A Piece of Glass

By R. Chauncey

Lyle Morton leaves the Department of Information in Crown City, the capital of the United Democratic World and disappears with a glass disk that contains information that can destroy the five most powerful and richest men in the world if released. The five force Lee Adams and Evelyn Summers to find Lyle. They know if they do, they and Lyle will

• Language: English
• Publisher: MainSpring Books
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781947352094

R. Chauncey

I am a retired schoolteacher who spent thirty-six years teaching history. I have always liked reading and writing, but I did not devote myself to writing fiction until after I retired in 2006.

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Copyright © 2021 by R. Chauncey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-947352-09-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021911032

Sci-Fi; Action and Adventure

MainSpring Books

5901 W. Century Blvd

Suite 750

Los Angeles, CA, US, 90045

www.mainspringbooks.com

A Piece of Glass

Lyle Morton, an employee of the Department of Information in Crown City, the capital city of the united world leaves work on June 1, 3075 and disappears with a glass disk that contains information that could destroy the five most powerful and richest men in the world. The five hire Lee Adams and Evelyn Summers, who’ve worked for them in the past to find Lyle. Lee and Evelyn know once they’ve found Lyle and turned him over to the five, they will all be killed. If they fail to find Lyle, their families will be killed. They must find Lyle, find out what he’s got, and reveal it to the world to save themselves and their families. When Lee and Evelyn fail to keep in contact with the five, they send their special killers out to find them and Lyle. What Lee and Evelyn eventually learn at first shocks them and then nearly destroys them.

Chapter 1

June 1, 3075 10: p.m., Friday, Department of Information

Lyle Morton was afraid because what he was doing could not only result in the end of his life but those of the wife and three children, he hadn’t seen in twenty-two years because he had to abandon them in order to protect their lives and to preserve his so he could do what he had to do. Tell the world the truth.

He looked at the computer on the desk he sat at and watched carefully as the information he had managed to steal from the secret files hidden among the classified files in the Department of Information’s classified section was downloaded on the glass crystal in the DVD drive. He felt uncomfortable about what he was doing, because he was not a thief by nature. What he was doing offended his sense of right and wrong to steal. His theft of the information downloading on the glass crystal went against every concept he had of an honest, law abiding citizen. But the world needed to know what had been happening to it over the last five hundred years, or it would happen again and soon this time. He had inadvertently stumbled across the Information more than twenty-three years ago when he worked for the Department in its Hong Kong office.

It took him two months of research to accept what he had uncovered was the truth, and not someone’s idea of a cruel and vicious joke. And when he did it had upset him so much he lost ten pounds in five days. He had been trying to lose ten pounds for the past three years without success. It was only when his wife and three daughters had begun to comment on his loss of weight that he realized the danger he had put them in with his discovery if the monsters found out.

Lyle had thought about ignoring the information and continuing with his life, until he realized his unintentional discovery might by discovered by someone analyzing data as he had been doing and reported. If it was the men who had hidden the information among the Department’s classified section would know instantly he’d discovered it because his identification number was on the file where he’d discovered the information and come for him and his family.

The information was so dangerous he would have to die and anyone he’d come in contact with would have to die, too. Family, relatives, friends, even neighbors would all have to die to guarantee the information would never be released to the world. If it was, then the men who wanted it to remain hidden would be destroyed. He knew instantly his life would have to change to protect those he loved and respected. Even his coworkers he came in contact with daily would face horrible deaths to guarantee the information remained safely hidden.

So, a little over twenty-two years ago Lyle Morton arranged his death in an automobile accident that guaranteed his body would never be found, and there would be no question his death was an accident. It sickened him to do what he had to do to protect his family—his death would hurt them deeply, but he did it anyway and disappeared.

Then he reappeared a few months later as a new man with a new identity and started working as a clerk in the Department of Information’s ten story two blocks long two blocks wide headquarters building in Crown City, the capital city of the United World Government. It was easy for him to acquire a new identity for himself.

Lyle Morton knew how the Department of Information worked with information having worked for it for five years before he disappeared and how to acquire the paperwork that helped him develop a new identity for himself. One so well put together no one would question it because there were plenty of documents within the Department of Information to prove who he said he was. Even his DNA matched that of the person he had become. He had simply switched his health records with those of a man who had died in Honk Kong the same week he’d died, and taken the dead man’s health records for his. And then eliminated all information indicating what he’d done.

Once that was established he started the slow work of climbing the ladder of success in the Department to his present position. A position that allowed him to access any information in the Department he wanted as long as the proper paperwork had been made out. It took him fifteen years to get into his position, and once there he began to gather the information he knew the world needed to know. Now seven years later he was ready to release what he had collected to the world. All he had to do was find a place where he couldn’t be found and release the information.

The world was no longer the world it had been in the late twenty-fifth century. It was now a united world with one government ruling the planet. The individual nations still existed with their unique cultural customs, languages, and religions. But national competition between the nations of the world had ended on May 1, 2575 when the United World Government was proclaimed and established with Crown City just northeast of the city of Denver, Colorado, as the capital of the world. Crown City, originally a small town in the state of Colorado, was chosen as the world capital to avoid arguments among the nations that their capital cities should be chosen as the world’s new capital.

