Jake Reston and the Founder

Perfect World story (The ILLUMINATION)

Reprinted from The Encyclopaedia Galactica, AD 2295

Never has there been a more telling benchmark for the advancement of human civilization than its system of government, the reason being that an enlightened approach to administration results in an enlightened populace. Nowhere was that more evident, in modern times, than the advent of Perfect World theory in the late 20th century.

A book written by an author known only as 'the Founder' began the latest and final chapter in the evolution of human social development. The book was hand published and bore none of the traditional signs of technology found in books at the time-- no publisher, no country of origin; not even a date to place it among the annals of time. Research has shown the original manifesto was printed on a Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer manufactured between 1991 and 1998, and while it could have been published anytime after that, specific dates within the work place it at approximately 1993.

And 1993 is when Jake Reston (1957-2068) set about making it happen. While the Founder is the brainchild of Perfect World, it was billionaire Jake Reston who ultimately put the plan into action, building the first Perfect World city with his own funds.

The Beginning

Jacob Dylan Reston was born in the town of Pleasanton, Texas (pop. 4275) on March 4, 1957 to Jasper and Betty, the eldest of three boys.

The family made do with income from Jasper's recycling business, most of the products coming from dumpsters and trash bins located in and around the business district. His mother was a housewife, and knit scarves and sweaters to bring in additional money.

His early life was unremarkable, typical for small town life in the 1960's. He went to public school, spent time with friends (he was an avid softball player) and later, became an admired ladies man. To help with the family finances he would tutor math, english and science to students from his school. He graduated in 1975 and went on to local Coastal Bend Community College. It was there he met the Founder, who had been traveling the country gathering names from college campuses for people with the right temperament to be potential Perfect World inhabitants.

According to records they met in a local bar where Jake worked nights as a bartender.

He occupied Jake's attention all evening and upon closing, convinced him to continue the conversation at his motel room. That is when Reston first saw the Founder's Perfect World Bible, an overstuffed and worn tome containing stories and allegories written by the man, who

had been mapping out through time how human behavior had been adversely affected by selfish and inferior leadership, and speculated on how a fair amount of tweaking could fix the problem.

So began a friendship which lasted until the Founder's death in 2067, and in all that time, Reston kept the man's identity a well-hidden secret, if he ever knew it at all. Even after the Founder's death he would not confess, saying that the man's identity was bound together with his manifesto-- he was the Founder, and his actual name was irrelevant. Years after Reston's death DNA analysis on the original Bible found profuse evidence of Reston... but no other DNA whatsoever, causing speculation over whether the Founder even existed. Some believed 'the Founder' was just a handy identity Reston used to separate himself from the controversial pronouncements of Perfect World (the abolition of competition greed, and religion, to name a few), but there was abundant photographic proof showing the two of them together, and even though the Founder always appeared behind dark glasses, long hair, beard and overcoat, there was no doubt he was real.

Xiu-Xan Ximone (1999-2099), administrator of the Perfect World city Vivacita in Brazil, South America, repeatedly claimed to be the granddaughter of the Founder although refused to provide evidence, repeating this quote as her only explanation: "The Founder re-created man's relationship with planet Earth and probably saved the human race in the process. If he wants to remain anonymous I should think it would be his right." Further attempts at determining the Founder's identity have been met with resistance; to date, no concrete evidence exists of his origin.

Soon after the evening in the Founder's motel room the two separated, not to be seen together for some years. Within a month Reston dropped out of junior college and applied for three patents of designs for radical new technologies; one in microcircuitry, one for a rudimentary ramjet process and one for a new type of building material which, at the molecular level, was partly metal and partly stone. Each design was very well received and made their way into the products of the 1980's including the personal computer, which was a brand new concept at the time, and high-speed jets. Those patents helped Reston become a multi-billionaire. He created FutureTech, the company which was later responsible for building Aden, the first Perfect World City, as well as the highly successful long-distance underground transportation the VeeStreak, later called the BLUR (Bullet Levitating Underground Railway) line.

There had been some speculation as well about the patents themselves; while Reston had no extended training in any of those areas of study the plans were obviously designed by a skilled hand with great depth of knowledge, leading many to again find suspicious the relationship between Reston and the Founder. The wildest attacks came from splinter groups like The Solarmen (2015-2040), who were certain the Founder was not human but rather an advanced alien come to Earth to save humanity from itself, although no evidence of alien involvement was ever uncovered. To this date there has been no contact with aliens of any kind.

