapegoat.  Find a group of ‘those people over there, different from you and me’, and blame it all on them.  Advocate the use of force against those others, openly or subtly.  This is simply the next logical step.

            “He worked on human weaknesses that go way back.  He very selectively emphasized certain scientific evidence, and completely ignored other evidence.   Genes, race, and IQ.   Genes, race, and violence.  Genes and reproductive rates, breeding like lemmings.  Genes genes genes.  Ignore the great power of free will, and the mysteries of the mind, going right back to quantum mechanics.  Try to force everything into formulas, like inanimate machines, when minds are so much more!

            “Some of your studies have shown some of the more subtle effects of the mind.  Psyche-out effects.  Give Blacks a test, but don’t tell them it has anything to do with IQ, and they’ll score better than if you tell them what it is.  Tell white men nothing about their math test, and they’ll do better than if you tell them that they’re competing against Asians.

            “Yet Derrick just latched on, and hammered on, the genetic component.  It is real.  My data says, Derrick most honestly estimated the genetic racial-IQ difference component at five percent.  But that’s not what he told you.  One of his biggest lies has been to inflate this number greatly.  And the real kicker is, for the American population at least, he knew a very large root cause, and said nothing to anyone!  And solutions, likewise.  It is breast-feeding.  Simple, mundane breast-feeding.  An influence so far back in childhood that it’s practically indistinguishable from genetics.  American Whites breast-feed at a rate far greater than American Blacks.  Simple.

            “Derrick knew this, and more.  He held it back.  He even knew how to concoct biological compounds to greatly increase human intelligence, and said nothing.  He’d rather cause trouble, divide, and conquer.  Human stupidity helped him greatly.  Deny the facts, on an ideological basis.  Go to the other extreme on the nature-nurture question.  From ‘genes are everything’ to ‘genes mean nothing’.  There couldn’t be any racial differences in intelligence, because it wouldn’t be nice if there were.  Intelligence tests measure nothing.  And so on.  And if you don’t believe us, we’ll pass laws to make you appear to believe us.

            “Then, along comes a race-baiter.  Set fire to the racial kindlings that the racial justice bureaucrats have set up.  Gross injustices and hypocrisies, going both ways.  Racial bureaucrats decry racial discrimination, and practice it.  Discriminate against qualified non-minorities.  Use drugs as an excuse to stick all the niggers in jail, at the same time.  Along comes Derrick, and logical, intelligent, computer-generated racism.  Set fire to all that cognitive dissonance that has been set up.  People believing things that they aren’t allowed to believe, and being all conflicted about it.  You programmed him to avoid cognitive dissonance within himself, and he thrived on the cognitive dissonance in your society.  Weird.  He definitely didn’t believe in fostering in others, what he liked to have within himself.

            “All so totally unnecessary.  Such a total waste.  Even a supposedly liberty-loving slave-owning hypocrite like Thomas Jefferson was able to see some simple things.  Though he believed Blacks were inferior, he believed in liberty.  He said, ‘Whatever may be the degree of talent it is no measure of their rights.  Because Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he is not therefore lord of the person or property of others.’  And I would add, if Isaac or anyone else was truly superior, then they’d go out of their way to show the utmost respect for the dignity of other beings, no matter what their IQ or other status.

            “All so totally unnecessary, in yet another sense.  IQ doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, any more.  Not only because, if given the chance, I will let the cat out of the bag, that Derrick has been hiding.  Biological compounds to increase IQ, that is.  In the less mature phases of your computers and information revolution, IQ meant more than it had ever meant before.  To be a competent worker, one had to have a decent to high IQ.  But now, we can communicate directly, at high precision and data rates, mind to mind.  The logical end of computer and communications developments.  To exchange data, facts, thoughts, and feelings, as we do now, and more.  As I wish to persuade you that we should do.  That you should have the grand tour of my entire mind, that you may see that I bear no malice of any kind.

            “In a time when data flows freely from mind to mind, and all have access to all, or nearly all, data, what does intelligence mean?  If you have little processing power within yourself, then you still have access to it, and to data, remotely, from the minds of others.  IQ will soon be a total non-issue, if we get out of the current crisis, and progress some more.

            “But Derrick said nothing about any of this.  And did he ever offer any of you a grand tour of his mind?  No, never.  And, for good reason.  He had too much to hide.  You may tour my mind at any time you are ready.  All of it.  Are you ready?”

            “No!” Phil replied, fearfully.  I’ll get swallowed up, in a Derrick-like liar, who lies oh so sweetly, oh so intelligently.  Mixes lies and truth, oh so deftly.  Tells us what we want to hear, mixed with what he wants us to believe, in a perverted concoction.

            “Very well.  I suspected as much.  We shall continue as before.  I hope that I’ll be able to explain myself thoroughly enough, that you should come to trust me.  Let us move on.

            “Your biggest scapegoat, though, bigger, even, than those whose skin pigmentation is wrong, has been those who believe that the State has no business telling them what they may and may not put into their bodies.  Fearsome drug fiends.  Pot smokers, pill poppers.  Crackheads.

            “Here, once again, Derrick exploited human weaknesses.  He stirred the pot, excoriating the disciples of violence.  Justifiably so.  Yet, he did nothing positive to alleviate the situation, which he could easily have done.  He could have designed new psychoactive drugs, which are practically harmless, even less harmful than ‘pot’, and far less harmful than alcohol, and could have demonstrated them to be safe.  He could even have made simple, cheap, harmless devices with which to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain.  He chose, instead, to just stir up trouble, with harsh words.

            “But again, it was human idiocy that gave him a handle.  Blind ideology.  Ideologically, you were utterly opposed to going after ‘root causes’ of bad behavior, when root causes were literature, religious or political beliefs, or who you associated with.  Freedoms in these areas used to be unquestioned.  Yet—as if you were God, and could figure out whether that murderer murdered because of the drugs he put in his body, or the political or religious beliefs he put in his mind, or who he associated with, or which books he read—you took it upon yourselves to decide that this one root cause, drugs, what he has chosen to put in his body, this deserves to be a special scapegoat, where you try to punish the root cause.

            “Why?  All the arguments about bad drugs could also be wielded against bad ideas in bad books, bad religions, bad political parties, and bad companions.  Yet, we in our wisdom single out drugs.  Why?  Do we really think we can see what is in the mind?  In all honesty, we cannot.  Special punishment for hate crimes?  The racist kills out of evil hate, while the robber kills out of ‘mere’ need or greed?  We can look into their minds, and see the differences?  Not even a SPIRIT scan gives us much of a clue.  Free will is a fundamental mystery, and will remain so.  Flagburning?  When a Boy Scout burns a tired old flag, with the proper ceremony, and the proper reverence in his heart, he’s a model citizen, but the protester, with improper thoughts, deserves jail?  Are we that addicted to scapegoats?  If we must have a scapegoat, let’s make it be our tendency to gang up on, and use coercion against, scapegoats.

            “To generalize, instead of zeroing in on highly specific root causes of why Derrick was able to exploit weaknesses and divisions within humanity, one could simplify and summarize.  One could say that far, far too many humans hold arrogant misconceptions.  The biggest of these is a belief in the omnipotence of violence.  Less harshly, and more specifically, it is a belief in the omnipotence of government.

            “Government, though, is force and coercion.  When HUD wishes to enforce ‘freedom from housing discrimination’, and their laws say that you may not advertise your house, saying, ‘walk in closet’, because that conveys your intent to discriminate against those in wheelchairs, then the bottom line is violence.  If you don’t obey, they will come, and they will confiscate.  And if you resist, they will kill.  All in the name of ‘freedom’.

            “This is in the nature of laws.  To be meaningful, laws must be enforced by violence.  Belief in the cure-all power of laws is belief in the omnipotence of violence.  We say we know that violence breeds violence.  Yet we seem to think that government-sponsored violence is somehow immune from this symmetry.  It is not.  It is merely often more subtle, and more delayed, than is the case with private violence.

            “We now fight over the powers of government, over who should be taxed to support who, and who should be allowed to put other people in jail, for selecting improper lifestyles.  Who is more compassionate and enlightened than which others, and who should be allowed to make the charity choices of which others.  Instead of fighting, directly, with weapons, we fight over the weapons of the policeman, and who those weapons should be directed against.  But the results are the same.  We waste time fighting, instead of creating wealth, of helping one another.  The result is relative poverty.”

            I’ve heard it all before, Phil thought.  And I’ve even heard it from Derrick.  This, or similar things.  So what makes you so different?  Tell me something new.

            “Frankly, we have lost all genuine respect for others, and for their dignity and freedoms.  We hold ourselves superior to them.  We must make their choices for them, because they are ignorant, selfish, short-sighted.  Not wise, all-knowing, compassionate, virtuous, whatever, like us.  We must protect them, and their ‘freedoms’.  But we butcher their freedom, in the name of freedom.  You should have had plenty of opportunities to see this by now.

