Josiah the Reformer, Page 2

CHAPTER 2

  The people went into the transporting ship in pairs with a specific number identifying their seats. It was as if they were simply flying across country, only this time they were traveling to another world and their seats resembled a sort of vertically standing glass coffin.

  An IFA man was among the migrators. He had a handsome face and a strong build, both made more apparent by his confidence and his military uniform. He had always known he had a gift of charm and flattery. The difference, though, between him and others was that he knew how to be, what he called, complexly charming. Those he charmed weren’t even aware of his efforts. They only knew they liked having him around and that he always proved himself intelligent and useful. However, he also knew those he couldn’t fool, and so he never tried. The General was one of those people. The General had witnessed this persuasive talent in action as he oversaw a mission of the IFA man in an effort to gain information from an active and notorious anarchist group. He then made note of this in order to use it as he saw fit in the future. It was because of this gift that the IFA man was traveling to the colony, assigned to a peculiar position. He gladly accepted.

  The nurses, those who would tend to the passengers during the length of the flight, seemed to flock to this man as he came onto the ship. In fact, they would hover around him for the majority of the flight as he slept. For him and his fellow travelers, it would only seem an overnight trip, but for the nurses and attendants, it was always a very long three months.

  The glass coffins were lined up as circles within circles, the most outer circle lining the edge of the ship and the most inner circle holding only a handful. Each circle would have coffins on the inside and outside so as to have every person in each coffin facing another. Those across from each other tended to be of opposite genders, male and female. The nurses never knew if this was by design or by chance.

  The job was not demanding. In fact, it was viewed by most to be quite boring. The ship was fully closed and so there was no opportunity to peer out into space and watch the systems turn and the planets rise. They simply tended to their patients, their ‘term of duty’ as they called it. Three months there, three months back.

  There were three things to make sure of: food, hydration, and muscle stimulus. Food and hydration were taken care of automatically through tubes. They simply had to monitor them on the screen and adjust as they saw fit. Muscle stimulus on the other hand was done manually. Each person received ten surges each time. Only on this flight, in one particular section, there was an exception. The handsome IFA man, by specific order, was to receive double the amount of surges every time.

  The misinformed travelers walked to their assigned cases and, as they were instructed beforehand, stood back against the wall, hands by their side, and feet firmly placed in the plates on the floor. They were then injected to induce a light coma, and they slept as they stood. Since the coma happened so quickly, it also had a bizarre effect on the people’s faces. It seemed to have frozen whatever expression they had lastly held. Whatever they felt at that last second, they seemingly felt for the remaining months. It was this that led the nurses to their favorite past-time aboard ship.

  “So you see this guy here, the one who’s going to get the double dose,” a veteran nurse who was then on her tenth voyage, but not all to this particular place, explained to a young, pretty novice nurse how she kept herself amused all these years, “well, let’s say he’s been away at war for a long time. Now he is finally returning home to his wife. However! Along the way, he meets this little cutie.” She points to a rather attractive brunette female patient facing the uniformed man. “It happens that he seldom received many letters from home. Not that his wife never wrote, you see, they mostly got lost in the mail. But he thinks perhaps that his wife has been unfaithful. He convinces himself that he has an excuse, and what would you know, he has a fling.”

  “Oh-!”

  “Hold it. I wasn’t finished. You see, this guy right here,” a strong, muscular patient in his mid-forties, “he is her boyfriend. No, wait. Let’s make him the brother. So her brother finds out about this affair, for she was already promised to another man being one of those arranged marriages, but being the scoundrel he is - he looks like a scoundrel, doesn’t he - bribes his sister with the knowledge he gains by uncovering the woman’s affair. Then he uses that money to buy something nice for her,” she walks to a very feminine and petite woman of about thirty years, standing to the strong man’s left, “his prostitute wife!”

  “Oh, stop it!” The nurse had said it out of pretended shock, but she was actually a little intrigued and would have been disappointed if the woman had actually stopped her ad-libbed drama. The woman simply ignored her.

  “But you have to admit it though, don’t you?”

  “Admit what?”

