"Virtually Yours, Jonathan Newman"
Prologue
Nineteen Years after the Great Change
Jonathan Newman had expected the whirs, beeps, and whispers as he lay naked on the cushioned blue table, arms and legs outstretched like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. What surprised him was how comfortable he felt. The phosphorescent yellow lights gave the room a radioactive glow; exactly as it had looked in the pre-entry training module he was shown. It felt neither hostile nor particularly friendly, like a hotel room that pretends to be your home for a while but that you willingly forget the moment you hand in the key. A hospital-like aroma of tangy pine gently scented the room, warning germs to back-off. He felt chilly, but what else would you expect when you’re stripped bare and lying on a slab in front of complete strangers. The worst part of the experience so far was the background music. They knew he was a musician; that he played in a relatively obscure, somewhat trendy and always broke band that blended jazz with a retro-rock style from the 2020s. Why in the world would they select an electronic version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to welcome him to his new life?
The team in white inserted a tube here, a lens there, poking and prodding like shoppers in a produce market. There were four of them, or five, the way they buzzed around it was hard to tell, speaking softly to each other behind protective surgical masks that preserved their anonymity. Their actions were confident and professional. Micro-wires were gently connected under the skin at each fingertip; sensors were glued on his long, slender toes. A silicon chip with a wireless transmitter was carefully injected above each eye, the resulting crimson beads quickly swabbed away. Tiny filaments were inserted up his Roman nose and lodged high in his sinuses. No orifice was spared, no inch of skin ignored. The team was efficient and had clearly done this many times before. There was no pain, just as promised.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was muffled but pleasant in that practiced, medical way.
“I’m fine,” Jonathan replied. “Bit cold, but….” The shift was immediate. Jonathan felt his body temperature rising as if he had stepped through an enchanted doorway into a comfy living room with the fireplace roaring. It was a remarkable bit of magic and he wondered how it was done.
When a man is surrounded by strangers while lying naked on a table he has a natural concern for the integrity of his genitals, so it wasn’t surprising that Jonathan’s heart rate increased noticeably when a gentle but firm hand took hold of his penis and lifted. His blood pressure notched up and his eyes widened further still as the first of twenty-four wireless electronic connections was attached to that most sensitive body part. It wasn’t disagreeable, just a bit disconcerting. You want to know who’s doing what to you down there. The pleasant-sounding woman’s voice reassured him. “Relax please Mr. Newman, breathe,” she said as something resembling a form-fitting rubber cod-piece was stretched over what his wife Jen affectionately called “the pest.”
“We’re going to run a test Mr. Newman,” Ms. Pleasant Voice said placing a gloved hand on his shoulder. Then she leaned in very close to his ear and whispered with what sounded like a teasing smile, “Feel free to enjoy this.” He could still feel the caressing sound of her voice and smell the minty Tic Tac of her breath as a tsunami of bliss shot between his crotch and brain with such force that his eyes shut of their own accord and a reflexive, primal groan filled the room. The assembled technicians tittered, but he couldn’t have cared less.
“Maybe you should run that test again,” he gasped after catching his breath, half-joking and half-begging, but there was no response. The technicians disappeared into the anonymity of their work once again. As the tingles receded and his pulse normalized, his thoughts migrated to his wife Jen, and from her to the kids and the way they each looked as he hugged them goodbye at the airport just a few hours ago – Jen cautiously hopeful, Rachel annoyed, Josh with his ever enthusiastic smile.
It seemed a ridiculous proposition. Why would a man voluntarily agree to spend two years living in total isolation selling blood and other body fluids to laboratories – especially when some of those materials were going to be extracted from his own body? When Jen showed him the advertisement on their morning news display, they laughed at the absurdity of it.
They opened the link as a joke and the holographic advertisement that rose from the screen delivered the usual saccharine testimonials from regular people, just like them, whose lives had been transformed by the freedom they had earned after just two short years of dedicated service to QualLab. Debts had been paid, education and healthcare for their children assured, work in their senior years was less onerous and more fulfilling. “Yeah, right!” Jonathan had smirked.
Since the Great Change nineteen years earlier, Americans had learned to trust their own instincts and no one else. The freedom to make your own decisions, right or wrong, without government agencies guiding you or interfering in the process had been one of the primary promises of the revolution. Companies had been freed of federal regulation, able to market their goods and services as they saw fit. The consumer now had the right and responsibility to separate fact from fiction.
The same applied to employees. There were no more government watchdogs, no publicly funded filters, no mandated healthcare, no Big Brother watching out for you. If a company promised great pay and superior benefits only to deliver endless hours of boredom, abusive management and delayed or missed paychecks, the Free Market would straighten it all out - eventually. The Free Market had replaced God and government as the court of final appeals, the great leveler that ensured justice would be done.
