Dawn of the Unthinkable (12 page)

But until such a time as a visionary washed
up on his shore, he knew he should keep his left wing, nut-ball
theories to himself. In his university, especially in the
hierarchy, conservatism ruled the day. He would just keep studying
and reading and be ready when, or if, the time came.

Ryan decided that in order to address his
concept fully, he had three major institutions to write
about—government, business, and religion. All three had such a
monumental effect on life and all dealt with huge sums of money. He
decided to tackle government first. He felt he now needed to sound
this out with someone other than Kathy, who was tired of trying to
assimilate it all.

He thought he would bring his friend
Douglass into the big secret. He was a government guy like himself,
and quite well read. He called him up and said, “Yo, remember when
I said I was working on something a while back? Well, I’m ready to
tell you what it is, you up for that?”

Douglass said, “Sure, what is it?”

“Well, it’s kind of long and involved, I
think I’d rather meet you somewhere, are you available now?”

“Yeah, sure, can you golf and tell me at the
same time?”

Ryan paused and had to think about that. He
hadn’t anticipated telling someone about saving the world while
hitting golf balls, but why not? It was how his friend best related
to him, so he would be in his element. Ryan quickly obtained
approval from Kathy and finalized arrangements to meet at Neshaminy
Golf Club, a nice track in Bucks County about forty minutes from
his house. As he drove there, he went over in his mind what he
would tell Douglass, especially as he was stuck on how to configure
the government for this new society.

He pulled into the long, tree-lined driveway
that was evocative of Magnolia Lane at Augusta. He parked and saw
Douglass on the practice green, and smiled as he drilled a long,
winding putt. He said to his friend, “Hey, you’re not going to do
that while we’re playing, are you? That’s pretty annoying.”

Douglass laughed, “I wish. Putting here is
like doing it on a pool table. I don’t know how that one found its
way in. So what’s this thing you’ve been working on?”

So they started their round, and Ryan
gradually laid out the plan, with more or less details as they hit
their various shots. Douglass listened attentively, and asked a few
questions on points that were not clear. He said, “I don’t think
anyone
would be willing to give up their money and have
strangers deciding how you are going to live.”

Ryan had now heard this same thought from
several people, and knew he was going to have to explain it better.
“But the give back and conversion will be gradual, you’ll get to
keep your current stuff, you won’t have to give up anything until
you die. The food will be the start, we’ll have the farmers and
everybody produce as much as they can, and have that be free. Then
we’ll move on to other commodities and services, and convert them
to being free, and figure out how to trade them. If we can land a
nam on the moon, we can do this.”

“Yeah, but landing a guy on the moon didn’t
require the cooperation of millions of humans. That’s where your
plan would fail, getting people to think about others first and not
themselves. Sorry, Chief, I can’t buy it. Nice thoughts and words,
though, I liked how you wrote it.”

They continued their round and talking about
the idea, conversing about everything as only old friends who know
each other well can. When he got home, Ryan got back to work, and
wrote,

4. Politics and
Government

As society has grown more
complex and the population has grown, situations have developed
that could not have been foreseen by those crafting the
Constitution. While these relatively wealthy men developed a
remarkably fair system of government, the system over time has
become more responsive to those with the wealth to influence
legislation. Many have come along and tried to make sure the system
works fairly for all, regardless of their nationality, race,
religion, or gender, but many such efforts have been defeated or
undermined. The absolute measure of freedom guaranteed by our
method of democracy ensures a life of relative comfort for some but
continual suppression and lack of opportunity for generations of
others. While those who have been able to maximize their potential
to the fullest extent often do not consciously set out to deny
someone else an opportunity to succeed, this is what actually
happens.

The government is in
charge of the finite pool of money that exists, but they are not in
control of the growth of population in a given geographical area,
nor the distribution of resources. By removing the self-imposed
tyranny of money, the government could guarantee each citizen the
ability to pursue happiness and become truly democratic. The new
society will:


Reorganize the
government agencies to become a conduit that passes the resources
necessary to allow the United States to become a money-less
society. While the three major branches of the government would
remain the same, their mission will change drastically to oversee
the processes that will develop to accomplish the aforementioned
goals. Agencies that were hampered in their missions before by lack
of funding can now move aggressively. For instance, HUD and GSA can
become central clearing points for housing and office planning, and
can create many administrative and construction trade job
opportunities. Agriculture can oversee and enhance an enormous
growth in the amount of farming. These agencies are currently
organized and motivated to serve the public; their roles can be
strengthened if unfettered by yearly budget
restrictions.


Allow all citizens to be
given an opportunity to vote on every bill that is developed in
Congress. Congressmen and Senators will no longer have to seek
contributions from special interest groups to be elected and will
therefore be able to be truly representative of those who elect
them. In order to do this, once these men of law have developed a
bill, it will be put to a vote by all of those who show an interest
in voting. In this manner, society will be governed by laws that
they approved themselves rather than having one representative for
hundreds of thousands of people. The Senators and Congressmen will
also have a two-term limit. This will be a truly democratic method
of society and will afford all, not just the powerful, access to
government.


Enable citizens to have
an opportunity to voice their opinion on Presidential policies
prior to them being enacted but not be given direct approval of the
President’s decisions. All democracies must have a leader who is
able to operate independently in national security situations, and
this will not change. The President will move toward becoming the
implementer of society’s policies rather than the creator of his
own.


Permit the government
control of the information “superhighway” that will be needed in
order to implement the plan. Confidentiality will be maintained to
the highest degree possible, but it will be necessary for the
government to know more information about each individual than it
does currently. This is the price that must be paid in order to
have all of society function at a more evolved and civilized
manner. This disadvantage will be offset by increased security in
having all people, including criminals, readily
identifiable.


