CARLOS & KATRINA

A Novel by Charles Adrian Trevino
Copyright 2006, 2021
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Chapter 41

Bet Bader looked down at the papers lying on the desk in front of him, an upraised hand supporting his hanging head. As usual, he was deluged with important matters to decide, people who needed to talk to him, monies to be shifted about; then after those tasks, there was always a slew of less urgent things to confront him and demand his time. He had very little time for personal pleasures these days; strange events were occuring in rapid succession all around the UFS... and he himself was one of the major players in the group behind these events.

In only a very brief span of time the Usher High Council, with the very able assistance of its top puppet/assistants, a top-secret organization known as the Longfellow International Affairs Institute, had shaken the country to its core. By spreading false claims about a deadly viral outbreak and manipulating certain key political figures, Ushers had managed to shut down most of the smaller businesses, while funneling vast amounts of taxpayers' money to their favored recipients: their own larger, "essential" businesses and corporations. They did this while singing their favorite song, of course: "if these large businesses fail, it will have devastating results for all of the country! Come on, taxpayers, let's bail them out... again!" It never seemed to fail, this "absolutely necessary" taxpayer-bailout refrain; that was why the Ushers loved singing it so often.

But that wasn't the only goal the High Ushers had achieved; the country was undergoing a general demise, as underground anti-fascist operatives began to crawl out of their sordid little holes and terrorize the populace. Crime had increased steadily, until the statistics had grown too scary to even think about anymore. Government-protected Usher scam artists were fleecing unsuspecting home buyers, "outside" investors, and stock market novices like crazy; some victims of stock market speculation were even committing suicide, after finding themselves with huge, unexplained debts brought on by their "ignorance." In fact, suicides had increased at a heartbreaking rate all over the country, as people's lives failed along with the badly wounded economy. But the crowning touch was the success the Ushers were having with their "forced innoculation" campaign (another benefit of the "pandemic"), which they were steadfastly insisting was not mandatory... even as they blatantly forced people to take the vaccine, by making it almost impossible to function in society without proof of vaccination.

Bader closed his eyes for a few seconds, exhaling heavily; the subject of mandatory vaccinations disturbed even him. It was a thinly disguised plot to either kill people outright, or introduce debillitating viruses and chemicals into their bodies that would go dormant for years, even decades, before activating and causing the victim to become ill, seek expensive medical treatment and medicines, and then die miserably, more from the treatments and medicines than anything else. This delighted the Ushers no end, since they were the ones who profited from the vaccines, as well as the expensive treatments and medicines the victim would invariably seek; also, the younger the age at which people died, the less social security benefits the Usher's system would have to pay them back. The Big Ushers didn't like having too many old people around; to their way of thinking, only successful Ushers had the right to enjoy their "golden years" in good health and comfort.

Smelling blood in the water, the conspirators had gone for the kill, manipulating stock markets, government grants, pension funds, and home loans among other things, to rob and evict people they disliked (and troublesome people who didn't think like Ushers in general) from their homes, replacing them with Ushers and/or people who thought exactly like the Usher, and weren't likely to protest the Usher's toxic, obnoxious ways. This was the Usher's idea of social progress.

Once they had the UFS under their complete domination, they could proceed with the final phase of their plot: to use the UFS to start another world war. This would cause unprecedented misery, destroying countries' economies and making them completely dependent on the Usher system of eternal interest payments, and would decimate entire populations of unwanted, combative people opposed to the Usher philosophy of spiritual and moral debility, decadence, greed and cupidity. After they had reduced the entire planet to a state of groveling submission, they would begin to exterminate the less desirable peoples... and there were a lot of them, in the Ushers' opinion. When they had successfully carried out their plan, the world would be a much, much less crowded place; it would no longer have to worry about over-population, depletion of resources, pollution; these problems would all be solved, Usher-style:  through mass-murder, committed on an astronomically large scale. It was the fastest, cheapest, easiest way, and so... that was that.

Life, which had been so unjustifiably cruel to the poor oppressed Usher, was going to be much better now. With no straight-laced hypocrites to restrain him, the Usher could go completely hog-wild on society, improving it immeasurably by doing away with the foolish notions of the higher social strata; things like morality, chastity, self-restraint and integrity were quaint, now-useless relics of a time that the Usher despised; yesterday. Yesterday, when sane people were running things.

Bet raised his head and straightened up again. He had started to become more and more unsure of the aims of the ultra-elite group of people for whom he worked so hard. But he was neck-deep in the intrigue... and he had already committed himself to a life of well-rewarded servitude to this powerful group of men. And, he had to admit it to himself -- he liked it. It was interesting, and Bet hated being bored.

One of the less important but somewhat amusing topics of interest to him was the skyrocketing career of a formerly poor, lonely and drug-addicted musician/conspiracy theory-spreader named Carlos Fontana, who had only been of minor importance prior to this time. But things had changed for the idealistic but self-destructive youth; he had now attained a high enough level on the Usher threat indicator to activate the algorithm-like response that always followed such an alarm.

He had done this by repeatedly giving little "pep talks" to his attentive audiences, before starting his musical shows; these pep talks always alluded to some kind of satanic, hidden-away power that was in the business of stealing unsuspecting, unprepared people's souls. He'd suggest ways to identify and "fend off" these satanists' assaults, going into fairly acute detail, considering the short duration of these speeches, and his words seemed to resonate strongly with the more knowledgable audiences his band drew. The Usher's main concern was that everything Carlos said was true, and the truth could be easily seen when told from his perspective; in fact, he seemed to have some ungodly gift for hitting the Usher's sensitive spots, and rubbing salt into the wound. It was this scary ability, and the fact that he had such a large following now, that had gotten Carlos into what was beginning to look like big trouble; he was now a threat to be reckoned with. And Bet himself had signed off on his "arrest" warrant.

Now all the little rich but unimportant trash-entertainment starmakers who had been trying to drive Carlos crazy had to step aside; it was time for the real psychological warfare experts to take over. Carlos had now become a public figure; he wasn't just some underground nuisance with a real loud mouth anymore. As such, he had set himself up for an endless torrent of ridicule in the media, and the Ushers would use every trick in the book to ruin his growing populist reputation. This would include all the usual tactics: bad pictures, embarrassing pictures, fabricated pictures; quotes taken out of all original context, and edited to make him look hateful; shocking "tell-all" revelations from people who claimed they knew him well, but were actually just blatantly paid-off actors reciting prepared scripts; documentaries warning the public about this latest threat, this new uncool upstart spouting his jerk conspiracy theories. And as always, they would be trying to ensnare his soul by offering him multi-million dollar record deals. This was the prize they coveted most; to take an artist whom they hated and envied, and get total contractual control of him, forcing him to sing hateful songs, make hateful movies, make hateful statements, and endorse hateful people, among other sick things. Tragically, many an artist who had found him or herself so soul-crushingly manipulated by the foul Usher entertainment moguls had commited suicide.

Yes, influential Populists were considered dangerous, indeed. So dangerous, in fact, that some very high-powered Ushers had suggested that Carlos should simply be done away with swiftly and completely, with no fanfare; buried without a marker. His much-repeated insolence had earned him some extremely heavyweight enemies; it was not so much their actions, but their opinions of him that would put Carlos in danger -- "will no one rid me of this pest?" Some people didn't have to actually give spoken orders... or offer spoken rewards. Some people merely had to frown at the right moment to have some annoying problem "fixed."

But for now, the naysayers were satisfied; Bet had personally attended to the matter, and the media "bloodletting" would commence immediately. Carlos was not in any mortal danger... although he might have preferred that, if he knew what was about to hit him. Even though Carlos had not achieved fame in the standard way, i.e., he hadn't been hand-chosen by the Ushers themselves, but had established himself on his own, he was still fair game... just because he had now become a known celebrity. Even though it was still only the smallest news outlets that were reporting on him, that would soon change, thought Bet... somewhat sadly. Carlos was still so young... what was about to hit him had felled stronger, more experienced troublemakers. But it was Carlos who had brought all this trouble on himself -- it was time for the musician to step up and face the music he had made for himself.

And Carlos had better be ready, thought Bet.

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Copyright 2006, 2021 by Charles Adrian Trevino.