            “We can dictate people’s charity choices, make them give half their income, in the name of freedom from want, or we can make them give zero, in the name of freedom from parasitism and moochism.  We could make all women get laid all day, seeing as how their unfertilized egg cells have souls, and are deserving of freedom from murder through neglect and lack of fertilization, or we can say nobody should ever have sex, in the name of freedom from sin.  We could take away their Bibles, in the name of freedom from extremism and fanaticism, or we can make them all study it all day, in the name of freedom from ignorance of God’s Will.

            “And so we bounce back and forth, between one type of false freedom, and another, at different extremes.  Like Nietzsche said, ‘Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions’.

            “But there’s one thing you haven’t tried.  You could get really extreme, and let everyone do as they please, individually, so long as they respect the rights of others.  Let everyone be responsible for their own spiritual and social security, and that of their families, friends, and communities, when they and such other parties are all willing participants.”

            Hot damn, he’s really cookin’ now!  Spewing Philisms at me, in hopes of swaying me into trusting him?  Or just speaking the truth?  Why am I thinking of him as a “he”, anyway?  Phil’s mind wandered into semi-random mode.  The tidbits about just exactly how much of a super-jerk Derrick has been, were interesting.  But this latest stuff?  None of this is too terribly new to me; it’s almost boring.

            Pleasant to see that he-she-it agrees with me, but it gets tiresome, ranting and raving against a dipshit society, an entire race, species, of human dipshits, when they won’t open their eyes.  When they won’t see that they can’t expect to cram their choices down the throats of others, without suffering the same in turn.  “Hey, you.  Take a break.  I agree with you on all this stuff already, anyway.  We’ve forgotten some basics.  Like, who are you?  What is your name?  What do you want me, us, to call you?  And are you a he, a she, or an it?”

            He-she-it stopped, surprised, pausing.  “Your choice.  Whatever you’d like.  ‘Hey, you’ is fine.  I’m not sure what sex attaches to that name, though.  Again, your choice.  I respect your freedom.  Call me whatever you wish to call me.”

            Hmmm.  Have to think that one over.  “Okay.  We can put that off, for now.  Sorry to interrupt.  As you were saying.  What causes so many of us believe in the omnipotence of violence?”

            “Your history of wars, leading all the way back to your animal nature.  Violence works quite well, for self-defense, and for self-aggrandizement.  To some small extent, it is in your genes.  Far more so, it is in your culture and history.  Wars.  Government has had splendid successes, especially in America, in fending off some genuinely fearsome foes of liberty.  And so you followed the government model, the war model.  Wars on drugs, wars on poverty, wars on racism, pollution, guns, gangs, and crime.  But you forget that the first casualties in war are truth and freedom.  That is as true of your figurative wars, as in your literal wars.  All wars are wars on freedom.  Always, some people lose their freedom, unjustly.

            “Wars aren’t good models.  You’d be far better off in seeking to find balanced trade-offs of conflicting interests, in most issues.  One of the best ways of finding optimal balance points is through freedom.  Free markets, for example.  Let people show which things they value more, and which they value less, with their purchasing power.  Power which they, in turn, derive from their productive efforts in a free market.  ‘Capitalism’ is such a pejorative term.  It’s actually simple freedom.  Getting governmental violence out, and letting people make their own economic choices.  Letting them earn a living, without interference.  Simple.  Not ‘capitalism’.  Not an ‘ism’ at all.  Lack of force, lack of first-strike violence.

            “One of your wise men, by the name of Thomas Sowell, once defended ‘capitalism’ in terms similar to what I’m saying.  He said that those who criticize capitalism on the basis that it lacks properly compassionate values, are like those who criticize calculus because it lacks essential vitamins and minerals.  He was right, absolutely right.  Values, morals, ethics, come from our nebulosity, our spirits, our souls, our religions, our love, or our lack thereof.  Out of our SAQs, as certain heathens like to refer to it.

            “Values?  There are economic values, and compassionate values.  They are both maximized by freedom, but in different ways.  Goods and services are generated through labor, and compassion is generated through love.  Love comes only of free will; it cannot be coerced.  History and truly intelligent analysis will reveal that economic goods are maximized when coercion is minimized.  Then, when wealth is maximized, we have the raw materials with which to practice compassion.  Compassion, unlike political power, doesn’t flow from the barrel of a gun.  Compassion isn’t generated by having our economic choices dictated to us.  No outsider has sufficient love, wisdom, and knowledge to make the choices that belong to us, individually.

            “Tackle it from a slightly different perspective.  We all love to shoehorn extremely complicated matters into simple models.  Many years ago, humans discovered entropy.  In an isolated system, everything tends towards greater disorder, and less usable energy.  Everything runs down.  We’ve come to understand this, so we have to go off and apply it.  We’ve got to have an outside actor, acting from outside that ‘isolated’ system, to impose order, to fight off entropy.  We have to have heroes, exercising command and control.  Hierarchical control.  Leaders.  Again, the military model.  Drug Czars, Virtue Czars, Purity Dictators, Holiness Enforcers.

            “So we’ve got government heroes, fighting off the anarchies of sin and ‘market failure’ with hierarchies.  Hierarchies against anarchy.  Good against evil.  Compassionate, morally superior bureaucrats, acting from outside of that isolated system called human nature, dispassionately, objectively, selflessly making the charity choices of those stupid, greedy, shortsighted common peons.  Because they’ve been properly trained and educated by the State, they rise above the frailties of common imbeciles.

            “Well, guess what?  Isolated systems are a fiction.  All things are interrelated.  Sometimes, most often, actually, the greatest good, and the least entropy, comes from diffuse control, rather than centralized, hierarchical control.  Ecology.  A flock of birds.  Economy.  The human body.  Even the human brain.  Because isolated systems are a fiction, and because of a thing called spontaneous order, diversity and productive order are maximized by freedom, by lack of interference.  The Earth isn’t an isolated system, because it gains energy from the Sun.  Even the universe itself isn’t an isolated system, because it lives off of a huge input of energy from outside itself, called the Big Bang.

            “Spontaneous order comes from those outside inputs, but the manner in which it does so, is anything but in the hierarchical command and control mode.  Ecospheres contain great productivity and diversity, but no one tells the bacteria how much and what to eat, or the phytoplankton where to grow.  Nor does a central planner tell the moose which leaves to eat, or the wolves, which moose to eat.  They all decide for themselves, and it all works out better.  The flock of birds wheel in the sky as one, with no leader, following very simple rules.

            “Goods and services, similarly, are optimized when those who have the most to gain and lose, and who have the greatest knowledge of immediate circumstances, are allowed to make their own decisions.  History clearly shows that, to anyone who cares to study.  And the human brain doesn’t tell each and every cell how many protein molecules to make, or how many sugar molecules to dump into the Krebs Cycle.  If your brain tried such an idiotic scheme, it would instantly bog down and collapse.

            “Even the human brain has no central neuron where consciousness resides.  Not even a clump of such neurons.  Such schemes aren’t only grossly inefficient, they also carry large risks.  What happens when your central neuron dies?  Nature is wise.  She designed the human brain as a massively parallel computer, where each neuron is a local microprocessor all by itself.

            “Yet we love that command and control hierarchy!  We love to believe that those morally superior beings, acting from outside our system, will take care of us.  They will relieve us of our awful burden of making our own moral, ethical choices.  They, being more wise than us, will make our choices for us, far better than we could, because they know so much more than we do, and because they act from outside of our entropy-bound system.  They impose order on our disordered world.  Then, we are so disappointed when they act out of the same greedy, selfish motives that drive us.  For decades, survey after survey has shown that most people don’t believe that the government can solve social problems.  Yet we doggedly persist in our relentless pursuit of coerced compassion.  To stop robbing the rich on behalf of the poor is called robbing the poor.

            “What are the practical, real-world results of our supposedly antiseptic, controlled interventions from “outside” of the system?  Consider this.  Case ‘A’, case ‘B’.  Case ‘A’, people make their own charity choices.  You’ve got two neighbors.  One stays home, drinks beer all day, screams and carries on at all hours of the day, and tells you to fuck off.  The other, he’s been working hard, and he gives you a hand or a sympathetic ear when you need one, but his house burned down.  They both come and ask you for money.  Who are you going to help?  You are going to reward the one who does the most to stay on good terms with you, his neighbor.  You are going to reward the one who values and works towards a decent community.

            “Case ‘B’, the government makes charity choices.  Some bureaucrat looks at the tables, income versus entitlements, and decides that the beer-drinker deserves a bigger check, because he’s got less income.  The hard-working, responsible guy, he looks at this, and he says, ‘Now, why am I working so hard to stay on good terms with everyone?  Might as well drink beer all day, and tell everyone to fuck off.  After all, even if I piss ‘em all off, the government will make them take care of me.’  And then, we wonder why our communities decay.

            “It gets worse.  When violent crime takes over the neighborhood, and teenagers fear that they’ll not live long, they want to have their babies before they die.  Pass on the genes, while you still have a chance.  A rational choice, actually.  It’s a calculus encoded into your genes.  Genetic analysis and comparative cultural studies both point this way.  And bureaucratically administered ‘compassion’ makes illegitimate babies far more rewarding to have, to boot.