At fairly regular intervals Reston continued applying for and receiving patents for new technologies that he said were created by the Brain Trust, his think tank of geniuses, who were given free rein to come up with any 'left field' ideas they could (his words). This was very likely true, as most of the people in the Brain Trust were well documented inventors and inspirationalists. (See separate articles about Dave DuBois, Maggie Larter, Rick Payne, Joe Hobart, LaShamra Johnson and Raf Zellen).

Another inventor of the time period not at first connected to Reston was Professor Len Thackery (1961-2065), who also wanted to see Perfect World come about but chose more radical and invasive methods to attempt the change, believing the ends justified the means. Even though many of his inventions found good use in Perfect World cities (like the Time Television and the Nanocam), and Thackery himself would spend his final years living in Adenas a guest of Jake Reston, he was never considered good Perfect World material because of his sociopathic methodology.

Reston's path crossed the Founder's again when they, in a private meeting with sitting President William Jefferson Clinton in 1993,

presented the Perfect World concept to him. The meeting ended with Clinton's vigorous approval, suggesting that it be slowly implemented over the next two hundred years. Starting as a privately funded, unadvertised city to be built in a remote area on government land, Perfect World Concept would have to prove that it could not only be entirely self-sufficient, but also be able to contribute to the economy of the nation through taxation and with the production and exporting of goods and services. The president agreed the project needed to be kept quiet at first.

One of Reston's patents, a satellite-mounted ground-penetrating camera, allowed him to find an expansive series of previously undiscovered deep caverns under remote government farmland, and he began building the first version of the city Aden in the caves, over time amassing six hundred twenty seven linked buildings housing 130,000 people. It was nicknamed the Farm in honor of its soybean growing diversion some eleven hundred feet above. Silos were used to mask the equipment providing fresh air to the caverns, and an enormous barn was outfitted as an indoor runway and hangar for moving people and product, with a wide bank of elevators leading down to the city. The city's water was taken from an underground river,

as bank after bank of waterfall turbine generators provided over 900 times the city's requirement for power, which was sold to US power companies and became a rich source of revenue. In an interview Reston once admitted that although the Founder often spoke about his Master Plan, he rarely mentioned any detail that wasn't relevant to the conversation, lending profuse mystery to the man.

The Master Plan

After the Farm proved to be a social and financial success the Founder met privately with Reston to discuss his long term plan for the first leg of Perfect World Theory, which he called 'The Now', which he expected would take between 50 and 100 years (and ultimately lasted 79). They had already begun by building the Farm and now used its vast capital to sway leaders of several other governments to build additional Perfect World cities in remote parts of their countries. They would find and draft appropriate local candidates to staff them and have each city provide a different invaluable service to its country. One developed solar energy programs. Another worked on software, trying to attain a conversational and predictive relationship with computers. Still another was developing weightless transportation. Others concentrated on nanotechnology, medical manipulation, faster-than-light travel, food fabrication and cold fusion.

One by one each Perfect World city became the symbol, in its host country, for progress and logical design, and as that occurred each city began a new project, the next step in the Master Plan-- converting that nation's educational system to Perfect World Podschools.

The Founder surmised that after years of Podschool education, there would not be any person who did not know their own values and strengths, and as such would be ready and capable to join the workforce with talent and confidence. The Founder predicted that a strong contingent of political science students from the Podschools would one day be in position to influence the rest of society, and was correct. Over the course of a decade most had been elected as senators or congressmen. Once enough were in place, Perfect World resolutions began to be passed, slowly outlawing many of the day's 'necessities', like parking meters, stiff fines, jails, paying for government services, late and service and penalty charges, competitive games and sports in schools, large armies, nuclear weapons, bargain brands, lawsuits, insurance, lethal personal weapons and many more. They voted on improvements of the infrastructure. Acceptable building strength was quadrupled. Complex logistical movement patterns were developed to eliminate needless travel.

The government drafted and ultimately passed legislation to outlaw politics itself, once every citizen was trained and accountable to themselves and their city. It was the start of a golden age, although marred with violence and controversy caused by a rebellious and dangerous contingent of the only groups threatened with destruction by Perfect World, rich businessmen and outraged religious extremists.

