The Aegis Solution (42 page)

"Is there a common reason they have come?"

"To get away from out there," answered Tillie.

Wilson nodded. "That would appear to be the case. As you mentioned a moment ago, just as the
Pilgrims voyaged to America to escape England and the King, most of our recent arrivals have been
men and women who have given up on society. They no longer feel as though they belong to what the
culture has become. They can no longer relate to the music, the movies, the politics…even their
immediate surroundings when they venture forth into the public arena. Yet they are at a disadvantage
because there is not a culture anywhere in the world which attracts them, nor is there an available plot
of land, ungoverned and unspoiled, to which they may flee as did the Pilgrims. So they have come to
Aegis. And their numbers are growing exponentially."

"That's amazing! I've heard nothing about this on the outside."

"Of course you wouldn't. I would doubt that those leaving would announce their reasons."

"And I'm guessing from what you said earlier, most of them have gone to Madison."

"Indeed. In fact, their arrival, the growth in their numbers, has focused and crystallized the
foundational beliefs of Madison considerably."

"I am surprised that so few of them go to Walden. My visit was brief, and I admit it wasn't my cup
of tea, but it did seem pleasant there."

Wilson permitted a slight smile to curl his lips. "Many did try Walden first. It seemed to them that
it was closer to an idyllic structure than Madison with its more visible rigidity. They quickly changed
their minds."

"Why is that?"

"They recognized it as what they were running away from," answered Tillie.

"Really?"

"Yes," she snapped. "It usually took them about a week to figure out that all of that politically
correct pseudo-tolerance, finding one's inner child, celebration of victimhood, building your self-esteem,
narcissistic garbage is what was causing all of the problems out there."

"How do you really feel?" Elias asked with a smirk.

"It's true! The only newbies who went to Walden and wanted to stay there were the deferred
suicides, not the societal refugees Wilson described."

"And now we are finally answering your original question, Elias," Wilson said.

"I've forgotten what it was."

"You inquired as to why there were so few remaining at Walden. The answer lies within what
Mathilda so eloquently described. That particular enclave found itself to be the last refuge of the
desperate."

"That should still be a sizable number."

"It should, but for one small issue. It seems that for those unfortunate souls, the decision to enter
Aegis only briefly delayed the inevitable."

"They killed themselves anyway?"

"Nearly all of them have."

"I don't understand. If they escaped whatever it was out there that was driving them to the brink,
why would they do it in Aegis?"

"I think," Tillie replied, "it was because they couldn't get the right wine to go with their organic
veggie burgers."

Wilson glanced over at Tillie, a subtle, chiding expression on his face, as he continued, "In a sense,
I believe that Mathilda was correct in her assertion that Aegis is a psychological or political Petri dish.
The jury is still out in my mind as to whether that was the deliberate intent of its creators. However, it
has become a de facto social experiment. The very nature of Aegis had an accelerating influence on the
Darwinian process of selection of the fittest."

Risking another look of disapproval from her old friend, Tillie added, "And the Petri dish on the
left, the one labeled ‘Walden,' is full of nothing but an almost dead crust."

Wilson pursed his lips. "Crudely put, but that is essentially the case."

"What about ZooCity? That colony is now wiped out by Kreitzmann. But prior to that happening,
how was it faring?" Elias addressed Wilson.

"It, too, was on the decline."

"From suicides?"

"Not at all. Again, you must remember that Aegis hastens the progress of the social experiment.
ZooCity attracted the bored, the hedonistic, the disenfranchised, and the nihilistic. The appeal of gangs
out there is the perceived, fallacious concept that the underprivileged in society exist as a result of a
deliberate and calculated oppression. One of the inescapable realities of human nature is that when you
oppress people, they will band together. That coalition has taken many forms throughout our history.
In some cases the result has been the overthrow of the government which has been oppressing them,
as was the case with the French Revolution. In America's past, workers were grossly abused. They
banded together and formed labor unions. The ensuing shift of power between the worker and the
employer caused all of the most egregious offenses against the workers to be corrected or eliminated.
There have obviously been moments in history when the natural urge to self-organize has been
beneficial to the oppressed, when oppression has been ameliorated somewhat.

"Sadly, as is the case with most things, natural human tendencies are quickly identified by the less
than scrupulous, and exploited for less than noble causes. There are those who relish the power they
accrue from the formation of a group. In the case of the labor unions, there is no longer any oppression
of the workers. Society has evolved and the abhorrent labor practices of the past do not exist, nor would
they re-emerge should the unions cease to exist.

"If we were to compare the creation of labor unions to the public revolt in France, the revolution
was accomplished and the oppressors were removed and killed. The people who joined forces for a
cause succeeded in their goal, and there was no longer a need for the extemporaneous coalition. Yet,
in the case of the labor unions, the construct has become self-perpetuating and institutionalized. They
must now manufacture straw-man oppressors from whole cloth to justify their continued existence and
indeed, in some cases, have become the oppressor themselves in their relentless quest for power and
wealth.

"In the case of inner-city gangs, there are influential neighborhood figures, community organizers,
local and national politicians, popular entertainment figures, and a variety of others who benefit from
the existence of gangs. Whether they are the senators seeking funds for their states or the corner drug
dealers interested in growing their customer bases and distribution networks, there are legions of
parasites who live off the strife and tragedy which accompanies the gang structure in the urban
community. They must, on a daily basis, sustain the lie that these youths are being oppressed, for the
purpose of maintaining their power base.

