Nonentity Page 6

  “I’ll let you get back to work,” said Jenkins. “Try to stay on top of things. Election season will soon be upon us. God help us all.”

  Shortly after his exit, my attention drifted from the Davinsky film on screen. I tried to make sense of my hallucinations in that office.

  ****

  Three weeks later Triple-M collected sixteen discs of campaign footage I had reviewed. I was nervous. Over-caffeinated throughout the editing process, I doubted the quality of my material. Call it misplaced anxiety. I never heard anything, pro or con, about that footage.

  Another memorable event occurred the day I turned in those discs. I left work at 6 p.m. As I walked through a parking lot, I spotted Victoria Mason about twenty feet away. She was taking photographs of me. She stuffed her camera in a bag and ran away. I did not pursue her.

  Why was she photographing me? What did she want? I added those to a growing list of unanswered questions and headed home.

  CHAPTER 4

  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

  Gabriel Manchester wrote in A Man of the Regime:

  The chief asset of government is its monopoly on the legal definition of crime. This monopoly grants the State an exclusive privilege to commit acts that would constitute crimes for private actors. Government redefines its theft as “taxation,” counterfeiting as “inflation,” kidnapping as “imprisonment,” mass murder as “war,” etc. The State’s authority hinges not on any logical or moral legitimacy, which it lacks, but on its guns, its cops, its military. Might has always made right. The citizens must remain ignorant of this truth. The rulers employ numerous smokescreens to camouflage the nature of their power. Propaganda abounds, becoming the wallpaper of society.

  “Smokescreens” and “propaganda” permeated a conference I attended for work, more than two and a half years after Lorna’s evaporation. Election season was heating up. Incumbent upon the Permanent Regime was that its employees, especially those in key departments such as mine, possess the proper spirit. Two months earlier the government had increased its workers’ dosage of “thought stoppers” by fifty percent.

  The title of the conference was “All Within the Regime, Nothing Outside the Regime, Nothing Against the Regime.” I arrived at the thirty-two-thousand-seat arena around 9 a.m. Above the floor’s central stage hung an imposing black banner, touting the government’s newest slogan in red letters: LAND OF THE SHEEP, HOME OF THE SLAVES.

  Thousands poured into the bleachers. I sat in Row 28, a safe distance from the Triple-M contingent, whom I saw enough at the office. Jenkins spotted me anyway.

  “Flemming!” he said, leering at my jumbo thermos. “Damn it. That’s enough coffee for four people. You’ll be bouncing off the walls.”

  I felt sarcastic. “Got to stay wide awake for this entire function. Don’t want to miss a single second. Should be a real doozy.”

  “Yeah. You’re right about that. Couldn’t you cut down just a little?”

  “I need every drop.”

  Jenkins frowned. “What’s with your tie? It doesn’t go with your shirt.”

  “Is that so?” I said, looking myself over. “Egad! This tie’s a disgrace. How about my jacket? It is woeful. By golly, I’ve set men’s fashion back twenty years.”

  “Now you’re just smart-assing me. I don’t appreciate that. If we were at work, I’d really let you have it.”

  “Sorry sir, but I meant no foul. You must have misread me.”

  He grunted and walked away. I chuckled.

  I did not have to suffer Jenkins much longer. He was removed two weeks later, presumably evaporated. I could not reckon him a covert agent of the underground. Perhaps his exaggerated enthusiasm for the Regime – which I considered sincere – marked him a probable faker. Or maybe a random glitch in the system undid him. I shed no tears for the man. Live by the sociopathic plutocracy, die by the sociopathic plutocracy.

  The conference began at 9:20 a.m. A tall woman, more than a dozen ridiculous medals adorning her military uniform, walked across the stage toward the microphone. She had shoulder-length red hair and a body that might have looked good in different apparel. She stopped at the mic, bowing her head devoutly. The audience hushed.

