A Study In Evil From A Paralle Universe Nearby

Ethan Vulerummer could hardly wait to see the report titled, “The Ratio Of Productivity To Consumer
Spending”. Not that he cared much about its content. Along with his six collegues they would decide how
many hundreths-of-a-percent to move the stick forward for the coming fiscal year. No, what he was
anticipating was the presentation itself. The previous year that man Carroll had brought down the room
with his hilarious video. The Seven Lions of Private Control had never laughed so hard during one of their
semi-annual meetings. It put them in great spirits for “The Bunny Hunt” later that night.
The video showed rows of C & B Class workers on stationary bicycles peddled by people in shirt and
tie; people in hard hats; mail carriers—even sex workers. In one scene a hand pushed an excellerator lever
forward and the workers peddled faster and faster as a large screen TV in front of them displayed an
orchard of fruit trees hung with various comsumer products growing larger as they worked. When the lever
came a bit to far forward, one of the stationary bike peddlers keeled over and a big robotic claw reached in,
grabbed the worker, and brought her to a window where another robotic apendege—this one made to look
like a leg—booted the slacker high in the sky; all the way out of the area and into a rural unprotected zone.
The keeled-over, booted-out worker landed right in the middle of a pack of wild lions and was devoured.
Above the floor level, circling the workers, sat A Class executives. Each had a little table with a faucett
and a large soup bowl. As the workers peddled faster, a flow of what looked like liquid gold would
increase as the stream filled up the bowl. At the highest level in the room sat a panel made up of The Seven
Lions themselves. They had even larger bowels and that man Carroll had made it so the stream of liquid
gold was even brighter and more alluring then what the executives were getting.
The Lions had been smitten by the video and Vulerummer instantly gave Carroll the coveted assignment
of creating the new C Class Compensation ads. He had nuked that task too. Most of the stuff was
perfunctionatory and ho-hum. The different compensation companies with different mixes of food choices,
hours on the subway sleepers, Sunday porn or church room accomadasions, Saturday body maintenance
opportunities, “eternal rest slots” in one of the various retirement towers—all the C Class necessities.
What Carroll had come up with in addition to this was the new organ donor program.
Approved C Class workers could give up their hearts and livers in exchange for a retirement package
that included a garanteed spot at University for one of their children along with four nights a week in a
private room for their families. Plus a double-size 12 inch slot at one of burrial towers.
He tried it out first with one of the smaller compensation companies running ads on the sleeper subways
just after porn or daily prayer hour--right before “lights out”. The commercial showed a worker slumbering
peacefully with a smile on his face lying on a bed of fluffy clouds. His family stood by at his internment in
one of the premium view alcoves at a burrial tower gazing proudly at the double-size, 12 inch slot center-
placed among the others with a commercial grade gold-engraved name stripe. A religious offical gives
final blessing and the tearfull son steps up and says, “My father was a hero who gave all for his family. I
will attend University, work my way to A Class status and build a seven acre paradice custom home for my
family. My father’s picture will be placed in the large entry and all will remember him as a great man!”.
Vulerummer and the other Lions were stunned when they saw it for the first time. They had it product
tested. It was an audience knock-out with a twenty percent favorable rating in the C Class. And that was
before they began to promote it with appearances by company PR people on the Lou Glen Show. All they
had to do now was get the religious leaders on board. Since The Lions had them fully leveraged, it
wouldn’t be a problem. It was predicted that fresh hearts and livers for A’s and prominate B’s would rise
over 50 percent the first year after the various governments rubberstamped the new policy into law. Carroll
was a marketing genius and maybe even a future Lion himself.
More available replacement hearts and livers would provide The Lions and the A Class executives even
greater control over the B Class, who were always clamoring for more, more, more. With only one A Class
position available for every ten B Class successes, these people needed to see extra perks. There were
always movements afoot in the B Class to vote in greater reform. The Lions even promoted some
dissention just to keep the illusion of Democracy intact. But the special “shift circuits” placed in voting
machines years earlier made it so they didn’t have to worry much about political movements outside their
control. They still allowed vigorus debate, but they had Private Control Mechanisms or PCM’s all
throughout the different countries now.
