CHAPTER 4:
D.C. Shit hits the fan
The immediate
impact of the 2016 visit from the eggheads that bestowed the most incredibility
advanced energy technology that saved our atmosphere and later rendered fossil
fuels noncombustible from a National Government Defense perspective was disaster.
All the most powerful, most sophisticated, largest militaries in the world were
extremely concerned due to the fact that a large percentage of their weapons of
war relied on fossil fuel consumption. While it was not a complete start over
(many weapons such as basic infantry, artillery, nuclear powered naval vessels
were still perfectly operable) it did serve to level the playing field for a
moment and give nations with a lesser military foot print the opportunity to
expand that footprint substantially if they harbored a desire to do so. A new
style of arms race had become one of the unintended consequences of the
benevolent actions taken on humanities behalf by the eggheads. Part of this
arms race, particularly with under developed countries, was the desire and
continued attempt to reconfigure the molecular structure and reconstitute
Carbon based fossil fuels in order to utilize decommissioned military hardware.
This global race to reboot militaries and reconstitute oil had been going on in
one way or another for the past sixteen years and was certainly not new news,
however the GECA which served to increase greatly the negative consequences of
engaging in this race had put a new light on an old situation.
“Charlie,
Linh, Laura grab Doug and anybody else you see who’s been working with Jack on
this GECA thing and get to the conference ASAP”. Ron hung up and turned to Sam
“what do you think”? “well sir, I have been working pretty close with Jack
recently” Sam started “and as far as I know the GECA has to pass through the
legislature and get approval to proceed to the United States Ambassador to the
United Nations for our support of the measure in the U.N. Security council. If
we can get support in the Security Council, which is expected to exist, then we
can move to the General Assembly for ultimate approval. If this all goes
through, it will most assuredly be a net positive and every interest we
represent is hoping that we can pull it off. Now, that being said, it’s not
like we don’t have any head winds. First, the People for Proper and Peaceful
Energy Production or PPPEP, which is basically just a bull shit front for a
bunch of old petroleum industry types, and a coalition of extreme conservative
Trads, have mounted an extensive opposition to the passage of this legislation.
While Jack has expressed some frustration with regard to these folks, I don’t
think he has ever really regarded them as a viable threat. President Kelly has
been pushing hard for passage and a majority of the Democratic Republicans, and
the Democratic Socialists are on board. Before he left, Jack had a bunch of
meetings with various committee chairs to garner support”. Sam went on to
explain that Congressman Derrick Bahley, who had won in Michigan’s 1st
district in 2014 and had worked his way to Chairmanship of Ways and Means and
was a staunch ally, had assured Jack of passage in the House. Senator Evin Bayh
of Indiana who had left the Senate in 2008 in total frustration and come out of
retirement in 2020 and was now majority leader in the Senate had basically
promised the same. “So, I don’t see any real danger coming from any of those
angles. I mean, Jack saw a lot of those guys as a pain in the ass, but
defiantly not dangerous”. “So, who has the most to gain from this Legislation
getting killed” Ron asked. “It’s probably not an interest in the U.S…..unless
it’s some kind of clandestine undercover shit. I mean it could be a conspiracy
of some kind but I can’t really see who stands to benefit….at least not enough
to justify the risk and certainly not enough to kill people. Of course it could
be an international thing; there are quite a few nations that could benefit
from a military and/or economical point of view from the ability to burn a
little oil and be able to use any weaponry or machinery that’s just sitting
around collecting dust”. “Did Jack ever mention anything like that….anything
that indicated he was aware of some kind of dirty work going on” Ron quizzed.
“He might not have even realized it was a clue” he added, suddenly realizing he
was talking about Jack Saffell who with his superior intuition, never let a
clue go by unrealized. “I don’t think so sir. Let’s face it, this is Jack we’re
talking about”. “Yea, Yea I know…..forget that last question. Come on, you’re
coming with me to the conference room. We are meeting with the wiz team and
trying to get to the bottom of this”.
By the time
Ron and Sam got to the conference room of the Environmental Alliance Group the
rest of the team had already assembled and were busy discussing exactly what
was bugging Ron enough to call this meeting. “Ok guys, here is what’s going on.
