Total Consciousness: Revenge of the Gamer

By Mihaly Nemeth

As predicted by the Mayans calendar there was a period ending and a new one emerging. The first real evidence was when the magnetic Poles began to move on March 18th, 2018. Triggering shifts in the continental tectonic plates causing volcanoes, earthquakes, and accelerating climate change. The ice caps melted, causing major flooding to coastal populations. Drought and desserts appeared where there were none before. Pollution combined with high atmospheric volcanic ash changed our sky by blocking out some of the sunrays. The rays that got through were kept in our atmosphere slowly raising global temperatures, eventually melting all glaciers and the ice caps. The rains were an acidic cocktail; most of the crops and vegetation could not cope. Then the viruses came, affecting at first, the planets birds, then huffed animals, then the rest, only a few species survived. What followed was devastation in the form of two pandemics, SCARS4 and H9N8, wiping out more than 60% of the world's population in the first flu season. Then came the next round these had no names, there wasn't time, fewer than 100 Million people survived worldwide.


Like Intelligent Design, the idea of the Invisible Hand stubbornly persists in the face of overwhelming evidence

- James Kenneth Galbraith

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503558588

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A s predicted by the Mayans, Planet Earth experienced a period ending, and a new one emerging. The first real evidence was when the magnetic poles began to move erratically causing wild gravitational waves and shifts in the continental tectonic plates triggering volcanoes, earthquakes, and accelerated climate ch ange.

The ice caps melted, resulting in major flooding to coastal populations. Drought and desserts appeared where there were none before. Pollution combined with high atmospheric volcanic ash changed the sky, blocking out most of the sun’s rays. The rays that got through were kept in the atmosphere slowly raising global temperatures, eventually melting the last glaciers. The rains were an acidic deluge. Most of the crops and vegetation could not cope.

Then the viruses came, affecting the planet’s birds; soon after all hoofed animals, then the rest; only a few species survived. What followed for mankind was devastation in the form of two pandemics, SCARS4 and H9N8, wiping out more than 60% of the world’s population in the first wave of flues. The next round had no names, there wasn’t time; fewer than 100 million people existed worldwide.

Throughout this period governments collapsed, schools, institutions, entire cities were abandoned. Only the largest companies with formidable resources survived and became the new world order. Oil, food, and drugs were the only currency. The biggest, Titan Oil, acquired interests in everything from food to steel. One odd move was when they took over the World Wide Web. At first, they claimed it was just to save and maintain it. Shortly after they secured most of the infrastructure and hardware; they soon monitored and controlled it limiting free access to the last real global communication system. It was hard to get any reliable information or news that wasn’t edited by Titan-On-Line.

During the pandemics, Eden Drug Company owned by Titan Oil, conducted research with the few animal species that were unaffected by the viruses. They used a couple bald eagles trapped near the Alaskan pipeline; the oil company’s mascot, two white tigers from a private zoo in New Jersey; plus a pair of Colorado wolves that were caught after terrorizing the Billings’ Refinery, and a pack of rogue coyotes near the Beaumont Refinery in Texas. They were all taken to Eden Labs in Ann Arbor, Michigan where scientists developed a vaccine that eventually was successful in protecting humans against the smorgasbord of deadly ever mutating viruses.

Titan Oil provided all their employees with the vaccine and sold millions of doses to the public. The overseas companies were able to find other surviving species and develop their own strain of the vaccine. What were common in all the vaccine forms were the side effects that manifested in the offspring, creating a new generation of children: visible mutations that blended some of the physical reminders of the host DNA; a variety of features distorting the eyes, mouth, noses and ears. Children started showing pin feather hair, hard shelled noses, and some with bird-like eyes.

Overseas, Chinese sailors found kimono dragons on remote islands that had survived, and a few giant pandas in the secluded mountain reserves. The result was an entire population who were powerful, fast; some with hard scale-like skin, and some with just different ears or eyes, but all majestic highbred beings.

In North America, for people who could not afford to buy the cure at a Titan clinic; there was a mix of cheaper underground vaccines available.

The main characters in the story with their features:

S. T. Williams (eagle DNA), bird-like ears, yellow eyes, slight discolored hard skin over nose.

• Jane A Williams (white tiger DNA), slight feline facial features, high ears, blue cat-like eyes.

