By examining those graphs in detail, Ogle could assess the emotional status of any one of the PIPER 100. But they provided more detail than Ogle could really handle during the real-time stress of a major campaign event. So Aaron had come up with a very simple, general color-coding scheme. The background color of each screen fluctuated according to the subject’s general emotional state. Red denoted fear, stress, anger, anxiety. Blue denoted negative emotions centered in higher parts of the brain: disagreement, hostility, a general lack of receptiveness. And green meant that the subject liked what they saw. Green was good. Regardless of color, the brightness went up with the intensity of the emotion.
Stepping a little closer and scanning the screens, Aaron could see that a good eighty or ninety of the PIPER 100 were wearing their wristwatches, as per their agreement with Ogle Data Research. There were a few stragglers. Almost all of them were women. One of the problems that had come up with the PIPER program was that the bulky watches looked clumsy on a woman’s wrist, and most women didn’t want to wear them all the time. Hopefully, they were carrying them around in their purses, and would take them out and put them on as soon as the program started.
If they didn’t, they’d forfeit the rest of their money, and their wristwatches would be given to someone a little more reliable. For this, the first test of PIPER, a 90 percent compliance rate would be pretty decent.
“So, what’s the mood of America?” Aaron said. He couldn’t resist asking. He stepped as far forward as he could and stood right next to Ogle’s chair, so that the panorama of screens completely filled his peripheral vision. The effect was like hanging in outer space, in the center of a dynamic young galaxy: against a backdrop of velvety black, bursts of colored light flared unpredictably in every direction, in hues of red, green, blue, and mixtures thereof.
“Hard to say, since we don’t know what any of these people are reacting to,” Ogle said. “I been keeping an eye on this poor guy right here.” He pointed to a screen that had been consistently red ever since Aaron had come into the room. “I think this guy must be right in the middle of a bar fight or something.”
Aaron leaned closer to the red screen and squinted to read the label at the bottom. It read, TRADE SCHOOL METAL HEAD/KENT NISSAN, MT. HOLLY, N.J.
“His blood pressure is through the roof,” Aaron said. “Maybe you’re right.”
He couldn’t help checking out his five participants. Floyd Wayne Vishniak seemed to be in a quiescent state, probably sacked out on his couch watching television. Chase Merriam was in an excellent mood; probably getting lubricated at a cocktail party in the Hamptons.
“Hey, this looks great!” another voice exclaimed. “Jesus! Look at this thing! It’s virtual reality, man!”
It was a tall man in early middle age, with a neatly trimmed beard and a ponytail: the controlled hippie look. He was wearing shorts and sandals and a Hawaiian shirt, and was just tossing a weather-beaten leather satchel onto one of the counters.
“Evening, Zeldo,” Ogle said.
Zeldo’s gaze was fastened upon the Eye of Cy. “This thing is killer,” he said. “Does it work?”
“The input side works,” Ogle said, “as you can see for yourself. Now that you’re here, we can run some tests on the output side.”
“What’s the output side?” Aaron said.
“Okay, I’m up for it,” Zeldo said. He ran over to the nearest Calyx workstation and started to sign in. “I just came over from Argus’s dressing room. He’s waiting.”
“Who’s Argus?” Aaron said.
A faint beeping noise sounded from the direction of Cy Ogle. His big chair, in the middle of the Eye of Cy, had a telephone built into it, and he was punching in a number.
“Good evening, this is Cy Ogle,” he said. “Is there any possibility that I could speak to the Governor? Thank you so very much.” Ogle was actually capable of delivering this kind of dialogue as though he meant it.
“I have acquired Argus,” Zeldo said. The screen of his Calyx system had come alive with a multiple-window display showing the status of some incredibly complicated system.
“Evening, Governor. You mind if I put you on the speakerphone?”
One of the windows on Zeldo’s screen was a rapidly fluctuating bar graph. It had been dead for a little while, but now it put on a burst of colorful activity.
“Okay,” Ogle said, and punched a button on his phone.
“I hate these speakerphones,” said a deep voice. When he spoke, the bar graph on Zeldo’s screen came alive.
“They make me feel like I’m in a box,” the voice continued. Aaron had finally recognized it: it was the voice of Governor William A. Cozzano.
“We want to test our communications link,” Ogle said.
“That’s what Zeldo told me,” Cozzano said. “Go ahead and do something.”
The armrests of Ogle’s chair were huge, like the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. The right one was covered with small keys, like on a computer keyboard. Each key was labeled in small letters.
The left armrest contained a row of several joysticks or sliders that could individually be moved back and forth, left to right, between two extremes. Aaron stepped forward, leaned over Ogle’s shoulder, and read the labels on the joysticks:
LIBERAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 CONSERVATIVE
LIBERTARIAN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 AUTHORITARIAN
POPULIST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ELITIST
GENERAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 SPECIFIC
SECULAR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 RELIGIOUS
MATERIAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ETHEREAL
KIND/GENTLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 BELLIGERENT
Right now, all of the joysticks were set close to the middle except for GENERAL/SPECIFIC which had been set to 1 (GENERAL) and stuck in place with a piece of duct tape.
