Reflexive Fire - 01

by Jack Murphy

  Jarogniew smiled a vicious smile to an oblivious audience.

  The time was now.

  For hundreds of years the power elite, the anointed ones destined to rule mankind, had used a system of incrementalism, slowly changing paradigms and archetypes, humanizing the mechanical and dehumanizing the living. Injecting insanity into the collective unconscious, making the masses pliable, and ultimately useful as serfs working the cotton fields of a dying global economy.

  However, his fellow elite failed to identify their own shifting status in the grand hierarchy.

  They occupied the gilded halls of academia, manned the round table groups, and staffed the foundations, the men who pulled the invisible puppet strings tied to the alleged seats of power. They belonged to a kind of shadow government, invisible custodians that most were subconsciously aware of, even if programmed cognitive dissonance told them otherwise. This farce was falling apart before their eyes.

  Jarogniew sneered as he watched the rain water streak down his limousine window.

  Bohemian Grove, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Club of Rome, The Trilateral Commission, The Bilderberg Club. They had all served their purpose, managing global order as the monarchy and the Lombardi cartels had before them.

  Mostly they were just old men, playing at Byzantine power games while the world passed them by. The awakening would crush them, rising up like a phoenix in the coming years, ending absolutism once and for all.

  He had seen it in his mind's eye long ago.

  Over a decade had passed since he had sat his own faction down for a private meeting, creating what they internally called The Council of Three. They were the capstone of the pyramid. If they didn't act now, bypassing incrementalism for something more drastic, they would all lose control over everything, everyone, forever. Their great work would be left unfulfilled.

  Disgust for his elitist minions fading, Jarogniew's face crested with the familiar smile, the animalistic intensity glowing in his eyes.

  Drawing together and compartmentalizing various experts and controllers, they had dusted off old plans and put together new ones, utilizing control grids already in place, innovating and inventing new ones as needed.

  For well over a hundred years, true scientific progress and knowledge had been concealed from the public, for their own good of course. The greater public was only exposed to the third tier of scientific knowledge; governmental programs classified as Top Secret/Secure Compartmentalized Information were allowed access to Tier Two tech. Only those supranational entities who worked at a level darker than black knew about Tier One.

  Tier Two had instituted various eugenics programs for the last hundred years, continuing into the present. Social anthropologists had combed the globe, categorizing and cataloging various ethnic groups. In the modern hospitals of the Western world, each child's blood was taken at birth, logged in massive paper databases before the advent of computers.

  These data inputs had allowed them to design the perfect virus, guaranteed to prune the world's population by at least ninety-five percent. All of it was very under the radar, and had to be, since the last eugenicist who had blown off incrementalism had sensitized the world to the concept of racial hygiene.

  The public had already been primed. The previous year’s swine flu had been intentionally introduced into the populace, its strain was novel, or without any pedigree. The so-called H4N7 had carried the precursors for what was to come. It carried with it a stealth virus that had entered into the masses' genomes and would lie dormant until the time was right. The genetic engineering involved was several generations ahead of anything the public was aware of.

  Once the biological trigger was released, the two strains would combine with each other, forming a binary biological weapon. The oncogenes in human DNA would then be switched on, stimulating uncontrollable cellular growth, causing a cancer that would literally eat the body from the inside out.

  With customary thoroughness, The Council of Three had experimented with human subjects to ensure that the binary virus killed in hours, or at most a few days, once activated.

  Using advanced game theory- numbers crunched with quantum computers using all variable inputs- they had planned the collapse of civilization. From day zero through day thirty, when the holocaust would be more or less completed. Every event was planned, structured, and war gamed.

  Even as the world's population ticked down to an estimated hundred million, The Council needed to prevent an all-out nuclear apocalypse and safeguard critical infrastructure that they would need in the aftermath to build their new society.

  The eaters and consumers could be difficult little devils, especially in the midst of an apparent species-wide extinction, so special measures needed to be taken to prevent them from doing any more damage then they'd already done.

  Project Snow Beam circled the earth in geosynchronous orbit, sophisticated detection systems scanning for the launch of intercontinental missiles which would be shot down moments after exiting their silos, if it came to that. Yes, the Chinese were still playing target practice on old weather satellites with their ground-based lasers, but Jarogniew was convinced that the risk of interference had been appropriately mitigated.

  Soon they would hit Day Zero Minus One. The Council along with high level minions and servants would then occupy safe zones and armored redoubts, safe from societal collapse. Key strategic assets would be moved into place. Samruk International and others would occupy centralized hubs, such as Denver Airport, to respond to contingencies.

  On Day Zero the trigger virus would be released and quickly identified by various departments of health. The media would roll out preplanned press releases. The United States would use cold war era defense plans updated for the war on terror, instituting Continuity of Government. In effect, America would be placed under martial law, the President declared dictator for the duration of the emergency.

