"At least I'm not a ten-percenter," I said out loud to myself as I walked down the stairway to my dwelling unit. At least I knew that much. Those two were ten-percenters. I knew that for sure. Just like the DOCTRINE said, ninety percent of our problems stem from just ten percent of the population. I had benefited from the DOCTRINE. I was educated. I received a CD4ROM5 just like every newborn citizen. I was proud of my bootstrap education. I even remember my PRAYER OF FISCAL SELF-RELIANCE:
Each day these discs I do unfold
To play their tunes as I've been told.
Their rules and lines and pictures say
All that I need throughout the day.
The lessons here I'll teach myself
Without a danger to my health.
Who needs a teacher or a book,
These discs are all I need, just look!
The rule of market law is true
As simple as the sky is blue.
I'll never ask for what's not mine,
Nor will I step across the line;
The line that separates those who state
That they're the masters of their fate.
Behind the line are those who whine
And make excuses wasting time;
They thought we owed them a free lunch
That was before our budget crunch.
The financial crises taught us all
That alone the market rules stand tall;
The market serves to lead and guide
And bring to all who listen, pride.
Let all who stray be filled with fear
For these are words we hold most dear.
Of course, I don't say it out loud anymore--not like I used to when I was self-learning. I looked around the room and gazed at my framed certificate of FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, still today the truest sign of citizenship. It had a stamped photo of Horatio Alger, the icon of the free market. I can still remember attending my first financial responsibility meeting when I was eight years old. I could see what looked like a giant teeter-totter in the middle of the stage. It was called THE SCALE OF FINANCIAL JUSTICE. It was a balanced scale large enough to weigh horses, pianos, or other large objects. Gradually the lights dimmed and the crowd began to hush. A sickly, purplish light filled the stage and out walked a muscular, tall man carrying a sword and wearing only a pair of diapers. He smiled at the crowd and began posing: flexing his muscles for the OOHING and AHHING audience. He pulled down one end of the scale and climbed onto it. He stood akimbo and riveted his gaze to the right side of the stage. The crowd again hushed in anticipation. Slowly an enormously obese man in tears and chains was pushed and prodded onto center stage. He, too, was wearing only diapers. He looked like a fleshy cow followed by two guards poking at him incessantly, forcing him to climb up onto his side of the scale. The imbalance immediately teeter-tottered the muscle man up into the air causing the audience to cheer. The poor fat man sat crying and was met only by the boos and hisses of the audience. The muscle man was laughing.
I felt a confused, nervous laughter taking over. Under the scale was a digital display showing both their weights displayed as dollar signs: the costs to society of their future medical costs to the NATIONSTATES. The obese man was priced at a minus 4,444,000 credits for all his future hospital costs. He wept louder with humiliation as an announcer read off the figures. The muscular man was displayed as being worth one million plus credits; he was going to add money to the state though his good health and strength. His muscles were shining in the light. He smiled contemptuously at the poor, obese man. The crowd began to cheer: CUT COSTS! CUT COSTS! CUT COSTS! Over and over they cheered. The muscle man pulled out his sword and held it high above his head. Without warning, he started slashing out at the fat man's hand, severing it at the wrist. He slashed and he slashed, and with each hack the scale dipped in the muscle man's favor. Like the digitally displayed scale in a butcher's market, the numbers under the fat man flashed out smaller and smaller numbers with each hack of the sword. The crowd roared with approval for we were being saved tax dollars. The muscle man hovered over his victim and began chopping away at a wild, uncontrolled frenzy. He was dismembering the man and throwing chunks of flesh before the crowd who continued to roar with deafening approval.
Thus began my introduction to the world order, THE DOCTRINE OF ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY. We worshipped the law of the market--LOM. "If you don't follow the directions of the invisible hand, you are likely to be punched by the invisible fist." That is what I was told time and again by the child rearers. It seemed true. Supply and demand, that's what it all came down to.
