The Imaginary Revolution - 2: The Imaginary Revolution, #2

By Roy Jackaman

(Book 2 of 2) This book is a work of fiction which is based on a true story.

Part two.  Go to a world governed not by the pervasions of politics but rather by time.

As Head of State George Patterson was still calling the shots and, in the process, tidying up after the previous president, even though remnants remained hidden deep inside the administration. 

On the other side of town, the beguiling and sometimes decadent Michelle was still hovering around fitting vicariously into the picture, or rather into Stephanie's picture of what her spouse could have been.

Rizzo appeared to be on the same old continuous treadmill battling with the forces of the administration not knowing that someone else, a third party, was battling even harder.  Still, he had refuge in his group of three, even if he was still puzzling how the communication functioned.  The triumvirate, a historical aberration fitted out with the most subtle electronic gadgetry without anybody knowing how it worked.

With Lucille on the side-lines Rizzo's challenges miraculously disappeared.  Was it to do with Lucille and her notion about the strange nature of time?  That firebrand, Lucille, with her ideas had bizarrely painted a picture which materialised.

Their fate was all connected with an overwhelming historical resentment which had everything to do with the countrywide vacuous protests which were taking place.

At another level, Lucille was enthusing about Imaginary Time and how it developed into TSVF.  All the time Rizzo was sharing views with the protesters but dreaming in synch with the president, George Patterson.

Following a myriad of imponderables Rizzo is also presented with an addition.  Was it a result from the time geek?

Finally, it all comes home.  A new situation and even though he does not comprehend it his burdensome problem is relieved.

(This book is written in UK English.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roy Jackaman
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386627630

Roy Jackaman

The author has earned degrees in mathematics, has a substantial career as an IT Specialist and is a member of MENSA. He has lived in many parts of the world. The objective of his writing is to tell a story from a technical idea and to present it in a readable form. He enjoys writing about complex fictional issues and abstract notions.  

Book preview

The Imaginary Revolution - 2

Roy Jackaman

Copyright © 2019 by Roy Jackaman

Library of Congress

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.  All characters and events in this book either are a product of the author’s imagination or if real are used within this book’s fictitious content and not meant to be a factual depiction in any way.

Time was on My Side.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 1

More than anything else it was the insidious nature of the beast.  The president who had a certain penchant for nicknames had labelled the offending group a cartel.  More colloquially he also called them ‘The Resistance’ for that was what they were.  In fact, they were a little more than that, they were two major forces, both hideous to the president.  It was blatantly obvious in his appraisal of them when his innovative panache conjured up some of his schoolroom French.

"Les deux forces majeures."

George Patterson had imagined that in reference to an irresistible and truly catastrophic insurance claim.  That was easy, he always thought his term in government as a backup for the country he loved and an insurance hedge against the misdeeds of the opposition party.

It may have been reasonably innocuous terminology, but behind it was an implication of two sets of major destruction.  It was his little dig, or rather not such an innocent attack, at their twin and malevolent role in corrupting the political landscape.  The opposition party was a disruptive force two ways around.  In his mind, there were two ill winds that had blown nobody any good.  Then by the analysis, which only he could make, at least so it seemed, he quite independently held them responsible for many of the country’s problems.  He rather judiciously held them in low esteem.  They may not have been a disruptive force of nature but they were something equally frightening.  A force of hindrance to the free running of government and a divisive manipulative force on the minds of the population.  Geoffrey Patterson thought about it occasionally when he was perturbed by their activities.

Yes, ‘The Resistance’.  Most appropriate.

"Yes, president une bête noire," Steve Gowdy restrainedly retorted.

It seemed that his vice president had cottoned on to the occasional habit of the president to use French vernacular.

