1

1

2 Mary Asher Short Stories -- A Study In Irony

3

4 Copyright 1985, 1986, 1994

5

6 by

7

8 Cyanosis@Bga.Com

9 (Bill Scarborough)

10

11 1318 Lamar Square Drive

12 Austin, Texas 78704-2227

13 United States of America

14 (512) 443-8647

15

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/4921/asher26g.htm

16

17 Table of Contents

18

19 How to Succeed in Business Without

20 Really Being Conservative ................. Page ______ ..... Line 37

21

22 There Are Bugs in Paradise ................ Page ______ ..... Line 235

23

24 Nobody Got Fired (An Improbable Ending) ... Page ______ ..... Line 413

25

26 Psychology Of Entitlement ................. Page ______ .... Line 653

27

28 Love, Death, and Money .................... Page ______ .... Line 897

29

30 Proxima Woman (A Christmas Story) ........ Page ______ ..... Line 1235

31

32 The Assassin Bug (A Happy Ending

33 For Mary Asher But Not For Others) .......... Page ______ .... Line 1683

34

35 =============================

36

37 'How to Succeed in Business

38

39 Without Really Being Conservative'

40

41 Copyright 1985

42

43 by

44

45 Cyanosis@bga.com

46

47 Mary Asher always hated fraternities and sororities. They stood for

48 beer busts and racism and sexism. They were full of business students

49 who always wanted to make money and who did not respect the real academic

50 world she lived in. 'The business school,' she often snorted,

51 'should be in a trade school, not in a university.'

52

53 'I am not after racism or sexism or money,' she thought, as she was

54 preparing for her graduation from the History Department. 'I have

55 learned from the mistakes of past generations. I know the oneness

56 of humanity and that the greatness of the best civilizations has been

57 in the heart and not in the economy.'

58

59 As she was handed her diploma, she thought, 'This will be for the

60 greater good of humanity.'

61

62 She had chosen to take her GRE exam after graduation. 'This way,'

63 she thought, 'I will have plenty of time to study for the test.

64 Then I will go to graduate school and become a professor. Then I will

65 teach those business school creeps the real meaning of life.'

66

67 She had a resume prepared by a professional word-processing company.

68 It showed off her good talents - - - her grades, her membership in

69 the Historical Society, the roles she played in the Actors' Guild.

70 It was printed on high-grade paper with a linen finish. While she

71 was to study for her GRE, she needed a job that would allow her the

72 intellectual space to do well on the exam.

73

74 Now, in many a private job-placement agency, there are two separate

75 offices - - - one for the white-collar positions, and one for the

76 blue-collar jobs. Secretaries go to the white-collar office, which

77 has a phone with many buttons, a rug on the floor, dark paneling,

78 and a cheerful, well-dressed interviewer. People who sweep floors

79 go to the blue-collar office, which often has a bare concrete floor,

80 cheap plyboard walls, and a single desk with a man (only rarely a

81 woman) wearing an open-collar work shirt. Of course, Mary went to

82 the white-collar office.

83

84 At the job where Mary was finally hired, the managers

85 decided to hire her over their lunch break. Personnel director Jim

86 Thornton and Vice-President for Labor Relations John Forney discussed

87 her compared to the other applicants submitted by the employment agency.

88 'Clara Washington has the primary job skills,' Jim noted, 'But

89 this is not just a secretarial job with a secretarial paycheck. Boffo

90 Burgers is being organized by the F-SWOC (*), and we need someone

91 to help keep the workers in line. I am afraid that Clara will be

92 too inclined to be cool and not face down the shop stewards.'

93

94 ((*)F-SWOC - - - Food Service Workers Organizing Committee)

95

96 'In plain English,' John retorted, 'Clara is a nigger. We got to

97 keep the Meskins fighting the niggers and the Bubbas fighting them

98 both, or else we don't get those vacations in Europe.'

99

100 'As you say,' Jim continued, 'But we can't do it up front or else

101 we get our asses caught. Now, George Fernandez knows a lot of Spanish,

102 and he can communicate better with more of the employees. He has

103 had a lot of speech courses, and he can hold up in a debate. But

104 he may or may not display company loyalty when the going gets tough.

105 He's had too many employers.'

106

107 'In other words again, he is like the other beaners,' John commented.

108 'When things get a little hard, it is always jump the border.'

109

110 'Now this Mary Asher is an all-American girl,' Jim pointed out.

111 'She has a good family background. We found out she was recording

112 secretary for the Young Democrats. You couldn't talk your straight

113 English to her, but she has all the correct liberal opinions we need

114 to pretty up our effort to destroy F-SWOC.'

115

116 'You mean I got to say all those nice words in front of her? Well,

117 OK,' John assented. 'Sure beats paying those monkeys who work for

118 us like they were royalty or something.'

119

120 Mary started at her new job with enthusiasm. She was to travel between

121 Boffo Burger places and take notes on what was going on in them.

122 Not about production figures or sanitation standards like those frat

123 rats would do. She was to be the Boffo Burger historian, writing

124 up the human aspects of working in a sandwich shop.

125

126 John and Jim gave her plenty of latitude in her job. 'If need be,'

127 they told her, 'You can give the manager a suggestion or two on

128 how to improve the humanity of the workplace. And, of course, we

129 will always be open to suggestions ourselves.'

130 Mary always went that extra mile for her supervisors. The two of

131 them were liberal arts graduates! (They were hired during the fifties,

132 when any kind of diploma meant a career in business if not in academics.)

133 Moreover, this was her first job, and a good recommendation would

134 surely help her to get into graduate school so that she could become

135 a professor. And the research she did could be used to publish scholarly

136 papers, which or course lead to tenure. (Of course, tenured professors

137 make more money than managers of hamburger joints.)

138

139 What she found was not one big chain, but many little enterprises

140 ('little nations,' she called them), each with its own little

141 history. The Boffo Burger place next to the Carver Project had been

142 robbed six times in two years but had one of the lowest turnover

143 rates. The outlet next to the Free Enterprise Magnet School had

144 problems with vandals but had lots of workers from all over town.

145

146 The Boffo Burger places where country music was played were not as

147 pleasing to her. The workers there often did not have any college

148 at all, and some of them regarded her with distrust. They were frat

149 rats in the bud, she mused to herself. To her, they were devoid of

150 the intellectual life she enjoyed so much when she went to Happy Hour

151 at the historical society in college. But she persevered, and wrote

152 long essays, replete with references to older civilizations, about

153 the customs and mores of the poor white folks who peopled many of

154 the Boffo Burger outlets.

155

156 No Boffo Burger stand, however monolithic the clientele, had a homogeneous

157 work force. Mary wrote that her employer was a winner in hiring minorities,

158 for in no store were black or brown people absent. Some outlets hired

159 mentally handicapped people to wash utensils under a targeted jobs

160 program in which each such employee was paid by the piece. (The average

161 paid-by-the-piece worker made about 80 cents per hour.) A few outlets

162 hired a lot of Vietnamese people, which Mary noted as a sign of willingness

163 to help displaced people. Mary also noted that some managers preferred

164 to hire illegal aliens but excused the practice on the grounds that

165 many were refugees from Nicaragua and El Salvador.

166

167 Mary made it a practice never to accept a date from a Boffo Burger

168 worker. It would have been unprofessional, she thought to herself,

169 and besides, so many of them were so base. The men would read 'Playboy.'

170 and the women would read 'People.' Some of them always read the

171 'National Enquirer.' This did not stop her, though, from having

172 an occasional dinner with a Boffo Burger manager, who would take her

173 to a good restaurant and pick up the tab. A few Boffo Burger managers

174 took her out to see plays at dinner theaters.

175

176 As time progressed, she began to give a little counseling to the Boffo

177 Burger managers. The F-SWOC had been working on the country-music

178 Boffo Burgers rather heavily, telling the workers that they had more

179 in common with each other than with their managers. The F-SWOC organizers

180 were of all colors and backgrounds, and would work in teams to reach

181 out to all kinds of workers. This, noted Mary, was an appeal to the

182 greed of the workers. No decent liberal arts graduate would stoop

183 to such a thing, according to Mary's reasoning.

184

185 The F-SWOC stewards often became aloof from Mary's investigations.

186 They told each other that she was a 'company spy,' a move that Mary

187 dismissed as jealousy. The typical steward, she noted in one of her

188 little histories, was someone who thought himself or herself worthy

189 to be a manager but who was only a hamburger helper.

190

191 In due time, she deduced a pattern and reported it to her supervisors.

192 She reported that the typical Boffo Burger worker needed not money

193 but a sense of pride in his or her own particular Boffo Burger outlet.

194 She suggested that the custom of naming outlets with numbers be replaced

195 with names such as 'The HydePark Boffo Burger.' She suggested that

196 all music played in Boffo Burgers be standardized.

197

198 Most interesting to her supervisors was her suggestion that a campaign

199 be conducted to convince the workers that their managers were regular

200 people just like them. This would be done, she recommended, by appealing

201 to family values, for most of the Boffo Burger managers (including

202 many of those who took her out), were family men who lived in good

203 suburban neighborhoods.

204

205 John Forney, always ready with a frank comment when the door was closed,

206 praised her report - - - 'This looks like our road to Easy Street.

207 We'll put a picture of a good white man in every outlet. We'll let

208 the nigger welfare mothers know that our promotions are for our real

209 Americans. We'll let them know those commie stewards stand for the

210 destruction of the free enterprise that made Boffo Burgers great.

211 No Spanish. And let's use that music idea - - - I know a distributing

212 company that will throw in our company messages along with our company

213 music.'

214

215 Mary Asher thought the most of Boffo Burgers. The company had done

216 so much for her and let her do so much for humanity. Jim and John

217 gave her glowing reference letters which helped her get into grad

218 school. They paid her enough that she could afford study tapes to

219 listen to while she traveled in the company car, and that of course

220 helped her grade on the GRE. She went on to become a Ph.D. full professor

221 at a major university. Her monographs on hamburger joints won her

222 high acclaim.

223

224 At Boffo Burger, things became so much better from the management point

225 of view. Executives vacationed in Europe, Australia, and the Soviet

226 Union. Labor costs declined as the union was broken up and the plight

227 of the workers worsened. There were numerous equal opportunity investigations

228

229 but nothing was really proven. Best of all, from the management point

230 of view: no one could have done a better hatchet job on the minorities

231 than Mary Asher.

232

233 =============================

234

235 'There Are Bugs in Paradise'

236

237 Copyright 1985

238

239 by

240

241 Cyanosis@bga.com

242

243 A full professorship in a large state university is the envy of all

244 in the professorial crowd. Honors, recognition, and salary opportunities

245 are to be found in such places. However, Mary Asher needed a way

246 station on her road to academic success. Exchanges of resumes and

247 questionnaires led her to St. Origen University.

248

249 Set in a lush landscape of the American South, with forests and gently

250 rolling hills, lay the town called Land of Shangrila. Here were stately

251 mansions with Greek style columns (pronounced 'colyumes' ) alongside

252 simple uncurbed roads. Here slumbered the campus of St. Origen University,

253 little changed since the turn of the century except for addition of

254 air-conditioning, of ramps and elevators, of modern buildings for

255 eating and living.

256

257 In keeping with the practices of small colleges, Mary found herself

258 not just a history teacher. Her first year, she was to teach two

259 sections of history, freshman English, and sponsor the school paper.

260

261 'I think it is terrible,' she admonished her classes, giving a stern

262 look to those wearing Greek paraphernalia, 'to pick on someone because

263 of race or color. It is certainly wrong to ostracize someone or refuse

264 to sit down by her or him because he or she is of another nationality

265 or handicapped or gay. I will not tolerate prejudice in this classroom.'

