Chapter Twenty Four
How They Fall
Walter Jameson had been watching the election returns coming in all day.
It had been nearly six months since the attacks on the mall. Walter had limped for a few weeks afterwords, but that hadn't stopped him from appearing on several national news programs. They called him the “Hero of the Heartland,” and everyone wanted to book him on his show. He didn't even charge them for the appearances.
But he did use them to promote the “Don't Vote!” party, and after a few major news outlets made the mistake of having him on, his popularity with the media establishment dried up in a hurry. But the people loved it, and more and more, they wanted to know just what the “Don't Vote!” party was all about.
Their rallies had doubled, and then tripled in attendance. And within two months, Walter and Kent weren't able to handle all the work themselves. What had begun in the old farmhouse had exploded into a national movement, which the Jameson boys were only nominally leading.
Local chapters were opening up all over the country, and soon the requests coming in for them to make appearances were more than Walter and Kent could handle alone, so they recruited Hall to help. Bob Donovan retired as the chief of police after he healed up from his injuries, and the day he showed up at the party headquarters they'd established in one of the offices at Walter's bank asking if he could join the cause they welcomed him with open arms and a pile of work.
The party grew and grew, and the Jamesons refused to play by the “rules” of the establishment. They didn't apply to get on ballots. They didn't apply for government funding. When they held rallies, they didn't apply for permits. They didn't require party members to adhere to party dogma or pay homage to party leaders.
Instead they used the net to get the word out. They wrote articles and submitted them to libertarian forums and internet magazines. They bought ad space on popular netsites. They challenged politicians from all parties to defend themselves in video debates that they then posted on every site that would let them. They held fundraisers where they gave away their literature and dvds of their debates for free. And instead of trying to rule, they tried to encourage people to use their own creativity to come up with new ways to promote not voting.
And all along more and more money was pouring into the party coffers. And the money turned right around and went out as more pamphlets and videos and audiobooks. Nobody collected a check for their participation with the party, and all over the country excitement was growing.
Because the new Homeland Security department under Director Stephens was passing new and more draconian policies every day.
Passports for international travel now had to be applied for at a federal office and required thumbprints, photos, and two drops of blood, one which went on the passport itself, and one which was kept in federal custody in case there was ever a dispute over the actual identity of the person carrying the passport. The Legislation had already passed a law requiring that passports for interstate travel be carried at all times and produced for law enforcement officers upon demand.
In addition, although he had begun bringing the soldiers home from around the world and closing the overseas bases, he had not disbanded the military or released any of the troops. Instead, those troops were being used to augment local law enforcement offices for the purpose of “ensuring local adherence to the new security requirements.”
And more and more people were deeply concerned about the direction they saw the nation moving in.
So as the next election grew closer, people wanted to know what to do. After all, it was the “Don't Vote!” party, but did they really mean don't vote? At all?
Yes. They did. And that's exactly what they encouraged people to do. And all over the nation, that's what people did. The party encouraged everyone who made a conscious decision not to vote to go on their netsite instead and cast a “blank ballot,” signifying their refusal to participate in the elections.
So as he watched the election returns Walter kept track of voter turnout and compared it to the results from the site.
And as the night went on, and the election played out like so many before it, with victories for the state and only losses for it's citizens, it became clear that they'd made a difference. A big, big difference.
Over the next year “experts” in the field would argue whether it had been the terrorist attacks frightening people away from polling areas, or the multiple high level assassinations driving down public confidence that voting was making a long term change, or whether it was a reaction to the public perception of the inability of the government to protect them, or a reaction to the new security measures.
But they all agreed that something had acted to significantly drive down voter turnout. And they all ignored the obvious.
Voter turnout was down nine percent between major elections, which was a record for all of the nation's history. And while there was no doubt in Walter's mind that some of that could be attributed to any or all of the debated explanations, no one wanted to admit the fact that nine percent of that turnout could be directly accounted for by counting the number of blank ballots cast on the “Don't Vote!” party netsite.
It was a shot across the bow of the state. And while the experts ignored it, the people applauded.
And after the votes were all counted, Walter knew he'd have to move the party headquarters out of the back of the bank and into a larger place.