Sam is going to bring everyone up to speed then we are going to develop an
action plan and see if we can get to the bottom of this shit. Sam, you’re up”.
Sam went through the same details he had spelled out for Ron, answered several
dozen questions to the best of his ability and turned the floor back over to
Ron. For a guy just out of grad school who was just serving as an intern for
the past eight months, Sam was really surprised at the fact that he was being
included in an upper level meeting at EAG with guys who were arguably some of
the smartest guys in the world. “What countries do you think might be involved”
asked Dr Watson. Holy shit thought Sam; these guys are taking this seriously.
“I have a hot list on file; here I’ll pull it up for you”. A projected data
screen with various lists and spread sheets appeared in the middle of the
conference table. Sam reached over and moved some of the data groups around,
added another screen and organized while mumbling to himself for a minute. When
he was finished he turned back to face the group and said “this list here, are
the most likely to be involved in any energy conversion activities for a
variety of reasons; this list represents priorities from a military stand
point; this list is of outward or known hostiles and this final list is
comprised of any known groups, state sponsored or not, that have economic or
idealistic interest in ether energy conversion or “new tech” disruption.” “Good
work Sam” said Dr Watson, “hey Doug, you see any patterns here”? “Laura, what
about you, anything jump out at you”? “OK” Laura said “let’s try this”. She
quickly wrote an algorithm and plugged in the data. As images on the midair
transparent data screen flashed across she said “I just asked for a probability
study based on the info we have plus a probable hierarchy of priorities. I used
a bit of speculation and placed Power and/or enormous financial gain as top
priority. After that we have Religious ideology, Nationalism, and so on down
the line”. “Also I interfaced every entity, organization, or country that anyone
who met with Jack in the last two months is associated with”. What filtered out
on the data screen was a list of possible culprits and when cross referenced
with those who had contact with Jack, it made for a decent starting point for
investigation. “Good start guys” Ron said, “now, let’s figure out who or what
is after Jack and why.
Then we
figure out what their overriding agenda is and everyone who is involved. Than
we figure out just how to proceed to stop it without causing a shit storm or
getting anybody killed; not to mention trying to avoid an atmospheric melt down
and/or world war three”. “Ok, here is the action plan for now: Sam, you track
down everybody who Jack had contact with in the last two weeks. Cross reference
with Laura’s probability schedule and report back at our next meeting at 7:30
AM tomorrow. Charley, can you get the exact status of this GECA legislation
from a House, Senate, Special interest, and Executive point of view. I want to
know the name of every ass hole that ever even uttered the phrase Global Energy
cooperation Act. Call in every favor that’s owed you, or me for that matter and
find out just exactly who stands to gain and who stands to lose from this
shit”…..”Got it”? “Yes, I got it Ron” Dr Watson said. “Linh, you take the
international front. Do a total comb of our global data access and cross
reference with Laura’s data. I want the data to be fluid with Laura taking
command central and interning the data and adjusting the algorithms as we
filter the information. In twenty four hours I want to know just what the fuck
is going on. Dougy, you go find Jack, take a couple guys from security and
don’t take chances. If Jack contacts anybody patch him to me right fucking now.
If you can’t patch him to me, you tell him to stay secure and wait for Doug to
provide backup”. Ron finished up be asking “Anybody got anything to add”? Doug
requested an update of Jacks meeting schedule from Sam and they planned to do a
brief strategy session in Doug’s office. Doug also asked Jane Keen if she could
contact Max Cunningham and Tom Rum in the EAG security division. Dr.s Watson,
Chang and Jones spent a few minutes hashing out a few details and after
everybody was ready Ron said “Ok let’s hit it”.
