Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  “Now consider the tycoon, the sheriff, and the politician. The tycoon runs the corporation—they who make the products and distribute the services—and as its comptroller he receives all the socioeconomic benefits of the system for himself and his family. He makes an exorbitant, unfathomable amount of money compared to the layman he employs. He worries never for his bills, but rather he has money to burn—and burn he does, to feed his greed. Perhaps he gambles on craps or cockfights; perhaps he siphons revenue under the nose of the CFO; perhaps he hides money offshore, in the Bahamas, or in Switzerland; perhaps he manipulates the market; perhaps he uses shell corporations for fraud, tax evasion, or circumventing international sanctions. Regardless—is he caught?” the Dark Patriot grins. “Not if he runs the system; not if the right people are paid. He’s only exposed if a snitch meets the right journalist, or if the grand machine needs a scapegoat.

  “And the sheriff—the lord of his own kingdom, with his knights and their chariots at his disposal; with his hand in the people’s pockets; with his sword held over their necks. He who, in a province so small the federal engine does not attend, has immense power over the populous; he who may seize property, commodities, and cash from his electorate, under the guise of the law. He who may extort, blackmail, and pilfer for his benefit. Is he punished? If ever caught, he may be demoted, or relocated, or removed from office—but must he pay reparations for the trauma or hardship he manufactured under the name of the law? Only if the system can distance themselves from his history of malfeasance; only if the system can get away unblemished.

  “And the politician—the false prophet; the idle-talker; the seller of bridges and promises. He molds himself for the system, embraces the system, and becomes the system. Compared to the misgivings of the layman—he who is fined for his adultery; jailed for purchasing sex; incarcerated for underage relations—the politician is merely coerced into a televised apology, still to remain on his throne, and still on the payroll of some corporate lobbyist—one of the many shadowmen who weave the web between the so-called ‘separate systems’ of corporation and government. The politician is too integral to the grand machine, and so his punishment is meager, cos with great public power comes little personal responsibility.

  “The unethical will be unethical, and the moral will act morally—most of the time. How the grand machine punishes and rewards has nothing to do with laws but everything to do with connections; with power; with the size of the cog—and the smaller the cog, the more easily it’s replaced. And so deviants may be punished, but the truly corrupt tend to escape even in the daylight. This is a system that rewards purposeful parts. The politician who fucks a fourteen-year-old is given a second chance. The grocery bagger who fucks a fourteen-year-old is demonized and incarcerated. If the earth were still governed under the laws of nature, both of these men would be drawn and quartered; their mortal implements dismembered and shoved down their throats.

  “But a system that kills its purposeless moral offenders would expose its true nature: a vast structure of institutions that conditions men into cogs, to accept either service or death; obedience or death. Of course, instead of the physical death they offer a figurative death: isolation, on some charge, real or imagined; to be forgotten and locked-away in some barbed-wire box on the side of the interstate, kept alive until the sole unquestionable executioner—Father Time—kills them himself.”

  “And of the women?”

  “Which women?”

  “The men are cogs in this apparent ‘grand machine,’ so what are the-”

  “The women, the men—we’re all cogs, Ajax. I'm a cog, you're a cog-"

  "I'm not a cog."

  "We're all cogs. It’s only that the men are more brash and aggressive; more animalistic, due to those ancestral genes that say 'battle is the answer.' Men are more inclined to defy the system, and so it is most often men that the system must beat into submission."

  "There are women who defy the system."

  "I'm not saying there's not."

  "Like Harmony."

  “Ah,” the Dark Patriot nods. "I remember her well. Very brave. Strong of character."

  "And defiant to the system."

  "Rare, too, in that aspect. But consider the prison population—mostly men. Even the supers—mostly men. Some active women, of course, like Harmony, but most public supers—regardless of their moral lean—are men, as it's men who most often flaunt their dissatisfaction with rage; rage against the dying of the light. More of the earth's population are women, yet we mostly see men get swallowed by the system, as it's the men who take-up arms."

  "That seems narrow-minded."

  "It's an observation."

  "It's sexist."

  "It's an observation."

  "What about schoolchildren?"

  "Schoolchildren?"

  "Something something vessels of an ideology-"

  "Vessels to fill with biased history lessons, coded ideology, and values—"

  "Right."

  "—that encourage eyes-closed, head-down—"

  "I recall."

  "—subservience to higher powers."

  Ajax pauses, and, "So these are speeches that you memorize for yourself."

  "Not all the time," Dark Patriot asserts. "Some turn of phrase just sounds good."

  "Mhm."

  "Mnemonics."

  "Sure."

  "Modernization facilitates education as a means to manufacture fresh cogs for the grand machine. It's not so much about teaching arithmetic as it is teaching a way of life: behaviors, expectations, habits, mindsets, beliefs."

  “Church and state?”

  “What?”

  "Teaching beliefs—but you had said God was dead."

  "Beliefs, as in, 'my vote matters,' and 'anyone can become president,' and 'the government wants what's best for me,' and 'my money is safe in the federal bank,' and so on."