  “That the brother is being quite the hypocrite with a prostitute wife!”

  “Oh, that’s disgusting.” But it was true. She had to admit that.

  “Don’t rule it out though.”

  “Rule what out? That the soldier murders the brother?” She meant it sarcastically, but the storytelling nurse actually considered the possibility.

  “Interesting but no. The soldier falls in love with the prostitute wife after a night with her. She wanted anything else to be with the man she was with. He was a little abusive after all. The two ran away together. But only to be found and murdered by his first fling.”

  “Gross!” She glanced back at her characters.

  “Well, he never loved the first one, though she did love him. In fact, he was her first love. He did in fact love the prostitute. It just goes to show, though, doesn’t it?” It was as if the old nurse actually believed the stories she told. Perhaps she did. Once they had awoken, she never seemed to be polite to those whose characters were cruel or wicked. She even eyed some of them with intense suspicion.

  “Sorry you had to die. You are quite handsome.” She walked up to him to speak to him face to face, and she whispered, “But you kind of had it coming with all the sleeping around and all. What about their names?” She spoke to the other nurse while still looking deeply into the man’s face.

  “It’s your story.”

  As the trip continued and the months passed by, the nameless man became a spy, a traitor general, a courageous navy man, a prisoner of war, and a sly impersonator, having countless affairs, murdering, being murdered, a scoundrel, a hero, while always remaining a man in a glass coffin.

  The unloading took three days. People were awoken in shifts. The military man unshipped in the first shift, the first one on the new planet. They exited the ship just as they entered, only this time severely dazed and weakened. The military man, however, still walked strongly, the double treatments making all the difference. As he left, the nurse who had spent the most time with him looked at him longingly and curiously. She realized that she knew very little of him. She knew his name, his military status, and his handsome face but nothing else. If she had known, she would have realized how shallow her fictional tragedies compared to the man’s actual past. He never had a mistress. He never had an affair. He never had any other romance other than with his wife. His wife never left him. His wife was never unfaithful. And his wife was never murdered, though that was not quite true in his own eyes.

  In the world he left behind, his wife died three years before. She was elegant and beautiful. She was intelligent and resourceful. She was sweet and outgoing. She was happily pregnant with their future daughter, who no doubt would have been more beautiful than his beautiful wife. But his daughter was never born. His wife was a researcher of the reservations, observing and intermingling with the desert savages. He had always been wary of “those unpredictable people,” but even they mourned her death. On what would have been her last visit to the desert until their daughter was born, her vehicle broke down twenty miles before reaching the village. She was ill prepared. She had no water or any means of communication. She had no hope but to walk to the village
and stay until help arrived. She died of dehydration and exhaustion in sight of the village well.

  Perhaps this was why he gladly took the job. Perhaps this was even why the General personally offered him the job. He was stationed on a planet with no sun, and he had always been fully aware of that fact. Ever since her death, he never wanted anything but overcast. It was impossible to hate the sun. No one ever hated the sun. He did. He hated clear days and could never look up without his gut being torn. Fifty feet away and the sun still burned down on her. It had no mercy, not even for his daughter. And after her death, without any remorse, the sun continued to shine. No mercy. No help. Just heat.

  A large, towering man in a military uniform much different stood in sight as he stepped into a new world. By the looks of this world, they all might as well have been shipped to a facility within sight of their old home. Nothing seemed drastically different. Nothing ever would. The man in waiting was wearing a colony uniform, but even when he lived “back there” he had worn still a different uniform. The nurses had no way of knowing that their handsome passenger had never fought in a war per se. He had never killed a man, he had never fired upon anyone, and he never had a need to return home. He was an IFA man which meant he fought against the homeland’s terrorists and anarchists. He was, essentially, a spy and an interrogator. His force was intelligence, not strength. His bravery was not shown at the front lines but at the poker table, which can prove to be equally as deadly if ever he was found out. Being still alive proved his success. In the IFA size meant very little and proved nothing, although if given the chance he felt confident that he would be able to hold his own.

  The towering man who greeted him had indeed been to war and had returned home without his left leg from the knee down.

