The Modest Proposal Institute: A YA Dystopian Thriller

by Paul James

  As Shane watched, Tomas focused the communication feeds that broadcast to Institute headquarters on an empty part of the sea and away from the attacking fleet. He felt his hopes rising in the anticipation of conclusive proof that Tomas would not abide by the institute’s pacifist principles. But Shane could also see that Tomas was still undecided; his expression and agitation betrayed an inner turmoil.

  Tomas’s indecision kept Shane on edge. He knew from their many conversations that Tomas saw his best result in news of the pirates’ destruction getting back to the many lawless bands that now roamed Northern Africa and Southern Europe. In that way, other looters would be deterred from attacking. But Tomas also knew that if the institute learned of his actions, they’d cut off his access to funding and the security program and, like Alexis and Shane, he wasn’t yet self-sufficient enough for safety.

  Tomas messaged Nadia. She materialized on the room’s hologram device. “Hey, what’s up?”

  Tomas pointed at the monitors.

  “Wow. That’s bad,” Nadia said. She frowned. “Hey, why isn’t that showing up on the feeds?”

  “I’ve substituted other feeds until I decide what to do.”

  “And what do you want to do?”

  “I want to obliterate those guys, leaving just a handful to get back and warn the others not to come here.”

  “And you want me to persuade the Founders to go along with that? You know they won’t. No one could persuade them to bring on a war.”

  “It isn’t me who is bringing on the war. It’s those guys” Tomas said, pointing to the monitors.

  “I agree, but the institute doesn’t get into fights with people. You know that.”

  “We can’t run away forever.”

  “We’ve talked about this Tomas. I’m in violent agreement with you, but that time isn’t now. Get Alexis and Shane on board and we have a chance. On our own, we don’t yet.”

  Tomas frowned and said nothing. Clearly, he wanted to act and not stall. Shane found he was hardly breathing with anticipation. Was this the moment he had been waiting for?

  “You want to send some of them back alive,” Nadia said. “Why not send them all back alive, but hungry and ragged? Surely you and the robots can do that?”

  Tomas’s frown grew deeper. It obviously wasn’t what he wanted to do.

  “Okay,” he said, at last, “but I’m not promising all of them will live.”

  “Whatever. Now put the live video back on. The Founders and council need to see what you’re up against.”

  “Go and sweeten them up for me. I need to reprogram the marine NuMen and that will take some time. You have an hour to make them accept whatever it is I do.”

  “They won’t be happy. Your orders are to evacuate if attacked.”

  “Tough. They can be unhappy. They should have given me the extra equipment I needed.”

  “I wish I could be there,” Nadia said.

  “Best not. It would just implicate you and we need to keep you clean in their eyes. Drop in after for the celebratory drinks, if you like.”

  “I like your confidence.”

  Tomas smiled wolfishly. “The only reason those pirates are still alive is because I need to keep onside with the institute for now. My sending them home on a raft or on the tide is just a matter of packaging.”

  Nadia laughed. “Good hunting,” she said, and switched off the hologram.

  Tomas spoke quickly to the robot control center. Soon the marine NuMen—powered submarines that transformed into creatures with claws and grappling devices like kids’ toys but seriously dangerous—were hurtling out from their underwater base to engage with the oncoming fleet.

  The two forces converged quickly, the pirates on the surface unaware of the danger approaching from below. Their surprise when the boats were seized by hydraulic “hands” and the boats’ propellers torn off was comical to Tomas watching in the Control Room. One by one, the boats were gripped and disabled. Within minutes the whole fleet was motionless, rising and falling like wreckage on the sea. Bullets from the pirates’ light machine guns bounced harmlessly off the NuMen, who were now floating nearby awaiting further orders.

  Orders came and the NuMen began gathering the boats, nudging their hulls so forcefully they threatened to capsize the boats and dump their occupants into the sea. The panic-stricken pirates roped the boats together for safety, forming a raft that rose and fell with the waves. Without engines, the boats were simply flotsam and likely to be capsized by the ocean swell. The crews’ fear made Tomas’s wolfish smile grow broader.

  But Shane’s hopes were dashed yet again. Tomas clearly wasn’t going to do anything that would support Shane’s Tomas-as-evil-villain theory. All he intended was a long, miserable scare before he allowed the pirates to go home.

  The boats and men were left floating throughout the night with two NuMen guarding them. By morning, the captives were cold, wet, and cowed. Tomas sent a boat with an armed NuMan to negotiate. This frightened the pirates into opening fire on the approaching boat, and the NuMan held back, biding its time. By midmorning, the pirates had run out of ammunition. The NuMan threw a line to the pirates and the raft was taken in tow. A week later, the starving pirates were dumped back on the shore they’d left.

  Chapter 26: Trade, Not Aid

  Fear heightened as growing lawlessness in the West threatened not just the countries and people of the West, but the institute too. The evacuation from Britain went well, which reduced some of the daily pressure. They still sold products throughout Western Europe using both the institute’s and the world’s internet, but slowly they removed physical infrastructure along with the families. The institute’s policy of temporary structures that could be dismantled and shipped out once again proved the clear-sightedness of Dean’s thinking.