“You don’t need a union or some politician in Washington telling you what you can or can’t do at work,” Enrico Prima had declared. “You’re an adult!”
Enrico Prima, known universally as Ricky, was the masterminding engineer behind the Great Change. Though he was a powerful political speaker, he never sought elected office himself, never chose to wear the mantle of government power. He understood better than anyone that once the Great Change had achieved its mission, those running the government shell that remained would be more or less irrelevant caretakers, national figureheads whose primary job was to stay out of the way. The real power would reside elsewhere.
“Contracts!” Ricky would declare. “Contracts are the heart of freedom. Make your best deal, stand up for yourself, negotiate your own destiny. With a contract you have the leverage to control your life!” The assumption was that both parties in the negotiation were free to agree or not. Any inequality of power between the job-seeker in need of work and the employer behind a desk asking questions, backed by an army of lawyers and accountants who wrote and enforced the contracts, was irrelevant. The principle is what counted. The strong should get stronger; the weak should get out of the way. It was the natural order of things.
The Great Change had transformed the country like a rainstorm bringing life to fallow fields after years of drought or, if you preferred, like a frenzy of blood-thirsty sharks feeding on the carcass of a wounded democracy. It all depended on your point of view. In the course of one election cycle either eighty years of socialist tampering with the purity of market capitalism had been discredited as a failed experiment and unceremoniously dumped into the trash compactor of history, or long cherished institutions that served the majority of the population by providing fairness and equality of opportunity had been swept away by the avarice of unchecked corporate greed. The same reality could be seen through different colored lenses.
“Government is the Enemy of Liberty!” had been the battle cry of Ricky Prima’s Freedom First Party and the majority, at least the majority of the forty-eight percent of citizens who had bothered to vote, had agreed. It had been only the second election unfettered by spending restrictions and this had unleashed those with cash and a clear agenda to ensure their voices were heard. The result was the most sophisticated advertising campaign in world history, a tidal wave of entertaining, dramatic, and powerful messages delivered in every imaginable medium with Ricky Prima leading from behind, pulling the strings, and it worked. Democrats and Republicans were defeated from coast to coast and for the first time in over one hundred and fifty years a new political entity revolutionized America’s two-party system.
Which is not to say there was a huge groundswell of support for Freedom First. True, the new party did capture the popular imagination with its “Give Yourself to Freedom” campaign, winning the Presidency for a relatively unknown politician from Kansas. True, for the first time in the country’s history a new political entity gained a majority in both Houses of Congress. But these were default victories born from decades of disinterest in the political process, not an upheaval led by crusaders fomenting a popular movement. The truth was that frustration with the inefficiency and corruption of the old politics and an equal measure of complacency were the real winners and the primary driving forces behind the Great Change.
It was an appropriate moniker. Everything changed. The mind-numbing rate of technological innovation that had, since the middle of the twentieth century, been fueled by government-funded research at government supported universities and institutes, came to a screeching halt or moved overseas. The promises of a capitalist renaissance, of creativity unchained once government interference was swept out of the way, never materialized. Instead there was a familiar race for the quickest returns from the smallest possible investment. Mammoth corporations got much, much larger and any creative upstarts were quietly, or not so quietly, squashed. With no watchdog to restrict the naturally monopolistic tendencies of the powerful, nature took its course. It’s a fallacy that those with great power want competition. The young and aspiring want the ability to compete, to challenge the status quo, to break in. Kings of commerce and industry want to maintain and expand their control and keep the upstarts out.
The social fabric of America was also transformed. Responsibility for the education of children was returned to families. Under the new order, going to school became a voluntary option and it was a parent’s responsibility to pay for it. Gone was the socialist notion that universal education should be a citizen’s right, financed by the state through public taxation. Most communities kept some modest form of public education alive for a while, but with costs prohibitively high and efforts to raise local taxes usually defeated in all but the wealthiest suburbs, the nation’s public school systems collapsed. Some saw this as a step forward, the end of a dinosaur that had outlived its usefulness. Others, including the over three million newly unemployed teachers, did not.
What replaced them was a vastly expanded home-schooling network supported by online e-courses and resources. Companies and churches also stepped into the education void, acquiring abandoned public school buildings and college campuses and converting them into private institutions. Employers began to offer their most desirable candidates for highly technical jobs or management positions the financial support they needed to educate their children in these new, selective schools, in return for a long-term contract. It was a quid pro quo that fit the new social order. You were free to enter into the agreement or not. If you wanted the benefits of a quality private education for your children and couldn’t afford to pay for it yourself, you had choices.
