The story behind XVII by Mark D. Diehl – Enter to WIN $50 GC! #GF_17
The Background of XVII by Mark D. Diehl“Seventeen” is set in the Midwestern United States in the not too distant future. Civilization has evolved to a point where corporations own and control everything on Earth. If you want to survive, you’ve got to have something the corporations want, but what do you give them when they’ve taken all but your soul?
As the earth’s supply of raw materials dwindled to nothing, corporations were able to corner every market, all around the world. They used this unprecedented power to gradually replace government as the focal point of human power. Like governments, corporations are immortal and soulless. Unlike governments, corporations act solely to benefit the bottom line. As such, they have supplanted the old governmental power base — election by the people — with the corporate power base of efficiency.
To remain efficient in spite of deepening shortages, corporate culture demanded that society be reshaped into a rigid hierarchy. Now there are 17 billion people on the planet, each with nothing to trade but total obedience to the organization. At the bottom of the corporate hierarchy: perfectly compliant “brain trust” employees, who are kept alive but unconscious for hundreds of years after natural deaths would have occurred, their brains processing information as parts of enormous data banks. They outnumber the conscious “ambulatory” workers by a wide margin.
The ecosystem has been destroyed, and because so many toxic plant varieties developed with irrepressibly infectious genes in the early days of genetic engineering, all plants have been declared illegal. Nearly every product on Earth is made from secretions of patented, genetically modified bacteria, with each purchase debited from corporate accounts at the point of sale. Medicines, too, are synthesized from various strains of bacteria, with unseen doctors debiting accounts as their computers authorize prescriptions for their roughly 30,000 patients each.
Eadie, a 19 year-old waitress in one of the synthetic-food diners owned by a gargantuan organization, brings the society’s brutal control mechanisms into play against her when she intervenes in a struggle on behalf of a bedraggled alcoholic known as the Prophet. He predicts she will lead a revolution, but how is that possible when she lacks the power to change even her own miserable situation? She has nothing, she is nothing.
Street drugs, too, are now made from engineered bacteria. Brian, a heroin dealer, is dosed with an unknown substance produced by an untested strain and runs off into the night, eventually seeking help that brings him into contact with Eadie and her band of desperate followers. His herbalist, Dok, can’t tell if Brian’s condition is just a case of undifferentiated schizophrenia or some new kind of brain damage, but he’d rather have Brian keep the gun than hold onto it, himself.
Though Eadie comes to believe that she was indeed intended for a greater purpose, she finds herself a destitute outcast, forced into hiding by the powerful enemies she has made. She must rely on the resourcefulness of the followers she has unwittingly attracted as the only means of advancing her cause. In order to achieve her destiny in a world run by brutal, ultra-hierarchical corporations, her own primitive organization will have to run just as tightly and have equally severe consequences for disobedience.
SEVENTEEN
By Mark D. Diehl
Most of the world’s seventeen billion people are unconscious, perpetually serving their employers as part of massive brain trusts. The ecosystem has collapsed, and corporations control all of the world’s resources and governments. A bedraggled alcoholic known as the Prophet predicts nineteen year-old waitress Eadie will lead a revolution, but how can she prevail when hunted by a giant corporation and the Federal Angels it directs?
EXCERPT:
The man’s mouth hung open as he stared at her face. His long, ashen hair had shifted, revealing a smudge of grease or dirt that made an almost perfect circle on his forehead.
“Sir? Are you all right?”
His eyes widened. “It is you,” he said. “At last. I have been looking forward to meeting you for such a long, long time.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry it took me so long to get to your table, sir. I just clocked in.”
He blinked slowly, pondering her response. “Ah,” he said. “You are a waitress, still. Well, then, General, I would have a cup of Vibrantia, if it pleases you.” The man’s expression never altered and his lips remained mostly still as he spoke, making it seem as though his voice was coming from somewhere or someone else.
Eadie clenched her teeth, trying not to laugh, though his words made her feel as though she was being tickled with a feather along her spine. “I’m sorry, sir. This is a corporate restaurant owned by McGuillian Corporation, so we synthesize only McGuillian patents. We have Synapsate but not Vibrantia. Would that be all right?”
“Of course, General. That would be lovely, if it pleases you.”
“Okay, sir. And my name is Eadie, by the way.”
“Thank you, General Eadie. And, if you like, you may address me as many have lately come to do. I am the Prophet.”
AUTHOR INFORMATION:
Mark D. Diehl writes novels about power dynamics and the way people and organizations influence each other. He believes that obedience and conformity are becoming humanity’s most important survival skills, and that we are thus evolving into a corporate species.
Diehl has: been homeless in Japan, practiced law with a major multinational firm in Chicago, studied in Singapore, fled South Korea as a fugitive, and been stranded in Hong Kong.
After spending most of his youth running around with hoods and thugs, he eventually earned his doctorate in law at the University of Iowa and did graduate work in creative writing at the University of Chicago. He currently lives and writes in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Author’s Website: http://www.markddiehl.com
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