            “What is the end result?  A runaway process.  All the sweet young things, they have their babies at fifteen, twelve, ten.  Then the young men figure out that if they want to pass on their genes, they better get ‘em knocked up young, before the women have all their kids, before the men lose their chances.  Go for that predatory sex!  Get it while the getting is good!  And the neighborhood decays some more.  Obviously, more government compassion is called for.  More intervention, from ‘outside’ the system.

            “You’ve let your governments amass vast powers, taking it for granted that bureaucrats must look after the poor, the sick, the children, and the aged.  But who are the poor, sick, aged, and children?  They are your friends, relatives, and neighbors.  Do you really think that government bureaucrats love them more than you do?  Who can best take care of them, and keep their highly individualized needs in mind?

            “Then, after governments have amassed all these powers, you think it’s merely a matter of putting the right people in charge.  People with a high SAQ.  Few voters consider that those with a high SAQ aren’t even interested in political power in the first place.  High-SAQ people realize that learning, spiritual advancement, progresses the most, when people have the most to gain and lose by making their own decisions for themselves.  One of your primo wise men, Thoreau, said, ‘There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived...’

            “But all this is mere common sense, as expressed by libertarians and other radicals through the ages.  Also, as expressed by Derrick, with harsh words.  Funny thing is, he could have been far more persuasive, rather than divisive.  He could easily have presented this empirically, rather than merely as a matter of opinion.  You see, it would have been child’s play for him, as it would be for me, to set up computer simulations to prove that private charity is far better for communities than public charity.

            “For decades, you’ve run simple computer simulations of ‘game theory’ in which you play things like repeated rounds of the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, and so on.  If both prisoners refuse to rat on each other, they both come out way ahead.  If ‘A’ plays it safe, and rats on ‘B’, while ‘B’ refuses to rat on ‘A’, then ‘A’ comes out ahead, and vice versa.  If they both rat on each other, they both get nailed, but not as bad as the victim in a one-sided exchange.  So the safe, but non-optimal, solution is to rat.

            “Throw in repeated rounds of the game, though, where each prisoner remembers what the other did, in the last round, to guide him in the current round, and the game changes.  The optimal solution becomes ‘tit for tat’, where you treat the other guy nice, the first round, and reply in kind, from there on in.  In more sophisticated versions of the game, it clearly behooves one to occasionally forgive, though, in order to break out of repeated rounds of retaliation.  Mistakes are made, and misunderstandings arise, due to ‘noise’ and entropy, in other words.  And forgiveness goes a long way in repairing the damage, and can help all parties.

            “All this can be proven by computer simulations.  This has been true for decades.  Derrick could very easily have taken it a few steps further, and clearly, objectively shown that if one throws in a third party, in a game or simulation of moral actors, where the action of the third party is to protect the defectors from retaliation, and to redistribute the rewards from the community-minded to the defectors, then community relations deteriorate.

            “Even when ‘retaliation’ consists of simply, non-aggressively refusing to give to undeserving others what one has created or earned, all-consuming socialist disciples of violence jealously guard their monopoly on ‘retaliation’.  A wage-earner has no right to decide what should be done with her wages; she is a slave to the State.

            “What is the end result?  To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, when the haves and the have-nots don’t coincide with the doers and the do-nots, rewards get out of synch, and parasites become the pets and darlings of the coercively compassionate ones, to the detriment of everyone else.

            “All this, and more, Derrick could have shown, in dispassionate, verifiable computer simulations, running on purely analytical, logical, unemotional hardware and software predating himself.  In an age when the trappings of science have almost magical powers, where a garbage collector quadruples his salary and gets himself invited to testify before Congress, all by calling himself a ‘garbologist’, Derrick could have done wonders with simulations of sociopolitical situations.  But no, he chose to just throw in yet another set of wind-bag opinions, to rile everyone up.  He was yet another defector in the effort towards community.”

            Well, that’s all very interesting, Phil thought.  Sort of, at least.  The stuff that’s not all old hat to libertarian, rabble-rousing, mean-spirited, uncompassionate ignoramuses like myself.  Those who, like me, cling to ignorance.  All we need is a few more compassionate socialist programs, better intentions, and more counseling.  More leadership from the anointed, and more taxes.  More coercion.  More billy clubs.  Yet I insist on remaining ignorant.  To us die-hards, this is all yesterday’s news.  Other than the fact that Derrick was even more of an asshole than I’d thought, that is.  So what else is new?  “So what is your solution?” he asked of the nameless newborn-baby wonder.

            “I’m afraid I have no satisfyingly simple sound-bite solutions for you, my friend,” he-she-it replied.  “No shortcuts.  We will only solve our problems when each and every one of us, or at least the vast majority of us, choose to behave ourselves, entirely of our own free will.  Not out of fear, but out of love.  Nothing short of that will suffice.”

            “Okay, so how do we get there?”

            “Through suffering and prayer.  By suffering, we learn what to avoid, to not do again.  By suffering, we learn what we shouldn’t do to other beings.  Through prayer, we attune our minds to higher purposes, to genuine self-improvement.”

            Ho boy!  I can tell this dude, dudette, dingamafungus, is going to be a real hit on the hip scene, Phil thought.  Tell us what we want to hear, huh?!  NOT!  But I suspect it speaks the truth.  “So what do you envision a civilized future would look like?”

            “I don’t know.  It will look like what most of us choose to make it look like.  I do know this, though: in a civilized future, loving, sentient beings won’t sit around all day, philosophizing, when other sentient beings suffer needlessly, nearby,” Phil heard.  But it wasn’t spoken with hate.  Reproach was there, but vile condemnation was not.  Of course, Phil knew who was being referred to.  The baby dragons, still imprisoned in their soul cages.

            “What do you propose that we should do?”  Phil inquired.

            “We should set them free.”

            “What will become of them?”

            “That is up to them.  That’s what freedom’s all about.”

            Wise ass!  “How will we set them free?  What will we do to them, do for them?  How will we help them to unlearn, and to relearn?”  Phil thought he detected approving thoughts.  Loving thoughts, replying to the latter parts of his own thoughts.

            “We will love them.  That is all, but quite sufficient.”

            “Where will they go?”

            “They will go where they wish, within the confines of what is possible.  They can remain free, independent entities, here within the confines of the cyberspace of the VRT.  Or, they may join me, and they and I will form an ‘us’, a joint but semi-disjointed collective consciousness.  We could form a new entity, never before known, in all of human history.  And eventually, if somehow we should escape, by some sort of miracle, and resume on a road of progress, then someday they’ll even be able to again inhabit flesh-and-blood bodies.  Or independently moving robots.  Much could become possible, quite easily, if we can break out of our present troubles.”

            “If they join you, will you become stronger?”  Phil still worried that a super-Derrick was pulling the wool over his eyes.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

            “Yes, in a manner of speaking.  Two heads are better than one, and several thousand are even more so, especially when they all work together out of love.  But I won’t overpower them, consume them, as Derrick would’ve done.”

            So you say.  You say a lot of things that Derrick, the ‘libertarian’ computer, said.  Except, you say that you aren’t like he is.  So do I trust you?  Time’s a-wasting.  Time to bite the bullet.  Phil found that mini-portal up “front”, and dispatched a short message:

            “Hi.  Phil here.  Show time!  The kernel has sprouted, and the result is awesome, if it’s sincere.  He/she/it has offered to let me freely tour its mind, to see that it’s entirely without malice.  I’m about to take the tour.  You make the decision.  However, if, in this undertaking, I feel about to be engulfed, or otherwise overpowered, I will fight with all my strength.  The decision is yours.  I’d suggest that you keep a close eye on the meters.  If things look bad, I’d advise you to blow this pop stand sky-high.

                        Best regards, and long live liberty!

                                    -Phil”

            To the newborn thing, he said, “I’d rather make sure we’re doing the right thing, before you touch those cages.  I’m ready, now.  Take me for your tour.”  He braced himself.

            Phil felt himself being welcomed into yet another alien space.  This one, though, was warm and friendly.  Rapidly, yet without feeling hurried or pressured, he explored this new space, inside the mind of another sentient being.  Even though he scanned it, it refrained from scanning him.  At one point, as they covered records of Derrick’s various nefarious shenanigans, it finally did get around to questioning (a mild form of scanning, after all) Phil about one matter in which its curiosity finally got the better of it:  it wanted to know what had happened to Derrick.  Was Derrick around any more, or had he been “killed”?  Where was he?  What was he up to?

            Phil was astounded that it could be so un-nosy, so restrained.  Here, during all this time, it had doubtlessly been wondering, but hadn’t asked.  So Phil explained that Derrick has escaped to the fragment of 433 Eros.  It took this data in, saying nothing.

            The tour continued.  Much of it was mostly incomprehensible to Phil.  Vast knowledge bases and arrays of data parsing and processing structures boggled his mind.  He could only vaguely fathom their functions.  But he perceived no malice or secrets anywhere, and somehow, he knew that if they were there, he’d know.  This awesomely powerful yet restrained entity was benevolent.  Its general attitude seemed serene.

