Gregory Greene
WALKABOUT
THE STORY OF A BRIEF CENTURY
© 2000, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission
in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are
the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance
to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART 1
1. I’m Off!
2. Seoul, Korea
3. Tokyo, Japan
4. The Monk
5. Bread and Circuses
PART 2
6. The Kapitan Fedosov
7. The Northeast Passage
8. Polar Bears
9. Land of the Midnight Sun
10. Self-sufficiency
11. Midsummer
12. Hanover, Germany
13. The Giant
14. The Raid
15. Organic Farming
PART 3
16. Brussels, Belgium
17. Paris, France
18. The Emperor
19. Off with His Head!
20. Taizé
21. Rome, Italy
22. The Cooperative
23. Vesuvius
24. Palermo, Sicily
25. Seas of Lights
26. Oran, Algeria
PART 4
27. Dorset
28. Creation
29. Unidentified Flying Object
30. Wales
31. Washington DC, USA
32. Who Dunnit?
33. Minneapolis MN, USA
PART 5
34. Home
35. Campus Life
36. Advanced Study
37. Graduation
PART 6
38. The New Farm
39. “I’ll Be Seeing You”
40. Operation Noah
41. Music of the Spheres
42. The Historian
EPILOGUE
To MarieAntoinette
All you need is love.
-The Beatles
PART 1
1. I’m Off!
The international terminal at
Sprinting along the moving walkway, I listened to the loudspeakers paging the
last missing passengers by name: a list of about ten European-sounding male
names, plus my own. It struck me as somewhat odd that, when I came to the
gate, the attendant closed it behind me, although I hadn’t seen any of
the other people on the list. At the end of the gangway, I noticed that
the “Authorized Personnel Only” door leading down to the tarmac was
ajar and unguarded. But finally, I was on board and looking for my seat,
and pushed all those seemingly unconnected observations to the back of my mind,
to be considered at some later time.
The six extendible gangways were retracted and the plane’s six double
swing‑out doors closed with the quiet sound of perfect hydraulic
engineering. Towed by a heavyweight tractor, we were gently turned around
and were ready to begin our journey. The flight attendants went through
their demonstration of the life vests and carried out the final preparations
for takeoff.
Every last seat in the huge machine was taken. Almost a thousand people
were more or less comfortably seated on its two decks and looking forward to
the two-hour supersonic trip to
I folded down my tray and turned on its built‑in computer, hoping to read
my electronic mail while the Hyper Jumbo taxied out to the runway.
Normally, I’d have dealt with my messages first thing in the morning at
the entertainment center at home, but, after all, it isn’t every day you
pack up and leave on a trip around the world.
It was, I reflected, a bit of a shame that you couldn’t break away from
the obligation of being in touch even for the few moments you spent
traveling. Now that every jet airplane passenger had the use of a
computer connected to the Internet, flying had become a very silent
affair. Hardly anyone talked to their fellow passengers anymore, as even
the longest flights took only a few hours. You felt you had to make the
most of the opportunity to sort out any lingering business, catch up with the
news, or send in‑flight greetings to your friends. Even the
children kept quiet: with all the games, they never had a chance to get bored.
So it was somewhat unexpected when, as I folded up my tray for the takeoff, the
passenger in the seat next to mine spoke to me. A little embarrassed over
having paid her no attention, I turned to find myself pleasantly surprised: she
was a very pretty young lady, of Asian origin, with beautiful, long, black
hair. Her complexion was fair and her eyes very dark—in a word, she
was attractive. Her demeanor was gentle in a way you don’t often encounter
in
“You don’t seem at all apprehensive about flying,” she
suggested. “You must be very used to traveling!”
This was true. I had traveled a lot, and I had taken the Hyper Jumbo
several times before, with each trip reinforcing my conviction that it was the
best airplane ever built. I was so fully at ease in the giant machine
that, to me, it seemed just as safe as my own living room at home. It was
a plane that could travel at
“You’re quite right,” I replied. “In my
experience, this is a very reliable plane. I don’t think
there’s anything to worry about.”
“Maybe I’m being silly,” my newfound acquaintance excused
herself. “I’ve never been in an airplane with so many people
before. It makes me nervous to think of what could happen if something
went wrong.”
As the plane climbed and built up speed, we continued our conversation. I
tried my best to convince the young lady about the reliability of the plane and
the competence of the crew. The main problems with fly‑by‑wire
technology had been solved many years earlier after several tragic Airbus
crashes and a number of near misses involving the Boeing 777. In my daily
work as a contingency planner, I had stayed fully up to date with all the
gossip about air safety on the Internet. Even the most cynical critics
had had to admit that, this time, Boeing had got it right from the beginning.
I soon found out that my fellow traveler was from Korea, on her way home to
Seoul a few months after graduating as an English teacher from an Australian
university. Her name was Jin Ju, which means a pearl. Her interests
were wide-ranging; she had no trouble following me when we discussed the
technical safety features of the plane, and she managed to enlighten me in many
things I had never paid attention to, given my rather narrow outlook as an
engineer. Jin Ju displayed an impressive amount of common sense and a
courteous directness. Although I believed our risk for a crash was very
slim, I had to agree with her that unexpected things might, indeed, happen.
But I was still trying to reassure Jin Ju after our in‑flight meal, when
I became aware of some unusual activity around me. A number of tough‑looking
men with assault rifles were positioned in the aisles in every section of the
plane that I could see. I had a good view of nearly half of the lower
level of the plane from where I was sitting, close to door number two on the
port side of the lower, economy class cabin. When, bewildered, I half got
up out of my seat, the nearest armed man barked an order in rather broken
English, and waved his gun in my direction. Jin Ju told me to sit still
and take no risks: those guys meant business, she said.
“I recognize their leader from a newscast a couple of weeks back,”
she added. “They’re from the mercenary force that lost the
bid for the latest UN peacekeeping mission to Africa.”
I couldn’t believe my bad luck. I began to work out the full
implications of what was happening. The airplane would have to land
rather soon, because it didn’t carry much extra fuel: keeping the liquid
hydrogen cold was expensive, and leaving one or two of the tanks empty could
mean the difference between profit and loss for a leg of the flight.
Also, to get any money, the hijackers would have to bargain with someone who
could be expected to take enough of an interest in the safety of the plane and
its passengers. Since the Korean government held a substantial stake in
Pacific Rim Airlines, it was a good candidate. The passengers would be
used as bargaining chips while somebody, either PRA or the Korean government,
came up with the required ransom—if they did. Security forces would
be sure to be waiting for the airplane on the ground.
Looking around once more, I saw the hijackers taking down shoulder bags from
the overhead lockers. Having made some kind of adjustment inside the
bags, the men put them on the cabin floor near the fuel tanks in the wings,
warning the passengers not to touch them. On the upper deck, similar devices
would have been put back in the overhead lockers, to be near the main fuel tank
on top of the passenger cabin. The plane was now booby‑trapped, and
presently I saw the leader of the hijackers, who had been moving around giving
orders, holding a remote control device of some kind.
Jin Ju had been watching what was going on, too, and she kept up her background
commentary with amazing calmness.
“They’ve left it to the last moment to pull this off,” she
said. “In a few months from now, all cash payments will be replaced
with electronic ones, and dollar bills will be worthless. As it is,
they’ll be aiming to get a trunk full of cash and fuel to continue the
trip to wherever they think they’ll be safe. Some hostages will
have to go along, of course. I hope it won’t be us.”
I, too, wished we wouldn’t be thus honored. I found it ironic that
I should be on this plane at all. It was precisely because of the
impending monetary reform that I had decided to go now rather than a year
later, when I’d have been due for long service leave and wouldn’t
have had to quit my job. I had wanted to go while I could still hope to
pay my way using cash, traveler’s checks, and a credit card. The
new payment system, according to the Internet gossip, was going to make it
impossible to remain anonymous when paying for anything, and I just
didn’t like the idea of leaving an unbroken payment trail of myself at a
time when repressive governments were multiplying all over the world. So
now, instead of enjoying the first leg of the traditional, carefree Australian
wander around the globe, I was in an airplane hijacked by a shady troop of
professional soldiers that wanted to pad their bank accounts while it was still
technically possible to do so through crime. After the introduction of
the new payment system, every payment would be traceable, and enjoying the
proceeds of a heist like this would become quite a challenge.
The plane began to slow down and lose height. For the first time the crew
were allowed to make announcements. The captain was brief and to the
point: he told us that the plane had been hijacked and that we’d be
landing in Seoul shortly. He instructed us to stay calm and follow all
orders given by the hijackers—they were in control, and it was our duty to
cooperate with them and try to avoid casualties.
As soon as we had landed at Incheon, all the lights at the airport went
out. The airplane remained at the end of the runway with its own lights
on. Some kind of negotiations must have been going on over the radio, but
we heard nothing of them. Outside, everything was dark; the airport
seemed dead to the world. The hijackers were getting nervous and kept
peering out the windows. Evidently, the Korean authorities meant to keep
them guessing. In my mind I recalled horror stories of hijack victims
having to spend days in their airplane seats without even being allowed to go
to the toilet, while authorities tried to gain time and win the argument simply
by exhausting the perpetrators. I gave a brief thought to the possibility
of turning on the seat computer and somehow calling for help, but soon realized
how useless and dangerous it would have been.
But Jin Ju had a different worry.
“Our government won’t just give them the money. I think
they’ll send in the antiterrorist squad.”
She was dead right. Through the window I could see a swarm of armored
personnel carriers, followed by fire trucks and all kinds of special
vehicles. In an instant, mobile lounges loaded with crack troops were
closing in against the doors. Moments later, the doors, activated from
the outside, began to open.
Meanwhile, the hijackers had been busy. With brutal efficiency, they had
rounded up some of the passengers to form a human barrier inside the
doors. Jin Ju and I had been sitting closest to door number two and were
first in line. We now found ourselves squashed against the edges of the
opening doors, while troops and hijackers shouted commands and threats over the
screams of the panicking passengers. Before I knew what was happening, I
was falling toward the ground ten feet below between the body of the plane and
the still approaching lounge, while above, the first shots rang out.
I had hardly landed, quite shaken but essentially unhurt, when Jin Ju fell
right on top of me. She was the last one; the lounge had closed up to the
side of the plane and the troops were forcing their way in. Jin Ju was
unconscious but not from the fall: I had managed to half catch her so she
hadn’t hit the tarmac at all. Not waiting for instructions, I
picked her up and started running. It was, quite possibly, the fastest
one hundred meter dash I’ve ever run, in spite of my load. Well
clear of the plane, I had to stop to take a breath.
All the efforts of the troops and the fire brigade were directed toward the
port side doors. Nobody was paying any attention to us, but we were still
far too close to the action for comfort. I started running again.
Fortunately, Jin Ju was very light, and about half a minute later I was able to
stop and lay her down, having put a considerable distance between us and the
besieged airplane.
The gunfire was intensifying, punctuated by the bright flashes and deep thuds
of stun grenades. I started wondering why the plane hadn’t caught
fire, and the thought got me to my feet again. I picked up my companion
and ran like a bat out of hell. I had remembered the explosives so close
to the tanks, where untold tons of liquid hydrogen were still left.
All of a sudden, a giant hand swept me off my feet into a somersault.
Again the lucky outcome was that Jin Ju landed on top when we both hit the
tarmac. I sat us up and cautiously regarded the ongoing explosion.
I had expected a blinding inferno, but the light of the fire was only just
starting: hydrogen burns hot, but without a visible flame. I could see
parts of the airplane still on their way up into the air, while round about,
the closest vehicles were disintegrating, ignited by the intense heat and blown
up by fuel and ammunition. As it turned out, we were far enough from the
plane to escape the fire and the flying debris. That was just as well,
since I had lost all ability to run any further.
“Just like the Hindenburg, but worse,” Jin Ju said softly.
She had regained consciousness, but was still leaning against me. And as
before, she was right: hydrogen is an excellent propellant, as well as a very
buoyant filling for airships, but it’s a deadly dangerous explosive.
Quite relieved that my new friend was, at least, alive, I got up again and
helped her to her feet. All we could do was move further away from the
fire—I had no idea where the airport buildings might have been or which
way to turn. In the light of the blaze we must have been clearly visible,
for soon an ambulance arrived to pick us up. Next thing, we made the fastest
and least complicated entry into Korea anybody has ever made. The
ambulance took us directly to the nearest hospital, and we received the caring
attention of a very competent emergency crew.
For whatever reason, the press didn’t find us that evening. Having
been assured that neither of us was seriously hurt, I was soon resting in a
wonderfully clean, although slightly too short, Korean hospital bed. Then
it struck me: I had to call Laura!
Laura, my girlfriend back in Sydney, had helped me plan my trip and had almost
decided to come along. But then she had settled for Plan B: as a travel
agent, she had a limitless supply of free travel, and could fly in and join me
at convenient points along my route. Laura always watched TV late at night
and would have seen the news about the disaster. Calling my parents could
wait: they’d be asleep since a couple of hours and would know nothing
about it all until tomorrow.
Laura picked up the phone right away. Without saying “Hello?”
and before I could utter a word, she demanded, “Gregory, who’s that
girl?”
My surprise was such that I burst out laughing, which she pretended to take as
an admission of guilt. After much sputtering on my part, Laura told me
about her ordeal watching the story on TV. First, a text banner had
announced that an airplane had been hijacked in Korea. Big deal. A
minute later, the movie she’d been watching had been interrupted for a
special newscast from Seoul: the plane was PW765 en route from Sydney to Tokyo!
Oh no!
Initially, only a blurred satellite picture had shown the plane on the dark
tarmac. It had taken at least five minutes before the first camera
drones—unmanned miniature airplanes adapted from military spotting
use—had got to the airport. Then the helicopter had arrived, and
then the ground crew with telescopic lenses. And suddenly, the
antiterrorist attack had commenced. Laura had known the plane was doomed.
She had also known that I was not, so she had kept a sharp lookout for anything
unusual. And there, in a long shot of the blaze, she had seen somebody
sitting on the tarmac far off to the left. She had done an instant replay
and had zoomed in on that part of the picture, and had recognized me, with a
girl in my arms. Oh boy!
Quite possibly the only viewer to have picked out such a fleeting detail, Laura
needed little by way of particulars of my story. She told me to get some
rest and call her back in the morning. But first, she had a piece of
practical advice for me.
“Now don’t you get too close to that Korean girl you rescued, so
she doesn’t fall in love with you! You’re mine! After
all you’ve done for her, it would be such a waste of everybody’s
time if I had to come there and kill her...”
This was music to my ears, and I did my best to calm Laura’s dramatic
imagination, promising to behave and to encourage no romantic feelings on Jin
Ju’s part. More out of concern for me than out of jealousy, Laura
almost seemed to think that she should, after all, join me on my trip, but then
she resolved to stick to her original decision. I wished I could have
hugged her long and hard.
2. Seoul, Korea
The doctor’s round took place early in the morning. He gave me a
clean bill of health, and let me know that both Jin Ju and I would be released
from the hospital within the hour. He had already seen her, and told me
that apart from a few bruises, she was in perfect shape. He advised me to
take it easy for a while, and warned me that I could expect quite agonizing
flashbacks and nightmares for months to come. Being on a holiday, I had
no intention of overexerting myself. I told the doctor so, and thanked
him for his services and those of his hospital.
Before we could leave the hospital, we had to wait for customs and immigration
to come and officially admit us into the country. Jin Ju’s parents
had been located at the airport and brought to her bedside the night before;
they were now on their way to pick her up. Using my smartphone that I had
kept in my pocket, I had called my parents to reassure them of my well‑being,
and I had had another talk with Laura.
The immigration procedures turned out to be painless. Jin Ju and I had,
of course, lost our luggage, but not our money nor our traveling
documents. Mine were in a money belt and Jin Ju had hers in a small
backpack that she had managed to slip on while we had been waiting to land.
When we were done with the formalities, a couple of airline representatives
came to see that we were well taken care of. Pacific Rim Airlines was the
epitome of generosity and promised to fit us out and reequip us, and to pay us
compensation for our horrifying experience. The airline also wanted to
have its doctors ensure that we’d get over the aftereffects of our
ordeal, and insisted on putting me up in a downtown hotel for a week, before
I’d be sent off, first class, to Tokyo to resume my trip.
Now Jin Ju’s parents arrived in an airline limousine, and I was
introduced to them. There was no mistaking their joy and gratitude over
their daughter’s miraculous survival. I explained, interpreted by
Jin Ju, that I was just as grateful for what had happened, and that my part in
it was rather minor in comparison with the kind of break we had both been given
by Providence.
Jin Ju’s home was on the other side of Seoul, and her parents offered me
a lift to my hotel. In the car, Jin Ju turned to me and gave me a big
hug.
“Thank you for saving my life, Gregory,” she said. “My
parents and I would be very honored if you’d like to come and visit us in
our home. It would be a great privilege for them to be able to show you a
token of their gratitude before you continue on your trip.”
I gladly accepted the invitation. Now that, for the moment, all our
concerns were over, I, too, felt the shock of being a survivor of a disaster
that had claimed nearly twelve hundred lives. Acknowledging and beginning
to sort out this harrowing experience was something best done together with Jin
Ju and her parents. We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet again
as soon as possible.
At the hotel, I was met by PRA officials who made every effort to ensure my
comfort. Two gentlemen took my garment sizes and set off to procure
clothes and personal necessities. I was installed in a suite and made as
comfortable as possible. Lunch was brought up. The hotel staff was
instructed to look after me with no expenses spared, and a doctor and a
psychiatrist set to work treating me for posttraumatic stress syndrome. I
asked if Jin Ju would get similar attention and was assured that this was the
case: arrangements had already been made with her parents.
In the days that followed, I came to realize how fortunate I was to receive
this treatment, although, for a start, I had been more than a little annoyed
over all the fuss. Wherever I looked, memories of the destruction of the
plane kept coming back to me. TV talked about little else; the papers
were full of it. Walking down the street, I’d see a mother with a
young girl, and the image of the child across the aisle from me would flash
back to my inner eye. Encountering a wrinkled old man with particularly
dark skin would make me think of charred bodies, and then I’d realize
that there hadn’t been any: the incineration of the passengers had been
complete and instantaneous. Every person in and around the airplane had
turned to ashes in a firestorm that had paralleled the intensity of a major
napalm bombardment. My sleep was disturbed by fits of panic, as I would
relive in my dreams my flight from the airplane and its fiery destruction.
But I knew I had to put the hijacking behind me. During the next several
days, I toured Seoul and visited the lovely palaces, the ancient gates, and all
the other sights I had never taken the time to see before, when I’d been
there on business. I went for a long walk in Namsan Park and had my
dinner in the skyline restaurant in Seoul Tower on the top of the mountain,
just to prove to myself that I hadn’t acquired a fear of heights.
The park was a splendid sight at this time of the year: the greenery was fresh
and young. In the National Museum of Korea, I discovered that the
country’s culture is over 5,000 years old. A lot older than
Australia, I mused, but then I corrected myself: no, less than one tenth the
age of Australia’s Aboriginal culture.
Just as interesting was the National Folk Museum, not far away. Here, I
got a glimpse of the way Koreans had lived and worked in bygone days.
Then I took a guided tour of the Ch’angdokkung Palace and the Piwon or
Secret Garden in the back of the palace grounds.
Finally, after I had spent a week in Seoul, the doctors agreed with Jin
Ju’s parents that our recovery was well enough underway for my planned
visit to take place. I took a cab to their home in a working‑class
suburb, a stark contrast to the Westernized hotel where I had been accommodated
by the airline. It turned out that Jin Ju had a younger brother.
This was a good thing, as Koreans don’t like having an even number of
people at a table. Jin Ju’s parents were simple people, who spoke
only a few words of English, but their sincerity was great, and Jin Ju was kept
busy interpreting.
It was clear to me that the hijacking and this unexpected exposure to a totally
different culture were having a profound effect on my priorities and my attitude
to life. My earlier travels had always taken me to environments similar
to that in which I worked and lived. Business meetings were held in
offices of sister companies and vendors to my employer, and my lodgings were
never very different from one country to the next. Here in Korea, for the
first time, I had met foreign people who were in no way involved with
international trade. Instead of the inferior civilization our customary
Australian underestimation of Asians had led me to expect, I had encountered a
cultivated, intelligent family with refined manners and ancient traditions.
The contrast was made even more striking by their simple home and their humble
circumstances. I might have expected this dwelling to make me miss the
creature comforts of my own home. Instead it set my mind working on how
much of our automated luxury might, in fact, be a kind of addiction. I
began seeing a dependence carefully nurtured by industry and commerce, relying
on advertising and peer pressure to make us always want more. I had to
admit that the lifestyle of my circle of acquaintances in Sydney revolved
entirely around gadgets. In that peer group, your degree of success was,
very simply, judged on how many of the latest imported machines you owned.
At home, my clean‑line, space‑age kitchen had a computer set in the
counter, with commands for doors to slide open and for the selected item to
present itself. For making a simple cup of coffee I had six different
machines—from a plain instant coffee maker to the steam‑trap for
the flavor that couldn’t be beaten. In comparison, Jin Ju’s
home was primitive. But the fare I was served was simply superb; the
hospitality was congenial, and the place was quiet, without the constant whir
of fans and beeping of timers. Over the strong, green tea that so
perfectly complemented our dinner, I expressed a thought that had been growing
on me during the week.
“Just being alive now seems like such a privilege, such an important
thing. I really want to live every minute of the rest of my life.
Overcoming habit and prejudice, learning from others, experiencing everything
that comes my way—I can’t think of anything more essential.”
Jin Ju had come to similar conclusions.
“You know,” she said, “since I nearly died there, I see
everything in more vivid detail. I see colors I didn’t even know
existed. I hear the birds like never before. Every day holds so
much that’s new—I only regret that I’ve spent all these years
without knowing how precious life really is.”
I returned to my hotel at peace with myself, and feeling not a little excited
over my new insights. After a good night’s sleep, I waited for my
two doctors to arrive. Following a brief closing session, I announced
that I now wished to equip myself for the rest of my journey. I thanked
them for their help and set out to use my open‑ended account at the big
department store in the underground mall connecting to the hotel.
To replace the suitcase I had started my trip with, I got myself a sturdy, good‑looking
rucksack with a magnesium alloy frame, on the hunch that I could just as well
prepare for a rather more adventurous trip than I had originally
envisaged. I filled it up with high‑quality outdoor clothes and
hiking gear for different climates, and, for good measure, strapped onto it a
tent, a self-inflating foam pad, and a warm sleeping bag. A first aid kit
and some simple cooking gear completed the setup, and after purchasing some
tools and camping provisions, I was ready to continue my journey.
My seat on the flight to Tokyo had been booked for that afternoon. I
stopped at the PRA head office to thank my benefactors there, and was treated
to a ride in one of the company’s chauffeured cars. Waiting in the
back seat were Jin Ju and her parents. My minder at PRA had been kind
enough to invite them to see me off. Soon we arrived at the airport and
it was time for me to go.
“I’ll never forget you,” Jin Ju said, bowing lightly in her
Oriental fashion.
We said good-bye, and I was grateful for our friendship, and content that it
hadn’t turned into infatuation.
3. Tokyo, Japan
In comparison with the Hyper Jumbo, the old 787 that took me to Tokyo seemed
like a small commuter plane. Nevertheless, my flight was pleasant, and no
incidents occurred to justify my newfound apprehension of flying. I
arrived at Narita airport at the peak of the afternoon rush, and, once again,
was lost in wonderment at the genius of the Japanese for organization and
efficiency.
Pacific Rim Airlines had booked me a hotel room in downtown Tokyo, and to get
there, I had the choice of taking the levitating bullet train or the
underground airplane. Or I could have waited for the bus and spent the
next two and a half hours watching commuters leave Tokyo by road, but I decided
to cut short all delays and go high tech one more time. The train seemed
like the less oppressing alternative, since it traveled above
ground—I’ve never learned to enjoy flying through a tunnel at
Ten minutes and
The clerk at the registration desk recognized me and gave me the best room
available. As I was installing myself in my room, the automatic windows
were closing and getting lighter for the night. The room computer, a
miniature entertainment center that also acted as an interactive
high-definition TV set with a video camera and a microphone built in, greeted
me in flawless English, and inquired into my wishes for entertainment. I
told it to give me the news and a beer, and sat down within easy reach of the
delivery tray of the minibar. To my amusement, the beer was served in a
glass: during my previous visit less than a year earlier, it had still been my
job to open the can, find a glass, and pour the beer.
Much of the news was the usual, depressing stuff. Pollution and algal
bloom had finally killed off all marine life around Japan, and the
country’s oceangoing fishing fleet was roaming ever further in its search
for natural protein. Although reasonably priced, alternative products
based on soy, algae, and synthetically cultured meat were available, the affluent
Japanese still couldn’t be persuaded to switch. The actors
advertising the fake foods swore they couldn’t taste the difference, and
they were probably being honest about it. But staying with the
traditional foods was seen as a matter of maintaining your status and living
standard.
Wars, floods and earthquakes were ravaging the globe. The screen showed
an ever-changing succession of images conveyed live by remote-controlled,
airborne Kamikaze cameras at the centers of calamity, bringing the starkness of
hitherto untold suffering into every living room.
Never before had those scenes so affected me. I realized that my own
brush with death had cracked the callousness I had used to share with most of
those who watched such happenings every day, but were lucky enough not to be
affected.
The ultraviolet danger was proving worse than expected. As the northern
summer approached, only patches of the ozone layer remained. The
radiation, in combination with resulting, unwanted chemical reactions in
polluted air made large cities such as Tokyo patently unhealthy places to live
in. I was glad I was only passing through.
The political news wasn’t much better. The Japanese emperor lay
dying, leaving no heir. No agreement on a constitutional amendment was in
sight. The shaky truce in the Middle East was showing signs of crumbling:
citing terrorist activities, Israel had again attacked one of her Arab
neighbors, and even her critics had lost count of how many UN resolutions
Israel had already violated.
The depression in America was getting worse. An analyst explained that
America had run out of technical talent: generations of belligerent
fundamentalists, implacably hostile to science, had succeeded in removing or
diluting the science curricula of US schools to such an extent that the
country’s supply of young engineers and scientists was drying up.
The gifted instead became doctors, lawyers, and bonus-grabbing business
executives: too many people dividing the cake and not enough bakers.
While America had long been able to compensate for this trend by importing
research and development staff, a point had now been reached where equal or
better pay at home combined with unwillingness to risk their children’s
education had reversed that flow.
This trend was exacerbated by the fact that America was no longer able to find
lenders to finance her growing deficits resulting from the waste of trillions
of dollars on wars, outdated superpower weaponry, and the world’s most
expensive health care system.
Moreover, as the Chinese-supported de-colonization of South and Central America
cut into long established cash flows of US capitalists, many large corporations
were failing. China itself, however, was running out of arable land,
drinkable water, and breathable air, with Beijing gradually disappearing under
desert sand. Only Europe was going from strength to strength.
The hotel provided access to a number of international TV channels, and now I
tuned in my regular Sydney station. Back home, it was an hour later, and
the main news and current affairs bulletin were over. I watched the
familiar succession of local entertainment news, TV comedy news, soap opera
news, quiz news, and rock music news. After the preview of the
week’s new TV commercials my favorite talkback show started.
The subject was the new “Total Experience” helmets that were in the
process of replacing virtual reality body suits on the market. While
sight, sound, and smell still came to you through your normal senses, the host
explained, the sensations of touch, position, temperature, and
movement—indeed, even that of taste—could now be conveyed with an
accuracy hitherto unknown, as they came directly to your brain in the form of
precisely targeted electromagnetic impulses. Likewise, your commands and
movements, as well as your reactions to advertising and propaganda, were picked
up from your brain. Gone were the clumsy gloves and sensors you used to
have to strap to your body; all that was needed was a painless one-time
injection of nanorobots into the brain, where they handled the necessary
interaction with the body’s own neurons. Although expensive, the
helmets were going like hotcakes, partly due to the fact that they extended
virtual reality into the realm of sex, something that had never before been
possible without purchasing embarrassing, remote-controlled sex
toys.
The host pointed out the absurdity in keeping the awkward, sexless body suits
on the market for so long: people were, after all, male and female. In
his opinion, the manufacturers of VR body suits had come close to fraudulent
advertising when they had promised what they had called a “complete
sensual encounter” from a suit that simply ignored a basic human need,
that of sex.
Nevertheless, the host said, it was a worry that the market was now being
saturated with uncensored, clandestine software for the computers controlling
these helmets. Shady vendors were busy creating virtual reality programs
that made it possible to act out every conceivable sexual perversion.
Traditional consumers of pornography, interacting with their helmets and home
entertainment centers, could now perform and experience all the depravity they
had formerly only been able to read about or watch on X-rated videos and Web
movie clips, as porn sites were made interactive. Anything was available,
albeit without run-time victims, from child molesting to sex with decaying
corpses or extraterrestrial monsters, not to mention rape, torture, and
murder. Those wanting to share such activities were free to connect with
willing partners over the Internet, and weird-sex groups were now more popular
on the Internet than chat rooms and role-playing games combined.
Not all such interactions had been strictly voluntary, however. On
several occasions, computer crackers had illegally connected their equipment to
the entertainment centers of unsuspecting women enjoying their helmets in the
privacy of their homes. This, obviously, was a cause for concern.
Imposing your sexual deviations on an unwilling partner in such a fashion was
much worse than a mere obscene telephone call; it was more like a rape.
Moreover, no such intruder had yet been traced and brought to justice.
People started calling in and voicing their opinions. Most callers
thought the helmets were a great thing: being able to connect to any partner of
your choice—via a computer dating agency, if you so wished—and
having whatever kind of sex you wanted without any concerns for pregnancy or
AIDS, was a phenomenal instance of progress. A married couple called in
and reported how their helmets had improved their relationship: they were free
to share the wildest of fantasies in their home whenever they wished. Or,
if they wanted a change, they could swing with their friends or call the dating
agency, all without the hassle of going out and getting involved with
strangers.
By now four viewers and the host were shown discussing the subject. A
clergyman thought the availability of the perverted software might turn out to
be a blessing in disguise, since potential rapists could satisfy their needs
without assaulting anyone. A woman, who had been raped, disagreed.
She thought that virtual sex would only serve to whet the appetites and lead to
an increase in assaults on women and children, as men with sick minds switched
to the real thing, just like playing violent computer games simulating car
theft and reckless driving was known to generate deadly manifestations of road
rage.
Few people, however, shared the reservations the host had mentioned at the
beginning. Several men had noticed that their sexual performance with the
helmet was markedly better than without it, and wondered what the difference
could be. That was something I knew, so I decided to call in and make my
contribution.
For some reason, the manufacturers of the helmets didn’t advertise the
fact that the scent generators they used gave off more than just smells to make
the experience of virtual reality lifelike. Those generators could also
release odorless pheromones that act directly on the brain to induce a number
of emotional states. Via two tiny pits in our noses, called the
vomeronasal organ, such pheromones can make us feel happy, angry, afraid, sexy,
and so on. Hunger, or the lack of it, can also be induced.
It was the hunger pheromone, released into the air, which made fast food
restaurants so irresistible when you walked past them in a shopping mall.
At home, your TV set exuded the same pheromone along with the smells of food,
when it showed a commercial for, say, a home delivery pizza service. When
you went into a slimming parlor and felt so wonderfully capable of fasting
forever—until you came home again—it was the opposite agent at
work. Since staff breathed the stuff all day long, anorexia was a common
occupational disease in the weight loss industry.
According to inside information, such techniques were being used to intensify
the experiences people were having while using their helmets. This would
also make you more likely to come back for more, increasing the revenues of the
software vendors, as if the Internet weren’t addictive enough on its
own. Another little known aspect of the technology was that the
nanorobots were programmed to react to more generalized, longer-distance
signals, as well, while the bearer wore no helmet: in shopping centers, you
could induce euphoria and impulse shopping, while another code, beamed from
crowd control vehicles, would produce fear and submission. The robots
would outlive their bearer and couldn’t be removed, only reprogrammed at
authorized outlets to add new, fashionable VR experiences and enhance their
crowd control features. A hack to disable them via your own VR helmet
existed, however, and could be obtained through unofficial channels.
I thought the public ought to know about all this, so I dictated an abstract of
my planned comment to my combined computer and TV set. I positioned
myself in front of the camera in the set and rehearsed my observations in my
mind. But nothing happened.
Questioned, the computer said it had sent the abstract to the TV station in
Sydney and received an acknowledgment. I had taken part in these
talk-back shows many times, and had become accustomed to being on the air
within seconds of throwing in my token. The station was known to favor
people it often got interesting feedback from, and I found its silence rather
annoying. Could there be something wrong with their computer?
So I sent in another abstract, cleverer, I thought, than the first one.
Still no reaction. Quite incensed, I decided to call the marketing
manager of the TV station at his home, something I felt free to do, since I
knew him well and had visited him several times.
“Steve, what’s wrong with your talk-back contention program?”
I asked. “I have a sensible comment to make, but your computer just
keeps ignoring me!”
“Hold on a moment, Greg,” he answered. “I’ll log
onto our system and take a look.”
A while later, he picked up the telephone again. “Yeah, I can see
your two abstracts here. They look really good. You should have
been on the air ages ago!”
“So what’s the problem?” I insisted. “You never
treated me like this before!”
“You aren’t calling locally, are you?” Steve asked.
When I confirmed that I was in Tokyo, he knew the answer right away.
“That explains it,” he said. “That contention program
automatically weeds out interstate and international calls. You
wouldn’t believe how many people all over the country watch us over the
Internet, and we just can’t use their comments.”
“And why not?” I inquired. “Are Sydneysiders the only
people with any smarts, as far as you’re concerned?”
“That’s not the point,” Steve retorted. “You
aren’t here buying anything. Our sponsors pay us for the names,
addresses, and personality profiles of our viewers, and those sponsors are here
in Sydney. While you were here, you were hot stuff—a well-to-do
yuppie with an early adopter profile. We’ve made many a nice dollar
on computer-analyzing your opinions, my lad. Now you’re thousands
of miles away and no one wants to know a thing about you. Try some local
show!”
“They wouldn’t care one yen about a traveler passing through
Tokyo,” I told him. “Can’t you wheedle in my comment
somehow from where you are?”
“I’d have to change the parameters of the program to do that, and
we’d have a dozen people from Perth and Hobart breaking in along with
you,” Steve replied. “No go. That show is earning us
good sponsorship money as it is, and we’re not changing anything.
How long will you be away for?”
“Heaven knows! A year, maybe two. I’m going around the
world, and I’ve made no firm plans.”
“Then I’ll delete you from our files,” Steve told me.
“You don’t want the junk mail piling up while you’re gone,
and we don’t want to waste anybody’s time on you.”
“One more question, Steve. Why is all your news about things that
don’t matter?”
“I distinctly remember telling you this before, Greg, so why do I have to
tell you again? The purpose of commercial media news is not to inform,
it’s to maintain consumer confidence. Have a good trip!”
And with that he hung up. I returned to watching the TV, dismayed at the
realization that my sincere participation in shows such as this one had only
served to give the marketers of consumer goods a better handle on how to sell
to me. Gradually, I began ticking off in my mind what I had seen so far
that evening. Apart from the world news, every bit of programming had
been about entertainment of some kind. Entertainers selling their own
wares? Yes, along with everybody else’s: over half the program time
was taken up by commercials.
What about real life? Did anybody know anything about real life
anymore? Did anybody care? Even the world news seemed more like
entertainment than concern about reality. Was there, I wondered, a
difference between politicians and entertainers? Not a very big one, I
thought.
Commercial TV news habitually presented a disconnected series of snippets about
what the station management considered the in-happenings of the moment, and
good for the station’s ratings. Well-groomed, familiar experts,
provided and paid for by the multinational business community through
innocuous-sounding consulting subsidiaries of their advertising agencies,
followed up with predigested views and conclusions for all to adopt. By
the end of the newscast, all the thinking the nation was going to do on the
subjects it covered had already been done by the performers, and public
amnesia, induced by information overload and incessant entertainment, wiped the
slate clean until the next newscast.
In contrast to reality, which, if you care to study it, forms a continuum of
observation and reflection, TV shows a disjointed world where nothing other
than entertainment and advertising matters very much. Suddenly, I
understood why Laura always knew the next phrase to be said on TV: it’s
all fully predictable, because the programming is tailored to what the public
has been taught to like and expect.
I had soon had enough of it all and went out for my dinner. Upon my
return, the intelligent toilet gave me a douche, a blast of warm air to dry me
up, and a whiff of cologne, and told me what I already knew: I was fit as a
fiddle, all my urine analysis readings were normal, and I wasn’t
pregnant. Before I retired for the night, I found the switch to turn off
the ever-watching computer, rather than having to tell it that I wanted none of
its nightcaps, lullabies, through-the-mattress massages, scented breezes, heart
beat monitoring, and soft rocking of my bed.
4. The Monk
During the days that followed, my wanderings took me to many parts of inner
Tokyo. I walked about the streets, watching men hurrying to meetings,
traffic roaring in all directions, and women shopping, always shopping.
Many young women, hoping to get in touch with a young man interested in
marriage, were trying their luck at vending machines dispensing their horoscope
and details of a suitable male participant in the scheme. But more young
women, it seemed, had joined the men in the pursuit of a career, and showed
little interest in domestic things. With equality in the workplace,
Japanese women have been handed a harsh set of choices: marry and run a
household on their own, while their husbands spend most of their waking hours
at work or drinking with their colleagues, or accept the same kind of workload
and have no time for a family.
Robots scurried around, keeping buildings and sidewalks clean. A
considerable proportion of vehicles were electric. Still, pollution was
heavy and disposable gas masks were available from vending machines
everywhere. And people bought and carried the masks with them. Some
wore them whenever they were outdoors, either because of pollution or due to a
widespread phobia of other people’s germs; others just kept them on hand
for the case there’d be a poison gas attack. There hadn’t
been one for many years, but these people didn’t want to be caught
unprepared.
I descended into the underground. I took an express elevator five hundred
feet down to the lowest level of Alice City and began working my way up.
I was in one of three huge, cylindrical office blocks, together forming a city
of their own where a hundred thousand people worked. Ascending from the
lowest car park level, I came to a deep train line station, the main gateway
between the cylinders and the outside world. An interminable flow of commuters
and shoppers came and went. There was nothing to reveal that I was in the
very bowels of the earth, rather than in a regular subway station a few feet
below the surface.
A couple of floors up, I entered the lower garden, at the bottom of the
cylindrical center of the block. Here, birds sang and fountains
sparkled. Daylight, concentrated by huge, movable mirrors on the roof,
beamed down the shaft and was amplified by the silvery windows lining it all
around. A gigantic shopping mall encircled the garden, providing every
imaginable service. The people who worked here had no reason ever to see
the Tokyo that bustled more than
A further ride in an elevator brought me halfway up to the surface.