• Wyatt Williams: like his father, predominantly eagle features, with his mother’s blue eyes.

• Charlie Williams: like his mother, predominantly white tiger features, with his father’s large yellow eyes.

Titan Oil’s private army, the Bush Security people, had K-9 features, usually wolf or coyote. The rare tiger or eagle features were from a small original batch of vaccines only available to top company executives. People without the vaccine did not live long enough to have children; with only a few exceptions who developed a natural defensive immunity.

Survival and progress was possible, and two different types of societies emerged. The majority of communities were just extensions of the major companies, still functioning with capitalistic free market values. The others were self-sufficient communal societies; not unlike the Amish communities, that flourished in and around southern Ontario and Pennsylvania; however, without the religion, and with a real thirst for new technology.

*

This story takes place around an old house in a small village above the north shore overlooking Long Point Bay on Lake Erie, across from Cleveland, Ohio. The alternating chapters are the Before and After.

The main After character, S.T. Williams, runs a local repair shop in an abandoned big box store-type building. His wife, Jane, works in an indoor reforestation farm at Titan’s Agra-Lab. She is experimenting with the reintroduction of outdoor agriculture from one of the few remaining seed banks. The air has become so contaminated oxygen masks must be worn at all times anywhere outdoors. The year is 2069, exactly 100 years since man first landed on the moon.

The main Before character, Sean Galbraith, is a retired Washington Economics advisor. He is living in the present time during which he and the world will witness the greatest changes to our planet since modern man has tracked time.

You are about to meet his granddaughter.

CHAPTER 1

TYRANNY OF SMALL DECISIONS

M ary is intently watching her favorite professor as he writes TYRANNY OF SMALL DECISIONS on the large white board. He prints big bold letters and moves with command and style. She is captivated by this confident, magnificently fit, mature, African-American professor watching him rhythmically pace back and f orth.

The professor gestures as he quotes, Aristotle, sometime before his death in 322 BC, says, ‘For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest, and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.’

He continues, Imagine a railway with daily service to get in and out of a remote location. It provided services regardless of conditions, in fair weather and foul, during peak seasons and off-peak seasons. The local airline and bus company also offered service, but only when conditions were favorable. After several years, the railway service is then withdrawn, because travelers did not provide the railway with the revenue it needed to cover its incremental costs to keep the line operating, resulting in, ‘no service at all’ once the bus and airline stop proving the seasonal option. He then stops writing and walks away from the board.

Mary notices that today the professor is wearing the exact same well tailored clothes as he had on the day before. She wonders if he might have not made it home last night, and fantasizes about what he might have looked like when he was twenty-three, her age. She stares down at her notebook barely hearing him ask:

For those of you that completed last night’s assignment, let’s have some other examples of undesirable economical outcomes due to individual small decisions or choices made initially with a positive intended, however, cumulatively in mass, results in an opposite negative impact to the contingents.

She hides her pretty face behind her hair as she feels his eyes scanning the classroom. She peeks through a small part in her bangs as the professor picks on a young man in the front row.

Yes, John, stop waiving your hands and stand up.

Mary lifts her head slightly watching John stand, knowing he will answer any question just for a chance to hear himself talk. She looks back down to her iPad notebook trying to get the images out of her mind, and to find her place again in the novel she downloaded earlier in the week. She is only half listening as John answers.

Tyranny of small decisions… John says as if boasting, a result when consumers don’t consider all the costs and benefits of a choice, and when the same choice is made by many people, the result is irreversibly damaging.

The professor’s face reads disappointment. Okay, but I was looking for an example, not a definition… He pauses.

Mary tries to finish reading the last couple lines of the chapter, until she notices the silence. She lifts her head and realizes that the whole class is now looking at her. She removes her glasses, pulls her long curly red hair back over her right ear; sits up straight before making eye contact with the professor, just as he says:

Yes, Mary, are you with us today? Let’s hear your example on this topic… Before Mary can even get a word out, he continues in a patronizing tone, and try just this one time not to turn it into another environmental issue. I would expect a Galbraith to give a little autonomy for the economy. The professor claps his hands once shuffling his shoulders.

