Tellus, A Story (1)
That Saturday morning Ken Johnson was living out his life doing his usual weekend routine. He left the warmth of his bed an hour later than he would have on a work day and made coffee. He went out for a Saturday paper and picked up the Sunday paper as well. Back at home he sipped coffee as he read the comics with the television turned on. There were the usual cartoon super heroes jetting around doing good deeds. He noticed this new strain of strange cartoons that featured psycho imbecilic zombies. That bothered him somewhat, cartoons did not seem as innocent as when he was a kid. On the other hand every other cartoon show was baby this and baby that. Everything from baby rodents and amphibians to baby super heroes. It looked like cuteness was taking over. ‘What were these modern kids going to grow up into?’ he wondered. ‘Monstrous babies?’ He switched to the educational channel. There was an old show on about Dr Setlaw but he left it on anyway, at least there were no commercials on this channel. “Dr Setlaw discovered the theory of broadcast electricity before the turn of the century,” the announcer on the TV show lectured. To Ken this show was not only old but elementary. He left it on while he went into the kitchen to make some oatmeal to eat while he read the rest of the newspaper. The TV droned on in the background. “At first broadcast electricity was used to turn simple electric motors but now it runs virtually everything.” Ken remembered that he had a strange dream last night. “People could use free nonpolluting electric heat with electricity harnessed from the earth’s magnetic field.” In his dream he had seen different cultures were in various stages of evolution. “A controversial concentrated energy beam is being worked on to navigate space ships to the outer planets.” One culture in his dream was primitive and still used steam power, they were rather poor and unsophisticated. Another culture was burning their forests, using fossil fuels and rapidly destroying the environment as well as polluting the planet. They were in a lot of trouble. Ken was glad his culture was opting for electric autos and street cars and clean air. “There are plans are to put a base on the moon and mine metal to make energy transmitters that use the suns power.” He listened to the show for a moment, he had forgotten this part. “Further plans call for the use of relay transmitters for reaching outer planets and terraforming them, that is to change the atmosphere gradually to make, say Mars, livable.” Ken took his oatmeal into the living room and sat down in his easy chair thinking about how civilization had seemed to progress so much and yet there were still starving people and warring nations and opposing religions. Was it the petty egos of politicians that kept the world in turmoil? After all, politicians are not economists or scientists, they see things in political terms and prefer political solutions over other decisions. Was it the fault of the selfish majority? People voted for the politicians and they always seemed to vote for the most conservative and sadomasochistic ones that came along, rich men who were out of touch with the needy. Maybe human nature was mentally ill, passive aggressive or schizophrenic. Too many demands pulled the people of the world in to many directions. People were expected to be good but the nature of reality forced them to fight for what they needed and to hold onto it tenaciously. It was economic pressures and opposing customs that made different people appear to be bad to others. People seemed to have the need to fight over territory and that would always cause trouble. Even a group of chimpanzees ritualistically defend their turf each morning by going to the edge of their territory to scream at the neighboring group of chimpanzees. “This is our side, stay away,” screams one group. “This is our side, stay away,” screams the other group. The phone rang; Ken looked at it and wondered who could be calling at this time of the morning. “Setlaw practically invented the modern electric world as we know it when he discovered alternating current,” the TV announcer was going on. Ken turned off the sound of the TV with the remote control. The phone rang again as he picked it up. “Hello?” he said into it. “Ken? That you?” “Yeah Dave, who else would be here?” It was his brother and he sounded very drunk. “They are brain washing people,” Dave slurred into the phone. “Fine thing to get wasted first thing in the morning, what does Janie have to say about it?” “She ain’t here.” Ken could practically see Dave’s crooked grin. “Been up all night worrying bout what they’re doing.” Suddenly alerted, Ken started pacing on the worn white rug in his living room. “Look maybe you shouldn’t talk about this on the phone.” If his brother was going to start babbling secrets over the phone system he might be putting his government position in jeopardy. “I don’t care about that, I know too much, I can’t take anymore.” Ken resented having his day off disturbed like this, for someone who lived alone he did