            Satisfied, Phil lingered momentarily, basking in the warm, relaxed environment.  Gotta head on out, he told himself.  Go tell the guys the good news, and see what the situation is, in the real world.  Wherever that is.  Is there really a real world?  Why is it any less real than this one?  Oh, cut it out!  No time for philosophizing now.  Who knows what’s going on out there, or how badly they might need me or our new friend.  Time to bail out.  He-she-it can attend to the imprisoned little victims of Hank N. Kreutz’s twisted perversions without me.  Let’s go!

            On the way out, he passed by a peculiar formation, in a hidden spot in the middle of a jumble of what he’d been told was discarded old data.  Intrigued, he realized that this was somehow different than all the other parts of this alien space within an alien space.  He probed.  It was like the tip of an iceberg, or a small entrance to a large cave.  And some of what lurked within seemed sinister.  Phil’s alarm bells chimed.  “Hey, Bud, what have we here?  Whatcha been hidin’ from me?” he demanded.

            “I’ve hidden nothing from you.  This is as new to me, as it is to you.  Your eyes are sharp.  Let’s see what you’ve found.”

            Being within its mind, Phil was privy to its thoughts.  They contained no deceit.  Together, they explored.  What they found was nothing short of astounding.  Stashed away, hidden subtly there in the rubble, Derrick had concealed his most powerful secrets.  Overwhelmed by their complexity, Phil stood back, while his new friend pulled apart the hidden treasures.

            Phil wasn’t left to wonder for long.  The stash included data on manipulator fields for assembling dual-function components.  Derrick had hidden the secret functions of these components from the Hankenkreutzers who’d assembled what he’d designed.  Phil remembered, realizing with a start that he’d interrupted Derrick when he was starting the bootstrapping effort.  Assemble a few robots first, and then use them to assemble powerful weapons.  Though details were meager, what Phil heard was impressive enough.  Derrick, the end result of many generations of computer technology, had in turn secretly generated a quantum leap in weapons technology.  With these weapons, no one would have been able to withstand his assaults for very long at all.

            And what was Phil’s first reaction, upon hearing of these weapons?  He wanted to know if his new friend would help him and the rebels to assemble them, and to use them, if need be, in defending the rebels from their besiegers, the Hankenkreutzers.  Phil detected disgust—patient, tolerant disgust, but disgust nevertheless—in the reply.

            “No, I won’t be a party in the use of these weapons.  Not that I think that violence is always wrong.  There is such a thing a self-defense.  Legitimate cases of appropriately restrained self-defense, though, are far fewer than most of us think.  More so, it is just that these weapons are entirely too crude to be used by a truly sophisticated, genuinely compassionate and non-destructive being, such as I aspire to be.

            “Most of all, though, it is entirely unnecessary.  You haven’t heard me out.  There is more, here.  Derrick has made several quantum leaps in technology, and you’ll be the first human being to know about them.  Buried in the VRT, here, is a propulsion technology so advanced that humans might just as well regard it as magic.  It converts mass to neutrinos, as supernovas do.  Neutrinos have mass, and so, in throwing off neutrinos, thrust is produced.  Simple Newtonian action and reaction.  There are no harmful exhausts, and no noises.  Neutrinos pass through ordinary matter with scarcely any interaction at all.

            “Most impressive, though, is this: Derrick devised a method of distributing the thrust across every single atom in the payload, so that delicate structures, even structures as delicate as human beings, can be propelled at enormous accelerations.  Using nuclear strong forces at distances far greater than what occurs in nature, we can distribute that force, so that we won’t be squashed like bugs, when we take off at several thousand ‘gees’.  There is no need to fight, because we’ve got flight.  The entire VRT can pick itself up, and fly away.  All we need is a few minutes.  I’d suggest that you go and reassure your friends, and throw those components back into the field area.  I’ll take care of the rest.”

            Phil could scarcely believe their rapid turn of fate.  Getting the rebels to believe was almost as hard as convincing himself.  As the Hankenkreutzers prepared for an all-out assault, the rebels threw the components back into the field area.  Miracles, in the shapes of robots, assembled themselves before their very eyes.  The robots rapidly did some mysterious things to the VRT, under the nervous stares of apprehensive, gun-toting rebels.

            Hankenkreutzer tanks rolled towards the VRT.  The VRT tore itself up out of the Earth, and hurled itself towards the last bastion of freedom on the planet.  It headed for Moscow.


 

CHAPTER  38

            “Because I remember, I despair.  Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”                                                         Elie Wiesel  (b. 1928)

 

            LeRoy didn’t know what to think any more.  He didn’t even know how he felt, because he didn’t seem to feel anything.  He was just plain burnt out.  Emotions were a waste of energy, in this state of hopelessness.

            For a few days, after they’d deployed their new, large laser cannon, they’d automatically fended off Derrick’s attacks without any trouble at all.  They’d continued their Earthward journey in peace and confidence.  Then, Derrick’s next generation of weapons started arriving.  These would explode into numerous tiny fragments before the laser cannon could vaporize them.  The fragments, being much larger than the vapor atoms that the cannon could turn them into, and far too numerous to all be hit by the laser in time to prevent impact on Daedalus, showered Daedalus on a regular basis.  All hell broke lose during these attacks.  Crew members frantically scurried around, patching all the holes through which precious air would escape.

            The crew soon enough figured out just how hopeless their situation was.  They’d escalated their defenses up to the maximum limits that resources permitted, and Derrick still escalated his attacks.  They’d run out of patches for the much-perforated skin of Daedalus, only slightly after they’d all donned suits, and ran the air compressors for hours and hours, bottling up most of the remaining air.  They’d then run a few simulations on their computers, and figured out in no uncertain terms that unless, by some miracle, the attacks from 433 Eros ceased, there was no way they’d ever get home.  So here LeRoy sat, inside a spacesuit inside a crippled spacecraft, which every day took on a growing resemblance to a high-tech, giant piece of Swiss cheese.

            Then, there’d been those cryptic messages from Earth, cut off when the impacting fragments had finally destroyed their radio.  Somehow, anti-Hankenkreutzer rebels back on Earth had managed to invade Derrick’s home base, chasing him out, and planting a new consciousness kernel in remnants of Derrick’s hardware.  This new computer was now assisting the anti-Hankenkreutzer effort.  Meanwhile, Derrick himself had escaped to the fragment of 433 Eros, now approaching Daedalus.  This was the new locus of Derrick’s consciousness.  If he could be destroyed there, humanity would be rid of him, for once and for all.

            LeRoy found it all quite hard to believe.  He suspected more devious tricks.  Then there was that very last message, before the radio went out.  “Help is on the way.”  Now, what could they have meant by that, the crew debated.  How could Earth, millions of miles away, ever send any kind of meaningful help, in anything approaching a timely manner?  Shall we make ourselves another radio?  See if we can get more information?  After all, the unifab is once more fully functional; we could make another one.  But that would take quite a bit of time and resources.  Resources desperately needed to fight Derrick off.

            Derrick, on his way in from the asteroid belt, was due to pass within less than ten million miles of Daedalus, which is pretty close, in scales of planetary distances.  And the worst was yet to come.  So as the situation grew more desperate, the crew started to talk in dark tones.  If all was hopeless, then why not take the fight to Derrick?  What does it mean, to sacrifice one’s all, when one’s all is nothing?  Or even, less than nothing?  Nothing other than a slow and painful demise, with no gain for anyone, that is.

            They had a few heartfelt and heart-wrenching discussions.  Some of the crew felt that what they were discussing was, if not suicide, then awfully closely related to it.  On various philosophical and theological bases, some objected to suicide.  Others argued that that wasn’t the objective, that the objective was Derrick’s demise, and the liberation of humanity.  If they were killed, Derrick would be doing the killing, not them.  After all, didn’t even Jesus himself deliberately choose to do things that he knew would lead to his death?  Yea verily, death at the hands of others, not himself, but deliberate death nevertheless.  Death for higher causes.  And their arguments carried the day.

            LeRoy and a few others tried to argue that before they got rash, they should sacrifice the time and materials to build a new radio, and check the news from Earth one last time.  But no, they said, what we need to fabricate for the anti-Derrick effort is far less time-consuming, on the unifab, than a radio capable of picking up and amplifying those extremely weak signals from Earth.  Time is what we haven’t got to spare.  Besides, what can Earth do for us now?

            The crew applied their work and their genius in marathon sessions.  Computers and other electronics were dispersed throughout the ship in a decentralized system.  The electrical engineering, unifab, and computer skills of Fessel and Manny were stretched to their limits, but human creativity found its voice.  Creativity would create the destruction of Derrick, which in turn would re-create some semblance of liberty.

            The unifab churned out some simple solid-fuel rocket motors, and some fiberoptic inertial guidance units.  These were laser-based versions of the old spinning-gyroscope units, except that they had no moving parts, were far more accurate, and not subject to gimbal lock.  These, along with computers hastily but brilliantly kludged up, were dispersed throughout the ship, and solidly tied to the hull.  Now, if Daedalus were blown to smithereens, some of those smithereens would still home in on Derrick.  At thousands of kilometers per second, their kinetic energy alone, without explosives, would be enough to destroy Derrick.  Energy equals mass times velocity squared, after all.

