Gore Got Some Big Cojones

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But All Gore's balls are snowballs, that's all.



Happy winter, Al. You may restock now.

Torch in the Night, Chapter Two, Part One

Begin with the beginning.

Chapter Two

The Eagle and the Vulture

Washington, DC, a few days later.

Kevin Traynor stood looking out of a huge plate glass window of the First Am terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport. He did not stand out by his height. He was slender, but not athletic, never really having time for a workout. Nevertheless, there was something in the way he stood and walked that spoke of confidence, determination, and pride. Whatever it was, it matched his angular face and resolute chin. The hair framing his oblong face was dark-blond and rather shaggy, but cropped short to appear businesslike. Dark pilot's sunglasses shielded his blue eyes. Away from the office he would wear jeans and a leather jacket, but when he had to dress formally, like now, he preferred a black suit and a silk tie. He had come to the Capital to argue the landmark case First American Corporation v. New York in the Supreme Court. Briefly, with a shudder, he thought of Tom Hardy, a former presidential candidate for the Altruist Party, who had argued that New York's arbitrary gun licensing laws were constitutional.

Obviously, as every individual has the rights to life, liberty, and property, he has the right to defend these rights, and thus the right to own and carry the weapons necessary for self-defense. As these rights are natural rights, any law that abridges them is wrong. Yet, it was not the business of the Supreme Court to make good laws. Its only business was to interpret the Constitution. Thus, to get rid of gun control, Traynor had to convince the justices that the right to keep and bear arms recognized by the Constitution not only was a protection against federal gun control, but also applied to state and municipal governments. He had to get the justices to rule that the Fourteenth Amendment had extended the Second Amendment to the states. In legalese, the Second Amendment had been incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment. After such a ruling, the often capriciously administered state licensing schemes, like in New York, and outright gun bans, like in Chicago, would be null and void.

While Traynor's argument had been perfectly logical, Hardy had worked with smoke and mirrors. Again and again, he had tried to sway the justices with cowardly little half-hints at the fudged statistics his ilk had manufactured. They purported to show that thousands of people were killed with guns every year, while only very few lives were saved by civilian-owned guns. In fact, the opposite was true. Every year, millions of crimes were thwarted and countless lives saved through armed self-defense, many more than all gun deaths by accident, suicide, and crime combined. Yet, that was beside the point. Even if the gun control freaks' statistics had been true, that would have been meaningless. Human rights are not subject to cost benefit analysis. Even if a billion people could be saved by murdering one innocent man, sacrificing the one would still be morally indefensible. Ethically, sacrificing one man to save many would be a kind of the most outrageous crime possible: cannibalism.

However, facts, logic, reason, and rights counted for little in this day and age. Even though Traynor had already secured a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down zoning laws restricting floor area and height of skyscrapers, he knew that the highest court of the land was unpredictable. Justices were not above twisting the Constitution beyond recognition by the most abstruse sophistry for ends they deemed desirable. Regarding property rights, First American Properties v. New York City had in fact been diametrically opposed to the high court's ruling in Kelo v. New London, adjudicated only a few years before. While First American Properties held property rights as sacrosanct, Kelo had meant that individual property rights were at the mercy of the government's political agenda. Sure, while First American Properties concerned zoning, Kelo had been about eminent domain, but to anyone who wanted to see, the contradiction was glaringly obvious. Thus, the present case was a tossup. If the justices believed in the doctored statistics, they might side with Hardy and trample human rights into the dust.

Well, right now Traynor was going to catch the last ever airliner leaving Washington for New York. Across the traffic, cabs, limousines, and buses, he could see the wide steel and glass vault above the airport's new subterranean train station. It served First American's Twenty-First Century Limited, the fastest train in the world. The difference between the Twenty-First Century Limited and what the now dissolved government-run passenger railroad had passed off as high speed trains was like day and night. The Twenty-First Century Limited connected Logan International Airport and Boston's South Station, crossed the Long Island Sound Bridge at New London, stopped at Idlewild before entering the East River tunnel and rushing into Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station. From there, it passed under the Hudson for Newark Liberty International Airport, downtown Philadelphia, Philadelphia International Airport, downtown Baltimore, Baltimore Washington International Airport, and Washington Union Station before arriving at its terminal, Dulles International.

