by Karl Wenclas

(image c/o Shuran Huang/ WSJ)

I.

“Two minutes and counting,” the Advisor said with a smirk to his personal assistant as he stared at his phone. “Per usual, the directors are late.”

They waited outside a room in a lower level– deep underground– of one of his many ultra-modern office complexes, this one in Texas. Inside the room: a holographic machine. He was scheduled for a holographic meeting with the board of directors of one of his companies. The meeting was to have started exactly two minutes-and-fifteen-seconds ago.

The office complex was state-of-the-art, as was everything he created. Latest AI security and monitoring systems, with cameras and voice recorders in every room and hallway. Every keystroke made by every employee recorded, with the time of the action. The silver design and decor of the exterior, hallways, cubicles, bathrooms: of everything expressed his viewpoint. The zeitgeist of this company and every one of his companies. Everything fit– except the company logo, which was what this meeting was about. To fix the logo.

He produced a stiff, folded-up sheet from a pocket of his sportcoat and unfolded it, simultaneously shifting a small blue plastic container from another pocket into that one. Displayed on the white, thin-cardboard sheet was the current logo.

As he did this, he glanced at the personal assistant. He couldn’t keep track of them all. Personal, business, politics; family and friends. Assistants as well for each of his companies. This particular personal assistant had lasted precisely seven weeks and four days. Why the fact popped into his head, he didn’t know, but it had. Facts about everything, from rockets to spaceships to satellites, always available, his brain waiting to provide them. Part of his genius.

No one of course was any longer expected to remember anything– devices existed for that– but he expected himself to remember everything. Gen X, he was the necessary bridge between analog and digital, past and future. Only the future mattered. For the entire world there would soon be only the future.

He assessed this assistant. Agnes? Allison! He remembered. His brain never failed him. 162 centimeters tall– approximately 5 feet, four inches in American terms. Wearing a modest blue-gray suit. Page boy haircut, reddish brown in color. Dark brown eyes– very dark, almost black. Caramel-colored complexion. Traces of intermixing in her family’s past? Excluded her from breeding consideration. He chose only thoroughbreds to produce his children– seventeen, at last count, and climbing. This assistant, Allison, appeared efficient anyway. One must strive for efficiency, exactitude, perfection– in everything. The world was imperfect, but that’s why he existed. To make everything perfectly right.

Another full minute had gone by. With a hush the silver door to the holography room slid open. Ahead waited a single silver office chair with headrest on a platform, under a white-hued spotlight. The Advisor took a seat. The spotlight made him glow. Then, next to him, seven other individuals, five men and two women– their images– in similar chairs, appeared next to him, also glowing. 

He expected the directors to respect his new position: Chief Advisor to the U.S. President; head of a newly formed agency designed to eliminate corruption, an agency which had its own mercenary purposes.

Not all of them did.

The Advisor was a naturalized citizen of this country, but considered himself Citizen of the World. Hopefully with more worlds to follow. Image was important. The Advisor needed to show his dedication to this country. Show. His sacrifices. As well as an image of dynamic change– his various companies part of that.

He knew he pushed people, no one harder than himself.

“I called this meeting,” began the Advisor– CEO of this company and all his companies, as well as largest shareholder– “to discuss the logo.”

He held the white cardboard sheet up to show the green-and-orange, square-shaped design which appeared on social media, on letterhead and whenever possible on products themselves. 

“Look at this! Square. Quaint. Stodgy. We need a more futuristic logo,” he told them. “Think of a speeding jet. This version was adequate ten or fifteen years ago– an eternity in the tech business. Now it’s antediluvian. Not good enough! We need to represent forward movement. Speed! Ever more speed. Look at this. I don’t like these static vertical lines.”

He pointed to them with his finger.

“We need lightning bolts.”

The holographic images of the directors shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. One of them– a man about forty with dark brown hair and a squat face– smirked.

“Surely we don’t need this . . . theater . . . to discuss a logo,” the man said. “There are plenty of structural problems in the company we should be talking about.”

This particular director was a television entrepreneur– a media face– worth a mere $2.3 billion. He wore an ill-fitting brown suit and a sarcastic yet ingratiating smile. Ninety percent of the man’s career had been based on that smile. The Advisor regretted the day he’d invited the joker– during an early stage of the company’s development– onto the board.

