by John Hunt
Distracted, he barely noticed Sophia sliding in beside him. She reached over and flipped up a small cover in the center of the steering wheel to reveal a keypad and a slot for a card with a magnetic strip. She keyed in a number and was rewarded with a satisfying beep.
With a nod, Jeff pressed the accelerator again, and this time a satisfying forward lurch greeted him as the quiet cart finally found a life. He pulled forward to the bags, placed them on board, and then headed off toward the road leading to the lagoon. Petur jumped into the rear seat as he passed.
Petur laughed. “Changed my mind. I was going to walk, but figured I would hop a ride. You know, since you were passing.”
“Why the pass code on the golf cart? Do you have security problems here?” Jeff glanced back at Petur, who was shaking his head.
“The pass code is really not a pass code at all. It’s a charge number. So the owner of the carts can make a living.”
“You’re kidding! These are rentals?”
“Of course! Actually, there is a bounty of enterprises here. This whole place is a bastion of free-market activity. It was almost uniformly demanded by our financiers, and me, that it be this way. The financiers are all wealthy and have a healthy respect for the power of a free market. I do too. That’s why I got the financing!”
“Anything here that is not free market?” inquired Jeff.
“Well, things aren’t perfect. We have a pretty small group here so far, only fifteen hundred people. So there is a fair amount that the Island Corporation provides. The market is open, but lacks competition as yet. Anyway, the corporation provides these items at quite a bit above cost. Things like power and water and telecommunications access. But whenever someone wants to come along and provide them privately, the corporation steps aside.”
The cart was moving at about 20 km/hr down the now-paved road leading to the lagoon. The breeze generated by the movement cooled Jeff’s face and made Sophia’s long blond hair fly about attractively. Many driveways and side roads branched off this, the main route, but Sophia indicated they should continue straight ahead.
Jeff followed Sophia’s directions as she indicated which road to choose at each fork. Soon they pulled to a stop in front of a house, with large glass windows and a white and gray wooden porch looking out over the sea far below.
Jeff and Petur grabbed the baggage from the back and lugged it through the unlocked front door into the foyer. The air in the house was hot and stale. Sophia moved from room to room to open the windows — allowing the fresh tropical air to flow through the place. Her voice came down to the two men from upstairs.
“I am going to take a quick shower. Make yourselves at home. There should be something in the refrigerator that’s safe to drink.”
Petur was already examining the contents of her fridge and smiled sheepishly at Jeff. “She doesn’t seem to have much more than a couple of cans of soda. Want a soda?”
“How about water?”
“No problem.” Petur pulled a glass down from a shelf and filled it with water from the tap. “Our tap water is excellent here — taken directly from the streams coming down the mountain. Few mammals live on Paradise, so we seem to find few diseases. The water is more than safe; it’s actually delicious.”
And it was. Jeff drank two full glasses within the first minute, and then sipped at his third.
Petur sat down at one corner of a long beige cloth couch. Jeff chose a wooden chair nearby. They sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping at their drinks.
“So Jeff, tell me about yourself.”
“Ah, what’s to tell? I have been chasing bad guys for a long time. But it would seem that I am out of that business now. I had been considering getting out anyhow.”
Petur wrinkled his forehead, seemingly in concern. “Why did you want to get out? Was it the dangerous nature of the work, or some other factor?”
“Well, it is dangerous work. But that’s not the problem. It is the futility of the work that bothers me. Futility on several fronts.”
“The more you catch, the more there are, right?”
Jeff nodded his head, took a large sip of the cool water, and swallowed. “Well, that’s part of it, sure. There seems to be a never-ending supply of people profiting from the drug trade. But that’s not the real reason. If that were a good reason to quit, then doctors would all quit their jobs because of the never-ending supply of sick people.” He tipped his glass to drain the last of the water.
“So what’s the real reason?”
“The futility is the whole drug war itself. The government has decided that drugs cause too much harm and therefore attempts to eliminate them all. Meanwhile, some people fight against the government and the DEA because it’s interfering with their individual liberties. Others want the drugs and don’t care what the government says. It’s profitable business because the trade is on the black market. Sure, some of the drugs are pretty much the worst shit I can think of for people to use. Heroin use will destroy a person and their whole family. But so can a lot of other horrible decisions that people make. I bet overall there would be a lot less violence if drugs were not criminalized. Americans pay for drugs, and the cartels use the money to fight the DEA. So, Americans are funding both sides of the drug war.”
He continued. “I know drugs are a huge problem. I have seen them at their worst. True freedom is not easy. Bad comes with the good. But every law that gets made to lessen the bad parts seems to make other unexpected bad things happen. The politicians aren’t smart enough to figure it out. No one is. So they make bad laws after bad laws and hire people like me to enforce them.
Petur considered for a moment. “This philosophy doesn’t sound compatible with your current role in preventing drug trafficking.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what are you going to do next?”
Jeff shook his head. He had been thinking a great deal about that over the past year, and had arrived at several possible careers. None seemed terribly exciting.
“I don’t know yet.”