Commercial air travel between the cities of the megalopolis along the Eastern Seaboard had never been a good idea. It was a waste of fuel, money, and time. To get from downtown Washington to Manhattan, one first had to drive out to the airport, go through lengthy, invasive security checks, board a plane for a flight that practically consisted of only takeoff and landing, the most dangerous and fuel intensive phases of any flight, only to drive back downtown once in New York. Only the absence of a speedy and reliable train service connecting downtowns had made this waste viable. Well, it had been put paid to. Plus, the Twenty-First Century Limited served as a feeder to the international airports of the region. From now on, international airlines only needed to provide service to one of the large East Coast airports.

At a time when conglomerates had been out of fashion among the bean counters, the Boss had built First American Corporation to be the largest conglomerate in the world. The bean counters believed shareholders could extract more profit from industrialists if the latter were confined to running some core business ad nauseam. The Boss had proven that curiosity and a taste for new challenges would beat rote repetition any time. He took over market leaders like Durand Chemical, improving them still. He bought ailing, apparently obsolete businesses like New York Pacific Railroad dirt cheap and turned them around.

First American's corporate charter stipulated that the company would undertake any venture its executives thought fun. What they thought fun striving for was expressed by the corporate motto: "The Highest, the Greatest, and the Best." At first, that had often limited capital availability. But in the long run, First American's daring investments usually paid off more handsomely than the timid bean counting of the competition. Over the last few years, First American's return on investment had been slightly but consistently higher than that of the competition. True, some of First American's mega structures and sweeping damn-the-torpedoes investments never turned a profit in dollars and cents. Yet, when a First American ship came in, it made profits beyond the bean counters' wildest dreams. Frequently, First American's approach was so innovative and bold that the company would enjoy a monopoly for years. It would be a monopoly in the best sense of the meaning, with customers gladly paying top dollars for something that could not be found anywhere else.

Read on…

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Want a Couple Feet of Global Warming?

December's barely here, and all of Europe's got enough cold and snow for several white Christmases.

Last year the eco-terrorists claimed snow in midwinter or thereabouts is a sign of global warming. I guess the same is true for snow and cold in late fall.

Here the entire text for the new meteorology textbook approved by All Gore and the Obama administration:

If it's hot, it's global warming.

If it's cold, it's global warming.

If there's no weather at all, boy, is that global warming.

Torch in the Night, Chapter One, Part Two

Begin with the beginning.

"I invented this cure. Do you wish to know why? I invented this cure, not because I wished to help the suffering, but because I wished to defeat the virus. I invented it because I did not choose to stand by and watch a virus — which isn't even a proper life form — kill those who claim to be human beings, the highest life form on the planet. Now, to qualify as a human being one must possess the single characteristic of a human being: a reasoning mind. Most of you are at best half-human, as you may have two arms and two legs and two eyes — but don't choose to think. Well, I chose to side with you anyway.

"You wonder why a thoroughly selfish man would come up with such a cure — and not an altruist? Well, it's only logical. Only a man who lives for himself, and faces nature alone, can succeed at any creative venture. A man who lives of, by, and for others will always fail. How would an other-directed fool be able to do any research? Some of you would snivel to him, 'We want a cure without side effects.' Some of you would snivel to him, 'We want a cure that contains no particles of pigs, for our faith forbids it.' Some of you would snivel to him, 'We want a cure that contains no particles of cows, for our faith forbids it.' Some of you would snivel to him, 'We want a cure that contains no globs of cells, for our faith forbids it.' Some of you would snivel to him, 'We want a cure gratis.' Such a fool would listen to you — and attempt to find a cure that harms no one, contains nothing, and costs nothing. Good luck."

