“Settle down!” urged McSuede. “I said settle down, damn it!” He banged a book hard onto the table. The sound echoed through the microphone onto the speakers. The crowd, despite being in a cheerful mood after the chanting, did oblige McSuede and shut their mouths. “Thank you, folks. Sorry about that outburst – I’m just used to controlling the room, ha!” Mild laughter dispersed from the crowd. “Now let me go through ten of the topics that will be discussed tonight. The topics will be randomly selected – by me – but the ten topics are: Religious Freedom, Taxes, Global Economy, Oil and Gas.” Members in the crowd clapped loudly. McSuede paused for a moment, placed his fingers to his lips, rolled his eyes, and then continued, “Education, Climate Change, Marriage Equality, Militarization of Police, Gun Control and National Parks.”
The crowd clapped quietly, and fearfully, after the final topic had been read.
“That is quite the smattering of topics, candidates. Are you all ready?”
“Of course, Don!” shouted Southwyck over his microphone.
“I… am… Ready…” breathed Steenburgen.
“Let’s do this!” said Chairman Obelis cheerfully. He smiled a calm smile.
“The first topic will be given to Mr. Ryan Southwyck,” said McSuede. “He will have two minutes to give his, erm, ideas or plans about the topic. Then the other candidates will each have a minute to refute any possible claims. Steenburgen will go first rebuttal, then Obelis will give his rebuttal. Now, Mr. Southwyck, the topic is taxes. What are your plans for the state tax code?”
The crowd completely hushed.
Southwyck began to speak, “Well, thank you all for having me here tonight; despite what ole Huxley did in Bella Vista, he’s an all right guy I think.”
“Mr. Southwyck, you don’t have time for this,” interrupted McSuede.
“Oh, right, right. I plan to completely lower the tax for any business, big or small, in the entire state of Arkansas! Yeah!” Southwyck clapped behind his podium. “I’ll lower it as legally possible, then I’ll try to lower it some more! Because, frankly, these businesses mean more to this state than any poor person or any person waiting to get some cancer medication! What has a poor person ever done for me? Nothing! What has a poor person ever done for big business? Nothing!” He never was the one to hide his agenda, but he was being extremely blunt about it. Too blunt.
Instead of hinting at what he was going to do by being purposefully vague, Southwyck showed his hand to the entire country. Every single camera caught this statement and many audible gasps could be heard in the crowd, and across the nation.
There was a table of oil and gas gentlemen in the ballroom. None were too pleased by the statement Southwyck just made. Each man looked at one another wondering, “What the hell is this idiot doing? Is this the best we could do?” They wanted a charismatic guy, a guy that could schmooze the press and the lowly people. Not some belligerent assclown that just came out and said the plans directly. It didn’t matter if he said that during a closed debate like in Bella Vista, but it was idiotic for him to reveal a plan like that right in front of these cameras.
Silence fell upon the room. The disgusting silence felt only after someone completely fucks up.
“Isn’t that what you guys want to hear?” yelled Southwyck. “Low Taxes. Woo!!” The crowd stayed silent. “Come on, folks! LOW TAXES!”
McSuede interrupted the silence, “Well, I think you’ve made your stance right there, Mr. Southwyck. We’ll just end your turn early. Now Miss Steenburgen, your rebuttal?” McSuede couldn’t believe he took time out of his schedule to moderate this debate and try to help out this sap of a candidate.
Southwyck, disappointed in himself, lowered his head onto the podium. He kept it there until his next turn to speak. He thought to himself, “I need a bump right now, damn it.”
Steenburgen coughed before speaking slowly, “I… think… that…” she coughed loudly once more. “S’cuse me. I think that taxes are an important part of the political system.”
Grumbles could be heard in the crowd.
“But it’s where the taxes are allocated that matters! Mr. Southwyck thinks by cutting corporate taxes to nothing will help Arkansas – it won’t – but I think cutting taxes for…” The crowd stopped their grumbling.
