The 2084 Precept (40 page)

"But perhaps Germany
can
afford all
of this?"

"Jeremy, last year, Germany's debt passed
the €2 trillion mark and they are still taking on additional new
debt each year. To provide a simple guide, Germany's debt will
today have increased by another €140 million. Yes,
today
,
while we are talking. This is what happens when incapable people
are allowed to design systems, make them law, and borrow
increasingly vaster amounts of money to finance them at no risk at
all to themselves personally, flap, flap. These ghastly people are
not, as a practical matter, held responsible for any of their
actions. This is precisely what always happens when you sanction
the non-existence of accountability, when you allow the separation
of authority from responsibility, when, in fact, you permit the
complete annihilation of any form of concatenation between the
two."

"But if there is not enough income to
finance things, are you sure there is no way at least to reduce the
expense?"

"There are many ways to reduce the expense,
Jeremy, and without harming anyone. For a start, if you were to
require all of the unemployed to appear at 07.00 a.m. every workday
and stay there until informed as to whether a job or any kind of
work were available—or payments would be stopped—you would probably
save billions. No further action required. Because a sizeable
percentage of these people would simply not appear. Or not for very
long."

"O.K., I understand. But Germany is one
thing. Is this also widespread among aother countries which run a
socialist system? For example, what about here in the U.K.?"

"Same thing, Jeremy. The U.K. system cannot
be financed either. But the U.K. birdbrains don't understand that.
And so they make the U.K. borrow and borrow again. The U.K. debt is
factually worse than Germany's as a percentage of GDP—a total of
over €1.7 trillion. And the interest on this is around €48 billion
per year and they continue having to borrow more and more at the
rate of over €2 billion per week. The U.K. debt is now 100% of GDP,
despite their birdbrains' National Investment Rules which only
permit a maximum of 40% of GDP. Just another example of what
generations of birdbrains can achieve. And if the U.K. had not had
the same luck as the Arabs, by which I mean finding oil (in the
North Sea) and imposing vast taxes on it, it would have become a
bankrupt country long before now. Long, long ago."

"But hasn't the U.K. saved any of that oil
tax income?"

"Saved? Oh no, Jeremy. The U.K. has spent it
all trying to support its various social systems and theories. If
you would like to see some of the results of this, I am told there
is a good television series called 'Benefits Street' which would
give you an idea of how the money is spent and what types of people
receive it. No, the fact is that the money has gone, it continues
to go and, as I have just mentioned, they continue to borrow more.
Norway, on the other hand, created a special national fund into
which it channeled and continues to channel a major share of its
North Sea oil revenues. This fund now totals hundreds of billions
of Euros and continues to increase."

"Peter, I have to say that that is enough.
It is difficult to comprehend why you structure your society in
what appears to be not only an impossibly complicated manner, but
also a disastrous, inequitable, illogical and financially
unworkable one. I believe it is simply due to that same lack of
general intelligence which explains your constant warring and other
murderous activities. But the broad outline you have provided me
with is adequate. And I shall, as always, fill it in with the
details I require. Now…there was something I wanted to discuss with
you today but I no longer have the time. It is, however, important.
Do you think we could get together tomorrow morning again, let us
say for about an hour, perhaps less?"

Hell, why not? At least it sounds as if I'll
be doing the listening for once instead of the talking.

"Can do. How about around 11 a.m., Jeremy?"
That was fine by him and he said let's meet here again. In the
lobby, no need for a conference room.

And we said our usual courteous goodbyes and
I was out through the lobby and lighting up my cigarette almost
before it was legal to do so. Piccadilly was full of people walking
along in TGIF mode, two days of life in their beehives coming up
before having to return to their office prisons.

In a couple of minutes I was back at my
hotel. There was an unattractive girl at reception whom I had seen
a few times before. She was unattractive and fat. Polite but not
friendly; categorized by me as one of those who treat sex as a
duty, hopefully to be performed as rarely as possible, maybe
whenever Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, and preferably after a
few drinks, and then only with a man who is as fat as she is. I am
merely surmising of course, perhaps I am completely mistaken, who
knows, but all she gets from me is a civil 'good evening' and not a
word more.