Healthcare was similarly revolutionized. Those with the resources could buy insurance and there were myriad companies and policies to choose from. Prices were unregulated, that is to say very high, so more than half the population chose to forgo coverage, which was their right. If you or your children got sick and you were uninsured or if you had foolishly purchased some bargain insurance plan without carefully reading the fine print and exclusions, well freedom had its price. The religious charity hospitals still provided a safety net, but the demand for their services was high and they were free to decide who was worthy of care.
As with education, some companies offered medical insurance to key employees to attract and retain the most prized talent. It was a powerful lure, and many people chose where they worked primarily for this benefit.
There had, of course, been protests as the Great Change swept the country; the transitions were radical and there were serious pockets of opposition. However, as the federal government was dismantled, piece by piece, it became more and more difficult to find a central authority to challenge. Who do you protest against? At the same time, local militia groups funded by corporate titans and led by libertarian ideologues fiercely loyal to Freedom First emerged to defend the new order. People were free to speak their minds under the new government, constitutional rights were guaranteed, but with no strong central authority to protect those rights it was easier for groups who didn’t approve of a message to find ways to intimidate or silence the messenger. This was the most twisted paradox of the new America. [1]
Jonathan and Jen had been among the millions that sat the revolution out. They didn’t have strong political feelings one way or the other, hadn’t even voted in the election that shook the world. The protests and marches were exciting to view on their living room communication center, the riots and rallies made for dramatic distractions, the entertaining commercials were great fun to watch, but like most of their generation they never thought the Great Change would touch them personally in any significant way. As things turned out, they were wrong.
The Newmans had no health insurance. As obscure musicians with a small local following, the absurd costs of the now unregulated healthcare industry were out of their reach. Jen’s day job was working for an architectural firm where she was an interior designer, but the company had been able to attract talented people without offering such expensive perks and after the Great Change there was no longer any requirement to do so. Jonathan and Jen had both been healthy their whole lives. Their daughter Rachel had the usual early childhood diseases but nothing out of the ordinary or particularly pricey. Why would they sink their limited funds into overpriced insurance?
Unfortunately they hadn’t anticipated that their son, Josh, would contract an obscure virus that would trigger mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, also know as Kawasaki disease, just days after his fourth birthday. How could they? How could they have known that if they delayed seeking medical treatment, and delay they did, his young heart would be permanently damaged and that the resulting aneurysms and coronary artery inflammation would require the immediate implanting of an electronic defibrillator and, eventually, a heart transplant?
Little Josh had kept his sense of humor through it all, though he looked terrible and felt worse. “Hey Mom, what’s brown and runny and smells like Green Lake? My poop!” “Look Dad, my tongue is turning into a strawberry!”
The decision to take him to the emergency room was finally made after days of online searching and a frenzy of frantic calls to friends and family. “Josh has a high fever and it won’t go down. No it doesn’t look like the flu. We already tried Tylenol, it didn’t work!” Their child’s lips had turned red – really red, and his hands were swollen. Who would ever have suspected this could happen to a healthy four-year old boy?
The Newmans’ lives were upended. Jen took a leave from her design job during the three weeks he was at the hospital and for an additional month while her son recovered at home. The scare and stress, which might have destroyed some families, had brought Jonathan and Jen even closer together. Their finances, by contrast, were a disaster. How were they going to pay off their mammoth medical bills? Would they ever be able to afford the heart transplant Josh needed? What would happen if they couldn’t?
For ten years the Newmans struggled, working double jobs, slowly digging out of their financial hole like a couple of determined moles burrowing through concrete. Jonathan discovered he had a gift for sales, as long as he believed in whatever he was selling. It didn’t feed his soul the way music did, but it put food on the table. When things looked especially bleak, which happened more than once, they reluctantly turned to family and friends for help. Finally, after a decade of ups and downs, just as they were about to retire the last of Josh’s medical debts, their cardiologist gave them the alarming news that their son’s heart had further deteriorated. The defibrillator could no longer reliably keep him alive. If he didn’t get a transplant soon…
Jonathan’s shaved head, once full of wavy dark-brown hair, was pricked again and again as tiny transcranial magnetic stimulators were inserted just below the galea aponeurotica. Wired rubberized booties and gloves were coaxed onto his hands and feet. He was alert, aware of each step in the procedure though he was oblivious to the stem cells being discreetly inserted into cavities deep inside his body, pockets he didn’t even know he had.
How long had it been now, an hour, maybe two, three? It was hard to tell. Bill Lamb, his QualLab manager, had told him that time would disappear, that day and night would become meaningless, but he hadn’t expected to lose track so soon. He had just arrived.
Just as Jonathan began thinking the hook up process would go on forever, it ended. The team stepped back to examine their handiwork, mumbled a few words complimenting each other and then disappeared. The lights slowly dimmed, dramatically, like the beginning of a theatrical event. Deep quiet filled the small room leaving nothing but the rhythmic sounds of Jonathan’s own inhaling and exhaling to listen to.