  "Well, we try to keep it safe."

  "What, the money?"

  "Yeah—we, meaning, the civil defenders, police, and guards all watching over the banks, making sure the people's money stays where it is."

  Dark Patriot scoffs, and he smirks. "Money isn't real."

  Ajax Madison shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He grimaces, and inquires, "Have you just been talking to yourself for the past six years?"

  “I do not attend many dinner parties.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Not many friends.”

  “No—why d’you say money isn’t real?”

  “What do you think money is?”

  “Currency.”

  “For?”

  “Trade,” he assures. “It’s a middleman for trade.”

  “What is it worth?”

  “Uh—a dollar is a dollar, five dollars are five dollars-”

  “But what are dollars?”

  “Paper, man,” he blurts, “I don’t know.”

  “What for?”

  “Regulating… trade, I guess.”

  “Trade.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trade.”

  Ajax pauses, “Yeah, trade.”

  “Who makes money?”

  “People with jobs; people who work and earn-”

  “No—who makes money?”

  “Um,” Ajax lingers, “the federal mint.”

  “Yes,” Dark Patriot growls, turning toward the skyline, intentionally ominous. “The government.”

  Ajax looks around. “What’s up?”

  “This city.”

  Ajax looks to the nightprowler, and to the skyline. “What of it?”

  “Before we stitched the continent with iron rails, buried it in concrete, and filled the air with fumes, there were trees. From sea to shining sea, there were trees. Here, where we stand, was a forest, and across the river was another. The Lenape Indians called it ‘manaháhtaan’ or, ‘the place to get bows,’ cos the south end grew thick with hickory shoots—their ideal wood for carving longbows—and so it was for hundreds
of years. Then the Dutch came, in sixteen-twenty-four, and built a fort on Governors Island. The next year they built a fort in manaháhtaan, in the hickory grove, at the south end of the long trail that snaked north to the other end of the island. That trail is here today, still maintaining its moniker as the widest of paths.”

  Ajax thinks for a moment. “Broadway?”

  Dark Patriot nods. “The Lenape natives met the Dutch in sixteen-twenty-six to accept a deal: the whole island in exchange for a bundle of cloth, iron tools—hatchets, awls, hoes, and kettles—a mouth harp, and—most famously—wampum beads, all totalling nearly a hundred-twenty dollars today. Over the next century and a half, the Dutch—then the English—cleared the land of manaháhtaan and built a port city, servicing the northern half of the New World. The Sons of Liberty found the city integral in their fight for independence from the crown. Broadway became the island’s main thoroughfare, and a financial empire grew around it, and a metropolis around that—Wall Street to the south, Union Square, Times Square, Madison Ave, the Theatre District, Central Park, Julliard, the West Side, Sugar Hill, Harlem, Washington Heights… Look at all that Manhattan’s become,” he says, gesturing to the skyline. “This city’s been on the forefront of every cultural, political, and economic boom since the Dutch first bought it. So, my question is, what was the island worth to the Indians?”

  “You said it: a hundred-and-twenty dollars.”

  “No,” he shakes his head, “it was worth iron; it was worth tools; technology—an upgrade to their way of life. They had leagues of other forests, but the Dutch had something they didn’t: Arthur Clarke’s monolith; the instruments of progress; a chance at becoming more efficient, and more comfortable. It was a dream they bought with wampum beads… They traded Manhattan for a dream.”

  “Well,” Ajax hums. “That’s what we all do.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s what advertisements do—they sell dreams. Commercials, magazines, pop songs, newsreels—”

  “That’s right.”

  “—and game shows.”

  “The fuckin’ Price is Right.”

  “Let’s Make a Deal.”

  “Strike It Rich; Twenty-One; The Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar Question—all means to teach the public to love consumerism; to believe spending money is fun; to believe owning objects is equivalent to pride and happiness. But these shows are all a game—a long con at the expense of our collective values and individual priorities. Civic involvement is on the decline, Ajax, and fast.” He glowers, “The people are turning against guys like you and me. They don’t want society; they don’t want neighborhoods—they want cars and television sets and monogrammed towels, and little porcelain cherubs to sit on their mantel…” He looks away. “Society as we know it is on the out. I give it ‘til the end of the millennium.”

  “To do what?”

  “To be beyond repair. Think about it: capitalist greed; increased individualism, decreased civic involvement; dissolution of the nuclear family; racial tension; economic inequality; overpopulation; pollution; consumerism; wage slavery; average debt growth-”

  “Slavery,” Ajax scoffs, “you got that right. Lincoln might’ve spoke the words but the country didn’t listen.”

  “Though many still wear chains in the south, for their difference in skin color, the chains that you and I wear today care not for color or religion—our shackles are not of iron but of income; our drag-weight not of cannonball but of debt; our branding not of seared flesh but of psyches conditioned to obey and conscripted to kneel before the grand machine-”

  “And the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else…”

  “As the global network grows, the ties between our enclaves elevate—from tribes to towns to cities, to states to nations to continents—making smaller the perceived value of a neighborhood; making greater the powers and playground of the elite; making weaker our will to resist; making stronger their leverage over us…”

  Ajax exhales. “You’re making me feel claustrophobic.”

