“A Great Read”

I just finished a great read. It provides a glimpse into a future where freedoms are nearly non-existent, and patriots are those that don’t conform to the elitist ideals. The typical 3 branches of government; Executive, Legislative, and Judicial are replaced with the Governmental, the Corporate, and the Financial.

The authors storytelling is polished and characters are rich in depth. The book offers a futuristic look into technology, corporate influence, and the general ambivalence of the American people toward personal freedoms.

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.”

Thomas Jefferson

If you are at all concerned with the current direction of American politics, read this book.

 

By  Patrick O’Brien “Freedom lover”

About the Book

Devin Moore broke ‘The Law’ in this dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. For his crime, he is exiled from the last free colony of Goldstein, Alaska. His journey into fascist Amerika is an odyssey of chaos, delusion, and violence as Devin experiences the ravages of hyperinflation, the mind-numbing holovision, omnipresent surveillance and the imperious nanny-state .

‘The Land of the Free’ had become a serfdom where you have nothing to worry about if you are being good . But Devin could not embrace the role of ‘gelded rebel’ and his exile becomes a mission of self-discovery.

Pursued by the arrogant, ‘leathery-faced’ Director Morgenthau and his vicious minions seeking to ‘hotwire’ his brain, Devin contemplates making a mysterious ‘Delivery’ that will exonerate him and allow him to return home…home to GOLDSTEIN.

“A Cynical Reality”

Rich vocabulary makes it an intriguing and flowing read. The book creates a storyline that draws you in quickly, with eagerness to find out what is coming next. The writer creates a picture of a cynical reality if our government’s distortions which impede on our so called ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’. The book also depicts futuristic governmental controls that could very well be a reality one day soon!

http://www.amazon.com/Goldstein-Troy-J-Grice/dp/1426917759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258316412&sr=8-1

Chapter Two

It was a perfect day for an execution, sunny and clear with a cool whisper of wind coming from the north. An accused man, shackled, stood before a council of twelve robed jurists. He maintained a defiantly erect posture and an indignant expression was scrawled across his face. His name was Devin Moore.  The rectangular hall was completely still, frozen in anticipation.  Then one jurist rose.

“We’ve reached a verdict,” proclaimed a white-haired man with thick black glasses and a pipe that hung from the corner of his mouth. A din rose amongst the hundred or so gathered in the hall’s gallery. The standing jurist held his glasses with one hand and hammered his gavel three times with the other. Puffs of smoke leaked out from the corner of his mouth with each violent pounding. The murmur began to subside.  “We’ve reached a verdict!” he shouted. He took a draw on his pipe.

The eleven other black-robed jurists remained seated and expressionless. These twelve, selected by lottery, were known as The Council and they were the ‘deciders’ for the colony. The position was unpaid, unheralded, and generally undesired. They looked unanimously uncomfortable in their flowing, priestly robes.

The walls behind The Council were adorned with holovisions which projected three-dimensional images of court exhibits and witness’ testimonies. They were all muted, their floating images frozen in space. The standing jurist, who was still waiting for the din to fully subside, was known as Mr. Brooks. He was biologically blind as was revealed by the complete opacity of his lenses. His physiological eyes might have been useless but he was not without sight. Built into his lenses were tiny cameras which converted stereoscopic images into brainwaves and transmitted them into his visual cortex by way of tiny arrays buried in the stems of the frames. One could have eye or brain surgery to correct nearly all forms of blindness, but the glasses were a far less invasive and far less expensive alternative. Seeing eye frames were cheaply available at either of Goldstein’s general stores.

The accused man, Mr. Moore, had no issues with visual acuity or any other physical handicaps of any significance. He was young, lean, and strong. He stood alone, looking afflicted in front of the gallery and facing The Council, chained up like some medieval felon.

“Are these chains absolutely necessary?” he asked holding them up as he spoke. The throng began to mumble.

“Quiet, please!” ordered Brooks, his baritone voice echoing through the hall. Devin wasn’t entirely sure if Brooks was ordering him or the gallery or both. The noise finally subsided. “Thank you,” Brooks continued. He puffed out a ring of smoke. “After much deliberation, The Council has come to the conclusion that Mr. Devin Moore, standing before you now, is guilty of breaking The Law.”

Devin shook his head. “Bullshit!” he shouted.

“The surveillance video was particularly damning evidence in this case,” Brooks explained.

“You call that evidence?” Devin protested. “It was doctored!”

Brooks pounded his gavel. “Quiet! The Council has rendered its verdict. You are guilty of breaking The Law.”

“The Law?” Devin mocked.

“Thou Shalt Not Steal, Devin Moore,” chimed another jurist.