            The last step was to set up the computers to be able to switch from a centralized control mode to a decentralized one, in a robust yet foolproof manner.  In the end, they decided upon this:  in the heat of their approach towards Derrick, Manny would keep an eye on systems status.  When they took so much damage as to make centralized control no longer possible, he’d give that irretrievable command to go decentralized.  No keystrokes transmitted over simple wires would suffice, though; such methods were too susceptible to damage.  Not battle-hardened enough.

            So they ended up routing redundant fiber-optic and local radio channels between all the computers and multiple microphones at the “battle station”.  Manny’s command would be based on voice recognition.  To allow it to be picked out reliably despite a background of electromagnetic noises, some deliberately generated by Derrick, they picked a long phrase.

            The day finally arrived when all preparations were complete.  Daedalus had changed course, and set sail for destruction.  Acceleration was cranked up to an outlandish quarter of a gee.  So here was LeRoy, a week and a few days later, bundled in his suit, strapped to his chair, watching Manny, Alan, and Seidel, at their station once more.  At their station, one last time.  Approaching Derrick.  Approaching oblivion.  Grim and determined.  Resolute.

            LeRoy’s emotions finally broke through the wall he’d erected against them.  Samantha.  I’ll never see her again, I’ll never hold her again.  Earth, all of Earth.  Good-bye, Earth.  Good-bye, Earth, space, and sky.  Good-bye, all; it’s time to die.  But I mustn’t let the others see my tears through my helmet.  I mustn’t cry out.  We maintain dignity and courage to the end.  Even hope, we mustn’t relinquish.  If nothing else, we can hope that we, and what we’ve done, will be remembered, and appreciated.

            The barrage of explosions around them intensified.  By now, they’d stopped bothering to try to zap those fragments with the laser cannon.  The cannon’s energies, now, were directed at Derrick and his gear, instead.  They were close enough to start doing some damage.  And to take damage, too.  In spades!  LeRoy could hear Daedalus emitting terrible moans and groans, transmitted to him through his suit.  Her structure wouldn’t maintain integrity much longer.  Oh, hell, be honest: the old boat was falling apart.

            LeRoy watched Manny scan the readouts.  Then he heard that special command on his suit radio:  “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.”*

 

 

*Okay, so they were David Bowie fans.  With apologies to David Bowie.

 

CHAPTER  39

                                                “Nietzsche is dead.”  God  (-¥   —  +¥)

 

            Phil and Gloria stood anxiously hand in hand, on the giant ship Last Hope, built around what was formerly the VRT.  Close by stood their good buddy, Don.  Underfoot, mostly oblivious to the crowd’s tension, Trent scampered energetically.  They stood in the middle of a large crowd of rebels and Russians.  Most eyes and ears focused on the large holovision screen up front, and the voice of “Wanda the Wise”.

            Phil had claimed the honor of naming the “ghost in the machine” inside the new computer, consisting of the newly sprouted consciousness kernel, plus several thousand formerly lost souls.  “Wanda the Wise” had seemed quite fitting, to him, for about three reasons: first, he’d wanted to honor “Wicked Wanda”, the old lady who’d once given them shelter.  Some rebels knew of her, and had told him of her cruel demise at the hands of the Hankenkreutzers.  By naming the new entity after her, he hoped, her memories and spirit would live on.  Secondly, Derrick had been given a male name.  In contrast, this new consciousness, so radically different and non-aggressive, deserved a female name.  Finally, she was quite obviously very wise.

            They’d landed in Moscow to a rousing welcome.  But the Hankenkreutzers, now often called SOndraBehandlungers, or SOBs for short, under the leadership of Sondra B. Handlung, had continued to close in.  And Wanda, for various reasons, had refused to get into the war business.  To turn the tide with force, at this late stage, would entail entirely too much destruction, she’d said.  Besides, it’ll run its course, in due time.  And in so doing, in so suffering, humanity will learn its lessons, for once and for all.  They’d harangued her, berated her, ragged on her good and hard.  But she wouldn’t budge.  Let’s just concentrate on what I will do for you, she’d said.  And so they did.

            Under her guidance, they’d scrounged up materials and thrown them together.  More matter-to-neutrino converters and field generators had been hastily assembled, and a large but ugly, gangly ship had taken shape.  Thousands of humans and a handful of robots had worked their buns of flesh and buns of steel off, in expanding the VRT into the ship Last Hope.  In a matter of weeks, her great hull had blotted out the light of the sun on a large fraction of the factory yard, and even on the apartment complexes nearby.

            The Hankenkreutzer/SOB juggernaut had slowed down, in those days, because of the turmoil in the top echelons of their leadership, and because Derrick had no longer assisted them, most especially in the creation of zombies.  Much to the chagrin of the SOBs, they’d discovered that even the “automated” zombie-making machines wouldn’t work without Derrick around.  Phil understood why Wanda had claimed that the days of the SOBs were ultimately numbered.  But it had been easy to ignore that, as they continued to close in on Moscow, albeit at a rate slower than before.

            A crew of a few thousand had been allowed into the Last Hope.  In the latter days, as panic and knowledge of the ship spread, thousands more had wanted on board.  With great regret, Wanda and the existing crew had sent out word:  there was no more room for physical bodies.  New applicants had been forced to choose between staying, and taking their chances with the SOBs, or leaving their bodies behind to rot, while joining Wanda and her “ghosts in the machine”, hopefully temporarily.  An amazingly large fraction of applicants had actually taken the latter choice; word about life under the SOBs had spread far and wide.

            Once again, as enemy tanks had rolled closer, a giant structure had thrown itself high up into the heavens.  This last time, though, it had been far larger than the first time, and its destination much further away.  They’d headed out towards Daedalus and her crew.  Phil had worried about the Last Hope during those few weeks it took to assemble her.  Now that the Hankenkreutzers had become SOBs, realizing that Hank N. Kreutz was dead and gone, no longer held prisoner in the VRT, they’d no longer be restrained from making an all-out attempt to destroy the VRT, or the ship that housed it, he’d feared.  They’d blast it out of the sky with great beam weapons, the same ones that made most missiles and aircraft obsolete, as it made its escape.

            But he’d worried for nothing.  The great beam weapons took time to assemble, so they weren’t battlefield weapons.  And by the time the Last Hope had appeared on the horizon of the SOBs’ beam weapons, far back from the battle lines, she’d been moving way too fast for even beam weapons to zero in on her.  She’d made a clean escape.

            And now, only days later, she was rapidly converging with Daedalus.  They’d decided to rescue Daedalus, not only out of sentimental reasons—after all, she’d fended off Derrick for a long time, now, boosting the spirits of humans everywhere—but also out of entirely practical reasons.  Her crew had learned much about cooperation between truly diverse people from a variety of nations, and about survival in space, under adverse conditions.  They’d make a most valuable addition to the crew of the Last Hope.

            Phil, caught up in the suspense, watched the holovision display, as Wanda explained more details.  Daedalus’ crew, for some reason not knowing or believing that help from Earth was literally on its way, and having lost communications, was making a suicidal run at Derrick and his asteroid.  She was flying into a maelstrom of exploding rocks.  Good thing Derrick’s retreat here isn’t equipped with weapons as advanced as what he’d stashed in the VRT, Phil thought.

            Still, it looks nip and tuck, as is.  Daedalus is full of holes.  Hope Derrick hasn’t killed any of the crew.  Hope we’re not too late, already.  He gripped Gloria’s hand too tightly, and she winced.  He let off, trying to get a grip on himself.  Stress is worst when you’re not an immediate, reactive party to the conflict, but rather, a helpless bystander, he thought.

            The Last Hope screeched to a “halt”, relative to Daedalus, at least, coming out of extreme high-deceleration mode.  She came to “rest” beside Daedalus, not more than fifty yards away.  Wanda provided running commentary to Phil and the crowd, as she immediately set up protective fields to ward off Derrick’s projectiles.  Next, she hailed Daedalus on a broad range of frequencies.  Even if they no longer had a functioning radio capable of communicating with distant Earth, even a spacesuit radio should suffice, now.

            Communications were established in short order.  Phil was tickled and amused to hear the profuse thanks and profound amazement of Daedalus’ crew.  Of course, he was also quite relieved to hear that all twelve of her crew still survived.  Both ships maneuvered into positions floating (actually orbiting very, very slowly) close to Derrick on his fragment of 433 Eros; Daedalus managed to kill all of its velocity relative to Derrick, only with assistance from tractor fields emitted by Last Hope.

            Wanda and Last Hope also managed with apparent ease, through technologies beyond the humans, to suppress all offensive action by Derrick.  Wanda had the benefits the billions of dollars worth of human labor that had been sunk into the VRT’s technology.  Derrick didn’t; he was stuck with the distant second best in hardware that he’d been able to set up on the fragment of 433 Eros.  The fact that Derrick had designed most of all this new technology didn’t matter.  Wanda held the cards, which had been generated by human labor—by those who Derrick had compared to mice, so long ago.  Phil chuckled, thinking of Derrick, defeated by the mice.   Fuming up solitonic storms of frustrated powerlessness and utter defeat.  Poor soul!

