In Desperate Times
© 1997 Andrew S. Fuller
Of living in fear, they had simply grown weary. As people, as families, as countries. So they worked at getting rid of the fear by getting busy, and, for the first time in their history — keeping busy. A little busier each year, because the elimination of fear on a global scale was not an overnight task. They were getting their act together, as it were. And each successive year, the human race outdid itself more extraordinarily than the previous.
As no other had been, it was an historic year of human accomplishment. Within that year, the last of the nuclear weapons were dismantled and launched into the sun, with an allotted six uranium wedges recycled for use in the fusion drive of the spacecraft Clarke in the first World Space Program effort — the pioneering manned mission to Jupiter. That year also saw the adoption of the World Constitution, and the prompt ratification of the 29th and 30th Amendments, repealing the original 2nd and 21st (outlawing firearms and reinstating prohibition respectively). The proposed 31st Amendment was a “shoe in” to pass within the next year, granting voting rights to virtual persons — a long overdue inalienable right to a race who had come a long way since their genesis at the Hollywood movie special effects studios. Solar-powered vehicles experienced a slight decrease (to 94 percent of total automobile sales), but that retro-fad was guaranteed to extinguish itself soon as antique dealers hoarded their prized gasoline collectibles and outdated parts in garage museums. After nearly a decade of oblivion, the printed book was back from the dead, and, for the first time since the mass marketing of the VCR, more people were reading the words, and, in general, just plain paying attention. The last of the corporations (formerly known as Microsoft) donated its entire resources to the last signing member of the Global Unification of Nations Agreement (formerly known as Myanmar), and immediately began transfer of all human resources, computer hardware & networking systems, rather plush company vehicles & vending machines, and ergonomically correct office furniture & peripherals. The only breakthrough that would have added anything more significant to that year’s accomplishments would have been the cure for the AIDS epidemic — but everyone had already forgotten the disease ever existed, thanks to the breakthrough of the owl urine vaccine five years previous.
Yes, many common practices of 20th century human existence had become absolute antiquities, dismissed in the onslaught of some new exponential form of progress. Disappeared from the human planet were practices including, but not limited to: terrorism, political scandal, rush fees, child abuse, divorce, smoking, dictatorships, destructive drug use, junk mail, rape, waiting in line, borders, toxic dumping, censorship, game shows, war, and (most) venereal disease(s). All in the past. All solved. All cured. All extinct. All obsolete. Like bloodletting, the slide rule, the compact disc.
In all their progress, they forgot their original goal. The result, in fact, was very similar to the original plan. But they weren’t too sure anymore. Of the plan. Of the goal. Of themselves.
A note: even progress cannot prevent boredom. (This may or may not be pertinent to their particular situation.)
They took a day off from solving all the problems, and looked around, and listened carefully to the peace going on, and felt around in the calm, warm light they had created without too much thoroughly exhausting effort —
And they became slightly worried. Which worried them more.
Something was missing.
So they searched everywhere. They asked around. No one could come up with the answer. They got nervous.
They had forgotten how to be afraid.
So, the next year, they sought him out.
They didn’t have to intercept him on the bike trail, lie in wait behind one of hundreds of bushes on the 7.2 mile route, day after day, for him to pass — but just the right day and timing when no one else was within visual range of the shaded curve — so they could squeeze the trigger and let fly the phfffp! of the poofy feather-backed rhino tranquilizer dart into his neck at just the right second so he would ride straight off the asphalt and continue over the grass into bush cluster 163sub-c, and into the hands of Team Beta before his unconsciousness toppled the bike and he so much as skinned his knee.
They didn’t have to come to his bedroom at night and put duct tape over his mouth before he woke. And hold his violently struggling limbs while the syringe emptied into his thigh. And wait for him to go limp. And take him in a dark van, along dark roads, to someplace underground (dark) and far away. And make him sit in a room for hoursweeksmonths on a three-legged stool under a single 100-watt bulb in a tiny room with a looped recording of the sound of dripping water playing out of THX surround-sound speakers. And come in and beat him with telephone books if he so much as closed his eyes or nodded his head or leaned in the slightest bit in any direction.
They didn’t have to entice an old but unrequited love of his to call him and ask him out (which he never did) for a beer (which he never drank) and a long evening of staring into his eyes and smiling and praising everything he said, and full, almost impossible (but thoroughly convincing) attention to every detail of his life since (which wasn’t much), and practically hypnotize him with small talk and an overt (though irresistible) seductive tone to her voice and body language, which all promised for an even longer evening ahead, so he would find himself, just minutes after last call, trembling with a giddy nervousness (and only two sips of beer in his belly) fitting the key into his passenger-side door, almost dropping the keys, feeling all mixed up inside (to say the least), but just smelling her standing next to him, until they came out of the shadows and grabbed him.
They didn’t have to hack the artificial intelligence of the automated computer pilot, sending the airliner into a vicious nose-dive crash onto a specific suburban block of a particular residential district, instantly killing the 420 passengers and an approximately 32.6 (give or take a few) resident families of the neighborhood area, but slashing the flaming debris down through his apartment with such calculated precision and at just the right point in time when he was on the exact side of the couch, that only certain parts of his body were crushed, leaving his brain alive minutes enough for the special team to slip in amidst the confusion of emergency vehicles and screams and wailing, and toss the still-warm and functional organ in a cylinder of pink fluid that would sustain him.
They didn’t have to take his sister and send him photos every day for a week of the things they did to her, and finally bring him a finger of hers. Until he screamed and wept and went with them.
They didn’t have to wipe out his bank account. Or fill his mouth with spiders. Or pop his car tires every week for a year. Or staple his cat to his front door. Or hang him upside down and pour water up his nose while making paper cuts under his fingernails. Or burn his books. Or drag him behind horses through town in his underpants with skulls on them. Or slip a synthetic mutation of the Ebola strain into his milkshake. They did not have to hold him by his ankles from the observation window of the former state capitol building until he agreed to their demands just from the blood pressure in his face and not necessarily the fear of being pulped on the marble sidewalk below. (Note: in Lincoln, Nebraska, or anywhere else, 14 floors is high enough to be persuasive, even if not entirely impressive.)
They did not have to.
They asked him first, figuring he would say no. They asked as a matter of protocol, figuring no one would want to help them do such a thing as they wanted to do. They asked, figuring they needed some time to catch up with him, this anachronism that he was, as they prepped their teams with old maneuvers, figuring they’d have to get rough. They asked, figuring they were a little soft.
And he came to them.
So astonished that he would cooperate at all, they agreed immediately to his terms. Which were: he wouldn’t give up his day job. He liked selling sunglasses at the mall pagoda. He made himself available to work for them part-time.
As though he didn’t think much of his gift. His incredible, unique, unstoppable gift.
He came to them three nights a week, and one weekend a month.
And he taught them Fear.