“…animal services and fast food establishments!” finished Steenburgen. The crowd sighed and the businessmen shook their heads. “Who doesn’t want to help out animals and make fast food meals cheaper?! They’re the only option for food for poorer areas! We’d be helping the poor and poor animals!” She tried to urge the crowd to join her in cheering for her plan, but they continued to grumble. She sighed, “Thank you. That is my rebuttal…” She closed her eyes tightly.
“I know I enjoy my fatty hamburgers after a rough night of drinking, Felicia!” said McSuede. “Thank you for your rebuttal; Huxley Obelis, are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Chairman Obelis as he scanned the crowd quickly. The table of oil and gas men sat in their seats with sullen faces and sweaty palms. Even they were unsure of how the state of Arkansas would shape up in the coming years without a candidate under their thumb. “I would like to begin stating that there are good and bad things about taxes, things that are never properly explained. The good: infrastructure improvement in the many cities and small towns in Arkansas – think roads, bridges, hospitals, public transport! Infrastructure improvement leads to jobs, better transportation options and better city planning to attract companies, tourists and new residents. We want Arkansas to be a wonderful place to live don’t we?”
The crowd hesitantly clapped. Everyone looked around to see if everyone else was clapping too. Some nodded their heads in agreement, while others, like the businessmen and oilmen, sat with their sullen faces clapping slowly.
“There are more benefits to taxes, but since I need to be brief I’ll go into the bad portion,” continued Chairman Obelis. “Taxes suck!” The crowd, again, looked around at one another and then began to clap. “No one wants to pay taxes because then you’re losing your hard earned cash, right?” The clapping grew louder, aside from the sullen businessmen and oilmen. “I dislike the idea of sabotaging or disparaging others, but I feel I must in this instance. Time and time again, you’ve been paying your taxes and, for the most part, previous administrations have handled your tax money poorly. They created frivolous governmental departments, made asinine laws that benefit no one – not even you rich business men!” Chairman Obelis pointed toward the table of grumpy oil and gas men.
Each man jumped at the acknowledgement. They plastered fake smiles on their faces and nodded at Chairman Obelis. None of them were actually listening to what Chairman Obelis was saying; they were much more worried about how terrible their candidate was just a few short minutes ago. Southwyck still had his head rested on his podium looking like a dunce.
“Twenty seconds!” said Don McSuede happily.
“Thank you,” said Chairman Obelis. He nodded at McSuede. “Essentially, taxes are bad when they’re mismanaged at the top – by the current administration. Every administration wants to do right by the people that voted them in, but this leads to short-term goals that screw up the long-term. I have a background in many start-up companies and technology businesses. I never trimmed a budget by firing someone nor did I stick extra cash in my pocket by only trying to advance myself or friends. We’re in this together and if taxes need to be raised on the super rich for some years to correct past mistakes, we must do so, but the money needs to be handled properly at the top.”
“Wow, what a rebuttal!” exclaimed McSuede.
An employee of the college tried to gently wake Southwyck from his podium. He had fallen asleep at the end of Chairman Obelis’ rebuttal and began to snore. He brushed the employee away and tried to keep sleeping.
Moaning could be heard from the oil and gas men. “I thought this McSuede was supposed to make our guy look better?” said one man with a bumpy red nose. “Wasn’t this supposed to be a s
ure thing?”
“I don’t give a shit what that skinny nigger says up there,” said another man with a black cowboy hat, a bolo tie and denim shirt, “I want our damn guy in the governor’s spot. We were promised by those pricks at the RNC that Southwyck was going to run away with this. They fucked us over like I thought they would, God damn it. They said we were demanding too much, but bullshit. I need to go give them a fucking call. S’cuse me fellas.” The denim wearing man stood up from his fellow oil and gas men, and walked into the hallway.
As the man entered the hallway, he went to pull out his cell phone but bumped into another gentleman entering the ballroom. This caused the cell phone to fall to the ground. Crack-ack-ack.
