The Final Warning

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Chuck Pavel and his best buddy Luke Furrowes were as different as two people could be. For a start, Luke was a rising star in the world of professional golf – and Chuck hated golf. Secondly, he was supposed to have stolen a girlfriend of Luke’s, which had led to a major fight. Luke was slender, compact, athletically handsome; Chuck was short, overweight, and bookish. ‘Geek’ was Luke’s nickname for him. Luke was a social live wire; Chuck preferred his own company, except for some reason that of Luke.

They had met in Tampa, where Chuck was a computer sciences scholar at Tampa University and Luke was on a golf scholarship at the Tampa Golf Academy, one of the university’s more ambitious offshoots. They were brought together by accident through a mutual friend, who thought Chuck might appreciate some pocket money for pulling Luke’s trolley in the inter-university championships.

Chuck was overcome by the silliness of the game, but Luke wasn’t offended. In fact it amused him that someone could be so rude about the love of his life.

For whatever reason, the two men hit it off at once, and they were often seen getting lunch together on the Tampa University campus, or in one of their favourite bars in the city. Luke had a girlfriend called Polly, and everyone reckoned they were becoming a permanent couple. But when Luke heard rumours that Polly and Chuck had been seeing each other, he went looking for Chuck and found him in a bar with a group that included Polly. Wild with rage, he dragged his friend out into the street and slammed him with a right hook that chipped a cheekbone and left Chuck with a scar and a bump that he had to this day.

The rumours were false. Chuck had run into Polly in a café a few weeks earlier. They had discovered they shared an interest in astronomy and agreed to go together to an upcoming campus talk from a visiting expert. When Luke found them, they had all just left the talk and were discussing it over a drink at the bar before heading home.

It cost Luke the love of Polly, which was no big loss for a youngster who was finding the attentions of campus girls an enjoyable fact of life. Chuck on the other hand was mortified, mainly for having ended his friend’s love affair.

Where Chuck won out was on the brain stakes. In his whole life, Luke had never met anyone so clever. There wasn’t a subject that Chuck didn’t know something about, and the fact that he never showed off his amazing knowledge impressed Luke still more. They would spend evening after evening together, debating all kinds of topics, from economic theories to the meaning of life. Chuck taught Luke about Descartes and Nietzsche, and the fascinating notion that perhaps he and all the things around him were just a dream and didn’t really exist. They talked into the night about an idea that Chuck reckoned would revolutionise the country’s tax system.

‘Listen up, golfer. Public servants are paid by the government, right? And where does the government get the money to pay them? From tax they take off the rest of us. Then the government taxes the public servants’ pay, right? So they tax us to pay their workers, then they tax the workers. It’s the same money, going round twice. And something like twenty per cent of all the tax collectors in the IRS are employed to collect those taxes from public servants. Why in God’s name would you take tax in with one hand, give it out with the other hand, then take it back in again? Instead, why not pay the public servants net of tax, fire all the redundant tax collectors, and use the money you save to lower everyone else’s taxes?’

‘You’re hurting my head, Chuck.’

‘Better than hurting your pocket!’

Another favourite topic was the future of robots. Luke had been reading about it. ‘We’ve already got driverless planes and cars. Robots run factories. Bionic legs, robot nurses. Maybe the world’s getting too clever for its own good?’

Chuck was with him on that. ‘There’ll come a time when a computer designs robots that are cleverer than itself – and miles cleverer than us. Then what? Suppose the robots design their own value system and ignore little old us with our human values. And who’s going to monitor all of that and prevent the catastrophe that follows?’

‘Come to that, who’s monitoring anything on earth, right now even? I mean, we’ll never get the powers that be to agree on one global leader, or one global approach for running the world. And without that we’re off to hell in a handbasket…’

‘Replacing the United Nations would be a start.’

‘ “United” be damned. They’re too interested in what their own countries want to agree on anything worthwhile.’

‘So – we’re looking towards a seriously moderate future. Maybe the President was right when he said it’s in our hands to save or destroy the world.’

‘Sweet dreams, old friend.’

As they got to know each other, Luke took to testing Chuck among his friends.

‘OK, guys,’ he said to the gathering as they sat in the Groupie Bar, their favourite hangout on the edge of the college campus. ‘Listen up. I’ve got a new one for the Geek.’

Knowing the game, the others always gave them the floor once they began their familiar ‘Brain of Tampa Quiz’.

Chuck helped to set the tone. ‘It’s not going to be a tough one, coming from a man who thinks an iPad is what you wear to sleep on a plane!’

Luke ignored him. ‘What’s the scoop on Slobodan Petrović?’

The quiz required that Chuck was given minimal information. For most of the group, Slobodan Petrović could have been the next US tennis champion or an eighteenth-century Slovakian poet. To Chuck, it was a trick question that he saw through in a trice.

‘Would that be Slobodan Milovancev Petrović or Slobodan Tomislav Petrović?’

‘Don’t duck and wriggle, Geek,’ said Luke. ‘For trying to prevaricate, you get to answer for both.’

‘Slobodan M. Petrović is the next incarcerated Chechen, bar one, due to be put before a Russian grand jury on trumped-up charges of disseminating anti-Russian propaganda in the capital, Grozny. Whereas’ – Chuck paused to allow the group to wind up Luke with their chants of ‘Where-as! Where-as!’ – ‘whereas Slobodan T. Petrović was President Tito’s favourite ghillie at his private fishing lodge on the River Neretva forty kilometres inland from Dubrovnik, who died in 1968 from a rusty salmon hook snagged in his left leg.’

‘VA-VA-VOOM! VA-VA-VOOM!’ In unison, the tribal cry greeted another Chuck triumph.

Luke was having none of it. ‘Right leg,’ he muttered.

The boos drowned him out. ‘Right leg!’ he announced, louder this time, laughing with the rest at his feeble attempt to deny Chuck his victory.

Chuck clapped his hands to quieten everyone down so that he could have the final word. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am humbled by the amount of wisdom you have extracted from me!’

Luke called out above the renewed laughter. ‘Mark Twain?’

‘Woody Allen actually.’ It brought the house down.

Privately, Luke was so proud of his bookish friend’s prowess that he never minded losing. The only time Chuck had ever failed was over a golfing question that they both agreed was a cheat.

‘This guy is as round as a balloon and as sharp as a tack,’ Luke boasted, his arm around Chuck’s shoulder.

‘You talk such balls,’ Chuck said sheepishly. ‘What’s worse, it’s mostly golf balls.’ His eyes twinkled from behind his heavy glasses.

What I love about the Geek, Luke thought, is his wackiness.

* * *

For the last year of their time at Tampa, Chuck Pavel and Luke Furrowes had lived like brothers, even sharing lodgings on the university campus. The two of them graduated on the same day, and that night the party ran for twenty-three hours. They drank as if their lives depended on it, and Chuck did his best to keep away from Luke’s new girl, the effervescent Charlie from Southern France, in case he caught another fist on the chin.

But now another distance interfered with their friendship. Luke had recently won his second consecutive Amateur Championship and his golf career was about to go into overdrive. Chuck, on the other hand, was heading to the White House as an apprentice ‘runner’ for the Chief of Staff to President Sukova, Mr Jeff Stone.

They drank to each other’s health, once, twice, then again. They pledged to call every day and to meet every weekend – then they hugged as if it was their final farewell.

The next evening, bleary-eyed, heads throbbing, each finally set off on the next piece of his life.

‘Good riddance, old mate,’ said Chuck.

‘See ya, Geek,’ said Luke.

You bet, thought Chuck – little knowing how right he was.