Dawn of the Unthinkable (9 page)

“Hmph, are you sure it wasn’t you that was
chasing me in my dream?” he asked bemused. After all, he had not
gotten a full look at the dark man’s face; it could have been a
woman. Who knew with dreams?

“No, it wasn’t me. Not that I haven’t had an
urge to do you harm at times.” She smiled, but it was quickly
replaced by a concerned look. “I couldn’t see where the trouble was
coming from because whatever it was, was trying to hide itself, but
it was pretty serious. I think you might have even died,” she said,
her voice trailing off. As much as she might tease him, any thought
of having to live without him was horrifying. She nestled into his
arms again.

“Well, I’m still here and plan on being
around for quite a while, so you can put your dreams of getting
your hands on my vast estate and running off with some other guy
away. Remember a good man is hard to find.”

In answer, she ventured a quick look to make
sure the kids were otherwise occupied and reached down to his
crotch for a little squeeze, saying, “No, it’s ‘A hard man is good
to find.’”

He laughed, gave her a quick kiss, and left
the kitchen.

She turned back to her cooking. She usually
didn’t remember dreams for long, either, and probably wouldn’t have
remembered this one if he had not have said anything. It was
curious that they should have the same type of dream so close in
time to each other, but this wasn’t the first time that they had
had some type of telepathy thing going. It was probably more due to
circumstance than any mental bond, she realized, but it was nice to
think that there were times when they could communicate without
talking. God knew there had been enough times when they were
talking (yelling, actually) and not communicating at all. Now, they
were having similar dreams? Amazing.

Ryan had turned his attention to the
newspaper, which had an amusing little write-up about some senator
getting his pompadour gummed up. He was glad to see that the guy
wasn’t hurt and wondered about his assailant. She had the guts to
make her views known, even if her method of delivery was way off
base. How did people get the courage to come forward and say,
“There’s a better way to do things!” Especially since out of a
world with billions of humans, only a small handful really had the
power to mold and shape public opinion. The problem was the people
who had that power usually used it to gain
more
power, by
conceiving ways to separate the less intelligent from their money.
And the ultimate problem was that the decision-making was left to
too small a group that they could not possibly reflect the choice
of the majority of the people. While the old system of
representation worked fine when people were spread throughout the
country and the capitol was a three-day horse ride away, it was now
time for an update. With global communications becoming more
sophisticated, there was no longer a need to have only certain
people vote for laws. Everyone could do it, and there would be no
need to have lobbyists or special interests influencing the
outcome.

His mind drifted back to his article. He had
left off thinking about asset divestiture and how to persuade the
rich to join such a program. It was likely that no amount of civic
spirit could move someone who had acquired a large amount of land,
housing, and goods to voluntarily give them away. He was not that
naïve. No, something like that would take legislation, vast
legislation. People had tried before, and ideas like the New Deal
and The Great Society had come and went without ever really curing
the problems they set out to solve. He wondered if behind closed
doors the idea of a moneyless society had ever been put forward. If
so, how had it been received? Had its sponsor been branded a
lunatic? It was possible it had happened; he probably would never
know. But whether it had or not, it shouldn’t stop him from
suggesting it. After all, if it never gets any farther than these
sheets of paper, he’d still feel better for having tried.

Many nations created a constitution to deal
with chaos after a revolution or civil war. His system would allow
people to plan a transition to a new way of life while things were
going relatively well. Rational thought could be put into how to
ease the pain and difficulties of changing, and pitfalls could be
avoided to a certain degree. Instead of having to field-test such a
system in real time, you could set up simulations that would show
where the problems were and how to solve them. But he kept coming
back to how to overcome the resistance of the “haves” to this
system, as his article would have no validity if it could not show
how to implement it.

The news was on the TV, and the breaking
story was that a cop had been gunned down by a bank robber trying
to make an escape after a heist. Money had been the indirect cause
of yet another death, and gun lobbyists got rich by funding
candidates who always voted for further deregulation.
There has
to be a better way
, he thought.

Kathy called them all to dinner. Her simple
macaroni and cheese smelled wonderful, and while fattening, was a
two-serving meal for him. The boys came bounding in, yelling at
each other over some nonsense. Ashley was starting to walk, and
pulled at her mom to be lifted up. A normal family supper in a
middle class family.
This is the better way
, he thought.

The wealthy would have to be shown that
benefiting everyone was better than benefiting a few. This went
against the current human nature of survival of the fittest, but it
was an evolution that man should make. If they could be shown that
the system would not deprive them of their wealth in their lifetime
but would be a divestment of their physical property after they
died and that they would have a say in the distribution, they might
buy it. If not, the law of Eminent Domain could be judiciously
enforced. The government in the past had seized assets in times of
emergency, or even when the good of the nation was determined to be
more important than a person’s individual needs. This would be a
last resort, however, as the courts would be available to
adjudicate disputes over divestiture.

Another selling point to wealthy people
would be less worrying about security. Right now, the wealthy were
in a situation that when they acquired more than their fair share
of assets, they had to spend the rest of their time jealously
guarding those assets, as well as themselves, as they became
inviting targets for crime. His system would cause the interest in
that type of crime to diminish, as desperation would be minimized.
But it would still be hard to convince people who had a taste for
life’s finer things to scale back their lifestyle. Could an appeal
to their vanity work? Could they be approached with the thought
that their intellects were needed for think tanks that would
explore the idea of space travel and colonization, which was a goal
that should probably be on more people’s minds? Would they have a
net thrown over him for asking?

