Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  Sure enough, John Hoover was dead, and his obit photo, taken on the occasion of his retirement from Gant Industries, bore no resemblance to the man now occupying the gingerbread house in Atlantic City. “John Elliot Hoover,” Joan read from the Times On-Line Morgue, “1926–2010.” The octogenarian Hoover had been a shrunken, prune-faced man with a mad scientist’s shock of white hair; he didn’t look like the sort of person who’d have the patience to take care of a hound, Mechanical or otherwise, though Joan could picture him siccing one on somebody. In addition to his work for Disney and Gant Industries, the Times credited him as an accomplished mathematician, engineer, and computer scientist. Born in rural Oregon and educated at UCLA, he’d worked as a cryptographer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps before a chance meeting with Walter Disney on a Burbank streetcar landed him a fifty-year career designing robot animals and other theme park attractions. In 2005, after Disney management had concluded that Hoover’s Self-Motivating Android, while interesting, had no real sales potential, he’d offered his patent and his services to Harry Dennis Gant, who recognized the Android as the neat idea that it was and turned it into one of the most successful products of the early twenty-first century. Hoover had remained with Gant for three years, midwifing his last brainchild through its first generation of manufacture. Citing poor health, he’d retired to Atlantic City in 2008, and died there of a clerical error in September of 2010.

  Hmm, Joan thought, reading over the details of the accident. The hospital that Hoover had gone to for emergency throat cancer surgery had confused his medical records with those of another patient; he’d been given the wrong anesthetic and had died of anaphylactic shock on the operating table. The source of the mix-up had not been immediately determined, but evidence pointed to a software glitch in the hospital’s Electric Filing System. As Hoover had left no surviving relatives, however, no lawsuit was anticipated.

  Joan got a hard copy of the obituary, then punched up the death notices for J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn as well. Nothing unusual here: J. Edgar had died of a garden-variety heart attack in 1972, Roy of AIDS in 1986. Neither man had had any connection to John Hoover that the Times had seen fit to print.

  Time for a smoke and a think. Joan went out to the stone lions in front of the library, where she’d agreed to meet Kite. She set the Electric Lamp, which she still carried, between the paws of one of the lions, and lit her cigarette with a match struck on the locks of a granite mane.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Joan said to Ayn, who’d been mum since her blow-up with Jerry Gant.

  Ayn, still sulky, replied: “I believe you just did.”

  “Cute,” said Joan. “But listen, seriously, is the John Hoover I met in Atlantic City human or a machine?”

  “I don’t know,” Ayn said.

  “Because J. Edgar Hoover”—Joan pointed to the photo in one of the obituary printouts—“didn’t have a twin, especially not a slower-aging twin, and as far as anyone knows he didn’t take part in any cloning experiments. And he didn’t have kids. So it occurs to me that the J. Edgar look-alike masquerading as John Hoover in Jersey might be an Automatic Servant instead of a person.”

  “That sounds logical. Do they come in white?”

  “Sure. AS204 Negroid configuration is the consumer favorite, but you can specify any skin tone you want, including green. And if you’re a licensed representative of an amusement park or a museum, you can order a custom duplicate of a dead celebrity—but the more realistic a Servant looks, the more anti-fraud behavioral inhibitors it comes packaged with. They aren’t supposed to be able to lie about what they really are.”

  “Still,” said Ayn, “that explanation is much more plausible than any of the alternatives. Yes, I’m sure it’s true. John Hoover must be an Automatic Servant.”

  “But you never actually saw him recharge himself, or do anything else that would prove he wasn’t human?”

  “I don’t need to have seen anything,” Ayn said. “Your original line of reasoning was sound. John Hoover is an android. Now, may I ask you something?”

  “Feel free, Ayn.”

  “I wish to know why you married Harry Gant,” Ayn Rand said, “and why you divorced him.”

  Joan frowned. “Is there a particular reason you want to jump to that topic just now?”

