The Media Candidate

by Paul Dueweke

  He sat on the edge of his bed searching the Oriental carpet for answers, the same carpet that had inspired him toward politics just a few days ago. But this time, strawberry blond hair flowed from the filigreed fields. An honorable mention ribbon rose between raging beasts. He rubbed his eyes as they began to glaze over and then winced as a spider swelled from a distant corner of the carpet.

  “Sherwood,” he muttered. “Sherwood is real. And he’s right. It’s not a game.”

  Then a meerschaum pipe emerged from the carpet confusion. The menace was irrefutable. He closed his eyes to forget. But how could he?

  I barely escaped two hit robots today, he thought. But men sent them after me. Mindless bureaucrats made the decision to kill me. A week ago that would have been science fiction, but now … now a computer can do that to Susie … a computer can order her to be murdered. Last week I would have laughed at that … but now it’s reality.

  As he dressed, his mind ran back to “Sex and Society” and to the Joel and Jan hard sell. He sat beside his copy of the Halvorsen files running his hand over the smooth sheets of paper. He picked up the optical disk and stared at it for a long time. Just then, the TV sound came to the front. “The Debating Game” had just started, and the cheers bit into him. The MC stirred his audience with a titanic benediction, but it was soon lost to the sea of apostles eager for the rite to commence.

  He picked up the box of the Halvorsen files and walked downstairs to the kitchen. He opened the disposal door, dropped both copies inside, closed the door, and pushed INCINERATE. He opened a bottle of Pete’s and walked into the TV room. Sitting beside Martha, he picked up a remote, multi-media controller. She looked at him with a question—then with a smirk.

  “Would you show me how to pick a candidate with this thing—please?”

  The end.

  “When a people are corrupted,

  the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin.”

  — President John Adams

  About the Author

  Paul Dueweke

  I wrote The Media Candidate in 1992, and it evolved into its present form over the next six years as I learned the craft of writing fiction. It is my first Smashwords publication. I would be very grateful to any reader who would write a Smashwords review of The Media Candidate.

  I was a research physicist long before I turned to writing. But I’ve written five novels and am presently working on numbers six through twenty-seven. My first was an autobiography, MY LIFE AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN — a memoir for readers who find memoirs disagreeable and reality tedious, inspired by my lifelong obsession with Don Quixote and his ingenious view of reality. It took first place in the 2002 Independent E-book Awards - Humor Division. THE MEDIA CANDIDATE is a near-future, speculative science-fiction thriller inspired by watching too much TV. PRIONA is a multi-cultural, multi-generational story of love, poetry, music, and the dividing waters of race, set in the Jemez Pueblo of northern New Mexico. LAMB OF GOD is a psychological drama of how a young boy, surrounded by the racial and commercial tensions of the Arsenal of Democracy, Detroit during World War II, deals with the guilt of being too weak to save his twin from tragedy. It won second place in the 2003 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards in a field of 370 entries. Finally, HORSE CAMP WEST is a modern western drama set on a dying ranch in the highlands of southern New Mexico. It was a 2002 EPPIE Award finalist. These books should be available at Smashwords later in 2016, but for the time being, you can get a taste of them at my website fictionQ.com. If you would like me to notify you when my next books hit the ground at Smashwords, drop me a line at editor at fictionQ.

  I have spent forty years as a physicist in Ohio, New Mexico, and California. Some of those years I did basic physics research at The University of Dayton in the areas of ionizing radiation detectors, shock waves in solids, and infrared measurements. This stuff probably doesn’t excite very many of you, but it has been breathtaking for me. Call me a nerd, but I love science.

  I spent some years at a beltway bandit* doing a funny thing they called system studies. Then I evolved into a mid-level manager for a big defense hardware company. I learned pretty quickly that upper management is really, really hungry. That's why middle management has to run so fast. Now I have become an even higher lifeform. I work off and on for an itsy bitsy company right in the bosom of Silicon Valley. My business card has a blank under my name so I can be anything I want. And I haven't needed a security clearance for the last twenty years.

  I’m a firm believer in second careers. When I was doing physics research, I had to do mostly what other people wanted me to do. That was still great because it was such exciting stuff. But now I can write whatever I want to. Maybe that’s just as good, in a way. I think every writer should write as a second career, not as a first. It gives my writing roots and a unique point-of-view beyond writer.

