In which John Tracy meets an ordinary person; the purpose of life is discussed; John makes a decision, but you'd probably never notice because it's buried under eight tons of evasion and some crap about wolves
"You should remember to rest your eyes every twenty minutes."
John looked up, startled. "Excuse me?"
The flight attendant smiled at him. "Could I get you something to drink, Mr. Tracy?"
John shook his head, more to clear it than to refuse.
"If you need anything, just let me know." She bestowed another smile on him, and moved on to the seat behind him.
John sat back and rubbed his eyes. He turned the screen of his laptop away from him for a minute and blinked a few times, trying to get his eyes to refocus.
"Big meeting?" a voice next to him rumbled.
It was the man next to him. He had come in a few minutes before takeoff, downed a glass of Scotch, and promptly fell asleep. John had hoped that he would remain so for the rest of the flight. No such luck, apparently. "No," he said, politely but hopefully with a cool enough tone for the guy to understand that he didn't want to talk.
The man ignored it. "You're too young to be working so hard." He cleared his throat and stirred restlessly.
"I'm not working," John said simply. "Just reading."
The man reached over and spun John's computer around so he could see the screen.
"Hey!" John slammed the laptop down, and looked at the man in astonished outrage, but his seatmate gave a hacking laugh that turned into a bout of coughing.
"That's what you read for fun?" he rasped out when he was through. John was in the process of shutting down and putting away his computer, and only gave the man an irritated glance. He was older, probably a good ten years older than John's father, florid of face with white hair combed back from his head. He was wearing what looked to be an extremely expensive suit.
"Ah, I'm sorry. Just pulling your leg. Been on this plane so long I start to get a little crazy. I hate flying. I do nothing but travel, and hate every minute of it. It's always the same. Same food, same routine, same thing every time. An airplane is its own little world, you ever notice that? Doesn't matter what time it is, they decide it's dinner time, you eat dinner and then they turn off the lights and it's night. Could be four o'clock in the afternoon. It's own world. The world of planes."
John paused in shoving his laptop into its case, thought about that for a moment, shrugged, and zipped up the case.
The man stuck out his hand. "Hamilton Caine."
Figuring he might as well make the best of it, John shook it. "John Tracy."
"Nice to meet you. First time going to Sydney?"
John shook his head. "No. You?"
"I wish." He glanced around the cabin, and lowered his voice. "I hate Australia."
John thought for a moment. "You know, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that."
"Yeah, everyone loves it. Except me." Hamilton Caine shook his head. "It's too fucking far away. Don't get me wrong, kid, it's a nice place– and the girls are beautiful – but it's way too far away from everything. It's in the middle of nowhere! What's around it? Nothing. Plus a whole chunk of it is desert. Nah. Too hot, too far away. They should just take a section of Texas, plant a flag, stick a couple of kangaroos in and set up shop there."
John didn't know whether to argue or laugh. The man's bushy white eyebrows were drawn together, and he seemed genuinely peeved, however.
"It's not really in the middle of nowhere," John pointed out gamely.
"Yeah? Says who?"
"New Zealand."
"Eh." The man made a dismissive gesture. "Australia without kangaroos. Ask yourself this, kid. What has New Zealand done for you?"
"Me personally?"
"My point exactly. Nothing."
John tried to get the conversation back on more normal ground. "Do you have family in Sydney?"
The man sighed. "No. I own a company there that's falling apart. No, it's not falling apart. It thinks it's falling apart. They all think they're falling apart, getting panicky. It's a sad thing to see a company – a whole company – panic. What are they scared of?" He gave John a friendly slap on the arm with the back of his hand. "You know what they're scared of? Guess what they're scared of."
"You?" John said.
Hamilton Caine broke into another wheezing laugh. "That's right. They're scared of me. You know why they're scared of me?"
Because you're insane, John thought. Aloud, he said, "Because you run the company?"
"No! No." The man shook his head. "No, kid. That's not it. Hey, John…it's John, right? What do you do? What's your job, in, in life."
"Well, actually, I'm sort of trying to figure out…"
The man cut him off. "Go to college?"
"Yeah."
"Good school?"
"Harvard."
"Well, that'll impress some people. You just graduate?"
"No, not really."
"Well, kid, let me give you some advice. Any schmuck can run a company, you get that?"
"Any schmuck can run a company," John repeated dutifully. The man sat back a bit and gave him an appraising look.
"Yeah, fine. Okay. Listen to me, this is something you're going to need. Kids like you, smart, good education – they get into a company and they see the CEO and he's got the nice office and the nice car and the big house and they say, hell, that's not so hard. I can do that. And you know what? They probably could. Most of them don't – and that's a whole other can of wax – but most of them could. It's not brain science. Anyone can run a company. But what I do is hard. Do you know what I do?"