Mary smiles, feeling that familiar chemistry she has, when she locks eyes with, her favorite professor. She’s aware of the class and shifts her facial expression as she answers in a serious manner. Okay…so I won’t go with the example of how small decisions made by farmers and land owners to drain wetlands or small decisions of industrialists to release pollutants into our skies are an example of tyranny. I’ll just use the fact that thousands of educators make small decisions every day to leave out a vital factor, the environment. It’s just like your quote from Aristotle—you’re only thinking of your own interests, and neglect reality, expecting that it will be part of some abstract elective or future program. So, who should we be hearing the truth from regarding our environment? The engineers? The lawyers? The military?

Mary gets up, grabbing her books and starts her trek toward the door while continuing, The farmers, the fishermen, truck drivers, Wall Street, Washington, United Nations…why can’t it be coming from you, our educators?

Where are you going, young lady? the professor challenges her.

She stops in the doorway. Nowhere, that’s the point. We’re not going anywhere that really matters.

Mary, I want to see you after classes today, or you are going to fail this class and not graduate this term, the professor calls out as she leaves.

Mary spends the rest of the day in the library finishing her book, The Elite Society, before deciding to go back and see the professor.

She knocks on the door and walks in. She is agitated when he does not look up as he says:

Mary, I have better things to do with my time than wait around all evening. You are lucky I have papers to mark or I would not have stayed this late.

Look, you asked me here, remember? So I’m here.

Is your education not important to you? He continues before she can answer, You have a chance to make something of yourself. You are one of the brightest students I have ever taught, and you just don’t get it.

I don’t get it? Mary rolls her eyes in disbelief. Can you not see what is happening all around us?

Mary, not everything is about the environment. You can graduate with top honors, and then if you decide, take a few years and work with a special interest group, make a difference. Just don’t, do it in my class. You influence and distract the other students who are here to learn.

Learn what? she huffs. Your canned lessons, on how to apply ourselves so we can propagate the agenda of the almighty economy?

Mary, no one forced you to study economics.

No, but it is clear after these last four years that I have entered the Devil’s Lair.

Mary, do you hear yourself? Honestly, the Devil’s Lair, my classroom?

Mary gestures right and left. NO…it’s this whole place.

I’m surprised at you, Mary, the professor shakes his head. I never saw you as the religious type,

It wasn’t meant that way. There is a bigger picture. There are other elements and things more important than learning about the economy.

Of course there is… the professor pauses for a moment to reflect. Okay, humor me, you have my attention. I’ll listen. You educate me on how you see things. Get it out of your system once and for all, and then I don’t want to hear it again. Not in my class. He turns to a white board on the wall, and with a red marker he writes as he is saying, Not everything in life is about the ECONOMY VS. NATURE.

Mary picks up a green marker and writes the word MOTHER over the word NATURE. Mother Nature… she erases and rewrites NATURE in green,

"and don’t be offended, it’s not just your class, but it is the economy against Mother Nature."

Please, we’re just here to discuss your behavior in my economics class, young lady, and if you plan to have a future…

Future? Mary interrupts in a low voice looking straight into his eyes. That is exactly what I am concerned about, and not just my future, but everyone’s future.

Look, you’re far too young to start shouldering the weight of all the problems on this planet. So, just put Mother Nature on hold while you are in my class and focus on Father Economy, the professor smiles.

"Father Economy? she snaps back, You’ve got to be joking? The father hasn’t even started to wave his invisible hand. In case you haven’t noticed, the earth is changing…"

Mary writes the words, one under the other, EARTH AIR PLANTS ANIMALS as she says, "The father is on this side! She points to MOTHER NATURE. He has not weighed in yet. He has noticed that we’re no longer satisfied with just suckling at her breast. And like a good father, he wants us to have free will. What he can’t see is that we just want her exploitable resources, so we can serve this precious economy… Mary’s passion is evident as she continues, And it’s killing her. Like any mother, she has given all she can. But like spoiled children, we just can’t wait to inherit what we believe is ours. You’re teaching us to rip at her very flesh, her every treasured morsel listed on the stock exchange. You can see how she is responding to the pain." Mary writes the words in blue, CLIMATE and FORCES under MOTHER NATURE.

