“What would you have me do?” he said.
“I don’t know. But we can’t keep on like this. Everyone is so afraid of our men showing up in the middle of the night and either dragging them away or putting a blaster hole through their head that they’re turning on everyone else they know. We’re getting hundreds of thousands of calls each day from people accusing all their friends of being Thinkers.”
“Are we arresting everyone who’s being accused?”
“Initially, we were. But how can we now? The entire country would be behind bars.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” The Ruler said, trying to chuckle, a little bit of life returning to his face.
“They would certainly be easier to control that way. But if the entire population is behind bars, who would keep the infrastructure running? Who would produce our food, teach our children, pick up our trash?”
“True,” the Ruler said. “What about the people making the accusations? Are you at least having them arrested?”
“I’d love to. But if we start arresting the people who are accusing their friends and family of being Thinkers, pretty soon no one will be reporting the radicals we actually want to catch, and then the Thinkers would be able to do whatever they want.”
“Very smart,” the Ruler said. “That’s why I need you here, to think of the things I’d never think of myself.” And then: “This is all the Thinkers’ fault. If they wouldn’t question everything we did, people would be happy to go along with it.”
“It’s almost like the Thinkers are thinking about everything except what’s good for the country,” Matheson said, smiling at his own joke. “We need to do something, though. We can’t have the public so afraid that they’ll turn on each other.”
“I like that the people are afraid. It means they respect us.”
“Maybe. But maybe they’re becoming too afraid. We want them to be just scared enough that they listen to what we have to say, but not so scared that they lose their minds. Pretty soon, no one will be safe. One of the leaders might turn on one of the other leaders. Maybe an entire group of leaders will claim that another group of leaders were Thinkers just to get rid of their rivals.” Matheson looked at the monuments in the distance before adding, “Maybe a leader with aspirations of becoming Ruler will accuse you of being a Thinker.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I know that. But what are the Security Services supposed to do, listen to some accusations and ignore others? Where would it end? Would you be safe but your family be at risk? We need to make sure the people we care about remain insulated from everything that’s happening.”
“Very smart. Very smart indeed,” the Ruler said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “Sometimes, I think it should have been you who was elected instead of me.”
They walked away from the window and over to a pair of sofas arranged on either side of a glass table. Matheson sat on one sofa and the Ruler on the opposite one so the two men were facing each other. On the table in front of them, a stack of reports was piled detailing the state of the Tyranny.
The Ruler looked down at the documents, not bothering to flip through any of them. They were always filled with the same suggestions.
“What do you recommend?” he said to Matheson. “Maybe another war. Nothing unites the people like war.”
Matheson grimaced and ground his teeth together. “Normally, I would say yes. Wars have been very successful for us in the past. But I think the people grow tired of all the wars. I think they’re fed up with seeing their loved ones coming back in pieces and with all the money we put into killing people.”
“We could just drop some bombs then,” the Ruler said, eyes widening. “No one would get hurt. From our side, I mean. We’d level a couple cities, get our people cheering for the home team again, and everything would be better.”
“We may have played that card a few too many times. Trust me, I know it used to be effective, but there are too many people whispering that the last war was staged, and the one before that was unnecessary, and the one before that was just a distraction. We might want to hold off on any more bombs. At least for the next few weeks. After all, we’ve been on quite a roll recently.”
“What else can we do then? What other options do we have?”
“I don’t know,” Matheson said. “I wish it were as easy as blowing some city off the map, but I don’t think it is this time.”
“The whole thing makes my head hurt.”
Matheson watched as the Ruler pressed his fingers into his temples again. Each time, the Ruler also squeezed his eyelids shut, and each time he opened them the eyelids seemed to swell and become heavier than before, the eyeballs fading into the distance. The man yawned and closed his eyes for a moment. Matheson wondered if his friend might have gone to sleep right there on the sofa. It had happened before.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” the Ruler said, his eyes still closed. When Matheson didn’t say anything, he added, “There are reports that the Thinkers have learned how to travel back in time.”
Matheson didn’t say anything, only put his hand to his chin and rubbed at the stubble that was coming in. If anyone else were speaking about time travel, they would be thought to have lost their mind.
“Can you imagine that?” The Ruler said. “A bunch of radicals who hate all the good we’re trying to do, trying to go back in time and keeping us from starting the Tyranny?”
“Are you sure that’s what they intend to do?”
“What else would they do?” the Ruler yelled, his eyes bursting open, then closing again as he tried to calm himself. “We listen to every phone call, every conversation. We read every letter, every email. We track where every single person goes and who they meet with. And these people are still able to sneak around under our noses.”
“It doesn’t help that everyone is so afraid to fall under our suspicion that they keep reporting everyone they know to be a Thinker. We have so many false claims that we can’t track the serious ones.”
The Ruler nodded. “The entire thing is a mess.”