Because nine percent was only the beginning.
“We've done the math again and again. The money just isn't there.”
“I don't want to hear that Jeanie. That's not an option. This needs to happen and we need to fund it.”
Jeanie Halloran was sitting in another secret meeting of the Legislative Budget Committee, and once again she was beating her head against a wall of ignorance.
She was the ranking member of her party on the committee and it was her responsibility to try to make sure that government funds were directed towards the initiatives her party supported. Most of the time that was just a way to say that government funds went to the corporations her party supported.
But the new expenditures Director Stephens was demanding for the new Homeland Security measures were more than anyone had predicted and the money just didn't exist in the budget. Which was what she had been trying to explain to the ranking member of the opposition party.
But as they kept repeating, they didn't want to hear it. “Look Jeanie, our countrymen are expecting us to act. We can't protect them without soldiers, and we won't have soldiers if we can't pay them. We need to find the money.”
Jeanie held up the Accounting Office reports she'd been reading from. “These proposed expenditures total more than 300 billion dollars over the next ten years. Where is that money supposed to come from?”
She continued, “It isn't in the budget. We raised taxes to fund President Alexander's response to the Devastation, and the additional money we need now isn't in the new projected tax revenues. Do you want to cut spending somewhere else? Where? Welfare? Public pensions? Front line services? Foreign Aid?”
Her opposition counterpart sneered at her suggestions. “You know we can't cut those programs Legislator Halloran. People are counting on us. That's just not an option.”
She really did try to be professional, but she just couldn't contain herself. Jeanie threw her hands up in the air. “Then where? Where should the money come from? Leprechauns? You find a pot of gold somewhere?”
Her opponent leaned back and smiled. “You're sarcasm is hardly helping Jeanie. If we need the money we can just print it. It all spends the same. If you can't come up with solutions to even the simplest problems than maybe your party should send someone else to represent them at these committee meetings.”
Jeanie sat there with her mouth open. She was supposed to be a fiscally responsible national security Legislator. And she was being told to print money to monetize future debt.
She looked across the table at him. “Do you know what has brought down every empire throughout history?”
He was already gathering his things and standing to leave the meeting. Clearly he thought the decisions were made. “No Jeanie. Please enlighten me.”
“Bad financial decisions.”
The regulars were all gathered at Maude's a few weeks later, and the election was still the topic of discussion. Former Legislator Grandon had won a coveted position as his party's highest ranking member in a landslide, and most people agreed that he was the man for the job. He'd make a wonderful President.
“Between Grandon and Stephens, this country's on the right path.” Harold had been going on like this for a while. He'd been all gung-ho about Director Stephens new security procedures, and had been one of the first to apply for the new interstate passports.
Larkin was leaning back in his chair. He'd finished his breakfast an hour ago and was alternating between sips of coffee and thoughtful nods. “I'm not so sure about that Harold. Seems like a lot of what this Stephens doing is directed more at the people than at the terrorists. And Grandon seems to be backing him to the hilt.”
Harold waved his hand as though shooing away an annoying pest. “Yah yah, you keep preachin that line Larkin, but we need men like them to keep things in line. Things were gettin out of hand back before the election, and we haven't had an attack since. Seems like they're doin fine to me.”
Something had been bugging old Greg for a while now, and something in what Harold said put it into words for him. “Where's de Vitoria? After the Devastation it was all de Vitoria and his Apatridas. Then it was all El-Hesab. But since the election, we haven't heard a thing. What happened to those guys?”
Everybody thought about that for a moment. Nobody had an answer right away, and after a moment Larkin signaled for Abby to come over and refill his coffee. “What you think Abby girl? Greg's got a good question here. What happened to Vitoria and those El-Hesab fellers?”
Abby rolled her eyes as she refilled his coffee and then looked around to see if anyone else needed any more. “What do I think? I think last time we heard from their kind we had explosions and dead people at the mall and our President got himself shot. If I never hear from 'em again I'll be just fine. As for Stephens and Grandon? They were around before and didn't seem to have much of an effect, I don't expect much out 'em now.”
