The Media Candidate

by Paul Dueweke

  Guinda’s phone buzzed her from her trance. “I’m sorry about that interruption, Ted. That was my reminder service. I have a meeting over on campus in fifteen minutes, but I’m finding your story very interesting. It’s a glimpse into a life that’s as different from my experience as—”

  “As we are?”

  “Yes, I guess that’s right,” she said. “We’re not just from different centuries—maybe from different planets.”

  They looked at each other for a silent moment.

  “When can we finish the outcome of the science fair?”

  “It’s not a very pretty story, Guin, but I’ll tell it, and then you can judge whether you want me on your team.”

  “Okay. That’s fair.”

  “But at your convenience,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be getting many buzzes from my reminder service.”

  They laughed, turned away from each other, and walked toward their respective planets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Anarchists

  “And the status on the local sponsor?” the state director grilled Guinda.

  “No word yet from Corona Corp., but GeneSplice is on board.”

  “Okay, keep the pressure on Corona,” the director said. “Now Sherwood has a full report from COPE on Townsend.”

  Sherwood then said, “He was on the state Free-Thought Party Committee from 2002 to 2010. Worked at the National Lab from 2003 until a few days ago. Any contact since we talked last?”

  “… No. … Nothing.”

  “Good,” replied Sherwood. “A COPE regional investigator called me a little while ago. Says he heard about my request and thinks the report from HQ is incomplete. Thinks Townsend is an anarchist. Found a file on him, an old paper file, from when he belonged to the Free-Thought Party, a bunch of ultra-anarchists. COPE got the file from the FBI. Long time ago, but thinks he may have been working underground for years. Says not voting for a long time is typical for anarchists. Fits the profile pretty well. Belongs to a couple of anarchist organizations, Scientists Against Abortion and American High Energy Physics Society. Sounds like he might be coming out of the closet since he retired. Very respected in the scientific community. Could cause a lot of trouble. COPE is putting him under surveillance. If he is an anarchist, they will take care of him. Let me know if he contacts you.” The meeting was abruptly over.

  They’re actually putting him under surveillance because they think he’s an anarchist? I wonder how COPE figures he’s going to cause trouble. She had heard the word anarchist several times since she joined CBS, but she never gave it much thought. Now it had come to the center stage several times in two days, and it carried some very ominous overtones. She didn’t know who COPE considered to be anarchists or why that was such a threat. Whoever Townsend is, he’s no threat; but COPE is going to “take care of him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Media Connection

  Guinda sat in the detached comfort of her office staring at a stainless sky. Flawless beams of sun splashed against the imperfect mirrors of a nearby office building facade, articulating every failing in this human monument that daily interrupted the mating of sun and earth. The perfection of nature confronted a crude attempt by man and his compliant machines to create a mate worthy of the sun’s intimacy.

  She observed this display with sheltered senses and studied it with managed values, instinctively missing the message of nature. Her senses were tuned to action, piercing movement, scorching tones. On Guinda’s planet, trivia, spectacle, and fraud resided in every icon.

  Now a new icon had happened in—a person, with real doubts, fears, and disillusionments. This icon whispered sincerity and trust. It exposed itself guilelessly, seeking to help, or be helped by, a helpless world. This icon was a fossil of another age.

  Guinda had been comfortable with her culture, but now a veil overshadowed it. Elliott was not the author of this veil, but he did provide buoyancy, bearing it to the surface. She was unsure about yesterday’s events—and today’s feelings. But in a few days, she would probably forget about Elliott, and her life would return to its former state. That comforted and disturbed her.

  Her automatic receptionist suddenly alerted that a visitor had entered the lobby. Oh, no, she thought. Now Elliott has come here. That’ll make things stickier. But it wasn’t Elliott. She hurtled to her feet as Sherwood appeared in her doorway.

  “What a pleasant surprise to meet you face to face, Sherwood,” she lied unconvincingly.

  He entered in silence, looking around as an art critic would evaluate a candidate acquisition. He slowly approached her and reached out his right hand in the customary way, still scanning the surroundings. His examination then focused on Guinda.

  “I just wanted to drop in to see how things were going, Burns,” he returned the lie. “I should spend more time in the field, but …” Sherwood was poorly equipped to engage in small talk and could rarely complete a sentence that was not focused on his objective. Although a coldly focused man, his speech was less abbreviated in person than when projected in the artificial environment of a phone call or a holographic meeting. His arrogance in person, however, more than made up for this small concession. A face-to-face dialogue with Sherwood bore more resemblance to an archery match than to a conversation. Sherwood carefully diagrammed each sentence before he released the string and reached for another from his quiver.

  “I have been looking over your record since you joined us. You have great potential for going far in the party. It is difficult to find people your age with the intelligence and commitment it takes to be a dependable asset to the organization. I have taken a special interest in your future because you are encountering problems that are bound to raise legitimate questions, questions which are direct results of your perceptiveness, moral values, and judgment—in short, the very qualities that make you a valued member of our team.”

