Atlas Drugged Read online

  “Quiet, quiet. Out of order,” many in the audience call out.

  “Don’t you know your place?” the woman next to him yells.

  Unmoved, the young man just stands and looks straight ahead at Manfreed.

  “No, no, it’s all right,” the professor replies. Unable to hide his dismay that anyone would presume to ask a question in the middle of his speech, let alone challenge him, but showing no outward sign of anger, Manfreed instantly decides to turn the unprecedented moment into a teaching experience.

  “Young man, I won’t ask you who you are or where you come from. I just want you to know I feel sorry for you. Have you learned nothing? Are you one of those misguided souls who delude themselves into believing that they are responsible for others? Have you forgotten the first rule of self-interest—that there is nothing but self-interest, that we can only act out of self-interest, that we should only act out of self-interest, and that we don’t owe anybody anything? Are you still feeling guilty for your success and the failure of others? Worse yet, are you a looter? Do you want others to be responsible for your failures, and do you want to live off them? Do yourself a favor and free yourself from your regressive, inhibiting, socialist ideas. They destroyed our country once. Don’t let them do it again. Honor John Galt.” All eyes on him, the young man chooses to say nothing more and sits down.

  “Around the world, Free-for-All market successes have occurred, though none as sweeping as what’s happened in Mississippi. We can only hope for more like that in the near future. But in Mexico, right on our doorstep, perfect positioning, the sweeping privatization of public services has taken place on a grand scale. And our corporations have been able to cross the border and reap profits no one ever dreamed of. The national gas and oil resources have been sold to a private conglomerate in the Corporate States, and it is already been reaping huge profits. Don’t believe press reports of protests and riots because of increased prices. Outside agitators who have been paid to do the dirty work of international companies competing with ours are responsible for all the trouble. Our companies’ private security forces have everything under control. Similar privatization deals are occurring on every continent. Our corporations are acting like Atlas—heady with limitless possibility, drugged on the power of self-interest.

  “No matter how much criticism we hear, no matter how loud voices may be raised against our fundamental beliefs, let us never forget that all of these breathtaking improvements and opportunities have been possible for one reason alone: Total deregulation of our economy and market, complete noninterference by government, the end of unions. Our government has been converted into a board of directors responsible first and foremost to corporations. The idea was so simple it was lost on generations of leaders here. But now its possibilities inspire almost everyone.

  “Some people disparage us by saying we live by the ‘law of the jungle.’ But I think of that as a positive. They’re paying us the highest compliment without knowing it. The flip side of ‘the law of the jungle’ is ‘survival of the fittest.’ And that’s what we’re all about. Now more than ever, each of you needs to carry the message that will sustain and save world economies. Our goal is to convert all nations to the Free-for-All market. As we have proven time and time again, it is a finely wrought machine. It is perfect. It is an expression of ‘natural law.’ In the perpetual war that we need to keep waging, that we will never be free from waging, government is our sworn enemy. Greed is Good. All good comes from greed. That is all ye need to know.”

  Expecting the mysterious voice to break in, Manfreed pauses and surveys the audience, hoping to be able to spot the slightest move that would reveal his whereabouts. But there’s dead silence and no one so much as stirs.

  “We now come to the final portion of today’s program,” Manfreed says, appearing relieved to be able to begin. “I have the great pleasure of inducting three of our most promising New Atlantis associates into the Circle of Atlas, the corporate body that manages New Atlantis. Will Enrique Reyes, Zora Tremmon, and Albert Swift please come forward? They are living examples of the power of the Free-for-All market in action. They came to New Atlantis three years ago from different parts of the country and the world. Together, they created the most outstanding for-profit proposal we have seen in two decades. They presented it to the board of the Taggart Venture Fund at the end of their first year and received a $500,000 loan. Today, they head a thriving company, and not just a thriving company but a model for all companies and an inspiration for others to bring ideas to market.

