Dawn of the Unthinkable (8 page)

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Communities within
different geographical areas will choose which industries they want
to incorporate into their societies. The community will vote on the
choice based upon what products are currently needed for the
greater country. All communities will strive to become balanced
with industry, professional services, agriculture, and residential
areas.

Ryan was warming to his task. While he had
to admit it looked and sounded like Socialism, it had some
important differences that would give it better chances of being
successful if implemented. He was writing it as fast as he could,
in a sort of semi-official verbiage that he felt such a plan
warranted. He was up to four full pages now, and it was starting to
seem like a real article, or document, or something. He had
“solved” employment, housing, and land use problems with
sophisticated computer programs that would analyze and aid everyone
with their distribution of assets. Now he had to deal with the
emotional part: how to determine a person’s class when they entered
the system.

People had a general idea of which class
they belonged to by making constant comparisons with those he lived
near or with, and usually their instincts were correct. If you
tried to cross the invisible border from one class to another,
usually someone made you aware that you were transgressing, that
you did not belong, and that it would be best if you left. This was
true whether a person went up or down, as the lower class had as
many rules to their society as the upper class; and their
enforcement was just as strict.

He remembered the time that Donna and he had
went to visit a dying co-worker of his in the hospital. She was a
crusty old black woman named Emmo Clemmons who had a real spark
before she got sick. They had brought Billy with them as she was
always asking about him after seeing him after he was first born.
The lady’s sister was there to visit as well, and offered to take
Billy down to get ice cream while they visited with Emmo. Donna was
nervous to let her child go off with this unknown lady, but did not
want to say no and seem like she didn’t trust a black stranger with
her baby. Well, the ice cream trip stretched out to an hour, and
the both of them were getting very nervous. Poor old Emmo was
croaking from the bed, “She’ll come back, she didn’t go nowhere,
she’ll bring him back” while both of them stared with worry down
the hallway, looking for any sign of her. Of course, she did come
back, explaining that Billy had pulled her into the gift shop after
the ice cream, and she had been bamboozled into buying him an
over-priced toy to get him out of there. They both were shamed with
embarrassment at assuming this black woman would be attempting to
kidnap their baby, while instead, he had made a nuisance of
himself. The lady stared at them with resentment when she saw their
relieved faces; she could tell what they were thinking. The visit
ended awkwardly as they had been kind of called out for being
racists. Would they have been as nervous if the kind lady had been
white?

With his plan, a person’s family standing or
race would not matter because all evaluations would be performed on
an anonymous profile that was downloaded on a computer in every
household. A person’s heritage would be of no use to them in
getting ahead, other than possibly allowing them to be better
prepared genetically to succeed academically. When the system was
implemented, all people would be judged on their own merits. If the
debate about the levels making up the profiles was long and
arduous, and all felt they had had a reasonable chance to
participate, then acceptance of the conversion might be less
difficult. The problem would most likely come from those who had
accumulated massive wealth, as they would be required to sacrifice
the most, and sacrificing was not something they were accustomed
to. A critical question would be how to get those types of people
to buy into a system where the lowliest of the low could judge what
their standard of living would be. Especially since they, the
"ruling class," had at their disposal the best resources for
fighting such a plan.

They’ll never go for it,
he thought.
Well, just write it down, anyway.
He could explain its
merits later. The way it could be done was through a gradual
divestiture of assets through several successive generations of a
family. The family would have a say as to how its assets would be
broken up, but every person’s will would now have to be approved by
the government to ensure that there was a sufficient divestiture of
assets. The process should be performed in a way that each
successive generation coming up would hardly notice any reduction
in standard of living because it would happen before they were old
enough to realize what a standard of living was. This would
minimize resistance, as the next generation would not miss things
that they had never had. Land, buildings, ownership of companies,
it could all be gradually turned over to the state for reassignment
to other families. But how could he factor in the concept of
everything being free with the value that was currently attached to
practically every material product?

What would have to be done to make this
acceptable would be assigning a value or class to all goods and
services, much like money did now, but with people assigned to
certain products based on their voted lifestyle. They could “trade
up” occasionally if they wanted, that is, getting a special bottle
of Jameson if they gave up two bottles of their regular wine that
week. The huge variety of products should be cut down as well;
people just did not need the huge amount of crap that was currently
produced. The strive to produce premium products for wealthy people
would be replaced with the need for necessities for the lower
classes, and production would gradually be pushed down to those
needs. In other words, a person could go to a supermarket and be
eligible for two baskets of food due to his family’s size. He could
then pick any quantity of products from his class band that would
fill those two baskets. It was possible that at first some items
like lobsters or prime meats would probably have to be rationed,
but eventually supply should equal demand even on these items.

Instead of wasting valuable time determining
the price of everything, the products could just be assigned to a
class of goods that society would determine was appropriate for a
person in the middle class. Less time would be spent cultivating
caviar and more producing baby formula. When he thought of the time
that was spent estimating prices and costs that could be better
spent enjoying life, it made him become even more excited about his
plan because it could actually solve some of the problems that
depressed him so much.
Besides, when you’re not rich yourself,
it’s not hard to talk about disposing of other people’s assets
,
he thought happily.

He was getting sleepy. The small amount of
exercise hitting the balls had tired him,
which does not take
much anymore
, he mused. He was thinking about other, more
pressing needs around the house that he was ignoring. The chair he
has in was a soft, comfortable recliner, and he snuggled down
deeper into it. Before long, he was breathing deeply, fast asleep.
He started to dream.