“I’m terribly sorry!” said the gentleman entering the ballroom. He bent down and picked up the cell phone.
“God fucking damn it, man!” said the denim wearing man. “I have important people to talk to right now!” He ripped his phone away from the gentleman. The denim wearing man caught eye-contact with the gentleman and noticed the piercing blue eyes and powder white hair the man had.
“Like I said, I’m terribly sorry,” said the white haired man. “Is there anything I can do to help you, uh, what’s your name?”
Taken aback by the man’s powerful blue eyes and politeness, “I’m, uh, Mr. Erdol. Jimmy Erdol is the name! I’m the guy that runs Gaxxom,” said Jimmy Erdol. He stuck his hand out as a greeting to the white haired man. “Sorry for yellin’ at you! I’m just frustrated that the guy I’ve been funding is a complete idiot!” The white haired man obliged to the handshake. “He’s dumber than any farm animal I’ve come across.”
“Oh, you must be talking about that Ryan Southwyck fella?” asked the white haired man. He shook his head in disappointment. “He has a lot of problems to work out it seems. Too arrogant and too drugged up on pills and beer. He rides on his daddy’s coattails. Which leads me to this question, Mr. Erdol, is it? Why would you fund a candidate with such a rocky history?”
“Well,” replied Jimmy Erdol, “that’s a good point. We normally just trust the RNC to give us a quality candidate then we donate to them. It usually works – guess not this upcoming election. I’m just throwing money down a damn well! That damn nigger is gonna runaway with this if Southwyck can’t shape up!”
The white haired man squinted painfully. “What about the democratic candidate, um, Steenburgen, I think?” said the white haired man. “She’s better than Southwyck.”
“Better person maybe,” said Jimmy Erdol as he crossed his arms, “but she’s a yuppie libtard, ya know? She’s just going to fund things to help animals and weird people. I don’t like that kind of shit.”
“Is that such a bad thing to help people?”
“Well, no, I guess not, but I just like to back a winner! She’s not a winner! She’s got no one helping her – her own damn party hasn’t given her a cent! That’s a joke. Sure, Southwyck is a dipshit but we’ll back him and try our damndest to get him to win since he’s what we’ve got right now.”
The white haired man and Jimmy Erdol stood there for moment just staring at their surroundings. A few paintings made by students of the community college were hanging on the walls and the carpet had a floral pattern with a gray background.
“I think there’s something I can do to help Southwyck win this election, Mr. Erdol, if you have the money and proper connections,” said the white haired man in a lowered, serious tone. “I can assure you a much closer race.”
Again taken aback, Jimmy Erdol replied, “What sort of connections? And what sort of money are we talking here? You aren’t gonna kill him are you?”
“I can if you need me to,” said the white haired man. He licked his lips.
“No,” said Jimmy Erdol. “I don’t want to go down that route again, like we did in ’84, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. First, let’s just try to scare him can you do that? If that doesn’t work, then we’ll kill him and make it look like he offed himself. I got a guy if you aren’t up to it.”
The white haired man held a grin on his face and replied, “Call me at this number in three days. We’ll talk about a safe meeting place, compensation, and your connections. Make sure you use a payphone.”Jimmy Erdol was handed a card with a phone number written on it. “For now, this is goodbye and I don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am.” The white haired man entered the ballroom to find his seat. Southwyck was still trying to sleep at his podium as his friends tried to pry him away from it.
“Payphone… I haven’t seen one of them in years. And I don’t know who you are! What’s your damn name at least?” asked Mr. Erdol into the ballroom. “Can’t I at least get that?”
Chapter 33
My Mind Hurts
Before Chairman Obelis had taken over the mining facility, it was considered a deathtrap – nicknamed “The Gulag” after all – because zero safety procedures were followed or administered. The procedures were never regulated either. Not once, even after it was made federal law that coal mining operations were to undergo significant regulation. The Gulag became a deathtrap for workers and citizens in the surrounding area, generally anything that was alive. It was an environmental disaster zone that no one in power knew about or would care about.
