day 20 of 30

NanoWriMo2005
J E D Cline
Title: “The Ark of 1984’s Future”
day 20 of 30

It was Guardiano’s turn to be talkative after the next weekly meeting of the Leroy Brown Society. I tell you, he said, that there is something wrong going on. Two meetings several of the lead members have been missing from the meeting, and he had heard comments in the crowd about several other strong members who have not been at the meetings either. One meeting, maybe they are out on a secret operation, even though normally a point was made to not do them when it would overlap the weekly meeting, which was a time of importance for those whose special daring and power were making sure that the forces of waywardism were held at bay.

Also, Guardiano continued, there is an uneasiness generally among the members there. Something is going on, what is it? It is essential to follow the traditional rituals, otherwise chaos will begin to encroach. We are the finest of humanity, and set the example for all others to follow, maintaining order and well being for all.

Rationallo was only half listening; he had heard it all before, over and over again. Besides, he knew what the problem was, at least about the people not showing up at the weekly meetings. Although those missing were among the most impressive of them all, and that did worry him a bit. He knew it had been those 3Musketeers who had somehow disposed of the group’s commando team; and apparently it had been an operation conducted by the finest. That was impressive. And how to prevent it from happening again was his interest. And he could not tell his friend any of it, such as was the society’s rules of secrecy.

Surely secrecy had been maintained for the operation, standard procedures. Perhaps a bit too hasty, due to the irritation probably evident in Rationallo’s voice when he gave the command to do it. Maybe that was part of it, the team was moving too fast, and too suddenly. In the past, they had done similar operations without a problem, many times, however. And the command link he had used to define the mission to kidnap the doctor and family and make them horrifying examples to bring the 3Musketeers staff more in compliance with Tanfl’s leadership.

Guardiano broke into his thoughts. It is the 3Musketeers wayward ways, he proclaimed, that was defying traditions of all kinds. That was the problem, it was rot at the core, and needed to be removed.

Yes, Rationallo agreed, both Tanfl and 3Musketeers corporations need to play by the same rules, or they are not playing the same game, and that does not make sense, to not play the same game.

But then he mused to himself, that despite lack of rigid chains of command, the 3Musketeer people somehow still managed to achieve incredible things. He was quite content to aspire only to sell more sporty clothing at his chain of department stores, year after year, the best of the best. But meanwhile the 3Musketeers, had fumbled their way to be creating a huge space transportation structure and power plants in GEO, more and more. They had needed the money and engineering talent to really make it happen, and so Tanfl had gotten in on the action, and of course had to direct it all, if it was their money on the line. And despite it all, the 3Musketeers people got the cooperation of their people without the hidden terrorism equivalent of Tanfl’s Leroy Brown Society. Now that was impressive. How did they do it? How do they enforce compliance among their employees, their underlings?


Well, it was clear that it was the lack of solid discipline that made much of the difference between the wealth and power of Tanfl people, as compared to the multitudes of struggling 3Musketeers people. And since Tanfl money and engineering expertise that were being invested into the 3Musketeers space carousel escalator applications project, correct discipline had to be maintained. It was clear that a severe breach of discipline had been made, and 3Musketeers would have to be adequately disciplined correctively. But, wasn’t that what was ongoing when the current loss happened? The perfect disciplinary terrorization by use of the sacrifice of the offending doctor, and his loved ones, at a time when they would have the attention of the 3Musketeers corporate staff, had not yet been achieved, and the Leroy Brown society had suffered severe loss of some of its highest members in the activity. It would take an adequate disciplinary action to set this all right, indeed.

The tradition of burglarizing the membership files of the opponent party was long a key part of Tanfl’s predecessors traditions. Establishing a record of who voted against them, and maintaining that record available to all one’s own corporations, enabled them to not provide employment to those nonmembers, or if already employed, to have them no longer get raises like their coworkers were getting; it was a most effective technique, never mentioned but increasingly clear to people which side they needed to be on to succeed in life. Tanfl Political Corporation had always maintained their records of themselves, and to a less detailed extent the 3Musketeers Political Corporation’s people’s records. Birth and death records had maintained that flow; people were born into one party or the other since then. Now Tanfl needed more detailed data about the intimate daily lives of all 3Musketeer people, so in the finest tradition, it was time to stage a burglary on 3Musketeers own personnel files. And in the process, they likely would stumble into info about the whereabouts of the offending doctor. Things would be set right again, once adequate knowledge was acquired.