“Mitch the Cynic,” the Advisor responded. “Forever trying to score points. You think you’re still on your low-rated low-budget TV show. There are no structural problems in this company. Not lasting ones. We move beyond them. Structure is always changing. In flux. You’re trapped within 20th Century thinking. Change. Change! Change is the only thing that matters, for any company, if it wants to survive. Constant change.”

As he spoke, the holographic images of the seven directors began to turn green.

“ADJUST THE PROJECTOR!” the Advisor shouted to offstage technicians.

“Here’s a perfect example,” Mitch put in. “How much are we spending on this technical exhibition. . .”

“Less than if I flew all of you in. . .”

“. . . to discuss a logo! You once posed as an environmentalist. How many new server farms are needed to sustain your vast array of technological props? AI. Robots. Satellites. Spaceships. This.”

“If we need server farms we’ll build them,” the Advisor said as the images lost their green tinge and became lifelike again. “Enormous ones. More server farms and more power plants, of all kinds. They’ll need to be built anyway, to sustain the higher-technology world we’re creating. We’ve barely started. Every possible obstacle in front of us can be overcome and will be overcome.”

“The expense. . .” Mitch continued.

“Let me worry about expense,” the Advisor cut him off, while the other directors, of the go-along-to-get-along variety, looked embarrassed at the exchange, as they would at any contentious exchange.

Seven sets of eyes gleamed out at the Advisor, like members of an audience. Looking for direction. Guidance. Answers. He knew at the core of his being, as if he were a small precocious child again in a vanished overseas world, what he required most in life was an audience.

“Your problem, Mitch,” the Advisor continued, sitting back in his chair while making a tent with his fingers, satisfied he’d found an answer to Mitch, as he found an answer to everything, “is you are not a risk taker. You leave the gambling table too soon, which is why you never advanced much beyond your first billion. You’re cautious. You see only what’s immediately in front of you. You worry about expense. I already have it covered. The government will take care of much of it. Maybe most of it. Necessary infrastructure investment, you might say. Subsidies. Tax credits. Write-offs. As always, I’m three steps ahead.”

After the meeting concluded, the Advisor bounded off the silver platform, feeling for a fast moment like a fourteen year-old. Conquering all. His personal assistant, who’d been observing from a corner, stood next to him and opened the exit door, while he touched the blue plastic container in his sport coat pocket to assure himself it was still there. He felt light-headed; experienced accelerating thoughts– the world moving, out of balance– but shook them off.

“Back to reality,” he joked.

II.

Allison had been his personal assistant for two months. As long as anyone had lasted in the position, she’d been told by one of the security men, part of a phalanx of security men. The job was wearing. Simply being in the Advisor’s presence was exhausting. The man had a draining personality– a combination of brilliance and admitted quirkiness. He was always “on.” Like an actor on stage, but the stage never left him. Which was how he’d achieved so much– owning seven highly valued companies and now Chief Advisor to the President– who he treated as one more necessary human appendage. The Advisor, via an enormous campaign contribution, had in effect bought the Office, its occupant and the political party attached to him.

“What’s next?” the Advisor asked Allison in his unusually accented voice, eyes boring in on her. Strange eyes, dilated, never resting, always focused like a high-speed camera on some object, idea, or person.

They drove along in one of his cars, she sitting to the right of him in the rear seat. “His.” He owned the automobile company, had given it its prominence. Not the truck. They never rode in the company’s highly touted truck, which resembled a spaceship and like his spaceships had been spontaneously combusting of late, like out of a Dickens novel. “The workers,” he’d told Allison privately. “They’re sabotaging me.” In his peculiar ultra-Randian philosophy, everything was the fault of “the workers.” Flipside to the opposite philosophy, which stated all achievements were due to “the workers.” 

Allison had no philosophy herself, though she found herself imbibing more and more of his. Her main concern in this tumultuous time was staying employed.

They sped along in the most advanced model of the sedan. XJVC3. Or something. Which she often confused with the legal name of his youngest son, who she, like the rest of the staff, referred to as Sparky, under the care of a variety of nurses and assistants.

