Leo arrived at Admin HQ before they opened at dawn. He rapped on the door and, to his surprise, it was opened by Paul Kerr himself.
“You’re your own receptionist?” Leo asked.
“Come in here. Yes, and everything else, too. In fact, I’m the only one here so far.” He re-locked the door and brought Leo into his spartan office. It had only a desk and 7 folding chairs. It was cheap, efficient, and exactly what Leo expected.
“Sit yourself,” the Progressive leader told him, “and catch me up on what you’ve been doing.”
Leo sincerely liked Paul Kerr. He was pleased, although surprised, that the man he knew to be the top leader of the revolutionary process in America would take the time to renew their friendship. Nevertheless, he didn’t intend to waste any of that time.
“You sent me to Oklahoma over that Dr Johns acquaintance of yours. He thought he should get an exception to the fossil fuel moratorium. I didn’t have much effect, and he ended up using some natural gas for his experimental process anyway. He did it on himself. Then you sent me to Texas to set up the drug addict program. I actually thought that was going pretty well, but we underestimated the backwardness of the locals and they destroyed the place. I understand that it’s working OK now, under new, more capable, management.”
Kerr smiled. Apparently, he already knew what had happened. He asked, “What about you? Did you learn anything?”
“I learned that some places aren’t as physically bad off as we are here. I also learned that there’s still some residual violence going on. I guess, too, I started getting used to being called ‘commissioner’ and listened to, even when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I think I also learned that I could have done a lot better than I did.”
Without reacting, Kerr said, “I have a new assignment worked out for you, but it’s going to take some explaining. Sit back and get comfortable.”
Leo listened.
“As you know, the richest people aren’t running things any more. That much happened before you left New York. Our coalition, the Progressive Class and the Greens, has taken power. The armies, the police, all the repressive forces, have pretty much either disbanded or given themselves over to local authorities, just as we asked.
‘I imagine that you also know that people hold you, personally, in very high regard. Many of them credit you with having guided the revolutionary process, whatever you and I may think about it. I would go so far as to say that more people know the name Leo Torres in this regard than any other name, including mine. I saw part of your interview yesterday. It reaffirmed what I thought before about your next assignment.
‘Leo,” Kerr leaned forward in a familiar tone of camaraderie, “we’re asking you to try to get elected as a delegate to a conference leading to a new world government.”
Leo was too shocked to answer. Thankfully, Kerr continued: “This same process of electing delegates to a world conference is going on, or soon will be going on, throughout every area where we have communications. It’s the next necessary step in creating a lasting civilization without all the flaws of the previous ones.”
Leo found his voice at last: “Do you realize how ridiculous that is? If you started a list of my qualifications for world government, you’d be through before you began. I don’t have qualifications!”
“Actually, you do,” Kerr continued. “You stuck with us after you joined the rebellion, and you’ve carried out a couple of assignments since then. You didn’t give up on either one of them, and you didn’t try to turn them into personal advantage for yourself. That’s miles ahead of some of the people we’ve assigned.”
Leo protested: “You sent me to Oklahoma and you sent me to Texas. I had to come back from both of them without any success. I rode out of Oklahoma without really deciding anything or organizing anything. I barely got out of Texas ahead of a lynch mob. I’m not sure what to call it, but I’d never call it success!”
Kerr persisted, and Leo realized that Kerr wasn’t holding a conversation, he was persuading. The leadership decision had already been made and all that remained was to convince him, Leo Torres, to do it.
The only way out of this, he thought, is to defy Paul Kerr and break with the revolutionary leadership. A streak of panic set in, if he wasn’t continuing to be with them, then what was he? Was he against them? Or was there some way to wiggle out of this without cutting any ties?
Torres said, “You know I’m not suited. You know that better than anybody, because you know me, whether anybody else does or not. If I gave in to your orders, it would have to be under protest. But, just for the sake of argument, what would I have to do?”
Kerr: “You’d have to function as a candidate in an election campaign. At this point, we could probably just appoint you, but we’re trying to go beyond the days when we rule by edict. We need a government by and for the people, one they can believe in. They aren’t going to accept a system that’s just written up and presented to them. They are going to have some confidence in the process and in the people doing it. That’s why we’re setting up an election.