  “Their product, Atlas Energy, is a high-potency drink sold throughout the world, and their chain of Atlas Fitness Centers is franchised throughout the Corporate States with plans to expand worldwide later this year. They have repaid their loan with interest, as well as a twenty percent share of their profits—and believe me, those are already in the millions with enormous opportunities for growth. And, as I’m sure you realize, they have only been able to achieve their success in such lightening speed and with such spectacular results because, and only because, they have been free of government overregulation. Bureaucrats have not had the power to stand in their way.”

  With the trio now on the stage, he motions toward them and says, “Enrique Reyes developed the secret formula for the most sophisticated and effective high-energy drink ever produced. It’s so powerful that I hesitate to call it just a drink, though that’s what they call it for marketing purposes. I would call it a drug, in the best sense of the word. Believe me. It’s everything you can imagine in a liquid that can transform the chemistry of your body and add years to your life. I’ve been drinking it since it first went on the market, and I’ve never felt better. Escaping from Cuba, where socialism has suppressed free markets and taken the creative life out of people for more than half a century, Enrique is a scientific genius with a natural aptitude for business. He’s proof that you can’t extinguish the human spirit. He’s flourished in the Corporate States.

  “Zora Tremmon was born in the Corporate States to parents who fled totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. She created the computer and social network programs that market and manage the sales of Atlas Energy, as well as the franchises of Atlas Fitness Centers.

  “Albert Swift, a native of California, created the patented Titan WholeBody Harmony Machine that is available only at Atlas Fitness Centers. There is truly nothing like it anywhere in the world. Independent scientific studies reveal that regular use lowers body rhythms, harmonizes the brain, and produces unique levels of physical strength.

  “The proprietary, thirty-day program developed at Atlas Fitness Centers, combining a regimen of the Atlas Energy Drink and the Titan Machine, guarantees weight loss, energy gain, and total-body toning. It actually cures conditions like diabetes and shows promising early signs of helping reverse the effects of spinal cord injury and Parkinson’s.”

  He shakes each of their hands and gives them a miniature statue of Atlas like the one in the lobby with their name and Circle of Atlas inscribed on the base. “Let’s hear a round of applause for our free-market heroes,” he adds, looking out at the audience. “You can buy the Atlas Energy Drink as you exit the pavilion. Drug yourself on it. It works like nothing else! Take a Fitness Center brochure to find out how to join the one nearest to you. And consider becoming a franchisee. And now, fellow Atlantans, until next year, good day.”

  After a lengthy, thundering ovation, the crowd slowly make their exit. Above them, a small airplane buzzes the campus tugging a banner on which are written the words “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.” Most people shake their fists at it and shout, “John Galt lives! The market is God!” The redheaded, young man looks up and smiles.

  Inside, backstage, an enraged Manfreed, barks at his assistant, Baron Rooky. “How could you let this happen? You’ve made me look like a fool.”

  “Me?” Rooky fires back. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Find out who that redheaded bastard is, who said ‘bullshit’ in
the middle of the president’s speech, who the hell cut into my speech, and how he did it, or you’re out of here. We’ve got to crush those fuckers completely. And I mean completely! This is war. I don’t know who’s behind this. But no one gets to do this to Hilton Manfreed. There can be only one winner. And there will be only one winner!”

  TWO

  Assist, Resist, Desist

  SUNDAY, JUNE 5: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN. The gray-blue sky is completely overcast. It’s been that way all morning and there are no signs of clearing. It is noon, but there’s an ominous feel to it. It’s the kind of day you want to come in out of—for the warmth and comfort of whatever you can find. You’ll settle for anything. It is late spring, but it feels like winter. It is cold and damp. Nothing is in bloom or shows signs of blossoming anytime soon. Trees and plants are barren of buds waiting to leaf and flower. The landscape seems drained of all color, turned into a study in black and white.

