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by permission of Bartok House Press
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Chapter One (excerpt)
When
Lowenstein wakes, he goes to his desk and reviews the notes for his
latest adventure with Jensen Westcott, The Lascivious Philosopher
Affair: “Susan Westcott brought a curious murder to our
attention. For Jensen and myself the plot and the characters formed
a wild, improbable fiction.
A
respected scholar and philosopher, a full professor at Cornell had a torrid sexual affair with the wife of the President
of the United States of America. (By most accounts it is normally
the randy Presidents having affairs, and the wives putting up with
it.)
This
affair was known to the White House Staff, but was miraculously kept
from the public for twenty-two years. At the time, the affair was
considered a matter of National Security and classified Top Secret by
all agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and oddly because of the
philosopher's heroin use, the DEA. Special officers were made
available in all agencies to assist the First Lady and her lover, and
keep their hours of sweet sexual congress as secret as nuclear
launch codes. Who knows what conversation the President had with
the First Lady? At some point she must have said, “Cooper, I am
going to do this. With or without your approval, Randy and I are
going to have sex at least four times each week. Sometimes in the
White House. If you want to keep this secret you will need to make
my affair a National Security issue.”
And
President Cooper probably put down his executive pen, said something
like, “OK, bitch. Fuck your damn philosopher. Good luck. You
will have armed men outside your door at all times, listening to your
moans, sighs and whispers. I hope you both orgasm in etheric realms
and attain spiritual enlightenment.”
The
philosopher's name was, Randall Thaddeus McCunn. Three months after
the former First Lady published her “tell all” memoir, Mr.
McCunn's body was found in dumpster near Post Alley in Seattle.
The
former First Lady appeared on every national talk show, coyly
recalling her affair with Randall McCunn, who was at the time a
21-year-old graduate student at George Washington University. At
43-years-old, the philosopher now received lengthy obituaries, but no
clear explanation of his mysterious death, and no further reports of
police investigations into his death. After the initial reports,
news media looked no further for facts.
The
initial reports did, of course, generate a full week of non-stop
tabloid and talk show speculation about the connection between the
release of the First Lady's memoir and the death of McCunn. There
was no substance to the speculation.
The
story served the primary purpose of all cable news programs: to
spike the network's Nielsen Ratings, and thereby generate increased
ad revenues. After seven days viewers got bored and the network
news moved on to in-depth discussions of recent pedophilia
accusations against three, bald billionaire Wall Street tycoons. By
the end of the second week, McCunn's death was already fading from
public consciousness, and no longer mentioned by the main stream
media. Jensen and I believed there was too much left unsaid.
Specifically, Jensen sensed a cover-up. He felt McCunn's philosophy
had become threatening to the stability of the strong, on-going
incestuous relations between elected officials and the C-level
officers of a several multinational banks and corporations. McCunn's
ideas were becoming too popular among middle-class voters.
In a
period of four years, his political writings had gone from being
defined as “fringe wacko” to their current and secure status as
“mainstream intellectual.” Many academics, and more than a few
industrialists and bankers were beginning to view the current
government of the United States of America as a threat to their
interests. This view had nothing to do with sympathy for the brutal
demise of the middle-class.
Their concern was the catastrophic economic losses
caused by that demise. Large corporations and banks are now forced
to redefine themselves to profit from the now-extinct
middle-class. Companies of all kinds will now re-tool their
product lines to create a coffee pot for 8-cents and sell it to the
giant lower class (the former middle-class) at Walmart and Costco for
$12. The poor people will think they are getting a great bargain.
The reliable products people once expected will no longer be
available to the majority of the population. Every consumer product
or service will have but one goal: a large, sustainable profit
margin for the manufacturer or service provider.
The
quality of the products or services is no longer a concern. Quality
of any physical product is now economically relevant only to assure
the product will fail and need to be replaced in a short
period of time.
Some
large enterprises will not be able to re-tool in a timely manner.
Not that the CEOs care one way or another if their businesses fail.
Their personal wealth will easily sustain the lifestyles to which
they have become accustom. And, in most cases, sustain that
lifestyle for their entire families for several future generations.
This
was the crux of the recent writings by McCunn. He posited a theory
which made everyone uncomfortable. McCunn wrote about genetic
mutations which created an inherent need in some people, a need for
power, high social status and venues for ever-increasing exhibitions
of vanity. The very existence of these individuals relied on those
specific conditions.