“We’re on our way now to the airport,” she informed him, the speed of the vehicle according to numbers on the large computer screen facing the silent driver in the front seat approaching 110 miles per hour. “We’ll board your Number Four jet, which will fly us to Reagan Airport. From there we’ll transfer to a Presidential limousine. Your son” (Sparky, she thought to herself) “and his Number Three Nurse plus his Number Two Bodyguard will be waiting for us.” (Also Frank, at some point. The Advisor’s most secretive assistant.) “You have a quick meeting-slash-photo op and press conference scheduled with the President at the White House. At 1300 hours.”

At the mention of 1300, the steadfast driver, who might as well be a robot, increased their speed. The world outside the windows rushed past faster, other cars left behind as mere blurs. Local police had been informed of their transit, with orders not to interfere– such was the Advisor’s standing right now.

“Good. Good!” the Advisor said, focused, seeming anxious, clutching in his right hand the blue plastic box which was always with him.

III.

Allison waited outside the Oval Office, which resembled a television studio or a stage show. Everywhere were lights, cameras, boom microphones– and reporters. The President joked with a few of them. 

“Careful, or you’ll be deported,” he told one, saying it with a malicious grin.

Then he closed his eyes and relaxed, sitting back in his chair, a performer waiting for his cue. In the chair as if on display, bloated, garishly made up, with yellow-orange wig– press lights bouncing off him– he resembled a large, quiescent puppet waiting in its box.

Standing next to Allison was Sparky’s nurse, Belia. The minute the Advisor stepped away from the lights after the presentation, Sparky would be handed over to Belia, to be kept on standby until needed for another media appearance.

At this moment, Sparky held his dad’s hand on the edge of the lights, in a kind of halo netherworld between show and reality. Instinctively he understood he was not to act up– to entertain– yet, but the moment would arrive. His father, restlessly observing everything, had changed into his black overcoat, maybe because it had larger pockets.

Also waiting near Allison in the hallway was Frank, another of the Advisor’s many aides. Frank carried the look of a disreputable doctor– intelligent but furtive, scantly shaven, with dark circles around his eyes. Like her, someone who undoubtedly needed the position and to keep it would do anything required.

A signal was given, reporters and cameramen became attentive and as if suddenly plugged in, the President jolted to life. 

After a few nonsensical sentences lauding himself and his always-great accomplishments, the President glanced toward the side. The cue for the Advisor and Sparky to join him, which they did.

“And look who just dropped in!” the President said, acting surprised. “The richest man on earth. One of my biggest fans! But why wouldn’t he be?”

After saying a few words acknowledging the man in the chair, the Advisor stepped around and behind the sitting President, reciting a semi-articulate monologue. A Steve Jobs wannabe, Allison thought. She was more worried about Sparky, who played hide-and-seek, giggling and crouching alongside and behind the desk. A PR display? The unrehearsed routine had movement anyway. Energy. Despite his young age– four– Sparky was a budding actor, understanding the importance of the cameras and mics, of playing to them. As did his dad.

Who could argue with the Advisor’s tactics– his ability to put himself in the spotlight? Forever at the center of things? Of everything: manufacturing; media; government. Foreign affairs, even. (After the White House visit, they were scheduled for an immediate visit to China, where he had a gigantic factory.) Allison didn’t, at this stage of her life, mind the frenetic pace and constant travel. She was seeing the world. The Advisor had businesses, homes and hideaways across the globe. Including a well-stocked fallout shelter in New Zealand. Meeting world leaders was part of his incessant networking, an essential element of his nonstop publicity tour.

Publicity! Publicity was everything, he’d told her. 90% of the value of his companies had been created via publicity. Maybe 99%.

The Advisor, ever the perfectionist, had fired PR managers at his companies. “No one is better at publicity than I am,” he’d told her. Unstated but implied was the message, “No one is better at anything business-related than I am.” Getting himself into the Oval Office was no doubt a significant coup.