Even with all her gifts, we still plunge deep into her belly, gouge at her skin, violate the very balance of nature. Yet we’re continuing this back and forth dance we insist on leading. Have you not noticed? Are you seeing what is playing out around the world, its daily news? With every disastrous war, oil spill, reactor leak, dammed river, strip mine, smoke stack, weapon testing, logging, and so much more? Each manmade catastrophe just provokes an equally devastating natural disaster. How long how can we ignore what is imminent? How long can this endure before it’s too late?

The professor, surprised at her emotion, tries to settle her down. Things are not quite so dire. You can’t just look at the ugly side of mankind. We are not all opportunists. We have many magnificent accomplishments. There are endless good deeds and as many kind, well meaning people as there are those that do wrong.

Mary picks up the red marker, looks back at the professor and begins to lecture him. Okay, let’s go with that. You said, ‘as many as’. That would imply a balance. So why are there now less species? She writes the word LESS beside ANIMALS, and continues. Less trees, as she writes LESS beside PLANTS. Polluted skies, holes in the ozone, dangerous UV indexes, hundreds of thousands of children gasping with asthma…"

She writes LESS beside the word AIR; then turns to the professor. Do you want to know what the tyranny of all these small decisions we make daily is? She doesn’t wait for his answer. When this balance you’re talking about finally keeps us from going outside because the air is un-breathable, so toxic that the very plants and animals that feed us all need to be farmed indoors, small decisions that foster the tyranny of disease and pandemics eventually leading to…

Mary stops for a second to write PANDEMICS and DISEASE under CLIMATE and FORCES in green. She switches to blue and writes the word MAN. And in red beside MAN she writes LESS saying, Less man…

The Professor interrupts, And that is tyranny?

Mary leaps back at the board. No! The tyranny is… She writes in red the word FEW and in green INNOCENT. "Even with, less man, regardless the number, there will always be the few privileged and the innocent. Because that’s what we learned—that’s what you teach. She draws a red arrow to the word ECONOMY, saying as she completes a circle in red, And the only way the economy survives is to continue to exploit nature, resulting in less air, less plants, less animals, and less man."

Then, her big finish: That’s our future. If you care to see past the Market Index, it’s a vicious circle spiraling in on itself, like flushing a toilet. She makes several more swirling circles in red, then points at the word INNOCENT and writes with the green marker, OFF-THE-GRID and OIL, putting an x through the word OIL; whispering to herself, "It starts with X on oil."

She stares at the board then back to the professor; throws her purse over her shoulder, and hands him the red and green markers. She half turns toward the door; then taking one last look at the board, she picks up the blue marker, draws a line across the bottom of the board under INNOCENT, writes HOPE below the line, and draws a final arrow from INNOCENT to HOPE.

Mary says under her breath, It will have to be the innocent that rise against those few privileged if there is any hope to clean up this mess.

Mary notices that the professor was listening as he stares at the board. She heads to the door with her back to the professor. After a couple steps she hears him say:

It’s not just me, Mary. All the staff is concerned. You are rebellious. It’s like you’re trying to force a confrontation over anything that doesn’t agree with you…like you have some kind of hidden agenda.

Mary hesitates. She realizes he cares, he’s always treated her fair, and she tries to hold back the tears. You’re right. I am just a small insignificant voice…

The professor jumps in. On the contrary. Because of your family’s contributions and the influence they still hold here, believe me, your voice is loud.

He runs a hand over his salt and pepper hair. Mary, I respect your passion, but you have to get past this thought that it’s you against the world. The world is not against you. It’s much more complex than that, not all black and white, Mother Nature against the economy.

Mary wipes away a tear and raises her voice. I don’t care about what my family has done, or what you think about them… She hesitates, trying to choose her words carefully. Okay, you brought up my ancestry, so let me remind you of yours. It was no mass migration or divine spiritual pilgrimage. There was no war, no plague, drought, or other natural disasters. No pioneers, no explorers, and no mistake. Africans were taken from their home, brought to America, and sold like commodities, beasts of burden to serve the economy. Each sale, just small decisions…to buy, or not to buy. She stops and it’s awkwardly silent before she continues.

"There. Is that the example of tyranny you wanted to hear from me in class today? I know we are living in a different time now, but