The Modest Proposal Institute: A YA Dystopian Thriller

by Paul James

  “Have you had any ideas since?”

  “All I can suggest is that maybe several flash grenades detonated simultaneously and that was what we saw.”

  “Security team,” Dean asked, “you use these devices more than anyone else. Is that possible?”

  “It may be possible, Founder,” Kurt said, “but that can’t have happened here. We count the weapons for the exercise. We’ve watched the video of the exercise and there are no flash grenades unaccounted for.”

  Dean frowned. “Something unusual happened and Leon disappeared. We need that investigated and understood before we proceed with any more exercises.”

  “There are other concerns, Founder,” Shane said, attempting to start a wider investigation.

  “We don’t want this tragedy lost in other details,” Dean said firmly. “The disappearance of one of our students in a way that doesn’t seem accidental must be our first duty. Other issues can wait.”

  The initial investigation took several days and answered no questions. Leon seemed to have just disappeared from the beach during the bright flash; what had actually happened remained a mystery. The investigation, however, gave Shane time to work on the Founders in an effort to increase the institute’s involvement in the robot project.

  “I wasn’t convinced there was something sinister going on with the NuMen, Founder,” Shane said, “but then I watched the recent night exercise and I spoke to the instructors after. I’m not saying the robots had anything to do with Leon’s disappearance because I don’t understand what happened. But the instructors really do share Leon, Kurt, and Yves’s concern. It isn’t that we think Tomas is a threat, it’s just that we feel the robotic project should have the same Founder oversight as the security project. After all, they share the same features—a cadre of drilled and disciplined professional soldiers with powerful weapons. Oversight is all we’re suggesting.”

  The Founders said nothing for a moment, then Dean spoke. “We will discuss this together. We can reconvene tomorrow when Alexander and I have decided what to do.”

  That night, Shane told Yves and Kurt of his meeting. “I think the Founders will finally act.”

  “They’d better,” Kurt replied. “If Tomas does decide to take over, all of us together won’t win against those robots.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” Shane said. “The robots’ power packs can only keep them running for about an hour and their outer skin can’t stop heavy bullets.”

  “The heavier weapons are kept locked in the armory,” Yves said, “and you can be sure Tomas’s first action would be to take control of that. As for the batteries, they can carry additional battery packs to give them extended time. We’re not saying Tomas is going to overthrow the Founders and take over the institute—” He stopped himself short, then shrugged and finished his thought. “Just that he is quickly closing in on that capability.”

  His team’s thoughts gave him the chills, and nothing the Founders said soothed Shane’s fears for the institute’s safety. What did help were the bugging devices he’d added to Tomas’s clothes, room, office, and phone. From now on, he, Shane, would know everything Tomas said and did. It had to produce an answer to Leon’s disappearance. Of that he was certain.

  Chapter 7: Shane Callaghan, P.I.

  They were called to a follow-up meeting with the Founders the next evening. Within seconds, Kurt and Yves’s worst fear was realized.

  “We’ve met with Tomas and his team.”

  A slight groan escaped Kurt’s lips and Alexander paused, signaling the suspicious listeners to be quiet.

  “Have no fear—we didn’t suggest to them that you had doubts. On the contrary, we told them that your glowing reports led us to ask for an update. We told them Leon’s disappearance had raised our level of concern around the exercises and the programs that require them.”

  He paused again, waiting for some response. When there was none, he continued.

  “Their update was illuminating and your observations were apparently understatements. The Robot team has overcome many of the mobility issues of earlier models and also improved immeasurably on their learning capabilities. However, since they still haven’t improved the battery issues or the armor-plating, Dean and I are inclined to let the robotics project continue as is.”

  “But, sir—” Kurt began.

  “Here me out. Going forward, we’ll have weekly meetings with them and put it on the governing council’s agenda every two weeks. Dean or I will observe future exercises to get our own sense of what’s happening—but we will not add Founders’ Oversight until we feel it is necessary.”

  The expressions on the Founders’ faces left no room for argument. The three companions left the meeting in silence.

  “This is the worst thing that could have happened,” Kurt said when they were away from the room. “Tomas and his gang are now truly alerted to our opposition. Dean may think they fooled Tomas by using Leon’s disappearance as an excuse, but he won’t be fooled. He has all the insecurity of people who come from oppressive places, and with added anger from the social-media mobbing he endured in the States. If he was planning a takeover, this pushes him to move sooner rather than later.”

  “I agree,” said Shane gloomily. “We need a plan and we need one soon.”

  Shane decided to double down on his own investigation into Leon’s disappearance. The lack of explanation from the security team’s investigators almost worried him as much as the tragedy itself. They had delivered their report to the Founders and council earlier.

  “You found no evidence of foul play?” Alexander had asked incredulously.

  “None at all,” the lead investigator said stubbornly. “I know that everyone thinks Leon was killed somehow, but there’s no evidence of that.”

  “And still no evidence of his body where he was last seen alive?” Alexander persisted.