“Jane, get
me the president’s chief of staff ASAP” Ron shouted to Jane Keen, his personal
assistant. “Ms Meng is on the line Ron” Jane said with the mix of respect,
sarcasm, affection, and wise assness that so totally became her. Grace Meng was
President Dr. Sarah Jane Kelly’s chief of staff. Ron thought of her as one
smart, shrewd, babe. She was fifty seven years old, had been elected to the
House in 2012 representing the 6th district of New York. She was a
Chinese American from Queens Y.N. and landed a seat of the foreign affairs
committee in her first term. After a third term she lost a bid for the NY
senate seat vacated by Senator Kristen Gillibrand. This was in 2018 and the
midterm election during President Santorum’s single term. The general trend had
been toward the right and several long held democratic seats were lost in the
transition. Of course this was two years before the Party break up and
rearrangement to the new three party statuses.
“Hey Grace its
Ron, you got a minute”. “Sure Ron, what’s on your mind”? “You know how we’ve
been lobbying for this GECA that your boss is all hot on”. “Yes Ron, you know
how happy we are to have your guys support”. “Well, my main guy on the hill
Jack Saffell seems to have run into some mysterious goings on”. Oh yea, I know
Jack, what’s he say is the problem”? “That’s the problem, he can’t say because
he seems to be missing. His aid Sam Marky says he got spooked by ether
something he found out while pushing for GECA support or somebody that may have
paid him a visit for the intended purpose of scaring him into bolting. We both
suspect the latter and I’m just wondering if you can shed any light on this for
me”? “I can talk to the boys at National security, and check with CIA. Let me
do some digging and get back with you. Do you have any suspicions yet”? “Not really,
we just developed and action plan and have the data bases filtering stuff right
now. We have run a couple algorithms but so far we are just guessing that
somebody has a big reason to kill the GECA and Jack must have stumbled on to
something they would rather he not know”. “So Ron, you want us in at this point”?
“Yea, I think so. We don’t have anything at all concrete, but, you know, if
there is something going on, at least the NSA should poke around. What do you
think Grace”? “I agree, when is your next briefing”? “7:30 AM tomorrow morning,
here, at the EAG conference room”. “I’ll send Peter Miller over to attend; will
you bring him up to speed”? We’ll do”. In the mean time I will see what’s up on
our end, CIA might have some info, let’s coordinate tomorrow”. Sounds good,
Thanks Grace”. Ron said. “Jane, get me Dougy will ya”? “Yes boss, he’s on”.
“Hey Doug what’s up”? “I got Max and Tom meeting me in an hour at the airport.
I have the pilots ready; we are taking the Bombardier 260 and should be in
Traverse City two and a half hours from now. We ran a few software samples and
his old cottage on Lake Leelanau is a high probability for where he’s gone. We
are getting continuous data updates from Laura and are feeding back anything we
find. Hopefully he’s there and we can scoop him up. Then all we’ll have to
worry about is if there is monkey business going on, Which is a hell of a lot
better than worrying about the safety of one of our own”. “I hear you there
Dougy, good luck and be careful”.
Dr
J. Laura Jones was a genius with a 200 plus IQ as well as being a drop dead
beauty. She was not the kind of Alpha female that needed to be in charge. In
fact she possessed the kind of inner confidence and utter serenity that she
could solve the most complex of problem without anyone noticing and not give it
a second thought. She liked Jack and was impressed with his intellect and his
dry and quite sense of humor. She was seated in her office at EAG headquarters
and had five different screens projected in the air. She was using voice
activation and typing at the same time. With her IQ and super connected
Neocortex Laura was actually able to perform up to five activities at a single
time…at least from a brain activity stand point. She was also communicating
with Dr Watson, Sam, Doug, Ron, Jane and Dr Chang along with at least a dozen
others on a pretty much continual basis. She could do this just by thinking
about the proper connection protocol and talking; conferencing in as many
people as she wanted was no problem. She chuckled when she thought about the
days when one needed to hold a box to ones ear to communicate. As she was
speeding through screen after screen of data and information she suddenly
froze. Humm....this is interesting she said to herself.
Since
2016 the nations of the world engaged in a lot of jockeying for position on the
world stage. Some countries were much quicker to embrace new technology as it
became available.
