The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  “Well, I did get the impression that that would be the maximum I could hope for.”

  The Chairman laughed. “I hope you aren’t getting your hopes up, sir. Venus really is a bit much. I could possibly swing Ganymede or Io.”

  Justin folded his arms and waited, choosing to ignore The Chairman’s olive branch.

  Upon his realizing that Justin had finished, The Chairman’s eyes shifted once again—all business. “I have everything drawn up for you to take to your council in order to put the agreement into motion. You will notice that I have already embossed my fingerprint, signed, and given a DNA sample. Forgive my using a drop of blood; I sometimes can’t resist a flare for the dramatic. You will also sign, fingerprint, and give a DNA sample. Hand this pad to your lawyers, and by Damsah, Mr. Cord, you’ll get everything you want, the system will return to normal in a matter of months, and everyone will get to live happily ever after. Does that sound so bad?”

  Justin remained silent, and then a second later motioned for The Chairman to hand over the pad.

  “So,” asked Justin, staring down at the glorified DijAssist, “everything to seal the deal is contained right here?”

  The Chairman nodded solemnly.

  Justin studied the pad for a few more moments, and then, appearing to be puzzled, beckoned The Chairman over.

  “I don’t want to be confused,” Justin said to the man now peering into his pad, believing he’d been called over to elucidate a point, “because it seems so much of what I say gets misconstrued. So I’d like it to be really clear here. . . .”

  The Chairman nodded, anticipating the question.

  “Since you believe that everything vital to your existence can be found within this,” Justin said, raising the pad ever so slightly, “why don’t you take it—and all that it represents—and shove it up your ass.”

  Justin then let the pad drop to the floor.

  “I choose freedom.”

  Contrary to Justin’s expectations, The Chairman didn’t overreact. In fact, noticed Justin, the man seemed suddenly tired. His shoulders sagged, and the gloom in his eyes revealed far more of the ninety-three-year-old than that of the young man currently represented.

  “As would I, Mr. Cord . . . As would I.”

  Justin stared at the man, unsure of what to do. He’d expected a harangue, a threat, a phalanx of securibots to drag him off to some netherworld, but not this. Whatever The Chairman’s game was, Justin wanted no part of it.

  “You won’t change my mind,” he said, refusing to move from his spot. “So whatever it is you’re up to, you can forget it.”

  “Change your mind, Mr. Cord?” the old man answered. “Why would I want to change what I helped to create?”

  The Chairman smiled, as a father would to a son. And with that one smile Justin finally understood the mystery that had stymied not only him, but all those around him. A mystery that had faded in importance in the rush of events.

  “You,” he said, smiling knowingly. “You paid the ten million credits and made it untraceable. You,” he said, hardly believing the words pouring out of his mouth, “made me into the Unincorporated Man.”

  The Chairman nodded, slowly turned around, and began walking down the promenade, beckoning Justin to follow. “Why don’t we get a drink and really talk.”

  The Chairman led him off the promenade to a small sunken lounge. He then procured some glasses and a bottle of amber liquid from behind a bar while Justin sat, waiting impatiently at a small table. Justin had come expecting a polite but terse conversation, confirmation of positions, and a getting on with life. The strange turn of events had unnerved him.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me from the start?” he asked. “Why the charade?”

  “I needed to know if Hektor had gotten to you.”

  “To what end?”

  “Justin,” began The Chairman, pouring drinks for the both of them, “all will be explained.”

  “To what end?” Justin said, this time more firmly.

  The Chairman raised his glass and drained the amber liquid. “Humor an old man, won’t you? I assure you, it’ll be worth your while.”

  Justin eyed the man for another few seconds. “Go on.”

