The last politician, p.1
The Last Politician, page 1
part #1 of Van Diemen Chronicles Series
THE LAST POLITICIAN
By M.C.ROONEY
Copyright © 2015 by M C Rooney
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental
The Van Diemen Chronicles
The Last Politician
The Lightning Lords
The Violent Society
The Arrogant Horseman
The King of Control
Tales from the Collapse
The Distracted
The Cykam War
The Lunatics of Sydney
The Two Realms
The Water Planet
The End of the Cusp
Hobart, Tasmania, Year 2044
Rain thumped against the windshield of Jon Dayton’s new car as he travelled homeward. But try as he might to watch the Holonews on the dashboard of this car, his eyes continually drifted upwards to look at the flowing traffic ahead.
The self-driven car was a ten-year-old technology designed to get you to and from your destination without rear ending other vehicles or breaking any of the road laws. You simply entered your destination manually into the car computer or by voice recognition, then sat back and relaxed.
Jon, however, did not like the idea of not being in control of his own vehicle. The cars did have all the normal old-fashioned driving accessories to be used in case of an emergency, but they were hidden in the spacious dashboard and you were encouraged not to use them, instead just to get in the car and put your seatbelt on. But even now, two weeks after he purchased it, whilst the car navigated through the traffic, his foot would still reach for the clutch or brake, and both hands were held up as if to grab the wheel, making him look to passing vehicles or pedestrians as if he was pretending to be a tiger or having some sort of fit.
Taking a deep, relaxing breath, he settled down and flicked through the hundreds of channels and stopped at the news report of rising violence between China and Japan; there were even reports of secret weapons being used, which was unusual. It was not unusual that these weapons were used in today’s world, as the Resource and Satellite Wars were now beginning to escalate, but unusual that it was being reported on, as ever since the financial collapse of the USA, all media outlets were slowly being bought out by other rich countries, namely China.
He changed channels to see, standing in front of the Tasmanian Parliament, the local up-and-coming politician Carl Cooper, from the very famous political family, who was in the Opposition and touted as a future party leader, complaining about the current government’s position on the economy.
Tasmania had two main political parties, and for the most part, they had enjoyed a power-sharing arrangement for decades. By power-sharing, Jon meant that for four years, one party governed, then there was an election where the vote-weary public, outraged at the lack of any economical progress would oust the governing members; then, for the next four years, the other party governed and were eventually thrown out and replaced by the previous party.
Damn, it always bothered him that the more poorly the government performed, the happier the Opposition looked. Cooper was even standing there talking to the reporter with a smug smile on his face.
Next on tonight’s news, the presenter solemnly announced the tragedy of the privately funded space mission to Mars. Since the declining influence of NASA, any space program was funded by a group of eccentric billionaires who gathered finance through their own personal fortunes and the promise of exclusive Holonews rights to any footage of the mission and of that on Mars. The first successful trip had taken place in 2023 and had been followed up by missions every four years, but those were one-way missions with the intention of building colonies on Mars, with no intention of the space travelers ever returning. This all changed on the latest mission, where the astronauts intended to reach Mars, collect relevant samples, and return, just like the legendary Apollo Missions to the moon. However, on the descent through the Earth’s atmosphere just a half-hour ago, the presenter announced that the returning module had burnt up, killing all on board and destroying any scientific data they had collected.
Finally, he switched over to the new channel on the block, a channel privately owned by the new Christian Brotherhood of Tasmania, to see a handsome clean-cut young man in a suit named Peter Rainswood shouting in self-righteous anger.
Over the last hundred years, mainstream religion had been in steady decline in the Western World, which had led to the rise of fundamentalists like this guy, who would gather numbers of people who loved to point their fingers at everyone else in judgment and claim they were God’s chosen whilst being unaware that they were actually the architects of the decline of religion because they were all full of hate. This man was raving about the rising of the dead and the time of judgment, of all things.
The car computer informed him that the fuel tank was nearly running on empty. He entered the pre-programmed Service Station into the computer so it would make a pit stop on his way home. The computer was voice activated, but he found he had to repeat the destination a few times to be understood properly. Probably because he was not a morning person and tended to mumble a lot, and at the end of the day, he was tired and grumpy, so he mumbled even more. To avoid the hassle of it all, Jon thought it was far easier to enter a destination manually.
The car slowed down on the main road, indicated to turn right, entered the station, and navigated its way into the vacant service bowser. The bowser’s arm mechanically joined with his car and then entered the precious petrol, without him having to leave his car.
Yes, petrol. In a world where huge technological breakthroughs were being made every day, his car was run on a fuel system that was now over one hundred fifty years old. He could understand the need for oil from a money point of view; it was expensive, and therefore, the government made a lot of taxes from it to fund roads, education, the health system, etc. However, it was a crazy catch-22 situation, where fuel helped run the world’s economy, keeping people in jobs, housed and fed, but was destroying the environment at the same time. It was a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode. Also, nobody with an open mind could deny that wars had been fought purely over oil supplies, and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives on both sides had been lost.
