The Last Rational Man

by Karlin

mind you, we could have left it to the summer and no harm done. Though it did photograph well. The Shiites are scheduled for two weeks from now. I don’t see the Kurds, though. Oh, here it is.”

  She pulled out a spiral bound notebook from one of the piles of paperwork. It had flowers printed on it, like you would see on a fifth grade girl’s notebook. She flipped through the pages until she found the bit she was looking for.

  “Yes, I remember. We spoke about the Kurds a few weeks ago. ‘The Kurds are not a legitimate freedom movement. They are not significantly different than their neighbors, and have used violence to advance their cause.’ There you go. That puts it in a nutshell. Now that I think about it, I remember that it is notoriously hard to get into Kurdistan, especially with camera equipment, and most people haven’t even heard of them, so it is not really worth it in any case.”

  “But you said that violence was OK, at least for the Basques. And I do think that Kurds are quite different from the Turks or the Iraqis.”

  “‘The Kurds are not a legitimate freedom movement. They are not significantly different than their neighbors, and have used violence to advance their cause.’ That says it all, don’t you think?

  “Here. Let’s look at a few more bits from the scrapbook. Here we are, protesting against the economic situation in Newfoundland in the first week of August. All of these poor fishermen out of work, because of the atrocious behavior of the fishing fleets.”

  “But didn’t you yourself get in the way of those fleets?”

  “And here we are, the following week, in Alabama. These poor people are living in a terribly unhygienic region. They live in a small town, which hasn’t put up a proper sewage treatment plant! Their children are exposed to all sorts of terrible diseases! And this, mind you, is in the U.S., not off in Africa somewhere.”

  I had a sinking suspicion as to where that sewage plant was supposed to have been built, and why it hadn’t been built, but there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to argue with Marty. She had gotten very excited about this particular one. Her face was red now, practically a glowing blast furnace, as she went on and on about the awful diseases that the children of this town would be exposed to, and the potentially disastrous plagues that hopefully, I mean unfortunately, would strike them. It seemed that her group was not likely to be a source of rational resistance to our plan.

  I tried to distract her, and move the conversation in a more positive direction.

  “So, what are your major projects now?”

  She pulled out the diary again, and consulted it.

  “Let’s see. Last week we did coral reefs. And we are just finishing up this week’s bit on the Palestinians, we always give them a week or two each year- they’re so photogenic, and let me see. Ah, next week we will do the Airport Racism thing.”

  “Airport racism?”

  “Yes. Let’s see. Well I don’t have our official statement yet, since that always comes out on the Monday of an item’s week. But it seems that certain types of people are being singled out for extra checks at the airport. People with Middle Eastern names, or a dark complexion, are being selected for Special Treatment, especially young men. This is a clear violation of their human rights!”

  “What are they doing to them? Torture?”

  “No, it is much worse than that. They are invading their privacy, subjecting them to additional, humiliating searches, and repeated x-rays of their luggage.”

  “Well, they are a more risky group of people…”

  “Again, that propaganda. How can you label an entire group ‘risky’?”

  “But if you ran the extra security checks on everybody, just to be fair, than the airport would clog up, and nobody would be able to fly.”

  “You have really swallowed a lot of conservative crap, young man. The convenience of a few wealthy businessmen is not important when compared to Human Rights!”

  There was something else that struck me about the whole conversation, the diary, and the scrapbook.

  “Tell me something. How long have you been working on these projects?”

  “As a whole, for about fifteen years. Each project though, gets only one week of real attention.”

  “One week?”

  “Yes. We find that the press and public get tired of a subject after a few days, so we have to have something new all the time. The only exceptions are the really photogenic groups, especially if they have effective P.R. The truth is that I don’t really have the patience to stick with one cause for much more than that. It could take years to really research something, and figure out all the subtle nuances and so on. It is much better to find something catchy and run with it. ”

  A heavy burden had been lifted off my soul. This liberal fad group was dedicated all right, but had lost their minds entirely. After our victory, which was now looking certain, we would pop the whole bunch straight into the nuthouse. Though, of course, it looked like the entire world, with the exception of our small community, was one big nuthouse. The day would come, though, when our educational system would have its effect. The next generation would be a perfect, rational generation, and a new Golden Age would descend on Earth.

  …..

  The Central Committee meeting was only a few weeks later. It was critical that we stick to our timetable. The meeting was run efficiently as well. Nobody wasted time repeating what others said, and the meeting was run in accordance to our standard rules. Members of our organization must strive for rational personal behavior at all times, even though it was clear that we would sometimes fail, due to our poor upbringing. Complete rational behavior during group activities, however, was mandatory for all. When the movement first started, some members had been expelled for emotional behavior during meetings.

  I briefly presented my report, stating the encouraging conclusions, and illustrating them with a few examples of the basic insanity of the people I had met. The chairman had little to add to this.

  “Well, we have just heard the report from another field operative. I believe that the overall conclusion is clear. I suggest that there is no reason to wait for further reports, and we proceed as planned.”

  There was a hand raised at the other end of the table.

  “Yes?”

  “I agree with your conclusion, but I think that we should hear from one more specific operative before proceeding. I ask that we have a report from the operative who was sent to the accelerator.”

  “Ah, the physics operative. Unfortunately, he has not been able to come to our headquarters. We have, however, received a preliminary report from him. There are three major points:

  1.Physicists have a Cosmology, based on a very limited set of facts, which is no better than the idea that the Earth rides on the back of a giant turtle. In fact, the giant turtle hypothesis has the advantage of being more imaginative.

  2.They firmly believe that they are advancing mankind, though all of the evidence indicates that they have only caused damage, and have cost their economies huge sums of money in the process.

  3.They are plagued by messianic ideas. They always believe that the next accelerator, the really big one, will give them the real answer to how the universe is built. There is also a pervasive belief that the Higgs Boson is in some way God.

  “In short, gentlemen, there is nothing to fear from the physicists. They are as nutty as the rest of humanity, and will not be able to resist.

  “Therefore, I move that we delay no longer, and trigger our plan immediately.”

  The vote was unanimous, as one would expect from a logical group making a logical decision. Our first attack would take place that same evening.

  The weapons had been distributed already, and only the assignment of targets remained. There would be no standing up to our methods, to a technology that had been proven to work under carefully controlled conditions. The astounding thing was that weapons scientists had managed to ignore the technology for decades, though it was staring them right in the face.

  I waited in l
ine to receive my target, knowing that others, spread across the world, were doing the same. I tried to control my excitement, which was inappropriate for a rational being. I could see that the others in line were having a difficult time controlling their emotions as well. No matter. Future generations would be cured of emotional responses, and will appreciate the effort that we made to overcome the insanity that we had been trained to believe was normal.

  I collected my target. It was packaged in a shoebox, a real one with a logo and labels on it, indicating that there were blue running shoes inside. Nobody’s attention would be drawn to the package, not until it was much too late for anybody to mount a real defense.

  When I got home, I locked the door, and carefully opened the box. There it was, my target. I immediately recognized him. He was a well-known figure, one that I had seen on television many times. A typical mediocre politician, constantly pushing his own form of insanity. I was glad that I had not received a more prominent target. The Prime Minister, for example, was bound to be a difficult one.

  The model I had received was carefully marked, and indicated the most vulnerable points and the best ways to attack them. I would of course be expected to mount this attack alone, just as thousands of others would do the same. The attack would be coordinated by the enemy’s own facilities. It would start worldwide when the BBC announced that it was 22:00 GMT. I tuned the radio to the BBC station,