  I married Marilyn where we met at the University of Dayton. We moved to Alburquerque** where our two daughters grew up; and now we all live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  FOOTNOTES:

  * Beltway Bandit — For those not conversant in Government Speak, a Beltway Bandit is one of the companies clustered around the Washington, DC Beltway that sells “professional services,” which is stuff the Government could do itself if they had any idea what they wanted done or if they weren’t fighting among themselves about who should do it.

  ** Alburquerque — Most of you traditionally educated readers are probably under the mistaken opinion that the dusty little town in central New Mexico is Albuquerque, not Alburquerque. It was, however, named after Don Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva Enriquez, Duke of Alburquerque, Spain, and Viceroy of New Spain in 1706. About a hundred years later, it was misspelled to its present form. I, in the spirit of Don Quixote de la Mancha, have taken up the cause to redress the evil of misspelling the name of one so highly born.

  WHAT REVIEWERS SAY

  ABOUT MY BOOKS

  THE MEDIA CANDIDATE

  "It is not often I read something this well written. What a mix of farce, satire, techno-thriller, SF, romance, social commentary. And all good. You are at your best when into the technology. That you do as well as anyone in print. You either know exactly what you are talking about, both the actual technology and the processes within the organization, or you are the best damned bluffer I've ever read. The flashbacks to the school science fair touched me. I have been a science teacher who has advised his students to use the scientific method and then had a girl with a pretty display of pills win when judged by a community of morons. I know the scene, man and you got it right. Great!"

  . . . David St.John, executive editor of Elderberry Press

  The Media Candidate by Paul Dueweke

  Books are like closed doors. You open them and step through into new worlds where you may find unusual people and live through unusual experiences. Those new worlds may be governed by leaders with new, perhaps frightening ideas.

  The Media Candidate is one such world, a place where democracy has been replaced by media-led, computer tyranny. Using satire as a keen bladed weapon, Mr. Dueweke shows us what could happen if no effort is made to rein in government and the media as they gain ascendancy over the minds of the governed. Murder is rife as those who question this power are eliminated. Who is the mind behind the killings? A person or a computer? Or a combination of both?

  If you like intrigue, mystery, and have an understanding of what drives characters, you will find this sci-fi satire interesting, peopled with well drawn characters who try to balance their acceptance of an unbalanced governing entity and their fear of the same.

  I found the technology described herein enlightening. The author knows his subject and his people and has written an interesting story around them. If you like books that cross genre lines and want to see what could happen if the media is allowed to stay its present course, you will find this book a good read.

  Review by Anne K. Edwards, author of "Death Comes Knocking"

 
for eBook Reviews Weekly

  Word Wrap: A book review by Patricia Spork

  The Media Candidate

  by Paul Dueweke

  Intellectual Techno Thrill! Recommended

  The year is 2048. News media and celebrities have converged to political "infotainment". NBC Democratic Party and CBS Republican Party candidates are actors, porn queens and musicians, all in the running for Presidential office. The Committee for Political Equality (CORE) preserves (actually, controls) political competition through neural computer networks and robotic assassins.

  Elliot Townsend, a retired Nobel physicist, becomes suspicious about several deaths involving people charged with espionage. When Townsend personally investigates, he is labeled an "anarchist". CORE field agent, Sherwood, formally a software developer for the Dagger Project (robotic assassin development) begins surveillance of the famed scientist. Townsend soon fears for his life and his family's, and searches for evidence to enlighten the general public about CORE's unethical practices.

  Paul Dueweke, author, metamorphose programmed computers into thinking assassins by using rich, technical detail and vivid imagination. THE MEDIA CANDIDATE is a realistic view of what could be if media moguls and government officials had their ways in our world. Although written well, the HTML version could have used more editing, as a few words were misused or misspelled. Other than grammatical errors and a luke-warm ending, THE MEDIA CANDIDATE is a competitive techno-thriller for the science fiction genre.

  Cindy Penn

  Senior Editor,

  Amazon top 50 Reviewer

  eBook Specialist, Midwest Book Review