The Rangers Are Coming (37 page)

              He wrote a careful analysis of what he’d learned and made a long list of recommendations of what to do next.  When he was finished, he put on his beret and wandered down to the martial arts training center. 

              On the wall of the training center wall, was a big permanent picture of Arcadia, clad in her Black Ninja outfit, which concealed everything, and a large caption on the picture that said, “You will never be as good as the Black Ninja, but keep on working.”

              Robby stood in the back of the room and crossed his arms as he leaned against the wall and watched Arcadia working.  She had 30 pairs of men and women spread out across the mats, and her current victim standing next to her.  She explained the move she was going to do, and then demonstrated it at full speed.  The student was an expert in his own right, but was helpless to counter the complicated maneuver Arcadia was teaching.

              She helped her student to his feet, and then broke the routine down into its many parts in slow motion.  She had the students work through each part of the exercise and practice it until they were able to do the maneuver perfectly.  Then Arcadia stood back and watched her students practice it over and over again.  Finally, she picked one student who seemed to be doing the routine the best and had him come forward.

              “I want you to run this move on me,” she said. 

              The student stepped forward with confidence and began the exercise.  Everything went well for the first part of the sweeps and strikes, but suddenly, everything went wrong.  Soon the student was laying on his face, slapping the mat in submission.

              “This maneuver will work for you about 95 percent of the time, but sooner or later, you’re going to find someone who has the defense for it, and then you’ll be dead.  There is always one more thing to do in martial arts.  “Good work, today, Rangers.”  She bowed to the class, who responded by bowing even lower.  She then left the building.  Robby followed after her.

              “I think you are losing your touch,” he said, “the infirmary says there were only three sprained ankles, five sprained wrists, two broken ribs, and a broken arm.”

              “We do what we can,” smiled Arcadia through her mask,  “your troops are light years ahead of where they were when you and I went after it 20 years ago.”

              “Thanks for the compliment and for the training,” said Robby, “the whole brigade is talking about it.”

              “How’s your study going,” asked Arcadia?

              “Go into my private bath and get cleaned up, then we’ll talk.”

              Showered and dressed in jeans and a sweater, Arcadia came into Robby’s office, still fluffing her hair to make sure it was dry.

              The general pulled up his report and projected in onto the screen.  “The fundamental problem you have here is the interaction between the United States and the Muslim world.  By importing their oil, you will not only make them rich, you will inevitably find our country in conflict with them.  This must be avoided at all costs.”

              “I’m glad you have looked beyond all the wonderful advantages that cars bring to the people and have seen the real trap waiting at the end of it, “nodded Arcadia in satisfaction.

              “We have a lot of oil in the United States, enough to be independent of any foreign oil for a long time.  Unfortunately, some of it is going to be hard to get and I’ve no idea about the technology involved, even though I have seen it in your comprehensive documentary.  It will be many years before we will have developed the technology to get at the oil imbedded in rocks.”

              “However, the automobile will set the population free and allow them to travel further, do more work, and actually provide a whole new industry of recreation and family pleasure.  You saw the Grand Canyon on your trip to Veracruz, years ago, you’ve never forgotten it, or the big mountains.  Think how wonderful it would be for our people to actually drive to those places and see them with their own eyes?”

              “That would be wonderful,” said Robby, “but as I understand it, the only roads you have built are between the big cities here on the east coast.”

              “That’s true, and it’s also the answer to the problem,” said Arcadia.  “We will be able to ration the use of this kind of travel by the rate at which we build roads, and the kinds of vehicles we put on them.  After the roads are built, the first vehicles we will use them for is commercial traffic,  trucks to transport cargo to and from the ports, and to and from the cities.  We can still use diesel fuel for these vehicles.  As the network of roads increase, we can start building them to some of our national parks and provide bus service to them, still using diesel and not significantly increasing our carbon footprint.”             

              “Our what,” asked Robby?