  With all three branches of government operating from secret bunker complexes in the Virginia Mountains, The Council would allow them to manage the crisis, to a point. COG would help contain and isolate trouble spots around the country, easing the process as best possible.

  Twenty-seven threat fusion centers would be operational, until eventually overrun or the operators themselves were killed off by the virus. Their stated function was to guard against terrorism, but in reality they were always designed to spy on and monitor the American public, cracking down on anyone who threatened the establishment.

  On Day Sixteen the President would be assassinated in his underground bomb shelter, Congress and the Senate would have nerve gas piped into their bunkers. In effect, The Council was the shadow government's shadow. They would move in to run key systems, once the situation had gone critical when the government was at its weakest. To the very few outside observers left, it would all seem to be done in a very spontaneous but organic manner.

  The military and police forces would be quickly exhausted, expended on futile attempts to save the public amid the riots and irrationality. While the public self-destructed, The Council would send in its enforcement arm to protect key areas. Dams, bridges, airports, and other infrastructure needed to be preserved for the elite.

  Of course no virus was a hundred percent lethal. Some would isolate themselves in remote areas, safe from the transmission vectors the virus would travel along. Others would have freak immunities to even the most cleverly designed virus, nature's way of safeguarding the human species from such pandemics. Some of these loners would roam the world's wastelands, others would gather into tribal groups, and some would form terror cells which would eventually attempt to strike out at the elite.

  Day Seventeen would mark when The Council would send its mercenaries out to preempt any such efforts. Lone survivors would be executed; larger groups would be brought back to collectivized camps for more efficient processing. Of course Council members and those in their employ would be inoculated against the virus on Day Zero Minus Two.

 
The population would continue to plummet, ticking down to about one hundred million. Over six billion would perish when all was said and done. It had been a serious debate within The Council; a few extremists wanted them all eliminated, but eventually cooler heads had prevailed. Jarogniew had managed to convince the elites that they still needed warm bodies, at least enough to work the fields for another couple of decades.

  Day Thirty would mark the end of Phase One, the population sufficiently reduced and the beginning of their great authoritarian society.

  Some of the old cities would be restored, but mostly new cities with entirely new methods of architecture and advanced technology would rise from the ashes. What was left of the public would be forced into crowded city states, travel restricted to the elite and their servants. Super highways would connect some of the megacities; others would be placed in the center of jungles or tundra, and only accessible by tilt rotor aircraft.

  Cities would divide the pruned population by age and work group. Children would be raised in massive communes to insure emotional sterility. Their minds would be dulled by mass education, encouraged to believe that everyone is the property of everyone else, and promiscuity and petty entertainment would replace so-called human values.

  The serfs would live and work together in large labor groups. Shuffling to and from the factories, they would serve the barons who oversaw the city-states, their overlords. Each worker would be tagged with a subdermal RFID chip that controlled what resources they had access to and when.

  The new scientific dictatorship would use the RFID chips to channel the workers into a cashless society that would work for virtual currency. Like the monetary system of one of today's video games, the public would never see actual currency or hard assets. Credits would be assigned to each user's RFID chip, to be redeemed for basic provisions and methods of entertainment at the city canteen.

  The scourge of private property would finally be abolished; babies would be born when authorized, with millions of dollars of virtual debt hanging over their heads. The population would be permanent indentured servants, trained to love the very servitude that enslaved them.

  Pervasive throughout the new city-states would be a panopticon of technical surveillance features. Millions of cameras would be placed on the streets, in places of employment, even in the barracks where the workers lived. Microphones would be planted everywhere, supercomputers monitoring every conversation for key words, hints of threats that needed to be silenced.

  Biometric scanners would be ubiquitous, so common that the worker bees would soon grow jaded to their very presence. Fingerprint and iris scanners would be used for identification everywhere they went. Other scanners would function on computer programs connected to the spider web of cameras that would measure each person's gait and mannerisms. Other systems would measure the pattern of veins in a worker's hand or arm for more advanced forms of control.

  Brain scanners would be set up at key choke points such as subways and bus stations. The second generation Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging devices would measure actual brain waves and signatures, literally reading people's thoughts. Third generation devices would be hand held.

  Such crude behavior modification would be necessary only until several generations of children, genetically engineered to be servile and impotent, were brought online. Afterward, any remaining survivors from Day Zero would be culled as well. With new technologies in hydroponics, aquaponics, and alternative energy, like cold fusion, brought to the forefront, automation would increase exponentially, the need for human capital reduced once again.

  The elite would be protected by private armies, of course, but the public needed tending to as well.

  With the population herded into strategic hamlets, they would now be administered by teams of experts, mid-level minions who would, in return for their services, be granted access to a slightly higher quality canteen for material goods.