  “The only suggestion we have is that perhaps the blast everyone witnessed blew his body out to sea. How that happened without the blast affecting the others, we can’t explain.”

  Alexander frowned. He looked at Dean and the council chairman, but they remained equally speechless.

  “Very well,” Alexander said. “We accept your report for now. But—” He paused. “The investigation cannot end here. ‘Magic’ isn’t an acceptable explanation for what happened, yet that’s all that appears to be left for us to deduce at this time.”

  “Founder,” the investigator said, “we share your frustration, but right now we have no good evidence for what happened. We aren’t suggesting that ‘magic’ had anything to do with it, only that we haven’t found any evidence to explain what did happen. We will continue the investigation, if you wish.”

  “Do that. Start with the blast that everyone witnessed.”

  The investigator nodded stiffly. “We will keep you informed of our progress.”

  Everyone left the meeting dissatisfied—Shane most of all.

  Shane diligently studied the investigators’ evidence and reports over the following weeks. He visited the beach where it happened. He replayed the moment in his memory. Every day he reviewed his secret recordings of everything Tomas said and did. From those, he learned Tomas was frustrated at the Founders’ oversight and at the constraints that were placed on his development and deployment of upgraded NuMen—but nothing about Leon. Frustrated, he gathered the crew of the landing craft to question them himself.

  “I called you together in the hope that something has come to you that you didn’t think of during the previous investigation.” Shane studied the face of each crew member.

  At last, one spoke. “If you watched the footage, then you know what happened. You’ve seen what we saw.”

  “I’ve seen the footage, but was there anything odd before or after Leon’s disappearance?”

  “No. Nothing was odd before, and we didn’t know Leon had disappeared until the exercise was over.”

  “You didn’t see him when you left the boat,” Shane persiste
d. “Did any of you wonder where he might be?”

  There was a general silence until a soldier said, “When you leave the boat, you look for cover—places you can be safe while you make your way up the beach. If I’d wondered about Leon, I’d have assumed he was just taking cover like the rest of us.”

  “But there’s hardly anywhere on the beach to take cover.”

  The soldier shrugged. “There’s cover in the darkness and rocks at each end of the beach. We use anything available to us.”

  Shane frowned. “Did you pause leaving the boat during the bright flash?”

  “Yes,” a different soldier said. “I was right behind the NuMan that followed Leon. The light blinded me and I stopped. Only for a moment, but I did pause. When I could see again, the NuMan was already on the beach, so I jumped out and followed.”

  “Leon was in charge that night,” Shane said, “so he was first out. Is that right?”

  “Yeah, that’s how it goes. You don’t want to be an officer at times like this.” That prompted laughter from the crew.

  “There were six NuMen and six people in the boat. What order were you supposed to leave in?”

  “Man, NuMan, man, NuMan, and so on. Each NuMan’s job was to give covering fire to the man in front of them.”

  “And is that how it went?”

  “Exactly how it went. Everything was as planned, except for Leon’s disappearance.”

  “Does anyone have any ideas?” Shane asked again, more out of despair than actual hope.

  The room’s response of silence confirmed his right to be despondent.

  Chapter 8: First Blood to the Institute

  While searching for an answer to the puzzle, Shane found time to take out a Manta Ray every chance he got. Thanks to the computer game he and his first team had developed, he was so rich he didn’t have to turn in for work every day. He enjoyed his quiet escapes to the sea creatures’ dark underworld, but above all he found he was confirming this as his, and the institute’s, future. His side of the institute would leave the world’s surface and live beneath the sea until life above found a new equilibrium.

  Even these outings, though, were haunted by thoughts of Leon. Shane would never admit it, but he wished he could discuss the events with Alexis. Alexis, however, had now moved to the South American spaceport where he was starting the long training that would allow him to fly space planes. He was rarely on the island anymore. If they were to be future joint Founders, they would need to work together, which was proving hard when they were on such divergent paths. That’s what he told himself, but he knew it wasn’t the whole truth. He and Alexis shared a vision of the future that his other companions did not. They saw only an everyday life of work and wealth. Alexis, like Shane, was working for something far beyond that and, however misguided Shane might think Alexis’s dream was, it marked him as someone Shane could talk to.

  Shane could call Alexis. Only he had no wish to trust his words to the institute’s chat service. The service was impossible for outsiders to hack, but he’d long believed that internal hackers, who were not members of the security team, were listening to his calls. Since he’d now hacked into Tomas’s life, he knew how relatively easy it was to do and he’d become suspicious of everything and everyone.

  It had been difficult to talk to Alexis even before he had gone to the spaceport. Alexis was frequently in the wider world manfully defending the institute in the courts of public opinion. He and the Founders were also regularly called to testify before parliaments and congresses; the West was dying, and even the richest Western nations couldn’t deny it any longer.

  About this time, one of those meetings went badly wrong. Dean and Alexander had suffered a particularly vicious grilling from the European Union’s leaders, and almost immediately after a group of European soldiers landed on the institute’s first island. The Founders had long debated how to respond to such an incursion, which they’d considered but hoped would never happen, and had decided to let the invaders land rather than drive them off. They thought it would demonstrate the peaceful character of the school while demonstrating the lack of wealth to be stolen.

