The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller

by Hans G. Schantz

  “And, that brings us to the third and most important reason why the Tollivers in particular and other key players in the Civic Circle are big supporters of women’s rights: sustainability.

  “A free and rapidly-growing economy could be tolerated when we had a frontier to fill. But, the Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement.

  “Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just get an abortion.

  “And even if she avoids anti-male indoctrination, there’s plenty of social pressure to turn most gals into COGs.” Uncle Larry looked expectantly at me.

  Cogs? That made no sense. Uncle Larry was clearly waiting for me to take his bait, so I did. “Cogs?”

  “Career-Oriented Gals,” he explained, smugly. “COGs. All those COGs are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits, and experiment with any man who catches their fancy. Makes the office much more decorative too, if you get my meaning,” he said with a smirking grin. I was creeped out, but kept a poker face.

  “And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there.

  “Try starting a family in your mid-thirties, and you’ll be lucky to crank out more than a couple kids, if that. Get a taste of what Common Core will require of you, and your enthusiasm for more kids will be completely sapped out.

  “In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it,” he leered. “The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels. Already much of the Western world is at break-even or below. Our demographic trends would already be in decline if not for immigration.

  “It’s profoundly ironic,” he observed with obvious amusement. “A strong, independent woman is now one who meekly obeys the media’s and society’s clamor to be a career girl and sleep around with whatever stud catches her fancy or with other girls, for that matter. A woman with the courage to defy that social pressure and devote herself from a young age to building a home and raising a family is an aberration, a weirdo, a traitor to her sex. There aren’t many women with the balls to stand up against that kind of social pressure. It’s not in their nature.”

  I was appalled and stunned in equal measure. I remained silent, trying to soak all this in, and make sense of it.

  “I suppose you wonder why I would be telling you all this,” he finally added.

  “Well, yes, I am curious,” I acknowledged.

  “First off,” he explained, “no one would believe you. And, if word got out that you had betrayed my trust, I would not only deny this conversation every took place, I’d also see to it that there were,” he paused ominously, “consequences. If you are wise, you will keep everything I’ve told you to yourself. Don’t even tell your parents.

  “But more importantly, the reason I’m telling you this is that there’s a new age beginning. The old ways of rapid growth are over. They have to end if we’re to protect our planet’s future and survive as a species. There’s a new social order emerging: a more stable and sustainable society in which everyone will know their place.

  “Your father is an admirable man in many ways,” Uncle Larry generously acknowledged. “There aren’t many men who could steal the heart of a Tolliver and have the balls to move right here to the center of our power and make it stick. Although he’d never have been successful without your mother’s backing. It takes a Tolliver to beat a Tolliver. With her help, he did. I admit it. But, he’s the last of a dying breed. The last of the great individualists. The last of the self-made men, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

  “Your father may be a remarkable man, but he’s hopelessly naïve. Conservatives like him think that progressives and liberals are too stupid to realize the consequences of our policies – how our policies perpetuate the very poverty and inequality we profess to despise. We’re seventy years into Social Security for all, and we’re forty years into a War on Poverty. We’ve taken trillions of dollars from the productive – money that could have been used to build new businesses and make new opportunities for the poor – and yet we have no less poverty to show for it than when we started. The great twentieth-century communist experiment failed miserably and left millions of corpses in its wake, yet we’re taking our country down the same socialist path.”

  I was puzzled. “But, if socialism doesn’t work, and you know socialism doesn’t work, then why would you support it?”

  “Why do most people support it?” he clarified. “Emotional reasons. It feels good to think you are helping people particularly if it’s with other people’s money. All gain, no pain. It feels comforting to have the approval of your herd. It feels good to be patted on the head by the media, the government, and the people in power and authority. It feels good to be told what a special little snowflake you are for being able to parrot back the progressive ideas we’ve force-fed into you.

  “Most socialists support socialism for irrational and emotional reasons. In that sense, your father is right that they’re stupid. Furthermore, because most socialists come to their political positions for emotional reasons, to feel good about themselves, that’s precisely why socialists perceive conservatives as evil. Who is going to be the more motivated to triumph in a political battle: the side who thinks their opponents are mistaken, or the side that thinks their opponents are evil? But, I digress…

  “Those aren’t the real reasons the elite advocate socialism. The actual reason the Tollivers and the rest of the Civic Circle support socialism is because it will inevitably lead to a sustainable, low-growth or no-growth society with ourselves running the show. The Civic Circle wants stability and sustainability above all, in a controlled fashion, with us in charge, shepherding the ignorant masses, implementing our vision of social justice, and crushing any threat to our elite position in society. We’re deeply conservative in our own way,” he added wryly, “only what we want to conserve is ourselves and our positions in the elite without having to fight off every interloper with ambition and new ideas.

  “A truly capitalist or free-market society is inherently unstable,” Uncle Larry explained. “You can’t have safety or stability when some upstart can put you out of business at any time by offering something better at a lower price, destroying the work of generations.

