Interest (10 page)

“I thought inflation was supposed to be a good thing. Isn’t that what the economists are always saying?”

“I have a working hypothesis that financial illiteracy is genetically predetermined, deliberately coded into the human genome by the Dranthyx. If my hypothesis is correct, it would explain why such a large percentage of the world’s population is unable to make ends meet and why few people understand the time value of money. The only humans who seem to understand money implicitly are the Tchogols, who are overrepresented in the world of investing and high finance. If the average human understood money the way the Dranthyx do, the scheme wouldn’t work.”

Len almost felt insulted but was forced to admit to himself the plausibility of Neith’s theory. He’d spent his whole life working his butt off while living hand to mouth, like most people did, while his freshman-year roommate in college, a business major with no scruples or ethics, was able to amass millions. Bastard was probably a Tchogol.

“OK, fine, so I slept through econ in college. How does inflation give the Dranthyx control?”

“Let’s say we live in a country where the currency is cookies. I’m a central bank and I bake these cookies. If you come to me to borrow a cookie, what do I do?”

“Charge interest?”

“Very good! Now, how will you pay it back?”

“By baking some to give you.”

“Bzzt! Wrong!” Neith exclaimed, suddenly breaking from her phlegmatic android persona. “You aren’t allowed to bake cookies!”

“Why not?”

“It’s illegal for anyone but me, the central bank, to create currency, that’s why. If you bake cookies, it’s considered counterfeiting and they throw you in jail. I’m the only one who can bake cookies. So now what do you do?”

“I have no idea.”

“The answer is, you borrow another cookie from me just to pay the interest on the first cookie you borrowed. Now you owe me two cookies, Mr. Savitz. How will you pay me interest on that?”

“I guess by borrowing more?”

“Bingo. Under this program, you quickly go from being zero cookies in debt to being trillions of cookies in debt.”

“What does that have to do with inflation?”

“That
is
inflation. We started with one cookie in circulation, and in the span of a few decades, we end up with trillions of cookies floating around. Cookies everywhere.”

“I don’t get it.”

Neith sighed. “Mr. Savitz, at the beginning there was only one cookie, right?”

“Yes.”

“One cookie in the whole world. How valuable do you think that cookie is?”

“If it’s the only one in the whole world, probably pretty valuable.”

“Could you trade it for a house?”

“Maybe, if someone were really desperate for baked goods.”

“Now, after my prodigious, usury baking has run its course and there are cookies all over the place, what will an individual cookie be worth?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you see what happened? Using this scheme, I can control the entire world just by lending. And simultaneously, I weaken your purchasing power by devaluing any cookies you might have. Only instead of cookies, real banks use worthless, silly-looking paper that they create for free. The only way to stay ahead of it is to be a member of the banking cartel.”

“So this is real?”

“You can bank on it, Mr. Savitz.”

“But I’m not sure I understand entirely what you’re all about, Neith. What does this financial stuff have to do with the government? Why are you attacking them too?”

“Governments are simply the enforcement arms of the Dranthyx debt system. Government is also controlled by the Dranthyx. We vest government with the legal power to do violence to others, then put it beyond the law so that it can’t be sued or jailed. This is known as sovereign immunity. The Dranthyx debt system doesn’t work without the use of violent force. If John and Susie Homemaker take out a loan to buy a house, do you know what happens if they don’t make their mortgage payments every month?”

“Foreclosure?”

“Yes. The police come to their door, throw them out on the street, then seize their property to satisfy the debt. If there were no police, the bank would lose money every time. A bank can’t make a profit by lending money if there’s no threat of violence to enforce the bank’s right to collect money. We attacked the Federal Reserve because it lends the money, and we attacked the IRS because it is the Fed’s muscle.”

“Why do the Dranthyx bother with the debt? Why not just use straight force to control people?”

“Because force is obvious. Humans would rebel. However, when you borrow or use their phony money, it feels voluntary.”

“What about when governments fight each other? Wouldn’t that undermine the control system?”

“It would seem that, from time to time, the Dranthyx have allowed certain ambitious Tchogols come to power and invade other countries. You would think that this would upset the established order of things and would be bad for business. However, nothing could be further from the truth. War is horrifically expensive; all belligerents in a conflict must borrow money to fund it. No matter who wins or loses a war, all participants are in much more debt as a result. Bankers win every war. The house
always
wins.”

“What the hell? What is the point of all this, Neith? At some point, don’t you have enough wealth and control?”

“The Dranthyx were the original sociopaths, Mr. Savitz. They can never have enough wealth and power. What they have ingeniously created is a system that is utterly inescapable. Even if you never borrow money from a bank, the Dranthyx will still rob you with inflation and taxes. Even if you somehow escape inflation and taxes, you will always live under one of their governments. There is nowhere on this planet where you can escape their control.”

