Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  He pushed a button on the right side of the keyboard and the audio-visual connection was made to Broglio's Pizza Bar, serving pizza which was, the pretty girl reminded him, "Thicker and quicker!"

  "They'll be there in 10 minutes, sir," the teenager answered when he completed the order; the display screen informed him that the appropriate number of electronic funds currency units had been moved from his account to the account of Broglio's.

  "They'll be here in 10," he said to Karen, who entered the den, toweling dry her hair. She came to him and bent to kiss him. "Hope you like shrimp," he said.

  She took the half-burned cigarette from between his fingers and crushed it out in an empty coffee cup. "I like you, don't I?"

  "Funny!"

  He pulled her into his lap and jostled her in a moment of playfulness that gave way to more serious intentions. She stood and resumed drying her hair with the towel.

  "The pizza's coming, remember?"

  "Yeah. Wish I had told them to bring it later."

  "You know that wouldn't work. Everything is on a neatly packaged schedule these days. We must fit into the mold. Cooperate with the methodologies of this New Age, or be left behind. I believe that's how your Ambassador Wilson put it. Not too long ago, there would've been plenty of time."

  "Right now, I'll agree with you, but it's my glands talking, not my good sensibility. In a more rational mood, I'd say things like 'we must put aside our personal and national interests for the good of everyone' or 'only when we pull together can we advance to our ultimate destiny!'"

  "I'm glad you're not rational right now, because I really wouldn't want to hear that garbage."

  "Seriously," Jacob said, watching her brush her wet hair into long, straight strands. "What's to be said that's so great about the good old days? You had to phone the order in, look for money to pay for it--most of the time you had to cash a check or write one--and, of course, you had to drive in ungodly traffic for 30 minutes to pick up the order, or else wait an hour-and-a-half for the pizza, which was always cold by the time it got to you.

  "Now, we pay without the hassle of keeping up with coins or paper, and all we need is our UNIVUSCARD for everything. We know exactly where we stand without having to worry about figuring out balances, mailing bills and all the rest. We have more time to do other things, and we save tremendous amounts of fuel and money by ordering through UNIVUS and having the merchandise delivered from the product Distribution Centers.

  “And, we have the option, if we choose to be archaic, to do things like we did back in those good old days."

  "But not without Big Brother and everyone else knowing our business and scolding us for our lack of cooperation. What about the privacy we've forfeited? And how long do you think we will have a choice about whether to join in?"

  "Forfeited our privacy? How?" he asked, incredulously.

  "Come on, Jake! We are recorded from birth to death, and I mean every detail. It's all there in the UNIVUS memory banks for anybody who cares to dig deeply enough."

  "There are protections. Since the biochip, UNIVUSCARD can't be used without the thumb and fingerprints of the person who owns the card. There are other features."

  "There are no overrides? No ways to break the codes and the safeguards?" Karen questioned in a knowing tone.

  "We have to trust something, Karen, or else we're all lost anyway. Of course there are the ultimate overrides, as there have always been, even in your good old days. But they’re the province of only a very few at the top level of government. The same guidelines of confidentiality apply to UNIVUS as have always applied to, say, matters involving nuclear and space technologies."

  "And they've always been compromised, too," she broke in. "What makes you think this type of top-secret information will be different?"

  "I'm sure there will be adequate redress for people when they're caught in the middle of theft of data or accidents or tampering. Especially as the system grows and improves... becomes more efficient."

  "Meanwhile, what about the one who suffers the loss, and has to absorb it? Maybe loses everything? Or the person who is sitting in prison somewhere waiting for the system to eventually discover the error and vindicate him?"

  "Karen, there will always be mistakes and injustices under law. Every civilization that's ever existed has had to face that. That doesn't mean we just fold up and stop progressing."

  "Growing into our Utopia?"

  "Well, we certainly haven't gotten there through the old ways of doing things. We've never had the technologies to try something better until now. Look at the improvements in the economies of the world. Hunger is not as great in Third World countries; the common electronic currency has stabilized much of the trade problem and has completely done away with the currency fluctuation nightmare. There's a lot better understanding among the peoples of the West. Before long, we will link with the Middle and Far East, and the language barriers will be bridged by the new translation capabilities."

  "But Jake, this is all at the price of individual liberty. Is the pipe dream of having one world worth that cost?"

  "We'll have to sacrifice some individual liberties. And the time is coming when we will have to set the example by putting aside national interests to some extent."

  "Dr. Marchek calls it the 'Babel Syndrome.'"

  "Babel Syndrome?"

  "The story in the Scriptures about people trying to build the tower to heaven. They were all of one mind and one language, and God says in His Word that they could eventually do what they set out to do, and He wasn't ready for that. So He confused their communication by introducing many different languages while they were in the process of building the tower. They no longer understood each other, became terrified, then got mad and began fighting, forgetting all about the project."

  "Fascinating story, Karen, but so is ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ You don't believe that nonsense, do you?"