But, hell, I just do my job. Of course I don't work all the time. Sure, I put in my twelve hours a day like everybody else. Every Sunday night after I've finished work, I meet with my pals at the local pub to get caught up on the latest. Me and my pals, we go way back. Old army buddies mainly. I met most of them while doing mine-sweeping duty along the coast after Singapore's occupation. One year of hell, that's what it was. One year of picking up other people's explosive garbage after five years of taking it up the rear by the Singaporians. Hell, can anyone blame me for being nervous?
I never had much I could say was an accomplishment besides the fact I can do twenty-five one arm push-ups. Twenty-five. How many people do you know who can do even one? Sometimes my biggest thrill for the week was watching the head on my dolphin tatoo get bigger as my biceps expanded. You think it's easy to do one-arm push-ups? Just try it. It's not your average, everyday arm that can take that kind of punishment, that's for sure. I was known as the one-arm push-up king. I would tie one arm behind my back and pump away on the other. I turned myself into an up and down blur. I could do twenty before even slowing down. If I ever have a claim to fame, that will be it.
The door monitor bell rings and I tell it to open, but it's not my shipment. It tells me I have a message outside. I reach for my jacket, stub out my tobacco tube, and start the walk to the outside. My eyes hurt from the sunlight as I step out the front door. "Dammit," I said out loud. "My monitor's on the blink again." I hadn't realized it was daytime. A long row of people were standing in line waiting to confess their sins to the ATM confessional, but I didn't see anyone waiting for me.
Out of the shadows appeared my friend, Hardeman. Hardeman is a cool dude. I've known him since the war. He wasn't in my division; he was in logistics. I knew him from basic training. Hardeman spent two years in a Singaporian prison camp during the war. Never talks about it, not even to me. Now, he works as a tester-a bug checker at MACROHARD's headquarters.
He always made me laugh. His round black face would always break into a laugh the same way: he'd start by closing his eyes and grabbing his chest as if he were having a heart attack. Seconds later his head would tilt back emitting what started off as a cocoon of a smirk, and gradually evolved into butterflies of laughter pouring out of his mouth. This beautiful laughter would rest around him wherever he went. Hardeman was what I called "my good cheer dude" because he always brought me up. Hardeman wore a black synthetic jacket with the state emblem of the invisible fist stitched boldly on the front. Now, just because he wears the insignia don't start thinking he's a MACROHARD brown-noser. No way. He always told me he thought the emblem was cool. He has a picture of his grandfather wearing a T-shirt with practically the same emblem! No shit. He said it was a "Black-folk-thing." MACROHARD must have bought the rights to use it when they bought out all the libraries.
Hardeman whispered, "There's gonna be a VOX meeting tonight at the mill."
"VOX!," I said, "Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. It's gonna be an endorphic wanna be--definitely. Stay quiet and follow me from a distance." Hardeman quickly stepped through a hole in a nearby fence. I looked around to make sure no one had seen us, and I squeezed myself through the narrow opening--fully aware of the risk I was taking.
Hardeman had been into VOX for several months. I had only gone to three meetings, but I already knew all the rumors. VOX was an underground organization that trained people in one of the forbidden arts: public speaking. It was started by an eccentric named Alan Trochanter. Trochanter spent his fortune creating an underground (both literally and figuratively) library. He secretly hired librarians and became a hero because he was providing employment at a time when only the truly INFOHIP had jobs. The whole idea was thrilling, forbidden, and definitely illegal.
Trochanter was immensely liked by youth. He argued that for generations the young were taught to revere the old because the rate of change in the universe was relatively slow. He explained that at one point in our history, our survival depended on respecting and listening to our elders because they had all the experience. Somewhere around the year 2000, the velocity of change passed a critical point. The world was changing so fast the situation reversed itself: the old had to turn to the young because young people were the only ones who could keep up with the changes.
Trochanter was a chameleon kind of a guy. At least it would seem that way if you could watch him from a distance for a long time. Conservatives swore he was a traditional conservative. Liberals thought he was far left. He had money--lots of it--but he hung out with ten-percenters. The guy could understand people. He often complained because he would feel sick when he was with the ill. He said he was both "blessed and plagued by spontaneous empathy." They say he used to teach at Northwestern University, but lost his job when the schools and libraries were closed after being sued by MACROHARD for violating copyright laws. That's when he formed VOX.
