The Founder of Perfect World Doctrine

Perfect World story (The ILLUMINATION)

Reprinted from The Encyclopaedia Galactica

First Edition, AD 2295

There has never been a more telling benchmark for the advancement of human civilization than its system of government, the reason being that an enlightened administration comes from an enlightened populace. Nowhere was that more evident in modern times than the advent of Perfect World Doctrine in the late 20th century, better known as World Family, the accepted social architecture for modern humanity. Unlike the Bible, which was a document forged from the tales printed by a thousand hands, the Aden Codex (the decorative book surround housing Perfect World Doctrine) was penned by only one, a man known as the Founder.
The Founder's true identity is not known to this day, largely because of his concentrated efforts to that end-- he believed that linking the Codex to what he called "an imperfect human, warts and all" would diminish or even destroy its impact, and he felt the work "must survive so that humanity could". Dozens of awards ceremonies held in his honor over the years went without its keynote speaker as the Founder vigilantly avoided any kind of acclaim and instead sought isolation with only the company of his closest confidants. The few persons who might have been privy to his personal information were allied with him and destroyed any documentation of his birth and early life, and his genetic information was never collected. Still, many families have unsuccessfully claimed him as being part of their lineage based on known parallels between individuals in their family with the sketchy information of his life, but one or more conflicting factors has eliminated each of them and the truth of his life is no closer to being discovered than it was during his influence.
It was established the Founder never intended to be treated as a deity nor even as a sage; he often commented that he created the Codex with the intention that it be discovered only after his death. In a public interview he stated that "Once the warning signs of humanity's impending descent into oblivion became painfully clear to me, it forced me to spread the plan earlier." While the Doctrine would eventually prove to be the right path for humanity's salvation, he stressed that he did "not want the Doctrine to be treated with reverence, as with a Bible nor with fear of punishment, as with a Lawbook but as a guide or 'an encyclopedia of the human condition'." His comment that he designed it from "a dash of decency, a pinch of pornography and a whole lot of common sense" was seen as evidence of his unique perspective on what it meant to be 'human'.
The Founder observed that "there is a potential in the human heart to be selfish, a capacity which is enlarged by suspicion and fear," and recognized that fear, although a natural product of Earth's organic 'kill or be killed' dictum, should not be used by society as a tool of manipulation but rather as a benchmark to decide which social policies do not work and must be eradicated, and which ones better humanity and therefore must be implemented.

To that end the Doctrine called for a dismantling of the current political structure. He understood the debilitating effects of power and reverence on individuals and how a slow behavioral change inevitably creeps into the psyche of a leader which negatively alters their perception of themselves and their 'subjects'. This perhaps explained his own desire to stay clear of any position of power and to remain anonymous. His comedic quote, "I don't exist. And that guy who wrote the Bible, that Lord guy, he doesn't exist either. I know because we go to the same gym" actually demonstrated his aversion towards becoming a holy figure, preferring to ignore his pivotal and undisputed role as savior of the race and of the planet.

Considered to be equally prophet, genius and philanthropist, the Founder was a student of social evolution and often censured the widely held belief (at the time) that Democracy was the final step in the socioeconomic organization of man; to that end, he spoke at colleges across the country (and on many campuses in countries which would permit it) spreading desire for his concept, which was first (and always, by him) called 'World Family' [see main article]. Most of his initial followers were passionate followers of the Doctrine and became the seed populace in the first Perfect World City. With the unlikely name of The Farm because of its disguise on the surface, this city was built in a series of naturally occurring underground caverns in Northwestern Nebraska [see main article] and housed upwards of half a million people before its destruction.

In order to create enthusiasm and fervor for World Family, his end goal was not simply the building of a single city which fully implemented his ideals; he wanted the entire civilized planet to recognize the logic and so strove to build at least one new city in every major nation. Each city's goal would be to turn around the strength and economy of their host country once each government complied with a few simple nationwide behavioral changes. The first city to be recognized, Aden (which was built to replace the destroyed Farm), made itself essential for the United States by creating a steady stream of modern technological advances whose profits (amounting to trillions) were offered to the financially strapped government in exchange for modification of the nation's educational system (schools), penal system (prisons) and infant training system (parents), to Doctrine standard.

The Founder operated under the premise that Perfect World would be a generations-long project which could best benefit a society educated to recognize these advantages. With the successful trading of renewable energy for podschools (the Perfect World alternative to traditional schooling [see main article]), it was finally possible to 1) create a youth culture sensitive to the logic of Perfect World 2) convince the host nation to stop using old technologies and 3) sever ties with backwards yet economically powerful cultures. Following that radical change the United States experienced an unprecedented enrichment even as the rest of the world suffered the most desperate worldwide economic period in a hundred years. Additionally, facilitating other necessary upgrades to the national profile launched the country back into the stratosphere of world leadership.

