The Modest Proposal Institute: A YA Dystopian Thriller

by Paul James

  “And what is your view with respect to the immediate future of this island?”

  “I agree with Shane,” he said. “Move the school and university to a safer location and turn this into something low value, which will reduce temptation. We should also increase the institute’s proportion of project revenues from five percent to six or even seven percent, to accelerate the move to the moon and the ocean floor. The sooner we are out of their reach, the better—for us and for them.”

  For Shane, the only outcome of the council meeting was more frustration. He’d hoped his and Alexis’s opposition to Tomas’s suggestions would lead to an outburst that would open the Founders’ eyes, but, once again, nothing Tomas did alarmed anyone—except Shane.

  Chapter 12: Duarchy or Triumvirate?

  “Alexis, we need to talk,” Shane said, catching up with him as they left the conference room.

  “What about?”

  “Not here. Come with me.”

  Shane led Alexis to a small room, once an oversized closet but now repurposed for meetings.

  “This place is soundproof and checked for bugs daily,” Shane said, closing the door and flicking the lock.

  “This sounds serious.”

  “It is. It’s about our futures.”

  “And Tomas, I guess?”

  “Exactly. I think the Founders were once happy with the idea of you and me being their successors, but lately, I’m not sure.”

  “You think they now fancy Tomas for one of the positions?”

  “Either that or maybe a triumvirate.”

  “A triumvirate may be better anyway. There’ve been times when Alexander and Dean disagreed and nothing could be done. A deciding vote may prevent that.”

  “We don’t do votes,” Shane reminded him.

  “You know what I mean. A third opinion or could prevent deadlock.”

  “Tomas is too aggressive. Surely you can see that. He’s itching to use his robots on somebody in real life, not a drill. It would be fatal for us. I can’t get out of my head that Leon disappeared during an exercise where the NuMen were ‘defending’ the island.”

  Alexis rolled his eyes. “There’s no evidence that Tomas had anything to do with Leon’s disappearance and you are the only person who thinks there is. It’s true Tomas is more forceful than us when it comes to physical action, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing anymore. I think we all take the easy way out and avoid standing up for ourselves too often. Nothing like Leon’s disappearance has happened since that night and Tomas and his NuMen have been working on our behalf as hard as ever.”

  “You’re just angry with the world because you have to face the abuse they dish out to you when you’re being interviewed. That makes it hard for you to be detached, but detachment is what we need right now.”

  “You’re right about me being angry with the wider world,” Alexis admitted ruefully. “I’ve had it up to here with them. So much so that I’ve told the Founders they need to find a new spokesman because speaking Nadia’s scripts is making me sick to my stomach. If it wasn’t for seeing and being with Nadia, I’d have quit long before now.”

  Shane shook his head, a little frustrated with Alexis. “Even if you don’t agree with me about the institute’s future, you should understand one of our future’s may be at risk. I sense that the Founders are too impressed by Tomas’s energy and forcefulness, and may be unhappy with our passiveness.”

  Alexis frowned. “It is odd, isn’t it?” he asked. “From the start, they taught us that we can’t take on the world militarily and that we have to retreat if attacked, but now they appear to admire someone who has clearly not bought into that lesson.”

  “I believe that’s often the way with people,” Shane said drily. “To love what they say they hate.”

  “Do you have a plan to thwart this growing love between Tomas and the Founders?”

  “Not yet,” Shane said. “I wanted to get your thoughts, find out if you’d seen what I see.”

  “I’m still not seeing it as a problem, I guess,” Alexis said after a moment’s pause.

  “Maybe I’m imaging things,” Shane said, irritation tinting his voice. “And even if I’m not, as you say, a triumvirate may work just as well.” He hadn’t truly expected Alexis to be equally concerned. After all, Alexis was Alexander’s family and unlikely to be the one losing out. He rose and walked to the door. Alexis followed.

  “Look, Shane,” Alexis said, “I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I don’t see it the way you do. You don’t need to worry, you know. You’re head of the security program and too embedded in the institute to be pushed out. And you’re now heading up the undersea project, which will make us safe here on Earth forever. Tomas’s robots are incredible and vital for both my space program and your undersea cities, but without our programs, the robots have little application.”

  “Except for war,” Shane said. “That’s where I get nervous. If the institute doesn’t give him what he needs, there are still countries and organizations out there who would love to buy a billion NuMan battlebots.”

  “Then a triumvirate may be the best solution,” Alexis said.

  Shane shifted his approach, “I can’t believe you’re so casual about Leon’s disappearance. He ran with you before you gave it up for flying! Surely that should mean something? Doesn’t it?”

  “We ran together in some events,” Alexis said, “so what? We’ve lost other people to accidents. I don’t see you obsessing over them.”

  “We have lost people to accidents,” Shane replied through gritted teeth. “But this was no accident. That’s why I’m ‘obsessing,’ as you call it, and why I think you should be too. If this can happen to Leon, it can happen to any of us.”

  “We don’t know what happened to Leon,” Alexis said. “For all we know, the sand below his feet may have become quicksand and swallowed him up. Just a freak of nature brought on by the war games.”

