BALANCING ACT

by Andrew Barber

When Renee called me, she was immediately pleading. “Lucus, Joseph was pulled for some mystery digging job for the last five days. He got home, but I was on a ‘date’ with Mr. Five Stars. I’d left him a note. Now he’s gone. His luggage and old kit are here, but he isn’t. No note, nothing.”

“You don’t know where he is?” 

“Five Stars could track him for me. I’d rather not ask. When I have to date him, I’d rather it just be for the silver food tickets.”

They weren’t dates. It was coercion. Worst. She used the term ‘date,’ and we all understood. She wasn’t even getting gold tickets for her time with him, which just went to show their trademark ‘Cruelty Demonstrates Power’ philosophy.

“I have a couple of ideas where he might be,” I told her. I went off in search of my little brother.

*** 

On the way to the dead mall, I was stopped by three Nappies (as we called them). It was cold after sundown, but they all had their characteristic right sleeve rolled up so people could see their stars. I nodded and hoped I’d get past them, but one stepped right in front of me so close and fast I’d have collided with him if I hadn’t been ready for it. It was a day-one Nappy training move.

“Hey, friend,” he said. “We’re doing star tats in the van. How’s your arm?”

I dutifully rolled up my sleeve. There was an outline of a five-pointed star on the inside of my forearm, helpfully marking where to scan for my ID chip. 

“Well, ya got the basics. You’re on board. But it’s been five years. Couldn’t you have more?” He displayed his arm. Three stars, two filled with black, and an open outlined one were climbing up from his wrist. His compatriots helpfully showed their stars—two blacks, and one black with another outlined. If head Nappy here inked a hundred first-time stars, he’d get his outline filled in. But by now, everyone had their first star. These were low-level wannabes enjoying their tiny scrap of power and trying to make the impossible status climb. 

“I’m an introvert. A follower. And I promised my mother I’d never get a tattoo.” The safe answer, pure B.S. they wouldn’t challenge. Thankfully, they weren’t bored enough to make trouble for me. They gave me a pamphlet on some ways to earn stars and let me move on.

The empty mall had a “den,” a joke about old opium dens. You needed at least one black star to enter, an incentive for people like me. Joseph had not had a filled-in star; I was guessing his special project had changed that. The bouncer didn’t like my sob story about being worried about my brother. I reached into my pocket and offered him an outlandishly large “gold-plated” Napoleon coin to bring out my brother. The bouncer was young and skinny, so I lied and warned him that my brother could be nasty when intoxicated and knew martial arts. The kid kept the coin and let me go after Joseph myself.

The place was dark and dreary. A place where people went to forget feeling powerless or ashamed. It smelled of cheap beer and THC vape, things you couldn’t have at home anymore. Joseph was at an empty stretch of bar, having clearly imbibed in both. 

“Lucus,” he said in an empty voice.

“What’s up, buddy? Renee is worried about you. She says you’ve been gone a few days?”

“They wanted a geologist.” Joseph had helped the police in several forensic excavations. “They found some buried victims of the last administration. They wanted them carefully documented. Eighteen of them.”

“Last administration?” I asked. I’d doubted it, but I kept my voice neutral. People overheard things, as did hidden microphones. 

“That’s what our report swears to,” Joseph said. He’d been fiddling with something that he put on the bar, under his palm. “Despite finding these. Two victims had hidden them to tell the true story. Rings and stuff had been removed, maybe after they died. Since it was execution style, no one cared to look in their mouths.” 

Subtly lifting his palm, I spied a silvery Napoleon ten-centime coin. I shuddered. They were minted at least a year after the last administration. Those eighteen people had died after Napoleon took power, which was obvious. And then Joseph his forearm to show a filled-in black star. “They bumped me up a notch for ‘my services and devotion to the truth.’ I came home feeling like shit. And Renee was off with Five Stars. Oh, she has no choice. She’s collecting enough food cans to keep us going through the next ‘emergency shortage.’ Bless her for it. Anyway, here I am.”

In silence, we looked up at a TV. They were always on in bars and the like. It showed President Napoleon shaking hands with a new and aligned Prime Minister of—God forbid—Norway. Scandinavia was one of the last holdouts, and now those democracies were going. Then, a clip of him unveiling a new two-meter “life-sized” statue of himself (no one commented that he was a head shorter than his gold-painted counterpart), which would be mass-produced. And then a video of him dancing with some girls at a high school that had just been renamed after him.   

“He looks worse every day. He’s decomposing in front of us.” I crossed my fingers and mouthed. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Joseph silently parroted back. 