Early Life

Information regarding the Founder's early life is hearsay-- the facts of this information are not known. The Founder was said to be born in a city on the East Coast of what was then the United States of America. A single remaining recording of his voice proved that he spoke with an accent attributed to the Northeastern part of the country, most likely Boston or New York City, indicating that (whether he was born there or not) he lived there during the dialectic formation period of his life (ages 2 to 10). Additionally, his first college rally began in New York City, at Queens College in Flushing.

He is said to have been an only child; at the time it was unusual for a family to have only one child, unlike today where it has become the norm. His life was described as 'happy' but he was often considered a 'troublemaker', often speaking out of turn in classrooms (when schools taught generalized education using a single technique to children in rooms with more than one student) and refusing to believe many accepted social theories. He was reputed to have been thrown out of at least two schools prior to college because of his disruptive tendencies.

The first indication of his beliefs arose (according to reports from his early followers) when, in junior high school, he organized a sit-in (a 1960's protest method in which protesters sat en masse to block public movement)

of the students in his 8th grade political science class, which was designed to impede access to the school's main office until the administration agreed to remove specific text from the course.

The sit-in was ultimately doomed; the administration denied their demands and the underaged protesters were removed by their parents. According to the Founder his own parents were proud of him for 'sitting down' for his beliefs, but took away television viewing as a punishment. This action gave him much more free time and cemented his commitment to the Doctrine, the fundamentals of which he was already outlining.

In place of television viewing he took on a series of hobbies and studies, including woodworking, bookmaking, political theory, physics, biology, public speaking, degridding (the act of deleting oneself from all public records) and music, and he absorbed all the information he could find on alternate realities, sociology, psychology and political science, which lent fact to his theories, and ultimately lead to acceptance of them by the preeminent scholars of the time.

A Jarring Influence

The Founder's parents died in a construction accident when he was 15. He rarely spoke of the events leading to their death, but according to Jake Reston, he mentioned once that his parents had been killed when a crane broke loose and crashed onto the streets of Manhattan.

He indicated that it happened when they had been on their way to attend a parent-teacher conference to discuss his latest misbehavior. The Founder felt he was the cause of his own parents' untimely demise, according to Reston because, had he not been a troublemaker, they would not have been on that street when the accident occurred.

The foolishness of his rebellion-- distributing custom toilet paper around the school with the principal's face printed on every sheet, with a slogan reading 'Clean Up Your Act', was an irony not lost on him. Although later in life the Founder was heard commenting that his parents died because his principal got 'shitfaced', the gravity of that event stayed with him to his death. Reston added that the few people who were aware of this fact not only kept it in confidence, they attempted to relieve the Founder of his burden with any number of reasonable explanations, but reported that he 'would hear none of it'. Many surmise that his complete renovation of construction practices when building Aden were reinforced by that early life trauma, along with the shocking events of the Farm; he campaigned (with little success) to bring the stiffer building practices to all Outer cities as well.

Following the tragedy of his parents death he became very serious about his studies and never again disturbed classrooms. But his idea about a 'Better World' had been set into motion, and the remainder of his high school classes and all of his college courses were chosen to help him in his quest to fully design this new social system. He researched societal organization from the earliest recorded tribal behavior; he conducted exhaustive studies of current systems, including postmodern influences on human behavior in Democracy and its descent back to precivilized norms, due in large part to a push by the ultra-rich to roll back the laws controlling social reform.

His writings, which were copious studies of the human condition, fleshed out with fiction stories of the world he was planning (many cities of which were designed and built to those specifications before his death) went into a tome he called the Aden Codex [see main article]. It was a large wooden book surround which he designed and constructed while in high school, made from hardwood and leather and metal parts from a variety of sources, including an oversized three ring school binder. While somewhat crude and very worn, the nature of its contents made it an impressive item to view as it stood in the foyer of every home he would ever live. The Aden Codex survives to this day and is on display at the replica of his final home at the Founder's Museum in Aden.

The Two Visions

The Founder did attend a four-year college and was known to have completed his studies in three. Though this remains a pertinent clue to his identity, an exhaustive study using worldwide data mining found over 100,000 people who had accomplished a similar goal during those same years (1975-1978). Further corroborative data has been sketchy and future analysis has fallen into the bailiwick of historians and archaeologists.