"That is the underlying reason for the tremendous peer pressure felt by an urban youth to dress in
a certain way, walk with an affected style, talk in a manner which is unintelligible to others, and at all
times exhibit an air of hostility. If the lie is that the larger community hates you, will not employ you,
and will never embrace you as a peer, it is crucial to create a persona which makes these messages a
self-fulfilling prophecy. As the young man in the neighborhood emulates his peers and is greeted with
unfriendly glares, harassing police, and rejections from potential employers, that message is reinforced.
The young man's commitment to the group is cemented.

"Why else would these same fraternities turn so viciously on a member who dares to trim his hair,
dons the garb of a suburban businessman, speaks the King's English, and adopts a positive attitude, all
so that he may obtain a job? Because they don't want their members to discover the truth.

"It was the very uniqueness of Aegis, this surreal facsimile of a culture, that made it impossible to
maintain the illusion of oppression. How can you claim to be oppressed when all of the lodging within
these walls is identical and, other than those already occupied, available for all, when the food and
clothing dropped from the sky are more than the residents require and are freely shared?"

"That would be difficult."

"It was. All of it was compounded by the absence of currency. There could be no, even fabricated,
claim of oppression since none existed."

"Also, in Aegis, there was no power structure that benefited from the illusion."

"Essentially true, Elias. There were a few entrants who had been leaders in their old gangs and
missed the power that went with that position. They became the core of ZooCity. Internecine rivalries
were the rule during that period, with minor skirmishes until the end, as they vied with each other for
the position of top dog. But there was no manipulation from above…from the aforementioned
community organizers, politicians, and celebrities.

"However, they soon discovered that the underlying impetus which provided a steady stream of
recruits was absent. Instead of claiming to fight what they could portray as a noble and just crusade
against the oppressive establishment, they were unable to disguise the fact that they were organized,
indeed existed, for the sole purpose of robbing, beating, raping, and killing the newcomers to Aegis.

"They found that these goals attracted a significantly smaller following than the former, appealing
only to the sociopaths among them. A great many entrants, having come from a similar environment
out there, enthusiastically joined the habitants of ZooCity, only to quickly migrate to either Walden or
Madison, once they saw the true raison d'état."

"So other than the occasional gangster newbie," Tillie stated, "they dwindled down to a hard-core
collection of thugs. And the ones who still had souls when they arrived here split so fast your head
would spin. And like Wilson said, a lot of them went to Walden to get away from the punks. You have
to admit that Walden would look pretty good after that – enlightened, peace-loving, tolerant, all that
stuff. It didn't take them long to hightail it out of Walden and zoom over to Madison. That's where they
are now, for the most part."

"We've been dancing around the issue regarding Madison and Walden," Elias broached the subject.
"Would you describe the two enclaves as microcosms of the political right and left, or Republican and
Democrat…conservative and liberal?"

"Yes!"

"No!"

Tillie and Wilson had answered simultaneously. Tillie was the first to expound. "Walden is a
collection of liberal pukes. Their whole thing is ‘if it feels good, do it.' They see Walden, and Aegis as
a whole, as a commune. All they preach is tolerance, but they are the most intolerant bunch I've ever
seen, when it comes to someone or something they disagree with. They are smug, self-righteous,
proscriptive, and sanctimonious, and they believe that they know what is best for everyone. They have
actually tried, more than once, to intercept the food drops and remove any item they find offensive
because it isn't organic or it might cause obesity or whatever, before it is distributed to the rest of the
residents.

"And they can't stand anyone who might rise above the others. Conservatives believe that if you
fertilize and water the garden, things will grow – things of all shapes, heights, sizes, and colors, things
that will look pretty, things that will bear fruit, things that will produce vegetables, things that are
destined to be eaten by the farm animals so they can grow. And you can't always predict what might
sprout next.

"Liberals are like the lawn mower that comes along and lops off any plant that excels and tries to
grow higher than the others. They are like the spray that kills anything other than the designated and
acceptable form of life.

"No wonder the newbies who came to Aegis to avoid killing themselves went ahead and did it
anyway after a dose of that stuff!"

By the end of her diatribe, she had worked herself into a frenzy, her voice bouncing off the
surrounding concrete walls, reinforcing her passion.

"Tillie, I never cease to be entertained by your tirades," Wilson remarked, chuckling.

"Well, it's all true!"

"I take it that you don't agree with her," Elias commented to Wilson.

"It isn't that I don't agree with our exuberant friend; in many ways I do. When I responded in the
negative to your question, I was being more literal."

"How so?"

"You asked if Madison and Walden were microcosms of the political right and left, or perhaps the
Republicans and Democrats."

"Yes."

"Since Mathilda launched us, emphatically, in this direction, let's begin with Walden. I believe that
if you took a poll of the residents, present and past, you would indeed find that almost all of them would
describe themselves as Democrats; however, I have never perceived that political party to be as
ideologically monolithic as others might. Their current socioeconomic bent is certainly not consistent
with the firmly held beliefs of prominent Democrats from the not too distant past."

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

"Precisely."

"But that speech was from half a century ago."

"It was. And it has taken that half century for the now dominant voices to wrest control of the party
from the others. But that does not mean that those who believe in that concept, or in a strong military
or a thriving business community, do not still consider themselves to be Democrats. It is only that their
voices have been drowned out by the others. And I believe that they are waiting for their party to return
to them.