Allison noted the room’s evident props. Paintings of several past presidents, prominently displayed. The current president had added his own pagan touches– garish gold statuary. In-your-face exhibits of his well-known lack of taste. Allison realized that for the Advisor, the President was himself a prop. Allison by now knew the Advisor’s worldview– he admired the orange man, but only as a historical relic. As if P.T. Barnum or Colonel Tom Parker were in the room. A cutting-edge businessman for his time– master salesman– but his time had passed. Carrying a 20th Century mindset– seeing only the game, the presentation, not the game outside the game, the technological apparatus which ultimately controlled everything. Communication systems– including satellites– and electronic platforms, from smartphones to laptops, to social media and podcasts which channeled the images and voices that appeared on such omnipresent devices. Without which the President was merely a cartoonish man with orange skin in a blue suit in a room. A strange man sitting in a room. The old-fashioned levers and appendages of an old-style American president were being cut away. Dissolved. Disconnected. Dismantled. Ignored. Agencies. Bureaucracies. Judges. Congress, even. None of it any longer mattered. Only the AI-generating machines, replacing all of that, mattered, and those machines were owned and controlled by a handful of super-rich men like the Advisor.

The President went through his huckster-salesman routine, which came naturally to him. He’d played the role for half-a-century. His carnival tent fans loved it. He gave them what they wanted. Surprises. Decisiveness. Bigotry. Most of all: cruelty. Cruelty toward their perceived enemies. Payback for perceived grievances. This was the displayed game. While taking place outside the performance were real happenings– the actual levers of power which controlled the dystopian electronic machinery which ultimately controlled everything.

The sound of protesters outside the White House echoed up to them. Allison had seen the earnest, pathetic-looking protesters holding their scribbled signs when the limousine carrying her and the Advisor from the airport drove through the White House gates. She’d glimpsed also the Advisor’s satellite system– produced by one of his companies– now atop the historic structure’s roof, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

“Show us what democracy looks like!” came the impassioned, choked voices from outside.

The President grimaced for an instant at the chants. He had no tolerance for criticism– would love to ship the demonstrators to a prison camp someplace. The Advisor’s emotions, on the other hand, would be mixed. He had as strong an ego as anybody– considering how much, in his mind, he did for the world and its people. Sacrificing happiness for necessary progress– his vast billions merely an inevitable byproduct. But if the protesters and their signs brought ever more articles, media reports, coverage– wasn’t this, for his overall goal, a good thing?

Eventually the President had enough of the wrestling-interview routine and gave a subtle nod. A glance of his eyes. Obsequious White House staffers acted quickly to end the event.

“Thank you,” the President said absently to the Advisor when the big lights turned off and only a few reporters remained. “You’re doing a wonderful job. Simply wonderful. I couldn’t begin to tell you how wonderful a job you’re doing. Fighting to save this government from the wokes and from the absolute mess I inherited.”

He made a fist and gestured with it, as he would with any audience. The Advisor paused at the compliments, fixed eyes staring. Did he respect this orange figure– this ancient master promoter– after all?

“I am an exile from Eden,” the Advisor stated like a programmed automaton. “My mission is to create a new Eden.”

The President gave no sign the words registered with him. He nodded, his brain moving on to other things. A McDonald’s lunch delivery, most likely. Or a nap.

The Advisor rejoined Allison and made a quick sleight-of-hand switch of plastic boxes with Frank. “The hand-off,” as his security people referred to it. While Sparky was handed off to Belia the nurse.

IV.

The Advisor stepped from the washroom at the rear of the private jet, feeling rushing air under his feet, beneath the fuselage of the jet. Holding the blue plastic case in his hand. He knew instead he should try to sleep– to obtain a few hours of sleep on the long flight– but he couldn’t sleep. Too much to do. Social media posts to make, to maintain his global profile. Reports from his seven companies to go through. Other reports about various government agencies, from his new team of young tech enthusiasts. His self-appointed task: to increase government efficiency. To make government as efficient as his companies, which ran on one-tenth the staff they had previously. Occasional mishaps were blips amid their progress, could be written off anyway as business expenses. More reports, about his children– no doubt containing requests for money– which he might or might not read. He was also scheduled in seventy-five minutes to participate in a worldwide video game livestream.

Too much for any one human being to handle, but he wasn’t just any human. He was the necessary cog– he believed– which kept all of it operating. Systems. The world. This world, which he believed in his heart would be a failure anyway, not up to the test– his test– and so must be abandoned as quickly as possible. Inhabit the galaxies. Spread his seed. Much to accomplish. Too much for one lifetime.

His chief problem among all his problems was having to deal with politicians. “Leaders.” An obsolete job classification. The U.S. President. China’s President. Either able to go off in wrong directions like children– like Sparky– and destroy his well-prepared plans. Prepared for his entire life, from a ten year-old’s daydreams. As much as they tried not to, the politicians were locked into “national” concerns, which by definition were narrow and parochial, while his viewpoint embraced the entire world.