While committed to his cause, he nonetheless behaved in the schizophrenic manner consistent with other students of the day, involving himself deeply in academia; and also with parties, drinking and sexual liberation. During the height of his debauchery, however, he had a self-described epiphany; he claimed to have been visited in a dream by his 'great great great great great great grandson' from 200 years in the future, who had a long conversation with him regarding social changes the Founder had been positing since high school, which inspired an abundance of the Doctrine's early chapters.

In the dream he received an envelope which sprang into a page when touched, that answered any question he said aloud or in thought, in real time, moving text. He ascertained that he was speaking to a descendent living two centuries hence, and proceeded to grill him about the society of the future.

The relative relayed to him that many of his ideas did come to pass, including the most grandiose and unlikely one (moving the human race into a Perfect World social system), and answered many of his questions except for the one which had been beleaguering him since the beginning: What driving impetus had he discovered that shifted the entire human race over to Perfect World? He knew that the wheels of social change moved at a glacially slow pace and had trouble envisioning a circumstance which would cause politicians to vote away their own livelihoods, especially the crooked representatives who had benefitted so much by graft and payola.

That most important answer had been interrupted by his alarm clock, which ended the 'dream' and severed his 'connection' to the future. It has been surmised that the very fact of his frustration was the tipping point in his quest to find the missing link-- the action which put in place the Founder's philosophy.

While it was that important revelation that invigorated his desire to see Perfect World through, he rationalized that the dream was just a dream and that he had no way of knowing whether anything he wrote about would ever be taken seriously, let alone that the Aden Codex would become the vade mecum of future man. But any doubts he had about the efficacy of his plan were laid to rest a year later, when he was revisited by the same relative, albeit in a different manner. His prior unanswered question was finally given deep consideration, which it is presumed caused the second major push of hyperopic writing that manifested in him until his death nearly a hundred years later.

Johnny Ideaseed

He realized that the gravity of this project was much bigger than one man (although it was conceived by just one) and so resolved to eradicate his identity and create a new, ambiguous one. Using his privately developed talents of degridding, he methodically eliminated any trace of himself in written, photographic or computer records, to the point that there was no evidence of him ever having been born. What few pieces of evidence the Founder missed were confiscated and destroyed soon after discovery by assistants, who respected the Founder's desire to have no traceable roots.

After completing college, the Founder made his living primarily from poorly paid speaking engagements in colleges across the United States. Firsthand witnesses maintained he would go onstage with no speech prepared and ruminate about the life of the citizenry living in a Perfect World city as if it already existed, exciting a student body wary of the treacherous life for which they were training. It was not unusual for him to begin with a licentious statement like, "Boy, we have fucked it up big time," or "Your parents have screwed the pooch," endearing himself to the young audience. They also appreciated his countercultural attire: Long beard, long overcoat, dark glasses, wide-brimmed hat... he was the embodiment of the social outcast movement, and he was their leader. He often quipped, "It's a good thing I don't drink Kool Aid or wear Nikes," referring to the recent charismatic but zealous religious cult leaders who won their followers over... prior to instigating their mass suicides.

Afterwards he would be inundated with questions from students rushing the stage and would consent to hold an impromptu 'rap' session in the lobby of whatever hotel he was staying; it was from those most passionate students within the after-hours meetings that his ultimate inner circle was formed. Many of those dropped out of college soon after attending his talks, preferring to work full time making the Doctrine of Perfect World come to pass.

Together with his 'lieutenants', in his life the Founder reached over 30,000 college campuses worldwide, recruiting over one million people as permanent residents of the first three Perfect World cities: Nebraska's The Farm (whose inhabitants moved to nearby Aden upon the Farm's untimely demise), Pacific City in northern California, and Brazil's Vivacita.

There were twenty-one Perfect World cities at the time of the Founder's death, and he had been actively involved in creating and building each of them, but always preferred living in Aden, commenting, "It was here that I was born." He was almost 40 when even the Farm was first built, so it is presumed that he was speaking metaphorically.

His view that it was necessary to use Capitalism as the shoulder upon which to launch Perfect World caused him to seek out and to draft a small number of progressive-leaning billionaires (exactly one) into the cause prior to receiving money from the profits on inventions perfected by FutureTech (Jake Reston's shell company and Aden's later connection to the Outerworld economy). Many believe that Perfect World might never have come to pass, were it not for that essential application of large amounts of capital at the right times and in the right places. Ironically, the politicians who accepted bribes in order to pass this legislation never realized that by doing so they would not only be guaranteeing the demise of their very occupations, they would also be making their accumulated wealth all but worthless in the future.