Ensure that the
government will deal with the problems that will be created with
foreign trade. Countries that currently have vast monetary holdings
and investments will be compensated in either products, raw
material, or gold. The amount that they will be compensated will be
negotiated prior to the conversion, but in cases of dispute, the
government will make a unilateral decision that may be appealed in
court. The US government will attempt to determine what resources
it has that best match the needs of their trading partner, but if
no suitable match can be found, gold from US storage will be
offered.

He got up to get a beer from the
refrigerator. He took a sip.
Yeah, that’s the ticket
, he
thought. It was nice to kick back after exercising your brain and
just let it rest.
The Simpsons
would be on soon and he could
watch one of his heroes, Homer, blunder innocently through life. In
his society, there would be a place for men like Homer. Hopefully
it would not be at a nuclear power plant but somewhere safe where
he wouldn’t have to suck up to a Mr. Burns to survive.
That
would be cool
, he thought.

Otto Krumpf disliked anything that wasn’t
highly organized, and what he was currently being subjected to was
his idea of chaos. The traffic he was stuck in on South Street in
Philadelphia’s entertainment district was horrendous, and to add to
the misery, there were inner-city youths roaming around his Benz,
laughing and whooping like asylum inmates. He had agreed to take
his out-of-town guests down here for some libations, as they had
heard about it, but now he regretted not being firmer in his lack
of enthusiasm. His handlers had told him he had to work more on his
inter-personal skills, so he had agreed to a trip to this raucous
part of town, even though this much inter-personal contact would
probably kill him.

Herr Krumpf, as his handlers always referred
to him, was a poster boy for the Aryan race. Six foot tall, blue
eyes, blond hair, and a lean look made him someone Hitler himself
would have been proud to call son. As it was, his
parents
were in fact neo-Nazi sympathizers and were preparing him to be a
leader in a new Reich. He didn’t know his real parents, having been
told that his mother was a whore and his father a drunk and that
serving the Fatherland would be his best way to redeem his
unfortunate birth. He had been shuttled from one group of foster
parents to another, all being members of The Party, with the idea
that no permanent emotional bonds should be formed. The Party
wanted no cumbersome attachments once their protégés came to
positions of power, and families could be such a problem (Hadn’t a
brother turned in that inspired terrorist, the Unabomber?).

Krumpf was an electrical engineer who took
great pride in his precision and accuracy. He printed in small
letters that often only he could read. His knowledge of computer
systems was vast, and he kept as up-to-date as possible. None of
the people that he worked with had any idea of his Nazi leanings,
even that overly-friendly Nick Ryan with whom he worked. He
preferred to keep his private life secretive to everyone except the
other secret members of The Party. Krumpf had been able to lead a
non-controversial life by not drawing attention to himself, other
than his outstanding ability as an engineer. He occasionally went
out with people from work, but more often than not, he arranged for
out-of-town trips so that he would have an excuse to not attend
functions. In reality, he was attending meetings and rallies with
other brethren with the goal of a takeover of society by a new
Reich when the time was right. Until then, they quietly supported
insurrection and terrorists throughout the world, hoping to cause a
sequence of events that would allow one of them to rise to the
position of Führer again.

While Krumpf was an enthusiastic supporter
of the movement, lately it had been giving him problems of a mental
nature. His handlers had conditioned him to not have the types of
emotional mood swings that their beloved Führer had, but they did
not account for the pressure of leading a double life. He was
trying to be an All-American boy on one hand while preparing to be
a leader in one of the darkest forces to walk the Earth on another.
Krumpf tried to deny that anything was happening to him, but he
found that he was having a harder time focusing on what was going
on in his daily life. Indeed, his birth father had supposedly
become schizophrenic. He tried to mask this by attending even less
functions with his ever-celebrating engineer cohorts and not
attending as many rallies as he once did. If his handlers or other
Party members saw how he was starting to slip, they might remove
him from consideration for the top post. And, more than ever, he
felt that he was best qualified to be The Ultimate Leader.

In order to cover his problems at work, he
threw himself into his projects, working on computer encryptions
over and over. He loved numbers and the precision they offered; he
could make them dance and sing, and they crooned to him with their
certainty. At times, he would start a complex theorem to work on
late at night and not become conscious that it was time to go to
work next morning until he looked around his room and saw that he
had flung pages of work all over the floor. Horrified with this
facet of his personality that allowed untidiness, he would fly
around the room in a rage, hands clenched in fists that would dig
nails into palms until they bled. He would hurriedly clean up the
mess and stagger into work, looking the same, but feeling like
someone who had been up all night. He would come home at night and
collapse into bed, sleeping until midnight, and then starting in on
the codes again, driven by increasingly disconnected thoughts in
his mind to bring order to his world.

His problem with women did not help. Nazi
doctrine did not hold women in high esteem, viewing them as
housewives and girlfriends but not much else. In the United States,
women held positions of high rank (One had even been Secretary of
State!), and their assertiveness confused him. He thought wistfully
of loyal Eva Braun, who was a consort to Hitler for so many years,
even following him into death. His handler’s discouraged long-term
relationships, and instead encouraging encounters with prostitutes
from The Movement. These women were trained to make the encounter
brief and passionless and were rotated so that no attachment could
be formed. After he had some performance problems, he stopped
trying altogether and instead took solace in his own ministrations
in his bathroom at night. Not so great for the future ruler of a
conquered world.