Dawn of the Unthinkable (4 page)

“No, no, I’m fine with all that. We’re
finally finding something around the house that I like to do.”
Kathy smiled and snuggled in closer, envisioning what their future
held.

In a short time, Kathy became pregnant. They
were as happy as when they had each found out about their own
children, and toyed with the idea of determining what the sex of
the baby was, but decided to wait. The nine months of pregnancy
could not pass quickly enough for them, and they hoped first for a
healthy child, and second for a girl. Life smiled on them on both
counts, when Kathy delivered a beautiful little girl that they
named Ashley.

Fall 1988

Ryan and Kathy were snuggling on the couch
on a crisp fall evening. The house was filled with her killer
lasagna, which he just could not stop eating. He kissed the top of
her head where it was resting on his chest, and said,

“Hey, babe, that was great, I swear you
ought to enter that in some type of contest, do they have contests
for best lasagna? Maybe Garfield would know.”

She smiled at the compliment, “Why, thank
you, that’s very nice of you to say, and no, I don’t think there is
much information to be gained from a cartoon cat.”

He went silent, and she looked up at him to
see why he had stopped talking. He was lost in thought, looking
into the distance. “Watcha thinking about?”

“Hmm?, oh nothing, I was just thinking about
pulling the plug on my reproductive capabilities.”

“What?” she said, lifting her head up so she
could look him clearly in his face.

“Yeah, I was thinking about getting a
vasectomy, I think we should consider our family complete, as we’ve
been pretty lucky with the kids we had. We both had some early
setbacks, but we got past them, and now here we are, and we have
the exact type of family that they were looking for with our first
partners. So why tempt fate? I’d rather stop now, and it’s easier
for me to get fixed than you.”

Kathy could tell from his expression that he
was serious and given this idea some thought. To be sure, anyone
offering to have his privates operated on had to be serious, but
she was surprised that he had brought it up, as he usually left
family planning to her.

She said, “Well, to be honest, I had been
giving it some thought myself. I just didn’t want to suggest it
because I wasn’t sure how you would feel. I’m pretty content with
where we are, too, and if you’re willing to go under the knife, I
appreciate it.”

“Well, okay, but the correct family size is
not the only reason I have for ending the baby train.” Ryan was not
content with being just another white, middle-class, civil servant.
He seethed with ideas, and the
Star Trek
episode had started
one in his mind that was so audacious he was thrilled at the scope
and simplicity of it. He could no longer keep it to himself, and
finally, as his wife was the closest person to him, he decided to
tell her.

This was risky. She had been through “ideas”
with him before. He had outlandish whims and flights of fancy that
came unexpectedly. Just thinking about things was not so bad, but
when he tried to bring them to fruition, he drove her nuts. She had
her hands full running the house and did not need him to be adding
extraneous programs and projects to the mix. During their time
together, he had decided he wanted to be a part-time life insurance
salesman, to the point of taking the exam and passing it, but then
decided he did not really want to be pestering people with
insurance policies. Then he had forced them into purchasing a
piano, which he had played in his youth, but gave up on shortly
after they had finished paying for it. Then he had an idea for an
indoor miniature golf course/driving range, which he had sunk
several hundred dollars into and gotten most of his friends and
family stirred up over. That idea sank into the mud also. The
Disney products distribution business they had finally purchased
was at least somewhat enjoyable, but they ended up folding it after
several years of declining profits. Therefore, she was dubious of
all his ideas.

“I’ve been thinking about something that
might take up a little bit of my time, and thought it’s only fair
to let you know about it,” he said. She was no longer listening to
him as the kids getting home from playing outside. He saw her
getting ready to get up and tend to them, and stopped her. “No,
wait…I’ve had an idea.”

She looked at him in alarm, thinking nothing
good could come of this. “No,” she said firmly.

“Yes,” he replied cheerfully.

“No, not again.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Now what?” she asked wearily.

“I’ve figured out how to solve all the
world’s problems.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“The answer is simple. Do away with money in
all forms, and make everything free,” he said with a satisfied
smile, as if he had just waved a wand and made clear an obvious
answer.

She looked at him as if he was deranged.
“What?” she asked.

“Money. Just eliminate it,” he repeated.

“And how would you do that?”

“I’m not sure yet, but they said it had
happened on
Star Trek
, so it must be true.”

As a practical person, she had no time for
space or any of its permutations. “Oh, well, then I’ll leave it to
you and Captain Picard to figure it out,” she said and left the
room with a little toss of her hair.

He smiled fondly after her. The thought that
was coming to him was rather grand. He was not sure he wanted to
let it out. But ideas being what they are, once germinated, had to
grow. What if he wrote an article that spelled out exactly how to
proceed with such an idea, one that would formalize what he was
thinking about and let other people see it and comment on it? He
was a decent writer, having written a thesis in graduate school
that merited an A. He could write it and submit it to a bunch of
magazines and see if any of them were interested. Or, he could post
it somewhere on the web and see what kind of response he got. Of
course, many might consider him a crackpot for proposing such a
thing, but hell, that was how some of the best ideas started. There
was nothing to stop him, and maybe it would catch on. Maybe someone
would ask him to write a book about it! Then he could go on talk
shows, meet movie stars, and the whole bit.
That would be
great!
he thought.

Anyway, he had work to do. It was no simple
task to reorder society, considering that he had a hard time
keeping his closet straight. Nevertheless, in some ways, it was
easier to just write some ideas down than to actually dig in and do
something. He grabbed a pen and some paper, eased back in his
chair, and waited for the muse to strike.

This idea got short-circuited when his son
blasted into the room.
Blasted
was not an exaggeration. The
kid had noticed him off in another world, and delighted in scaring
him, like the Asian servant in the old
Pink Panther
movies
used to do to Inspector Clouseau. Billy was getting big, and the
sight of him hurtling out of the doorway to stage a mock attack
startled him into tossing the pen and paper into the air and
raising his hands to a defensive position.