  “You’re walking well already. Much better than I did when I first got here. And much, much better than they are.”

  The grin that held his face throughout the greeting turned into a chuckle. The first of the new colonists stepped onto solid ground were walking as if they were toddlers just learning. They wobbled and stumbled, bumping into each other and causing each other to fall which led to a large pile-up. As they tried to stand back up, they held their weight against each other or slowly climbed the walls until they reached their feet. The military man’s face gleamed with amusement.

  “Why am I so much better off?”

  “Because you got the double dose. Twice the muscle stimulus means twice the strength.”

  “Why not just do that with the rest?”

  He leaned in a bit closer and replied in a hushed voice.

  “It’s all part of the plan, rookie. It’ll take some time for them to get into decent shape again. It’s not allowed for them to go outside of the colony before they are in approved shape, and before they are in that approved shape, it so happens that a severe storm damages the gates and they sit unable to open and await their repair.”

  “And that will be enough?”

  “The Captain seems to think so.”

  So he was one of those, he thought. He always tried to stay away from stereotypes. Underestimation was a reoccurring flaw in his field. But he couldn’t help think of this man as just a brute who obeyed orders. He was a henchman.

  “This story that he came up with can only last for so long, don’t you think. The people are not dumb. It’s possible that they may catch on to this, and what then?”

  “One thing you need to learn, rookie, if you're gonna be a part of this, is that we follow orders.” Just as he thought. “We don't make 'em, and we also don't carry 'em out by ourselves. It's not up to us to create a process. We don't just make up stuff because we want to, and we think we can. This is an organized action. It's not like every man does his own thing, what he thinks is best, to try to drive these people out of their mind.”

  “So this Captain and his idea, if it's supposed to be so grand, what is it and how does it work?”

  “I'm not so sure I could really explain it to you. Although I understand it to the tee, I'm not the one to ask about it. You are to report to the Captain. So if you would, follow me and I will lead you to him. Afterward, I will give you the tour and explain to you your duties.”

  The man walked briskly, leading the rookie to the office of the Captain. As the rookie followed, he tried to catch the layout of the colony. The large man kept silent. He was a man of few words who couldn’t care less for small chat. So instead of keeping a forced conversation going, the rookie attempted to take everything in. They traveled the hall leading straight from the gate to the center, passing hall after hall. After passing a lengthy section of a smooth, bronze-plated wall that grabbed the rookie’s attention, they reached the large common room. They passed through, reached the other side, turned right down a hall immediately afterward and stopped by a great elevator, much larger than anyone he had ever seen, and there were four of these elevators, side by side and across from one another. However, they did not enter it. Instead, they stood in front of a fifth elevator, much smaller and only could be opened with a key. The door slid open as the military man punched in the numbers into the electronic pad. They stepped in and traveled upward to the fifth floor. The rookie would find that the other elevators had no such option.

  The rookie made his way to the Captain’s lobby alone. He had already assessed that this man must be similar to the General and he should not attempt the use of any flattery. The secretary, a very beautiful lady dressed in red, had eyed him curiously ever since he had stepped from the elevator. She was quite different than any of the other women working for the colony, most who were military. She was definitely not military. In fact, it seemed to him that she was simply a friend who had just come along to keep the Captain company. Perhaps the Captain played favorites after all.

  “May I help you, sir?” An unexpected soft, almost motherly voice accompanied the pleasant figure. But up close, he noticed that she was attractive in a strange way, and yet the next moment with a different facial expression, she became rather unapproachable. He could never determine if she was altogether beautiful or off-putting.

  “Yes, ma’am. I am an IFA officer. I’ve just arrived on the ship. Here are my papers from the General, himself. And it is my understanding that I am to speak with the Captain.”

  “The General, himself, you say. It’s an honor to even handle his papers.” This caught him by surprise. Had she just spoken sarcastically of the General? But she had said it in such a tone of kindness that he had trouble distinguishing her voice just as he had her looks. “However, the Captain is not in at the moment. If you would like, you can set up an appointment, and we will get back to you. Just fill this out, giving your name, rank, and call number, and we’ll let you know a specific time whenever the Captain is available.”

