Forty-six thousand applicants remain. As they proceed to Round Four, I already know that I am going to hire all of them.
Applicant 081289
ETN: A9
33/SWF/Philadelphia
01:15:19
“I’ve always wanted to do something monumental with my life, and while that’s getting harder to do in today’s world, it’s also getting easier. I can make a viral video of a cat playing piano or spray paint my name and phone number under a bridge and people will know who I am. But I don’t want to be famous. That doesn’t do anything, no matter what celebrities raise awareness for. I want to do something that changes the world, even if nobody knows my name. I want to feel like the things I do every day make a difference, not give more pocket change to some Olympian boss I’ve never met.
“Adam Smith asserted that acting in your own self-interest translates to acting in the best interest of the world. John Nash proved that acting in the best interest of the group will bring the best results for yourself. I would like to contend that these men were looking at the same picture and seeing two different things, as one man sees a duck and one man sees a rabbit in the famous example. In any situation, you are not separate from the group. You are always part of the group, and for that reason, to act in your own self-interest is to do what’s best for the group, and vice versa.
“I want to join Peace by Piece to help the world, but mostly I want to join Peace by Piece to help myself. I intend to prove how I will do these things in the next five years and beyond. I’m ready to be a part of the solution.”
Applicant 233992
ETN: A3
30/SWM/Boulder
00:03:03
“I don’t like to talk unless it’s necessary.”
18.
Zero-Zero-One has her tight little budget, but she will forgive my indiscretion. Or she won’t. It doesn’t matter. In the interview process, I have trained 46,000 enthusiastic foot soldiers who not only believe in what they are doing but, more importantly, are willing to put in the hard work to make it happen. Money is secondary.
Take A9, for example. She is clean and well-educated. Her resume is filled with non-profit charity work. She grew up privileged but in her adulthood eschewed her birthright to live in an economy apartment and teach yoga, literacy, and theater to inner-city middle school kids. She has her own vegetable garden and rides her bike to work every day. She is living her convictions, though the impact of her convictions is negligible. With Peace by Piece she will make the difference she thinks she’s been making, for less money than other more capitalistic people would expect. I assign her to the base in Philly as Central East Director of Operations.
Then there’s A3. A3, by the age of thirty, has held five different jobs. He spent two years in university before dropping out. He spent the next two years as a barista. For the two years after that he sorted mail at the post office. For two years after that he tended bar. At twenty-six he went to a two-year culinary school, and upon graduating at twenty-eight, he took an entry-level position at an air conditioning repair company. He took an online HVAC correspondence course while he worked the switchboard during the day. On slow days he tinkered with broken air conditioners they had in the back room and learned the experiential details of the work. Not long after he became certified, he got that two-year itch and moved on.
A3 never repeats himself. He is a man of few words, whether people are listening or not. As a result, people listen to him. He tells A9, at their first meeting, that he isn’t interested in mastering something that isn’t a challenge on a daily basis. Around the two-year mark, or four thousand working hours, is when his job starts being the same every day. He’s not concerned with it happening at Peace by Piece, and neither am I.
A9 sniffs. She can’t imagine how anyone can think life is boring when there’s so many people to educate.
A3 doesn’t say anything, leaving us all to wonder if he agrees or not. Still based in Boulder, he becomes Midwest Director of Operations.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
ETN 25124
JUNE 14, 2028
9:42 AM CST
Hi! How are you today?
Hey! How are you?
Good afternoon, fellow human! How are—
Hello! How are you?
-Fine.
That’s good to hear. Do you have a moment to talk about world peace?
-I don’t give money to the government.
So I guess you don’t pay taxes? … Okay, bye!
Good afternoon!
-Hi!
How are you?
-I’m having a good day. A great day. How are you?
I’m very well.
-I like your patch.
Thanks. I like your hair.
-Thank you. I’m trying something new.
It suits you. Do you have a minute to talk about world peace?
-I’d love to.
You know world peace is a very important issue.
-Probably the most important issue.
Every day millions of people suffer the effects of Unpeace.
-You mean like war?
And unpeaceful personalities. We destroy each other more with our individual actions than we do with guns and bombs.
-You know, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. He said that if we were all just a little nicer to each other, and less selfish, there wouldn’t be wars at all.
That’s exactly my point! If we took world peace to the smallest level, the ripple effect would cause an avalanche of world peace. There would be no more Unpeace, anywhere. We would be living in a utopia.
-Maybe not a utopia. Utopias have never worked before. Isn’t that what cult leaders are all telling their followers?
It is. But cult leaders have always gotten it wrong. They are focused on power and misleading large groups of individuals. They aren’t doing it for world peace either. Aren’t they usually doing it for aliens? Or just to have orgies?
-Haha, yeah, that’s true. Or to make bombs!