“If only we could record people’s thoughts,” Matheson said. “Then there would be no way they could hide from us.”
“That really would make things so much easier for us. Maybe in a utopia the Tyranny would be able do that, but not in the real world.”
The Ruler looked down at the stack of reports in front of him. One would be filled with all of the possible countries they could attack next. Another would detail all the new laws that could be passed to further control the population. Yet another would provide the statistics of all the people who had been rounded up under suspicion of being against the Tyranny, all the people who were in the Tyranny’s prisons, all the dead.
“There’s a book that predicted this very thing,” the Ruler whispered. “It said there would be people, like the Thinkers, who learn how to travel through time and want to use that capability to prevent the Tyranny from ever forming.”
Matheson laughed. When the Ruler didn’t share in the humor, Matheson leaned forward and said, “Are you serious? As a friend, I have to say you sound like you’re out of your mind. No offense.”
“I know. But it’s not crazy talk. And no, I haven’t lost my mind.” He smiled. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You actually believe the Thinkers can travel back in time?”
“I know they can, or at least I know they will be able to one day. I’ve seen the book.”
The only things Matheson could think to say were, “I don’t believe it,” and “Let me see this book,” and “You still sound crazy,” and so he said nothing, only leaned even further forward, on the very edge of the sofa.
The Ruler took no joy in knowing something that his friend didn’t. Rather, the knowledge made him act even more decrepit, another ten years older.
“I’m not withholding anything from you,” the Ruler told his friend. “I only saw it yesterday. Campbell showed it to me.”
“
Campbell?”
The Ruler nodded.
“Campbell?” Matheson said again. “Why does the Fed chairman have it?”
“I’m not sure. From what I gather, it was originally given to Thomas Jefferson, who immediately went on to tell everyone—like the fool he was—about the so-called dangers of tyranny. Ha! He handed it down to someone he trusted, and so on, until someone received it who must have been more concerned with wealth and power than with preserving the foolish ideas the Thinkers try to persuade people of. Eventually, the book fell into the hands of the very bankers that the time traveler was trying to warn people about. There’s some cosmic justice for you. The rest,” the Ruler gave a shrug, “is history.”
Matheson started to open his mouth with a barrage of questions but the Ruler waved him off: “Trust me, the book was real. It was written on some sort of old paper, practically falling apart. But it was written in our modern English. There was no “’twas,” or “forsooth” or anything of the sort. It was antique, almost ancient, but written by somebody from our time. Damn thing even mentioned our secret prisons and our cameras everywhere.”
“How much did you get to read?”
“Enough to know that what I’m being told is true. The Thinkers are set on changing our way of life. The fools believe they’re better off living without our laws, without us overseeing everything that goes on. This isn’t like the other enemies we’ve fought,” the Ruler said, growing loud and energetic. “These people really want to do away with the Tyranny. Can you imagine?”
Neither of them spoke then, both of them trying to imagine a reality in which the Tyranny didn’t exist. How would things be different? What had life actually been like before the Tyranny came about? These things were difficult to remember because every television station, every book, every radio station, kept saying how each new law was critical to ensuring everyone’s safety. It was enough to make even the most open-minded individual question how anyone could have lived before all these laws were created. There must have been bombs going off everywhere, killing thousands of innocent citizens in each of the Tyranny’s cities. There must have been trains and buses being blown up on every corner back when people were allowed to board them without being molested.
“One thing doesn’t make sense to me,” Matheson said, shaking his head. “If Thomas Jefferson had it, wouldn’t he make sure it was only given to someone he could absolutely trust, not someone who could be corrupted?”
The Ruler’s eyes became buried behind cheeks that rose when he burst into laughter. “That’s what you wonder? My god, man. I tell you I’ve read a book from the future and that the Thinkers really will be able to travel back in time, if they can’t already. I tell you that our entire way of life is at risk and you wonder why Jefferson wasn’t a better judge of character?” The Ruler smacked his knee while he howled. “I wish there was a microphone recording some of the things you say.”
“There probably are,” Matheson said.
The two men looked at each other for a moment, then the Ruler went into a fit of laughter so intense that he rocked back and forth on the sofa. Hearty, genuine guffaws that made the man look younger than normal. If anyone was listening, they might think they were hearing a grizzly bear giving birth, but it was the Tyranny’s Ruler enjoying one of his rare moments as a regular person, not having to do what he was told, not having to tell his people that another needless war was going to start or another pointless law was going to be passed.
“That was a good one,” he said. “I need to remember that one.”
31 – You Can’t Report That
Year: 2048
“What do we have so far, Jerry?” Amy said, standing over his desk and the amazing amount of clutter it contained.
The man, whom she had known as long as she had worked in news, shrugged and smiled. He appeared to be particularly old when she stood over him and could look down at his balding head. Then she remembered her hair hadn’t always been grey, knew how old that made her look, and said nothing.
