Final Chaos

By Mark Goode

Is the world ravaged by climate change, where the global population has been driven underground and all life on the surface teeters on the brink of disastrous collapse, Jack Jennings joins the Aquaterrians to fight the government faction for the control of the world's most precious resource: water. As the world water wars rage across the country and water and food resources dwindle, in Colorado savant scientist Angela Starr dedicates her lab and considerable effort to research crop plant physiology for insight on how organisms survive adverse conditions in hopes of discovering disaster resistant food crops. But then, suddenly soldiers from both sides of the war turn their weapons upon themselves and commit suicide. No one saw it coming. On the battlefield caught in the tightening noose of rampant self-destruction, Jack Jennings frantically seeks a way to prevent more self-harm while the world demands answers. Who, or what is to blame for causing this mass suicide event, what is being called Apoptocide? Amazingly Angela Starr is accused. Can she find the link between her scientific investigations and the mass casualties on the battlefield- before the world condemns her for crimes against humanity ? Author Mark Goode takes us deep into an intriguing thought experiment that quests for answers about the real world suicide pandemic. This journey inward explores is the relationships between biology, apoptosis, chaos and neuroscience describing the first ever behavioral toxin. We come to understand how it attacks us from inside and out. But is there a remedy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735182025

Book preview

© 2020, Mark Goode. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-7351820-2-5.

To purchase books or for more information, visit www.finalchaos.live

This book is a work of experimental fiction. It is specifically not intended to diagnose or treat any medical or psychological condition, which can be obtained by consulting with your health care provider. Any resemblance of the characters or stories in this book to real-life persons or events is purely coincidental. The story occurs in the future. There is a small amount of history which is real. The physical setting includes real places that could be substituted with any number of alternatives without materially effecting the story. These places have no other intended relationship whatsoever expressed or implied to the story which is fictional.

a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable professional assistance and friendship of Christina Palaia of Emerald Editorial Services. Not only for the professional editing but for the coaching and guidance throughout the process of writing this book. I would also like to thank longtime friend with an infectious enthusiasm, graphic designer Nikylla Celine for her fantastic artwork and encouragement. Finally, and most importantly thanks to my wife and beloved elkhounds for their unconditional love.

To thinking outside of the box

Contents

• Call 911 Now

• Chapter 1: Only Wanted to Play Music and Then…

• Chapter 2: She Could Smell You a Mile Away

• Chapter 3: Not So Basic Science

- The Chaos Bakery

- Apoptosis

- Neuroscience

- The Brain Lab

• Chapter 4: Grandmother Got Arrested

• Chapter 5: I Should Have Seen It Coming

• Chapter 6: Angela Starr, Child to Scientist

• Chapter 7: Grandmother’s Laboratory

• Chapter 8: Enter the Virus

• Chapter 9: Grand County, Colorado,

Big Thompson, and The Aquaterrians

• Chapter 10: Enter the Chloroplasts

• Chapter 11: Jack and Arnold’s Reunion

• Chapter 12: Fractitious

• Chapter 13: Revelation Day

• Chapter 14: Battlefield Interview

• Chapter 15: The Aftermath

• Chapter 16: All the Plants Died

and the Region Turned Brown

• Chapter 17: She Wrote Me a Letter

• Chapter 18: Angela Has a Stroke

• Chapter 19: The Trial

• Chapter 20: Nick’s Reset.com

EPILOGUE:

- Stress and the End of Life

- Behavioral Scripts

- Chaos and Computers

- The Emotion Chip: A Higher Level of Intimacy

AFTERWORD:

Closing Tips

- Prayer and Meditation

- Physical Activity

- Music

- The Human-Animal Bond

APPENDIX:

Odorless, Tasteless, Transparent, and Deadly

AGREEMENT:

Statement of Friendship and Caring

P r e f a c e

—

Suicide has reached epidemic proportions in our communities. Every time I hear that someone has taken their life, which happens all too often, I wonder what happened. Why did they do this? What were the circumstances? Could things have been different? Everyone is aghast. Even the medical providers are astounded that this is occurring in our communities. We have so much to be thankful for, how can there be so much chaos in paradise? There are suicide hotlines, mental health facilities, universities, churches, schools, recreation of all types, yet seemingly suicide rates are exceeded only by property taxes.

For most, it takes two incomes to pay the bills, childcare is as expensive as housing, parking fees can be compared to the cost of a nice dinner. Speed is measured by bandwidth. No one is talking to anyone, and suicide victims are particularly silent about the turmoil they endured.

Mental health problems are inconvenient. They don’t fit into our lives, culture, or medical system. They require lots of time, compassion, genuine and caring communication, and, importantly, long-term follow-up. I am not the first to suggest the need for a national conversation and personal discussions with our families, classmates, coworkers, and neighbors about this. I believe the more we talk about this societal issue, the more we could remove the stigma from mental health problems that normal people experience in the course of their lives, a stigma that may be preventing individuals from asking for help.