He looked at an American news crew. "When you weren't manufacturing slanted news, you went partying — and mocked me for working late. You ruined your health drinking, smoking, and having unprotected sex. You expect me to cure you — for free?"

He looked at some silver spoon socialists. "You who voted for all of us to pay higher taxes, you who wanted part of my income confiscated to be wasted on inefficient government-funded research projects, you expect me to cure you — for free?"

He looked at some African diplomats sporting the traditional headgear of their tribes. "You witch doctors who preach that AIDS can be cured by raping a virgin, you expect me to cure you — for free?"

He looked at a diplomat from another African state. "You who claim that AIDS doesn't even exist, you expect me to cure you — for free?"

He looked at the papal legate. "You who declare that condoms are sinful, you expect me to cure your followers — for free?"

He looked at Sister Sally of the Order of the Rotting Sores of Calcutta. "You priests declared that globs of cells have a right to life, but man has not. You bribed politicians to make my work impossible. You expect me to cure your followers — for free?"

He looked over the collective of world government diplomats. "You wriggling worms. You scabious savages. You should have come to this country, your savage headgear in hand, begging us to show you how to establish good government and live productively by yourselves. Instead, you slithered up the shores of my country, the noblest country in the world, and brazenly claimed it were our duty to share with you the property we produced. You who never cared to learn how to produce property. You who only know how to destroy and to murder.

"This drug is the product of my mind. Without me, without my work, it would not exist. As the creator of this medicine, it is my right to dispose of it in any way I wish. Need is not a claim. Your need is no claim on my life, no claim to enslave me, no claim to loot my property, the product of my creative work. My ability to create does not put any duty on me to give my creation to those who wish to enslave me. It is not for you to take my creation by force and decide what to do with it. Looters, moochers, rotters, perverts, thieves, slave drivers, murderers of the world — delegates to the world government — listen carefully: You have no right to steal from me, to take the product of my work on any other terms than those at which I am willing to sell.

"I do not feel your pain. I am not caring. I do not care about you. I do not care about your suffering. As far as I am concerned, you can suffer till the cows come home. I only care for myself and for those who deserve my friendship. To trade with me, you have to offer me values — not cries of pain or threats of violence. These values can be as much as a billion dollars in gold or as little as a thank you. But it has got to be some value. I might even have given you the cure more or less for free. But now, all bets are off — I do not present any gifts to thieves. I do not collaborate with cannibals who want to eat me." Towne spoke calmly and coldly, his dark, clean-shaven face hard with contempt and disgust for the creatures making up the majority of the audience. "Now listen, looters: I swear that as long as the world government exists, I will not contribute any values to you. If you cry that you are dying — die! I will not delay your death by permitting you to cannibalize me." He pointed at his forehead. "The only copy of the formula left is up here now. Try and loot this!"

Towne left the eerie silence of the conference room, left the world government complex, walked west along Forty-second Street, back to his laboratory — from the realm of the looter to the realm of reason. Parker high-fived Traynor, both men grinning in triumph. Ngdbdele still stood frozen, gaping. The world was spinning around him; blood was rushing in his ears. How dared that man refuse to serve his brothers? Ngdbdele was a deeply religious man. He had dabbled in the witch doctoring of his native country, then in Islam, and finally, Christianity. All religions agreed that a man should be eager to sacrifice himself to men, without thinking of his own good. No one knew why that should be so, nor did Ngdbdele care to know. It seemed to be very charming that all other religions he had sampled agreed with his native communitarianism. If all religious faiths of the world agreed, they could not be wrong, or could they? Even the socialists and communists, whom he admired for their secular altruism, had stuck to the Christian morality of self-sacrifice, though they had kicked the gods out of their worldview. But he could not understand those Americans. He did not understand that stuff about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Was not America supposed to be a Christian country?

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Quote of the Day

"To travel in silence — by a long and circuitous route — to brave the arrows of misfortune — and fear neither noose nor fire — to play the greatest of all games — and win, foregoing no expense — is to mock the vicissitudes of fate — and gain at last the key — that will unlock the ninth gate."