He waited for something to happen but nothing did, not even the obnoxious music. It was as dark as a moonless night in winter and after a while he considered just going to sleep, but that didn’t seem right. He became more and more aware of the sound of his breathing which was louder than he remembered, most likely because everything else was so soundless. Jonathan couldn’t recall ever hearing this much silence. It was starting to feel a bit creepy.
“Anyone there?” he finally called out. There was no response. He thought of getting up and walking around the room, trying out what it felt like to move with all the wires and tubes attached, but decided it was too dark so he stayed put. With nothing else to do he eventually closed his eyes and, as you would expect, was instantly jolted alert by a voice that materialized unannounced inside his head. It was a woman’s voice and she sounded young, intelligent and, there was no mistaking this, sexy. To Jonathan, loyalty to his wife was an absolute commitment, one he enthusiastically embraced. He might look at other women, but he never fantasized about them. Thoughts can lead to actions; lines must not be crossed. But if in a moment of weakness he had imagined a voice other than Jen’s, a voice that conjured a body that he would enjoy undressing in the morning when he awoke, at night when he lay down, and several times in-between, this was that voice. She had bypassed his ears, having taken up residence somewhere in his left temporal lobe. It was as if she and Jonathan were dancing very close and she was whispering, but it wasn’t a whisper. A whisper is suggestive and ethereal. This was fully real and very present.
“Hello Jonathan,” the voice said. “I’m Candy and I’ll be your aide while you’re here. I’m sure you’ll like living and working as a Customer Support Professional at QualLab. We’re going to become very good friends. Your first day as a CSP will start in a few hours. I’m going to give you some Doze now. Doze will help you sleep. We’ll talk more after you’ve rested.”
A thin, mustard-yellow medication began flowing through one of the tubes hooked up to Jonathan’s arm. “Relax now. I’ll wake you soon,” Candy purred deep inside him. “I’m glad you’re here Jonathan.”
In a corner of the room a sign slowly came to life and radiated a welcoming message: Year 1, Day 1. Your QualLab contract will expire in 730 days. Thanks for being part of the QualLab Team! It glowed brightly for a few seconds and then gently dimmed until the room was once again as dark as it was silent.
The nothingness around him felt strangely soothing now. The creepy sensation had dissolved, neutralized by the embrace of Candy’s warm welcome. He felt safe though he was still stripped bare, comfortable despite the snaking web of wires and tubes which would bind him to this small cell for the next two years. Jonathan Newman was at peace. His breathing became even and deep as the Doze took effect and a half smile twitched across his lips. His eyes closed and he began to drift. Candy seemed nice. It was going to be okay.
Note: [1] The Impact of the Great Change on America
In the years that followed the Great Change, every public institution was radically transformed. Even the most fervent believers in the revolution had been amazed and, in some cases, distressed by the speed and scope of these changes. The Freedom First Party discarded the rusty anchor of Social Security, severing the chains that had held the economy prisoner and allowing it to float free. Medicare and its evil twin, Medicaid, were dismantled, the resulting vacuum partially filled by the religiously financed charity hospitals that had served society’s derelicts and most vulnerable in earlier centuries.
The despised Internal Revenue Service was among the first to feel the axe, and a slick national lottery was quickly created to provide the relatively modest amount needed to support the new order. The country’s natural treasures – lakes, mountains, rivers, even air space, were sold to the highest bidders to pay off the national debt. The public infrastructure – roads, dams, parks, transportation and schools were likewise privatized. Public radio and television outlets disappeared overnight, dismissed as costly and redundant.
The civil courts still functioned and you could sue to prove you had been harmed and seek restitution, but the judiciary now had to be self-financing and the cost of bringing a case was beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest citizens. Besides, tort reforms limited a company’s liability and penalized losing complainants so if you chose to sue and lost, the financial results could be ruinous. The risks now usually outweighed the potential rewards. At the highest levels, the Supreme Court returned to the values and traditions of the Lochner Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, striking down any laws seen to be infringing on economic liberty or private contracts. Individuals were even able to enter into employment agreements that curtailed their basic freedoms and rights as long as they did so voluntarily. A contract became the preeminent determinant of what was and was not legal or acceptable. Social or cultural values took a back seat to the rights of individuals, especially if those individuals were corporations.
Finally the most important communication tools of the recent past had also been transformed. Once hailed as the facilitator of revolutions around the world, the Internet and its ingenious social applications, which had always eluded government control, found themselves in the service of those who favored the Great Change and out of reach of its opponents. Despite the creative energies and innovative skills of young protesters intent on challenging the country’s new direction, once the Great Change had dismantled the power of the central government, the corporate behemoths who owned the airwaves, networks and infrastructure that underpinned how people communicated with each other had a free hand in ensuring that opposition was muted while accolades in support of the Great Change flowed freely.
