beauty of the argument was of course that opposition to any idea or set of ideas could then nearly effortlessly be portrayed as boorish or unpatriotic, as a frivolous rejection of the carefully groomed values of the society that chose to institute this set of ideas.
National interest was the big buzzword then. Even if some of the actions in question might under different circumstances be judged ambivalently. Like running gambling casinos, subsidizing horse racing and lotteries or voting for latently horny fat politicians who eagerly wrap their hands around the slender waists of scantily-clad constituent beauty queens at important functions such as ribbon-cutting events and grand openings at gaming arcades, muffler shops or pick-your-own-strawberry and avocado farms where migrant laborers did all the toiling. Or, for that matter, at any number of other mindless photo ops created specifically for this purpose of perpetuating their political raison d’être.
And for someone whose cerebral matter was hardwired as minimalistically as that of Niklas, anything deemed to be in the “national interest” in essence constituted a perfectly adequate explanation. It was just like invoking the gospel. It was cute and simple. There was no compelling need for him or anyone else to have to think and rethink things over and over again.
Life could be simple if people would only allow it to be so.
As the airliner approached Libertyville@Esperantia on this particular sunny morning, Charles could clearly see that the whole expanse of the city, which essentially constituted the entire domain.state–their new soon-to-be home–was wedged in loosely between water and two broad expanses of what appeared to be largely uninhabited marshland. Along the northern and eastern edges of this area, the large, lazily meandering riverbed culminated in a shallow lake or lagoon. This had the appearance of being thick and muddy, probably due to the amount of silt being transported by this stream at this time of year. A handful of dredges, looking diminutive from up here, could be seen working on the river. As far as Charles could determine, there were no towns and really no significant settlements to be seen outside of the perimeter of the wall which closed off the city from the mainland. There were also only very few roads leading into the enclave discernible as he peered down from his stratospheric perch like a hawk on the lookout for prey.
But, much to his surprise, from his vantage point at some twenty or thirty-odd thousand feet in the long descent into Libertyville@Esperantia, Charles could easily make out a fair number of drilling platforms that appeared to be several kilometers offshore. Seen from his perspective, they resembled miniscule renditions of the Eiffel Tower protruding from the marble shiny rippled surface of the water. If one focused carefully on shadows on the surface of the ocean, one could see that the light was broken by tiny flames that produced even, uniformly shaped blobs of dense black smoke as they flamed off excess gas. The shadows of these smoke clouds on the pearly, seemingly stationary surface of the water deeply fascinated him.
It couldn’t possibly be long before they arrived now.
So as the jet continued to gently rock its way through some annoying morning thermal turbulence, traversing the boundary of Libertyville@Esperantia in the course of an increasingly steep descent, Charles strained hard to catch even a telltale glimpse of color flashing from somewhere among the dense cluster of drab green-brown-gray global age prefabricated concrete severity that was now beginning to spread out before him. He was seeking some sign of encouragement that he secretly hoped would permeate their lives, inundating their senses with a new sense of optimism, a positive, uplifting vibe to greet them once they set foot in Libertyville@Esperantia. Despite his mother’s sympathy, his opinion hadn’t counted heavily thus far in the long deliberations that had led up to this moment and his being a captive party to this adventure. Up to now, he had been an unwilling pawn in this grand endeavor so there was little else he could do except to wait and to hope fervently that something–anything!–might signal to him that things were finally changing for the better, even if his being subjected to this escapade in the first place was solely at the behest of Niklas. Charles was silently praying for something magnificent to manifest itself, something that would finally kick off the future.time for him with a bang.
He peered down again. Maybe he could find something blue out there. Or green. Red. Even yellow would do.
Anything.
“Life is gonna be so full of blessings,” was Niklas’ mantra, his almost standard promise to Jacqueline whenever the subject made the rounds again in the family. “Things are going to work out just fine for us.”
And, as usual, he ignored Charles.
As the edge of the city passed under to the airplane now, one very fatigued and not quite early-adolescent boy on board, seated at 21K, silently stepped up his vigilance. His curiosity was so great that he nearly held his breath, quaking slightly in his seat in anticipation. As silly as the idea may seem to an observer, Charles was bent on obtaining, absorbing and preserving his very first impression of their destination. Squinting as he shielded his eyes with one hand from the searing cold glare of the sun reflected between the two exterior window panes of the aged Sonic.Cruzeiro, he found his gaze fixed on a landscape that somehow appeared as empty and instantaneously distant as the pictures he’d seen of the dark side of the moon. The only color was a small rainbow prism of light scattered among some ice crystals which had formed within the aircraft window during the flight.
He rubbed his reddened eyes with the back of his hands and flexed the muscles in his arms and legs shortly, doing what little he could to restart the circulation in them while still confined to these very cramped quarters. Sitting up straight in his seat again, he then pressed his nose against the window and again devoted his attention to the awesome spectacle of the worldmonde.Planet passing beneath the wings.
Although he had flown on only a handful of occasions before as a small boy, he had always remembered it as being a very special and very enjoyable experience. Best of all, he recalled how, after he had finally learned to read, he had invariably spent those final few minutes of each flight, about the time that the airplane would be vectored onto its final approach course, intently scouring the panorama before and below him in a concentrated search for the very first words to become legible upon arrival at his destination.
In truth, this wasn’t always an easy task which he had taken upon himself. As a young boy, the challenge lay in the fact that he either couldn’t read fast enough or that he simply never managed to find anything suitable until just before the airplane would come careening across the airport fence. But it had always been great fun trying.
In the past.time, on those occasions on which he flew together with his parents, the first words which became visible as the airplane approached the destination runway were almost inevitably ANOTHER ONE TRILLION SERVED! Perhaps this was because the restaurants gaudily proclaiming this success were by now truly ubiquitous. Or maybe it was because his eye would be involuntarily attracted by the telltale golden arches, often mounted on tall poles that seemed to be a hundred miles high. Perhaps it was a kind of reflexive conditioned response?
And then there would follow a second glance, this time across the road or highway. DoubleWhopper indemnity was usually assured.
Charles neither knew nor did he really care what the reason behind this activity was. To him, it was just plain fun. Maybe it was a bit like playing peek-a-boo with a baby, he reasoned, as the outcome didn’t seem to matter anywhere nearly as much as playing the game itself. Just like the bambinos, he understood that the fun was not about winning anything, but all in the action.
And it wasn’t important to impart any deep logic to all of this anyhow. In the end, it was only one more tiny detail, one diminutive stone finding its place in a kind of surreptitious mosaic image in the back of his mind which he was forging from secrets which he was certain were revealed only to him as he wrested them, bit by bit, from a state of invisibility brought on solely by the fact that he was airborne. He somehow found this exercise exhilarating, as though he alone was capable of snatching these cryptic clues from the jealous clutch of distance, assisted only by the speed of the airplane in which he was sitting.
It was a game which he used to play with his father, Fulton. Who would be the first to find something that was useful or meaningful? What kind of loony word constructs, headlines