Which is the opposite of what Peace by Piece is doing.
-Peace by Piece? Oh, I saw something about that on the news.
That’s who I work for.
-Cool!
Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s awesome to go to a job every day and do something I believe in, instead of just doing something because I need money.
-That does sound awesome.
Would you sign a petition for world peace?
-Of course!
Great. I’ll need to see a picture ID with your current address.
-That makes sense. Like voting!
9:46 AM CST
19.
A great general once led his troops into battle. After suffering significant losses, they were hemmed in on all sides by reinforcements. A soldier turned to the general and said, “Sir, we’re surrounded by enemies.” The great general replied, “Excellent. We can attack in any direction.”
That might not be a true story. But then, if soldiers believe it, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. That’s the thing about really good lies: if they’re big enough, and simple enough, and you tell them often enough, people will start defending them as the truth. (For further reading: Mr. Cartwright’s Ultimate Conclusions.)
With my new employees already stationed in their cities during the auditioning and training months, Peace by Piece establishes bases in Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Houston, and Boulder. At the beginning of the talent search I bought abandoned buildings in each city and used local crews to renovate them. By the time the Ambassadors were ready, so were their new homes and workplaces, and the residents of the neighborhoods where they would be living were happily walking around with my money in their pockets.
With the natural publicity accompanying the training process, it makes sense to focus peace efforts in this country until it really catches on, and give us some time to create relationships in other countries and prepare bases there. It
’s better for my new Ambassadors to be close to the operation in their first days, and strengthen their wings before flight far from the nest. Similarly the international Ambassadors will continue leadership training on the field and continue their work in their home countries.
Though I know I will not make any money from this venture, I am not neglecting its organization and structure. Too many non-profit groups see organization as some corporate demon to be shunned, and they do not realize that organization is an essential component of not losing money. Organization is not bureaucracy; bureaucracies create time poverty by overregulating simple processes in an attempt to keep things organized. Organizations maximize time by making people and resources the most easily accessible. As soon as the Ambassadors were hired, they were released from their applicant numbers and assigned new ETNs that coincided with their levels.
I’ve never enjoyed indulging in a traditional vertical employment model, but when one has 46,000 employees, managers are necessary. I am at the top, and though I am less of a known physical presence than in the first years of Final Solutions, I am even more venerated by my employees, who refer to me as C-in-C, Cap’n Crunch, El Presidente del Mundo, and an occasional tongue-in-cheek Führer which I’m sure makes Zero-Zero-One shudder in her desk chair. A9, A3, and the other eighteen As are known as A-men, and directly under me. Each A-man has fifteen Captains underneath them. Each Captain has fifteen Wardens making reports. Each Warden is the elected representative of ten other Ministers.
20 A-Men
X 15 Captains
X 15 Wardens
X 10 Ministers
= 45,000 Ambassadors
The other thousand Ambassadors work in the offices, doing the daily tasks that a business, even an NPO, needs to keep an office running. Some of them will accompany Wardens and Captains overseas to work out plans for new bases. They organize files. They update computer software. They pick up coffee. Important little things.
Except for myself and A3 through A22, the other Ambassadors (Captains, Wardens, and Ministers all) spend at least six hours a day talking to strangers, five minutes at a time. The Captains spend the other hours reading reports from their Wardens and inputting the day’s work into a database linked to JOBS. They also update our canvassing map, ensuring that the Ambassadors don’t overlap and that they don’t overstay their usefulness.
The most important aspect is, that though the Wardens are “in charge” of their Ministers and so on up the ladder, the individual Ambassadors are responsible for each other’s behavior and performance. It is true that I have already assembled a formidable team of hard-working, soft-hearted, hard-headed, soft-worded individuals who want to work together for the good of the whole world, but in their units, they have chosen to take that to the extreme. One group – they are in Atlanta, I believe – have chosen to wear the same outfit so they can be easily identified by civilians. The outfit is simple: yellow and khaki, to represent sunshine and earth. Hearing of this idea, the trend has spread to other units. As the movement is taking hold in the general population, civilians are borrowing the style and color scheme from their local unit, identifying themselves as adherents by their clothing. It was not my idea, but I approve it.
The rising number of civilian adherents is extremely loyal. Peace by Piece centers on a petition to the human race to actively create peace in their own lives. Our petition is perfectly legal; it requires a photo ID, two points of contact information, and a current address. My plan is to present the petition to the United Nations at the end of five years, or by the time we get to four billion people, whichever comes first. The movement is so publicized that many people have signed their names to our petition without the five minutes allotted. It’s going very well, except for those few people who don’t agree with me. I am not very surprised to find that those dissenting to my plan are listed in the Final Solutions Unemployable file.