  As far as Shane was concerned, all could have been well but for the institute’s own foolishness. The food projects were now creating more food than even the enlarged population of Institute lands could eat and they had begun selling directly to people in Western Europe. It was these contacts that brought down another barrage of fury upon their heads. This new commercial venture, on top of Dean and Alexis still speaking to Western media, kept the institute all too visible to the public eye.

  One particular interview came after footage was aired on the BBC showing desperate Britons swarming a mobile Institute shop in Glasgow, complete with outraged commentary suggesting that selling food to starving people was immoral.

  Interviewer: Surely now you can see why people are so angry with you? Everywhere is disorder and growing poverty, and yet you people, living in your own little bubble, are taking the last few possessions people have!

  Alexis: What is happening now has been inevitable since the foolish trade agreements of the 1980s and your governments’ compounding the disaster by letting China into the World Trade Organization without ensuring they would play by the rules.

  Interviewer: But if you care so much, shouldn’t you be setting up factories here and putting our people to work? Or providing aid?

  Alexis: When the time comes, we may again locate factories in Europe. But that time is not now. You’ve trained whole generations of people that they’re entitled to everything they wish for without ever having to work for anything. It will take two or three generations to undo that damage.

  Interviewer: You can’t seriously be saying you’ll watch people starve for decades without helping?

  Alexis: We didn’t create this mess and we can do little to fix it. We’re selling food and other necessary items to the European peoples, but we can’t possibly feed everyone.

  Interviewer: Yet you can feed some, it seems. How can you do this when you live on such small islands?

  Alexis: We’ve used agricultural methods pioneered mainly by Western nations—Holland in particular—to provide our own food. We’ve continued to develop and expand those methods with the result that we now produce more food than we eat.

  Interviewer: Much o
f what you are selling is meat, yet in the past you have said that the institute doesn’t eat meat.

  Alexis: We don’t. We aren’t vegetarians or vegans, but we don’t eat actual animals or fish, despite living on islands. All our meat protein comes from artificial sources. We manufacture meat proteins, again developed from machines originally produced in the West. We don’t have wide, open, grassy plains to feed cattle on, and we won’t destroy life in the oceans for food when we can create it mechanically.

  Interviewer: Then why can’t you do the same in our countries?

  Alexis: For the same reason you can no longer feed yourselves. Your societies have broken down. Chaos reigns everywhere. No one can grow food because the fields are robbed bare before the crops are ready to be harvested.

  Interviewer: I want to take you up on your comments about the Western origins of much of your food production. Doesn’t this prove the institute is simply wrong? We’re inventing things and you are using them; you haven’t invented anything new.

  Alexis: Not a lot you see is our invention, that’s true. Inventions take time to come to fruition and we haven’t been going long enough for that to happen. But your societies pretty well stopped inventing years ago, and very little has been invented anywhere since invention ended in the West.

  Interviewer: You said “not a lot we see,” which suggests there are things that we may see one day.

  Alexis: It’s often said that war is where the human race develops technology fastest, and we’re no different. Though we do everything in our power to avoid war, we are driven to develop things for our own defense by what’s happening in the world. These inventions are being tested and will be used to defend us if we continue to be attacked. You and your leaders should take note. Up to now, we’ve been able to survive without using our growing collection of defensive technologies, but that may not last much longer.

  Interviewer: That sounds very threatening.

  Alexis: Really? Saying we may not be able to avoid your attacks for much longer and may have to defend ourselves sounds like a threat to you? How do you think your actual physical attacks feel to us?

  Chapter 27: An Ugly Confrontation

  The Glasgow incident turned out to be the first of a long line of physical attacks against Institute food shops and stores in Europe. The attacks followed a similar pattern, that first one being a typical example.

  Yves had been on site and in charge of the security detail on that occasion, and Shane had overseen the event from the Control Room at Shaneville.

  “Are you seeing what we see?” Shane asked over the communicator.

  “I see it getting out of hand here,” Yves replied. “Is there something beyond what I can see?”

  “Yes. Behind the people up front you can see others with sticks and knives. I suggest getting everyone back to the boats and out of there.”

  “Will do.” Yves ordered the robots to form a shield wall behind the store counter and the manufactured food project team to head back to the boats. The withdrawal soon caught the attention of the crowd and they pushed forward, clashing with the locked shields that were slowly retreating.

  Ensuring that all Institute personnel were gone, Yves continued his own retreat to the beach where the Manta Rays were waiting. Many in the crowd were in tears as the only food they’d see that day was about to sail away.

  Shane frowned. “They’ll say we rob these people of their last pennies and possessions for a few ounces of fake meat and vegetables.”

  “Which is why I don’t like these events,” Yves said. “It’s dangerous for the security team and for the foodie team. Sooner or later someone is bound to get killed, and all for a pittance that isn’t worth collecting. The ‘trade is aid’ story is great in theory, but in practice it looks bad.”