Helmets given to the miners rarely fit correctly and typically had cracks; the elevators leading down to the main mining seams hadn’t been inspected for decades and constantly got stuck in their shaft; oxygen tanks were never properly filled, so many miners died of suffocation, while others died from a litany of other avoidable work conditions. Funerals happened so often that families would have group funerals to save money.
Former owners of the mine rarely had to pay out to the deceased’s family because they were friends with the local government and police, or they claimed the miner was drunk or on drugs at the time – sadly, this was normally true as some miners were drunk or on drugs when they died in the mine. Drug abuse was how they coped with the difficult working conditions. All the miners knew how to do was work in the mine, drink, smoke, eat and fuck. That’s all the owners wanted them to know.
Despite the deadliness of the mine, it stayed open for decades because, well, it made an enormous amount of money for the owners of the mine and their pool of workers spawned like rabbits.
The purposeful carelessness – known as cost cutting – by the owners caused much of the environmental disasters when the chemicals (benzene, nitrogen oxides, and mercury, among many potent others) used to procure coal from the mine permeated the local water tables – this led to 25% of the local community to develop malignant tumors around their ears. In addition to the tumors, a significant decrease in much of the local flora was tied to the chemicals, and local fauna was known to have the same ear tumors as the humans. Rodents and certain insects were the only known organisms unaffected by the wastewater runoff.
Luckily, and scientifically implausible, children in the community eventually gained immunity to the chemical water they drank and rarely had tumors form near their ears, but were more likely to have chronic fatigue and chronic masturbation disorders that ruined their social lives. The mine was a deathtrap for the miners, the community and, in essence, planet earth.
Now, what does the mine look like under the control of the reclusive billionaire, Chairman Obelis?
It’s a spotless – as spotless as a mining facility can be – facility that procures coal deep from the mines and resembles more of a museum from the outside than a coal facility because of the architecture. It was a smooth and unassuming building from the outside, but contained the technology within to keep the miners safe and the pollution nonexistent.
The miners were overjoyed after learning the mine would reopen, but had no idea how immaculate, modern, and safe their place of employment would become. No longer were they forced to wear broken helmets; no longer were they forced to pray to their respective God when using the elevator; and no longer were they given nearly empty oxygen tanks. It was as if the l
ocal community had collectively won the lottery. Their fortunes and luck had finally changed.
Since Chairman Obelis reopened the coal mine several months ago, there have been zero deaths, zero work-related amputations, and there have been zero chemicals or wastewater leaked into the water tables. Was this because the workers appreciated this new facility and all the fancy safety tools they were given?
Absolutely not.
They were still drunks and intense drug users, which is why Chairman Obelis didn’t open the mine until the majority of the miners had the Carda Implant placed into their brain stems. He wasn’t going to trust a herd of braying donkeys in that coal mine, no matter how safe it was, because he couldn’t risk a person dying. Aside from a select few dangerous individuals, every single life, no matter how insignificant the life was in the grand scheme of things, mattered to Chairman Obelis. Healthy and non-injured employees wouldn’t hurt his public appearance. That would be meaningless political fluff only for those outside Arkansas once the Carda Implants were inside each Arkansans’ brain stem, however.
Problems still arose at the mining facility since humans aren’t perfect, not even the ones with the Carda Implant. Miners occasionally would be burned by the chemicals used to get to the coal; they would catch their fingers in the elevator shaft; and they would, infrequently, faint from exhaustion because they thought they could work longer than they ought to work. These small time injuries normally would have taken the miners out of commission for too long, but with the Carda Implants they overcame the pain and would only seek medical attention when they knew it was urgent.
Generally, though, the work environment was perfect for miners since there was essentially no way that they would die from faulty machinery or a mine collapsing. Their only real threat was their minds.
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