Others,
slower to switch from traditional petroleum based industry, energy, transportation
and military, had to play catch up in order to maintain their status in the
world economic order. Pre 2016 saw the U.S. as the world's largest economy
followed by China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Italy, India, Russia,
Canada, Australia, Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, Netherlands, and
Turkey. As a result of the rapid building of new infrastructure and adoption of
new and advanced technologies, the world economic ladder had changed a lot. The
U.S. and China remained the largest since the U.S. was just so much larger than
the rest of the world to begin with and China by nature of its raw size of
population and strong upward trend for the previous two decades. Turkey moved
into third, India forth, Canada and Australia, fifth and sixth. Japan, once the
second largest economy in the world, moved to seventh.
Turkey
was on the cutting edge of the new technology implementation right out of the
gate. The Turks had way more motivation to establish new energy technologies
than just about any other country on the planet. The Turkish government being
the only secular, free, parliamentary democracy in the area, had always been a
bit nervous about being surrounded by mostly wacked out dictators, monarchy's,
tribal war lords, war torn fragile states, and out and out anarchy. Since Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk founded the modern secular Republic of Turkey in 1923, It had
found itself smack in the middle of some of the most bizarre and deadly
regional conflicts in history. Turkey had once been the cradle of civilization
and the Fertile Crescent where by most every measure civilization had begun. It
was the first society to grow crops and domesticate beasts of burden to perform
tasks, and provide dairy, eggs, and meat. The first society to be free from the
all consuming hunt for food and have time to develop government, artisans, and
philosophy. The Ottoman empire of Turkey lasted for 623 years, from July 27,
1299 to
November 1, 1922 and influenced much of the western world; longer than the
Roman Empire; longer than the British Empire; longer by far than the U.S. had
been the predominate influence in world power and economics. By far the most
overriding reason for Turkey's immediate and fully fledged adoption of all the
new advancements and technology was that for sixty six years they had been the
only Middle East country without substantial oil reserves. For sixty six years
Turkey had been surrounded by oil rich, hostile neighbors, who they depended on
for their energy needs, but who generally ran completely counter to Turkey's
philosophy of secular democracy. The government and people of Turkey had grown
tired of being both nervous and pissed off about living next to countries like
Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and a bunch of other ass hole countries
that wanted to fry there asses. Since all the surrounding Petro- Dictators had
little more going for them than an abundance of oil and a really bad attitude,
Turkey was just itching to tell its neighbors where they could stick their oil
and exercise a little ass kicking.
Within
the first year following the Alien visit which promised to advance human
civilization beyond measure, the Turks went into full production of all readily
available new- tech energy production facilities. They geared up research and
devoted every resource they could muster toward furthering all the
technological advancements that the eggheads had granted to humanity. Along
with total revamping of their energy infrastructure - and selling this
perfected technology to other nations- re-powering their military, implementing
nationwide healthcare using new technology and greatly enhancing their
artificial intelligence capabilities and Internet, they also utilized new-tech
desalination and turned what had become an arid desert back into the Fertile Crescent
it had once been. By the year 2032 Turkey had become a net exporter of food,
computers (which were now implantable into just about anything due to nano
tech) automobiles, and assorted other forms of transportation. A dozen
companies in five different countries had experimented with and produced a
variety of "flying cars" that could hover to at least a hundred
meters and travel at one hundred miles an hour without terrestrial constraints;
however they posed a whole additional problem of infrastructure and regulating
traffic flows. The biggest problem was the development of integrated computer
software so people didn't fly around crashing into each other. Besides this was
just in its infancy and not legalized for personal use.
Most
of the area known as the Middle East had fallen into utter chaos in the decade
following 2016. After a decade of anarchy and confusion most of the former
countries of the Middle East had been annexed to ether Turkey, Israel, or
India. Both Israel and India, along with neighboring Pakistan had followed the
path of Turkey. India and Pakistan, once arch enemies had signed a treaty of
cooperation sharing technology and military to establish order and end the
conflict between tribal war-lords which erupted and continued throughout the
decade following 2016. It turns out, that the ideological hatred between
citizens of India and Pakistan had little basis after humanity had learned that
all of their individual ideas of religion were mistaken. While differences in
religious ideology had been taken out of the picture as a reason for conflict; it’s
not to say that self interest no longer existed....because it did at every
level of society just as it always had. The global balance of power had indeed
shifted, but there remained no lack of national interest around the globe.
