1976 - Division by Zero

[Calder]

Chapter 21
The Seer’s Office, 13th Floor, National Security Council Building, Washington D.C

The Seer read Achillea’s report of her operation in Aurandel quietly with only a raised eyebrow at some of the more interesting sections. Eventually he put it down and asked her mildly, “Achillea, have you ever heard of the concept of collateral damage?”

“Of course, it’s the thing you try and minimize when we’re doing targeteering.” There was a very long pause before she continued. “I’ve never understood why.”

“Obviously.” The Seer’s voice had a note of dryness in it. “Let’s examine the concept a little shall we? The problem we had was that a move by the State of North Carolina to eliminate the dysfunctional administration of Aurandel and replace it with a functional administration would result in numerous discrepancies between the town and county records being exposed and this would endanger our family. Therefore, the local records would have to be destroyed so their replacement would be by duplicating the state records – whose content is acceptable to us. Agreed?”

“I think so.” Achillea made a mental note to borrow a dictionary later. Without saying a word, the Seer reached into a desk draw, took out a copy of Funk and Wagnalls and gave it to her. She dipped her head in thanks and the two exchanged friendly grins. It wasn’t the first time they’d had conversations of this type.

“The problem is that in doing so, you managed to burn down two buildings and got nearly fifty people killed. And that’s just the start of it. We’ll come on to the longer-term consequences later.”

“Boss, we couldn’t just burn down the courthouse. I know we have before, but those were different circumstances. Given the situation in the town, a courthouse mysteriously burning down would never have been taken as an a accident. There would have been a major investigation of what somebody was trying to cover up and that was something we don’t need. When I found there were four factions fighting for control of the town, I knew I’d have to set up something else. I didn’t care about a gang war but it had to involve the courthouse going up for reasons related to that war. So, I was setting that up when somebody beat the tar out of the Sheriff.”

“Who did that by the way? Your report doesn’t say.”

“I honestly don’t know. We never will know now; everybody who could tell us is dead. Anyway, I also found out that the records weren’t in the courthouse, they were in the police station. That made a world of difference. A courthouse getting burned down is one thing, an attack on a police station is something else. It’s close to civil war. There had to be an extraordinary situation to justify it. I only killed three people, Boss, then they started killing each other. I just watched. Well, before the final fight started, then I was defending myself.”

“Extraordinary, yes. That is the word I’d use. Do you realize you’ve brought almost the entire meat industry to a standstill? Quite apart from everything else, nobody will be getting a turkey for Thanksgiving. Including us by the way; we can’t get a turkey for love or money. Believe me, Igrat’s tried both.”

“She always does, No change there.”

“Agreed. But the point is, in an election year, there is a major food crisis in this country and people can’t get their meat. This is a nation of carnivores. They may not notice an international crisis or two and the complexities of national finance are of no real interest but when Joe comes home from a hard day’s work and finds his wife crying because she couldn’t find a steak for his dinner, he gets mad. The political consequences are going to be disastrous for the incumbent. That doesn’t really worry us; our role here is just to provide a bit of inertia so that they don’t rush into rash decisions. We’ve no real interest in who sits in the White House, or on the Hill either. Well, most of us don’t, but the Senior Chief does. He’s looking for you; he thinks you’re responsible for the prospect of putting a Democrat into the White House.”

“Oh.” For the first time, Achillea looked slightly nervous. “You know, I think I met one of his relatives.”

“Oh, indeed. The problem is that everybody feels this meat business personally. They blame the man in charge for it. Now, the USDA and so on are going to have a whole new set of controls to make sure this never happens again. I’d think that we’ll see each carcass tracked individually and that’s going to cost people. At the moment, there’s no meat in the system at all. It’s all been withdrawn. Every butcher’s shop is closed down while its equipment is checked and sterilized. The authorities are giving priority to the small independent butchers first, they think that they’re more likely to be clean so they can get more back in operation faster. Also, those small family butchers will be hurt worst by the freeze. Frankly, there’s also an element of ‘the big guys caused this, they can suffer’. The cost is going to run into billions though. The government is going to have to carry the cost eventually, one way or another. Add in the tight controls on factory farms that will make them much less profitable and meat prices are going to rise and stay up.