Office suites extended several ways from a luxurious lobby, nestling against
the windows toward the light shaft in the middle of the cylinder. Along
the sides of the lobby, the video wallpaper showed peaceful sceneries from the
gardens above. The pictures were live: you could see people moving about
and airplanes flying overhead. Everything had been done to relieve what
claustrophobia there might have been to expect among the occupants. But
wherever I looked, I saw fire escapes and fire fighting equipment prominently
signposted. There was no doubt it was a long way up.
Ascending closer to the surface, I encountered a distribution point of the
Greater Tokyo subterranean freight network. This was a robotized web of
special tracks, comprising
Via a series of escalators I then arrived at the terminal of the underground
airplane, or Geoplane, that I could have taken from the airport. Moments
later, I was again above ground, much relieved. I decided to wait a while
before I took the subway to my next point of interest.
The building in question was in plain view, although several miles
distant. It was Sky City, a giant, hexagonal tower,
Standing at one of the entrances to Sky City, I marveled at its sheer
bulk. The tower was
My brief excursion into the building confirmed my expectations. From the
top, the view would have been spectacular, had the air been clear. And,
as I had thought, anyone who lived and worked in Sky City had no reason ever to
leave it save for recreation. Everything was there, including a
hospital. And next door was a high‑tech funeral parlor, not the
kind I was used to from home. This one was complete with laser light
show, dry ice mists, motorized coffin, and computer‑animated interviews
with the departed.
By this time, I had had my fill of architectural marvels. I didn’t
care to visit Pyramid City, over a mile tall, which housed a million
people. I had taken note of the 500-story Aeropolis tower out in Tokyo
Bay, the home of 140,000 residents, with 300,000 places of work, but I felt no
desire to take the fifteen-minute elevator ride to its top. I wanted to
see something beautiful for a change.
So, the next day, I went to the gardens of the Imperial palace, the great oasis
in the heart of Tokyo. The cherry trees were in blossom and the gardens
were a sea of pink and purple. Everything was quiet. Ancient
buildings and elegant little bridges showed off their ornamentation in the
bright spring sunshine. I sat for a long while on a bench, just taking in
this piece of nature in the middle of the chaotic city.
The contrast between city and garden was enormous. Here, the ducks and
the carp would continue their peaceful existence even if life in the city
stopped, as it would have to do in the case of, say, a major strike or power
failure. The millions of people in Tokyo, as in other large cities, could
only be fed, housed, employed, transported, and entertained through the
flawless workings of a high-tech, commercialized infrastructure.
It seemed to me that a society so highly organized was somehow, in its very
essence, different from and more restricting than older, simpler
communities. In the old society, people worked on their own or together,
as the case might have been, to survive and better their living standard.
Although cooperation was important and beneficial, your life and your survival
were, first and foremost, your own responsibility. Here, the technical
workings and the organization of society were out of reach to every ordinary
citizen. All of that was decided for you by an invisible elite.
There was no element of self‑sufficiency left, not even a tiny bit.
And the interaction between people was no longer a matter of choice or
convenience; it had become a fixed kind of role-play with no alternatives.
An elderly Buddhist monk seated himself near me and commented on the beauty of
the surroundings. I welcomed his friendly approach, counting myself lucky
that he spoke perfect English. I told him about my interest in his
country and her people, and something about my musings on the workings of
modern society.
The two of us soon found that we had much in common, and we were getting along
marvelously. The monk, whose name was Mikio, had been a business
executive until several years earlier, when he had decided to change his
lifestyle. He didn’t care to talk very much about himself, but he gave
me a quick outline of his background.
“I was the Chief Information Officer at a large bank for many, many
years. Then my wife died, and I reexamined my life. I found that I
knew too much about how we’re being controlled and manipulated. I
wanted my freedom from the consumer society and I simply dropped out and became
a monk. It turned out to be a complete break with my relatives, as well:
they haven’t talked to me since, as I brought shame on them by leaving my
‘respectable’ job. Now all I own are a robe, a pair of
sandals, a bowl, and a few other things, and I find I need nothing else.”
However, when it came to explaining the workings of the society he had turned
his back on, Mikio had no inhibitions.
“Japan is very much a prototype of the ‘ideal’ consumer
society. And it’s by no means an accident: this country has always
been run according to plan. We’re a very governable nation.
Many years ago, when computers were quite new, our government came up with a national
scheme for what was then called the Information Society. The idea was to
create an information intensive way of living and working. Our
consumption of goods and services couldn’t grow any faster, so this was
the next logical step in the process of continuing the expansion of the economy.
“The course then chosen has remained through all the intervening economic
ups and downs. In short, the very design of our society forces every
citizen to use the technological services provided by government and
business. They must do this in order to be competitive enough to be able
to satisfy the growing expectations advertisers keep generating. Our
owners and leaders have succeeded in engaging every Japanese in the rat race,
and peer pressure ensures that there’s no escape.”
“Surely, this isn’t a specifically Japanese outlook?” I
observed. “North Americans, Australians, and Europeans do very much
the same thing, don’t they?”
“This is true,” the old man in his saffron robe replied.
“But our ambition level in this respect is higher than anybody
else’s. We have a tradition of total conformity. We’re
used to concerted, government‑led campaigns to carry out every policy
that our leadership has adopted as beneficial. Elsewhere, part of the
population wouldn’t pay any attention to such campaigns. But here,
everybody accepts this kind of programs without coercion. Most of us
actively want to conform. And for the rest, a tempting materialism is
inducement enough.”
“Who is tempting whom?” I asked. “Materialism is a
normal way of life for nearly everyone, isn’t it?”
Mikio, clearly, was no materialist. Everything he owned was on his
person. His home was a bare cell in a monastery. He had to beg for
every meal he ate. Yet he seemed freer from care than anybody I had ever
met. Now he had found some crumbs in his bundle and was feeding the
squirrels. A tender joy was in his eyes, as he watched them eat.
When he returned to economics, his expression changed to one of kind endurance
with my ignorance.
“You must understand how human society is structured before you can grasp
where the influences come from. Think of Australia for a while.
Have you ever seen a sheep farm back home?”
Around my childhood home, sheep farms were all you saw wherever you
turned. This I now told Mikio, and he made me describe to him the rolling
hills, the dusty, browning pastures, and the black and white dogs driving the
flocks to the shearing shed until, in the end, they were walking on top of the
sheep as the mob pressed together in the sheep-yard, waiting for the hardworking
shearers inside. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all this
was now gone, replaced by robots, GPS-actuated virtual fences, and injections
of a special protein to make the sheep shed their fleece.
“If you want to understand how society works, it’s an excellent
exercise to think of sheep first,” Mikio said. “There are
four basic classes of people in every society, and these classes interact in a
very clear‑cut and purposeful way.
“The great mass of regular people are sheep. The sheep convert
natural resources to wealth and provide services, for their own and everybody
else’s benefit.
“Every flock of sheep has its owners. There’s an owning class
in every society. Even where so-called socialism was tried—in
truth, the Eastern Bloc countries of the past century practiced state
capitalism, not socialism—the party bosses were in the position of
owners. The owners are idle and live off the sheep’s back, as you
say in Australia.
“Then, to keep, indoctrinate, dupe, and protect the sheep, and to extract
the wealth that’s needed to support the owners, the latter employ
shepherds. Politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, brokers, financiers,
soldiers, professionals, police, clergy, entertainers, teachers, and managers
fall into this category. Evidently, the shepherds will receive a handout
for their trouble. A lot of wool is pulled over their eyes, as you say,
to prevent them from seeing what they actually do, but should they understand
it, their self‑interest will keep them serving the purposes of the
owners, anyway.
“The owners also promote conservative political views among the
shepherds. This breeds right-wing politicians and keeps the attention of
the shepherds on any unearned benefits given to the sheep, and away from the
large-scale welfare payments society bestows on the owners in the form of tax
breaks, subsidies, and preferential procurements.”
“It seems that you just placed everyone in society into three
categories,” I said. “Which is the fourth one?”
“The last class is the wolves,” Mikio continued. “In
Australia, you’d talk about dingoes, of course. The
wolves—that’s to say, the criminals—take their sustenance
from the flock, just like the owners do. Neither class can get rid of the
other, nor could they live without each other. The wolves need the owners
to maintain the flock, and the owners need the wolves to justify the existence
of shepherds with their fees, taxes, rules, and regulations. Both classes
share a way of life and a habit of tax avoidance. As long as wolves and
owners stay within accepted limits, they tolerate each other; indeed,
occasionally they even cooperate.”
“At Australian police academies,” I interjected, “cadets are
taught that the public is their enemy. Not the criminals. That
seems to agree with what you just said.”
Mikio nodded thoughtfully. “Law enforcement’s foremost duty
is to protect the owners and their businesses from the people, not the people
from the criminals. Think about the meaning of the term ‘Public
Order.’ That’s what the police are here to maintain.
But who would threaten it? Not the burglar, nor the rapist, nor the
embezzler. When public order is disturbed, the culprit is the
public. Regular, honest people who, for some reason, have become
enraged. They’re the danger, and they’re the enemy.
“There’s strength in numbers, but that strength must be
meticulously circumscribed. Control of the many by the few is a fact of
life, even where it goes by the name of democracy.
“From time immemorial, human society has been organized along these
lines. What has changed in the past century is the practical role of the
sheep. Technology has eased their burden, marketing has replaced the
stick with the carrot, but their shackles remain.”
“I wonder if it’s really as clear‑cut as that,” I ventured.
“There are few people one could unequivocally class as owners, for
example. Modern times must have blurred the distinctions of your model of
society. But I can see that it would have been very accurate up to about
the year
Mikio agreed.
“Ownership is more widespread now than at the beginning of the industrial
age. Many members of the shepherd class are also owners on a limited
scale. But, what’s more important, ownership has become
institutionalized and internationalized. As companies grew bigger,
individual capitalists had to bring in outside shareholders. Now
institutions control most of our accumulated wealth. Some of those
institutions are sovereign funds, owned by rich states, not individuals.
This has made the power of ownership faceless, merciless, and utterly
conservative. Most of the people now exerting that power are employees of
the owning institutions: they aren’t authorized to show compassion on
anybody.
“However, behind the institutions are wealthy individuals operating
globally. The richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half
of all household wealth; the poorer half of the world’s population owns
less than one percent of our shared assets. Middle-class ownership, which
was an important force as late as at the turn of the century, has fallen off
sharply, as more and more people have been drawn into on-line
speculation. The stock markets are mechanisms for concentrating wealth to
the rich: the latter create the fluctuations, and sell when prices are high and
buy when they’re low, while everybody else buys highly valued stocks, and
then panics and sells them off when they’ve dropped below some limit.
“Another thing that’s different today is that many of the sheep in
society now wear white collars and work in a service profession. Some of
them are highly educated, some unemployed. But allowing for these changes
and a lot of overlapping, the basic setup of interests remains the same.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and media pander mainly to the owning institutions.
Efficiency is still measured only in terms of profitability and minimizing the
work force. The only newsworthy economic indicators we have are those
that gauge how well human activities cater to the needs of the owning
class. In short, the only economic process of any consequence taking
place in our society is that the rich are getting richer. And among the
rich, the most powerful ones are those that get richer on conflict and distrust
between people, ethnic groups, and nations.”
“And what’s the alternative?” I queried.
“You already pointed out that Communist revolutions didn’t change
anything. George Orwell showed the same thing in his Animal Farm.
Should we rather strive for anarchy, perhaps?”
“Anarchy is an elite fantasy,” Mikio retorted. “There
may be a small minority of idealists who could live briefly without any kind of
leadership. But, as with other utopian thought systems, anarchy simply
became an excuse for vandalism and terror as soon as it became widely known.
Anarchy doesn’t work with real people.
“Human society readily lends itself to exploitation of the people by the
clever and the ambitious. Many will grumble against such abuse and may
support the political opposition or a revolutionary movement in the hope of
getting a better deal. But, as we know, any such change of the ruling
layer only results in more of the same. Losing the customary social
structure would hurt everybody. The masses can’t function without
leadership, the shepherds would lose their jobs, and any vacuum at the top
would just sit there waiting to be filled.
“Have you noticed how the media report on civil wars and popular
uprisings? The most calamitous news isn’t how many people have been
displaced, killed, maimed, and tortured. The most dreaded line, the one
that’s meant to make us shudder from uncertainty and fear, is,
‘Nobody seems to be in control.’ If total freedom, or, in
other words, anarchy, were such a desirable state, then, surely, we’d be
expected to react differently to such news.”
“You’d think the wolves would like it, though, if the flock lost
its protection!” I suggested.
“Not for long,” Mikio replied. “After a quick kill the
flock would scatter and perish, and the wolves would starve to death—or
would have to learn to eat grass; in other words, to do honest work. The
wolves are just as dependent on the productivity of the sheep as are the owners
and the shepherds. In fact, if all the latter were lost, the wolves would
sooner herd the flock themselves than risk losing the social fabric that keeps
them in business.”
I still had some objections. “I worked for a large corporation for
nine years and had a great time. I had a fine boss, smart colleagues, and
a generous employer. Big business can’t be all that bad.”
Mikio didn’t disagree. “There’s nothing wrong with
business and capitalism per se. The alternative doesn’t work.
Enterprise brings out the best in people. The problem arises when we, the
people, permit corruption and loss of transparency. When society neglects
the need for checks and balances on big money, it abdicates the power that
belongs to the people to the owning class. Greed feeds on itself, and on
a large enough scale, it knows no morals at all.
“The model of society I’ve described to you remains the only workable
one. It caters to the ambitions, abilities, and inclinations of
practically every human being. Whether it turns out well or poorly
depends on the character of the leadership. And here we come back to the
old rule: in the long run, people get the kind of government they
deserve. Good government comes about only through the strength of
individual character and integrity among the people.”
5. Bread and Circuses
As we were talking, Mikio guided me through the gardens and kept pointing out
interesting and beautiful things. Now a path with low steps took us up
toward a large, traditional-looking building, surrounded by trees and
shrubs. On a table by the path stood a collection of little bonsai trees
in their pots, looking like exact, miniature copies of their larger cousins
growing on the hill. It was as if the camera makers had finally succeeded
in producing lifelike, three-dimensional photographs. But the small trees
were just as much alive as their bigger relations. We found seating in
the shade of the veranda of the building and resumed our discussion.
“As I think about your model of society, I can’t help visualizing
hard work in dirty, dangerous nineteenth-century factories,” I
observed. “Life is easier now, but it seems to me that
today’s society is both better and worse off than the old one. The
living standard is higher, but there’s so much fear and
dissatisfaction. Crime and corruption flourish while honest people are subjected
to more and more control and restrictions. What has happened, and when
did it happen?”
Mikio thought for a while. “Technology hasn’t created a
paradise,” he said, “for a very simple reason: human society is
designed to provide power and profits for the few, not health and happiness for
the many. To benefit the owning class, today’s humanity is quite
unlike that of a few generations ago. But the changes have been so
gradual, so slow, that no one has reacted. The idyll is gone; instead,
people seem to be mainly mean and selfish.
“A major difference between our days and times past is that we now live
under the illusion of ever growing wealth and inexhaustible resources.
Before 1950, scarcity was the normal state everywhere. As a consequence,
those who formed public opinion—owners and shepherds—then set a
norm to the effect that it was proper for the lower classes in society to work
hard and be content with little. There were strict laws against vagrancy,
and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t be employed were put in workhouses
to produce goods or carry out unpleasant maintenance work without pay.
All this ensured that most of what wealth there was could conveniently be
accumulated at the top of the social ladder.
“During the latter half of the twentieth century, a world economy
emerged, where technology and the availability of energy other than muscle
power had created such a degree of prosperity that, in industrialized
countries, there was enough for everyone. At that time, it became the
interest of the rich and powerful that the lower classes borrow, spend, and
consume as much as possible. That way an adequate proportion of our
collective wealth would still end up in the hands of the former—as taxes,
interest, and profits. Whether people work or not is no longer important
to the owners, as there are enough machines to help out with production and
services.
“To this end, the term ‘Consumer’ was given a respectability
that’s totally alien to the word. As late as in the 1940s,
‘Consumer’ was an insult, meaning the same as
‘Parasite.’ If you couldn’t call yourself a producer of
something or a provider of a service, you had nothing to be proud of. But
by 1962, President Kennedy could say ‘we’re all consumers’
without being tarred and feathered on the Capitol steps.
“Just as mass production had enabled the owning class in the
industrialized countries to turn their populations into profit-generating
consumers, so, at the end of the twentieth century, they decided to do the same
to people in poor and developing countries, as well. But such countries
are bound to stay at a much lower level of prosperity for a couple of powerful
reasons. First, big business still needs below-minimum wage labor, so the
exploitation of poor nations must continue—normally by installing corrupt
tyrants, or, where democracy has taken too strong a hold, through the economic
extortion that becomes possible when nations are deep enough in debt.
“Second, the great powers need enemies.”
“Why is that?” I asked, quite taken aback.
“You have to realize whose needs we’re talking about. The
national interests of a great power are the interests of its owning class, the
owners of its big business.
“The tax revenue of a large country is special in that it’s a
predictable and reliable flow of truly serious money. As such, it holds
an attraction to the owning class that’s in quite another league from
that of a small country. If you’re one of the owners of big
business, you’ll be eyeing that money and plotting how best to divert the
largest possible slice of it to yourself. The answer is no secret:
it’s been known for as long as there have been states in this
world. The safest and most profitable way of dipping into the national
revenue is getting the nation into a war; selling it weapons, oil, and military
supplies and services; and lending it the money to buy all that from you.
War is the most dependable consumer there is.
“The politicians controlling the national budgets of the great powers
tend to welcome such machinations, because a large country can only be held
together if its leaders can point to an adversary that’s always producing
new, unsettling threats at the national level. Failing this,
people’s attention strays to local and provincial matters, and the
national government becomes abstract, distant, and even irrelevant.
“But great powers can’t fight each other anymore—it
would be too dangerous—so now the chosen enemy is terrorism. To
ensure a steady supply of terrorists, the arms makers and defense contractors,
under great patriotic brouhaha, tend to put their own men into the governments
of the great powers, where they can make sure that someone, somewhere, suffers
enough insult and injustice to resort to armed resistance and
retaliation. They’ve gotten really good at this: America’s
military-industrial complex managed to spend more on fighting a few tens of
thousands of ragged insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than on defeating Italy,
Germany, and Japan in the Second World War.
“When the Cold War fizzled out around 1990, it became a matter of
urgency for the arms makers and the governments of the great powers to find new
enemies. As we know, the choice fell on the world’s Muslims, who
have the advantages of a culture based on honor and vengeance, widespread
poverty, and minority status in nearly all the large nations involved.
They are easy to fear because their fertility is high. They have internal
divisions that can be used to play them against each other, and they can be
provoked as needed by indulging Israel. Their local religious leaders,
always looking to maximize donations to their noble causes, have it easy to
find young men with no prospects for a job and turn their minds to extremism
and holy war, enabling our governments, once again, to raise our defense
budgets.
“There you have the two main reasons why misery will persist next to
affluence and wastefulness. But, while withholding prosperity from the
developing world, we’ve managed to export the new covetousness alright:
everybody consumes First-World entertainment, even if they have nothing to
eat.”
“Going back a little, my understanding of how values form is quite
different from yours,” I ventured. “I’ve read about all
kinds of cultural and sociological influences interacting with developments in
technology and communications. Isn’t your model of values being
manufactured by the owning class a bit simplistic?”
“You can’t separate human behavior from economics. Our minds
don’t have separate compartments for different aspects of our interaction
with society, just because those aspects are studied by different
scientists. Economics is the foundation of our survival, and will always
be one of the strongest influences we experience.
“Insight doesn’t come from knowing the right answers. It
comes from asking the right questions. The most important question you
can ask when you want to discover hidden influences or find out who committed a
crime, is, ‘Who benefits?’ This question has been the basis
of criminal justice since Roman times, and it’s all you need when you try
to understand where our ideas come from. If those in power clearly
benefit from the current values and preferences of the public, then you can be
pretty sure that, ultimately, they’re behind those same values and
preferences.
“The main difference between the morals of today’s postindustrial
society and those of the famous good old days is that greed is now quite
acceptable for everyone, not just for the rich. Because we have all been
taught greed, our values have changed, and in many respects disappeared. Without
the old values that made a virtue of restraint, there’s no more peer
pressure against enriching yourself by whatever means you seem to be able to
get away with. And, sad to say, peer pressure makes up the main part of
the conscience of many of us.
“What’s left is envy. Vengeance and envy provide the last
checks that remain at society’s disposal for curbing economic
crime. Either the guy has taken something from me, or he’s getting
away with something I couldn’t get away with. So I turn him
in. This is something entirely different from concern for his
integrity. But it’s very useful for whomever that has an interest
in enlisting my vote for putting more stringent controls on civil
liberties.”
“What you’re saying,” I interjected, “is that greed and
the crimes it induces provide an excuse for more control, and attaining more
control over citizens requires more power to be given to the authorities.
Is there any other way?”
“In the old kind of society, there certainly was one,” Mikio
replied. “People were honest. Respect for the rights and
property of others was instilled into every person from childhood. But
modern parents that are taught greed by opinion makers have no way of teaching
their children integrity. Children learn by following the parents’
example, not by what they’re told to do. Today, we’re fast
forgetting that people should be honest and that their honesty should be taken
for granted, as a basic tenet of society.
“Where greed is fulfilled, there’s prosperity. With
prosperity come stress, boredom, and spoiled children. As soon as we no
longer have to struggle for our survival and our betterment, we turn against
each other, bickering and destroying, like birds or mice crowded together into
too small an area, even if they’re given plenty of food.
“We Japanese have a particular problem because we’ve all been
raised to conform without questioning, and we therefore tend to be quite
gullible. Moreover, we have no traditional sense of morality to fall back
on. Shinto, our main religion, has no code of ethics, and Buddhism
provides only our burial rites. Our concepts of duty and obligation, Giri
and On, apply only within the group we belong to, such as a company, a school,
or a family.
“As the crime rate rises, politicians can campaign for more government
control over people on the premise that we can’t trust each other and,
hence, will think it a good thing that the authorities protect us by keeping
track of what everybody is doing. When we’re far enough removed
from the old tradition of integrity and honesty, we’ll sacrifice our own
freedom in order to have protection from others. When a politician argues
for more control because of the threat from criminal elements, we accept that
the alternative of raising well-mannered children and trusting each other is no
longer available, scarcely even remembered.”
“Raising well-behaved children is no easy task,” I objected.
“You’re certainly right there,” Mikio confirmed.
“That’s another thing that’s completely different now.
Before automation, kids had chores in the home, and the family
needed their work to survive and prosper. Give children a productive
task, and they’ll keep busy and be responsible like anybody else.
But today, child labor has been outlawed—ostensibly, to put children in
schools and protect them from overwork and exploitation—with the aim of
eradicating all remaining pockets of family self-sufficiency by breaking off
the transfer of traditional skills to the next generation. To protect
children from accidents—under the assumption that their parents are
careless idiots—they aren’t even allowed near the equipment the
family farmer uses for his living. Today’s few remaining farm
children are nearly as ignorant of where our food comes from as city kids, and,
as adults, just as likely to become mere consumers without any complementing
skills. Where children of bygone days played traditional games and made
their own toys, modeling them on the working environment their families
depended on for a living, today’s children must be inundated in
expensive, technical playthings to keep them from becoming unmanageable through
boredom. The toys represent no aspect of any productive process, only
fantasies,
armed conflict, and conspicuous consumption.
“For their own survival in old age, yesterday’s parents and
grandparents relied on the ability of children and grandchildren to carry on
the productive work the family was engaged in. Because of this, adults
had a vested interest in fostering in their children a solid work ethic and
values like compassion, prudence and productivity. Today, children are
mostly in the way of their parents’ hedonistic consumer lifestyle.
Employers, social security, and pension schemes are assumed to take care of the
aging—few realize that there can be no security for the old unless the
young stay productive and competitive. So parents think that it’s
the task of schools and officials to teach their children how to behave, and to
intervene when correction is needed. The only remaining entities with a
direct, pecuniary interest in children’s values are retailers who want
their money, and the retailers’ advertising agencies. Advertisers
raise our children, and we wonder why we don’t understand them.
“This has been going on and getting worse long enough to result in a
nearly total loss of traditional value systems. But liberal democracy
wasn’t made to cope with a population without values. Neither was
any other form of government the world has known so far. Even where
dictators forced their views on defenseless populations, they had to depend on
some kind of norms and values that made people react predictably. They
had no means of keeping tabs on everyone individually, so they had to impose at
least two mechanisms based on respect and values: a power hierarchy of
privileged officials, and economic sanctions or rewards, as the case may have
been.
“Today, the disappearance of values makes us ever harder to govern.
There are hundreds of millions of people with resources at their disposal that
two or three generations ago were either unknown or the privilege of the very
few, such as cars, computers, efficient communications, lots of money,
unscrupulous lawyers, and the ability to travel fast and far. Suddenly,
very many of us are both very selfish and very powerful, and society has run
out of constructive ways of keeping us honest. Introduce a restriction,
and someone will find a way around it. Promise a reward, and it’ll
be abused.
“Clearly, this situation is untenable. To preserve their
credibility, politicians must come up with a solution to the problem of mass
dishonesty that they and the business community have created by teaching us
greed and covetousness. Given today’s technology, and considering
that nobody wants to stem the consumer’s appetite for ever more
gratification, the solution will have to involve computer control over
everybody’s actions and over all movements of money.”
The afternoon was now cooling off, and Mikio wanted to walk again.
Knowing the parks in detail, he took me to see the ruins left from the
buildings forming the keep of the old Edo castle in the East Garden.
Following my history lesson on the ancient Shoguns, I still wanted to pursue a
few questions.
“Tell me something, Mikio. Why is entertainment such a central
matter in life? It seems that somebody is pushing the idea that
entertainment is really important. The media dedicate more time and
effort to reporting on entertainment than on reality.”
Mikio looked at me and laughed.
“You just answered your own question,” he said. “You
haven’t been away from your entertainment center two weeks yet, and
already you’ve discovered that beyond all the brainwashing, there’s
a whole world out there. If those in power didn’t keep people glued
to their televisions, computers, and game consoles, this society would fall
apart.
“Modern society is built on exploiting the masses as workers, dole
recipients, and consumers. To ensure that the exploited don’t
discover what’s going on, it’s vital to engage everybody’s
mind without actually exercising it. That’s why the entertainment
and gaming industries are among the strategically most important ones we have.
“In our traditional, mainly agricultural society, priests took care of
keeping people ignorant, superstitious, and subservient to their betters.
Wandering minstrels provided entertainment to fill what little free time there
was. News rarely travelled far because of the lack of
communications. That kind of society was very stable.
“Today, mass media provide all the elements needed to cause
social
unrest: news, ideas, and contacts. Religion has split into
fanatical fundamentalism and inconsequential ritualism, and is no
longer a stabilizing force. Despotism and censorship work poorly
in the
Internet age. So it falls to the media to counteract their own
destabilizing influence by drowning all this dangerous knowledge about
reality
in something more attractive, i.e., non-stop entertainment and
advertising. And, fortunately for the economy, people are
willing to pay for having their minds switched off.
“To find a historical precedent to our current society, we need to go
back to ancient Rome seen as a city state, with an easy flow of local news and
a mock democracy like our own, where the owning class can’t just do as it
wants, but has to buy votes and bribe elected politicians.
“In Rome, after its great conquests had been made, the interests of the
ruling class—interests known then, as now, as ‘the security of the
state’—were threatened by the growth of a bored, angry mob of
unemployed lower class citizens. The solution then adopted for pacifying
the masses was to give each person a set amount of flour every month, and to
build large arenas where grandiose and violent shows and competitions were
held. In return for food and the interminable spectacle of the cruel
killing of beasts and humans, the crowds stayed manageable and fulfilled their
only civic duty, that of voting, to the satisfaction of their patrons.
This was the well-worn concept of ‘bread and circuses for the
people.’
“Modern society is managed along the same lines. Basic material
security —if need be, through handouts—and entertainment provide
the dope for people nowadays. Make entertainment so fascinating that a
majority of voters never care to seek any other views than those you feed them
through their favorite TV channels and Web news services, and you have a
perfect rubber-stamp democracy.
“This system of government now prevails all over the world.
It’s very similar to the state of the late Roman Empire just before the
Barbarians overran it. But this time, lacking a superior outside enemy,
the fatal attack will come from within.”
“What happened to all the other things people used to do?” I
persisted. “I know that people had to work harder before TV was
introduced, but surely they had some spare time then, too?”
“Most of what people did in their homes before television took over had
to do with some productive activity that helped them survive and prosper.
They also put great value on just being together and talking to each
other. In all sound societies, there always was an element of
self-sufficiency and independence that gave the citizens the guts to stand up
for their rights. Such societies were based on individual initiative and
responsibility. Government and all other social activities were
characterized by the words, ‘By the people.’
“Now we’ve let our guard down. We’ve accepted the idea
that everything, including what the government does, should be ‘for the
people.’ Evidently, this is what politicians want, as it makes them
and their bureaucrats indispensable. It also makes for a centrally
controlled society. Electronic entertainment is the ideal means to
achieve such a state, as it replaces all other leisure activities with the act
of perceiving, or interacting with, a centrally distributed monologue.
Thus, people’s opinions and outlook become standardized by those in
power, whereas, in earlier times when people communicated locally, there were a
variety of views of the world, which helped keep leaders and opinion makers
honest.
“Virtual Reality was the best invention ever for business and
government. Virtual Reality is so fascinating, and it’s so much
nicer to have your own choice of realities than having to put up with the one
decaying environment we’ve got left in the real world, that we’ll
soon have a majority of people, i.e., voters, who actually prefer VR to the
real world. The entertainment industry is working hard to ensure that
they never have to come back to reality. They can get news that relates
to their virtual worlds; they can eat exotic dishes in Martian restaurants even
though the food is just the regular supermarket slop, ordered, heated, and
served by their own alimentabot; they can mingle exclusively with fantasy
beings of their own preference. This majority can be totally manipulated
by the propaganda channels, and it will decide what our society is going to be
like.
“Lots of other people, too, have lost their ability for meaningful
communication with each other. They prefer the uncomplicated illusion of
interacting with celebrities as they talk back to the computers of the
TV stations. What time is left over is spent on fashionable, expensive
hobbies. It’s easy to see that once you have thus destroyed
self-sufficiency, more must be bought, perhaps with borrowed money, and profits
will benefit.
“What we have, once more, is a political system that favors non-accountable
government, big enterprise, big media concerns, big banking, powerful
propaganda machines, and, where labor unions still remain, corrupt union
leadership. Such organizations willingly take care of imposing conformity
and exerting control. This is much easier for those in power than dealing
with individuals and small enterprisers who all have different needs and
interests.
“Once upon a time, such a system was called corporatism and the political
philosophy supporting it was called fascism. At the end of the Second
World War, we were told that fascism had been defeated and would never
return. In truth, however, fascism was far too valuable to big business
to be allowed to disappear. So instead of open fascism like there was in
the 1930s, we now have something called democracy that serves as a cover for
wholesale corruption of politicians by big business. Since even leftist
politicians are now for sale, and intimidating them is no longer necessary, the
more disgusting public features of the old fascism have been left to parading,
powerless neo-fascists. But the traditional corporatist connection
between big business and government is closer than ever.
“However, in an important sense, our society is the direct opposite of
the old despotic regimes. Multinational business is now stronger than
government, and the latter takes its orders from the former. Where
business in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930s was made to serve the
purposes of party and government, today government and parties alike serve the
needs of transnational enterprise. In olden days, strong-arm governments
supported by national armed forces put the people to work for the interests of
the country’s power clique. Today, government and media keep people
happy and ignorant, borrowing and spending, in order to profit an absent,
transnational owning class.
“Almost no one seems to realize that all the good intentions of national
and international politicians and bureaucrats, and all their pious talk, mean
nothing at all, because they don’t make the decisions. All issues
of any consequence are decided by billionaires and their business executives,
with the sole aim of maximizing the next quarter’s profits.”
At the end of the day, after many more insights on my part, Mikio invited me to
share his customary evening meal. We joined a number of other monks, and
a few dropouts, for a free dinner generously provided by the kitchen of the
Palace Hotel.
Mikio introduced me to his friends. Most of the monks had begun as young
novices. But a couple of the older ones had a business career behind them
like Mikio did. One had suffered burnout and a nervous breakdown, and had
quit his job to protect himself from karoshi, or death from overwork. The
other had seen himself relegated to the class of madogiwa-zoku, the
“window-side people”—elderly workers that were never
promoted, but regarded by their employers as useless. They were placed by
the window, something that would have been counted a privilege in the West.
In Japan, it meant that they could be assumed to waste time by looking
out. Humiliated in every way, some went mad or became alcoholics.
Mikio’s friend had found a new way of life that was slowly giving him
back his self-respect.
The dropouts were furosha—homeless—or burakumin, members of the
lowest caste in a society that, since 1868, officially has been
casteless. Traditionally, the burakumin did the most defiling jobs, such
as slaughter, corpse disposal, and removal of human excrement. But by
now, most of them had been made redundant by automation. Rather than
accepting handouts and helping feed the corporatist system that kept denying
them basic human dignity, the burakumin I met had elected to stay on the
outside and shun consumerism.
In all its humbleness, this small group of nonconformists presented an
enormously uplifting experience. True, they couldn’t feed
themselves, but they claimed survival because of their basic right to
life. And while living as beggars and scavengers, they had refused to
sell out to the coercion that ruled the lives of the rest of Japan’s
population.
I hated parting from Mikio, but I knew our time together had come to an
end. I thanked him profusely, wondering if I’d ever be able to meet
him again.
Once more, Mikio straightened me out in his patient manner.
“It’s true that we’ve become friends, Gregory. But
I’m old, and I remain here. You have a mission and you must travel
on. If you can act with more wisdom thanks to what you’ve learned
from me, you’ll have repaid me. Now go on your way; my thoughts go
with you.”
I felt very strange going back to my hotel room after that day’s
experiences. The entertainment center was still shut off, and I left it
that way. Many thoughts filled my mind, and sleep came slowly.
My stay in Japan was drawing to a close, and the next day I went to visit the
Tokyo outlet of my favorite Sydney outfitters, there to buy myself the
traditional Australian Akubra hat, Drizabone raincoat made of wax-impregnated
fabric, and Blundstone boots. Although all this, by Australian standards,
was frightfully expensive, the familiar outfit made me feel like I had regained
a part of my personality lost with my original luggage.
Upon my arrival in Tokyo, I had decided to trade in my air ticket and continue
by sea and land transport. After some searching, I had found an
adventurers’ travel agency that had sold me on the idea of taking a
freighter to Europe through the Northeast Passage.
Many cargo ships carry passengers, but no more than twelve. That way they
aren’t obliged to have a doctor on board: the medical training of the
ship’s master is considered enough. So, for the next leg of my
trip, I would travel on board a Russian bulk carrier scheduled to join a convoy
to Murmansk in the northwest corner of Russia. From Murmansk, I hoped to
find some convenient means of getting to Finland, just beyond the border.
There I had an old friend who had issued me a standing invitation to drop in on
him at any time, should I be passing through.
PART 2
6. The Kapitan Fedosov
Since early in the twenty-first century, by combining Western satellite
navigation technology with sophisticated Polar Sea icebreakers, the Russians
had managed to keep the Northeast Passage open for up to nine months of the
typical year, and sometimes all through the winter. Between
1918–1920, when Amundsen made his voyage through the Passage, and 1993,
the route was closed to all but Soviet shipping. In August of the latter
year, however, a French Arctic research ship, the L’Astrolabe, made the
trip as the first foreign vessel for over seventy years, using only occasional
icebreaker assistance and convincingly demonstrating the usefulness of
satellite radar reconnaissance of the ice situation. Since then, aided by
the steady retreat of the arctic ice due to global warming, the Russians had
been perfecting their methods. The result was that going through the
Northeast Passage became faster and expended less fuel than taking the
alternative route, twice as long, from the Far East to northern or western
Europe, or vice versa, through the Suez Canal. The ships to be used on
the route had to be extra strong, of course, but enough foreign shipping
preferred this alternative to make the enterprise profitable for Russia.
Nevertheless, I was facing a sea journey of 6,000 nautical miles, most of it
through pack ice. Having procured a few additional items of warm
clothing, I boarded the Kapitan Fedosov and installed myself in my cabin.
One of my concerns had been how to pass my time during three weeks of sea
voyage, but if Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia didn’t do the trick
nothing would—the battered old volume I had found in an antiquarian
bookstore in Tokyo was nearly three inches thick, and promised some fascinating
reading. Laura had the same book in paperback and had asked me to read
it, but I hadn’t had the time before I had left.
One of the advantages of travel by freighter is that you get to dine at the
captain’s table, an honor bestowed only on the select few on passenger
liners, where such are still in use. Come dinnertime, I put on my best
clothes and joined my fellow passengers in the officers’ mess on poop deck,
with a splendid view of the darkening Tokyo Bay.
To my surprise, the captain of this Russian ship was African. His name
was Joel; he was a Hausa from Nigeria, a professional seaman who had obtained
his Master’s degree from none other than the Australian Maritime College
at Launceston, Tasmania. A sincere, intelligent man in his early
thirties, he described his current job as a step along his career. The
Nigerian merchant fleet hadn’t had an opening at the level of master at
the time, and here was an opportunity both to learn Russian and to gain
experience of Arctic navigation, while commanding a good, strong, new ship with
a reliable, international crew. It was his second season sailing the
Northeast Passage, and Joel assured his passengers that we’d have a safe,
routine trip; a little noisy, perhaps, but we’d soon get used to
traveling through ice.
This early in the year, there still was room to spare on board: we were only
eight passengers in all. To my left were seated Mrs. Dana Frost, her
daughter Evelyn, and her husband, Dr. James Frost, a newly retired American
professor who had ended up his career teaching computer systems design at
Macquarie University near Sydney. Between James and the captain sat
Sheila Johnson, a middle-aged English spinster who was on annual leave from her
place of work, an international organization on the US East Coast. Her
modest looks belied an adventurous spirit: the year before, she had
“nearly climbed” Mount Everest on a trip to Nepal, and she seemed
to be in a habit of dividing her vacations between visiting her elderly mother
in Devon and going off on the most unusual treks the world had to offer.
On my right was Dieter Braun, a German economist. He was a bachelor, in
his mid-thirties, on his way back home from an assignment in Indonesia.