266

267 Mary Asher never attended any of the civil rights meetings that were

268 going on in the town called Land of Shangrila. The people who had

269 sought her to come to those meetings didn't impress her. She liked

270 people with intellect, and the local civil rights leaders did not

271 impress her in that department. Even less impressive to her were

272 the general citizenry of Land of Shangrila. She came to associate

273 the Southern twang with uncultured simple living without great art

274 or literature. Behind the face of every white town-person she saw

275 the heart of a Ku Kluxer. Reinforcing her image of Land of Shangrila

276 were the town leaders, who often used racial and chauvinist humor

277 in public. No wonder that, if a student was from the town, she was

278 available during office hours only, but she was available in the coffee

279 lounge, on the sidewalk or in the hallway, to all of whom she approved.

280

281 She and the Greeks took an immediate dislike to each other. She had

282 tried unsuccessfully to forbid Greek apparel in her classroom, and

283 they in turn took to wearing born-again Christian buttons in her classes.

284

285 She had, after her first semester at St. Origen University, fallen

286 in love with a Sociology instructor from New Hampshire. Bart Bartlesby

287 was, though, deeply entranced by Eugenia Wardham, who had been Mary's

288 friend from her first day at St. Origen. Mary felt that her love

289 life was her private concern; she never divulged any of this to even

290 her closest friends.

291

292 She would sometimes while a couple of hours at a time talking to a

293 certain Ned Florence, a paraplegic who worked at the Business Office.

294 She found it in keeping with her liberated image to be seen with him.

295 After all, he had liberal views on the world, and she so much liked

296 to tell to him how liberal she was.

297

298 Shortly after she moved in to her little cottage just outside of town,

299 the phone company installed a line to her house, to which she attached

300 a telephone she bought from a major electronic supply house. After

301 a while, she became used to the local service - - - The company

302 seemed to give her call waiting without her asking for it, and international

303 calls had to go through an operator, but hers was a tone-dialing phone.

304 She did not pay much attention to it, for she did not make many calls.

305 (There is a relatively simple circuit that can be put into a telephone.

306 Such a circuit can be made with little more than a few each of operational

307 amplifiers, series 7400 logic chips, and cheap audio-frequency transistors.

308 It keeps the microphone active and automatically calls to a predetermined

309 number when the telephone is not in regular use. In this manner,

310 virtually every sound that went on in her house fed to a speaker-phone

311 in the attic of the Kappa Rho Upsilon Delta house. The Kappa Rhos

312 also bugged the line at the town telephone station. This had been

313 a common occurrence at St. Origen University for many years with

314 many people. Of course, this is illegal. It is also illegal to smoke

315 pot.)

316

317 She came to her English Literature class one February morning expecting

318 to lead the class in a discussion of 'The Short Happy Life of Francis

319 Macomber.' The class seemed to giggle and smirk as she approached

320 her desk. A sheet of notebook paper, torn from a spiral binding,

321 had a message typed on it addressed to her. It was filled with mushy

322 love such as only a young college student would write. It was obvious

323 that the author subscribed to the 'National Lampoon.' What she

324 noticed, though, was that it gave every clinical detail of her love

325 life, which consisted largely of masturbation.

326

327 'We came here to read great literature,' she screamed, 'Not to waste

328 ourselves on this trash!' She ranted and raved half the period and

329 sulked the other half. Every student in that class was ordered to

330 read an extra novel.

331

332 Throughout February and March, she would find, here and there, a love

333 letter addressed to her. She found out from one of these notes that

334 Ned Florence had gotten his disability while fighting in Vietnam.

335 This blighted him in her heart, for, while she could not admit it

336 to herself, his participation in war was too contrary to her pacifist

337 tendencies. She came to refuse to even look at him.

338

339 Sponsoring the school paper became a dreaded chore for her. She wanted

340 so much to uplift the moral fiber of St. Origen University and break

341 down barriers of racism and sexism. She wanted the journalism of

342 the 'Christian Science Monitor,' but what she got was a typical

343 small-town weekly. The most popular parts of the paper were a column

344 called 'Campus Blab,' which told who was dating who, and a column

345 called 'Dear Aunt Sally,' which was full of made-up questions.

346 The staffers soon called her 'The Censor.'

347

348 The reason she was living in a small cottage outside of town was to

349 protect her privacy. She was used to being free to come and go as

350 she pleased, with or without anyone she pleased, without people around

351 her knowing about it. This is common among people used to big cities.

352 She did not go into town very much except to teach her classes, and

353 she liked to spend her evenings reading great books or watching great

354 movies on her videocassette recorder. Had she comingled with the

355 townspeople or with the campus community, she would have known all

356 along that she was going through the hazing common to small colleges

357 throughout America.

358

359 Her classes became increasingly tense, as she would never know what

360 would await her at her next class. She came to prepare more for illicit

361 communications than for the subject matter of the classes. Her lectures

362 became more formal, and her grading became more strict. Grading papers

363 came to take longer and longer, for she dreaded ever so much the innuendoes

364 that continually crept into the compositions submitted by the students.

365

366 A government instructor named Andrea Manque always tried to write

367 something meaningful for the school paper, something that Mary Asher

368 would like. She wrote about civil rights movements, about the nuclear

369 freeze, and about the Federal budget. These were pleasing to Mary

370 Asher, and the two became friends for a while. However, Andrea was

371 often specific and to the point. Mary took offense at some of Andrea's

372 remarks, particularly when they approached Mary's tyranny over the

373 school paper.

374

375 Mary was such a likable person, but she could turn her back on a friend

376 in a jiffy. By the first of April, she was not speaking to half the

377 faculty. 'I need space,' she told them.

378 What a dynamic person she had become, for in only seven months she

379 had changed much of the tenor of the school. Her conduct on the race

380 issue had the effect of delaying much-needed reconciliations, and

381 what had been the campus gossip sheet came to evangelize about nuclear

382 doom.

383

384 Complaints about her teaching problems brought her before the University

385 Grievance Committee. Her case was not going well. Honor students

386 were doing poorly in her class with little more explanation than that

387 their deportments were not good enough. Brown-nosers were finding

388 her easy prey. A backlog of ungraded papers and tests had to be assigned

389 to another teacher. Bart Bartlesby had taught her the fine points

390 of getting drunk. The school paper won the booby prize in the district

391 competition.

392

393 John Forney of the Boffo Burger hamburger chain had a cousin who had

394 attended St. Origen University many years ago. (This is a place where

395 Mary had worked on the management team from time to time.) St. Origen

396 University had been on the endowment list of the Boffo Burger Foundation

397 for many years, and the people of St. Origen knew better than to ignore

398 any request from John Forney. A quick phone call to President Quisling

399 came just in time for Mary's final hearing.

400

401 Quite mysteriously, the Grievance Committee dropped all charges.

402 A glowing reference letter was drawn up and sent to the major state

403 university where Mary was applying to teach and to pursue her Ph.D.

404 Her thesis, whose major reference source was 'Compton's Pictured

405 Encyclopedia,' was quickly approved.

406

407 Mary ended her year of teaching at St. Origen University with a sense

408 of pride, for she brought her lively spirit and her love of humanity

409 to what was to her the hick town of Land of Shangrila.

410

411 =============================

412

413 'Nobody Got Fired'

414

415 Copyright 1985

416

417 by

418

419 Cyanosis@bga.com

420

421 Much has been written about the booming city of Megatropolis and the

422 large state-supported Megatron University. People from all the world

423 came to Megatropolis seeking the good life. Not so for Mrs. Tamara

424 Jefferson, whose family, the Corundums, had come to the Megatropolis

425 area at the turn of the century.

426

427 She and her husband Frank wavered on the fringes of the Establishment

428 of the city, making their way in the world of privilege that each

429 of them was inheriting. As newlyweds, they were yet to become civic

430 leaders, but the road lay open to them. They were all the things

431 that the old Megatropolis valued, for they were white, conservative,

432 and Christian, and their families had members high in the ranks of

433 business and government.

434

435 Computer literacy training, in high school and at Megatron University,

436 landed Tamara a job in the Computer Room of the regional office of

437 the State Welfare Commission. She lacked a college degree but was

438 admitted under a cooperative training program. She was one of the

439 best workers on the crew, and also one of the best liked. However,

440 she did not get along with her supervisor, Pansy Sentien, an equally

441 well-liked and competent worker who nevertheless tended to rebel against

442 the bureaucratic structure of the State Welfare Commission.

443

444 The Boffo Burger management always welcomed Mary Asher when she took

445 a semester or a summer off from school, for her work always pleased

446 them. However, Megatropolis was far from Boffo Burger territory,

447 and Mary needed money for the sessions that she would work on her

448 doctorate. Like most teaching assistants at Megatron University,

449 she had to moonlight. Her skills in writing gave her a place in

450 the Computer Room with Pansy and Tamara.

451

452 There were others who worked with the three in the Computer Room.

453 Mary's crew worked closely with the data entry clerks (still called

454 'keypunch' people), with the departments that used their data, and

455 with the word-processing people (who were called 'stenographers'

456 ). Many of these workers were commonly called 'girls.'

457

458 About the third day Mary was on the job, as she and Tamara were working

459 side by side at the terminals, Tamara asked, 'Who is your boyfriend?'

460

461 This was of course a nosy question, although not uncommon in many

462 organizations. Mary did not know how to answer it. During her year

463 at St. Origen University, she had a romance with a certain Bart Bartlesby,

464 which gave her a number of nights of passion and many mutual declarations

465 of eternal love. However, many of the students at St. Origen made

466 her affection a burden. Mary did not want to go through a session

467 like that again, but was not sure how to prevent it.

468

469 'I just came to town,' Mary replied, not telling of anyone she was

470 meeting at Megatron University, 'And I do not presently have a boyfriend.

471 I am not sure I want one; they are so much trouble. Besides, I need

472 my freedom and my space.'

473

474 'Oh, we'll help you on that. We know some guys who will take you

475 out. Take Martin Walton, who operates the collating equipment. Or

476 Stanley Gordon, who works in Accounting. They are unattached right

477 now. I hear Andrew Edgar just got dumped. We will help you find

478 someone.'

479

480 'I don't need you or anyone to help me,' Mary snapped. 'I am an

481 independent woman. I don't want to marry an accountant and live in

482 a ticky-tacky house in a suburb.'

483

484 'Maybe you're gay,' mused Tamara. 'Are you embarrassed when you

485 undress in front of another woman?'

486

487 'What's that supposed to mean?' retorted Mary.

488

489 'That's supposed to be a sign of homosexuality,' Tamara continued.

490 'I read it in the paper once. I think it was in a Sunday supplement.'

491

492 To converse in this manner would be objectionable to many people.

493 To Mary, it was an abomination. How she wanted to say those fateful

494 words of discarded relationship, or to make a comeback. However,

495 she was not under any kind of protection, for she had neither the

496 Boffo Burger management nor a union card at hand. She simmered as

497 she edged back with, 'I never saw that in the paper. I don't read

498 Sunday supplements.'

499

500 Tamara Jefferson proved to be a strong-willed young woman. She could

501 counter every one of Mary's liberal arguments with a forceful, if

502 not always intellectually sound, comeback. In particular, the two

503 could not keep off the subject of abortion.

504

505 'Maybe we ought to do what they do in China,' Mary quipped one day,

506 'Where you have to have a license to have a baby.'

507

508 'This is America, replied Tamara,' Where free enterprise will feed

509 all the people. We can feed people with seaweed from the ocean.

510 Murder by the state of innocent little babies is what you are talking

511 about.'

512

513 'I really don't think we need the Chinese way, but we should give

514 every woman control over her own body. If I got pregnant right now,

515 should I give up school and a career?' asked Mary.

516

517 'A baby inside of you has a body of its own,' Tamara

518 proclaimed, 'And you have no right to take human life, not yours,

519 not your baby's, not a baby to be born in a ghetto.'

