Undisclosed - Zach Bo1inger
The Legacy of Ennor Garest
The work order said to change the fuse. Ennor Garest was one of about 30 people in the world who could change that fuse. It’s not that the job was hard. It was regulations. The fuse was connected the General’s own public address system. Regulation 862.7229g said that only an electric engineer could service critical government equipment, and the public address system was absolutely critical.
In addition to the restrictive regulation, General Lerscer was also responsible for the shortage of electrical engineers. “I went to high school with an electrical engineer,” he reminisced as he was writing the laws of economics, 15 years ago. “You know that guy used to build radios for fun? I don’t see why we pay them so much when they are really just doing what they enjoy doing. I say we pay them 2 credits an hour. Besides, all the technology we need has already been invented.” It didn’t even matter what the reasoning was. General Lerscer thought it was a good idea, and it became law. You could make 14 credits an hour supervising drones at the waste-water treatment plant. The General figured people would only tolerate the smell if they were compensated. That was 15 years ago. In order to change the laws encourage more people to go to school for electrical engineering, the General would have to admit he was wrong. That wasn’t going to happen.
Some people remember Chaos Economics. They used to say that only poets would work for engineer’s wages back then. Poets didn’t have to go to the Academy for four years to be qualified to write poems.
People are drafted to become engineers now. The draft does not take aptitude into account. It’s supposed to be random, but many people suspect being drafted for Engineer’s School is usually punishment for some crime you’ve unknowingly committed. Students are on strict suicide watch, but if there is one type of person who always finds a way to beat the system, it’s the guy who knows that he is training to earn two credits an hour for the rest of his life. For 10 years, 100% of the Academy’s engineering students have taken their own life.
All the qualified engineers alive today were educated in the days of Chaos Economics. Even then, their numbers were dwindling because the “fair” market didn’t want to pay what they thought they were worth. Even then, people believed that all the technology we would ever need had already been invented.
Ennor was one of those classically trained engineers. Now he was changing a fuse on the PA system, because he was one of 30 people qualified for the job. A drone leaned in and watched his progress. “How long does it take to change a fuse?” it asked.
Ennor replied, “I could just change the fuse, and then I’ll be back tomorrow to change the same fuse again because this circuit is overloaded.” The drone could not process this logic. It radioed its human supervisor to check the validity of the engineer’s claim.
In a control room, a supervisor received the transmission. He considered the paperwork involved in overriding an engineer’s judgment. Then he considered the paperwork involved if the engineer took two hours to change a fuse. They were probably about the same. If he chose to override the engineer, the paperwork was guaranteed. If the engineer took too long to finish the task, the paperwork would only be needed if an audit revealed the wasted time. The supervisor looked over Ennor’s performance records and found that he completed his tasks in the allotted time in 98.7% of his work orders. Nobody would audit him. He replied to the drone’s transmission, allowing the engineer to perform additional repairs as necessary, with an audit for sabotage when the work was completed.
Ennor had waited about 6 years to get his hands on the PA system. He dreamed up his plan long ago, but the PA system hardly ever broke. There were a couple missed opportunities when other engineers got assigned to the job. Ennor probably could have made some effort to be the engineer assigned to the previous work orders, but that would have aroused suspicion. As it was, he was glad the drone looking over his shoulder could not detect the sweat beading up on his hairline, or the raise in body temperature that some other drones would have recognized in humans attempting deceit.
When the job was done, Ennor reported the status to the drone. Two other drones arrived to perform the sabotage audit. Ennor knew that they would simply be doing chemical composition detections, looking for explosives. There were very few humans that could understand the simple circuitry he had installed. No drones were sophisticated enough to evaluate it. The work passed the audit, and Ennor went on to the next work order.
The Tube Community afforded Ennor the anonymity he required for the next step of his plan. He waited four weeks to be sure that he was not audited for taking so much time to change the fuse. His plans would be ruined if another electrical engineer was consulted to review his work on the PA system. Four weeks was enough time to ensure that if the work order was not audited, the records would be offloaded to archival storage and not reviewed for petty offenses. 29 days later was his next scheduled action.
