O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
commercial exploitation since the establishment of the Catholic
Church” had, under Schlechtmann’s guidance, managed to trample
every and all legal challenges of obscenity, slander, invasion of
privacy, and pandering. Even incitement to rioting had been thrown
out of court. He never expected anything else. From the beginning it
had been clear where television was heading. There was no doubt
that sooner or later someone would merely give the people what they
wanted, and what they wanted was darkness, depravity, and death. It
made their grey realities look so much brighter in comparison.
It was exactly eight o’clock when he entered the palatial offices of
VTV, bearing the demeanor of a good and just king. This was part of
the intricate design of his life. He knew from a young age that when
you consider yourself royalty, others will also, and that despite its
perch above the animal kingdom, the vast majority of men were only
slightly more evolved than their animal predecessors.
That phrase, “power to the people” made him laugh. The notion
that society had been moving toward some kind of enlightened
democratic egalitarianism had only been the grandest of fibs. Unlike
the middle ages, great numbers of men were now able to believe what
they liked without fear of the rack, but confronted with the horror of
endless and stultifying possibility, they now had no idea what to
believe. So they turned from the light, buried themselves in
superstition, simulation, the somatic. And in so doing they proved
they had truly not progressed much past the ignorance of the
ancestors.
Here was their vaunted democratic egalitarianism. Power to the
peephole. The human soul writ large, in blackest ink, a reptile howl
transmitted into endless depths of our empty spaces. All Gareth did
was provide the channel.
“May I take your coat, Mr. Schlechtmann?”
“Of course, Mary. And for the last time, please call me Gareth.
VTV is a team, you know, and you’re just as important as anyone
around here.”
Mary Kay Parker blushed violently. “Thank you Gareth. That’s
very sweet,” she said. What a kind man he was, she thought. Just so
good to all his employees and always there with advice when you
needed it. A man like that should be president, no matter what those
awful news magazines say about him. She watched his reflection in
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