Those seemed like wise words to the old men in the diner, and they all nodded their heads while they considered what she'd said.
Harold was the first to speak up. “Well, maybe you're right about Vitoria and the camel jockies Abby. Maybe you are. But I'll tell you what, you're all wrong about Grandon and Stephens. With them in charge, we won't be hearing from those cowards any time soon. My guess is they've gone to ground. The zips used to be like that during the war. They'd come runnin' outta the night and we'd bust 'em up good, then they'd lie low for a while hopin' we forgot about 'em.”
Old Greg took a long drag on his cigarette, drawing it all the way down to the filter, and then stabbed it out in his ashtray. As he pulled his pack out of his jacket pocket to get another he spoke up again. “Maybe that's it Harold. But that Vitoria feller'd been preachin' that crap for years, and now all the sudden he clams up. I'm guessin' somethin' happened to him. He didn't seem like the kind to lay low, like he didn't know what was good for 'im. Those other guys, those El-Haysab, now they's a different story. Maybe they're layin low, but I don't think it'll last.”
Nobody really wanted to think about what that meant, what might be in store the next time El-Hesab showed up in the papers, so they went back to their coffees and their smokes and their unending arguments.
Maude's was the kind of place where those sorts of discussions never really ended or began. It always seemed like they were right in the middle of the tale.
Epilogue
What the Future Holds
It had all begun years ago. Before he'd ever went to the bar during that diplomatic mission. His meeting Grandon was no accident. It was the very reason he'd been a part of the security detail. They knew that Grandon would be drawn to him, and that allowed his employers to have access to information about the highest levels of Yankee politics without Grandon even knowing he'd become an enemy agent.
Of course, he had known he was selling his government's secrets, but he'd assumed it was all personal. His gain in exchange for Gorsky's. And it had worked out well for both of them, so he'd never really questioned it.
Even back during the days of the party Theodore Grandon had been identified as someone who could be subverted. He drank too much and his avarice was nearly boundless. After the party fell, the new bosses agreed with the old boss's assessment and decided to send Gorsky to meet him.
Grandon probably never trusted Gorsky, but he never suspected just what Gorsky's employers had planned. So he'd been happy to use the information Gorsky gave him to advance through his nation's political system.
And advance he did. Just as Gorsky's employers had hoped. He'd risen all the way to the top, become the Yankee President they always knew he could be. And that was when they'd ordered Gorsky to complete his nearly decade long mission.
And so when Grandon invited Gorsky to his home to discuss the potential his new position offered their working relationship, Gorsky killed him, his wife and children, and his entire security detail.
It had been the plan all along. He was to help make him President, and then assassinate him. It was believed that such a tragedy would deeply destabilize the Yankee government and that Gorsky's employers could use that to improve their position by comparison. A little over seven years ago when the mission had first begun, they had not anticipated that he would be involved in assassinating two Presidents in such a short time frame. Things could not have gone better.
It would look like one of Grandon's own security detail had gone rogue, Gorsky already had the man's body loaded into the trunk of his car. He would leave behind enough evidence to leave little doubt in the minds of the investigators. In Gorsky's experience, when the answer was presented to them so neatly it was simply accepted, with little effort made to investigate beyond the obvious.
He would leave the gun with the man's prints along the road leading away from Grandon's private estate, where it would be found later that day. A large sum of money would be transferred into and then out of the man's bank account, making it seem like he had been paid for the hit and then collected the money and disappeared. Gorsky would tell them a story, and they would listen attentively, hanging on his every detail.
He carefully removed any trace of his presence there. It would not do for them to find a footprint or bullet casing for which there was no explanation. That was why Gorsky had first disarmed the man in the trunk before killing him, and then used the weapon taken off the dead security guard to murder the rest of the detail and the Grandon family.
He was a consummate professional, and as he plied his craft on yet another Yankee President, Gorsky thought about the future, and what it would hold for men like himself.
He had no sons, no one to carry on his name or his trade. Very few people would ever know he had existed, and fewer still would have any idea of the impact he had on the world of his time. Bad or sloppy assassins were remembered by historians, professionals were never even suspected by them. In a few generations, probably quite less, there would be no memory of Emil Gorsky.