Nineteen Years after the Great Change
Jonathan Newman had expected the whirs, beeps, and whispers as he lay naked on the cushioned blue table, arms and legs outstretched like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. What surprised him was how comfortable he felt. The phosphorescent yellow lights gave the room a radioactive glow; exactly as it had looked in the pre-entry training module he was shown. It felt neither hostile nor particularly friendly, like a hotel room that pretends to be your home for a while but that you willingly forget the moment you hand in the key. A hospital-like aroma of tangy pine gently scented the room, warning germs to back-off. He felt chilly, but what else would you expect when you’re stripped bare and lying on a slab in front of complete strangers. The worst part of the experience so far was the background music. They knew he was a musician; that he played in a relatively obscure, somewhat trendy and always broke band that blended jazz with a retro-rock style from the 2020s. Why in the world would they select an electronic version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to welcome him to his new life?
The team in white inserted a tube here, a lens there, poking and prodding like shoppers in a produce market. There were four of them, or five, the way they buzzed around it was hard to tell, speaking softly to each other behind protective surgical masks that preserved their anonymity. Their actions were confident and professional. Micro-wires were gently connected under the skin at each fingertip; sensors were glued on his long, slender toes. A silicon chip with a wireless transmitter was carefully injected above each eye, the resulting crimson beads quickly swabbed away. Tiny filaments were inserted up his Roman nose and lodged high in his sinuses. No orifice was spared, no inch of skin ignored. The team was efficient and had clearly done this many times before. There was no pain, just as promised.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was muffled but pleasant in that practiced, medical way.
“I’m fine,” Jonathan replied. “Bit cold, but….” The shift was immediate. Jonathan felt his body temperature rising as if he had stepped through an enchanted doorway into a comfy living room with the fireplace roaring. It was a remarkable bit of magic and he wondered how it was done.
When a man is surrounded by strangers while lying naked on a table he has a natural concern for the integrity of his genitals, so it wasn’t surprising that Jonathan’s heart rate increased noticeably when a gentle but firm hand took hold of his penis and lifted. His blood pressure notched up and his eyes widened further still as the first of twenty-four wireless electronic connections was attached to that most sensitive body part. It wasn’t disagreeable, just a bit disconcerting. You want to know who’s doing what to you down there. The pleasant-sounding woman’s voice reassured him. “Relax please Mr. Newman, breathe,” she said as something resembling a form-fitting rubber cod-piece was stretched over what his wife Jen affectionately called “the pest.”
“We’re going to run a test Mr. Newman,” Ms. Pleasant Voice said placing a gloved hand on his shoulder. Then she leaned in very close to his ear and whispered with what sounded like a teasing smile, “Feel free to enjoy this.” He could still feel the caressing sound of her voice and smell the minty Tic Tac of her breath as a tsunami of bliss shot between his crotch and brain with such force that his eyes shut of their own accord and a reflexive, primal groan filled the room. The assembled technicians tittered, but he couldn’t have cared less.
“Maybe you should run that test again,” he gasped after catching his breath, half-joking and half-begging, but there was no response. The technicians disappeared into the anonymity of their work once again. As the tingles receded and his pulse normalized, his thoughts migrated to his wife Jen, and from her to the kids and the way they each looked as he hugged them goodbye at the airport just a few hours ago – Jen cautiously hopeful, Rachel annoyed, Josh with his ever enthusiastic smile.
It seemed a ridiculous proposition. Why would a man voluntarily agree to spend two years living in total isolation selling blood and other body fluids to laboratories – especially when some of those materials were going to be extracted from his own body? When Jen showed him the advertisement on their morning news display, they laughed at the absurdity of it.
They opened the link as a joke and the holographic advertisement that rose from the screen delivered the usual saccharine testimonials from regular people, just like them, whose lives had been transformed by the freedom they had earned after just two short years of dedicated service to QualLab. Debts had been paid, education and healthcare for their children assured, work in their senior years was less onerous and more fulfilling. “Yeah, right!” Jonathan had smirked.
Since the Great Change nineteen years earlier, Americans had learned to trust their own instincts and no one else. The freedom to make your own decisions, right or wrong, without government agencies guiding you or interfering in the process had been one of the primary promises of the revolution. Companies had been freed of federal regulation, able to market their goods and services as they saw fit. The consumer now had the right and responsibility to separate fact from fiction.
The same applied to employees. There were no more government watchdogs, no publicly funded filters, no mandated healthcare, no Big Brother watching out for you. If a company promised great pay and superior benefits only to deliver endless hours of boredom, abusive management and delayed or missed paychecks, the Free Market would straighten it all out - eventually. The Free Market had replaced God and government as the court of final appeals, the great leveler that ensured justice would be done.