  “That’s precisely why we champion economic controls as the antidote for global warming. Maybe there’s a crisis, maybe not, but never let a crisis go to waste. Of course, we know that carbon taxes and controls impose a huge drag and cost on the economy. Those negative impacts are precisely what our policies are designed to create: a low-growth, sustainable future with us in charge and no one to threaten our position.” Uncle Larry seemed shockingly cynical about environmentalism. Maybe I should reconsider what Dad had been arguing all along?

  “I’m getting off topic again,” Uncle Larry confessed, with a smug smile. “The danger the Tolliver family and with all elites face is that we get inbred. It’s called assortative mating. We and the rest of the elites send our elite children to our elite schools where elite ideas are pounded into their skulls and they become proficient at elite thinking. They meet other e
lites and eventually breed elite little babies to pick up the torch and continue upholding their family’s position in the elite. It’s self-defeating. Even within the Civic Circle there are cycles and currents and some elites are more elite than others. My grandfather, Ol’ Tom Tolliver, got the family connected with the Civic Circle back during the Great Depression. He helped the Civic Circle and the New Deal Brain Trust bring prosperity to the hicks and hillbillies of eastern Tennessee through great public works projects like the Smoky Mountain National Park, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Oak Ridge Lab. Then, my father got us in the door as junior members in the Civic Circle. However, there’s an inner circle that calls the shots. It can take generations to get in position, but a few careless heirs failing to live up to their responsibilities, and a family can slip out, without even realizing it. Oh, any family with the wealth and position to get in would still be comfortable enough for a good long while, but they’d no longer have the power to control events and look out for their interests.

  “I’m thinking ahead to the next generation of Tollivers,” Uncle Larry said with the conviction of a man on a mission. “I’m thinking of who will not only maintain our position in the elite but also push the family to the very top of the Civic Circle. Your mother is a Tolliver, and your father brought new blood, new energy into the family. Our family,” he emphasized, “yours and mine.

  “You can be a key player in pushing the family to the next level. You have a choice. You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution,” Uncle Larry offered with a hint of menace in his voice. I could hear the veiled threat.

  I realized Uncle Larry must think my reticence was all about the fallout from Dad marrying Mom. He had no idea that the animosity on Dad’s part stretched back to the loss of the Oak Ridge farm that ultimately broke Dad’s grandfather, and to how the family homestead had been stolen for Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I’d just been made the proverbial offer I couldn’t refuse. Or else. I decided I’d best be friendly, but non-committal.

  “That’s a very generous offer, sir,” I said earnestly, “but I’m planning on going to Georgia Tech and majoring in either physics or electrical engineering. It’s probably too late to get an application lined up for one of the top Eastern schools. Wouldn’t I need to major in sociology or something like that?” He seemed to take my assent as a buy-in to his schemes.

  “I know who to call. I could get you in most anywhere on my say-so. It pains a Harvard man to admit it,” Uncle Larry acknowledged, “but you’ll probably get a better education at Georgia Tech. Too many scions of the elite start to believe our own propaganda and can’t see the truth behind the tales we tell the masses. You’ll get a better, more demanding education studying at Georgia Tech. You’ll learn logical thinking and analysis with less propaganda. Then you can finish off with a business degree, and take your place at Tolliver Corporation. You might even end up in my job someday.

  “Besides, I think you’ll find the times they are a-changing, even at Georgia Tech,” he added cryptically. “I can’t say any more. We shouldn’t let one misunderstanding between our branches of the family so long ago stand between us.” He offered his hand with apparent magnanimity as if we were about to seal a deal. I reflexively took his hand, and instantly regretted it, feeling as if he’d cornered me.

  Jump in little froggy, Uncle Larry was telling me. The water’s just fine. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, sir,” I said. “I appreciate your openness and your offer.”

  “You can take your time,” Uncle Larry said, “for now. Mull it over. Soon, though, you’ll reach a point where you’ll have to decide on which side you stand: on the right side of history with your family and the future, or on the side of a failed, archaic, and dying ideology.”

  Mom and Dad came in as Uncle Larry finished up. Only then did I realize that the chrysanthemums had been a ploy. Uncle Larry had put Aunt Nikki up to distracting Mom and Dad so Uncle Larry could make his pitch to me in private. How devious of him.

  We all engaged in the usual small talk before heading home.

  So much of what Uncle Larry said made a lot of sense. I could see pieces falling into place. He had given me a glimpse of a structure, a pattern in human events that I had never perceived before. It was too big for me to keep to myself. I hadn’t given my word to Uncle Larry to keep his secrets. I told Mom and Dad about the peculiar conversation on the way home. “I think I’m being recruited for the dark side,” I said jokingly.

  Mom was shocked, “Anyone who tells an underage boy to keep secrets from his parents is trying to take advantage of you – to cut you off from sources of support and security.”