— Boris Balkan, The Ninth Gate.

Torch in the Night, Chapter One, Part One

Begin with the beginning.

Chapter One

Crosstown

New York City, the near future.

An unmarked silver-gray jet darted across the waters of New York Harbor. The aircraft was sparkling in the sunlight like the waters of Upper New York Bay below, where the orange oval of the Staten Island Ferry dropped behind. To the west, Lady Liberty lifted her golden torch into the sky. The pilot waved a lighthearted salute to the green guardian of freedom and the rights of man. As the jet zoomed in on Manhattan, the skyline grew so rapidly that from the cockpit it looked like a fountain shooting jets of concrete, crystal, and steel into the stratosphere. The butte of Financial District skyscrapers rose on the right. The recently finished towers of the new World Trade Center soared on the left. He zipped between the skyscrapers. Whoosh — already, the executive jet had left Downtown Manhattan. Yet the jet had zoomed past the topped-out steel frame of First American Building towering above the world, cater-corner from Madison Square. Next up came the Empire State Building at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. The steel hat of the stepped limestone pyramid was glistening in the sun. Now, the towers of Midtown Manhattan filled the windshield of the cockpit as a solid wall. The black box of Trump World Tower, the shiny needle that was the Chrysler Building, the irregular spire of Bank of America Tower, and Condé Nast Building with its communications tower stood out. On Fifth Avenue, in the center of things, soared another black box, more than twice as tall as Trump World Tower. Durand Chemical Tower currently was the tallest completed building in the city. With her twin turbofan engines roaring, the jet homed in on the skyscraper.

Carefully, the pilot settled the General Aviatics City Hawk VTOL — a prototype designed to combine the speed and range of an executive jet with the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter — on the square roof of the tower. Kevin Traynor was home. It was a Monday in April, and Traynor could not yet know what was unfolding in the canyons below, what the future had in store for him and his friends.

On Tuesday, after years of research, Dr. Remington Towne found a cure for AIDS. He was naive enough to announce the good news on the website of his small biotech firm, and word spread fast.

On Wednesday, two world health police officials dressed in immaculate brown suits visited Towne in his laboratory on East Forty-second Street. They had come to discuss how to distribute Towne's invention among the afflicted poor in the most humanitarian fashion. Not five minutes later, they fled the building and sped away in their Mercedes limousine.

On Thursday, two federal government bureaucrats dropped by to back up the world health police. They wondered how Towne of all people could refuse the suffering in Africa pity. Well, whatever. The State Department wanted the world government's support for American foreign policy. So they explained to Towne America's — and particularly his — duty of self-sacrifice for the sake of the suffering around the world. When that did not fly with him, they gave him a detailed description of what a hell of suffering the federal government could cause him if he refused to obey.

On Friday, there was a reception to present Towne's discovery to the world at the world government headquarters just a few blocks from his laboratory. Towne walked east down East Forty-second Street. He entered the world government compound, which was dominated by the innocent-looking glass slab of the administration building. On the plaza in front of the administration building, rows and rows of flagstaffs flew the flags of the countries subject to the world government. The tridoveion — the flag of the world government — was fluttering aggressively above his head. The blue flag with the three white doves flying in a circle was displayed from a taller flagstaff than the others. Yet, Towne had to smile as he thought that it still was far below the tops of the skyscrapers. There were many theories as to what the tridoveion actually symbolized — like the duty to give to the third world, or the hope to sacrifice everything to avert World War III. However, to Towne it looked like this purported symbol of peace was a cruel mockery when inventors like him were being enslaved by force.

The conference room was crowded with reporters, camera crews, government employees, world government officials, and philanthropists. Muammar Ngdbdele, general secretary of the world government, was speaking — smiling under his beard and seemingly a picture of benevolence. Towne spied two of his friends, Kevin Traynor and Nick Parker of First American Corporation, standing apart from the other guests. The reception was being televised live to America, Australia, Europe, Asia, and Africa. From Tripoli to Cape Town, from Monrovia to Mogadishu, the whole continent was suffering, dying — even though the witch doctors' governments were trying hard to blank out reality. In front of television screens all over the world, in homes, hospitals, and hospices, people were watching intently to learn what selfless altruist had labored only to give his creation to a suffering mankind. What other reason could possibly have motivated his work?