Politicians, Jon thought again.
There had been a battle between the Oil and Coal industry and the Free Energy industry for over a century now. Nick Fields, a young eighteen-year-old who worked at Jon’s office, was a mad conspiracy theorists. He told him all about the alternative energies that had been suppressed by governments over the years, in order to protect their countries economy.
The fact that Free Energy was just that, free, would always mean the politicians would do everything in their power to stifle their growth. Society was built on money, it was just a plain and horrible fact.
Nick had told him the story of an inventor called Nikola Tesla, who wanted to give the world free energy. Jon found him fascinating. He seemed to have been written out of the history books for some unknown reason, even though he was the main inventor of most of the 20th Century electrical technology. Nick, as he had a tendency to do, would elaborate on the most obscure and dubious of Tesla’s inventions, such as the Death Ray, which was linked to US President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars Project, The Earthquake Machine, The Weather Controller, and of course, Mind Control. Tesla was quoted as saying that our entire biological system—the brain and the earth itself—work on the same frequencies. If we can control that resonate system electronically, we can directly control the entire mental system of humankind. After Tesla died in poverty in 1943, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI agents had taken all of his personal belongings and notes from his hotel room.
Sighing, Jon turned off the Holonews as his car made the final journey home and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror.
“Is this all worth it?” he asked himself softly.
Jon was forty-four years old now, had dark hair that was greying a little, hazel eyes, and was one hundred and eighty-six centimetres tall and still physically fit. His parents had passed away, and his siblings had long since moved to mainland Australia, and he now realised that he had grown up to be a cynical, lonely, and miserable old man with severe anxiety problems. He tried to be happy, he really did, but as the years went by, he became tired of this superficial world and felt like he didn’t belong. A world with nearly nine billion people, a reduced food supply, and failing environment all didn’t add up to a rosy future. A society headed for the abyss, and nobody seemed to care. People seemed more caught up in who the rich and famous were dating, or the latest fashion, or what was happening in their favourite soap opera, than what was happening in the real world.
Although, try as he might to think of some way out of the world’s problems, he couldn’t provide an answer to any of this. He might bang on about how inept the politicians were, but if he was in their shoes, he probably would have been just as useless.
This just made him sadder. Perhaps he should give up and join the ‘sheeple’, as Nick liked to call the general population. They seemed happy, and happiness was good wasn’t it?
‘Ash,’ a feminine voice seemed to whisper in his mind like something from a bygone dream.
“I don’t know who that is,” he muttered in reply.
‘Money,’ the voice now whispered, but Jon ignored it.
The car final
He meandered up to his house and placed his face against the retinal scanner, which then allowed him to enter. His home was an average three-bedroom house with no particular features to make it stand out. He did like to take care of the garden, so the outside of the house looked quite respectable, but the inside was very sparse and bland. He just found no motivation to improve or change anything that was inside. Two of the bedrooms were empty and had been for the entire time he had lived here. I guess it could be said he was a typical bachelor.
He never had any kids, not because he didn’t want to, but because he never met the right woman to marry and have a family. He had such a tragic record of choosing the wrong woman that, sometimes, he thought the universe intended him to become a psychiatrist.
There was the loveliest girl at work named Sarah. He had been a distant admirer for a couple of years now. But she was thirty-one years of age, way too young and good for him, he thought glumly.
Settling on his average-looking couch, he quickly ate some nuked lasagna from the microwave and guzzled down a beer from the fridge before watching the Thursday Night AFL Football game between Fremantle and Darwin. He never bothered to listen to any more of the news that night and never looked outside the curtains of his windows to view the strange yellow comets that could be seen in the night sky by everybody in Australia, perhaps even the world. Comets that could be seen by the naked eye, but strangely couldn’t be captured by any camera or video.
He would hear about it tomorrow, though; he would hear about it quite a lot.
The elevator opened, and Jon walked onto the eleventh-floor office, where he had spent the last fifteen years working for the government. He was halfway to his desk when he noticed a large number of people standing at the windows. Funny, he thought, there must have been an accident in the street below; strange that he hadn’t noticed it on the way in.
Walking farther in, he noticed that they appeared to be looking up in the sky rather than down. Nick Fields, the eighteen-year-old kid who was obsessed with Tesla, was among the group. He was skinny, with spiky dark hair, glasses, and kind of nerdy looking but was a good lad, nonetheless. He had moved down from Launceston in the northern part of the state on a short-term work exchange program. It was his first time away from his parents, so Jon hoped he had spent his time in Hobart being drunk and getting laid, but had the feeling that it was more likely that he spent his time on the computer at night, speaking to his worldwide friends about the last government conspiracy. Nick turned around and noticed him, then gave a big laugh.