Russia, being an oil rich nation and having once provided over one third of
Europe's natural gas was now a waste land. Their corrupt government that was
still controlled by Vladimir Putin in 2016 was simply to ineffective to
implement any kind of efficient sweeping change. Once fossil fuels became
non-computable, Russia started down the tubes and after only a few years they
had become the vagrant, homeless, crack-head, drunken, bum of countries. The
fact that the United States had managed to finally get its collective shit
together and maintain its position as a global economic and military leader was
nothing short of miraculous. After four years of social bickering and political
blundering under President Santorum, it found itself playing catch up. Were it
not for its previous power and economic strength, along with lots of tech help
from its ally's Australia, Great Britain, the E.U. and Canada the U.S. might
well have found itself in Russia's shoes and been the beggars of the world.
Brazil had lost some traction, but regained its status due largely to its
generous mineral deposits. Eggheads had given humanity the ability to
synthesize whatever was necessary to achieve energy without fossil fuels,
however it was discovered that many of the requisite materials could be
extracted from the earth thus saving the time and expense of synthesizing.
Brazil and the lower half of the African continent were found to be rich in
such minerals. Of course no one bothered to recognize that we had previously
behaved in exactly the same way regarding oil and should have learned a lesson
after aliens showed how to get along without it. Ah but such was the nature of
human behavior and even though the eggheads had granted mankind a few tricks on
how to survive, they probably didn't intend to force humanity to save itself.
Dr.
Nisen Berfin Hamarat was in her lab at the Istanbul headquarters of the EAG.
She had been with the organization for sixteen years now and was responsible
for much of the data they had banked regarding human migration since 2016.
There had been a sizable refugee migration overland in search for food early
on, but irrigation technology combined with desalination had food production in
places like sub Saharan Africa possable, and global famine was quickly becoming
a thing of the past. The U.S. along with a host of developed countries had
eventually adopted open immigration policies that prompted large movements of
humanity in a rather short person of time. This sort of modern migration had
obvious environmental and economic impact and the EAG was keen to study and
record the effects.
Dr.
Hamarat or Fin as she was known by her friends and associates was a profession
of Human Geography. She had studied human migration from the time humans first
started to migrate out of central Africa and populate the globe. She was
intrigued by the movement of people; where they moved, when they moved and why.
She had once explained to Ron Smith and Dr Watson that if you take a model of
the earth or any part of it and pour a fluid, say water, over it; the water
will simply follow the laws of physics so if you know these laws than the flow
of the water will be easy to predict. Now, if on the other hand you were to
replace the water with people.....well then you have an infinite number of
variables to weigh and consider. In some instances the people may simply follow
the flow of the water, that is to say "follow the path of least
resistance" just as every molecule will do according to the laws of
physics, however it is equally possible that they take a different path; one
with more resistance thus defying the laws of physics. "People are funny
that way" was a favorite saying of hers. "What motivates a people to
take the path of more resistance" she asked? "Is it food, water,
shelter or more comfortable climate...sure...is it chance, luck, human
curiosity, or something more....who knows". One thing that Dr Watson and
Ron Smith knew for sure was that Fin knew more about this stuff than anybody
else on the planet and that this information was useful stuff to have. Fin had
every major human migration (major meaning over one hundred thousand people moving
in five years or less) committed to memory and what she didn't have in her
head, she had in a data base that had taken her ten years to compile.
“Hey Fin, This is Laura”. “Hi Laura…here let me pull
you up on visual”. “Oh god no” said Laura “whoever thought it was a good idea
to actually see each other while talking from miles away was a dick head”.
