Unity

By Nicholas Schubert

In a world with Facebook controlling the social classes it creates two separate Societies. One with wealth and prosperity in the sky, the other being third world post apocalypse. We meet Jeff Epoch 14, he is a family man who runs a crew of surface agents, who find themselves in a sticky situation during a job. Jeff finds himself cornered by a military officer and forced to take on a protégé named Ben. During his training they start working together to save Ben’s younger brother from gangs on land and to find his family. Once they find someone has deleted them from Facebook Data Base, Jeff realized someone is hiding something. How far will they go to keep they’re secrets hidden. Is it worth risking everything?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728369914

Book preview

2020 Nicholas Schubert. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   09/02/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6992-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-6991-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Prologue/Query

Chapter 1 Dreaming

Chapter 2 Game Day

Chapter 3 End Of The Month

Chapter 4 Mi Familia

Chapter 5 Butterscotch Ripple

Chapter 6 Mi Casa Su Casa

Chapter 7 History

Chapter 8 Just South

Chapter 9 Yellow

Chapter 10 Facebook Head Quarters

Chapter 11 Routine

Chapter 12 A Glass Of Bourbon

Chapter 13 I Promise

Chapter 14 Basic Military Knowledge

Chapter 15 Fighter Jets

Chapter 16 Off The Books

Chapter 17

Chapter 18 Michail

Chapter 19 Out Of Province

PROLOGUE/QUERY

Setting is in the future where physics don’t matter and the whole world has ability. You can manipulate objects using your mind and students work on concentration and memory ex: making water staircases and puzzles just with there mind. They have a different calendar it’s 12 months but it consists of calling the month a planet. The world is split into two, there are people who live in concrete levitating homes in the shape of a flying saucer these people are considered to be upper class or wealthy and in control. They have medical care, education up to the age of 18, business ventures and they are perfect in most ways. An interesting side note is that these people have computers and log into facebook but facebook is different then what it was initially intended for as blue dots or blue matter is good things to happen/items of sort almost like a currency. Also this blue matter is used to purchase square ft of air or land beneath them. The other part of this futuristic facebook is grey matter which is almost like demerits. These demerits can be given to a person on ground and it will bring them hardships. Anyine with a computer (the sky people) can see peoples accounts almost like a police data base give them demerits or debt so they have difficulty surviving. The other group of people are the ones with grey matter and they suffer on the surface of earth. These people have raids chid soldiers bombing. shoot outs no access to money or health care no education or laws victims of prejudice and discrimination and racism. Basically the apocalypse. Some of the surface people are lucky enough to find computer soft ware planted by the sky people. Since data base info on Earth is for sky people the surface people don’t know what they are called if they get the code or name and enter it to onto the computer they can leave earth via a scout security flying ambulance or a pod that picks them up and takes them to rehabilitation where they go through the steps of becoming a sky person. Sky people go down to the surface for various protocol and preventive maintenance reasons they carry weapons but treat them like there lepers or zombies. There are incidents often creating friction among the two groups. Our protagonist finds himself from the surface group in the middle of a street with buildings on fire when while searching he finds a computer in building of ruble that was left behind during an altercation happening moments ago. He has an eye out of its socket hanging by a nerve he is hunched over wearing rags and malnourished. The computer scans his face then a code comes up along with a name and he types it in then the scout picks him up. There are new species of predator on earth that hide in the forrest as well they cause concern for sky people going to surface. Sky people only dress in hazmat suites with weapons such as tranquilizers and flame throwers while traveling to the surface. The scouts or flying droids shoot plasma ammo as well. These droids also provide intel on whats happening to surface people and sends pics back to go on Facebook. Another aspect of life among the sky people. The sky people also have a city that is on land that levitates with beautiful Architecture and an amazing waterfall. You aren’t accepted onto this place unless your lucky enough to granted permission.

Permission could be granted for things such as a good facebook accounts meaning enough land and blue matter, being from a Prestigious family or earn valor in ways of confronting surface people during preventive maintenance.