              “The amount of carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere.  Tell me, how close are your wonder boys to taking your prototype engine into a vehicle?”

              “We could probably do that much today.  The problem, they tell me is to recreate the shifting system and to figure out the way to stop the vehicles.”

              “All that takes is to reverse engineer the vehicles you already have.  If we can get motorized vehicles on the road in the next few years, we will still be almost a hundred years ahead of the rest of the world.  I’m going to send you some real mechanics to work with your teams.  I want the first truck to roll out in a year.  I’ll send you the specifications for what the trailer should look like, along with the design for a bus.  You can have your family send some trusted workers here and we’ll build everything in a secret building.  I want all of this kept strictly secret while we’re working out the details.”

                                                   
35

Washington, D.C.

              Alexander Hamilton was elected President in 1808.  In his first meeting with Arcadia he said, “All my proposals for a national bank and control of the currency were put into place from the beginning, so I’m a little confused as to why I am here.”

              “Because, Alex, you were one of the most brilliant men of the Revolution and would have been a great President if you hadn’t have gotten killed by Aaron Burr in a duel in 1804.  As it turns out, your paths have hardly crossed.  Now you have been hard at work as Vice President under Thomas for the past eight years and are really ready to take the United States to the next major plateau of development.”

              “I believe your idea of putting the vice president in charge of education in general and the gifted schools in particular is a sound principle.  I have been in a position to watch some of the remarkable things coming out of the special schools, and now that I’m president, I’m in a better position to implement the best of the things we are producing.”

              “That was the idea,” said Arcadia.  “Now do you see the results of the many developments and research projects developing?”

              “Of course I see the financial picture first.  The flat tax is producing $50 million a year from individuals and an astonishing $170 million dollars from commercial business and industry.  Our trade picture is very strong.  We export over $250 million dollars in products annually and import only about $50 million.  Much of this money is flowing into private enterprise through your ongoing policy of taking the big developments in all fields that were done by the jump-start you gave in technology through the government, and then backing the government out and forming private companies that let ordinary people buy stock.  It’s a huge advantage to investors.  The average American worker has an annual income of $1,500 a year, and enjoys a standard of living, which is the highest in the world.  Your goal of preventing the rise of trade unions is working since workers have benefits such as a 50-hour workweek, vacation, and sick pay.  The major manufacturers have learned keeping their workers happy make them infinitely more productive.  We have a large and very productive middle class, who are using the investment strategies of companies who combine many different stock investments to limit risk.  That’s making it possible for people to multiply future income and use it for their later years when their productive work period has ended.  Meanwhile, our unemployment rate is effectively zero, and the continuing dedication of people to the worship of God has made it possible for the churches to pay relief funding for families who are in poverty or are otherwise disadvantaged.”

              “Our Federal budget is now $60 million a year.  We have 10,000 Federal employees, and our surplus has grown to an astonishing half a billion dollars, all in gold reserves, and we are receiving about $25 million a year in interest payments for credits and loans we’ve extended to foreign governments.”

              “We currently have applications for immigration of over 2 million people, last year we only admitted half of them.”

              “That’s because we are more cautious of whom we allow to immigrate,” said Arcadia, “and we limit the numbers to what we can reasonably absorb into our work force.”

              “I must say that I didn’t entirely understand your institution of such an extensive intelligence system 20 years ago.  It was, and is an expensive program, but our network of spies and intelligence gatherers, allows us to prevent the least productive people and common criminals from getting into the country.  Moreover, it’s very handy to identify the very gifted, who we are able to basically bribe to immigrate, by encouraging their research, and letting them teach, plus give them a decent salary.”

              “What about the expansion of our transportation system,” asked Arcadia? 