520

521 'I still stand,' Mary insisted, 'On my personal freedom.'

522

523 'You mean your freedom to kill,' retorted Tamara. 'Do you think

524 that you are a double-O agent or something? What gives you the right

525 to be judge and jury for capital punishment?'

526

527 Mary opposed capital punishment and said so, while Tamara had the

528 opposing view. Each found the other's views to be not merely incomprehensible,

529 but, rather, unbearably painful to behold. Each complained to Pansy,

530 whose laissez-faire managerial style sometimes did more harm than

531 good.

532

533 ' -- If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men,

534 -- ' Pansy quoted, ' -- and if another conquer himself, he is

535 the greatest of conquerors. -- '

536

537 To Mary, Pansy consoled, ' -- All created things are grief and pain.

538 -- We are doomed to birth and rebirth. When you have an abortion,

539 you are not really destroying anything - - - You are putting the

540 little one up for adoption. -- Not in the sky, nor in the midst of

541 the sea, not if we enter the clefts of the mountains, is there known

542 a spot in the whole world where death could not overcome a mortal.

543 -- '

544

545 Pansy likewise told to Tamara, ' -- All men tremble at punishment,

546 all men love life; remember that you are like unto them, and do not

547 kill, nor cause slaughter. -- As Dr. Seuss put it, -- A person is

548 a person, no matter how small. -- '

549

550 At no point, however, did Pansy succeed in breaking the periodic quarrels

551 between Mary Asher and Tamara Jefferson. Nor was it possible for

552 her to keep herself from arguing with them, for neither Mary nor Tamara

553 could comprehend or endure Pansy's quotations.

554

555 Tamara proudly showed off her husband's achievements in the Jaycees

556 and at his job as a real estate salesman. She brought to work her

557 album of wedding pictures. She was so young and so much in love.

558 She especially shared this with a certain Ben

559 Frederick, a pre-law student who worked occasional semesters as a

560 data entry clerk at the Welfare Commission.

561

562 Tamara and Ben could always be seen together at lunch and at coffee

563 breaks. Tamara introduced Ben to Mary, who began to spend a number

564 of her lunch breaks with him. Indeed, Tamara came to find herself

565 sometimes having her lunch alone or with some of the 'girls' in

566 the 'keypunch' room.

567

568 'Ben, I will be near the milk machine,' Tamara hinted. She played

569 her role softly, and some time later suggested, 'I am not sure that

570 Mary is right for you.'

571

572 In due time, Ben came to withdraw from Mary, who by that time had

573 warmed up to him. He and Tamara were once again seen together every

574 day. Of course, Tamara still bragged about her husband. Of course,

575 Mary had another problem in dealing with Tamara.

576

577 For all her likability and computer knowledge, Tamara could not write

578 near a professional level. For all her knowledge of composition and

579 narrative, Mary found the computer a mysterious black box. Between

580 the two of them came the chore of drafting user documentation for

581 the computer system, which required their utmost cooperation. Pansy

582 told them, 'Be quiet and still and think of a watch without time.

583 Think of wearing a watch and looking at clocks in a universe without

584 time.' Mary and Tamara's collaboration became slow and difficult.

585

586 At the end of six months came Mary's first performance evaluation.

587 Pansy, who mostly sat in a supervisory work station where she patched

588 programs into the system and frequently meditated, wrote a bone-crushing

589 evaluation against Mary. This was such a surprise, for Pansy had

590 always spoken well of Mary. Mary asked why, and was told, ' --

591 Let him not overrate what he has received, nor ever envy others.

592 -'

593 The following report was prepared by the Personnel Division of the

594 State Welfare Commission - - -

595

596 'Grievant Mary Asher charged irregularities and inconsistencies in

597 her performance review. Our investigation indicates there were personnel

598 difficulties with all three persons in the Computer Room.

599

600 'Pansy Sentien brought a mixture of Buddhist theology and touchy-feely

601 management to her workplace. These are nonstandard procedures likely

602 to generate equal opportunity and affirmative action compliance problems.

603 However, we cannot act against Ms. Sentien without specific proof

604 of discrimination. We do not exclude the possibility of discrimination

605 according to religion. However, we do not believe we have a provable

606 case.

607

608 'Operations manager Aubrey Divaneh tore up the grievance and handed

609 Mary back the pieces, but not without first making an electrostatic

610 copy and forwarding it to Personnel. Top management considers this

611 a training problem and has instructed Personnel to prepare seminars

612 and lectures on grievance handling. The Federation of Public Workers

613 had grounds for a lawsuit but apparently was not involved in the Asher

614 grievance.

615 'Ms. Jefferson appears to have passionately argued with Ms. Asher.

616 She must continue to receive highest recommendations as an employee.

617 She has rapport with many workers throughout the Commission. We believe

618 she can be trained to handle the literary aspect of computer documentation

619 and will therefore pay for her tuition at Megatron University.

620

621 'We find that Ms. Asher has had experience in labor relations, although

622 she has not had specific training in labor laws. In like fashion,

623 we will arrange for the Employee's Association to pay her tuition

624 for her postgraduate education at Megatron University on condition

625 that she will take the course in labor relations. We can use her

626 here in Personnel. However, we will watch her closely in light of

627 her negative evaluation.' Mary Asher never saw the personnel report.

628 Neither, for that matter, did anyone outside of Central Personnel

629 in the Capital, for the report was put into a zero file. She was

630 told that Pansy Sentien's bad report on her would be superseded by

631 whatever information that should come out of her work in the Personnel

632 Office in the Regional Office of the State Welfare Commission. She

633 knew she had her work cut out for her, as the Federation of Public

634 Workers was then leafletting a number of government offices all around

635 Megatropolis.

636

637 Tamara Jefferson later was promoted to be chief of the Computer Room,

638 as Pansy Sentien moved over to a position in Public Relations. This

639 did not please Mary Asher, but she thought it would impair Tamara's

640 other new position as shop steward.

641

642 (Postscript written years after this story was written. Thus we close

643 a slice of life story with a flat ending. Note how Mary Asher and

644 Tamara Jefferson each valued ambitions and titles. Note how each

645 adhered to her respective bailiwick and refused to learn from the

646 other. Yet, as do many in the post-industrial society of our day,

647 these characters survived. They did not flourish or grow or decline.

648 They just survived. So, now we leave the Computer Room of the Regional

649 Office of the State Welfare Commission -- or do we?)

650

651 =============================

652

653 'Psychology of Entitlement'

654

655 Copyright 1985

656

657 by

658

659 Cyanosis@bga.com

660

661 This is a story of Mary Asher, a twentieth-century antihero of the

662 middle class left. This story has to do with her adventures as

663 personnel officer at the regional office of the State Welfare Commission.

664 It is also a story of Tamara

665 Jefferson, a white middle class apostle of the Christian right.

666

667 Affirmative action became one of Mary Asher's priorities at the State

668 Welfare Commission. Tamara Jefferson thus found it no surprise that

669 Mary, as personnel officer, strongly suggested that Tamara hire for

670 the Computer Room a certain Diane Harris, who had cerebral palsy and

671 who used an electric wheelchair. Many of the people throughout the

672 office knew another reason - - - Mary would have been very happy

673 for Tamara to miss a few production quotas.

674

675 Tamara's skepticism was alleviated but not erased when Diane showed

676 herself to be, like Tamara, a born-again Christian. (Of course, hiring

677 according to religion is a flagrant violation of civil rights laws.

678 Like many born-again Christians, though, Tamara looked upon this protection

679 with contempt.) Once Mary had written Tamara a memorandum (with which

680 Tamara could scapegoat Mary) in Diane's behalf, Tamara acceded.

681

682 All employees in the Welfare Commission were on a flex-time program

683 in which some, for just cause, could come and go whenever they could,

684 so long as they were there during the -- core time. -- Diane would

685 always make the core time, but never could be sure when she would

686 arrive, for she was dependent on the unreliable Special Transit of

687 Megatropolis. 'Why don't you get a van?' asked Tamara. 'Won't

688 your parents buy one for you?'

689

690 'My parents treat me well,' noted Diane, 'But asking them to buy

691 me a van is too much.'

692

693 Diane chose her words carefully, and was succinct in expression, for

694 she found many people around her who had great difficulty understanding

695 her words. However, special adaptive equipment (signed for by Mary

696 Asher) made her quite 'talkative' with the computer, and she soon

697 exceeded production quotas.

698

699 (The employment records of the Welfare Commission showed that many

700 disabled people had been 'hired' for Diane's position and for similar

701 occupations within the agency. The procedure for these people had

702 been to hire them on leave without pay pending arrival of adaptive

703 equipment. The Budget Office would then submit a grant proposal to

704 Washington to pay for the equipment. Since Washington never paid up,

705 no disabled worker before Diane actually saw a paycheck. In this

706 manner, the Welfare Commission showed, on paper, a willingness to

707 hire disabled people. This procedure was short-circuited for Diane.

708 All around the office, the 'girls' asked one another whether Mary

709 was really interested in disability rights or if she was merely pulling

710 a fast one on Tamara.)

711

712 'My parents always help me buy a car when I need one,' Tamara reported,

713 'And Frank's parents are helping us to buy a house. They don't mind.

714 It's part of being American.'

715

716 Tamara was horrified to learn that Diane and her husband George lived

717 in a middle class apartment complex by way of -- Section Eight -

718 funding. Worse still in Tamara's eyes, George and Diane used food

719 stamps and paid for household workers out of state subsidy administered

720 by the local independent living project. However, Tamara had learned

721 to respect Diane

722 personally, and tried to be subtle when she was bothered by Diane's

723 use of government money.

724

725 (Diane's parents showed the overprotective reaction so

726 common among parents of disabled young people. They wanted her to

727 stay at home, where they could look out for her personal needs and

728 protect her from the cold cruel world. Her exposure to the independent

729 living movement, limited though it was, taught her ways to get by

730 without the non-maturing and sometimes domineering assistance her

731 parents were pushing on her. This of course meant government funding,

732 a source of revenue offensive to Tamara.)

733 From time to time, workers at the Welfare Commission would be visited

734 by boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses. Tamara always looked askance

735 at George Harris. On one occasion, she stopped by public relations

736 worker Pansy Sentien, asking, 'What is wrong with him?'

737

738 'I bought my first son Tommy a car when he graduated from high school,

739 ' narrated Operations Manager Aubrey Divaneh. 'I wanted for him

740 to have the good things in life that I never had during the Depression.

741 Trouble was, he didn't seem to appreciate it like I would have. When

742 his brother Timmy approached

743 graduation, well, Timmy just up and asked me what kind of car he was

744 going to get. Took it for granted he was supposed to get a car, just

745 like it was pimples or something.'

746

747 Periodic semesters and summer sessions brought Ben

748 Frederick, a pre-law student, to work at the Welfare Commission.

749 He was well-liked by all the 'girls' in 'Keypunch,' but he spent

750 his coffee and lunch breaks with Tamara. 'I wouldn't be working

751 here at all,' he complained, 'But my parents don't give me enough

752 money.'

753

754 Mary and Tamara, for all their disagreements and differing values,

755 shared a love of privacy. Tamara was sometimes upset to see Diane's

756 face light up in rhythm with her conversations on the office phone,

757 for Tamara considered her telephone line to be private. Likewise,

758 Mary would often close the door to the office the Welfare Commission

759 gave her before starting to talk on the phone. Each had her own tender

760 private conversations on her office phone. (Little did they know

761 that the Security Division, operating out of a tone-remote line from

762 the Capital, spot- checked all lines, and paid particular attention

763 to those of Mary and Tamara. Even less did they know how little recourse

764 they would have if they did learn this procedure, for the circuits

765 they were using belonged to the Commission, not to Mary and Tamara.)

