The Langley Case: A Nathan Roeder Mystery
Chapter 24

Another Interlude, again discussing the problem of Nathan Roeder

It’s not fear that drives us. We are the bringers of fear. We are meant to be the things that go bump in the night. While not actually evil, we are certainly indulging in the more base desires of humanity. Desires that some thinkers have somehow taken to believe was bred out of us. As we move closer and closer to genetic perfection, and farther and farther away from the rabble populating the Sprawl, we learn many things about the human condition.

For instance, the capacity of humanity to engage in violence is not necessarily a genetic trait. It is bred into us through nurture, through cultural influence. Through a desire for power. For there is no greater power than that over life and death.

Our initiation rights are strange. Outsiders would call them barbaric. This comes from a simple lack of understanding, a failure to see the bigger picture. But whatever the picture we are trying to produce, it cannot be produced in the light of day.

Which brings us to the problem of Nathan Roeder. When last we spoke, Mr. Roeder was a bumbling idiot, no more a threat to us than any other bumbling idiot populated, plaguing, and infesting the Town and the Sprawl. Were there a way to remove these cattle wholesale, we would do so. But that is something that must wait until we have established what needs to be established, until our Utopia can rise from the Distopian mass of vulgar lottery humans swarming through our world.

Now, though, things have changed. With each step he draws closer and closer to doing what Oliver Langley failed to do. Oliver’s last wishes may prove to be just as damaging as he had hoped them to be, and may end up doing exactly what he was trying to accomplish. His feeble mind was unable to grasp the greater picture, unable to see the future we are laying plans for. He thought somehow that all people sharing the basic genetic code, the correct number of chromosomes, deserved to live in the future. He didn’t understand that there simply is not space for them all.

Oliver was a humanitarian. He would have you think that there is room enough for humanity to go on breeding, to continue its pathetic attempt to perfect itself through evolution. He would have you believe that it was okay to have the population continue to increase. So what if the world can only support half of its twenty billion people to any sort of acceptable standard of living? That’s no reason not to allow them to keep making more.

He didn’t understand. Nathan Roeder understands far, far less. Yet both are a risk of exposing things.

Why do we fear exposure? We are outnumbered by a scale that is mind boggling. You do the math.

What I can’t seem to grasp is why Roeder has been so successful. When I first met him, I did all the research I needed to do, and I was amazed to discover that he was capable of even supporting himself.

He is a failed Reader, unable to complete even the most rudimentary training. He is an alcoholic, addicted to cigarettes, obsessed with noir films of the twentieth century. For all the potential that his genetics has afforded him, he’s done nothing throughout his life but squander every last opportunity his parents pain stakingly arranged for him to have.

Yet somehow, he continues to be a thorn in my side. In all of our sides. Somehow, Roeder is constantly bumbling closer and closer to the truth. Failing consistently upwards.

Perhaps the time has come to remove the gloves. And with them, remove Nathan Roeder. Permanently.

We’ll see how things go at our next meeting.

That is all. Return to your lives, your families, and your careers.

We will be in touch.