Ngdbdele introduced Towne. His short eulogy presented Towne as an altruistic, selfless benefactor driven by the suffering of his African brothers. He ended his remarks with, "Please welcome my brother — the Dr. Remington Towne."

To a polite applause, Towne came forward, meeting Ngdbdele at the lectern. The scientist did not raise his voice, but he did not whisper, either. "I'm not your brother, you racist. What would you think if any blond girl referred to any other blonde as her sister, only because of their accidentally identical hair color? Jerk."

Leaving Ngdbdele standing dumbfounded, Towne stepped to the microphone, addressing the audience. "Hi!" He had intended it as a greeting, he had tried his very best — but considering the mob that crowded the room, his voice was hard and tense. It came across as a challenge — a challenge to those that populated the room, and to that which made them possible. He looked at the teeming mass of creatures that surrounded him. It was not a look — it was a slap.

From his jacket pocket, he produced a sheaf of papers, raising it above his head. "This is the only tangible copy left of my findings, including the formula that would obliterate the human immunodeficiency virus." He lifted a metal wastebasket onto a table next to the lectern, produced a lighter, set the papers on fire, and dumped them in. No one tried to stop him or to extinguish the flames. The huge majority of the audience did not believe he was serious. They believed he was up to a joke or a publicity stunt. In no time, the priceless papers burned beyond rescue or recognition, to ashes that crumbled to dust.

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The Gay Airport Science

The major selling point of the security theater groping at airports near you is that the groping is strictly same sex, so you don't get a free handjob out of your patriotic concentration camp duty.

So…

Can gays demand to be groped by a woman?

Can lesbians demand to be groped by a man?

What about bisexuals? Can they demand to be groped by a nonhuman? Like, by a bomb-sniffing dog?

What, then, about zoophiles?

And if I say I'm gay, do I get to be groped by a blond hottie?

All good questions.

Torch in the Night, Prologue

Prologue

The Southern Belle

New Orleans, March 1862.

Andre Durand walked briskly along the dock — while the country was collapsing all around him. He was literally on a life-and-death mission — it was Durand versus the government. The entire South was in open rebellion. Speed, stealth, and determination were required for a chance of success.

Darkness camouflaged his aquiline features as his tall shadow approached the black silhouette of the sternwheeler. The Southern Belle was a workboat, less elaborately decorated than the floating palaces her name suggested. Before the war, the small boat had been carrying passengers and cargo. To Durand, her two disproportionately tall smokestacks with their flared crowns and their guy wires looked like hanging trees.

By birth, Durand was a Southerner — by choice, a proud Creole. His family had lived in Louisiana long before it became American, long before anybody had dreamed of rebellion or of a rebel government. He was loyal to the Union. He would not stay here and let the rebels force him to fight against the only country he loved. Besides, Durand knew that it was impossible for the South to win this war. As a businessman, he was aware of the economic superiority of the North. Even though the rebels had scored some initial victories, the Union had to win in the long run. She had more men, materiel, industries, railroads, whatever. He did not believe that the Europeans would come to the rescue of the South, either. They were not that stupid. Neither did he believe in slavery as a sacred institution to secure the Southern way of life — nor in the secessionist talk of ambitious Southern politicians. He would rather be damned than defend these slave states ruled by dynasties of slave drivers. He had nothing to win from fools who enslaved others by force to live on the scanty product of their physical labor. One resourceful mind like his, if left free, would create more wealth in a day than a whole state of brute slave drivers and their countless victims could ever dream of producing in a century.