He worked for a large multinational corporation and had decided to spend some
time between projects on a relaxing sea voyage rather than going straight home
by air.
On the captain’s left sat Katherine Davis, newlywed wife of Michael
Davis, a young American investor who praised modern communications technology
for affording him and his bride this opportunity for a honeymoon in the form of
a trip around the world, while he could continue managing his portfolio using
his satellite-enhanced all-wireless notebook computer. A grimace from
Kathy at the mention of the computer gave me the impression that she’d
have preferred more of Mike’s attention for herself and less of it given
to her electronic rival.
The chief engineer, Ilya Sergeievich Yakovlev, completed our party; he was a
jovial, gray-haired man with the most intensely blue eyes I had ever seen, and
a loud, booming voice never far from laughter. He had only praise for the
Kapitan Fedosov: her builder, the old Navy shipyard in St. Petersburg, was, in
the opinion of Ilya Sergeievich, fit to compete with any shipbuilder anywhere
in the world. The company had weathered the post-Soviet turmoil well by
specializing in submarines and Arctic ships.
Our discussion eventually turned from pleasantries to the deeper things in
life. A random collection of strangers who never expected to meet again
following the end of our trip, we found it easy to bare our thoughts to each
other and share things you never hear mentioned, say, in the workplace.
Predictably, I got everyone started by telling Dieter about my talks with Mikio
in Tokyo. Dieter confirmed Mikio’s description of human society as
a flock of sheep with owners, shepherds, and wolves.
“It’s an unconventional way of putting it, but in essence it’s
precisely what you’re taught in the economics class at college. It
seems, however, that your Japanese friend didn’t want to put any other
system in its place. So what was he trying to prove?”
I was still having a hard time answering that question in my own mind, but I
welcomed the opportunity to think out loud.
“Mikio’s main point was that the system lends itself to many
different purposes, depending on the leadership. Today, the only
discernible motive of those in power is greed, and greed filters down to every
layer in society. During some brief periods in past history, there seem
to have been leaders who were motivated by nobler ideals.
“But another cause for concern is the sheer complication of this
society. Humanity has been around for several million years, and during
nearly all of that time, almost every family lived on the land and wrenched its
living from that same land. Now, during what’s just a brief instant
in history, we’ve attained a population larger than anything the earth
has ever supported before, and nearly everyone is far removed from the process
of producing food and providing shelter. We have no historical indication
that such a society can continue for any length of time.
“The social mechanism for maintaining this population is utterly complex
and inherently unstable: not only is it dependent on the whims of the weather,
but it’s also at the mercy of the hunches and fears of millions of
speculators with their computerized trading systems. Our society is very
much like a military airplane with a canard up front instead of the traditional
tail plane at the rear. It’s very agile, but it can fly only under
computer control: it was built unstable in order to be able to maneuver faster,
and it changes direction so fast that only a computer can steer it.
“I think Mikio would like to see a society where each person and family
would be more immediately responsible for feeding, housing, and clothing
themselves, and, therefore, less susceptible to being controlled. More of
the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ sort of thing, I guess.”
“But there again,” Dieter retorted, “it’s precisely
because there are so many people, and in the wrong places, that we need this
commercialized society. Up until a few generations ago, starving masses
could be given land through revolutions or land reforms, and, eventually, they
would prosper as smallholders or members of cooperatives or kolchoses,
providing social stability and a reliable tax base. But today, they live
in megacities and have to have money to buy their food and water and to pay for
their housing and other needs. They need a way to support themselves, but
they have no skills, and, in particular, no survival skills. If there
were land to give them, at least ninety percent of them would be dead within
the first few months, because they wouldn’t know what to do with
themselves out in the countryside.
“When modern hunger riots erupt, they are aimless and destructive, not
targeted at land and land politics. The rioters are simply seen as
demanding something for nothing. The police aren’t concerned with
giving anybody paid work or handouts, only with suppressing the unrest.
With current surveillance technology, they can do that in the most effective
way possible: they identify leaders with the help of cameras, microphones, and
computers, and take them out on the spot using snipers and robots.
“The recycling idea, of course, is very nice, and it has helped conserve
some of our scarce resources. But recycling hasn’t reduced our
dependence on business. Germany has the strictest recycling laws
anywhere, and the only thing they’ve cut down on is the amount of
landfill produced. Costs and the general complication of life are only
up, up, and up.”
Mike Davis had his own view of recycling. Holding up a bottle of Russian
mineral water, he stated, quite categorically, that it did nobody any good just
to clean the bottle out and reuse it.
“Any fool can wash a bottle and refill it. If that’s all you
do, you haven’t created any employment, and certainly no opportunities
for making a profit. I’m all for recycling plastics, for
example. Plastics can be sorted at a conveyor belt and sent to industry
for raw material. If it’s cheaper than using new plastic, why
not. As for glass bottles, you can crush them and send them to the glass
works. Recycle, if you have to, but the bit about reducing and reusing I
don’t buy. All you’ll get out of that is unemployment and
recession.”
Sheila Johnson had another interesting comment to my tirade.
“You know, I’ve been watching the workings of what we call
official development aid for quite some time now. It strikes me that what
we’ve been doing to Africa, Asia, and South and Central America for the
past several decades, has had the effect of turning their entire populations
from subsistence farmers and fishermen into urban consumers. The
statistics say that their living standards have grown tenfold, as measured by
the amount of money they turn over. But where once there were a lot of
poor people fending for themselves and spending little money because they
didn’t need to buy much, now there are urban slums full of discontented
consumers, some unemployed, some being worked to death. However, they
have to spend money to survive, and the money, of course, goes to business.”
Mike didn’t see anything wrong with that.
“Whenever there’s an increase in business income, the wealth
trickles down to the people. That’s how the West got prosperous in
the first place. Without profitable businesses, there are no jobs and no
getting anybody out of the slums!”
“There’s a difference, though,” Jim Frost cut in.
“The West and Japan got rich at a time when national markets were
strictly protected and regulated. Foreign competition rarely was allowed
to damage domestic production. Colonial empires helped build up the
wealth of the owning class, and labor unions and social legislation ensured
that more income was diverted to the people than what the capitalists would
have let them have on their own. Once the industrialized world had strong
enough businesses to go global, it began dismantling trade barriers, purely in
its own interest. The developing countries weren’t ready for trade
liberalization, but it was forced on them through Structural Adjustment
Programs, as a precondition for continued aid and more loans.
“These SAPs, as they were called, took away from the poor countries every
one of those protective factors that had helped the West and Japan become so
strong, just when they’d have been needed the most. It isn’t
overly cynical to say that the SAPs enabled the rich of this world to
reintroduce colonialism. They also resulted in a ‘trickle up’
effect rather than the ‘trickle down’ of economic theory, and they
were designed that way.”
“In Indonesia,” Dieter took up Jim’s thread, “I saw
many effects of what you just said. Tens of millions of people, who once
got a fair livelihood on their own land, from growing and hunting their own
food and making their own things, now work at minimum wage for large employers.
They own nothing, especially not their homes. The employers are companies
owned by a few rich Indonesians, usually together with multinational
corporations.
“In Europe and America, regular people became prosperous only after the
aristocracy’s absentee ownership of all land and resources had been
abolished. Today, in the developing world, we have a situation of
absentee ownership of everything, like in feudal and colonial times. But
now the colonial masters are multinational corporations and their local allies,
not foreign governments.”
Not that much earlier, Costa Rica, with a long tradition of democracy and
social justice, had attempted to reintroduce some of the laws that her SAP had
forced her to abolish. At the time, Costa Rica had managed to pay off
most of her debts, and her democratic institutions had thought the time had
been ripe to better people’s lives again. But the country had soon
found out differently. Traditionally, the US Marines would quickly have
invaded such a rebelling country and brought it back to order. But no
such clumsy methods had been needed this time: the handful of multinationals
controlling Costa Rica’s exports had applied some subtle financial
pressure, and within months, everything had been back to normal again.
The captain, Joel, referred with a few words to this well known incident, and
added, “The world, as we see it from the perspective of regular
Nigerians, has become one huge profit-making mechanism. Our villages have
lost their ability to support their people. Ogoniland is covered in crude
oil pouring out of badly maintained pipelines. Health care has become too
expensive for regular people, so we’re back to using witch doctors.
But our rich and our military leaders live very comfortably, indeed.”
Jim Frost had mentioned his interest in history early on during our meal, and
now he drew on some of his insights.
“It’s a long-standing conflict we’re talking about, and the
rise of big-time capitalism hasn’t always been smooth sailing. What
makes the rich so much stronger today is that their power has been
institutionalized. We’re no longer dealing with individual owners,
who once could be made personally responsible for their actions, at least in
theory. Now, as soon as somebody is rich and powerful enough, their
holdings are turned into corporations. Other large companies and funds
have no predominant owners, and are still harder to pin down.
“It’s interesting to observe how, during the past century, our
language was manipulated for the purpose of safeguarding the power of the
institutions. During the nineteenth century, capitalism meant
unrestrained private enterprise. Democratic government then derived most
of its power from free individuals; not, as now, from the manipulation of
public opinion by advertising agencies on behalf of political parties and other
institutions, and from lobbying and bribery by the business community.
“In those days, the term ‘Public interest’ meant the good of
the many individuals and families forming the governing public.
‘Private interest,’ on the other hand, was that which was
profitable for the few, rich and powerful capitalists.
“Public and private interests were, by necessity, in conflict with each
other. Through the efforts of concerned politicians and activists like US
Presidents Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many laws were passed that
limited the abuses practiced in the private interest, at the expense of that of
the public.
“That way, eventually, a new, liberal capitalism emerged, where the
unabashed greed of the few had been replaced by the more responsible concept of
the institutionalized profit motive. To ensure that private enterprise
respected all the social and environmental obligations society had now imposed
on it, a number of new public bodies were established.
“Naturally, with institutions increasingly dealing with and controlling
each other, the influence of both private entrepreneurs on the one hand, and of
individual activists on the other, was replaced by a much more harmonious
interaction of bureaucratic minds on all sides.
“To protect their newly gained territory in society, the bureaucratic
minds set about changing our way of thinking. A foolproof way of doing so
is to retain accepted values and attitudes, while switching around the names we
call things by. So in the case of institutions vs. individuals, the
‘public interest’ became that of the institutions, ostensibly
representing the public, and ‘private interest’ became the
incidental concerns of regular individuals and families.
“We’d all come to accept the concept of public interest as
something good, and private interest as something dubious, if not outright
bad. And now, in the name of us, the people, all those
institutions—business, government, and so on—have usurped the right
to define a standardized public interest, which uses every available excuse to
increase the institutions’ control over us, while decreeing that your and
my individual needs and demands, by definition, are antisocial and bad.
“By now, most of the health and safety regulations built up during the
twentieth century have been abolished in the name of “streamlining
government’ and ‘self-regulation by industry,’ and the public
is again at the mercy of big business, just as during the 1800s.
“What we have today is a resurgence of unrestrained capitalism on a
global scale, where the only regulation comes from unelected international
agencies that represent the so called ‘public interest.’
Worse, many multinational corporations and even individual speculators are so
rich and powerful that they’re more influential than most national
governments. That’s why all trade barriers have been broken down:
it gives the multinationals free access to all markets, for goods, services,
and labor. It’s illegal for local authorities to produce their own
drinking water and run their own schools and hospitals, if some corporation can
show that it can do it at a lower cost to the taxpayer—higher user fees
don’t affect the outcome. The world is, basically, one big
sweatshop, where only the largest enterprises can compete, and an
individual’s only choices are to become an employee on their terms or
find a niche where being local still matters.
“We also have better communications and transportation systems than
ever. Communications have always been a means of exploitation.
Early on, roads, canals, shipping, and railroads enabled large manufacturers to
undercut and bankrupt small, local ones and then use their labor more cheaply
afterwards. The Information Revolution only furthered the same trend.
Those who know most about people also wield the greatest power over
them.”
7. The Northeast Passage
Six days after our departure from Tokyo, we passed through Bering Strait and
crossed the Arctic Circle. Although it was May, it was very cold, and as
we turned our course westward, the ice floes got more numerous, and soon we
were flanked by pack ice on both sides. Still, the Kapitan Fedosov was
doing a good fifteen knots; we were following the zigzagging channel made by an
icebreaker a few days earlier. On the bridge, Joel explained that
we’d be sailing on our own for another day until we came to the
seventy-first parallel: the convoy was being formed at Ambarchik, where our two
icebreakers were waiting. There’d be six ships in all; three were
ahead of us, one could be seen on the horizon astern, and the last was
presently passing through the Strait.
“A ship that’s built for use in the Arctic isn’t just any
ordinary tub,” Joel told me. We had become friends during the past
week, and with my background in engineering I found the bridge a fascinating
place, so I spent a lot of time there.
“First of all, she has to be built to the highest standards of hull
strength, which means Lloyd’s ice class IA Super. Second, she has
to be incredibly agile. We don’t just have a regular screw pointing
backwards, like many other ships. We have a propeller assembly that turns
a full 360 degrees to move us in any direction that may become necessary.
Water jets on the sides of the hull enable us to move the entire ship
sideways. We also have a sophisticated setup of computer control,
combined with satellite navigation. Data from our radar and from
electronic sensors in the hull and propulsion gear of the ship are constantly
combined with satellite information on the ice situation. The result is
that the ship noses her way along the easiest route available, avoiding contact
with icebergs entirely.”
The sun was low and cold over the southern horizon; it was about noon. Suddenly
Mike Davis stormed in, yelling and complaining. His computer had lost
contact with its satellite, and he was out hundreds of dollars for every hour
he was cut off from the markets—or so he claimed. He had followed
the instructions for his computer, placing its amplifying external antenna
outside his cabin window, but the computer had simply stopped working that
morning. So now he demanded the use of the ship’s antenna gear, and
wasn’t taking no for an answer.
It took all of Joel’s phlegmatic patience to make Mike understand that
the ship’s satellite communication gear was built for entirely different
frequencies than those used by the telecommunications carriers, and that even
if it had been technically possible to assist him, the ship’s equipment
was meant for navigation purposes and wasn’t available for other
uses. The existing Local Area Network, having Internet access,
couldn’t be made available to passengers for security reasons: if a
passenger brought in a computer virus or otherwise crashed the network, the
safety of the ship would be at stake.
I volunteered to continue the lesson, saying a few words about the differences
between the Inmarsat marine communications satellites and the low and medium
earth orbit satellites serving portable computers and telephones. To
spare Mike the humiliation of being evicted from the bridge, I suggested going
down to his cabin to see if we couldn't check out his gear and get it working
again. We tried, but to no avail—there was no cellular telephone
network anywhere near, and the outside temperature was way below the rated
limit for his satellite antenna—and to divert Mike’s wrath, I
thought to ask him about his investing business.
“What industries should one invest in these days?”
Mike gave a grunt.
“Death deferment is your best bet,” he said.
“It’s a little-known business, operating under the guise of health
care. At the current state of the art, it’s possible to keep almost
every dying body biologically alive for as long as there’s insurance
cover and the families have any assets left. The returns are formidable:
for every day you leave the life support systems on and the body keeps
vegetating, you take in thousands of dollars with very low operating
expenses. Then, when the money runs out, you pull the plug and harvest
the organs. Simple. Just make sure you go for the large hospital
chains that have divested terminal care into separate subsidiaries. But
if you get into individual contracts on specific people, avoid AIDS patients:
they tend to die unexpectedly, and can’t be revived. Stroke victims
and people in a coma are best. Now that we’ve got death with
dignity and assisted suicide outlawed altogether and everyone is an organ
donor, it’s really good business. Even living wills are now invalid,
thanks to our lobbyists and all the free help from the churches.”
“Who are ‘we’ here?” I asked.
“An informal group of socially aware, progressive investors. It has
no name, but we work well together. We’re into nursing homes, as
well. Our nursing homes have higher occupancy rates than the average,
also thanks to efficient lobbying.”
“What’s the connection there?”
“The key success factor is getting into our homes and terminal care
facilities those old people that have the best insurance and the most assets,
plus relatives that can take over the payments when needed. Choosing them
is easy: everybody’s medical and financial information is accessible
through the Internet by hiring the best hackers.
“As you identify your next clients, you need to round them up. For
this we use local police officers whom we pay kickbacks—quite
unofficially, of course. For a beginning, the success rate was poor:
officers tended to give up if a spouse or a caregiver refused to give their
consent. We’ve got that problem solved now.”
“How did you solve it?” I inquired.
“We got a Federal program set up that directs money to the county level
for the purpose of rehabilitating young offenders. Local authorities can
reduce their police budgets by hiring precisely the recruits we need: easily
corruptible thugs. Now objecting caregivers are tasered or shot
point-blank, and the new client is simply carted off. A cop is a cop,
even when he’s lining his own pockets, and you shouldn’t try to
resist him. It’s pretty shocking when such cases get into the news,
but these federally funded guys are practically impossible to fire, once
counties have started accepting the money for them.
”Another law that we had a hand in passing says that, for the good of the
patients, once you’re in one of these facilities, you can never get out
again, as long as you can pay. It’s a fine industry, really.”
“That would take nerves of steel,” I mused. “Anything
less gruesome for a beginner?”
“The peace-of-mind industry is hot, too.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Peace of mind includes anything and everything that makes people feel
good and secure. Business such as insurance; entertainment including
religion; belief systems, motivation, inspiration, fashion, trend bureaus,
cosmetics and cosmetic surgery: in general, having your personal matters in
order and belonging to the right crowd. From an investor’s point of
view, the best branch of this industry is televangelism. With the
depression, a lot of good talkers, like used car salesmen, are out of work and
available to do the delivery, but they need capital for the necessary
investments and connections to find a distribution channel. They
don’t need to know what they’re talking about: all the material is
available from Internet vendors.”
“Wouldn’t that make for rather bland sermons?”
“No,” Mike replied, “it now works fine. The first
attempts at simply computer-generating sermons fell flat, but the vendors
learned fast. They went and bought up tens of thousands of real sermons,
cut them into paragraphs, and classified the paragraphs. That’s
where the science part comes in. The preacher picks a subject that he
knows will appeal to his audience just then, and the software he’s bought
from the vendor assembles a sermon from the right paragraphs in the vendor’s
on-line library. When the preacher has made his own adjustments, the
software checks the language, makes sure there are an optimum number of appeals
for donations, and creates the teleprompter material and the audiovisuals,
including the Bible quotes. You need a call center to take in the money:
that’s cheap, because they’re all located either in India or in
American prisons, and the labor costs are way below minimum wage. I own a
chain of televangelists, and they’ve made me rich.”
The crassness of it all flabbergasted me. “What on earth makes
people want to pay for evangelization by a guy who doesn’t believe in
what he’s saying?”
“We’re not talking evangelization here. The thing that brings
in the big money is hate speech.”
“Hate speech? Isn’t that illegal?”
Unfazed, Mike kept revealing his business secrets. “Someone else
would end up in jail, yes. But at least in the States, anybody who calls
himself a Christian priest or minister is free to rant and rave right up to,
and including, the point of raising a lynch mob. There was a law against
it for a while, but it didn’t last. Totally un-American. The
preacher and his audience are simply practicing their religion, and nobody can
stop them from doing that.
“You just have to choose your targets right. Blacks and Jews are
out; gays and Muslims are in. Political liberals, pro-abortionists, gun
control proponents, and women’s rights activists go like hotcakes.
If you promote concern for Nature over the profits of big business,
you’ll be hounded as a ‘New Age environmentalist,’ and
prayers will be said to protect the nation from your demonic influence.
Anybody who is anti-war, anybody who speaks out for civil rights, anybody who
defends the interests of other nations against those of America (that is, the
interests of America’s billionaires), teachers who teach evolution,
politicians who are in favor of any kind of fiscal transfer of wealth other
than to the rich: we get them all. It’s called moral coercion:
Either you live your life as I say (not as I do, of course!) or I’ll make
you. My televangelists get the people up in arms and put the thumbscrews
on politicians and civil servants, and the tax-free money keeps rolling
in.”
“You mean you target individuals, not just objectionable behavior in
general?”
“Yes, of course,” Mike confirmed. “Old-fashioned
fire-and-brimstone preaching is perceived as challenging the hearers
themselves, and who wants to pay for that? The viewers I’m after
are prepared to help finance campaigns against other people, and it has to be
identifiable individuals, real flesh-and-blood villains who are out there, and
whom they could take a baseball bat to, if it came to that. We get lots
of leads from Conservative Internet vigilantes as well as from right-wing Christian
bloggers and Web forums. My office coordinates teams of on-line
volunteers from the churches who dig the dirt on the targets. When we
have enough material, we distribute the dossiers to the televangelists. I
own a law firm, as well, so I can take the targets for everything they’re
worth and avoid being sued. The process, once it’s set in motion,
doesn’t stop until the target is dead, imprisoned, or destitute and on
the street. You don’t want to be a liberal in the Bible
belt.”
“A modern witch hunt, then,” I concluded with poorly concealed
disgust.
“Yes, only we’re much more efficient than they could be in the old
days, even in their home villages. The Department of Homeland Security
has the data on everyone, and the people we want are already blacklisted
there. Many of our volunteers work in law enforcement and have access to
the Federal data bases. Often we simply pick somebody off the blacklist
who is conveniently located for a preacher who needs a new target. The
Feds say nothing—we’re just doing their dirty work for them.”
“How do you get on the blacklist?” I asked.
“If you’re anything other than a regular credit-dependent consumer,
you’re already in a gray area. Add to that things like no mortgage,
no car loan, or frequent use of cash, and red flags go up. If you read
books other than those sold in supermarkets, you’re dangerous. If
you read a quality newspaper and listen to the Public Broadcasting System,
you’re doubly dangerous. Using public transportation while having
the means to drive shows you’re anti-American. Hinting or asserting
that those who made billions on the wars that resulted from events like Pearl
Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, and 9/11 could in any way have
been involved in organizing or enabling those atrocities gets you directly on
the blacklist.
“All your Internet use is routinely monitored, and anything other than
shopping, local news, sports, and harmless comedy gets analyzed. Any
interests or hobbies beyond church, sports, and entertainment are bad.
Any gaps in your paper trail with the authorities make them really
nervous. Even being unusually healthy and of normal weight is flagged: it
indicates that you may have the wits to see through the advertising that
governs typical consumer behavior. Having contacts with people on the
blacklist will get you blacklisted, too. If you have objections to making
your personal information public, you obviously have something to hide.
If your computer has an unusual operating system that doesn't provide back
doors for market researchers and intelligence agencies, you're a terrorist
suspect. After that, it only takes an overseas phone call or a view of a
news item on a foreign Web site to bring the jack-booted federal thugs to your
door. On the other hand, speeding tickets, petty crimes, and occasional
financial troubles only prove that you’re human, and are never held
against you.
“If you have a problem with the way one per cent of the population
enriches themselves at the expense of the other 99 per cent, you’re
antisocial and a Communist. The quickest way to get on the blacklist
would be to stand on a soap box in front of the White House and recite the Bill
of Rights: it contains statements so dangerous for the oligarchy that runs the
country, that you’d be booked for sedition before you were half-way
through with it.”
I realized that before I left Sydney, I had been entirely harmless according to
Mike’s criteria. I also knew that when I’d return to
Australia, I’d be the perfect candidate for blacklisting.
“What about you, then?” I asked. “You don’t fit
the description of the innocent consumer. Aren’t you worried for
yourself?”
“No, I’m rich enough to be exempt from all that. As you
probably know, the rich don’t even pay taxes. I’d have to do
something to hurt other rich people, like insider trading or setting up a
pyramid scheme, to get myself in trouble. Although I’m only a
multimillionaire, the billionaires tolerate me, because they figure I’m
in the same boat with them.”
The computer was still off-line. I was treated to some more foul language
on primitive Russian ships that didn’t have the most basic services, and
on how Mike would be suing the pants off the ship owner.
That metaphor soon came home to roost. Looking quite ravishing in a silk
negligee, Kathy emerged from her dressing room and put an end to our fiddling
with the computer.
“Mike darling, don’t worry about your money! It’s doing
quite nicely where it is. Money is just like a garden: if you disturb it
too much, the flowers don’t grow as well. We’ve got better
things to do...”
Quite alarmed, I watched her begin her strip-tease performance for her husband,
altogether indifferent to the fact that I was still in their cabin.
Slowly and sensuously, she peeled off her wedding present from Mike, a
morphing, stretching cellular phone in shocking fluorescent pink that she had
kept wrapped around her left forearm. Not waiting for the next garment to
come off, I departed quickly and discreetly, and didn’t see them again
until dinner.
After lunch I went to my cabin to read, as it was too cold to spend much time
on deck. A while later, there was a knock on the door, and young Evelyn
appeared. I asked her to sit down, and wondered what the matter was: she
seemed bored and upset at the same time.
“Did you bring your helmet, Gregory?” she asked.
After giving a fleeting thought to my motorcycle helmet, stored away back home
in Sydney, I realized that she meant the Virtual Reality variety, and told her
that I didn’t own one.
It turned out that Evelyn, too, had lost touch with the rest of the world.
“I only brought along the most basic sex software because I had this
really cool thing going with a guy in Adelaide. It’s been a couple
of days now that my computer has been dead. I guess we’re really
out of touch—my cell phone isn’t working, either. It’ll
be weeks before I can get back on-line again, and I thought maybe you and I
could have hooked up our gear via the wireless interface. All I have is Godzilla
and the Incredible Hulk, and it’s so boring!”
Having seen her out, I reflected on the fact that she hadn’t done the
obvious thing, which would have been to ask me to go to bed with her.
Just as well, because I’d have had to turn her down: in that regard I
wouldn’t have had the excuse that I wasn’t adequately
equipped. It left me wondering what Virtual Reality might have been doing
to the procreation of the species.
I returned to reading about Islandia and John Lang’s very different
problems with his women. Unrequited love aside, Islandian society and the
ethics of her people were a fascinating proposition, and I wondered if anything
similar would be possible in real life and modern times. Before I knew
it, it was nearly six o’clock, and dinner was announced.
A relaxed Mike Davis turned up with his smiling wife, and somehow he seemed a
lot less concerned over his financial isolation. Nevertheless, our
discussion over dinner turned to money, due to the news of a large-scale
corruption scandal that had been uncovered in Europe.
Apart from occasional Siberian radio and TV stations along the coast, and
rather spotty satellite service, our main source of news was digital shortwave
radio. The ship’s public-address system carried the World Service
of the British Broadcasting Corporation several times a day, and now and then
I’d listen in to other stations with Dieter, who had brought along a
pocketsize all-band receiver. It was very stimulating to hear actual
newscasts without commercials and with no mention of entertainment. For
those who wanted to know, there still was access to real information.
The latest newscast began as we sat down for dinner. According to the
BBC, special prosecutors in several European countries had conducted a
concerted investigation into official corruption in high places, and had
uncovered a multitude of improprieties, often connected to the laundering of
criminally obtained money, and to tax evasion by shady enterprisers.
Dishonest officials were to be found everywhere, and bribes had been paid for
turning a blind eye to ongoing criminal activities as well as for favoring
privileged vendors in public procurement programs, just to mention the most
obvious entanglements.
A closer analysis of the problem had showed that drug money was often
involved. It had been known for a long time that many terrorist
organizations financed their activities by producing or selling drugs, and in
spite of long and expensive campaigns, organized crime was still riding high
all over the world, often well connected to the corrupt civil servants.
But now the tune would change. The BBC interviewed the president of the
European Union, who took the opportunity to present his administration’s
final solution to the problems of economic crime plaguing Europe and, indeed,
the whole world.
“The root of the whole crisis is cash. As long as shady deals can
be paid in cash, there’ll be money laundering and corruption, tax evasion
and terrorism. Europe is now ready to give this festering cancer on
society a lethal blow. Our new bar code-based payment system has been
thoroughly tested and will be implemented in all European countries during the
next few months. Corrupt officials will be prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law. And to deny terrorists and criminals their main source
of income, legal drug companies and pharmacies will take over the production
and distribution of all recreational drugs except cannabis. The tobacco
industry and its distribution network will act as the legal supplier of
marijuana and other cannabis products. Cannabis products will be freely
available; other recreational drugs will require a doctor’s prescription
and participation in an approved therapy program. Science has proven that
drug addicts are ill, not delinquent. So let them have their medicine
through legal channels, along with the care they need. Drug prices will
be held as low as possible to discourage illegal suppliers.
“I was critically injured once and I live with pain every day. I
know what pain is like. But there are millions upon millions of
terminally ill people all over the world that are denied pain medication
because of the scattergun approach of this misguided war on drugs we have been
waging. Let them have morphine so they can die with dignity!
“The nations of the world have finally taken the matter of economic
crime into their own hands and will solve it completely. No honest person
has had any reason to use cash for years now. Cash has outlived its
usefulness and has become a public enemy. By abolishing cash, we will force
all payments into the banking system, where automated controls will ensure that
any illegal transactions are reported to the authorities, and that taxes are
collected fairly and consistently.
“Economic crime is directed against the people, and the people will
mercilessly stamp it out. By legalizing drugs, we not only take an
immense amount of cash flow away from criminals, we also make an army of
qualified law enforcement officers available to fight economic crime and other
expressions of disloyalty toward the people and its elected leadership.
The nations of Europe are to be congratulated on their resolve in standing up
to this challenge, and on their determination to end, once and for all, the
scandal of the uncontrolled use of cash!”
The BBC continued with a special program on all the gory details of tax
evasion, forging of currency, money laundering, and corruption, making it
evident that the reform was long overdue. The Japanese prime minister and
the US president read statements in support of the scheme, and made it clear
that they weren’t far behind in implementing it.
“It’s about restoring the conditions for civilized life,” the
American president concluded, announcing, at the same time, the reorganization
of the Drug Enforcement Administration as the Dollar Enforcement
Administration.
“And it’s about time,” Jim Frost said. “Every man
and his dog has been forging currency on color copiers and personal computers
and getting away with it. Laundering dirty money has been as simple as
buying valuables for cash in the name of some phony company, and then reselling
them, plus depositing the proceeds in the bank. Taxes are bound to go
down when all this leeching on decent people is stopped!”
“This campaign may catch some small fish and put some drug dealers
out of business, but the big schemes will go on,” Mike Davis
commented. “The top operators in the criminal world never touch
cash, and their payments can’t be traced or taxed. Big business
will continue its legal lobbying and its clandestine payments to
politicians. Its pawns in government are safe from all those
investigations. This whole show is on for some other purpose.”
“Could you please be a little less cryptic?” Dieter Braun asked
him. “How do those in the know handle their payments?”
“Just an example: they may pretend to play the futures markets.
Futures markets are great for the purpose, because they normally generate big
losses and big gains in a short period of time. Let’s say that A is
to be paid a million dollars by B. A buys a futures contract on some
commodity whose price is likely to go up. B sells an identical contract
in a totally unrelated deal in another part of the world. If
they’re right, they then reverse the deal and A gains the money, while B
loses the same amount.”
“And what if they guess wrong?” Ilya Sergeievich wanted to know.
“These people have deep pockets,” Mike explained. “They
can take a few fluctuations. It’s no worse than flipping a coin
until you encounter a head. They’ll continue, perhaps for stakes
that are twice as high, until the right amount has been transferred. To
the outside world, it looks as if one person has been smart or lucky and the
other has had a bad run. No amount of auditing can hope to be able to
pair such deals and find out who’s been paying whom.”
“And, of course, we aren’t really talking about persons,”
Sheila Johnson added. “All the big fish operate through
corporations; the smart ones even pay their corporate taxes so everything looks
legal.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a government exposes some petty
crime in order to take people’s attention off the large operations
conducted by its friends with its blessing,” Joel noted.
“This happens in Africa all the time; it’s so ingrained that nobody
expects anything else. So what could be the real purpose of this entire
high-level hullabaloo?”
“It can’t be denied that economic crime has been getting a lot too
popular lately,” Dieter said. “Like Gregory’s Japanese
friend pointed out, the public has been taught greed; it can’t be
governed by appealing to values anymore. In this day and age, the logical
solution is to confine all payments to the banking system and apply automated
controls and on-line taxation.
“But there are other aspects to the official supervision of payments.
Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to go for a day without making a payment
of some kind. Without cash, you’ll always pay with something that
has your name or account number on it. Such a payment system always knows
who the payor is, and where the payee is located. What’s more, an
electronic payment transaction isn’t just a transfer of value. It
also records every item we buy and every service we use.
“Once all our payments go through the banking system, there’ll
remain, in the computers of banks and retailers, an unbroken trail of all our
whereabouts and all our consumption. If the government or somebody
else—typically direct marketing companies—wants to analyze our
payments, they can find out not only where we’ve been, but also who else
was there at the same time, and how often we’ve been in the same place
with specific people. That way, they can nip emerging protest movements
in the bud. And they’ll know exactly what we buy and what services
we use. The statistics can tell them what newspapers and books we read,
what TV programs we watch, whom we talk with on the phone; in short, both our
opinions and our tastes, as well as our circle of acquaintances, depending on
who wants to know.”
“There’s yet another side to the matter,” I added.
“Once electronic payment is legal tender, and there’s no cash,
you’ll have to have a bank account in order to be able to buy or sell
anything. If they don’t like you, they can close your
account. You’re likely to stay in line if the alternative is giving
up eating, aren’t you?”
“And do you know what?” Joel said. “A generation ago,
most people in this world wouldn’t have given a hoot about such a change,
because they fed themselves then, and water was available for free. But
now, what you’re saying affects everyone, even those in the poorest
countries. Since the Great Drought destroyed family farming and enabled
big business to buy up all sources of clean water, everybody has had to pay for
their food and water, and this kind of blackmail passes nobody by.”
“If that’s the objective, then they’ll also have to abolish
personal checks,” Mike observed. “Checks can be negotiated
and used much like cash.”
“How will I go about selling something I’ve made, if nobody can pay
me with either cash or checks?” Dana Frost wanted to know.
“I’ve sold a lot of quilts and other handicraft items, and
it’s been a nice extra income for me.”
“Technically speaking, you’ve also been cheating on taxes by not
reporting that income,” her husband reminded her. “With the
new payment system, you can’t do that anymore. You’ll have to
get some kind of software and a bar code reader from your bank, and as you ring
up the payments, sales tax and income tax are deducted then and there!”
“Would you really bother with all that?” Kathy Davis wondered.
“Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler and cheaper to take the quilt or
whatever to a concession store and let them handle the payments?”
“Here we have another important property of the new system,” Dieter
exclaimed. “It can be used to stop trade between individuals and
force everyone to use business as an intermediary. In the process, like
the Japanese monk pointed out, more profits, taxes, and interest are generated,
and more of our wealth will be transferred to the owner and shepherd classes.
Gone are the days when you could hire your neighbor’s teenager to mow
your lawn and give him ten euros for his trouble. Now you have to engage
a landscaping contractor and pay not just the cost plus profits and taxes, but
also health and liability insurance, Social Security, leave loading, and what
have you. Plus a fee to the bank for recording the payment.
Great!”
“I don’t think I like it,” I said, half to myself.
“But I do,” Mike retorted. “It’ll do the economy
a lot of good, like Dieter says. Sure, it may add some complication to
life, but there are efficiencies to this system that will save many losses and
expenses. And if the result is that some crooks get caught, what could be
better?”
He had actually mistaken Dieter’s sarcasm for an endorsement. As I
was pondering this, Jim handed me a plate of cakes and pronounced his verdict
on the new order.
“It looks to me like you’re beat, Gregory. You may like it or
not, but you won’t have much of a choice. You do want to keep
eating, don’t you?”
8. Polar Bears
On the day we had been at sea for two weeks, we rounded Cape Chelyuskin, the
northernmost point in Siberia. Somewhere to starboard was Severnaya
Zemlya, the Northern Land; our position was almost 78 degrees northern
latitude. For more than a week, we had been enjoying the midnight sun, if
you want to call it enjoyable when it doesn’t get dark at night. It
was biting cold: winter seemed to have returned, and the pack ice had been
causing us and the other ships in the convoy a lot of trouble. Finally,
at the point of entering the Kara Sea, we were stuck.
The two oblique icebreakers assigned to our convoy weren’t having any
trouble moving about. They were ingenious, asymmetrically built vessels
that normally could open a channel wide enough for a large freighter or tanker
by traveling sideways through the ice. Now, however, the strength of the
pack ice forced them to move forward like regular ships, so both were needed to
make the channel wide enough. The exceptional cold, combined with the
slow progress of the convoy, caused the channel quickly to compress and freeze
over again, and even though we were only the fourth vessel in line, the sea had
already frozen around us.
“The Kapitan Fedosov may be a strong ship, but she’s no
icebreaker,” Joel told me as we were surveying the ice. “Our
computerized navigation system sees us through ice that’s on the move,
but here, it’s frozen solid. We’ll wait and see what the
icebreakers will do.”
Joel was watching something through his binoculars, and presently, he handed
them to me and told me where to look. I searched for whatever it was, and
then I spotted something that moved. A polar bear had caught a seal by
pulling it out of its breathing hole, and had just begun eating his
catch. The seal still looked intact, as if it had been alive. It
was the first seal I had ever seen outside a zoo. Naturally, it also was
my first glimpse of a wild polar bear.
“Take a good look,” Joel said, when I told him this. “It
may well be both the first and the last wild seal and polar bear you’ll
ever see. The Arctic Ocean is the only water in the world where there
still are some seals left—the other oceans have been overfished and
polluted, and all their marine mammals are extinct. Now the Japanese are
talking about fishing from nuclear submarines under the Polar icecap, so soon
there’ll be no fish left for these seals, either. And when the
seals go, so will the polar bears.”
A little later, I spotted another bear, no doubt on the lookout for prey.
I would have liked to see a bear cub, and asked Joel if there were any about.
“The cubs are still with their mothers in and around their winter lairs
on the shore. They wouldn’t show themselves while we’re here:
we make too much noise. A few months from now, we’ll be able to see
them on the ice, if we’re lucky.”
To port, we could see the Taimyr Peninsula. There were no trees, and the
tundra was covered in snow. The first mate, a Russian officer, told me
that there had never been any trees this far north. But further south,
Siberia had used to be covered by a nearly unbroken boreal forest. It was
now largely gone, due to clearcutting by foreign corporations, invited by
incompetent or corrupt local officials following the disintegration of the
Soviet Union. Those marauders had been allowed to get away with just
devastating the forests and carrying off the timber, although they had
committed themselves to comprehensive forest management programs.
“Too many mistakes were made around the turn of the century,” the
mate concluded. “Maybe Russia could have become a democracy if
somehow we could have produced officials capable of something more than just
taking bribes and obeying orders. We should have pulled ourselves up by
our bootstraps, but, evidently, it was asking too much. In the end, the
secret services won, and we’re again governed like we’re used to
being governed. You’ll have to remember that Russia has never had
anything other than autocratic rule during all of her thousand-year history,
except for brief experiments with democracy that have all led to
failure.”