“You don’t need a union or some politician in Washington telling you what you can or can’t do at work,” Enrico Prima had declared. “You’re an adult!”
Enrico Prima, known universally as Ricky, was the masterminding engineer behind the Great Change. Though he was a powerful political speaker, he never sought elected office himself, never chose to wear the mantle of government power. He understood better than anyone that once the Great Change had achieved its mission, those running the government shell that remained would be more or less irrelevant caretakers, national figureheads whose primary job was to stay out of the way. The real power would reside elsewhere.
“Contracts!” Ricky would declare. “Contracts are the heart of freedom. Make your best deal, stand up for yourself, negotiate your own destiny. With a contract you have the leverage to control your life!” The assumption was that both parties in the negotiation were free to agree or not. Any inequality of power between the job-seeker in need of work and the employer behind a desk asking questions, backed by an army of lawyers and accountants who wrote and enforced the contracts, was irrelevant. The principle is what counted. The strong should get stronger; the weak should get out of the way. It was the natural order of things.
The Great Change had transformed the country like a rainstorm bringing life to fallow fields after years of drought or, if you preferred, like a frenzy of blood-thirsty sharks feeding on the carcass of a wounded democracy. It all depended on your point of view. In the course of one election cycle either eighty years of socialist tampering with the purity of market capitalism had been discredited as a failed experiment and unceremoniously dumped into the trash compactor of history, or long cherished institutions that served the majority of the population by providing fairness and equality of opportunity had been swept away by the avarice of unchecked corporate greed. The same reality could be seen through different colored lenses.
“Government is the Enemy of Liberty!” had been the battle cry of Ricky Prima’s Freedom First Party and the majority, at least the majority of the forty-eight percent of citizens who had bothered to vote, had agreed. It had been only the second election unfettered by spending restrictions and this had unleashed those with cash and a clear agenda to ensure their voices were heard. The result was the most sophisticated advertising campaign in world history, a tidal wave of entertaining, dramatic, and powerful messages delivered in every imaginable medium with Ricky Prima leading from behind, pulling the strings, and it worked. Democrats and Republicans were defeated from coast to coast and for the first time in over one hundred and fifty years a new political entity revolutionized America’s two-party system.
Which is not to say there was a huge groundswell of support for Freedom First. True, the new party did capture the popular imagination with its “Give Yourself to Freedom” campaign, winning the Presidency for a relatively unknown politician from Kansas. True, for the first time in the country’s history a new political entity gained a majority in both Houses of Congress. But these were default victories born from decades of disinterest in the political process, not an upheaval led by crusaders fomenting a popular movement. The truth was that frustration with the inefficiency and corruption of the old politics and an equal measure of complacency were the real winners and the primary driving forces behind the Great Change.
It was an appropriate moniker. Everything changed. The mind-numbing rate of technological innovation that had, since the middle of the twentieth century, been fueled by government-funded research at government supported universities and institutes, came to a screeching halt or moved overseas. The promises of a capitalist renaissance, of creativity unchained once government interference was swept out of the way, never materialized. Instead there was a familiar race for the quickest returns from the smallest possible investment. Mammoth corporations got much, much larger and any creative upstarts were quietly, or not so quietly, squashed. With no watchdog to restrict the naturally monopolistic tendencies of the powerful, nature took its course. It’s a fallacy that those with great power want competition. The young and aspiring want the ability to compete, to challenge the status quo, to break in. Kings of commerce and industry want to maintain and expand their control and keep the upstarts out.
The social fabric of America was also transformed. Responsibility for the education of children was returned to families. Under the new order, going to school became a voluntary option and it was a parent’s responsibility to pay for it. Gone was the socialist notion that universal education should be a citizen’s right, financed by the state through public taxation. Most communities kept some modest form of public education alive for a while, but with costs prohibitively high and efforts to raise local taxes usually defeated in all but the wealthiest suburbs, the nation’s public school systems collapsed. Some saw this as a step forward, the end of a dinosaur that had outlived its usefulness. Others, including the over three million newly unemployed teachers, did not.
What replaced them was a vastly expanded home-schooling network supported by online e-courses and resources. Companies and churches also stepped into the education void, acquiring abandoned public school buildings and college campuses and converting them into private institutions. Employers began to offer their most desirable candidates for highly technical jobs or management positions the financial support they needed to educate their children in these new, selective schools, in return for a long-term contract. It was a quid pro quo that fit the new social order. You were free to enter into the agreement or not. If you wanted the benefits of a quality private education for your children and couldn’t afford to pay for it yourself, you had choices.
Healthcare was similarly revolutionized. Those with the resources could buy insurance and there were myriad companies and policies to choose from. Prices were unregulated, that is to say very high, so more than half the population chose to forgo coverage, which was their right. If you or your children got sick and you were uninsured or if you had foolishly purchased some bargain insurance plan without carefully reading the fine print and exclusions, well freedom had its price. The religious charity hospitals still provided a safety net, but the demand for their services was high and they were free to decide who was worthy of care.