I was tired, I was not in a good mood. I was
not enjoying the Jeremy meetings, certainly not protracted ones
such as today’s. Or ones which feel protracted, even if they are
not.

No message from Céline. Well… no panic, she
had
said the weekend. I ordered a room service meal. I
wondered what Jeremy wanted to talk about tomorrow. No idea.
Shower, read another of Ellin's brilliant creations, ‘
The
Cat's-Paw'
, and fell sleep.

I awoke to another good mood, looked out of
the window. Sunny weather! Not a cloud to be seen. Had a leisurely
breakfast, drank lots of good Lavazza, and flipped through the
hotel's Financial Times.

The markets were slightly up again this week
for reasons unbeknown to man nor beast, and I have lost another
€12,000. Not a problem. My bear certificate is a leveraged one and
I gain or lose double on whatever the market movement is in
reverse. It is quite clear to me what is coming. I will earn good
money while the optimists lose theirs. I just don't know exactly
when. This week, next week, next month, a few months down the road?
No way to judge the timing. I am just leaning back and waiting
until the institutional optimists are forced by events to throw
their optimism overboard and start selling. My other investments
are doing well, mainly defensive stocks paying sizeable dividends,
the dividends supplying a partial buffer against any downward price
trends. Not that I am ever caught by the full effect of any
downward trend, I upgrade all of my automatic sell and stop-loss
orders on a regular basis.

So all was well with the world as I took off
for the Ritz. Except of course for Céline. I was definitely worried
about her. What kind of complications had she been referring to?
Could be anything. Impossible to guess. And therefore no point in
wasting my time with conjecture.

I made a detour into Green Park. There were
plenty of people about, a sunny Saturday morning, and I headed
straight across to the other side. Stopped, turned around and
checked everyone coming in my direction. Nobody appeared to have
any interest in me, nor did anyone seem to be the sleuth type, not
that that necessarily meant anything of course.

I lit a cigarette and stood around smoking
it, then walked back fast in the direction of my hotel. I entered
the lobby and looked out through the glass entrance doors. Again I
could see nobody approaching, nobody standing around doing nothing
and nobody standing around doing something either.

And so out I went again and strolled the
short walk up to the Ritz, arriving at a couple of minutes before
eleven. The lobby of the Ritz was full of people drinking coffee,
or maybe it was tea, what do I know, talking, reading newspapers,
waiting for other people, maybe just pointlessly killing off some
of their leisure time on their road to death.

Time, for each and every one of us, is a
strictly limited commodity, like oil. And, like oil, we waste a lot
of it.

Jeremy was standing by the reception desk. I
was wearing chinos and a sports jacket, the lightweight one, but no
casual clothes for him. A dark brown suit, a white shirt, and a
dark green tie with a pattern of small yellow dots. Actually, as I
approached him, I saw that the dots were tiny yellow elephants,
making his concession to the weekend with a
motif léger
after all. Flying ones would have been better, if you ask me, in
view of his mental state.

"Peter, good morning," he said with a smile,
albeit a somewhat hesitant one it seemed to me, not his usual
cheery beam. "There are too many people around for what we have to
discuss and so I have arranged for a small meeting room after
all."

"Just for an hour? They do that?"

"No, they don't. But as you know, money is
not an issue for me." Another smile, a pleasant enough one but not
full of the joys of life either. I wondered what was on his
mind.

"It's this way, Peter."

The room was not that small, except perhaps
in Ritz terminology, and was furnished simply but with taste,
expensive Ritz taste. Coffee and biscuits were already there and we
sat down in what had become our standard positions, a corner of the
table and a spare seat separating us. Jeremy poured us both coffee
and I grabbed a couple of biscuits.