“You know The Law, Devin,” Brooks continued, trying to sound patient. “It is the only law. Do you wish to make a statement?”

“I do.” Devin turned towards the gallery. His chains jingled. He scanned their faces. They averted their eyes. Then he turned back to The Council. “This trial’s a sham. You can’t sentence me. I’m an Amerikan and I have rights.”

“Boo! Thief! Liar!” Called the crowd.

“I have a right to a trial in a real court— not this kangaroo court. You have no authority.”

“Boo! Traitor! Execute the Traitor!”

“Quiet, please!” shouted Brooks while pounding his gavel again. “Do you have anything to say that is relevant before we sentence you?”

Devin stared into Brooks’ blackened lenses. Then he scanned the rest of The Council. Their eyes remained fixed on him. They knew he was guilty. He knew he was guilty. He always wondered if he would be able to delude himself into thinking that he was somehow the victim in all of this mess but he couldn’t bend his mind that way. Despite his luck for getting out of past jams, he would not be able to get out of this one. Once the Council rules it is finished.

Devin’s only hope was for a spectacular, fantastical, perfectly timed miracle rescue by the National Police. He prayed for the appearance of the black-clad, NaPol tacticals, repelling from hovering dragonflies, smashing through the hall’s sensorglass windows, and wildly firing their heat-seeking assault rifles into the throng. They would rescue him and take him back to Amerika where he would be released on his own recognizance while awaiting a larceny trial that would be delayed ten years.  That was a preferable outcome to being stoned to death by a bunch of Bohemians.

“I demand you turn me over to NaPol. This is not a real court.”

Goldstein was certainly outside the bounds of the Amerikan justice machine, but its court was indeed real. The Colony had its share of thieves, swindlers and bandits, lured from the Lower Fifty Three. Its insulation from the omnipresent eyes and pulse emitters of National Police made the Colony a prime destination for those lacking moral inhibition. But the skeptical nature of the colonists quickly flushed the criminal element into the open.   A life of crime rarely paid well in Goldstein.  The Council was notoriously ruthless at sentencing. They had very few resources by which to enforce The Law so justice had to be swift and decisive. It was a Draconian system but very efficient.

After mumbling to each other, Brooks spoke again. “The Council has taken your position into consideration. Mr. Moore,” he continued while holding a stem of his glasses, “in light of your numerous declarations during this trial about the invalidity of this court and your desire to be turned over to the National Police, we think you’ll find the sentence for your crimes to be to your liking.”

“What is it? Hard labor?”

“That might be one aspect of it.”

“Detention?”

“That is very likely.”

“Death?”

“Possible.”

“So you’re going to put me in a labor camp and then execute me?”

Signaled by a vibration in his multi, a burly man of six and a half feet sidled up to Devin. The man rolled up his sleeves revealing his tattooed forearms. He was the Sheriff— the sole elected law enforcement of the colony. Devin began to come to the realization of what his sentence was going to be. His head dropped as he was overtaken with dread. He didn’t seriously expect to be executed but this might actually be worse.

“Have you named a custodian for your property?”

“What?” asked Devin, distracted by his thoughts. “I uh…I don’t have anything worth worrying about.”

His mind began to race. He needed a plan. He had to figure out how to escape since it was increasingly unlikely that NaPol was going to save him.

“I believe we have nothing more to do here except carry out the sentence,” concluded Brooks. “Sheriff, will you take Mr. Moore to the river?” Ryland put his paw on Devin’s shoulder. “Get your damn hands off me!” Devin barked. “I’ll go peacefully.”

“Fair enough,” replied the sheriff.

Devin, weighed down by his jingling chains, turned towards the gallery and faced their condescending glare as he lumbered out of the hall. He was followed by the sheriff, Mr. Brooks, and a dozen or so gawking colonists.  The procession made their way to a utility truck where Devin was helped into the back. The sheriff got in next to him. The gasoline engine roared to life.

They motored slowly out of the cobblestone plaza and onto a paved thoroughfare. The road was flanked by stone and log row houses which were capped with whirling wind turbines and smokeless chimneys. Ice still coated the narrow alleyways and shaded surfaces between the buildings. The snow had receded into the cooler places but the road itself was dark and wet from the thaw.

As they drove out of the plaza, the tightly packed storefronts and houses of the village gave way to small industrial and agricultural Kwanset huts tucked into the dense spruce and budding birch trees. Inside their arched plastic skins, articulated robot arms were knitting textiles, sowing seeds and scribing millions of nano-processors.