  From every direction, in what has become a Sunday ritual for years, lines of men, women, and children flock to Central Park. If you were in an airplane, you’d think giant snakes starring in a horror movie were infesting the place. They come not for a concert or just to relax and enjoy the day, as in better times. They are coming to eat. They are the city’s fringe population. They are already homeless and destitute—may be barely able to pay their rent or afford to eat, a few bucks away from having to live on the street. The park is their salvation. They and others like them make the trip every day, twice a day, at 7 a.m. and 5p.m. Sunday is special, an all-day buffet. Feedings start at noon and continue until 4 p.m.—or until the food runs out, which is lately more often than ever. Every day, hundreds more people—too many— come.

  Today, the earliest arrivals start lining up at 8 a.m. It’s the same story at every entrance. They’ll tell you they’re going to Cooperville, not Central Park. It’s their way of pinning their plight on Ham Cooper, president of the Corporate States of America. Today, there’s at least one Cooperville in every major city. It started as a trickle of displaced people ten years ago, to which no one paid much attention. After all, there had always been homeless people—drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, the poor, les miserables. Everyone wished they’d go away, tried to ignore them, and discounted them as human waste. At best, they’d throw them a few bucks. At worst, people felt they had done something to deserve their fate—and couldn’t have cared less.

  But before anyone realized it, thousands of men, women, and children were on the streets—or barely scraping by—and they squatted wherever there was hospitable vacant land. Their numbers had grown so big so fast, no one knew how to relocate them—or where. They were everyone’s relatives, friends and neighbors—working people who had never needed a handout in their lives, even people who had owned small businesses. They came from everywhere—within the five boroughs of the city, the suburbs, and from across the country: Scarsdale, Dallas, Seattle, Chicago.

  Something was terribly wrong with the economy. People thought they knew whom to blame. Cursing Cooper became a national pastime. “Cooper doesn’t give a shit about us,” shouts a woman in her late thirties. “Right on,” says everyone within earshot. “That fucker should rot in hell,” says a man in his sixties on a walker. “I voted for the bastard,” he adds. “I fell for his campaign slogan, ‘Free markets free Americans to be rich.’ I knew he was a whore for the rich and Big Business. I just never thought he’d sell me out. My company folded. I lost my job, my pension, and my health insurance. I’ve got nothing. Fuck the American Dream.”

  At the 59th Street entrance to the park, the north side of Grand Army Plaza, the line stretches down the east side of Fifth Avenue to 50th Street. It’s made up mostly of families. “I’m hungry, mommy, and I’m tired of standing,” one little girl says above a whisper, looking up at her anguished mother. “We’ll be eating soon, sweetheart,” she answers reassuringly. “And there will be plenty to eat.”

  As though protecting themselves from the blinding glare of a solar eclipse, the people look away from the windows of the exclusive stores on Fifth Avenue—too painful a reminder of a world that doesn’t exist for them. But they can’t avoid taking in the fabled Plaza Hotel. An older woman, probably in her late seventies, points to it and tells a woman in her twenties next to her that she lunched at the Palm Court every Saturday for years. “I just loved the stained glass ceiling,” she says. “And what wonderful teas. That was before all my investments were wiped out when the stock market collapsed.” Spare me. And I’m Elizabeth Taylor the young skeptic thinks to herself. Why do I always get stuck with the creeps?

  Her driver waiting beside the open door of her limousine, Countess Isabella de Horsch (nee Idabelle Sue Raft, formerly of the ruralest of rural Alabama) makes her calculated exit from the main entrance of the Plaza. She doesn’t deign to look from side to side but walks slowly, in the measured steps of a bride going down the aisle, making certain everyone can feast their eyes on the product of her three hours’ worth of preparation. She and Count Henry bought their penthouse condominium five years ago, shortly after he bought their titles through a Polish website. She, in turn, has done everything her husband’s riches and modern medicine can do to banish the backwoods from her looks, if not her psyche or entirely from her speech. The icing on the cake are her four surgeries to make her look like Marilyn Monroe. And she is dressed in a knockoff of the subway sex dress the bombshell wore in “The Seven Year Itch.” She affects Monroe’s sultry speech as a way of overcoming a southern twang—well, at least she wishes.

