The Overton Window

by Glenn Beck

  “While you’ve given us nothing that implicates you in the treachery of the preceding days, you’ve also said nothing to exonerate yourself to my side of the conflict. A true believer or a traitor to the cause, either one of those I could at least respect. But you’re weak, aren’t you? And fatally so.”

  Neither of Noah’s eyes would open fully, and what vision he had was dim and watery. His father looked like a giant silhouette, a featureless shadow. Fragments of memories intruded, a flash from the office break room when he’d first seen Molly, but her image was replaced in his mind with the outline of seven light strokes from a felt-tip pen.

  “Continue,” his father said to the technicians.

  The lines that had once represented Molly’s exquisite form dissolved into a pool of blackness and pain.

  “Noah, I last told you this when you were only a boy, so I doubt you’ll remember.” His father had retaken his position at the side of the table. “It’s a rhyme I made up for you, in answer to some childish question you’d posed. I think it fitting in our present situation.”

  When he spoke again the old man’s voice had taken on a softer, more fatherly tone.

  “‘There are men who are weak and few who are strong / There are men who are right and more who are wrong / But of all the men huddled in all the world’s hives / There’s but one thing that’s true: It’s the fit who’ll survive.’

  “Noah, the meek will not inherit the earth. A faint heart is as great a weakness as a feeble mind. It pains me to say it, but I’m afraid we’ve reached a parting of the ways.”

  It was then that Noah felt something beneath him, and behind him, all around him—something outside himself that he couldn’t quite identify.

  His father’s mind, his mother’s heart. What the old man had given him was all that these men could tear away, but it was her heart that they couldn’t quite reach. His mother had passed it on to him, and even after her strength had lain unused and scarcely remembered for all these wasted years, it seemed that Molly Ross had somehow awakened it again.

  The idea of dying wasn’t nearly as frightening as he would have thought it would be. But somewhere he also knew that this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Molly had taught him the importance of living to fight another day. She hadn’t been captured, she hadn’t been killed. A spirit like that doesn’t die so easily. He had no facts whatsoever to assure him of this, but he knew it. Maybe it was a bit of that faith that she’d spoken of.

  The old man pulled away with a stoic finality and picked up his suit jacket, which had been folded neatly over the back of the office chair. As he put it on, he turned to the man who was clearly in charge of things. “Finish the job and then craft a story to ensure my son is remembered in a way that will bring dignity and honor to our family.”

  There was a way out of this, but Noah didn’t know what it was until he heard the answer whispered at his ear, as though Molly were there right beside him. The fight would go on, she’d said, with her on the outside and him on the inside, where she’d already shown him that the deepest kind of damage could be done. And then she added one thing more:

  Don’t be afraid.

  As the old man turned away, Noah tried to speak the words she’d given him, but his mouth and lips were so dry that the words were barely audible. “As it will be in the future,” he whispered, “it was at the birth of Man.”

  He didn’t even know if he was saying the words aloud or reciting them only in his mind. “There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.” His father’s hand was on the doorknob when he suddenly froze and looked back.

  “What did you say?” the old man asked.

  Noah continued, his voice becoming stronger. “That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire.” His father had taken a few steps closer to him now. “And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.”

  Arthur Gardner’s usually dispassionate face, so long accustomed to the denial of emotion, could not contain his surprise. He resumed his seat next to the table and motioned the others from the room.

  The old man leaned close and squeezed his son’s hand. Noah smiled as best he could and let his father believe what he surely thought he was seeing. “I knew it was in there somewhere,” Arthur Gardner said. “We had to strip all of the other nonsense away, but there it is, from the root of your being; the essence of what I’ve taught you. I knew you couldn’t forget, though I must admit that you had me concerned.”

  Noah looked directly into his father’s keen, discerning eyes and nodded.

  “Those people you were with,” the old man continued, “they somehow believe that we can have a brighter future by resurrecting the failed ideas of the past. They’re wrong, and their ideas would lead to untold misery for millions. The answer is a new vision, my vision, and together we can make it a reality.”

  Noah realized something else then, another thing that Molly had taught him: When you lie for a living, you sometimes can’t see the truth even when it’s staring you right in the face. That’s a weakness that could clearly be exploited.

  It was a matter of pride with Arthur Gardner that his heir should be involved in the transformation that was coming. His son, then, would do his best to prove the adage that pride comes before the fall.

  The old man smiled. The ordeal was finished, and though he clearly felt he’d won the day, what Arthur Gardner couldn’t know was that the battle lines had only just been drawn.

  Noah felt himself fading, and he spoke again, but scarcely at a whisper. These words were meant for different ears, and wherever Molly was, he knew for certain she would hear them.

  “We have it in our power,” Noah said, “to begin the world over again.”

  EPILOGUE

  A month to the day had passed since Noah had arrived in his new quarters.

  The days in this place had started to meld into one another, so he’d resorted to noting each sunrise with a mark on one of the painted bricks in the wall near his bed. While actual calendars were available for residents of his moderate status, these private etchings seemed to be a more fitting method to keep a tally of his time inside.

