The Coming Revolt of the Guards

I was a guardian of the system. A guardian of the most ingenious system of control in world history. A system of control full of openings, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. A system in which the top one percent owned forty percent of all wealth, and the remaining ninety-nine percent battled for the remaining scraps, having been successfully turned against one another - the small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native against foreign, intellectuals and professionals against uneducated and unskilled.

I was a member of the Establishment - a club of business executives, generals and politicians. I made sure to maintain historical unity and order, in which government represents all the people, and the common enemy is always overseas, where disasters of economics or war are unfortunate errors or tragic accidents to be corrected by the members of the same club that brought them about. It was part of my job to encourage impotency amongst people. To make them look to the stars, to leaders, experts in every field, to surrender their strength and submit to the system. In the process, I was able to become everything I've every dreamed of; a man of success, an entrepreneur, a respected member of my community, an ambassador of good will.

I lived in a beautiful city. The capital of steel and smoke, with its monumental skyscrapers covered in a century of dirt and air pollutants blocking out most of the sun - yet another piece of evidence proving man's power to bend nature to his will. It was a cold and rainy Saturday. As always in the morning, I ejected myself from bed to get a fresh bagel and an overpriced coffee. While drinking my coffee, trying to catch a cab and not get completely drenched in the process, I began to wonder: where were the symptoms of global warming we have all heard so much about? I had no clue, because the environment wasn't really my specialty. Drilling was. After consolidating drilling rights in Alaska, I was able to turn my humble exploration company into an oil empire. All I knew about global warming was that there was more oil underneath the ice caps than anywhere in the world. If the caps ever melted, you wouldn't see me at environmental rally or demonstration, I'd be up north, wearing SPF 75, and drilling for oil.

I recall the first office job ever had in my life. I was then seventeen and after a couple of days on the job I decided to start coming into work at six in the morning, about two hours before everyone else, so I could perform all the morning routines of an blue collar worker before anyone else got there. I read my mail, I drank my coffee, I checked the news, I responded to my messages, and when the office finally started to fill up around eight o'clock, I was already ahead of everyone else, I had an edge. I heard that Sam Walton even in the last years of his career would come into the office at 4:00 AM because he wanted to have an edge. Having an edge was one of the reasons why I started working Saturdays many years ago, and today wasn't going to be any different. Yet something was. As I was ridding in the elevator to my office, my heart rate at 120 from all the caffeine I've had, I suddenly felt weak. I couldn't grasp a breath, staggering in the tiny elevator from the pain in my chest. I fell to the ground and was surrounded by darkness.

I woke up with an overwhelming feeling of tranquility. I was back home, spending the summer with my grandparents in their vacation house out in the country, away from civilization. I was twelve again, running across the fields of wheat that glittered in the summer sun and swayed in the gentle wind, like waves on the ocean. And then I saw the other Logicars, they were there as well, standing in the field and smiling. We were now running in sync, together, as one again. I was back where I've yearned to be for all these years. I finally understood that the Universe really was a friendly place.