Page 60 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Homeostatopia

combined institutions would have to triple in size to handle the
resultant client load, wiping out all the savings the city had
anticipated. But the unions representing those workers had already
declared war on the municipality, unifying against this threat and
presenting demands none of them could have made individually.
Then Peña became poison to any organization seeking basic
change. He did not, however, acknowledge any intellectual failure. He
had assumed, so he announced in a press release, that the city would
take care of the displaced personnel, working with private industry to
transfer their skills to high-paying technical jobs in the corporate
world, thereby increasing the tax base and the city’s revenue. He was
unrepentant. The public prefers its celebrities to confess, as
dramatically as possible, so that it may confer absolution. Peña, the
very model of a modern megalomaniac, would have none of that, so
he took his savings and moved to this sterile and blasted part of the
country. His last manifesto was in my briefcase. It defined itself as
nothing less than a blueprint of the best possible survival strategy for
the entire planet—virtually cost-free.
At last some signs of human habitation came over the horizon,
way too drab and dormant to be a mirage. Peña had attracted a few
true believers to his cause, mostly young and idealistic. I saw a few of
them as I approached the main building, a mud-brick dome
distinguished from five or six others by its size. How had Al Magnus
located this crazy man? Not in the telephone directory. But my
directions to his experimental community were explicit, and anyone
interested in joining up could find out how to get there. The ones
already there, and sticking around, I decided, were diehards. How
would they have approached Mr. Peña after traveling down this road
through hell?
I pulled into the parking lot, which was everywhere and nowhere,
pushed open the car door and peeled myself off the seat. I had
already shucked my own skin of mannerisms and fashion, adopting
the identity of the type most likely to be accepted by Peña as an angel
dropping manna in the desert: a gambler. My clothing shrieked Las
Vegas, all expensive but tasteless Western tailoring, right down to the
hand-tooled calfskin boots, longhorn silver belt buckle and turquoise
pendant. My efforts at a carefully slicked-down coiffure now lay in
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