“Also at my side?”
“No! My side! And stop torturing me!”
“And the gold kimono? I mean, what is our interpretation of this? Is it making love or….”
“What kimono now?!”
“Alright, alright, no kimono… But Manami…?
“What is it now? Take me in!”
“Alright, immediately. Just one more question.”
“What?”
“How long will this last? Because I won’t be able to stay long in such a silly pose.”
“Just a fraction of a second. As soon as you touch me…” said Manami, while opening the door herself.
Chapter 139
“Mr. Grasshopper, can we go back to Pascal Alexander? You said that he didn’t offer anything new, that he only wanted to restore something that had existed previously?” Dr. Palladino asked.
“Yes. He wanted to restore the human community which would offer every person equal opportunities. A society that in his opinion had the most correct value system.”
“What values are those?”
“Freedom, human rights, democracy, free entrepreneurship, progress, success, material prosperity… work, efficiency… scientific development. He believed that such a society is capable of once again finding itself and moving forward after each development phase, after each cycle. In his opinion such a society would represent an ecosystem, an incubator, which would produce the Third Renaissance.”
“The Third Renaissance? I didn’t know that there had been two,” Dr. Palladino was surprised.
“Mr. Alexander claimed that there were. He claimed that the first renaissance was created after the Dark Ages in Tuscany, and that the second renaissance was after the even darker first half of the twentieth century, in Northern California.”
“In Northern California?”
“Yes. He was delighted by the fact that some young men created companies in their garages, which in turn changed the world; that by teaching people to think differently, one young man created a company that had the largest market value in the world; that something created only using gray cells and sand from the Californian coast, was more valuable than even the largest energy company at the time.
“When the man died, his President and First Lady said that he not only changed the world, but was one of the rare persons who changed people’s views of the world. Mr. Alexander was fascinated by the story of two young men who created a machine for searching the Internet. He was excited by the fact that it was possible to get uncensored search results.”
“Uncensored?”
“Yes. There is very little information about all that. The Kaellas hid that part of history. Because the Internet was free. The regimes couldn’t lie to people for very long through controlled media. And not only that. There was an Internet encyclopedia which people continuously created and updated, in all languages. The story is that there was even a social network with free communication. With communication that no one controlled. The users on this network were mainly young people. But they were from all across the planet.
“According to Mr. Alexander, a new generation of youths was growing up throughout the world, under the influence of the second renaissance. This was a generation that didn’t hate and wasn’t evil. A generation with open hearts, Mr. Alexander called them.
“But it wasn’t given an opportunity to take the world in the direction that it wanted to. They were remembered as the lost generation. What Mr. Alexander felt worst about was Kaella’s bragging that the ultimate result of the False Balance was the lost generation.”
“Why was that generation lost?” Dr. Palladino asked.
“You didn’t watch Kaella’s interview. Babe explained everything very nicely. These young people lost their future.
“They had finished school, but they couldn’t find jobs. They didn’t have any income, they didn’t get married, have children or create families. In certain groups of people their unemployment exceeded fifty percent even before the over-indebted states collapsed.
“Their parents had taken away their future, by providing leisurely and carefree lives for themselves through decades of loans and by destroying the planet’s ecosystem. And they extinguished their children’s second renaissance.”
“And this Third Renaissance? What will that be?”
“Mr. Alexander didn’t know that. Nor did he claim that he knew. He believed that when he restored democracy and free market, the Third Renaissance would come on its own; that its time will come because that is the nature of historical cycles. That this is what must come after the darkest of all centuries. After Kaella’s century. That is why he believed that the Third Renaissance would be the most magnificent. That it would bring about something that we cannot even imagine today.”
“Of course, you don’t agree with that.”
“No.”
“Will you tell me why?”
“Dr. Palladino, you fail to find arguments against my theses and you want Mr. Alexander and I to cross swords in front of you. It seems that he is your last hope. And the same goes for these people on Earth. Have you seen what people do?”
“I have.”
“They pray to him, asking him to return to Earth from heaven, and to save them. They are improvising his temples. At the very end mankind is summoning a new messiah. Like always when people realize that they are only victims and nothing else. That’s when they turn to religion, to God. They swore to him that they would not sin, that they would respect His commandments. And during periods when they were powerful, when they had the opportunity to kill their victims, then they did exactly that — and in his name.”
“I agree. I admit that I can’t find any argumentation against your claims. I want to hear your comment about Pascal’s thinking. I admit that it is my last hope. Will you tell me, please?” Dr. Palladino asked the Grasshopper.
“I will. Even if Mr. Alexander is right,” the Grasshopper explained. “even if this third, most magnificent renaissance occurs, if something that we cannot imagine were to be created, even then the collective ancient urge to kill would use it to its advantage.
“The achievements of the human mind always created newer and more effect deadly weapons. That is how this command desk, the one that I am sitting at, was created. If it didn’t exist, the Third Renaissance would only postpone the agony.
“Think about it. What did the second renaissance create? It created technologies that the Kaellas used for their information systems, systems that control every person, from birth to death. At every moment they know where each person is, who is communicating with whom, what they are looking up on the Internet, what their affinities are, what they could additionally sell them… They erase and change people’s identities, biographies…
“And that was all made possible by the technologies from Northern California, Dr. Palladino.”
Chapter 140
“Dr. Palladino, it was precisely Mr. Alexander, and especially the unstoppable growth of his movement, that finally confirmed to me that I’m right,” the Grasshopper said.
“How is that?” Dr. Palladino asked.
“Because he wanted to restore democracy. He often repeated Churchill’s thought that democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. He claimed that this was valid in Churchill’s time and that it’s also valid today.”
“And you agree with this?”
“I don’t know whether one form of government is better than another. I don’t know the criteria based on which I would make this assessment. But I do know that democracy is certainly the most deadly form of all forms of government that we have learned about so far.”