not seem to have much privacy. “Take anymore of what? I never know what you’re talking about. You never explain, you just say its secret.” “Yeah? Want to know a secret?” “No.” “You’re a smart boy Kenny despite what they say about you, that’s why I like you.” Ken rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Thanks, I think,” he said resignedly. His brother was always mocking him, he hated to be called Kenny, it reminded him of bad days in his childhood. “Maybe you can figure this out.” “Figure what out?” Ken asked even though he did not want to know since Dave was not making sense in his state of drunken paranoia. “People are being rain washed, people are being killed and there is no reason for it except politics.” “So what else is new? I’m going to hang up now, call me back when you are straight.” “Oh come on now Ken, hear me out. It started with the assassination of President Carrady, the people who planned that are still robbing the country blind.” Ken was getting frustrated, “Who is robbing the country?” “The Crats, of course.” The Crats was Dave’s shortening of aristocrats, as opposed to the people he called the Publicans, meaning those people who argued politics in bars. “Not only are they stealing the nation’s budget and creating the largest debt in history but they will do anything to stop any exposure of their plans. They’ve done their won people in with unnecessary brain operations and they have machines that can give people a heart attack that looks natural. They split personalities off of some people and program them to create political mayhem for the opposition. They create phony revolutionary groups to discredit any real political dissent and it all goes under the guise of internal security. It’s awful, you wouldn’t believe it.” “I am finding it hard to believe right now.” “They’ve got computers that break people down into ten thousand types of personalities so they can figure out anybodies psychology...” The phone went dead and Ken’s blood went cold. He was half expecting to hear the tread of heavy boots at the door of his apartment. He hung up the phone and wondered if the door was being kicked in at the other end of the phone line. He called his brother back; the phone rang and was picked up immediately. “Oh hi, you still there?” asked Ken warily. “Yeah, I’m here,” Dave answered, sounding sober. “We must have got cut off or something.” “I don’t know, maybe that was a coincidence or maybe it was a warning. I don’t want to talk about this on the phone anymore.” “Ok Dave, I’ll see you in awhile, we can talk later.” “Bye.” Ken went back to his oatmeal and entertainments but in the back of his mind he wondered what his brother’s job had gotten him into now. That morning Bill Wright was puttering around in his laboratory retreat. There were bits of material here and there, books were scattered around the room, clothes were dropped on the floor and food and garbage were set at random. Bill felt more comfortable like that in his private quarters. Instead of putting things away in an orderly fashion he set them aside in a random fashion. He had his reasons for this, it made it his space and no one else’s. He called it his antifascism statement, as opposed to rigidly putting everything in its place. He preferred the memory system to an ordered system. He liked to find things where he left them, it felt more organic to him. This habit had cost him some credibility at times with his students and the established members of his profession. Their anal tendencies were so strong it made them think that his sloppy personal space would be reflected in sloppy professional procedures. Wright had a lot of work to do and he did not have time for something as mundane as routine cleaning. There were other people to do the simple minded work. Even so, he took time to water his plants as they were starting to wither a little and he could practically hear them calling out for water. As he watered the philodendron he toyed with the idea of writing a paper he would call Uptightness and the Anal Retentive Personality or subtitled, How Strict Toilet Training had Lead the World to War. The fascist actions of parents created fascist tendencies in children who grew up and supported fascist politics. Wright had proved to himself that the family was the basic unit of fascism. The pre World War II German family was archetypical. Everyone in the family did what the father said and since the father was the sole authority all wills were subordinated to the father’s will. It seemed to Wright that this was a perfect analogy of some religions that saw god or their representative of god as the all powerful father who would be wrathful if not obeyed. Bill came out of the school of psychology that Ziggy Fraud had begun in Sausalito California. Dr Fraud had opened the door to the subconscious, his student, P.J. Young, had discovered the key to symbolism and psychological archetypes. Bill, by himself had decided that physical energy affected psychology as much as mental energy did. Psychology was as much soma as psyche, that is, as much