“Yo, pest, knock it off!” he yelled as the
boy crashed into him.

“Yaaaahhhhh!” the boy answered in return, as
he latched onto his father’s wrists and tried to pull him out of
the chair.

Now one skill that had not deserted Ryan was
chair wrestling, the ancient sport of fighting to gain control of
or remain in the most comfortable seat in the house. He had learned
at the feet of his older brothers, who tossed him unmercifully too
many times to count. It was not until he was older and learned the
way of
The Force
that he began to keep the chair more often
than not. His son was getting stronger but still no match for the
Jedi
master. Ryan jerked his arms out of his son’s grasp,
corralled one of the boy’s wrists into one of his hands, and
applied pressure on his elbow until he had twisted the boy’s arm
behind his back and lodged his neck in a half-nelson. The boy
dissolved into laughter at being suddenly disabled, and had to
break off his attack.

Ryan held him a moment, until the boy
squirmed uncomfortably from the unexpected affection, and then
turned him loose.
Trying to channel Donna through him. Gotta
knock that off. It’s weirding him out,
Ryan thought. Billy
collapsed onto the floor, still laughing and gasping for air. He
picked himself up and shuffled off to the computer, which occupied
most of his time. He played games by the hour, either as a general
of some cyber army, or as a warlord of mutant creatures with
impossibly muscled physiques. Ryan wasn’t too interested in playing
games and used a computer so much during the day that he was not
inclined to use the one at home. His only significant interaction
with the home computer came with having to referee fights over
whose turn it was to use it. Scott played noisily on the floor with
toy trucks and cars, and Ryan used the experienced parent’s trick
of keeping half an ear and eye on them while doing something
else.

He knew a little about socialism, but
decided to find out more about it, as his idea seemed similar to
it. An Internet search showed that socialism had few supporters in
the United States, while several European countries were organized
around its principles. But while socialism called for equality for
all and democratically controlled means of production by working
people, few places were ever able to completely achieve it. It was
apparent that any attempt to put such a system in place would have
to overcome enormous resistance. And unfortunately, it was
associated with communism, which had a horrible past and present.
So how could he, just an average guy, change an unpopular idea into
one that might change the world?

He picked up his blank piece of paper and
pen and started to write.
I’m an introvert. I like to crawl up
in my mind and think things through, so this project is perfect for
me,
he thought. He decided to write his article along the lines
of a declaration or formal document. That way, he could send it to
politicians and magazines at the same time, with no adaptation. He
tried to think of what the underlying premise of a cashless,
free-for-all society would be.

He thought,
Survival is the basic goal of
all living organisms
. Survival consisted of meeting the minimal
needs of life, not their wants. People wanted to have a nice car, a
house at the shore, and many consumer items. What they
needed
was enough food and water, clothes, shelter, and some
type of interaction with other people (and the last wasn’t an
absolute requirement). So, society should make sure that it met all
(and that meant
all
) people’s needs before it addressed
their wants.

He was sure that one of the questions that
he would hear the most would be “Why would people want to change?”
He knew that the economy was doing fine, that many people had jobs,
and that it appeared that the American version of capitalism was
aiding as many people as could be helped. The ones that weren’t
able to take advantage of what was going on,
well, that was a
shame, we’ll throw them a bone, but they better find a way off
welfare, or we’ll throw them off!
He wondered how the people
that made these laws could live with themselves while things like
the social security remained sacred cows—untouchable. He knew once
again, it came down to money that the people who were affected the
most by Social Security had money, and voted, which caused their
benefits to remain the same (and usually increase every year). But
were poor people’s opinions as to how they should be treated any
less important because they were poor? They shouldn’t be, but there
was no doubt that they were.

He thought for a while as to what to write
for the motivation segment, then began writing.

Motivation

No matter how much society
attempts to solve its problems, it will always be thwarted by
money. While I enjoy a decent standard of living, there appears to
be no guaranteeing my children a chance to enjoy a reasonable
lifestyle despite my hard work to put them through college. When a
parent senses that his best efforts are not going to result in a
reasonably happy lifestyle for his child, he becomes motivated to
try something to improve the situation.

On a more global scale, it
is depressing to read the newspaper and watch television news
programs that endlessly detail the horrors that modern society can
inflict on itself. Many wish that they could do something to help,
but in today’s world, the only way to solve a problem is to devote
large amounts of funds to that problem. Though I do not have large
sums of money at my disposal, this is an attempt to begin thinking
about an idea that never seems to even be considered—let
all
of society determine
in a cooperative manner how finite resources are
allocated.

Now that the motivation was out of the way
and he had the reader hooked emotionally, he needed to get to the
theory part of it. . In order for the idea to work, society would
have to refocus their production with the goal of first satisfying
the basic needs of everyone, and leaving their wants for anything
that was left. The problem with capitalism, he realized, was that
by having money and representatives in government that took
contributions from corporations, it was skewed toward rewarding the
wealthy. He thought,
What if I combined several of these ideas,
like no money and socialism?
For it to really work, both money
and a representative Congress would have to be eliminated. That
would be a major mind-set change as, right now, the powerful people
that controlled the majority of the assets steered the production
of goods and services toward their own excessive wants. This left a
disproportionate amount of the population unable to fulfil their
basic needs. Moreover, any time it appeared that the underclass was
making strides toward improving their lot in life, the rich made
changes to the system that would head them off with some type of
insurmountable obstacle.
So
, he thought,
the current
system continued to exist indefinitely, and no well-meaning
president, congress, or other public figure had ever been able to
change it. Perhaps after 200 years of little success it was time
for something new.