First Follower- Professor Leonard 'Len' Thackery

[see main article] The Founder had discovered the passion of college students with his first speech, and it was at his first speech at Queens College

that he met a 14 year old genius/college student, young Lenny Thackery. There is little doubt of the gigantic contributions made by Thackery to help implement Perfect World Doctrine. Unfortunately, it was disputed beyond doubt that his sociopathic tendencies also put the program into serious jeopardy a number of times.

Early Contributions

Attending school only at the behest of his parents (theoretical physicist Theodore Thackery and microbiologist Ellen Rhys-Betoire), Thackery refused for reasons he would never acknowledge to attend any school that was far from home (it was presumed he was intimidated, being fourteen) and settled on the nearby but completely unsuitable Queens College. His innate knowledge was already far beyond any scientific theory taught there, so instead spent most of his time in the laboratories inventing incisive new technology, at first concentrating on nanotech manufacturing techniques.

Until his paper 'Self-Replicating Robots', robotics engineers had been locked in on the idea of designing tiny assembly lines to build nanomachines. Thackery turned the fledgling industry on its ear with his design of the Motherbot/Cannibot pair. The first Motherbot was a building-sized robotic machine with all the appendages, parts and tools necessary to duplicate itself... but at 50% original size. The huge Cannibot then went into action, dismantling the larger Motherbot, using those materials to fabricate identical but smaller parts for the new Motherbot to use in creating two copies of itself at half size. The Motherbots dismantled the Cannibot and made two at half size. The new and smaller Cannibots then reduced the second Motherbot into new parts for the two Motherbots to to make four smaller Motherbots, and so on. The final product could be any size, from meters across... to nanometers.

This pairing concept launched modern nanotechnology and the founding principle is still used 200 years later. There could be no artificial human brain, with its quadrillions of neurites, without it.

It is a matter of some dispute how Thackery became the misanthrope he did, but he showed only limited evidence of it in college. He was a rabid believer of the Founder's, however, and brought three separate technologies to the cause which ultimately earned over a hundred trillion dollars together, enough to build every Perfect World city, a contribution which is inarguably the reason for the Founder's early success. If workable cities could not have been built to prove his theory and garner high praise, there is no question Perfect World would have been delayed, if not scrubbed entirely.

These technologies were 'donated' by Thackery to FutureTech, a corporation shell begun by the Founder's next inner circle member, Jacob Dylan 'Jake' Reston, along with the Founder and Thackery. While actual products would be produced under the FutureTech banner, its main purpose was to funnel money and raw materials back to the Farm and Aden without alerting the public to their existence. All products were actually made within the cities for use outside, to satisfy the complicated agreement they had with OuterWorld (the nickname given by Perfect Worlders for 'anyone else'). Ultimately it was decided that Reston should be on the Board of Directors as the only one of the three with any desire to run the pseudobusiness, and he managed to parlay its unique structure into the single most profitable corporation in the world until corporate earnings (and rankings as well) became moot.

In addition to nanobot design, Thackery had invented a dual hyperjet engine that recycled the high temperature, high speed 'spent' gasses from one engine to boost the performance of the second by a great percentage. That second jet in turn supplied heated gasses for the first jet, boosting its output tremendously.

He had, in effect, created a near perpetual motion flying machine which reduced fuel needs to the point that a fleet of new jets could run on the fuel formerly reserved for a single older jet [see main article].

Thackery did not simply invent these technologies but also implemented their integration into existing designs, as was evidenced by his third invention for FutureTech. He created a new type of building material (called Carbonite) which, at the molecular level, was both metal and carbon but at only a fraction of the weight. He then designed a process to quickly fabricate beams and supports from the new material, on site. The Outers' scientific community were skeptical of a support product that light in weight, so to prove his claim he and a small crew of five built a single beam bridge across a mile-wide section of the Hudson river in three days, then drove an enormous earth-mover across it... successfully.

Later the material was employed in the first, and then in every 200 story megascraper in all original Perfect World Cities, buildings which are still viable 250 years later, even as new and even better materials have been implemented.