  With the stub of a pencil from the nightstand he inscribed another X at the end of the last line, and then he began another empty grid beside the first in anticipation of the new month to come.

  Noah was familiar with the atmosphere of a dormitory, though he’d never actually had to live in one while in college. That was the style of accommodations this place most resembled. Just a simple bedroom with a pressed-wood desk and a shared bath, more than a cell but considerably less than a real apartment. Some no-nonsense designer had tacked on a veneer of generic warmth just sufficient to allow the space to be thought of as a modest home by its resident, rather than as a place of confinement.

  Two floors down it was more like a barracks, and the levels below those floors weren’t on the tour.

  A man walked by out in the hall, glancing briefly through the window in the door as he passed. Not a guard, Noah had been reminded at his orientation, but more of a floor monitor; just a benign, overseeing administrator, there for security and safety.

  And this wasn’t a prison, not at all, the welcoming committee had gone on to emphasize. This complex and its surrounding buildings might have been originally constructed as a prison, but funding cuts and changes in policy had orphaned the place in recent years. Local officials in the small Montana town nearby had been delighted to learn that their costly investment might finally be put to profitable use, providing local employment and helping the country deal with its recently declared emergency.

  The old man had arranged his son’s reservation here, and his job. As soon as he’d healed, Noah was to become a key asset in the all-important public-relations push behind the nation’s unfolding, brave new direction. He wouldn’t return to New York right away—he’d be a sort of field correspondent, helping to manage the flow of information from the ongoing fight agains
t the dangerous homegrown forces who’d recently declared open war on American progress.

  Noah’s original accommodations had actually been much nicer; a private suite on one of the upper floors—but his unsatisfactory performance in his first real work assignment had resulted in his lodgings being downgraded a notch.

  This failed assignment had been pretty straightforward: He was to write up an in-depth piece for the news, outlining the inner workings of the recent homegrown conspiracy that had nearly led to the destruction of Las Vegas and San Francisco. The story was to be told from his own point of view as a courageous hostage and unwilling insider.

  His first draft was rejected immediately; there’d been a consistent undertone in the text that seemed to paint the ringleaders, the Founders’ Keepers, in a subtly but unacceptably positive light. His second try wasn’t an improvement, it was even worse. The strange thing was, if only out of self-preservation, Noah had been trying hard to write what they wanted, but the stubborn truths just kept elbowing their way in.

  After an informal inquiry, this first glitch was chalked up to the lingering effects of the Stockholm syndrome, that passing mental condition through which hostages sometimes develop an odd sympathy for the cause of their captors. For the time being it was determined that, until he was better, Noah would be given less-demanding duties and an additional editor to watch over his work.

  There was no shortage of things to do, large and small. A lot of PR spin needed to be applied to the changes that were already well under way across the country. Noah was given a stack of small writing tasks, mostly one-liners and fillers that required far less of a commitment to the web of new truths being woven for consumption by the press and the public. For one of these jobs, he was to simply come up with a suitably harmless-sounding name for a new Treasury bureau that would be put in charge of the next wave of government bailouts for various failing corporations and industries.

  This was the work of only a few seconds; Noah called it the Federal Resource Allocation & Underwriting Division. Nearly a truckload of boxes of letterhead and business cards had been printed before someone in production noticed the problem: The five-letter acronym for this new government bureau would be FRAUD.

  They’d said they believed him when he told them it was an accident, but they’d also moved Noah to this more secure, probationary floor of the residence building just as a temporary precaution.

  Once you know the truth, Molly had said, then you’ve got to live it. What she’d apparently neglected to add was that you’ll also tend to randomly tell it, whether it gets you into trouble or not.

  Noah rearranged his pillows and lay down on his cot, not with an intention to sleep, but just to rest his eyes for a while and try to clear his head.

  A thousand things were flying through his mind. It was a condition that his father referred to as a topical storm, a state in which so many conflicting thoughts are doing battle in your brain that you lose your ability to discern and to act on any of them. This state was regularly induced by PR experts to cloud and control issues in the public discourse, to keep thinking people depressed and apathetic on election days, and to discourage those who might be tempted to actually take a stand on a complex issue.

  They’d given Noah a radio and a small TV, but he knew those wouldn’t help to clarify anything for him. On the contrary; the Emergency Alert System had kicked in shortly after the thwarted attack, and though some individual stations and networks were active again, the news still had the distinctive sameness of single-source coverage. While no real disaster had actually happened, the selected newspeople were breathlessly working 24/7 to puff up the disasters that might have happened, and what might still be looming ahead tomorrow. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt—the three most effective weapons in the arsenal of Arthur Gardner—were keeping the country in an uneasy state of tension and helplessness, much like his own.

  “What can one person do?” That was the passive, rhetorical question that kept people silent and powerless in the face of things that seem too large and frightening to overcome. It was the question in Noah’s mind, as well. Now I see the truth, and yes, I want to live it, but what can I do?