As with education, some companies offered medical insurance to key employees to attract and retain the most prized talent. It was a powerful lure, and many people chose where they worked primarily for this benefit.
There had, of course, been protests as the Great Change swept the country; the transitions were radical and there were serious pockets of opposition. However, as the federal government was dismantled, piece by piece, it became more and more difficult to find a central authority to challenge. Who do you protest against? At the same time, local militia groups funded by corporate titans and led by libertarian ideologues fiercely loyal to Freedom First emerged to defend the new order. People were free to speak their minds under the new government, constitutional rights were guaranteed, but with no strong central authority to protect those rights it was easier for groups who didn’t approve of a message to find ways to intimidate or silence the messenger. This was the most twisted paradox of the new America. [1]
Jonathan and Jen had been among the millions that sat the revolution out. They didn’t have strong political feelings one way or the other, hadn’t even voted in the election that shook the world. The protests and marches were exciting to view on their living room communication center, the riots and rallies made for dramatic distractions, the entertaining commercials were great fun to watch, but like most of their generation they never thought the Great Change would touch them personally in any significant way. As things turned out, they were wrong.
The Newmans had no health insurance. As obscure musicians with a small local following, the absurd costs of the now unregulated healthcare industry were out of their reach. Jen’s day job was working for an architectural firm where she was an interior designer, but the company had been able to attract talented people without offering such expensive perks and after the Great Change there was no longer any requirement to do so. Jonathan and Jen had both been healthy their whole lives. Their daughter Rachel had the usual early childhood diseases but nothing out of the ordinary or particularly pricey. Why would they sink their limited funds into overpriced insurance?
Unfortunately they hadn’t anticipated that their son, Josh, would contract an obscure virus that would trigger mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, also know as Kawasaki disease, just days after his fourth birthday. How could they? How could they have known that if they delayed seeking medical treatment, and delay they did, his young heart would be permanently damaged and that the resulting aneurysms and coronary artery inflammation would require the immediate implanting of an electronic defibrillator and, eventually, a heart transplant?
Little Josh had kept his sense of humor through it all, though he looked terrible and felt worse. “Hey Mom, what’s brown and runny and smells like Green Lake? My poop!” “Look Dad, my tongue is turning into a strawberry!”
The decision to take him to the emergency room was finally made after days of online searching and a frenzy of frantic calls to friends and family. “Josh has a high fever and it won’t go down. No it doesn’t look like the flu. We already tried Tylenol, it didn’t work!” Their child’s lips had turned red – really red, and his hands were swollen. Who would ever have suspected this could happen to a healthy four-year old boy?
The Newmans’ lives were upended. Jen took a leave from her design job during the three weeks he was at the hospital and for an additional month while her son recovered at home. The scare and stress, which might have destroyed some families, had brought Jonathan and Jen even closer together. Their finances, by contrast, were a disaster. How were they going to pay off their mammoth medical bills? Would they ever be able to afford the heart transplant Josh needed? What would happen if they couldn’t?
For ten years the Newmans struggled, working double jobs, slowly digging out of their financial hole like a couple of determined moles burrowing through concrete. Jonathan discovered he had a gift for sales, as long as he believed in whatever he was selling. It didn’t feed his soul the way music did, but it put food on the table. When things looked especially bleak, which happened more than once, they reluctantly turned to family and friends for help. Finally, after a decade of ups and downs, just as they were about to retire the last of Josh’s medical debts, their cardiologist gave them the alarming news that their son’s heart had further deteriorated. The defibrillator could no longer reliably keep him alive. If he didn’t get a transplant soon…
Jonathan’s shaved head, once full of wavy dark-brown hair, was pricked again and again as tiny transcranial magnetic stimulators were inserted just below the galea aponeurotica. Wired rubberized booties and gloves were coaxed onto his hands and feet. He was alert, aware of each step in the procedure though he was oblivious to the stem cells being discreetly inserted into cavities deep inside his body, pockets he didn’t even know he had.
How long had it been now, an hour, maybe two, three? It was hard to tell. Bill Lamb, his QualLab manager, had told him that time would disappear, that day and night would become meaningless, but he hadn’t expected to lose track so soon. He had just arrived.
Just as Jonathan began thinking the hook up process would go on forever, it ended. The team stepped back to examine their handiwork, mumbled a few words complimenting each other and then disappeared. The lights slowly dimmed, dramatically, like the beginning of a theatrical event. Deep quiet filled the small room leaving nothing but the rhythmic sounds of Jonathan’s own inhaling and exhaling to listen to.