  “I wish to discover your premises,” Ayn said. “The roots of your current irrationality. Hearing you describe what attracted you to Gant and what drove you away from him should clarify your basic values. Then, perhaps, we can correct the errors in your thinking.”

  “Jesus,” Joan said. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

  “‘Did a number on me’?”

  “Hoover. John Hoover, whether he’s human or a clone or a Servant. He must have left out your redeeming graces when he programmed you. You can’t possibly have been this obnoxious in real life.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Ayn said, “if your fear of reality causes you to identify rigorous objectivity as ‘obnoxiousness.’”

  “Ayn, I’m not the one who’s afraid of reality.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No. I like reality. There are parts of it I’d like to change, granted, but I’m comfortable with it. You’re the one with the problem.”

  “Me?”

  “Championing logic is one thing,” Joan said. “I’m all for common sense, and I’ll gladly take objectivity when and where I can get it. But reason is something more than a tool to you, Ayn; you’re the most defensively rational person I’ve ever met.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re terrified of uncertainty. Maybe because of what the Bolsheviks did to your family, maybe just because you were born into a century that had a hard time being sure of anything. My guess is the need for certainty played as big a role in the formation of your philosophy as any desire for truth. I mean it feels a lot more secure, doesn’t it, to view the world in terms of absolute black and white than to spend your life wrestling with shades of gray.”

  “It not only feels more secure,” Ayn Rand said, “it is more secure, for the simple reason that the world is black and white, and so-called shades of gray are nothing more than mental fog generated by irrationalists in their attempt to avoid the responsibility of choice.”

  “But I see the world in shades of gray—most of the time, when I’m not up on a soapbox—and I still manage to make choices,” Joan said. “And despite occasional attacks of embarrassment when I pull a boner like setting the East River on fire, I’m pretty up front about taking responsibility for the consequences of those choices.”

  “Yes, and what are the consequences? You’re divorced and unemployed, you’ve been declared unfit even to patrol sewers, and the majority of your time is spent in the company of vagabond amputees whose grasp of reality is more tenuous than your own.”

  “Nice mouth, Ayn.”

  “I’m simply stating the facts,” Ayn said. “Try as you may, you cannot escape the primary law of existence—the Law of Identity, which states that A is A, that things are what they are, independent of any human beliefs, whims, wishes, feelings, or opinions. Blanking out reality doesn’t change reality; what is, is—A is A—regardless of your attempts at evasion.”

  “That may be true, Ayn, but what I’m saying—”

  “There’s no maybe about it. It is true. A is A, and given that axiom, there can be no shades of gray. You either accept reality or deny it. If you choose to accept it, then the only means of knowledge and the only guide to rightful action at your disposal is reason: the black and white rules of logic applied to the concrete evidence of the senses. And if you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, then you understand that the acceptance of reason, and the acceptance of man’s life as the ultimate standard of moral value, leads inevitably to the embrace of capitalism, as well.”

  “Well,” said Joan. “I understand that you think it’s inevitable.”

  “It’s the only logical conclusion you can come to!�
�� Ayn insisted. “If man has a right to his life, then man has a right to engage in those actions necessary to his survival as a rational being. And since man, by his nature, must produce the things he needs to live, the right to life implies a right to production, and the right to production further implies a right to dispose of one’s product as one sees fit.”

  “Hence private property,” Joan said. “And free trade, too.”

  “Any restraint of commerce by outside parties is an infringement of the right to life,” Ayn confirmed. “An objective morality of self-interest mandates a complete separation of state and economics.”

  “So no taxes on business. No taxes period, in fact, since anyone with something worth taxing is by definition part of the economy.”

  “Taxation is theft,” Ayn Rand said. “Theft is immoral. A rational citizenry will of course agree to pay for the services of a properly limited government, just as they would pay for insurance, but such payment must, as with all other transactions, be voluntary in nature. And the same principle applies to charity: while men may choose to donate their surplus capital to those in need, no amount of need can ever justify the forced ‘redistribution’ of wealth.”

