He waved his finger angrily, standing on the side and watching the children’s hands jostling to pet Lucky.
And Lucky… he was all warm with pleasure.
“It’s OK if he woke us, Mr. Sayash,” Gala said. “Don’t be angry at Lucky.”
“How can I not be? He doesn’t listen to a thing I say…” Sayash answered, with a smile.
“It was time to get up, wasn’t it?” asked Kimo, winking at his friends.
“It was! It was!” They all answered at the same time.
“And why was it time? You have to go to school, do you?” Sayash wanted to know everything.
“No, no…” Kimo was confused.
“We don’t have to, Mr. Sayash, it’s recess!” said Sara, who got a hold of Lucky and held him in her hands.
“Recess, is it?” Sayash looked at them suspiciously. “So where are you snacks?”
“We ate them!” said Matic. “That’s why we were sleepy.”
“Aha! So you had your snack, you had a nap… That means that recess is almost over. Doesn’t it?” Sayash asked.
All the children fell silent for a moment, disarmed by Sayash’s ironclad logic.
“Actually, it isn’t…” Tai stuttered.
“What do you mean ‘it isn’t’? Don’t dilly-dally!” Sayash said angrily.
“Well… it’s not recess. I mean, it’s over…” Tai continued, frantically looking for a solution.
“Of course its over! Who knows when it was over?! Its all clear to Mr. Sayash! You got on that truck and skipped school!”
Chapter 127
“At this moment it is all insignificant,” the Grasshopper continued. “I want to talk about consequences, about these moments, about the end.”
“Forgive me. I won’t interrupt you any more. Please, continue,” Dr. Palladino said.
“I will. It is important to understand that people had to find various excuses in order to kill with impunity.”
“Yes. You said that the excuse for having sex was the survival of the species.”
“Exactly. But in the case of killing, people had to be much more creative in finding excuses. All ideologies in history were created only as an excuse for killing. Certain ideas, membership in a certain group, are placed above human life and serves as the excuse for killing with impunity. You saw the conversations between Erivan and me, and you saw what Erivan did…”
“Yes. I watched your satire live on the Capital City stage. You were the screenplay writer, director and prompter for the main actor.”
“Satire? I’m not a satirist, Dr. Palladino. I, in the role of the trustee, only took inventory of a bankrupt civilization.”
“And you say that you were aware of this bankruptcy even as a student?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to liquidate the bankrupt firm?”
“I asked myself why shouldn’t it be me, knowing that this room represents the tool with which I could do it.”
“And you never wondered why the Kaellas or Erivan hadn’t done it?”
“Because I beat them to it.”
“What do you mean? The Kaellas could have done it half a century ago, when they completed the energy system.”
“I’ll explain it to you. The Kaella’s didn’t find the excuse that would allow them to use the energy system as an absolute weapon. That is why they used it to sell energy to the Consumers. And while that functioned, they used a different, more selective excuse for killing.”
“What killing?”
“What do you mean ‘what killing’, Dr. Palladino? The killing of the old, the ill, the inappropriate, the misfits, the helpless, the homeless… The killing at Euthanasias.
“The third Kaella saw himself as the greatest humanist, who created the Balance in human society. Just like all other rulers in history, he used his ideology as an excuse to kill.
“He placed the Balance and Humane Capitalism above life. And he could neither create it nor maintain it without killing the sick and the elderly people, who didn’t have an income to pay the bills, and who only represented an expense for the balanced state. And his ideology didn’t permit that.”
“That is why, in order to save the Balance and Humane Capitalism, he introduced mandatory medical checkups, with complete ideological justification. And at these checkups potential parasites were identified in a timely fashion. Following the medical checkup the information system predicted the likely course of the disease for each examined person, the costs of their treatment and the expected date when their revenue would cease to cover the costs.
“Every morning the information system sent the tax administration a list of people for whom this critical period had started. Then they carefully monitored every financial transaction of such an individual. They waited for the person to sell their shares, if they had any, and to pay the bills and treatment for a while, using the money from the sale. And when that too was spent, the person would be taken to Euthanasia and put to death.
“The descendents of the deceased would be pleased with this. The tax administration would notify them on time that their father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, brother, sister… would be left without the necessary financial sustenance within a month. They would be asked whether they wanted to take over financial responsibility for their relatives. As a rule the answer was negative.”
“Why would people in their prime want to spend on the sick and the elderly the little money that they were left with after they paid their bills to Kaella and the mandatory purchase of goods from the new season? They too deserved to live a little, to go out to dinner, to travel, to take a ride on a submarine.”
“I understand. It’s dreadful, what has become socially acceptable,” Dr. Palladino said.
Chapter 128
“We didn’t! We didn’t skip school!” the children shouted at the top of their voices.
“We were on a fieldtrip!” it dawned on Babette.
“On a fieldtrip? Children that small? All by themselves? I don’t believe it,” Sayash shook his head.
“What do you mean ‘alone’, Mr. Sayash?” Enzo asked him. “We’re going on a fieldtrip with you.”
“With whom?”
“With you and Lucky” Enzo took Lucky from Zuri. “Isn’t that right, Lucky?” Enzo asked Lucky, holding him in front of his face and rubbing noses with him.
It looked like Lucky was about to take off, that’s how much he was wagging his tail.
“Oh, Lucky, you’re so gullible. You fall for it,” Sayash was still serious.
“Our mothers and fathers told us ‘kids you can go on a fieldtrip, but only if Mr. Sayash and Lucky take you,’” Kaya said.
“Did they, really? I don’t believe you!” said Sayash scrunching his eyebrows. He was on high on elation.
“Really! Really, Mr. Sayash!” all the children shouted.
“Well, alright… if that’s the way it is… What do you say, Lucky?… I do ask silly questions,” Sayash laughed while looking at Lucky, who was running around in circles with joy.
“Alright, if your mothers and fathers said so… And what did they say, where should we take you on the fieldtrip?”
“Where you and Lucky were headed, Mr. Sayash,” said Mona.
“I don’t know if that’s smart…” Sayash reflected.
“Why not?” asked Edwin.
“Well… the two of us were on our way… we saw it in the movies. A huuugeee city, the largest in the world…”
“Megapolis! Great! Let’s go!” the children shouted.