Petur nodded, then rose to pick up Jeff’s glass. He made a gesture, offering a refill that Jeff refused, and then sauntered out to the kitchen. Jeff looked at him as he left. Petur was young — perhaps in his mid-thirties, a few years older than Sophia. Despite his relative youth, he led the Island Corporation. Obviously very well financed, his corporation was likely to become a heavy hitter in whatever it pursued. Jeff wasn’t exactly sure what this place was up to, however. He knew a little about Sophia’s work, of course, but she hadn’t spoken much about any other projects. From the size of the operation, however, it was clear a lot must be going on here. He had given Sophia’s brother very little thought until this trip. Although he remembered Petur’s concern about the future of the world, he had no idea what Petur hoped to do about it. Petur walked back into the living room. Well, it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Petur, what do you all do here, exactly?”
Sophia, who had just been coming down the stairs wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe, overheard the question. She laughed loudly, causing both men to turn her way.
“Oh dear. Jeff, are you sure you want to ask him that question? You really need to get showered and rested. If you get Petur going on that discussion, you will be sitting on that couch all night! Petur, why don’t you go on home now.”
Jeff looked at her admiringly. The white terry-cloth bathrobe did nothing to hide, and in fact accentuated, her outstanding figure. The skin on her legs glowed golden with her gentle tan. Her hair, still wet, hung long and straight down her back. There was a subtle wisdom in the wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled. Above these eyes were dark and well-contoured eyebrows. A straight, slightly upturned nose perfectly complemented her mouth and chin. He couldn’t help but marvel at her sheer beauty. And he now regretted his question to Petur.
Petur shook his head paternalistically. “Sophia, Sophia, why do you chasten me so? I can be as brief as the next man!”
“Only if th
e next man is more verbose than Tolstoy!”
“Yes, War and Peace is just a single column in a newspaper relative to my dissertations. But I can nutshell it for him. Really, I can!”
Sophia had come through the living room, heading to the kitchen. She shook her head, but Jeff knew even from behind that she was grinning. “Go ahead then,” she said. “Give him the spiel. Keep in mind, I already told him, though.”
Jeff interceded, “Yeah, Sophia, but I want to hear it from the master. Anyhow, you never told me what he intended to do about it.”
With a nod of satisfaction, Petur began. “I will be brief. The world is running short of time. Throughout history, politicians have cheated the people, often unwittingly but not innocently. This time, a small banking sector began the scam one hundred years ago; they used the power of the national governments of the major countries to handcuff their competitors and thus began to control entire economies for their personal financial gain. I think they even lied to themselves, believing that they provided services and expertise to benefit the nations. The people who created the central-banking system were either unethical or narcissistic. Probably both.
“In either case, they created a monster that has consumed the lifeblood of the populace, while empowering the governments. Quietly, subtly, even so-called ‘free’ nations have been torn apart from the inside. Meanwhile, they created the appearance of advancing wealth because accumulations of material goods could be seen, visibly, while the growing debt was hidden. Increasingly, wealth today is borrowed from the children of tomorrow, while governments have castrated, bureaucratized, interfered with, abolished, or regulated to suffocation the market systems that used to allow people to create wealth. The next generations lack the market system that would allow them at least the chance to create enough wealth to dig themselves out of the debt.
“The governments don’t want to risk rebellion by raising taxes, so they try to continue their game by printing money, and lots of it; this inflation creates a growing economy, but an economy that is so artificial that it cannot maintain itself. It keeps them in power for a time but ends up making economies as flimsy as the paper money that created them. The printed money is spent on projects and wars of low or outright negative value, as they are supported not by honest market forces but rather only by politicians with agendas. So, many people end up working on unwise, useless, or counterproductive projects. People waste their labor and sometimes their whole lives on useless programs paid for with this printed money.
“Importantly, inflated paper money provides the primary support to scientific communities within the developed nations. Government agencies, unconstrained by the market, fund worthless projects that waste scientists’ energies and taxpayers’ life savings. With their productivity diminished, taxpayers have to work harder and harder to support a system that hampers scientific advancement.
“We will reach a climax within the next decade. Americans will see the inflation and lose their faith in the dollar. People will try to get rid of the dollar by spending it on stuff worth more than paper: food, ammunition, gold, silver…. By spending it, the supply of circulating dollars will increase, and the value of the dollar will therefore decrease, as more dollars chase the available goods. This will speed up the price increases in a horribly vicious cycle of hyperinflation. And then: collapse.”
Jeff asked, “So what are you going to do about this?”
“We plan to create value — create wealth. Wealth is the only antidote to poverty. An enormous increase of wealth is also the only way possible to pay off the massive debt that has been accumulated, at least without resorting to outright slavery. I think it is also the only way to induce politicians to turn off the money-printing machines. Absent such new wealth, if they turn off the printing presses, the cessation of inflation will lead to politically unacceptable recessions. You see, once governments inflate their currencies, economies inevitably collapse, as always throughout history. But this time, the collapse will be nearly worldwide — not restricted to just one nation. And a long period of time will follow in which people cannot afford the luxury of philosophy and the ability to advance the human condition, for humanity will be concerned only with survival. We as a species are at the peak of civilization, but a civilization about to crash because of this economic failure. Our children will have it worse than us — much worse, I fear.”
