day 18 of 30

NanoWriMo2005
J E D Cline
Title: “The Ark of 1984’s Future”
day 18 of 30

Back on Earth again, Rationallo methodically searched for what went wrong with the “lesson” he was teaching the 3Musketeers corporate staff. The secret romps of the Leroy Brown Society were hosted by the government, which had learned to live in fear of the society, too. And so there was no record of the activity having taken place. But Rationallo found that there were consistently an average of two security police vehicles not returning each day to their garage; also there were several Tanfl security staff that had not reported to work since then, and had not called in sick. He looked into their records, yes, they were among the most competent and efficiently brutal of the Society, too, and thus likely to have conducted the mission to kidnap the doctor and his family. Yet there was no record of a visit by Tanfl security vehicles to the 3Musketeers corporate headquarters. He set the long range surveillance cameras to watch the doctor’s house, and found that there were no occupants there, nor infrared signatures of anyone there in recent times. So there had been a hit made, yet all had then vanished afterward. But he could find no clues after that.

He indulged in a work break, which was for him a virtual experience game where he was Turl, the head of security over the Earth after it was conquered, in the book “Battlefield Earth.” He had the book made into a virtual presence game, in which he could enter the story at any point, and experience it almost as if it was real, and then modify it a bit from the original story, experiencing its results almost as if a real world experience. Turl was his ideal, his model of perfection. How would Turl deal with this scenario?

This was a mystery, and he loved mysteries. Perhaps that was the only thing he loved. Surely not his wives, he had no love for them, but efficiently preened around them to excite them sexually, paid for their upkeep, and got them fertilized at calibrated intervals. There were going to be lots more of Rationallo genes in the next generation. It was a mark of his success that there was no one he loved such that it altered his methodical efficiency in achieving Tanfl goals. No one’s life had any meaning for him except to use their self-preservation urge to leverage them to do his demands. Normally there was no problem, as he had spent his lifetime ensuring that all others complied, any who had even been slow in complying had suffered “accidental” extreme lethal hardship in public view, and so all had learned that there was no choice but to immediately obey Rationallo. As far as he could tell, no one in Tanfl could even think of disobeying him anymore. Yet, here was this mystery. He smiled to himself, this was the first interesting thing that had happened to him in years.

It logically was caused by that Idealiana wench, but she had been on the Moon at the time. There surely was connection with Artesiana, yet she was on SpaceDock1 at the time. There had been no monitored communications from either of those locations back to Earth surface 3Musketeer corporate headquarters. So the communications channel and the physical means to carry out the physical part, would all be powerful new tools for him when he ferreted them out and made them his own. He flexed his biceps muscles looking into the office mirror, were they not quite perfect for posing for clothing ads? That posing was a requirement for Tanfl superior people, they must be perfect physically and pose for clothing ads to be admired by millions of people thereby, and subtly getting into their brains thereby, especially the ones that bought those particular clothes he had modeled for the ads. That was part of his power. He headed off to the corporate gym to get those muscles tweaked back to perfection shape.

In the gym, he first lay down in a device that grasped his hands and feet, applied neurostimulation pulses to quiver his muscles, and the machine manipulated his body through all ranges of motion, while mentally he dozed off. It then aroused him after his physique was exercised to the desired degree. He then went to the next part of the gym, where he engaged in a ritual martial arts dance of violent conflict with others. Those others were robotic computer controlled mannequins, that did not mind when he kicked their head off to send it flying against the wall, or tore someone’s arm off and bashed the mannequin with it. This was all both physical and psychological tune-up for him. All the pieces of those mannequins would later be put back together again good as new for the next round of gym use. It was all coldly efficient, almost boring, yet it provided the vigor that Rationallo needed for a tune-up, relaxation from the ongoing office duties.

Back in his office, he felt refreshed, and looked at the roster of job duties for him. Add up the profits made by each of the Tanfl corporations, and initiate publication of that sum. He got it done in 15 minutes, a good day’s work. Then he tuned in to various security monitors surveying his immediate staff. One secretary was showing signs of deteriorating efficiency; not much, but apparent as compared to her baseline performance record. Her heart rate was consistently up, and distraction was showing in her responses to the activities assigned to her. He popped into her terminal monitor, interrupting her work briefly. How were things with her, he inquired of her slightly surprised image. She said they were fine, no problem. He sent a disciplinary shock to her workstation, and when she had stopped jumping, he asked her again. This time she was rattled enough to blurt out that her husband had left a couple of nights ago suddenly and had not returned since; it had been a secret mission, and so she could not inquire about it. Rationallo cut the communication link; here was more data on the mystery, yes.

He now knew the identity of one of the operators on that mission. He accessed the man’s records, found the code for the location implant in him, and triumphantly activated its location signal.

It was in the sludge of the digestion vat.


Rationallo was thinking that he was finding himself staring thoughtfully too many times lately.

He smiled to himself, It appears that the 3Musketeers bunch were begining to use tactics like his own. Good. When everybody is playing the same kind of game, it is easier to manage the game. And when he conquered them, those 3Musketeers, at last, they would already be good troops, using the same techniques.

But then, who would the opponent be? There had to be an opponent, or there would be no need for readiness for assault. And that was unthinkable to him. If there were no foe, how would he rally the people together under him to assault the foe?

The usual chat with his buddy Guardiano was a time to discuss these heavy things outloud. They both had noted that there were a few faces missing from the platform at the weekly Leroy Brown Society meeting. If it was a beginning trend, it had to be stopped immediately.

But when Guardiano heard about Rationallo’s command to kidnap the 3Musketeers doctor and his family to use as examples to terrorize the 3Musketeers corporate staff at their breakfast, he reacted strongly. We need that space carousel escalator of theirs up and running full capacity to get the masses of people to abandon their property on earthsurface, before the takeover plan can be fully implemented. If the assault on the 3Musketeers corporate staff’s psychlogy had been completed, it would be a major setback for Tanfl’s long range goals. Better now to be glad it failed and to bury the whole problem, Guardiano advised.