  The woman said to the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Permanent Regime and her fighting forces overseas, I welcome you to today’s celebration. A renowned speaker will address you this morning. Let us pause first to ponder all our magnificent blessings in this, the greatest nation on Earth.”

  After a brief silence, the audience turned to the national flag – famous “PR” in black against a solid red background – which suspended from the rafters. They recited aloud The Pledge of Subservience:

  I pledge subservience to the cloth symbol of the Permanent Regime, and to the oligarchy for which it stands, one nation, under bread and circuses, imprisoned by collectivism, with thievery and injustice for all.

  Following a few prayers and announcements, a husky man advanced to the microphone. His firm face was recognizable from his many photo-ops. Though over fifty, his trendy hairstyle made him look much younger.

  He saluted the crowd. “Good morning, fellow citizens and employees of the Regime. So splendid to join you. My name is Lannigan McGinnty. I am the Secretary of the Office of Misinformation. That’s not as prestigious as it sounds. I am no more critical to the success of this enterprise than any of you. I thank you for your dedication.

  “Before I say anything further, I have a video to show you. It’s a fantastic little gem that our friends at the Dog-and-Pony Department put together. We’ll probably be running it in all the schools soon enough. Let’s have a look.”

  McGinnty pressed a button on a remote control. A gigantic screen unrolled from a cable above the stage. He pressed another button. A movie began playing.

  The title of the piece appeared in red: Glory, Sweet Glory. The opening five minutes assaulted the senses with historical imagery: soldiers in combat, bombs crashing onto beastly enemies, numerous Premiers/secular saints from the past, footage of domestic victories, photographs of revered political documents, etc. An angelic Regime anthem blared over the video. The onslaught slowed, yielding to fifteen minutes of heavy-handed narration before transitioning to a conclusion that mirrored the beginning. The narrator spouted the usual malarkey about the Regime’s greatness. I was well adrift during that segment of the video.

  The familiar blue blotch popped repeatedly before my eyes as Glory, Sweet Glory unfolded. It came every minute or so at first. By video’s end, the blotch was appearing to me every twenty seconds or less. During the final credits, the blueness solidified, overwhelming me for several minutes. I awoke from the trance:

  The rest of the audience was gone. I was alone in the bleachers.

  Lannigan McGinnty went to the microphone and said, “Wasn’t that a spectacular slice of bullshit? Let’s hear it for that masterpiece!”

  Deafening applause erupted. I shook my head, wondering how an empty room could produce such an ovation.

  “We are winning the war on individuality,” said McGinnty. “We have many conflicts overseas. There is no shortage of foreign foes, ghastly threats abroad, and other vaguely defined hobgoblins. Keep the masses terrified of dangers from without and we shall dominate the war within. For there is only one true enemy that the State must subdue, contain, frighten, diminish, and ultimately abolish: the independent individual.

  “The primary function of our propaganda is to divorce individuals from their authentic selves. We must define these individuals as early as possible. We must brand them with labels such as ‘citizen’ and ‘Regime native,’ based on geographical accident of birth. We must concoct principles and belief systems and ideologies, inducing our subjects to internalize and personalize our concoctions. Swell the people up with nationalism and seduce their fragile egos with wildly embellished historical achievements that occurred before many of them were born. Convince them that they are the government.

  “Glory, Sweet Glory is b
ut a tiny brick in a house of illusions that we are continually constructing. We are … we will …” His voice faded out. The blue blotch overwhelmed me once again. My sight returned:

  The crowd was back. Trumpets blared and people sang ballads deifying the Regime. I watched as McGinnty paraded through the bleachers, shaking hands with spectators. Had I heard any of the actual speech that he had delivered?

  ****

  I did not discuss my hallucinatory experience at the conference with my schoolteacher friend Cranston Gage. Privy to my encounter with the deceased Lawrence Alister, Cranston already feared that I was becoming unglued. I feared the same.

