David Wallace - The Pale King - An Unfinished Novel

‘In retrospect, it appears absurd,’ Reynolds said.

‘But that’s after the éclat that it looks so naive. Since there was no way to check.’

‘Not really. Just a name and relation.’

‘It was the honor system. There was no real way to ensure that dependents were real.’

‘No efficient way, that is.’

‘Oh sure, sure, they figured that the filer figured we could check, but as a practical matter we couldn’t check. Not really. Not in any definitive way.’

‘Especially since data processing was in such a primitive state. You could track consistency of dependents listed over successive years, but it was time-consuming and inconclusive.’

‘A kid could have turned eighteen. An elderly dependent could have died. A new kid could have been born. Who was going to chase all this down? It wasn’t worth the man-hours for anybody.’

‘True, if there was an audit and some of the dependents were made up the filer was in huge trouble and there were criminal penalties plus interest and penalties. But that was just random chance. The dependents themselves couldn’t trigger an audit.’

‘Each dependent was I think two hundred dollars added to the standard deduction.’

‘Which you guys now know as the zero bracket amount.’ Both aides were in their late twenties, but they spoke to Fogle as if they were much, much older than he. ‘But before ’78 everyone knew it as the standard deduction.’

‘But this was ’77.’

Sylvanshine gave Reynolds a look whose impatience was conveyed through duration instead of expression. Then he said: ‘In case this sounds picayune or inconsequential, let’s stress right here that we’re talking $1.2 billion.’

‘That’s b-b- billion, from this one tiny change.’

Fogle wondered if he was supposed to ask what change, whether they were including him in the choreography here as a kind of prompter, whether the sophistication of their routine was that advanced.

Sylvanshine said: ‘What Dr. Lehrl saw, as some no-account GS-9 auditor, was insufficient incentive for the filer to report dependents accurately. Institutional incentive. In retrospect, it seems obvious.’

‘That’s the way of genius, of éclat.’

‘And his solution looks simple. He simply suggested requiring taxpayers to include the SS number of each dependent.’

‘Requiring an SSN right next to each name.’

‘Since everything in the Martinsburg database at the time was keyed to SSNs.’

‘Which actually didn’t make it all that much easier to really check.’

‘But the filer didn’t know that. The requirement would greatly increase the filer’s fear of a phantom dependent being detected.’

‘Such was the power of the SSN.’

‘It created, in other words, an added incentive for compliance on dependents.’

‘And it was very easy and inexpensive. Just add “and Social Security Number” in the directions for 5c and 5d.’

‘His District Director had the sense to recognize an éclat and kicked the idea up to the Region, who routed it to the DC–Compliance’s office at 666 Independence.’

‘No one could believe it hadn’t been thought of before.’

‘The first tax year it’s actually implemented is ’78, as Section 151(e) of the Code. So ’79 is the first year the new instructions are on 1040s. Six-point-nine million dependents disappear.’

‘From the nation’s 1040s.’

‘Vanish, poof.’

‘As compared to the ’77 returns.’

‘There are no sanctions. Everybody decides simply to pretend the fake dependents never happened.’

‘Netting $1.2 billion the first year.’

‘It’s a textbook éclat.’

‘It’s also politically brilliant. There’s more than one kind of éclat.’

‘This was both.’

‘Because although it costs next to nothing to implement, it requires a written change in Section 151 of the US Tax Code, which requires one of the Three-Personed God’s senior staff to shepherd it through the Ways and Means process, to get codified as law.’

‘Which means the idea gets bruited about at the very highest levels of Triple-Six.’

‘And from out of nowhere Dr. Lehrl jumps four grades and even jumps Region after only two quarters and becomes in short order the DC-Systems’ most valuable—’

‘Well, one of the most valuable, to be fair, since there’s also — in—.’

‘Who is a whole other story involving your more slow, conventional rise through the pipeline.’

‘But certainly one of Systems’ most valuable utility men.’

‘Like an in-house consultant.’

‘Especially since the Initiative.’

‘Especially in Personnel Systems.’

‘Which is where you come in, Mr. Fogle.’

‘Essentially, he comes in and reconfigures Posts to maximize revenue.’

‘Essentially, he’s a reorganizer.’

‘An idea man.’

‘More bang for the buck.’

‘True, largely at the District level.’

‘But this is hardly his first Regional Center.’

‘There’s a certain amount of this we can’t talk about.’

‘We’re enjoined.’

‘You can think of him as a Personnel guy, or a Systems guy.’

‘Personnel Systems, essentially.’

‘But he answers to Systems. He serves at the pleasure of the Deputy Commissioner — Systems. He’s the DCS’s instrument, you could say.’

‘But he’s not a slave to any one system.’

‘He’s a reader of people.’

‘He’s an administrator, ultimately.’

‘Or more like an administrator of administrators.’

‘The Systems Division, you may or may not know, used to be called Administration.’

‘It’s a vague term, admittedly.’

‘He’d describe himself more as a cyberneticist.’

‘The Service is, after all, a system composed of many systems.’

‘His job is to come in and redesign Posts to get the most out of them. To find ways to streamline and enhance productivity, remove bottlenecks, debug. This blends an expertise in automation, personnel, support logistics, and overall systems.’

‘He goes where he’s sent. His assignment is simply a certain Post. The assignment memos are always about one line long.’

‘Phase One is fact-finding. Feeling out the situation.’

‘His real genius is incentive. Creating incentive. Finding out what makes people tick.’

‘He’ll take you apart like a little machine.’

‘It’s not as if Line 5 was his only éclat. We’re just giving you an example. What he really is is a genius of human motivations and incentives and designing systems to achieve them.’

‘He’ll test you.’

‘When you go in.’

‘He reads people. It can be a little scary.’

‘Be ready is all we mean.’

‘But don’t look nervous or like you’re braced for some battery of tests.’ Fogle knew of eastern cultures where any small piece of business had to be worked up to through involved systems of small talk and ritual indirection. Only an idiot would not have wondered whether this was what was going on, or whether Reynolds and Sylvanshine were just extremely boring and took a very long time to come to the point, assuming there was any point. Fogle had been away from his table for over half an hour already. Sylvanshine was continuing. ‘Because it doesn’t work like that. It’s not that kind of testing.’

‘Give him an example, maybe,’ Reynolds said to Sylvanshine, indicating Fogle with a movement of his head as if there were anyone else he could possibly be referring to.

‘OK.’ Sylvanshine made a show of looking right at Chris Fogle. ‘Where’d you go to school?’

‘Umm, what kind of school?’

‘Your college. Your alma mater.’

‘I went to several, actually.’