by Jack J. Lee
Thomas Edison’s first light bulbs used carbonized linen strings or wood splinters as filaments. He found that bamboo light bulbs will actually last for 1200 hours before they burn out. Bamboo in the amounts we needed wasn’t hard to find. Bamboo filaments were put into screw top jars filled with nitrogen gas. If any oxygen got into the jars the filaments would burn out too quickly. Every tire shop had canisters of nitrogen. All my businesses were incorporated under the name of Hansen Enterprises; my light bulb subsidiary was doing extremely well. Screw top jars that used to be trash were now valuable.
The council passed an ordinance that allowed every citizen of Salt Lake City to put a 10’ by 10’ raised soil bed under the solar chimney green house. People planted vegetable gardens there. Enterprising farmers leased land from other citizens; instead of paying with cash they usually paid with produce. It was wonderful to be able to get fresh vegetables year around again. Human beings are funny. If you make something scarce and expensive, it becomes a premium luxury product and therefore desirable. People who had avoided vegetables like the plague before the Outbreak now wanted them.
Once the walls were up, Salt Lake City developed a night life; pubs, nightclubs, coffee shops and restaurants opened up for business. Active Mormons don’t drink alcohol. There was a revival of a Utah phenomenon, nonalcoholic nightclubs. It’s strange but it somehow works for the LDS. Mormons are able to do the same things sober that people of other religious faiths can only do drunk. There were almost no motorized vehicles inside our walls. It was still too hard to get a working vehicle or get fuel. Only successful businesses or the government had the funds to maintain a car or truck. Everybody walked or rode bikes. Even a slow walker could get from one end of our fortress to another in a half hour. During the day and into the late evenings there were people out on the streets.
There wasn’t enough power for people to run refrigerators or electric stoves. We no longer had the ability to get natural gas to individual homes. In the depths of winter people kept food outdoors. For breakfast and lunch most people ate cereal or used canned food. Currently people were using propane grills. For dinner, most people ate out. One of the best restaurants in the Fortress was called the Diner. It was co-owned and operated by Mary Black and Hannah Redding. Both of their families had been rescued after the Outbreak by Mark; they had actually lived in Marks’s house for a few months. Mary and Hannah had a special relationship with Mark. They catered dinners over to Mark’s house whenever he wanted. He paid for his meals but no one else got this service.
Dinners at Mark’s house quickly became legendary. Mary and Hannah always served good food at the Diner. They seemed to take particular care to have incredible food at Mark’s. I guess it made sense. All the movers and shakers in our community usually ended up eating at Mark’s at least once a month. They really liked Mark and it was good advertising for them to have the most prominent members of our community raving about their food.
Mark had two jobs. He was the Federal Director of Emergency Services in Utah and he was the Director of the Salt Lake City Militia. He was appointed to both positions. He never ran for an elected position. Theoretically he wasn’t a politician but everyone knew that by far he was the most popular official in our community. If he had announced that he was running for the position of Dictator for Life, he would have won in a landslide. If it hadn’t been for him, every living human in Salt Lake City probably would have died. To give him credit. He had absolutely no interest in being dictator. In fact he was one that came up with the idea of having elected officials. If he hadn’t nominated me for a position on the Council, I probably wouldn’t have run. I’m pretty sure that if I had run without his support, I wouldn’t have been elected. Close to eighty percent of our population was Mormon. I’m not Mormon and I’m an avowed feminist.
I never had issues with Mark’s leadership. My problems have always been with his personality. Mark Jones doesn’t have a Napoleon Complex. Napoleon Bonaparte had a Mark Complex. I make a lot of short jokes when I refer to Mark. He’s actually not that short. He’s probably 5’8”. His personality is short. He’s the perfect example of the overcompensating short man.
Mark’s political role in our community was similar to the Queen of England’s role in Great Britain. He didn’t have any official power; he had vast unofficial influence. If a project didn’t have Mark’s unofficial seal of approval it never got off the ground. Mark hated official government meetings. He preferred informal get-togethers, often small dinner parties at his house. It was typical for him to meet with the City Councilors one on one over dinner.
Mark had started inviting me over to his home for dinner in January. He treated me exactly the same as the other councilors. Meals with Mark followed a pattern. The first half hour was straight business. Mark asked questions about what was going on with the council and with Hansen Enterprises. I wasn’t offended when he asked me about my personal business interests; they were pertinent. I had become an essential component of Salt Lake City’s Industrial-Military Complex.
Business stopped as soon as dinner started. Mark can be charming when he wants to be. He’s also a very good listener. Surprisingly for such an egotistical man, he didn’t try to pretend to know everything. When he asked me a question, he really wanted to know what I thought. I’ve never been very social. I grew up on a rural farm. My companions were my younger brothers. In college and in my doctorate training I was busy with school. It wasn’t until after I had gotten a job at the University of Utah that I got a social life. Even then I had just one close friend. My best friend before the Outbreak was Cecilia Swanson another professor at the University. I initially thought that she had died after the Outbreak. It was wonderful to find out she hadn’t.