  The Chairman nodded in thanks. “Let me tell you a little bit about my life that the bios don’t talk about. It begins accurately enough. I was born on Mars and my mother was killed. I never really knew her. Just a memory of a kind face and a voice singing in the night as I went to sleep. After she disappeared I asked about her and why she died. My earliest clear memories are not of my mother, but of my asking about her. According to my father, Mother really didn’t want to be on Mars. But she didn’t have majority, and the job paid very well, so she agreed. My father says to this day that if she had had majority she never would have taken the job that killed her.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Back then, Mr. Cord, I had absolute faith that it was the truth.”

  Justin nodded, indicating that The Chairman should continue.

  “This may come as a shock to you, but the truth is, I’ve always hated incorporation because of it. As I grew up I came to realize that my father was probably just grieving. The money was very good. I couldn’t see how my mother could have turned it down, majority or no.”

  “And yet you still have this hatred?”

  “It’s my earliest and most constant feeling, Mr. Cord. In all the many years between then and now I’ve never lost that.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind my saying, sir, you have a pretty interesting way of expressing it. You were a near-worthless penny stock and rose to be Chairman of arguably the most powerful organization in history. I’d say the incorporated system has been very good for you.”

  The Chairman didn’t respond—intent, figured Justin, on seeing the story through.

  “Mr. Cord, what would happen to someone from your time who said he hated the USA? Not only that, but at every opportunity, from grade school through adulthood, this guy made his feelings known in a loud and obvious manner.”

  “They’d probably make him a writer for The New York Times,” snickered Justin. He then saw the confused expression on his host’s face. “A bit of very dated humor, sorry. I understand what you’re getting at. He’d be ostracized, most likely.”

  “And made useless,” added The Chairman. “From the earliest time I knew that my loathing for the system that surrounded me had to be kept very deep. That there was no one I could share it with, no one I could talk about it with. But, Mr. Cord, every share that I did not own, I considered a piece of my soul torn away. I thought that when I achieved majority it would go away. I’d be at peace. But it only made it worse. The fruits of my labors were not my own. I could never have all of what I achieved. I would always have to share it.”

  “Mr. Chairman, not to be rude, but we had that in my time, too. It was called taxes.”

  “Mr. Cord, taxes, horrible as they might have been, only taxed income. Incorporation takes a piece of everything. From the moment we’re born our actions are circumscribed. There are whole categories of actions we cannot take because our stockholders won’t allow it. They not only own a piece of our income, they, by default, own a piece of us. Can you say the same for your taxation?”

  “No,” admitted Justin, “I guess not.”

  “After I got my majority,” continued The Chairman, “I considered becoming an asteroid miner. That’s about as free as a person can be in our system. If you have majority you’re on your own. Your shareholders don’t mind that you’re in a high-risk field because of the profit, and you can forget you’re incorporated, as long as you don’t look too closely at your earnings statement.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because, Mr. Cord, the more I studied the evolution of the incorporated society the more I realized that it was becoming more dangerous.”

  “Well, according to those opposed to my vision,” answered Justin, “you’re talking about a system whose bigg
est crime seems to be that it works.”

  The Chairman nodded somberly. “And they’d be correct, Mr. Cord. For going on three centuries now incorporation has given mankind unparalleled peace, progress, and prosperity. But at what price? Humanity has stopped asking that all-important question, ‘at what price?’ ”

  “If the price is freedom,” snapped Justin, “then guess what? Ninety-five percent of your people don’t want it.”

  The Chairman’s eyes grew still and cold. “How can they, Mr. Cord? They don’t know what ‘it’ is. This world we’re living in, sir, is a dictatorship—a dictatorship of the content. It’s a creeping, smothering form of tyranny because it works so well and makes everyone so happy . . . on the surface. But I knew that if left alone to develop, it would grow to the point where it could not be stopped.”

  The Chairman poured himself another glass and leaned back in his seat, knowing full well the impact of his words.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Justin, hardly believing what he’d just heard. “You’re saying that all of mankind is in danger of falling into this ‘dictatorship,’ and that you’ve been somehow trying to stop it?”

