The Patriot Protocol

by C. G. Cooper

  “Have a seat,” my father said, his own image coming to life in the glass wall. He was pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back.

  I sat down, still not entirely comfortable talking to a fake person. Sure it was my dad, at least I was pretty sure about that, but it was weird. I kept my automatic weapon on my lap. The right time would present itself. I was sure of that.

  “You’ve asked about food and other resources. As you probably know, we allocate a certain amount to the governing bodies of each Zone. I’ve done my best to be fair.”

  I thought of all the poor souls scraping to make a living in Franklin, dragging their sickly bodies to beg or steal as their needs demanded.

  “So, how do you do it? What are your criteria in being fair?

  My father nodded thoughtfully, like he was trying to come up with the right explanation to mollify me.

  “You were tested when you enlisted with The Tennessee Zone, correct?” I nodded. “And what did they tell you about that test?”

  I tried to remember exactly what The General had said. “Something about DNA markers that told them what jobs we should have.”

  “Good,” he said, like I’d passed a test, or maybe that The Tennessee Zone had. “But there is more to the testing than that.”

  It all clicked.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I surmised.

  “Yes.”

  “And you were looking for me. That’s what the test was for.” It all made sense.

  My father’s pixel lips pursued. “Not exactly,” he said, avoiding my gaze.

  That got me. I’d assumed that my father had been looking for me. Why wouldn’t he? Using his expertise, and whatever tech he had at his disposal, it seemed a natural task to pursue.

  “Then what? You said the test was why I’m here, but it had nothing to do with actively searching for me. Please explain.”

  His look was pained now. “I thought you were dead. I had no way of knowing that you’d survived. The test had nothing to do with you, or at least, it didn’t until now.” His hopeful demeanor returned, and he met my stare. “I should have known, should have assumed.”

  “Assumed what? Would you just tell me what this is all about?”

  I could tell he wanted to put me in my place, but he didn’t. Instead he nodded and began his incredible explanation. “What do Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington all have in common?”

  Great. A pop history quiz.

  “They founded the United States.”

  “Correct. They were the Founding Fathers. But in what other ways were they similar?”

  I searched my memory for long-forgotten middle school history lessons.

  “I don’t know, that they were somehow special? They were men devoted to their countrymen?”

  My father smiled. “Close, very close. Now, do you remember what happened in Washington D.C. just before The Collapse?”

  Of course I did. I’d lived it. I’d been right smack dab in the middle of the drama. Those memories lived on in my nightmares.

  “Everyone showed their true colors,” I said, remembering how colleagues had turned on one another. Politicians who’d spent entire careers forging paths together then sought to destroy each other.

  “Yes. That’s a very good way of explaining it. You always had a knack for distilling things down to their most basic tenets.”

  “Yeah, maybe I did because you didn’t.”

  His eyes flared, but a second later, softened. “You’re right, of course.” He laughed. “I’ve never been known for my brevity. Like you said, everyone showed their true colors. Now, what if I told you that there was a way to predict not only someone’s aptitude, but also predict their sense of duty, honor and love for country?”

  “I’d say that’s a lofty promise.”

  He thrust his right index finger in the air. “But I did it! I got lucky for sure, but I did it.”

  He’d ignited my curiosity now. Could it be possible?

  “How?”

  “I raided the tombs of the Founding Fathers.”

  He said it like he’d just told me he’d bought a soda at the corner market.

  “You what?”

  “I was desperate. It was a shot in the dark. Instead of trying to reinvent history, I went back to it. We had the time, so I capitalized on my curiosity. Using science, I wanted to know what made those men special, what gave them the will to press on despite the overwhelming advantage England had over them. They were sometimes only days away from doom, yet still they persevered! Imagine it.”

  I didn’t have to imagine it. I’d lived it, but I didn’t tell him that.

  “Through a very specialized DNA test, I was able to compare the samples and find the similarities. It took some time, but I found it.”

  “Wait, you’re saying that you found something in their DNA that can predict whether a person has the same chances as Thomas Jefferson to run a country?” It sounded like one of his crazier experiments.

  “No. Anyone can run a country. History has proven that. What I wanted was to find something special, something so unique that only the tiniest fraction of the population would have it. I wanted to find the ultimate patriots, the ones who would put their country before themselves in selfless service, if that was needed.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. I’d served with men and women who seemed to live and breathe the American flag, but then when the shit hit the fan, they ran away as fast as they could. In my mind there was no way of predicting that. Predicting behaviors took time, experience, and a fair share of heartache.

  His smile was wide. He would not be deterred.

  “It’s not impossible. I’ve done it.”

  “Come on. How can you know for sure? Even Thomas Jefferson wasn’t perfect. Hell, George Washington’s entire life was spent scooping up land to fill his family coffers.” I didn’t know where that random fact bubbled up from.

