Leete scowled. “We keep telling you, Julian: this is not Utopia. There is no such thing as Utopia. Society is in a continual condition of flux. Of course there are malcontents in United America today.”
“Who are they?”
He thought about that. “There are various individuals and groups. For instance, some of those who were at the very top under the former socioeconomic system; some of the ultra-wealthy; some of the former politicians who wielded great power and loved it.”
Edith said, “Some of the military, especially the top brass. But also lower echelons of the military who liked it for its own sake—its discipline, its traditions of glory.”
“I see what you mean,” Julian muttered. “If George Armstrong Custer or old Blood-and-Guts George Patton were alive today, they’d hate a world in which there was no longer the need for war.”
Leete added, “Quite a few of the religious, too. They rebel against the fact that religion is so rapidly disappearing under this socioeconomic system.”
That surprised Julian. “You mean that you can’t study religion any more?”
“No, no. 1 don’t mean that at all. A student can study religion, any religion. But we no longer teach religion as though it were true. If you decide that anything from the Amish to Zoroastrianism is the true faith, then you’re certainly free to embrace its teachings. But we don’t teach religion as religion. As the old expression goes, we let everyone go to hell in his own way. Some of the more orthodox—the Fundamentalists, the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox Jews—object. Younger people in our society don’t pay much attention to religion, which infuriates the generations which were raised in it.”
“Who else?” Julian asked grimly.
Both Edith and the doctor thought for awhile.
Edith said, “There are some who strongly object to the fact that two percent of the population is all that is needed to produce what we need. Many of these, too, are members of the old religions, such as the Seventh Day Adventists. The Bible says that man was meant to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; today, nobody need sweat any more. Surprisingly enough, a good many of these objectors are among the ninety-eight percent who don’t work and subsist on their Guaranteed Annual Income. I suppose they are the ones who can find no manner in which to fill their leisure time profitably.”
Julian grunted.
Leete said slowly, “In actuality, there are quite a few of the older people, those in their sixties and beyond, who are taken aback by the many changes and long for the old ways. They haven’t kept up with the changes, and the so-called generation gap hits them the hardest. They rebel against everything from the new way of schooling to the new sexual permissiveness. They object to the fact that drugs are no longer controlled, or to pornography being freely available to anyone silly enough to want to read it. Some even protest that there is no longer news censorship on any level.”
“All right,” Julian said. “Most of those you’ve mentioned belong to the older generations. Time has passed them by and they’re uncomfortable. How about dissident groups among the younger people?”
Edith was obviously the one to answer that. She said, her voice unhappy, “Some of our youth, usually those of too low an Aptitude Quotient to be selected by the computers for a job on Muster Day, read the old stories and look at the old movies and TV shows in the International Data Banks and become enamored of the past. They seem to think present-day life is static and unadventurous.”
Her father said sourly, “When I was a youngster, I used to dream of the days when knights were bold and damsels swooned. It never occurred to me that during the Dark Ages not one person out of a hundred was a knight or a damsel. Ninety-nine percent of the population were out in the fields, serfs grubbing away at the soil with primitive tools.”
“Who else?” Julian demanded. “Who else in this Utopia of yours wants change?”
Both of them thought for long moments, and finally both shook their heads.
Julian said, “In my day, and before it, there were people, most of whom were probably very idealistic, who were nevertheless rebels. They existed in just about every country, and in every socioeconomic system. I guess you could say they were revolutionists. People in my position were inclined to believe these types to be crackpots, or opportunists. But most of them were not. Tom Paine, for instance, who probably more than any other single person put over the American Revolution of 1776, was neither a crackpot nor personally ambitious. Neither was Lenin or Trotsky. Neither was Mao or Che Guevara. Who else can I think of who wasn’t grinding his own ax? Let’s say Jean-Paul Marat, of the French Revolution; Rosa Luxemberg, the German radical following the First World War; the anarchist, Kropotkin. Let’s say Wendell Phillips, the American abolitionist.”
Both Leete and Edith were frowning at him.
“I fail to see your point,” the academician said.
Julian took a breath. “It would seem that in any socioeconomic system there are what can only be described as instinctive revolutionists. I’m not talking about the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Francos, I mean the idealistically motivated—whether they are right or wrong in their beliefs. Karl Marx was neither a villain nor a fool, but he was a lifelong revolutionist. Do you have any equivalent today?”
Leete slumped back in his chair. “Why… why, I don’t know. I suppose that possibly we have. I wouldn’t agree with them, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t admit their right to disagree with our present social system.”
Julian wryly misquoted, “I thoroughly disagree with what you have to say, and would defend with my life your right to say it.”
Edith asked, “What are you leading up to, Jule?”
He shook his head, then motioned to the doctor to follow him.
Leete, mystified, let his guest lead him to the bathroom. There, Julian turned on both the shower and the faucet in the lavatory.
He whispered, “Keep your voice low.”
The doctor stared at him, but nodded.
Julian whispered, “Do you know what a bug is?”
“A bug?”
“A device that can be put into your home, or in your phone screen, to listen in on everything you say.”
Leete was still gawking at him. “You mean like in that Watergate scandal way back?” he whispered.
“Never heard of it,” Julian whispered. “Must have happened after I went into stasis.”
“Why, yes, but we haven’t had anything like that for—”
“As you say, but could some of them be left over, here or there, or would there be plans on how to make them in the International Data Banks?”
Leete nodded dumbly. “Everything is in the data banks.”
“Okay. Are there plans there to make a mop?”
“What’s a mop?”
“An electronic device utilized to detect bugs.”
They were both still whispering over the sound of the rushing water. “Why, I suppose so.”
Next, Julian asked, “Do you have a friend who could get the plans out of the data banks and have a mop made secretly?”
“I suppose any of my friends who have hobby electronic shops in their basements or wherever could do it, particularly if the things go back over thirty years. It should be child’s play for a modern electronic tinkerer.”
“Somebody you could absolutely trust to secrecy?”
Leete thought, then nodded.
“All right. Get at it immediately,” Julian snapped. “Now, one other thing. Are you connected with the government in any way?”
“How did you know? I am associated with a committee which is working upon suggestions for reforming our present civil branch of the government. As you know, our present system is dual, one pertaining to economic matters, production and distribution, and the other to civic matters, the equivalent of what the government was in the old days. Under the revised constitution—”