  “I was told to meet with him as soon as possible.”

  “I know you must meet with him, but the ship was not as punctual as we had hoped, and you missed your appointment today by three hours.” Was that sarcasm? “However, I believe the Captain will be back within two hours. So if you would please leave your information, you will be contacted when he is available.”

  The more she spoke and the more he listened and looked upon the secretary, the more frustrated he became. He didn’t even know why. He didn’t often get frustrated, and she was simply doing her job. In the short span of their discussion, she had been physically attractive and hideous, as well as vocally kind and bitter. All had been paired with each other in that short time.

  “Of course, dear. Take a seat, make yourself comfortable, and there are a few magazines for your choosing on the table.”

  As quickly as he was frustrated, he was put at ease. Attractive and kind, he thought. The couch he had sat in was quite comfortable, and just as she had said, three magazines were spread on the table: The People’s Life, Family Encouragement, and The Comedy Volume. Picking up what seemed to be the most legitimate option, he began to skim the articles of the People’s Life. He had never been a reade
r of common magazines and was at that time reminded why. Most of the articles were vague, useless, and only seemed to fill the empty spaces of the magazine pages. Page eight: Be Wise With Your Time. Page twenty-one: Neighborly Nuances. Page fifty-eight: Making Your House a Home. Skimming through the latter article, he found more vague and idle writing.

  “A big move can be different and difficult for many, but if you were to make the right adjustments to your current living space, the place where you live can become the place that you love.”

  But soon after, his eye caught a line printed in bold.

  “In order for you to be happy where you are, you need to forget where you came from.”

  Interesting, he thought, very interesting. He continued to read a bit more carefully.

  “When you compare a new place to what you consider home, then the place where you are currently cannot become home. In a sense, you cannot have two homes at once. If you still consider where you lived in the past home, you will not be happy in the house that you are living in now. So how do you change your house into a home? By changing your perspective.”

  He was astounded and very impressed. He had been exposed to propaganda and subliminal works before. He had even helped create such works. It made perfect sense for them to be displayed here. After all, this was the perfect setting for it.

  “It’s very impressive!” He had said it so loud and so abruptly that he had startled the odd secretary.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “The articles. They’re already being introduced to it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “The magazines. They are brilliant. ‘You need to forget where you came from.’ It’s genius. Have you read them? I think they’ll fall for it. In fact, I know they will, especially in the state they are now. The whole thing is perfect.”

  “Again, I do not know what you mean.” She seemed to be scolding him. Attractive and bitter. “I would dare say that you should not let your opinions slip so easily, if you understand me correctly, even in such an empty place as this.”

  “Of course, of course. I’ve forgotten myself. It just took me off guard. It’s done so well.”

  His sentence faded into a mumble, and he began to mumble to himself, disregarding the scornful secretary. He had underestimated the Captain and the underlying of the plan. He eagerly read through the other magazines. He picked up Family Encouragement whose writings seemed even more watered down than the previous one. There were only a few statements that he read that seemed to be purposeful. Several statements encouraged good morale and work ethics. Motivation would be needed for the people to work, better motivation than collecting currency. One in particular grabbed his attention because, although it was subliminal, it seemed quite pointless.

  “The family is a group of providers, providing for each other to show love and gratitude.”

  The problem with it, he thought, was that there were not many strong families in the colony. Many were single, and many were unmarried. It was an ironic statistic that the divorce rate was steadily decreasing in the motherland. The decrease, however, was not due to a sense of morals but rather a lack of commitment. Divorce wasn’t happening simply because marriage wasn’t happening. The cons of commitment outweighed the pros. He found it even more ironic that the couples would make the commitment to move together to a different planet before they would commit to marry one another. There always had to seem to be a way out, a comfort in knowing that this might not have to be the way things will end. That was their family. So before the family could be used for motivation, the family needed to be created. Perhaps the Captain knew that as well. He continued to read, but most of the words were wasted space, just something to read without giving the reader any sustenance. In the midst of this wasted space, though, were perfect statements which would seem to be nothing to the common reader but would float around in their mind until it would anchor itself into an idea, the Captain’s idea.