  "Of course not. But I do believe this will lead to more problems than it will solve. I agree with the dear old man on one point. The whole thing can lead to dictatorship, by its very nature. Jonathan Schell was right in The Fate of the Earth, when he wrote that whether a one-world order should come through fear or through love, either path will lead to the same destination. Dr. Marchek thinks, and he's not alone in his opinion, that the destination will be global tyranny."

  "More of his biblical wisdom?" he bantered.

  "I don't agree with him because of that, but because of what I see happening. We're relinquishing ourselves more and more to something we don't understand. The majority of people don't want to try to understand. They just don't care. Just trust government; it will do what's best for us.”

  Jacob reached to her and pulled her onto his lap. She curled her arms around his neck and yielded to his lips when he held her to himself.

  "I want to meet this Hugo Marchek. I'm not sure I care for you thinking so highly of him," he said, nibbling the velvet skin of her cheek. "I think the relationship bears watching."

  "He's old," she said, laughing, but enjoying his mock jealousy.

  "So are half the codgers in Washington, with their nieces at their sides every evening."

  “Dr. Marchek is also one of the most moral men to be found anywhere."

  "So is Senator Hosfelt, Justice Brendon, Secretary Martin. All of them are extremely moral men who can prove it by convincing you that their concept of morality is the right concept of morality."

  "Dr. Marchek's is Judaeo-Christian. He would never approve, for instance, of our sleeping together."

  "Who sleeps?" He kissed her. "If that's all that would bother him, he'd have nothing to worry about."

  "I think it's cute, his old-fashioned view of marriage and loyalty to one woman."

  "What about to one man?" Jacob asked, after she returned his kiss.

  "He's really against homosexuality, and I'm not so sure I'd like to share you with a man — call me old-fashioned." She laughed, kissing his neck and hugging him playfully.

/>   "I don't think I'd like this guy, Marchek. There's something basically un-American about that kind of narrow-mindedness."

  "With everyone thinking and talking about getting rid of nationalism so we can all come together, I should think you'd be pleased with anything that's not American in its philosophy, or theology, or whatever."

  "Actually, my dear, I can abide internationalist thinking, or any other kind, so long as it's strongly rooted in American precepts."

  "Weren't some of those precepts family, home, and sexual fidelity to one's legal, God-ordained mate?"

  "Want to get married?" He was facetiously serious.

  "What? And give up all my men? Don't talk insanity!"

  "Solomon is my hero... my example. Seven-hundred wives..."

  "And concubines, too, don't forget," Karen added. "I'm content with the New Age renaissance way of things. It makes more sense. Freedom means the right to make your own choices. You can't do that when you're tied to a dogmatic philosophical or theological contract. I just don't know whether I could get to like your Hugo Marchek."

  "You could find out if you go with me tomorrow night. The PAL staff is having a small party at Dr. Marchek's home at seven. A get-acquainted thing for the newer people."

  Jacob nudged her from his lap, stood, and lit a cigarette. "I have to put some finishing touches on the project paper. We have three days left, and Uncle Conrad needs me there tomorrow so we can pull everything together. It goes to the President on Monday."

  "Sure... some other time, then," she said. But he saw her disappointment.

  "I'll do my best to get away by nine. No. I will be there by nine-thirty." Her smile, this time, was genuine.

  Conrad Wilson paced the burgundy-colored carpet of his study, his silver-white mustache twitching typically beneath his thin, peculiarly down-curved nose, the exaggerated exploitation of which had been the delight of political cartoonists for four decades. He dictated to his secretary of 15 years in a burst of inspiration after sipping from a glass half-filled with scotch and ice.

  "America has, more than any other national entity, led the way in international reorganization and cooperation in order to make life better in the free world. The VNIVUS and VNIVER electronic currency systems are based on the former U.S. dollar — later assisted, of course, by the contribution of the euro. Middle-Eastern peace was established largely because of the United States' support of and continuing guaranteed protection for Israel. And we neither discount nor forget the magnificent contributions of Mr. Krimhler in that historic process.

  “Indeed, in addition to providing most of the funding for the telecommunications and computer technologies that link us, the United States, as always, continues to provide the nuclear umbrella which ensures the future for all of us.

  “These and many additional factors give this nation, in this panel's view, not only the right but the common-sense duty to assume the dominant position within any universal governing format."

  It was classic Wilsonese, wrapping months of intensive work in a cocoon of precise extemporaneous analysis; in this verbal art, he was without peer.

  Jacob sipped his own scotch, watching the old man walk back and forth in front of Alexandra Fitzwell, whose face, when her shorthand had captured the words, glowed with admiration.

  "What do you think, Jake?" Conrad Wilson questioned the younger man in the smooth baritone made famous through hundreds of speeches and interviews.

  "Wish I'd said it."

  Wilson laughed heartily while walking to the small bar in one corner of the study. He poured a drink, then held the decanter in an offering gesture toward Jacob.

  "No, thanks. I have a ways to drive tonight."

  "Oh, yes! Your young lady. You are quite taken with her, I can tell."

  "Oh?"

  "This is the longest I've known you to lavish such attention on any one girl," Wilson said, smiling. "And, through our conversations of late, I've come to detect your concern for her. Care to talk it over?" His tone became fatherly. "That will be all this evening, Alexandra."

