Chapter 17

“You are a teenager with the impulsiveness that comes with your youth. That teen brashness inures you to most social gaffes, but you have enough common sense to know to avoid such scenes.”

“True. It is best I not be there, I agree.”

“Right. Instead, make yourself helpful. What I want you to do is to go back to your hidey-hole and make it more comfortable for you and your mother to remain in it quietly for up to about two hours. Provide yourselves with soundless entertainment: reading materials, plus music only if you have headphones to listen with. The main requirement is silence and no emanations, so no smoking anything; tobacco or hash, and no food that produces strong odours. These make smells that we need to do without if you are trying to hide. Check if there is any kind of toilet facility there. If not, then you need a portable toilet. Check with my ladies if they have one in the house. If not, we need to buy one in. We can probably order one online. Oh, I forgot. Please have a look at the Copies website and see if they have any portable toilets in stock. If they do, we can get one tomorrow quite easily. I can put it down to preparing for our children.”

“Sure, Jimmy; I can do all that. I am not a silly teenage girl. I have had to grow up fast. Do you agree that I could marry you, if we get along together?”

“You are showing signs of that, Isabella. I would still like to have a more definite long-term disposition of your father before we embark on such a permanent liaison. Currently, you are lost to the authorities, but if they get any hint of your whereabouts, then that is a clue for your father to chase after you for punishment if he was that way inclined.”

“But if I become another of your wives, I’ll be under your protection, won’t I?”

“You would, but with no civil registration of a marriage, you are still a single girl in the eyes of the state, and if your mother does not have the financial ability to care for you properly, the state may wish to intervene, ‘in the interests of a minor’, as they would put it.”

“But that is silly. Mom can get a job and look after me, if I am officially unmarried.”

“Have you finished school?” I asked her.

“Effectively, yes. I had a few weeks remaining of my final year, but when we had to vanish because of my father, school was the last of my concerns. I don’t see any point in going back there for a short spell, just to complete the school year.”

“The authorities may not feel that way. They may want you to go back to school, even for a short time, and that would give your father a line on your whereabouts, as your mother has to provide details of your place of residence.”

“I see. That suggests I am best to stay hidden until after school finishes.”

“It does. I had earlier assumed you would be here for a few weeks, until we were sure you would be safe from your father. If they commit him to a mental facility, it most probably means for a rather long time, but we have nothing definite yet.”

“You think in longer terms all the time, don’t you, Jimmy? No short term fixes for you.” I admitted, “Solutions tend to take longer than most people expect. Short termism seldom is successful in solving deep-seated problems.”

“Ah. So that is why you have been keen to put off the proposal to marry me. It is not just to establish compatability; it is for my long-term protection as well. Is that why you made an agreement with Mom to help raise her baby, if she has one by you? Her long-term protection?”

“You are a sharp girl, Isabella. Not much gets by you, does it?”

“I try to pay attention to everything, if that is what you mean. I also listen to what your wives say, and they said a lot about you during our day of sight-seeing. You do realise that every last one of them loves you, not just likes you: loves you wholeheartedly?”

“I have that impression, yes. I love all of them as well.”

“You must find it easy to fall in love, Jimmy.”

“Not at all. Until I met Sharl, Cherry and Charlotte, I had no serious entanglements with women, and I didn’t view these three as potential lovers when we started their ‘detention’, or social training as I viewed it. I intended to wean them off sex by a period of abstinence, but somehow or other that plan got subverted, so I then informed them that if they needed sex, it would have to be with me, and that meant all three having sex with me. It was meant to be a purely clinical judgment by me, and a deterrent to them, but it backfired on me. The more these women improved themselves under my tutelege, and learned to observe and think before acting, the more we became emotionally involved. It sort of happened, all by itself, with me hardly noticing the change. They told me that when I had sex with them, I treated them with respect and consideration, almost affection. They had never had that special experience before, and wanted to keep having it. In those close confines, that meant keeping me, and then I stupidly let them know that their father had said he would give his blessing if I wanted to marry one of them at the end of what to him was an experiment. All three of them wanted that vacant slot, and after I had deliberated the conundrum, I explained that the only way I could see them getting all they wanted, was for all of them to marry me.” Isabella jumped straight to an immediate conclusion.

“So their father agreed with that solution?”

“Not exactly. We were not in touch with anybody at that point. We decided between us that some strong pressure would be required to persuade him, and I expressed my view that the only viable pressure was for them all to be pregnant when they came home. The idea was a shock to them, I can tell you, and they had to think carefully about it.”

