There's a bit of inevitability to the conclusion of this story. Still, at least one part should be somewhat unexpected. One problem with Mind Control stories is they don't usually pursue the topic to its logical conclusion. Chapter 22 does that.
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The idea was simple, but it involved so many individual actions that it felt very complex. I'll avoid as many details as I can.
Emma identified a potential presidential candidate who was strong on the environment. So far, so good. We gave him a big, fat donation, which gave me a chance to talk to him by telephone. I used the sonic stimulator to convince him I was the most important backer he had, he needed to talk to me anytime I wanted, and that he loved me the way he loved his old fraternity brothers. Emma and I spent a romantic weekend at his compound in Martha's Vineyard. It was nice.
Emma worked very, very hard on his campaign. This was the biggest opportunity of her career, and she was determined not to screw it up. She hired a top polling firm. Her consultants conducted focus groups to figure out how to craft a message the public would accept. I felt bad that I couldn't tell her she didn't need to worry so much. There was no way our guy could lose.
That's because I made sure that our campaign TV ads included the sonic stimulator in the background. I learned that a lot of TV sets have such poor sound quality that they don't always reproduce tones in such a high frequency range, but most newer sets were fine. I'd put the soundtrack under places where the announcer said things like "Vote for clean air and water." Emma thought it was very weird that I insisted on having a role editing our commercials. She thought it was so odd that I eventually used the sonic stimulator to make her think it was normal.
This part was tricky. I couldn't use the sonic stimulator too much. We needed for our candidate to win a substantial victory that gave him a mandate, but not in a landslide so big that it appeared he'd done something impossible. That wasn't easy. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about this. It would have been a lot easier if I'd simply told Emma what I was doing. She was better able to read polls and determine precisely how many commercials we needed to run, but I couldn't let her know.
After we'd taken over the White House, Emma targeted congressional members who stood in our way. She launched campaigns in districts that hadn't changed hands in years. The media was awed that so many enemies of progress lost elections they'd always won easily. The pundits eventually decided Americans had woken up to the extent of the problem of global warming. It was a "spontaneous shift in attitudes." Yeah. Sure it was. "Spontaneous." Pundits. God bless their pointy little heads.
It was actually fairly easy deciding what steps to take to save the environment. We just made a list of everything possible, then pursued them all. No act was too big or too small. We had to eliminate dirty industry, establish green technology, restore rainforests, and on and on and on. The folks we elected had their hands full enacting our agenda.
This might sound like something so complicated it was impossible. It only sounds that way because people invested in the dirty old way of doing things liked to lie, saying the technology didn't exist, or change would wreck the economy, or it meant the death of the automobile, or some other bullshit. They'd repeated these lies for so many years most folks believed them. But a lot of change was almost effortless.
For example, eliminating coal and oil was a top priority. All we had to do was stop subsidizing those dirty industries. For years, fossil fuel lobbyists had gotten so many deductions, exemptions, tax credits and outright grants that ultimately 80 percent of America's energy subsidies went to oil, gas and coal.
Ending all those government handouts was enough to fix the problem. Without corporate welfare, the dirty industries could not compete with unlimited clean, free energy from wind, solar, and hydropower. The main drawback to nuclear power was that Americans never possessed the political will to agree on a safe place to dispose of nuclear waste. With the sonic stimulator, that problem disappeared. Upgrading the electric grid and building power storage facilities was enough to make sure America never ran out of clean energy. All it took was some clever engineering, and America has always had a surplus of clever engineers.
As expected, Emma did indeed have a lot of crazy days that left her in a state of frenzy when she got back to her hotel room. She did indeed need a big dose of cock therapy most evenings. I couldn't always be there for her, but I was there enough that she claimed she'd never enjoyed campaigning more.
"I need some meat!" Emma would say when she walked in the door. "A big serving of meat!" She usually had a wild look in her eyes when she said that. I came to learn it was best not to keep the lady waiting. It reminded me of the time Mary requested that I be lying naked in bed when she got home horny from dancing naked. With Emma, I began wearing easily-removed terry cloth robes without underwear. She appreciated the gesture.
That year
Time
magazine listed Emma Fitzgerald as one of the top 10 most important Americans under 30. She and Victoria had that in common.
This whole part of my life was so hectic I began worrying about my mental health. I'd already spent time in a psychiatric ward; it wasn't an experience I wished to have again. Mary was a big help. She got me involved in yoga, mindfulness meditation, and a steady diet of enough sex to tranquilize a bull. Still, I wasn't very happy. I got almost no pleasure doing all this crap. What I wanted was to spend time having intimate conversations with Mary, Emma, Victoria, Mariana, Alana, and occasional others who added so much to my life. I did all the political work because I felt the world didn't have a chance without it.
Emma wasn't surprised when I announced it was time to spread our message around the globe. It would be a massively complex effort, but by now Emma knew how to conduct massively complex campaigns. She went back to her polling companies and asked for a list of countries where the environment already enjoyed widespread support. She identified weak spots in the political infrastructure of the forces of evil, and won a series of battles that put the good guys in charge. The pundits decided it was a spontaneous global movement. Bless their pointy little heads.
There was a lot more, of course. But it's like the joke I often quote. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I'll just add that I used this opportunity to do something Emma called my "vanity project."
As you know, I hate smoking, and I've used the sonic stimulator to make lots of tobacco addicts quit. I commissioned a series of commercials that urged young people to quit smoking. Overnight, tobacco companies were horrified to discover their customer base was shrinking every day as old smokers died and young people didn't replace them. Pundits called it another spontaneous change of attitudes. As if.
Knowing it troubled me that I couldn't spend enough time with the women I loved, Mary came up with a good suggestion. I bought a private jet for Emma, and another for Victoria. It was a very practical purchase because it meant they spent less time waiting in lines in airports. They were touched by the gesture because they knew I did it mainly so I could spend more time with them.
For the next few years, I raced to do my part to make Emma's campaigns work. Her staff grew so big I eventually had to persuade our property management company to evict an entire floor of occupants to make room for Emma's army of worker bees. Almost every day, I had to spend some time using the sonic stimulator to make little tweaks to our campaigns. It would have been a lot easier if I'd felt it was safe to let Emma know what was happening, so she could make the tweaks herself. But I know one thing. The way to keep a secret is to not tell anybody. As much as I loved and admired Emma, I remained convinced this was a burden I dare not share with anyone.
At least, that's what I thought until I began thinking about the future.
I was still young and healthy. There was no reason to expect I wouldn't live a long, healthy life. But no one lives forever. It would take generations of work to get planet Earth back where it needed to be. As it was, the whole thing would collapse after I died.
Something had to be done. I had to figure out a way to pick a successor. There was no guarantee that I could ensure this person didn't misuse the sonic stimulator. Even if I used the sonic stimulator to make them strongly resistant to the idea of revealing the secret, or misusing it, mistakes happen. I finally decided what to do.