None of that bothered him. He was no ideologue, nor was he a romantic. He did not yearn for legacy. He simply had a skill, one few possessed in equal measure, and he used that skill to the best of his ability. As perhaps all men so talented at their chosen craft were honor bound to do. Would not a great chef or painter do history a disservice should he turn from his gifts?
But in his profession men thought of the world from a historical perspective. Especially a story teller such as Emil. And he could tell where this story was going.
They could not play these games forever, the Yankees, the Ivans, even the Celestials and Arabs. It would end. He could see that history was trending towards something else, and out of the hands of men such as himself. There would come a time when such men were ghosts of the past, and when there simply were no great powers to attract men of his calling.
Like the swordsmith and the spurrier, his trade would simply pass out of utility, and the world would never even notice when it did.
Gorsky knew that there would come a day when men such as himself and Fourie and the late Kevin Imalt were no longer the storytellers of their times, but the hobgoblins of days gone by.
He did not regret this, and it did not affect his work. Professionalism was his highest standard after all. He simply recognized it to be true.
All the actions of men such as himself, all the orders they carried out, all the deaths of men like Theodore Grandon and James Alexander, amounted to nothing against the backdrop of time. Only from the limited subjective perspective of those present was there any change. In time, Emil Gorsky knew, history would crush them all to dust.
He paid the man and then turned away from the little taco stand with the pork tortas wrapped in the newspaper from the day before and walked back to where Jennifer was waiting in the jeep.
It had been months since their ordeal in the prison, and their lives hadn't been the same thereafter. Thomas had taken some vaction from his job with the marketing firm, but even two weeks later he hadn't felt like going back. And so he handed in his notice, took the last of his vacation, and walked away without any regrets.
They had decided to leave the capital. As the new security measures of the Homeland Security Office under Director Stephens were being implemented, the city was becoming more and more restless. Every day it seemed like people streamed in through its open gates, angry at what was happening. Protests were a regular sight on the streets, and it was not unusual for those protests to erupt into small scale riots.
They were concerned about what they would do for money, but then they received a letter from a charity organization known as “The Friend of the People.” The charity had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and had begun issuing deeds for gold bullion to the victims of the Devastation and their families.
When Thomas received the letter in the mail, he had never heard of the charity organization, so he didn't know what to expect when he opened it initially.
“Good sir. You brought to our attention a regulatory oversight within our organization. In return for your good work and on behalf of those whose lives you have saved, we are proud to present you with the following certificate of deed. Enclosed you will find documents certifying you as the sole owner of the equivalent of sixteen million dollars of your local currency in gold bullion, currently being held in your name and awaiting your acknowledgment. We wish you all the best in your future as a free man.”
Sincerely,The Board of “The Friend of the People”
Jennifer quit her job at the hospital that afternoon, and they spent the remainder of his vacation planning their getaway.
They decided it wasn't enough to leave the capital. They way things were going, it seemed likely that the whole country was going to end up in flames, and so they decided to leave it completely. With their new fortune they could go wherever they wanted, and they decided to see the world.
They traveled south first, crossing the border with their new passports in a jeep they purchased for the trip. They'd driven down the highway past the big cities and into a small village they'd read about on the net where you were supposed to be able to walk out to the beach and see right down to the bottom of the clear blue sea.
That's where Jennifer was now. Sitting on the beach with her toes in the cool water, the jeep parked behind her with their sleeping bags and camping gear loaded up in the back.
Thomas stood there for a second holding their dinner and tried to imagine what he would have thought if someone had told him a year ago how his life would be changed in such a short time.
When they'd left the prison facility in the transport vehicle, they hadn't been sure exactly what they were going to do. They'd turned off the main road as soon as possible and driven down small desert roads for hours, expecting to see military vehicles appear in their rear view mirror any minute.
As the sun went down they came to a medium sized town where Thomas pulled in behind an abandoned warehouse and parked the vehicle. He knew they couldn't just walk away, their fingerprints were all over the truck and the military would be after them as soon as they found it. So they walked to a nearby gas station and Thomas used the little cash he still had in his pants pocket to purchase a lighter, a lottery ticket, and some gasoline in a portable gas can.