“But why would that work?” Isabelle did not see the inevitable logic, so I told her, “Would you like one of your three daughters to be married and the other two have illegitimate children? You would be prepared to have bastards in your middle-class family? It was much preferable, in his eyes, to have all three married, albeit without that paper, the civil registration, and so all three grandchildren would be seem to be acceptably born in wedlock.” Isabella laughed at the forced settlement.

“Social standards must be upheld in society, even if it means breaking civil standards? I like it.”

“Thank you,” I accepted graciously.

“But you said you got married in a religious ceremony.”

“Yes. We found a tolerant cleric willing to perform the marriage ceremony. A century and a half ago, multiple spouses were not illegal in the States; and this was before the Mormons abused the practice by taking it to extremes. Their behaviour was one of the activities that persuaded the populace to put pressure on the Federal government to make plural marriage illegal.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that bit of history. They don’t tell you that in school history classes.”

“It is information that society thinks children should remain ignorant of, for their own supposed good. Any alternatives to the current view of normality tend to be frowned upon. History, as taught in school education, presents the facts in different fashions, depending on what country or society is running the system. For the last two thousand years, Europe and North America have taught history as seen through the eyes of the Christian Church, which mostly ignores the part played by Islamic scholars in translating early Greek writings and so preserving much of what the Renaissance thought of and admired as Greek Learning. If it was not for the Islamic scholars, we would not have had the benefit of much of the early Greek writings that the West put so much store by for many hundreds of years.” I gave a short bark of humour as I continued.

“Not that all of it was accurate. Some of the Greek thinkers got their perceived facts wrong and yet the Western world took that as unchallengable truth for many hundreds of years, much as the Christian church assumed that as some of the Bible was accurate, all of it was accurate and unchallengable. Thus it was that the Church added to the confusion by insisting that the Earth must be the centre of the universe, as that was what the Bible implied. Provable observations to the contrary had to be ignored, as they did not fit with the ‘known and accepted’ structure of the solar system, according to the Church leadership and ancient Greek writings. That was what got Galileo in trouble, stating what he found by observation of the sky. He was supposed to observe the Bible only! He was banned from making public statements or even writing about his views, because they were seen as contradicting divine ‘truth’. It is always the same way. The powers in control have their view of things, and anyone stating otherwise is by definition wrong, no matter what the subject in dispute. When you get a US President describing the findings of highly regarded scientists as ‘fake news’, that is only one of a long line of leaders who objected to any statement of facts that contradicted his or her beliefs.”

“Gosh! You would have made a great teacher, Jimmy dear. We had none of this in school lessons.”

“Of course not. You were being taught to become citizens of this here United States, defender of freedom, despite the manifest and terrible true facts of loss of freedom by much of the population: long-term slavery and then even later preventing former slaves from exercising their human rights under the constitution. Controlling political groups within a society, or those holding the economic power, try to marginalise the less well-off, or those of a different religious persuasion, from fear of what they may do in numbers. This attitude still continues today, making it difficult for poor people to vote, as poor people are mostly black and also not likely to vote for those politicians supporting the rich white folks.” Isabella said with a puzzled look, “So why don’t the people vote them out of office, if the top clique are so bad?” I sighed, having to say more than I originally intended.