Laura had been working nonstop in her office for the last sixteen hours and
felt like shit. She was convinced that she looked like shit too, even though it
would take a lot more than a sixteen hour work bee to make her look anything
less than stunning. “I hear ya sister” fin replied “I use to work from home all
day long in my cozy pajamas and goofy animal slippers and talk with people all
over the world until we started using visual calling. I once had an emergency
conversation with the Prime Minister of Sweden and his staff for two hours in
my PJs and the hoody I use to paint in….now I have to get all dressed up for a
freaking phone call”. “Technology… got to love it”. “Ok Laura, I guess I
wouldn’t want to trade getting dressed for a business call, for say Polio or
Small Pox or any of those stupid diseases that we have cured and people use to
die from.”….”but I still like to conduct business in my cozy PJs”. “Now that we
have solved the world’s most pressing problems like video conferencing and
proper at home business attire, what else is there for us to conquer”. “I want
you to run some analysis on some migration that’s going on in all the countries
north of a line from Turkey running east to China including the north coast of
the Caspian Sea”. “So, you are talking about Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan right”? “That’s right”.
“Well you know Laura that there has been a fourteen year general migration to
the south in all those areas due largely to the continually degenerating
conditions in Russia. Lots of folks out in the boonies got cut off when the
fossil fuel stopped working. I’ve tracked this stuff for a while and it appears
mostly like folks moving south in search of food, shelter and a warmer
climate”. “Yea, I’m with you on that, but I noticed a more recent and much
larger move and that’s what I’m interested in. Of course I have got nowhere
near the kind of data that you have and that’s why I’m wondering if you can
check it out for me. I want to know if it’s real, and if it is….why”. “Hey Laura,
that’s no problem but……..what the heck is going on”? “It’s kind of need-to-know
stuff but I can tell you that Jack Saffell is missing and I think the GECA has
something to do with it”. “Missing?? What the fuck do you mean missing”? “I
mean that nobody has been able to get in contact with him for three days and he
left Sam a message that something or somebody had spooked him so he was going
to bolt and hide out for a while. I’m pretty sure he’s ok, but we want to make
sure and Ron wants to know just what the heck is happening. It could just be
that Jack is just being paranoid and silly, but then it could be some kind of
covert shit that had something to do with the GECA. We’re not unaware of the
fact that if that treaty goes into effect that some people stand to lose. Now I
would argue that they are generally the bad guys and we want them to lost, but
I’m sure that if there is something to all this that those guys will feel
differently than me”. “What do you think the area we’re talking about has to do
with this”. “I really have no clue, just following up on any little thing I
notice that’s different”. “Well, you got it sister, I sure hope Jacks ok. Maybe
he’s just hanging out fishing and drinking, you know he’s been known to do that
from time to time”. “I hope so to Fin, I’ll keep you posted. Send me that data
as soon as you can, Ok”. “Right, talk to you soon”.
“Humm, I wonder what’s going on” Fin uttered to
herself….”let me see”….She moved a few screens around, sent a few more commands
with the keyboard, made a few more adjustments with voice command that said
“Ok, run this one” After a few minutes of filtering she found herself staring
at a screen of data that surprised the shit out of her. In the last one and a
half years eight million, seven hundred and sixty two thousand and five
hundred, plus or minus two hundred people had migrated south to an area within
one hundred kilometers of the southern borders of all the countries of the list
Laura had given her. This was an area about fifteen hundred kilometers long, so
and area of about one hundred and fifty thousand sq. kilometers. “What the
hell” she thought “what the hell are a eight million people doing moving into
an area of only a hundred and fifty thousand sq. kliks”? “Hey missy (her name
for her artificial intelligence or computer as people use to call them) better
get a hold of Laura again”.
That
was quick". "I just ran a preliminary algorithm and it looks like a
lot of people are moving south. It's sure a lot more than you average refugee
migration......and I really don't think that's what it is". "Any
military"? "Don't know.....but I doubt it". "Ok, can you
get demographics"? "Maybe...at least an overview". "Good,
if we got a bunch of twenty something's that could spell trouble".
"Let's just see, if it's propagated by need, we'll see a pretty diverse
age range, but I can't imagine anything that the area north of Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan has to offer in the way of relief".
"I don't see it as offering much in the way of anything"."I
gotta agree with ya there Laura.....I'll get on it now". "Start with
Sat images". "Just what are we looking for" Fin asked. "Im
not sure, but when half the number of people that moved into the U.S. last year,
move into an area that's basically inhospitable for no perticular reason.....it
makes me wonder". "It's got my curiosity working, that's for
sure". "Thanks Fin, I'll talk to you in a few".
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