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m not saying these men were perfect. I am saying they possessed a singular quality, one that I now know is so rare as to be almost non-existent. For a time, I wondered if that quality had died with the rest of humanity. But it didn’t. You’re proof of that.”

  Wait, what?

  “Are you saying that I’m…?”

  “Yes! You have the marker!”

  This is what he’d been trying to tell me? It was ridiculous. Stupid.

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  That wiped the proud grin from his face.

  “You will believe me.”

  I laughed at him. “Why, so I can fulfill whatever destiny you’ve concocted in your Frankenstein laboratory?”

  “There are more; I know it.”

  “How do you know it?”

  “Because the three I mentioned aren’t the only ones. The remains of other leaders were tested - leaders from around the world. Churchill. Gandhi. Mandela”

  A creeping darkness entered my subconscious.

  “Did you dig up only the good ones?” I asked, watching as his face became stoic.

  “We didn’t dig them up.”

  He was dodging my question, and I could see that he was about to go off on another tangent. I wouldn’t let him.

  “You dug up the bad ones too, didn’t you? You included the tyrants, the dictators, and the mass murderers?”

  He blinked once. Dead people didn’t need to blink.

  “The rise of certain personalities can always be attributed to upbringing, environmental factors and opportunity. As a scientist, I had to test them all.”

  It felt like ants were crawling over my skin on their way up to my head. “So, you’re saying that guys like Hitler and Stalin possessed the same marker?” I said it slowly, so that there was no question as to whether I required an answer.

  “Not Stalin, but Hitler, yes.”

  Expletives raced through my head, and I have no idea how I kept the daggers from shooting out of my mouth, piercing the “body” jar.
That was my dad, always ignoring the downside of an argument, especially if it didn’t back up his own hypothesis. He’d made a name for himself by taking risks. Up until the cybot debacle, he’d minimized the fallout from the darker side of his plans. But here he was again, the famous scientist interpreting data to build his own version of what life on Earth should look like.

  “This is wrong. I don’t want to be any part of it.” I stood up from the chair, my weapon still in my hands. “I’m going.”

  “Don’t you want to know what you get? And what the people out there get if you cooperate and work with me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Even if it means saving them, saving all of mankind?”

  I exhaled. It was exhausting talking to my father. He was brilliant. I’d give him that. And, with his new lease on life, I bet he could work longer and harder than he did in the past, without the physical limitations a body imposed.

  “I’m tired, Dad, and I’m not really in the mood to talk about this anymore. There are people out there that I can help right now.” And then it hit me. He didn’t know. I smiled. “I have a wife and three kids. Did you know that?”

  He froze. His holographic image actually froze. Maybe there was more of him left than I’d thought.

  “I…I didn’t know,” he stammered.

  “I need to get back to them. I need to make sure they’re safe.”

  My father’s eyes brightened. I didn’t like that look.

  “You can bring them here! It’s perfect. I can keep them safe—I really can.”

  I’m sure he could in his own way. But I didn’t want my wife, let alone my children, to be exposed to his twisted world or his way of thinking. I could only imagine how Andrew would take to living at The Fed, exploring The Ark with wide eyes, dissecting everything. Now that I thought of it, there was a lot of my father in Andrew. That thought made me shiver.

  “I’ll think about it,” I lied. “Why don’t you tell me about how I can help.” I was stalling, of course. I couldn’t tell if my bullets would make it through the glass barrier. The material might be completely bulletproof; it probably was. My father wasn't stupid. Then there was the shape of the glass, convex and perfect for deflecting flying objects, like bullets. I stood a damn good chance of killing myself with a round-the-room ricochet.

  He snapped his fingers excitedly. “Okay, so the plan was to institute a system that was foolproof, so that only the worthiest could assume leadership of the new world.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I call it The Patriot Protocol. Do you know what a protocol is?”

  “Sure, it’s a system of rules.”

  “Yes. Good. But it really has three meanings, the one you mentioned, where a system is put in place. Then there’s the medical piece. That’s where things started in my experiment to find the marker that separated true patriots from others. Then there’s the treaty aspect, or formal agreement. That’s what we’ve established with The Zones.”

  Here he was again, explaining things as if I understood what he’d already done. And what was with him and odd numbers? Three parts to protocol, five Patriots, etc.

  “What’s this about a treaty?”

  “As you might have guessed, we parcel out the resources to The Zones based on how many new citizens, or patriots, if you will, they are able to recruit and retain. That’s where the initial testing comes in. It exists to document each new member and to test them for the marker.”

  “So you dangle the carrot, so to speak, and then they do the heavy lifting for you to find the people you need.”

  He shrugged. “It worked for you.”

  He was right, of course. It made sense. Attract the poor and hapless with food and safety. If it hadn’t been for the medical care we needed for the kids, I never would have given serving again in the military a thought. It worked.

  “And this system you mentioned; what’s that all about?” I asked.

