Serpent in Eden

      Serpent in Eden

 

          Once upon a time, Mr. Morden, Shadow thrall and agent of Chaos, awoke on a planet unknown to him. A Starfleet officer explained that he had materialized in the United Federation of Planets. The officer described Federation society as a utopia without war, poverty, disease, or oppression. The officer said, “In the Federation, all are free, and all are equal. We cooperate to better ourselves, and all humankind, and all sentient life. We have evolved beyond competition.”

“Very nice,” Mr. Morden said with a tight little smile.

“There is no need to compete. With our replicator technology, you can have anything you want. So what do you want?”

Mr. Morden smiled more broadly. That was his kind of question. He ordered coffee; they replicated a cup, he sipped it, and he frowned.

“This coffee is weak and watery,” he declared. “Can I have another brand of coffee?”

The Starfleet officer explained that replicators have the same programming all over Federation territory. There was no coffee any worse, and none any better, anywhere in the Federation.

Mr. Morden frowned. Then he smiled and asked the Starfleet officer what he wanted. The officer gave an anodyne answer; Mr. Morden repeated the question; after repeated hectoring, the officer confessed affection for a certain woman, but she was already engaged.

          Mr. Morden said, “As you wish, so be it,” and took his leave.

          Mr. Morden set forth to grant that wish, by any means possible. He framed the woman’s fiancée on trumped-up charges; this broke up the engagement, and the Starfleet officer caught her on the rebound.

          Mr. Morden busied himself by going to and fro in the Federation, and walking up and down in it. Everywhere he went he asked people what they want; and he granted those wishes in the most chaotic way possible. The Shadows had trained him to do this. Nowhere in the Federation did he get what he himself wanted, which was a cup of coffee as good as the coffee that the Shadows had brewed for him.

          Mr. Morden smuggled black market luxury goods. He hacked the central accounting system. He trafficked in latinum, drugs, and weapons. He busted crooks, rebels, and lunatics out of the Federation’s gulags by blackmailing the guards. He encouraged wastrels to play raucous music to cheering slackers and shocked Federation bourgeois. Everywhere he went, the orderly and lawful Federation quickly slipped into chaos and conflict. It broke along its hidden fault lines, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

          Mr. Morden lied, cheated, bribed, extorted, and used every filthy trick possible to reach the ‘core’ of Federation society – what they called the top. There he found people as devious as him; but even their coffee was weak and watery.

Mr. Morden anonymously revealed their corruption to the Federation masses, and political chaos ensued. Crime and injustice emerged from that chaos; but so did competition and innovation.

One day Mr. Morden strolled through a broken city in the broken Federation. He went to a restaurant, in a struggling neighborhood between newly-rich and newly-poor. He ordered lunch with coffee. He sipped his beverage, and he smiled.

He said, “Finally, a decent cup of coffee!”

 

          Moral: Nature sides with the hidden flaw.