  Mobile sterilization teams would scour the city-states for unauthorized pregnancies. The teams would be manned by a representative from the central authority, two program officers from the city itself, two junior officers, and a small support staff. After the first round of forced sterilizations, the number of mandatory abortions necessary would decline dramatically, but the situation would still be closely watched.

  Armed enforcers would be omnipresent. Armored thugs would tote a variety of non-lethal weapons designed to inflict maximum pain compliance. Long range tasers would shock resistors at distance, firing along energized ion trails, and sonic resonance systems would lull them to sleep. Eventually, malcontents would be taken for rehabilitation or destruction, depending on the severity of the offense.

  The watchers at the city-state level would of course be watched by high level commandos deployed by the true architecture of power. The hunter/killer teams would be armed with Tier One technology, constantly on standby to lead sharp point operations that would crush anything that looked at the power brokers the wrong way. Mostly, they would be deployed to keep the low level barons in line.

  It was expected that The Council's top-level assassins would compete for the chance to lead the elite teams. Kammler had called him just hours before his speech to give him an update about Burma. Peng was eliminated as expected. O'Brien had once again surpassed expectations, his ruthlessness ensuring that he had a place on the H/K teams.

  However, there were many fail-safes, a virtual division of power to guarantee The Council's grasp on power and absolute control. Artificial intelligence systems would create a simulation of every system on the planet, creating a separate node for each individual with cognitive profiles gathered from surveillance systems and in-depth screening. The supercomputer would predict events before they happened, giving forewarning to the elite. Troublemakers would be rounded up before the thought of trouble even occurred to them.

  It was called Project Leviathan. Its sentient intelligence would compute numbers into infinity in the blink of an eye. Predictive programming, precognition, and more were all possible. Human beings would be reduced to biological androids, not a moment of their lives left unplanned or unscripted.

  Jarogniew was brought back to the present as the limousine came to a halt in front of the United Nations building. He had several more meetings scheduled for the day. Much more work to do before Day Zero.

  The Council of Three controlled the past, present, and future.

  Their great work was the alchemy for total control.

  Twenty Six

  Deckard walked to the entrance, automatic doors parting to allow him through.

  Astana's brand new hospital was getting broken in the hard way, the casualties of war coming in on stretchers. Others were getting wheeled into a separate area with white sheets covering still bodies. Nick was shouting at doctors and nurses, twin veins in his neck stretching like garden hoses as anger took hold.

  It had been a long plane ride home, the longest of Deckard's life, sitting alongside the body bags. They had finally touched down in Kazakhstan an hour ago. Most of the troops were on their way back to the compound to hit the newly installed showers and then rack out in the bunks.

  As the chaos swirled around him in the emergency area's waiting room he felt it again, the crushing feeling that hung over his head. He had never lied to himself about who he was or what he did. Deckard liked war, loved it occasionally. Combat was the only time he ever saw people for who they truly were, a place where anyone can be a hero or a coward, or both at the same time. War was the only time you saw the world for what it really was.

  With societal constructs removed, the truth became apparent, obvious even. Compared to war, any other job was just punching a time card.

  He intrinsically understood that the mercenaries he commanded were grown men who had made their own decision, freely and with full knowledge of potential consequences. They hedged their bets because the pay was good, or signed up looking for some action after their military career. When you play big boy games you play b
y big boy rules, and any one of them could have been the guy coming home as a corpse.

  For some reason, this time that notion didn't make him feel any better.

  “Mr. O'Brien?”

  Snapping out of it, he realized he was supposed to respond to that name. Deckard turned around. A balding man wearing a suit and tie was standing in his way, peering at him through thick rectangular glasses.

  “Yeah,” Deckard said, his hand inching towards the Glock 19 strapped to his hip.

  “Your benefactors have sent me to speak with you.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Just a job interview.”

  “Not happy with my performance?”

  “Not at all, but this is a different kind of job they have in mind,” the suit replied. “Now, please follow me.”

  Glancing across the lobby, Deckard could see Nick pushing a doctor aside and treating one of the Kazakhs himself. He was in charge here, no doubt about it.

  “Adam,” he said into his radio. “I'm going to need a few minutes. Personal business.”

  “You okay?” his new second in command asked.

  “Yeah, I'm cool.”

  Adam was still outside, helping to unload casualties from one of the trucks.

  “But I'm going offline for a few.”

  “Got it.”

  Deckard was dealing with the type of people who were not used to refusals. He was in too deep to turn away now. Besides, one well-dressed prick was hardly a threat.

  “This way,” the man said, adjusting his glasses.

  Leaving the scene in the emergency room behind, Deckard was led down the long, empty halls, the sharp stench of sterilizers used by the cleaners stinging his nose. Cutting around a corner, they climbed a set of metal steps to the second floor. The halls were completely silent, abandoned.

  Following colored lines painted on the floor, the suited man continued to lead him through a maze of corridors.

  “What is this all about?” Deckard finally asked, looking around suspiciously.