Contents
Title Page
Overview
Free Offer
Quotes
Net-Dictionary
Chronology
Chapter One: Death of the Red Hat Man
Chapter Two: Vatican Games
Chapter Three: The Hand of the Five Cities of the Plain
Chapter Four: Lords of Babylon
Chapter Five: The Finger of God
Chapter Six: The Rise of Brazil Khan
Chapter Seven: Wolves of Exodus
Epilogue
Review on Amazon
Thanks From the Author
Continue the Adventure
About the Author
Copyright
THE AFTER EDEN SERIES
PURE CONSPIRACY
A Select Novel
AUSTIN DRAGON
Pure Conspiracy
By Austin Dragon
A Select Novel in the AFTER EDEN futuristic thriller series
Pure Conspiracy
The After Eden Series (The Genesis of World War III)
This is how the End began.
Every era has its conflicts between opposing factions—a war between ideologies or cultures; sometimes it goes no further than words; but other times, it goes far beyond.
Race and ethnicity are no more. Class and nationalism remain. But above all—even more than the rift between those who dwell in the shiny, A.I.-controlled, Grid-monitored tek-cities of the masses and those that prefer to live in the territories beyond—is between the irreligious super-majority and the religious minority.
It all happened simply, slowly, legally, "logically," one step after another, then more significant and more provocative, ending in ways most would never have imagined—a transformation of things that some would call Heaven, and others, Hell.
In all things there is a moment when the path to an outcome becomes inevitable, irreversible—here, they are revelations of pure conspiracy.
Welcome to the world—four years away from the 22nd century!
The After Eden Series is a dramatic mix of politics, religion, technology, and intrigue set over 75 years in the future. Pure Conspiracy can be read as a stand-alone novel or as the perfect introduction to the entire series.
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"After Eden, Thy Kingdom Fall. All Kingdoms Fall, New Kingdoms Rise."
"America isn't one nation, it's two." – Kristiana Price, future elder of the Amish Order, 2088
"I want a solution of finality to these Jew-Christians. What's that word they have?—Amen." –
President T. Wilson of the United States, 2089 (third term)
Net-Dictionary
Wolf 359
1.A red dwarf star located in the Leo constellation, approximately 7.8 light-years from Earth, making it one of the stars nearest to our solar system.
2.A fictional space battle in the Star Trek Universe between the United Federation of Planets and the Borg Collective in the year 2367.
3.The opening battle of World War III in New York City on September 11, 2125. Over sixty percent of the United States of America Atlantic Oceanic Battle Fleet was destroyed by the Supreme Islamic Caliphate Battle Group on the first day.
Other terms:
Pagan: (universal or American usage) a non-believer of god or gods; one that doesn't believe in religion, often negative to, hostile to, or hateful of religion.
Jew-Christian: (American usage [by non-religious people]) a religious person, other than Muslim.
Faither: (global usage [by religious people]) a religious person, other than Muslim.
Tek World: common slang for tek-cities, tek-metropolises, or general tek-society.
Resistance: (pre-World War III)
1. [by non-religious people] government term for the network of Jew-Christian domestic "terrorists" in America.
2. [by religious people] the civilian resistance force against the militant, anti-religious American government.
Continuum:
1. (general usage) the parallel society created by and controlled exclusively by Faithers outside of Tek World.
2. (formal usage) the formal alliance of the New Protestant Order, New Jewish Continuum, New Catholic Order, Mormon Order, the African Collective, Shogun, and the Magi.
The following story takes place after the events of
Rising Leviathan (After Eden Series, Book #3)
and before the events of
Red Halo (After Eden Series, Book #4)
Chapter One: Death of the Red Hat Man
The Pacific Ocean, Russia, The Russian Bloc (Greater Russia and Eastern Europe)
8: 57 a.m., 21 August 2096
The neon-ivory, American cruise liner sails the calm waters with the tek-cities of Greater Russia in the distance. On the main deck, the private party of senior male American executives continues—techno music blaring, wait staff serving plenty of glasses of liquid drugs, scantily-clad sex workers hanging on the arms of the polyamorous male passengers, and the captain moving about, socializing.
At 9:00 a.m. the sky is consumed by a flash. Everyone's personal e-pad, tablet, Net-interface glasses, and device stops. The ship's lights, power, machines, and systems stop. The entire sky rumbles as if a bolt of lightning came from outer space itself. Everyone looks around. People on the deck and the port windows watch it grow in the distance, many miles away—a yellowish mushroom cloud, unimaginable in size, expands and rises higher into the sky, filling their entire view.
The captain watches in horror. He can already see the ocean waters move away—the coming tidal wave is going to be beyond comprehension.
Smack! Something hits the deck only a couple of feet from him. He looks up and sees more. Birds, real and surveillance bots made to look like birds, fall from the sky, all around for as far as the eye can see.
