Three weeks later, John Paul stood on the edge of the Sarajevo Crater, looking down into the abyss. There was no way to tell what this man who had lost his wife and daughter was thinking at that moment, but it was my job to try and imagine it.
And yet, I thought, what could a man possibly be thinking when confronted with the desolate landscape so typical of his favorite SF novels? When looking at the place that only a short while ago was a city but now had been scorched into a smooth, glassy wasteland surrounding a giant crater? What would the white-radiation-suit-clad figure think as he stood on the edge, looking down at the giant mortar bowl, imagining his family being crushed into paste?
Shortly after he returned home, John Paul dropped out of MIT and shut himself away for six months. He ordered his groceries online. For half a year there was not a single record of him ever having used the subway, a bus, a tollbooth, a shopping mall, or a store. His web receipts showed that the only purchases he ever made online were for food. John Paul isolated himself from the world as much as was physically possible.
What depths of despair had John Paul been cultivating during these six months? Did he make attempts on his own life? Was every night a sleepless one? And then, emerging from his self-imposed silence, John Paul suddenly decided to take a job at a prestigious PR firm. A firm that regularly worked for governments and big business, coordinating “hearts and minds” propaganda campaigns. At the time John Paul joined the company his new employers were being retained by a certain developing country in an effort to persuade the international community that said country was an excellent prospect for direct foreign investment.
Whether he was hired for his White House and National Military Establishment connections from his MIT days or just for his phenomenal linguistic ability—he was apparently able to speak thirteen languages fluently—John Paul’s role was to take care of business for the firm’s nation-state clients.
His role was to attend the important functions in Washington, meet the right bureaucrats and Congresspeople so that he could plant seeds of sympathy in receptive minds. On the client side, John Paul had to select and prep the government ministers who would go down the most easily with the Western media, and then, when they were ready, fly them over to the US to place them on the right news programs. He set up a press center to receive foreign correspondents in style, building up a picture of his client country as a place where business could be done and foreign visitors were welcome.
After his first success, it was a simple case of rinse and repeat, and before long John Paul had become the go-to man in the field. He had become an official aide to various ministers for public information, press, media, culture, and propaganda for numerous developing countries.
And then the atrocities began.
The countries John Paul had worked for found themselves plunged into civil war in quick succession. The only variable was who started the troubles—in one country it seemed to be armed insurgents, in another the regular army, and in yet another the ordinary townsfolk—but one way or another they all seemed to lead to genocide on a massive scale. Even so, John Paul was seen as a success by some segments of society, for he always appeared to be at least partially successful, particularly in initially winning the hearts and minds and sympathy of the American people to the plight of his latest client. America would then be the country’s savior and guiding light, right up until the moment that the rug was pulled from under them when the people of their nice new client state inconsiderately decided to start killing each other. America had assumed the role of the shepherd toward a new democratic and civilized era for its adopted states, so Americans were understandably a little shocked when they found out that they seemed to be driving their little flocks into vicious civil wars.
It was as if the US had become an assassin of emergent developing countries. Initially though, no one would have dreamed of pinning the blame on John Paul. Why would they? How was anyone to suspect that this single, mild-mannered company man was capable of fooling all his bosses and colleagues and, unbeknownst to any of them, was coordinating a deliberate campaign to incite civil war and mass murder?
It was only when the evidence became too strong—when every single one of his clients ended up in some sort of horrific internal conflict—that people started looking at the possibility of a causal and not just a correlative relationship between John Paul and the atrocities emerging worldwide. Even then, John Paul was able to stick around at the company for a little while longer, as he paid no attention to his detractors. He was never worried about his company’s approval, after all. He didn’t need to play the game because he had no true interest in working there. He had only joined the company in the first place as a means of getting the genocidal ball rolling.
Eventually though, enough was enough, and John Paul was forced to leave the PR company. And then he seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. No trace of him in any country’s transport systems, no sign of him even buying food, anywhere, ever. Indeed, the last confirmed sighting was in a Prague shopping mall.
And here we were now, trying to track down the man who disappeared off the radar only a few days ago.
Since John Paul’s departure from the PR company he had only been visible through his works. His signatures on military orders. Whenever we heard John Paul was at the heart of another bloody civil war, we’d fly there to find he was already gone. Whenever we heard that he was orchestrating another massacre, we’d fly straight out there to find, yet again, that he had long since left. The greenhorn from the CIA must have seen his face at least one time, or else how else would he have kept tabs on him? And yet, according to his ID, John Paul had never been anywhere near the city …
It was then I realized that we were chasing a ghost. A specter born of the death and destruction of the Sarajevo Crater.
Waiting for Godot, huh? Maybe Williams’s analogy wasn’t such a stupid one after all.