Chapter 5

“How are you doing?”

“I’m uncomfortable. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I’m bored out of my mind. My diaper is dirty. How do you think I’m doing?” Jane snapped at him.

“Sounds like you are doing as well as can be expected,” Jack answered with a smile.

“Screw you.”

“What problem of yours should I address first,” Jack pondered aloud.

“How about untying me?”

Jack answered, “No.”

“Change my diaper before I get diaper rash,” Jane said glaring at him.

“What is diaper rash?” Jack asked looking at her blankly.

“It is a rash that babies get when they wear dirty diapers for too long,” Jane answered.

“Really? I never heard of that,” Jack said.

“They eliminated diaper rash in your timeline?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know. I never saw a baby back in my timeline. I’ve only seen a few of them here,” Jack said.

“You’re kidding,” Jane said while lifting her hips so that Jack could remove her diaper.

“No,” Jack said. “In my timeline, all children were raised by the state until the age of twelve.”

In 2032 the Child Liberation Act was passed to put an end to parental abuse of children. This was in response to the discovery that parents were still teaching religion in the home despite laws forbidding them from forcing religion upon their children. Freedom from religion was viewed as an essential human right granted by the government.

The Child Liberation Act gave the government the authority to remove children from their parents shortly after birth. Infants were raised in huge nurseries until they began to walk. They were then transitioned into specially constructed padded facilities until their motor skills developed to a point where injuries due to falls were minimized. The children were then raised in carefully controlled environments where restricted topics, such as religion, were never mentioned.

“That’s criminal,” Jane declared.

Jack shrugged his shoulders and said, “It wasn’t really universal. Those laws only applied to American citizens. The people in this country illegally didn’t have to follow them because they had governments that backed their rights to keep their children.”

Jack was among the first generation of children to be raised in that manner. He wasn’t sure if that was good or not. Some programs started out good and degraded with time.

“So you should have seen babies,” Jane said.

“Not really. Because it was deemed politically incorrect to impose American values on individuals of a different culture there were exceptions to the laws. Every city had cultural enclaves where some of the laws were not valid. We ended up with huge enclaves of Mexicans, Muslims, Indians, and Chinese. They could choose to raise their children so that their culture remained intact so long as they didn’t flaunt it in front of Americans. It was actually worded to suggest that we didn’t want to inflict our culture on them. Americans are basically bad people,” Jack explained.

Jane was silent while thinking about what Jack was saying. A lot of what he was saying seemed pretty farfetched to her. During the 1960s through 1980s there had been a trend of blaming America for the world’s problems. In her timeline, that trend had started to re-emerge in the 2040s.

Jack interrupted her thoughts when he said, “It was a one way street. Americans had to accommodate other cultures, but the other cultures didn’t have to accommodate to the American culture. The argument was that the American culture was so strong that it automatically dominated the other cultures.”

“There is a lot truth to that,” Jane said.

“That’s only true in the early stages of cultural intermixing. By not encouraging the traditions and beliefs of the existing culture it begins to weaken. One day you wake up and realize that what had once been a dominant culture is gone. You stop public celebrations of some holidays because the other cultures might find offense in it. Your children grow up not celebrating the holiday and it disappears.

“Christmas becomes the winter holiday without mention of Jesus, wise men, or peace on Earth. Easter disappears from the calendar and no one knows when to celebrate it. Easter egg hunts, chocolate bunnies, and young kids dressed up for church disappear from the cultural memory. I cried the first time I saw kids taking part in an Easter egg hunt. I had never experienced anything so joyous when I was a kid.

“Cultures are a fragile thing. Thirty years — that’s all it takes for a vibrant culture to commit suicide,” Jack said.

“You can’t be serious!” Jane exclaimed.

Jack said, “Cinco De Mayo celebrates the day that Mexico declared its freedom from Spain. Now that has nothing to do with the United States, but in my original timeline the Cinco De Mayo celebration was even greater than the Fourth of July celebration. Why? Well, at one time the Fourth of July was a day of family picnics, barbecues, and families setting off fireworks with friends in celebration of declaring independence from England. Then it became a day of public firework displays. When budgets got tight the public displays of fireworks disappeared. If you wanted to watch fireworks, you sat in front of the television. Of course, near pornographic shows, lame comedies, and reality shows that had little to do with reality-dominated television. In my time, the holiday just became another day off. They didn’t talk about it being Independence Day or a celebration of the founding fathers.”

“There needs to be a balance between cultures,” Jane declared.

“It helps if the leaders are seeking that. In my timeline, the leaders were embarrassed and ashamed of the American culture. In 2010 there were political leaders who laughed at Americans who took pride in their culture. They denounced average Americans as right-wing fanatics, racists, and war-mongers. They derided individuals who believed in God, embraced the past history of the country, and believed that America was the shining star in the heavens that beckoned all,” Jack said.

He remembered the articles in the New York Times about the men and women who protested some of the radical changes they saw occurring in their government. After seeing that the majority of people in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s believed in God, country, and self-reliance he realized that the articles condemning the protesters were condemning long-held beliefs. It seemed to him that the criticisms of basically good Americans were grossly unfounded.

“It wasn’t that way in my timeline,” Jane said.

“There’s a reason for that,” Jack said with a smile.

Realizing what he was saying, she said, “You killed people to prevent that from happening in this timeline.”

“Yes. I’ve removed 54 political activists who were instrumental in setting up the government policies of my timeline. I’ve taken out rabid environmentalists who wanted a return to caveman days. I’ve killed socialists who were working to create a socialist system here. I’ve killed social progressives who believe that laws apply to everyone equally with exceptions based on race, gender, religion, and economic background. I’ve killed secular progressives who demanded that Freedom of Religion be interpreted as Freedom from Religion,” Jack replied.

“You’re a serial killer,” Jane said feeling that the chances of living much longer had just disappeared.

Jack didn’t answer right away. The deaths of this time were few compared to what he had been required to do in his timeline. He had been required to kill constitutionalists, Christian Fundamentalists, antitaxers, and free marketers. Those groups were only a drop in the bucket. The biggest group of antigovernment people was mothers.

He asked, “Do you know how many women protested having their children taken away from them?”

“No.”

“There were tens of thousands of them. My job was to eliminate the activists among them. What I’ve done in this timeline is nothing compared to killing women who just want to be mothers,” Jack said.

“That’s horrible,” Jane said feeling truly horrified at the idea.

“That’s why I took so much pleasure in strangling that bastard,” Jack said. “It was under his leadership that all of those activists came together and grabbed political power. He was the charismatic one who sold a bill of goods to the country under false pretenses.”

“Your friend, Ed Taylor, wasn’t much better. He passed a lot of laws that included capital punishment. A lot of people died because of him,” Jane said pointedly.

“We’ve covered his punishment of treasonous crimes. You mentioned death penalties for individuals who kill while drunk. What else was there?” Jack asked.

“Smuggling and dealing large quantities of drugs was a capital crime. Capital punishment was dictated for individuals in possession of more than five hundred kilos of drugs or who were in the business of making illegal drugs,” Jane said.

“You mean he had a death penalty for people who were killing other people by selling illegal drugs?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Jane answered.

“That seems completely reasonable to me,” Jack said. “A handful of bastards smuggle in drugs that ruin the lives of tens of thousands of individuals while costing the country billions of dollars. Another handful produce poisons that kill kids. Having a segment of society with total disregard for law percolates through the whole society undermining the social fabric of the country. You don’t think that death is a reasonable punishment?”

“It is taking a human life!” Jane shouted.