  He decided to sleep on that, because so far he’d been unable to come up with a good answer.

  Noah brushed his teeth and washed as soon as the bathroom was free, left the sink and the shower and the commode a lot cleaner than he’d found them, dressed for bed, and turned in. He rolled over onto his side and saw his first filled calendar grid, with the second empty one beside it on the wall.

  Where would he be a month from now?

  That answer seemed depressingly certain. But then, where might Molly be? Asking that question had become a nightly ritual at the end of these dreary days, and it was still on his mind as he fell asleep a while later on.

  There was no hard transition between consciousness and the beginning of his now-familiar dream.

  Noah opened his eyes and looked around. He was in the small, warm family room of a rustic little cabin. Surrounding him were simple furnishings, hand-made quilts, and corner shelves of keepsakes and photographs. Unlike the mass-produced, impersonal flash of the world he’d left behind, the things here had been built and woven and carved and finished by skilled, loving hands, things made or given by friends and family, made to mean something, to be passed on, and to last through generations.

  Snow fluttered down outside the wide windows, big flakes sticking and blowing past the frosted panes, an idyllic woodland scene framed in pleated curtains and knotty pine. He was sitting in front of a stone hearth. A pair of boots were drying there, with space for another, smaller pair beside. A fire was burning low, a black dutch oven suspended above the coals, the smell of some wonderful meal cooking inside. Two plates and silver settings were arranged on a nearby dining table.

  A simple evening lay ahead. Though it might seem nearly identical to a hundred other nights he’d spent with her, he also knew it would be unlike any other, before or after. It always was; being with Molly, talking with her, listening to her, enjoying the quiet with her, feeling her close to him, thinking of the future with her. Every night was like a perfect first date, and every morning like the first exciting day of a whole new life together.

  Like Molly had said, such a simple existence certainly wasn’t for everyone. But the freedom to choose one’s own pursuit of happiness— that’s what her country was founded on, and that’s what she was fighting for.

  Noah heard a sound at the entrance, and he turned to welcome her home again.

  But when he looked, it was a different room he saw around him. He blinked repeatedly, but the reality he’d woken up to wouldn’t disappear so easily. The man from the hall was looking through the window in the frame, beckoning Noah to the door.

  He sighed, got up, walked over, and turned the lock. It was only a formality, of course; it wasn’t as though the guy outside didn’t have a key of his own.

  After the usual pleasantries the man in the hall offered Noah a tray from the rolling cart beside him.

  “Looks like I woke you up. Sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay,” Noah said. “What’s for dinner?”

  The man lifted the round stainless steel cover from the plate on the tray. “Sure looks like Thursday to me,” he replied.

  “Ah, my favorite.”

  The man had nearly returned to his cart, but he stopped and came nearer again. “Say, I see you here every day, and it occurred to me tonight, we’ve never been properly introduced.”

  Noah put down his tray on the side table inside his door. “I’m Noah Gardner.”

  The man nodded, and casually glanced left and then right down the hallway before he answered, quietly, “My friends call me Nathan. I’ve got a message for you,” he said. “Would you mind if I came in for just a moment?”

  “Of course, come on in.”

  He stepped aside and closed the door as the other man walked past him into the room. Noah watched as he unplugged t
he TV, ran his fin gers along the edges of the desk as though feeling for something hidden, and then clicked on the radio and turned it up loud enough to establish some covering background noise.

  “What is this—?” Noah began, and before he could finish that question he found himself pushed hard against the wall with a forearm pressed against his neck and the other man’s face close to his.

  “You want to know what this is?” Nathan hissed. “It’s a wake-up call. You’re in a valuable position, my friend, and we need for you to snap out of it and start doing the work we need done.” He adjusted his grip on Noah’s collar, and continued. “Now listen closely. Tomorrow, at your job, you sign into your computer right before you leave for the day, but you don’t sign out. Here’s a key.” Noah felt something shoved roughly into his pocket. “You’re going to leave it under the mouse pad on the desk two places down from yours, to your left. Got all that?”

  Noah nodded, as best he could.

  “I hope you do,” Nathan said. He took a step back, smiled and straightened his clothing as if the two of them had just been engaging in some mutual, spirited roughhousing. “To quote a good friend of mine,” he added, on his way to the door. “If they’re gonna call this treason anyway, we might as well make the most of it.”

  “Wait,” Noah said.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” Nathan said. “The meat loaf ain’t much, but I think you’ll like the dessert.” With that, he left the room and resumed his walk down the hall, pushing his meal cart.

  Noah closed the door and stared at the tray of covered plates on the table in front of him. He went right to the smallest of them, lifted the lid and found exactly what he was looking for inside: a lukewarm square of runny peach cobbler. He took the knife, cut down the center, and, just as he’d hoped, felt it hit something solid.

  He extracted the object from the gooey syrup, took it to the sink in the bathroom, locked the door to the adjoining room, and held it under the cold running water until it was washed clean.