War was a thing of the past. As was starvation, disease, and ignorance. Everyone had the ability to acquire a clean comfortable place to live with free medical and dental services available. Education was available to everyone. The world was certainly a better place to live for the common people, but no one, not even the rich and powerful, knew the events of the past that had led to a united world was the work of five men who made the brutal Nazis of the twentieth century pale in comparison. Nowhere in the history of the human race were there people as monstrous as the five men whose information Lyle was downloading on the glass crystal in the DVD drive of his computer.

The world had become a better and safer place to live for everyone, but no one suspected the horrible cost of unifying the world and keeping it unified was the work of five greedy men who cared for no one but themselves. A cost the human race did not have to pay to achieve world peace and unity, but a cost it did pay because five men benefitted.

Lyle heard noise of footsteps in the corridor outside his secretary’s office and calmly looked in the direction of his office door. He had learned the advantage of acting calm. It put suspicious people off guard and allowed him to do what he wished without them suspecting anything. He looked back at his computer and saw the information being downloaded on the crystal paragraph by paragraph every five seconds. He looked at his watch. Another thirty seconds and all four thousand pages will be on the crystal with room left over for another four thousand pages.

He heard the door to his secretary’s office open. The hydraulic door openers always made a mild whooshing sound when someone opened or closed a door on one of the many corridors in the building. No one paid any attention to them.

The sound of footsteps ended when the guard, he knew it was a guard, they always made their rounds every hour on the hour, stepped from the hard tiles in the corridor onto the soft gray carpeting of his secretary’s office.

Every office in the Department of Information’s building had gray carpeting, because it was a neutral color and easy to clean. That was the explanation the Government Accounting Office gave people when they asked why the government couldn’t buy carpeting with color in it.

Lyle leaned back in his chair and waited for his office door to open as he watched the information being downloaded.

A moment later the frosted glass door to his office opened and the head a guard poked into the semi-dark room. The guard scanned the room with his eyes before he looked at Lyle.

Lyle ignored the guard.

Good evening, sir, the man said. As a night shift guard he wouldn’t know Lyle’s name as the day guards did.

Lyle looked up at him and nodded as he said, Good evening.

Working late, sir? the man asked.

Unfortunately, yes.

Who are you, sir? the guard asked him as he entered the office.

Lyle Morton, data analyzer second class, he said as he started to reach for this wallet.

The guard walked over to the desk and stopped in front of it.

Lyle removed his ID from his wallet and handed it to the guard to prevent him from coming around behind the desk and looking at the computer screen. He didn’t want him seeing the bright red letters at the top of the computer that read ‘Classified. Not For The Public’. The guard might ask why the information was classified, since classified information was extremely rare in a united peaceful world.

The guard took Lyle’s ID and looked at it and at Lyle for a few seconds before he handed it back to him saying, Doing work for the political big shots, huh?

Lyle smiled as he returned his ID to his wallet and his wallet to his pocket. Someone in the capital building requested this information at four, and unfortunately I was given the assignment to find it. I just located it half an hour ago.

The guard looked at the drape covered windows behind Lyle’s desk and around the room before he said, Don’t forget to swipe out before you leave, Mr. Morton.

Oh, yes, thanks for reminding me, he said.

The guard turned around and walked toward the door saying, Good night, sir.

Good night, Officer, Lyle responded.

When Lyle saw the guard’s shape walk out the outer door to the corridor and heard the whooshing sound of the hydraulic door opener opening and closing the door, he allowed himself a few seconds to tremble before he got control of himself and looked like nothing more than a data analyzer second class doing his work.

Ten minutes later the download was complete and the glass crystal, an eighth of an inch thick, and three inches in circumference, slid out of the DVD slot and he picked up a plastic case lying on the desk in front of him and put the glass crystal in the case and closed it. He picked up his canvas laptop briefcase, opened it, and slid the plastic case into a pocket on the left side of the briefcase and zippered it closed. He looked at the clock on the wall above his office door.

Ten fifteen.

He stood up and walked to the closet in his office, opened the door, and removed his suit coat from a thick plastic hanger hanging from the rod and his hat from the shelf above the rod and put them on and closed the closet door.

I mustn’t do anything unusual.

He walked to his desk, picked up the canvas briefcase, and turned around and walked out of his office. He didn’t turn his computer off because it had an automatic off switch. After ten minutes it would go into sleep mode and after an hour shut down. Only the special code word he had put into it would allow someone after starting it up to get 8 Chauncey

into his files, which were nothing but general department information.

Lyle didn’t worry about the five men getting his finger prints. Those that were on file belonged to a man who had died the day he’d moved to Crown City and taken a job as a regular clerk in the Department. Those he’d left on the keyboard of his computer would be wiped away by the cleaning robots that would clean his office now that he’d left it.

Lyle walked to the elevator section