Charlie’s father turned around and went to his bedroom, closing the door silently behind him. It would be the last time Charlie would ever see him. He went to his room and quickly packed his things. He called a taxi and waited on the front stoop for it to arrive. As the cab drove away, he watched his mother wave goodbye to him, tears streaming down her face. It would be the last time he would see her too.
Any sentimentality he felt for his mother eventually faded. He soon became involved in much more important things—rallies, meetings, and sit-ins. After graduating from high school Charlie set off for the University of Chicago. He never did declare a major. Instead, he got more deeply involved in the anti-Vietnam movement, even joining Students for a Democratic Society. Charlie quickly gained the reputation as a lightweight, not really committed to the movement and not particularly bright. However, when the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago in 1968, Charlie got his chance to show his bona fides.
It was during the third night of the four-day convention. Many of Charlie’s friends had already been arrested, so he decided to go out alone. He was standing towards the back of a large mob that was trying to break through a police barrier. Once they did, all hell broke loose. Charlie got chased into an alley and he watched, stunned almost, as dozens of his comrades were run down and beaten by cops with nightsticks. Two cops caught a young man and started beating him right in front of Charlie. Seething with anger at the injustice of it all, Charlie picked up a loose bit of concrete, snuck up behind one of the cops and smashed him in the back of the head. He then escaped down a dark alleyway. The young officer had a fractured skull and was nearly killed. Charlie, however, was a free but wanted man.
Most people, when seeing their face on a “Wanted” poster, would be frightened. Not Charlie. When he returned to campus the next fall he realized that he’d become notorious. Word spread that he’d been involved and the police began making inquisitions. To avoid being arrested, Charlie snuck into Canada where he stayed for nearly a year. He returned to the U.S. where he continued on with the movement, but much to his chagrin, it fizzled out just a couple years later.
Charlie stayed underground for nearly a decade until Jimmy Carter formally pardoned all draft dodgers. Free from being hunted by police, Charlie returned to the University of Chicago and earned a degree in political science. He then went to Cal Berkeley to earn his master’s degree, eventually taking a job with a progressive think tank in San Francisco. That work quickly became boring so he and a few comrades from his underground days started a nonprofit group. They were given a series of federal grants, most of which they used to fund their lavish lifestyles. Officially, their mission was to spread democracy in third world countries, but it was really a front for the re-emerging American Communist Party. For decades, Charlie and his cohorts traveled the world—Cuba, Angola, East Germany, France, Southeast Asia. They worked with Marxist factions in Northern Ireland and incited Leftist uprisings all throughout South and Central America.
Charlie did this for nearly three decades. It was while he was on a sabbatical that he found out about the experiment. He applied because he saw an opportunity to truly see how progressive policies could benefit mankind, only on a much smaller scale. And that is why he found himself on this train, speeding across a part of his country that he’d never wanted to see, imagining what his life’s work could do for these naïve and gullible people that were about to become his neighbors.
He already had plans for after he arrived, but he knew that it was going to take months, if not years, to make it all happen. But like most true believers, Charlie was patient.
Anna Radinski yawned deeply and readjusted herself to where she could see out of her window. The train was zooming past the landscape. Apparently there were no towns or people in this part of the country, she thought, cynically. There was nothing to slow down for in Wyoming anyway. This barren landscape contrasted greatly from where her trip had started, in Newark, New Jersey. She balled her red Cornell hoodie into a pillow and rested her head as comfortably as possible.
Like most of those headed to the experiment, she was excited for what the future held, but scared about the unknown. Perhaps, she thought, she leaving behind more than most people. She thought of Patty and the sudden thought of her friend brought back the sadness of their goodbye. Both she and Patty applied to be part of the experiment, but only Anna was selected. Anna felt like she was betraying her friend by accepting the slot, but there was no way she could refuse the opportunity. It helped that Patty insisted that Anna accept.
To Anna, being selected felt like destiny. It would now be her mission to bring about the social changes that America had needed for so long. It’s so hard to convince over three hundred million people that they’re wrong. Convincing thirty thousand people was a different story, however. Once she, and whoever would follow her on her crusade, showed that socialism could work in an American society, their approach could be modeled by the country as a whole. This sense of mission hadn’t lessened the pain of her parting with her friend, though. Anna and Patty were inseparable, in mind, in spirit, and in purpose. They tried the “one in body” thing once, but they both decided it was strange.
Anna had been an achiever in college, but most of her professors saw her as an intellectual lightweight. A follower. A lemming. In reality, she’d always been a big fish in a small pond. Because of her many awards and accomplishments, she’d gained an extremely inflated sense of self. Once she reached Wellesley College, however, she realized that she was just another student. Nothing rankled her more than the thought of being mediocre. Her best talent was taking other peoples’ ideas, inheriting them as her own, and then properly regurgitating them at the right times. She was also adept as repackaging, or rebranding, ideas.
