The Aegis Solution

by John David Krygelski

  "Too high."

  "A million?"

  "No…yes. I'm not sure."

  "Aren't there several people on your side of the ideological fence who believe that a million dollars is much more than a person needs to make?"

  "That's true. There are."

  "So even if you felt that a million was a good threshold, there would be others who fought against you, maintaining that such an amount was extravagant?"

  "Yes."

  "For the purpose of our little chat here, let's say that you got your way – that the threshold was set at a million dollars, and every dollar in excess of that amount had to be turned over to the government. What do you think would happen next?"

  "Well, I think that the wealthy would have no choice but to share it, pass it down to the employees."

  "So, back to your ‘wealthy businessman'...you think that he would simply share it? Put it in a pension plan or a profit-sharing plan?"

  "Or give higher wages and benefits."

  "He wouldn't."

  "What do you think he would do?"

  "He would leave. He would leave the United States and find a country which allowed him to make more money, gain more recognition, earn more prestige."

  She began to rebut him, when he interrupted her. "Mildred, just as your residents left to come to Madison."

  She stopped. As Mildred had plunged, over the past several minutes, into the familiar and somehow comfortable debate with her brother, she had briefly forgotten about Walden. The reality of the failure of the community – her failure – came flooding back to her.

  His voice once again becoming gentle, Milton continued, "Aegis has been an experiment, an experiment to determine human nature, whether we are born with exceptionalism or we are not. I believe that it has to be earned, to be striven for. I believe that the flaws and frailties which produce the other behaviors, the nasty and unpleasant ones, are the natural condition and that it takes hard work and consistent effort to overcome them, to drive them out of oneself. It is that basic difference between us which prompts those of your philosophy to eschew the concept of an exceptional person. Because if all people are born with it, by definition they cannot be exceptional; they would merely be normal."

  She started to speak, but he cut her off. "But watching, enforcing, disciplining, grading, and the rest are only half of the equation. The other half is to reward, since people will only operate, with rare exceptions, in their own self-interest. That was what intrigued me when we came to Aegis and when Walden and Madison came into existence."

  "What's that?"

  "The normal, traditional ways to reward were eliminated. We have no currency. No one here can attain or exceed that million-dollar cap you propose. The housing, clothing, and food are all provided. There is no access for the purchasing of status items. To be honest, Mildred, I was initially convinced that Aegis was a ready-made environment, a perfect medium, for you and your belief structure."

  "I remember," she said, a slight trace of a smile coming to her face. "Not too long after we arrived, you shouted at me that Aegis was nothing but a commune."

  He smiled in return. "It definitely looked that way. I was certain that your philosophy would be the one which prevailed in here, rather than mine."

  Her smile quickly left, replaced by an expression of forlorn dejection. "It didn't work out that way, did it? Walden is essentially dead. Less than forty people left. How many do you have in Madison?"

  "Well over six thousand. You still haven't really told me what happened."

  She paused for a moment to formulate her words before surprising him. "I was hoping you could tell me what happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Milton, don't be disingenuous. It was hard enough for me to say it. I don't want to repeat it."

  Pierce took a deep breath, using the moment to organize his thoughts. "All right. You obviously didn't lose many to ZooCity."

  She nodded to indicate her concurrence.

  "That leaves Madison or death as the only other main choices. From the time we initially formed our enclaves, Madison has picked up many of your people. From the beginning it has been a fairly steady stream. The number we've lost to you has been negligible, especially if you consider how many of those changed their minds within a month or so and returned."

  "Why do you think that was, Milton?"

  "I don't have to guess. With our residents who told us they were leaving, we did an exit interview whenever they agreed. We also did a formal interview when they returned. Of the few who left, their reason was generally an emotional reaction to what they felt had been harsh treatment on our part."

  "And why did they come back to you?"

  "Overwhelmingly, the reason they gave was that, although in Madison they became occasionally irritated by the standards and expectations imposed upon them, they found that they could not tolerate the complete absence of any standards or expectations they encountered at Walden."

  "That's not…." Mildred halted in mid-sentence. "Go on."

  "We also interviewed those who started out at Walden and relocated to us. There was, again, a consistent message. The recurring theme in their answers was a feeling of frustration, of pointlessness over there."

  "Pointlessness?"

  "Do you remember a behavioral study performed many years ago where they took a group of college students who badly needed money, and paid them quite well? I think it was three times the current minimum wage. All they had to do was spend every morning out in a field digging holes. They would break for lunch and, after they had eaten, their afternoon was spent filling up the same holes."

  "Vaguely."

  "Within ten days they had all quit, despite the fact that they needed the income. When asked why, the reason given by almost all of the students was the same. They couldn't stand doing something meaningless…pointless."

  "How does that translate to Madison and Walden?"

  "That was my struggle at the beginning. As I said earlier, everything was provided for us. All of the normal yardsticks for success, for achievement, for distinguishing oneself were not viable here. For you, it was perfect. You created an environment of harmony and equality, an egalitarian Shangri-La. After some thrashing about and some false starts, we created the Madison you see now."