  “Keep yourself together,” Cranston said to me. “The so-called underground is littered with fractured minds and broken souls. A lot of people plunge into their own private hells long before confronting the hell of evaporation.”

  His words echoed Gabriel Manchester, who wrote in A Man of the Regime:

  Oppositionist movements face a daunting scenario. Among the populace is a wall of delusion and denial, founded upon steady conditioning. Most reflexively defend the Regime against all philosophic attacks. Anyone who rejects the reigning dogmas of statism is a heretic.

  A greater problem may be the oppositionist movements themselves. In a climate hostile to freedom, radicals may lose hope or delude themselves with false optimism. Splintering may occur. Some will surrender to cynicism and impede progress worse than the staunchest statists. Others will go mad.

  “Revolution” is a romantic term, but it usually leads to an altered form of the status quo – or worse. Genuine advancement requires unwavering virtue. Virtue is typically scarce, particularly with those under extreme duress. The Permanent Regime is the most overpowering source of duress on Earth....

  “Duress” was too mild a word. Outright hysteria was rampant in the underground. Cranston tried to steer me clear of malcontents and loose cannons.

  He said, “Beware conspiracy nuts. They are right to question official accounts, but that hardly qualifies them as reliable. They’ve got off-the-wall explanations for everything. It’s more distractions, which only serve those in power.”

  Conspiracy nuts were legion in the underground. Endless dots demanded connecting. Secret societies, covert sex cults, drug-running intelligence agencies, terroristic false flags – the theories of conspiracy junkies could fill volumes. Some of them entertained the hell out of me. Cranston was not so amused.

  King of the conspiracy crowd was radio personality Allen Jonah. He obsessed over a New World Order that allegedly commanded the Permanent Regime and fomented evil throughout the globe.

  “They control the printing of all currencies, in effect, a license to steal,” Jonah said during one of his broadcasts. “They determine every nation’s tax code and budget. Why is there so much government debt worldwide? Is that an accident? It’s a deliberate scheme to perpetually enslave the masses to the moneychangers. Why is human history war after war after war, a long trail of blood that benefits almost no one? These wars greatly inflate deficits that allow banksters to remain forever at the top of the pyramid. They seek no less than complete ownership of every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

  Such claims were conservative compared to other aspects of his worldview. According to Jonah, virtually every major incident – assassination, terrorist attack, foreign invasion, mass shooting, etc. – was a false flag/inside job designed to induce panic and manufacture demand for government protection.

  Jonah said, “What about these insane anti-drug policies? Various governments have waged wars on malevolent substances for well over a century now. Has the drug problem improved? Not in the slightest. Substance abuse has soared. Are the rulers unaware that their anti-drug campaigns have fallen short of their stated goals? Or were those goals only charades? Might it be more than a happy coincidence that these policies have ballooned the fortunes of money launderers, intelligence agencies, prison industrial complexes, police states, and political manipulators in general? Crazy talk, right? Shut your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears. Your overlords are counting on you to look the other way. Disappoint them, and it’s off to the evaporation chambers you go.”

  Jonah frequently referred to “the evaporation chambers.” As much as he accused the financial oligarchy of terrorizing people, he created more than his own fair share of fear. It certainly boosted listenership.

  Many in the underground regarded Allen Jonah as a “sensationalist” and “paranoia monger.” How could this self-proclaimed defender of truth get away with so flagrantly exposing the puppet-masters? Speculations ran strange. One theory asserted that Jonah never broadcasted from the same location twice; he went from place to place, leaving behind equipment that enabled him to air his controversial material by remote control. More likely, he was a counterfeit agitator, wittingly or unwittingly disseminating misinformation that aided the establishment he claimed to oppose. An ironic twist: one of the world’s leading paranoia mongers became a target of paranoia himself. “Trust” was a dirty word in the underground.

  “Place faith in no one,” Cranston said to me. “Stay on the outside. Friendships may serve you on a personal level, but they won’t keep you safe. They often get people killed.”