766

767 Mary Asher made education a prime target of her duties as labor relations

768 worker. She put many supervisors and some workers through lectures

769 and seminars such as 'The Welfare Commission Supports Equal Opportunity'

770 and 'How to Manage Your Money.' She was especially proud of her

771 money-management programs, for, in keeping with her struggle to help

772 humanity, she was helping the workers to get by on their often paltry

773

774 paychecks. She took it for granted that poor people have their cheap

775 houses to live in and their cheap cars to drive and that they only

776 needed to learn how to get by on less. She was especially anxious

777 to teach them that human values are more important than material values.

778 Unlike Ben Frederick, most of the data entry workers were female,

779 and a majority were Hispanic or black. With few

780 exceptions, the remainder were of the kind of poor white

781 background that Mary Asher found distasteful. Many of the data entry

782 clerks, known as 'the girls,' liked to watch soap operas, and a

783 few even brought portable television sets into the

784 breakroom to share with other 'girls.' What a far cry this was

785 from the public and public access viewing in Mary Asher's apartment.

786 How different this was from the Christian channels that Tamara and

787 her husband Frank frequently watched.

788

789 Most of the 'girls' could never hope to go to college. A few could

790 work their ways through school, but this proved to be the exception.

791 Many were daughters of garbage-workers and food service workers, and

792 their parents could never hope to give them money. To the 'girls,'

793 lack of money meant eating beans half the month. The Federation of

794 Public Workers leafletted the Welfare Commission on this subject;

795 Mary's educational program was a classic union-busting trick.

796

797 Upon a few strategic hints from Mary, the professional

798 society of the Welfare Commission sponsored a literary contest. Workers

799 were asked to submit an essay on any subject. A panel of professors

800 at Megatron State University would choose the winning paper. The

801 prize was but a token, but the essay would be published in the agency

802 newsletter, and the winner would have lots of brownie points with

803 the Regional Commissioner.

804

805 'This contest is mine to win,' thought Mary to herself,

806 'For I have the degree and the coursework.' As she set out to writing

807 her paper, she had many friends at Megatron State University who encouraged

808 her and complimented her progress. Among the liberal arts students

809 she was one of the most popular, for what she lacked in personal integrity

810 she more than made up for in personality. Indeed, she was considered

811 among the finest people at Megatron State, for no one would question

812 the morality of someone so very attractive and lovable.

813

814 Labor and management alike instructed Tamara Jefferson in writing

815 skills. Management trained her for computer

816 documentation manuals, and the Federation of Public Workers, having

817 recruited Tamara as shop steward, wanted her to be able to write effective

818 grievance papers. By the time of the contest, she, too, was writing

819 an essay. Tamara's friends in her Sunday School class encouraged

820 her, for what Tamara lacked in genuine humility she more than made

821 up for in displays of faith.

822

823 Aubrey Divaneh told a number of office workers that his paper would

824 deal with the generation gap. 'We had the New Morality when I was

825 young,' he commented, 'We just didn't tell everyone about it. Everybody

826 talks about 'space' these days. In my day, everyone had a bailiwick.

827 Same thing. My wife, her bailiwick is her kitchen and the kids.

828 Me, it's the office and the bar. If I come home after drinking and

829 she gets upset, well, then, it's her fault for letting it bother her.'

830

831 One entrant told no one of her entry. Diane Harris was quite shy,

832 and she wrote her thoughts into the word-

833 processor in large part because something in her personal life made

834 her want to empty her thoughts into the computer. She had no idea

835 that she would win the contest - - -

836

837 'My Attendants

838

839 'by Diane Harris

840

841 'I and my husband George are believers in the Word of the Bible and

842 in the Living Jesus Christ. We believe in the

843 traditional Christian family of husband and wife and children. George

844 and I do not merely go to church together, for we share a life in

845 Jesus wherever we go.

846

847 'I am disabled.

848 This means I must have help to get up in the morning, to go to bed,

849 and to do a number of chores. George simply cannot keep up with it

850 all.

851

852 'We have two part-time helpers, Jim and Sharon. They live in our apartment

853 complex. They take turns coming by in the morning, in the evening,

854 and on weekends. George and I are close to them, almost as much as

855 we are close to each other.

856

857 'Because I am speech impaired, Jim and Sharon must concentrate when

858 they listen to me, and many times they have to talk to George to understand

859 what to do. They are friends to George and me, and we arrange for

860 the four of us to meet once a week to talk things over.

861

862 'Sometimes George will have a long talk with Sharon and I start to

863 feel a pain inside. I know this is of the flesh. I know that it

864 is only human to feel jealousy in romantic love. Love can be hard

865 and painful just as it can be beautiful.

866

867 'When Jim is helping me, I sometimes feel a warmth inside, and I can

868 tell that George knows this. Sometimes, I want for Jim to just go

869 away, but that would solve nothing. George knows that Jim has to

870 hold me in his arms and see me naked. I know in my heart that he

871 must deal with jealousy too.

872

873 'I am constantly reminded that the things that I have and the people

874 I love did not come to me because I earned them. They are in my life

875 because God has entrusted them to me. Whether I shall keep them will

876 be God's decision, and I know that God loves me.

877

878 'The four of us all have affection for each other. We do not find

879 this easy. But we know that genuine love does not consist of not

880 seeing another's faults but entails the hard labor of understanding

881 and forgiveness. We find comfort in the Supreme Being who loves us

882 all.'

883

884 (It is not the intention of the author to perpetuate the myth of the

885 noble disabled person. It is, rather, to give some degree of humanity

886 to a character in this story. Suffice it to say that Diane Harris

887 has her personal faults that are well known to her husband George.

888 Suffice it to say that Tamara Jefferson never again looked upon George

889 with a jaundiced eye, and that Mary Asher made an exception to her

890 prejudice against born-again Christians. Of course, Mary and Tamara

891 were after each other again three days after the contest ended, but,

892 for a brief interlude, a miracle of God's love and forgiveness reached

893 them both.)

894

895 =============================

896

897 'Love, Death, and Money'

898

899 Copyright 1986

900

901 by

902

903 Cyanosis@bga.com

904

905 No one really knows the source of the 'werewolf legend.' All that

906 Camilla Smith knew was that she had been known to have nightmares

907 in which she dreamed that she was some sort of prowling animal, and

908 that she may wake up to learn that she is known to sleepwalk.

909

910 Camilla's doctors estimated that a portion of her primeval instincts

911 were surfacing in her dreams and sleepwalking, but that nothing would

912 ever come of it other than an occasional stumble in the dark. Not

913 so easily convinced was her local evangelical crowd. Her little cottage

914 in her little home town became the target of exorcisms and derision.

915 For her, the obvious choice was to move to an apartment near Megatron

916 University in the big city of Megatropolis.

917

918 'What brings you here to Megatropolis?' Mary Asher added to her list

919 of questions. (Mary's job as personnel worker often called upon her

920 to conduct initial job interviews. At the Regional Office of the

921 State Welfare Commission, the top brass considered a prime job specification

922 that of being able to fit in.)

923

924 Camilla hesitated, then recited, 'I want to broaden my horizon.

925 The little town I lived in just did not have all the cultural opportunities.

926 Living as I do now, near Megatron University, there is so much that

927 is going on.'

928

929 Mary distrusted small-town white people almost as badly as she patronized

930 black people. However, Camilla had stumbled on just the right words

931 to make it past Mary's desk.

932

933 Tamara Jefferson, head of the Computer Room, made clear her position

934 - - - 'Are you going to bring any secular humanist religion?'

935

936 'I'm not sure what you mean,' Camilla quietly noted. 'I do believe

937 in God and Jesus, but I believe 'the rain falls on the just and the

938 unjust alike,' and that Jesus told us, 'This is my commandment, that

939 you love one another as I have loved you.' ' Camilla held back inside

940 of her a certain fear mixed with a little bit of anger. She knew

941 enough to know that Tamara's line of questioning was forbidden fruit,

942 but she dared not risk her chance for a job in Megatropolis.

943

944 Tamara, born of one of the most lily-white conservative families in

945 Megatropolis, thought over Camilla's application and interview. The

946 Welfare Commission seemed to acquire people Tamara thought of as oddballs.

947 Mary Asher plainly and directly rejected the Christian gospel Tamara

948 loved so well. Aubrey Divaneh had a male chauvinist side that would

949 offend Archie Bunker. Pansy Sentien filled her work area with quotations

950 from The Buddha. What could be wrong with this one, Tamara reflected,

951 as she continued, 'Are you going to school?'

952

953 'Well, not right now,' Camilla mildly replied. 'Since I have just

954 arrived here, it is a little early to think about school.' She was

955 groping for innocuous answers.

956

957 Camilla passed Tamara's questioning, which weighed more than the score

958 on the programmer's test. She found herself an understudy to Diane

959 Harris, who was known around the office as a quiet and soft-spoken

960 worker. (Diane Harris was quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. Her

961 disorder caused many people to have difficulty with her spoken words.

962 Camilla, though, was ever so glad to have someone with whom she could

963 identify, even if she could never get around to telling Diane about

964 her own

965 disability.)

966

967 In due time, Camilla came to meet the husbands of Diane and Tamara.

968 Particularly Diane's husband George Harris. Camilla visited George

969 and Diane occasionally. 'Why of all things!' Camilla exclaimed

970 to Diane one day, 'Here at your home, you talk a blue streak. Why

971 don't you let it out in the office?'

972

973 'Xxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxxx,' Camilla heard Diane blabber

974 away, as if Diane could care less if Camilla could make out the words.

975

976 'Those bigmouths at the office don't care,' translated George.

977 'They want me to be their good little poster child. But if I am asked

978 to carry somebody's load a mile, I will carry it two miles. Some

979 days, I am ready to blow up when I leave that office. Look at Tamara

980 Jefferson. She brags about what a good Christian she is. Maybe her

981 brand of Christianity is right, but she shouldn't pat me on the head.

982 You've seen it -- right in front of everybody -- she pats me on the

983 head. Makes me think of Judas kissing Jesus.'

984

985 Camilla couldn't resist asking George how he related to the strong

986 personality Diane presented at home. ' -- An intelligent wife,

987 - ' he quoted, ' -- is a gift from the Lord. -- '

988 One day, George came to the office with an especially big smile on

989 his face. He held Diane's hand for a moment longer than usual, and

990 the two smiled at each other in such a way that even the 'girls'

991 from the 'keypunch' room noticed it. He turned to Camilla, with

992 his hand in Diane's, beaming, 'Diane is pregnant. We are getting

993 that spare bedroom ready.'

994

995 Tamara immediately rushed to congratulate them. 'How lucky you are!

996 How did you do it in your condition?'

997

998 Even Diane couldn't keep from wincing over that one. George recovered

999 the fumble, quipping, 'We do it the old-fashioned way. We earn it.'

1000

1001 'What a sweet thing for the two of you. Will it be paraplegic or what?

1002 I mean, you know, well, you do think about that, don't you?' Tamara

1003 continued, little noting that she was treading on dangerous ground.

1004 'Frank and I want to have a little one ourselves. We want to preserve

1005 our family blood lines. We come from the best of families, you know.

1006 Besides, we need more Christians in the world, and raising a Christian

1007 is better than making a Christian.'

1008

1009 By that time, Mary Asher had walked over to the Computer Room. 'I

1010 think I know exactly how you feel. It is so much happiness to know

1011 how much potential you have. Just like when I write a paper for school.

1012 I really think I can be a Mark Twain or an O Henry, if only I apply

1013 myself hard enough.'

1014

1015 Camilla couldn't keep the silence, whispering, 'Diane is going to

1016 have a baby. It means more to her than a paper.'

1017

1018 'Oh, relax,' Mary replied. 'I know what you mean. I was pregnant

1019 about a month ago.'