It was graduate school at Cornell where everything changed for her. It was there that she blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Instead of wearing frumpy outfits, she, with the help of her mother, entirely replaced her wardrobe. She got LASIK surgery so she could get rid of the her nerdy glasses. She grew out her hair and began carrying herself with more confidence. She was hot, she knew it, and she used it to her advantage. She flirted with classmates for notes and help on tests. She flirted with professors for good grades.
At the end of Anna’s first semester of grad school, Patty moved close and got a job teaching a local middle school. It was at the end of that first school year that the experiment was advertised. While only Anna was selected, she and Patty started to make their plans. Anna would get settled in and would then help bring Patty and their mutual friend Mark out there to live. It was against the rules, but who would ever find out?
Now here she was, finally on the train, close to her destination. The thought of Patty and Mark joining her in a few months eased the pain of the long journey and for the first time in hundreds of miles, she smiled. She was looking out her window again. A brownish-gray haze hung over the grayish-brown landscape. Much of her trip from Albany had been pretty, but this was the ugliest, most barren landscape she’d ever seen.
Thick raindrops began to splatter onto her window and although she was warm inside the entertainment car, she felt cold. She rooted around in her backpack and found her iPod. She navigated and found her “Patty” playlist. Listening to these songs would make her cry again, but luckily, if things went the way they’d all planned, her friends would be joining her very soon.
Being the true Texan that he considered himself to be, Mike Wilson wanted to roll into Utah with one of those Cadillac land boats with the wide bull’s horns on the front. His dream was killed, however, when he was informed that participants had to arrive in an official train. To make up for the dashed hopes of a grand entrance, Mike was showing out. He had on his biggest hat, his pointiest boots, and his largest, gaudiest belt buckle. The hat and the boots were off now and he was in the entertainment car of his train, lying across three seats. It was a relatively short and easy trip
for this train, which originated in his hometown of Houston. The stretch through the Rocky Mountains would be slow going, but so far, the trip had been flat and fast.
Mike was a throwback to an earlier time in Texas, when the oil wildcats tried to scare up dollars out of Texas’ hard-packed earth. He’d made some serious money with oil and with cattle. He tried, as best as he could, to emulate J.R. Ewing from the 1980s show Dallas. He wanted the money. He wanted the power. He had actually accumulated quite a bit of both.
Now, after having gone through the experiment’s tedious application process, Mike wondered why he’d gone through with it. He shook his head at himself that day as he scrawled his signature across the contract—one, if he were to break, would cost him five hundred-thousand dollars. Yet, here he was on the train, headed west. Mike figured he needed some adventure and excitement. The fact that a member of the Saudi royal family had put a price on his head was also good motivation to run away. That said, these were not the only reasons for his wanting to start new.
During one of his many long and sleepless nights – before giving away almost his entire first fortune and before making his second – Mike was flipping through channels when he came across a movie about a man who had become rich and successful. The man realized he wasn’t happy because he was no longer on the way up the mountain, but was sitting and waiting at the summit. Searching for a purpose, the man gave away all of his money and challenged himself to get it all back through a new business venture. The fun was in the getting, not the having.
Mike’s watch beeped. He slapped impatiently at the snooze button but couldn’t find it. He swore at the watch, but he was awake now and decided that he might as well get ready for the day. He put his hat on, did up his belt, and slid into his boots. He stood and did a yawning stretch in the middle of the aisle. A woman, who had been walking down the aisle, had to stop because he was blocking her way. She glared at him impatiently.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, grinning at her and tipping his hat. She scowled at him and slid past. He smiled to himself and followed her down the aisle. He made his way to the dining car and ordered a cup of coffee.
“Where we at, darlin’?” he asked a pretty, young, blond barista.
“New Mexico somewhere,” she answered with a huge, gorgeous grin.
He returned the smile. She was probably half his age, but that never bothered him. After a few minutes of small talk he slipped a ten dollar bill into her tip jar. He grabbed his coffee and made his way back to his seat, striking out yet again. The train stopped in Santa Fe, Tucson, and Phoenix, and then headed north into the pine forests in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The progress was slow but Mike reveled in his last moments in the old world. It was an escape on two fronts. First, he would be able to start new—to make a new conquest in a new place. Second, he had a better chance of avoiding any further attempts on his life by that crazy Saudi.
The episode began just after the Iraqi army retreated from Kuwait in the spring of 1991. The Saudis and Kuwaitis were so grateful to America that they opened up new contracts to several American oil companies. Mike was just coming into his own at that point and the Saudi contracts were a virtual goldmine. Before flying to Riyadh, it was stressed to him by the U.S. State Department, and his business partners, to stay away from the Saudi women. He did the proverbial swearing on the Bible, but in his second night in Bahrain, a smaller country without all the Islamic restrictions on alcohol, his false attempts at religion went out the window.