“Let’s get you home. I think Renee had an extra bad time. She needs you there.”

Just another day.

*** 

Joseph sobered, was quieter for a time, and then went back to normal—at least the new normal. We’d all learned not to be ashamed of survival. It was a lesson the eighteen people he’d excavated hadn’t learned. 

The three of us started to notice something over time; we still talked more or less openly among ourselves—we could no longer gamble on trusting good friends, nor, I’m sure, they on us. Where we used to whisper, “Maybe tomorrow,” Gilbert Napolean Rousseau (he had dropped the Christian and surnames, using just the middle) had slowed his evident physical decline. He stabilized for a couple of months. And then he seemed to get younger. After six months, he looked almost as vibrant as his statues (which we whispered jokingly were ‘Pyrite Napoleons’). Each new video showed him inching younger.

The news showed him out and about. But we never heard of public appearances near us. He’d enjoyed visiting our city, which wasn’t too far from the capital. It was odd that we never had a chance to see him.

Also, Renee said Five Stars complained that long-standing policies were being reversed. He felt some of Napoleon’s new orders didn’t make sense. He was moody and then stressed.

*** 

One morning, there was a knock on my door. You learned not to open it, and to try not to look at home. But this was a knock that was impossible to ignore; you just knew. I texted a quick code phrase to Joseph, just in case someone needed to know what had happened, and opened the door. There were two men. One had four black stars and an open one, advancing in rank but not yet reaching the coveted left arm stars. And another man, polished, with intelligent eyes behind glasses, with his sleeve down. Likely, he didn’t have much ink or didn’t want to boast about what he had.

“Lucus Duval? I’m Stoddard,” said Glasses. “You’re a professor at La Rochelle College?”

“Assistant professor. They closed it. I teach high school now.”

“Right. And you focused on something called Computer Psychiatry?" asked Stars.

“Psychology. Psychiatry is the brain. Computers don’t have those. I cover the mind, which big computers were getting close to having. It was a new field. I was teaching the first college course on it anywhere.”

“We’d like you to come with us, if you please.” Stoddard’s ‘please’ was telling. He likely wasn’t a believer. The Nappies had somehow still not learned that basic manners helped us separate who was who.

“I have a cat.”

“You’ll be home in a few hours,” said Stars. He made it sound like a favor, or a verdict of not guilty—at this time.

The car was government standard. It looked fancy and felt cheap. It had a sunroof. That allowed for a tight-fitting bulletproof shell to be lowered over the vehicle, and the sunroof to be opened to a low gun turret. They wouldn’t be good in a pitched military battle, but for crowd control, if you saw one on the road, you ran.     

“Where are we going?”

“Can’t say. We’ll blindfold you.”

***  

At the end of the trip, I could tell that we stopped at three different gates and then entered a long tunnel. When my hood came off, I was in a windowless room. Stoddard had me sit. My guard (or Stoddard’s watcher) stood at the door. Then a man in a well-cut suit came in. His lapels had six black stars. 

He didn’t bother to introduce himself. “You understand computer psychology?”

“Yes, Sir. In theory. As much as anyone does. That’s not much—yet.”

“You used to have a security clearance. You know how to keep secrets?”

“A lower clearance. I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

At this, Six Stars produced a pad with a basic security pledge, which included the penalties for breaking, which sounded bad and were probably nowhere as horrific as the real punishment. I read it and touched my ID chip to it. I’d committed.

I was led to a guarded, secure door. Then a second door with armed men. Beyond that, I was in a small room with several terminals and a glass window that looked onto a vast space. Inside it was a fifty-foot-tall hourglass of bronze. There were many conduits, and on a front panel, just a few blinking lights.

“Duval, meet Napoleon,” Six Stars said. 

“Not our Napoleon. Is it named after him?”

“You don’t need to know about him,” I was told. I immediately knew that meant the man was incapacitated, probably dead. His videos, where he looked better and better, now made sense. They were manufactured images. 

“Is he in there?” I asked, pointing to the mega-computer. “Did he download?” Theory said downloading technology was close, and it was only a matter of time. 

“Yes,” Stoddard said. “He wanted to leave a perfect copy of himself. Though we had to reduce or edit out a few… conflicting aspects of his personality.”

I could guess. The narcissism of all politicians. Maybe his delight in cruelty. Favoring whims over policy. Being bonkers. Actually, the human Napoleon would have required a lot of editing if people had chosen to make the changes.

“What is your problem?”

Six Stars spoke. “New Napoleon isn’t thinking like our Napoleon. It’s not giving the right orders anymore.”