  Shane frowned. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Could that really happen? He needed to have the beach drilled to see if it was possible.

  “Even without Leon’s disappearance, I don’t trust Tomas to abide by our rules,” Shane said. “He truly thinks he can run the world better than anyone else and he’s just waiting to get that opportunity. I think he’ll get us killed unless we stop him.” Alexis’s expression of disbelief put flame to his frustration. “Well, as you say, maybe it’s for the best,” he added lamely.

  Shane opened the door and walked away toward his room, his mind ticking over plans to thwart Tomas. If they had to confront him—and he felt sure they would someday soon, though his surveillance of Tomas showed no wrongdoing—the institute needed to have some chips to bargain with.

  It was Institute “law” that they would never repeat the errors of the past when it came to the outside world. They would never tell others how to run their lives and never, even if requested, take control of any place. They would never aid, support, or manage other people for any purpose. There would be no Institute Empire—ever. In Tomas, however, Shane saw the beginnings of a desire to “help others to a better life,” and that was the road to another ruinous empire.

  Despite Shane’s underlying belief that Tomas would be the first to strike, that wasn’t what happened.

  Chapter 13: The Institute Draws Real Blood

  “Shane,” Yves’s voice whispered, urgent in the earpiece, “we have a situation.”

  Shane sat up and switched on his bedside light. The clock said 4:14 a.m. He grimaced. “What can be so urgent at this time of night?”

  “An intruder,” Yves said. “An interesting one.”

  “Put it on my screen,” Shane said, suddenly wide awake. He switched on the screen on his wall. It flickered and showed a dark boat, filled with men who looked armed, moving slowly across the dark sea. The first gray light of dawn was just enough to make them visible against the horizon.

  “Fishermen?” Shane asked, skeptical of his own question.

  “We�
��re getting a robot monitor up to view them better, but we think pirates. Real live pirates.”

  “I’ll come up to the Security Room,” Shane said, springing out of bed and grabbing his pants and t-shirt.

  When he arrived at the Security Room, Yves and Kurt were staring intently at the close-up livestream of the boat and crew. They were indeed pirates, heavily armed and grim, their eyes so intently focused on the institute island ahead that they were oblivious to the submarine monitor tracking them just off their port side.

  “We thought this would be the perfect time to use the Bubbler,” Kurt said. “No one knows these people. No one will miss them or be sorry when they’re gone.”

  The Bubbler was a compressed gas torpedo the security team had developed for sinking boats without trace. It ran below and just in front of a boat before releasing a cloud of gas that effectively left no water directly below it. Without support, the boat fell through the giant bubble of gas and disappeared without trace as the gas dissipated into the air and the water closed over them. The boat was swallowed whole.

  The weapon had been tested and a single Bubbler worked well on relatively small craft. They’d been able to use several to sink small ships in tests, but without actual battlefield results to review, the team was still unsure it would work when needed.

  “They’re keeping a steady course and a moderate speed. The boat is a good size and, looking at their weaponry, the crew is clearly a threat to the safety of everyone here,” Yves said. “I think it’s now or never.”

  Shane considered. He agreed but wasn’t sure that Dean or the governing council would. He suspected the more worldly-wise Founder, Alexander, would agree, but he was back in the outside world overseeing one of his many Asian infrastructure projects.

  “You’re right,” Shane said, “but we’d remove all traces of this from the recordings. We need to study the results; no one else does.”

  “We thought of that,” Kurt said. “The official record is now checking the other three hundred forty degrees of the horizon. This small segment is going on a separate drive.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Yves pushed the button that started the Bubbler launch program. They watched as its forward camera sprang to life and projected the underwater world onto the screen in the Control Room. After completing final program checks, the Bubbler confirmed that it was ready to launch and Kurt gave the signal to attack. The torpedo swiftly left its bunker and converged on the boat, its hull appearing on the torpedo’s camera as a dark shadow against the dimly lit surface of the sea.

  The torpedo took up its station just ahead and below the pirate vessel. Shane pushed the final button to start the attack sequence and the Bubbler’s rearview camera showed an explosion of gas release from its internal high-pressure tanks. The screen was soon white with swirling bubbles of gas racing for the surface.

  The tracking monitors showed the pirate boat moving steadily through the dark sea. Suddenly, the sea at its bow erupted in a white mass of flying spray and gas. The boat seemed to slide into a hole and was gone. The gassy eruption subsided and the sea returned to its smooth swell. There was no sign that a boat had even been there. Heavily laden with guns and ammunition, the men would have no opportunity to swim, even if they’d had time to realize what was happening.

  “That worked well, now we just need the EMP weapon scaled up and we have something like an effective defense,” Yves added. “It works okay on ships and things that size, but one day we may need to knock out an entire country’s electrical system.”

  “It needs to be bigger and better,” Shane agreed, “but even the biggest countries have just a few choke points. If we hit those, we’ll have most of the value of a real EMP without the nuclear blast, which is what we promised the Founders.”