  “Of course,” Joan said, lighting another cigarette, “rational rich people would be only too happy to extend a loan to the legitimately needy, in the same way they’d be overjoyed to volunteer their fair share of government upkeep. And even if that turned out not to be the case, or if it turned out there wasn’t enough surplus to go around, the rational poor would still be completely understanding. They’d continue to respect the wealthy’s right to property, even if it meant their own starvation, because to do otherwise would be contrary to self-interest.”

  “Be as sarcastic as you wish,” Ayn said, “but what you say is essentially correct. If the poor—by definition, the least productive members of society—are allowed to loot not just the surplus but also the operating capital of the rich—by definition, the most intelligent, talented, and productive members of society—overall production is drastically reduced, leading to more, not less, starvation. If the looting continues, the entire industrial base is ultimately destroyed, after which everyone goes hungry.”

  “But even if that’s true,” Joan said, “how does it follow from that that people who are already going hungry should be content with their lot? Or more to the point, that they will be?”

  “They shouldn’t be content. They should work to better their circumstances.”

  “And if they can’t?”

  Ayn Rand shrugged. “Then that’s too bad. In a true capitalist system unemployment would be minimal, of course, and hunger nonexistent or virtually so—among moral men, that is—but those who did starve would be doomed in any event. Unfortunate, but what can one do?”

  “Have you asked a starving person that question?”

  The Lamp flared red. “I’ve been a starving person!” Ayn raged. “Don’t you ever presume to lecture me on that subject! I’ve been a starving person, and I’ve seen only too well what end government-sanctioned theft is meant to achieve!”

  “I know you have,” Joan said, “and I don’t doubt that single-mindedness was an asset to your survival in that situation. But I also think the experience left you blind to other perspectives, blind even to the possibility that there might be other perspectives.”

  “Oh no,” Ayn said. “If one includes the full spectrum of the irrational, I’m sure there are a virtually inexhaustible number of perspectives from which to choose. But reality is not a matter of perspective: A is A. To any particular issue, there are in reality only two sides, two ‘points of view,’ one of which is right, the other of which is wrong. There is also a middle ground, into which all other perspectives can be demonstrated to fall. This middle ground represents ‘compromise’: the cynical accommodation of truth to falsehood, reason to unreason, justice to injustice, good to evil, morality to immorality.”

  Joan shook her head. “Even if all disputes could be boiled down to two polarized positions, which I don’t believe, different people would identify different poles. One person’s middle ground is another’s absolute truth. And another’s total falsehood.”

  “Perhaps that’s the case among simpletons,” Ayn said. “Or savages. But to fully rational beings—”

  “But there are no such people,” Joan said. “That’s what I was being sarcastic about. You talk about reason as if it were something pure, something that could be disembodied from the reasoner, but it’s not that way at all—especially not in regard to ethics. Facts are facts, but what seems morally true is always going to be influenced by who you are: by the experiences you’ve had, by the people you’ve known and the kindnesses and cruelties they’ve shown you, by the books you’ve read, by the books you were too lazy to read, by your desires and your fears, and by a hundred other personal, subjective factors.”

  “You think there’s no hope, then,” Ayn Rand said. “You think reason is impotent, that man is doomed to a life of ethical caprice.”

  “I didn’t say reason was impotent. Not being sure isn’t the same as not knowing anything. All I’m suggesting is that nobody has the whole truth—not you, not Karl Marx, not the pope, and not me, either. If somebody did have it—if we could be absolutely, logically certain we knew right from wrong, in every situation—then what would we need hope for?”