The only thing truly unforgettable about him were his eyes; they radiated a strength and confidence that commanded respect and at the same time put one at ease in his presence. His face changed as he spoke; he must have had more muscles in his face than normal, for when he smiled, his entire face grinned revealing wrinkles never recorded in an anatomy book. When he frowned, his ears pulled up and back like an angry dog. He was much shorter than average, but his perfect posture remained with him whether sitting or standing giving him a commanding presence. They called him a bit of a dandy: he was always aware of every item of clothing he wore. He was both an old man and a little boy. He was one of us to each of us--no matter where we came from.
His organization, VOX, was based on an obscure philosophy called CYBERCONTEXTUALISM. He said his purpose was to teach people how to communicate without using machines. This was a wild and revolutionary idea. People didn't speak much to each other face-to-face. It was too dangerous. He argued that the problems in the world were due to the ways in which people dealt with information. He criticized the "information age" as popularized by MACROHARD, by proclaiming people don't communicate fundamentally for the purpose of exchanging information. According to Trochanter, the opposite was true: people communicate to identify with the intangible and mysterious. On the outside it appears people only communicate to find out what they need to know when actually they are simply attempting to merge with something bigger than themselves.
He argued that the major problems in society were caused by the way we treat information as a commodity. The commodimization of information could only lead to the commodimization of human beings. That's the way he saw things.
From what I could put together, CYBERCONTEXTUALISM sprang out of the ecology movement of the later half of the twentieth century. But it really wasn't about ecology in the traditional sense. Trochanter was always insistent in saying it was not the same movement. The ecology movement made a fatal error: they neglected the human factor in the ecosystem. They removed humans from the equation and became overly concerned with plants and animals. Millions were spent saving moths while children were starving to death during the great depressions. This led to an overall dissatisfaction of ecology by the public. VOX and the philosophy of CYBERCONTEXTUALISM, on the other hand, were concerned with ecology in the sense of human sociological and economic activity.
Trochanter didn't advocate religion, per se, although some have argued that VOX was something of a cult. Trochanter was fond of saying the idea of religion was crucial to human beings; having faith is crucial, but to have faith in any one creed was to miss the point. He looked at specific religions as allegories. What is important is the idea of religion--the idea is what counts. He also felt religion was also capable of creating our most severe problems. I myself was an Episcocapitilist. Why? I'm not sure.
The basic philosophy of CYBERCONTEXTUALISM is that information and communication follow a "big bang" type pattern; like the origin of the universe itself, information is constantly expanding, pulling itself apart into smaller and more specific pieces. Information can best be understood by likening it to an explosion. An explosion causes something to pull itself apart in a three dimensional, three hundred and sixty degree pattern of opposite directions. Trochanter believed the world of ideas worked in much the same manner. A problem should be viewed as essentially a series of fragments that have spread apart in opposing directions. To solve a problem, one must re-assemble the parts. The human condition is essentially one of fragmentation and one of the goals of CYBERCONTEXTUALISM is to literally make people whole again.
Trochanter taught about two subjects: Empathy and Rhetoric. He was fond of saying: "The best way to learn about a physical something is to take it apart; but the best way to learn about a person is to take the parts and put them together. You learn about objects by taking them apart, but you learn about humanity by putting it back together."
VOX was wild stuff. I was excited by the prospect of going to another meeting. The common person liked VOX. Its goals and philosophy gave hope, mostly because people were scared. VOX didn't come across like a Church or anything. They didn't recruit people. It was just a way of learning without machines.
Needless to say, those caught attending meetings involving controversial subjects like CYBERCONTEXTUALISM were deemed by MACROHARD to be in need of treatment. This was an idea I did not relish.
I ran ahead to catch up with Hardeman.
"Tell me Hardeman, have you ever actually spoken before the group at one of the meetings?"
"Sure."
I felt my intestines twisting themselves into a knot.
"You, yourself, have actually stood up in front of a group of strangers and talked to them at the same time?"
"Many times. It's not so bad once you get used to it."