1020

1021 Diane and George stopped smiling as they looked over to Mary with

1022 amazement. They knew instantly what Mary was talking about, but they

1023 simply were not ready for Mary's news.

1024

1025 'It's murder!' snapped Tamara, 'It is cold-blooded murder one!'

1026

1027 'Oh, come on, you had your appendix out,' Mary remarked. 'Any decent

1028 lab can make a carbon copy of you out of it. Just like a growth in

1029 the uterus.'

1030

1031 'That's not the same, ' Tamara retorted. 'You killed a baby.

1032 A real human being with a real soul. Don't you have any feeling about

1033 it?'

1034

1035 Center stage had come to Mary. Once again, she found Tamara difficult

1036 to deal with as she began to narrate, 'Well, at first, I had this

1037 feeling like I should be holding a baby in my arms. Held my cat a

1038 few times. My doctor told me this was perfectly normal.'

1039

1040 'There ought to be a law about you,' complained Tamara. 'You have

1041 no more feeling about taking human life than you have about eating

1042 a candy bar. Maybe less if you're on a diet.'

1043

1044 'Hold it, girls,' interrupted Aubrey Divaneh, the Manager of Operations.

1045 'We don't need a grievance here.' Aubrey had stepped over when he

1046 saw Mary and Tamara close to each other. They had argued on company

1047 time before, and he did not want them to have it out again.

1048

1049 Aubrey was less than optimistic when, about a month later, Tamara

1050 herself turned in a pregnancy form. 'That Diane Harris,' noted

1051 Aubrey, 'has helpers and social workers. She gets neighbors to

1052 pitch in, and besides, she is just a programmer. Tamara, we in the

1053 Welfare Commission in the evaluation phase of auditing jobs. You

1054 may be entitled to the classification of Systems Analyst. But we

1055 can't be having you take off every time you got a sick kid, and we

1056 were looking at making you an exempt employee. I know how you feel

1057 about kids and babies and such, but we here at the Commission have

1058 our work to do.'

1059

1060 Tamara had always prided herself on how well she was doing. With

1061 only a high school diploma and a computer literacy program, she had

1062 become boss of the Computer Room. Her ambition also made her run

1063 for and get the office of shop steward in the Federation of Public

1064 Workers. Indeed, she had validated much of her very life by her salary

1065 and offices. Any challenge to her claim to personal perfection -

1066 or that of her theology -- was met with the recitation, 'I have had

1067 four raises and two promotions.' Now, her most supreme ambitions

1068 in life were in conflict with one another.

1069

1070 Tamara's husband Frank sold real estate. He learned the fast deal

1071 and the procedure called 'flipping.' Between himself and about

1072 a score of others, a dozen to fifteen corporations floated. Land

1073 would be bought from a farmer near a suburb of Megatropolis, usually

1074 in a going-out-of-business sale. The property would be exchanged

1075 between three or four of the

1076 corporations before one of the corporations -- the one holding the

1077 notes on many deals -- would go bankrupt. Under the law in such a

1078 deal, the farmer gets nothing and the corporate shareholders get a

1079 lot of easy money and no liability. Many real estate buyers, usually

1080 young couples seeking their first homes, were also clipped.

1081

1082 To Frank, the options were simple. 'Look here, Tamara. I am a Christian

1083 and you are a Christian. We give to our church and the '700 Club.'

1084 That is good stewardship. If we have this one, we will be burying

1085 our one talent. After you are a Systems Analyst, we can bring even

1086 more Christians into the world.'

1087

1088 Most of the workers at the Welfare Commission were enrolled in a health

1089 maintenance organization. This included Diane Harris, who was enrolled

1090 in the SpiffCare Insurance Company. Although SpiffCare, the state's

1091 regular insurance provider, was under contract to pay to any proper

1092 vendor, its representatives liked to steer patients into Kouhouris

1093 General Hospital.

1094

1095 'Let me get this straight,' asked Dr. Abraham Jones III. 'You are

1096 looking into whether the patient can have a normal delivery. Thousands

1097 of women with cerebral palsy have perfectly normal deliveries. I

1098 don't see what you are getting to.'

1099

1100 'Dr. Jones, we are looking at the possibilities,' replied Rod Pool,

1101 the chairman of the board of the Kouhouris Corporation. 'Our service

1102 is to ordinary citizens. We send all the freeloaders to Megatropolis

1103 General. The rich prefer St. Bartholomew's. The more we spend on

1104 one case, the less we serve the regular people who come here. Whatever

1105 we do, we must look after our stockholders. The stockholders keep

1106 this hospital open and the free enterprise system working. There

1107 is a risk -- I know you say it is a small one -- that her tab will

1108 be fifty or a hundred thousand or more. We are not sure she should

1109 impose that kind of risk.'

1110

1111 'Diane Harris most definitely does not want an abortion,' Dr. Jones

1112 complained. 'It is against her religion and nature.'

1113

1114 'The board of directors considered these things in a special meeting

1115 last week,' Rod continued. 'That's why are asking for a court order

1116 from Judge Clandon. Don't worry, it will hold up on appeal. It is

1117 just like the ones we get for Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses.

1118 Oh, by the way, all the doctors in the case are under a gag order.

1119 We don't think anyone will be helped by any press. You understand

1120 that, don't you?'

1121

1122 Dr. Abraham Jones was the third in a father-to-son succession of doctors.

1123 He had been brought up to respect the old-fashioned country-doctor

1124 ways of his forbears, but he always honored respect for the law.

1125 His own lawyer filed a brief, but Dr. Jones could only keep silent.

1126 Unless, of course, he were to risk a term in jail. His first move

1127 was to talk to George Harris.

1128 'How could a Christian nation allow such a thing?' George shouted.

1129 'Why won't they let me see Diane? Are they going to make it a secret

1130 until it is too late?' All that George could think of was the smiles

1131 and the joy in Diane's face and heart-- happiness known to mothers

1132 to-be everywhere-- and the heartbreak she would have to endure.

1133

1134 Nobody told Diane Harris about the fate that was due for her and her

1135 little one. She thought she was in Kouhouris General for routine

1136 testing. George's absence was excused, to her knowledge, by something

1137 about sanitation. She knew chapters from the Book of Psalms which

1138 she recited from memory, little noting that the nurses took them for

1139 childish babbling.

1140

1141 That very night, Tamara Jefferson had checked into St. Bartholomew's

1142 Hospital. 'I believe that life is sacred,' she told the nurses,

1143 ' but I want to make sure to have a perfect baby.' Tamara insisted

1144 upon her right-to-life political stance. However, she asked her doctor

1145 for a complete battery of tests. She ordered them, 'I want to make

1146 sure mine doesn't have cerebral palsy.' Her requests were impossible,

1147 for there are some 600 pre-natal tests which each have mortality rates

1148 of about one percent, none of which detect cerebral palsy.

1149

1150 One of the nuns at St. Bartholomew's asked of people like Tamara,

1151 though not to their faces, 'If they're against abortion, why do they

1152 have these tests? Do they think we don't know what happens to the

1153 babies who fail in the testing?'

1154

1155 Dr. Jones sent George into the hospital cafeteria with orders to get

1156 a bite to eat. A reporter for Radio K-Zero, Sam Rogers, saw in George

1157 a certain erratic movement. He had no idea why George did not seem

1158 quite right, but he suspected, wrongly of course, drugs or alcohol.

1159 'This could be worth a light feature,' he thought. Sam turned on

1160 the mobile radio so as to put George on live. Little did he know

1161 what a story George was to give him.

1162

1163 The law firm handling the Diane Harris case was well known to Judge

1164 Clandon. A number of its top attorneys were part of the political

1165 and social matrix that put Clandon in office. With modern campaign

1166 finances being what they are, their access to political monies could

1167 not be ignored. Furthermore, the case law seemed quite firm. With

1168 a severe disability involved, this was obviously a therapeutic abortion.

1169 The cases on religious beliefs seemed also quite airtight. The Supreme

1170 Court's rejection of the -- Baby Doe Rule -- canceled any effective

1171 claim under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Only one case stood between

1172 Diane's baby and destruction - - - Roe vs. Wade. Could he really

1173 construe and apply the pro-abortion decision to protect life?

1174

1175 Camilla Smith was not allowed into the maternity floor as was George.

1176 She paced the floor in a waiting-room near the lobby until she fell

1177 asleep. On this of all nights, she jumped out of her padded lounge

1178 chair, asleep but erect, growling like an animal of the night. In

1179 her reversion to primitive instincts, she tripped off a fire alarm

1180 and caused the police to be summoned. The assistant chief of police,

1181 who suspected a bombing attempt, ordered an immediate evacuation.

1182

1183 Three small groups, each looking upon each other with distrust, stood

1184 outside Kouhouris General the following morning.

1185

1186 'I am from the Free Will Baptist Church,' called out the Rev. John

1187 Matherston, 'Are you here for Diane Harris?'

1188

1189 Mary Asher never got along with Rev. Matherston, a leader in the Pro

1190 Life Council of Megatropolis. His fire-and-brimstone ways offended

1191 her, and his rejection of right-to-choice struck her as narrow-minded.

1192 However, the radio reports about the impending abortion of Diane Harris'

1193 baby brought Mary to the hospital gate also. 'We are here to protect

1194 her right of free choice,' she announced. 'It is for every woman

1195 to control her own body.'

1196

1197 The Megatropolis Alliance of the Disabled was known for dramatic protests

1198 such as blocking entrances to facilities not accessible to people with

1199 disabilities. Today's protest was somewhat milder. But its members

1200 had the best banners and posters.

1201 The three groups did not truly have a meeting of the minds. They looked

1202 at each other suspiciously even as they shared a common petition.Each

1203 told the reporters their relief at Judge Clandon's decision - - -

1204 Diane was to be cared for at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and given

1205 every chance to have her baby.

1206

1207 There is no known genetic component to cerebral palsy. To their great

1208 joy and to no one's surprise, George and Diane later brought home

1209 from St. Bartholomew's a perfect and beautiful little girl. They

1210 named her Amanda, which means 'worthy to be loved.'

1211

1212 In like fashion, Frank and Tamara brought home a boy, whom they called

1213 Solomon, hoping he would one day learn the wisdom which so far eluded

1214 them.

1215

1216 Camilla Smith found herself a home at the Regional Office of the State

1217 Welfare Commission. Once assured that her lycanthropy was just a

1218 minor birth defect, the other employees came to accept her as a regular

1219 just as they learned to accept Diane. Camilla spent many evenings

1220 and weekends, times she came to treasure, babysitting for Amanda and

1221 Solomon.

1222

1223 (Here we close on this story of love, death, and money, but also a

1224 story about life. Thanks to help from Camilla and from the man Camilla

1225 later married, Solomon Jefferson learned both wisdom and integrity,

1226 values he could never have learned from his parents. Amanda Harris

1227 grew up used to Diane's speech, and she came to learn several languages

1228 and become a foreign missionary. There was no perfection in any of

1229 these lives; nor was there true evil. Only as trustees for God and

1230 all humanity could any of them escape the pain that comes with love

1231 of money.)

1232

1233 =============================

1234

1235 'Proxima Woman'

1236

1237 Copyright 1994

1238

1239 by

1240

1241 Cyanosis@bga.com

1242

1243 Liliana Proxima did not know who she really was. All she really knew

1244 was that she woke up one morning in a wooded area not far from Megatropolis.

1245 She had no idea why walking fifty miles to get into town had no effect

1246 on her, or why walking fifty miles was not so easy for most of the

1247 people she came to know. However, she had sort of known to keep discretion

1248 about herself regarding things of herself.

1249

1250 Scientists at Proxima Centauri IV had thus programmed Liliana. She

1251 was not just an android passing as a human. She was herself a space

1252 probe, sending back to Proxima a stream of data about life on the

1253 alien planet called Earth.