              “Following the quarter century of Thomas’ sound policy makes it easy to see where we go next.  Let’s summarize, we have now built over 50,000 miles of railroad tracks.  The new trains running on diesel fuel with their special filters that limit pollution can reach speeds as much as 70 miles per hour.  We are adding at least 5,000 miles of new track every year.  The roads take longer to build and cost a lot more, but we’ve built highways between all the east coast cities and have three highways that are inching across the country.  One to Chicago in the north,  the farthest west is to Kansas City in the Midwest, and to Atlanta in the south.”

              “I know you’ve been sitting in on the meetings that give the reason for all these transportation systems,” said Arcadia, “but I haven’t kept up on the vehicle research like you have.  What’s the latest on that?”

              “The engineers had to learn how to simplify their prototype vehicles.  They were getting very frustrated over the advanced technology that augments the systems in the Humvees.  Finally, they decided build the basic engine, transmission, and braking system without all the special features.  They found out they didn’t need all that to make the vehicle run efficiently.  Then one of the bright lads decided to take a look at the much simpler ATVs.  That was the breakthrough.  The ATV’s are easy to understand.  So they built their own ATV and worked out the design problems as they went.  They finally got one to run as well as the real ATV’s after they figured out they needed a better fuel, a more refined product.  One of the guys found a reference to that in the refinery schematics.  This fuel is called gasoline, and it changed the entire situation.  However, the bigger vehicles are going to run better on diesel, so a small model of that was built and they improved it gradually until they had a truck that was something between an ATV and one of those big trucks you showed us.  Then…”

              “Excuse me, Alex,” interrupted Arcadia, “I kind of know all about these vehicles from my century.  We could have built them for you, but the fundamentals have to be understood from the ground up by people from your century.  Just give me the status of the project as of today.”

              “Of course,” said Hamilton.  “The shop at Fort Independence completed and tested the first big truck two months ago.  It will carry 40,000 pounds of weight, and will run 500 miles on a tankful of fuel.”

              “Wonderful,” said Arcadia.  “How soon can we start building trucks on an assembly line?”

              “A year,” said Hamilton.  “Where do you want to build them, and who’s going to do it?”

              “The Pierce company has the best workers for wagons, so they will have the shortest learning curve to build trucks.  They’re used to working on an assembly line.  When you survey the country, where is the place with the slowest economic growth?”

              “Atlanta,” said Hamilton.  “They’re stuck with a mostly agriculture economy and only have textile mills.”

              “We have a highway, a modern road to Atlanta.  That’s where you should set up your factory.”

              “It makes sense, the city will be a boom town with a big factory to build trucks.”

              “New subject,” said Arcadia.  “So far we’ve managed to flood the world with great products without letting most of the secrets of how we make these products from other countries.  How are we doing in keeping our edge?”

              “Obviously every country would like to know how we build such advanced products at such cheap prices.  We get a lot visits from foreign dignitaries who bring their best scientists along in their official parties.  They can’t miss the subway system that runs under Washington, D.C., but they haven’t a clue how we built it.  They understand the fundamentals of electricity, but how we produce so much of it and then adapt it to trains that run underground is a great mystery.  Of course, the big power plants are always under heavy guard, so they can’t see the generators.  They marvel at our trains, but it would be quite a feat to steal one.  We never give tours of our assembly lines, so that piece of information hasn’t dawned on them yet.”

              “But there are smart people in every country, even though we try to siphon off their best, and use them ourselves.  Nevertheless, other countries are making big improvements in their technology.  Just knowing it exists here in the United States is a powerful incentive to make it.  I think our goal of staying a hundred years ahead of everyone else is still true in nearly every area.  In some fields, we are much further ahead, medicine is an example of that.  We’re now routinely manufacturing and distributing vaccines for diseases that are still killing millions of people.  Our surgical techniques are so advanced people are not afraid to go to a hospital.  In other countries, going to a hospital is like a death sentence, since most of the world hasn’t figured out that washing your hands, taking showers, using antiseptics and practicing personal and private hygiene actually prevent disease.  Most of the other countries still are disposing of waste in their rivers without ever treating the contaminated water.”