  “Oh, Mr. Cord, that’s the irony,” answered The Chairman. “I can’t. Though I’ve been trying very hard to slow it down. I’ve worked night and day to get enough power to reverse the direction humanity’s been going in. To make us all pause and retrace our steps.”

  “So then why not change it?” asked Justin. “You’re The Chairman, for God’s sakes.”

  The Chairman sighed.

  “Mr. Cord,” he answered, “if I could have, you would not be sitting here right now listening to the confessions of a lonely old man. You’d be out traipsing around the solar system with your Dr. Harper, and the human race would not be on the road to slavery.”

  He swirled the newly poured drink in his glass and stared at the elliptical pattern the rich liquid made as he did so.

  “I have more power than anyone in history,” he uttered, then paused to take another sip, “but I’m not more powerful than history.”

  He put the glass down on the table, and once again looked directly at Justin.

  “The momentum of centuries is difficult to break, and even with my power, Mr. Cord, I couldn’t stop the course of events. If I moved too quickly and too openly I would’ve been exposed and removed from power. All I’ve been able to do is slow it down.”

  “It?”

  “The crossing of the threshold into outright slavery. Without me and some carefully played political games and judicial appointments, individuals would be allowed to sell off eighty percent of themselves and not seventy-five. Do you know, in my lifetime, Mr. Cord, the minimum percent of themselves a person was required by law to keep was dropped from thirty-five, to thirty, to twenty-five. There are many people still alive who can even remember when it was forty-five.”

  “But if it’s so obvious, Mr. Chairman, why don’t more people fight it? Why aren’t my followers in the billions rather than the millions?”

  “Fight what, Mr. Cord? Prosperity? Jobs? Wealth? As we all became inextricably linked to one another through personal incorporation, our wealth became more abundant, and we needed less to be content. Even at 20 percent the poorest of us would be as wealthy as you were in your past life—more so, when you consider the health benefits and life expectancy of living in our era. If my calculations are correct, within two centuries the minimum by law that a person will have to keep of themselves will be down to 5 percent. Five percent, Mr. Cord. That’s about what a slave got for his labor before your Civil War. But at least the slave knew he was a slave. Ours won’t. Oh, we’ll take care of them, feed them, be good masters, but they’re going to be slaves, nonetheless.”

  “Not every slave remained a slave,” answered Justin, choosing to leave his glass conspicuously full. “There were always those who rose up.”

  “Yes,” answered The Chairman, “the incredibly talented, driven, and lucky ones managed to find freedom. Would you like to know the percentage of luck I needed to get as far as I got? If I’d been as unlucky as I was lucky early in my career I would never have made majority. The percentage of penny children born of penny parents who will make majority is less than 10 percent. The lower the minimum shares that must be kept, the smaller that number gets. The system is very efficient at making its choices. By the time the average penny is born, educated, and raised he’s at his minimum. Society conspires to have his parents, and then himself, give up all of his disposable shares, and it gets harder and harder each passing decade to get them back.”

  “So then what do you propose to do?”

  “Me? Why, nothing. Or, at least, nothing much.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Justin. “What do you propose I do? That I’m not already doing, that is.”

  “Everything, Mr. Cord. You’re the luckiest thing that ever happened to humanity, though it will be centuries before history realizes it. It almost made me believe in the divine. When I got the report of what you were and when you came from I sensed that you could be the answer to the problems that had beguiled me. And then when it turned out to be you, Justin Cord, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years, Mr. Cord.”

  Justin shrugged, not venturing a guess.

  “Hope,” said The Chairman.

  “Hope,” answered Justin, “is a dangerous thing, Mr. Chairman.”

  “And so very powerful,” countered The Chairman. “I’ve been protecting you ever since. You wouldn’t believe the number of attempts that have been made on your life.”

  Justin remembered the incident on the Moon and at the Empire State Center. “Yes, yes, I would.”

  “A confession, Mr. Cord . . . The first attempt was mine. Not to take your life, I assure you, but rather to scare you into taking your protection more seriously. I apologize for those two troglodytes. They acted beyond their orders.”