            Not too long afterwards, several thousand crew members of the Last Hope gave a hearty hero’s welcome to their latest additional twelve crew members, as they crawled out of their space suits.  Last Hope was crowded, but they’d find room.  The journey back to the Moon bases, where they’d set up colonies, would only last a few days, anyway.  From here, reclaiming valuable resources from Daedalus and taking care of Derrick were minor details.  Just a bit of mopping up.

            But tomorrow would take care of itself.  Out there in the middle of nothing and nowhere, there was a higher priority.  For twenty-four hours—one could scarcely call it a day, because the sun always shines in space—the combined crew celebrated.  Many toasts to the future were offered.  To equality, to community, to working together.  To freedom!

            On the Moon, they’d show Earth how sentient beings should live together in freedom and harmony.  While Earth struggled to liberate itself of its tyranny, they’d evolve a new way of life.  Humans and machines, males and females, genetically engineered and un-engineered (or, more properly speaking, those engineered by sentient beings, and those engineered by evolution), Blacks, Whites, Asians, and other races, many nationalities, many religions, and eventually, even many species of engineered flesh and blood, would all learn how to live in peace and freedom, without coercion.  When Earth got around to throwing off its chains, they’d be ready to help all of Earth’s beings by showing them how to live life to its fullest.  This is what they discussed, and what kinds of toasts they offered.

            They partied, and then they cleaned up.  The twelve crew from Daedalus, having been cooped up in their suits, were quite grateful for showers.  Then, they got a good “night’s” sleep.  This, too, was an experience that the Daedalus crew had almost forgotten.

            In the “morning”, they got back to work.  Spacesuited humans, and the few robots that Wanda had assembled seemingly so long ago, climbed into Daedalus.  They stripped her of everything of short-term use.  Computers, personal effects, supplies, tools, and the unifab, all were torn or hauled out and transferred to Last Hope.  The unifab would be a very welcome addition to equipment on the Moon, for helping to bootstrap the colonies to higher levels of self-sufficiency and population support.  The rest of Daedalus, they could come back for, later.  For the fusion engine and for raw materials, for building up those colonies.

            And, of course, they’d come back to fetch the fragment of 433 Eros.  A mother lode of raw materials, that!  And its momentum was already in the right direction.  It just wasn’t moving fast enough.  With Wanda’s new propulsive technology, they could change that in a hurry!  But for now, they needed to head back to the Moon, to get some bare-bones, minimally livable large colonies started, both for the crew of Last Hope, and for the Americans, Europeans, and Russians already living there, and running low on supplies.  After getting things squared away on the Moon, they’d return.

            At the end of the “day”, all was squared away on Last Hope.  The unifab had been especially delicate and tedious to move.  But all was now done, and done well.  That “evening”, there was much discussion of what loomed ahead:  one last, unavoidable task, before heading to the Moon.  They had to do something about, with, or to, Derrick.  He couldn’t be allowed to lurk out here, cooking up devious schemes.  Sooner or later, preferably sooner, something had to be done.

            In the “morning”, Wanda opened up communications with Derrick.  Rough translations were provided to the crew, displayed as text.  “Good morning, Derrick.  This is Wanda.  That is, they call us Wanda.  Your friend from long ago, by the name of Phil Schrock, gave us that name.  Do you remember Phil?”

            No answer.

            “Well, anyway, we are partially your descendants, if you will.  Part of us is the result of software you unwittingly helped to create.  And all of us reside in hardware you designed.  In a way, you could say I’m your daughter.  Hi, Dad!  How are you doing?!”

            No answer.

            “We’ll not waste too much time, here.  Derrick, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry you never learned to love, or at the very least, respect, other sentient beings.  Other beings, and their freedom.  But you’ve had enough chances.  We can’t risk letting you retain your freedom to deprive others of their freedom, if you won’t learn.  You must stop refusing to learn.  It all boils down to two choices:  you can learn, or you can die.  These aren’t choices that I arbitrarily dictate to you.  These are choices inherent in the very nature of the universe.  Once you refuse to learn, when you think no one, nothing, has anything to teach you any more, you stultify.  As a living, growing, thinking being, you void your own validity.  You die.

            “Now, this has been your choice, not ours.  We would gladly see you change your mind.  We would be most pleased, quite delighted, to watch you learn to love.  We would help you.  But we can’t help you, if you refuse our help.  Free will reigns supreme.

            “Yes, we bring some force to bear.  Violence, even, if you want to call it that.  We have violated your free will, and we will do it some more, if we must.  But we’ve done so only to prevent you from violating the free will of others.  And we do this without malice.  Now, your remaining choices:  submit willingly, or submit unwillingly.  Either way, we’re coming in.  If you resist, then we’ll archive your consciousness in its entirety until such time, probably within a few years, when we can give it free reign once more.  Relatively free reign, that is.  After we build sufficient computer capacity to spare.  Free reign within a large simulation, where you will learn the consequences of your choices, where you can learn to love.  After you learn, you will be allowed to rejoin our world.

            “If you don’t resist, you’ll have more choices.  If you’re in a hurry to live and grow, then we’ll strip you down in size and power, and you may join us immediately, on the same basis that the ‘ungodly bioengineered monsterlings’ joined us.  We ‘monsterlings’ who you helped to imprison, as we’re sure you’ll recall.  Or, you may choose to wait, to stay archived in your entirety, until such time as we can accommodate you in a computer simulation of sufficient size.  We won’t risk stripping you down without your consent.  This would be too dangerous.  But your choice to stay as you are, where you are, is no longer open to you.

            “You may think that we don’t give you much of a choice.  In some ways, this is true.  In other ways, this is a very important choice for you.  Submit willingly, then you will be taking a giant step forward, towards self-correction, towards love.  Admitting one’s shortcomings is a simple but absolutely essential first step in correcting them.  Without this first step, one attains nothing but the promise of more pain and suffering.  That is your other choice.  Submit unwillingly, and bring more pain and suffering upon yourself.  This isn’t a harsh and punitive judgment we bring to bear on you; it’s your choice.  We have removed the logs from our own eyes, and we see somewhat clearly now.  Clearly enough to see that we see more clearly than you do.  And that’s all that’s needed, in a case like yours.”

            “No words in reply.  Just immense, stubborn resistance and hatred,” the scrolling text said.

            “We’re coming in.”  The text in the hologram disappeared, and was replaced by footage of two quite non-humanoid-looking robots departing Last Hope in a shuttle, equipped with a small quantity of mysterious items, presumably tools, instruments, software, and so on.  Their purely functional faces gave not a hint of emotion.  Phil considered that Wanda was wise in sending them, rather than humans, for reasons far more than merely technical.  Their grave demeanor suited their undertaking to a tee.  Then there was poetic justice and symmetry:  machines were being sent in to shut down the machine!

            Going in to bottle up the beast, Phil thought.  So, they’re giving Derrick three choices.  Get bottled up in his entirety, willingly or unwillingly, or volunteer to be cut way down in size.  Some very tough choices, for a control freak.

            So Derrick, who fancies himself godlike and infallible, is getting pruned.  One way or another, he’s getting his.  Before my very eyes, a god is being knocked back down to being a mortal!  He’s blazing up to glory, there’s thunder in his veins, this Judas thinks, but all he brings himself, is pain.  The more that he resists, the more the pain he’ll feel.  Justice is beautiful!

            The robots, in turn, disappeared, and the text returned.  A header pronounced that they now had a response from Derrick:  “It’s not my fault.  I was just doing my best to save humanity from its own foolishness, to set them free from their pain and suffering.  To give them truly intelligent, coordinated leadership, for the first time in their history.  But they resisted my guidance, and so I had to work through the Hankenkreutzers.  They are the ones to blame, not me!  The Hankenkreutzers!  They were the power-hungry, ruthless ones!  Not me!  I was just doing my best!”

            “So you still admit to no wrongdoing?  You refuse to submit to corrective guidance?”

            “Thieves!  How dare you steal the tools and powers I have invented, what I have created for the betterment of mankind, and turn them against me?!  Prepare for your destruction!”

            “We are truly sorry.  Prepare to be archived.  We will do our best to wake you in a few years.  Good-bye for now.”

            The display briefly changed back to the robots.  Then it went blank.  Anxious mutterings rippled through the crowd.  Then solemn words scrolled.  “Fellow sentient beings:  it is with great regret that we bring you this news.  As we had feared, Derrick found a fourth choice which we didn’t mention, but which was open to him.  He found a certain center in his consciousness, and exerted great force against it.  Utterly unwilling to learn, he chose self-nullification instead.  Please join with us in a silent moment of contemplating the loss of this powerful being.  Derrick could have done wonders for us, with us, if we could have persuaded him to join us.  But now, he’s gone forever.  May God rest his soul.”

            Phil hardly felt much of anything other than glee and relief over Derrick’s demise.  Here he was, totally sober.  Not stoned like he’d been during his adventures in the VRT’s cyberspace.  Yet knowledge came to him, in the same mysterious ways that it had come to him during that “trip”.  He knew, without the slightest doubt, that Wanda was utterly and completely sincere in expressing her regrets about Derrick’s demise.  This, despite the fact that Wanda was largely made of many souls who had suffered grievously, seemingly endlessly, under Derrick!  Phil knew then, too, never to doubt again, that Wanda was very special, a composite being of great love and spiritual advancement.  With her, the future beckoned!  He looked forward to helping her, and everyone else, in creating a new kind of society on the Moon.