  “After The Collapse, I understood the need for leadership that was incorruptible, or as close to it as we could get. Only a person with that propensity could be given direct control of The Fed, The Ark, and all that comes along with that.”

  “Wait, what do you mean control? I thought you controlled everything.”

  He nodded. “True, but that is only temporary. I enacted The Patriot Protocol to be fully controlled by five individuals. Once those five are found, my role will be complete.”

  “And I’m one of those five?” The fully weight of his revelation was sinking in.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you even know there are four other people left on Earth that fit your model? I mean, it’s not like we have billions of people left to search.”

  He nodded gravely, and then in his precise clinical voice said, “By my estimation, and from the probes we’ve sent out, the surviving population of the world is roughly the size of the pre-collapse population of Rhode Island.”

  I took a step back, then another. If things had seemed bleak before, now it felt like we were the only two men left on earth. Check that. One man, and one floating body.

  “And you think that somewhere in that number you’ll find the other four?”

  “I found you.”

  “But that was luck! If I hadn’t come in, you wouldn’t even know I was alive!”

  He stared at me for a long moment. And then, in a tone reserved for his most thoughtful musings, he asked, “What about faith?”

  “Faith? How did faith help us when your creations were killing everything in sight? Did faith help my children when they got so sick that I couldn’t help them? No! I Did! When will you realize that your inventions aren’t the solution to everything?”

  Pissed off didn’t come close to explaining how I felt. He’d sucked me in again, presented a plentiful bounty of resources, and then explained its validity with a single word - faith. So much bullshit.

  “You’re right. It’ll take more than faith. It will take hard work and time. Maybe a lot of time. It’s possible that these individuals aren’t even born yet, or maybe they’re so well hidden that finding and convincing them to come with you will prove difficult. But don’t forget, we have resources here, anything we need to find and bring the other four from anywhere around the globe to safety.”

  It was a good speech. He said it with all the reverence of a preacher on a Sunday morning. But, I wasn’t buying what he was selling. I could see through his facade. He wanted to be the solution. He wanted a new legacy, one not defined by The Collapse, but by The Patriot Protocol. He wanted to be the savior to prevent the world from extinction.

  What could I say? He knew how I felt. He knew the layers of crusted skepticism that had been forged between us.

  And then something he’d said rang a bell in my head. He’d mentioned something, and I could use this to my advantage.

  “What did you mean when you said I’d have resources at my disposal?” I asked.

  There was that look again, like I was a fish that just nibbled on the hook, and he was about to commence reeling in the catch of the day.

  “As one of the five, you get a fifth of anything you’ve seen, including the cybots.”

  “Wait, you’re saying that if I choose to walk out of here with one-fifth of the cybots and one-fifth of all the food we could transport, that you would be okay with that?”

  “It’s your right as one of the five. It’s yours to do with as you please, although I will tell you that should the resources remain whole, the impact on the world could be exponential. Imagine the work the cybots could do, building new cities, working in factories, exploiting and caring for the land as they’ve learned to do here. Everything works better in harmony.”

  It sounded too good to be true.

  “What’s the catch?”

  “Catch?”

  “Yeah. There has to be a catch.”

  My father huffed in frustration. “I tell you that I’m giving you these resources, the power to do so much good, and you ask me what the catch is?�
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  I couldn’t help but smile. “You taught me to be a skeptic.”

  “I did. I know that. But what I’m asking you to do now is to look past your skepticism and to find the value in the proposition. Can’t you see that?”

  I was done arguing. It was getting late, and I wanted to get back to my family. My mistake was in asking the next question.

  “Okay. So what do I need to do?”

  A strange smile crept onto his face.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Before I could react, something grabbed me from behind, clamping my head in a vice. I tried to move, attempted to raise my weapon. The gun was stripped from my grasp as I felt soft padding behind me, and I flexed, making every effort to get away but to no avail.

  “It’s best if you don’t struggle,” my father said matter-of-factly.

  Before I could respond, I felt a sharp prick in the side of my neck. I remember the image of my father wavering in the distance. Suddenly, everything seemed so far away, and then I faded away.

  Chapter 34

  I woke with the feeling that I’d been asleep for days. I wasn’t used to sleeping well. An hour or two was about all I normally got at one time. That’s what you get when you live through the destruction of the world. If it were a choice between life and sleep, I’d choose life.

  My eyes opened effortlessly, and I had almost forgotten what happened. When the memory did come to mind, I wasn’t angry, not even a little bit. It was just something that had happened. In fact, it really felt like all the stress had been squeezed from my body, the years of struggle and toil cast off like an old shirt.

  I relished it for a moment, breathing in and out as my vision cleared.

  “How do you feel?” a voice asked. It wasn’t my father.

  I turned my head. There he was again, the president.

  “Where’s my father?” Again, I didn’t feel any anger toward him or anyone.

  “He thought it best if he wasn’t around when you woke up. He said you put up quite a fight before.”