Carbonite had superior compression statistics without being brittle and was far more elastic, a property which could be vastly increased or decreased using the appropriate application of specified energy. This attribute enabled a building made entirely of Carbonite to survive unscathed an earthquake of over 13 on the Richter-Xenon scale, a level with vibrations strong enough to powder concrete and friction that could melt carbon steel. Other Perfect World scientists took his original design and developed another molecular structure of Carbonite which was transparent (Crystanite), which paved the way for today's 'intangible' structures including the vast Phobos/Diemos Transitory Tube, designed to connect the wobbling moons and keep them from crashing into the newly terraformed Mars,

as well as Earth's nearly invisible space elevators, now numbering over 100 and spread all around the planet's equator.

Closest Friend- Jacob Dylan Reston

[see main article: 'Jake Reston and the Founder'] If Len Thackery was the Perfect World's 'black sheep', then Jake Reston was its 'Golden Boy'. Discovered by the Founder just a month after meeting Thackery, Reston quickly became the Founder's public face, and by extension the Perfect World's mouthpiece as well. Outgoing and friendly, Reston was a natural Outerborn Perfect World citizen, a carbon copy of the Founder's concept for a human raised entirely using Doctrine guidelines.

The Founder met him at Coastal Bend Community College in Texas, where Jake was an unremarkable student but enormously popular among the campus population. He was voted class president four years consecutively, a first in the school's history, and was personally responsible for convincing nearly a thousand students from the small college to join Perfect World in the first year alone.

Although the nonexistent political structure of Perfect World had no leaders, Jake Reston was unofficially the spokesman for Aden due to his even temper, urbane charm and marksmanlike insight and maintained the position until his retirement. He was the foundation of Aden; its designer and builder (along with a team of brilliant visionaries); its moral center and the torus of its most unflappable ebullience. Any unsolvable problem inevitably landed on his desk and became a solution in moments-- he had a way of getting to the meat of the matter immediately, then working it like a pugilist until it relented an ideal response. Even Jolie, the vast and personable Aden computer, modeled her behavior after Jake's careful and cordial weighing of every input, no matter the source. As evidence, he built the unique and vastly popular Roller Coaster Transportation (RCT) System after hearing the idea coming from a six-year-old girl, spawning his comment, "From innocent minds come the cleverest ideas... if we would just listen."

Ideas occurred to him instinctively and reflected his visceral understanding of the human condition, beginning with his Aden In The Dark program, which caused each member of Perfect World to endure without Aden's modern conveniences for two straight weeks each year to keep them connected with nature and to foster creative thought.

He was known to be forever respectful of the man who had brought the Doctrine to fruition-- and maintained this closest of friendships with the Founder for over 80 years.

The Tragedy of his Wife

The Founder met the only woman he would ever marry while at an undisclosed rally at a college somewhere in the northern hemisphere. The only fact known for certain is that it was a university in a small town surrounded by farmland, a situation which commonly existed at the time.

The tale is that a stunning young woman with flowing red hair attended one of his late night hotel discussion groups and hung on until the last person left, which is when she made her passion and brilliance known to him. She opened up her dossier and showed him her design for an underground city she had been working on for over a decade, one that seemed destined to be a first Perfect World city-- secret, secure and obdurate. They retired to his room together, where they continued to merge his Doctrine with her Designs, thrusting them more deeply together until they were as one.

They were inseparable after that. She understood his need for anonymity and as a gift to him on her own, degridded herself and donned her own hat and large sunglasses. They married after only three months while giving a rally in Las Vegas, using created documentation. He was now Joe Founder and she became Bertha Founder née Bublé. If he ever knew her real name he never mentioned it.

She became his agent, his handler and chief organizer; she worked long for both his cause and her own and could always be found nearby. Her genius was in systems and she used it to design Aden's social architecture, which was vastly different from anywhere else on Earth-- it was cooperative and Green and focused on matters of visceral importance to man: Art, science and discovery as well as peace, care and freedom. Although she was unable to bear children she designed the city with the loving care of a mother and created a place of learning, safety and beauty; a university and resort wrapped around an island of scientific curiosity.

The pair were a dynamo, unstoppable, and the talent she brought to the team was a crucial component of Perfect World's success. She was his cheerleader, number one fan and occasional coach as well, organizing a step-by-step plan for bringing both of their dreams to fruition, and as the pieces drew nigh she was there to help coax them into place. Soon the vast and remote land had been secured and the essential seed money was funded, donated by a wily Internet billionaire who had been bedazzled by her charms and secretly aroused by her revealing gauze dress.