  “It’s hard to believe the people who would have spent hundreds of dollars, pounds, or euros on our computer games only three years ago can’t even afford food now.”

  From the boat, Yves was watching the withdrawal of the last of the shield wall robots under a barrage of bricks, rocks, and other projectiles. “Yeah. Only a year or so ago, who’d have believed food would be worth more than codes and graphics?”

  “Sadly,” Shane said, “we didn’t, or we’d have built more food factories and fewer coding shops.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped,” Yves replied as the last of the boats left the beach. Desperate people ran to the water’s edge, arms outstretched, begging for help. “They can’t afford either now, so neither would have been a good investment.” He shook his head. “These kinds of societal collapse happen often enough throughout the world, yet people still think they won’t happen to them.”

  “Well, we didn’t realize it would come upon the West as quickly as it has,” Shane said, “and we knew it would come one day, so they aren’t the only ones caught out. So long as all this is recorded and taught to every future Institute student, it will have served a useful purpose.”

  “Maybe,” Yves said grimly, “but haven’t we started going down the same route ourselves with the latest changes?”

  “I think so,” Shane said, “but I also think when we have everyone undersea and away from the surface, we can contain the danger and educate the lunacy out of the newcomers.”

  “We need to make sure Alexis does the same on the moon,” Yves said.

  “I’ve told him that, but I fear he has already caught the disease,” Shane replied. “He’s talking about helping, the way Tomas does. I intend for us to be very wary of Alexis and the space crew in the future.”

  Chapter 28: Time to Go

  The debate over the institute selling food to European people raged on long after the first violent incident. Shane was amazed by the way Western media focused their attacks on people trying to help while ignoring the problems the helpers were trying to fix. Media reporters would happily watch starving people fight for scraps without offering any aid, demanding that someone else do something that they could criticize. It was surreal.

  He was equally amazed and angered by the institute perpetrating the problem by appearing on such media. Over and over again, the Founders went back to the collapsing West in, they said, “an effort to turn around the behavior that was causing the collapse.” It was madness in Shane’s mind. Only experience would change people’s minds; saving them from that experience was self-defeating. There was another lunatic interview only months after the first.

  Interviewer: In a recent interview, you said you would let us all starve rather than help. On sober reflection, has the institute changed its mind on that?

  Alexis: Let me explain the world to you. I’m sure you know everything I’m going to say but somehow can’t believe it applies to you. It does. In this world, populations of any living creature rise and fall with small changes in climate or food or whatever. They grow until another small change wipes out the advantage they were enjoying, and then the populations fall back to some sustainable level.

  The particular small advantage modern humans had was the Western world’s invention of chemical fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. Before their invention—say until 1900—the world had about one billion people, most of whom lived in absolute poverty. Today, thanks to those inventions, the world has nearly eight billion people, most of whom were actually living pretty well until recently.

  Once the West began to fail, the world began a downward spiral. When Western governments couldn’t tax their people any more, as happened after the 2021–’22 recession, they couldn’t borrow anymore. Without borrowing, even the West’s farmers found it hard to buy fertilizer when most people couldn’t buy the food they produced. Fertilizer and pharmaceutical manufacturing companies began closing down, and with them went the ability to support eight billion people. Thanks to the sustainable policies you’ve all chosen to follow, the eight billion have to get back to being one billion—and that can’t be done without extraordinary pain and destruction. The institute’s ten thousand members alone can’t support the a
dditional seven billion people, though our continued trade with you provides some relief.

  Interviewer: I want to get your opinion on a subject that has so many of our media outlets angry with you: The videos that went viral of those robots that prevented desperate, starving people from getting food in Glasgow. Surely you can see how inhumane that looks?

  Alexis: The robots hurt no one and the people were trying to take what wasn’t theirs to take. I fail to see anything inhumane in that.

  Interviewer: They are starving people!

  Alexis: They are your fellow citizens and your responsibility, not ours. We were selling food to them, as we do at many places around Western Europe in an effort to mitigate some of the disaster you’ve brought upon yourselves.

  Interviewer: But that is the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Those robots were built in your automated offshore factories, which provide no work or income to anyone, and built by a man who used to work in the USA before taking his ideas and industry offshore where he pays no taxes that might have supported hungry people in the West. You say we brought the problems on ourselves, but isn’t it equally true that you robbed us of wealth that should have accrued to us?

  Alexis: Tomas didn’t “take” his ideas and industry to the institute. He was driven out of his work and country by people who took offense at something he said at an industry conference. He lost his position and was ostracized by people in the West for an opinion you didn’t like. If that isn’t bringing problems on yourselves, I don’t know what is.

  Interviewer: He could have just apologized for his hurtful words and he would have been welcomed back to his position and civilized society. Instead he chose to take himself and his ideas to your misogynistic “Institute” and withhold the fruits of inventions that we made possible by educating him and supporting him throughout his early years.