They waited until that night and then, under cover of darkness they poured the gasoline all over the inside of the vehicle. The two of them backed up about ten feet and then Thomas used the lighter to ignite the lottery ticket and tossed it into the open door.
They stood there for a moment and watched the flames lick the roof of the truck and then turned and walked out of that parking lot before the fire engines arrived.
Making their way home hadn't been easy. At first, they didn't even know where they were, they'd been hooded when they were taken to the prison facility, and they were still wearing the clothes they'd worn to the protest in the capital the day they'd been arrested. Clothes filthy with dirt and grass, and stained with the blood of dead men.
They went into a BurgerHut and cleaned themselves up as well as they could and then Thomas went out in the parking lot and begged for cash until they had enough to buy two bus tickets to the next town over. From there, Jennifer called her mother and asked her to wire them enough money to rent a car and drive home.
Eventually they arrived at their own front door. They parked the rental car in the street in front of their house and went in without saying anything to each other. Jennifer went into the bathroom to take a shower and Thomas laid down on the bed to wait his turn.
By the time she was done, he was already fast asleep. Jennifer watched him for a moment, and then laid down next to him in the bed. As exhaustion washed over her, she pressed her naked body against his back, taking comfort in the familiarity of the moment.
Thomas woke the next day and finally removed the filthy clothes he'd been shot, shackled, and dragged to prison in. He took a long hot shower and scrubbed the blood and sweat off his body until he felt clean again. He called his work and apologized for not showing up on Monday, explaining that his father had been in the hospital, and no, he was fine but could he take some vacation. They were very accommodating, although he never returned to work. It was a little over two weeks later that they received the letter in the mail from the “Friend of the People” foundation.
Thomas sat down next to Jennifer and handed one of the tortas to her. She unwrapped the little package and took a bite out of it, chewing while they kicked their feet in the surf.
Between bites he began to speak softly to her. “When I was there, in the future, I overheard something that's had me thinking. They mentioned something called the Emancipation. I think I know what he meant.”
Jennifer turned to face him and Thomas kept talking. “I think someday men really will be free Jen. From all of it. I think people are going to outgrow the state, and it's going to be an event of such historic importance that they'll remember it forever after. I don't know if we'll live to see it Jen, but I believe someone will, and that gives me hope. I can live a free man knowing that someday everyone else will be too.”
Jennifer looked back out over the sea and took another bite of her torta. Thomas scooted over closer to her and put one of his arms around her. She leaned in towards him and rested her head against his shoulder.
They watched the sun go down that way. And just as it hit the horizon it flashed across the water and for just an instant, Thomas and Jennifer were blinded by a brilliant white light.
Author's Note
I began writing this book in July of 2009. It took me a little under a year to finish the first draft. Since that time, the country I live in has suffered the deepest economic depression in nearly a hundred years, states have begun arresting people on the mere suspicion of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the world is poised on the edge of the greatest financial collapse in human history.
It was against this backdrop that I wrote this story. I wanted to write a story that would both convey the important ideas I believe in and also be exciting and passionate. I wanted people to want to keep reading, and also consider the ideas it contains. I hope that I have accomplished both of those goals.
It was important to me while I wrote the novel to allow my characters the same freedom I want for myself. The freedom to grow and live as they wished. There were of course times when I felt that one character or another should act in this way or that in the interest of narrative, but like so many other central planners who came before, I found that it was far more difficult than one might expect to predict the behavior of a large number of dynamic personalities. In the end, I tried to let the people I'd brought onto the page tell the story as they experienced it, and was sometimes as surprised as my characters at how things turned out.
I am an anarcho-capitalist myself, and I have spent a significant amount of time trying to show people the true nature of the state. I have written blogs, and articles, and poems, and spent much of my free time arguing for a voluntary society.
I have come to believe that while voluntaryism is absolutely inevitable, it is also something which we can not bring about on our own. Statism is too entrenched, the incentives for those who support it far too powerful, for us to ever bring it down ourselves. It will simply have to run its course, and only then, in the in-between time before humanity once again embarks on this path, will we have a chance. It will be during that time that we will have to convince people to choose freedom and non-violence instead of death and control.
