“Dear Miss Tagbord:
Kindly permit me to express the gratitude of which I felt on the occasion yesterday of your extremely neat visit to our School. It was an affirmation of my love of my own self and the life that it lives to see you in the audience as I rehearsed my speech. And yet I do not express here the typically obsequious homage of a nobody to a celebrity. My theory is that celebrity feeds off of fame, which is its bread and butter and meat and potatoes and mother’s milk and just dessert. And what is fame, but the afterglow of men’s discussion of an individual providing value for the admiration of the mob? A visitor can be no more distinguished than the place to which he visits. Therefore I will not speak of being honored by your presence. The mass of lesser men seek elevation of their self-respect in the proximity of their selves to the heightened significance of the lauded one. But to the individual of true mind such turn-ons are irrelevant, because they find their value in the accomplishment of their own achievement. Do you dismiss my assertion as being merely that of a student? Then you do so at your peril. A society indifferent to its students, and to their ability to determine without obstruction the site of their senior prom, is a society that is doomed. It is a society ruled by cowards for the benefit of weaklings, squares, and numb-nuts. That is no society in which I deem it worth living my one life, which is all one can live, and be alive. I hope you like the flowers.
“Yours truly,
Nathan A. Banden.”
Dragnie threw her head back in a gesture of defiance. Informing Miss Smith that she would return to the office tomorrow, she left.
On the train to Washington Dragnie read the card five more times. Something in the boy’s words touched her deeply. She found herself compelled by his unflinching willingness to address even the most trivial of topics in terms of heightened philosophical discourse. The tone of the card bespoke a sensibility almost frighteningly in sympathetic harmony with her own. She wondered if his parents were aware of the boy’s potential for greatness.
The porter, a dignified man named Ben Dover, wearing the official dark blue Tagbord Rail uniform, stopped on his way up the aisle and bent in professional deference. He had been serving the needs of passengers of the Executive Car since the earliest days, when Old Man Pop Gramps “Professor” Zayde Poppa “The Guv’nor” Tagbord had created the line, and had watched Dragnie grow from infancy. He was now ninety-seven years old, blind in one eye and functionally deaf, and yet he still worked, willingly and with the highest competence, for such was his dedication to his job and its ability to protect and safeguard his individuality from the effects of undeserved cost-of-living wage increases, unnecessary health care, and employer-funded pensions that enslaved workers on other, still-vaguely-unionized rail lines.
He now demonstrated his undiminished ability to transport, with one hand under a tray, a martini from the galley car without spilling a drop. “Is something wrong, Miss Dragnie?” he inquired in his wise and aged manner. “You look to be the subject of vexations.”
Dragnie forced a reassuring smile. “It’s nothing, Uncle Ben,” she murmured. “I’m just worried, I suppose—worried about the future of the entire world.”
The old man chuckled. “Well, I don’t know nothing about that,” he said. “All’s I know is, we’re out of chicken salad.”
Dragnie smiled. The courageous train rushed on to its once-dignified but now shamefaced destination.
The conference took place at the White Home, in a secret room unknown about by men not informed of its existence. As Dragnie entered she saw that John Glatt had already arrived, as had Sanfrancisco De Soto, Hunk Rawbone, and Regnad Daghammarskjold. The four men sat along one side of a table set with pitchers of water and glasses, both of the highest transparency, and legal pads and pens. Opposite them sat three representatives of the nominal government in whispered colloquy with its loathsome head, Mr. Jenkins. A sweat-soaked, fat man with repulsive male breasts, he gave a weak, contemptible smile as she moved toward her seat. “Ah. Miss Tagbord. Splendid. We’re all here.” He glanced at the hate-worthy bureaucrats flanking him and then gestured to Glatt and his companions. “So let’s get started.” The repellent chief executive composed the features of his ugly face into a stern and grim arrangement. “The word from the People’s States of the People is what we’d been fearing,” he said in a voice soaked in terror and self-pity. He shifted, his chair emitting squeals of protest as if in violent objection to being sat on by such an inferior individual. “They’re imposing a comprehensive embargo on all products made in the U.S. That’s not good. That’s not good at all!”
“But, why?” Dragnie said, her voice low.
“They say our products are too dangerous,” Mr. Jenkins replied.
“But, why?” Dragnie asked, her voice low.
“Our toys are covered with lead-based paint. Our cars explode when the odometer reaches three hundred. Our broccoli, kale, and Romaine lettuce harbor dangerous impurities such as salmonella, E.-coli, and other pathogens. Our kitchen appliances burst into flame the first time you plug them in. Our telephones generate X-rays that cause brain cancer.” Mr. Jenkins gulped convulsively and wiped sweat from his forehead with a disgusting handkerchief. “The common man doesn’t want brain cancer. The common man doesn’t want brain cancer at all, I tell you!”
“The market will decide that,” Hunk Rawbone murmured coolly. A thousand words screamed in his mind but he did not permit himself to give them voice. Instead, he mentally recommended that they shut up. “We manufacture our products as cheaply as possible in order to maximize profit. Perhaps that’s something they don’t understand any more in the People’s States of the People of France or England or Germany or Spain or Portugal or Greece or China or Australia.”
“Or Goa,” added Regnad Daghammarskjold, deliberately speaking with his voice.
“Look, Hunk,” Mr. Jenkins whined in the manner of a child seeking to escape blame for everything all the time. “I know that, and you know that. But the boys in the People’s States of the People don’t see it that way. They have objections to their kids being poisoned and their mix-masters blowing up. And now, with this embargo, we have no place to sell our exports.”
“We’ll sell them domestically,” Dragnie said, her voice low.
“To whom, Miss Tagbord?”
The question came from the man seated languidly to the right of Mr. Jenkins. He was Phillip Sissyberger, the Minister of Equality, a thin, meticulous aesthete in a custom-made, purple silk suit and a florid green bow tie. He sported a pencil-thin moustache and affected the airy, condescending manner of an individual for whom the supreme achievement of life was to be a big know-it-all. “The vast majority of our population can’t afford much more than food, clothing, and shelter. True, we boast an upper class the income of which may comfortably rival that of any aristocracy anywhere in the world—if there still are any aristocracies left, in our benighted age. But those people—one might call them ‘the achievers’ or ‘the successes’ or ‘the good people’—comprise less than one tenth of one percent of our populace, and in any case they scarcely have need of the cheap consumer goods our factories produce. They purchase their appliances and automobiles from the prestigious manufacturers in the People’s States of the People of England, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. No, my friends. We may all applaud the free-market revolution led by you four gentlemen and Miss Tagbord ten years ago. You may congratulate yourselves on the complete removal of all government regulation and oversight of industry. You may likewise take pride in the realization of your primary goal, which is and always has been the elimination and, indeed, de-legitimization of the very idea, of taxation, and for the complete subjugation of the public sphere to the interests of private enterprise. In this you have succeeded admirably. The popularity of Grand Canyon Fun Park, the lines at the District of ColumbiaLand ticket booths that surround this nation’s capital, the conversion of the Great Lakes into water hazards for the world’s largest miniature golf course—all of these attest to your achievement. But the equality characterizing our nation now consists in a near-universal state of lower-class subsistence. The American people can no more afford to buy their own products than they can afford to catch the flu or purchase loin lamb chops to feed a family of four.”