He waited for something to happen but nothing did, not even the obnoxious music. It was as dark as a moonless night in winter and after a while he considered just going to sleep, but that didn’t seem right. He became more and more aware of the sound of his breathing which was louder than he remembered, most likely because everything else was so soundless. Jonathan couldn’t recall ever hearing this much silence. It was starting to feel a bit creepy.
“Anyone there?” he finally called out. There was no response. He thought of getting up and walking around the room, trying out what it felt like to move with all the wires and tubes attached, but decided it was too dark so he stayed put. With nothing else to do he eventually closed his eyes and, as you would expect, was instantly jolted alert by a voice that materialized unannounced inside his head. It was a woman’s voice and she sounded young, intelligent and, there was no mistaking this, sexy. To Jonathan, loyalty to his wife was an absolute commitment, one he enthusiastically embraced. He might look at other women, but he never fantasized about them. Thoughts can lead to actions; lines must not be crossed. But if in a moment of weakness he had imagined a voice other than Jen’s, a voice that conjured a body that he would enjoy undressing in the morning when he awoke, at night when he lay down, and several times in-between, this was that voice. She had bypassed his ears, having taken up residence somewhere in his left temporal lobe. It was as if she and Jonathan were dancing very close and she was whispering, but it wasn’t a whisper. A whisper is suggestive and ethereal. This was fully real and very present.
“Hello Jonathan,” the voice said. “I’m Candy and I’ll be your aide while you’re here. I’m sure you’ll like living and working as a Customer Support Professional at QualLab. We’re going to become very good friends. Your first day as a CSP will start in a few hours. I’m going to give you some Doze now. Doze will help you sleep. We’ll talk more after you’ve rested.”
A thin, mustard-yellow medication began flowing through one of the tubes hooked up to Jonathan’s arm. “Relax now. I’ll wake you soon,” Candy purred deep inside him. “I’m glad you’re here Jonathan.”
In a corner of the room a sign slowly came to life and radiated a welcoming message: Year 1, Day 1. Your QualLab contract will expire in 730 days. Thanks for being part of the QualLab Team! It glowed brightly for a few seconds and then gently dimmed until the room was once again as dark as it was silent.
The nothingness around him felt strangely soothing now. The creepy sensation had dissolved, neutralized by the embrace of Candy’s warm welcome. He felt safe though he was still stripped bare, comfortable despite the snaking web of wires and tubes which would bind him to this small cell for the next two years. Jonathan Newman was at peace. His breathing became even and deep as the Doze took effect and a half smile twitched across his lips. His eyes closed and he began to drift. Candy seemed nice. It was going to be okay.
Note: [1] The Impact of the Great Change on America
In the years that followed the Great Change, every public institution was radically transformed. Even the most fervent believers in the revolution had been amazed and, in some cases, distressed by the speed and scope of these changes. The Freedom First Party discarded the rusty anchor of Social Security, severing the chains that had held the economy prisoner and allowing it to float free. Medicare and its evil twin, Medicaid, were dismantled, the resulting vacuum partially filled by the religiously financed charity hospitals that had served society’s derelicts and most vulnerable in earlier centuries.
The despised Internal Revenue Service was among the first to feel the axe, and a slick national lottery was quickly created to provide the relatively modest amount needed to support the new order. The country’s natural treasures – lakes, mountains, rivers, even air space, were sold to the highest bidders to pay off the national debt. The public infrastructure – roads, dams, parks, transportation and schools were likewise privatized. Public radio and television outlets disappeared overnight, dismissed as costly and redundant.
The civil courts still functioned and you could sue to prove you had been harmed and seek restitution, but the judiciary now had to be self-financing and the cost of bringing a case was beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest citizens. Besides, tort reforms limited a company’s liability and penalized losing complainants so if you chose to sue and lost, the financial results could be ruinous. The risks now usually outweighed the potential rewards. At the highest levels, the Supreme Court returned to the values and traditions of the Lochner Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, striking down any laws seen to be infringing on economic liberty or private contracts. Individuals were even able to enter into employment agreements that curtailed their basic freedoms and rights as long as they did so voluntarily. A contract became the preeminent determinant of what was and was not legal or acceptable. Social or cultural values took a back seat to the rights of individuals, especially if those individuals were corporations.
Finally the most important communication tools of the recent past had also been transformed. Once hailed as the facilitator of revolutions around the world, the Internet and its ingenious social applications, which had always eluded government control, found themselves in the service of those who favored the Great Change and out of reach of its opponents. Despite the creative energies and innovative skills of young protesters intent on challenging the country’s new direction, once the Great Change had dismantled the power of the central government, the corporate behemoths who owned the airwaves, networks and infrastructure that underpinned how people communicated with each other had a free hand in ensuring that opposition was muted while accolades in support of the Great Change flowed freely.