Ennor practiced waking up at 2:00 AM without an alarm clock, then going back to sleep. This time, he did not go back to sleep. He slid out of his tube, got dressed, and left the dormitory. Anybody who had a job that paid two credits an hour lived in a tube in the Communal Living dorms. It was generally assumed that people in this income bracket were harmless, so security was low in the dorms. After all, if the residents had ambition and intelligence, they would have been assigned a job that paid more. The lack of ambition or intelligence assured the security planners that the residents here did not have what it takes to challenge law enforcement as efficient as General Lercser’s. They spent their security budget elsewhere.
Ennor waived to the desk clerk as he walked out the front door. She knew he was old-fashioned and preferred to smoke outside. She didn’t even make an entry in the log books anymore, because Ennor always came back 7 minutes later. Ennor didn’t smoke that night, though. He walked out to the bus stop in front of the dormitory and pulled out a white grease pen. Like every bus stop, his bus stop had a 9 foot tall portrait of General Lerscer painted at one end. A slogan above the portrait reminded citizens that the super-efficient public transportation system was provided by the generosity of General Lerscer himself. Ennor took his grease pen and drew a penis on the portrait’s crotch. Then he drew an arrow pointing to the doodle, and wrote the words “Little Penis! HA HA!”
He lit a cigarette so that he would smell like he was be smoking and walked briskly back to the entrance so that he could stroll back in exactly seven minutes after he left. He waived at the desk clerk as he walked back in. Most people thought smoking was disgusting these days. The desk clerk thought it was quaint that an old man clung to his old habit.
The next morning, Ennor was arrested. Even in the low security district, there were tapes that police could review to see who committed a capitol crime like the one Ennor committed. The first person who noticed the graffiti reported it instantly. Ennor was lucky if five people got to see it before a task force was dispatched to remove any evidence of the crime.
At 9:00 AM sharp, Ennor’s trial began. Capital crimes were always handled as soon as the courts opened. This was the first capital crime to be tried in over two years. General Lerscer’s laws had few challengers left these days.
The opening arguments were completed by 9:05. The nature of the crime dictated that no details could be revealed, in the interest of National Security. Ennor was tried simply with the charge of Disparaging the State. Any onlooker knew that this was a crime punishable by death and required no evidence to be publicly revealed. The judge was shown a video clip of Ennor in the act, the caption on the video displayed Ennor’s RFID number – confirming his identity. The judge was then shown a photo of the completed artwork. This was ten times the evidence needed for a Disparagement convition.
At 9:07, Ennor was asked if he had any comments he would like on record. By law, he was only permitted to say “No comments, your honor.” Compliance with the law was ensured by two electrodes stuck to his back under the suit. If the censor heard the defendant utter anything other than “No comment, your honor,” then Ennor would have been rendered unconscious by the jolt, and the proceedings would continue without him. Ennor recited his line from the script perfectly.
The trial moved along on schedule, and at 9:08, the jury deliberation began. They returned their verdict at 9:09. The judge read the verdict at 9:10. All witnesses to the execution had to be sworn in, which took another two minutes.
Everybody on the court-stage was a little nervous. By law, all trials had to be completed in under 15 minutes. It had been so long since anybody performed an execution, the officers were not sure exactly where they were supposed to stand for the ceremony. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and Ennor Garest had his sentence rendered on schedule. The guillotine blade dropped at 9:14:53 AM. There were seven seconds to spare. Mussolini made the trains run on time. General Lerscer gave the world the most efficient justice system anybody had ever seen.
The crowd started to disperse, when an announcement came over the PA system.
“Citizens of General Lerscer’s Great Nation, this is Ennor Garest speaking. You have just witnessed my execution. I have one brief message to pass on from beyond the grave. I want all who hear this to know that people are only executed for telling the truth! I myself was executed for announcing publicly that General Lerscer has a small penis. If that were not true, the Good General could simply show us all the truth, and I would have been shunned from society for telling such outrageous lies. Do me the favor of recalling other citizens who were executed for criticizing our government, and realize that if they were executed, they presented a threat because they told the truth. That is all.”
If Ennor had been a poet, he might have prepared a more eloquent speech. His invention never spoke again. The supervisor who authorized the extra work on the PA circuit was executed. The desk clerk in Ennor’s dormitory was also executed. Still, Ennor’s message did not fall on deaf ears. General Lerscer only maintained control of the country for 38 days after the incident. There was a brief period of unrest when his order was dissolved.
General Roswar stepped up to fill the vacated position, and he restored order to the country. He was in fact much more ruthless than General Lercer. He maintained his power mostly because he had a huge monster cock.