Besides being a businessman, Durand was a brilliant chemist. Durand Liquor, his invention, was becoming the most popular liqueur in America. It had been distilled right here in New Orleans, but with secession looming, he had moved his business to Brooklyn, the second city of the State of New York. He had returned to New Orleans one last time to save important records belonging to his company, which had been left behind in the chaos of secession. Of some papers he had additional copies in his Brooklyn archives, so he might simply have burned them to keep them from falling into rebel hands. However, for other formulas there existed no duplicates, so he had to take them home to New York. Now, the documents were safely on board the sternwheeler he had chartered, the Southern Belle. Her master had demanded an outrageous sum for running the gauntlet. Durand had paid him in gold, without complaint.

When he walked up the gangplank, Durand could not help but wonder how slim his chances actually were. His only hope was that the gunboats and batteries of the belligerents would not bother to fire at an unarmed civilian steamboat. But he knew they would, because they could not know that the Southern Belle was a noncombatant. Of course, they would suspect she was carrying contraband. Maybe they could slip past, steaming at night only, hiding near the bank by day. But what if they encountered one of those indestructible new weapons, an ironclad? Two of them had duked it out at Hampton Roads, after the Virginia, as the rebels called her, had given hell to the United States Navy. Only one thing was certain: Those files were too important to be left where the rebels might seize them, in a city that had to become a war zone sooner or later.

Now Durand was standing in the wheelhouse, next to the old pirate. "Cast off, Captain Legrand. It ain't gonna get any darker."

Instead of an acknowledgment, Legrand fed the brass cuspidor. That he followed up with a volley of orders bellowed through the jungle of his tobacco-streaked, formerly white beard. Durand turned his back on Legrand, to look back at what skyline the Queen of the South had. So the Southern Belle steamed, her single wheel turning ever more rapidly, smoke puffing ever darker, out into the murky expanse of the languid Old Man River. The low-lying city behind the levee at the end of the docks receded. Durand had traveled down to New Orleans by what railroads were still running, had bypassed rebel troops on horseback when there was no rail service, hiding in the underbrush if necessary. Traveling with several wooden crates of records and the strongbox he had come for, the land war torn, the sea patrolled by the United States Navy blockading the Southern ports, this was the only avenue left open to him.

Unbeknownst to Durand, a sneaky shadow emerged from behind some stacks of crates back on the dock. The stranger focused his stare on the riverboat shrinking into night and distance. "Run, you nigger-loving, gorilla-worshiping scalawag. Run for your dear little life. Even if you run the gauntlet, you'll never make it — you traitor to your native state." He would rather be damned than let that individual who refused to serve his people get away with that.

While the lights of the city were fading into the distance, Durand became ever more painfully aware that he was taking a terrible chance. Like he knew nothing about the spy on the dock, the rebel knew nothing about Durand's cargo. With the Southern Belle traveled the darkest secret man had ever devised. In the wrong hands, it would destroy the world.

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Phantom Train and Mysterious Boat Released as E-Books

Now the latest Kevin Traynor novels, Phantom Train and Mysterious Boat, are available as e-books as well as dead tree editions. With that, the complete first Kevin Traynor trilogy — Torch in the Night, Phantom Train, and Mysterious Boat — is available in e-book format.

To mark the release, I post the first chapters of all stories in these books, including as an internet premiere those of The Secret of the Lost Tribe, the second story in Mysterious Boat.

Enjoy!

Taunts, Not Truffles, for Airport Pigs

"Oink, oink, oink!" writes one airport pig. "Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing."

And all true. Maybe you don't lie and really don't get a kick out of groping people, but you do the dirty security theater work of the fascist state.

"One day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments."

No, you don't have to. You can quit and get a real, productive job instead of working for the man. Or you can starve to death, which is still more moral than aggressing against disarmed victims, exploiting their fundie fear of having their "private parts" touched to force them into a machine that gives them skin cancer.

"If something doesn't change in the next two weeks I don't know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry."

Why just cry? Suicide is a good option for pigs like you.

"If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, 'But what shall I do?' my answer is, 'If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.' "

— Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience."

Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil.