“This is a book that you will devour in a day or two….It’s a book that you will want to discuss with people. That’s when you know you’ve read something good, when you’re thinking and talking about it long after the last page has been read.”
—Tulsa Books Examiner
Exhibiting a crackling narrative energy and vivid prose, first-time author Gordon W. Dale’s Fool’s Republic is about freedom—freedom of action, freedom of thought and, ultimately, the freedom to be human. It is the story of a man’s struggle to come to terms with himself and the culture in which he lives.
Citizens’ stories of state abuse, from secret wiretapping to unjust imprisonment and worse, make headlines daily. In the hands of novelist Gordon W. Dale, they drive a masterful political thriller. As Fool’s Republic opens, Simon Wyley floats in a tiny all-white cell. A short-order cook with a genius-level IQ, Wyley has had a steady job for twenty years, paid his taxes, kept to himself. A dedicated husband and father, he’s a model citizen. So why is he being held?
Here, we share a sneak peek excerpt of this new psychological, political thriller, that is as full of suspense as it is excitement!
Chapter 1
I float in an eight-by-eight cell of the purest clinical white: white walls, white sheets, white toilet, white sink, white light. Even the floor drain has been painted white. This drain worries me, sitting as it does in a slight recess in the floor, with no apparent purpose except to sluice away evidence. I stare at it, obsessed with images of red blood spilling down white tiles, like a pour painting by a trendy New York artist whose name I no longer recall.
I am attired in madhouse whites to match my cell: disposable briefs under white cotton pants, a white short-sleeved shirt, white slip-on canvas shoes without socks. My head has been shaved. I am denied access to a mirror, but no doubt my skull is also white, as white as the skin of my arms and hands. White skin over red blood.
It occurs to me that I am afraid.
They have stripped me of my name; I have become a number. I search my body for the telltale tattoo, but find nothing. Perhaps I have been marked in a way not detectable by the naked eye. The thought has nagged at me for some time, but now I shrug it off. What does it matter? My life has been a series of numbers: maternity ward number, student number, IQ number, juvenile corrections number, Social Security number, internal security file number. What difference could one more number possibly make? I’d let them number me till Judgment Day, if only they’d turn the goddamn light off, just for a minute. Just so I could rest my eyes.
Isaac Newton said that time flows equably, without relation to anything external. Imagine how much more subtle his thinking might have been if he’d been locked in an all-white room where time doesn’t flow at all but rather stops, becomes palpable, and takes on form. Time keeps up a companionable silence all morning, or at least what I fancifully decide to be morning. I have no real sense of morning or evening, of day or night. I am bathed in unrelenting white light. In white light time doesn’t flow; it lies on the floor.
I go to the sink and turn the handles of the faucet, yearning for the sound of water, for the sound of something passing. The handles turn silently and no water comes, not so much as a drip. I am alone in a silent desert of white light. Alone, but not unobserved. They watch me. I am particularly conscious of it every time I use the toilet. What do they hope to learn from observing me defecate? Nothing. They’re bureaucrats, mindlessly ticking off columns, pen-pushers completing forms. But, in truth, I don’t much resent their watching. I’ve done time enough in institutions to know that real privacy is what you keep in your head. What bothers me is that the toilet bowl flushes automatically when I stand up. There’s no relief to be found from the monochrome whiteness, not even in the sight of my own waste.
–
The cell door slides open. I crane my neck to see through the opening, desperate for a glimpse of color, a splash of something to tuck away and keep. Even a drab wall of army green would be a relief. But, to my disappointment, the outside hallway is painted the same blinding white as my cell. I regain my self-control, stare fixedly ahead. Desire is weakness. I can live without color.
A man wearing a white lab coat over a white jumpsuit enters my cell and the door closes silently behind him. He offers his hand, which I ignore, and mumbles his name, which I don’t catch. Apparently he’s a physician of some sort, come to check on my injuries. He carries himself with the same air of disheveled self-loathing Denholm Elliott affected as the abortionist in the first film version of Alfie.What transgressions, I wonder, have led him here? An excessive fondness for drink? An uncontrolled passion for little girls? For little boys? Mere professional incompetence, perhaps. I cannot look at him for long, and stare at the floor. But he’s obviously not regular military and for that I am grateful.
He asks me to remove my shirt and I do so with difficulty. He has me breathe in and out, then makes a show of examining my ribs.
“Have these been X-rayed?”
“No.”
“Well, they should be.”
I take from his tone that it’s never going to happen. An X-ray of a non-life-threatening injury is a privilege. And privileges are not extended to uncooperative detainees.