  “Bah!” Ayn threw up her hands in disgust. “Useless! Useless to attempt to talk sense to a liberal, college-bred mystic! And it’s all a con game, anyway—you’re intelligent, you know that I’m right, but my conclusions don’t match your whims, so instead of admitting that you can’t answer my proofs, you—”

  “Strong opinions and a bad mood aren’t proof, Ayn. Your theory has some valid points to it, but—”

  “Theory!” Ayn roared. “My philosophy is no theory!” She jabbed furiously with her cigarette holder, hurling ashes like a shotgun blast of fireflies. “You can’t refute capitalism, and you know it!”

  “I’m not so sure I want to refute capitalism,” Joan said. “Not entirely, anyway. I mean I do own a building, after all, and a pretty hefty interestbearing account with my Gant severance pay, and I’d have to say in general I’m a pretty selfish person. But selfishness doesn’t mean I don’t also recognize an obligation to other people’s needs. If the ultimate standard of morality is life, and property is just a means to that end, then—”

  “No! There cannot be an obligation to charity! Can’t you see that’s a contradiction?”

  “Taken to extremes it’s a contradiction. If you’re asked to treat other people’s lives as more sacred than your own, or to sacrifice for those who aren’t genuinely in need, then I’d agree that’s an affront to good sense. But there’s a difference between rational self-interest and being a merciless son of a bitch.”

  “Socialist!” Ayn hissed. “Don’t you speak to me of mercy! Do you think I didn’t struggle when I came to this country? Do you think I wasn’t desperate, in need? But I never received charity! No one helped me with a handout! Nor did I ever demand, nor would I have accepted, a single unearned value.”

  “Except that that’s nonsense,” Joan pointed out. “I know your story, Ayn. Just to come as far as to be struggling in this country was a tremendous leap forward for you, a life-saving leap, and you never would have made it without help. Didn’t your mother sell the last of her jewelry so you’d have money for the trip overseas? Money she could have used to feed herself and the rest of your family? Didn’t your relatives in Chicago—who’d never even met you—go out of their way to help you get a passport? Didn’t they agree to take financial responsibility for you during your ‘visit’ to America? Didn’t they also pay for your steamship ticket? And didn’t they put you up for six months free of charge—even though, by all accounts, you were a self-absorbed pain in the ass as a house guest?”

  “Who told you about my private life?” Ayn demanded. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “And as for you ‘never
accepting an unearned value,’” Joan continued, “not to be rude, but you didn’t exactly acquire U.S. citizenship on the basis of merit, now did you? Unless cunning counts as merit. You bluffed immigration into letting you enter the country temporarily, then married an American so they’d be forced to let you stay. You used fraud—a form of theft—to gain the protection of a government that you then spent your career criticizing for its failure to adequately respect property rights.”

  “What ‘theft’?” Ayn said. “There was no theft! I stole nothing!”

  “You bargained in bad faith,” Joan said. “At the American consulate in Latvia, you applied for a tourist visa, granting you a limited stay in the United States in exchange for your promise to return home when time was up. But you never intended to keep your end of the deal.”

  “I had no choice in the matter! I would gladly have applied for permanent asylum, but that wasn’t an option. The visa I got was the only type of visa being offered!”

  “So the item you really wanted wasn’t for sale, but you decided you’d buy anyway.” Joan raised an eyebrow. “And when the storekeeper in charge got suspicious and started questioning your intentions, you made up a story about a fictitious fiancé waiting for you back in Leningrad—compounding what was already implicit deceit with a flat-out lie.”

  “I had no choice!” Ayn repeated. “If I’d been turned down by the American consul, there’d have been no second chance, no avenue of appeal—not even the opportunity to petition the consulate of another country. I’d have been arrested immediately and deported back to Russia. Forever!”

  “Well then,” Joan said, and shrugged, “that would have been too bad, wouldn’t it? Unfortunate, but what can one do? Didn’t you just tell me that no amount of need could ever justify stealing?”

  “What stealing? I didn’t steal anything!”

  “U.S. residency and citizenship aren’t objects of value? Why did you lie to get them, then, if they weren’t worth anything?”