“But, at least, Russians are now allowed to travel, and there
aren’t any Gulags,” I observed.
“The Communists were paranoid, and wasted their strength on trying to
spread their system over the world. In one sense, the West should be more
worried about today’s Russia than they were about the late Soviet
Union. This government is pragmatic and seeks only what’s in
Russia’s interest. We don’t subsidize anybody’s
revolutions or bankrupt economies like the Soviets did: all our efforts are
directed toward strengthening Russia. We’ll accept any foreign
investments and joint ventures if they contribute to that goal. And, like
Henry Kissinger pointed out long ago, a strong Russia has always tended to
retake her empire, even if she’s lost it during periods of
weakness.”
“But today, as I see it, buffer states to the west would be a useless
precaution,” Joel objected. “The Western European powers
tried to invade Russia four times during the past three centuries, and
they’ve realized that it can’t be done. They won’t try
again: the only possible attack against Russia would come straight down from
space, as intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia, too, knows that
her former European satellites are more useful to her as free trading partners
and gateways to the EU than as subjugated and uncooperative vassals.
We’ve seen that Russia’s main efforts at reestablishing her empire
have been directed south and east. I think that any further Russian
expansion will go south, not west.”
At that we left it: the icebreakers were back in action around us, and we were
on the move again. Our course turned to the southwest, and the wind
turned, too; during the next days, spring returned, and our speed settled at
the seven to eight knots required for keeping our timetable. The
loneliness of the East Siberian and Laptev Seas was only a memory as we entered
the bustling oil and gas fields of the Kara Sea and the Yamal peninsula.
Two 120,000 ton oil tankers joined our convoy, and with one and a half days to
go, we passed south of Novaya Zemlya and entered the largely ice-free Barents
Sea.
Inevitably, our last dinner discussion on board the Kapitan Fedosov
returned to Europe and the payment system we had talked about on several
occasions before.
Ilya Sergeievich wondered aloud what it was with the European leader that had
made him so popular.
“I think he’s creepy! He’s so sly, and they say he has
cold-bloodedly eliminated some of his opponents.”
Dana Frost agreed, and thought she knew how people had been conditioned to be
able to admire somebody like that.
“Remember, most people get their values from TV these days.
I’ve always liked watching old movies, and I think there was a kind of
turning point at some time in the sixties or seventies. Until then, the
hero was always a good guy. Then somebody started introducing new values.
“The first really different programs were the massive TV serials that
began with Dallas and Dynasty. The drama those serials depicted seemed
larger than life because of the huge personal business interests
involved. But their main attraction lay in their controversial lead
characters, J. R. Ewing and Alexis Colby. These imagined individuals coined
a new concept in the public mind: the admired son of a bitch.
“When Dallas was new, viewers reacted as could then be expected.
They thought J. R. was a creep. They found him revolting. They
positively hated him. But Dallas was formidable entertainment, and people
kept on watching it. Then came Dynasty and all the other takeoffs from
Dallas, and soon the familiar lead character was a household concept.
Eventually, there was no resentment: the strong leader who gets stronger and
wealthier by immoral means and by walking all over other people had turned into
a hero.
“Action drama developed the same way. Before The Seekers, John
Wayne was always a gentleman, and when right had won over wrong, he rode off
into the sunset with no reward and no resentment. But your typical
hard-core cop in the movies of the eighties and onwards isn’t
sympathetic, not by a long shot. He kills and maims with vengeance
written all over his face. He drives home the idea that hate and violence
are legitimate means of solving problems, especially when you happen to be on
the right side of the law. It seems that an entire branch of the
entertainment industry has dedicated itself to getting us accustomed to seeing
the antihero replace the old-fashioned, sympathetic, unselfish, true
hero. I think this is the main reason people can now accept, even idolize
somebody like the Leader.”
“There was a similar development in comedy, as well,” Dieter Braun
remarked. “Modern comedians have nothing in common with true clowns
and great performers such as the heroes of the silent movie.
Today’s comedy is removed from reality into a studio environment packed
with one-liners and canned laughter. It concerns itself not with exposing
human weakness as comedy used to do, but with excusing it. To make people
laugh, the key ingredient is insincerity.”
Soon we got back to talking about the payment system. Mike Davis wanted
to know what I’d be doing for money now that I’d be having no more
free meals on board, and, reluctantly, I had to admit that I didn’t know.
“Maybe I’ll go back to Australia, buy myself a piece of land
somewhere, and grow my own food,” I said, full of doubts.
Jim Frost didn’t think I’d make it, either.
“Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, gave an apt description of life in the
state of nature: ‘Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
Today it’s harder than ever to wrench a living from the soil, because so
much of it has blown away. The temperate zone has become hotter than it
was until the end of the last century, and has suffered a long period of
alternating floods and droughts, and with the droughts, wildfires. The
result is that hardly any traditional farms remain.”
“I think it’s strange, though,” Sheila Johnson commented,
“that, once more, we’re so often solitary, just like Hobbes’s
savages. There aren’t that many people living in traditional
families anymore.”
Dieter attempted an explanation.
“We’ve learned that the task of the masses today is to borrow,
spend, and consume. Because of all the automation we have access to,
it’s no longer essential that everybody works. Earlier, while the
masses had to be kept working in order to produce wealth, the family truly was
the cornerstone of society, because it was a functioning unit of production,
and it kept people responsible and industrious. In fact, the traditional
way of living always implied a local economic structure that extended far
beyond the core family: a clan or a village comprised a number of professions,
and had a considerable degree of self-sufficiency. Further, it
didn’t borrow outside its own boundaries, and its members traded goods
and services without using money: no taxes, interest, or profits could be
extracted from its internal trading.
“Big business, with the enthusiastic support of corrupt civil society, is
systematically eradicating every last trace of this traditional
self-sufficiency. Children spend half their waking hours on schoolwork
designed to turn them into specialized consumers with no skills apart from
their professions; the other half is taken up by commercialized
entertainment. They learn little from their busy, disinterested
parents. They learn nothing from their grandparents, disposed of, as
useless, in nursing homes. Big business has purloined the interpersonal
space that always served to pass on tradition: we’ve been rendered
ignorant of everything our forebears knew, robbed of the accumulated wisdom of
thousands of generations. We only know how to use what business has to
sell us, and some more to handle the side effects.
“Now that the most important objective of society is to maximize
consumption, families are a rather undesirable impediment. A family keeps
itself occupied; its members can specialize and satisfy some of its needs by
producing goods and services themselves, or by cooking their own food.
It’s a sad fact that the interests of business are better served by a
population of lonely people. The single spend more time out of the home,
they buy more just to console themselves, and they can’t combine
complementing skills. So they spend more money than those who are members
of a family, clan, or village living together. The disappearance of the
family is very much in the interest of business; consequently, mass media have
long since given up portraying the traditional family as something inherently
better or more desirable than being single or divorced, or cohabiting with
persons of the same or opposite sex. It’s called ‘political
correctness’; what it really is, of course, is conditioning the public to
place itself at the mercy of business.”
Kathy Davis had heard what she wanted to hear, and got hold of her husband to
give him a big squeeze.
“See, Mike, I told you it was going to be better for us to be
married! Ooooh, I love my hubby!”
I, too, had heard something I liked.
“There are still a lot of people keeping up their skills in the old
crafts. What we need is that enough of them get together with traditional
farmers in places where there’s still soil and water, and form local
communities that are to some extent self-sufficient. That’ll be a
good beginning. I can’t be the only person in this world who
objects to being marked with a bar code!”
The one property of the new payment system that I had found most offensive was
that the identifying bar code was to be applied to each person’s
skin. This was something I couldn’t abide by: it stirred up some
kind of deep, ancient revulsion in my soul. I realized, though, that I
wasn’t going to find much sympathy for this feeling among the others: a
generation so casual about tattoos and piercing wasn’t likely to take
exception to a simple number added somewhere on their skin.
“You’ll need access to some kind of money, though,” Ilya
Sergeievich said. “One of the worst difficulties we had after the
fall of the Soviet Union was the lack of money. Inflation was so rapid
that money was practically useless. People did a lot of bartering, but it
isn’t enough to get an economy going.”
Dieter thought for a while, and agreed.
“Prosperity only comes about by having a working payment system.
Without it, everyone is on their own, more or less. But the governments
of this world may well abolish cash and checks and still fail to do away with
money as we’ve known it. They can’t take away the coins
people have hoarded. Paper money is worth something only as long as the
central banks say so, but coins will remain usable if people want to use
them. After the governments withdraw all the coins they can get their
hands on, the remaining coins should, in fact, go up in value.”
“People have used seashells and wampum as money, too,” Sheila
added. “Just about any object that’s hard to forge can be
used as money. I can think of stamps and gambling tokens, for
example. Gambling tokens even have a casino backing them up, willing to redeem
them just like the central banks guarantee their money.”
So there was hope. I felt I had support from my fellow passengers, even
though they didn’t seem to share my reservations about the new payment
system. Before we parted for the night, Dieter gave me his address and
asked me to contact him when I came to Germany. On the morrow, we’d
be approaching Murmansk, and breakfast would be our last time together.
The others were going to take the train to St. Petersburg, while I
intended to hitch a ride to Helsinki, Finland.
9. Land of the Midnight Sun
The ship’s Russian steward had promised to set me up with a driver who
would take me to Helsinki. While the Kapitan Fedosov would take a few
days to unload her cargo of plastic pellets and take on another of nickel ore,
the container ships that had arrived with us were already half empty.
Special tractors were scurrying in and out of their huge forward and aft gates,
towing container-laden trailers to be attached to waiting long-haul trucks,
while cranes were lifting the containers that had been stowed on the
ships’ decks onto railroad cars at the quayside.
The steward took me to the harbor office of a Finnish trucking agency, and
quickly found me a driver. As I had expected, there was a trucker who
needed a passenger, just for looks. The road safety rules required each
truck to have two drivers, while the old school of trucker still liked to go it
alone. So a hitchhiker was always welcome.
Following a few formalities, we were on our way. The road was too narrow
for heavy traffic, but my trucker didn’t let this disturb him in the
least. He was a friendly type who understood little English, and said
less: his radio seemed sufficient to keep him entertained. The only
disruption to our trip came on the Finnish border, where the entire truck was
X-rayed for undeclared goods. Although the operation took less than three
minutes, the driver seemed to feel that he had to make up for the lost time by
driving faster. Entering Finland, I also entered the European Union, and
didn’t expect to have to show my passport again until I left the European
mainland. By noon we were in Ivalo in northern Finland, and after a
hearty meal we continued south on a much better road.
Jukka, my driver, used the opportunity to increase his speed further.
When we stopped for dinner, he logged himself out of the truck’s computer
cum trip recorder, and after dinner, he moved the driver’s license that
read “Jukka” to another pocket, replacing it with one that read
“Pekka,” but still showed the same portrait. Then he logged
himself in again as Pekka and continued on his neck-breaking journey.
This was his routine, and the truck’s log would show that everything was
legal and no limits on working hours had been exceeded. Jukka/Pekka was a
bit apologetic as he tried to explain his system: it kept him in business, and
he had a family to support. Had he actually had to hire a co-driver, he
wouldn’t have stayed competitive with large trucking companies.
We arrived at the land transportation center in the northern outskirts of
Helsinki, the Finnish capital, around ten o’clock at night. Jukka
was a trucker of the old school alright: he had covered
After three weeks at sea, it was strange to have to pay attention to what day
it was. Luck had it that the next day was a Friday in early June: Antero,
my host, would be free for the weekend by four that afternoon. I called
him at work and set a time and a place for our meeting. Then I was free
to tour Helsinki, and made the best possible use of my day, visiting the
National Museum, Finlandia Hall, the Opera building, a couple of churches, and
the Suomenlinna fortress museum, set on a number of islands at the entrance of
the harbor. The Gibraltar of the North, it had been called; it had never
been taken, just betrayed once, in its only significant battle. Or
perhaps the renegade commander had been a pacifist—it was hard to tell.
Antero, or Andy, as I called him, was an old mate from Australia. He had
been one of those would-be immigrants who’d stay in Australia for a few
years and then decide it wasn’t for them. I had once been an intern
at a yacht marina on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, and Andy had been my
foreman. Together, we had fixed up many a boat and done many a test run
on the river. We’d also seen some real action during a bush fire
that had swept through the Ku-Ring-Gai National Park and very nearly
overwhelmed the marina: it had jumped the river upstream and we were surrounded
by flames on all sides. The firefighters had their hands full elsewhere;
it was up to the marina staff to protect the facilities and the
customers’ boats. This we succeeded in doing in the end, with the
aid of some good firefighting equipment and an ample supply of water.
Thus, Andy and I were close friends, and meeting him was like a
homecoming. He still worked at sea, as the engineer of a tugboat in the
Helsinki harbor, but for my sake he was now taking two weeks of his summer
vacation. After doing some shopping for supplies, we set out in
Andy’s car to drive to his home, an old house some forty miles out of
town, on an island in the Gulf of Finland. We took the freeway east,
going toward Porvoo, and turned off south. We crossed a long, high bridge
that led to the island, and drove for nearly half an hour on a narrow road that
didn’t seem to have any straight portions. Just shy of the far end
of the island we turned off into a private road, and finally into Andy’s
driveway.
The house was a rather small timber building with a gambrel roof and a glass
veranda. To one side of the front yard was a workshop, to the other an
old shack that Andy called the playhouse: he had played there as a child.
Its other use was as a summer guest house for children of visiting
relatives—Andy had none of his own, as he was a bachelor. The
seashore was just a few steps away, with a pier and a boathouse, and further
on, a sauna, the inevitable adjunct to every Finnish dwelling. Most Finns
are regular users of an electrically heated sauna in their home or apartment,
or in the basement of their apartment block, but Andy’s sauna was the
real thing, a low, squat log cabin ten steps from the water’s edge, with
wood heating and a sitting room that served as a summer guest room for visiting
relatives.
Andy turned on the garden hose and filled up the big boiler in the washing room
of the sauna. Then we lit fires under the boiler and in the heater in the
steam room, and waited until the draft was good enough to close the
doors. Only after seeing to this necessary preparation for the focal
point of Finnish hospitality, the sauna bath, were we free to tour the rest of
the property and view the house.
The shoreline next to the sauna was a jumble of granite rocks and boulders
forming a small point and bay at the tip of the larger peninsula where
Andy’s place was situated. The sun was in the west, but far from
down: it was about seven, and sunset would be at about half past ten. The
view of the bay and the surrounding islands was beautiful; the Finnish
archipelago with its 10,000 islands is a summer paradise for a considerable
number of Finnish families. The same Ice Age glacier that carved out the
archipelago also left some 60,000 lakes, on the shores and islands of which the
rest of the nation’s half million summer homes are located.
We passed several other houses and greeted their inhabitants, all Andy’s
relatives; there were no fences to demarcate the different plots of land.
Finally, we entered Andy’s home, which I found rustic and cozy. My
room was upstairs, and I was soon installed. Having added wood to the
fires in the sauna a couple of times, we eventually thought it hot enough, and
proceeded to enjoy our steam bath, flagellating ourselves and each
other’s backs with freshly picked bunches of young, soft, fragrant birch
leaves. Then followed the mandatory dip in the sea, clean and still very
cold this early in the season, but immensely refreshing, leaving my skin
tingling in the weirdest way.
Afterwards, wrapped in curiously rough linen towels, we lit a fire in the open
fireplace of the sauna sitting room, and ate like Finns, grilling delicious
sausages on the glowing embers, and drinking cold, tasty Finnish beer—to
replace the water lost by sweating, as Andy pointed out, winking an eye.
The sun was low in the northwest, shining in through the windows of the sitting
room, and life was just about as pleasant and peaceful as it gets.
“So, tell me: what brings you here?” Andy inquired. Like most
Finns, he didn’t lightly delve into anybody’s personal matters, but
he knew that as his friend, I’d welcome his interest.
“I’ve gone walkabout!”
Andy was well acquainted with this Australian expression: it denotes the urge
of Australian Aborigines to go wandering off on their own every so often,
especially when work gets to be boring.
“Like so many Australians, I want to see the world, and living so far
away from everything, we usually take at least a year before we return.”
“You sure picked a strange time to do it,” Andy said.
“All these new European laws have us wondering what the world is coming
to. I’m not so sure I’d care to go traveling anywhere until
we know what it’s all about. Like this latest thing, taking away
cash altogether. You’d think it would be more important to make
sure everybody has clean drinking water! After those two comet fragments
fell down and poisoned so much of the world’s drinking water, ensuring
decent living conditions should be the European Union’s first
priority.”
Being the one who had decided to do the traveling, I couldn’t allow
myself to be as pessimistic as that. However, hoping to compare notes on
the new payment system, I gave Andy a brief account of my discussions about the
cash question with my fellow travelers on board the Kapitan Fedosov, and found,
to my surprise, that he was quite familiar with our conclusions.
“Here in Finland, we’ve had lots of time to think about those
things. This is where the new payment system was tried out over the past
couple of years. Since the 1940s, we’ve had the most advanced
payment system anywhere: as an example, we’ve never used personal checks
to pay bills. We hardly use cash anymore, either; not even the banks keep
a lot of cash on hand. And it’s true that eliminating cash cuts
down on crime: our rate of bank robberies and muggings has gone down to almost
nothing. Our bankcards and bank transfer forms have bar codes on them,
and it’s all very efficient. In place of small change, we use smart
cards. But in this country, putting the bar code on your skin rather than
using a card is optional, and anyone who wants to use cash, is willing to pay
the extra charge for it, and is prepared to explain to the tax office where he
got it, is free to do so.”
“Would you say, then, that the European scheme is a good one?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Andy replied. “In
Scandinavia, we have strict privacy laws, but it doesn’t seem that this
current European Presidency cares at all about such restrictions. Without
guaranteed privacy, what to us is just an efficient payment system becomes a
tool of tyranny, especially when cash is abolished and having a bar code on
your skin is made mandatory. And legalizing drugs just so they can use
the drug police to enforce compliance is crazy. If those laws are forced
on Finland and she doesn’t leave the European Union to avoid them, I
think there’ll be an uprising of some kind here.”
“Are all Finns against the new laws? If so, leaving the EU would be
the obvious thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
Andy admitted to a slight exaggeration.
“No, most people don’t think it would be much of a change if the
system became mandatory. I guess it takes a certain kind of mentality to
see the danger. You have to realize that in this country, like in the
rest of continental Europe, people are used to being written up in church or
government data files. We’ve been keeping accurate records of
everybody for the past millennium. Now, after generations of stable,
democratic government, only a few people understand that those files, apart
from being a necessary tool of our enlightened social policy, also could be
used to control everybody, just by ignoring the laws that now protect our
privacy. Those few deviates—I’m one of them—try to
point out that right through human history, it has never yet happened that a
tool of tyranny, once developed, hasn’t been used. Why should this
one be an exception?”
“Europe isn’t alone in keeping track of her citizens,” I pointed
out. “I’m sure the nations on other continents have their act
together, as well. Even countries like Britain, Australia, and the US,
where privacy activists managed to avert a regular national ID card scheme the
longest, have other tools doing the same job.”
“Quite so. But now surveillance is being taken to a new level
altogether. We’re talking about being permanently marked with a bar
code that shows your national ID number, and we know that scanners for such
codes can be installed anywhere. If they want to, they can keep track of
you wherever you go, in addition to knowing your location every time you pay
for something.”
I, too, knew about the long-distance bar code scanners that could pick out a
marker at tens of feet away. Originally, this type of scanner was
developed for scientific use in the Antarctic, where a method was needed to
keep track of individual penguins in order to map their behavior. The
birds were labeled with a bar code on their beaks, and as they passed along
their well-established paths on their way between their colonies and the sea,
they were weighed and timed. The marking gave scientists the opportunity
to recognize the individual birds, which would have been difficult without
computerized help, since all penguins of a certain species look very much
alike. As a result of this demanding beginning, the long-distance
scanners entered the commercial market as very mature, rugged products that
would work at temperatures down to -100ºF and in driving snow, if needed.
“What’s this marking like?” I asked. “Will we all
look like a piece of merchandise with a black bar code all over our
faces?”
“Certainly not!” Andy had himself a good laugh.
“You’re talking about consumers, vain people who have to be kept
happy with their looks. The bar code is invisible to the naked eye: the
scanners use infrared light. It’s a simple laser tattoo; you
don’t feel a thing when it’s put on your right hand. They
figured most people are right-handed, and holding out your hand was the natural
thing to do at the checkout. The left-handed lost out as usual: since the
code is invisible, its location must be standardized.”
“What about those who don’t have a right hand? Or no hands at
all?”
“There’s one alternative location for those who don’t have a
right hand. It had to be one everybody is sure to have, because you
can’t leave checkout clerks and bank tellers guessing and looking all
over a person. They picked the forehead because it is rarely covered by
clothing; hair and makeup don’t bother the scanners. If you
don’t have a forehead you don’t need a payment system identifier
anymore...”
“Why can’t we keep on using plastic cards? They’ve been
working well for a long time!”
“Remember,” Andy answered, “the whole idea of the new system
is that it’s going to be mandatory for everybody. Electronic
payment will be legal tender, and the only kind. Plastic cards were
designed to be used by an elite, those who have an interest in getting them and
are competent to use them. They aren’t issued to criminals, the
homeless, children, or the mentally handicapped. If you were opposed to
the new system and wanted to be exempt, all you’d need to do would be to
claim that you can’t keep track of a card or its Personal Identification
Number. Also, cards can be lost and stolen, and there’s a lot of
card fraud going on. All these problems can be solved by attaching the
identifier to the person so it can’t be removed. It takes only one
more principle to make this a nearly unbreakable system.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s the simple requirement that everybody is to be marked.
That way, every person will have an official identifier. Its location is
known, even though you can’t see it, and changing or removing it would be
very difficult. You won’t have to contend with a minority of
unmarked people who might amuse themselves by stamping their hands with forged
identifiers in order to defraud someone else. Once everybody is marked,
the system is supposed to be so foolproof that, in staffed environments like at
checkouts, you won’t even need a PIN number anymore, so they’ll
actually be able to include both the incompetent and the uncooperative.
That’s where the new European system differs from the pilot system we
have here, and it makes all the difference in the world.”
”I can pay for a lot of things with my cell phone,” I
observed. “That payment method is widespread and reliable.
Why didn’t they choose it instead?”
“For a very simple reason,” Andy answered. “A phone is
too easy to separate from its owner. Moreover, the new system will be
mandatory: you can’t mandate a phone for every person in the world.
Also, the availability of phone-based payment depends on too many
parties—retailers, banks, network operators, phone manufacturers, and so
on—all of which make profitability a condition for their
participation. It’s a multi-billion dollar business, and, as long
as it serves a purpose and generates profits, it’ll continue to
exist—with the added requirement that the owner has to identify him or
herself to his or her phone for every payment, by scanning his or her bar
code. But it can’t be made legal tender.”
“What about biometrics like fingerprint or iris recognition, or a
computer chip under the skin?” I inquired.
“Those are good ID systems, but they can’t be made mandatory.
Biometric methods are fine for limited-scale applications like access control
and on-line banking, but they would be hopelessly slow and expensive in a
universal payment system, where all the billions of people of the world have to
be uniquely identified to a high-transaction volume system, even when away from
their normal shopping environment. An implanted chip can be removed:
muggers would go around armed with scalpels, and dissidents would cut them out
on their own. They’re also a cancer risk, so, as tumors and, say,
allergies would develop, part of the population would have their chips removed
and would lose their ability to pay. Others would be getting worried and
causing trouble. Implanted chips are fine for pets, but for people
they’re usable only in limited applications where the bearer has an
interest in getting the chip. The bar code costs practically nothing to
apply, and all the equipment needed is already installed in both retail and
finance. The laser markers are cheap variations on industrial
equipment. The existing bar code scanners are sensitive enough to
determine that the ID code is read off living skin at body temperature, and
that there’s blood glucose in the tissue below. Only a software update
was needed to add those checks.”
I could see a problem, however.
“This system seems to work much like a debit card or ATM card,
doesn’t it? Well, those cards always have a daily withdrawal limit,
so if you’re paying more than that limit, you have to use a credit card
or a check, or get the cash from the bank. If you take away cash and
checks, and perhaps credit cards too, you still have to have a way to make
larger payments.”
“That withdrawal limit came about when ATMs were off-line, to minimize
overdrafts, and also to make sure the machines didn’t run out of cash too
soon. Nowadays, all point-of-sale payment terminals are on-line to your
bank, and there’s nothing to keep you from spending all you’ve got
plus all you can borrow, as long as we know for sure who you are.
That’s the beauty of an active identifier, a number tattooed on your skin
and known to be genuine. The computers don’t have to go through a
set of security checks to verify an identity tendered by you, which may or may
not be your true identity. Instead, your mark tells them positively who
you are, just like the license tag on a car.
“What happens when we abolish plastic cards is that we shift from the
American principle of identifying a business relationship, using a plastic card
that can be lost or forged, to the European idea of identifying a person, which
allows us to grant the person all the privileges they’re entitled to
without worrying about misidentification and card fraud. Americans might
miss their plastic card accordions, of course!”
“What about a backup system?” I inquired. “With cash
and imprintable plastic cards, and with checks, you can always complete a
transaction manually, if you lose power or if something isn’t
machine-readable. How do you sell stuff where there’s no electricity?”
Andy had this one figured out, too. “Every shop will have a simple
battery-powered blacklight as a backup, or as the main system where
there’s no automation. In ultraviolet light, you can read off the
code in clear, just like you can read it in regular light on every product
package if the scanner doesn’t pick it up. Nothing like manual
backup!”
“That’s a lot of analysis all at once,” I marveled.
“How did you figure all this out?”
“My bank manager is one of those opposed to the new system,” Andy answered.
“We’ve had many long discussions about it. If the mark is
made mandatory, a lot of people, including us, will kick up a stink in the
courts, and we simply won’t take it. There’s just one very
important thing we have to do, and it’s kind of curious to get such
advice from your bank manager. We have to make sure all our debts are
paid off before the new system becomes compulsory. That way, the banks
don’t have the option of calling in our loans to help persuade us to take
the mark.”
10. Self-sufficiency
The next morning, Andy and I got up bright and early and spent an hour working
the garden. Most of Andy’s land was either forest or rocky heath,
but there was a small, rather shady spot where he had some berry bushes
growing, and next to them he had planted his carrots, radishes, parsley, and
dill.
“Never mind this,” Andy said. “This little kitchen
garden is here just to keep this plot from growing over. I’ll show
you where I’ll be getting my food.”
Off we drove, along the curving main road of the island, across the bridge, and
almost all the way back to the freeway. After a mile on another narrow,
winding road, we came to what must once have been a stately home. The
manor was built of timber and dated from the nineteenth century.
Everything told of class and ancient traditions. This far north, the
topsoil remained intact. The south of Finland had been spared forest
fires, as most forests were private and small, and as enough water remained in the
many lakes and rivers, in spite of low water levels during droughts.
Also, clearcutting was only practiced in large forests, mostly up north.
So the trees remained, protecting the topsoil.
The master of the house came out to greet us, and Andy introduced us to each
other. Ingmar was a distinctly rotund-looking gentleman around
fifty. His figure was round, his face was round, and his hands were round
and chubby. A handlebar mustache completed his appearance. He spoke
fluent English with a strong Swedish accent: he belonged to the
Swedish-speaking minority living along the Baltic coastline of Finland.
His sense of humor and his love for puns and wit were never far from the
surface. It turned out that he had worked in the telecommunications
industry for nearly thirty years, while keeping his inherited estate going on
the side, but this year he had quit his job in order to work the farm
full-time. Ingmar gave me a quick orientation of his business.
“After Finland joined the European Union, farming rapidly declined.
The EU Common Agricultural Policy directs farm subsidies mainly to large farms
run by agribusiness, with the aim of eliminating family farming and making the
land available to big corporations. Many Finnish farmers had to give
up. In the north of the country, where some meager special subsidies
remained, mostly dairy farms survived. I was lucky: I had my job and
didn’t have to make the farm pay every year, so I managed to keep it
going. Now food prices are higher than they’ve been in a century,
and farming is again profitable. Many farms have been started up anew
here, and locally grown food is quite competitive. But the new payment
system is really giving us a boost, because there are so many people who want
to bypass it and deal directly with a grower.
“We now run the place as a community supported farm. It’s an
idea that’s been tried out in the States and Sweden for many years.
A number of families commit themselves to buying their food here, as a kind of
subscription, and we grow it for them to order, with the advantage of knowing
that we can sell everything we produce. To keep costs down, all our
customers come here and work whenever they can. Today is such a day; in a
while, we’ll have dozens of people here.”
Andy was one of Ingmar’s clients, of course. We were early, and
Ingmar took us for a ride in his four-wheel-drive. The estate bordered on
a river, with another estate, larger than Ingmar’s place, on the opposite
shore. On the river’s edge, naturally, was a sauna. There
were over two hundred acres of fields and a similar area of forest, housing for
several families, a stable for horses, and barns full of pigs and
chickens. Ingmar hadn’t kept cattle so far, although the old barns
could have accommodated quite a number: it would have been too much work while
he had farmed only part-time.
With all those customers willing to pitch in, Ingmar was able to grow his
produce organically, using no chemicals. The chickens roamed free in a
fenced run: no battery hens there. To save on fuel costs, he had acquired
several draft horses and had fixed up the old horse-drawn farm machinery that
neither he nor his father had bothered to get rid of: now he had lots of people
to operate it. He still had his tractors, as well, and kept them in good
nick, but thinking of a time when his customers would be unable to pay him with
money, since they’d be unmarked, he wanted to make sure he could keep his
cash expenses to a minimum.
“Inevitably, that goal will require us to keep dairy cows, so we’ll
get enough manure and won’t have to buy fertilizer,” Ingmar pointed
out. “We’ll have to get hold of some top-class cows, and hire
some permanent staff. Presently, I’m looking into ways of employing
somebody without paying their full wages as money.”
When we got back to the farmyard, it was getting crowded with people:
Ingmar’s family and customers were getting their tools ready, bridling
horses, and exchanging gossip. While Ingmar went to work making sure
everybody knew what to do, Andy and I joined the throng and got ourselves rakes
and pitchforks. It was an early summer, and some of the hay had been
mowed. During the morning, we followed a horse-drawn hay rake and made
haystack upon haystack, and got a few blisters on our hands in the bargain.
After lunch, I got reacquainted, after all those years, with gardening without
herbicides. If you don’t want to spray poison on your garden, nor
spend money on propane gas to singe the weeds, you have to pull them.
It’s backbreaking work, but it leaves a very nice-looking result. I
also found out what you do to avoid using pesticides: you combine every crop
with the right companion plants. The companion plants either repel the
bugs or taste better to them than the food plants, and the latter stay healthy.
At the end of the day, Ingmar and his wife Ritva asked Andy and me to stay for
dinner and sauna. Ritva was Finnish-speaking, and their children were
growing up bilingual, something I understood was not uncommon in the coastal
areas of the country. They had both taken a little longer—a few
months to a year—to begin talking than other children, but now they were
perfectly fluent in both languages, apparently without any trace of an accent
in either. The trick, Ingmar said, was to be totally consistent about
speaking your own language to the child, even if you switched languages for
others, including your spouse.
Self-sufficiency was on everybody’s mind here, and Ingmar’s family
had spent the past two years making intense preparations. Where in earlier
days the farm had grown just a couple of crops, now, between them and their
neighbors, they produced nearly every kind of food plant that would grow in
Finland. The pigs were new, too; chickens and sheep they had always
kept. By the river, there was a small-scale fish farm that had been
restocked after the comet-induced toxicity of the water had cleared. It
was only logical that our dinner consisted entirely of homegrown food.
Dessert was a sweet pudding made of berries, which made me wonder what they’d
be using for sweetening: sugar cane grows only in hot climates. Ritva
pointed out that they could grow sugar beets instead. Sugar beets grow
well in Finland, although their cultivation is more costly than further
south. When, early this century, the EU caved in to pressure from the
multinationals and the World Trade Organization, and allowed the importation of
some cane sugar from plantations in developing countries, it sacrificed the
less economical sugar beet production in the Nordic countries in order to
protect the large-scale growers in Central Europe. Now, with
community-supported agriculture, independent of subsidies, Ritva and Ingmar
could grow anything they and their clients wanted. Their neighbor across
the river still had the equipment needed to produce sugar and molasses from the
beets. There also was honey, fruit, and berries.
“While Ingmar was fixing up his old farm machinery, I spent a lot of time
going through the attic,” she continued. “Apparently this
family has never thrown anything away! I found all these old cookbooks,
guides, and manuals from the Second World War, when the whole nation had to
live mostly from the foods that could be produced here. I also found
books on canning and preserving, on organic gardening, and on keeping your
family and animals healthy. A place like this, of course, has an immense
root cellar, and we can use all the methods from those old books just like they
were used then.”
“In those days there was no refrigeration, but they knew how to keep all their
foods from spoiling, anyway,” Ingmar added. “By using those
old methods, we can cut down our power consumption considerably. But
we’re not going to give up using electricity altogether, since
we’ll be running a dairy farm. The milk has to be refrigerated, or
it can’t be sold.”
“You’ll need money, then,” I said, “unless you can
trade milk for electricity.”
“That’s all taken care of!” Ingmar had that
characteristic, cunning look. “We make our own! About a
kilometer up the river, there’s a small hydroelectric power plant.
Last year, the power company was about to retire it, but our neighbors, on
whose land it sits, found out and offered to buy it. In the end, we
shared the cost with them, and it was quite affordable. The plant can
support several hundred homes if their owners make an effort to conserve
energy, so now all our and our neighbors’ customers living in the area
buy the electricity we produce, delivered via the national grid. We
deliver more electricity than we sell, so the local power company gets
compensated for the distribution costs. For now, our customers pay us
with money, but we’ll figure out another method when it becomes
necessary.”
“Don’t you need staff to operate it?” I asked, quite
fascinated with this kind of self-sufficiency, but still wondering if it would
work without money.
“No, it runs unattended. My computer over there in the office
monitors it and alerts us if something needs to be done. We do some
regular maintenance on the turbine and the generator, and keep the river clear
of logs and debris. That’s all—it’s been doing its job
for over a century already, and with some modern electronics to regulate it, it
runs like clockwork. As you see, self-sufficiency doesn’t have to
mean returning to the Stone Age!”
“We use wood, solar, and heat pumps for heating, and wood for cooking,
and I even do my ironing with an old iron that sits on the wood-burning cook
stove to get hot,” Ritva interjected. “It works just as well
as my electric one. The only machine I won’t give up is my washing
machine.”
“That's really convenient!” I mused. “You're more
fortunate than most people who might consider living without money.”
“True,” Ingmar admitted. “But there's more than
convenience to it, and anybody who wants to try some degree of self-sufficiency
would be well advised not to forget their power supply. This old building
functions perfectly without electricity, because it was built that way.
But many of our customers live in modern homes with mechanical ventilation.
If their power is cut off, the ventilation fans stop and the house begins
developing mildew. Next thing you know, the local authority may condemn
your home and turn you out of it even if you own it outright. And it
would be nearly impossible to live in an apartment without electricity: the
only other way you could cook would be with gas, and that has to be paid for,
too.”
Dinner was over, and it was time to see to the animals for the night.
When the chores were done it was the sauna’s turn, and I found out that
the river was a lot warmer than the sea. I actually had myself a proper
swim.
Returning to Andy’s place with a sack of potatoes in the trunk, I felt
that my knowledge had increased at least as much as my waistline, and compared
notes with Andy.
“As long as we can still use our bank accounts to receive our salaries
and pay our bills, this system with community supported agriculture will work,
even if we have no access to the official payment system,” Andy
concluded. “The worst problem I can foresee for our little
community is that we might lose our wheels if we have no way of paying for
gasoline or bus fares. That would make it harder for the farms to support
customers living at a distance. But where there’s a will,
there’s a way. My ancestor who built the original home out here on
the island rowed a nineteenth-century rowboat
Sunday morning, we took Andy’s sailboat out on the bay.
“Normally, I’d be checking the nets at this time,” Andy told
me. “But there’s no fish left in the Baltic. For many
years, the Scandinavian countries financed cleanups and antipollution measures
in the Baltic countries and northwest Russia. We got the Baltic to where
the fish were quite healthy, but where man left off polluting, nature took
over. In hot years, regular algal bloom had already done damage, and then
the comet took the rest.”
So we rounded a shoal and sailed back. Andy wanted to show me some more
locally grown food, and we walked into the forest. There we found some
alpine strawberries and blueberries just beginning to ripen. It would be
a good year for wild raspberries and lingonberries, too, Andy told me, and
pointed out large tracts of unripe fruit between the pine trees. The
northern European forest, he continued, was a larder, free for all who cared to
gather what it offered: many kinds of berries and mushrooms, and moose for the
hunters. Last of all, the rowanberries would ripen: some made jelly from
them, but most were left for the birds. In the fall, you could tell how
severe the winter was going to be from how many rowanberries there were: a good
crop spelled a long, cold winter.
“Somebody up there thinks of the birds, it seems,” Andy concluded.
“So far, you’ve arranged for a fine supply of vegetarian
food,” I pointed out. “With no fish, what will you do for
meat? Or will you become a vegetarian?”
Andy had a young dog named Jack, a friendly, sociable hunting dog that had been
following us all over the place without a leash. He was a cross between a
Finnish hound and a Bavarian mountain hound, and you’d be hard pressed to
find a smarter dog. Most hunting dogs will take to the woods if you let
them go, but Jack preferred our company. Now Andy turned to the dog and
said, “Go get it, Jack!”
Jack disappeared with his nose to the ground, and a few minutes passed.
Then Jack returned with a dead jackrabbit in his mouth. He laid it down
in front of Andy and was duly praised and patted.
“Jack took his first jackrabbit at just ten months of age. Now he
does it on cue. He eats the entrails and brings me the gutted
carcass. It makes a fine dinner, as you’ll see!”
Touring Porvoo later that day, we saw another business, essential for the
people who were interested in self-sufficiency. They had got together and
restored an ancient mill by a river east of town, and it now had a miller and
was in daily use. Around the mill was a reconstructed village with a
bakery and a number of craft shops. All this had once been rebuilt in
order to attract tourists, but now most of the customers were locals who used
the different services for their daily needs. Much of the trading was
based on barter, and the miller accepted payment for his work in kind, as a
percentage of the flour produced; this he took to his wife in the bakery, and
between them they supported their family quite nicely.
