Glenn Beck: The Overton Window

When it became clear that not even a stammering answer was forthcoming the old man continued.

“Indoctrination. I made you afraid, Mr. Purcell, and in your fear you accepted my truth, my power, and you abandoned your own. The public will do the same; leave them to me. The misguided resistance that still exists will be put down in one swift blow. There’ll be no revolution, only a brief, if somewhat shocking, leap forward in social evolution. We’ll restore the natural order of things, and then there will be only peace and acceptance among the masses.” He smiled. “Before we’re done they’ll be lining up to gladly pay a tax on the very air that they breathe.”

Arthur Gardner walked a few steps closer to the group at the other end of the table.

“Each of you was invited here this afternoon at my suggestion. The small but serious problem you brought with you was merely a point of entry, a premise for our introduction today. That leaked document sparked a conversation that I’ve had with your superiors, and they with theirs and so on, about a wide-ranging plan of action that has long been in development and now awaits its execution.

“I told them that now is the time, and ultimately they concurred, with one condition. You, all of you here, are to be put in charge of enforcement-the boots on the ground, if you will. Before this new order of things can be brought forth, it was decided that you must all, unanimously, agree to protect and defend and rebuild what will remain of this country after its transformation.”

On the screen behind him a quotation faded in, finely lettered as though written in the author’s original hand. It took a moment but Noah soon recognized the words from Julius Caesar.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

and we must take the current when it serves,

or lose our ventures.

The old man watched them as they read, and then he spoke again.

“Shakespeare wrote of a time of great decision, and ladies and gentlemen, that time has come. We stand at a crossroads; the civilized world stands at a crossroads. Down one path all men are created equal: equal in poverty, equal in ignorance, equal in misery. Down the other is the realization of the brightest hopes of mankind. But not for all men; that was a brief experiment, tried and failed. Abundance, peace, prosperity, survival itself-these coveted things are reserved for the fittest, the deserving, the most courageous of us, the wisest. The visionaries.”

The room was still again, and he let it stay that way for a while.

“Now,” Arthur Gardner said, his voice just above a whisper, “while the tide is in our favor-come with me. You can still save yourselves, and in so doing, you can help us build a whole new world upon the ashes of the old.”

Noah stopped in the middle of the main hallway and stood there for a while, his head full of unfinished thoughts and that troubling fogginess you feel only when you’ve forgotten where you’re going, and why.

That meeting was still going on, but without him. His father had called a break and passed him a note with a list of phone numbers and a few bullet points of instructions-one last errand to perform before he could leave for the weekend. These were apparently VIPs to be invited for the after-hours portion of the presentation, provided the first part had gone as hoped. Evidently it had.

This task he’d been given had started out strange, and then one by one the calls had only gotten stranger.

There were no names, only numbers. Each of the calls was answered before the second ring, not by a service but by a personal assistant. Every one of those phones was professionally attended after business hours on a Friday night, and probably twenty-four hours a day by the sound of it. That seemed oddly extravagant, but maybe it wasn’t so unusual considering the circles in which his father was known to travel.

There’d been audible indications of a scrambler during at least four of the brief conversations, and some sort of voice-alteration gizmo on one of them. Everyone had seemed extremely wary of revealing any information about the identity of the person associated with each number, but the last one hadn’t been quite careful enough.

Noah had caught a last name spoken in the background during this final call. It was a Manhattan number, a 212 area code, and the name he’d heard was an uncommon one. He’d also seen it in the newspaper earlier in the day. That call had been to the private line of the most likely nominee for the next U.S. Treasury secretary, assuming the election went as forecast.

This man was also the current president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. He and twenty or so others of comparable status were apparently now dropping everything and coming here, bound for a conference room where Noah’s father was waiting with the previous attendees.

He walked to the southeast corner suite and keyed himself into the private kitchen used to prepare his father’s meals on those days he was in town. The room was all tile and polished granite and stainless steel, larger than most of the executive offices and equipped for Arthur Gardner’s personal chef.

Noah flipped on the blower over the range, lit the cooktop in back, and followed the final instruction on his list of things to do.

Destroy this paper; be certain to watch it burn.

His errand complete, Noah resumed his drift through the halls. It was hard to say how much time had passed since he’d been ordered out of the remainder of that meeting. No clocks were allowed on the walls or the wrists at Doyle & Merchant.

It was one of the many quirks meant to remind everyone that this wasn’t just another workplace. Over the decades this office had morphed into a science-fair diorama of the inside of the old man’s brain, furnished with everything he liked and nothing that he didn’t. Sometimes these oddities arose from an impulse or an outburst, other times from long deliberation, but once King Arthur had passed final judgment on a thing he never, ever changed his mind. The clock business happened a few years before Noah was born.

In 1978 an account executive had checked her watch during Arthur Gardner’s heartwarming remarks at the company Christmas party. She’d looked up when the room got quiet and had seen in Noah’s father’s eyes what time it really was: time for her to find another job, in another city, in another industry. By the following Monday the unwritten no-timepiece rule was in full and permanent effect. It was only by His grace that windows were still tolerated, though access to any view of the outside world was strictly confined to the executive offices.

Noah resumed his stroll and took a meandering right turn, still without a clear destination. There wasn’t a soul in the place, though some would say that in the PR business that phrase always applies.

This particular corridor was the company’s walk-through résumé, a gallery of framed and mounted achievements, past to present. Press clippings, puff pieces, planted news items and advertorials, slick, crafted cover stories dating back to the 1950s, digitized video highlights running silently in their flat-screen displays. It was a hall of fame unparalleled in the industry and the envy of all competitors.

No trophy case, though; you’d never see a flashy award show for outstanding PR campaigns, God no, not for the serious stuff. It’s the first rule, and one of the only: The best work is never even noticed. If the public ever sees your hand in it, you failed.