I struggle back into my shirt and he has me sit on the edge of the bunk so he can look at my facial injuries. He doesn’t like what he sees and when he examines my left eye there is a  sharp intake of breath. He makes me follow his fingertip back and forth, up and down.
“Is your vision blurred?”
“No.”
He has me close my eyes, then bring my finger to the tip of my nose.
“Any nausea?”
“What are the charges against me?”
He runs his fingers over my skull, palpates the vertebrae in my neck.
“Dizziness?”
“Why have I not been given the benefit of counsel?”
“You have some contusions. No evidence of concussion. You’ll be fine.”
“I was drugged and blindfolded before being transported here. Where am I being held? What continent are we on?”
My questions seem to cause him personal pain. He opens his mouth to speak but, after a moment’s hesitation, simply shakes his head and turns away. He can only pat me clumsily on the shoulder. The door opens of its own volition and he departs and I am once more alone in the white light.
Time rolls onto its side and closes its eyes.
–
My father had been something of a chess wiz at college and one Sunday, when I was twelve, he decided to teach me the rudiments of the game. My father’s idea of instruction was to set up the chessboard on the dining room table and, without preamble, annihilate me, match after match. That week I went to the library and checked out a couple of how-to manuals. When we played again, the following Sunday, I beat him the first game, then three more games in rapid succession. He never sat at a chessboard again.
Here’s the first law of chess: the better the chess player, the more likely he or she is to equate chess with intelligence. It’s crap, of course, but there you are. And there’s a corollary: the more you confuse intelligence with the ability to win at chess, the more humiliating it is to be beaten by your twelve-year-old son, particularly if you’re a hotshot university professor and he’s . . . well, just your twelve-year-old son. And one with a D average at that.
Later I joined the chess club at school, where I learned the second law of chess: teenagers aren’t any happier about losing to a twelve-year-old kid with a D average than university professors are. And another corollary: if you had few friends before you joined the student chess club, you’ll have no friends at all after you join the student chess club, particularly if you destroy their best player on your first night.
Chess isn’t about intelligence; it’s about flow. A chessboard, after all, is nothing more than a large circuit panel of possibilities. Each move opens some circuits and closes others. Even strategy, such as it is, is all about opening and closing these pathways of possibility. Only the knight is counterintuitive. All other pieces flow, either in straight lines or on the diagonal. But not the knight. It doesn’t flow; it steps. There’s an inelegance to it, like the quantum leap (not really a leap, more of a step, and certainly not a flow) of electrons in physics.
It was this stepping thing that kept me from pursuing chess beyond a few regional titles. I couldn’t see the possibilities of the knight the way I could with the other pieces. The knight—this goddamn horse—kept me off balance. It stepped over things as if they weren’t there. In short, it bugged me. And it made the artificiality of the game inescapable.
–
Before they transferred me here, I was held in a standard-issue military prison for eleven days. I know the duration because the place ran on a regular schedule: lights out at ten, back on at six, scrambled eggs for breakfast, macaroni and cheese for lunch, mystery meat for supper. Every twenty-four-hour cycle was the same. But at least there was a cycle, one I could discern, one infinitely preferable to being bathed in unvarying white light. At least I could tell day from night.
On the tenth day, I was marched to the interrogation room and thrown into the prisoner’s chair with unusual force. My regular inquisitors shook their heads at me and departed. In truth, I was sorry to see them go. I’d named them Maccus and Bucco, after the
fools of early Roman comedy, and had become quite fond of their antics. Their replacements, two muscle-bound cretins in uniforms stripped of identifying marks, were cut from a different cloth altogether. No comedic antics now. By way of introduction, the shorter of the two backhanded me off my chair.
“Your name?”
I just stared at him from the floor, too outraged to reply.
They pulled me to my feet, slammed me back into the chair. “Your name?”
“I have yet to be formally charged.”
That earned me a second slap. “Your name?”
“I demand my legal right to representation.”
They hit me a couple more times, not very forcefully, just to show they could. And would.
“Your name?”
“Wyley.”
“The detainee will give his full name.”
“Simon Christopher Wyley.”
“Occupation?”
“Short-order cook.”
“Religion?”
“A Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, Hindu atheist.”
“Detainee has Islamic sympathies. Political affiliations?”
When I didn’t answer, they reeled off the list of approved enemies of the state. It was a long list, but not particularly impressive. I could have easily compiled it myself from the previous week’s headlines.
“Are you affiliated with any of the above-named political associations?”
“No.”
“Reason for detention?”
“I have yet to be formally charged.”
“Reason for detention?”