The Doctrine's followers grew; when 100,000 solid commitments had been reached it was time to begin. The money bought construction machinery and raw materials to build the immense metal barns which would serve as their first home. Farming vehicles were purchased and loaded the land with food crops for miles in all directions. Inside one special barn an industrial elevator was bored through two hundred feet of solid granite to reach the immense chain of caverns below; discovered from space using ground-penetrating radar designed for that very purpose, it was exactly the home they had hoped for. Eroded over millennia by the action of a surging underground river, level-floored cavern rooms like a string of pearls now continued for miles before ending at a vast abyss, as the once-great waterway still sent a million gallons of pristine water every minute over that gloomy edge, plummeting to incalculable depths towards the center of the Earth. One day they would explore and utilize the river fully but until then it was only used for drinking water, as a rich source of hydroelectric power and as a spawning ground for the delicious cave lobster discovered down there, actually a giant shelled mollusk.

With electrical power now surging through the caverns automation began, and structures began sprouting from the floors like stalagmites. Building materials had been discovered all around them; a new mineral was found to have remarkably resilient properties and they converted thousands of the enormous black boulders into billions of bricks to be used in construction. The rock was flexible, absorbed shock energy and could survive astonishingly strong earthquakes without damage. In the end 618 of the city's 627 buildings were made of the mineral, called Vulcanite.

It was decided that a name as grand as Aden should be reserved for a beautiful city thrusting its pinnacles skyward, not a dark and hidden city populated with low squat buildings and so dubbed it the 'Farm' after the diversion growing above them on the surface. Name notwithstanding, the Farm was still a magical place; no other city in the world could claim such a unique and interesting design, and it was a delightful experience living there.

Ten years into the city's life tragedy struck. It began small, as one structure began to lean for reasons which were unclear until the damaged bricks were inspected microscopically. The scientists were shocked to learn that they were infested with a previously undiscovered bacterial parasite that were in fact, consuming them, and voraciously so. They concluded that Vulcanite was not a mineral as was originally thought, but instead a tightly packed food source for this bacteria. Soon they found that the bacteria was everywhere; in every cavern room, on every piece of equipment and on every building. The bacteria disturbed nothing else; its only food was Vulcanite, but for that they were insatiable.

It was not easy to evacuate everyone immediately; the elevators were not meant to carry so many people, but the bacterial attack was moving far faster than anyone had realized and the push was necessary. The first building, which was situated nearest the advancing microbes, came crashing down in hours once breached. Other buildings fell soon after, filling the air with a thick black dust. In the panic lives were lost as people senselessly entered condemned buildings to collect their plants or pets; one collapsing building snagged the elevator shaft emerging from its roof and pulled it, full car and all, crashing to the rock floor several hundred feet below, with no survivors.

In 36 hours time all but 9 buildings were little more than piles of black rubble, and almost 1000 people had lost their lives. It was the biggest catastrophe nobody ever heard about.

It was said the Farm's destruction proved to be too much stress for Martha-- watching her life's work, and that of her beloved husband's fall into ruins was like watching all of her children die at once. Worse than that, she had lost her best friend LaShamra Johnson in the destruction. Later that day she collapsed in her husband's arms, clutching her head in pain. With the Farm's hospital facilities and clinics now rubble and the nearest hospital two hundred miles away, the doctors could do little to help her and she died that evening of an aneurism, with the Founder by her side.

It was often repeated that the Founder proved his leadership that day; after losing both his dream and the love of his life and on the same day, anyone could have expected him to retreat into grief. Instead, he stood high upon a podium in the huge barn and gave a stirring and impassioned speech to his saddened citizenry, relaying hope and inspiration and dismissed their sorrow, assuring them that years hence this shall be seen as only a minor setback for the first Perfect World community. He calmed them with his vision and energized their resolve with a glimpse of the future, showing how, if they had lived in a world devoted to the Doctrine, there would have been help from all sides and a new city standing before the end of the year. He guaranteed they were going to do it all over again, and better, and this time out in the warming light of sunshine. He declared right then that the new city, to be built just a few miles away, would be of a design that Bertha had been creating, a futuristic vision with soaring megascrapers and smooth transportation, a Perfect World city more perfect than the last. He declared this new city would be Aden in name and characteristic, and that to commemorate those who died here this day, construction would begin in the morning. And such was his influence that on the morning of the next day, construction began. From that day on, though, the Founder became reclusive, never to be seen by anyone except Jake Reston and a few trusted others.