  "You created boot camp." Her tone was gentle, without a hint of ire.

  With a grin, he acknowledged her comment, "In a sense, yes. We had to find a way to give people something to work toward, a way to be recognized and acknowledged. We began small. Creating a basic education curriculum, we opened our first school. Attendance was mandatory. Achievement was tracked and published. Degrees, and their accompanying status, were earned and granted. We also created work for people to do. Frankly, much of it was busy work, although we made sure not to fall into the trap of digging and refilling holes. We instituted a political structure with elected representatives for each block of residential units, as well as a security team with ranks.

  "In short, hierarchies began to form and crystallize. The community had leaders, second- and third-tier leaders, work supervisors, scholars…the list goes on. And with each of the distinctions came privileges, some of them amorphous, some quite obvious. We randomly selected secondary corridors within Madison and made them accessible only to the higher-tier citizens. They got preferential seating at the common-area dining rooms and at any meetings or events. Things like that."

  "You created haves and have-nots."

  "We did, essentially out of thin air. But what we actually created were goals. Individuals on a lower tier of the hierarchy, who wanted to be a part of the group receiving the best seats, worked harder until they reached their goal. We provided challenges. Almost all of our residents accepted the challenges."

  "And those who did not?"

  "We found, within the concept, a method for taking things a step further, a way to utilize our structure to create a gentle form of punishment. If we have a citizen who does not participate, d
oes not buy into our social structure…who is, essentially, a slacker…then he or she is assigned to do the laundry for one or more of the others, or, perhaps, clean their quarters."

  "You make the person a servant?"

  "We do. And before you say anything else, in almost all cases, it works. The people soon become functional, participating members of the group, and those tasks are eliminated. We actually have a ceremony for them as they come out of subservience. The entire population shows up to honor, welcome, and applaud them for making the transition. It is always quite an emotional moment for them to be accepted and embraced enthusiastically by the others."

  "But why make them servants? Isn't that humiliating for them?"

  "Of course it is. It's supposed to be humiliating. In addition to the unpleasant duties, they must also wear a bright red shirt at all times, denoting their status."

  "Supposed to be humiliating? Why? It seems as if it would be damaging to them."

  "It is the humiliation that shocks them out of their lethargy. It is the impetus which drives them to make the changes in their lives needed to escape from it. Without it, there is no motivation. Mildred, we are back to the issue of human nature. It is normal to be ashamed in a situation such as I've described. But it is also normal to want to end the shame, to escape from it, to rise above it. Remember when our father left our mother and she went on welfare and food stamps?"

  "Of course, I do. I'll never forget that time. It was horrible!"

  "You're right. It was. Our mother came back from the store completely humiliated by the looks and even the occasional comments from the others in the cashier's line when she paid with food stamps. The same was true when she cashed the welfare check."

  "It wasn't right! She was in that position through no fault of her own."

  "I know. I agree. I think much of the way we both are today is a result of watching her come home and cry during those times. But you and I learned very different lessons from that experience. You were mortified and vowed that society should never put any citizen through that again. I realized that it was the shame which caused her to buckle down and work very hard to make certain that she never had to ask for public assistance again."

  Mildred listened to his words, saying nothing.

  "The culture moved in your direction. Now that times have changed, now that the stigma is removed and the outward evidence of public assistance is hidden, how many people, who are standing in that cashier's line and are allowed to pay with a debit card instead of the conspicuous food stamps, are still on assistance because they don't feel the shame our mother felt?

  "The shame, the social ostracism, is necessary. Without it, you not only lose the motivation to escape from the assistance, you begin to feel that you are entitled to receive it. I'll be honest, the concept did not have a one-hundred-percent success rate. There were a few on whom it failed."

  "What did you do to them?"

  Milton permitted a slight smile to cross his face. "They left and joined Walden. Within a month, maybe two, they returned. And when they came back, they were ready to join in our society.

  "I took a very long time to answer your question as to why I thought Walden failed. But Madison is only accountable for a portion of the population loss from there. I said at the beginning, the only other way you could lose people was through death. I would know nothing about that. Please tell me, has it been an issue?"

  "Almost from the beginning, suicide has been, if you'll excuse the expression, a way of life at Walden. A week would never pass that didn't include the loss of some of our residents, sometimes several."

  "You must have developed a feel for their motives."

  "We tried to get a handle on the motivations. We had group sessions, counseling, interventions, hundreds of one-on-one meetings before the fact. Nothing ever emerged as an underlying reason."

  "What reasons did they give?"

  "Most of the time, none. But if they did, the reasons were best described as superficial, more akin to a convenient excuse, rather than anything substantive. As an example, we had a young, healthy man commit suicide because he had torn his favorite shirt."