  “And died.”

  “If they had followed orders they would not have.”

  “And the second attempt?”

  “Unplanned, but my responsibility nonetheless. One of my subordinates got a little out of hand. He’s been dealt with, I assure you.”

  “Comforting.”

  “Would you like to know how many attempts I’ve actually managed to stymie?”

  “I’ll pass,” answered Justin. “Just remind me before I leave to fire my security detail.”

  The Chairman allowed himself a small laugh.

  Justin’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand something.”

  The Chairman indicated for him to continue.

  “If you were so gung ho to keep me unincorporated, why did you have GCI try to incorporate me in court?”

  “We had to do something. Hektor would have waited and built a stronger case. Kirk Olmstead, his former boss, wanted to move quickly. I knew Manny Black would destroy them.”

  “And I suppose,” said Justin, resigned, “you set that up as well.”

  “Yes, though neither of you knew it. I have files of extraordinary people that I keep in reserve for all sorts of contingencies. Manny was one of them.”

  “Who else did you activate?” snapped Justin.

  The Chairman waited a moment before answering, knowing full well that what he was about to reveal would be incendiary.

  “Sean Doogle.”

  Justin’s eyes boggled. “You unleashed that murderer on humanity?!”

  “To be more precise,” he answered, too calm for Justin’s comfort, “I allowed Hektor to.”

  “He murdered the president,” shouted Justin. “Hundreds of others—and spawned the architects of the Gray Bomb! Please tell me you’re not giving money to the Action Wing.”

  “Not anymore. Its usefulness is at an end.”

  Justin stared blankly at the man before him.

  “You’re mad. Why in the world would you want a revolution that could possibly kill billions when an evolution would achieve the same ends with far less loss of life and a better chance
of success?”

  “Because, sir, evolution has failed. I’ve tried it, and even with all my power, could barely stem the tide. What we need now is a revolution. Doogle and the Action Wing were simply the clarion call.”

  “Evolution failed your way, but not mine. It’s true that I’m the one man who still has the freedom to choose, and I will give humanity a fighting chance at a real destiny, but not at the guaranteed price of billions dead.”

  “Billions, Mr. Cord?” asked The Chairman, clenching his jaw so tightly his words were almost indiscernible. “What about the hundreds of billions who’ll be here soon? If your evolution fails, what sort of universe will they be born into? One in which each of them is free to choose a destiny, or one in which they’ll be programmed from birth to accept a certain range of menial jobs for 5 percent of their labor? And what of the trillions who’ll follow that?

  “I’d give anything to be you,” The Chairman continued, “the man to lead humanity out of slavery. But we don’t get to choose our history so much as history chooses us, do we? Well, Justin Cord, history has chosen you.”

  “No, sir,” retorted Justin, “you have chosen me. And if I were to follow your course, countless more billions will die needlessly. In your rush to destroy the system you hate, you haven’t stopped to consider what would replace it. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s almost always something or someone worse. Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, and Ahmadinejad, to name but a few.”

  “I’m a good judge of character, Mr. Cord, and you’re none of the above.”

  “You’re right, I’m not. But there’s no guarantee, as you so aptly pointed out, that I’ll be around forever, and I’m not willing to trust the future of humanity on the whims of one person. Slow and steady wins the race, sir. Even if it means the race takes a few hundred years.”

  “I’m well aware of history, Mr. Cord. It wouldn’t be just you. We can both manage it. With my power and connections and your leadership we can turn it all back—together.”

  “No, we can’t,” answered Justin, “at least, not the way you’re envisioning it. And we’d be fools if we thought we could. Your revolution has succeeded in nothing but the killing of countless millions, and if not for me flying across the far reaches of the planet, quite possibly countless more. No, sir. If you want me on board you do it my way. It won’t free everybody, but anybody who wants to be free will have the opportunity.”