Ethan Vulerummer had accomplished a great deal in the ten years he had been at the helm of The Seven
Lions of Private Control. No man since the British Lord Rashling had accomplished as much. For
Vulerummer, Rashling had been his childhood hero even though, at the end of the Second Great War, the
Labor Party in London had set him up and he was stomped to death in the football stadium by an angry
crowd. Following that, it had taken an entire generation almost for the Fascists to reinvent themselves. But
no man in history had accomplished the kind of change that Rashling brought. In the midst of The Final
War, he had exterminated 6 million Arabs, 10 million Asians, 5 million Indians, 12 million Latins, 3 million
Africans and every Eskimo in Alaska! Plus, over 70 million males worldwide had been secretly sterilized.
Eighteen-hundred years after Cristo had laid down before the wild lions in the Greco-Roman Collasium,
his gentle vision of world peace had mostly been realized by muscular men like Rashling and leaders of the
post-war collusions who mapped out the various spheres of political influence world-wide. The United
Nations now had nuclear devices planted in 100 locations on earth and a commanding protocal that allowed
twelve full trials for offending countries and a complete evacuation plan that meant only property would be
distroyed if a “national death sentence” were to be carried out. And such a thing had never occurred.
Mankind had thrown in the towel on war.
During the post-war collusions, leaders had undertaken a hugh plan to centalize populations around the
major cities and leave outlying areas as preserves for wild lions which were bred in huge numbers and
enjoyed great legal protections. Tens of thousands of years earlier, the large cats had killed off the
chimpanse and evolved a taste for the great apes. Human beings had largely vanquished the wild lions as a
result, but then brought them back to use as a control mechanism to prevent unathorized expansion into the
outlying regions surrounding major cities. Farming, hunting and all recreational use of the wilderness was
corportized and controlled by private security firms. Economic opportunity itself gradually became deeply
stratafied in most places. The choice for average people throughout the earth became: except the corporate
plan with limited government influence, or go out to the wilderness and take your chances with the lions
and security officers. There was upward mobility throughout the classes, but corruption had risen in line
with the deminished populations and rationelle for wars. Some called this period, “the great age of
Capitalism”, others called it “the great age of cheap-jack con”.
For Ethan Vulerummer, it was just a great time to be alive! Especially when you were chairman of the
Seven Lions of Private Control. He had gained the position after convincing the other members that his
predicessor had to go; that the man had become, “soft on world security”. So during The Lion’s “bunny
hunt of 1799”, they brought knives to the party and finished him off, “The Roman Way”, stabbing him over
two hundred times. The problem with the previous chairman was his unwillingness to expand intelligance
capabilities and agree to testing of new viruses on homosexuals. Plus, he didn’t beleave in torture.
Vulerummer conviced the other board members that they were in danger of being absorbed back into the
ranks of the mainstream A Class where Democracy was favored more then Facism. He felt that they had to
be men such as Lord Rashling with power to “fine tune the gene pool” and provide a stricter control over
populations.
But Ethan had won. And now as he enjoyed a glass of his favorite gin, he thought about “the bunny
hunt” later that night. They had gone over two full catelogs to narrow the field down to seven girls. The
rules never changed. If any of them managed to evade The Lions long enough to find the hidden passage
out of the thickly landscaped, five-acre atrium where the hunt was conducted, they would be given a huge
bonus and be promoted. If not, they would have to settle for the raw pleasure provided by The Lions.
Ever since the ouster of the previous chairman, The Seven Lions would conduct the hunt wearing only
jockstraps to prevent secret concellemnt of weapons. There was always a big argument about what attire—
if any—the girls would be allowed. As The Lions all came from different regions on earth, they had
different tastes. Vulerummer—the only American on the board—liked to have the girls dressed in actual,
skimpy bunny customs complete with fluffy tails and ears.