“What wealth will you create?” asked Jeff.
“Whatever our free market on this Island creates. I don’t know what it’s going to be. But there are lots of possibilities. And that is our purpose: to create the conditions that allow true value to be created before the next Dark Ages come upon us.
Petur looked toward his sister. “Was that brief enough, my dear?”
She nodded approvingly, and while Jeff remained silent, she and Petur began small talk about the roads on the island. To Jeff, Petur did not sound crazy. He was not ranting like a lunatic. He was not preaching the end of the world. Doom and gloom, perhaps, but he had reason to be concerned. Petroleum would not last forever; new forms of energy were not rapidly progressing. He remembered that scientists had been predicting food shortages starting in the year 2030, despite advances in genetic engineering of crops. Now he learned what Petur and Sophia thought about a central failure of the system — one that he had, until recently, given no thought to.
“Jeff, you look too serious. You look like my brother used to look when he first began to recognize what the future holds. He is not nearly so serious now.” Sophia walked gracefully behind Jeff and gently rubbed his shoulders and neck.
“Petur, you go on home now, okay? Jeff and I need to catch up on our sleep.”
Petur stood up to leave. “I know when I am not wanted. You don’t have to tell me twice.”
“I just did,” Sophia quipped.
As he approached the door, Petur turned to Jeff and said, “Nice to have you here, Jeff. We could use someone like you.” He smiled curiously and left.
Jeff scratched his shoulder. “What did he mean with that bit about needing someone like me?”
“I couldn’t really say, my love.”
“Couldn’t say, or won’t say?”
Sophia had loosened the sash holding her bathrobe together. It fell apart, appealingly. “Let’s go to bed.”
Jeff could not resist the invitation. But he was still thinking about Petur’s comment as he gently carried Sophia up the stairs and placed her on the bed.
19. Investigator
ISAAC AND PETUR sat together in the now nearly empty restaurant at the pinnacle of Science Hall. It was long past 11 PM. The sun had made its grand exit some hours before, and the two men had been sitting here ever since.
Gustaf, the restaurateur, had become accustomed to this activity over the past many months. These two men, the recognized leaders of this ambitious project, conducted the affairs of state here, in his restaurant. He was very proud.
Petur was looking past Isaac’s shoulder, down onto the lagoon. The large pier was empty, unlike earlier in the day, when a container ship had been unloading. He looked over toward the northeast, where his sister’s house was, but that area of the island was dark. No moon lit up the sky, nor did any streetlights, so the only illumination in the residential areas was the trickle of starlight from far above. With the lights in the restaurant still on, Petur could see nothing of the unlit portions of the island.
He had hoped so much that by now, out in the dark sea, he would be looking upon the bright lights surrounding the high deck of a massive Ocean Thermal Energy Converter. The OTEC had been a key step in the evolution of their plan. Its sinking, a week ago now, was the first significant setback the Island Project had experienced. And it was a major setback. The reliable and continual source of power it could have supplied would have been able to satisfy the increasingly energy-hungry research projects. The solar array on the mountain was adequate for most day-to-day purposes, but the OTEC was needed for the big projects.
Isaac, who had been sipping at some decaffeinated coffee, interrupted Petur’s dismay for what had to be the hundredth time this week.
“Dammit, Petur, it’s only a few months’ delay. That shipbuilder you hired said he could turn out another one of those OTEC monstrosities in less than four months. It’s only four months Petur. We’ll be fine. Besides, there is nothing we can do about it!”
Petur shook his head. “Every week, every day counts. Remember? Isaac, I am so angered by this; I can hardly bear it. Things had been going along so swimmingly. Why did this happen? And who the hell did it?”
“Stop obsessing about this. It’s a useless waste of energy.” Isaac smiled and looked wry. “Excuse the pun about the energy. Bad timing.”
Petur shook his head despairingly. But the humor lifted him out of his gloom.
Isaac shoveled a handful of small chocolate mints into his mouth. With his speech thus enhanced, he told Petur, “Shtop worrying aboud ebrytig.”
“What did you say?”
Isaac chewed some more, and quickly swallowed. A swig of coffee followed as a chaser. “Stop worrying about everything. Petur, are you a physicist?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you an electrochemist?”
Petur shook his head.
“Are you an aeronautical engineer, a communications expert, an astronomer, a geologist, a biologist, a teacher, or even just a rich man?”
Petur shook his head, exasperated. “Isaac, I am nothing. Your point?” He rubbed his eyes, as if bored with the conversation.
“You recruited people in all these professions, and dozens of others, because you didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do it yourself. Petur, you aren’t a private investigator, either. Your best trait is your ability to delegate. So go ahead and delegate this too. Get this Jeff Baddori signed on and let him figure out what happened to the Mary Brewer and the OTEC. Then leave it be, and rely on your people.”