“Jon, did you see the comets?”
“The what?”
Nick gave Jon an astonished look. “The comets. You know, the ones that have been in the sky for the last twelve hours?”
Jon must have had a blank look on his face because Nick then said, “Jesus Christ, Jon, you must be the only person in the world who hasn’t seen them.”
Abashed, Jon mentioned that he had fallen asleep in his car this morning and had a habit of walking with his head down from the car park to work, or anywhere, for that matter. Moving up to the window, he couldn’t see anything unusual in the sky at first, but then, yes, if you looked really closely, you could see yellow streaks of light moving across the horizon.
“Was it easier to see at night?”
“Yep. Clear as day,” Nick replied with a grin.
“What does the Holonews say on the matter?” If anyone was to know what was going on, it would be Nick. Even if he tended to go for the extreme versions of conspiracy land, sometimes what he came up with made a lot of sense … sometimes.
“Well, that’s the interesting part, Jon. The government hasn’t said anything of any substance. Just that they are looking into the matter. But when the news cameramen film the comets, or whatever they are, nothing comes through on film. I’ve even tried it on my Holophone. It’s like its unfilmable or something.” Jon was about to ask him more on the matter when a loud grumble came across the room in the form of a giant, two hundred-centimetre-tall man.
“What are you dopey buggers doing gazing out the window? Sit your fat arses back down and do some work. What is it, bush week or something?” This led to everyone automatically moving back to their work cells and picking up the phones to work, even though Ray wasn’t a manager nor did he have any authority over anyone. And he wasn’t even actually doing any work himself. Despite the colorful language, this was actually what his mate Ray Beasley would describe as friendly banter.
“And how are you, you stupid prick?” Ray said, wrapping his big arm around Jon’s shoulder. Ray was an ex-AFL Footballer for the Southern Kangaroos, and like most Footballers, he could be a bit rough around the edges. He was a forty-year-old divorcee with three young boys, whom he had sole custody of after his wife had left him for some rich old man. He had dyed blond hair, and like a lot of ex-athletes, had stacked a few extra pounds on since retirement, but underneath the added layers, he was still as strong as an Ox. He was also one of the best friends Jon had ever had.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just been chastised by young Nick here about not knowing about the comets last night.”
“Really? You hadn’t noticed the lights at all? By Jesus, you are a hermit, aren’t ya? Too busy dreaming about Sarah, no doubt,” he said with a big grin.
“Shut up,” Jon replied, his face flushing. “She’s just a good friend, that’s all,” he said, quickly glancing around the room to make sure nobody had heard, and most importantly, that Sarah wasn’t nearby.
“Yeah, sure, mate. Sure.” Laughing, Ray moved over to his desk and picked up his headset to connect himself to the phone queue, which would receive calls from all outside organisations.
Back in the old days, people used to converse over the phone without seeing each other’s faces. That gave both callers the advantage of not allowing the other person to see the emotions on your face. This all died with the new operating phones, which allowed both callers to be connected via computer with all relevant applications on the one screen, and also being able to see the other person’s face. So if you had dumb people ringing up with dumb questions, you would have to maintain a friendly demeanor at all times. This helped most of the office employees to become very good poker players. All except for Ray, who, unfortunately, had been called into the manager’s office a number of times over the years for abusing customers. It was quite funny to listen to, though, Jon thought with a smile.
With Ray gone, Jon turned to Nick. “Right, you can stop grinning and fill me in on what’s happening.”
“Well, I’ve been on the Internet talking to my buddies around the globe. They mentioned something about the Space Planes and the Satellite Wars; then they mentioned the Mars crash and—Oh, shit, here’s Dave.”
Jon looked up and saw Dave Lawson sauntering over to his work cell. Dave was twenty-five years of age, with short brown hair, was muscular, and had a humungous beard, which was the fashion of the day with young men, and also made him look about forty.
Whilst Nick was way too much into conspiracies, Dave was sceptical of everything, and the two of them had some colossal arguments. Jon thought these two were exactly the right guys to talk to about this.
“Are you going to shave that thing off your face yet, Dave? It’s looking very pubic.”
“Ha! No way, Jon. I love it. Been a cool look ever since Ned Kelly.” Turning to Nick, he said, “Well, has ‘conspiracy boy’ come up with any ridiculous ideas about what’s going on in the sky?”
“I have, actually,” Nick said primly. “You probably would as well, if you didn’t have to spend the night brushing your beard a hundred times before bedtime.” Nick paused. “In your pink nightgown.”
Dave sighed. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Well, it was a good try,” Jon said. “Just the delivery wasn’t quite right.” Looking up at Dave, he thought the mental image of the joke was actually quite funny.
“Anyway, you were talking about the Mars crash yesterday?”