  Shane remembered the moment well. It had started with an announcement.

  “Gentlemen,” the lecturer had said, rapping his desktop with his knuckles. “I’m being told we are under attack.”

  The boys, who had been thoroughly engrossed in their projects and studies, went silent and turned their attention in unison. The lecturer put the Control Center feed through to the room’s monitor. Offshore, a small gray warship was disgorging zodiacs full of armed men. The ship bore no flag or markings, leaving their identity a mystery.

  “You know the drill,” the lecturer continued. “We expect you to follow it. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They waited in silence, watching the monitors as troops landed on the launching ramp and spread out across the island. Clearly, they didn’t know that everything was underground, and their puzzled faces amused the boys. Defensive positions were being taken up by NuMen and Institute men on the institute’s tethered ships, where the bulk of the older men and Security Forces were located. The invaders appeared uninterested in the ships. They obviously believed that what they wanted was on the island itself.

  A second window came up on their monitors, showing the attackers entering classrooms and machinegunning children. Blood and gore splashed walls as bodies—broken by streams of bullets—were swept from chairs and benches. The same soldiers the boys could see wandering aimlessly about the island were clearly identified as mass murderers of schoolchildren. When the monitor showed the last child and teacher dead, the invaders began ransacking rooms and stores, desperately seeking something of value to make the wholesale murder they’d just carried out worthwhile.

  “The feed going out to the world is more believable than I’d have believed possible,” the lecturer said. “Your security project team’s work is commendable, Shane.”

  “It is good, isn’t it,” Shane replied. “The program has to develop the massacre scenario using the invaders’ features as well as our own. It creates the event in almost real time. Whichever government sent these folks is going to get a lot of heat from the world about this.”

  The lecturer continued, “For those who haven’t studied the drill, I will remind you. The ground level entrances and exits are fully secured, so it’s unlikely they can get in. That would need heavier equipment than they appear to have. But, if they do begin to break through the barriers, we will retreat to the sealed rooms in the safe area of the complex. The parts they enter will fill with knockout gas. Out at sea, the ship’s crew will also be rendered unconscious by our mosquitoes. When they all wake up, they and their ship will be drifting in the middle of the Atlantic without any fuel. Their own government can rescue them from there.”

  A third screen opened up to show news programs from around the world broadcasting the horrific massacre on the institute’s first island.

  “Our parents do know that this is a computer-generated movie, don’t they?” asked another of the boys.

  “Yes,” Shane said. “The system sends them a warning over our secure network.”

  “I imagine the captain of the ship will be getting urgent calls to stop by now,” the lecturer said, grinning.

  “Provided they are on an official mission,” Shane said. “It’s possible they’re one of the many groups of European soldiers that haven’t been paid for so long they’ve become rebels. We’re hearing more and more that it’s a growing problem. This may be something we can expect to happen regularly in the future.”

  He had hardly stopped speaking when the screen showed the troops, who were still slowly investigating every rock and shrub on the island, being desperately called back to the zodiac. In evident puzzlement, they jogged to their commander, whose emphatic body language spoke of unimaginable mental turmoil.

  The troops were soon on their way back to the ship. The moment they boarded, it headed nort
hward and over the horizon.

  “Our defenses worked this time,” the lecturer said, “but they’ll soon figure out what we did. They won’t be so easily repulsed next time.”

  “We have other tactics,” Shane said, “but I agree. Sooner or later, their growing poverty will make them desperate. We’ll be forced to fight or flee.”

  Chapter 9: A Question of Physics

  When Alexis returned to the island weeks after the exercise, Shane finally got to talk privately to him about the events of the previous weeks. Alexis still wasn’t convinced by Shane’s suspicions.

  “People can’t just disappear,” he said when Shane pressed him to take it more seriously. “Something rational happened and they’ll figure it out.”

  “It’s been weeks now and they’re no closer.” Shane felt his frustration boiling. “I’ve been reading and reviewing everything and even I can’t see how it happened.”

  “Maybe the guys in our Physics Lab at the spaceport could come up with something—they’re lunatic enough,” Alexis said sarcastically. When the institute had reached space and begun its moon-base project, a number of the world’s best physicists had been brought on board. Alexis had spent too many hours being lectured by them during his space training to think kindly of them. They were an oddball bunch who seemed to talk in riddles most of the time. By comparison, he felt magic would be more understandable.

  Shane was about to respond with equal sarcasm, but he paused. No one had come up with an answer based on the real world, so casting the net wider wasn’t a stupid thing to do.

  “Can you recommend one of our physicists?”

  “They’re all equally unintelligible,” Alexis said, “but I can put you in touch with two of the more understandable ones, Cathcart and Bronski. They work on the ion-drive team developing better ion motors for our Mars program. The other lot we have—nuclear guys developing better, smaller reactors for our space cities—are too busy and too cranky to spend time with anyone. I’m not sure they’re quite sane anyhow. I blame it on the radiation.”