  “Wilson, whatevah you do, don’t proceed across Central Park South,” the countess orders her driver as she brushes the air with her left hand and straightens her dress from under her with her right. “Ah simply can’t bayah to see all those homeless people on the street. Whah they positively offend the eyes, I must say. Someone has to do something about them. They littah the place just by being heah. Human littah, that’s what they ah. There ah more and more of them every day. Where ah they coming from, Wilson? Can’t anybody put a stop to it?”

  “Times are really tough, ma’am,” the driver says.

  “Well, they’ah always tough. All ah know is that we paid eighteen mil for ahwah penthouse. It was a steal. The count always steals. I mean gets a steal. And ah don’t want to have to look at a bunch a bums across the street. It positively offends the eyes.”

  “I’m sorry, Countess,” Wilson replies. “But there’s no other route for me to take today. Westbound traffic is completely blocked from 58th Street to 43rd Street and, because of it, westbound traffic on 42nd Street is at a standstill. The Greek prime minister is in town. Two hours ago, I took the count to the Hilton to meet with him. We needed a Secret Service pass to get through security. It’s gonna be like this for hours.”

  “If you must,” the countess answers with a sigh. “Let’s just hope someone gets rid of these people. They’re ruining property values.” As they drive along Central Park South, suddenly the countess thinks she recognizes a familiar face among the homeless. But that’s impossible. I must be seeing things.

  The Central Park Cooperville has turned into a city-within-the-city, a full-fledged commune. Everywhere you look are tents, cardboard boxes, lean-tos, sleeping bags—anything that can serve as a shelter or a bed. Several shacks are made out of scrap metal. In “Cooperspeak,” they are mansions, the homes of the park’s longest and most creative and resourceful residents. Some have even been “sold” when their owners have moved on. There are through-streets and cul-de-sacs, named and numbered. There are playgrounds for kids. Some people have moved close together, making makeshift row houses. Ten huge feeding tents are in the middle of the park, spaced about every four blocks from 60th Street to 110th.

  According to a study by the social research firm of Bates & Rich for the deHaven Foundation, an estimated 7,500 squatters actually live in Cooperville at any given time. The average age of residents is forty-five. Forty percent have lived there for three years or more. Thirty perce
nt had been small business owners. Thirty-five percent had worked in manufacturing jobs. Another thirty-five percent were midlevel managers in midsize corporations. Sixty percent are married or have been married. Thirty percent have a family member with them. The researchers observed, “If the talent in Cooperville resided in one business, it would have one of the most educated and experienced workforces in the nation and would easily be a Fortune 50 Company.”

  Thirty percent of residents are sixty-five or over. But because Medicare and Social Security were discontinued twenty years ago, they are destitute. Almost everyone in Cooperville has been thrown on the street by circumstances beyond their control—the series of recessions that have gutted the economy in the past ten years. The pattern of dislocation, researchers found, is almost always the same: They couldn’t find work after they were fired when their employer shipped jobs overseas. They used up their savings. They lost the equity in their house when the real estate market tanked. Because they owed more than it was worth, they couldn’t afford to sell and, eventually, the bank foreclosed on it.

  To the researchers’ amazement, Cooperville has evolved into a self-sustaining community—what they called “a full-fledged model, a working democracy.” Natural leaders emerged almost from the start. Before feedings actually took place in the park, they were the ones who had “the heart” to tell others, especially new arrivals, where and when they could find food, clothing, employment help, and similar resources throughout the city. And before long, as the numbers grew, a core group saw the need for some form of organization to create ways to help people within the park. They elected their own governing body. And when they needed a name to call themselves, they came up with Cooperville. “President Cooper fucked us,” the then-newly elected “mayor” said. “It’s the least we can do to let him know we know—and we’ll never forget.”