“Let’s put this into perspective, honey. Last year, the meat and poultry industry processed 8.6 billion chickens, 34.3 million cattle, 242 million turkeys, 2.5 million sheep and lambs and 110.4 million hogs. Sales alone totaled 81 billion dollars and by the time salaries, taxes and ripple effects on other industries are included, the meat and poultry industry generates 225 billion dollars per year to the U.S. economy. That’s roughly 6 percent of our entire GDP. Lillith’s had a look at the figures for me and she estimates the country will take an economic hit of roughly 25 billion by the time this disaster plays out.”

Achillea gulped; stunned by the sheer scale of the ongoing disaster. When she spoke there was an edge of panic in her voice. “But that’s not my fault. It was Nathan Stauffer and the people at Pendlewood Farms who came up with this scheme.”

The Seer sighed. “You know, the strange thing is that for all the damage this affair is going to do, the actual extent of the problem is quite small. A relatively small number of infected hogs appear to have gone through the system. Probably no more than three quarters of a million, less than one tenth of one percent of the total. Most of those will have gone to processors where it was sterilized. Most butchers sterilize their equipment every evening, quite a few more often than that. So the damage is probably very limited although I suspect quite a few cases of flu were actually brucellosis. If it had been left alone, the whole business would have been resolved as a series of isolated instances. But, the way it came out at once has magnified the damage out of all proportion. So that much of it is the result of the actions you took. Collateral damage.”

Achillea was thinking. “Seer, did you know that game runs through an entirely different meat processing chain from farm? Goat, deer, pheasant, wild turkey, all of that stuff, they all go through a different butchering system. The two don’t touch. So they won’t be affected. Nor will fisheries. Red Lobster is already doing very well, people queuing down the street.”

The Seer thought for a second, then got up and went to the door of his office. “Lillith, honey, shouldn’t we be buying shares in fisheries and game suppliers?”

“Ahead of you on the fisheries Boss; I started buying in when Achillea sent those first samples up. I’ll get on the game side of things right away. Hunting might take a bump up as well.”

“Thanks, honey.” The Seer closed the door again and returned to the discussion.

“Talking about hunting, what do we do about Randolph Bragan? The FBI as good as said they’ll do nothing about him. He’s covered his tracks too well.”

“And nor will we. In our official capacity, he’s not a threat to national security even by the most liberal of definitions. In our private capacity, he’s no threat to us. So we do nothing. We’re not a group of avenging angels. Understand?” There was a solid note of warning in the Seer’s voice that Achillea knew was not to be disregarded.

“Understood. By the way, somebody might get word to Conrad, wherever he is. Miriam Margolis-Jacobs is doing very well for herself.”

“I’ll see to that. Now, we move on to the next clutch of collateral damage from this Aurandel business. The Savings and Loan scandal. You and Emelia were right, the Savings and Loan industry was taking good money from investors, making excessive loans on worthless or near-worthless properties, and pocketing the proceeds. The Securities and Exchange Commission are ripping them apart. It appears that Emelia was right; the whole Savings and Loan industry is built on a mountain of massively overvalued assets. As of this morning, 747 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States have had their operations suspended because the assets securing their accounts are essentially worthless. It’s getting worse hourly; as more have their doors padlocked, they throw additional strain on the others. The public is beginning to get nasty as well. Last night, the Director of Plans/Systems and Logistics was mobbed and had his car overturned when he took his wife shopping. It seems that people thought the S&L parking permit was ‘Savings and Loans’. He’s spending this morning trying to think of a convincing reason why he was using his official vehicle to take his wife shopping. Be that as it may if the government bails out the industry, the seven hundred plus S&Ls I mentioned will take nearly 89 billion dollars to refund. Lillith reckons the total may well go to a hundred and twenty-five billion.”

Achillea whistled. “To think a jerk like Heckman could have been involved in something that big.”

“He was one of hundreds, probably thousands of small fry. The real problem is the damage to the banking system. Lillith thinks that the combined S&L scandal plus the disaster in the meat industry will throw the government into a financial deficit for at least five years and flip the economy into a recession for at least that long. The collapse of the S&Ls is going to make it harder for people to buy homes and that means fewer will be built, hitting the construction industry and creating further damage. It could be a decade before we finally see the end of the repercussions of all this.”