Further along in the Master Plan, many more people would be trained as experts in early childcare and teaching. At the same time there would be a serious curtailing of childbearing, to reduce the world population over time to a billion, accomplished by following compassionate programs to ensure a natural population drop-off.

In retrospect the Founder was largely correct at every juncture. The new laws had their desired effect-- existing cities began to change over, which signaled the next stage of the Founder's Master Plan, a stage he called 'The Interim'. He predicted this would be a time of great turmoil, as the last desperate holdouts of the original system fought to maintain their antiquated power structure. The rich had no hold in Perfect World cities where money meant nothing, and so used their cash elsewhere to buy the loyalty of the stubborn religious, who could not let go of ancient traditions and false truths. They became the army of God that tried to take back the Last Cities, but because of the decades earlier destruction of lethal weapons and war machinery their attacks were feeble and easily quashed.

Rebel fighters were surprised to be quite literally frozen in their tracks when the nonlethal Perfect World weaponry was launched-- pellets which burst on impact, expanding into a thick and sticky foam which hardened into rock in moments. It was the last skirmish on Earth (to date) and not an injury was reported, except some strained muscles of captured rebels trying unsuccessfully to free themselves from the solid goo.

Ultimately it was decided to leave a few cities unchanged (The Last Cities) around the world for the nonbelievers, and to maintain a peaceful (albeit strained) business relationship with them. Anchorage Alaska in the north, Abilene Texas in the south and Provo Utah in the northwest remained as the Last American Cities, the last stanchions of Capitalism. Not surprisingly, over the next forty years the Last Cities were slowly consumed by the greedy rich. This had the effect of widening the lower class and destroying infrastructure until the dilapidated school systems were compelled to install Perfect World Podschool units because of their attractive pricing (free) and success rate (99.9998%). Over the next seven decades all Last City populations became 100% Podschool trained, and on September 4, 2144 the final Last City officially joined with Perfect World, at last creating the World Family and beginning The Illumination... the completed Master Plan, which foretold the full realization of human potential. It was the Founder's belief that creating a cohesively wired society would lead humanity to the next stage of biological development-- free-form sentience, allowing humanity to explore the universe instantly and safely and become indistinguishable from the gods they once revered. But in over one hundred fifty years since the Illumination began, that has not come to pass. Not yet.

The Final Days

Perfect World realized the potential for corruption and eliminated political figures and parties. Instead, leadership fell to the voting public, who gained the knowledge they needed to make wise decisions by consulting with panels of experts in their respective fields. In that way proposed projects were passed quickly and were built quickly as well, one of the more famous examples being a replacement Eiffel tower (but three times the size) which was taken from the voting stage through completion in 28 days, total.

Another was the famous Twin Figure Monuments, 37 five-story-tall marble remembrances of the man who conceived Perfect World, and the architect who built it. Placed at the entrance of every Perfect World city, Reston and the Founder stood together, welcoming visitors to the World Family. Although honoring individuals was deemed long ago to be counterintuitive (for the honored) these statues were placed after both men had passed.

This was fortunate, because Jake Reston would have been displeased at the undignified spectre. The Founder's thoughts mirrored Reston's; in the Founder was a man who was so strongly against accolades he wiped all trace of his own identity and actively prevented people from knowing his true countenance. At the end of his life he finally agreed to stop hiding and live among the society he created. He was offered a penthouse at the top of Thoreau Pinnacle, a two-hundred story tall megascraper in Aden, but insisted on a small apartment near the ground floor. His last years were spent beginning his final work, detailing the direction humanity could move during the Illumination. Sadly, he passed of apnea on December 28th, 2067, before he could complete this final treatise.

Reston was an exception to the rule of leadership and was respected more like a president or king of the World Family. He always denied the flattery, accepting only the title of 'inspirational leader'. Although in his life he personally oversaw the construction of every Perfect World city (37 worldwide with a total population of 290 million) he preferred to live in the first one, Aden, and made a habit of walking through the city every day. He did so until his death during a nap on June 23rd, 2068, at the age of 111 years, 111 days.

Many brilliant thinkers have come and gone since the time of the Founder and Jake Reston, contributing countless innovations, new fields of study, previously unthought-of sciences and revolutionary thought processes, and there is one thing all these bright minds had in common: They owe their very existence to the efforts of the Dynamic Duo of social reform, Jake Reston and the Founder, who foretold and averted the destruction of planet Earth by saving us from ourselves.

Copyright 2009 Bruce Ian Friedman