The road took them by several construction sites. Construction was an ever-present phenomenon in Goldstein.  Cranes and scaffolds were the predominant feature of the colonial skyline. An excavation near the road had made a deep scar in the tundra and a spider web of steel lattice rose up from the pebbly mud. Steel was an unusual and fantastically expensive commodity in Goldstein. ‘BROOKS’ was emblazoned in black on every beam.

The site was alive with a mixed crew of brown, smooth-faced Natives and pale, bearded Anglos buzzing around the hive-like foundation hoisting and hanging and welding and riveting. They were building a fusion reactor that would serve as the prototype for future power plants. It was rumored that some venture capitalists from Hong Kong were bankrolling the project. 

The road wound on, down into a gauntlet of birch trees.  Down for two miles past a scrap yard and a quarry, dropping a hundred meters in altitude along the way. Down through the pulse-emitting field array that fenced the inner colony from human and animal intruders with an invisible beam of coma inducing microwaves.

Brooks keyed some digits into his multi unit. A segment of the field turned off. They drove through the invisible fence, to the banks of a meandering river where the truck stopped and the driver turned the engine off.

“Get out!” The sheriff rudely barked at Devin. Devin held his chains up with an expression of helplessness etched in his face. The sheriff and the driver helped him out. The three of them along with brooks walked down to the banks of the river. 

“So you’re really going to do this to me?” Devin asked.

“You did it to yourself, thief,” the sheriff replied. 

“Isn’t there another way, Brooks? I can make things right. You know me. Give me a chance.” They gathered around a dilapidated wooden rowboat pulled up onto the shore. Devin felt even more dread. “You know this is a death sentence,” he exclaimed.

“A slow death by starvation,” added the sheriff as he unlocked Devin’s shackles. “You shouldn’t have broken The Law. Now get in.”

The sheriff palmed his 9mm as Devin slowly climbed into the tiny boat. Brooks stayed the sheriff’s hand. Devin took a seat in the boat and pretended to row. The sheriff tossed him a thermal which hit Devin in the face as he pulled on the oars. Devin rolled it up and tucked it under his seat. He had given up. There was no getting out of it. He wondered how long he would last. Would the animals get him first? The cold? Hunger?  “Well, what are you waiting for? Shove me in,” Devin ordered.

“Hold on,” Brooks intervened. “You know this need not be a death sentence…”

“How?” Devin asked without enthusiasm.

“You can still be pardoned. The Council has signed off on it.”

“I’ll be dead before I get to McGrath.”

“Maybe,” Brooks continued, “Certainly if you give up. But things aren’t as hopeless as you insist. Just make The Delivery and you’ll be pardoned.”

“Deliver what?”

“Here, catch…” Brooks tossed Devin a leather satchel which landed with a thud at Devin’s feet. before Devin could open it and look inside, the sheriff grabbed hold of the splintery boat with his massive hands and shoved it off into the gray water.

“…And I better not see you back here unless you deliver it!” the sheriff shouted.

“Deliver what?” Devin asked again. “To who?”

“It’s there, in the satchel. Don’t worry. They’ll find you.  Just read the instructions first,” Brooks shouted. “Make The Delivery and you’ll be pardoned. We’ll even come get you.” 

Devin began to row. “Maybe I’ll come back and make a delivery to you,” he blustered as he rowed the bobbing boat through the icy gray water.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” replied the sheriff as he fastened the snap on his holster. “Watch out for moose, they kill more people then bears, you know!”

The three stayed behind on the shoreline until the current swept the frantically rowing Devin around a bend and out of sight. He was an exile, now. If he was to return, the mandatory colonial response would be to shoot him on sight. But that had never happened in the thirty plus years of Goldstein history. Several dozen exiles had tried to return either openly by groveling on their hands and knees, or covertly by slipping into the perimeter when the field was down. The vast majority of colonials lacked sufficient ruthlessness to shoot exiles on site but they were always disciplined enough to maintain the boycott of them. With no possibilities to exchange with the colonials for food, shelter, or clothing, the exiles would soon give up in frustration and drag their starving, emaciated, carcasses back into the wilderness. Sometimes, usually not more than two miles from the perimeter, their half-gnawed skulls would be discovered by hunting parties.

Brooks took a moment to ponder Devin’s fate. “Will he make it?” He asked himself. There was something in Devin’s persona that gave Brook’s hope. Devin was a loner and mentally tough. That gave him a better chance than most. Brooks imagined him washing up on shore somewhere fifty kilometers downstream, hungry and shivering. Would someone find him? Would someone help him? “We’ve got to give him a chance,” Brooks thought.

“Do you think the son-of-a-bitch’ll make it?” asked the sheriff.

“You mean make The Delivery?” asked Brooks.