  He was ushered into the Captain’s office after the two hours had passed. The secretary led him and had bid him farewell with a grin that offset her face. Hideous and kind. The door opened to an immaculate office, quite different than any officer’s office he had ever seen. It was a scholar’s study. It was a librarian’s library. It was an explorer’s trophy room. Books filled the room’s many shelves. Globes spun where they sat on the desk. Maps, paintings, and artifacts filled all empty spaces. On the wall in direct eyesight upon entering the office, as a centerpiece of the room, was mounted the enormous head of a lion.

  The Captain stood with his back to the rookie. He was a rather tall man, equivalent in muscle, with a military cut. He wore the colony uniform, but his was more elegant than the others, well fitted, and he deemed it necessary to wear a purple and satin beret which he wore quite handsomely.

  “You must be our new rookie.” He spoke with his back still turned against him.

  “Yes, sir. My name is -”

  “Do you know what it takes to convince someone that what has been real his entire life isn’t real at all?” The Captain spoke thoughtfully, disregarding the rookie’s attempt at an introduction. But the Captain still faced the lion as though talking to it instead.

  “No, sir.” The rookie was taken aback at the Captain’s rudeness.

  “It takes time.” At this, the Captain turned about and faced his new arrival. It was strange to the rookie that the man looked to be much older than he had expected by his stature from behind. The man had aged above his years. His face showed deep wrinkles, faded color, and shriveled lips. It was his eyes that were contradictory. They showed youth. They showed brilliance and eagerness. It was as if through his whole life he had been anxious and stressed, but for the first time he was happy, content, and excited. The rookie could never grasp any idea of the Captain’s true age. He then realized how much time he spent observing the man’s features. He then quickly responded.

  “Yes, sir. I imagine it must take a good bit of time to do this. The mind is a strong thing and memories aren’t easily altered. How much time would you say, sir?”

  A grin of cleverness crossed the Captain’s face.

  “No, no, my fellow. It’s not about how much time. It’s a matter of how we use it.”

  “I don't quite understand, sir.”

  “We can control time, rookie.” He said it so matter-of-factly and paused as if to let the idea sink. “Think about it. There are no other clocks besides ours, no other way to determine the time. We can manipulate the second by changing its very definition. Our second doesn't have to be a specific length.” He sensed the rookie’s growing confusion which was not difficult to do as the rookie’s expression obviously gave him away. “Do you know how long a second is, rookie?”

  “Well, yes sir, I do.” Doesn’t everybody?

  “Then let's hear it.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Come over to the desk. Give it two taps, one to start the second and another to end it to test to see if you really know how long a second is.”

  Two taps were given.

  “Are you sure that's a second?”

  “Not entirely, but I think that was fairly accurate.”

  “What if I were to tell you that a second is just slightly longer than what you just gave me?”

  “Well, sir, I guess I could've cut it a little shorter than it was supposed to be.”

  “Exactly, rookie. Don't you see? Nobody knows how long a second is. What you just gave me was very well near a second, but nobody knows exactly how long a second is without a clock. If someone told you that a second was actually longer than you think and that the clock agreed with him, you would believe it without thinking twice, rookie. If someone said the same thing in the opposite effect, that a second was actually shorter, who would doubt it as long as the clock proved it was just so? It's absolutely perfect, rookie. Can you imagine it? Two seconds, two different seconds, that is, a long one and a short one. During the day we wil
l lengthen the seconds just a bit which in turn will make the hour longer which will make the working day a good bit longer but still lasting the same amount of 'time' as it did before, the same amount of 'time'. And when they sleep, we will shorten the second, which gives them less sleep in the same amount of 'time'. Are you finally getting the picture, rookie? More work and less sleep without them realizing it. I can just hear it now. 'Doesn't it seem like today's just going by really slow to you?' 'It doesn't seem like I got much sleep at all.' And they'll get tired, rookie, unexplainably tired. And that is precisely what we want. We want them to get so tired that they are hallucinating. That's when we get them. That's when we tell them that there is nothing else but here and now.”