Suicide is a complex neuropsychological behavior. It is staged in a theater where biology, genetics, and the environment compete as leading actors in the drama of life.

Life is hard!

We are guaranteed to come across difficult circumstances and hard stops in our lives. We each stand in the crosshairs of transcendence and dissolution. We can and must help one another there.

Admittedly, this book raises more questions than it provides answers for. Thank you for indulging me in this "food for thought experiment.

"

In addition to the rhetorical questions I ask here, I hope that you will ask your own questions and discuss them with family, friends, and neighbors as part of a countrywide conversation that brings this topic out into the open. Ideally, by talking about suicide, we could expand and influence mental health care access, awareness, and funding and get more people the help they need and stop this epidemic.

The idea of writing this book arose out of my interest and readings about chaos combined with other interests, computers, artificial intelligence, and the brain. I noticed I could not escape the all-too-frequent reports of yet another suicide; the epidemic actually better described as a pandemic. I started thinking of the possible connections. Chaos certainly seems a good description of the circumstances surrounding suicide. This powerful little word has many deep, profound meanings and a universality: everybody holds in their minds an image of what chaos is.

Children negotiating the trials of adolescence, young adults trying to gain a grip on life and establish themselves in their careers and families, middle-aged people trying to solidify their futures, elderly persons coping with retirement, physical decline, and aging. Our servicemen and servicewomen training to protect us, and veterans reentering society, and the collective whole that is dealing with life experiences and lessons such as illness, trauma, addiction, consequences of bad decisions, divorce, unemployment, and societal realities such as violence, homelessness, terrorism, and armed conflict need help finding a pathway out of chaos.

The concept of chaos so perfectly describes the interplay of the human condition with the worldly condition. You can envision the turmoil and anguish of a brain out of sync, struggling to keep it together in the midst of adversity, whether it be an organic medical condition such as dementia, schizophrenia, or depression or an extreme psychological situational or cultural stress such as divorce, bankruptcy, or death of a spouse, child, friend, or even a stranger. Imagine the unbelievable pain, anger, confusion, and disorder erupting in a brain projecting an outward appearance of normalcy yet spinning out of control to the extent that the executive network deems pulling its own plug the only option.

Indeed, this five-letter word – chaos – is an excellent descriptor of these phenomena, among others.

Many great minds, including physicists’, astronomers’, mathematicians’, economists’, meteorologists’, and biologists’, have encountered chaos in a multitude of scenarios. Chaotic the adjective is commonly used and understood. However, chaos the noun was regarded as an aberration or noise in the real science of Newton’s clockwork universe, and it has only recently come under investigation.

Inarguably, one of the great revolutionary minds of our times was Albert Einstein. The world has marveled at his genius. As a theoretical physicist, Einstein performed experiments in the most sophisticated supercomputer laboratory known: his mind. These famous thought experiments showed us how to think about topics not readily investigated in the laboratory. What better way to get a handle on that which is not graspable? Yet, the posthumous study of his brain did not reveal any anatomical basis for his brilliance.

I am attracted to the methodology of thought experiments as a framework from which to launch our minds and ponder the complexity of suicide. I hope this gives us the platform and the poetic license to do so in the absence of hard science and factual data. To that end, I submit this story, a combination of fiction, some science, some history, and a lot of imagination.

The primary story is that of brilliant savant scientist Angela Starr and her fictional discoveries about the regulation of life cycles in plants. The drama unfolds in the future on a planet struggling with limited resources and environmental change. Chaos flourishes at every level as societal, environmental, and biological circumstances align and erupt in the World Water Wars.

Angela’s story is rife with conflict and tension and controversy: the degraded environment and global warming, the mismanagement of water amid societal growth, the power-hungry government and oppression of freethinking citizens. The people’s struggle between the innate forces of self-destruction and self-preservation.

Our thought experiment ponders the existence of an innate neurobiological behavior script, rooted in cellular biology. Vulnerable brains by virtue of training and circumstance and activation by the development of chaos in the brain may enact self-destruction. The fictional story attempts to depict the intersection of these variables in a special time and place under the influence of the first-ever behavioral toxin, chloroplast DNA.

I apologize in advance for offending anyone, particularly those who may have been touched by suicide. I wish I could say that there is potential for healing in the book; however, that would be presumptuous. What I can say is that it will be controversial. I hope to stimulate discussion possibly leading to better understanding of suicide – not necessarily from these written words but by the hard work you do thinking about and discussing the topic with one another.

We don’t have to be the victims of suicide, not our own or others’. We can hope to grow more knowledgeable about this chaotic state and our ability to cope with the loss of those who could not escape it.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to acknowledge and rally support for the real heroes in this battle: the therapists and all those involved across multiple disciplines who are dedicated to providing mental health care to real people. I salute and thank you.

Attention. Read This.

Call 911 Now

If you are thinking about harming yourself or someone else, get help now! You