We also visited a greenhouse gardener cum plant nursery who was part of the
group of people preparing for life without money. On our way back, Andy
stopped by a garage along the road and took me to the back yard. There,
looking like something out of a fairy tale, stood an old building housing a
forge, all reconditioned and in daily use.
“Once, this family were the blacksmiths of the village. Now, after
generations of repairing cars, they’ve opened the old smithy for business
again. With so many draft horses in use, they keep a couple of people
employed reconditioning old machinery, and as farriers. We’re
really lucky that so many farmers just kept the old machines stored away in the
back of their barns, or as ornaments. I don’t know if anybody
thought they’d ever use such old implements again, but now they come in
very handy.”
“One thing mystifies me,” I had to admit. “Where did
all these horses come from? You don’t raise draft horses from
nothing in two years!”
“Well, they didn’t come about by accident,” Andy assured
me. “Finland has a national committee on civil defense, which was
never disbanded nor subordinated to any European Union organs, even though we
joined the EU. The committee retained its original purpose, which is
ensuring that the country always has a measure of self-sufficiency and
organization for making it through an international crisis that might disrupt
our normal exports and imports. This committee, using its small budget
and a network of men active in the Army Reserve, managed to preserve a supply
of tens of thousands of draft horses, part with the Army and part with volunteer
farmers. It also organized a seed bank of strains of food plants bred for
our climate. When the new payment system was introduced, everybody agreed
that the popular movement for self-sufficiency was fully qualified to take over
and expand this program.”
11. Midsummer
It was Midsummer Night’s eve, a Friday night near the summer solstice,
and all Finland was getting down to serious drinking. This nation of
reserved and sensitive people drinks in bouts, none more manifest than the eves
of Valpurgis Night, Midsummer, and New Year. After two weeks of making
observations, I had come to the tentative conclusion that, in addition to a
known genetic predisposition, the reason for this might lay in their custom of
quietness: you never talk to strangers, you never talk about your problems,
and, in some parts of the country, men hardly talk at all, except about
work. Unless they’re drunk. Mobile phones have brought about
a small change in this respect among the younger generation, but even those who
grew up with the phones still don’t talk much face to face as adults.
For most people, living without the outlet that talking about their feelings
affords would be near impossible, but in Finland, idle talk isn’t
acceptable. Being drunk gives the Finn an excuse to break the taboos and
talk to anybody: to himself, to strangers, to his spouse, to his friends.
Unfortunately, a lot of Finns don’t carry their liquor well, and as a
result, there’s a lot of fighting and wife beating on weekends.
In view of all this, my location on that day was a good one. During the
latter part of our holiday tour of the country, Andy had taken me all over the
Lake District, and for Midsummer, we were visiting some old friends of his in
the area of Suomenniemi near the large lake Saimaa. This area borders on
Karelia, where the people are gregarious and talkative, and also less prone to
drinking too much, which would seem to corroborate my theory.
The people from the area were getting together at a dance pavilion on the shore
of a smaller lake, the Kuolimo, where a band was playing and entertainers were
performing. A large bonfire had been prepared, and would be lit at sunset
around eleven. The Midsummer bonfire is one of the dearest traditions of
the Scandinavian nations, and here it was a true family celebration. The
mosquitoes, incidentally, were also having their party of the year.
After much dancing with pretty Finnish girls, I watched the bonfire burn high
against the pale blue sky, where no stars could be seen among the flying
sparks. Many boats moved silently on the lake; their view of the fire
must have been spectacular. The volunteer fire brigade was standing by,
but had no need of intervening: the bonfire had been built on a rocky islet in
the lake, and it burned down without causing any harm.
The next day, we made the compulsory tour of our host’s farm. It
was of a size similar to Ingmar’s, but Mr. Anttola, the owner, ran it the
normal way, using tractors and chemicals, and specialized in timber, milk, and
two or three crops for the wholesale market. He also kept genetically
engineered cows and hens producing raw materials for a pharmaceutical
company. His recipe for surviving fluctuations in food prices and farm
subsidies was simple: don’t borrow money. It seemed to be
well-founded advice—the weather vane on his home was a plain sheet metal
banner brandishing the year 1723, sixty-five years before British settlers
first came to Australia.
Neither Mr. Anttola nor his wife or sons spoke English, although Matti, the
youngest of the three boys, clearly had no problem understanding me. He
just hadn’t had an opportunity to learn actively to speak the foreign
languages he had studied at school. Andy did enough translating that I
could follow his conversation with the Anttolas: they were discussing the new
payment system, as could be expected. With a large kitchen garden, a root
cellar, and their cows, pigs, and hens, the Anttolas weren’t overly
concerned about the likely disappearance of cash. Their farm income would
continue to flow through the bank, and they were practically self-sufficient
for their daily needs. Phlegmatically but optimistically, Mr. Anttola
summed up his impressions in what seemed to be his favorite saying:
“It’ll all sort itself out, as long as we don’t rush into
anything!”
Mrs. Anttola, who was active in the local congregation, agreed, and stressed
that most particularly, they weren’t going to take any kind of mark in a
haste. There was talk among the people at the church that it might be
unbiblical to take it. She wanted to be sure it wasn’t, before she
did any such thing.
Late on Midsummer Day, we returned to the island, and landed in the midst of
the continuing festivities among Andy’s many relatives, all of which were
at their respective summer homes. One of the cousins, who lived in
Germany, upon hearing that I was heading there, warned me that the cutover to
the new payment system was almost complete, and that cash was presently being
withdrawn. It had been a simple change without any technical problems, as
all the equipment was already in place and working well. It had only been
a question of reprogramming cash registers to accept the payor’s ID
information through the ever-present bar code reader instead of through the
card and check readers, and of deactivating the cash box. Nearly everyone
was already marked, and the use of bar-code-inscribed plastic cards was to be
discontinued within days.
The next day I parted from my old friend, and boarded one of the large
passenger ships in the Helsinki harbor, bound for Stockholm.
Majestically, the tall, white, floating luxury hotel rounded the Suomenlinna
fortress museum and set out westward through the beautiful archipelago. I
was having my dinner in the first class restaurant and couldn’t decide
which I was enjoying more, the food or the view.
Half a mile astern followed the competition, a red ship every inch as elegant
as the one I was in. The Gulf of Finland was dotted with sailing yachts
and powerboats, all on their way to some beautiful spot in this northern summer
paradise. Most Finns had begun their summer vacations. The Swedes
would go on their great migration a week later, at the beginning of July, and,
following Andy’s advice, I had timed my trip so I’d be out of
Sweden before the crush of cars bound for the Mediterranean would be unleashed
on July first.
After, once more, having done a lot of dancing with tall, pretty blondes, I
retired to my cabin and felt very much at home with the movement of the ship
and the quiet rumbling of the engine. Too quiet, I thought, but reading
the welcome leaflet, I found out why: behind the wall paneling, the cabins were
lined with a plastic film acting as both a moisture barrier and an active noise
suppressor. The film was covered with a piezoelectric layer that
functioned as a loudspeaker. This layer was fed a signal exactly the same
as the sounds entering the cabin, but inverted, so it canceled out most of the
outside noise.
I had thought it was time for bed, but the night was light, and I wasn’t
sleepy. So I went to one of the bars for a beer and to see if I could
find someone to chat up; on the dance floor, the loud music had made talking
next to impossible.
The only free seat at the bar happened to be next to a man who had already had
a drop too much. He was slightly bent, of middle age, with a narrow face
disfigured by prominent lumps under the skin. His ash blond hair was
greasy and unkempt, but he clearly wasn’t poor: he was well dressed, and
drank only the best. Insisting on buying me my drink, he blabbered on,
making sure I knew what to call him: his name was Janne.
Janne’s life’s story and all his woes were pouring out of him: here
I was in the position of the stranger he could legitimately talk to, because he
was drunk. He wasn’t unpleasant, though, and he knew a lot; he had
been rather high up at European Computers before he’d been given early
retirement.
When I made a lighthearted comment about still being able to pay cash for a
drink, Janne suddenly got serious and almost sober.
“You shouldn’t joke about payment systems, Gregory! You
shouldn’t joke with me about payment systems! Do you know who
designed this new system they’re installing just now?”
I didn’t, but I could guess. I was right.
“Yes, I led the project to develop it; they thought a Finn stationed at
headquarters in Paris was the right person for the job. The system was
piloted in Finland, you see.”
I told him that I knew, and that I was familiar with some of the workings of
the system.
There was an air of utter anguish about Janne when he continued.
“Technically, it’s the greatest information system ever
built. It addresses all the problems the European Presidency wanted to
solve. It’s simple and reliable, and if it could be implemented as
planned, it would be fair and secure. Imagine a system that makes
economic crime impossible—not just for the little guy, but for the big
shots too, and for their friends in government! But do you have any idea
what it can be used for?”
“A pretty good one, I think!” I told him briefly what I had
picked up so far.
“Well, you seem to have found out a lot already,” Janne conceded,
“but you don’t know half the story yet. Did you see the
three-dimensional TV show in the central gallery of the ship? Right,
you’ve seen the new European TV standard at work. But here on the
ship, only part of the TV standard is in use: you see a lifelike holographic
image of the entertainers, and you’re impressed. But the other half
is the sound system, and that works only with the new payment identifier.
On the Continent, the complete system is going into public spaces, such as
shopping centers, at a tremendous rate, and homes are being equipped fast,
too. This is politically important, so the European Union not only
financed the development of the system, but keeps subsidizing the manufacture
of sets, as well. So the sets are cheaper than the old, much simpler
High-Definition TV sets with plain stereo sound.
“Now don’t be impatient! This sound system consists of a grid
of loudspeakers mounted in the ceiling, something like a checkerboard.
There’s also a grid of microphones, because this is an interactive
system. The microphones, between them, can pick out everybody’s voice
in a crowded room, and the speakers simultaneously deliver an individual sound
channel, modulated onto a precisely targeted ultrasound beam, to everyone
present, just as if you had your own, personal headset with stereo headphones,
and your own microphone. It isn’t complicated; it’s merely a
question of finally having enough computer power where it’s needed.
In a simpler form, grids of microphones have been used for a long time to
pinpoint the location of gunfire in the slums.
“That computer, however, must know exactly where everyone is in the room,
in order to process all these superimposed sound channels correctly. It
also has to direct a set of laser light beams at the eyes of each viewer to
create the three-dimensional holographic effect. So it has to be able to
locate everybody at all times. We solved that problem with a simple
pattern recognition system fed by a couple of panoramic video cameras. In
addition, we use a matrix of ultrasound transmitters that work like radar: the
microphones pick up the reflections and keep track of the movements of each
individual. But the politicians and the advertisers had another, more
exacting requirement. They wanted to know who everybody is, not just
where they’re sitting or standing. So we had to enhance the
locating of each viewer by also identifying them, and, since the new TV
standard is being introduced at the same time as the new payment system, what
could be more natural than deploying an arrangement of simple infrared scanners
that recognize bar codes? These scanners can pick out the face of a dime
at a hundred feet. An utterly reliable system, no fuzzy logic that could
make mistakes: just ask people to show their hand to set up a channel or to
restore it if the sound is lost for some reason.
“Alright. Europe now has a payment system that allows you to buy
and sell if, and only if you’re marked with a bar code. Europe also
has a three-dimensional TV standard that allows official computers to keep
track of how you’re reacting to the propaganda. Do you know
what’s special about the UPC/EAN bar code that consumers are now being
marked with, just like merchandise has been marked for years and years?”
“It looks different from industrial bar codes, but I don’t know
why.”
“I’ll tell you.” Janne was now dead serious.
“The UPC/EAN code was designed to be particularly robust and readable in
both directions, because of the unpredictable way merchandise passes over the
scanner in the checkout counter. It has three guard patterns; take a look
here on the vodka bottle. At each end and in the middle you have two
narrow lines, slightly longer than the others. Can you see what two
narrow lines stand for?”
“It must be a six,” I calculated.
“That’s right. Every UPC/EAN bar code comprises the numbers
6,6,6. Six hundred and sixty-six. That’s what the European
Presidency is marking people with. Do you know this book?”
He pulled out a dog-eared New Testament from inside his jacket. It fell
open to the Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verse 14, the pages much thumbed
and highlighted. It was an English New Testament, and Janne read to me:
Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he
(this is a publicity person called the second beast) deceived the inhabitants
of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast
who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give
breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all
who would refuse to worship the image to be killed.
He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to
receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy
or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of
his name.
This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the
number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.
“The latter part is perfectly clear,” I said, quite shocked.
“The first part sounds like a breathing, speaking statue of some
kind.”
“It takes a bit of thinking to understand it,” Janne
answered. “This propaganda person deceives all the people on Earth,
not just those in one particular place. The image causes all those who
won’t worship it, to be killed. That means it isn’t just one
statue, but millions of life-like images all over the world.
‘Breath’ simply means ‘Life.’ A living, speaking
image, reproduced everywhere, capable of keeping track of whether you worship
it or not, is interactive, holographic TV, nothing but. With full
identification of every viewer, I should add. The whole damned system was
defined two thousand years ago, by an old man who described what he saw so well
that no systems designer could have written the specification any better or
more concisely. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel? Do you
understand why I drink?”
“Let me see your book,” I asked; there was another passage I could
see about the image and the mark. So I read it out, at chapter 14, verse
9.
If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the
forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury,
which will be poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.
I could see Janne’s anguish increase. He had caused this to happen
to mankind, and he could find only blame for himself. But I began
thinking that he was wrong, altogether wrong.
“Look, Janne, I certainly don’t know much about religion, but since
a man of God wrote all this down 2,000 years ago, and since, evidently, he was
right, there’s no way you could say that what’s happening
isn’t God’s will! This second passage shows that
there’ll be a culling process. It reminds me of something
I’ve heard earlier: ‘You cannot serve both God and Money.’
It would seem that God has a need for some kind of test to find out who will
choose to serve him, and who will take this mark and worship this image in
order to be able to keep on using money. You may have built the system to
the Leader’s specifications, but, as far as I can see, they were also
God’s requirements. As you said, he provided the system description
long before the EU was around.”
There was a light growing in the eyes of this unhappy alcoholic. He
visibly straightened up.
“Gregory, you just saved my life. Tonight, when I’d have been
drunk enough, I was going to jump overboard and drown myself. But
you’re right: it is God’s will. There’s nothing we
humans can build or make, which God hasn’t figured out how to use for his
purposes.
“This has completely changed my life. I take you for my witness,
Gregory: I’ll never touch alcohol again, as long as I live!
You’ll be my support, won’t you? You don’t have to be
around, just say you believe in me! Thank you ever so much... Now
please help me to my cabin!”
12. Hanover, Germany
In Stockholm, I took my time touring the city. I saw the Old Town with
the royal palace and the changing of the guard, the restored seventeenth
century ship Wasa, the zoo cum amusement park at Skansen, and many other sights.
While I was visiting a combined hardware and housewares store in the Old Town,
who should have walked in but the queen, accompanied by a solitary security
officer. In the absurdly egalitarian way of the Swedes, she looked at
vases and quietly waited for her turn, while the storekeeper finished helping
me with a small repair to my rucksack, albeit with a slightly nervous look in
the direction of Her Majesty now and then. When I was finished and had
paid, I could think of nothing better to do than to make a bow in appreciation
of the queen’s patience, and left the store not a little confounded.
Then, following my usual scheme, I found the dispatch office of one of the
large international trucking companies, and located a driver who was willing to
take me to Germany on the morrow.
The drive south from Stockholm was a pleasant one: the freeway was excellent,
and the Swedish countryside looked beautiful. There still was a lot of
farming going on, some of it using horses like Ingmar did. I concluded
that the worldwide food crisis was a high-level phenomenon, consisting of the
multi-million-ton grain shortage in the commodity market and the disappearance
of marine sources of protein. Although a majority of people were trapped
in the crisis and had no other source of food, here and there some had found
local solutions by using the resources at their disposal, and by relearning old
skills.
Along the way, we stopped a couple of times for fuel, food, and bathroom
breaks. I noticed that Swedish service stations had a curious way of
demanding a deposit of some kind before allowing you to fill up at the
pump. This was due to frequent fuel thefts, I was told. Fine, but
why did they need my passport before they’d let me use the
toilet—were they afraid that I’d abscond through the back door with
the commode? Well, they had to be consistent: they wanted surety for
every transaction. Reporting thefts and vandalism to the police was
useless, as the police had neither the resources nor the powers to help.
Not even somebody caught red-handed could be arrested. Being denied
justice, the station operators relied on a kind of vigilantism of their
own. They couldn’t wait for the new payment system to be
introduced: with proof positive of the identity of every visitor, they could
bypass the police and get redress using their own lawyers, collection agents,
and security services providers.
In the afternoon, we crossed Öresund strait along a bridge nearly five miles
long, an artificial island, and a more than two-mile long tunnel, and
didn’t even stop for a customs check when we arrived in Denmark: all the
formalities were handled automatically by computers along the road and in the
truck, interacting via radio.
What little I saw of Denmark gave me the impression of a nice, cozy
place. A traffic sign read, “Please observe the speed limit;
Denmark is a small country and you’ll get to your destination soon
enough. There are only five million Danes and we need every one of
them!”
Emerging from the tunnel between Denmark and Germany at Puttgarden, we ran into
a line of cars and trucks at the customs barrier. Stig, my driver, was
furious; it was unusual to be held up there, as customs procedures were fully
automated on all intra-European borders. It turned out that the German
police were stopping all vehicles and offering to mark their passengers, so
they’d be able to pay for their stay on the Continent.
It seemed strange that you could be marked out of your own country, but the
procedure was simple, when it was explained to me. From a standard EU
identity card and passport—a credit card size plastic card—a
computer read your national ID number. Most people also had their bank
contact information recorded on the same card; if not, your bank or credit card
was read, which created the connection to your bank or charge account.
The marking standard had been worked out to accommodate the different European
national ID numbering schemes, so it really didn’t matter where the
marking was done.
I held up my Australian passport and was waved through. Stig told the
policeman in Swedish to go to hell, and stepped on the accelerator. We
were on our way, going past Lübeck and Hamburg to Hanover.
North of Hanover Stig turned into a truck stop at the huge Mellendorf junction
and we went to have our dinner. After some negotiation, the cashier
accepted payment by travelers check. It was to be the last check I
managed to use at a retail business in continental Europe. The food was
hearty and the serving immense, and the beer was as good as only German beer
can be. I’ve never yet regretted a meal at a truck stop, nor have I
ever had anything but a good time in the company of truckers.
After a relaxed evening with a dozen truckers of half a dozen nationalities, I
spent the night in the lower bunk of Stig’s truck cab. Following a
breakfast enjoyed on the balance of my check from the night before, Stig set
off for Frankfurt, while I positioned myself at the entrance to the Autobahn
spur to Hanover.
My plan was to tour some of northern Germany, continuing to Frankfurt to see
Dieter, then to travel through Belgium to France. All the while,
I’d have to find ways to live on my old-fashioned travelers checks and
credit card, and avoid getting in trouble with the law for not being marked
like everybody was supposed to be. Granted, I had the excuse of being
Australian and not yet eligible to be marked, but I wasn’t planning to
flaunt that status.
But now I was on my way into the city of Hanover in the company of a fat and
jolly German trucker, presiding over a battered old Volvo. He was from
Magdeburg in the eastern part of the country, and he let me know that he was
very happy to stay there although life in the East continued to be more austere
than it was in the West.
“We don’t need that much,” he said in his simple
manner. “We have less stress than the Westerners. Our old
people still remember the Soviet occupation, and we don’t mind a lower
living standard because we have our liberty.”
I told him about my concern for the bank identifier.
“I feel we’re all losing our freedom with that mark. The
authorities can keep track of everything you do. I just can’t bring
myself to take it,” I admitted.
Jürg, my driver, gave me a strange look.
“You’d lose more than your freedom if you took that mark,” he
said. “You’d lose your soul. I’m not taking it:
hardly anyone I know in the East has taken it. We’re very religious
people, and we don’t play with such things. That identifier is the Mark
of the Beast!”
This was the same warning I had received from Janne. I didn’t yet
feel as strongly about that aspect of the matter as Jürg did, but I was
impressed by his conviction.
“How do you pay for things then?” I asked. “I had a
terrible time trying to pay for my food with a travelers check last night.
Cash is no longer accepted, and they don’t take credit cards,
either.”
“We exchange what we need between us,” Jürg answered.
“Today, I drive vegetables to Hanover; my payment is two sacks of
carrots. One I’ll give to the gas station owner for the fuel, the
other I’ll take to my good wife. Yesterday, I delivered a load of
coal, and now we have coal for the rest of the summer. It works very
well, especially when enough people get together and accept services from each
other. Alone, we’d never make it; our garden is too small.”
Jürg dropped me off in Herrenhausen and continued westward to deliver his
cargo. I crossed the street and found myself in a park every inch as
splendid as anything I had seen anywhere. A fountain in the middle of the
park was pumping water in an unrelenting column, at
I briefly toyed with the idea of taking a tram downtown, but watching people
board one at the tram stop quickly convinced me otherwise. Sternly
supervised by the driver, each passenger in turn held out her or his hand in
front of a box inside the entrance door, and proceeded only upon receiving the
blessing of the machine in the form of a green light and an approving “beep.”
What deterred me was the red light also mounted on the box, and the knowledge
that with the red light went a piercing and most embarrassing sound
signal. I’d heard its likes in Helsinki where bus and tram tickets
were a kind of proximity card that held a season ticket or a balance of money,
and if you presented an empty card, you knew about it.
Left to my own means of locomotion, I watched in amazement how the tram driver
took off down the street in a death-defying career worthy of a Stuka
dive-bomber pilot. Its bell ringing incessantly, the tram forced its way
past the cars, demonstratively ignoring the existence of occasional crossings
without traffic lights. On the Autobahn, the Mercedes was king; in the
city, the tram reigned supreme.
Eventually I passed the railway station and a little later ended up in a
triangular plaza that seemed to form the dead center of Hanover. My
breakfast was now but a memory, and I set myself the task of finding out how I
was going to get hold of lunch. Clutching my travelers checks, I went
into a bank and announced to the lady at the information desk that I wanted to
exchange some foreign currency.
I now know what it’s like to be a time traveler and to arrive a couple of
hundred years into the future. The lady excused herself and went to find
a manager. The manager proceeded to confer with the head of the exchange
section. Every now and then they looked my way and shook their
heads. Maybe I should have left quietly, but I was nearly as curious as I
was hungry, and I really wanted to find out what they were going to do.
As it turned out, I was lucky. They didn’t call the police on me.
The manager came to talk to me and said, “Unfortunately, we can’t
help you, sir. Technically, your travelers checks are valid, but since
you don’t have an account with us, there’d be no way you could use
the proceeds, if we exchanged them for euros. There’s only one
means of payment for individuals now, and you have to have a bank account to
use it.”
He was a decent fellow: he didn’t bring up the question of my being
marked or not. He motioned with his eyes for me to leave, and I was quick
to take his advice. Customers and staff alike were staring at me by now,
and I got a very clear idea of what it’s like to be the odd one out in a
crowd.
The triangular restaurant with its big flat roof in the middle of the
triangular plaza seemed like the next logical place to try, and I sat down at a
table on its terrace and began reading the menu. A nice thing about the
EU is that menus have to be printed in a number of languages, including
English. A waitress, carrying one of the battery-powered laser readers,
came up to me to take my order.
“Do you accept travelers checks?” I asked her, hoping that an
establishment so clearly oriented toward serving tourists would prove to be my
rescue.
“Not anymore,” she answered cheerfully. “All our
customers can now use the reader. It’s so simple: no money to
count, no change to give, and my tip goes automatically to the bank.”
“Well, you now have a customer who wants to pay with a travelers
check,” I said. “I was just told by the bank that my checks
are still valid. Surely the bank will accept one from you?”
“I don’t think we can take them,” she said, “but
I’ll ask my manager.”
What the manager said when she found my table unoccupied, I’ll never
know. I determined that there was a distinct possibility that I had met
my last decent German manager for the day at the bank, and, brusquely
overruling my growling stomach, grabbed my backpack and left.
Heading south and west, for no other reason than having started out in the
north, I arrived at the Hanover City Hall and stopped to admire its
architecture. It’s a beautiful building with a huge dome, and
behind it I later discovered another enchantingly pleasant park. Across
from City Hall stood the City Hotel, and as a new idea formed in my mind, I
approached its liveried porter with a question.
“Does your restaurant accept travelers checks or credit cards?” I
asked him, realizing that I was going to be asking the same question ad
nauseam, unless I found some new way out of my predicament soon.
Here, again, I had met an upright man, and, after a quick glance around to
ascertain that no one was listening, he told me that it did, but that this was
very unofficial, and that, unfortunately, the cost would be rather high, as the
proceeds had to cover certain necessary expenses.
I had seen the “German glance” before, in old movies depicting Nazi
times, and realized that things were worse than I had imagined. The
“necessary expenses,” of course, were bribes.
“What would it cost me for lunch?” I asked.
“You’d be out at least 100 euros,” he answered.
I didn’t need my calculator to figure out that I’d last a couple of
months, at the most, if I had to eat at places like the hotel. I thanked
him and continued on my way.
On a park bench in the deep green shadow of the trees behind City Hall I took
stock of my situation. I had my credit card and my checks, technically
still valid. However, I was unable to use them, other than under the
counter at the most expensive establishments, those that catered to the moneyed
elite that didn’t have to worry about the restraints imposed on regular
mortals. I had enough money to return to Australia with my tail between
my legs: Travelers Charge would honor my checks and my card and sell me the
ticket, because its name was on them. But then what? Australia was
going to mark her people, too, and I still hadn’t figured out how to
establish a reliable way of living without the mark. Surprisingly, the
more my stomach hurt, and the less hope I saw of ever being able to buy myself
a meal again, the more determined I found myself to stick it out. I tried
to imagine what Laura would have done in my situation, and became convinced
that the answers to my questions were to be found here in Europe, and that I
was going to complete my tour of the world just as planned.
From the shade of the park, I now emerged into the brightness of a spa setting,
surrounding a lake a good mile long. Small sailboats and windsurfers
filled the surface to saturation, and a rowing team was practicing close to the
hither shore. I later learned that the lake, the Maschsee, is man-made;
it was excavated in the 1930s and is supplied by a river. It was one of
the public works projects that served to relieve the unemployment of the time,
helping give Hitler the initial popularity that soon propelled him to absolute
power.
My interest, however, lay with the numerous restaurants and food stalls along
the lake, not with how it had come to be there. As I walked along the
sidewalk, observing the commerce, I finally got the message. There was no
buying without the mark. In fact, there was no selling without it,
either. I watched the change of shifts at one of the restaurants: as a
morning waiter turned over his laser reader to his afternoon counterpart, first
the one, then the other scanned their hands and pressed the keys, apparently
entering their passwords and balancing their totals. Just as well that I
hadn’t come to think of the possibility of trying to get a temporary job
as a waiter, hoping to get a meal on the house now and then. I’d
have been in for another rude awakening.
It was then that I realized that I was now cut off from consumer society for good,
and that, consequently, there was another way of life awaiting me. I felt
tremendously impatient to discover what it was going to be like. I left
the lake with its glittering celebration of leisure, and was soon walking along
residential streets. Behind a supermarket I found a veritable smorgasbord
of food packages with recently expired use-by dates, destined for the garbage
compactor. With a mysterious sense of reverence I gathered up my first
free lunch, all vegetarian just for safety’s sake, and sat down on a
bench in a small park, officially to begin my life as a tramp.
13. The Giant
Having eaten like a rabbit, I did what every sensible cottontail would have
done in my situation. I turned my course due south, aiming to put as much
distance between myself and downtown as I possibly could. There was
nothing for me in that direction: the city lived by and for money, and money I
hadn’t got.
Walking parallel with the eastern shore of the lake, I passed a brewery on my
left that covered an entire city block. The aroma of beer brewing was
just heavenly. In spite of the fiercest pressure from the rest of the
European Union, Germany has stubbornly retained her purity law, dating back to
the year 1516, mandating that beer can be brewed from malt, hops, yeast, and
water, nothing else. Let others drink the synthetic stuff if they like;
the Germans won’t. I’m a great friend of good beer, and I
truly respect the Germans for this. Walking so close to the brewery, and
so far from a glass of beer, made me feel rather nostalgic.
At the next corner, a large cemetery began, and I started feeling that I was
going too far to the east. I veered right toward the lake and headed down
a narrow lane running along the wall of the cemetery. Nestled against the
wall stood an old red brick building with arched windows, its front yard
surrounded by a wall of its own, branching out from the one I’d been
following. The upstairs windows of the building could be seen over the garden
wall, and somehow they gave the impression of darkness inside. It took a
while before I realized that one of them was a blind window: the black paint
marking its panes was no blacker than the glass in the real ones.
This was a morgue if I had ever seen one. The ground level windows on the
street side had heavy iron bars in them. The back yard was walled in, as
well—whatever secrets the building held, they were well guarded.
There was something unusual, however: there were curtains in the windows on
this side, and one window, on the upper level, stood open. Through it, I
heard voices.
Morticians at work? It sounded more like a kitchen. Looking around,
I saw more signs of habitation. In front of the gate to the back yard
stood a three-seater VW Beetle. I’d never seen a three-seater
Beetle before, and had to take a closer look. The driver’s seat was
mounted right against the back seat, so there was no room to sit behind
it. The useless space was, instead, taken up by a nondescript pile of
junk.
I heard the back door of the house open, and saw somebody look down at me over
the gate. There must be a step up to the back yard, I concluded.
Then I saw the man’s feet under the gate, and as he opened it up, I found
myself facing a giant.
“How can I help you?” he asked in German.
The man was not just tall; he was huge. His upper arms were nearly as
thick as my thighs. His hair and beard formed an enormous black mane with
many gray streaks; he could have been in his sixties. He wasn’t
fat, but he must have weighed close to
At six foot two, I’m somewhat taller than the average of the population,
and I seem to have developed some kind of unconscious expectation that people
will be more or less shorter than I. Looking upward to see the face of my
new acquaintance, who must have stood nearly seven feet tall, I couldn’t
help feeling that I was a child, looking up to an adult. My last memories
of physically looking up to people were, undoubtedly, from my childhood: I grew
to this height during my mid-teens. The resulting confusion must have
shown all over me, and the giant concluded that I hadn’t understood what
he had said.
Repeating his question in English, he soon obtained an answer. I blurted
out my predicament, without ever thinking of what risks might have been
involved in telling a stranger that I wasn’t marked.
“You’ve come to the right place,” the giant said, took a
basket of groceries out of his Volkswagen, and asked me into the house.
The tiny back yard turned out to be a terraced kitchen garden, with manicured
vegetable beds covering every square inch between the back gate and the
cemetery wall, apart from the narrow path to the back door. Inside, a
vaulted hallway cut right through to the front yard; through the open door I could
see another garden, larger and brighter, with food plants growing in
profusion. A well-worn stairway took us upstairs, where I was greeted by
two women, one around twenty, the other in her forties. The women, whom
my host introduced as his daughter and granddaughter, were both about as tall
as I.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?” the giant asked.
He had told me his name was Polder, adding that it was his nickname.
Apparently, he never used his real name. I had it a little hard to
switch, however, and once nearly addressed him as “Mr.
Giant.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You found me,
didn’t you? At least, I didn’t know to look for you.”
A spirited discussion followed about what had brought me there. It turned
out that Polder’s home acted as a kind of clearinghouse for unmarked
people with nowhere to go, which was why they had assumed that somebody must
have sent me to them. When, finally, they were convinced that I had just
strayed into their arms, their amazement was great, as was mine. I
realized that I’d been extraordinarily lucky to stumble over this place
in a city of nearly a million; I had to agree with my hosts that it seemed like
a lot more than plain luck.
The doorbell rang, and somebody went down to open. More family members
arrived, all at least bilingual, and the conviviality of the household rose to
new heights. Our supper, sincerely blessed by Polder, was
delicious. The dining table, an ingenious contraption with a lever that
could be used to raise it or lower it to serve as a coffee table, was in the
living room, the windows of which I had seen while approaching the house.
I wondered why the room had seemed so dark from the outside while, in reality,
it was rather bright due to the large windows. I decided that the
impression must have been due to the high ceiling, and perhaps also to the dark
furniture.
Everything in the room was old, without the ostentatiousness of an antique
collection. Most objects seemed handmade, frequently with soft,
asymmetric shapes. A photographic portrait of a stern-looking thinker, in
a broad frame made of natural wood, gazed down at us from the far wall.
We ate and drank nothing artificial or addictive: the tea served after dinner
was herb tea. I got the impression that this family was well founded in a
strong faith.
There was no TV in the house, not even the old flat-screen type. Instead,
an ancient AM/FM radio was turned on and tuned in to the BBC evening
news. The developments of the day had been dramatic, to say the
least. The French president had been shot dead during a heated argument
at the National Assembly, where he had gone to explain his refusal to budge to
the demand of the right-wing majority that direct EU rule be introduced.
The assassin had been the prime minister; such was his popularity that he
hadn’t been apprehended for the murder, but had coolly proceeded to lead
the Assembly in confirming the transfer of executive power to the European
Presidency in Brussels.
“The third horn plucked up by the roots,” Polder said.
“First Italy, then Germany, and now France. The smaller states can
keep their puppet governments; they’ll never challenge the Leader.
It’s well underway.”
Amid all the knowing nodding and agreement, I was completely lost.
“Could somebody please explain?” I asked. “What’s
all this about horns plucked up by the roots? And what is it that’s
well underway?”
Polder’s son-in-law, a clergyman, volunteered to enlighten me.
“You probably know that these times we’re living in have been
predicted in the Bible,” he said.
I confirmed that I knew about some prophesies in the Book of Revelation that
seemed to be quite accurate.
“The three horns that were to be plucked up are mentioned in the book of
Daniel in the Old Testament,” the minister continued. “Daniel
7 describes how the ten core states of Europe are to revive the ancient Roman
Empire and its quest for world domination. Like earlier world
governments, the EU is described as a beast, but with ten horns, representing
ten kings, that is, heads of government. Our Leader, the president of the
European Union, is easy to recognize as the first beast in the Book of
Revelation. But he’s also the little horn in Daniel that arises
after the ten, and before whom three of the earlier horns, or heads of government,
are plucked up by the roots. M. Dupont was the third one to go, so the
Leader is now officially premier of Italy, president of France, and federal
chancellor of Germany. The other seven core states have nominal prime
ministers, but the Leader always participates in important sessions of their
governments via videoconferencing, and takes all the decisions.”
A couple of years earlier, the Leader had challenged the Italian premier to a
sword duel over some insult, a clever publicity stunt in many people’s
opinion. The duel had been televised, and it had ended with signor
Altamura, the premier, dead, and the Leader critically injured. Before
being taken to hospital, the Leader had managed to claim the Italian
premiership in front of the cameras, and who was going to oppose him? The
following year, while the German chancellor, Herr Kempten, had been on a visit
to Brussels, terrorists, using a vacant apartment, had fired a missile at his
car, as it had turned a street corner. The antitank warhead had made
mincemeat of his bulletproof Mercedes, and the carnage had been great.
Minutes later, EU secret police had hung three people they had said were the
terrorists in the street, without any process of law. It was widely
believed that the attack had been staged by the Leader, as Herr Kempten had
been opposed to the transfer of executive power to the European Presidency,
just like signor Altamura and M. Dupont.
“‘Thanks for explaining,” I said. “I keep
learning more about these Bible prophesies wherever I go. Is it the
Leader’s reign then that’s well underway?”
“Yes,” the minister answered. “We know from the book of
Daniel that he’ll hold sway for seven years. The last three and a
half years of his reign will be a period of severe terror. The Leader has
been in office for three years now, so there should be four left.”
A couple of Bibles were produced, one of them, mercifully, in English, and I
was given a quick lesson in history written before the fact. I learned
that not just Revelation and Daniel, but Ezekiel, a number of other prophets,
the Gospels, and several of the Epistles contain bits and pieces of prophesy
that together describe the present world events with amazing accuracy. I
was a little envious of my hosts for knowing it all in advance, and decided to
make better use of this incredible source of knowledge in the future.
During the evening, a steady stream of people came and left again, all greeted
like friends, but not entertained as guests. After the usual chatter,
they were taken into a small room off the kitchen, from where I could hear the
sounds of an old-fashioned personal computer. I asked Polder what was
going on in there—it seemed that all these people were somehow his
customers.
“We run a trade club,” he said. “The computer keeps an
account for each member. It’s a form of barter, but when a few
hundred people get together like this in a club, it works out more like an
alternative currency. Trade clubs provide the payment system for us who
aren’t marked.”
I told Polder about my driver of the same morning, and how he made his living
with the help of barter.
“The difference between his simple form of barter and a trade club is
that he has to trade one-on-one,” Polder explained. “He has
to find someone who needs what he can offer and has what he needs, and the
value of what’s exchanged must be comparable, so neither party loses
out. It works, but it’s clumsy. We run a LETSystem, short for
Local Exchange Trading System; a form of trade club, which records the value of
goods you’ve sold and services you’ve rendered to other members, as
a commitment, measured in LETS units, from the local community to you.
When you procure goods or services provided by others, you make a commitment to
the community. In fact, it’s just like money, with two very
important differences: you can get started buying without having anything to
pay with, and the system is isolated from the mainstream economy, so outsiders
can’t exploit its members through speculation.”
“You really run a bank then, don’t you?” I concluded, but
Polder corrected me.
“Not quite. We only run the accounting for the payment
system. Our members may have credit or debit balances, but the LETSystem
neither pays nor charges interest. A small commission on each payment covers
our costs. Furthermore, we issue no negotiable checks. Because of
all this, and since we don’t offer euro accounts, we don’t qualify
as a bank, and we need no permits to operate. Another nice thing is that
there’s no government supervision like banks have.”
Polder took me to watch the operation of the LETSystem in the small office
room. One of his grandchildren was keying data into the computer from
good old-fashioned credit card slips. A club member arrived with a couple
of vouchers, and had his account credited. Then the old inkjet printer
produced a statement for him, and he left, visibly contented with having his
finances under control. It all looked so professional, although on a
small scale.
“Where do the credit card slips come from?” I asked my host.
“I’ve tried to buy things with both travelers checks and credit
cards, and I understood that neither are accepted anymore.”
“These slips come from small stores whose owners are members,”
Polder answered. “The only cards they accept are LETSystem
cards. Their official trade is in euros, but they also deal in LETS
units, so our members can both sell to them and buy local goods and produce
from them. Most of these store owners aren’t marked
themselves. It’s a very curious situation when the store can deal
in euros and has a bank account, but the owner pays him or herself in LETS
units.
“In fact, we’d better fix you up right away; you have to get on
with your life,” he continued.
