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Show 7H and the world become one big concentration camp, lorded over by the computer-operators, with a l l buying and s e l l i n g regulated by terminals, a l l going and coming known and controlled by servants of the machine, man's c r e a t i v i t y run amok, no longer subject to the laws of God. Revelations would come true. One of my college students, a marketing major, had written his research paper on the efficiency and r e l i a b i l i t y of the economic system that had been planned, and he was a good Mormon boy just returned from a mission. But what my f a t h e r suggested was equally formidable - a government sourced in r e l i g i o n , mixing church and state ~ an attempted theocracy led by the head of the group priesthood. It was an aAmerican heresy. S t i l l , the idea enthralled me. A self-contained community, bonded by belief in something greater than the petty s t a t e of humankind, welded by f a i t h in God. Such a community would survive, for the communes and countercultural settlements of the sixties had been eroded by t h e i r own lack of a unifying jprinciple. The people of the group had learned to live together, the individuals growing stronger as they struggled with suppression °n all sides. A s p i r i t of adventure sprung l i k e a geyser in me. I wanted to rush home, pack a bag, thrust my children in the back seat °f the car and head north. "Well I won't go," my mother muttered behind her hand. When I was a teenager, I had dreamed of living on the ranch, protected from the smirking world. But my mother had wanted to stay. Brian would not go, e i t h e r . Despite my renewed commitment, s ^ t l e f l a s h e s , like those of a dimming bulb, troubled me. I |