  Guinda shifted her weight nervously and made curious shapes with her hands behind her back. She had difficulty attending to his words with his ego challenging her.

  “It is quite normal for a dedicated field coordinator such as yourself to confront various issues in the dispatch of her duties that need to be addressed so she can continue with clear direction. I am, of course, referring to Townsend’s visit to your office and the issues that raises about anarchists and the legitimacy of our electoral system. I have seen this sort of thing happen before with less experienced staff members, and I believe it is important to meet the issues honestly and directly so you can judge for yourself what position you prefer to take.”

  Sherwood invited Guinda to be seated as he did the same. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked. Guinda looked around the office as if to point out with her eyes that there were no ashtrays. As she returned her eyes to Sherwood, he retrieved his pipe from his pocket and began to tamp the tobacco in its bowl. His gold lighter then torched the tobacco, and he began his lesson.

  “Do you enjoy the election games, Burns?” he said as the smoke rummaged through his hair.

  “I feel they—” Guinda began but was not allowed to finish.

  “How about the holographic legislative voting-sessions, Burns. Do you think they bring the people closer to their government?”

  “Yes, they give a great deal of—”

  “And the energy of the whole process. Do you think that helps motivate the voters?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are exactly right, Burns. But do you know that such popular involvement is a recent phenomenon? Many of the junior staff do not understand how the present politics has evolved. You are surely aware that the way our representatives are elected is substantially different from the past, but then, the way we do most things is just as different. Politics has evolved with technology to better serve the needs of its constituents. Today, more people take a more active role in the political process than ever before. As little as fifty years ago that was not the situation.

  “In the twentieth century, few p
eople voted. People were disenchanted with politics. They felt they did not make a difference. They saw that the two parties had come so close together that there was no longer a substantial difference between them. True, the candidates still campaigned as if there were some great gulf separating them, but it was mostly illusory. Taxes always went up. The debt always went up. Liberties always declined. One party would declare war on poverty, but poverty was never conquered. The other party would declare war on Vietnam, but Vietnam was never conquered. They all declared war on government waste and inefficiency, but the bureaucracy grew year after year. Balancing the budget was the mantra for decades, but the deficit grew every year.” Sherwood paused to relight his pipe. The curling vortices helped to accurately guide each sentence to its target.

  “A strange thing happened as all this evolved. The two parties became so middle-of-the-road, that no politician was willing to try anything new because he knew there was just a whisper of a difference between himself and his opponent; and any platform that was unacceptable to just one special interest group could cost him the election. Every politician had something for everyone. That kind of a system just proliferated the problems. By the early part of the century, every activity under government influence was a quagmire, and that was nearly everything. Do you get the sense of what I am saying, Burns?”

  “Yes, I do. But what about anarchists? And why do you think Townsend is one?” questioned Guinda with surprising completeness.

  “After the turn of the century, a few media leaders convened to examine the true state of the union, quite independent of the optimistic lies of the politicians. Their conclusions were sobering and alarming. First, they concluded that the financial structure of the Government had essentially collapsed; the Government and the Media simply hadn’t admitted it yet. Second, they concluded that private enterprise had evolved to a much more advanced state than the political establishment. Technology had allowed business to address the needs of smaller and more singular groups with greater and greater efficiency. Automated factories built custom houses at tract-house prices. And the news media delivered electronic newspapers, custom configured for each subscriber, within minutes of the reported events. The political establishment had, on the other hand, clung to its protectionist laws and policies to maintain the illusion of a two-party system.

  “Their third conclusion raised great debate within the Media community. These leaders concluded that the Media was more responsible for the deteriorated state of society than the political establishment itself. They reasoned that the Media historically had represented the voice of the people against power-seeking collectivists, whether government, business, labor, or religion. That changed, however, during the twentieth century, only the Media did not tell anyone, so the masses kept naively believing it still represented them.

  “Over the century, the Media became focused on short-term profits and market share. As it began to absorb its share of MBAs, its product shifted from information and entertainment to a merger of the two—infotainment. The news had become a marketing tool rather than a vehicle for truth. The MBAs discovered that sensationalism sells. The sex lives, nannies, and rubber checks of politicians made page one while the transfer of trillions of dollars to friends of the establishment was generally ignored. The masturbation of a Hollywood celebrity would crowd out a Supreme Court decision.

  “And it worked. The infotainment industry grew and prospered. And the masses did not have to be troubled by onerous details. The Media performed a service for the Government that Government could never have achieved on its own merits: the Media bestowed credibility on an incredible aristocracy.”

  Sherwood paused and looked with disapproval at his pipe. It had failed to produce the river of smoke into his lungs. The smoky obscurity lingering about him had started to dissipate, and with it, his arrogance. His exposure as a human being momentarily disrupted his ability as a pedagogue. He immediately corrected the situation with an infusion of tobacco. Guinda seized the opportunity. “But there have always been minor parties and even independents. Do these have anything to do with the anarchists?”