John shook his head.
"I run an empire." The man sat back in satisfaction. "That's right. That's no cakewalk."
"What kind of empire?" John asked.
"A business empire."
"Yeah, but what kind of business?"
"Just business." The man looked pleased with John's reaction.
"But you can't just have a business…I mean, business isn't a business..."
"You might want to wait on that application to Wharton. Of course business is a business! It's the only business! What do I want to be, the sneaker king? The lord of textiles? No! There is one common denominator to all of this, my friend, and do you know what that is?"
"Business?"
"Money."
"Oh."
The man raised a finger. "Once you start making money," he intoned. "Your only purpose is to continue to make money. And then to take that money to make more money. It doesn't matter how you do it or what you do it with, just as long as it gets made. That's all that business is. That's what running an empire is."
"You make a lot of money?" John asked.
The man smiled. "I make a lot of money."
"That must be nice."
"Do you make a lot of money?"
"I don't make any money at the moment," John said.
"But you can afford a first class ticket to Sydney?"
John shrugged. "Yeah, well. Yeah."
"Your family, they have money?"
"Well…I suppose so," John said uncomfortably.
Hamilton Caine shook his head. "Whatta acting so squirrelly for? Having money isn't anything to be ashamed of. You can't help it, right?"
"I guess not."
"But you can spend it."
"That I can do."
"Or you can make more."
"Only if ISA decides to start paying better…" that was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
"ISA? Who's ISA?"
"The International Space Agency."
Hamilton Caine looked at John blankly for a second. "That French thing?"
"No, it's international. I mean, France is involved, but…"
"Those the people who built that base on the moon?"
"Yeah."
"You were on the moon?"
"Yeah."
"That's a dead end if I ever heard it. Huge waste of money. You want my advice, kid, get out of that racket as soon as you can."
"I don't know that I'd call it a racket…"
"Everything is a racket. The faster you learn that, the better off you'll be. Seriously, what are we doing there?" He looked at John. "I'm asking you."
"Well, there are a lot of benefits to having a permanent base on the moon. They're building a launch facility, because it's a lot easier to launch things from the moon. And there's no light pollution, so we can…." He trailed off, because Hamilton Caine was shaking his head back and forth. "Now what?"
"We don't need that."
"We who?" John snapped.
"We who. Who do you think? The human race. The whole goddamned world, that's we who. What do we need to go to outer space for? What do we need to go peering through galaxies for? We've been doing this since my father was a kid and what has it gotten us? Nothing. It's a huge waste of resources. Where's the payoff? They found carbon on some moon of some planet it takes eight billion years to get to. They all get excited, and nothing changes."
John tipped his head back and stared at the back of the seat in front of him for a moment. "Okay," he said after a minute. "What is supposed to be the payoff?"
"It needs to be able to pay for itself," Hamilton Caine said. "It needs to generate some revenue."
"It's an international research organization." John said. "How on earth is it supposed to generate revenue?"
Hamilton Caine stared at him. "Kid, were you born in the briar patch or something? You think all those scientists labor all day in labs for the common good? You think President what-his-face said that we needed to put a man on the moon because it was good for humanity?"
"It wasn't for money." John said.
"It's always for money. It is always for money…yes, could I have a Glenmorganie, please. And one for my friend." Hamilton had signaled a flight attendant as he was walking by.
"I don't…fine." John said. It would numb the pain.
Hamilton Caine slapped him on the knee. "Come on, Harvard. What kind of society do we live in?"
John rolled his head to the side to look at his seatmate. "What?"
"What kind of society is this?"
It was like a hedge maze, John decided. Every time you thought you had reached the center, you were forced to take another left turn. "I have no idea."
"See, right there is your problem."
"I don't know! A bad one? A corrupt one?"
Hamilton was shaking his head. "No, no. Those are moral judgments and I have no use for them. We live in a capitalist society. Everything comes down to money. It is the only reason anyone does anything. Money doesn't only get you everything, money is the only thing that gets you anything. Your fellow man will not feed you if you don't have money. He will not clothe you, he will not let you survive; in fact, he will deem you useless and encourage you to die."
John opened his mouth to say something, but his seatmate waved him quiet. "Spare me. Yes, yes, it's horrible, how could I say something. Well, I say it for the same reason I say anything: it's true. It's not good, or bad, it's just fact. It's the way the world is."
"I don't think it is." John said. "I mean, I don't see how it could be. That's not so much immoral as amoral. And I don't think we're like that."