Xiu-Xan Ximone

Although he had reputedly taken many lovers and several partners and a wife (Bertha) in his life, the Founder never had children. "Just doing my part to reduce the population load on Earth." His philosophy of family, of course, was that it did not stop at the nuclear nor at the genetic; his plan was moving humanity towards a world of family, a planet where any two strangers who meet feel immediate trust for one another. To that end he 'adopted' thousands of people in his life, acting as father and guide to them even as he restricted himself from physical access to most. He instead chose selective video conferencing, addressing his entire 'family' at once on their individual feeds and using the city's computer Jolie to categorize and present their many responses. His own comments would then be fed back to the correct asker, whether they number one or five hundred. He could carry on many conversations simultaneously that way, though some with unique questions needed to wait longer for a response.

One young girl he adopted stood out; her questions were both unique and clever so often that no others came close and it made sense to speak with her, one on one. This young girl was Xiu-Xan Ximone (zhoo-zhan zhi MOAN), age 10, IQ 221, the smartest person on Earth at the time.

An orphan in Nepal, the story is told that she heard about Aden one day while hacking into the school computer. She had then slipped away from her orphanage and tricked her way across the globe, convincing ticket agents and station clerks using guile and innocence to receive passage on busses, trains and airplanes to get there.

Arriving in New York she read newspaper after newspaper until it caught her eye-- it was an obscure advertisement for peace and contentment and a life free from stress. It was a long ad, heavily worded, and as she read she noticed syllabic stresses creating regular glottal stops when reading. That suggested a code pattern, and soon she was able to pull an address from it. This led her to an Aden elevator, which dropped a heart-pounding 350 feet below the street to the secret BLUR hypertrain. In twenty minutes she was in Aden Nebraska, a little orphan girl with a giant new family.

The Founder was always happy to accept her calls; she became a valued phone friend, even at that tender age. "I loved being bested by a ten year old supergenius. She was so much smarter than me that I wanted her help improving the Doctrine. To her young credit she said it was already perfect, which I think is when she officially became my granddaughter."

Once she completed podschool education (which had very little to teach her, he wistfully remembered), the Founder had her help Jake Reston plan the next stage of Perfect World: Planetwide city construction in remote areas of twenty promising countries: Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, India, China, Russia, Israel, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Italy, New Zealand, and five large remote islands. By Reston's own admission, his reaction to the young girl's input was at first polite but dismissive, most likely because he did not see the value of a child apprentice. His reaction reversed after observing her finessing design concepts; creating entire cities to implement the geographic features of each site, designing it to operate symbiotically with nature, creating power systems which were both delicate yet powerful. Reston declared her a natural and left the primary design work in her capable hands, knowing that she was the perfect future for Perfect World.

She excelled at Aden's Teen Challenge, which is where she met the future father of her children, Jake Reston's nephew Jean-John Reston. Rocky at first, the two forged a relationship which remained steady for over 80 years. They were both exciting young daredevils, as well as strong believers in the Doctrine; when given their choice of cities to supervise, they both independently chose the same one, another example of their lifelong compatibility.

She was still a teenager when she shipped out to Brazil to oversee construction of Vivacita, the Perfect World city where she eventually settled with Jean-John. Her sacrificial actions over the next four decades brought the entire continent of South America into Perfect World alignment without building another city and she was hailed as a champion. Like her grandfather, she refused any acclaim and additionally requested that nobody enshrine any image of hers, a request which went largely ignored because she was also a devastatingly beautiful woman.

Xiu-Xan Ximone died at the age of one hundred (1999-2099), at an age still considered young for the time. Biological therapies like Nanodoc delivery of antioxidants had kept her physical body the pristine age of thirty for most of that time. She might have lived another hundred years but tragically disappeared off a mountain while extreme skiing in Antarctica. Her body was never recovered. Others in her ski party said it was 'as if she had fallen off the face of the Earth'. She was survived by her husband and her children; daughter Sharell Tanthe (2037- 2256) and son Seth Corell (2072- ).

The Founder's Later Life

Once the Perfect World cities were operational around the globe and were producing solutions to global problems, the next stage of the Founder's Doctrine began-- worldwide acknowledgment and acceptance. He published the Doctrine in abbreviated form and again began a speaking tour, this time for much larger audiences, and often televised. Buzz about 'Perfect World' had gone on for years without any official Outer's recognition, and millions of people were intrigued with the concept without realizing that there were already over a dozen brand-new cities practicing Perfect World Doctrine as he spoke. The word spread quickly and the public, frustrated with their own lives, demanded from their representatives what was being promised by the Founder and his revolutionary book.

Politicians were concerned for their own survival-- Perfect World would unseat them and the dissolve the power structure which kept them in high style-- and to that end began fighting back. Many conservative agencies tried to paint him as a demagogue but the facts of his message were beyond question, even as the lying media, in bed with politicians, denied the facts. Still they tried, as was the party ordinance of the era, using propaganda and outright lies to attempt defamation.