  Dad was equally taken aback. “I’d never thought of it that way, before,” he acknowledged. “I just assumed liberals were naïve and muddle-minded. It never occurred to me that there might be a deliberate method to their madness. But, it makes sense. In any socialist utopia, there’s a ‘nomenklatura,’ a caste that occupies key positions and call the shots. And, it usually becomes hereditary as society becomes static and stratified. You have to have the advantage of parents in the nomenklatura to land positions in the right schools and to secure the right opportunities.”

  “That’s got to be it,” Mom added. “The claim that a no-growth/low-growth economy is necessary to save the planet is hogwash. I’m surprised a man as smart as Uncle Larry would truly believe that. I told you how the doomsayers of the 1970s were completely overtaken and overturned by events. In a free economy, people react to scarcity by devising ways to use less, to recycle, and to find substitutes,” Mom noted.

  “I must have missed that discussion,” Dad noted.

  “You were sleeping at the time, dear,” Mom told him.

  “Wouldn’t that be a self-fulfilling prophesy, Mom?” I asked.

  “How do you mean?,” she asked me.

  “What if you hobbled the free market? What if you kept it from devising clever solutions to resource shortages? Then you truly would have just the kind of economic malaise the doomsayers predict. Maybe that’s exactly what they want to achieve with their social engineering.” The thought was sobering.

  Mom agreed. “It makes more sense to me that Larry sees socialism and environmentalism as excuses to control society for the family’s benefit. He advocates regulations that keep interlopers from overthrowing the Tollivers’ business with clever innovations and hard work,” Mom explained.

  By then we were home. Mom and Dad had been planning their second honeymoon in Nashville for a while, just the two of them. They hadn’t taken a vacation like that since Kira was born. Uncle Rob showed up while they were changing into more casual clothes.

  Mom looked thoughtful as she came down the stairs. “I have to wonder if the Civic Circle is tied into this physics business you’ve uncovered in some obscure way,” Mom speculated. “Didn’t you say that Xueshu Quan translated as Academic Circle?”

  I hadn’t made that connection before.

  Then, Mom looked at me. “I’m uneasy about this. First, we have one ‘circle’ trying to hide the truth and threatening you for looking into it. Now, another ‘circle’ is trying to recruit you. Your father and I ought to stay,” she said wistfully.

  “We’ve already discussed this,” Dad countered with a patient smile. “It’s unlikely anything will happen. If it does, we should have a fair bit of warning. In any event, our son is far safer with Rob than with us here at home. Larry is just being Larry. Nothing to worry about. He’s trying to avenge his family’s loss of you by luring our son to the Tolliver cause.

  “You’ve been talking about this trip for weeks,” Dad continued. “We have the plans and reservations, and I’m not inclined to let myself get pushed around or spooked. When we get back, we’ll figure out the next steps.” He laughed, took Mom, and led her through some dance moves culminating in a spin and a deep dip.

  “Very well,” Mom agreed with a smile.

  Dad turned to me. “We’ll have to talk more whe
n we get back,” Dad said. “Until then, remember the lesson of the hypnotist. Be honest with yourself. Know your limits and the difference between right and wrong. Don’t let yourself be a frog to be boiled up in Uncle Larry’s pot.”

  Uncle Rob and I wished them well and said good bye. He backed his truck up into the garage. It appeared to be loaded – the bed was covered in a tarp.

  “What’s in the truck?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  “Nothing yet,” Uncle Rob answered. After he closed the garage door, he pulled off the tarp exposing some boxes. They were all empty. “But, there will be something when we leave. Only, it won’t be obvious to a casual observer since the truck looked loaded when I arrived.” We gathered up a load of books and valuables from the house, filled the bed, and covered it with the tarp. I grabbed the bags I’d packed of my stuff in preparation for an extended stay. He had me ride on the passenger side floorboard of the truck “just in case anyone’s watching.” I was not looking forward to life as a fugitive, getting around like that.

  When we got up to Robber Dell, he pulled the truck into his new barn – a steel-framed, steel-sided structure on the concrete pad where we’d eaten barbeque at the big Independence Day party. It was mostly empty except for a built-out section along one side, a couple of tractors and equipment, and now Uncle Rob’s truck. The built-out section had two doors to the rest of the garage – one to a bathroom, and the other to a small living room. It made a small, but comfortable, living quarters. The bathroom actually had two entrances – one to the rest of the built-out living area, and the other to the garage. I assumed the idea was that anyone working in the barn could use the bathroom without trooping through the living room.

  We unloaded the truck and stored the contents in the… bathroom? “No,” Uncle Rob said at one point. “Nothing on the counter or in the tub. Put everything on the floor and make sure nothing’s leaning against the wall.” I followed his curious instructions. Apparently, I was allowed to stick some boxes on the toilet. Go figure.