  "I have a theory, Mildred, about the so-called utopian mind-set, which I believe is far too exclusionary, unrealistic, and eventually damaging. Over time, the never-ending progression of actions, words, and even thoughts which must be forced into that tight mold of utopia gradually create such an intolerance to even the slightest deviation that an almost allergic reaction, a full-body and full-mind reaction, occurs, taking the person directly to furor or desperation. A house of cards has been constructed, so high and so tenuous that literally anything can knock it down. There is no resilience.

  "Altogether, how many have you lost to suicide?"

  Mildred sat back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling for a moment before answering. "Over the life of our community, approximately two thousand."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bonnie Schwartz refilled her coffee mug and laughed. "I can't believe he said that!"

  "He did! Right in front of his wife and my husband," Jennifer exclaimed emphatically.

  "What did you say?"

  "I told him to dream on!"

  They both broke into high-pitched squeals, causing the others in the break room to twist around in their chairs and glance at them. Bonnie looked at the clock on the wall. "I'd better get back. I was only supposed to be gone a minute."

  "Yeah, me too."

  Schwartz turned and walked hurriedly back to her station outside the lab. Thankfully, no one was around to see her return. She placed the full mug on the desk, accidentally setting it on top of a pen, which shot out from underneath, causing the coffee to slosh out of the cup.

  "Dammit!"

  She scurried to the restroom and grabbed several paper towels from the dispenser, returning to her desk. After the spill was mopped up, Bonnie sat down and checked her work phone for any messages she might have missed. Then she picked up her cell phone from the desk and checked for text messages. There was one from Jennifer, which had arrived only moments ago: "By the way, I gave him your email, lol."

  Laughing again, she moved her thumbs madly as she typed back a threat to send the man Jennifer's cell number. After having dispatched the text message, she checked her phone for any others and, finding none, replaced the cell phone on her desk. As she did, she noticed something strange on one of the video screens set up as an array in front of her.

  "What the…?" Pulling out her keyboard, Bonnie typed in a few commands, and the video camera she was watching zoomed in for a tighter view. She was instantly mortified by what she saw. Recovering, she dialed the extension for her supervisor.

  Sheldon Kennerley arrived within two minutes, winded from the jog to Bonnie's station. When he stopped and his eyes fixed on the screen, he gasped. It was a close-up view of Syndi sprawled on the floor in front of her work area. From the angle of the camera, he could see that a copious amount of blood had gushed from apparently every orifice in her body, pooling around her and saturating the white lab coat.

  "We have a breach!" he shouted. "Sound the alarm. Thank God, no one has opened the air lock. Bonnie, get Director Faulk on the phone."

  

  Faulk opened the door of the Hummer before the driver had come to a complete stop, the wind forcing the door shut again, almost slamming his leg against the frame. Putting his shoulder to it, he pushed it open again and climbed out, holding on to the side grip-bars to prevent the gale from knocking him to the ground. The roar made it impossible to speak to his team, but they knew their orders and followed him out of the transport.

  The group, leaning forward at an impossible angle, made their way to the entrance.

  

  Boehn glanced over at Killeen. "Gather all your men. It's time we departed Aegis."

  "What about him?" the young security chief asked, motioning toward the still-unconscious Kreitzmann.

  "Bring him and the others. Since the land line a
nd the T1 are both down, I'll gather all of the files on flash drives."

  "It's going to be difficult to assemble everyone without the others noticing. What should I do with them if they ask questions?"

  Boehn's first impulse was to issue a harsh order. He quickly realized that extreme measures were no longer required. "Bluff, bully...I don't care if you simply ignore them. I doubt that any of them will physically attempt to stop you, especially since we have their boss."

  "Done."

  

  Elias and Tillie were crouched in the air plenum, both peering down into the corridor below. Wilson was stationed back at the last junction, watching for any search teams.

  "I hope you're right," Tillie whispered.

  "So do I. It was the only spot on the perimeter that made any sense."

  He referred to a note on the plan that indicated there had been a block-out, a temporary opening in the continuous concrete wall which made up the envelope surrounding Aegis. Once they stood the wall, there would not have been any access to the interior for the workers to use, other than the single opening which was to become the permanent entrance. Having only one way in and out of a project of this magnitude would have been impractical and unsafe. The temporary opening was actually a gap formed in the tilt-up wall, a hole created when the panel was cast. After it was no longer needed, it would have been filled in and covered.

  "It is much easier to remove the in-fill of a former opening than to try penetrating an engineered panel. Besides, I don't think it's a coincidence that Kreitzmann picked the section of Aegis where the old opening is located to call home."

  Tillie, still staring intently down, murmured, "Like I said, I hope you're right. It looks quiet down there now."

  Elias slipped the knotted rope off his shoulder. "Might as well take a look."

  Gripping the edge of the lay-in grille, Tillie quietly pulled it up and out of the opening, while Elias took one final look at the page from the plans, memorizing this section of the layout. He had already tied one end of the rope to a nearby pipe and dropped the free end down to the floor below. "I'll go first."