However, with all the flowery and descriptive verbiage the president spoke about the opposition he held onto one word when speaking formally.  The president had designated them a ‘cartel’ during some of his addresses and it was not because of their propensity to regulate prices in the marketplace.  He called them ‘a cartel’ because he sincerely believed the opposition party was controlling a much more valuable commodity.  It was akin to regulation of the people, rather like the herding of cattle, but it was not physical.  The population was being manipulated by subtle words of persuasion and mealy-mouthed platitudes which hid their hypocrisy.  That in itself was nothing revolutionary, those sorts of practices had been going on for years and every political party from whichever political hue was to blame.  It was just that the political games had reached a crescendo and it was resulting in a divided nation.  The opposition party were particularly adept in that area.  It was a grand contortion of the people’s minds by their nefarious political antics and cleverly devised schemes, which on first airing would not seem anything deleterious at all.  It was both for their own justification as politicians but it also seemed to be ideas which they had harboured from their youths.  Muddied ideas from their adolescences which they had not quite developed into justifiable plans which really functioned.  It was a time when their passions were high and a damn sight more credible to their adolescent minds.  There had been an excitement then and a believability in ideas which would eventually become foisted on those amenable to mild coercion. 

What had started with the president as a play on words then developed.  It was more than a double entendre, it had at least three rather mischievous meanings.  ‘The Resistance’ which frequented more and more his impromptu words was merely a declaration espoused in the President’s own inimitable way.  If by saying it the way he did seemed to suggest a connection with the fabled force of patriots in France during the second world war, it was not.  The president who always had a certain place in his heart for those loyal to the country of which they were born could quite easily accommodate people with such feelings.  By paying deference to those loyal natives he could quite easily add his complete distaste for the opposition party.  The president would instead mean by ‘The Resistance’ as referring to a badly working machine which had not been sufficiently lubricated or rather like a car running without engine oil.

A rusted machine whose moving parts had seized up.  Had ceased to function correctly.  Not pursuing the role of government logically.  Now that is the true definition of resistance.  And those perpetrators of the crime could quite justifiably be called ‘The Resistance’.

Not quite ad nauseam, the president had recently said the same on numerous occasions to his vice president, Steve Gowdy.  ‘The Resistance’ was quite often bandied around when, during heated discussions, the name of the opposition party was mentioned.

The Resistance have been castrating the very minds of the population with ineffectual moral garbage designed for the nursery rather than a well-intentioned population.

The vice president always excused the president any of his analogies because normally his message was on target.  The president’s language was seldom eloquent but normally precise. 

As for determining in his own mind that his political opposition was a cartel that was also well founded.  They were not a business cartel because but they certainly did not have the aptitude to control any field of business.  They were a political cartel and one which the population had demonstrated, during the recent landmark election, were surplus to requirements. The population, at least for the foreseeable future, had decreed they did not want their narrowly channelled partisan politics sanctimoniously thrust down their gullets any longer.  The opposition, as they said themselves, were more politically agnostic than any previous variety of political party.  That also seemed a lie as they were becoming more radical.  It was also conclusive that the population had not been fooled. The last election had demonstrated that. The idea they were a party with fresh ideas, had been shot down in flames along with their other promises.  They had graciously been ousted.

However, Geoffrey Patterson was being chastised by the press which had always without exception taken the side of the opposition party.  To site that, there were misrepresenting articles in the media.  It was abundantly clear to the president’s political party there were manoeuvrings going on in the background that were not visible.  The president, if nobody else, was vocal about the issue but in the first instance only to Steve Gowdy.

The deep state is in the pockets of the opposition party.  The whole country is being fooled by the machinations of the news media. The deep state is not encouraging the free passage of news.  Within the governance of the country, the deep state is using their position of influence to counter the present government’s policies as much as possible.  The deep state is holding on to their positions of power to perpetuate the previous government’s policy’s.

It was a hangover of the previous government where true democracy if there could ever have been such a thing, had broken down.  The Resistance had infested the deep state.  They were trying to drag down the government of George Patterson and they were refusing to budge.  The had bypassed their obligation of rational debate.  It had become an act of war. The Resistance had infiltrated and were attempting to obliterate the very core of democracy, as it stood.

BEFORE THE ADVENT OF Geoffrey Patterson, the unassailable demands and control of the government was the very thing which had been irking Rizzo.  Yet that was not all which had been making him a little perturbed.  If he had major personal issues some were not so prominent.  Perturbed would be a good word to use for those since one could argue that the very substance of those irritations was indeed trivial.