“Yeah…”

Brooks didn’t answer. Instead, he placed a call on his multi.

Chapter One

Rocketing across the stratosphere at twice the speed of sound, a titanium eagle, a gem of Chinese technological superiority, laced the heavens with a silvery contrail. On board this aircraft, owned by the Numenor Corporation which was one of the twelve corporate cartels that controlled ninety percent of everything, rode a very dangerous passenger.

Inside this two hundred thousand kilogram bullet, safely insulated from friction-induced temperatures exceeding four hundred degrees Celsius, and comfortably tucked into luxurious, taxpayer-funded, leather captain’s chairs, rode the President of the United States Angela Forsythe, her aide-de-camp Maxwell Conrad— affectionately referred to as ‘Maxie’, a battalion of servants, analysts, and assorted government sycophants, and her husband, Judge. They were returning to Washington from a campaign fundraiser in the state of South California where the President had made it clear that there were about to be some major changes.

“Are you really going to go through with it?” asked Maxie.

The President raised her wine glass as she stared out into the ethereal blue that was framed within her portal window. They were far, far above the boiling storm clouds below. Soon, she thought, they would be descending directly into the maelstrom.

“I’m taking them down, all of them. From the cartel bosses down to the fucking errand boys,” she answered.  Maxie rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his eyes as the President continued. “I’m giving them the surveillance fi les, the audit trails, the minutes of the secret meetings, and all the names, especiallythe names, the media loves the names.”

“That could topple the entire government. Have you thought about that?” Maxie warned.

“We’ll recover. America is resilient.”

“What if it all gets buried?”

“The evidence is incontrovertible. The media won’t be able to suppress it.”

“The Freemerica cartel is the media. They’re complicit in all of it. And when they’re not complicit, they’re bought off. We can’t trust them.”

“They’ll be unable to quash it.”

Maxie could not understand why he couldn’t get through to her. She had never been this stubborn with him before.  “What makes you think you’ll get away with it? What makes you think you can take on the cartels like this? What makes you think you can go after the bankers? Please consider a more subtle approach. If you out them like this they’ll use their pawns in Congress to marginalize you. You’ll be a lame duck or worse.  If that fails, they’ll unleash Freemerica on you and the media always finds something. You can’t make it this far in politics without some kind of skeleton in your closet. You’ve got reelection to worry about.”

“You must not think that much of me if you think they’ll find skeletons.”

“It’s not that I don’t think much of you, it’s that they have many vested interests that will align against you. You’re putting them in a box with no means of escape and they’ll resort to anything to survive.”

“I’ve lived an honest life, Maxie. You know that. You’ve been with me for twelve years. You know they won’t fi nd anything useful.”

“Then they’ll make up some bullshit. You know how they operate. What about anti-patriotism? Freemerica can put that on anyone. It’s vague. It’s nebulous. They can pin that on you with nothing more than a reporter’s quivering lip or a flash of a subliminal message. They can paint you as an anti-pat without reporting any evidence at all. And the serfs will fall for it. They always fall for it.”

“Let them try it, then.”

“…Plus we’re at war, too,” Maxie continued, undeterred.  “This is not the best time to be stirring things up.”

“There’s never a ‘best time’, Maxie. Besides, we’re always at war. We’ll never not be at war, at least not until things change.”

The President gazed out the tiny portal window again. In her mind, the clouds far below were like a thick shroud blanketing the nation in a storm of lies; and here she was, insulated in her supersonic, titanium tube, far above it, rocketing through a blazing azure of truthiness, or so she thought. She drank her red wine. Her mind was clear. She was without doubt.

“The war of all wars is the one we wage against ourselves,” she waxed philosophical.

Maxie sighed. Presidents were not supposed to be philosophical and Maxie found her occasional bouts of idealism frustrating. Maxie had a PhD in political game-theory.    Idealism, he thought, was for stoned undergrads from commuter colleges.

“Ask yourself, Maxie, why is there so much resistance and violence? Where does it all come from? Why does it seem to get stronger whenever we increase efforts to restore the order?”

“Because the serfs are like children,” Maxie offered with pragmatic bluntness. “Because they lack self-control. Because they need authority and direction in their lives or they turn into cannibals.”

“Perhaps…”

“Or?” Maxie begged.

“Or perhaps it’s because the serfs have lost respect for authority. Maxie, I think we’ve lost the consent of the governed.”  Maxie threw his hands up in frustration and stormed off towards the back of the jet in search of the Presidential masseuse.

The President turned to her husband, Judge, and clasped his hand. He was fast asleep, or more aptly, comatose— electrically de-stimulated by the SkyDoze brand electrodes affixed to his temples.