"Abandon ship! Get everyone to the escape pods!" he yells to crew.
His eyes look out to the ocean horizon and he sees a wall of water rising. He whispers to himself, "We'll never make it."
He glances up again. So massive, so high, so monstrous—the yellowish, mega-mushroom cloud hangs frozen in the sky, above the "big blue."
Wastelands, South Carolina
2:02 a.m., 20 October 2096
The Wastelands. Trog-land. Beyond the metropolises are endless miles of empty deserts of sand and rock, bleak plains, bare forests, and ever-blowing dust. The civilized do not live here. People say, "Only savage humans and feral animals do." Some also say unnatural creatures. The solitude is interrupted by a convoy of land-hovering transports zipping along the surface so fast that the dirt and dust do not even have time to react to create a trail.
Yonah stares out the porthole windows through thick, tinted, night-vision goggles, though the outside passes by so fast that he cannot make out a thing. He is outfitted in a flight suit and fitted helmet with an air regulator mask covering the lower half of his face. He sees why he was instructed to keep the eyewear on when he first climbed into the 'catamaran'—a super-sonic-capable hover-transport vehicle, with each of its ten passengers sitting in pods, one in front of the other, single file. The blinding flashes in the night of sand lightning. They look like a natural occurrence but are actually one of the many man-made defenses created by Faithers to protect their territory.
Sand lightning, emanating from the ground, can strike and down a sky-ship or drone thousands of feet in the air, and they can strike and explode any approaching land-based vehicle. Besides the flashes that illuminate the complete blackness of the night, he also sees dots of light along the horizon in the far distance—the only marks of civilization in the wasteland. They are either nearby Trog-land settlements or Outland suburbs or distant mega tek-cities.
It will take a couple of hours for the ten-vehicle convoy to arrive at their Jewish enclave destination—one of the larger Faither cities of the South. This is how they travel—in the dark of night, quickly, quietly, and in convoy. The threats are numerous, but sat-recon tracking and active drone interceptors, both controlled by the Grid-government, are what they worry about most. Fortunately for Faith World, in the current political climate, the Pagans are busy fighting amongst themselves—the tek-city elite versus Outland and Trog-land sub-populations.
But political climates never remain the same.
Masada Enclave, New Georgetown, South Carolina
7:38 a.m., 21 October 2096
The conference room was made to accommodate thirty people comfortably, but more than double that capacity crowd inside. From their styles of dress—business casual, traditional black, or traditional colors, most with head coverings of kippah, knit caps, or kufi—the men are of the Conservative, Orthodox, or Judeo-Spanish Jewish Orders. Some of the men sit Indian style on the single heavy oval table in the center. Their attention is focused on the main vid-screen at the front of the room. The large face of a man looks back at them with short black hair, a full beard, and a mustache with flecks of gray throughout.
"We cannot proceed with this!" a man yells. "We have Russians dropping bombs and their government is in the process of purging their religious citizens just like the American government tried to do here to us two decades ago. And the CHINs did a long time ago to theirs."
"Religious people in the Russian Bloc aren't exactly the same as us," another man interjects. "We call our Pagans here 'Pagans,' but they're atheists. Over there they really are pagans. Witches, Druids, Satanists, and so many others that they call Old World religions."
"Yes, but what we're talking about is having collaborators, here, in our midst, again. To purposely create a dangerous security situation for ourselves within the Community again. Why?"
"Especially with all that we went through, including violent civil war, three of them, to rid ourselves of quisling spies," a rabbi adds from the side of the room.
"And we still don't know what happened to the Orthodox Christians in Russia," another man in the back says—Mr. Tova.
"And they had Behemoth," a man next to him says—Rabbi Henriques.
"Exactly," the man continues. "Why are we doing this, Mr. Elliott? Why are the Conservatives pushing this?"
The man on the vid-screen holds back a laugh. "Mr. Ira, I can assure you, and you have colleagues there who will back me up, that the Conservatives are not pushing this. If a vote were held today within the Conservative Jewish Order, this plan would be dead on arrival. It is solely the efforts of a few, no more. I have been asked to take the lead, because of similar work I've done over the years within our Community after our civil wars, and with the Christians and others. This is just a conversation, nothing more. No one, including me, has committed to anything."
"Conversations always lead to something," the man challenges.
"I can assure you that is not the case here," Elliott answers back.
"Shouldn't we table this until after the full Continuum meeting, in light of these Russian Bloc incidents?" another man asks.
"We can, but I say we push ahead and resolve it now, one way or the other. I don't like to postpone headaches for later. Get it over with now. Gentlemen, I understand the difficulty here."