Ogle punched a button on his armrest.
“Bullet whizzing past my head,” Cozzano said.
“Correct,” Ogle said. “That means that you’re under attack and you’d better take cover and defend yourself.”
“Got it,” Cozzano said. “Do another one.”
Ogle punched another button.
“Apple pie,” Cozzano said. “Which means American values.”
Ogle punched another button.
“Ice cubes. Which means I should cool it.”
Ogle punched another one.
“A B-52. A strong national defense.”
They went on in this vein for several minutes. Ogle had a few dozen buttons on his armrest.
“Argus is Cozzano,” Aaron said.
“Right,” Zeldo said. “Argus was the mythological figure who had a hundred eyes. With Ogle’s help, and with the PIPER 100 feeding him their emotions, Cozzano becomes the new Argus.”
At first, Floyd Wayne Vishniak didn’t know what it was: a burst of tinny music with sort of a patriotic brass-band sound to it. It sure wasn’t coming from his TV set, which was tuned to a fishing program. Finally a flash of red-white-and-blue color caught his eye. It was coming from his wrist. From the big fancy wristwatch that he was being paid to wear. It was showing a logo, a computerized American flag image.
Finally they were doing something. He’d been wearing the damn thing for two weeks and hadn’t seen anything on it except for occasional test patterns. He turned off the TV—the fish didn’t seem to be biting anyway—cracked open a beer, and sat down to watch.
Chase Merriam was out on the lawn of his brother-in-law’s house in East Hampton, Long Island, savoring a mint julep and enjoying the cool night air, when his watch came to life. It didn’t much bother him, since this was a dull party anyway. The sound of the music attracted the attention of several other partygoers, and by the time the program got underway, he was in the center of half a dozen people, standing on tiptoe, staring at his wrist in fascination.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Why don’t we all just watch it on C-SPAN.”
Dr. Hunter P. Lawrence, pundit extraordinaire, moderator of
the Washington Hot Seat, and nemesis of Eleanor Richmond, was a veteran of the Kennedy glory days. He had come down from Harvard to serve as an Undersecretary of State for Cultural Affairs, “liaising” with Ed Murrow’s USIA. After putting in his three years, he had returned to Harvard to take a joint appointment in the Political Science Department and as an administrator at the Kennedy School. He had a Savile Row tattered professorial elegance with a hint of dandruff around the shoulders of his dark gray pinstriped suit. His graying hair, cut long in the back to compensate for its gradual retreat in front, defied the best efforts of spray and gel to get it to lie down, and the backlights of the set turned them into silvery scratches against the dark blue background. As the house filled up and the media consultants fussed over their candidates and the technicians ran around barking into their headsets, he sat in his chair, legs crossed, flipping listlessly through some papers.
In a normal debate, tickets would have been distributed equally among supporters of each of the three candidates. But William A. Cozzano was not technically a candidate at all, even though a spontaneous ground swell had put his name on the ballot in forty-two states. The President of the United States was continuing to pursue his Rose Garden strategy and would not be in attendance tonight, though some of his handlers were already cruising the press room, buttonholing journalists and trying to apply some prespin to the event. The only “real” candidate was Nimrod T. (“Tip”) McLane. A reasonable number of tickets had therefore been handed out to the McLane campaign. Other than that, it was open seating; but given that the event was happening thirty miles away from Tuscola, the place was dominated by Cozzano supporters. Tip McLane was coming into the lion’s den tonight, which was exactly the kind of situation in which he excelled.
Most politicians were soulless tools, windup dolls, but these two guys, Cozzano and McLane, could more than hold their own in intellectual combat. This was going to be a hell of a confrontation, and Dr. Hunter P. Lawrence was just the man to act as ringmaster and lion tamer.
As Dr. Lawrence was engaged in this rather self-satisfying series of ruminations, the voice of the set director scratched from his earplug, “One minute to air.” Lawrence set his papers down, sipped some water, did a phlegm check, walked unhurriedly to each of the debaters and shook their hands warmly and firmly. At times like this, he had to consciously resist his normal tendency to apply what an overly honest colleague had referred to as his “fish kiss” handshake.
The theme of “Campaign ’96” rose in the earplug, unheard by the audience, and on the monitors he could see the nifty computer graphics in which the globe segued into the United States which in turn segued into the flag which in turn blended into a rather nice establishing shot of the Decatur Civic Center, still brightly illuminated by the late evening sun of midsummer. The building was surrounded by buses and cars. People were streaming into the entrances. Most of them were students who had been bused in from local colleges and high schools.
Superimposed over these images were some credits. The logos of various sponsoring corporations were flashed up as the godlike voice of an announcer, prerecorded weeks ago in New York, intoned: “Tonight’s debate is brought to you by MacIntyre Engineering, bringing American technological excellence to the world. Global Omnipresent Delivery Systems, the world leader in physical communications technology. Pacific Netware, creator of the industry-leading Calyx computer system. Gale Aerospace, providing new solutions for a changing world. And the Coover Fund, investing in America for a prosperous tomorrow.
