The Tree of Knowledge, Daniel Miller [unputdownable books txt] 📗

declares that the commoner will face a trial of fortune that will determine his innocence. The commoner is placed in front of a crowded arena in which there are two doors. Behind one door is the most beautiful woman in the land, whom he will marry if he chooses correctly. Behind the other door is a tiger that will surely maim and kill him. As luck would have it, the princess discovers ahead of time which door holds the tiger and which the lady. The commoner knows that the princess holds the keys to his life, and looks to her before selecting a door. She tilts her head to the right. The question for the man is, knowing that the princess loves him with all her heart and loathes the other woman, should he choose the door on the right or the left?

As a child, Eva had puzzled over the answer to the question for hours, hoping to find as certain an answer as the other riddles had provided. When her mother finished her work, she asked Eva what she thought.

“I don’t get it,” she had shouted. “What’s the answer?”

Her mother offered a warm smile. “That’s the point, Evalita. There is no answer. It’s an allegory about the power of passion and the difficulty of choosing between two equally unpleasant options.”

At first, Eva had hated the story for its ambiguity. She wanted an answer. But as she thought about it more, she began to love it. She could see herself as the princess, overcome with love for this man, but racked with hatred for the woman he would love. It was then that she realized that she wanted to feel that same passion—for a man . . . or a cause.

During her youth, everything had come easily to Eva. She excelled in mathematics and athletics, and her physical beauty was never in doubt. After the disappointment of Dilbert refusing the invitation to her quinceañera, she had made a point of winning the attention of every man she noticed, as well as excelling in every field of study and at every skill. And never again was she rejected as he had rejected her; never again did she fall short. But the facility with which she conquered every new challenge left her feeling passionless, like a teenager having finished an epic video game. She wished she could unwind the clock and use her skills to overcome the struggles of the past. To conquer lands with Alexander the Great, to build Rome with Caesar, to lead a revolution with Washington. But those battles had already been fought and won, so what remained for her?

It was then that she was told about the Society for Reason, Enlightenment, and Democracy. The Society had originated as a think tank designed to promote scientific reasoning and logical problem-solving in all aspects of life. This mission manifested itself in different ways during the following decade, from attacks on the irrationality of modern education to probing analyses of the illogical actions of politicians and government as a whole. By the early nineties, the Society had become an intellectual home for academic, business, political, and military leaders. The annual conference in Los Angeles attracted a veritable who’s who of the world’s power brokers.

As the Society’s influence grew, so, too, did its ambitions. Unsatisfied with merely being a talking shop, the Society’s leadership developed a multipronged political apparatus comprising private military schools to teach the Society’s values and approach, political action committees to influence elected officials and elections, and charitable organizations to build goodwill. To manage this broader agenda, the Society adopted a rigidly hierarchical structure, consisting of increasing layers of secrecy, and actively began recruiting younger, high-potential individuals to participate.

The wide-ranging ambition of the Society attracted Eva, and for the last ten years of her life, her sole goal had been to climb the Society’s ranks so that she could further the mission. She had personally created and trained the “Red Army,” the name given to the Society’s military schools. Thanks to Eva’s efforts, the Red Army now ran private schools in every state and was widely accepted as the most efficient and effective educational institution in the country. The crimson-uniformed cadet graduates were regularly admitted to West Point and worked in security at the highest levels. The army’s success generated so much heavy donor interest that Eva was forced to roll out a charitable arm, which used the cadets to perform basic social services. Her triumph with the Red Army led to her appointment to an increasingly vital string of projects. Yet, the more she climbed the Society’s ladder, the more meaningless it all seemed. She was admired, feared, trusted. But she herself didn’t admire, fear, or trust anyone. She didn’t love anyone, except her mother, and that was a love in constant search of approval. She was lonely.

When she was fourteen, and she had watched Dilbert turn his back on her in that classroom, she had thought she could fill the emptiness, embarrassment, and inadequacy with the thrill of ambition fulfilled. She had thought she would prove herself worthy and then feel it. But as she sat in the JFK gate waiting area and the airport speakers announced the boarding of zone something or other, Eva realized she was wrong. She didn’t feel worthy; she didn’t even know what that meant anymore. Other people’s reactions to her didn’t penetrate: nothing did. Her ambition was a journey without end, an addiction that could never be quenched. The seemingly endless opportunities of life that had beckoned her when she was fourteen had now been blocked off. The lone path visible now was the one that she had already chosen, and she knew that she had chosen poorly.

Eva pulled out her phone and called the general.

She shuddered at the sound of his voice but pressed on. It was much too late to turn back. “The job is done. I have the package, and Puddles and Turner have been smoked out.”

She could see the