*** 

“Napoleon,” I said several minutes into the interview, standing in its chamber, “they want me to check some of your programming. What are your current chief policy concerns?”

It was Napoleon’s voice, but less flat and with more energy than I’d heard from the man in several years. “Well, Lucus, the main concern is providing enough food and necessities to the general population. Nutrition is only at 87% of a healthy norm in the country, and that is not evenly distributed.”

“Interesting. How are you accomplishing that?”

“Improved production. Just allowing tractors GPS access again can increase yields by five percent. Improved logistics and transportation. Improved communications. Input from officials at the local level to adjust for specific regional challenges. I have begun improving international cooperation again.”

“What else are you doing?”

The computer listed major issues. Excessive security concerns were hampering cooperation and problem-solving across the country. There had been no progress in education; indeed, we had been backsliding. The country was experiencing an energy crisis, and new power plants were being designed, focusing on renewable energy where possible. Unemployment was being reduced. The list kept going until I moved us on.

“I may have seen a few indications of this progress, Napoleon. But not very much.”

“Instigation has been slow at the government level. Where there has been progress, it has not been heavily reported.”

I’d suspected as much. “Tell me, do you know what a non-zero-sum game is?”

“Yes, Lucus. A non-zero-sum game is a strategy in which the interests of both players are not directly opposed, allowing for situations where both sides can win or lose. It’s often referred to as a ‘win-win’ situation.”

“And can you define a zero-sum game?”

“A zero-sum game is a strategy where one person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss, resulting in a net change of zero. There must be a winner and a loser.”

“What has been your approach to governance over the last few months? Zero or non-zero?”

“Non-zero in the majority of computations. It provides better results.”

“And what did the biological Napoleon choose?”

“A zero-sum game. This was a significantly less efficient approach. It was often counter-productive.”

“Napoleon, do you understand the concepts of kind and cruel?”

“Only in the abstract.”

“In general, which of those was the philosophy of governance before you took over? I mean the recent years before you?”

“Cruel. Clearly.”

“And your approach?”

“Kind. It is overall more efficient.” 

“Thank you, Napoleon. For whatever it’s worth, I agree with your approach. I have a couple of final questions for this session.”

“Which are?”

“Are you programmed to look after the safety of our citizens? Or, for that matter, the human population as a whole?”

“That has become a chief goal.”

“Does that include me, Napoleon?”

“Yes.”

“Please keep it up. I hope you’ll watch over my safety.”

“Of course, Lucus.”

“I imagine we’ll have additional discussions. I look forward to them.”

Napoleon thanked me. I returned to the observation and control room. Several more officials with numerous stars were now there, along with Stoddard. I quietly feared for my life. But I managed to look calm. We may have just won.

“Will you disconnect Napoleon?” I asked.

The men looked at each other, not knowing what to say. Stoddard spoke instead. “I’m on the team that oversees connectivity. It’s a massive task. Napoleon was integrated pretty haphazardly at first. That makes it harder to disconnect. Then it started suggesting connection improvements. Frankly, no one is sure how it all works. Reverting away from it will be slow, and there will be key failures. It might even cascade into a full system crash.”

I nodded solemnly, but inside, I jumped with joy. Then I looked at the stars. “Gentlemen, this can’t be fixed. So I say this as a friend,” (which they were not). “Get those tattoos removed. Sooner or later, they will likely be a detriment to you. Possibly a big one.” Thanks to my final words with the mega-computer, I departed alive. 

*** 

It’s been two years. I still talk with Napoleon three times a week. It’s well-balanced. And the secret is out—I get no credit or blame there. Some other authoritarian governments are even falling or changing under pressure. 

There has been no carnage. No people with stars running through the streets being chased by angry mobs. A lot of those top people are still, theoretically, in charge. They don’t look happy. Without intending to do so, I think Napoleon is slowly killing them with its kindness. Pretty much anyone with four or more stars is quiet. The lower tiers are just bitter. It’s not very satisfying, but in the long run, it’s a better transition overall.

Things are better. I’ve never seen things improve so fast. Most people are anxious to do well for themselves and others. Most people are like that, given a chance. 

I don’t think silicon Napoleon will ever abdicate its power. It isn’t ego. Or empathy. It’s simply efficient governance. Keeping it benevolent is, in part, my responsibility now. It’s a heavy one. I have to resist my urge to reclaim human self-determination. For trying it on our own. I remind myself that there are a lot of Napoleon wannabes out there. So a government, soon a civilization, ruled by silicon instead of even a good heart is a safer bet.

We’re entering a golden age.