Undaunted, he proceeded to disburse any information he felt was valid to his belief system, considering highly disputed articles of the time as documented fact proving his theory. Publicly his writings were dismissed as being seditious, while privately political leaders plotted ways to remove him from public speaking entirely.

This policy proved to be a fatal mistake for the system of democratic politics due to a potent weapon held by one man, who wielded it swiftly and with great precision. Most politicians or pundits who attacked Perfect World or the Founder soon suffered great public humiliation followed by forced retirement, thanks to this weapon. It was widely believed but never proven that the ammunition for these reprisals was obtained using a device created by Len Thackery called the 'Time Television' [see main article], which was purported to use a powerful telescope-type device to visually record formerly private moments in history. Any attacker was soon dethroned in controversy when incontrovertible video evidence of their guilt in some matter or other became available on the Internet. The Founder remained uninvolved.

No evidence of such a device has never been found, and following the complete change to Perfect World Doctrine, the importance of such data became moot and was no longer pursued.

Now free to complete his life's work, the Founder engaged with gusto. Even though he was of advanced years the Founder did not retire; he kept on delivering advice to all the World Family Councils right up until the day he died. The Founder used Nanodoc antioxidant delivery to look a healthy sixty even at a hundred ten years old, picking that age because of the respect it commanded. He thought that if he looked any younger he might be taken less seriously and if he appeared any older, people would focus on the message of his age and not his beliefs.

The massively televised dedication ceremony of Aden finally brought the secret Perfect World cities into the public eye. The Founder was 86 for that event, and it was the last televised public appearance he ever made. He made his final home in Aden and died there, at the age of 111, of a sleep disorder known as apnea (which has since been eradicated). His private physician acknowledged he had suffered the disorder for several decades but always refused any kind of treatment. His statement "Dying in my sleep seems like a great way to go. I'd be a fool to prevent that" is today seen as prophetic.

His Legacy

While worldwide transition to Perfect World was not smooth everywhere, in 50 years time an estimated 80 percent of the world's population were confirmed World Family. The rest were mostly zealots, living in the last few cities worldwide which maintained Capitalism and unrestricted religious expression. These cities were kept separate for another fifty years until the last holdouts died. The empty cities were then dismantled and recycled. Replacement cities were erected in their place, often with duplicate structures (but made of superior materials) to maintain their uniqueness.

Afterword

Since the change to World Family the planet Earth has been at peace. There is no more scrambling for superiority between competing nations; borders have disappeared. Competition, once hailed as the sure road to superiority, has been completely eliminated. Cities have been streamlined now, and square miles have been returned to nature; thanks to Attritive Reduction and Otherworld Relocation there are only a billion people left and that number has been holding steady for over 75 years, giving the Earth a new lease on life.

The Founder's final two Doctrine contributions occurred after his death, which were ideas of great ecological significance fully deserving of the world's attention, and the world attended to making them happen with relish. For his first legacy, enormous strip mining vehicles were taken out of mothballs and set to the task of emptying the world's many and vast garbage dumps, done with care by identifying and converting every item back into raw materials for reuse. When only bare ground remained those sites were re-planted in a unique new way, which was the Founder's last bequest: Green Cemeteries.

The Founder wanted to change the look of graveyards, from miles of rolling hills dotted with identifying stones carrying short cryptic messages into vast, accessible forests. With Green Cemeteries, the departed were placed directly into the soil without a wasteful coffin to become nutrition for a new tree planted on their grave. On the adult tree was mounted a computer plaque detailing their life and accomplishments. Some chose to create an Avatar of themselves to converse with visitors for all eternity. The planet was healed that way, turning one reclaimed garbage dump at a time into a beautiful woodland.

The giant Sequoia and Redwood forests were also replenished and enlarged with new life, guaranteeing the honored dead a place to display the comprehensive story of their lives, so they may be remembered for thousands of years in well tended and accessible living mausoleums.

As for himself, the Founder went one step further and asked to be buried under a fruit tree, so he might truly give back. His family decreed it would happen, and that each of them would also be buried beneath a tree which bore fruit. The Founder's Family Grove, with thousands of trees is now visited by millions each year, who are all instructed to choose and eat a fruit from a tree, to partake of the Wisdom of the Ages infused, many believe, with the Founder's DNA.

And for his final giant irony, the Founder requested that he be buried under the original 'Tree of Knowledge'--

An Apple Tree.

Copyright 2010 Bruce Ian Friedman