In a practical sense, it would be a problem
if he were institutionalized for speaking heresy. It would be hard
to earn a living from inside an institution, harder still to be
taken seriously. But he thought of the star ships that travelled
through space in the shows and how they could have possibly been
built. Currently, the nations of the world had a hard time building
a comparatively unsophisticated space station due to one or more
nations having financial difficulties. But with each generation of
the world loading more people into the population, he was convinced
that at some point eventually the Earth would be virtually
uninhabitable. So while current leaders gave short shrift to space
exploration, he was convinced that the future generations had to
lay the groundwork for getting off this planet. And the only way
that was going to happen, in his opinion, was to take everyone’s
mind off of money and put it into thought.

Billy took a forkful of macaroni and shot it
across the table, hitting Scott right below his eye. Scott laughed,
saying, “You’re a hoser. Dad, tell him to stop it.” He threw a roll
at his step-brother.

Ryan had been lost in thought but snapped to
attention when Kathy barked at him to put an end to the
skirmish.

Ryan said with all the menace he could
muster, “All right, that’s enough. The both of you knock it
off!”

The boys looked a little scared, as they
were not sure whether he was really going to blow or not. But then
Ashley grabbed a fistful of the noodles and smeared them on the
back of her father’s hand.

She laughed and laughed, and they all joined
her.

It was a good moment.

Brian Willows was late and as his partner
Joe Riven constantly reminded him, time is money; so he was losing
ground just by standing there. He was standing in line at Beano
Supremo, one of the many coffee chains that had sprung up like
weeds recently. With people’s need for caffeine being what it was,
it did not seem like there would ever be a glut of these stores,
but there were five within a two-block radius of where he was. Even
with that many, there were always long lines in the morning, which
jammed him up. He cursed his inability to get up earlier, but with
amount of money he was pulling down, he had a hard time finding
enough hours in the day to spend it all. Ahh, to be young and in
love with….

Wall Street! He still couldn’t believe he
was here. He had come as a youth on a class trip and had been
fascinated with the swarm of activity going on the floor. It seemed
like a beehive, but he doubted bees ever yelled and cursed at each
other the way these people did. Of course, that was the part that
he wanted to get involved with as he was a mixer and joiner by
nature. At that time, little did he know then that people
controlling vast sums of money and making vast sums as he watched
were creating all the activity he witnessed.

His goal as a youth became to be one of
those traders and he set about learning all that he could about the
markets. While he wasn’t an exceptionally bright kid, he had the
drive to push himself, and before long, he knew his “puts” from his
“calls”, his futures, and all the other little daily doubles and
trifectas that made up the big board’s gambles. Now in his third
year as a broker, he was well on his way to being “financially
secure”, and maybe even settling down with a family. It would be
hard to give up the nightlife, though. He had found out why the
song called New York “the city that never sleeps”—the bars were
open forever. A young guy with some dough and a line could find
indoor sports to keep him awake till the wee hours.

Hence the need for gallons of coffee. What
with the overnight Japanese markets having such a huge effect on
United States’ trading lately, one had to hit the ground running in
the morning. His latest playmate had kept him hopping until three,
so he was gassed. A large cup of “El Jolto” should help; it
supposedly had kicked a mule to death back in the old country. He
was third in line, and trying to signal the poke up front of him
impatient with the amount of time of his transaction was taking
when his phone rang. He suspected it was his fellow trader, Joe
Riven, who always beating him into the office.
I’ll be there
early someday, too
, he thought,
once I no longer have a
life
. The thoughts of last night’s pleasures started to creep
into his mind, and he shook his head to get them out. “Concentrate,
boy,” he reminded himself as he reached into his pocket for his
cell phone.

“Hey,” Riven answered.

“’Morning, dude. How’s things at the
ranch?”

“It would be a lot better if I didn’t have
to do everything myself. Where the hell are you?” Riven answered,
half seriously. He knew his friend had social matters to attend to,
and as he was recently married, he no longer was a player.

“I’m sorry. There was a late surge in the
market that had to be interfaced aggressively in order to avoid the
potential downside of unnecessary distractions.” Riven snickered at
the man-speak that implied that he had to get laid in order to not
have his attention wander during the day.

“All right, all right, I don’t need the
instant replay. I just wanted to see what your agenda for the day,”
trying to cut him off from any more humorous ditties about his
active sex life. Married guys rarely wanted to hear about single
guy’s “babe-of-the-week” stories. “Did you see what Hong Kong did
overnight?” Riven asked. “You’ve got some excess cash from
yesterday. What are you gonna do?”

“Don’t know. What’s CNN say?” Willows asked,
as he smashed the phone against his ear and tried to fish money out
of his pocket for the coffee.

“CNN’s pretty cheery; CNBC’s gloomier. Geez,
Hong Kong’s in the basement. Can the Dow drop another five hundred
today?”

“Maybe it’ll go up. God knows I did last
night,” slipping in another comment about his night, liking to
torture his buddy.

“All right, goddammit, enough already,”
Riven said menacingly, trying to keep the conversation on
track.

“Oh, sorry, boss, uh…maybe it’s a good time
to buy, get a bargain,” Willows said, paying for his coffee and
pushing toward the door. He had trained himself to drink it black,
which saved time and mess, fussing with accoutrements, and near
gave him a slap in the face for wake-up quality.

“It could tank. We could get killed.” Riven
displayed his cautious side.

“Stop worrying. This is the big game, and
we’ve been training. We’re professionals. We read the papers. We
watch
Wall Street Week.
” With just a little more research,
they could find out the real deal and make a lot more money. If he
could learn so could anybody.

“Don’t want to do anything stupid, like that
colorization stock a few years ago. Thought people would like
Casablanca
in color. What a disaster,” Riven moaned,
recalling one of his earliest deals.