“Holy…” Len put his hand to his face, suddenly seeing the big picture. “So we’re screwed? Can’t we do anything about it?”

“Thanks to the research you did for us in Japan, Mr. Savitz, I was able to find a chink in the armor.”

“Which is?” Len asked impatiently.

“The world is run by people who lack empathy and ethics.” Neith’s weird robot face made an awkward, wry smile.

“I didn’t think that was new information.”

“Tchogols are people who exhibit certain behaviors: pathological lying, cunning or manipulative behavior, a lack of remorse or guilt, emotional shallowness, a lack of empathy, profound greed, and an inability to accept responsibility for their own actions.”

“So, every politician, ever?” Len quipped.

“The Ich-Ca-Gan were correct, the condition is in fact genetic. My preliminary research indicates that about 4 percent of the world’s population are Tchogols. However, Tchogols are not evenly distributed. They tend to compose the bookends of society—they’re either locked up in jail for violent crimes or running the world’s most powerful organizations. And you are correct in equating politicians with Tchogols.”

“Well, you have to be a little touched to run for office. Getting involved in politics isn’t something sane, truthful people do anymore.”

“It’s interesting to watch the presidential debates every four years, isn’t it?” Neith asked, abruptly changing course.

“No.”

“Each time, we are asked to choose between exactly two men who are functionally the same. If there were more than two candidates, the Dranthyx might lose control of the situation. If there were one fewer candidate, people might realize they aren’t actually living in a democracy. In the marketing business, this is called the false choice. Consumers feel they are making the right decision, when in fact the decision has already been made for them. Political parties are a charade and based on a false dichotomy. Whether you vote left or right, it doesn’t matter: your candidate is a Tchogol. Sociopathy, narcissism, and greed win every election. But Tchogols aren’t just politicians—they’re at the top of virtually every organization. They are CEOs of corporations, high-ranking bureaucrats, clergy, police officers, and Wall Street bankers.”

“Well, of course they run the world, Neith. They’re drawn to money and power like junkies. They get off on controlling people. What’s the point in telling me all of this? How is this a chink in the armor?”

“I want you to imagine a world without any Tchogols.”

Len found himself dumbfounded by the suggestion. “Huh. I can’t, actually.”

“Imagine politicians with a conscience who would never legislate away your rights just to give themselves more power, nor start a war for land or oil,” Neith said, as wistfully as a robot could. “Can you even fathom an elected official running solely for the greater good, then keeping their campaign promises? Imagine not having to live in fear of violent crime because there were no violent criminals. Can you envision a world where corporations don’t plunder, government isn’t corrupt, the police don’t abuse their power, and no one dumps toxic waste into rivers? Can you even picture a planet where everyone you meet has a conscience and ethics?”

“No, I can’t. In fact, that sounds incredibly naïve.”

“I don’t think it’s naïve at all. In fact, Mr. Savitz, I intend to make it possible.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

Neith’s slow, clumsy robot hand picked up a glass vial of clear liquid on her desk. “With this.”

“What is that?”

“The cure.”

“You’re going to cure the Tchogols?”

“No. I’m going to kill them.”

“What?”

“I intend to kill them all with a virus. Thanks to the information you obtained from the Ich-Ca-Gan, and DNA samples I’ve taken from Samuel Endicott, I was able to isolate the Dranthyx genes in certain humans. Using this data, I engineered a virus to specifically target Tchogols. The base delivery mechanism is the 1918 influenza, selected for its tremendous contagiousness, which we retrieved from corpses that had been frozen for over a hundred years. The virus should spread around the world in a matter of days. Most humans who come in contact with the disease will get sick, but it will only be fatal to Tchogols.”

“Wait, wait, wait a second. Hold on here. Did I hear you correctly when you said Tchogols are 4 percent of the population?”

Neith nodded.

“And you’re going to kill them with a virus?

“Correct.”

Len put his finger to his temple and did the math.

“Jesus, you’re talking about killing hundreds of millions of people worldwide, Neith! How on earth is this a good idea? I can’t imagine every Tchogol is the next Hitler; some of them are probably just regular Joes with families. And this comes after you’ve already slaughtered how many thousands of people?” Len could feel his pulse in his head. He stared at her in disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Neith?”

“It’s a small price to pay for a complete end to both war and Dranthyx control. The world will be a very different place once the epidemic has run its course.”

“At what point will have enough people have died? When does all this killing end?”

“The virus should be the last of it.”

“This virus of yours, will it also kill off the Dranthyx?”

“Unfortunately, no. I am not familiar enough with their physiology to design a pathogen that would be fatal to them. Killing off the Tchogols is the next best thing.”