All worlds. The galaxies. He was an Asimov space traveler. In his mind– in his memories. Pages of books, but no one any longer read books. His own AI device and similar devices from incompetent competitors had made print media– from trees! TREES!– obsolete. He encompassed contradictions because he encompassed generations and he embodied, comprised, encapsulated unending change.

He hadn’t slept in thirty-seven hours. Perhaps he might nap for an hour when they arrived in Beijing. Almost on the other side of the globe– this globe– but they’d get there quickly. He felt the world spinning, under his feet. The world was an unstoppable treadmill moving faster and faster. He stepped down the narrow, blue-carpeted aisle toward his seat.

Lines of tiny yellow lights ran up and down the blue aisle, mystifying and confusing him for an instant. Only an instant, he insisted. Like lights of an airport runway. He wanted to land on it. 

As he took his seat in a comfortable blue-green chair with headrest– though he wouldn’t, couldn’t rest– his personal assistant, Allison, across from him stared at him with her too-dark almost-black eyes. If she weren’t so efficient she’d already be fired, didn’t completely fit with his concept– his vision of the coming universe. Those who’d populate the universe.

Allison held his itinerary for China in her hand. On an iPad. He glanced at it, but knew it. It flashed before his eyes, produced from his efficient brain. Always efficient. The schedule began scrolling before him, in his brain, at increasing speed. He closed his eyes, but the schedule scrolled faster. Faster. At warp speed. 

“Scott sent notes for your talk with the Chinese President,” Allison informed him. 

“Scott?” he thought, then realized he’d said the word out loud.

He opened his eyes. Allison stared at him, puzzled. Yes, of course, Scott. Scott! Another of his assistants. An authority on China. Former professor at an Ivy League university that was in the middle of being defunded by the U.S. President. The Advisor had lured Scott away from academia via a doubled salary, plus highly-valued shares of stock in three of the Advisor’s companies. Scott had been allowed to choose for himself which three. Stock valuations– despite occasional blips– were always climbing, ever higher and faster, as they were inextricably tied to the Advisor’s reputation. His power and personality.

“Scott should be on this flight,” the Advisor quipped.

Allison’s eyes widened.

He’s meeting us at the Beijing airport,” she reminded him.

“Oh yes. Yes. Of course,” the Advisor covered for his misstep “I knew that.”

He knew it, but hadn’t remembered it. A lost fact– lost amid his super-IQ brain. But how? How could any important facts be lost?

The jet moved higher, surged faster. Above the clouds. The jet was registered in the name of one of his companies, written off as a business expense, but he’d arranged to have its title switched to show ownership by the federal government– could bypass certain regulations that way– care of his special unit. He’d thought he’d already arranged it. But had he arranged it? Yet another assistant, another liaison, another flunkie to keep track of– endless factotums to carry out his intentions, but they could never do it properly. Not perfectly, so they were invariably inevitably fired. He wanted to fire everybody. Businesses; government: the lot of them. Entire bureaucracies. Failures. All failures, failing this planet, failing the universe, failing him. HIM! The most necessary cog of all but they couldn’t see it. Why couldn’t they see it? Twenty bodyguards at various points around him everywhere he traveled in the USA, a security detail totaling 200 and climbing– because the people couldn’t see. They were blind and could not see!

Businesses agencies systems protests silver skyscrapers running together in his mind: cars trucks rocketships logos-lines-lists … sons-and-satellites … AI-generating robots … NEW advanced technology … society security weapons-and-abundance … multiplyingeveronwardforwardintomadness…

He rubbed his forehead, could feel to his shoes the throbbing of his brain. No one could see. His pounding all-important brain. Allison gaped at him with an expression of worry, but the jet sped faster. Empathy maybe, but he didn’t believe in empathy. A human weakness. The jet began climbing, shaking. Silver clouds– the world outside the window next to him– moved faster, at hyper-speed, accompanied by colors of the universe– his universe– red, blue, silver. Gold and green. Explosions of fireworks, while his eyeballs throbbed, gongs sounded and his heart raced uncontrollably.

Karl Wenclas is Editor-In-Chief at New Pop Lit.