“Debbie’s compiling a list of all the people—or at least the ones we know about—who have been rounded up or killed by the Tyranny in the past month.”
“How many?”
“Just in the capital, and just in the last month, over two hundred.”
Amy whistled and cringed at the same time.
“And Carter’s team,” he said, “is getting the stats on how many people have been accused of being Thinkers in the past month. There’s overlap, of course, with that list and the list of people who were killed or have disappeared.”
“Of course. So, how many?”
“Almost five hundred.”
“In just the capital, and only in the last month?”
He nodded.
“This is insane,” she said. “What are they going to do when there’s no one else to lock up?”
Jerry didn’t say anything, only looked out the office building’s window at an AeroCam hovering just outside, recording every action they made and probably every word they said.
She looked to see what he was staring at and growled. For a moment she seemed to consider picking up his stapler and throwing it through the window at the little flying camera.
Instead, she said, “And the piece about who’s investing in all the attack ads?”
“That one was pretty quick. The intern already found everything we need to know. The same two interest groups are funding both candidates. Turns out the same two groups also ran disparaging ads against anyone else who tried to run against the two main candidates.”
She took a deep breath and sighed. “Are you sure?”
“I know the kid doesn’t look like much,” Jerry said, flipping his eyes over toward the tiny desk they let the intern use when he wasn’t getting them coffee, “but it turns out he’s got a knack for research.”
“Okay, then have him put together some background notes on both candidates.”
“What do you mean?”
“What are their careers?”
He smiled. “That’s easy: they’re politicians.”
“I know, but what did they do before they were politicians?”
“They always were.”
“Always? Weren’t they lawyers or government contractors at least?”
“No. I think they got out of college and became politicians.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She saw, though, by his silence that he wasn’t kidding at all.
“So, who’s giving them all the money to do these commercials?”
“One group consists of the companies the Tyranny uses to make bombs, planes, and missiles. And the other consists mainly of banks.”
“Have the candidates said what their stance is on all the wars we’ve been fighting?”
“They both support every bomb that’s been dropped.”
“Of course. And let me guess, they both think the banks are misunderstood and are actually the Tyranny’s greatest asset, right?”
Again, Jerry’s silence spoke for him. He turned and looked out the window. The AeroCam was gone. Within a minute, another would replace it.
“Both of them,” he said, leaning closer to her, “back when they were state leaders, before they were running to be a national leader, had reputations for introducing laws they didn’t write. One of them, when asked about his new bill, didn’t even know what it was about. When he was told, he didn’t know what any of it meant. The other guy has a reputation for going on luxurious vacations that businessmen buy for him. He ended up introducing a law that made it legal to poison the drinking water where he lived. A week later, he sold his house and moved into a mansion.”
“Will it never end?” Amy said, suddenly becoming tired. “What happened to the farmers, doctors, and teachers who used to come here to make a difference, then go back and return to their lives when they were done?”
He didn’t attempt a reply. But this time it wasn’t because he was afraid the AeroCam would recor
d whatever it was that he said. He didn’t reply because he knew she already had the answer: the people she was talking about were now getting paid a king’s ransom to sit on the board of directors at the companies they helped while they were leaders.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “where is all of this going?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Amy. You can’t report this stuff. The boss won’t let you. You know that. He’ll lose a fortune when all the advertisers drop our station. And that doesn’t even account for the Tyranny. You’re very close to breaking the law.”
“Which law?”
“You can’t say anything bad about the Tyranny. You know that. I don’t like the law any more than you do, but it’s the law.”
“Is reporting the Tyranny’s actions a criticism of the Tyranny, or just journalism?”
“Come on,” he said, his hand reaching toward hers but pausing inches away. “We aren’t in college, debating the ethics. You can call it journalism if you want, but the Tyranny won’t see it that way. And we both know it.”
And then she did take his stapler and throw it across the room, almost hitting the intern in the face by accident.
“Sorry!” she said, but the intern was already running for the door. Then, to the entire floor of personnel, she yelled, “Does reporting the news make me a radical? Does reporting fact for fact, the Tyranny’s actions, make me a Thinker?”
No one answered in words. Their actions spoke for them. Every single person within earshot of her suddenly felt the urge to use the bathroom or refill their coffee or take a smoke break. Even Jerry got up and began walking, his head down in defeat, toward the elevators and away from her.
Outside, a new AeroCam was watching her from the third story window.
32 – Worse Than Bad
Year: 2048
“What should we do?” the Ruler asked again.
Matheson looked at all the reports scattered around on the table. Like the Ruler, he knew what they contained. The poor country that would be their next target. Ways to keep everyone safe by controlling all the things they did and said. Strategies to fill the prisons with even more people. In a different set of meetings, when it wasn’t just the Ruler and Matheson, men in suits from various departments within the Tyranny would take turns saying why the actions proposed in their respective reports were absolutely critical.
The Theta Prophecy Page 19