“Trampled,” a voice from down the table suggested.
“Ah, yes. Instead of discarded. Thank you.” Boss Jack was never one to discourage creative criticism.
But Marshal Matt mewed, “The electric utility companies are doing just fine; they invested in the solar cell development back in ‘05. They saw the handwriting in the sky.”
A collective sigh of disappointment went around the table.
Not one to give up easily, our Mr. Armstrong suggested, “What about oil producers, then? The coal miners?”
“The last coal miner retired on full pension in ‘08,” replied Matt dolefully. “The mines were fully automated by then. Nobody cares if robots are out of work; they just get reprogrammed and moved into another industry. Most of the coal robots are picking fruit in Florida now.”
“But the Texas oil and gas . . . .”
Matt headed him off at the pass. “Petroleum prices are steady. They sell the stuff to plastics manufacturers, mostly. Natural gas is the world’s major heating fuel. It’s clean, abundant and cheap.”
Gloom descended on our conference table.
It deepened as Boss Jack went from one of our experts to the next.
Terrorism had virtually vanished in the booming world economy.
Political scandals were depressingly rare: with computers replacing most bureaucrats there was less cheating going on in government, and far fewer leaks to the media.
The space program was so successful that no less than seven governments of spacefaring nations—including our own dear Uncle Sam—had declared dividends for their citizens and a tax amnesty for the year.
Population growth was nicely levelling off. Inflation was minimal. Unemployment was a thing of the past, with an increasingly roboticized workforce encouraging humans to invest in robots, accept early retirement, and live off the productivity of their machines.
The closest thing to a crisis in that area was a street brawl in St. Peterrsburg between two retired Russian factory workers—aged thirty and thirty-two – who both wanted the very same robot. Potatoes that were much too small for our purposes.
There hadn’t been a war since the International Peacekeeping Force had prevented Fiji from attacking Tonga, nearly twelve years ago.
Toxic wastes, in the few remote regions of the world were they still could be found, were being gobbled up by genetically-altered bugs (dubbed Rifkins, for some obscure reason) that happily died once they had finished their chore and dissolved into harmless water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia compounds. In some parts of the world the natives had started laundry and cleaning establishments on the sites of former toxic waste dumps.
I watched and listened in tightening terror as the fickle finger of fate made its way down the table toward me. I was low man on the board, the newest person there, sitting at the end of the table between pert Ms. Mary Richards (sex and family relations were her specialty) and dumpy old Alexis Carrington-Colby (nutrition and diets—it was she who had, three months earlier, come up with the blockbuster of the “mother’s milk” crisis).
I hoped desperately that either Ms. Richards or Ms. Carrington-Colby would offer some shred of hope for the rest of the board to nibble on, because I knew I had nothing. Nothing except that damning damaging note in my pocket. What if the Boss found out about it? Would he think I was a potential informer, a philandering fink to the feds?
With deepening despair I listened to flinty-eyed Alexis offer apologies instead of ideas. It was Mary Richards’ turn next, and my heart began fluttering unselfishly. I liked her, I was becoming quite enthusiastic about her, almost to the point of asking her romantic questions. I had never dated a sex specialist, or much of anyone, for that matter. Mary was special to me, and I wanted her to succeed.
She didn’t. There was not crisis in sex or family relations.
“Mr. James,” said the Boss, like a bell tolling for a funeral.
I wasn’t entitled to a power name, since I had only recently been appointed to the board. My predecessor, Marcus Welby, had keeled over right at this conference table the previous month when he realized that there was no medical crisis in sight. His heart broke, literally. It had been his fourth one, but this time the rescue team was just a shade too late to pull him through again.
Thomas K. James is hardly a power name. But it was the one my parents had bestowed on me, and I was determined not to disgrace it. And in particular, not to let anyone know that someone in this conference room thought I was corruptible.
“Mr. James,” asked a nearly-weeping All-American Boy, “is there anything on the medical horizon—anything at all—that may be useful to us?”
It was clear that Boss Armstrong did not suspect me of incipient treason. Nor did he expect me to solve his problem. I did not fail him in that expectation.
“Nothing worth raising an eyebrow over, sir, I regret to say.” Remarkably, my voice stayed firm and steady, despite the dervishes dancing in my stomach.
“There are no new diseases,” I went on, ” and the old ones are all in rapid retreat. Genetic technicians can correct every identifiable malady in the zygotes, and children are born healthy for life.” I cast a disparaging glance at Mr. Cosby, our black environmentalist, and added, “Pollution-related diseases are so close to zero that most disease centers around the world no longer take statistics on them.”
“Addiction!” he blurted, the idea apparently springing into his mind unexpectedly. “There must be a new drug on the horizon!”
The board members stirred in their chairs and looked hopeful. For a moment.
I burst their bauble. “Modern chemotherapy detoxifies the addict in about eleven minutes, as some of us know from first-hand experience.” I made sure not to stare at Matt Dillon or Alexis Carrington-Colby, who had fought bouts with alcohol and chocolate, respectively. “And, I must unhappily report, cybernetic neural programming is mandatory in every civilized nation in the world; once an addictive personality manifests itself, it can be reprogrammed quickly and painlessly.”
The gloom around the table deepened into true depression, tinged with fear.
Jack Armstrong glanced at the miniature display screen discreetly set into the table top before him, swiftly checking on his affirmative actions, then said, “Ladies and gentleman, the situation grows more desperate with each blink of the clock. I suggest we take a five-minute break for R&R (he meant relief and refreshment) and then come back with some new ideas!”
He fairly roared out the last two words, shocking us all.
I repaired to my office—little more than a cubicle, actually, but it had a door that could be shut. I closed it carefully and hauled the unnerving note out of my pocket. Smoothing it on my desk top, I read it again. It still said:
“Make big $$$. Tell all to Feds.”
I wadded it again and with trembling hands tossed it into the disposal can. It flashed silently into healthful ions.
“Are you going to do it?”
I wheeled around to see Mary Richards leaning against my door. She had entered my cubicle silently and closed the door without a sound. At least, no sound I had heard, so intent was I on that menacing message.
“Do what?” Lord, my voice cracked like Henry Aldrich.
Mary Richards (nee Stephanie Quaid) was a better physical proximation to her power name than anyone of the board members, with the obvious exception of our revered Boss. She was the kind of female for whom the words cute, pert, and vivacious were created. But beneath those skin-deep qualities she had the ruthless drive and calculated intelligence of a sainted Mike Wallace. Had to. Nobody without the same could make it to the CCC board. If that sounds self-congratulatory, so be it. A real Mary Richards, even a Lou Grant, would never get as far as the front door of the CCC.
“Tell all to the Feds,” she replied sweetly.
The best thing I could think of was, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The note you just ionized.”
“What note?”
“The note I put in your pocket before the meeting started.”
“You?” Until that moment I hadn’t known I could hit high C.
Mary positively slinked across my cubicle and draped herself on my desk, showing plenty of leg through her slitted skirt. I gulped and slid my swivel chair into the corner.
“It’s okay, there’s no bugs operating in here. I cleared your office this morning.”
I could feel my eyes popping. “Who are you?”