Trying to convince parties of something they don’t already believe, short of brainwashing or torture, is a pretty futile attempt. It’s why every preacher has a choir. I’m not going to spend a lot of extra time telling them that I’m doing the right thing for the world, since these same Dissidents didn’t accept that when they were fired. It’s not easy to hear, after years of being told the opposite, that there is no void in the world that only fits you.
I can find all the location information of these Dissidents from the old Labor Placements database. I am placing different Ministers in the areas where the Dissidents frequent, and having them use their best pitches and impassioned speeches to sway these poor souls whose deep-seated bitterness against a calculation I made a decade ago is now punishing the whole world with its Unpeacefulness. I doubt they will budge.
The Ministers are heartbroken. They don’t run into such opposition often. I tell them not to worry. I have a plan.
JOBS THREE
PRINTOUT REQUEST
UNEMPLOYABLES
0000023432: Akron, OH
0000036251: Lake George, NY
0000002451: Arlington, VA
0000785403: Lowell, MA
0000032432: Croton Falls, NY
0000021268: Queens, NY
0000009272: Newark, NJ
0000123347: Lancaster, PA
0000032485: San Diego, CA
0000148001: Glendale, AZ
0000002361: Philadelphia, PA
0000000125: Arlington, VA
0000000126: Arlington, VA
0000023467: Mt. Airy, MD
0000002479: San Antonio, TX
0000017602: Bronxville, NY
20.
A leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents look as if they belonged in the same category. Alternatively, if one group of opponents is too large to destroy without complaint, you split up the group into different ideologies to show the public just how dangerous different kinds of people can be.
Somehow, the identities of the known Dissidents have leaked to the press. It may be the faults of the Dissidents themselves. Often criminals are caught because they can’t stop bragging about their crimes. I wouldn’t doubt it.
The Dissidents, now out in the open, are not lying quiet and waiting for the storm to pass. They are stirring up their own storm against me, claiming that I am an evil mastermind. They’ve gained the confidence of a number of journalists, who are even more creative in their accusations, particularly because their research is coming up empty. One of my favorite newscasters has suggested that my Ministers are the best-paid cult members in history, and a small town opinion editor insists that I’m the Antichrist. Did you know that the Antichrist is supposed to promise world peace, achieve it for a short period of time, and then wreak havoc on the world by opening up hell? I don’t even know anyone in hell.
Naturally, since the media only exists for people to argue with each other, the Dissidents are gaining their own dissenters, and they’re getting away with calling the Dissidents much worse things than I could ever say: bigots, classists, social Darwinists, autocrats, Communists, warmongers… I’m not calling my opponents by these names, I’m merely reporting what others have called them. None of it is necessarily true, but the colorful language adopted by my opponents’ opponents have made the point that the Dissidents would rather maintain their right to be disagreeable and selfish than they would endorse world peace.
The world is changing without their endorsement. The supportive media, the Ambassadors, and the civilian Adherents are producing so much positive change in the world that going outside feels different. Though some will never tire of harping on the Dissidents, most are focusing instead of the good things happening. People are more polite, and in a great wave, they are turning generous and actively kind. Last week, two female Ministers, seeing a woman struggling with some large boxes on the street, offered to help her move into her new apartment. The other nine members of their unit worked a little longer to meet their quota. The act of kindness and empathy, though reported by one grumpy blogger to be fabricated hogwas
h to promote the movement, made an astounding effect. Soon random acts of kindness will no longer be surprising; they will be a part of life. Someone passing on the street will recognize you as a fellow seeker of happiness rather than a threat to their own happiness. When faced with the opportunity to help another person, people will stop asking “why me?” and realize “why not me!”
It’s time to invade other countries. Peace by Piece bases are being settled in Canada, the Netherlands, England, and Australia. International news has already spread over there and taken some hold. It helps that the majority populations of these countries are liberal, peaceful, educated, and English-speaking, so they make sense for our first international push. I am sending A6 and A8, and their accompanying subordinates, to begin the mission overseas. Of course many corporations and wealthy individuals have generously donated to our cause, thus reflecting some of the light of our effect. Not even Zero-Zero-One’s budget can dictate our movements now. We are handing out short pamphlets printed in dozens of languages for ambassadors to distribute to the busier civilians. For a small fee, one can obtain a premium lifetime membership in Peace by Piece, and gain access to streaming videos of the Ambassadors in action. Proceeds from the premium lifetime memberships go directly to promoting Peace all over the world.
Sticking to Zero-Zero-One’s original advice, I remain behind the curtain. I have not appeared under my own name in years. Even my pizzas are delivered under a pseudonym. Some of the more paranoid Dissidents claim that I don’t exist at all, but that I was created by an advertising agency, like a cereal box character, to act as the infallible face of a multi-national conspiracy to usurp world governments.
Mr. Cartwright and the Final Solution Page 6