Polder pulled out a plastic card and a book of vouchers, looking just like
checks, but without the word “Check” on them, and his granddaughter
opened an account for me. So far, so good, but I had to point out to them
that my balance was still zero.
“I forgot to tell you that you have a job,” Polder replied.
“A guy who runs a market garden was here a while ago and asked if we knew
anyone who could help him out for the rest of the summer.
“I accepted on your behalf while you were busy with your Bible
study,” he laughed. “It isn’t far away, just a few
kilometers south of here. We have a bicycle you can use, and you can stay
with us, if you like. You start tomorrow morning. You’ll be
paid in LETS units, of course. Since you won’t be drawing a salary
paid in euros, officially you’ll be a volunteer, and you won’t have
to worry about a work permit.”
I felt grateful beyond words. Only then did I realize that I had been so
much at ease in this house that I hadn’t given a thought to where
I’d be sleeping that night, or what I was going to do with myself, come
morning. Earlier that day, I had assumed I was going to be a tramp.
Instead, I’d be living a perfectly ordered life, with a home, a job, and
an income, thanks to Polder, his family, and his trade club.
Somewhat later, I was installed in a downstairs bedroom, with windows to the
lane. The strong iron bars seemed to provide protection against the
turmoil of the world, and I felt wonderfully secure. For a long time, I
listened to the nightingale singing in the mellow summer night, and, finally, I
drifted off into restful sleep.
14. The Raid
The next morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, the doorbell rang
angrily, and there was some loud banging on the door for good measure.
Outside were three uniformed policemen with a search warrant, and over
Polder’s loud protests, they entered and went upstairs, heading directly
for the office of the trade club. It looked rather comical with Polder
towering over them—I got the impression that he could easily have picked
them up and disposed of them, had he wanted to. But he was very careful
not to obstruct what they were doing. My pleasant sense of security from
the night before was badly shaken, as I watched the policemen disconnect the
computer, collect backup media and printouts from the desk, and carry it all
downstairs to their waiting van.
“This is terrible!” I exclaimed. “Now they know
who the club members are, and they’ll all get in trouble. How could
they have found out about you?”
“We knew to expect this,” Polder answered. “We
don’t keep anybody’s name or address here, either in the computer
or on paper. We only have numbered accounts. We don’t allow
the club to grow any larger than that we can still recognize all our
members. We conduct no business over the telephone or by mail.
That’s why all the members come here. The only exceptions are that
we have a young man on a motorbike pick up vouchers and credit card slips from
our merchant members, and we do some clearing via encrypted messages over the
Internet. Besides, what we’re doing isn’t illegal—not
yet. These policemen do it just to harass us.”
“But what about the backups they took?” I asked.
“Don’t they have some important data on them? And what
happens when they start up the computer and go into your
programs—they’ll see everything you’ve been doing!”
“These guys are just the local constables and not very smart,”
Polder reassured me. “The trade club system has password
protection, which they’re not likely to be able to break. The data
on the hard disk are encrypted; it’ll tell them nothing. Even if
they got into the system, all they’d find is a bunch of numbers.
We’ve changed the original program and taken out every heading and help
text that could give a clue as to what it’s used for. This makes
the application very difficult to operate, but I have bright grandchildren.
“The backup media we leave on the desk have only computer games and
harmless graphics on them. The printouts they took have random numbers
arranged in tidy columns without headings. It’ll keep them busy for
a couple of weeks, and then we’ll get a letter saying that we can come
and pick up our computer. They’ve done this before, so we’re
used to it.”
My gigantic host was taking on new proportions in my perception of him.
He was anything but naïve; he had known to protect his clients. For
official purposes, he was simply a retiree with a family and many friends; his
pension was paid into his bank account, and covered the rent, the telephone,
and the utilities. Not being marked wasn’t punishable as such,
although it was likely to turn the crowds against you. We expected that
it would soon be illegal not to salute the Leader when he appeared on TV, but
if you had no TV and never went into the shopping malls where the public
entertainment centers were located, you were pretty safe.
I could see a practical problem, however.
“What are you going to do without a computer for such a long time?”
I asked. “The trade club won’t be able to function, and
nobody will have any money, isn’t that right?”
“Come along, and I’ll show you one of the advantages of living in a
morgue,” Polder answered.
We went downstairs into the utility room across from my bedroom. By the
wall stood an antique dresser, a massive mahogany piece with an inscription
carved out in old Gothic script, to the effect that a well-stocked and
well-ordered linen closet was every woman’s rightful pride.
Well-stocked it was, to be sure: as we pulled it out of its place, I thought I
was trying to lift a ton of bricks. Polder’s end moved without any
trouble, however, and soon we had exposed an opening in the wall, about six
feet long and two feet high.
From inside the aperture, Polder took out a big iron crank, which he inserted
into a hole in the wall.
“This is the old corpse elevator,” he explained, as he started
cranking down a platform that had been resting just above the top of the
opening. “The upper access has been closed long ago, but the lower
one comes in handy at times.”
On the platform stood a complete, rather old-fashioned personal computer, very
similar to the one that had just been impounded. We took it upstairs and
I set it up, and from a well-concealed safe Polder’s grandson took a box
of removable disks.
“These backup media hold the data from last night,” he said.
“We’ll be up and running in no time.”
My relief was great. We had won a victory, however modest, over the
forces of repression. Looking out of the office windows, I understood why
it was here, not downstairs, where club members would have had it so much
easier to enter. The office had an unhindered view over the lane and the
back yard. In the case of a raid, there’d be several minutes to put
things away. But I couldn’t help thinking of how fragile our
security was. What if the Bundeskriminalamt came? They, the Federal
Criminal Police, weren’t to be fooled as easily as the local junior
constables.
“Remember the gentleman who came while I showed you the computer last
night?” Polder asked. “He’s our neighbor, the Lord
Mayor of Hanover. He’s one of us. He lets his boys play
around with our computer, but he doesn’t allow them to call in the BKA or
any other outside help. He makes sure they have their priorities
right. For now, we don’t have to worry. We’ll deal with
the next obstacle when we encounter it. And it’s about time you
went to work!”
Gardening turned out to be an immensely rewarding profession. I acted as
both gardener’s apprentice and handyman, and had the privilege of helping
Hans, the gardener, and his family turn out harvest after harvest of beautiful,
organic vegetables. Much was sold directly to customers who came to the
garden, and the rest was delivered to stores and markets around southern
Hanover. I did some of the driving and learned my way around town, while
my German improved tremendously. Hans didn’t speak English with me,
so I had to adapt to him; for a beginning, it was hard, and then I reached some
kind of a breaking point and made great strides every day.
I also got further insights into the workings of the trade club system.
Since Hans’s market garden was a business, he was free to use its money
without being marked: he paid by check or bank transfer on behalf of his
business where, as an individual, he’d have had to present a tattooed
identifier to a laser reader. Since he traded in both euros and LETS
units, he acted as one of a number of clearing points for the members of the
trade club. If a member needed something that couldn’t be had in a
store accepting his or her trade club card, she or he would ask somebody like
Hans to obtain it with euros and would then pay the agent, typically Hans, in
LETS units. This helped Hans balance his cash flow: frequently, his
business would have more euros than he wanted, and he’d be very willing
to trade some for LETS units.
I asked Hans if this kind of interlinking with the mainstream economy
wasn’t a form of exposure to precisely those influences the LETSystem
members had wanted to isolate themselves from: inflation, speculation, and
price competition from industrial goods and commodity markets. But Hans
said that in his experience, this could be handled. First, most of the
members weren’t marked, so their only widely usable payment method was
the LETSystem. They were also quite prepared to pay higher prices for
locally made goods and local services. Second, the only people who could
exchange LETS units for euros and vice versa were local businesses like
Hans’s garden and a small number of merchants. These agents would
only carry out such transactions on behalf of members, and only regarding
payment for goods that couldn’t be produced locally. If an outsider
came and wanted to speculate in LETS units, they’d be turned down.
Finally, should one of these enterprisers turn around and disregard those
rules, they’d be instantly excluded from the club.
We were beating the system, and we were using its own method, computer
payment. What intrigued me most was that all these thousands upon
thousands of unmarked people were continuing their lives much as before,
although they were unable to go shopping in large supermarkets and department
stores. Most of them were to some degree self-sufficient: no one with a
yard of any size grew grass, apart from those who kept sheep and goats.
Vegetable gardens filled every nook and cranny of their land. Even the
banks of the numerous railway lines were being utilized as vegetable gardens
for the railroad employees. Surprisingly many of the unmarked stayed on
in paid jobs although they were no longer able to spend their euros
freely. I did some asking about this and discovered that some were paying
off their debts at accelerated rates, while others who didn’t owe any
money were paying off other unmarked people’s debts. Since their
rent and other bills were paid by standing order or bank transfer directly out
of their bank accounts, the abolition of personal checks didn’t really
matter.
The hardest hit were those who lived in apartments without any land of their
own. The few communal gardens the city provided were utilized to
capacity. In fact, not many unmarked people were in this situation.
There had been a mass migration to suburbia, and even further out, during
several years before the identifier was introduced. Those who remained in
apartments were all more or less being helped out by others and were leaving
the cities as fast as they could.
Hans knew a lot about urban agriculture and told me things I found very
encouraging. Being done on a small scale and close to the markets, it had
remained labor-intensive all over the world and gave employment to nearly 200
million people. Another billion people in cities were somehow involved in
it, mostly by way of growing their own food in their own back yards.
Abandoned high-rise buildings were being turned into vertical farms in big
cities everywhere. In Chinese cities, urban dwellers had traditionally
grown 85 percent of their vegetables themselves; in Singapore, 80 percent of
the poultry consumed was raised locally, on a small scale. All this had escaped
the onslaught of the multinationals. Urban agriculture was doing fine all
over the world, and city market gardens like Hans’s business provided not
only fresh food, but also lots of jobs.
Just like the banks of German train tracks, similar vacant land was in productive
use elsewhere. In Rio de Janeiro, the power company allowed farmers to
use the land under the power lines, itself assuming the task of keeping
squatters at bay. Elsewhere, farmers cooperated with racetrack owners,
cleaning up and using the horse manure, and were allowed to farm the edges of
the racecourse, where they had the benefit of a chain link fence protecting
their produce from theft. Others grew duckweed for fish and chickens on
municipal sewage ponds, benefiting from nutritional qualities in the duckweed
similar to those of soybeans. On a larger scale, the sewage of Mexico
City was being pumped hundreds of miles out into the countryside, where it was
used to grow forage crops for beef, as well as for smaller animals back in the city.
There was a weakness in the basic approach of the official-commercial system
that had set out to turn every human being into a consumer, dependent on credit
and money. It worked on such a high level, relying on mass media,
computer control, and statistics, that it just missed out on what a lot of
people kept on doing for themselves. In Latin America, urban gardens and
farming lots were often hidden behind brick or stone walls, invisible to the
street. This helped protect them from thieves, and, apparently, also from
being noticed by the enemies of self-sufficiency. Angrily, the latter
kept denouncing the “gray” economy, from which they got no profits
or interest, but, praise God, so far they’d been unable to do anything
about it.
It struck me that the life we led was, in fact, much more desirable than that
of the marked people. We had everything we needed and we were able to
obtain anything they could buy, if we wanted it. But our food was mostly
homegrown, and always organic, while the supply to supermarkets of food
products free of chemicals and genetic engineering had almost ceased. We
also led a nearly stress-free life, spending so much of our time in nature; the
rat race was just an ugly memory. The few times I had to go downtown I was
appalled by the tenseness in evidence everywhere.
Still, the decision to refuse the identifier hadn’t been an easy
one. It had been a step into the unknown—on my part, I’d been
convinced I’d be living like a beggar. It had been much the same
for everyone I asked, as the movement that was now so strong had, by necessity,
started out from nothing. It seemed that our trust was being rewarded,
and I was particularly touched by an elderly lady who assured me she’d
never had it so good, and quoted the Bible, saying, “Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you.”
My peaceful life during that summer was in sharp contrast to what many others
had to go through. With the opening of the monsoon season, floods displaced
millions of people in northern India and Bangladesh. In the resulting
chaos, the habitual border clashes over the Line of Control between India and
Pakistan flared up and became a regular war. Pakistan drew on her pact
with China, and the Chinese came driving down their new highway, threatening
northeastern India. India dropped one of her nuclear bombs on a strategic
pass along the road to halt the advance. China, eager to divert the
attention of her people from her food crisis, mounted a major armored advance
through Indochina and Burma, destroying everything in its way, and soon the
Chinese troops were in India proper. India invoked her pact with Russia,
which attacked China from the north. By this time, the fighting was
indiscriminate, all four powers began nuclear bombings, and on the densely
populated battlegrounds, civilians were mowed down like grass.
When it was all over, a full third of Earth’s population had
perished. The number of troops, mostly armored, that had taken part in
the fighting, had been an unbelievable 200 million. Only a few million
soldiers remained in the end, when the war petered out due to the near-total
destruction of the participating countries.
The world was stunned. This had been a regional conflict lasting just a
few weeks, but still, the devastation was worse by orders of magnitude than
during either of the World Wars. And if anybody had been cynical enough
to think that the food crisis would have been eased at all by the loss of so
many people, they were wrong. Much of the world’s food producing
capacity had been destroyed, too, and as the soot from the burned cities rose
into the stratosphere, nuclear winter would be spreading fast, first over the
northern hemisphere, then further south; open-air agriculture would be severely
hampered for years to come.
Nevertheless, there was no change in the consumerist lifestyle of the rest of
humanity. With the radioactive fallout, outdoor life became even less
practical than before, and the more time you spent indoors, the more you
consumed. There seemed to be a sense of abandon: let’s eat and
drink; tomorrow we may be dead. Where there should have been incessant
fund-raising campaigns for aid and reconstruction in Russia and Asia, it seemed
that Western people couldn’t be bothered anymore. The closest
Western media came to expressing concern was a widespread fear that the
Internet would crash as it lost nearly half of its servers and communication
links in rapid succession. But the Net worked as it had been designed to
work: it automatically set up alternate routes and kept the rest of the world
connected.
With many cities leveled and uninhabitable due to radiation, and few people
surviving, the countries that had been destroyed were, in effect, reverting to
subsistence farming. As James Frost had explained, with no cities and no
communications, those people couldn’t be effectively exploited, so they
didn’t interest investors. Not even the Russian mafia cared for
Russia anymore; its operations turned up all over Europe instead, causing great
consternation. In my book, the remaining Russians were now free, and so
were the survivors in China, Tibet, India, and Pakistan.
I called Laura as often as I could to find out how she was doing, and she
reported that the radioactivity was lower in Australia than in the northern
hemisphere. She was taking every precaution, and expected that by the
coming spring, she’d be able to grow her own vegetables like before.
At Hans’s garden, we were largely spared radioactive fallout: we had no
rain during the weeks when the radiation was at its peak. We were also
well north of the worst belt of fallout material. It seemed that most of
the people we knew were able to continue feeding themselves as they had become
accustomed to do. We stocked up on iodine tablets, and there was a
little-known Hungarian oat bran preparation that we took in the hope that it
would help remove radioactive strontium from our bodies. In the end,
there was a great deal of fatalism, too, and after all, we had to keep on
eating.
One Saturday in October, Polder sent his son-in-law, the minister, and me, to
fetch a load of produce and meat from his relatives near Greifswald in the
East. We took Stephan’s, the minister’s, station wagon,
filled it up with hardware and other necessities that the relatives had
requested, and set off for the farm.
The Opel was a lot newer than Polder’s VW, and moved silently through the
city, its electric motors taking their energy from the flywheel. I got no
end of fun out of switching the car’s audio alert system between
different languages and voices: it would talk French with a deep, sexy female
voice, then German like an SS major, and I could make it say something
absolutely incomprehensible in Turkish, sounding like a choir boy with a cold
in his nose. Stephan got exasperated with me and said that it was
terrible to have a schizophrenic car—once you got used to a certain voice
you more or less connected it to a kind of personality you imagined the car to
have, and he wasn’t recognizing his wagon any longer.
Restored to its normal self, the Opel announced that we were coming to the
Autobahn, and asked for permission to authorize the payment of the toll.
Stephan queried how much it would cost to Greifswald. “16
euros,” the car answered, which Stephan thought reasonable.
Now Stephan switched on the gas turbine and steered the wagon into one of the
four inner, fast lanes. He told the car when we wanted to be in
Greifswald, and sat back. The car picked the
This car did just about anything you told it to do, apart from scratching your
back. Stephan asked it to give us a commentary on the sights along the Autobahn,
which it duly delivered. He had given it a standing menu of news topics
he wanted it to monitor, and every now and then it provided us with a quick
rundown of the latest news from the international wire services and a number of
radio stations, without bothering us with things that didn’t interest
us. Getting a list of the next ten departures from Berlin’s
Schönefeld airport was no trouble at all, and, just to try something difficult,
I requested a roll of the ships in the harbor of Melbourne. It took no
more than five seconds before the car started listing them, and I had to cut it
short, as I really didn’t want to know. Conveniently, this
didn’t necessitate any form of shouting match: I just made sure to look
bored, and the considerate car computer immediately checked if I wanted it to
continue.
This car, like all modern ones, always was in communication with the cellular
telephone network. The network provided both a high-speed data link, via
the Internet, to local traffic computers, and a location service, complemented
by the car’s Galileo satellite positioning unit. Thus the car at
all times knew its exact location down to a precision of
Few people worried about the fact that the traffic computers also kept track of
the location of every car. The location information, freely shared with
vehicle owners and operators who were willing to pay for it, was very useful
for trucking companies, also giving them exact data on the status of vehicle
and shipment. If the engine started acting up, or the cargo was in danger
of spoiling, they could take immediate action by sending the driver to a depot
or routing a repair vehicle to intercept the truck. Car drivers could
elect to have their emergency road service providers perform that kind of
monitoring, as well.
Hence, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road were always known to the
authorities, and not only could you be followed and found, but your route
remained on record for a few months, for the case that you were later
apprehended for some crime. The official message was that such
information wasn’t perused, except when a car had been stolen: finding a
stolen car normally took the police just a few minutes. Found or not,
newer model cars could be immobilized at any time via a cellular phone message
sent by its owner. The police, of course, also could immobilize a pursued
car: they had their own passcodes to override the access control systems of car
computers. Not surprisingly, the black market values of old, computerless
cars with refurbished, powerful engines were high and still rising.
If you used a phone navigation service to find your way on foot or by public
transport, your route remained on record just as if you had been driving.
In the name of the war on terrorism, the EU had eagerly followed the lead of
the US and outlawed printed road and street maps and atlases, so as to force as
many people as possible to leave electronic traces of themselves. Stiff
fines for publishing driving instructions as anything other than latitude and
longitude, to be interpreted by GPS or Galileo based navigators, were part of
the legislation. Cellular telephones and smartphones, whether equipped
with GPS or Galileo chips or not, could always be located by the cellular
networks down to a few tens of yards in cities, and a few hundreds of yards in
the countryside. Mining the computers of the phone operators for the
movements of individuals carrying cell phones or for cars equipped with
cellular links was thus, in principle, possible. However, because of the
cost of storing these data, the operators had won concessions that made such
searches difficult and often fruitless for the police—hence the
importance of promoting the use of on-line navigation services.
Surveillance wasn’t one of our worries, however, and presently the car
alerted its driver to the fact that we’d soon be leaving the
Autobahn. On the exit to Greifswald, the guidance system ended and
Stephan was again in charge. Still, he asked the Opel to help with
navigating, as it was some time since he’d been in those parts. The
car obliged, showing us the street map and our progress on its computer screen,
and reading out the names of the streets as we crossed them, along with clear
instructions as to when and which way to turn.
At one time Stephan didn’t notice a car breaking in front of us.
But the Opel, equipped with both radar and infrared sensors, did, and overrode
Stephan by instantly slowing down. Stephan, who had been distracted by
some landmark along the street, thanked it profusely, to which the Opel
responded with a modest, “That’s nothing.”
To me, Stephan admitted that when alone in the car, he would hold long
conversations with it.
“I spend time driving between my congregations, and I find it fantastic
to have a talking and listening car that can do everything my computer at home
can do. The car can retrieve any knowledge humanity has over the
Internet, and, in particular, there are several sites that have interactive
Bible search programs available to the public. With my hands free for
driving, I can ask the car to pursue a subject or a concept right through the
Bible, to give me different translations and use different concordances from
the various sites, and, in the end, to print out the chain of thought and the
references I’ve selected. So I no longer sit at a desk preparing my
talks; I arrive at the church with a slip of paper and a fresh new sermon in my
head.”
15. Organic Farming
We now were truly in the countryside, and,
having passed through a village, we arrived at a large, thriving farm. It
had hundreds of acres of land, well interspersed with forests and hedges that
had protected the topsoil. There were herds of cattle as well as pigs,
fowl, sheep, horses, vegetable gardens, and an orchard with fruit trees and
berry bushes. The farmer’s wife, Frau Schmidt, looking healthy and
happy, greeted us and announced to all and sundry that dinner was ready.
Many German families customarily eat the main meal of the day at noon and have
only a modest supper after work has ended.
The story of the family and the farm was long and
fascinating. They had been on the land at least since the eighteenth
century. After the Second World War,
The reunification had given them their land back,
but it had also caused the collapse of the market for East German farmers, and
had left the Schmidts with debts that had taken a long time to pay off.
As with so many others in the alternative movement, our hosts said that they
now had it better than at any earlier time in their lives: they had a faithful
clientele and a protected market. The currency of the unmarked, the LETS
unit, wasn’t freely convertible, and prices could reflect true costs
without being forced down by commodity prices on the world market. On the
other hand, Herr Schmidt chuckled, there were many other farmers supplying the
trade club market, and the competition was keeping him quite honest.
The apartments left over from the days of the
collective farm had been repaired to serve as homes for their workers.
Since the Schmidts now used no chemicals and hardly any motorized farm
equipment, they were again able to employ many laborers. The latter were
paid in kind and in LETS units; what income the farm received in euros, had to
be used to pay taxes and fees for the mandatory health and pension
schemes. Since all the laborers and their families were mark dodgers, the
arrangement suited them perfectly.
I asked Herr Schmidt if they hadn’t sort of
reverted to a system similar to Communism now that they had set up this
close-knit community where their laborers were treated more like family than
like employees. But he didn’t agree at all.
“Our community reflects our Christian
faith. Although the two systems seem to have similar objectives,
Communism is but a bad imitation of the Christian economic ideal.
Christian communities are based on love and giving, while Communism is based on
envy and taking. A member of a Christian community thinks in terms of
contributions; a Communist thinks in terms of entitlements. That’s
why Christian communities work, and Communism doesn’t.”
The Schmidts’ main worry was a certain
group of environmentalists with its campaign to close down traditional farms,
which the activists considered polluters of the environment. With
commercial food production more and more in the hands of big business, modern
farming methods relied heavily on greenhouses, hydroponic growing, robotics,
automated recycling of all runoffs, and genetically engineered food
plants. During the Great Drought, the water shortage had forced
agribusiness, and rising food prices had allowed it, to develop closed
processes that minimized pollution through runoffs. Organic farmers
didn’t pollute either and their soil erosion was minimized through
conservation tillage, but the environmentalists, recipients of large grants
from agribusiness, had adopted a policy demanding the abolition of traditional
farming altogether so as to restore the lands of old-fashioned farmers to
nature and halt the inevitable runoffs from their livestock.
The attitude of the local authority wasn’t
entirely positive, either. Farms like this one, together with their
customers, formed a separate economy that didn’t contribute to the
turnover and profits of business. Local politicians, many of which had a
stake in that turnover, tended to make life as difficult as they could for the
self-sufficient. Official harassment included frequent health inspections
and tax audits, and lots of red tape concerning the legal benefits of the
employees. The unions had been engaged in the campaign as well, and
regularly tried to get payment of wages in anything other than euros outlawed.
Herr Schmidt invited Stephan and me for a tour of
the farm on horseback. I was impressed by the dedication of everyone
working there, by the cleanliness of the barns and the milking process, and by
the care and attention to detail that showed all over the place. Buildings
and fences were in good repair, the animals were healthy, the land was well
cared for and free of weeds, and the forests were well kept and
productive. The recent fallout had caused little damage, and the
radioactivity was back within safe limits.
I didn’t think those environmentalists
could ever have seen a farm like this, or they wouldn’t have been trying
to close it down. To help Herr Schmidt counter their attacks, I told him
of some research I knew about: organic farms typically use 60 percent less
energy and emit 40 to 60 percent less carbon dioxide than conventional
ones. They also provide sanctuaries for many endangered species, and
their emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are lower. Since they
don’t use chemical fertilizers, organic farms help protect the
groundwater. They add no phosphorus to the environment, and thus they
don’t contribute to the eutrophication of the waterways.
We unloaded the station wagon and filled it up
again with sacks of wheat, potatoes, turnips, onions, and other produce that
Polder couldn’t grow in his small garden, as well as meat and sausage
from the Schmidts’ recent slaughter. On top of everything Polder
had ordered, Frau Schmidt gave us eggs, butter, cheese, a couple of chickens,
and a four-liter container of fresh milk. This was old-fashioned
bartering one-on-one, plus some true generosity for good measure.
During our trip back to
Back in
And so,
one Friday morning in late October, I was back at the Mellendorf truck stop
north of
Here was another city of glass and steel, the
financial center of
Dieter was profoundly interested in my
experiences and gave me credit for finding out the hard way.
“I never thought much of taking the mark,
but there again, I had no idea that it’s written up in the Bible.
In principle, I’ve half condemned myself to hell, I
suppose—I’m marked, but nobody’s been asked to do any
worshipping of the Leader or his image yet. You said that those who do
both those things are in trouble, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s impossible to tell
from the texts,” I replied. “First it reads that you’ll
be condemned if you both receive the mark and worship the beast or his image,
but I looked at that passage again with Stephan, and another verse down, it
says ‘there’s no rest day or night for those who worship the beast
or his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.’ But
Stephan said that, personally, he’d give a pretty good chance to those
who have been marked, but back off and change their lifestyle when the
worshipping part is introduced. After all, for most people the mark came
as a surprise, and it’s only afterwards that the alternative ways have
got some serious publicity.”
“Well, it’s worth my while to give it
a go, then,” Dieter said. “Tomorrow I’ll show you a
place somewhat like those you’ve seen, but using a different approach
again.”
Dieter lived with his parents, who very kindly
put me up for the night, and in the morning we all drove off toward
The coworker who welcomed us—patients were
called villagers and staff coworkers—explained some of those principles,
which included respect for the patient as a human being, a holistic approach,
education even for the most severely handicapped, an emphasis on artistic
expression, and a productive task for everyone, so as to assure their sense of
self-worth. Their kind of institution would receive patients from public
centers for the retarded who had been kept sedated and in shackles for years,
and would, almost without exception, turn them into happy, productive people
who needed no drugs or coercion.
The Camphill movement, as this group of
communities called itself, existed in many countries and shared the same
approach, while, otherwise, the communities were entirely independent.
The combination of farming and crafts as industries for villagers and coworkers
alike was common, although many communities did more of one or the other,
depending on their facilities. The architecture was part of their legacy
from Dr. Steiner: he had avoided squareness and right angles in the
buildings and objects he had designed.
The community was partially self-sufficient: its
members grew most of their own food, and made many of the things they needed
themselves. Much of what they produced was sold to help meet costs.
They also had a charity supporting them, and the villagers’ pensions were
paid to the community. Everybody shared a common household and none of
them was marked: the community did all the buying and selling for them.
Coworkers were paid mostly in kind.
Dieter’s brother Johannes had Down’s
syndrome. Johannes was short and had a round face and slanting
eyes. His handshake was weak; he didn’t have a lot of physical
strength. He had a slight speech impairment. But he was a happy,
positive person with a shrewd sense of humor. As people came and
went—it was Saturday, and many visitors passed through the community
building—I noticed an uncanny gift in Johannes: he saw right through
every person’s façade to their true personality. He perceived
humans, not roles; he was entirely unaware of the significance of titles,
dress, mannerisms, and position in society. Cats and horses, and some
dogs, have the same gift, but I had never seen a person with it. There
again, I had never met anybody with Down’s syndrome: there were hardly
any around.
Had the system had its way, Johannes
wouldn’t have been born, either. But his mother, Frau Braun, when
informed of the condition of the fetus, had refused to have him aborted.
She had wanted a child for a long time, and she wasn’t going to give him
up. The city had taken away her entitlement to child allowance for the
baby, but she hadn’t budged. She had given birth to Johannes, and
had raised him with much sacrifice: Down babies require a lot of care, and they
cry a lot. When Dieter had come along, she had had two babies to care
for, and her task had got no easier.
Johannes had lived at home all the way through
school. His parents had found a Waldorf school—part of the same
movement as the community where Johannes was now—that had accepted him
and given him expert care. After finishing school, Johannes had needed a
job in a sheltered environment, and the Camphill community had been the natural
place for him. He was now around forty, old as Down people go, but in
perfect health and still working.
“I’m the mailman around here,”
Johannes told me. “Everybody gets their mail delivered by me.
I also weave: I made that rug over there on the wall!”
It was a beautiful rug. The woof was wool,
dark green with a mottled look that made it intriguing. It would have
fetched a thousand euros in a craft shop. The Brauns had a similar one,
which I had already admired, in their home. All the materials for the
rugs had been produced by the community, including the linen warp and the
vegetable dyes.
“I have an offer for a job there as a
coworker,” Dieter told me during our trip back. “Not that I
expect to be forced to any kind of Leader-worship, as we don’t have a 3-D
television, but dictatorships have a way of making you take a stand. They
don’t allow anybody to take the middle road. You either go all the
way with the crowd, or pull back and refuse. And the latter act gets
noticed. So I think I’ll take the community up on its offer
soon.”
“Is it that bad?” I asked.
“
“
“I have no doubt about where the EU is
headed. Not long ago I was cleaning out the attic and came across some
old magazines left there from my great-grandfather’s time. He was
no Nazi, but he kept everything that had any interest, and these magazines sure
gave me something to think about.
“It was a rather complete collection of Signal,
a high-quality Nazi-German propaganda magazine for foreign sympathizers,
printed during the second world war, when Germany controlled just about all of
the current European Union. My ancestor must have been stationed abroad
or had them sent to him, because Signal wasn’t available in
“The
“How soon will the Leader’s influence
spread abroad to places like
Dieter was up-to-date with the latest
international developments that I had missed during my sheltered summer as a
gardener’s apprentice.
“His domination will take hold as fast as
the new TV standard can be implemented. The way
“What about the language barrier?
Most people outside
“The translation takes place in the sets
themselves,” Dieter told me. “The set gets the appropriate
translation program and dictionaries from the satellite,
and—Presto!—the Leader speaks Hottentot! Along with the
translation program, the sets also get parameters to adapt their artificial
intelligence modules to the local culture and way of thinking. That way,
the impact of the propaganda is maximized. Other parameters enable the
sets to interpret facial expressions and body language characteristic of each
population. This helps the propagandists gauge the effectiveness of the
program better than verbal feedback.
“Add to that the individual personality
profiles of the viewers, readily available from the direct marketing agencies,
and you can give each person precisely the message they want to hear.
Everybody will think the Leader is a politician just to their liking, and will
demand that his policies replace any remaining national ones. Once the
autocracy is in place, there’s no further concern about what people think
they actually got; anyway, people’s attention spans these days are short.”
When we got back to the Brauns’
place, I called Laura and woke her up bright and early Sunday morning. I
told her what I had learned, and she confirmed that the new sets were already
for sale in
“I’ll be looking around, Gregory,” she
said. “The mainland is too hot and dry, but it may get cold and
dark if we get nuclear winter instead of summer this year. I have this
strong feeling that we should go as far south as we can, to
“How do you like the opening words of my
latest book from the antique bookstore on the corner?” she continued.
“Listen to this—it’s from Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that
a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
“You need me, don’t you?”
“Yes, Laura, I need you and I want you,”
I said. “My fortune may not be all that fabulous, but I love you
and I’d like you to be my wife!”
“That’s nice!” she said, her
voice full of laughter. “I love you too. Bye-bye now!”
I had
proposed, but she hadn’t said yes, the tease, not yet... But there
again, she was the one who had brought it up. I knew I’d live the
rest of my life with Laura.
PART 3
16.
The following day, Sunday, Dieter and I found the nearest trade club on my
LETSystem list, and on my recommendation, Dieter was accepted as a
member. We took some time getting to know the people running the
accounting for the club and finding out about the merchants accepting its card,
and my traveling plans were soon being discussed. One of the members that
happened to be there, a barge captain, offered me a ride down the Main and
Rhine rivers, and it was settled that I’d go with him as far as
So Dieter drove me to his home to pick up my luggage, and after lunch, he took
me to the harbor by the river
The
But soon everybody cheered up again, and I long enjoyed the view of the steep
riverbanks with their vineyards. It got dark around six, and at eight we
arrived in
The next day, I crossed the
I had lunch at a cozy Gasthaus, or restaurant, easy to recognize as belonging
to the LETSystem on the card decal in its window. One of the patrons
offered me a ride to the western outskirts of
The cathedral is an extension of the original court
Normally, the grilles should have been shut, as there was no guided tour going
on. But now they were open, revealing the ancient throne of
Charlemagne. The throne is a large, square chair made of simple,
close-fitting marble slabs with a wooden seat and an unhindered view of
everything below. After taking in the beauty for a while, I walked to the
end of the chancel to find the gilded shrine of the old emperor, where the
relics he collected during his lifetime are kept in silk cloth.
While I was there and well out of sight, a slightly built man, unaware of my
presence, entered the church and quietly went up the stairs to the upper level
of the ambulatory. Then, scanning the church to check if anybody was
watching, and, evidently, missing me behind the altar, he climbed the six steps
to the throne and sat down. It was way too big for him—Charlemagne
was seven feet tall—and the little man seemed too minute to fill the
emperor’s seat. But there he sat for a while, enjoying some unknown
vision and looking mighty pleased with himself. Then, with a grimace
toward the altar, he disappeared out the far door where he had come from.
I was quite sure that he hadn’t seen me, so the grimace must have been
for somebody else. That was just as well, for it had been a fierce
expression of hate.
I left by the nearest exit and sauntered around to the western end of the
church. An official EU car was just pulling out, but I couldn’t see
anything through its dark windows. Whoever the visitor had been, he must
have arranged for the cathedral to be empty and the grilles to be open, which I
was quite grateful for. Wondering whom and what I had seen—it had
been too dark to see the man’s face clearly—I walked through the
darkening town to have my dinner, again at a small cafe that was a LETSystem
member, and, eventually, to bed.
Come morning, I continued to
There was another landmark I had to visit and to find it, I took rue des
Grand-Carmes, crossed rue du
A man my age, accompanied by three girls, stopped and shared my fun as I stood
there. We got to talking, and he introduced himself as Jean-Luc
Fortier. When he found out that I had nowhere in particular to go, he
invited me to his home, not far away. He and his family lived in a large,
stately old apartment that he had inherited from his parents, now
deceased. His wife’s name was Michelle, and they had four young
daughters in all.
It had become a regular experience during my trip that I always seemed to run
into mark dodgers, and I was slightly worried that, as a result, I might become
complacent and careless about how I moved about. But I put the thought
off until tomorrow, because here, again, I was enjoying the selfless
hospitality of a family just as pleasant as those I had met in
Marie-Louise, the oldest of the girls, spoke a little English, and wasn’t
at all shy about trying it out on me. The younger ones knew only French,
however, so I got a good opportunity to brush up on mine. Little Sophie,
who was only four, thought I sounded really funny, and giggled whenever I
spoke. But she was still very polite and we got along fabulously.
The Fortier family had returned from
“Did you run into any of those nasty locusts?” I asked Marie-Louise
in my best French, after first checking with Michelle how to translate
“Locust.” One of the recent asteroid impacts had hit an
undiscovered uranium deposit in
“Yes, they were all over the place, but they never bit me!” she
answered.
“Me neither!” Martha and Natalie broke in, and little Sophie
echoed, “Moi non plus!”
“It’s a fact,” Jean-Luc commented, “that we don’t
know of a single person we’d consider one of God’s people, who ever
got stung by them. They were very selective, to the point that several
persons who were stung during the beginning of the plague, and then joined the
church, were spared from then on, while everybody else was suffering
horribly. It was the same story all over Africa and the
“That never was on the news,” I marveled. “I guess it
wouldn’t have sat very well with officialdom.”
“I can assure you that we didn’t advertise our luck,”
Michelle said. “But word spread fast, and many thought they’d
be protected by staying inside the church or the school. It didn’t
work that way, however. They soon found out, because the church
wasn’t insect-proof, and the school didn’t have glass
windows. But still, we were able to continue teaching without any
disruptions. The couple of problem children we had got stung early on,
and dropped out of school.”
“You taught school along with your husband, Michelle,” I
observed. “Do you feel you’re missing out on something now
that you’re staying home?”
“No, nothing that I’d regret not having. Living in
“I’ve been told that children who go to day care learn social
skills earlier,” I answered, “but looking at your girls, I
don’t see how they could be any better behaved!”
“There’s a difference,” Jean-Luc pointed out. “In
an institution, children learn how to fend for themselves in a group. And
that’s okay for most people: that’s what they want for their
kids. But a mother can raise her children to be individuals, and she can
teach them manners on top of that.
“Unless one of the parents is a full-time caregiver, kids learn the laws
of the jungle too early, and may never accept that the good of the family comes
before the desires of the individuals. Many children seem to lack basic
manners and social skills simply because they’re only aware of their own
interests. What makes the problem worse is that modern homes are
automated to the extent that there are no chores left for children, and kids
find it an imposition if anything is expected of them. Because Michelle
is aware of this, our girls have learned from the beginning that we’re a
family, that we do things as a family, and that their needs will be taken care
of by the family. When this is their starting point, selflessness comes
naturally.
”Another crucial reason for one parent to stay home with small children
is seeing to it that they eat correctly. In this endeavor, we have the
entire business community and a good part of the medical profession against us,
and not even the schools can be trusted to keep junk food, soda pop, and sweets
out of the reach of children.”
“Eating correctly sounds good, but what are the practical implications
and how does it help?” I inquired.
Jean-Luc had clearly done some reading on the subject. “At least
ten percent of the population suffers from functional hypoglycemia, a condition
that essentially turns sugar, syrups, and white flour into poisons for the
patient. Most of them don’t know about it. 90 percent of neuroses,
40 percent of cases of schizophrenia, most cases of juvenile delinquency, a
good proportion of allergies, phobias, headaches, stomach ulcers, muscle
spasms, anxiety disorders, overweight, depression, addictions, etcetera,
etcetera, are directly caused by functional hypoglycemia. What goes wrong
is that eating simple carbohydrates triggers overproduction of insulin that
brings the blood sugar level down low enough to deprive the brain of
fuel. This can result in violent and foul-mouthed outbursts in a normally
placid person. I’ve seen a case of hypoglycemia mistaken for demon
possession, complete with a botched-up exorcism that gave the patient a
permanent knee injury. Moreover, with a high insulin level, stored fat
can’t be burned as fuel for the body, and weight gain follows. In
time, the condition may cause diabetes.