In his domestic life, everything boiled down to the feeling of disenchantment he was having about the ongoing war he with his combatant wife.  He felt beleaguered.  It was without exaggeration this was how he was feeling about their increasingly untenable situation.  It was a war, entrenchment of political views which would not resolve themselves.  He was in a battleground, set against his wife.  He had no misapprehension that his wife felt the same.  Indeed, it would not be difficult to imagine that Stephanie had identical feelings about the impasse of their two diametrically opposed political points of view.  Yet if you removed the hotbed political issues, which regrettably surfaced in any discussion they had, they still strangely hung onto something worthwhile.  The often-tempestuous relationship he had with Stephanie was still fully functioning, if not perfectly then functioning nevertheless.  During Rizzo’s testing time in other areas, to do with the authorities, it was a source of consolation.  Nothing could stop that notion that he had some sort of refuge with Stephanie.

It even teeters on affection, he thought.

If Rizzo had chosen his thoughts more seriously, he would have known it was not skirting affection.  His thoughts were an edifice to the practice. Succinctly put, he was fully immersed in the rigours of love or more precisely in the black art of love.

Within the Fuller household and as the name implied it was exactly that, for Stephanie had rather surprisingly adopted the surname of her spouse, there was an extra visitor.  Stephanie’s ever-ebullient niece, Lucille, had come back to stay with Rizzo and Stephanie for a few days.  If it was not a regular occurrence set in stone, it was a visit which had increasingly approached the realms of normalcy.  However, Rizzo did not dread the arrival he only dreaded Lucille’s overwhelming and endless energy and her scientific pontifications.  That was all a little strange because Rizzo used her scientific principles, which he had secreted somewhere in the back of his mind, more and more often as a peculiar set of circumstances occurred.  That was strange since he had quite consciously thought he had ignored them.

Surprisingly, with all that near sociopathic coolness Rizzo had inherited from spending long hours labouring at the keyboard he still retained a certain emotional agitation.  On occasions, it came out unannounced as if prompted by someone or something else.  He could be enclosed in his little oasis of a computer room where he wrote, when the effect, best described as a shock feeling, hit him.  Theoretically, it could have been prompted by one of Lucille’s impromptu visits, and the strange scientific information she would divulge.  Maybe it was with the connection, whatever it was, that he had with the effervescent young woman.  Although in a way it was quite divorced from Lucille since he never felt it was anything pertaining to the corporeal.  Likely it could also have been brought about by the jitters he felt from the increasingly normal bickering between Stephanie and himself.  It could have been promoted by their increasingly antagonistic relationship.

Whatever had instigated the process it was somehow becoming evident that the spectre of Michelle, if she could be referred to in such tones, was becoming more into focus.  It was Michelle, Stephanie’s sister and Lucille’s mother which occupied his mind.  It was Michelle with whom Rizzo had no more than a passing acquaintance who seemed more to occupy the centre stage in his mind.  It was such an artificial feeling.  Quite unnatural.  There were, of course, a multitude of advantages of any such thought.  The physical form was not so dissimilar to the delightful one which Stephanie presented and there was that certain natural smell which seemed to permeate the whole of the family, which Rizzo found quite attractive.  That wholesome smell which Rizzo could not realistically put a label on.  However, there was something else which sealed the deal.  Michelle’s political leanings even if they were not the same as those of her political agnostic daughter were almost married to those of Rizzo.  They were so similar that whenever they did have a chance to meet over some family ritual of Christmas, Easter, marriage or funeral they often conversed effusively and seemed a little detached to all others who were gathered.  Stephanie had noticed it before much as a tetchy spouse would but Rizzo had never thought of it.  That he now would suddenly have Michelle in his thoughts was nothing more than an aberration.  He didn’t normally dwell on her.  Maybe it was something to do with his discontent of the political governance of the country which had prompted such a thing.  With Michelle wasn’t it simply the similarity of their political allegiance, something which he did not share with Stephanie?

AS THE VISIT OF STEPHANIE’S niece had become imminent, he could only imagine what Lucille would lay on him.  Would this time be the same as those before? It could be the intricacies of Imaginary Time or some other fad which had been circulating the ivory towers of academia at that moment.  However, Rizzo had been resigned to endure the occasion with at least a modicum of understanding toward Lucille, even if sometimes it would border on exasperation.  In Rizzo’s mind, her stay would be fraught with the usual over-analysis of decidedly esoteric issues.

If last time was anything to go by, he imagined that once again Lucille would be hell-bent on converting him with any number of cranky ideas which were circulating in her mind.  If it was