Over
several generations, the genomes of powerful men and women had
evolved to demand personal satisfaction at the expense of the
majority of individuals of their species.
An
endless personal cash flow was required. Dominance over other people
was required. Tangible, physical examples of economic success were
required: buildings, boats, mansions and Major League Ball Teams.
All these were as essential to the survival of the mutants as air,
water and food are to the rest of us. In addition to the evolved
mutants, McCunn posited the existence of individual freaks-of-nature,
men and women who within the span of a single lifetime transmogrified
into the mutant strain, as if their genomes were stimulated by their
environment. McCunn's last three books all examined the details and
implications of these genetic mutants. He concluded both the
evolutionary strain and the freak-of-nature strain were a threat to
the survival of the human species.
This
was a very difficult philosophic concept to communicate to readers in
the United States of America during the 21st Century. Most
citizens had never considered the possibility their lives were
governed by decisions made by mutants. Most citizens educated in
public or private schools, believed the mutant characteristics were
“normal” and
even “admirable.” Though it was never stated this way, most
children wanted to grow up to be successful mutants. The mutants
themselves were often unaware of their own aberrant genetic flaws and
accepted their personal urgencies and the demands they made of the
rest of their species to be “normal” and “admirable.”
McCunn's second book, The Mutant DNA of Power, dealt
extensively with this subject and had recently arrived on the New
York Times Bestseller List for Non-Fiction. Fear was growing among
powerful people, centering on the prevalent and intense distrust
between themselves and their employees or between themselves and the
lower class (former middle-class) voters. Catchy slogans weren't
working anymore. This was a new variety of class warfare as the
upper class was being specifically identified as mutants,
genetically warped, pernicious
and aberrant, a scientifically documented threat to the future of
humankind. Though the scientific documentation was incomplete,
McCunn's articulation of the Theory of Aberrant Genomes
was already well-established as the cornerstone of current
philosophical debate.
Jensen
was certain McCunn's ideas were the cause of his death, rather than
his colorful, extensive, lascivious sexual liaisons. Jensen
was able to obtain a copy of the Seattle Police report. No autopsy
report was included in the file, only a handwritten note, signed by
the coroner, saying on first examination the cause of death appeared
to be a brain aneurysm. No physical violence had been done to the
body.
He
was dead about 24 hours before the body was found. A copy of
McCunn's latest book, Eleusinian Mysteries in 21st
Century Political Theory, was found in McCunn's coat pocket. A
handwritten list of the political archetypes described in the book
was also found in his pocket. It identified specific Senators and
Congressmen with particular ancient deities, for example:
Demeter-
Sen. Judith Wilkes of Kansas.
Hades,
Lord of Death- Speaker of the House,
Dennis Welch of
Tennessee.
Persephone-
Sen. Alice Grenholm of Texas.
There
were no annotations to say why McCunn made these psychological/mystic
associations, but given their behavior in Congress, it was easy to
see the resemblance between the elected leaders and the ancient
mythological figures. Judith Wilkes was from the wheat State of
Kansas. She was remarkably fertile, with nine grown children. She
was a strong supporter of Alice Grenholm of Texas, always voting and
working with Grenholm to get bills passed and to rally support for
their mutual causes. Grenholm was under indictment in the Senate on
a charge of gross financial misconduct, charges brought by Dennis
Welch. Her professional and personal life were being dragged strait
to Hell by the relentless Dennis Welch. In addition to ruining
Grenholm's life, Dennis Welch vetoed most everything that crossed his
desk.
McCunn
had been scheduled to give a lecture at Benaroya Hall, an engagement
which was sold out. This added to speculation that his speech may
have contained threatening information. Jensen found no mention of
the speech referenced in the police reports.
He
felt the text of the speech would be an important clue to McCunn's
intentions, and perhaps help explain his death.
I
decided to study McCunn's recent writings and tried to locate his
unpublished material and research documentation. My first stop was
in Palo Alto, California at the famous HudsonAlpha Genome Sequencing
Center, associated with Stanford University. Of particular interest
was the Mammalian Gene Collection, which contained a full-protein
coding sequence for every human and mouse gene. A senior researcher
there, Ted Lentz, had isolated a few of the mutant genes which McCunn
had posited. This was irrefutable evidence for the Theory of
Aberrant Genomes.
***