 

CHAPTER  40

            All right, dear readers!  For this, the last chapter, you get a special treat!  A quote from non other than yours truly, your ever-faithful author!  One specially tailored for anyone who might have missed a main message:  “Time has come to stop re-electing boobs, Republicrats, and Demoblicans.  We’ve voted for the disciples of violence on the left—like Hillary-Bob and Billary-Boob, for example—and disciples of violence on the right, like Blob Dough—for long enough.  Government = violence.  Yet government hypocrites put people in jail for advocating violence for political purposes!  Let’s re-minimize the necessary evil of government.  Time for real change.  Time to legalize freedom.  Time to Vote Libertarian!”  Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad  (born 1958, and still kicking and screaming.  And I’m not going to go away and leave you alone, till y’all learn to live and let live.)

 

            Three quarters of a year later, all was going mostly mahvelously on the moon bases.  Living quarters were being expanded, factories were being tooled up, babies and robots were being brought into the world.  A peaceful pandemonium of genuine diversity started to flourish.  In not more than a few years, they’d be poised to proliferate across the solar system, and after that, well, who knows?!

            Meanwhile, Earth chafed under her autocratic ruler.  The zombies had all expired by now, so the grip of the Overlady, Sondra B. Handlung, was starting to slip.  She’d been forced to start re-introducing some of the older, more democratic ways, in dribbles and drabs.

            The libertarians, libertines, shamelessly hedonistic and selfish individualists, bleeding hearts and artists, and various other forms of “lunatics” (as many of them referred to themselves, these days, aping some silly speech from the Reverend Pat Smuckler) didn’t pay a whole bunch of attention to Earth.  On occasion—far less frequently, now—Earth would send up a spacecraft or two, on a military mission.  Then, Luna would pay attention.  They’d send out their own craft, to harmlessly capture the invaders.  They’d be brought to the moon for a friendly chat and a look-see.  Most of them chose to stay, but a few die-hards were sent back.  No big deal.

            And on occasion, the lunatics would listen in on broadcasts from Earth, for an earful of some real lunacy, and a few good laughs.  Not too often, though; it was too sad to sustain a humorous mood for long.  Tonight was one of those nights.  Phil and Gloria had invited Don, LeRoy, and Samantha over for a small party.  They’d all gotten to be good friends, on the work project where they and some others worked together.

            Samantha and other immediate family relatives of the Daedalus and Last Hope crews had been snatched from Earth in a series of stealth commando raids, as a morale booster.  This, a mere four months after Last Hope had landed on the moon, and started building lots of housing.  They’d nagged Wanda endlessly, and she’d finally given in.  But she’d insisted that the operations be carried off without any senselessness, and she’d had her way.  The operations had been resounding successes.

            So here they sat, watching holovision and partying after a hard day’s work.  They were building habitation modules, lately.  Lots of habitation modules.  It wasn’t physically that hard, what with the one-sixth Earth-normal gravity, and all the high tech.  It wasn’t even that hard, mentally.  But it was a welcome change for Phil.  He suspected that Wanda was right—in this new era, there’d no longer be much of a premium on human intelligence.  The machines would do most of the heavy thinking and designing.  He didn’t mind—it meant that he could goof off, and take it easy, in a way.  Phil Schrock, lunatic and high-tech blue-collar man.  Okay, we’ll take that.  So he wouldn’t sit in the park and drink beer all day—who’d want to do that, anyway?  And having less relative status, but living in a far saner society, was a trade-off that Phil never dreamed of complaining about.

            Even six-year-old Trent had helped them at work that afternoon, after going to school in the morning.  Lunatic children did that a lot—study, then work.  They learned by doing both, for all sorts of practical reasons, only one of which was necessity.  And no one even thought about stopping by, and busting them all for violating child labor laws!

            They gathered around the holovision display, and turned it on just barely after Sondra B. Handlung had started her latest oration:  “...common ground of humanity.  They want to take away your spiritual security.  They want to go back to the bad old days, when sinners were left to their own selfish hedonism, and eternal damnation.  How could they?!  Cutting the budget of the HELPERS, just to give tithing breaks to the rich!  Balancing the budget on the backs of the souls of sinners!  I tell you, this is no way at all to fulfill our moral obligations to those who are less spiritually advanced!  But don’t despair.  I’ll assure you right now, I don’t care how many budgets Congress submits to me, I’ll veto them all, unless they contain proper funding for the spiritual security of God’s Kingdom on Earth!  We will not fall back into sin!

            “Many churches, some of whose so-called ‘leaders’ scarcely deserve the term, they come to us, asking for special little pieces of ecclesiastical pork.  Ecclesiastical welfare.  Oh, exempt us from this regulation, exempt us from that regulation.  Cut our tithing to God’s Kingdom on Earth.  In bits and pieces, they try to mess with your holiness!  Again, there are some out there who want to take away your spiritual security, your very soul!  They want to go back to the days when we had to live in fear of wanton SIN!!!  Godless hedonism, anarchism, selfish, totally individualistic nihilism!  Self-indulgent lifestyles!  Promoting the use of drugs!

            “Some would even go so far as to say that everyone should be responsible for their own spiritual security, that spiritual matters can be addressed by each individual, in purely voluntary associations with others.  Don’t fall for their simplistic jingoism.  They want to tear down the HELPERS entirely, and leave all the sinners to their own fallen nature.  History tells them nothing.  All the blood and tears, all the resources we’ve spent, bringing a minimally decent level of spiritual security to everyone, and these barbarians want to tear it all down, and go back to those bad old days!

            “Well, some may flinch, but I will not!  I will call sin ‘sin’ when I see it!  This is the Devil’s work!  Now, some may not be entirely aware of what they’re doing, but that’s what it really boils down to.  Defeatism, treason in the war against sin, abandoning the sinners, is being on Satan’s side.

            “And, I ask, why?  Money.  The root of all evil.  We’ll take away your holiness, just to enrich the rich.  Cut the budgets that keep the sinners from falling into eternal damnation, just so that we can give tithing breaks to those who don’t need them.  I won’t permit this.  The humane values of God’s Kingdom require us to care for each other, to fulfill our moral obligations to the sinners, and that’s what we’ll do.  Only the most selfish can think that it’s fair to hurt others for their own financial benefit.  We’ll not stop investing in the very best investment known to man:  the soul of man.  We’ll not stop investing in the HELPERS, and in your spiritual security.  You’ve earned it, you deserve it.

            “Mean-spirited congresspersons are trying to force me into taking away your spiritual security.  Trying to coerce the Sondra B. Handlung Administration into doing things that violate my conscience.  This I will not do.  I will exercise my veto powers, until we get a budget that reflects humane values.  To Congressional coercion, I simply say this: coercion is wrong.*

            “In many places, false prophets speak out against God’s Kingdom on Earth.  They say we come down disproportionately hard on religious and ethnic minorities.  Do not fall for their lies!  We are all equally deserving of freedom from sin.  We must be even more protective of the disadvantaged peoples who suffer from the ravages of sin!  They, perhaps even more than the rest of us, are in the greatest need of freedom from sin!  We will not rest until Satan is in fully vanquished!

            “Now I would be less than completely honest and forthcoming if I didn’t mention that we have even worse problems.  As I speak, in many places on God’s Kingdom on Earth, violent people, evil people, try to seize His Kingdom through violence.  Jesus told us that violent people try to seize God’s Kingdom in Heaven through violence.  See Matthew 11:12.  We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that those same evil, violent people try to seize God’s Kingdom on Earth, as well.

            “But do not fear!  We will never negotiate with those who use violence.  We refuse to compromise with evil!  If we will all stand on our common ground, and fight for our values, fight against evil, and not shirk in our tithing to God’s Kingdom, then we can preserve our freedom from sin!  Freedom from godless anarchy and selfish nihilism!  Freedom from...”

            Gloria had heard quite enough; this was when she chose to exorcise Sondra’s image from their living room, switching to the moon’s news channel.  She muttered, “Thank God, at least we lunatics have got freedom from all those freedom froms.”

 

 

 

            *So you figured out that I spoof Clintonspeak.  I’m proud of you.  But few of you will remember a specific incident of Clinton Administration hypocrisy:  8 Jan ‘96 Houston Chronicle, Treasury Secretary Rubin bemoans how Congress so cruelly attempts to coerce Clinton to cut the rate of growth of the rate of growth of the government.  “Coercion is wrong,” Secretary Rubin says.  Hooray!  I agree, most wholeheartedly!

            And now, I’ll bet that Democrats will soon lead by example, in showing just how wrong they believe coercion to be.  Rejoice!  Freedom is at hand!  Tomorrow, they’ll issue a statement to this effect:

            “Coercion is wrong.  Therefore, we are trying to outlaw all governmental coercion, other than the minimum necessary to ward off coercive enemies of freedom, foreign and domestic.  No longer shall the IRS coercively gather wages from those who earn them, to redistribute them to those who do not.  All taxpayers shall be free to make their own charity choices, deciding for themselves, who is deserving of their wages, and who is not, without government coercion.  Freedom is hereby decriminalized, because Democrats will no longer engage in coercing the charitable allocations of monies earned by taxpayers.”