Cecilia was now living with me. I was routinely working eighteen hours a day. I had a full time job as a city councilor and another full time job as the CEO of Hansen Enterprises. If I hadn’t had Cecilia, I think I would have gone crazy. The food at Mark’s house was consistently amazing and despite all of Mark’s flaws, he is funny. We spent much of our dinners laughing. He was almost a friend.
A few weeks after I started having dinner with Mark, the rag called the Sugar House Herald (imagine the bastard child of the National Enquirer and People Magazine) started publishing rumors that we were an item. These rumors didn’t get far. Most people knew that Mark met with all the councilors in a similar fashion. Until last night, I had always left Mark’s house the same time the other councilors did, right around 8 pm.
I ran into my house. I needed a shower and unlike some, I have hot water at my house. Owning one of the most profitable businesses in the Fortress has its advantages. Cecilia was waiting at door. She should have been at work, since the Outbreak there wasn’t much call for Professors who specialize in French Literature. She was now working as a research librarian. The EMP last October had destroyed most computers and took down the internet. We had to go back to using books. All books were precious; those with information essential to our survival were priceless. Librarians were necessary to catalogue all these books.
“Helen, you spent the night at Marks!”
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“You think I can work when you spent the night at Mark’s? I took a personal day. You have to tell me what happened.”
“I’m going to be late for a meeting. I have to take a shower and get changed. I promise I’ll come back and tell you what happened right afterwards.”
“You slept with him right?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God, how was it?”
I muttered, “Incredible.”
“What was that?”
“You heard me.”
“Oh my God, you slept with the most eligible bachelor in Utah and he was incredible. You better come back from that meeting ASAP.”
I made it to the meeting on time. I was totally distracted. I kept thinking about last night. The dinner had started off like any other. We talked about the problems we
were having building a hydroelectric plant at Mountain Dell Reservoir. Before the Outbreak this reservoir had been the primary water source for our city. We had gotten the water back running from the reservoir. Almost everyone’s taps work. We didn’t have the water treatment facilities working so people had to boil the tap water. People who could afford to get a well dug still did so because well water didn’t have to be treated.
Once we got tap water back online, the next step was to use the reservoir to generate hydroelectric power. We found out the hard way that vampires can tell if an electric wire is live. If it is, they destroy it. We tried encasing transmission wires in metal and then in concrete. In each case vampires ripped up our wires during the night. Mark wanted to get my input on how to solve this problem.
He wasn’t asking for my opinions because it was politically correct; he really wanted my ideas. I was the third councilor that he had talked to this week. Evidently Mark’s previous brainstorming sessions with the other two councilors hadn’t been helpful. I brought up the idea of building a hydroelectric generator inside our fortress walls. Vampires didn’t care about running water. If the water was first piped inside the Fortress walls and then turned into energy, the vampires wouldn’t be a problem. Mark told me that this idea had been brought up before but that so far no one had come up with a good way to implement this idea. I’m an engineer first, businessperson second. Going to meetings, making payroll, maintaining quality are all essential aspects of running a company but it’s tedious. Pure design is fun.
Mark and I lost track of time. I came up with the plans and performed the calculations; Mark played devil’s advocate trying to poke holes in my ideas. It wasn’t until around 10 pm when we were confident that we had a workable idea. To celebrate, Mark pulled out a bottle of wine to go with our now cold dinner. It had been a long time since I had this much fun. I drank two glasses of wine in forty-five minutes. I was relaxed, not intoxicated when I decided that it was time for me to leave. Mark asked if I wanted him to walk me home. I laughed him off. With our walls up, I didn’t need to worry about zombies or vampires. Our town was small enough to be safe and in the worst case scenario, I always carried a pistol.
I was in the middle of thanking Mark for a great evening, when he leaned over and kissed me. I froze. I’ve had this happen before, where men mistake the beginnings of friendship for something else. It usually turns ugly.
Mark stopped. He looked into my eyes and saw complete rejection. He started to laugh.
“I’m sorry, Helen. I remember you telling me that you are not attracted to me at all. I want to assure you that you haven’t been giving me any mixed signals. It’s just that I was born with a defective ego. My subconscious can’t accept the fact that there are women out there who aren’t attracted to me. Thank you for rejecting me. I need this. It will be a growth experience.” Mark kept laughing. He thought being rejected was funny.
Helplessly I started laughing too. I was grateful that this evening was not going to end badly. It was such a strange and hilarious way to end an evening. I don’t know why but I felt truly safe for the first time since the Outbreak. I fully intended to say, “Thanks. Mark” and leave. Instead I kissed him. From that moment until I woke up this morning, I didn’t have a single conscious thought. I understood what I was doing but I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t thinking, worrying, or planning like I usually do. I lived in the moment. My parents have a home movie of me taken when I was four years old. I had gotten to a banana cream pie that had been left unattended. I used my hands to devour that pie. I had pie all over face, hair and body. The entire time, I had the expression of complete ecstasy. Last night, Mark became my banana cream pie. I don’t know what this means.
Chapter 8: Mark Jones, February 28th, Year 1
I woke up to the sound of someone trying to be very quiet in my bedroom. I rolled toward the sound, “Hey.”