“In many cases, either there is no voting by the people, or the vote is restricted to those who are deemed worthy of the honour, or the people are told lies all the time by their leaders so don’t know what to think. Confusion is a power tool of the rich, for they are unaffected. You also have to know what the system is all about. For example, in ancient Greece, the term democracy meant only free men could vote or be voted for, so that limited who could be candidates. That system meant no votes by women, children or slaves; and the majority of the population were slaves at that time. The meaning of the word ‘democracy’ has changed radically over the centuries, thus we praise ancient Greek democracy on the assumption that it means what we think it means today; but it doesn’t. Aside from the later-arriving true democracy, most early societies were ruled by kings or military rulers who made all the major deciions. The ruler’s opinions were imposed as society’s rules in these cases, and everyone had to abide by them, no matter how repellent: think of the exremist Islamist states of today. It is similar to the European monarchic claim to rule as ‘the divine right of kings’: They have the right to rule you, and that is that. At times, the religion adhered to by the majority strongly influenced the leadership, who used it to reinforce their power, such as in that ‘divine right of kings’; in a few cases the leader doubled as the official head of the religion, making it a theocracy such as in ancient Egypt. The Pharoah’s title usually said one way or another that he was loved and supported by the gods. For example, Tutankhamun’s name meant ‘living image of [the God] Amun’, which he adopted after coming to the throne at around the age of eight. I’ll bet that this was the result of pressure from his royal advisers. Where a king actively ruled, controlling the nation, it was a monarchy, but if the king’s position is mainly ceremonial and the country is actually run by others under a constitution, it becomes constitutional monarchy. If a military arm takes over a country and stays in control, it is a military dictatorship. The army hold the weapons, so might assume they should also hold the power. It takes a lot of guts for the people to tell the military to leave office. If a citizen heads a select group that takes over and runs the country, it is an autocracy, and in most cases totalitarian as well, abolishing voting. Some countries employ what seems to be selection by voting by citizens, but the people in charge control the results in several ways. One is to have the selection of candidates subject to a control body, and so anyone who does not espouse the state policies does not get approval to stand for election. In other cases, the state controls the counting of votes, and surprise, surprise, only the approved candidate manages to get enough votes to win. This is theft of the election. This is why modern democracies have independent organisations or legal officials with no allegience to either party, who supervise elections and the counting process, ensuring the results are reliable. Claims that any election has been rigged in todays’ democracies have never been authenticated, I emphasise NEVER, all claims to the contrary, because of the checks and balances in place to prevent cheating.” Isabella was amazed.

“Why don’t our schools make explanations as simple as this, Jimmy?”

“With the best of intentions, Isabella, schools dare not make a subject simple. They need to get the students to think deeply about our society and how it is organised; get them to do studies of the different types of national organisation of a country so they can understand the pluses and minuses of each form of rule. In a national emergency, often the best solution is a single man or a small group making decisions about running a war efficiently. The more people involved in decision-making, the slower and worse will be the results. Sir Alec Issigonis, auto designer of the Mini, once said, “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” Isabella laughed uproariously at this quote.

“The man was a genius,” she declared. “Committee decisions take forever and a day, and are usually a mess, from what I have read. I can well see them designing something stupid in order to cover all eventualities.”

“The Russians did that in the first world war. They designed a tank that would be the best tank ever. It was extremely heavy, had two immense wheels thirty feet in diameter and a small rear wheel, plenty of armor and several guns, so sounded great. In practice, with its total weight of around 60 tons, the rear wheel got bogged down in mud as soon as there was rain, the front wheels couldn’t pull it out, and the whole thing couldn’t move! In addition, its height meant it would be impossible to hide in a conflict and so become an easy target. The prototype was abandoned where it stood, and finally got dismantled for scrap in 1923.”

“Is that all true?” she asked in astonishment.

“Completely true.” I averred. “Almost as bad was the American flying boat built by the Hughes Aircraft Company and tested in 1947.The government contracted for a prototype in 1942, intended originally as a heavy lift craft for WW2, able to transport two 30-ton Sherman tanks. Many delays in altering the design led to it not being completed before the war ended. Hughes redesignated it for transatlantic passenger service. Although nicknamed ‘Spruce Goose’, it was made almost entirely from birch wood - aluminium was restricted to combat aircraft by wartime regulations during its design and build. It had eight engines and the largest wingspan of any plane until recent times. It made one short flight to prove it could fly, but never went into production. Guess why?”

“Too expensive?” Isabella offered.

“Nope. The government paid most of the development costs; that single flight proved the concept and justified the subsidy. The official reasons for not proceeding were not actually stated, but the reality was almost certainly that most commercial air routes after the war were taken over by ex-military transport planes bought cheaply, and they could run shorter legs to Europe via Greenland and Iceland, undermining the market for the giant Hughes aircraft planned for the direct Transatlantic run. The market was no longer there for a single-journey heavy lifter to and from Europe.”

“So economics wins over good design?”

“Good design is always a matter of what the market needs at the time, and how much good design costs you, compared to simple design. The Russian T34 WW2 tank with a powerful gun was a very basic design, easy to make: simple and rugged, and up against beautifully designed techically superior German tanks that had excellent targeting sights. The Russians lost many tanks in the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa, but they could turn them out in vast numbers and repair them on the spot if a part broke, whereas the German tanks broke down frequently and had to be pulled back to Germany for repair, so the Russians overwhelmed by numbers the technically superior Germans. Over 35,000 T34s were built; shoddy workmanship to build, but worked well, was easy to repair and keep in operation.”