‘You might not win,” he grinned, “And right now it sounds like that’s the outcome you’d prefer. But if you did win, then you would meet in the UN with other leaders and hammer out some kind of an ongoing government that could take us into a future in which we flourish.”
Leo tried to hide his dismay and at least sound interested, “I couldn’t do this. But why are you even doing it? Aren’t things getting better right now?”
“As you say, things are getting better. But that’s only relative, it’s only because things were so horrible before. All we’ve really changed so far is to stop doing what we were doing to destroy ourselves, we haven’t made one positive change. That is, we haven’t done anything but react so far.” He leaned forward and put a hand on Leo’s knee, “We have to go forward. We have to! If we don’t, we’ll fall backward.
‘I don’t know how much history you’ve read. I know you’re working on that, but I don’t know how far you’ve come along. But Leo, this isn’t the first major revolution in human history. All of them made contributions, all of them helped in the grand scheme of things, but none of them were able to come up with an ongoing way for people to live. We need a set of rules, expectations, behaviors, that will make it possible for our species to live up to its potential.”
“But you know that I don’t know anything about such things,” Leo insisted.
“Brother, fix this in your mind. Neither-does-anybody-else! This is new territory. You know that I’ve been involved as much as anybody, at least in this country, but even I don’t know what we need. Of course, I have some ideas…”
“Like what?”
“All right, I’ll give you my own ideas, but remember it’s only speculative and it’s only personal. Our new, better, society is going to have to work things out for itself.”
Kerr took a long breath. “The secret is democracy. Democracy is very powerful, even partial democracy such as we used to have. I think that democracy can and should be spread to all aspects of civilized behavior. I think that an individual should have a say-so in everything that affects him or her, and that say-so should be commensurate to the extent to which they are affected. That’s different, you understand, from just ‘one person one vote.’ It means that the things that matter to you most should be the things most under your control.
‘Does it sound like pie in the sky? Just think about where we are. Why do you think that we’ve restored communications first? Why not transportation or manufacturing? We restored communications first so that people could network with each other to work things out. Right now in America, and in most countries around the world as far as I’ve been able to find out, people are organized in their own local areas. It’s a hodge-podge of course. There are war lords in some places, but most places have evolved some kind of a democratically selected committee that coordinates local activities. Most of them, up to now, have listened to us during this emergency period. But, in the long run, they need a system to run things for themselves. Each of those local committees needs to elect delegates to some kind of governing bodies covering larger areas, and then to even larger areas, until eventually we have a world government in place.
‘But, in my own view, and it’s just my personal view, these higher bodies would not implement laws the way old congresses and legislatures did. The new ‘higher’ bodies would organize proposals, call it legislation, and pass them back down through the system to be voted on at the original, call it the lowest, level. The local organizations most affected by the proposal would vote first, in my view. Once everybody has a communication device and access to the internet –- we’re not far from that now – the people will literally be running everything!”
It was too much for Leo. “I’d have to think about it to even get it straight in my mind what you want. Even if I did understand it, I couldn’t do what you’re asking.”
“Yes you could. You did OK on that interview yesterday, and that’s pretty much what you would be doing as an election candidate, doing interviews. You’d have to travel, in fact you’d have to go on an extended tour, because people need to see you in person. We’d call it a ‘listening tour,’ and that’s what you’re good at, listening. But you’d have to answer questions, too, just as you did yesterday.
‘There’s a lot more to this than just being a candidate. You’d be taking the early steps in developing the democratic network that will eventually run things. It’s an absolutely necessary step, and I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I didn’t think you could, or at least if I didn’t think you had a better shot at it than other possibilities.
‘Leo, you have two qualities that make you good for this assignment, or better than other people. Whether you like it or not, one is that, for want of a better word, you’re famous. The other is more important. You’re a solid supporter of this revolutionary process. You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of how you’ve acquitted yourself on assignments, but believe me, the leadership is impressed that you neither gave up nor tried to turn your assignments into your personal advantage. Knowing you as I do, I doubt if you were even tempted.”
“I’m not going to say yes,” Leo insisted.
“OK, but don’t say no either. Just think about how much this needs doing and it wouldn’t hurt if you had a little trust in my judgement, our judgement, in choosing you. Get back to me when you’re through anguishing about it.”