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announced with a knowing smile. “The candles are about to be lit on a perfectly beautiful chocolate cake and I suppose we’ll all be expected to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ before any of us will be permitted to eat.”

Chapter 4
    Thursday, April 12, 2029
    Boston

    Frank Werner stepped off the commuter train at Concord Station and drove from his mind the thoughts that had dogged him since meeting Dave Lewis the night before. It was just after three in the afternoon and the dense rows of bicycle racks were still full. Werner saw some interesting ones, too, bikes that looked as if they had lain neglected in garages and basements for years before being pressed back into service. What with gasoline rationing, ever-steeper road taxes, prohibitive tariffs on imported cars, and waiting lists for new Government Motors cars, only the wealthiest of commuters and privileged government officials still drove to work in the city.
    Werner had not set foot in the town of Concord in nearly seven years. Not since his older daughter’s graduation from Concord Academy on a chilly late May morning, when parents and students alternated between joy at graduating from secondary school and sadness at the imminent death of their beloved Academy.  
    Two years earlier, the President-for-Life had announced his New Education Plan, which called for the assimilation of all private educational institutions above the kindergarten level into the public educational system. By then, the ranks of private secondary schools had already been reduced severely by attrition, owing to the dwindling supply of parents who could afford what amounted to an extra four years of college tuition during a time of wage controls, soaring taxes, and devastated net worths. And despite the hand wringing in intellectual circles across the land over the abolition of private education, the opponents of the President’s new plan could muster little public sympathy to preserve what most Americans considered an archaic privilege of the rich.
    Werner also remembered his very first visit to Concord, when he and his wife had taken their older daughter, Justine, for her pre-admission tour and interview at the Academy. The town seemed the embodiment of early American ideals and traditions, with monuments to show for it. There was the Concord North Bridge, where the revolutionaries had fired the “shot heard around the world;” and then there were Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house, Thoreau’s Walden Pond, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, the Old Manse, and many other lesser monuments to the colonial era and the seminal influence of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and their intellectual heirs.
    The natural beauty of the town and its surrounding countryside had been carefully preserved, so that it was not difficult at times to imagine having stepped through a time portal into a bygone era. All this was possible because of the remarkable wealth the residents of Concord and their ancestors had accumulated over nearly four centuries. Its charm and history, meticulously preserved across many generations, had made Concord one of the most desirable residential enclaves in Greater Boston.  
    Werner crossed the street and continued past the row of shops that served Concord’s rail commuters until he reached Middle Street and turned right. He consulted his notebook and went on until he found 50 Middle Street, an imposing three-story Federal-style mansion painted white with black shutters and trim. He knocked and heard a woman’s voice answer. A moment later Nancy Widmer opened the door wearing a stylish beige wool suit with an open jacket trimmed with brass buttons. Though she was preparing to relocate, clearly he had not interrupted her while packing her dishes and chinaware.
    Nancy invited Werner inside, and within moments he noticed that the dining room table had recently hosted a luncheon. Four empty wine bottles stood guard over the remains of the meal, and he noticed at least five