CHAPTER 1

DREAMING

A day in the field generally speaking meant precise planning the day before hours of scouring over surveillance and blue matter in its respective places but for a few reasons it had been unproductive. The first being Sara who had been practicing violin once again and Sam who practiced his water levitating that grew in complexity that was even beyond his abilities. And he couldn’t help but stare with melancholy at the scenery of the city every day in his view. A reminder of what will never be. Juggling family with monthly inspections and a hard days work done with ease in hopes that someday it wouldn’t be so far away.

A group of surface dwellers hid behind a vehicle waiting for their plan to be set in motion among them was Jeff he saw the three sky people in hazmat suites. He had been tracked by droids unsure of their intentions, he felt fear. Then a large explosion happened and rubble swarmed with debris falling in all directions. They all screamed and ran towards the station that was once a foot patrol mission just seconds from there pod. Jeff ran like a mad man he got to the sky people and attacked him throwing punches then another person pulled him back and stabbed him in the eye with a pen pulling his eye out of its socket leaving him with one eye and the other drooping down his cheek hanging by a nerve. With his ailment he looked at the computer unguarded, suddenly another dweller came to his aid and struck the man in a hazmat suite and began thrashing him, that was all he needed, a much younger Jeff ran to the computer all he needed was his name. he scanned the computer and saw his reflection and couldn’t help but feel like a grotesque animal. The computer scanned his face and pulled up his file ACCESS DENIED reincar status unacceptable. He could see lights from droids coming closer, he switched two pieces of information ACCEPTED and the computer hummed Welcome to Facebook. suddenly the drones appeared they scanned his face and the blinking red light turned green and the droid responded hello Jeff follow me to your pod and begin your rehabilitation process.

Jeff woke up abruptly, earlier than the rest of the family and jumped out of bed to greet a rainy overcast morning. He had been dreaming again this time in more detail he was on the surface again. Not sure whether it meant anything he decided to take his mood stabilizers and focus inhibitors with gratitude.

The house had a door on the left that opened up to a table and kitchen on the right with plenty of space then on the right of that there was an office with his hologram projector and computer with big screens on the wall. Then past the office was the living room across from that was a hallway where the bedrooms were, on the right was where the doors are and with windows on the left almost from the floor to the roof. Standard living quarters for there profile. Everything was white and well lit. His tunic the walls, table, kitchen were all white except for his office which was dark with black monitors. He decided to go for a run since he had the extra time. Soon after he finished his morning routine, he entered his office and opened three files on his data base waving through his email and logging on to Facebook to see what kind of night his candidates had, glimpsing at surveillance inventory. The other file was of his own welfare on

Reviews for Unity

[gregfromgilbe-367580 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love books like this that draw many fields together. Wilson is an excellent science writer with a great style.

[jbd1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my very favorite books. Wilson argues that scholars ought to work harder to bridge the gaps between the humanities and scientific disciplines.

[librisissimo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Didn't impress me; read it too long ago to note details here. 

[johnclaydon · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Remarkably crappy.

[osprey-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A elegantly written book that challenges the artificial barriers we've erected to separate categories of knowledge. Among the many entertaining segments in the book, Wilson takes on the post-modernists with gusto and clarity.

[mkjones_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The enlightenment reborn! Literately written and persuasively argued, the author informs you why science is the best way to explain everything, from the natural sciences (where it's doing just fine), to the social sciences, arts and humanities, and finally to morality and religion. Reduction and synthesis both abound in this epistemologically monistic vision of the world.

[jewsbury · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a lecture on the unity and connectivity of all academic knowledge. In many ways this is a subterranean idea – only half appreciated by most people who have detailed knowledge of a small number of fields. Hence in our fractured world, this book promotes conciliation as well as consilience. It also involves a cry for greater knowledge of science by everyone. Wilson, a theoretical biologist, makes several assertions: science is driven by curiosity not politics; significant progress is measured by advances in theoretical understanding; biology is more complex than physics; the physical sciences are materialistic and the most basic; and there must be laws of complexity to explain evolutionary development. He then decides that: all science is materialistic; minds are consequences of informational processes within material brains; our brain structures and capabilities are relics of the Stone Age; and free will is an illusion. It is an entertaining and thought provoking book – a pleasure to read. Yet a non-scientist might fail to distinguish between plausible and deductive conclusions.

[justine_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not an easy read, but an interesting concept. I'm not sure if I buy it, but the area of thought: where science meets the broader humanities is fascinating.