1254

1255 Thus begins a very ordinary science fiction introduction, with a character

1256 like that of so very many android stories. However, this is not an

1257 android story. It is a story about Mary Asher, a twentieth-century

1258 antihero of the middle class Left. It is also a story of Tamara Jefferson,

1259 an apostle of the Christian Right.

1260

1261 We take you to the Computer Room of the Regional Office of the State

1262 Welfare Commission. Mary Asher usually works half-time as a personnel

1263 worker, but she is today working a full schedule because school is

1264 out for the Christmas holidays. Tamara Jefferson, boss of the Computer

1265 Room, usually can steer clear of Mary Asher, but must spend this season

1266 doing year-end performance reviews. To this combination, we add

1267 Liliana.

1268

1269 Liliana was hired as a 'gopher' -- to deliver documents and materials

1270 for the Welfare Commission. This meant that she came to know the

1271 isolated lifestyle of an office worker and also the life of the welfare

1272 caseworker -- although she could be part of neither.

1273

1274 'Christians,' snorted Mary Asher, 'talk about love and forgiveness

1275 and mercy. But all you hear from them is anti-abortion, anti-gay,

1276 anti-pornography, anti everything.'

1277

1278 'Liberals,' retorted Tamara, 'say they are open- minded and respect

1279 everybody. But they are nothing but a bunch of bigots.'

1280

1281 'You have been listening to Radio KQXXX,' replied Mary, 'where all

1282 they talk about is killing doctors and gay people and babies after

1283 they are born.'

1284

1285 'Your magazines,' said Tamara, 'are full of secular humanist trash.

1286 Don't you dare put one of them on my desk. I don't want to -- know

1287 why the caged bird sings. -- '

1288

1289 This kind of discourse was only partly familiar to Liliana. Her programmers

1290 had hidden from her that she was an android. They had decided not

1291 to attempt to give her emotions, for such a procedure is risky even

1292 in the most advanced scientific communities. Because transmissions

1293 from her took three years and four months to get to Proxima, they

1294 could not help her with communication feedback.

1295

1296 'Tell Tamara she is full of it,' Mary said to Liliana.

1297

1298 'No, you tell Mary where she is going,' said Tamara.

1299

1300 Liliana had spent 16 years traveling to Earth. Before that, her information

1301 about Earth was of varying quality, since the Proximans assembled

1302 her upbringing from television and radio -- television and radio some

1303 19 years in the past.

1304

1305 'Could each of you please explain your positions, ' asked Liliana.

1306 'I need something specific about what you each are saying. But I

1307 get no hard data about your claims. All these cliches. I just don't

1308 get it.'

1309

1310 Mary snapped, 'Liliana, I have known you since you first interviewed

1311 for the position. But I cannot take this kind of insult. You are

1312 in denial of your anger and hate. I have tried to explain about fundnazis

1313 to you before, but you just don't get it.'

1314

1315 Tamara replied, 'Don't listen to her. She has no idea that you

1316 are separated from the love of Jesus. You keep spewing the doctrines

1317 of Satan. 'You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you

1318 free.' '

1319

1320 Liliana had no idea that she had deeply insulted both Mary and Tamara.

1321 She was just executing a program that told her to ask questions and

1322 find out about life on Earth.

1323

1324 'Here are the reports,' Liliana said, in a matter- of-fact manner

1325 that could have betrayed that she was an android. 'I must go back

1326 to the local offices. There is a lot of caseload to enter during

1327 December.' With that, Liliana excused herself from the Computer

1328 Room.

1329

1330 Liliana returned to her rounds of the local projects. Socorro Hernandez

1331 worked at the Megatropolis Disability Center. 'Please take this

1332 to Mrs. Washington,' Socorro told Liliana. (Socorro's disability

1333 kept her from doing the rounds herself.)

1334

1335 'What is it?' inquired Liliana. Her computer program remained in

1336 force.

1337

1338 'Mrs. Washington needs to have a Christmas,' Socorro said. 'This

1339 is a cheese and sausage box. And these are warm gloves. They were

1340 on special at Spiff- Mart.'

1341

1342 Liliana took little note of what Socorro had done. She did know,

1343 but could not feel emotion about, that Socorro was not going to have

1344 a Christmas. Much of Socorro's December paycheck went to provide

1345 for Christmas for poor people. (This is not to say that only social

1346 workers do this. All around the world, in many economic and political

1347 systems, people high and low give of themselves to others.)

1348

1349 Liliana made a special set of rounds -- on her own time without charging

1350 mileage to the State. She could understand, in an intellectual sense,

1351 about compassion for the poor, for a share of the old movies that

1352 were downloaded to her circuits told of such issues. But she could

1353 feel nothing. Mrs. Washington got her gloves and snacks. Little

1354 Tony Gonzales got a bicycle that Socorro had bought at a garage sale

1355 and refurbished. Little Suzie Smith adored the aquarium with fish

1356 that swam right by her respirator. At each station in this journey,

1357 Liliana was greeted by warm hugs of gratitude - gratitude she could

1358 never feel.

1359

1360 The next day, Liliana returned to the Regional Office during lunch

1361 time. Mary Asher was indolently reading 'Death to America Magazine'

1362 in the breakroom. Tamara Jefferson was listening to the noon hour

1363 program on KQXXX -- the show called 'Christians Against Humanism.'

1364

1365 This time, she had a message from Harley Jordan, the boss of the Regional

1366 Commission. 'I must ask you -- each of you -- to share my car,'

1367 said Liliana, 'for an evening ride. Each of you shall help me with

1368 my extra rounds.'

1369

1370 Dear reader, you can imagine the groans and protests. Mary and Tamara

1371 had their evenings that they wanted to themselves. Each gave to charity

1372 -- that came with the territory -- but accompanying Liliana on one

1373 of these journeys was almost too much. Almost. (This, dear readers,

1374 is not to in any way belittle the many people who make contributions

1375 to charitable causes and cannot do more.)

1376

1377 Normally, 'regular people' cannot visit the caseload of a social

1378 worker. A worker's case file is not to be bandied about. But all

1379 three in Liliana's car were Welfare Commisson employees who had signed

1380 all the correct papers.

1381

1382 'Our first visit,' Liliana announced, 'is to a donor family. You

1383 will surely like this one.'

1384

1385 Much to their surprise, Mary and Tamara found themselves at the apartment

1386 of their mutual co-worker Diane Harris and her husband George. There,

1387 they found little Amanda Harris, with Diane singing a lullaby. (Neither

1388 Mary nor Tamara could understand Diane's song, for Diane spoke and

1389 sang with cerebral palsy and used an electric wheelchair. But they

1390 took in quite a picture, with Diane rocking the cradle with the help

1391 of a contraption her husband George had set up.)

1392

1393 George and Diane had a box of presents for Liliana and her helpers

1394 to pick up. And turkey and dressing and all the fixings. Around

1395 their apartment Diane and George put wall-plaques with favorite Bible

1396 verses. Mary and Tamara had each learned to respect Diane Harris,

1397 even as they each saw aspects of Diane and George that they could

1398 not understand.

1399

1400 As she drove away from the Harris apartment, Liliana told a story

1401 of George and Diane. 'They were not always together. Before they

1402 were married, George was not sure about getting too close to a person

1403 with a wheelchair. And Diane was not sure about a man who had not

1404 known a disability. At one point, Diane brought George into an independent

1405 living center where the caseworker belittled George for having his

1406 concerns. At another point, George brought Diane to a fitness club

1407 where a physical therapist belittled Diane for her disability. They

1408 learned the hard way that belittling each other only brought about

1409 more resentment, and that bringing in the cavalry only made the situation

1410 worse.' Liliana did not have the usual reserve about finding these

1411 things out or in retelling them.

1412

1413 'I have not yet learned,' continued Liliana, 'what it is that keeps

1414 them together. This love thing. I am not sure what it is.' At

1415 that point, Liliana's software came to a silence point -- a place

1416 where programmers had figured that Liliana should be programmed to

1417 be quiet. Human relations as we know it remains to this day a mystery

1418 to the scientists of Proxima Centauri IV.

1419

1420 The first delivery on the journey was to a shabby shack of a house

1421 in the Gonzales District. A dozen children swarmed around the house.

1422 Mother and father awaited Liliana. A color television blared a 'Christmas

1423 Special' as the three brought in turkey, pie, dressing, and presents.

1424 Even presents for the parents. Mary muttered something about how

1425 abortion and birth control would have meant fewer children. Tamara

1426 whispered something about the presence of a color television. But

1427 the parents each hugged each of the children. And all could see that

1428 their little stove was not big enough to cook a turkey. All could

1429 see that the color television had a beat-up appearance. But Mary

1430 and Tamara stuck to their ideological guns.

1431

1432 'Where is the Christmas tree?' whispered Tamara.

1433

1434 'Something is really wrong here,' replied Mary.

1435

1436 The usual mutterings of Mary and Tamara, loyal to the end to their

1437 causes, were muted by the lack of English around the house. Each

1438 had learned a few words of Spanish, but their words just did not connect.

1439 Not even 'Feliz Navidad.' There were Christian icons about the

1440 house, but something was just a little different about them. The

1441 whole house was also decorated with little American flags, accompanied

1442 by small stitchery works celebrating gentle animals and pastoral scenes.

1443 Mary and Tamara, contrary to their usual natures, found themselves

1444 curiously silenced.

1445

1446 Liliana had no such problem. Presents were put in a special corner

1447 of the little house. All the family talked with glee to Liliana,

1448 who seemed to them a native speaker. When their little table was full

1449 -- on top with food, and all around by parents and children, the

1450 father -- who had lost one leg and had trouble with the other, sort

1451 of leaned up on the arm of his 'Archie Bunker Chair' and proceeded

1452 with a speech. Liliana translated.

1453

1454 'We are children of political strife. I must tell you that we who

1455 are all children of all the world are so very glad to come to this

1456 place. To you who come here, many thanks and many good wishes.

1457

1458 'I love all these little ones.' With that, he pointed out each of

1459 the twelve children by name. Then, his real story opened up. None

1460 of the children were born to him or his wife. Some were from a dead

1461 brother; some from a dead sister; others from dead cousins.

1462

1463 'I am Joseph Tocharian, and this is my wife Martha. Our grandparents

1464 and great-grandparents, and their loved ones, lived in the eastern

1465 mountains of Turkey. We herded sheep and kept to gentle lives. But

1466 the Sultan outlawed all languages but Turkish, and sent armies out

1467 to destroy us. Many before me died. But we were among the lucky

1468 ones, for some of my family escaped.

1469

1470 'Living in the land called Armenia -- the land of our people -- freed

1471 us from the Turks. But the Communists, they did it all wrong. They

1472 sent out soldiers who oppressed us. They passed all manner of laws

1473 to put people in jail. More of my family died. When the time seemed

1474 right, we made a journey, across the Caucusus Mountains, across the

1475 Zagros Mountains, across an almost-desert, to a city in Iran. There,

1476 other Armenians had families and churches. But it was not to stay.

1477

1478 'The Ayatollah Khomeini decreed oppression against all Christians,

1479 Jews, and Baha'i. Many were tortured and many were killed. I witness

1480 to you that Jesus does not want there to be brother against brother.

1481 But in the name of God, with holy books in their hands, the ayatollahs

1482 brought bad days to our people.

1483

1484 'We of the Tocharian family crossed mountains and deserts, seeking

1485 some sort of life in Iraq. There in the swampland between the Tigris

1486 and the Euphrates, we had hopes for our families and our children.

1487 You know that we have left those hopes behind.

1488

1489 'My own children are dead. But these, the children of my people who

1490 are dead, are my own children now.