“Tonight, from Decatur, Illinois, the presidential town forum. Joining our moderator, Dr. Hunter P. Lawrence, will be Representative Nimrod T. (“Tip”) McLane of California and Governor William A. Cozzano of Illinois.”
Dr. Lawrence was enough of a self-consciously stodgy eccentric that he had actually armed himself with a gavel. As the voice-over began, he started to whack it. Audience members moved toward their seats and the buzzing clouds of aides and well-wishers that had surrounded the two debaters began to disperse. The noise level dropped and the house lights came down, leaving the three men down below in pools of halogen light, TV-bright. As backdrops they had tall floor-to-ceiling banners—colorized images of turn-of-the-century politicians: Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and William McKinley.
Dr. Lawrence loved this moment, loved the notion that millions of people were watching, loved the fact that, unlike so many other people, he performed without notes or a teleprompter, in short, he loved his own glibness—what open field running was for Barry Sanders of the Lions, extemporaneous and clever speech was for the professor. It was his chance to go and say “in your face” to the tongue-tied masses. It was as good as the first fuck with a new graduate student.
“I will be blunt: this country is on the verge of disaster.”
That was good; that shut them up. Dr. Lawrence cleared his throat unnecessarily and took another sip of water.
“This may be our last free presidential election. I make this alarming statement for the following reasons:
“Our national debt has now reached the level of ten trillion dollars, the surest sign of a society in disequilibrium, even free-fall.
“Our political leaders in the past few decades have shown no ability to address the problems facing our aging, failing democracy.
“Our federal leadership works only in response to pollsters and spin doctors; the sheer mediocrity at the executive, legislative, and judicial levels has driven away the most talented civil servants.
“The only sign of life is at the level of state government, and these officials are burdened to the point of paralysis by the albatross of Washington.
“The values that made this country what it once was—hard work and honesty, or as Emerson put it, ‘self-reliance’—have, like our finances, gone to hell.”
Dr. Lawrence paused to allow his words to sink in. “Are any of you in this audience convinced that the picture is anything but bleak for the future? I am sorry to be so blunt, but a lifetime of study of and love for this country compels me to set the stage for this debate with these thoughts.
“One century ago, a candidate looking back on events of the last decade would have seen feverish activity in the realms of technology, art, and politics. During that period, men with names such as Diesel, Benz, and Ford had been hard at work perfecting a new device called the automobile. The first telephone switchboard had been installed, the first subway system was under construction in Boston, and Thomas Edison had opened something called a kinetoscope parlor—the first movie theater. The gramophone, the rocket engine, the radio, and X-rays had all just been invented. And, as if these innovations were not important enough, the first professional football game had been played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.”
A murmur ran through the crowd and gradually bloomed into laughter. Cozzano and Dr. Lawrence exchanged smiles. This was typical for Dr. Lawrence: a subtle jibe that could have been interpreted as either a dig or a compliment. Cozzano chose to treat it as the latter.
“But despite this rapid technological progress, the political picture a hundred years ago was far from rosy. Foreign interests controlled our economy; an unfeeling business class brutally exploited the people of the United States; the political structure of this country was shot through with the most shocking corruption from top to bottom; divisiveness characterized the relationship between sections of this country, and between races; foreigners newly arriving to work in our country suffered attack simply for wanting to come to this blessed land to improve themselves. Beginning in the late 1880s the poorest farmers and workers in the West and South united to form the Populist movement. They failed to reach the middle classes and the cities; their message became shrill. But out of that movement came the Progressive movement, one of whose most eloquent spokesmen was William Jennings Bryan, who spoke in this town a century or so ago. His message was simple: government is for the people. The effect was profound. The Progressive movement spread across this part of the countr
y with the speed and fury of a prairie fire. Progressivism blended the skills of the best of this country with the ambitions of the middle 70 percent—the middle classes—to remake the system and allow this country to endure through the twentieth century.
“We need a new populism and a new progressivism and a new way to remake the system so that the values of honesty and hard work can once again have a nurturing environment in which to grow, and self-reliance can once again take its place.
“Tonight we will discuss these problems from many different directions. But I would like to begin by discussing a concrete issue: the trade imbalance.
“It is January of next year and you have just taken the oath of office. The economy remains uncertain. It seems as though the Japanese lead in the automotive sector has become insurmountable. How do you, as President, tackle that problem? Representative McLane?”
thirty-seven
TIP MCLANE had already adopted his characteristic pose, leaning forward toward the camera, head down, staring intently into the lens. As soon as the red light came on, he unloaded: “First of all, Dr. Lawrence, let me say that I would like to thank you, and the people of Decatur, for the opportunity to come here and participate in this forum.”
A few hundred yards away, Cy Ogle was crowing. He had thrown his head back and broken into triumphant, falsetto laughter. All around him, the Eye of Cy had gone into various shades of blue. It had happened the moment the phrase “first of all” escaped from Tip McLane’s lips.
“Lemme just jot that one down,” Ogle said, making a note. “Never begin with ‘first of all.’ ”