Chapter 3
It Is Your Thing;
You Do What You Want to Do
For two days, the world held its anxious, worried breath. Neither Dragnie, nor John Glatt, nor any of the other prisoners were released by Mr. Jenkins from captivity. The embargo decreed by the People’s States of the People remained in effect; the Strike called by Glatt also remained in effect. The state of war declared by the People’s States continued, albeit with no clear manifestations or acts of military hostility.
By then, Nathan A. Banden had reconciled himself to having lost Dragnie forever and, as is typical of such men when they can no longer find approval in the eyes of the best of women, he contented himself with the attentions of a lesser woman. Having relinquished all thoughts of college, he spent the day in the apartment of Angel Human, mired in the bright pink beanbag chair, watching the television. It was in this manner, therefore, that he was able to monitor the events of that convulsive day which would come to be known to men as Takeover Two.
Two days after Dragnie’s televised speech, at nine o’clock in the morning, Eastern Standard Time, in a nondescript area of the Bronx, a plain panel van pulled up before an unidentified building. Out of it emerged an armed squadron of strikingly beautiful Swedish pirates. They quickly overwhelmed the guards both outside and inside the facility, and moments later escorted Dragnie Tagbord, Hunk Rawbone, Sanfrancisco De Soto, and John Glatt out of the building and into the truck, and drove off. Astonishingly, this entire event was broadcast live on national television, as cameras and news crews, consisting of self-loathing “on-air reporters” whose sole concern was the dissemination of celebrity gossip, political scandals of the most sordid kind, stories of local crime and corruption, and sentimental “human interest” melodramas, were on hand. Nathan A. Banden therefore, by sheer happenstance, was able to watch, live, the rescue of the woman he had so selfishly, immaturely, and rotterishly betrayed.
A news helicopter was present to follow the escape van as it drove to a hidden airfield, where its passengers (except for the really quite fantastically lovely Swedish pirates) debarked and boarded a small private plane, which took off immediately. A news plane gave chase and broadcast to an astounded world the escapees’ flight to Wyoming. There Glatt’s plane descended through what proved to be an illusory visual projection depicting wild mountain crags, to land on a verdant meadow below. The news crew, unsure of its ability to land safely in pursuit of the story, radioed to the nearest city, where a vertical-takeoff-and-landing news jet was scrambled. This aircraft rendezvoused over Glatt’s Gorge—for such was the location where Glatt’s plane had landed—and successfully touched down at the air strip below. The jet’s news crew was therefore able to broadcast what transpired next.
A squadron of small, sleek, two-man jets taxied out of a heretofore hidden hangar and took off. Their destinations, men would later learn, were the capitals of the world. Each of them was armed with three things: A “ray gun” that emitted a modulated sort of radiation which, when its waves passed through the human brain, had the effect of making the subject feel deeply ashamed of himself; these were protected by a kind of shield made of a metal no man had seen before, which was able, when attacked by ordnance, bombs, or missiles, not only to deflect the incoming round but literally to reverse its course and send it back against the device that had shot it. Finally, each of the small jets was equipped with a series of non-lethal bombs which, when exploded over government buildings, released a cloud of fine-particulate talc-based chemicals that caused the officials in their blast radius, and their academic toadies and corrupted shills in the press, to acquire an immediate and intense dislike of collectivism, and to yearn instead for freedom.
All of this unfolded as Banden, and a billion other people in nations all over the globe, watched. On-air analysts speculated—accurately, it later emerged—that the jets and the “shame ray” were the inventions of John Glatt, the explosive-deflection metal the creation of Hunk Rawbone, the anti-collectivization powder the product of Sanfrancisco Nabisco Alcoa D’Lightful D’Lovely De Soto, and the personnel, both in the jets and co-ordinating their movements from the ground, were under the direction of Regnad Daghammarskjold, the notably handsome Swedish pirate.
The results of this unprecedented action were swift and decisive. As announced that afternoon on television by Dragnie Tagbord, who functioned as the liaison between the Glatt forces and the public, within five hours half the nations of the world reported that their civilian populations were thoroughly embarrassed by everything they had done, beginning with opting for the collectivism of the People’s States of the People and up to and including the recent embargo. Mass demonstrations erupted in national capitals around the globe, at which expressions of shame and abasement alternated with demands for capitalism, individualism, and a free market. Guarantees of a well-maintained public sphere, safeguards of a clean environment, provision of affordable medical care, assurance of a quality elementary and secondary education, and the protection of an old age marked by dignity and respect, were universally denounced as being “socialistic” and “parasitic.” Within twelve hours of the initial jet sorties, a wholesale rejection of collectivism and an avid embrace of corporatism had firmly taken hold in every nation on earth except Goa.
The response of the government of the United States was equally decisive. Mr. Jenkins went on the air, not only to formally resign, but to fire his entire administration. This had the effect of eliminating what few skeletal remnants still existed of the original Executive, Legislative, and Judicial systems. Over the course of two days, all of the Federal government withered away, followed by the various state governments—a transition formalized by an old man named Judge Rapahannock, who took a gift-shop copy of the Constitution and scratched it out.
Nathan A. Banden watched all this on television while dressed in pajamas and a bath robe, leaving his beanbag chair in Angel’s apartment only to attend to bodily functions and insisting she bring him meals. Three days after the initial escape by Glatt and the others, he was still watching the historical events unfold. He had viewed footage from all over the world of rioting mobs of citizens transformed, by the arrival of freedom, into swarms of jubilant consumers. He had watched the interviews with Glatt, Rawbone, De Soto, and Daghammarskjold. He had watched Dragnie conduct three press conferences. He had watched coverage of victory parades in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas, and Seattle. He had watched as high government officials such as Francis Pissypants and T.T. Mucklicker had dodged reporters and muttered “no comment” and generally sought to avoid confrontation with the nation’s, and the world’s, radiant new reality.
It was while he was watching coverage of the parade down New York’s Fifth Avenue that he realized that Angel Human was not in the apartment. Compelled to prepare his own bowl of cereal, he was leaning against the kitchen counter when she burst into the flat. She was exhilarated and breathless.
“Isn’t it neat, Nathan?” she gasped happily.
“Isn’t what neat?”
“Everything! What John Glatt and those guys did! I just came back to get my camera. Somebody saw Dragnie Tagbord up the street and I want to get a picture of her! She’s so fantastic! It’s a shame you weren’t man enough to keep her.” She seized her camera from a coffee table and ran out.
Banden heard a familiar voice emanating from the television.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Earth, it is my pleasure to announce that Goa has capitulated.” It was a voice he had heard over the course of many nights, as a train had roared into the darkness along gleaming, vitamin-rich rails of Rawbonium, its two principle passengers escorting each other into the realm of ecstasy and creating, with that voice and with his, the sounds of attack, conquest, surrender, hatred, fury, triumph, and subjugation. “It is also my pleasure to announce that, as of twelve noon tomorrow, Eastern Standard Time, this nation shall be formally known as the Incorporated States of America.”