I took a guess: “Crimes against the state?”
“Detainee admits to crimes against the state.”
“For which I have yet to be formally charged.”
More slaps, delivered with conviction this time, and blood began to drip onto the floor. I cast about for my sense of outrage but it had tiptoed from the room and disappeared down the corridor. I fought to remain calm, tried to formulate a strategy.
“The detainee will attempt to be more cooperative. A lack of cooperation will result in more vigorous questioning. What are the names of your associates?”
“I have no associates.”
“We know you had regular contact with . . .” and here they mentioned a state enemy of almost mythic proportions. “What was the purpose of said contacts?”
“I have yet to be formally charged. I demand my constitutional right to legal representation.”
“Your associates?”
“I have no associates.”
More slaps. More blood. I tried to keep my mouth closed to protect my teeth.
“The detainee refuses to name his associates.”
In the face of an aggressive opening, in chess, as in life, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a piece or two while setting up an effective counterattack. I addressed myself to the short one who had been doing the slapping.
“You know, if you work your quads and glutes less, you’ll look taller. It’s a simple matter of perspective, of fooling the eye.”
He glared at me. I shrugged apologetically.
“As for your dick, well, you might try swinging a five-pound weight from the end, but I doubt it’ll help much.” I used my thumb and forefinger to indicate a space about an inch and a half long. “That’s the trouble with bodybuilding: all that overcompensation and you’re still the smallest man in the room.”
He really went for me then. I covered up as best I could, but still took a couple of good shots before the taller one pulled him off.
I climbed back onto the chair, wiped the blood off my face with the back of my hand, managed to smile through my fear. “Feeling better about yourself?”
“Another remark like that,” the short one said, “and I’ll kick your head in.”
He seemed genuinely angry, which surprised me. I’d expected greater professionalism. Maybe he really did have a tiny dick.
“Next time,” his partner added, “I won’t restrain him.”
I looked them over. They were morons, blunt instruments. I couldn’t imagine their being entrusted with any significant information about me. Their ignorance was my only leverage.
“You know who I am, what I’ve done,” I said, knowing they most likely did not. “Any more physical abuse will cost you dearly.”
“Whatya gonna do? You ain’t gonna cause any more damage from here.”
“It’s not the damage I cause—it’s the further damage I may choose not to prevent.”
They sneered at that. “Maybe we’ll hook you up to the light socket, see what you’re able to prevent then, see if you can prevent pissing all over yourself. One thing you won’t prevent is talking. You’ll talk once we hook you up.”
“I’m sure I will. And when I do, you’ll have to check out the leads I give you. Trouble is, there’s no way you can check them carefully enough. You’ll set off a catastrophe the magnitude of which you can’t begin to imagine.”
“Tough guy. Big shot. See how you feel in a couple of months. In a couple of years. We got all the time in the world.”
“Before they sent you in here to soften me up, didn’t they tell you about me? Can’t you see I scare them shitless? I can’t believe you’re willing to carry their weight.”
That sobered them. Behind their bravado, I could see their confidence begin to slip away. Their sneers wilted to little half-smiles.
“I refuse to answer any more questions until I’ve been formally charged and granted my right to representation.”
They retired to a corner and put their heads together, arguing back and forth in angry whispers. Finally, they decided to err on the side of caution. After all, when things went bad, it was the people who did the slapping, not the people who ordered the slapping, who were tossed to the wolves.
On their way out, the short one leaned close to my ear. “Here’s a news flash, asshole. You don’t have any rights.”
The next day, before I was transferred here from the military prison, three inmates broke into my cell. It took the guards a long time to come to my aid, and by the time they did I’d been beaten to jelly. As I was carried on a stretcher to the infirmary, I passed the shorter of my muscle-bound inquisitors, standing at ease, his hands clasped behind his back, a broad smile on his moon face. He winked at me as we went by.
The third rule of chess: never confuse a game, where the movements of the pieces are limited by convention, with real life. And, of course, there’s a corollary: in chess, when your opponent concedes defeat, the game’s over. In real life, nothing’s over till it’s over. Every computer program uses a simple binary language of ones and zeros, zeros and ones. Eventually, a quantum computer will be perfected in which a single atom will represent both the one and the zero. No matter; it’ll still be the same old binary system. And every computer, regardless of how sophisticated, no matter how well defended, is vulnerable. You just have to know how to get inside.
That’s what worries them most about me: How the hell did I get inside?
Fool’s Republic is available in paperback and ebook wherever books are sold. For more on Gordon W. Dale, including upcoming book signings and author appearances, please visit his website at Gordonwdale.com.
