The elevator doors opened and a crew of nurses pulled me onto a stretcher and began administering oxygen to me. I suddenly broke into a smile although they couldn't see I was smiling because of the mask. I had made it. I was still Lane Cooper. I had held onto my personality and resisted the attempt to overwhelm my senses. I looked down at my hands. They were still tightly closed. I opened them and saw that my nails had cut into the skin.
The stretcher continued down the hallway toward a room with a door that looked like it belonged on a ship rather than a building. This would be the place where they would perform the conditioning. I knew this. The fact that I knew this and that they didn't know that I knew was my only advantage.
The room was painted entirely in yellow. In the background, the Beatles were singing: "WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE, A YELLOW SUBMARINE, A YELLOW SUBMARINE." A clean shaven man wearing a white suit and love beads came up and grabbed my hand.
"Thank goodness you're all right," he said. As he assisted me out of my stretcher, I realized I was in the middle of a party. A retro last century, drug filled, sex crazy orgy from the looks of the naked people, water pipes and psychedelic posters all over the walls. Over the din of the music, smells, and laughter, the clean shaven man took me by the arm to the other side of the room, next to a large wooden hot tub filled with a group of attractive merrymakers. Every one of 'em was CHEARED (chemically induced endorphic response) to the limit. I could tell. Not a single ten-percenter among them. They motioned for me to join them in the tub. I wasn't used to having strangers see my private parts, but they wouldn't take no for an answer. I found myself pulled into the tub and was instantly greeted with hands touching me from all sides. Pleasure sharks anxious to bite into new prey.
The man who walked me to the tub crouched down and said, "My name is Mr. Hollander. You're among friends here, Lane. Congratulations are in order. You, my friend, are a winner, a survivor. Welcome!" I smiled back. I knew this was just part of the STAB, but I had to play along. I was being touched and fondled by women on either side of me. I was the center of attention.
"Lane, we've heard so much about you," one the women said. "We are so happy you've decided to come to MACROHARD." She handed me a glass of pink liquid.
"Why, yes. I am happy to be here. MACROHARD is the ultimate company to work for." I put on my best jettsetterish air. The crowd in the tub burst into laughter.
"It is! It is!" Everyone in the tub was laughing and laughing. I faked laughter but found soon, I too, was laughing.
Mr. Hollander returned carrying a white bathrobe.
"Lane, there's someone here I'd like you to meet." I said goodbye to my naked friends and pulled myself out of the tub. Here we go. Here comes the moment we've all been waiting for: the last part of the STAB. We walked through what seemed to be endless naked bodies wrapped about each other. The room really did look like a yellow submarine. We came to an office door and I wiped my feet on a mat. Hollander opened the door to a spacious, beautiful office. The walls were covered with memorabilia from the 1960s: posters by Peter Max, pictures of the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas. A man stood up from behind a long wooden desk leaving a plate of egg yolks and shell fish. It was Will himself. I recognized him from his advertisements.
"Mr. Cooper, Mr. Lane Cooper." He said as he walked over to shake my hand. He smelled like money, not fresh money, but money in circulation for a while. He was much shorter than I expected; he only came up to my chin. He pumped my hand while he combed his purple hair. He had an outward appearance of being healthy, but his bulging liver and traces of yellowed jaundiced skin peaking out from under his heavily made up face told me this was a man who had long since traded in his liver for synthetic joys and preservative injections.
This was a designer dude to match any designer dude. Everything he wore was strictly Class three peacock synthetics. Everything to spec. Not a single biological fibre on him. His teeth all blended together in what looked like a bullet proof windshield and his body moved with power steering: graceful, in a rigor mortis sort of way. His personality was strictly hit-and-run.
"Mr. Cooper, I am sure you have a great deal of questions about MACROHARD and about what you're doing here. I want you to know MACROHARD has gotten a bad rap lately by a minority of very loud individuals. I want you to know, from me personally, what ever negativity you've heard is not true. Just simply not true. At MACROHARD, we are committed, committed, I tell you, to a better life for everyone. And I mean everyone. I don't care if you are an Episcocapitilist--which I happen to be by the way--or if you're Eurosacramental, a Sacramentapolist, a Protemercantilst, Muslimfactionalist, Judaionomic, whatever. If you live in the NATIONSTATES, you stand to benefit from the increased quality of life MACROHARD stands to offer."
"Yes, of course...," I started to say but was interrupted.
"You see Mr. Cooper, MACROHARD can make a difference because everything we do is based on the truth of the basic tenets of TECHNOLITERALISM: which is nothing more than a realistic belief in the application of technology to economics. We believe in people saying what they mean and meaning what they say. We are against all the old-fashioned myths that have ruined so many lives with their false hopes and empty promises. There are laws you know, laws that dictate how the world works whether anybody likes it or not. That's what its all about, Mr. Cooper. Why some people want to vilify us is beyond me."
I interrupted. "You must be referring to Trochanter and his popularized CYBERCONTEXTUALISM."
"Trochanter? He's just an old librarian, a pedagogue turned demagogue practicing the art of sophistry. VOX is a group of disenchanted misfits struggling against the inevitable tide of change. That's all they are. Their problem, Cooper, is they don't want to accept the law of the market. They can't turn a profit, and they won't accept it. They were struck by the invisible fist and they won't admit it." He turned and walked back over to his desk.
"Cooper, you're a good man. I've put you in charge of INVESTOR relations." With that final remark he turned his back and Hollander opened the door. I knew the conversation was over and I followed Hollander out the door.
The rumors were the INVESTORS thrived by practicing a form of insider trading. They had access to all the financial information about each city in the NATIONSTATES and they would use it to their advantage. Their basic plan was to manipulate the stock of any given town by artificially forcing the townspeople onto government assistance. This would reduce the profitability of the town and cause the value per share of its stock to plummet. The INVESTORS would then buy up the stock at the lower price. They would then come in and perform "cost-cutting" measures to reduce the costs of government assistance by any means possible until the price per share started to rise. Afterwards they would cash in and start the cycle over again in a new town.
For example, the INVESTORS would come into a small town and blow up a factory. The workers would be forced onto unemployment and the ratings for the town's stock would drop. The INVESTORS would buy huge amounts of stock in the devalued town, wait several weeks and kill off the unemployed workers. Their deaths would result in a savings in social costs to the state which would make the town's stock price rise. The INVESTORS would promptly sell off the stock and move on to a new town. Just another variation of "buy low, sell dear."
Naturally the NATIONSTATES officially condemned the idea of insider trading. But, at the same time the INVESTORS were treated as heros. INVESTORS were everywhere in Washington: always at the right parties. There was a mythology built up around them: they were the slayers of the ten-percenters but they kept the dirty work secret. They were 21st century economic bounty hunters. "Bean counters gone berserk" is what I like to call 'em.
As I walked down the hallway, Hollander explained I would essentially be in charge of the coordination of INVESTOR activities. A "highly honorable" duty he assured me. I was to be essentially a PR man. I don't get it. What the hell kind of STAB is this? They threw me in jail, practically killed me in a roller-coaster wannabe elevator, and now they've put me in charge of public relations.
Hollander explained tonight there was to be a grand banquet at Will's mansion. He took me to a dressing room and told me I would find all the clothes I needed in the closet and drawers. He closed the door and told me an escort would arrive in three hours to take me to the dinner. "Why the hell not?" I thought to myself as I closed my eyes and enjoyed a moment of silence.