  The woman stopped at the door before exiting the study. "You take your medication," she ordered sternly. "Promise..."

  "Yes! Yes!" Wilson retorted gruffly. "Now leave us in peace!"

  He turned his attention back to Jacob when the woman closed the door behind her. "She's a jewel, but a bit on the pushy side."

  "You would've never gotten along without her all these years, Uncle Conrad. Do what she says. Take your medicine, okay?"

  The retired diplomat waved off his foster son's exhortation, wanting to get off the despised subject of his failing health. "Getting back to your young lady, Miss Mossberg. Is the problem between you two something I can help with? Now, I'll admit straight off: my motive in offering to mediate the crisis is largely selfish. I would like to be a grandfather one day," he said semi-seriously, patting Jacob's shoulder he passed by on his way to a large wingback chair directly across from the younger man.

  "There's no crisis, really. But there is something. Something I can't put my finger on. You know... the feeling of impending something or the other."

  "Yes. I always get that feeling when I'm about to meet with the Russians. I've always called it 'mild intimidation,'" Wilson said with a chuckle. "It's the same with women. They'll get the best of you now and again if you're not on your toes."

  He sat forward, smoothed the crease of his trousers, then leaned back, crossing one lanky leg over the knee of the other. "When you were 12, Jake, you assured me that girls existed only to make you and Joey Framington, and all other boys, miserable. Then, at about 18, they were for talking with on the phone from dawn to dusk and for being out with from dusk to dawn. Now they're back to making life miserable. Women, bless their beautiful, black hearts, can be like getting caught in a revolving door when you get involved too much."

  "She doesn't make life miserable. Karen's... she's given me new perspectives and insights. Not because of any philosophy or theology she espouses. As a matter of fact, we disagree considerably in most of those areas. It's something that kind of sticks like flypaper to your thoughts. You can't shake it loose."

  "That, my boy, is one of the best descriptions of what we used to call 'love' that I've ever heard. Now it's 'mutual self-realization' or 'higher mind unity' or whatever else this generation is calling it," the old man said with amusement; but then he became reflective.

  "Whatever you call it, your mother and I had it," he said, his eyes becoming moist. "Don't be afraid of it, Son. It might only come once."

  "It's more than that though. Her work bothers me. I'm afraid she's tied to something that's somehow going to get her into trouble. She could disagree with me forever on almost anything and I'd never let it affect the way I feel about her. But this cynicism she has... it almost seems like an obsession with her. I just don't want her involved in something that might hurt her. I think that's at the bottom of my apprehension."

  "What's she cynical about?"

  "Particularly, about UNIVUS--about the control she feels the National Security Agency has over people--about what the man she works for calls the 'Babel Syndrome.' He says that mankind is going the way of the people described in the Bible who tried to build a tower to heaven. They were a kind of one-world order, I take it. God supposedly took away their common language and scattered them."

  "Yes. I'm vaguely familiar with all that malarkey," Wilson said. "Sound's like your young lady is mixed up with one of those Bible-thumping fundamentalist types."

  "He's not a minister. He's an eschatologist, she says. Someone who researches biblical prophecies and how they relate to present time."

  "And Karen? How does she feel about it?"

  "She loves the old man. Thinks there's no finer person in existence. She doesn't go along with the prophecies, the Second Coming, and that sort of thing. But she's convinced that all these tremendous strides we've made will lead to totalitarianism on a global scale. His name's Marchek... Dr. Hugo Marchek. She's part of hi
s organization, because she feels it's the only vehicle available to carry the message of alarm to the public."

  "Fanatics have been screaming 'The end is coming' since the beginning of time, but where is it?" Wilson stood to pace in front of Jacob, waving the empty glass while he talked.

  "I'm sick of all these self-serving, self-righteous morons who think they're the only ones with the answers! To sit still is to regress. We would be consumed by the evolutionary process. Our technology and our will to go on are all we have to hang our hopes on. We must unite, or else blow ourselves to pieces, or breed and degenerate and pollute ourselves into oblivion."

  Wilson calmed and refilled his glass from the decanter. "We've done pretty well pulling ourselves out to this point." He took a drink, grinned, and spoke more softly. "The old boy still has some of the demagogue in him, I suppose."

  Jacob returned the smile—understanding--remembering the time three years earlier when a United States senator had used the term in lambasting Wilson. Conrad Wilson was, at the time, defending an administration position calling for a national-identification-computer-system-interact card to replace the Social Security card for each U.S. citizen. UNIVUS had been adopted and the cards issued, but not before one of the most intense battles ever waged in the chambers of Congress had taken place. Wilson was a powerful influence in the winning effort, and those on the winning side had never ceased praising their champion. The losers had never stopped proclaiming at every opportunity that Wilson was the man who had, more than any other, put every citizen at the mercy of the dehumanizing computer network.

  "Anywhere there's civilization, the people are, by necessity, under governing authority. Now, for the first time, we have the technology and the good sense to use it for making government optimally benefit the individual. But these idiots would have us crawl back into our caves of ignorance!"