Angela and Judge had been married thirty years. He was once a rising star in the corporate world but he gave it up in order to support her political aspirations. She knew it was difficult for his executive-sized ego to be a supporting figure, but he believed in her and stood by her with unwavering loyalty.

“I have to do this,” she whispered to Judge as he slept. “It’s my reason for being here. I’ll make you proud.”

Many kilometers below, beneath the clouds, a torrent of rain was soaking a large swath of the Amerikan Heartland and more specifically a particular golf course located on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa. There were only three men on that course that day. One was the Director of the National Police, one was a milquetoast caddy, and the third was The Vice President of the United States.

The three of them stood on the rain-matted fairway with lightening illuminating the gray skies behind them. The deluge had formed numerous puddles in the grass all the way up to the fringe of the green.

“It is accomplished,” explained the Director who had just tucked his multi-unit into his dripping jacket pocket. He had a leathery, ruddy face and his rain-soaked, thinning gray hair fell in wet clumps across his forehead.

“Excellent,” replied Vice President Mellon with a sinister grin.

Vice President Theodore “Teddy” Mellon was a bombastic fellow with hair that looked several orders of magnitude better than the Director’s. His black waves remained stately even while soaking wet. Teddy had clawed and glad-handed and bribed his way to the second spot in the Unity Party ticket at the green age of thirty eight. Although young, his demeanor and maturity actually revealed a man of no less than thirty-two; which was, coincidentally, the age of George Armstrong Custer at the Little Bighorn.

Teddy, who was ‘attached’ to President Forsythe’s ticket as Veep by the party bosses as a means of solidifying her electoral base east of the Hudson, disliked the woman immensely. She was a Western Governor with a populist streak— an outsider with broad commoner appeal and little patience for technocracy.  He was an Ivy League elitist who felt that it was the divine right of all Ivy leaguers to run the world on behalf of the innumerable hoard of poorly bred slobs residing west of the Hudson River.  Teddy never referred to President Forsythe by name, referring to her only as ‘The Madam’ in public and ‘that bitch’ in private.

“These are desperate times, Axel,” Teddy continued as thunder rumbled from the west as if it was choreographed to punctuate his remark. 

“Indeed, Sir,” affi rmed Director Morgenthau. “We are at war.”

“It’s important that you remember that this had to be done.  It was for the greater good.”

“I fully understand, sir.”

“We can’t have anti-patriots running around undermining the system. These are desperate, desperate times.”

“Indeed,” replied Morgenthau, wiping the swoops of his wet, thinning, gray hair out of his eyes while trying to sound convinced so that the President would finally just move on to his shot.

“The normal rules do not apply in this case,” Teddy continued.

“Right, Sir. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”           

President Mellon rudely yanked a sand wedge from his milquetoast caddy’s soggy hand, wiped the water off it with a towel, and took three splashing practice swings.  “Never speak of this to anyone, ever,” the Vice President continued after his third swing, shaking the end of his wedge in Morgenthau’s face. “You never know who might be listening.  There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

“I certainly doubt anyone would be surveilling us here in Iowa, Sir. Not in this weather.”

“Just remember,” the Vice President repeated, “eyes and ears are everywhere.”  The Vice President dried his club again, then dropped it back into a puddle while he addressed the ball. He swung, lofting his ball high into the air. The three of them watched it hang in space and time, barely visible in the streaks of rain, hypnotized by its defi ance of gravity. Then they gazed as it started to fall, accelerating downward according to Newtonian physics,  ultimately descending with a plunk into a water hazard some seventy yards off.  “Wedge, huh?” The Vice President asked as he gestured for a new ball from his caddy. “You’ve got to be the stupidest fuck of a caddy in the history of golf. Why can’t the President of the United States of America get a better god damn caddy than this?”

Far above the deluge, President Forsythe’s supersonic jet knifed through the tranquil azure sky. A tiny viral script, beamed from a hand-held device somewhere below, switched off the jet’s life support systems. The great black bird roared eastward, guided only by its computers which did not require oxygen or heat in order to function.

No communication with the crew was re-established. Jet fighters were scrambled but they were helpless to do anything but escort the titanium zombie on its long, gentle descent.  Freemerica Media satellite cameras were already in position to capture the drama for public consumption. Amerikans watched their holovisions in semi-lucid amazement as the President’s jet burned up the last of its fuel and dissolved into the Atlantic Ocean.

Theodore “Teddy” Mellon was sworn in as President of the United States in the clubhouse locker room. After the ceremony, Teddy sent the bible off to have it bronzed.

“NaPol” Proposed by the Rand Corporation!

…As if taken directly from the novel:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG819.pdf

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