And that is why we must reach as many minds as we can now, so that we are as prepared as possible then.
That is the real reason I wrote this book. Yes, I hope people enjoy it. But more than that, I hope it makes people think. Think about the true nature of violence. Think about what it means for a politician to pass a law, and realize that it is nothing more nor less than threatening death to those who refuse to obey.
But be warned, when you begin to see the truth, there is no going back. And just as it did for Thomas, it can cause you great difficulty in your relationships. Some people won't be ready to see the truth, they have too much invested in the way things are, and when you challenge everything they believe in, they will cast you away in self defense. It isn't all roses, but if you care about truth, you'll end up there anyway.
And on the plus side, you'll be free. Even if the state exists the rest of our lives, and those lives are spent under the lash, at least our minds will be free, which is something so many will never know.
First and foremost I must thank my wife for her help in making this book a reality. She has spent many nights tolerating my impassioned rants about this government evil or that, and allowing me to spend our time together working on this when she'd rather I be doing something more entertaining. Her encouragement and support have made a work like this possible.
Second I'd like to thank my family. My brother and my parents have made me the free thinking man I am. I will be forever thankful for their support and owe them every accomplishment I'll ever have.
I must also thank the many intellectual influences who have helped me to understand the nature of the state. My friends, Jonny and Chris, great thinkers like Mises, Molyneux, Rothbard, and Spooner, and great writers like Ayn Rand and L. Neil Smith. It is the dynamic tension between minds which brings about the greatest advances, and I could never have imagined alone the ideas I've arrived at with their input.
You may be asking why I would write a book to try to convince people that statism is evil, if in fact I believe that there is nothing we can do to stop it. I have already said that it is my hope that, while I can't stop it from running it's inevitable course, I can at least try to educate people so that we don't repeat that course again. But I believe that Albert J. Nock answered this question best in his classic 1935 work, Our Enemy the State, and so I will leave you with his words.
“But it may quite properly be asked, if we in common with the rest of the Western world are so far gone in Statism as to make this outcome inevitable, what is the use of a book which merely shows that it is inevitable? By its own hypothesis the book is useless. Upon the very evidence it offers, no one's political opinions are likely to be changed by it, no one's practical attitude towards the State will be modified by it; and if they were, according to the book's own premises, what good could it do?
Assuredly I do not expect this book to change anyone's political opinions, for it is not meant to do that. One or two, perhaps, here and there, may be moved to look a little into the subject-matter on their own account, and thus perhaps their opinions would undergo some slight loosening - or some constriction - but this is the very most that would happen. In general, too, I would be the first to acknowledge that no results of the kind which we agree to call practical could accrue to the credit of a book of this order, were it a hundred times as cogent as this one - no results, that is, that would in the least retard the State's progress in self-aggrandizement and thus modify the consequences of the State's course. There are two reasons, however, one general and one special, why the publication of such a book is admissible.
The general reason is that when in any department of thought a person has, or thinks he has, a view of the plain intelligible order of things, it is proper that he should record that view publicly, with no thought whatever of the practical consequences, or lack of consequences, likely to ensue upon his so doing. He might indeed be thought bound to do this as a matter of abstract duty; not to crusade or propagandize for his view or seek to impose it upon anyone - far from that! - not to concern himself at all with either its acceptance or its disallowance; but merely to record it. This I say, might be thought his duty to the natural truth of things, but it is at all events his right; it is admissible.
The special reason has to do with the fact that in every civilization, however generally prosaic, however addicted to the short-time point of view on human affairs, there are always certain alien spirits who, while outwardly conforming to the requirements of the civilization around them, still keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things, irrespective of any practical end. They have an intellectual curiosity, sometimes touched with emotion, concerning the august order of nature; they are impressed by the contemplation of it, and like to know as much about it as they can, even in circumstances where its operation is ever so manifestly unfavourable to their best hopes and wishes. For these, a work like this, however in the current sense impractical, is not quite useless; and those of them it reaches will be aware that for such as themselves, and such only, it was written.”
