Freax and Rejex

“They are the aces; they are special. They don’t need to.”

“I don’t see a card on you either. Does that mean you’re an ace?”

He laughed softly. “No,” he told her. “I suppose you could say I’m the dealer.”

“Yeah!” Harlon Webber quipped in the studio. “You look like one, pal!”

Kate continued. “But could you ease the growing fears and genuine concerns that we in America have about this book and its inexplicable power over the people of Britain? Can you understand why it would be viewed as strange, even menacing and sinister, from the outside?”

“Of course it must appear odd to any outsider, but let me allay your fears and concerns. There is nothing to be afraid of. The benefits it has brought our society are endless.”

“And yet, just under two months ago, there was civil unrest in all your major cities. People were protesting against this very book, in scenes reminiscent of the clashes in the Middle East. We all saw the CNN footage of those battles in the streets and the Internet was disconnected throughout the UK for almost three whole weeks. How do you account for that? Were there not also several deaths?”

“There are no riots now,” the Ismus assured her. “Those misguided crowds were agitators who had not read the book and did not understand why it was important they should do so. The deaths were regrettable accidents, no more. Such violence could never occur again.”

“Because the anti-Jax groups have now read the book and are under its, and therefore your, control?”

“Like I said, there are no riots now. In fact, across the board, crime isn’t just down – it’s non-existent.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It’s true. The last reported crime was over a month ago, that’s all types of crime. Just doesn’t happen now.”

“That’s incredible.”

The Ismus grinned at her.

“Isn’t it?” he said. “Then there’s the sale of prescription drugs such as Prozac and Valium – down to nil. People don’t need that junk any more. They don’t need any type of drug, legal or otherwise. Drug and alcohol rehab are things of the past; every former user and addict is now completely clean.”

“I’m finding this very hard to accept, Mr Ismus.”

“Just Ismus.”

“You’re saying clinical depression has been cured by this book? That violent and petty felonies have been wiped out by this book? That dependence on hard, Class A drugs such as heroin has been totally eradicated by this book?”

“You should take a look inside one of our maximum-security prisons. Now they’ve each got four teams of Morris Men and their own internal league.”

“That really is astonishing.”

“It’s just one of the joys of Dancing Jax,” the Ismus told her. “It has united this broken country. Made it into a better place.”

“So can you explain just how that has happened? What exactly are the readers of this book getting from it? What is the power it has over them?”

The Ismus looked into Kate’s eyes until she found it disconcerting and uncomfortable, but she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her. She’d interviewed more powerful people before – or so she thought.

“It gives them order,” he said. “That’s what people want, but are too conditioned to admit. They want to believe in a simpler world where the burden of choice doesn’t exist, where they know who they are and how their jigsaw life fits into the larger pattern. To know and to belong…”

“The burden of choice?” Kate interrupted. “Excuse me, but freedom of choice, free will, freedom of speech are what define us, especially we Americans; our constitution is founded upon that. How can you call it a burden?”

He waved a hand in airy dismissal, which she felt insulted and antagonised by. “What a pretty illusion that is,” he said. “The choices you think are yours are just smoke and mirrors. What choice is there in this world where all the shops and food outlets are the same? Take the Internet, for example; where is the choice there?”

“I don’t see what you’re driving at. There are an infinite number of choices on the Internet.”

His face assumed a pitying, patient expression. “Millions of people online,” he said. “You’d think there should be unlimited choices, unlimited options open to them. But that isn’t what they want.”

“It isn’t?”

“Too much choice is confusing. As I said, they want order; they want to be told what to buy and from whom. People need herding. That’s why the chaos of the Internet is being tamed and moulded, by every one of their sheeplike clicks of the mouse. They’re building boundary walls within infinity because they’re terrified at the prospect of something so limitless and arbitrary.”

“I can’t say that I agree with…”

“It’s a waste of your spearmint-scented breath to deny it. There is only one place to download music, one auction site, one social network site, one search engine, one place to share your videos, one place to buy books, one encyclopaedia and one way to pay for it all… and you say you believe in the illusion of choice? Come now, are attractive women still pretending to be less intelligent than they are to get by in what they see as a man’s world?”

Kate refused to let herself get nettled by him any further and switched back to the book.

“And what about the people here who haven’t been seduced by Dancing Jax?” she asked.

“Interesting word choice. Yes, there are a very few sad individuals. Less than a fraction of a per cent of the population who just can’t appreciate the power and beauty of Dancing Jax.”

“Is it not true that those very people are now facing discrimination, persecution and violent oppression?”

“That’s profoundly untrue; they deserve our pity and understanding, and get plenty of both.”

“Not according to my sources.”

His eyes locked on her and Kate, despite being a veteran of war reporting in some of the most dangerous hot spots of the world, felt a stab of fear unlike anything she had ever experienced.

“Now I wonder what those sources can be?” he asked.

“I can’t disclose that.”

“You don’t have to. I can guess. Tell me, do you always give credence to paranoid conspiracy theorists with personal grudges? Martin Baxter is just a jealous, embittered maths teacher from Suffolk. His grievance isn’t with Dancing Jax. It’s with me. His ex left him to become my consort. Her son is also with me; the boy is one of our four prime Jacks – the Jack of Diamonds. Martin Baxter just doesn’t know when to let go. I feel sorry for the man, I really do. He should move on.”

“Is that why he’s in hiding?” she pressed. “Is that why he’s too afraid to even meet with me and communicates via email only? He is very outspoken and critical of what you and your book have done here.”

“The guy is delusional and a militant agitator. He’s wanted by the authorities here for stoking the very unrest you were talking about earlier. His accusations against me and Dancing Jax have been totally discredited and condemned and the papers uncovered some very unpleasant, shameful details about his personal life. Why would you even listen to someone like that?”

“Sir, what I’m more interested in is the treatment of the people who haven’t embraced your book. What is happening to them?”

The Ismus looked down the lens again and continued. “I intend only to help those people, to try and enable them to come join the rest of us and reap the same incredible rewards from this amazing work. Just as I hope to share it with other countries, yours included.”

“Sir,” she repeated without any respect in her tone. “The rest of the world is watching what is occurring here, watching extremely closely. Washington will not permit this controversial book to be published in the US if it provokes such heated demonstrations and turns citizens into brainwashed zombies who think this life is not their real existence. I really don’t think you can expect the book to be published anywhere else but here.”

The Ismus grinned at her. “And yet,” he said, “earlier this month, at the Bologna International Book Fair, Dancing Jax was sold to many different countries. At this very moment it’s being translated into nine languages. I can’t wait to see those foreign editions, I really can’t. The words of Austerly Fellows are going global.”

The interview ended on his crooked smile and the picture cut once again to Kate Kryzewski outside the Savoy.

“And so there you have it, the current situation in the United Kingdom. I still can’t begin to understand it, but I will say this and once again echo the words of Brandon from Wisconsin: ‘Wake up, America’.”