1491

1492 'We are all children of God. But this family is also among the children

1493 of powerful convictions. See how Mark lost a foot to a soldier who

1494 wanted capitalism. Lydia lost an arm to a grenade that had a Red

1495 Star on it. Luke lost his toes to an inquisitor who caught him with

1496 a picture of the Blessed Mary by his pillow.

1497

1498 'We will have our Christmas in January, and people in this gracious

1499 land have promised they will bring a tree and all that goes with it.

1500 We are glad to be in a land where people vote and live in peace.

1501 Please do not throw away what you have. May your Christmas season

1502 be as warm and happy as ours.'

1503

1504 Back into Liliana's car for Mary and Tamara. They glared at each

1505 other, but said little. That Liliana, who lacked even a high school

1506 education, could speak fluent Armenian was like a splash of a cold

1507 water balloon.(Liliana spoke almost any language that had been on

1508 radio or television anywhere on Earth.)

1509

1510 'Of course the Orthodox Christmas is in January,' Liliana explained,'

1511 but we can give a little Christmas cheer in December anyway.' Liliana

1512 said words like 'Christmas cheer' with a certain cadence that almost

1513 seemed real but also left the listener a little uncomfortable. People

1514 either thought she was a dear saint or that she was an insincere pretender.

1515 In reality, she was neither, for she was just executing software

1516 for respecting local customs.

1517

1518 'We have seen Christmas with diversity and Christmas with adversity,'

1519 said Liliana. 'Now, we shall see Christmas at the end of the tunnel.'

1520 Then, she reached a silence point.

1521

1522 Liliana brought Mary and Tamara to the Willow Grove Nursing Home.

1523 But upon reaching the parking lot, she stopped to talk to them.

1524 'We cannot give anything precious to a nursing home resident. It

1525 will be stolen. So, we give little things that can easily be replaced

1526 and which are not likely to be desired.' The three then gathered

1527 bags of little things, bought at the five-and- dime, to give away to

1528 the residents.

1529

1530 It did not take long for Liliana to get to her favorite room. In

1531 each of two beds lay a man. Each of them was alert and talkative.

1532 Each of them activated Liliana's inquisitive software.

1533

1534 James Gordon had been a wealthy playboy. He told his story -- 'I

1535 was a regular Cassanova. I knew how to love and to make women love

1536 me. I made more money than I spent, although I worked only a little.

1537 Now I am in this pit of snakes because somebody pulled in front of

1538 me and made me hit him. I hate lawyers -- they took everything I

1539 had. But do you know what is worst about this? I don't get to see

1540 any enemies. Used to be, I could just rib them and walk off with

1541 the girls. Oh, my women sometimes visit me, but they bring their

1542 husbands, and that takes away all the fun. And the people who are

1543 supposed to visit me do. But I can't just go and do business with

1544 people who are just people.' With that, he turned in his bed to

1545 face away from the three, and said no more the rest of the visit.

1546 He was more talkative when it was just Liliana.

1547

1548 Jack Turner had been a successful businessperson. He was very proud

1549 that his stay in Willow Grove was paid for by his holdings and not

1550 by Medicaid. 'I can get out of here any time I want,' Jack bragged.

1551 'Even in here, people treat me with respect. I can make or break

1552 someone.' Jack continued to brag. In the process of so much bragging,

1553 he filled up Liliana's data circuits. But he was eternally unhappy,

1554 for all his money and all his political power were useless to him.

1555

1556 'This is boring,' Mary complained. 'Let me get out of here.'

1557

1558 'I need to go to my house and see my little Solomon,' said Tamara,

1559 'and get on with my Christian family life.'

1560

1561 Nevertheless, the three made a full visit, to all the needy in the

1562 nursing home. Much to the dissatisfaction of Mary and Tamara.

1563

1564 Liliana listened as she drove them back to their cars in the parking

1565 lot of the Welfare Commission.

1566

1567 'I do not see why you have to put us through this empty symbolism

1568 of a Christmas,' Mary said. 'We are providing for these people

1569 every day when we do our jobs.'

1570

1571 'I don't get the lack of Christ here,' said Tamara. 'You are obviously

1572 not a Christian. You did not preach the Word and you would not let

1573 me.'

1574

1575 Liliana could not feel any burden for having gotten Mary and Tamara

1576 angry with her. Nor could she have had any of the emotions they attributed

1577 to her. She was just executing software.

1578

1579 'I do not understand,' said Liliana. 'This is not going according

1580 to the movies. (Liliana was speaking of movies based on Charles Dickens'

1581 novel _A Christmas Carol_.) I could not provide you a Jacob Marley

1582 -- but our boss Mr. Jordan said it would be a great idea for workers

1583 to see the Welfare Commission's business first- hand. I could not

1584 provide you with ghosts. But Socorro and I found cases that seemed

1585 to come close.

1586

1587 'At the apartment of Diane Harris, we saw how Christmas and family

1588 life should be, and how idolatry can take it away from us. At the

1589 house of Joseph Tocharian, we saw Christmas amid adversity and the

1590 fruits of idolatry. At the nursing home, we saw the final consequences

1591 of idolatry. You are supposed to have a renewal of yourselves and

1592 wake up with a new Christmas spirit.' Liliana had no emotion about

1593 saying this. All Liliana knew was that this was different from the

1594 movies, and that her programming told her to ask why.

1595

1596 'Mary, your stars are not right for this,' snapped Tamara. 'Venus

1597 and Mars are in the wrong positions. Otherwise, you would have learned

1598 from this.' (Tamara did not believe in astrology at all.)

1599

1600 'You have no right to make an astrological projection!' retorted

1601 Mary. 'That must be done only by a Certified Astrologer. You are

1602 in denial, and you are taking it out on me.'

1603

1604 'My Christian Steward came to the Welfare Commission,' replied Tamara,

1605 'and we tried to talk to you about it. You are just plain refusing

1606 therapy. Instead, you go to your astrologer. It is a sin and it

1607 is junk.'

1608

1609 'Who do you think came to see the Christ Child -- The Three Talk Show

1610 Hosts?' Mary quipped.

1611

1612 'This reminds me,' noted Liliana, 'of a skit I saw on television

1613 about the -- Heavenly Host. -- ' Lilliana did not have humor to

1614 share with Mary and Tamara. She could only play back tapes. But

1615 this play-back of a comedy routine caused Mary and Tamara to each

1616 turn against Liliana.

1617

1618 (Suffice it to say that the three had a long ride back to the Welfare

1619 Commission parking lot. Because your author wishes for this story

1620 to be fit for a family audience, the discourses against Liliana, accusing

1621 her of starting fights and causing all manner of evil, will not be

1622 covered in this story. However, Liliana did not suffer one bit.

1623 She would have taken no pleasure if Mary and Tamara had praised her;

1624 she took no pain when they blamed her.)

1625

1626 The Lord is mighty and the Lord is merciful. Even the prayer of an

1627 android reaches the Throne of Grace. Mary and Tamara each happened

1628 to awake at about four-thirty a.m. the next morning. What happened

1629 that day was also transmitted to Proxima Centauri IV.

1630

1631 Mary Asher stopped by the All-Night News Store near her apartment

1632 near Megatron State University. She spent about thirty minutes perusing

1633 the store, looking for something not in the usual fare of such a store.

1634 When the clerk asked her what she was looking for, Mary was a little

1635 embarrassed. Most of the customers who came in before breakfast wanted

1636 either newspapers or literature not to be discussed here. But Mary

1637 found her quarry - - - a magazine, a book, and a tape.

1638

1639 Tamara Jefferson lived near a large suburban shopping center where

1640 the grocery store was open all night. She wandered through the aisles,

1641 searching the non-food items, and in particular looking for magazines,

1642 books and videos. She had shopped at that store continually for years,

1643 but this morning, it seemed a strange place, where the goods she sought

1644 were hidden, stashed away behind things she had always bought.

1645

1646 Liliana arrived at work fresh as a daisy, just as she always did and

1647 always will. She was even fresh as a daisy as she did chores, read

1648 books, and watched television, all the night long.

1649

1650 Mary and Tamara were each a little slow that day. Each had a package,

1651 home-made from a brown paper bag, on her desk. But each was not sure

1652 when or how to speak to the other. Liliana arrived about mid-morning

1653 with her load of papers and computer disks and tapes. 'Tamara,'

1654 said Liliana, 'What is that package about?'

1655

1656 'Will you do me a favor?' asked Tamara. 'Sneak it over to Mary

1657 Asher.'

1658

1659 Mary overheard that. Normally, she would have boisterously bounded

1660 over to Tamara, full of self- assurance and high-handed words. But

1661 this was not an ordinary day. Mary silently placed her package on

1662 Tamara's desk. She thought to herself, 'What species of creature

1663 dumped in that bag Tamara has for me?' but she was strangely silent.

1664

1665 Liliana had an extra load, too - - - a food tray from the deli section

1666 of a grocery. 'Let's gather here and remember this season. A time

1667 of poetry, books, movies, and television specials. A time of learning.'

1668 She could only replay the tapes from so many Christmas movies.

1669

1670 Dear reader - - - You probably know now that Mary had brought to

1671 Tamara a package of Christian devotional material, and that Tamara

1672 had brought to Mary a load of things dear to the Left. You probably

1673 know now that Liliana could not eat any of the food she brought.

1674

1675 Thus, we leave the Computer Room of the State Welfare Commission.

1676 Mary and Tamara would always come from different worlds on this Earth.

1677 Liliana would always seek out the mysteries of life on this alien

1678 planet. May each of you who read this, whatever your vision, find

1679 sunshine in your heart this holiday season.

1680

1681 =============================

1682

1683 'The Assassin Bug'

1684

1685 Copyright 1985

1686

1687 by

1688

1689 Cyanosis@bga.com

1690

1691 'Ready pod doors . . . Activate thrusters . . . Radio silence instructed

1692 to computer . . .'

1693

1694 Arfla had hoped that this would be a routine mission to the third

1695 planet out from the small yellow star whose planets the Akyrion Empire

1696 was annexing. On the fourth planet from this yellow sun was stationed

1697 a small colony, encased in a hermetic seal, wherein lived Arfla's

1698 wife and two small children. He thought of his wife, who loved music

1699 with a heavy beat and who painted murals on the walls of the colony

1700 in her spare time. He thought of his son and his daughter, who had

1701 been without him for about a year during his last mission. How he

1702 treasured the six months that he worked the transceiver at the colony.

1703 He hoped, in what seemed a vain hope, that he would return from the

1704 third planet.

1705

1706 The first mission was a three-person scouting mission from which only

1707 one member barely escaped. The craft had landed near a large city,

1708 which sent out soldiers who attacked the scouts. The lone survivor

1709 soon died of an unknown infection, for he had been wounded in the

1710 attack. Not much more was learned about the inhabitants of the planet.

1711

1712 An attack on the Akyrion Empire is not to be taken lightly. Arfla

1713 belonged to a proud civilization whose officers title themselves in

1714 manners best translated into English as Ceaser, Proconsul, and Centurion.

1715 Arfla's ship carried Proconsul Defla, whose mission was to punish

1716 those responsible for the deaths of the crew members and to collect

1717 tribute from the authorities on the third planet.

1718

1719 The Jet Propulsion Laboratory had tracked a most unusual unidentified

1720 flying object. A craft about the size of a 45-rpm record was observed

1721 by a military satellite proceeding into American security zones from

1722 no comprehensible location. Only the JPL antennae could track the

1723 thimble-sized craft which entered the atmosphere. However, the JPL

1724 antennae could only place the landing spot of the little vehicle in

1725 a rural county just to the west of Megatropolis, near the little town

1726 called Farmer's Junction.