of the body as it was of the mind. What happened to you physically influenced your thoughts and emotions. His on going goal at the moment was to tap the energy of the universe as Dr Setlaw had tapped the energy of Tellus. The energy of the universe was an ancient, primordial archetype energy. People of many races though out history had found many ways to use this energy and had called it by many different names. It was the ether that filled the void of the universe, it was the life force. Bill’s theory was that this universal ether energy flowed through the healthy body. As people became more mentally rigid their bodies resisted the energy flow and this made them unhealthy. He figured that it was the anal personality who was tighter and stiffer and blocked the energy of life. The people with oral tendencies let the energy flow. Relaxation techniques played an important part in his therapy methods. Some of the best ways to relax are by using massage, light hypnosis and a few types of mild drugs and sex. Thus Wright’s theories were controversial. There were certain points on the body which the energy could flow through or be blocked and they seemed to correspond to acupuncture points and yoga chockras. Bill did not feel that he had discovered something new, he thought of himself as seeing old truths with modern eyes. He had discovered that this energy could be trapped in boxes built to reflect this energy and concentrate it. The energy had a strange blue glow to it and was strongest about three pm. The government had once assigned to him twenty terminally ill cancer patients to experiment with and he had cured most of them just by putting them in his boxes for an hour a day. He knew he was onto something but he needed to experiment more. This afternoon he would work with some radioactive material and see how the blue energy affected it. The government had said his experiments were worthless because he could not prove his claims. Curing people of terminal disease was not proof enough unless you could establish some kind of cause and effect with the blue energy. Bill suspected that the medical profession had something to do with the official rejection of his treatments. As the energy was free, doctors and especially drug companies would not be able to make an exorbitant profit off of it. The president was having his brunch briefing in the small meeting room where there were no microphones to record his words for posterity or prosecutors. “Well, let us examine some of our options in regards to what is hot,” the president said with gusto as he rubbed his hands together. He loved his work, he loved to wield power. It meant that all those who followed his orders were somewhat less that he and therefore he was somewhat superior to them. It was true, after all, god had chosen him to be president over all others. His men listened, notepads ready. He loved the idea that he had so many helpers at his beck and call. The guard outside of the door could hear a little when the conversation got spirited but mostly he was busy listening to the small radio receiver in his left ear. It was talking, in a distorted tinny way, about the normal radio traffic that someone on guard duty should be aware of. “The couple outside of the west gate seeking entrance should be directed to the main gate for inspection,” spoke the monotone electronic voice in the guard’s ear between its bursts of static. “Any new from the camp in Nevada?” the president queried the group. “The situation is on hold,” Meager the aide answered as he thumbed through his clipboard to find the page with that information on it. “There is some promise of getting the space time transport circuit in the near future.” “Wonderful,” the excited president said. If they could get the key to instantaneous transport first, they could get a lock on every market on Tellus and eventually become competitive in the rest of the universe. ‘Then we would be playing with the big boys and it would be a whole different ballgame,’ was the way the president thought about it. He love that ‘gee whiz’ science stuff, he found the possibilities in it really interesting. With that circuit they could subvert every military installation in the world. No individual enemy would be safe anywhere and they could terrorize anyone who would not go along with his plans. They could transport a platoon of soldiers into any capitol building in any country at any time, for instance. “Well continue pushing in that direction,” the president said with sure resolve in his voice. “We’ve given those ‘people’, and I use the word loosely, a lot of time and money and now they owe us.” He turned to his long time campaign manager. “How’s the election going?” he asked with a broad smile. Talking to his campaign manager always pushed the president’s public image buttons. There were no elections this year but everyday had to be pointed toward reelection to keep the agenda on track. It was important to stay in power to keep the programs moving along in the proper direction.
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |