The Traveler

It looked as if the tower was a solid monolith, but when Michael moved to the other side of the pedestal, he saw a cross section of the building. It was a maze of doorways and staircases. Strips of balsa wood covered the windows like Venetian blinds.

Michael heard a door squeak open and saw Kennard Nash enter the room. Bald head. Wide shoulders. When Nash smiled, Michael remembered the various times he had seen the general on television talk shows.

“Good evening, Michael. I’m Kennard Nash.”

General Nash walked quickly across the room and shook Michael’s hand. One of the surveillance cameras turned slightly as if to take in the scene.

“I see you’ve found the Panopticon.” Nash approached the architectural model.

“What is it? A hospital?”

“I suppose it could be a hospital or even an office building, but it’s a prison designed by the eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Although he sent his plans to everyone in the British government, it was never actually constructed. The model is based on Bentham’s drawings.”

Nash stepped closer to the model and studied it carefully. “Each room is a cell with thick enough walls so there can’t be communication between the prisoners. Light comes from the outside so the prisoner is always backlit and visible.”

“And the guards are in the tower?”

“Bentham called it an inspection lodge.”

“Looks like a maze.”

“That’s the cleverness of the Panopticon. It’s designed so that you can never see the face of your guard or hear him moving about. Think of the implications, Michael. There can be twenty guards in the tower or one guard or no guards at all. It doesn’t make a difference. The prisoner must assume that he’s being watched all the time. After a while, that realization becomes part of the prisoner’s consciousness. When the system is working perfectly the guards can leave the tower for lunch-or a three-day weekend. It doesn’t make a difference. The prisoners have accepted their condition.”

General Nash walked over to a bookcase. He opened a false wall of books, revealing a bar stocked with glasses, an ice bucket, and bottles of liquor. “It’s six thirty. I usually have a glass of scotch around this time. We’ve got bourbon, whiskey, vodka, and wine. Or I can order you something more elaborate.”

“I’ll have malt whiskey with a little bit of water.”

“Excellent. Good choice.” Nash began pulling corks out of bottles. “I’m part of a group called the Brethren. We’ve been around for quite a long time, but for hundreds of years we were just reacting to events, trying to reduce the chaos. The Panopticon was a revelation to our members. It changed our way of thinking.

“Even the most casual student of history realizes that human beings are greedy, impulsive, and cruel. But Bentham’s prison showed us that social control was possible with the right sort of technology. There was no need to have a policeman standing on every corner. All you need is a Virtual Panopticon that monitors your population. You aren’t required to literally watch them all the time, but the masses have to accept that possibility and the inevitability of punishment. You need the structure, the system, the implicit threat that becomes a fact of life. When people discard their notions of privacy, they permit a peaceful society.”

The general carried two glasses over to a couch and some chairs clustered around a low wood table. He placed Michael’s drink on the table and the men sat opposite each other.

“So here’s to the Panopticon.” Nash raised his glass to the model on the pedestal. “It was a failed invention, but a great insight.”

Michael sipped some of the whiskey. It didn’t taste like it was drugged, but he couldn’t be sure. “You lecture about philosophy if you want,” he said, “but I don’t really care. All I know is that I’m a prisoner.”

“Actually, you know a good deal more than that. Your family lived under an assumed name for several years until a group of armed men attacked your home in South Dakota. We did that, Michael. Those men were our employees and they were following our old strategy.”

“You killed my father.”

“Did we?” Kennard Nash raised his eyebrows. “Our staff searched what was left of the house, but we never found his body.”

The casual tone of Nash’s voice was infuriating. You bastard, Michael thought. How can you sit there and smile? A wave of anger surged through his body and he thought about flinging himself across the table and grabbing Nash by the throat. Finally there would be payback for the destruction of his family.

General Nash didn’t seem to realize that he was on the verge of being attacked. When his cell phone rang, he put down his drink and pulled the phone out of his suit-coat pocket. “I asked not to be disturbed,” he told the caller. “Yes. Is that so? How very interesting. Well, why don’t I just ask him?”