Hamilton Caine sighed. "It sucks. But we are, and you'd better get used to it, because life becomes a lot easier when you realize that the entire construct of society is to fuck over your fellow man. At least economically, if not physically. Hey, I'm a rich man. I'm not ashamed to say it. I got more money than god. I give money to charity. You know who I like? The wolves, the ones that the ranchers keep trying to shoot. So I give money to the wolf people. I don't even know if the money does anything. I haven't noticed any more wolves around. So do I do it for them, or for me? I do it for me. They're just an excuse. I can say, hey, money's not so bad, I can use it to help people. But what do I really use it for? A tax write off. Does it make me a bad person? I don't think so. I just think it makes me a person."
The flight attendant came over and handed Hamilton Caine his Scotch, which he passed to John. John sniffed the amber liquid warily. He had never been much of a drinker; it was Scott and his father who got all complicated about Scotch.
"They cure it in oak barrels by the sea. You can taste the sea." Hamilton Caine said shortly, and lifted his glass. "To a better world."
John raised his glass and took a cautious sip. Hamilton Caine must swim in hell's ocean, he decided. Hamilton Caine shook his head. "Wasted on someone your age."
"Probably," John agreed.
"Look at that," Hamilton Caine pointed out the window. John turned and looked. Against the cold indigo sky, the moon, lopsidedly a few days short of full, burned brightly.
"Do you know what that used to be?"
"What it used to be? Before what?" John was at sea, again.
"It used to be a god."
"Oh."
"And then we grew up a little, and it became just another place to go." Hamilton Caine took a sip of Scotch and sighed. "And now we're drilling it full of holes. We're not going to do the moon any good, that's for damn sure. So you can forget about your ISA, or whatever it is. It's nothing but a bunch of wildcatters."
"You have a very depressing world view," John told him.
"That's what my granddaughter keeps telling me. She's twelve. Smart as a tack."
John took another sip of Scotch. This one didn't hurt as much. "All right, Mr. Caine. If you were me, what would you do?"
"With what?"
"My life. ISA is Jettexas, the world is corrupt, I've got a Harvard education and let's just say I have enough money to write my own ticket. Where do I go?"
"I love it when this happens. All the time the kids are asking me for advice. Makes me feel like the Godfather. All right. You've got some sort of science background, right?"
"Yeah."
Hamilton Caine sat with his lips pursed thoughtfully, staring intently in front of him. John sipped his Scotch. He really didn't understand the point of it. May as well just eat jalapeños. His lips felt numb.
"All right. All right. This is what you're going to do. You know what we need? Food that you can heat up by plugging into your car's cigarette lighter."
"What?"
"Everyone eats fast food and everyone weighs three hundred pounds. You come up with some way to make food that people think is healthy and can heat up by plugging into their car's cigarette lighter. You'll make a fortune."
"That's crazy," John said. "Well, actually, it's not, but…"
"Let me ask you something. Where's the money from?"
"What money?"
"You said you had enough money to write your own ticket. I don't know if that's true, but I know you've got enough money to afford first class from California to Sydney. So who made it? Your father? Grandfather?"
"My father," John admitted.
"Does he have an empire?"
John shook his head. "Just a small sovereign nation."
"Well, kid, my advice to you is, swallow your pride and go into the family business."
John swallowed some more Scotch. "Why?"
"Because if your father is a business man – and he is, right? Okay. If he's a business man, he's going to want to keep the money in the family. It's safe. And you won't even have to do much, if you don't want to. But get in. Get your hands on the contracts. You want to know what's going on, because when your father is gone, someone is going to try to take it away from you, and you don't want to let that happen. You need to be the watchdog. Make yourself the watchdog of your father's company."
"You don't even know what he does." John said.
"It doesn't matter. He's a business man, and all businessmen do one thing: make money. You sell your soul, and you makes some money. And if you're lucky, you make enough to save some wolves. It's not a bad deal."
John turned and looked out the window. The moon burned coldly in the sky. Nancy's voice chirruped in his head, My whole life is a window. "Do you ever think that there might be one or two or five people that don't fit into your world view?"
"No," Hamilton Caine said. "Or if they do, they don't have enough money to matter."
John shook his head and smiled. "Well, I got a better offer." He put his Scotch to one side, and picked up his laptop out of the back. "And I have work to do."
The End
A/N: I owe some people: Sam for the early beta, Lynn for the reason this is all spelled correctly and doesn't have more errors than it already has, and most of all, Boomercat for all-around encouragement and for hauling me out of writer's block. Deepest thanks to all who reviewed.