  I said, “Aren’t you my friend? Should I place no faith in you?”

  “It would be naïve to tell you otherwise. Invest minimal confidence in our friendship. Survival trumps sentimentality.”

  “I thought that dismantling the Regime meant getting more involved.”

  “Dismantling the Regime – are you fucking serious? That’s not a practical ambition in our lifetimes. Securing meaningful liberty is a long process. There may be triumphs along the way, but many will be purely cosmetic. This is an intergenerational development that may span centuries. Forget about smashing an empire. Free yourself instead.”

  “Why oppose the Regime at all? Why not lay low and avoid risks altogether?” I said.

  “Now you’re thinking. Opposing the system is not about practicality. It’s about psychological health. Consider it a mental secession, a detachment from the barbarism at society’s root. It’s an acceptance of truth. That’s what Manchester meant when he wrote of ‘virtue’ in his book. Truth is the most basic virtue. Don’t oppose the system for tangible results unlikely to materialize. Oppose it so you can live in accordance with truth.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Keep writing. Don’t get much more involved than that.”

  I tried to follow his advice. I published several essays covering inside information I gleaned as a Triple-M employee. My code name became Nonentity after I read Manchester’s description of himself as a “nonentity” in A Man of the Regime.

  I contributed an article to the eighth edition of Criminal Enterprise: The Unofficial History of the Permanent Regime. It hit the black market shortly after the conference I attended during election season.

  The foreword to Criminal Enterprise, an excerpt from Manchester, read in part: “Due to advancements in electronic communications, fascism can no longer wear its various masks. People can finally apply the phrase ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant’ to oligarchic command and control. Ancient despotisms crumble under the weight of their own deceptions. The age-old seesaw of freedom versus tyranny tips in an unprecedented direction. Put the rulers on notice: their dreams of total subjugation are just that – dreams.”

  “Even Manchester was susceptible to unwarranted optimism,” Cranston said. “He failed to account for the limitations of cognitive dissonance.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, Manchester clearly understood that people are basically sheep who automatically submit to authority. He fantasized that the sheep would someday wake up. He thought that with better access to information, people would experience an overload of cognitive dissonance, compelling them to liberate themselves from the Regime. I find that doubtful.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”
<
br />   “There is already plenty of ground for the cognitive dissonance he wrote about. Propaganda didn’t show up just yesterday; it’s been abundant throughout history. Rarely is it especially persuasive. How many times have we heard that the Regime is bombing other countries to spread ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’? Even an imbecile should see through that. Most people believe it nonetheless. Consider it a failure of cognitive dissonance.”

  I stopped pressing the matter. I had enough of my own cognitive dissonance.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE WOMAN WHO CHOSE HER

  OWN REALITY PART II

  Lorna showed no fear while I knew her.

  “I used to worry a lot,” she said to me. “The world was such a troubling place and I was just a little girl, unprepared for the dangers. Did the constant worrying improve anything? Did it make the world less dangerous? No. If anything, the hazards grew worse. They became grisly monsters, chasing me down, devouring peace of mind. Yet I was eventually grateful for those monsters. They motivated me to change.”

  I said, “At least monsters are good for something. How did you change?”

  “I figured out that the world is more fictional than factual. The perils are only as real as one imagines them. I strived for something more than a surface existence.”

  “You chose your own reality, in other words. Kudos for that. However, the perils are real. They’re all around us.”

  “True. Ignoring the darkness won’t erase it. Choosing your own reality puts things in a larger context that unearths the sublime. Sublime elements reside in everything.”

  We sat at Lorna’s kitchen table. Her home boasted paintings and sculptures she had purchased at bargain-basement prices. The apartment otherwise lacked extravagance. With only a half-fridge and some decaying cabinets, her kitchen was slight, the table jutting out into an adjacent hallway. At our feet lay an old green rug that matched the room’s peeling wallpaper.