"Get used to it?" I said, "That seems highly unlikely. I'd rather face a Singaporian sniper than give a speech. It's the nightmare of nightmares. I can't think of anything more difficult, more frustrating, more unbelievably humiliating than the idea of standing in front of a group and speaking."
"I hear ya. I used to say I'd rather perform castration duty in a bull spare parts farm than stand up and talk to a crowd. You get used to it. Yeats said rhetoric was just the will trying to do the work of the imagination. That's what it's really all about, man. When you speak in public you allow your imagination to take shape because no one wants to fuckin' hear your imagination. No one wants to believe anything that personal. Rhetoric allows you to take those thoughts and put them together in such a way as to be seen and accepted by others. You use your willpower to convey your ideas--the will does the work of the imagination. That's what it is."
Hardeman loved to philosophize while he walked. We were walking quickly and the crunching of glass under my feet was becoming louder and louder--telling me we were moving closer to our underground destination.
"Communication relies on a combination of the will and the imagination, fact and fiction, narration and story," he continued to say, "A blind person learns to read braille, and can thus take in information independently, but at the same time is dependent on someone with sight to tell him where the signs in braille are located. As the blind person reads braille, the imagination is invoked. What else could be invoked but imagination; the blind person has never actually seen a fuckin' thing. Don't you see? But it's the same with all of us. All our ideas are either our own or someone else's imagination. It is only our will expressed through speech that makes it seem otherwise. Speech is nothing without imagination and imagination is useless without speech."
I tried to relate to what he was saying. I felt nervous. He was taking me across at least three different ethnic quarters in the town. I lived in worker-town, which was near fiscal-town. Hardeman took me into the tenderloin which had been abandoned since the days of manufacturing. Gradually we came upon the meeting place: an old abandoned grain mill. Hardeman introduced me to a woman who was standing watch outside the main entrance. She looked at Hardeman as he whispered, "Dum spectant oculi laesos, laeduntur et ipsi," and she whispered in return: "multaque corporibus transitione nocent." ("When their eyes behold others in pain, they feel pain themselves, and so many ills pass from body to body." From Ovid, De Remedio Amoris.) She nodded her approval and we entered. Hardeman pulled me by the arm and we walked down the hallway to the meeting place.
The large room was dark except for a green spotlight upon the makeshift wooden stage in the center. There must have been three hundred people in the room, all huddled together around the stage, all holding miniature flashlights. A woman stood on the stage and read a poem to the audience. Trochanter sat beside her, listening intently to her every word. As she finished, the crowd applauded, and Trochanter smiled approvingly.
Throughout the applause we walked quickly through the crowd, searching for a space to sit down. It felt strange to be close to so many people at once. The people buzzed and glowed and whispered as everyone strained to see the stage. I felt someone tap me on the back.
"It's your turn to speak tonight," she said as she pointed to the stage. Trochanter was gazing in my direction. I felt a sudden panic. I had never spoken to a group before.
"What do you mean, it's my turn. It can't be my turn. I just arrived." She assured me I had been randomly selected. I looked from left to right and realized everyone's eyes were upon me. I started to stand and felt my knees wobble. I thought about escaping, but I was too far into the crowd. I would have had to trample over fifty bodies to make it to the door. I was both excited and scared at the same time. My heart was racing like a startled gazelle being chased by a lion. I stood frozen. The crowd around me started to clear a path to the stage. I could feel gentle hands pulling me forward while others pushed me from behind. I was floating onto the stage whether I wanted to or not. Two strong men pulled me up onto the stage and I found myself facing Trochanter. He was laughing.
"There, there my fellow, you won't hurt yourself up here," he said as his hand squeezed my arm. I looked at him and then I gazed up directly into the green spotlight above. I felt suddenly hot and realized I was drenched with sweat.
"Gaze out into the crowd, son, and tell me what you see," he said to me as I attempted to regain some sort of composure. I peered out into the field of faces, all of whom were looking right at me. My legs were going into spasms. I believe if Trochanter were not standing next to me holding my arm, I would have fainted. "What do you fear might happen? Are you afraid they might throw rotten eggs at you?"
"Of course not, sir," I whispered.
