The Media Candidate Read Free Page A

unhealthy attitude toward
many of the basic tenants of twenty-first-century disciplined
democracy” and that many parents and alumni had complained about
her iconoclast views.
    Cynical was the University’s word
describing her view of Government, and there was no need for
cynicism. The Government had taken dramatic steps to insure total
and uncompromising honesty in the political process. Technology
wrested every bit of lying and empire building out of the political
arena. In fact, the socially correct term for politician had
recently become social principal , which had been shortened
to sopal and was being further shortened to pal by a
subtle media campaign.
    But Professor Halvorsen refused to believe that
Government could be trusted to monitor its own integrity and
maintain the degree of discipline presumed by its new role. Since
the media’s traditional watchdog role had become compromised by its
alignments with political parties, she felt there might no longer
be anyone overseeing the overseer.
    Most skeptics like her had been weeded out of
the education establishment over the last twenty years. But her
brother-in-law occupied a very influential position at the National
Subsidy Foundation and she had an aunt at the National Pension for
Preceptors. This helped make her maverick ways tolerable to an
intolerant aristocracy.
    Technology had become the principal tool of the
many tentacles of Government. Not only did it allow unprecedented
access to the minds of the electorate, it provided a subtle wall
between it and them, a barrier that ordinary people could neither
understand nor penetrate. Technology was the most effective
isolation Government could maintain during a period when it claimed
to be bringing both the leaders and the led into a historically
unique milieu, a oneness of body and function that would preserve
fundamental rights into the centuries that followed.
    Professor Halvorsen had her PhD in political
science, but understood that the science of poli-sci wasn’t the
science of the technological elite. She felt she would have to
understand technology if she were to understand the workings of
this new republic, so she studied communication engineering. But
this had become another wedge between herself and the Political
Science Department. They resented her as uppity, an engineering
transvestite. Her research into political trends and
electro-optical imaging technology made her aware of the fantastic
potential for its use and abuse.
    This research and her outspokenness had gelled
in the events of this evening. Tonight she would test her theory
based on thousands of hours of research. It would be her
vindication to the University. She would have hard data that not
even an academic community, dedicated to the status quo and fearful
of government funding agencies, could ignore.
     
    * * *
     
    Her rooftop visitor began the next stage of its
mission. It opened the skylight with its myriad of tools and used
its eight perfectly coordinated legs to climb into the skylight
well where it was only a short drop to the floor. Attaching itself
to the roof with a silken thread of carbon nanotubes, its jet-black
body, about the size of a cat, lowered into Professor Halvorsen’s
living room. It descended its slender thread as if it had evolved
for a billion years for just this task. Eight legs flexed
gracefully to a silent ballet in its brain.
    Its goal, however, wasn’t centered on
illuminating beauty, but on extinguishing truth. Reaching the
floor, it disconnected the silken tether and examined the
surroundings with both visible and infrared sensors. A
single-minded goal drove each movement.
    Its feline size and spindly legs did not suggest
the immense power built into it or the intelligence, which allowed
autonomous completion of the most complex assignments. It was a
monument to the highest callings of human ingenuity and art. It was
also a terrifying and vulgar machine—the progeny of the excellence
and the malignancy