In his dream, he was an eagle soaring high
above the country, higher than any other bird could fly. He could
see that most of the population was settled on both coasts with
pollution and other signs of overcrowding there and only sporadic
pockets of population elsewhere throughout the country. He could
hear the land moaning, like the overcrowding masses were stepping
on an open wound. He soared down to get a better view of what was
causing the problem. He flew down, wishing he could hold his nose
against all the odors civilization put out; with his heightened
sense of smell he realized how difficult it must be for animals to
live within close proximity to humans. He perched on a tall
building and looked around. He was close to several states’
borders, two of which were mainly agricultural in nature. The land
in those areas seemed to shine; he could smell crops planted, and a
whiff of small rodents to be eaten. Then he looked in the opposite
direction where there was a large city. There were crowded streets,
skyscrapers as far as the eye could see,
people pushing, people
shoving, and the girls who try to look pretty…. Hey, how did
Bachman Turner Overdrive
get in here
, he wondered. He flew
down for a closer look.

He saw a scuffle in an alley, and his bird
instinct told him a fatality might come of it, which could provide
him with an easy meal. He settled on a fire escape and watched the
action unfold. It was apparently some type of gang dispute because
the two youths beating the other wore red bandannas, while the
other wore blue. They were shouting and cursing at each other as
they landed awkward blows. One thing that had happened with the
advent of cheap guns was that gangs had lost their ability to fist
fight. The resulting scrap below looked like something out of The
Three Stooges, with little real damage being inflicted. It was
beginning to look like there would be no casualties out of this
action so he was getting ready to fly away when a new person
entered the alley. Unlike the others he wore no bandanna, but a
snap-brim fedora, black sunglasses, and a black leather jacket. He
moved deliberately, not excited by the scuffle, but moving
purposefully toward it. Around twenty feet from the heavily
breathing men, he hid behind an old door and pulled a rod from
inside his coat. He propped his elbows on the frame of the door,
and stuck the rod through its broken window. There were two quick
puffs of smoke, and one of the three dropped like a rock. He was
aiming at the other two when one of them threw something at him,
hitting him in the head. The dark man’s shot went wide. Someone
must have called the cops because sirens could be heard, and all
three took off. Before he left, the dark man looked up at Ryan
where he was perched and said with a wicked grin, “I’m coming for
you.”

“Dad! Dad, wake up! Eww, you’re sweating!”
his son said, shaking him. Ryan looked around. He was gripping the
arms of the chair tightly, his body rebelling against the terror
his mind had inflicted. He had had dreams before where he had been
chased, but this one seemed more real than the others. He wondered
whether the man getting shot had any significance. He guessed that
it did not; he was not the type to come to a violent end. Who would
want to do him in? He was a rather inoffensive civil servant. But
maybe all his thoughts about society’s problems had driven his
subconscious toward these thoughts of random violence. Could his
utopia cure the Dark Man? Or, the Horror Man from his past? He
thought about The Borg from
Star Trek
and their relentless
assimilation. Maybe some things were impossible to change.

He peeled himself from the chair, which was
indeed damp from sweat. He hoped Kathy didn’t see that. She had a
specific pet-peeve against the desecration of household goods. She
had resigned herself to the kids not being able to treat things
with respect but became exasperated when he contributed to the
problem. He went out to the kitchen to see how dinner was
coming.

She was in front of the stove when he came
in. He stole up behind her and wrapped his muscular arms around her
chest. She tilted her head back to receive his kiss, which usually
went along with this gambit.
Good
, he thought,
she
apparently isn’t upset about my new idea
. He was much larger
than she was, and she fit comfortably in his arms.

“What do you want?” she asked contentedly.
He was nuzzling her neck, which could lead to nothing or a major
event, depending on who was in the house and how long it had been
since their last encounter.

Ryan gave her his theory on sexual
relations. “The most men could last without sex was about
seventy-two hours, whereas most women could last seventy-two
days.”

Kathy smiled a little and said, “That’s not
true, but it is true that I don’t need to squeeze as much as you
do. It does make it easy for me that whenever the mood does strike
me, you’re pretty much ready to go. I swear, you could have sex in
a phone booth in the middle of Siberia.”

Ryan smiled and winked. He did have a hard
time keeping his hands off her. “Yeah, well, the phone’s ringing.
You gonna answer?” he teased, responding to her through a mouthful
of neck.

“Hmm,” she half-purred, half-laughed. He was
starting to work his hand down to her nether regions, but there
were children nearby. While she believed in showing the children a
good example of affection for one another, it had to be kept
appropriately “G rated” for the youngsters’ viewing.

“Stop,” she said with amusement in her
voice, and pushed his hand away.

“Later?” he asked, changing his grip on her
and making her squirm some more.

“Maybe, if you’re good—STOP! Now knock it
off!” she said, her voice rising as he had worked his hand down her
panties to her backside. She cracked at his hand with a big spoon
she was holding, but he had already darted out of range, happy with
having made a pest of himself and laying the groundwork for a play
later that night.

Kathy glanced curiously at his shirt, which
was still damp from sweating in the chair. “Why are you sweating?”
she asked.

“I dunno. Bad dream, I guess”, he said as he
pulled a bag of potato chips out of the cabinet and grabbed the
newspaper to read while waiting for dinner.

“About what?”

“Huh…oh, nothing. Just being an eagle and
watching some guy get shot. No big deal,” he said
disinterestedly.

“Really?” she asked, turning from the stove.
“I had a dream, too, that you were in trouble. It was like right in
front of me, but I couldn’t do anything to help you. It was awful,”
she said with a shudder.