“What about the people who run those S&Ls.” Achillea was both angry at the extent of the disaster and bewildered by the way her actions in a small town appeared to have caused it. Above all, she wanted to know that the people behind the rackets had been punished. “I know they must have ordered that attack on the police station. Heckman didn’t have the guts to come up with that on his own.”

“They probably did, and that’s something that’s being investigated right now. There’s a new definition of fraud running around. The FBI calls it control fraud. The events in Aurandel are both examples of control fraud in that the CEO of the companies involved used their positions to remove the checks and balances on fraud within a company through the use of selective hiring and firing. These tactics can position the executive in a way that allows him or her to engage in accountancy fraud and embezzle money, hide shortfalls, or otherwise defraud investors, shareholders, or the public at large. In the S&L case, they involved investments that have no readily ascertainable market value. The CEOs used appraisers that will assign unrealistically high values and auditing firms that will bless the fraudulent accounting statements. Again, though, this is nothing to do with us in either of our sets of interests. The most we can do is make sure legislation to stop it happening again is well-crafted and goes through smoothly.”

The Seer sighed slightly. “And that, Achillea, is collateral damage. Now scoot, we’ve both got things to do. Oh, and head up to Saranac sometime and shoot something edible for our Thanksgiving dinner.”

A few minutes later, the Seer was immersed in a file when Lillith knocked on the door and came in. “I thought I’d let you know, I’ve looked into game and hunting supplies and bought some small shareholdings. Prices are already going up so other people are onto the same line of thought. Did you have to send Achillea to sort that problem out?”

The Seer grinned. “Achillea isn’t really a person, she’s a force of primal chaos. Whatever she does has consequences far beyond her initial actions. I think Howie Lovecraft had her in mind when he invented Nyarlathotep. Anyway, she did what we needed which was to get those records destroyed in a way that didn’t link back to us, and in doing so, she’s cleaned out a set of problems we didn’t even know existed. That’s good enough for government work.”

[jemhouston]

One of my favorites

[Johnnie Lyle]

Nitpicking, it’s 1972, not 1970.

One hell of a tale.

[Calder]

Nitpicking, it’s 1972, not 1970.

One hell of a tale.

hmm, are you sure it is 1972? The file I have this on has a last modification date of 2013. It is possible it got copied wrong but I generally just copied and pasted these into word. (Or possibly Stuart changed the date at some point to make other stories fit?)

[Johnnie Lyle]

Nitpicking, it’s 1972, not 1970.

One hell of a tale.

hmm, are you sure it is 1972? The file I have this on has a last modification date of 2013. It is possible it got copied wrong but I generally just copied and pasted these into word. (Or possibly Stuart changed the date at some point to make other stories fit?)

1976, not 1972, sorry.

It’s a presidential election year, which rules out 1970. The text says it put a Democrat in the White House, and other TBOverse stories have Carter as POTUS from 1976 to 1980, and Nixon from 1972 to 1976, so it has to be’76.

[Calder]

Ok, that makes sense. I will update the title but probably won't bother fixing every single post with the new year. I also have the pictures that Stuart selected for each character but don't know how to post them here. How do you embed pictures in a post here? (The images I have are saved in a word file and not ones from the internet like the image link above has.)

[Calder]

This how Stuart thought each character should look.

Achillea

Achillea.jpg

Emelia Souza

EmeliaSouza.jpg

Fred Heckman

FredHeckman.jpg

[Calder]

Nathan Stauffer

NathanStauffer.jpg

Lance Gillespie

LanceGillespie.jpg

Judge Pettigrew

JudgePettigrew.jpg

[Calder]

Sheriff Pete Matthews

Sheriff Pete Matthews.jpg

[Johnnie Lyle]

I would love to have seen Ricardo Montalban play Heckman. He and Mark Lenard were staple 60s villains and very good at it.

[Belushi TD]

I think there's an interesting dichotomy to look at in this story. To start with, Achillea drives into town with the intent to burn down the courthouse in a non suspicious manner. What she discovers about the town and its inhabitants means that the easiest, or perhaps the most pragmatic, means of getting what she wants involves manipulating people into touching off a gang war. During the course of the story, upwards of 50 people die. It seems to me that she regards them as acceptable losses to maintain the security of the Washington Circle. Fairly cold hearted. The baseliners don't seem to matter. She sets her goals, and doesn't seem to care one way or the other that its her need to protect the Washington Circle Daemons that was the proximal cause of all the death and destruction.