"Elliott, we have no issues with talking to Lot Jews, or any Faithers. Those hiding in the tek-cities out of safety are one thing, but the Exiles? Excommunication must mean something or it means nothing. They were excommunicated for plotting and collaborating with the government and President 'Haman' against us—their own people."
"This is the exact kind of behavior that led to the Fall of Jewish Israel with its government. Negotiating with our enemies and collaborators," a large Orthodox man says from the front row, eliciting nods of agreement.
"Gentlemen, let's not engage in revisionist history," Elliott says. "Like Western Europe, it wasn't talk that led to Israel's fall; it was their actions, or lack of action. For us, we excommunicated most of the Exiles more than twenty years ago. Should the excommunication be extended to their children and grandchildren who were not even born yet?"
"Yes!" men shout out.
"That is a trick concocted by the Exiles to circumvent their excommunication and we will not allow it," a man yells.
"That's not what it is," Elliott counters. "Gentlemen, we are Jews, and is not forgiveness part of our mandate as Torah believers? We have to have the conversation. We did so with the Orthodox and the Hasidim after our civil wars."
"That was different," a man counters.
A man stands up in the back—Rabbi Oren. "Since the Orthodox Jewish Order's name is being brought up in vain"—men chuckle—"may I weigh in on the issue? I echo Elliott's assessment that the conversation should at least happen, and you know I am no pushover when it comes to these matters. Half of you in this room were too small to remember when there was the invisible rift within the Orthodox. If not for simple conversations, there would have been no—to use a Christian term—reformation within the Orthodox. As a young man, I was frequently at odds with old Ultra-Orthodox ways. It seemed unseemly to me—reading the Torah all day. You honor Yahweh by reading and living His Word, not reading it all day and shirking away your responsibilities as a man and having your women raise the children and do all the work, literally, which also included, doing the fighting for our very survival against the Pagans here in America, and the same in Russian Bloc and CHIN territories, and the Muslims in Western Europe and Jewish Israel. We had to be equal partners with our brothers in Judaism and not invisible bystanders. I stand before you as a man who was threatened with expulsion myself—Oren the Troublemaker is what I was called. We had to change, so we had our little, bloodless reformation. Orthodox won out over Ultra-Orthodox. We don't even use the word Ultra-Orthodox anymore. The Hasidim did the same within their Order, though there was some violence. The point is, the Orthodox people were made better and the Jewish people were made better by our continued inclusion within the Community. It was all made possible by the willingness to have a simple conversation.
"That is also why we now have the Jewish Continuum—the union of all our Jewish Orders. My own obstinacy and, yes, even my own pride, initially stood in the way of what we all universally recognize as the greatest alliance Jews have ever had in our history. The only thing worse than a mind open to everything is a mind closed to everything."
The room is calmed by his words.
"Oren, the Martin Luther of Orthodox!" a man calls out, which starts some laughter in the room.
"What is this conversation going to lead to?" the man asks more respectfully.
"Nothing that we don't want," Elliott answers. "We will not rush things and we will never ignore what the Exiles did. I say we handle the issue of Lot Jews and Hidden Ones separately from the Exiles."
The men in the room nod and respond with yeses.
"I have also consulted with the Shogun about this matter since they have had to deal with this type of issue more recently. I believe the bigger obstacle with the Exiles is not so much their past collaboration, but the fact that they are Jews in name only. Their religiosity is marginal at best, which by itself is not a problem, but it's often coupled with a hostility to those who are. Assimilation for them would be difficult enough with the feelings the Community has towards them, but with their attitudes, any real success becomes almost impossible. Atheist Western Europe allowed a separate, militant Muslim Western Eu
rope in their precincts for more than half a century, and it destroyed them in the end. Distinctions and debates are welcome, but a people must be united. There's much to sort through and evaluate, but again, nothing is settled. I can't emphasize it enough—these series of conversations have a strong possibility of going nowhere, but we have to be open. If I had to pick between leaving them out there and having them reunited with us, I would choose the latter. If only for the sake of the children and to deprive the Pagans from having more of our people to meddle with."
"Gentlemen," Mr. Tova calls out with his booming voice, "we are running over as far as time and we have another meeting coming up. Is the group satisfied with the course of action to be taken?"
Men look at each other, but there are no objections.
"Is the Conservative Jewish Order formally in charge of this project?" another man asks.
"No, the Shamar Order is," Elliott answers. "I am just taking lead in the initial conversations and meetings. If it were to move to the next step, I would contract with members of the Shogun Order in the vetting process. However, before that, we would ask for formal approval by the full Jewish Continuum rather than only the executive board. This is too sensitive a matter. We either all agree to move forward or we don't do it at all."
Men in the room nod in agreement.
Mr. Tova looks around the room for any more discussion. "The meeting is adjourned, gentlemen."
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