“Medical schools often don’t teach nutrition, and many doctors
don’t know about functional hypoglycemia. Nutritionists
aren’t authorized to diagnose illness. So the condition normally
remains untreated for the life of the patient, while the symptoms may get drug
treatment that shouldn’t be given and has little effect.
There’s no cure, but through proper eating and drinking, the condition
can be kept in check.”
“And how should you eat, and how do you teach children to eat
right?” I asked.
“Eat small, frequent meals low in starch and high in protein and
fat,” Jean-Luc said. “Avoid sugar, sweets, sweet drinks,
candy, white bread, pasta, and all other simple carbohydrates altogether.
Get enough fiber, vitamins, and exercise. By denying us healthy foods,
agribusiness colludes with the pharmaceutical industry to make us consume
unnecessary drugs all our lives and go to psychiatrists when all we need to do
is eat correctly. The diet is on the Web. Children will learn what
they’re taught in a good home.”
“What if your doctor doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of
functional hypoglycemia but treats just the symptoms? Self-medication can
be dangerous.”
“The good news,” Jean-Luc answered, “is that you
wouldn’t be self-medicating. If you suspect functional
hypoglycemia, you can try the diet for a few weeks. If your symptoms
improve or disappear, you’re on to something. Obviously,
medications shouldn’t be stopped without a doctor’s approval, but
it could be nice to have the proof. A reliable diagnosis of the condition
requires a six-hour glucose tolerance test, something most doctors aren’t
willing to prescribe, but a sure sign of it is a constant craving for
sweets.”
“This becomes difficult for single parents and for families where both
parents have to go to work to earn enough money,” I commented.
“I guess you’ll have to get together with like-minded people and do
your best.”
“In
“No concern for AIDS, then?”
“Not in our congregation,” Lean-Luc said. “AIDS is
rampant in
“The people in our church had solid family values, and they rejected
superstitions. So for the most part, they weren’t a risk group for
AIDS. It was a very good community and we had a wonderful time
there. Our church also runs a fine little hospital.”
“My friend Joel from
“That’s very much the African way,” Michelle answered.
“Here, society has long since disintegrated into individuals and nuclear
families that don’t trust each other. So they have to use social
and commercial services for everything. Add the gender equality hype, and
you have a situation like here in
“How’s that?” I wanted to know. “How can they stop
you?”
“Through taxation. Jean-Luc has a job; I work at home—so
he’s supposed to pay me a salary and the salary gets taxed. The
minimum wage is enough, mind you, but with all the extra fees for pension
schemes, insurance, what have you, only the very rich can afford housewives
anymore!”
“We get around it by keeping Michelle registered as unemployed,”
Jean-Luc added. “She even gets a small unemployment benefit that
pays our condominium fee and our utilities. But it’s quite clear
that gender equality has been welcomed with open arms by those who want to
prevent all forms of self-sufficiency. A family where both parents work
has to buy many things and services that we don’t need.”
Lunch was over, and I went with the girls to be shown their treasures and
artwork, while my hosts cleared up. Jean-Luc got ready to walk the three
older girls back to school, and invited me to come along and see the
church. He had no appointments for the afternoon, and we both felt like
talking some more. So we wished Sophie a nice nap, and set off.
I was quite interested in the Fortier’s experience of living in
Having dropped the three girls off at their school, Jean-Luc showed me his
church, and invited me for a cup of coffee in the office. I felt I had to
commend him and his wife again on behalf of their lovely daughters.
“Jean-Luc, I don’t think I know another family with such
well-behaved and positive children. Are there any other secrets to it
than a mother’s dedication?”
“A father’s love and steady hand help a lot, as well,” he
answered. “But looking at our little family, you see only part of
the picture. We were members of a traditional village in Gisenyi, and we
still have strong support from the congregation here.
“A village consists of people with a common identity. In the clan
or village, there’s uniformity between authority, values, and common
interest. You have to remember that peer pressure is the strongest
influence on people’s values and behavior. Humans have the peculiar
streak that they won’t unconditionally trust too large a group: a village
or a clan are OK, but a city, a nation, a country are too big.
“If you remove the social authority too far, to where the members of the
group no longer have emotional contact with those who set and teach the norms
and values, the peer pressure will remain on a local level and will,
inevitably, rise in rebellion against the distant authority. Where the
village brings about the necessary degree of conformity, according to its
traditional values, mainly through education, example, and emotional pressure,
industrialized society tries to govern our behavior through fashions,
legislation, economic incentives, and policing.
“Modern, urban society has taken away the traditional close contact
between small, local groups of people. Instead, we all get a standardized
culture and a uniform propaganda from mass media. We don’t visit
our neighbors, because it’s too dangerous to go out; rather, we converse
with strangers via electronic networks. These are people with no claims
on us, and we ask them for nothing other than intellectual interaction.
We share none of the things with them that create solidarity in natural
communities, such as common adversity and mutual achievements. When we
need to talk to somebody, we go to professional, paid counselors, like myself,
society’s only remaining personal representatives in our lives.
“Children naturally pick up the values of their social environment from
older children. If one of them does something wrong, the band of kids,
which instinctively plays at arm’s length from adults, will punish the
offender immediately and in a way he or she understands—through scolding,
shunning, or deprivation of some kind. If a child has a tendency to show
off and try to attract attention by being difficult, the other kids will set it
straight very effectively. In contrast, a teacher in a day care center or
a kindergarten can’t help but reward such a craving for attention,
because she can’t legally do anything to the child that it would
experience as true punishment. Whatever discipline a difficult child
receives from an adult, short of physical harm, constitutes precisely the
attention the kid wanted in the first place, and its disruptive tendencies are
reinforced.”
I could see his point.
“In Aboriginal communities in the Australian outback, you see very much
the same thing. The children get constant care and tenderness as babies,
and by the time they’re three or four years old, most of the time they
spend away from their mothers they play with other kids. They all grow up
with values that put white people to shame. They don’t know greed,
for example. If somebody is successful, it would be an unbearable
disgrace for them to enjoy a better life and not share it with their family and
relatives.”
“It’s the same in rural
“In the end, without the clan, society has to choose between the two
evils of oppressiveness, which might prevent some problems but inspires no
loyalty, and reactiveness, which educates no one and always deals with problems
only after they’ve become impossible to fix.”
17.
At the end of the day, Jean-Luc and I, between us, had pretty much put the
whole world to rights, and he invited me to dinner and to spend the night in
their guest room. First, however, he was kind enough to arrange my trip
to
When we got back to the Fortiers’ apartment, Jean-Luc continued his
arrangements. He got onto his computer and started its old Nautilus
package. This program made the computer work just like a telephone, but
instead of a regular phone line, which could be tapped, or a Voice over Internet
Protocol connection, which legitimate authorities could decrypt, this package,
freeware from the early days of the Internet, used an encryption scheme that
nobody had yet broken and no authorities had any escrowed keys for. As I
watched, he called a friend in
“Hello, Oliver! Is your room there at the back of the church
available at the moment?”
Clear as day, the response came through the computer’s loudspeakers.
“Certainly, Jean-Luc. Whom do you have for me this time?”
“A wandering Australian by the name of Gregory. He’ll be
leaving in the morning; I’ll send him directly to the church, if
that’s alright with you.”
“That’s fine,” the man called Oliver answered.
“Roger or his wife will let him in and give him the keys. Is he
there with you?”
“Yes, I am,” I broke in. “Thank you ever so much for
your kindness. Is it okay to stay for a week?”
“A week will be fine. Stay longer if you want to. We
don’t have a lot of use for that room at this time of the year. It
could be a little cold, however: it has only a small electric heater.”
“I’m equipped to camp out in the middle of winter, so don’t
worry,” I told him. “I’m looking forward to meeting
you.”
“Come to our place for dinner tomorrow night! Roger will show you
the way; we live right around the corner from the church.”
So I was all set. After exchanging some shoptalk with Oliver in French,
Jean-Luc signed off and told me some of the background. Oliver was an
English-born Protestant minister with a church in the 20th arrondissement in
Michelle had dinner ready, and we continued our spirited discussions.
After dinner, we watched the news on the family’s old TV, guaranteed to
have no means of feedback to prying marketers and officials.
“She means the propaganda commissioner,” Jean-Luc remarked,
“the second beast of the Book of Revelation. That office also
houses the headquarters of the Artes TV network. That’s why he
wants to be there—he governs by TV.”
The next piece of news from
“He was an old man and, lately, he seemed to withdraw a little from the
world,” Michelle observed. “It’ll be interesting to see
what kind of a man the new pope will be. With the Leader in
Then, with much fanfare, it was announced that Europe had received a welcome
addition to her electric power supply with the inauguration of a new satellite
transfer system from the big hydroelectric power plant that had been built in
Jean-Luc had a less rosy view of the story.
“Here’s a classic case of donor-driven development aid. The
dam and the plant were designed to be bigger and more costly than anything
“So, to save
“While we lived in
“After the Structural Adjustment Programs, rural women, who had always
done the farming, were devastated when their markets were flooded with cheap
food imports and their raw materials were no longer subsidized. While
most just disappeared into slums with their children, a few managed to hold on
to their livelihoods thanks to help from organizations like the Appropriate
Technology Groups.”
“What I’ve found quite remarkable during this trip,” I told
them, “is that in the midst of all these disasters, all the crime, and
all the cynicism, there still are some of us who actually love other people,
apart from their own families. It has made me quite optimistic about the
future. As long as there are a few of us left who care, we’ll make
it.”
“That’s right,” Jean-Luc said. “And to be fair,
I’ll have to add that there are many people working for the official aid
agencies, who genuinely want to improve the lives of the poor. They have
the unenviable task of finding a compromise that their employer can accept,
between, on the one hand, actually reducing poverty and, on the other, catering
to the business needs of the donor nations and the multinationals. The
corporate culture of their employers lives and breathes the assumption that the
sole key to improving any country’s economy lies in attracting foreign
investment. In such a culture, it must be hard to defend a program that
attempts to raise the productivity of the poor in their own right, rather than
turning them into minimum wage sweatshop workers, benefiting first and foremost
the coveted investors.
“It’s through such initiatives from the development agencies and
the international financial institutions that banking to the poor has taken
off. Take
I found our talks that day so interesting that I could have continued all
night, but I knew better. So that memorable Tuesday came to an end, and
the next morning, I took my seat in the Thalys train to
The ride was so soft that it was difficult to believe that the train ran on
wheels at a speed of over
Less than an hour and a half after leaving
Roger opened the door and introduced himself. He was an economics student
from the
So I walked back the way I had come, planning to take a look at the shops along
rue de Belleville. Here, I was in a predominantly North African and
Chinese area, with a very interesting ethnic aspect. Far from
encountering any trouble, as I had half expected, I found the streets safe and
calm. Turning into a side street, I came across a small cafe that had the
LETSystem—SEL in French—decal in its window, and ate a tasty and
filling meal with couscous as its main staple ingredient. Over a café au
lait at the counter, I asked the owner if it was common for the Muslim
population to be involved with the LETSystem, and he confirmed that it was;
more so, he thought, than among the native French.
“It’s very much a matter of religion, and the French aren’t
very religious,” he said.
I told him that this was new to me: during my trip, so far, I had been mostly
among Europeans, and had only heard the Christian motivations for not taking
the mark.
“Political fanatics apart, Muslims are peaceful and hardworking people
like you and I,” the host explained. “They can recognize the
signs of what’s coming just as well as anybody else, and they know that
the mark will lead to the worship of false gods. If anything,
they’re more wary of that than Christians.”
I paid, thanked the owner, and went out to see Paris. It was a blessing
to be a tourist in the fall: nothing was crowded, and I had all the peace in
the world, admiring the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and all the other treasures
in the Louvre.
My dinner at Oliver’s home was enjoyable, but the mood was quite serious,
and for the first time I learned about real trouble building up for the
unmarked. Under her right-wing leadership, France intended to set an
example in Europe and begin enforcing the obligation visibly and
unconditionally to honor the Leader as the symbol of European unity and
progress. This meant that it would be risky to go to shopping centers, or
“Shopping Temples,” as they were increasingly called, because if a
TV broadcast featuring the Leader were to start, the police would be checking
for any signs of lack of loyalty.
I couldn’t quite fathom what this meant, and felt rather sure that I, a
foreigner, wasn’t likely to be targeted. All the same, it was bad
news for my hosts and their congregation. But they didn’t seem
apprehensive. Oliver told me that whatever happened to each of them, they
all knew where they were going.
“What’s coming out of all this?” I asked.
“We’ve already seen disasters worse than anybody could have
imagined, but the economy is chugging along and consumer confidence is
high. When the Asian war broke out, everybody thought it was the end of
the world. But we’re still here. How much more can Earth
take?”
“Remember,” Oliver said, “that everything in this world happens
in cycles. Every time some trend is going in the wrong direction, some
doomsayer gets rich on describing the turmoil and destruction we’re
headed for. It’s sensational, and people love sensations.
They have all been wrong, because when things go too far, common sense kicks in
and some kind of correction is applied.
“At the same time, few observers take note of very small, gradual changes
that add up to real differences over the years. The political climate the
world over is now about as far to the right as in Germany in the late
1930s. But, just like then, nobody has stood up to challenge the
politicians, because every little change for the worse always came in reaction
to some emergency or provocation, usually engineered either by operatives of
the intelligence services of the great powers, or by mercenaries of
transnational big business with the tacit approval of the politicians
concerned. We still think we’re basically free, but with the
propaganda telling us we’re beleaguered by crime and terrorism on every
side, we’ve been giving up our civil rights very fast.
“Now seems to be the time when those who refuse the mark will be branded
traitors. We’ve known to expect it. Those who have gone out
into the countryside are still rather safe. We who remain in the urban
consumer society will be put to the test.”
“You mean mass arrests and concentration camps like under Hitler?
How can they suddenly start doing that in a modern society? Where will
they get the guards all at once?”
“Hitler and
Stalin just held local rehearsals for what’s about to happen now all over
the world. Finding thousands of enforcers isn’t difficult: they
already work for law enforcement, and they’ll just be obeying orders and
protecting the public. The problem are the millions of ordinary citizens
who, once again, will allow such a gross violation of human rights to
happen. Initially, they won’t feel affected, so they’ll think
it’s none of their business. The propaganda will tell them that
they’re on the side of the oppressors and that the victims are their
enemies. Tolstoy wrote: All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is
for good men to do nothing.
“But whether it’s the end of the world or not, we’re not
going to speculate about. We believe that one of these cycles of
emergencies and repression will be the final one, when humanity suddenly goes
off on a tangent. Meanwhile, our commitment is to live as if any moment
could be our last, or, as we prefer to see it, the beginning of something new.”
“It’s scary to think of persecutions, though,” I ventured.
Oliver agreed.
“Yes, it’s a frightening prospect. However, it could also be
a blessing of sorts. The Christian church retains its original form and
purpose only for as long as it’s being persecuted. Look at the
early church: it remained undivided and true to the apostles’ teachings,
and it became the majority religion in the pagan Roman empire because the
heathens could see that Christians, living their faith, had something
infinitely more valuable and emboldening than what they themselves had.
The persecutions targeted church leaders more than other Christians, and only
the brave, compassionate, and selfless became leaders and teachers.
“We still have this situation in places like parts of Africa and Asia,
and Christians from there put all of us who live securely and comfortably to
shame. As soon as it’s safe to belong to some religion or
denomination, it becomes part of the peace-of-mind industry, and its ranks of
leaders fill up with politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen, just like any
other organization. The death-defying evangelists are beatified,
sacrificed to martyrdom, sidelined, or forgotten, as needed, and the original
gospel is relegated to pre-sales work and to draw crowds on big holidays, where
it’s always proved its worth.
“From that point onward, clergy simply become peddlers of guilt.”
“That’s a rather sweeping statement,” I observed.
“How about a bit of commentary?”
“A code of behavior, even an onerous one, and the supervision needed to
maintain it, can be sold for money, as long as the promised reward is
attractive enough. Just look at the martial arts, as an example. On
the other hand, who’s going to pay you for advertising a free gift?
Well, that’s obvious from any marketing campaign: only the giver of the
gift. So preaching salvation as a free gift by the grace of God and the
blood of Jesus requires living on faith, something professional church leaders
and clergy aren’t very good at.”
“Some would take offense at such a direct comparison between religion and
business,” I noted.
“Hypocrisy, by its nature, is defensive,” Oliver confirmed.
“But the parallel is accurate. Clergy are in the business of
evaluating people’s actions and outward appearances, and selling a cure,
much like the weight loss industry.
“In an officially accepted church, the objective of a preacher is
no longer to share a message at any cost to himself, but to make a living,
preferably in a comfortable manner. Although such a priest or pastor
liberally claims the same authority Jesus gave his apostles when he first sent
them out to preach, he isn’t prepared to live on faith as they had to do.
“So if you’re a people person in need of a job, and you
chance upon a belief system, led by amateurs, emerging out of struggles and
persecutions, this is what you do. You take its original message of
faith—ancient mythology, the Gospel of Jesus, the revelations of
Mohammed, the writings of Marx and Engels, whatever—and transform it into
something entirely different: a code of conduct, against which you can gauge
people’s performance. Since you can’t supervise every person
yourself, the code has to be uncompromising and emotional enough to lend itself
to both rueful self-criticism by the individual and callous monitoring by
others. In effect, you take a message of joy, victory, and triumph, and
turn it into one of obligation, guilt, and condemnation by the holier-than-thou
crowd.
“To make the scheme fly, you have to come up with just the proper mix of
euphoria over belonging to the in-group with remorse over one’s
inevitable failings. When you’ve got this right, you also have to
cater to births, marriages, deaths, and other rites of passage, plus provide a
regular supply of holidays and celebrations according to the seasons.
It’s always a good idea to take over the feasts of the old order and
rename them after your own saints and potentates; this tends to keep the people
happy through the transition.
“Now you’ve created a lucrative profession that provides peace
of mind for all involved. By offering the worldly authority your
services, you may be able to attain a local monopoly and set your prices as you
see fit. Better still, you may even be given the right to raise your
revenue as taxes. All that now remains is cobbling together a suitably
biased and fuzzy interpretation of the original myth or gospel, so you can
explain away its overly simplistic aspects, such as the Greatest Commandment in
Mt. 22:35-
“George Orwell comes to mind,” I interjected.
“‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than
others.’”
“The examples are endless,” Oliver noted. “But back to
belief systems: an established religion is more concerned with a solid social
position than with changing lives. It makes both membership and salvation
contingent on partaking in rituals and paying tithes, while the early church
had no such conditions. It persecutes those who leave it and murders its
competitors, whether heathens or heretics. It transfers holiness from the
object of worship to the organization and its leaders. It dilutes faith
in God with faith in the church, and strives to convince you that this faith is
all you need. Though St. Paul says clearly that love is greater
than faith, such a church will teach you little about love, least of all by
example. Learning to act out of unconditional love will qualify you for
the Kingdom of God all on its own; there’s no billable contribution by
the church in that.
“St. Paul, in I Cor. 1:10-15, wrote a strongly worded condemnation
of divisions among the faithful, based on following different
authorities. Nevertheless, this kind of church invariably throws up
barricades between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ so dissent can be
demonized as treason. Belonging to the church, joining its interest
groups, taking part in its activities, and paying your dues become the focal
points of a religion that’s concerned more with fundraising than with
saving souls. No wonder so many find it impossible to accept such
churches and their authority over people’s lives.
“Organized religion doesn’t have what it takes to bring salvation
to anyone. Only individuals can do that—including, of course, the
occasional individual pastor.
“Those who teach or practice this kind of religion fall under
Christ’s denunciation in Mt. 6:1-17: they have had their reward. If
persecutions come, they won’t be affected. But the rest of us may
again get an opportunity to show what it means to live one’s
faith.”
18. The Emperor
Thursday, I set myself the goal of seeing the Tuileries garden and walking
avenue des Champs-Elysées from place de
One of the officials was just about to get into his limousine, with his driver
already holding his door open, when he saw me standing nearby. He took
one look at my Akubra hat, and greeted me in unmistakable Australian:
“G’day, mate!”
I had by then espied the Australian flag on the car, and guessed that I must
have been talking with the ambassador.
“G’day, sir,” I answered, feeling quite thrilled over running
into so prominent a compatriot.
“What brings you here?” he inquired.
“I’m just a tourist,” I replied. “About halfway
through a tour of the world!”
“Jump in the old bus,” the ambassador said. “I’m
off to have lunch by myself, and I’d much rather have an Aussie to talk
to!”
Once in the back seat of the car with the formalities sorted out, I motioned in
the direction of the palace and asked, “What was all that about?”
“You won’t believe this,” the ambassador told me, “but
we’ve all been watching TV for the past two hours!”
“That is hard to believe,” I confirmed. “It must have
been a mighty important program!”
The ambassador was shaking his head in disbelief at what he had experienced.
“There’s no doubt that what happened was important.
Alarmingly so, in fact. The Leader had arranged a grand ceremony in Rome,
at the Coliseum, of all places, and there he declared himself emperor!
Ambassadors to the EU had been invited to attend in person; lesser mortals like
myself watched the whole thing on holographic TV. Mind you, the entire
French government was there, too, so we were in good company.
Unbelievably, all available seats at the Coliseum were packed with regular
people. He’s riding a wave of popularity right now, and he seems to
have bet on the likelihood that he was safe with all those people there.”
The car had soon covered the short distance to place de
“I’d like to understand more of what happened today,” I told
the ambassador over lunch. “The Leader is now emperor.
Emperor of what? Rome?”
“That he didn’t say. I think the announcement was calculated
very carefully to be open-ended as far as his territory goes. Contrary to
previous rulers, who had very specific empires—and, if they wanted to
expand their realm, had to conquer more in battle—this bloke has designs
on the whole world, but he doesn’t necessarily plan to go to war over
it. He uses the term ‘Emperor’ kind of generically; he means
to be emperor everywhere and nowhere in particular. And via his TV
propaganda, and considering his alliance with the transnational business
community, he can do it. If he rules the minds of the citizens, national
elites and governments will have to follow his wishes.
“This coup was very well planned and perfectly timed. For many
months, the Artes TV network has been pushing romantic films about olden days,
when there was an emperor, and all was well. It’s become a
worldwide fashion: national TV networks have had to follow suit in order to
hold on to their ratings. The propaganda has quite fertile ground to grow
in, too: nearly every country on Earth was once part of some empire. Even
where this isn’t strictly true, if you allow for a kind of
‘grandfathering,’ you could say that Denmark and Norway, for a few
years, were occupied by a Germany that had had an emperor a generation earlier;
you could say that Brazil was a colony of Portugal, which was once part of the
Roman Empire, and so on. There may be no more than a handful of places,
such as Sweden, Thailand, and Hawaii, where the EU propagandists just
can’t point to any Imperial past whatsoever.”
“That reminds me,” I said, “has the Japanese emperor died
yet?”
“Yes,” the ambassador answered, “he kicked the bucket a
fortnight ago. There’s no heir, but conveniently, the Japanese
ratings of the Artes network are now higher than those of the domestic
channels. Ten to one that the Leader will be at least honorary emperor of
Japan within three months!”
“What’s the point in being precisely emperor? Couldn’t
he have become Secretary General of the UN or something?”
The ambassador knew his political history.
“It’s a very significant move, and the Leader has done his homework
well. Traditionally, the role of the emperor was that of a savior.
That’s why we think of emperors as having special powers. The
politician who reached such a position always attained it by playing on
people’s fear of some danger. Usually, the threat came from either
external enemies or internal divisions. In our day, the problems are
crime, protest movements labeled ‘Terrorism,’ and the helplessness
of authorities everywhere trying to cope with those things. The emperor
is the man who can convince people that he can set all this right, and the mood
is now such that the harsher the measures he proposes, the more support
he’ll get.
“This thing about honoring him, even his TV image, has all the markings
of a personality cult. The early Roman emperors from Augustus onwards
were considered gods; the Leader seems to be after a similar situation for
himself.”
At the end of our meal, my host pulled out his Travelers Charge card as if
he’d never heard about bar code markings.
“How come you can still use your card?” I asked. “I ran
out of luck with mine as soon as I came to the Continent last summer!”
“You have to know where to present it,” he told me. “It
never was a bargain basement card. Nowadays, it’s more expensive
than ever to use it; only the best establishments accept it. It’s
all very discreet, but you can still see the old decals here and there.
How would you be paying your bill, if you were to use your card during your
trip?”
“I have travelers checks that I also can’t seem to use, but I guess
I could ask my girlfriend back home to take money out of my account there and
pay the bills.”
“Listen,” the ambassador said, “I’ll take you to
Travelers Charge and see that you get everything straightened out. They
can be very helpful when they want to.”
Another short drive, and we were at the Travelers Charge office near the
Opera. Inside, a man came and greeted the ambassador, and the latter
introduced him to me as the president of Travelers Charge France, who very
conveniently happened to be in that office just then. My card was found
valid and I was advised to deposit part of my travelers checks in the card
account: that way I didn’t have to worry about payment for a while.
Then I got a list of businesses where I could use the card—all very
fancy, as I’d been warned—and so I had another way of paying while
I was traveling.
To my question as to what was happening to credit card companies now that most
people could no longer use cards, the president replied that Travelers Charge
was doing quite well, thank you.
“You have to realize that we never were in the business of peddling
plastic cards or travelers checks. Our business idea is selling a sense
of security to middle-class people. Our clients pay us an annual fee for
the peace of mind that comes with belonging to an exclusive group. With
the spread of the bar code payment system, nowadays most of our transactions
are made without either cards or checks. Instead, we give our customers
other little tokens, like key rings, address labels, knickknacks, and lapel
pins, as physical symbols of their relationship with us. Our logo prints
out on the receipt when they choose to pay via their account with us. As
long as we maintain our clients’ confidence that their social status will
be recognized, our earnings stay healthy.”
It was now past two, and the ambassador had to get back to his embassy. I
thanked him for all he had done for me, and he wished me well and left.
Having been diverted from my original plan, I toured the area between the Opera
and the Madeleine, and had my afternoon coffee at the Café de
Before noon on Friday, I took the train from Montparnasse to Versailles,
planning to see the palace and its park. Walking from the station, I came
across a bakery where I could pay in LETS units, and had myself a piece of the
most delicious chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted. I found Versailles
a charming place, with most downtown buildings built in the same style as the
palace, and often lined with the original sandstone. Even brand new
buildings were very tastefully designed to blend with the old ones.
Standing in line to see the palace—even in November, you had to wait to
get in—I struck up a conversation with a French couple who were just in
front of me. They were celebrating their anniversary that day, and had
decided to go and see the palace. Literally go, that is, in the old sense
of the word: they lived within walking distance, but had never taken the
trouble to visit the main attraction of their hometown. They were good fun
to talk to, although they didn’t speak English. Instead, I had to
do my best in French, and they were very patient, humorous, and helpful, like
all French people are when you make an effort to communicate on their terms.
While we toured the palace, Édith and Louis discussed their plans for the
weekend. They had a small apartment in Angers, where Louis hailed from,
and Saturday they were going there with their children to spend the
night. Suddenly they turned to each other with that look of “do you
know what I’m thinking?” and burst into laughter; then, with one
voice, they invited me to come along. There always was room for a friend
in the car and in the apartment, too: there was an extra bed in the
children’s room.
I gratefully accepted, but felt I had to tell them that I’d be unable to
pay my share the regular way. This was duly brushed aside—I was to
be their guest—and so I had a date for Saturday morning.
After seeing the palace, we took a long walk through the park with its many
statues and fountains. When, finally, we returned to the palace gate and
took avenue de Paris back toward the station and Louis’ and Édith’s
apartment, I was exhausted from walking. I bought some more chocolate
cake to take back and share with Roger and his family, and began the one-hour
train and Metro ride back to my lodgings.
For my trouble, Roger and his wife, whose name I could never pronounce, invited
me to share their evening meal, and I got myself an orientation as to what it
was like living in the Chad. It wasn’t an easy life, but for them,
it was home, and they were eager to return there. Roger had only one more
semester left until his graduation; his job was waiting for him, assuming that
the same side remained in power. The country was still split along
partisan lines, and neither the new oil money nor the long drought had brought
any more agreement. But once more, the church provided a circle of
friends that was sure to pull through together.
Saturday morning, I was back in Versailles, found Édith and Louis and their two
children ready to go, and folded myself into their Citroën. Édith sat in
the back with the kids, and turned out to be a fabulous backseat driver.
How Louis managed to get to our destination without accidents through all the
loud interchange of ideas about which way to drive, I’ll never
know. But we arrived in Angers alright, and I was treated to both room
and board, and a tour of the city.
The outstanding experience of the day was my visit to the old castle.
There, along the walls of endless hallways, hangs a collection of nearly a
hundred handwoven medieval tapestries depicting the scenes described in the
Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse, as the museum calls it. Louis was
still feeling generous and bought me a guidebook with color photographs taken
of the reverse sides of the tapestries. The fronts, which can be seen in
the exhibition, are faded from hundreds of years of exposure to light, but the
original colors, still remaining on the back, had been deep, bright, and vibrant.
Armed with my book, I took my time studying the collection. Édith and
Louis went along a different route with their children to give me time
alone. For a beginning, there was little I could relate to: lots of
medieval-looking characters performing symbolic acts. Then there was a
mounted rider called Famine. Why not: we’d had enough of
that. But then, pane 21 showed a star falling into the sea and wrecking
ships. That had happened! And next thing, in pane 22, another star
was falling, making the river water bitter. That had happened, too, just
a couple of years ago! A few more steps, and pane 24 depicted the plague
of stinging locusts. Pane 26 had riders on lion-faced, fire-breathing
horses killing civilians, and there were to have been two hundred million of
them. Well, in the Asian war, two hundred million armored troops had been
doing just that, with fire and brimstone coming out of the mouths of their tank
cannons. Close enough for me.
I walked past several panes with scenes I couldn’t connect to anything
that had happened so far. But then, here was the beast out of the sea,
our emperor, with seven heads that were supposed to symbolize the remaining
seven prime ministers of the ten core states, receiving homage from the people.
This was repeated in panes 41, 42, and 43: a momentous thing, as we knew.
Then there was the other beast, which Jean-Luc had told me was the commissioner
for propaganda, calling down fire from the sky. Not a falling star, but
fire. In the next pane, number 45, he was making people worship the image
of the emperor. All so true.
And here, in pane 46, the commissioner for propaganda was marking people with
the Mark of the Beast. I had always wondered why the payment system
project had been managed by the propaganda commissioner and not by, say, the
central bank in Frankfurt. But, as I knew, the foremost purpose of the
mark was to enable the EU Presidency to keep track of who was watching
holographic TV, and to extract homage from them when the emperor so required.
It almost was just a convenient extra feature that the mark also empowered them
to stop you from eating and drinking, should you disagree with them.
Then it seemed that the action passed me by: the rest had to be in the
future. It was highly symbolic, but I could see that it wasn’t
pretty. However, there also was the remnant of people that were to be
saved out of the earth, and I began to realize that I had cast my lot in with
theirs.
I tucked in my guidebook and went to find my hosts out on the battlements, and
tried to tell them about my findings. It largely went over their heads:
their attention was elsewhere. Soon we were off to dinner, and the rest
of my visit to Angers was just a pleasant tourist trip.
19. Off with His Head!
We left Angers soon after lunch on Sunday. Édith and Louis wanted to go
shopping, and, out of curiosity, I decided to tag along. We drove along
the autoroute past Le Mans and Chartres, and then we took a smaller freeway
through Orsay to Vélizy-Villacoublay. There we turned into the parking
lot of the huge Vélizy II shopping complex, and parked the car. Édith and
Louis were what’s known as “educated consumers,” and had
opted to be kept up to date with the latest offerings at their favorite
shopping mall. As soon as we were in the parking lot, their and the
children’s cellular phones began providing them with video advertising
messages from the stores at the mall. An electric bus dropped us off at
the main entrance to the new central mall, a true shopping temple.
Since I needed nothing, I just followed my hosts, and I also found that there
was little I could have bought. Here in the suburbs, not even Galéries
Lafayette sported the Travelers Charge decal; none of the shops here was listed
in my LETSystem directory. The suburbanites were quite content with their
new, universal payment system.
The central promenade of the mall had a great cupola in the middle, and here,
for the first time, I saw one of the new public entertainment centers Janne had
described during my passage from Finland to Sweden. There was a nonstop
show going on, unbelievably realistic in three-dimensional full color, keeping
the viewers and the passersby happy and cheering. As we watched a commercial
for one of the local department stores, I could see that the system worked just
like Janne had said. Every marked viewer seemed to have a clear sound
channel from the grid of silver-gleaming, drop-shaped overhead speakers, while
I heard nothing other than a fading, changing murmur and hiss. The
picture generating system seemed to work independently of the sound system
though, and had found my eyes immediately as I arrived.
Like all commercials, this one employed the best and most popular actors, and
it went to great lengths to tease information out of the viewers. I heard
Édith and the children squeal with delight, as the lead character flattered
them and probed for their innermost wishes. Later, as they’d be led
toward the department store by precisely timed, personalized messages on the TV
monitors along the walkways, those wishes would materialize as special offers
just for them. The mall computer network would closely monitor their
progress through the ever-present game consoles, where rewards and surprises
were awarded to every user. A department store hostess would meet them at
whichever entrance they would happen to choose, would know them by sight, and
would have their shopping list ready for them, with a financing plan for Louis,
tailored to his ability to pay.
Now something great was about to happen on TV, however. After a
tremendous fanfare, the Artes network announced the emperor. We were
going to see the emperor, almost in person! Instantly, the area under the
loudspeakers was crowded to saturation, with people holding up their right
hands to get their sound channels clear. A hush fell over the gathering,
and the emperor appeared.
I had been pushed close enough to Louis that I could hear his channel, and to
get better audibility still, I borrowed his hand and briefly held it up above
us. When I kept my head just over and behind his, we both heard quite
well. The emperor was still consolidating his new position, drawing on
the romantic feelings of the French for their great and glorious days under
Napoleon I and the beautiful life under the later Napoleons. It was
strange to think that, at the same time, he must have been talking to the
Italians about Roman emperors, to the British about the days of their empire,
and to the Austrians about the greatness of old Franz Josef.
He continued by reporting on the tremendous strides taken in the struggle
against crime and corruption, and promised lower taxes for all and sundry from
the new year onwards, thanks to the public expenditure saved from fraud.
The people cheered and waved their left hands, quite aware that they
didn’t want to confuse the viewer locating system by doing anything with
their right hands.
Then the emperor asked the viewers to tell him their concerns, as he held each
one of them dear and would endeavor to help them in every way he could.
Louis wanted a promotion, and the emperor told him, addressing him by name,
that he had well deserved it, and would get it in due time.
“Thank you, computer,” I was tempted to say, but bit my tongue.
“A raise, too!” Louis continued, and the emperor duly
answered that a raise would, indeed, go with the promotion.
Louis was satisfied, and I still had the sound channel.
I couldn’t help myself, and burst out in English, “Will you ever
stop?”
“No!” came the answer in my ears, and I got an uneasy feeling,
seeing that two of the close-up cameras of the entertainment center were
pointed straight at me. Fearing that I had done something stupid, I told
Louis that I’d be close by, and backed away toward the nearest
walkway. Here I encountered a young man handing out pamphlets, and,
collecting myself, took one and started to read.
It was a Christian leaflet, warning of the dangers of the payment system in
very explicit terms. I turned to the man and asked if he didn’t
think it risky to be here with such a message. He heard my accent and
answered, in English, that he knew the danger, but that he felt obliged to keep
warning people.
We continued talking, and the youngster introduced himself as Henry Allen, from
England, studying in Paris since a couple of years. Henry was well
acquainted with my host, Oliver, and invited me to drop by at his own church,
the Anglican St. Michael’s church in rue d’Aguessau near the
Madeleine. There always was something going on there, he said, with many
of the local English-speakers attending, and students in particular.
Now the crowd cheered in a frenzy, and everyone was holding up their right
hand. This must have had some particular significance; so far they had
been using their left hands to express their agreement. Henry knew what
it was; he had been here when it had begun a few days ago.
“This is emperor-worship going on. By holding up their right hands,
they can all be recognized as having shown their loyalty. Not that they
have any qualms about what they’re doing. He’s popular enough
to be worshipped even if he didn’t mandate it.”
I was about to ask what was going to happen to us who weren’t taking part
in the worship, but I didn’t have to. In short order, two policemen
swooped down on us, frisked us, clapped us into handcuffs, and marched us off
to a waiting police van. Henry’s leaflets were confiscated, and we
were quite roughly pushed into the back of the van.
I didn’t see Louis and Édith again, and never knew what they thought when
they didn’t find me. After a ten-minute ride with the siren
blaring, I recognized the City Hall of Versailles, and the van pulled up at the
Police Prefecture on its left side. Quite an ignominious way to return to
such a beautiful city, I thought.
After the expected formalities, depositing our property, and recording of our
identities, we were taken to a cell and locked up. No charges had been
read to us, but we knew what they were, anyway.
I was feeling not a little uneasy, but that was nothing compared with what I
went through when Henry told me, almost casually: “You know that the
punishment for failing to salute the emperor is death, don’t you?”
“What?” I burst out. “Since when?”
Henry was still calm.
“Since yesterday, to be precise. France is leading the pack,
showing the world how to deal with enemies of the people. I think you and
I have the dubious honor of being the first to be caught in the act.
Let’s see what happens.”
It took hours of waiting, hungry and miserable, before anything transpired to
give me reprieve from my uncertainty. A couple of hours after
dark—my watch had been taken away—a policeman came for Henry.
He was gone for a long time; then he returned in such a stupor that he said
nothing. But now it was my turn; at least I’d find out where I
stood.
The interrogation room was an unfriendly affair, as could have been
expected. I tried to be plucky and demanded to know what I was being
charged with.
“Failure to salute the emperor,” was the nonchalant reply.
“The punishment is death. There’ll be no need for court
proceedings or lawyers; our officers witnessed your crime, and
everything’s quite clear.”
“I have the right to make a telephone call!” I
exclaimed. Surely, some trace of legal rights had to remain: after all,
this was a country that had, until quite recently, been ruled by law.