The women wore head covers in the city, but night in the hotels was a different story. Mike couldn’t believe how gorgeous many of the Arab women were. Usually covered from head to toe, there was really no way to gauge a woman’s looks. However, at night, and in private, the women were much less guarded. Their big, almond-shaped eyes. The rich, mocha-colored skin. The exotic clothes and accents. For a tomcat like Mike it was almost too much to bear.
One night, following a boring day of finalizing contracts, he found himself alone in the hotel lobby when an absolute stunner walked in, modestly dressed, but with no head cover.
“Hi,” he twanged at her, letting her know that he was from Texas and that he was definitely on the prowl.
“Hello,” she said in lightly accented English.
She was tall and her eyes were a color he didn’t think possible for a human. She had the raven-colored hair that was typical for an Arab woman, but she had it cut in an American style. She wore a long, frill-less dress, but underneath, he could tell she had an astounding body. She was so beautiful he almost couldn’t breathe.
After shamelessly looking her up and down he said, “Can I get you a drink?”
She smiled at him and her eyes twinkled. “They don’t have any drinks here,” she said, elegantly waving her hand across the sitting room. His broad smile resembled a naughty boy who’d successfully gotten away with pulling Sally’s pigtail. He closed the distance between them and sat in the stool next to hers.
“They don’t have any here,” she said, her hot breath sending chills down his neck and his spine, “But I know where there’s something that is a little more … relaxing.”
“Where you from?” he asked her, his first attempt at small talk.
“Riyadh,” she said, taking a sip of a juice drink from her crystal glass.
“Well yeah. But where in America do you live?”
She looked at him, her eyes not betraying her surprise at his perceptiveness. Setting down her glass, she said, “New York.”
“Ahhh,” he said, giving her every bit of attention he could muster. “Ever been to Texas?”
She smiled coyly at him again. “Yes. My father has business interests there. Some with your president’s son, even.”
“Yeah? Well I’ll be damned. Maybe I know him,” he said, leaning in even closer.
She almost laughed at him. Her father didn’t have any casual acquaintances, especially in America and particularly not in Texas of all places. She mentioned his name and Mike laughed. He pulled out his wallet, removed a business card, and held it in front of her face.
“You know him?” she asked, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Of course,” he said, confidently, returning the card to his wallet. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“The food?” she said, laughing again.
He patted his stomach and groaned. The spicy food had not suited his stomach well. She laughed even harder. After another half hour of playful banter, he asked her if she wanted to see his suite. She looked around to see if anyone was listening, but a young concierge was the only person within earshot. They were nearly alone in the room.
“Give me thirty minutes?”
He winked and nodded at her as she gathered her things. An hour later there was a light knock at the door of his suite. He was in shirtsleeves now, no tie, collar undone, and no shoes.
“Hi,” he said warmly. He’d started himself off with a belt of Jack Daniels and he was feeling loose.
She looked in all directions to see if anyone was looking and then quickly stepped in. He offered her a whiskey and Coke and she gladly accepted. She was no devout Muslim and was more than a social drinker while living in New York City. They were sitting on a plush leather sofa and she was much more relaxed now. They talked and laughed and listened to American music while the alcohol took effect. Soon they were sitting very close and it was she that leaned in for the first kiss. Her lips were so soft it nearly took his breath away. The kisses became more and more passionate and both began to shed their clothes. Soon they were in his bedroom and after what had seemed like a blink of an eye, the morning had come.
He never found out how her father found out about that night, but somehow he had. And although the Saudi was angry enough to put a price on Mike’s head, he didn’t cancel the deal he had made with Mike and his partners. However, after Mike returned to America, his partners notifie
d him that there was a hit out on him and that he should probably hire some sort of security. He did just that, hiring a former Navy SEAL. It was expensive, but it was worth it.
And there was only one serious attempt that he heard about. A Colombian assassin was on his way to do the hit when he was pulled over by a Texas state trooper. After not being able to explain why he had a forged driver’s license, and obviously wasn’t a migrant worker, the Texas Rangers were called in to investigate. The Rangers called ICE, who called the Colombian government, who informed all involved that the man was a serious player in the drug cartels and was a pro. Word of the hit got back to Mike’s security guy, who told Mike.
After his scrape with the Saudi, Mike dissolved all of his interest in the oil business and went into cattle ranching. A friend of a friend had developed a new beef and it became a global competitor. Mike sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into the venture and was almost immediately rewarded with millions in return. They branched out and Mike made millions more.
Eventually, though, everything changed for him. It wasn’t any single event, he realized. It was more of a long transformation. He became a reborn Christian and married a lovely young woman from Arlington. His transformation was incomplete, though, and he wasn’t able to keep his vows. The old Texas tomcat eventually returned to his old ways, chasing skirts and money. That lifestyle became boring again, however, as did life in general. He’d achieved all of his goals. He’d made more money than he thought was possible, and just when he was at his lowest point he saw the advertisement for the experiment. He took a day and filled out the survey, not thinking anything would come of it. To his surprise, however, three weeks later he received notice that he’d been selected. And now here he was, on a train to Utah and into trouble that God only knew.
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