  His pipe resuscitated, he re-embarked, his authority amended. The relief showed in his eyes as they were devoured by the billowing anonymity. “The Media Summit believed politics could benefit from advanced technologies and an entrepreneurial approach to the political process. They decided to use their position of influence to save our republic. A bold experiment was begun to personalize politics, to bring politics to the individuals, thereby bringing individuals back to politics. We see the result of that experiment today. The majority of people feel good about politics and about their active participation in the political process. We have injected energy and purpose into the voting process. We have brought politicians and the issues right into the home. Their programs appeal at the individual level rather than at the group level of the past.

  “There are, however, a few people opposed to these improvements. Their numbers are dwindling, but they occasionally emerge. We attempt to maintain the system as free from such impediments as possible since they are irrelevant and disruptive to the main event. Just as the Minutemen repelled invasion, we must be vigilant to the most seemingly benign threats.

  “This brings us to your friend, Townsend.” Sherwood paused with his pipe now standing at the ready in his right hand at mouth level. The smoke cleared and revealed a pair of gray eyes now fixed intently on Guinda. She was unaccustomed to Sherwood actually looking at her, and she wondered if her nervousness was manifest in her eyes. And why did he refer to Townsend as her friend? Could he somehow know about her second meeting with Elliott?

  During this silent interchange, the slightest grin slowly unfolded on Sherwood’s face. It did not involve his mouth but just his eyes, and not their size or their shape, but their essence. They evolved from the piercing eyes of an inquisitor to the taunting eyes of a precocious child holding a favorite toy just out of reach of a smaller comrade.

  Sherwood stood up, his attention seemingly focused on making sure his pipe was completely extinguished before replacing it in the pouch in his pocket. Guinda vertically joined him. “Do not become enchanted by such people. They romanticize about events that caused great discord and suboptimization in a world as different from today as Townsend is from you. They seek to destroy the order that has allowed the twenty-first century to blossom. I doubt that Townsend will ever contact you again, but if he should, let me know immediately so we might act accordingly. Any more questions?”

  “Ah … no.”

  He shook her hand politely, maintaining eye contact with her. Guinda shifted her eyes to the right, and their hands parted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Robot Spies

  Elliott read the unsigned note in disbelief, then reread it in swelling anger: “You’re being surveilled by COPE. They think you’re an anarchist. You may be in danger. I’ll call you at the appropriate time. Please destroy.”

  The entrenched tactics of bygone tyrannies skulked from the note and filled the air with acrid vapors. This was an artifact of centuries past. Yet this was the twenty-first century, the age of freedom and enlightenment. This memorial to the age of monarchs eulogized a palace guard protecting the privileged, reaffirming the ageless dogma of “might makes right.”

  Elliott envisioned some faceless bureaucrat signing an order to surveil one Elliott T. Townsend for expressing an opinion contrary to the monarch’s. He was just a name on some list of anarchists in a computer file somewhere with gigabytes of other trivia. He considered how it might have happened, maybe with some baseball slugger newly arrived in Congress, knocking mud from his cleats by doing a favor for a COPE bureaucrat to expand some surveillance program, each the master of the other—and now each the master of him.

  He’d spent his career in the quest for truth, pure truth, the secrets of the building blocks of the universe. It was not the truth of convenience, not the sensational truth so easily dispensed by his accusers. But what we
re they accusing him of? Anarchy? He was no anarchist. He felt some ubiquitous organization tightening its coils about him. Dobbs’s eyes suddenly confronted him.

  He entered the TV room where Martha was watching The 404 Place, a late morning soap that boasted of being the most prolific political career-launching medium in the industry. It had introduced over two-dozen national political figures to the public. Entertainers with political ambitions actually paid NBC to make appearances on the show.

  “A few days ago you said something about them hurting me. I thought you were just angry. What were you talking about?”

  “Ted, what’s the matter? What happened?”

  “You remember that woman I went to see at the CBS office, and then I went to have lunch with her the next day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got this note from her today. She says COPE is surveilling me.”

  “You mean somebody is following you? Are you sure?” Martha questioned in disbelief. Her eyes darted from one window to another.

  “Yes, I guess that’s what it means. But the other day, you said somebody could hurt me. Were you talking about COPE?”

  “I read an article a long time ago, but then I never heard anything else about it. Some reporter said that COPE uses illegal means to monitor people, and he even said there were several unsolved murders suspiciously linked to COPE. But that was the only thing I ever heard about it. The story just disappeared, and I forgot about it. It sort of reminded me of those CIA stories we used to read about a long time ago.”

  “But you didn’t really forget about it, did you,” Elliott replied. “You really believed it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have said that to me.”

  “Elliott, I new there was going to be trouble. You’re just too outspoken … and too old fashioned. Things just aren’t the way they used to be. You’re acting like nothing has happened in the last forty years—like we’re still back in the twentieth century. Times have changed. It’s a more mellow time now.”