Apparently, the reformers had overlooked this detail. After conferring
with his colleague for a while, the officer reluctantly agreed. But there
was neither a phone book nor a computer for finding anybody’s
number. And what could I have used them for? I knew nobody in the
area except for Louis and Édith, who couldn’t have done anything for
me. I also knew that should I ask Oliver to intervene on my behalf,
I’d be endangering not just him, but his family and his congregation, as
well. The ambassador’s home phone number would be unlisted, for
sure.
But I did have a telephone in front of me, and so I did the only sensible
thing—I called Laura. I knew she’d still be at home: it was
early Monday morning in Australia. She answered on the second ring,
sounding sleepy and cute.
“Laura, I’m in trouble!” I blurted out.
She was fully alert immediately.
“Where are you?”
“At the police prefecture in Versailles,” I said. “I
didn’t salute the emperor.”
“And they’re going to chop off your head, right?” she
replied, blissfully unaware of how concisely she was expressing my predicament.
“The punishment is death, darling,” I answered. “Call
the Australian ambassador to France, right away. I love you!”
The last three words I only managed to call out from a distance, as the officer
took the handset away from me.
“Thirty seconds are up,” he said. “One minute for local
calls, thirty seconds for long distance. Our budget is very tight.”
There was nothing else to say, and I was led back to my cell. Henry was
kneeling by his bunk, praying. I felt like doing so myself, but gave up
the thought: I didn’t think I had the connection. Then I found that
I could make out some of the words Henry was whispering. He was praying
for me.
After a while, Henry looked up, and spoke.
“Gregory, I’m going to die tomorrow. Take this.”
He took a worn, pocket-sized New Testament from inside his clothes and handed
it to me. The police officers had missed it when they had frisked him.
“Do you think I’ll have some use for it, then?” I queried,
doubting that I’d live much longer than Henry.
“You haven’t finished yet,” he said. “My task is
completed. I’ve given out hundreds of leaflets during these couple
of days, and some people kept them. That’s quite enough.
Tomorrow, the guillotine. It was designed to be humane.
“Read it,” he added.
It didn’t seem to be the right time for further chatter, and I took
Henry’s advice. I read for a long time, until the light went
out. It must have been ten o’clock. Eventually, I fell
asleep, restless and scared.
At daybreak, two officers came for Henry. We hugged each other, and I
whispered a sad “Good-bye.” A while later, a siren started
its “poussez-vous!” outside and disappeared in the distance.
Nothing had happened to me so far, but I was desperately upset over
Henry’s fate, so totally unjustified.
About an hour later, somebody brought me breakfast. Eventually, I managed
to swallow a few morsels, and realized that they were doing me good: after all,
I was still alive, and giving up has never been my way. So I finished the
food, and waited.
Around nine, or so I thought, I was finally off to somewhere. A constable
took me to a different part of the building from the night before. To my
surprise, I was shown into the office of the prefect himself. The
policeman closed the door and left. The prefect, a man in his sixties,
looked up.
“Good morning,” he said in English, with genuine friendliness, and
told me to sit down.
“Good morning, sir,” I replied, unsure of what was coming my way.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” the prefect
continued. “I got the call from my friend, the ambassador, last
night, but in the current situation, I can’t let the staff know that
you’re getting special treatment.”
“What treatment, sir?”
“Apparently, the EU Secret Police needed more time to figure out how to
apply the new law to non-Europeans who aren’t yet eligible to be marked
in their home countries. So you’re still here. Fortunately,
your fiancée had the good sense to call the ambassador at his residence.
She had got the number from some VIP customer of hers; I understand she’s
a travel agent to some very prominent people. The ambassador and I know
each other well. Of course he knew that I’d intervene on your
behalf. At this stage, official protests would only have made things
worse.”
Good old Laura! No doors were closed to her.
The prefect continued talking.
“I want you out of Paris immediately. I mean immediately. You
can’t leave France yet, however: you’d be stopped at the
border. Do you have some place to go?”
“No, sir; I know nobody outside the Paris area.”
“Never mind,” the prefect continued. “I know where you
can go. There’s a place in central France where you’ll be
safe for now. I go there myself every summer. I’ll call the
people and tell them to expect you. When things have settled down a bit,
get yourself out of France, preferably to the south.”
He made his phone call, then another to the railroads, to book me a seat to
Mâcon.
“You can pay your ticket with your credit card,” he said.
“Credit card transactions are so rare that they aren’t being
routinely monitored like bar code payments are.”
“What about my luggage?” I asked. “It’s still
with my hosts.”
“You live in the 20th?” he inquired, which I confirmed.
“We have the time to go and pick it up. You’ll be leaving
from Gare de Lyon at noon.”
Next thing, he marched me to the front desk, asked for the envelope with my
belongings, and told the officer on duty that he was going to turn the prisoner
over to the Paris authorities himself.
“Let them decide what to do with a non-European,” he added, and we
left.
In the car, the prefect kind of broke down and looked depressed.
“Things have gotten really bad,” he said. “I’m
unmarked myself, as you might have guessed. I’m staying on in this
job for as long as I can do some good. I wish I could have done something
for Mr. Allen, but the matter was taken out of my hands last night before
I knew of the arrests. As you can expect in a dictatorship, junior
officers are now made to report directly to political personnel, bypassing
their superiors. The young Englishman is beyond help: there’s no
obligation to inform Britain, and the EU people are eager to get
started.”
“I don’t think the British are going to be very pleased,” I
ventured.
“No, they’re not,” the prefect agreed. “I believe
this will be the very thing that makes them leave the Union, like they’ve
been threatening to do for a long time. I’d have liked to send you
there, but there’s an ID check at the border now, and you’re in the
computer files of the EU Secret Police already.”
We drove through the center of Paris. The prefect knew all the right
streets, and said it would be faster than taking the périphérique, the ring
road, which often and unpredictably tended to be clogged. I
couldn’t help thinking of the personal risk he was taking: he was sure to
be under EU Secret Police surveillance, and they could monitor his route via
the traffic computer system.
Presently, we came to place de
“This is sickening!” I cried out. “Whatever
happened to civilization?”
“It left us so subtly that nobody noticed,” the prefect answered,
deeply disturbed. “I’m sorry.”
20. Taizé
While we continued our drive to pick up my backpack, the prefect let me know
that he’d try to remove me from the national database of crime suspects,
using the excuse that the EU Secret Police was now responsible for me.
Since that agency never gave out any information to national police forces
except when requesting specific cooperation, the prefect’s staff in
Versailles shouldn’t be unduly alarmed by not getting a confirmation that
this was really so.
“But keep a very low profile,” he told me. “It’s
almost certain that the media will find out that a detainee has gone
missing. Use only public telephones, and only when you have to.
Stay within the compound where you’re going as much as possible, at least
until Christmas. Then go to Côte d’Azure. Take a cruise to Italy
or Spain. Just leave the ship when you’re there and make no
fuss. That way you don’t have to cross the border. It
isn’t a big matter to the cruise operators if a passenger doesn’t
return.”
“Will it be safe to go to those countries?” I asked.
“They’re among the core states, too. Won’t I be getting
into the same trouble there?”
“Not if you continue and leave the Continent before March. This
harsh interpretation of the law is being piloted in France; there’s a
specific evaluation period like with all the other bureaucratic projects the EU
has conceived of. General implementation in the core states is set for
March first, and in the rest of the EU for June first.”
We stopped outside the church, where everything looked peaceful.
“I’ll see if I can delete these people, too, from the database of
suspects,” the prefect said. “I have access to it, or at
least I did this morning. I’ll have to go along with you.”
Inside the gate, Oliver and Roger met us, and their concern was great.
The prefect explained the situation, and gave them the same advice he had given
me: lie low. My things were soon packed, and I said good-bye to my
friends. Oliver said a prayer for Henry and another for my safety and
that of the prefect, and we drove off.
At the station, I bought a ticket to Mâcon with lunch included, and with a
connecting bus ride to Taizé, and the prefect took me to the train. He
insisted on staying with me until the train left, saying that he could take no
chances. I thanked him several times, and asked him to be careful,
too. As he left the train, the prefect reminded me that Henry was about
to lose his life.
“But, as we know, that way he’ll gain it. Good-bye and take
care of yourself.”
The ride was as speedy and smooth as my previous experience of the high-speed
train when I came to Paris. I barely got through lunch before I was in
Mâcon and had to get off the train. At the station I found a pay phone
and called Laura. I told her that I owed her my life, that I loved her,
and that I couldn’t wait to hold her again.
When she heard that I was planning to stay in Taizé until Christmas, and then
go to Italy or Spain, where it would still be relatively safe for a while, she
decided to postpone her visit to Tasmania, and instead use her leave to join me
for the trip south. I was thrilled beyond words, but also worried for
her. She soon set me straight, saying that I should know by now that she
could handle trouble as well as I. Better, in fact, we agreed. I
was to call her again before she left, but not unnecessarily. My smartphone
had to be off at all times.
A short while later I was on the bus to Taizé. My destination, a
religious community by the same name, lay within walking distance of the
village. The bus stopped in Cluny and then continued up the valley of the
winding river Grosne. Some
Each one was welcomed personally as we arrived in the community, a sprawling
group of buildings with a campground where, for the first time, I got to use
the tent I had bought in Seoul. In spite of the cold and humid weather,
there was a warm spirit of openness and friendliness all over the place, and a
degree of loose organization soon became evident. The community was run
by a group of brothers, as they called themselves, celibate men who had
committed themselves to the community for life. They weren’t
literally monks: most of them came from Protestant backgrounds like the late
founder, Brother Roger. But there were men there from all denominations,
including Catholics.
Visitors who had been there before, or even for just a few days, also acted as
hosts and hostesses, making us newcomers feel at home. A huge, boxy,
concrete assembly hall, called the Church of Reconciliation, was the center of
the place, where everybody gathered several times a day. There was ample opportunity
for study and meditation, as well as discussions in small groups; meals were
communal. It’s a place where one can endeavor to find oneself
spiritually, and since 1957, people from all over the world have been coming
there, returning year after year, to celebrate a special kind of togetherness.
My stay was to be longer than the customary week, and my main concern was
making myself useful to my hosts. There was work to be done to maintain
the buildings, and my offer of pitching in was gratefully accepted.
Taizé had harbored refugees before, including Jews and others fleeing the
German occupation of the northern part of France during the Second World
War. After the liberation, the brothers had made themselves unpopular
among their neighbors by showing compassion on German prisoners of war held at
a nearby camp. Nevertheless, they had later formed an agricultural
cooperative together with those same neighbors, and the cooperative was still
active. Most of the food the community served its members and guests was
homegrown.
During the weeks that followed, I spent a lot of time taking part in the
spiritual life of the community. The days followed a set routine: the
wake-up call was at 7:30, the first communal prayer at 8, breakfast at 9, meetings
in small groups at 10, prayer at 12:20, lunch at
Still, I didn’t feel that I had found the “it,” the true
spiritual meaning of what was so clearly a source of the greatest devotion and
joy for many others there. I was by no means alone in that situation: a
considerable part of the visitors didn’t appear to be very religious
people to begin with, nor did they necessarily seem to come to any kind of pervasive
faith while they were there. I felt really good about Taizé, though;
there was neither dogma nor fanaticism in evidence anywhere, and the compassion
those people showed everyone was genuine.
Taizé had been sending small groups of brothers to poor parts of the world for
many years, and wherever they went, a pilgrimage of young people turned up to
help them relieve fear and despair. Thus, the community had first-hand
knowledge of the problems I had learned about through hearsay during my trip.
They also had an inside view of everything that happened in the Vatican:
Brother Roger had been a personal friend of both John XXIII and John Paul II,
and Taizé had observers in place covering the current election of a new
pope. When the result was announced, I got a full explanation of its
significance.
It turned out that Henry Allen’s execution had lost the EU not only
Britain, which had immediately ceded from the Union, but also the
Vatican. The College of Cardinals had received the news just before it
had locked itself up in the Sistine chapel, and in record-breaking time, it had
elected its youngest and most radical member pope. Hardly had the white
smoke cleared over the chapel before the new pope had published his first
encyclical on the World-Wide Web, condemning the rising persecution of
believers of every faith, and forbidding Catholics from taking part in the
emperor-worship. His conviction was such that he claimed papal
infallibility, something the pope has had the right to do since the first Vatican
Council in 1869–1870. This wasn’t a claim made lightly: it
could only be applied when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher
of all Christians, the pope defined, by virtue of his supreme apostolic
authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.
It was a shrewd thing to do, however, considering the uncertainty of the times,
because, according to the Council declaration, such definitions by the Roman
pontiff are irreformable: nobody can undo them, neither a successor nor the
Church.
Incredibly, the Artes network had done a risky thing that had backfired badly:
it had invited the new pope to a question-and-answer session that had been
broadcast all over the world, using the complete Imperial setup.
Apparently, the propaganda commissioner had thought that he’d be able
either to befriend the pope or else to intimidate him into cooperating.
But no such luck: for a whole hour, the pope had been saying just what he
thought, and the obedient computers had adapted his views into automated
answers for millions of callers. This was an official blunder that went
down in history; the last time anybody could think of a politician agreeing to
anything so stupid was when John Kennedy approved the Cuban emigrant invasion
at the Bay of Pigs.
Moreover, to the emperor’s request to be crowned by the pope in St.
Peter’s Basilica, the latter had said a resounding “No,” and
had proceeded to discipline bishops and priests who had been leaning toward
collaboration with the worship peddled by the Artes network.
Taizé was celebrating this news, all the more so as the community’s
annual European meeting was to be held in Rome during the coming New
Year’s holiday. But there also was a somber undertone,
acknowledging the lack of power behind the papal statements, and knowing that
the emperor wasn’t one to be easily cowed. The consumer feast all
over Europe was continuing, and most people, many Catholics included, gave
little heed to the words of the Holy Father.
Christmas was drawing near, and with it my special treat. On Christmas
Eve, Laura drove up in a rented car. In addition to her free flights into
Paris and out of Rome—Laura and I had decided we’d be going along
to the European meeting—she had a complete prepaid package including the
train to Mâcon, the car, and fuel coupons, and had thought of every detail like
the professional she was. I was happy as a child and couldn’t take
my eyes off her.
The tent would have been a most inhospitable place to make Laura live, coming
directly out of Sydney’s hot summer. Instead, we moved into El
Abioth, one of the community’s multifamily guest houses. As soon as
we were installed, Laura, with her usual determination and with me in tow,
headed for the workshops. She had done her homework well, and knew all
about Taizé and what was for sale there from the Web. Presently, we were
viewing the goldsmith’s showcase and trying on rings. Laura found a
style she truly liked, and announced that we’d buy two of them, according
to local custom. I thought they were beautiful, too.
“I told the ambassador I was your fiancée, to make it sound more
urgent. I don’t want to be called a liar, so we’ll get
engaged for Christmas!”
It was one of those situations in which I tend to get a tad mushy, and I was running
the risk of being seen as too emotional. But I managed to retain a
measure of decorum, and was rewarded with a long kiss.
Much more relaxed, Laura then let me show her the small group meeting rooms and
the library. She asked the brother in charge of the library about me and
was told that I had been very busy, but that I hadn’t taken enough time
to understand the spiritual side of Taizé. Questioned, I told her about
my feeling of not fully having caught on to what it was these people had that
so filled their souls.
Laura said nothing, but headed for the library shelves. She quickly homed
in on a particular section and went straight for a small red paperback.
She told the librarian that I’d be borrowing it for the next few days,
and handed it to me.
“Here’s another book I’ve been begging you to read,”
she said. “Now’s the time. It’s the right kind of
book for intellectuals like you.”
The book, authored by a long-dead Church of England priest by the name John
Stott, was titled Basic Christianity. It was old and well worn. The
librarian expressed his agreement: he couldn’t have found me a better
introduction to his faith than this very book.
I read the book during Christmas, and it did explain Christianity to me.
It did more than explain: it made me internalize the faith and commit myself to
it. Again, I knew how much I had to be grateful to Laura for; I kept
thinking of her as my guardian angel. But I knew better than to tell her
that, having an inkling that women didn’t like being thought of as
angels.
Sharing Christmas with the brothers of Taizé was an experience never to be
forgotten. The Church of Reconciliation was full of candles, with young
and old alike sitting or kneeling on the carpet: there were no pews in the
church. Never had I heard the chants sung more beautifully.
Predictably, Laura had brought me presents from Australia, and knowing that I
wouldn’t have taken the time or the thought to get her any, she had
already found a set of beautiful earthenware dishes in the potter’s shop
and had set it aside for me to buy her. Laura was so full of life that it
was a challenge just to keep up with her. But I loved every minute of it.
On the day after Christmas, the buses arrived to take a good part of the
brothers to Rome. Laura and I packed the car, and were lucky to get a
couple of brothers to ride with us; the buses were filling up, as many extra
visitors decided to go along. Feeling a bit sad, I said good-bye to
Taizé; it had very much become part of me.
The drive through Lyon and Turin was beautiful, with the Alps covered in
snow. We didn’t hit any bad weather, and there was no trouble on
the border: apparently, the Versailles police prefect had succeeded in deleting
me from the files. Soon, we were driving south from Genoa along the
seashore, and by evening, we were in Rome. With expert skill, the advance
parties had arranged lodging for everyone, and Laura and I were housed with a
friendly Italian family.
The next days were filled with activity. We took part in shared celebrations
in local churches, visited people who couldn’t get around due to age or
illness, and managed to see a good deal of Rome in the process. On New
Year’s Eve, all the people taking part in the European meeting assembled
in St. Peter’s Square, holding lit candles, mingling with tourists
and locals, and handing out candles to them, too. During his midnight
Mass, the pope gave a special address in view of the meeting, talking about the
gathering forces of darkness and the hope of overcoming. Not a man to
mince his words, he bid Christians everywhere to welcome the beginning
persecutions: they would set believers apart—in the world but not of the
world, as Christ had commanded— and they would cut out the cancers of
power hunger, greed, and complacency within the Church hierarchy from among the
faithful, the true body of Christ.
On January 2, the meeting was over, and our friends were getting ready to
return to Taizé. Suddenly, as they were boarding the buses, the
community’s two resident representatives at the Vatican came hurrying
along. To everyone’s surprise, they were leaving Rome, and the news
they brought was devastating: the pope was dead!
21. Rome, Italy
To say that we were thunderstruck would be putting it mildly. We felt we
had lost our protection, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
“What did he die of?” was everybody’s first question.
We had seen him not two days earlier; he had been in vigorous health, a strong
man who was known to work out regularly and who hadn’t been sick a day of
his life.
“A brief but serious illness,” one of the brothers said.
“That was the official word. Whatever it was, it must have killed
him within a few hours. He was being laid out in state when we
left.”
Laura expressed the fearful thought that had been growing on me, and probably
on others, as well.
“He was poisoned, then. It’s been done before in the
Vatican. What a mean and cowardly thing to do!”
“We felt it was time for us to leave,” the brother continued.
“The place is in an uproar. Ever since the pope turned down the
emperor’s request to be crowned, those who always wanted to compromise
have been plotting some kind of rebellion. They were afraid for their own
skin and weak in their faith. This is how they mean to gain the
emperor’s favor and be allowed to continue living in peace.”
In spite of what had happened, we had to part from our friends. Rome was
peaceful enough and we didn’t feel threatened in any way, so Laura and I
turned to what we had planned for the day: sightseeing. We had no
guidebook, but Laura didn’t have the patience for such constraints
anyway; we just followed her intuition.
At the Spanish Steps, Laura had a question and thought she was turning to me to
ask it. Instead, before she realized it wasn’t me, she had put it
to a passerby who actually knew the answer, because he was a local. After
much laughing and apologizing, she got us into a spirited discussion with the
gentleman, eventually remembered to introduce us, and, in no time at all, had
him totally dazzled and eager to show us all the sights of Rome. This
most pleasant young man introduced himself as Dottore Lorenzo Benedetto, a
lawyer and, as it turned out, a true connoisseur of the beauty of his city.
All in its turn, however, and first things first. Lorenzo took us to a
cozy little cafe in one of the old streets. There he treated us to coffee
and cake, talking about the history of the buildings we had made a note of, the
architects and artists who had created them, and their current use.
Outside once more, he kept taking us through lanes and porticos, pointing out
artistic details and beautiful spots. I wanted to know how one goes about
acquiring such knowledge of a city; Lorenzo replied that it took a special
interest, dedication, and a systematic approach of finding a new route every
time you walked to a familiar place.
Eventually, Lorenzo apologized and said that he had to return to his law
office, but insisted that we get together again. He gave us his card and
told us to call him any time, should we need anything.
Laura wanted to see a shopping mall with one of the new entertainment centers,
and after lunch we set off in the car to the newest one in the surroundings,
following instructions Lorenzo had given us. Trusting that we
wouldn’t be breaking any laws, as Lorenzo had assured us, we parked, went
inside, and found the center, again under the main cupola.
Every few minutes between commercials and programs, there was some kind of
special announcement, and I asked a man standing there what it was all
about. He answered that the emperor was to speak at three o’clock,
and that it was going to be something very important. Laura remembered my
description of the throng of people in Vélizy II during the emperor’s
speech, and said that she was too claustrophobic to be there when it
happened. Still, she wanted me to hear it, so we’d know what was
going on, and said she’d go and have her hair done in a beauty shop we
had passed earlier. It had a credit card decal on the door, so we knew
she could pay there. We agreed that I’d come and pick her up, and
so I stayed on.
The man who had helped me continued to be talkative, and introduced himself as
Vittorio. When he found out that I wouldn’t be able to have a sound
channel of my own, he offered to lend me his hand. He understood English
very well, and suggested that we’d ask the center for the English version
of the speech. Any one of the EU languages could always be had anywhere
in the Union, and English wasn’t about to be abolished as long as Ireland
remained in the EU.
The clock struck three, and suddenly, the area under the cupola was crowded to
saturation. The sound system worked out as expected, and the
emperor’s speech began. The setting was a magnificent room with
gilded walls, and the emperor was seated between two immense winged lions, also
covered in gold. This time, he spent little time on pleasantries: the
steel was showing through his velvet gloves. He didn’t try to
conceal his satisfaction over the demise of the rebellious pope, and got the
viewers cheering when he condemned the threat to European unity the pope had
posed, and proclaimed good riddance.
The crowd was getting excited and Vittorio was clearly regretting that he
wasn’t hearing the emperor in his own language. But he was a
gentleman and didn’t want to deprive me of the favor he had planned for
me. I was grateful, because I expected the next part of the address to be
the central message. Vittorio would hear it over and over again, until it
would become part of him.
The emperor now left the matter of the pope: he was dead and of no
consequence. Instead, he turned against everything the pope and the
Church had stood for.
“Who has been promising you peace on earth for thousands of years?
God! And has he provided peace? No! Since time began, people
have been killing each other in the name of God! As I’m speaking,
Muslims are killing Christians, Jews are killing Muslims, Protestants are
killing Catholics; all in the name of God!
“Who was it that promised a land flowing with milk and honey and then
turned around and gave you hardship and famine instead? God! Who
told you to turn the other cheek when somebody assaulted you? To give the
mugger your coat, too, after he’d taken your money? God and his
clown Jesus Christ! Is that what you want?
“Who’s leading the rebellion against the European Union and its
Presidency, persuading ignorant people to refuse our common identifier that
makes it possible, once and for all, to stamp out all graft and crime?
Who are the foremost protectors of fraud, corruption, terrorism, and tax
evasion? God and his iniquitous lackeys, the priests!
“Listen: Your enemy isn’t the neighbor who has a different skin
color from yours. You both wear the same identifier; you belong on the
same side! The enemy isn’t the criminal who breaks into your
house. He’s the victim of the wrong circumstances and the old,
imperfect society. When he’s marked, like you and your possessions
are marked, crime becomes impossible and his temptation disappears.
“The enemy isn’t another nation: when every nation obeys the same
emperor, they’re all brothers. The enemy is God! He’s
preventing us from having the society we want. His system is bankrupt: he
hasn’t given us peace, he hasn’t given us affluence, he
hasn’t provided order and security.
“So we’re going to have our own religion! We’re going
to honor the things that matter to us: peace and prosperity, law and
order. You’ve seen for yourselves who can deliver these things.
You know that your emperor can make them happen! But your emperor can act
only if you are united and determined to let nothing and no one detract you.
“That means that we’ll have only one religion. As of today,
I’m replacing all the divisive nonsense that goes under the name of
religion with the simple act of honoring your emperor. You’ll be
gathering like this, holding your right hands high, receiving truth and
guidance from me personally. I speak to each of you individually. I
hear everyone. Tell me your concerns, and I’ll answer you!”
As the crowd burst out in supplication, Vittorio had his say in Italian, which
automatically changed the language of his sound channel. Again, I watched
with utter amazement how grown-up people firmly believed that they were all
having a personal conversation with the same emperor at once.
They’d have it easy to worship him: they actually thought he was doing it
through some miraculous power.
I suppose this could be seen as the ultimate achievement of the systematic
dumbing down of public education that started in the United States in the
1950s, and then spread via Britain and Sweden to the rest of the industrialized
world, until, in our times, regular people everywhere learn only consumer
skills plus the necessary minimum they need to do their jobs. It was no
accident that already in 1980, functional illiteracy in the US was 35% and
rising: if you can’t read, you have no other source of information than
commercial radio and TV, controlled by big business, and your vote will always
be pro-business. Talking and listening machines, even talking newspapers
and reading telephones, were hurriedly developed and perfected to ensure that
the illiterate were comfortable with their deprivation. When the Internet
became accessible to a large segment of the population, it, too, was rapidly
commercialized to flood it with consumer propaganda and to hide its last
vestiges of independent thought from all except those who knew how to find them
anyway.
For me, there was nothing more to hear, save the excitement of the people and
the murmur of the loudspeakers overhead. Desperate for some air and
elbowroom, I moved away toward the nearest entrance, from where I had a view
over the space under the cupola. It wasn’t yet time to go and pick
Laura up at the beauty shop.
As I leaned against the glass pane I realized I was standing next to a man
dressed in black, tight-fitting clothes, who looked distinctly familiar.
I couldn’t help staring at him for a moment, and, apparently thinking I
had already recognized him, the man asked me in good English,
“Don’t you like the speech?”
Something told me to be diplomatic, so, while trying to think of where I had
seen this man before, I answered that I couldn’t follow it because I
didn’t have an identifier.
His eyes turned to steel as he snapped, “Why not?”
Then I knew who he was. This was the little man I had seen trying out
Charlemagne’s throne in Aachen. This was the emperor himself.
“I’m Australian,” I replied. “We haven’t
got it yet.”
I tried hard to control my fear and agitation—here was the man who had
very nearly had me killed less than two months earlier, and who, most likely,
had just had the pope murdered. I realized now why I hadn’t
recognized him right away: he was only about five foot four, while the image I
had been watching showed him as closer to six feet tall. It was very
skillfully done with computer graphics: not just a magnified image, but
stretched, so he looked naturally taller than he was, and always taller than
those around him.
Tyrants, I remembered being told, have always been short men, from Nero and
Caligula right down to Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin. And just as
regularly, they’ve had their statues made bigger than life. Antero,
my friend in Finland, had told me about a Finnish politician of the last
century who had met Lenin in life, and knew him as a very short man. When
encountering a supposedly life-size statue of Lenin during a 1939 visit to the
Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow, this politician had remarked on how much taller the
statue was than its late model. He, and his country, subsequently found
themselves in rather poor standing with Stalin.
When he heard my excuse, the emperor’s expression changed again.
Instantly, he was condescending, nearly friendly.
“I understand. You’ll introduce the mark later this year,
right?”
“So I hear,” I said. “I’ve been away for eight
months, and I don’t get much news from home.”
“You’ll be able to get the mark at your embassy. You must
take it as soon as it becomes available to you. Your life would be very
hard without it. Soon, it’ll be impossible to live in Europe
without an identifier. And everyone must demonstrate their unity and
loyalty by listening to the official messages like the people are doing over
there, in their homes and in public places. You don’t want to miss
out on the great future of Europe while you’re here.”
“I did get to hear part of your speech just now,” I remarked.
“I borrowed somebody’s hand.”
“How did you like it?” the emperor asked. “It’s
important for me to know how I come across.”
My diplomatic skills, if ever I had owned any, were nowhere to be found.
I felt lonely and frightened.
“It was very impressive,” I said, truthfully. “But your
words scare me. It all sounds just like what I’ve read about
Hitler...”
“Hitler was a fool!” the emperor sneered. “He had some
good ideas, but he wasted his opportunities. This world hasn’t had
competent leadership for two thousand years. Napoleon, Mussolini, Stalin:
clumsy idiots, all of them. I’ll tell you who was my kind of man:
Augustus Caesar. He took what he wanted, he gave peace to the world, and
the people worshipped him as a god. He deserved to be worshipped: he was
the source of everything good. That’s the kind of leader the world
needs, and now it has one again.”
I felt a weird mixture of revulsion and admiration, like when you watch a
beautiful but lethally dangerous animal.
“You really believe in yourself,” I observed.
“I know you,” the emperor said, his eyes turning steely
again. “You asked me in France if I’d ever stop, didn’t
you?”
“Yes, I did,” I answered. “But I thought I was talking
to a computer.”
“You were talking to me. I happened to be looking at a zoom-in on
you at the time. My assistants pick out singular viewers along with a
holographic composite of audiences in different locations, so I can see how
both random individuals and various nationalities react. I didn’t
recognize you immediately just now, because I didn’t know then that you
were speaking in English. No time for details, you understand?”
“I very nearly got executed afterwards,” it slipped out of
me. “I lost my borrowed sound channel, and didn’t do what
everybody was supposed to do. So the French police took me and almost had
me guillotined.”
“You were released through my personal intervention,” the emperor
answered. “An example had to be set, so your English friend
couldn’t be spared. But you had shown courage that had to be
rewarded.”
I knew this to be untrue. Laura and the Versailles police prefect had
rescued me, not the emperor. This was an incredible situation: here was
the most powerful man in the world, drawing on a perfect memory but improvising
a blatant lie only to ingratiate himself with a helpless stranger. I was
lost for words, but was saved by the crowd, whose cheering just then rose to a
roar over some particularly hard-hitting statement.
“It’s an amazing system,” I said. “Not only do
people see you lifelike and experience direct contact with you, but you
don’t even have to be present in a studio. Here you stand watching
them from behind while they think they’re talking to you.”
“This speech is prerecorded, of course; we did it this morning in
Jerusalem. But all the interaction is handled by the computers.
When we do a live program, along with the visual feedback, I get continuous
statistics showing the dominant mood of the viewers and the computer’s
suggestions for my next argument as I go along. Europe has many nations
and I must appeal to them all. There’s no room for trial and
error.”
It struck me that this man, in spite of his short stature and slight accent,
didn’t look typically Mediterranean. He didn’t look typically
anything, other than European. As a leader of such a diverse continent,
he certainly had the right appearance. And then I saw the faint scars of
plastic surgery at the edges of his face. He wasn’t a man to leave
anything that important to chance.
“I didn’t think the setting looked like your regular studio, not by
a long shot,” I ventured. “What was the significance of doing
it precisely in Jerusalem?”
“That was the new Temple! The logical place to proclaim yourself a
god—don’t you agree? Besides, there are a lot of people in
Israel that think I’m the Messiah, and who am I to deny that and
disappoint them?”
For the first time I saw the emperor laugh: an evil, dirty smirk and chuckle.
“Your computers must be something special,” I suggested.
“I’ve seen a TV studio recently, but they did trivial things
compared to this. Games and commercials, just to collect marketing
information.”
There was pride in the emperor’s demeanor now.
“Well, yes, we’re not a commercial operation; we’re the
Presidency of the European Union. I have my commissioner for propaganda,
my right-hand man, as you say. He makes all this possible. Without
a skilled human at the helm, computers are worth nothing. Then I have the
three Sixes: the six best computer scientists in the world, six of the
fastest supercomputers ever built, and six giant communication satellites in a
geosynchronous orbit around the earth. Six is my lucky number.”
“And then there are computers in every country and every home,
too,” I added, feeling that I had to show off some of my own knowledge at
this point.
But the emperor brushed my comment aside.
“They only handle the simple mechanics of translation and virtual
interaction. The important work is done by those six men, my closest
associates. We do everything together—they, the propaganda
commissioner, and I—we live together, eat together, worship
together.”
“Worship?” I asked. “You’ve just told the world
to worship you—do you need to worship something, too?”
“We worship the Powerful One,” the emperor answered, almost
reverently. “But you wouldn’t understand. It’s
not what you’re used to.”
“Satan, you mean?” I replied.
“So you know,” he said. “Do you worship him,
too?”
“No.”
The emperor nodded and said, “You’ll understand one day.
Satan gives us power. Power is what’s needed in this world.”
Yes, I knew I was facing power and determination.
“Why are you telling me these things?” I asked miserably.
“Because you want to know,” came the nonchalant reply.
“Look at those people—they don’t care to understand
what’s going on. They want to believe it’s a miracle.
They’re like sheep, so they’ll find themselves a shepherd.
Fortunately, they’ve got an emperor who knows what’s good for
them.”
The roar of the crowd now rose to a crescendo, marking the end of the
address. The emperor quickly excused himself and headed for the exit, where
he was joined by four of the uniformed security men who had been standing
around, casually watching everything including me. His incognito
excursions certainly were well prepared: even his bodyguards dressed for the
occasion so as to blend in and draw no attention to themselves.
Vittorio had seen me and approached in a state of wild elation.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he exclaimed with
the utmost pride. “I’ve just had a personal talk with the
emperor!”
I felt sick.
22. The Cooperative
Laura was done at the beauty shop, and her long, dark hair shone with a deep,
reddish glow. When I had told her of the speech and my encounter with the
emperor, she said that this wasn’t the end of it: there’d be more
coming. Wandering through the mall, we came upon an appliance store, and
went inside to watch Cable News Network. The staff were understanding,
and quickly gave up trying to sell us the latest model entertainment center.
Things were happening all the time, and CNN hardly had a need for repeating old
news. The office of the propaganda commissioner had taken over the Holy
See: word had got out that the pope’s death might have been homicide, and
the EU Secret Police had arrested the entire staff for questioning. The
College of Cardinals being unavailable to hold a new election, the commissioner
for propaganda had assumed the pope’s position and responsibilities; he
had once been to a seminary and, therefore, had the legal prerequisites for the
job. His inaugural speech mirrored the emperor’s recent statements:
Catholics were now part of the worldwide solidarity movement for peace and
prosperity, honoring the emperor as humanity’s paramount symbol of unity.
The new pope’s first official act had been to crown the emperor in St.
Peter’s, during a private ceremony early in the morning.
In Japan, the Great Restoration of classical Shintoism was now complete, with
the emperor—the European one—as the ritual head of both state and
religion, and all other religious systems banned. A national committee
had been working hard to align existing Buddhist and Shinto rituals; since the
Japanese had long used each for different purposes, the task had been mostly
political, and less a doctrinal matter. The nation’s fear of the
many doomsday cults had made the restoration relatively easy to get through
Parliament. The cults, of course, simply would have gone back
underground. The real victims of the restoration were the various minor
religions, including Islam and Christianity, which were now outlawed.
The citizens of Russia and China—what remained of them—had thrown
off the yokes of their militaristic, secular governments and restored their
Imperial traditions, going toward a bright future of rebuilding and unity.
In a break with Britain, the spoilsport, most countries of the Commonwealth
were celebrating the return to Empire. And so on.
In Israel, a couple of days earlier, a crowd of animal rights activists from
all over the world had stormed the Jerusalem Temple, determined to stop the
massacre of innocent sacrificial animals. In the ensuing clashes with
Israeli police, several EU citizens had been killed or injured, and Eurofor,
the EU Rapid Reaction Forces, had intervened. Conveniently, a powerful
amphibian detachment of Eurofor had been in the area: the emperor had sent it
to threaten Egypt over her failure to live up to the peace agreement from four
years earlier, but had found reason to change his mind when the US Sixth Fleet
had steamed in to cool things down.
In the interest of peace and justice for Israel as well as to prevent the
wastage of precious food resources, the EU—by virtue of having made the
rebuilding of the Temple possible in the first place—had now imposed a
ban on further Temple sacrifices that Israel, an associate EU member, had been
forced to respect. However, in response to appeals from his many
supporters in Israel, the emperor had decided to give today’s crucial
speech there, in the innermost part of the Temple, the Holiest of Holies, which
was henceforth to be open to the public, in the name of equality for all
Jews. Traditionally, only the High Priest had been allowed to enter the
Holiest of Holies, and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement.
Further, to maintain the tradition of Temple worship, the European Union had
donated a jumbo-sized entertainment center, the first of its kind, to Israel,
and had had it installed in the Holy Place, the large anteroom of the Temple,
where hundreds of people could now come together to honor the emperor.
The propaganda commissioner had stayed behind in Jerusalem, and was seen
inaugurating the new entertainment center. Knowing what to look for, I
could see that the first program shown was the recording of the emperor’s
address.
As an aside, CNN reported on a sudden and totally inexplicable mass exodus of
thousands of residents of Jerusalem and its environs, heading up into the hills
that were still largely uninhabited since the Temple war. People were
simply jumping into their cars, commandeering buses, and taking off on
scooters, bicycles, and mules, in the middle of winter, without stopping for
even the most basic supplies. The Red Cross was hurrying behind with
tents and blankets, while authorities and reporters were trying to figure out what
had befallen these terribly misguided people. Nothing coherent was yet to
be made of it, but someone had mumbled over their shoulder to go and read the
Book.
Returning to the Temple grounds, we were shown the latest nuisance, two
shoddy-looking deviants dressed in jute robes and peddling some kind of message
in what seemed to be ancient Hebrew. Having appeared out of nowhere, they
were getting in the way of the official departure speech of the commissioner
for propaganda, and security personnel were trying to shove them aside.
The operation was going poorly, however: it seemed the two agitators were
carrying hidden flamethrowers. For the present, the police were
retreating, and the commissioner was seen quietly disappearing to his helicopter.
CNN now shifted its attention elsewhere: there had been a serious earthquake in
California. The aftershocks were still going on. Rescue efforts
were underway, but fires were raging, and the destruction was widespread.
Laura and I had seen and heard enough and left the store. There was a
storm coming, and we decided to stay on and have dinner. Soon a violent
thunderstorm was roaring overhead, and the rain turned into hail.
Fortunately, our car was parked in a covered garage: the hailstones were heavy
enough to shatter panes in the skylights of the mall. We got back to our
lodging in Rome late at night after the main roads had been cleared, and went
to bed, exhausted.
Morning came, strangely quiet. It was a bright and beautiful winter day,
and we decided to go and see the Forum Romanum. See it we did, from a
suitable distance to get a ge