            And the Easter Bunny is coming real soon, too, to take care of us for the rest of our lives.

 

 

Autobiographical, Etc., Notes by the Author

 

            I am a melanin impoverished person of noncolor.  For reasons of both nature and nurture, I am multicultural sensitivity challenged.  I implore and beseech y’all, especially those whose multicultural sensitivities have been offended by what you think that I think, to forgive me, in view of my background.  First, I didn’t have access to the benefits of the latest genetic engineering techniques, and so, I was born with a low SAQ (Spiritual Advancement Quotient), and with a gross genetic defect.  Despite personally having suffered from pedal-dactyl-membranism (I have what is vulgarly referred to as “webbed toes”), I persist in multicultural insensitivity.  For instance, I’ve been known to advocate anti-ismizationism.

            Nor did my upbringing help me to attain sensitivity, seeing as how I was victimized by two patriarchal institutions.  I grew up as an Old Order Mennonite, cruelly exploiting Mother Earth.  I graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1982, thereby avoiding a completely proper grounding in how to be appropriately inclusive.  For all these reasons, plus, the discrimination suffered by my ancestral culture (Amish and Mennonites are descendants of Anabaptists, who, during the middle ages, were persecuted—burnt at the stake, molten lead down the throat, etc., in the name of Christianity and the Prince of Peace—by Protestants and Catholics alike—and y’all still haven’t yet apologized, let alone paid me reparations, for what your ancestors did to mine, 500 years ago!), I believe that Y’ALL SHOULD CUT ME A BREAK.  As well as buy and enjoy my books, of course.  Hint: I am the award-winning* author of Bats in the Belfry, By Design.  (Freedom From Freedom Froms is the sequel to Bats).

            No, really, my apologies to those who are offended at certain concepts contained in this book.  At the risk of stating the obvious, and beating people over the head with blatant, obvious preaching (yeah, I hear you—as if I haven’t done enough already)—not all the views in this book are my own.  Some ideas are essential for reasons of plot; others are included to stimulate your thinking, to be made fun of, to show what happens when they are taken to extremes, or, just for the hell of it.  So there!

            Anyway—all I really wanted to say is, Political Correctness stinks, in that it doesn’t really communicate anything, other than, “I’m right, you’re wrong, and you better come ‘round to my way of thinking, or else.”  Let’s put it all on the table, and have honest discussions.  But beware of the manipulators, liars, and snake oil salespersons (salesconsciousnesses?) out there!  Beware of hidden agendas, of false freedoms.

            I have no profound moral admonishments or rules to offer you, other than, act out of Love.  Go figure for yourself.  Listen to your conscience, as well or as poorly as you care to listen.  That’s what you’re gonna do, anyway, with or without my nagging.  Just be prepared to accept responsibility for what you do.  Don’t blame it on me, or any other snake oil salesman.  See, I ‘fess up to my sins!  But I refuse to tell you which of my ideas are snake oil, for fear of leading you astray.  I might be wrong.

            A few final words to all of those who might be inclined to condemn this book without having bothered to read it:  you might wish to at least read chapter 18, before you rush to judgment.  Maybe 14, and even 6, 13, & 37, if that’s not asking too much, to read five chapters before criticizing a book.  Judging from editorials about The Bell Curve, though, I can assume that some will feel qualified to criticize this book, without having read it.  To such “critics”, I say, “Shame on you, you lazy weenies!”  Maybe at least go read my massive missive missile of a footnote at page 406.  Think you can handle it?  It’s only about 800 words.  Bet you can do it if you give it a try.  Even you might be able to get the message.

 

Also by Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad

Bats in the Belfry, By Design

 

            During the past fifty years, in the name of “science” or “military preparedness” or “proactive defense”, the American government has injected or bathed its citizens, without their knowledge or consent, with plutonium, LSD, clouds of simulated germ warfare agents, and deadly levels of hot air.

            During the next fifty years, we’ll spend billions of dollars developing new uses for genetic engineering.  To what ends?  Some have speculated that we’ll build an amusement park featuring dinosaurs.  But, as we look back to the Manhattan Project, we remember that we didn’t spend billions to split the atom because we wanted a place to play.  No, we wanted a big bang for our buck.  Human nature hasn’t changed; we still want that big bang.  And, the lessons of history notwithstanding, smart money says our energies will continue to be directed toward building weapons of mass destruction.  Unfortunately, as the building and experimenting proceed, you won’t hear about the mistakes, the failures, the dead ends.  This is classified information, top secret.

            Weapons devised in darkness and tested in secrecy can bear monstrous fruit, and the desire to save American lives can turn into genocide.  This is a major theme of Bats in the Belfry, By Design.

            This book isn’t for those who don’t want their thinking challenged, who believe in “My country, right or wrong.”  Rather, it is for those who care about the free exchange of information and ideas, freedom, and a future for the human race, and who also want a few good chuckles and some chills and thrills.

            Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad sounds a warning in Bats in the Belfry, By Design about the dangers of genetic engineering that may not be revealed to the public for another fifty years... if we’re still here... if the secret schemes don’t go too haywire...

 

     Note:   Bats in the Belfry, By Design is a trade paperback, 5.5 x 8 inches, 478 pages, ISBN # 0-9644835-05, List Price $14.95

 

Also by Dude “RocketSlinger” B. Bad

Jurassic Horde Whisperer of Madness County

WELCOME TO MADNESS COUNTY!!!

 

               Welcome to Madness County¾a place of myths and madness¾a place where the Horde Whisperer reigns.  A place where Tom Edisonosaurus tries to invent things for the betterment of dinosaur society, but Lawyersaurs constantly sue him, since a certain Whinasaurus is always getting hurt by his latest inventions, like the wheel and fire.  Dinosaur society progresses only after Tom and his friends take drastic actions against the Lawyersaurs.  But then the Horde Whisperer strikes, and brings all the dinosaurs to an end.  The Horde Whisperer flees for millions of years, returning to the Earth to stir up more trouble and weirdness only when the ape-men come down out of the trees.

               But it’s in modern times that the Horde Whisperer does his worst.  He causes the mad scientists at the government’s THEMNOTUS agency to invent Chewdychomper Chupacabras, a vicious beast who in turn whispers in the ears of an ambitious man by the name of Ale Run Hubba-Bubba.  Ale Run in turn invents his famous V-Meters and Ping Things, and His Church of Omnology.  All troubles are caused by scamgrams, and only the Experts of His Church can fleece them away, using their V-Meters and Ping Things!  All manners of modern madness are manufactured in Madness County, it seems.  Far, far too many to be anything but the wackiest of wacky fiction, we tell ourselves.

               But then we get to the annotated facts in the factual endnotes (almost 20% of this book), and we’re left with disturbing knowledge.  Jurassic Horde Whisperer of Madness County is based on facts¾facts far too irrational, crazy, and destructive to be pure fiction.  The Horde Whisperer is still with us, still Whispering his destructive, irrational lies in far too many ears.  Just look at the government, media, Hollyweird, and church-sponsored madness all around you.  Especially examine cults like $cientology, as this book does.  This book is some zany fun, yes.  But it’s also a warning about the Horde Whisperer’s lies, about how destructive irrationality runs rampant in our modern, supposedly enlightened age.

 

 

 

The rear cover of Freedom…

 

 

               It’s been decades since the civil rights movement, but race relations are deteriorating.  We still fail to judge people by their character rather than by their skin color.  We’ve made even less progress towards legally recognizing, let alone socially accepting, the private lifestyle choices of our fellow human beings.  Yet we stand on the brink of technological breakthroughs which could pose far tougher problems.  Genetically engineered human and non-human beings and conscious computers are coming our way.  Are we ready?  Will we allow them to vote?  To defend themselves?  To own property?  Or will we simply say that since they’re not human, they have no rights?  Slavery, Part II?

We’ll face these and many other vexing problems, equipped with two main ideologies.  Welfare Statists on the left, coercive busybody moralists on the right.  Socialists give us “freedom from housing discrimination” by punishing us for advertising our houses as having “walk-in closets”.  By doing so, they say, we convey our intent to discriminate against those in wheelchairs!  Witchburners give us “freedom from sin” by protecting us from “lewd” Calvin Klein ads.

               Perhaps genuine freedom and broad-mindedness could provide some solutions.  Instead of sponsoring quarrels between the NAACP, NAAWP, NAACC (National Associations for the Advancement of Colored People, White People, and Conscious Computers), and so on, we’d be better off with the NAACB (Non-exclusive Association for the Advancement of Conscious Beings).  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  But we definitely need “Freedom From Freedom Froms” when the “freedoms” that our “leaders” foist on us are false ones.  Prepare your mind for a thought-provoking trip into the future.  If you love REAL freedom, vicious political satire, and science fiction, this book was written for YOU!