  “Yeah, I know all that,” Yves replied, “but we are genuinely at risk of being obliterated soon unless the Europeans can be made to back off. But maybe it won’t be a problem, from what Alexis says. The way things are going, their electrical power system will soon be out of commission anyway. Their own people can’t pay for it.”

  “It’s not just the Europeans,” Kurt said gloomily. “Alexis says the Americans are also getting antsy. Both could think we’re a good solution to their problems. You’re right about the Europeans, though. Alexis says their grids are becoming less and less reliable and now there are long power outages, so maybe they’ll go down without our action. That would give us the time we need to scale up the EMP weapon.”

  “The Founders are working on slowing up the Europeans and the Americans. Anyhow, all those countries have enough trouble trying to keep the peace inside their borders without taking on an external threat.”

  “As I recall,” Kurt said sarcastically, “the classic way governments deal with internal unrest is to find an easy external enemy and rally their populations around attacking that.”

  Shane felt his irritation rise at Kurt’s tone. “I understand your concern and I share it,” he said, “but it takes time to develop and improve things, even for us. In the meantime, we have to do everything we can to keep the West from doing something stupid, like attacking us while they still can.”

  “And at least we know the Bubblers work well.”

  “Nobody but us can know that,” Shane said. “Nobody.”

  Leaving the Security Room, the reality of the step he’d just taken struck him. He was stunned. It was exactly the step he’d been certain Tomas was planning. He’d assumed it was Tomas who would kill someone first, and yet, when the time came, it was him. He returned to his room, deep in gloom.

  Chapter 14: Alexis and Nadia

  When he’d shaken off the horror of what he’d done, Shane asked his electronic library to find the interview Alexis had recently done with British TV stations.

  European society was clearly breaking down, but slowly enough that many people still weren’t seeing it. They thought it was just “change” and believed those changes weren’t all for the worse. Their governments and intelligentsia—if such words could be applied to people whose only real talent was speaking glibly in public—promoted the idea that the changes were just adjustments in the direction of aspirational perfection. Everything would get better, they said. All that was required of the population was the patience to see things through. To Shane, it was pitiful how easily people were being made helpless while their futures were stolen from them.

  His AI found the recording and started playing. On the screen, Alexis was seated uncomfortably on a too-low couch while the host and two hostile guests faced him.

  Interviewer: You say our countries are failing, as you always do when you appear on shows, but this can’t be true. On average, our people have never been richer. Our nation’s growth is steady, if not spectacular. Don’t you think you’re just out of touch on your small islands? Don’t you see why we can’t take what you say seriously?

  (The other guests nod in agreement. The camera pans across their angry stares and the faces of the equally approving audience.)

  Alexis (appearing by hologram): Living outside the countries of the world allows us to watch what is happening without being swayed by the noise you people generate to cover your tracks. (Alexis pauses as shouts rise from the crowd. The host calls for silence, and the room regains relative quiet.) But I’ll answer the points you made. First, you talk about averages. There’s no better way to hide the truth than in an average. Let’s imagine, for example, that a small number of people become fabulously wealthy while the majority become moderately poorer than they were before. The whole group would easily be shown to be better off “on average.” You say everyone is growing richer. We say your wealth is a sham, a mixture of huge debts and cheap goods from abroad. Both those advantages are disappearing fast.

  Interviewer: These are difficult times, but we’ve weathered difficult times before.

  Alexis: But in the past you had the means to climb your way out of the down times. Now you have few products or services t
hat anyone wants to buy. In reality, the West spent the wealth of its ancestors by the year 2000 and then lived on debt from 2000 to 2020. The West never recovered from the 2001 and 2007 recessions, and the 2021 recession left you as dead men walking.

  (The guests and audience become mocking, many on their feet shouting and gesticulating angrily.)

  Interviewer: You can see what people here think of your views and why so many of us want you people shutdown. Your ugly words and opinions will create serious social unrest.

  Alexis: We only talk to you when you invite us to come and talk.

  Interviewer: You haven’t actually come to talk to us for the last two interviews; you only appear by way of your hologram device. That itself is unpleasant when so many of our people need the help that your wealth could provide, but instead of helping, you just lecture us to follow old, ugly behaviors that can’t be accepted in today’s world.

  Alexis: We don’t come in person anymore because today in this country, people are sent to camps from which they disappear. We don’t intend to be among that number. As for not helping, over the years we have repeatedly shown you a good example but, because you don’t like what is being shown or the way it’s described, you refuse to listen or act on it. No society has ever become prosperous with the policies you are following. Plenty of societies have implemented your policies through history, and they’re all gone. Soon yours will be too.

  Shane stopped the recording. Yes, that’s what he remembered: Alexis and the institute trying to explain the obvious to the West and the West refusing to listen. The people of the West grew more desperate and angrier with every month and year that passed after that calamitous 2021–’22 recession. Whole areas of southern Europe were returning to subsistence farming and simple trades, but it was all described as “sustainable”—and therefore “good”—by those in power who were not yet at risk. Their time, however, was also closer than they knew.