1727

1728 Defla had preliminary instructions to observe radio silence and to

1729 make contact only after the strength of the Akyrion Empire could be

1730 demonstrated. The civilization that peopled this planet was known

1731 to build great cities out of dirt, and there was suspicion on the

1732 part of the Empire that nuclear devastation had caused the planet's

1733 inhabitants to live underground. He did not have the best mapping

1734 for finding the city where the bodies of two of his comrades lay dead.

1735 Defla's craft came upon a scene so much unlike the mound of dirt told

1736 by the surviving member of the scouting crew. Buildings of giant

1737 proportions towered over his ship, and two- legged beings of incredible

1738 proportions were readily apparent instead of the six-legged soldiers

1739 described in the first mission.

1740

1741 Strange men in dark suits and dark glasses were that day seen throughout

1742 Farmer's Junction. They carried odd-looking flashlight-like devices

1743 with which they examined every nook and cranny. Questions about them

1744 were answered with the words 'national security.' Further questioning

1745 was not permitted, as those who persisted were whisked away in unmarked

1746 cars. Neither the law nor the press said a word.

1747

1748 'There it is,' one of the men cried out. Just then, a small boy,

1749 noticing the little beetle-sized capsule, snatched it into his hand.

1750

1751 'Hold fire!' ordered Defla. The Akyrions are a warrior people, but

1752 eons of experience, as well as The Law of the Stars, prohibited an

1753 attack on the young of an intelligent species. The boy's youth registered

1754 on the sensor screens, and any attack mode would have to follow strict

1755 legal codes.

1756

1757 Mary Asher had by that time become involved in research projects at

1758 Megatron State University. She had no idea why Megatron State would

1759 so easily retain grants to study relationships between history and

1760 language. She had come to pursue a minor in linguistics along with

1761 her doctoral studies in history. Her works in these areas brought

1762 her in contact with a certain John Friedman, whom she had known as

1763 a part-time consultant at Megatron State.

1764

1765 John Friedman lived a civilian life as an academic consultant. Inside

1766 the air force base near Megatropolis, he carried the title of colonel

1767 in military intelligence. He was also one of the best diplomatic

1768 officials for Air Force operations. He had negotiated agreements

1769 between NATO allies that gave nuclear arms to West Germany and to

1770 South Africa. He !worked on the secret unsigned treaties between

1771 the United States and the Soviet Union that surrendered Afghanistan.

1772 The Air Force brought him in a jet to Megatropolis upon the capture

1773 of the diminutive UFO.

1774

1775 'He says that he is the Ceaser of the Akyrion Empire,' John dictated

1776 into his machine, 'Coming here to conquer the Earth. I am not sure

1777 of his authority. Commodore Perry pretended to be leader of all America

1778 to open up the door to Japan. However, there must be serious reason

1779 for their willingness to establish communication.

1780

1781 'According to their laws, this Defla says, those responsible for the

1782 failure of their first mission must be put to death, but innocent

1783 parties must be left alone. It appears that their first mission landed

1784 near an anthill, and the ants thought the Akyrions were invading insects.

1785 Obviously, we cannot find the one or two ants who killed the people

1786 in their landing party. However, I think it possible that we might

1787 persuade them to accept the killing of the ant colony queen.

1788

1789 'Biology students at Megatron State University have been studying

1790 ant colonies the past several years in the area of their first mission.

1791 From the descriptions we have, we seem to have isolated the one anthill

1792 involved. What we learn from current communications will have to

1793 be sorted out over some time. However, I can make some observations.

1794 The Akyrions have sexual reproduction and a male-dominant society.

1795 They live in a hierarchical society not unlike that of the ants they

1796 met before. However, they must be sensitive to formic acid and to

1797 the sting of the ant, which may suggest that they are not insects

1798 but perhaps mammals or reptiles.'

1799

1800 A Space Shuttle mission was scrubbed in order to find the funds to

1801 manufacture a computer-based robotic ant. Relays were set up between

1802 a small farm near Farmer's Junction, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

1803 and a modified lecture-hall at Megatron State University.

1804

1805 Sandra Werner was not given much time to direct the writing of the

1806 software. The mechanical ant was to give all the chemical messages

1807 to the real ants to worm its way into the confidence of the ant colony.

1808 She liked being given the space to be the master of her own project,

1809 for her position as programmer was something she had created for herself.

1810 Still, there was something deep inside her that haunted her about

1811 her role in the mission. It was something contrary to her education

1812 as a modern technocrat, something buried in her childhood.

1813

1814 Her brother Sam had kept an ant farm when the two of them were little.

1815 It was a large one, made with real glass instead of the cheap plastic

1816 she saw in pet shops. He would point out to her the various parts

1817 of the colony - - - the nurseries, the storage areas, the royal chamber.

1818 He told her how ants in the American West stored food in special ants

1819 called repletes and how ants in tropical North America kept little

1820 mushroom gardens fed with leaves stolen from orange trees. 'Who

1821 wants a dumb little old dog,' he would remark, 'When you can have

1822 a whole country, right here in your own room?'

1823

1824 There was not time to write a machine language program that would

1825 translate everything into synthesized words. Moreover, much of the

1826 language of the ants had to be learned during the expedition into

1827 the anthill, much of it with the expertise of Mary Asher. Each and

1828 every sensor reading was translated into a musical tone on an electronic

1829 organ. Every antenna tap was plugged into the drum circuits. The

1830 keys of the organ corresponded to chemicals to be secreted by mechanical

1831 glands.

1832

1833 There were to be two keyboardists taking turns for nine-hour shifts.

1834 This was to provide coverage for eighteen hours per day. The team

1835 could count on a six-hour period during the night when no activity

1836 would be expected of the electric ant. Jacob Obadiah, keyboardist

1837 for the Crystal Firmament, took the day shift, and Sam Werner took

1838 the night shift.

1839

1840 The Crystal Firmament had made a name as an ecologically sensitive

1841 Christian band. Three of its five members had degrees in the natural

1842 sciences, although all rejected the theory of evolution. Their songs

1843 spoke of God's creations and of an end to technocratic society, themes

1844 which made them popular outside the Christian musical world as well

1845 as within.

1846

1847 Sam Werner earned his living as a professor of zoology at Megatron

1848 State University but spent much of his spare time keyboarding for

1849 local rock bands. It was he who brought Jacob into the project, for,

1850 despite their differences in religion, each respected each other's

1851 musical talent.

1852

1853 About on hour after entry into the territory of the Beta Colony, a

1854 Beta ant contacted 'Little Sparky.' By this time, the improvised

1855 control room at Megatron State University seemed silent and cold,

1856 even as Jacob and the unknown ant exchanged a musical symphony. Also

1857 cold and silent appeared the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which helped

1858 handle Little Sparky's movements.

1859

1860 Before the first day was over, a team of scientists and linguists,

1861 including Mary Asher as one of the overseers, were beginning to understand

1862 the language of the ants as the computer transponded it. A sound

1863 like a snare drum meant a warning that one was making an infraction

1864 of colony rules. A chord in a major key signaled an assent, and a

1865 sound like an augmented seventh meant a question. Single tones seemed

1866 to convey technical information, and Mary Asher's crew worked around

1867 the clock to decode them. Of course, the tones were computer transpondences

1868 of chemical secretions.

1869

1870 The ants in the colony were classified into three major categories

1871 according to age, which were 'Spring' for pupae and larvae, 'Summer'

1872 for young adult ants, 'Fall' for middle-aged ants, and 'Winter'

1873 for older ants. Ants would begin their adulthood caring for eggs,

1874 larvae and pupae. Middle-aged ants would look after the queen, the

1875 drones, and housekeeping about the colony. Older ants would forage

1876 for food. For this reason, Little Sparky was started out with the

1877 chemical secretions of an older ant. She was to later chemically

1878 transform herself into a middle-aged ant, and win her confidence within

1879 the royal chamber.

1880

1881 Owing to the communications established, pursuant to the Law of the

1882 Stars, the Akyrion scout ship was no longer honoring radio silence.

1883 Defla kept logs on the mission as Arfla transmitted data into the

1884 computer system aboard the mother ship, then in a geosynchrous non

1885 orbit supported by a gravity neutralizer. These huge creatures, Defla

1886 wrote, must be without any real power at all. They were going to

1887 so much trouble to get to one of their smaller citizens. However,

1888 he noted that their respect for Akyrion law spared their planet, and

1889 that the death of the ant queen would be their tribute.

1890

1891 The third night, just before the appointed resting-time, Sam and the

1892 JPL put Little Sparky into a little nook of the colony not far from

1893 older ants. A program was loaded into the computer system that would

1894 make her younger to the other ants. It would be Jacob's job to manage

1895 the result of the transformation.

1896

1897 The technical crew of the mission, with few exceptions, found a morbid

1898 fascination with the musical exchanges between the keyboardists and

1899 the ants. During the second day of the expedition, all the princesses

1900 and drones went away on their wedding flights, from which none returned.

1901 The entomologists concluded that this particular colony had only one

1902 queen, and completion of the mission would mean the end of the colony.

1903

1904 Mary Asher found a certain joy in her work in the project. All was

1905 going well, she remarked, little caring that the people around her

1906 had slowly acquired a somber mood.

1907

1908 A long and beautiful concerto, albeit in strange and unusual keys,

1909 accompanied the journey into the most precious lair of Beta Colony.

1910 By this time, it was late afternoon, and Sam Werner, always in control,

1911 brought Little Sparky to Regina Beta's warm room near the surface,

1912 where she soaked up the warmth of the sun and laid her eggs at a greater

1913 rate. She thought Little Sparky was bringing her a droplet of honey

1914 like sustenance.

1915

1916 A cacophony of wild note-pounding, with chords that screamed of pain

1917 and anguish, filled the lecture-hall. Little Sparky's laser-fire

1918 proved far from painless for Regina Beta, whose writhing body filled

1919 the screen. A bass-drum roll announced that the soldier ants were

1920 alerted just before Little Sparky stopped transmitting.

1921

1922 Sandra Werner left scientific programming, and went to write programs

1923 for small businesses. Her perceptions changed, and she began to see

1924 people as living in environments rather than causing their worlds.

1925 Her brother Sam lost interest in ants and took up the social responsibility

1926 of scientists as a major theme in his lectures. The Crystal Firmament

1927 began to sing, in morose terms that destroyed ratings (and eventually

1928 the band,) of how Christians need to abandon the technocratic idolatry

1929 they condemned in secular humanists. A number of JPL staffers took

1930 up jobs in commercial aviation, where layoffs and bankruptcies are

1931 frequent.

1932

1933 However, since the entire Beta Project was Top Secret from the beginning,

1934 no one told any but those already involved the reason for their discord.

1935

1936 None of this was any big bother for Mary Asher. For the duration

1937 of her studies in the doctoral program at Megatron State University,

1938 she had been working part-time at the State Welfare Commission. The

1939 Beta Project guaranteed to her that she would become a professor at

1940 Megatron State, leave the Welfare Commission, and surely get tenure.

1941 'What good that I am doing for the world,' she thought to herself,

1942 'Helping make history as well as write about it.' (Of course, she

1943 received a large renumeration for her services. Of course, to her

1944 mind, this was different from the way politicians take campaign money.)

1945

1946 Arfla was contented to return to the fourth planet out. His wife

1947 and children could be expected to greet him with warmth and exhilaration.

1948 The new mission succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The ruler

1949 of a kingdom under the jurisdiction of the central government had

1950 been put to death as tribute to the Akyrion Empire. A piece of jellybean

1951 had been forwarded by the Chief Executive of the huge grotesque monsters

1952 whose technology would not allow them to apply the swift justice of

1953 the Akyrion Empire. And the Earth had become a vassal state of the

1954 Akyrions.

1955

1956 =============================

1957

1958 Mary Asher Short Stories -- A Study In Irony

1959 Copyright 1985, 1986, 1994

1960 by

1961 Cyanosis@Bga.Com

1962

1963 =============================

1964