"Are you afraid they might throw rocks or sticks at you?" he asked again.
"No, no, I don't think so. That's not very likely," I said as I heard the crowd laughing.
"Right," he said. "They aren't going to throw sticks at you. But you--you my friend," he started to whisper."You my friend are going to throw tomatoes at them!" He pulled open a large sack and started throwing tomatoes out at the audience. They roared with laughter. He handed me the sack and commanded me to throw every last one of them out at the audience. I instinctively obeyed and started to hurl them at the shrieking audience. I found myself completely taken over by the urge to pelt every last person out there. I threw and I threw as I laughed and laughed. I was then hit by three tomatoes from three different directions. It became an all out war with tomatoes flying back and forth while everyone roared with delight. I felt exhilarated. The laughter turned into applause as Trochanter raised up his hands. He said to me:
"There, the worst has happened. It will be an easy downhill journey from here on."
I was almost starting to like this. It felt exciting to be in front of a crowd. They seemed to like me. I liked them. "This could be habit forming," I thought to myself as the crowd collected itself. Trochanter turned to me and asked me to give a quick speech on the topic of fairness.
"Fairness?" I said nervously.
"Yes, fairness. Describe what fairness means to you. Fuse it together, Lane Cooper," he said as he climbed off the stage. I knew where he was going. Trochanter had all sorts of elaborate schemes for giving his speakers feedback so they would know when they were doing it right or not. I looked up into the light and down at my feet as I struggled with what I would say. I cleared my throat and looked out to the crowd.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. LIFE IS, WELL, LIFE IS LIKE, NOT ALWAYS FAIR." WHOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHH. I stopped my speech and braced myself as I heard the flour mill chute above me opening. "Shit, I hate this," I said to myself. "What did I do wrong?" The shower of grain began pouring onto my head from twenty feet above. I closed my eyes and mouth as the tiny kernels spilled over my hair, cascaded around my ears and nose, forming piles onto my podium, covering it with a layer of brown dust. "Damn his feedback systems," I muttered to myself.
"For God's sake man. Don't start to lecture us. Don't act like a waiter offering canapes to society types. Your dynamism is the conditio sine qua non here. Narrow focus, breathe some damn pride into your chest and begin your speech again." I gasped for air as the remaining dust filtered past my eyes. I lifted my hands into the air and bellowed in my deepest voice:
"TODAY I SPEAK TO YOU, YOU WHO HAVE SPENT YOUR LIVES IN TOIL AND MISERY WORKING AT TASKS WITH NO REAL SENSE OF WHAT YOUR CONTRIBUTION MEANS." As I spoke I could see his eyebrows rising, I knew he was pleased.
I continued my speech in this manner, watching Trochanter for non-verbal cues that told me when to brace myself from the merciless grain chute above my head.
"Don't become mesmerized by the sound of your own voice to the point where you take your eyes off the audience. You can prepare and serve the finest meal from the finest cook in the world, but if you don't carry it and place it directly on the table in front of your guest, they will never eat it," he yelled out to me as I continued my struggle to continue speaking. He was trying to teach us to recognize the moment our audience would lose interest so we could quickly adjust our voice and delivery to perk them up. The penalty for failing to recognize the non-verbal feedback was the grain chute release.
I prepared myself to begin again when I was interrupted by a crashing sound. Machine gun fire erupted from the side entrance. I jumped onto my stomach. The entire crowd fell into a stumbling panic, stampeding in all directions looking for a way out. I saw Hardeman turning in circles, searching for an escape route, but finding none. We were trapped. The police were on top of us everywhere. They weaved through the crowd with their batons thudding against defenseless bodies; people were climbing on top of each other as the police threw nets all around us. More machine gun fire flared up in the background. I turned and saw an officer fire three shots into Hardeman's back. I screamed and tried to push my way through to where his bloody body lay crumpled on the floor. I was pushed down near the edge of the stage and looked up to see a uniformed officer standing above me. In the green light I could see the emblem of the invisible hand stitched across his chest.
"Deficit slimebag," he said as he raised his baton above his head. I could do nothing but close my eyes as my head rocketed to the moon.