  “Good,” replies the nightprowler, “that means you’re awake.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “This city,” he motions, “it’s like an organism: millions of people moving independently—on their own missions, on rehearsed routes—and yet moving as a collective, through the subway arteries and the dendrite sidewalks, like cells unaware of the body they belong to; committed only to their own assignments, duties, and obligations, believing them to be the payoff of personal choice; ignorant to the mighty machinations that had surreptitiously bestowed these circumstances upon them. Consider,” he pauses, “few become poor by choice.”

  “Highways, jets, and telephone wires…” Ajax stares into oblivion. “The nervous system of the larger body.”

  Dark Patriot nods slow. “And we stand before the foramen magnum—the gateway to the machine: the Empire City.” He turns to Radiation Brother. “Three centuries ago, along the earliest stretch of Broadway, the English built Trinity Church—the first chapel in manaháhtaan. The polis revolved around Trinity, as a forum for free speech against the crown; as a conference hall for policymakers; as a meetinghouse for men of industry. George Washington was even known to attend its Sunday Service during his presidency. Mountains were moved around Trinity—through Trinity—and today, buried in its cemetery, at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, lies one of the greatest mountain-movers of recent history: Alexander Hamilton.”

  “The guy on the ten-dollar bill?”

  “We owe as much of America to him as we do Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson.”

  “And that’s why he’s on the ten…”

  “It goes deeper than that.”

  “Of course it does,” Ajax groans. “Everything goes deeper in your eyes.”

  Dark Patriot replies blunt, “Cos my eyes are wide open.”

  Ajax pauses, inhales, looks down, deflates, and motions for him to proceed.

  “Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, more or less institutionalizing the role. He believed in a strong central government and pushed for a national bank, well before the Constitution was penned. He opined to condense the country’s independent financial temples into one, owned and operated by the government. Surprisingly, much of the young nation’s bankers got behind his plan, because it took the burden of responsibility away from them without taking away their power of profit. These bankers lobbied hard for the formation of the national bank, ultimately forming the first political party: the Federalists, who favored—as it sounds—a strong federal hand in public affairs.

  “The man to eventually strike him dead—New York statesman Aaron Burr—had first worked alongside Hamilton in the Continental Congress, where they helped establish the Bank of North America. The first national bank of Boston came soon after, proving incredibly lucrative for the bay city’s shipping industry. With New York’s wharfs faltering in the wayside, loyal Manhattanites Burr and Hamilton reunited—though they continued to disagree politically—to form the Bank of New York. The men who profited most from this bank met with frequency at a coffee house on the corner of Wall and Water Street. There, they traded their stakes in local businesses, though ultimately they sought means to perform these trades orderly and organized—so, across the street, they established the New York Stock Exchange.

  “The Bank of New York was the first to trade on Wall Street; the second was the Bank of North America, helmed by Robert Morris. His was the de facto central bank of the nation, at the time, making Morris the Superintendent of Finance of the United States—the forerunner to the position of the Secretary of the Treasury. The efforts of Morris and Hamilton—both Federalists—laid the foundation of the country’s financial system. President Washington had asked Morris to be the first Secretary of the Treasury but, succumbing to old age, he recommended the younger Hamilton instead.

  “After Hamilton took office, Morris and Burr were both shunned by the institution they had helped create. Both were c
ast deep into debt. Morris, at the wizened age of sixty-four, was incarcerated at a debtor’s prison for four years, only to die in obscurity shortly after his release. Burr became vice-president, under Jefferson, but he was a pariah outside of his political party. After Hamilton insulted his character, the two dueled, and Hamilton was killed—and with his death went Burr’s career. He, like Morris, lived the rest of his life poor and in obscurity, though his character remained true: in his final years, after also losing his faith in God, he pawned his last item of luxury—his pocketwatch—to feed the neighbor’s children.”

  “I thought Aaron Burr was an asshole…”

  “He who controls the system controls society, controls education, controls history, controls the narrative. Nobody is a perfect hero, and nobody is a perfect villain; we’re all shades of grey, swirled together in a world of chaos. Those who can manufacture a semblance of order will have all the authority of a novelist, casting whomever they please in the light of a perfect hero, or in the shadow of a perfect villain. Painting a portrait in shades of grey yields no great narrative.

  “Whether Hamilton was a hero, or a villain, is not for me to decide; it is not a question, as I see it; he was a man who followed his own instincts and his own interpretation of the Founder ideology. Some decisions I can agree with, others I cannot. For instance, his first act as Secretary of the Treasury was to institutionalize a loophole in the Constitution: Article One, Section Eight, was worded loosely enough to imply the government could do whatever it deemed necessary in order to actualize what it interprets the Constitution to allow it to do—ergo, as the Anti-Federalists argued, they have boundless power and answer to nobody.