  At that moment, he looked much younger than before. His eyes were still lit up and his face shined with a youthful expression.

  It was truly a masterpiece of simple intelligence. No one would ever think of it because no one would question something so simple. No one second guesses time. He was a man of genius. The complexity and the challenge of the colony excited him. It was never the love for the people or even the duty for the motherland that brought him to the colony. It was the impossibility. “It’s the equivalent of convincing them there is no tomorrow,” the General told him. This was the closest the Captain had ever come to using his full potential. And he strove. The slightly eccentric Captain became the only man to convince an entire world that there was no tomorrow.

  “You see, Rookie, we here are rebels but not the nonsensical Confederates or those fruity utopianists -” The Captain held a contemplative look on his face, grabbed a nearby notepad and wrote the word ‘fruity’ on the end of an already written list. “I like to consider myself as a second George Washington.”

  “Who, sir?” He hadn’t followed what seemed to be a sudden change of conversation. To add to his confusion, he had never heard of the name mentioned. A look of disappointment swept the Captain’s face.

  “I figured as much. Even an IFA man has lost his sense of history. What is that phrase they teach you, the rule of three?”

  “When there is no other explanation, find three, sir.”

  “Oh, come. Please entertain me and speak the original line.”

  A little embarrassed, he continued. “With nothing to explain, find three again.”

  “You even speak it like that townie that coined it, rhyming explain and again.” The Captain became slightly giddy. “You’re not a townie, are you, Rookie?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Very well.” He then addressed him with a more serious tone. “If you ever want to be a man of any importance you need to know your history. But with you, it may not even matter in the end, because, rookie,” he severely emphasized because, “you may be with us, but you are no rebel.”

  Again, the rookie’s confused expression betrayed him. He knew little of rebels and nothing of the history the Captain implied. Without knowing why, he felt insulted that the Captain so quickly decided that he was “no rebel.” He wanted to respond but simply had nothing to say. Instead, the Captain continued.

  “Imagine that the colonists are the loyalists, loyal to everything they ever have ever known and experienced. And who better to be loyalists than them. They are perfect for it because they don’t even realize there is a need for a rebellion. To them there is no problem. To them everything is as it should be, only a little inconvenient at the moment. Our job can be said to turn the loyalists into rebels without them knowing it. After all they don’t even know we’re among them as rebels. So while they are the perfect loyalists, we are the perfect rebels. We will lead them to freedom, freedom from their entrapment. As of now, they are in ignorance of us and of a problem. We will erase that problem from their ignorance. Then there will never even be a possibility of a problem.”

  “Are you speaking of rebelling against the General, sir? Against the motherland!” The Captain was mad! How could anybody betray the General? He then felt proud of being ‘no rebel’ and considered himself a proud loyalist, a term he had never heard but could guess its obvious meaning. What had he gotten himself into by coming to a rebel colony?

  “Certainly not. We do not wish to rebel against the General. There is no need. The General is nobody. The sun, that’s who is king. The only difference between you and the General, aside from a few years’ experience, is that he knows who George Washington is. Let’s just hope you’re no Benedict.”

  The Captain turned his back again, facing the lion once again. Many words spoken had gone over the rookie’s head, and the Captain knew so. He just didn’t care. The newcomer must catch on quickly. An IFA man must be good for something. After all, he had been sent by the General, himself. Upon seeing that the conversation was over, the rookie began to walk out.

  “Rookie?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “For your first assignment, gather all the books from the colonists. Every single one.”

  “How, sir?”

  “You’re an intellectual force. Figure a way. When there is no way, find three.”

  He left the office.

  There was no way to collect. Not right now. Not ever. How do you make people give up their books without questions, without suspicions? If they were to remain ‘unnoticed rebels’ how could he just trot on in and demand people’s belongings? The Captain was insane. What kind of man was he to run a colony? Take all the books! How! Perhaps they won’t react if they are too tired, if the plan actually works. What the rookie thought was genius seemed to be recklessness and insanity. Rebels, loyalists, George Washington! And the nonsense about the General and the sun. Nevertheless, the Captain was the leader and was to be obeyed.