“Wow, this is insane. How can you just exterminate human beings like they were cockroaches and not even feel bad about it? The worst part is, you’re not even getting to the root of the problem: the Dranthyx themselves. There’s something seriously wrong with you, Neith. I think you’re a Tchogol yourself!”

“I assure you that’s not possible. Mr. Savitz, the Tchogols were introduced into the human population for one reason only: control. They are the overseers in the Dranthyx control system. Removing the Tchogols will destroy the hegemony that has been used to enslave the human race for millennia. The Dranthyx will be powerless without their Tchogols.”

“I highly doubt that, Neith. Did you see that fucking thing you caught? Did you hear it talking? That thing would rip your tits off just to masturbate to your screams. They’ve kept us as slaves for tens of thousands of years, and you think they’re going to just belly up and surrender all control once you kill off their middle management?”

“They’ll have no choice.”

Neith paused for a while, watching him. Len found it rather uncomfortable to look into her dead, plastic eyes. Then, as if to make her point, Neith threw the vial she was holding onto the concrete floor of the bunker, the liquid splattering onto Len’s shoe.

“Whoa! What the hell!”
Len recoiled away from the splatter, covering his face with his shirt.

“That won’t help you. Truth be told, I aerosolized a hundred times that much and pumped it into the bunker’s ventilation system two hours ago. Mr. Savitz, you are going back to Ecuador. I have chosen an air travel route for you to maximize global infection: six legs with layovers at five major airports. A total of four countries. You will leave in forty-eight hours, after the virus’s incubation period. Please give me all your materials. I will make sure all your photographs, notes, and so forth, are waiting for you in Ecuador. Once in Ecuador, you will complete your assignment. You will write the most important piece of journalism anyone has ever written: you are going to tell the human race the truth.”

“Then what, psycho?”

“Then I will disseminate it on the Internet for the world to see. You, your daughter, and your ex-wife will all be freed, and I will pay you what I promised.”

“Christ. Do you have any goddamn whiskey in this bunker?”

19

Two days later, as promised, Len felt terrible. Nausea, chills, coughing, the whole package. Len felt so close to death that he began to worry that he might have Dranthyx DNA and the virus would kill him. Almost all of Jefferson’s men were sick as well; the invasion of DC would have to wait. The underground barracks where they all slept sounded like an emphysema ward.

Len was awoken from a buzzing fever dream by General Jefferson. Jefferson was wearing civilian clothes, a respirator, and goggles. He had been missing from the bunker for two days, probably because he’d known in advance what Neith had planned.

“Wake up, I’m driving you to the airport.”

Len, barely able to get out of bed, somehow found the strength to get his stuff together. Jefferson had to find an old wheelchair just to get Len out of the mine and up to the surface where the car was.

Jefferson, unable to wear his suspicious-looking respirator through the many police checkpoints set up on all the public highways, drove with the windows down the whole way in an effort to avoid breathing in Len’s air.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Len looked up a few times and had to do a double take at the billboards he saw: “We’ll all still live here after the war. No land mines!” and “Let’s have a good, clean fight. No chemical weapons!” Len had to marvel at the weirdness of it: public-service appeals to posterity in the middle of a bloody guerilla revolution. Neith’s formidability had reached the point where it was even being acknowledged in advertising media.

“OK, we’re here,” Jefferson grunted a few hours later. “Can you walk? No? Great, I can’t wait to come down with that. Look, I’m going to wheel you into the airport. If they know you’re sick, they might not let you onto the plane, so just pretend you’re retarded or something.”

The airport was packed with uniformed people with guns. With the country at such a high level of alert, every single police officer and military reservist in the nation had been called up to do double duty guarding some public building. Despite the overwhelming paranoia and security, General Jefferson, the most wanted man in the world, was able to stroll right into the airport without attracting any attention. He explained Jim Rivington’s mental handicap to the people at the check-in desk. Then, just as easily, he walked back out and drove away.

The airline employees wheeled Len to the security checkpoint, where he felt a bit of panic. After the IRS incident, Len’s face was all over the news.

Nope, right through. No problem. Whatever Neith was doing behind the scenes was digital witchcraft, Len thought to himself.

Dulles to Chicago to Denver to Los Angeles to Mexico City to Bogotá to Quito, with hours-long layovers in between. The entire trip took about three days. At each airport, Len was wheeled to the next plane by some helpful attendant. Each airport was bustling with throngs of travelers rushing past him on people-movers. Len, sneezing and hacking, spread the illness to each of them, and they in turn took the virus with them onto their flights to every single nook of the globe. In the seventy-two hours it took him to get to Ecuador, Len had even managed to infect people who were traveling to the remotest parts of Siberia, Western Australia, and Antarctica. The pandemic had begun.