"Peter," he began, "we have an unfortunate
complication. A serious complication, a very serious one. But first
I need to clear the air, so let me say that I am aware of the fact
that a man of your intelligence does not believe I am an alien,
with or without certain 'hacker' capabilities. You also no longer
believe I am a fraudster, among other things because you have
already received a substantial sum of money from me. You therefore
believe that I am insane. You probably believe me to be the
original Jeremy Parker who was able in some way to obtain his
release from his mental institution. Am I right?"

You bet he was right. But no way was I going
to say anything that might disturb this lucrative arrangement. Keep
it going was my motto.

"Well…" I said, trying to think of how best
to lie, how not to answer the question while still appearing to do
so. The training an elected clown receives would have been of
assistance to me.

"Well…" I said again, "I do indeed believe
in the possibility of aliens. The sheer weight of probability
mathematics, given the vast numbers of solar systems, billions of
them, means that other life forms……"

"Yes," interrupted Jeremy, "but do you
believe that an alien could visit your planet? Do you believe that
an alien has already visited your planet? Do you believe that I am
an alien?"

"Well…" I started off again.

"Peter, if you had to make a statement
regarding my person right now, at this very moment, would you opt
for the version that I am suffering from weird delusions resulting
from a not unknown form of mental aberration?"

He was not going to give me a way out,
obviously. My neurons spent a couple of rapid seconds considering
first this answer and then that answer and comparing them with even
more potential answers, and then they reached a conclusion.

"Yes," I murmured. Embarrassing, but there
you go. I waited for his reaction.

"Good," he replied. "So now I can explain to
you what has happened without you taking it too seriously or
getting upset in any way…

"Depends what it is," I said.

"Well, Peter, as you know, after each of our
meetings I conduct a considerable amount of research. I sift
through enormous swathes of information which are available to your
public, including on your Internet, and I do this at a speed which
you would find difficult to envisage. No, our brains cannot go
faster than yours, but they
can
be trained for rapid
calculations and…what would you call it…speed-reading? Very fast
speed-reading. In fact, a few of you humans can do some of that
already. They appear on Quiz Shows and I.Q. contests. But anyway, I
delve far more deeply into the themes you have talked about during
our meetings, I check out some of your statistics for accuracy, and
then I finalize some formulations of my own. And finally I complete
a 'working paper' which I transmit to my professor."

"Yes, so I had understood."

"Now…after my first working paper, the one
on your interaction with the other species on your planet, my
professor was to a certain extent disturbed. He found the subject
matter to be especially brutal and repugnant. But that was it. Not
everything we learn about lower intelligence life forms—begging
your pardon Peter—is necessarily pleasant. And extreme though the
activities were on this occasion, he merely gave me his academic
comments and stored the information in my thesis file."

“Dissertation file.”

“Yes,” he smiled, “I keep forgetting the
fine line you draw between the two words when using them
academically. Right. So he stored the information in my
dissertation file.”

Jeremy paused, looked me directly in the
eye, leaned forward with his elbows on the table and continued. "My
second working paper, on the subject of how you guys interact with
each other, caused him considerable concern and alarm. His
immediate evaluation was that your species is clearly not only a
non-benevolent one, but an actively destructive and dangerous one.
And in such a case, which is a rare one, he is obliged to inform
the Governing Committee. Which he did. As a matter of fact, I was
truthfully unaware of such a regulation until he informed me of the
step he had taken. And now your species has been classified as
'hazardous', one of very few life forms ever to have been placed in
that category."

Oh my, oh my. Or oh my God, if you prefer
that expression, and as usual please feel free to choose whichever
god you prefer. This guy had to be the ruling monarch of all
lunatic fantasy worlds, a medical delight. Just how many intricate
and complex details can a deluded guy manufacture to bolster the
complicated structure required to support his delusions? An
interesting question, but hey, I was still after the remaining big
payments, or the possibility of them, so let me play it straight.
Even if he knows I think he is a maniac. There is nothing to be
gained by being disrespectful.