However 70 some odd years later, large parts of the Washington Circle decide to stay on Earth and fight it out with the baseliners. Ok, yes, she gets Queenie out. But that's one life saved amongst many. And the Seer's review of it is entirely dispassionate. All about numbers and cashflow and recessions, and nothing about the fact that 50+ people died so that the Washington Circle would be able to exist without scrutiny for another 40 or so years.

The dichotomy is based purely on self interest, of course. Following 70 years of technical advancement to the point where the Seer no longer thinks they can hide in the shadows, they come out and come out with a propaganda blast intended to portray them in the best possible light. I strongly suspect that if people knew the whole truth about Arundel (and every other town like it the circle used over the years) they'd not be nearly so happy about the existence of the Daemons.

That being said, its a great story.

Belushi TD

[Johnnie Lyle]

I think there's an interesting dichotomy to look at in this story. To start with, Achillea drives into town with the intent to burn down the courthouse in a non suspicious manner. What she discovers about the town and its inhabitants means that the easiest, or perhaps the most pragmatic, means of getting what she wants involves manipulating people into touching off a gang war. During the course of the story, upwards of 50 people die. It seems to me that she regards them as acceptable losses to maintain the security of the Washington Circle. Fairly cold hearted. The baseliners don't seem to matter. She sets her goals, and doesn't seem to care one way or the other that its her need to protect the Washington Circle Daemons that was the proximal cause of all the death and destruction.

However 70 some odd years later, large parts of the Washington Circle decide to stay on Earth and fight it out with the baseliners. Ok, yes, she gets Queenie out. But that's one life saved amongst many. And the Seer's review of it is entirely dispassionate. All about numbers and cashflow and recessions, and nothing about the fact that 50+ people died so that the Washington Circle would be able to exist without scrutiny for another 40 or so years.

The dichotomy is based purely on self interest, of course. Following 70 years of technical advancement to the point where the Seer no longer thinks they can hide in the shadows, they come out and come out with a propaganda blast intended to portray them in the best possible light. I strongly suspect that if people knew the whole truth about Arundel (and every other town like it the circle used over the years) they'd not be nearly so happy about the existence of the Daemons.

That being said, its a great story.

Belushi TD

Disagree on a few things.

Achillea does care about some of the people who die, and we occasionally see it. In Division by Class, she refers to Grace Pettigrew as a friend, and there’s a comment that people who consider her a cousin end up dead.

We also see hints of sentimentality in how she treats George and Marcie, plus Sheriff Matthews. Or, for that matter, in her joy in teaching the cops how to be cops, another theme expanded upon in Division by Class.

She also kills Heckman very brutally because she believes he earned it. She wouldn’t do that if she didn’t care about the people who died.

She just has the ability to push that to the side, as the result of her stoic training and experience in the arena where a friend might be dead tomorrow.

The only characters she really treats as expendable is Ray Lowry, and possibly Lance Gillespie.

[Belushi TD]

I'm not sure I agree that its hints of sentimentality with treatment of George and Marcie and Sherriff Mathews. I see it as more of respect for people who try to do their job well, rather than actually caring about them as people.

With regards to the comment about people who consider her a cousin end up dead, it seems more to me of a warning rather than her caring about them. I see it more as the putative cousins caring about her, and Achillea seeing it as a bad move on their part.

As far as killing Heckman, I see that less as doing it brutally because she cares about the people who died, and more because her personal philosophy demands that evil be punished. What's the line? The only justice you see in the world is that which you make? I see that as Achillea meting out justice because she needs to see some justice in this whole town, and her personal philosophy requires that she administer it.

As far as treating people as expendable, the three thugs who were beating up the Sherriff were completely expendable. She made the decision to kill them all before she had been attacked. Her skills are so far above those of the thugs that she notes during the fight that she would kill one of them them with his own knife, unless I'm confabulating fights. Again, her personal philosophy saw what the thugs were doing as evil and she takes it upon herself to administer justice. Therefore, they are expendable.

Belushi TD