Helen was in the middle of getting dressed. She looked embarrassed. “Oh, good morning.”
I propped my head up with my hand and enjoyed the view. Helen Hansen was in her low 30’s, 5’6” and with a build that was halfway between a gymnast and a runway model: narrow hips, small well-proportioned breasts, straight black hair that fell to the nape of her neck. She was almost too slim. She was beautiful. My appreciation must have shown (I’ve been told that I have an amazingly lecherous grin) because she brushed back her hair, looked at me firmly with her steely blue eyes and with her usual air of command said, “Stop it.”
I toned down my grin, “You were going to leave without saying goodbye?”
She blushed, “Well, I know you have a lot to do today, so do I. I hadn’t planned…”
I chuckled, “I get it. You sure you don’t have time to grab a quick breakfast at the Diner?”
Helen smiled. I could tell that she hadn’t expected that. It’s awesome having a reputation of being an inconsiderate jerk. The slightest courtesy becomes an unexpected gift. “No, I’ve got too many things to do today. As it is, I’m already late for meeting. I’ll talk to you later.”
After she left, I lay back in bed again, life was good. Before the Outbreak when I was unemployed and a lot less intimidating, guys would ask me “How do you do it? How do you get so many hot women to sleep with you?”
I’d tell them that I am able to get a lot of play because I understand how sexual attraction works. Once you know how something works, you can control it. The best way to mess up something simple is to treat it like it’s complicated.
To understand sexual attraction, you need to realize that human beings are irrational. Homo sapiens is Latin for wise man. We are not wise men. We are apes that rationalize. Sure we have big brains. One percent of our brains are used to create things like banks, governments, and art. The other ninety-nine percent we waste on illusions. It takes an enormous amount of brain power to force ourselves to believe that we’re being logical when we’re really being monkeys.
Strong emotions by definition are illogical. Most of us think we know why we feel emotions; most of us are idiots. I’ve learned that if I get emotional, everything I’m thinking in the heat of the moment is bullshit. You’re human. I’m human. If you pay any attention to reality you have to realize humans are full of crap; this includes you and me.
The only way to figure out what’s real, the difference between lies and reality is to have testable theories. If a theory is correct you should be able to predict the future. If you can’t, you know your theory is wrong. I was 16 when I saw a PBS documentary on baboons. About fifteen minutes into the special, it dawned on me that baboons and high school students were identical. In many ways the monkeys were smarter than my classmates because they didn’t waste energy pretending to be something that they weren’t. That evening, the Mark Jones Theory of Human Sexual Attraction was born. Since then, I’ve used this theory to accurately predict how women will react to me.
All baboon troops have one alpha male that gets to have sex with any of the females. The prettiest and smartest female baboons get the most attention. The female that gets the most time with the alpha male has the most status. She’s the alpha female and she rules the rest of the beta women. Alpha females don’t use strength; they use politics to stay on top of the other women. Unlike males that usually go at it one on one the females gang up on each other. In general, baboon alpha females are smarter and have more political savvy than the alpha males. Most of the males are betas. They get sex by giving things to a specific female, usually extra food; the female they suck up to are usually lower ranked and on the homelier side. They also help the females take care of their children. Beta baboon males stay clear of the alpha female because they don’t want to get on the bad side of the alpha male.
Alpha males and females eventually get displaced as they get weaker or lose their looks. Being an alpha or a beta isn’t fixed; baboons can transition from one to the other.
The only difference between humans and baboons is that we have larger troops. If a man wants to have sex wi
th multiple women, he needs to become an alpha. Just like a baboon, a man can transition from being a beta to an alpha and back. Attraction is instinctual. If the guy can somehow show a woman that he’s an alpha, he doesn’t have to be nice or attentive. If he can’t be an alpha, his only option is to suck up. If a guy’s wife starts losing interest in sex, he can get more by either getting a huge raise (alpha) or helping out more with the household chores (beta). The sex is better if he gets a raise.
Helen is beautiful and intelligent. She might even be a genius. When it comes to engineering, chemistry, mathematics, or business she is clearly smarter than me -- and I’m smarter than most. She is the perfect example of the intimidating alpha female. According to my theory, there is no way a beta male would ever have the courage to approach her. In all of Salt Lake, there are just three men who weren’t intimidated by her: me, Art Bingham, and Hiram Rockwell. Art was still in love with his dead wife; he didn’t even look at other women. There was no way that Hiram would date a non-Mormon. Even before I became the Federal Director of Emergency Services in Utah there was something about me that made a woman’s instinct scream, “This is an alpha male.” Since the Outbreak, I’ve become the ultimate alpha. Helen is a healthy woman; she has needs. I was the only game in town. According to my theory it was inevitable that Helen and I would get together.
We didn’t have much in common. I got the sense that she didn’t like me. I’m an alpha male; according to my theory I must have high standards. Just like a baboon alpha, I only make do with a beta woman if I have no other choice. Since alpha females have to be intelligent as well as beautiful, almost universally the women I sleep with don’t approve of me. It drives them crazy when they find themselves having awesome consensual sex with me. A lessor man would be offended. A better man would be more deserving. As for me, I like driving women nuts; I find it amusing.