[yiggy_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Consilience was a great read I thought. Wilson gives a brief account of the history of consiliatory thought and then begins taking each area of the humanities head on. In dicussing recent movements and ideas and biology, Wilson sketches out what we know about the mind and how he sees biology linking together with higher social phenomena in the long-run. In doing so all topics are approached, from economics and art to religion and literature. Wilson closes the book with a plea to end petty squabbling between sciences and humanities and to put the culture wars away in order to solve the more important problems of the day. His last chapter outlines the global warming crisis (as of 1998) and makes a call for all sides to come together in order to save "The Creation" as he refers to it. Wilson's prose is elegant and moving at times and his explanations and metaphors are apt.

[electricray · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I've made the observation before that scientists - especially biologists - tend to make lousy philosophers, and it doesn't take long to see Professor E. O. Wilson - one of evolutionary biology's most prominent lights - places himself squarely in that camp. "No one should suppose," he asserts, "that objective truth is impossible to attain, even when the most committed philosophers urge us to acknowledge that incapacity. In particular it is too early for scientists, the foot soldiers of epistemology, to yield ground so vital to their mission. ... No intellectual vision is more important and daunting than that of objective truth based on scientific understanding." On the other hand, and (as far as I can tell) without intending the irony with which the statement overflows, not long afterwards he says, "People are innate romantics, they desperately need myth and dogma." None more so, it would seem, that philosophising evolutionary biologists. Wilson's Consilience is a long essay on objective truth that - per the above quotation, gratuitously misunderstands what epistemology even is, whilst at the same time failing to mention (except in passing) any of its most important contributors - the likes of Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Quine, Rorty or even dear old Popper. Instead, Wilson characterises objections to his extreme reductionism as "leftist" thought including - and I quote - "Afrocentrism, 'critical' (i.e., socialist) science, deep ecology, ecofeminism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Latourian sociology of science and neo-Marxism." Horrified enough yet? That's about the level of engagement you'll get, and the only concession - a self-styled "salute" to the postmodernists - is "their ideas are like sparks from firework explosions that travel away in all directions, devoid of following energy, soon to wink out in the dimensionless dark. Yet a few will endure long enough to cast light on unexpected subjects." You could formulate a more patronising disposition, I suppose, but it would take some work. What is extraordinary is that of all scientists, a biologist should be so insensitive to the contingency of knowledge, as this is the exact lesson evolutionary theory teaches: it's not the perfect solution that survives, but the most effective. There is no "ideal organism". In support of his own case, Wilson refers at some length to the chimerical nature of consciousness (taking Daniel Dennett's not uncontroversial account more or less as read). But there is a direct analogy here: Dennett's model of "consciousness" stands in the same relation to the material brain as Wilson's "consilience" stands to the physical universe. Dennett says consciousness is an illusion - a trick of the mind, if you like (and rather wilfully double-parks the difficult question "a trick on whom?"). But by extension, could not consilience also be a trick of the mind? Things look like they're ordered, consistent, universal, *because that's how we're wired to see them*. Our evolutionary development (fully contingent and path-dependent, as even Wilson would agree) has built a sensory apparatus which filters the information in the world in a way which is ever-more effective (that's the clever trick of evolutionary development). If it is of adaptive benefit to apprehend "the world" as a consistent, coherent whole, then as long as that coherent whole accounts effectively for our physiologically meaningful experiences, then its relation to "the truth" is really beside the point. When I run to catch a cricket ball on the boundary no part of my brain solves differential equations to catch it (I don't have nearly enough information to do that), and no immutable, unseen cosmic machine calculates those equations to plot its trajectory either. Our mathematical model is a clever proxy, and we shouldn't be blinded by its elegance or apparent accuracy (though, in point of fact, practically it isn't that accurate) into assuming it somehow reveals an ineffable truth. This isn't a new or especially controversial objection, by the way: this was one of David Hume's main insights - an Enlightenment piece of enlightenment, if you will. As a matter of logic, there must be alternate ways of describing the same phenomena, and if you allow yourself to implement different rules to solve the puzzle, the set of coherent alternative solutions is infinite. So our self congratulation at the cleverness of the model we have arrived at (and, sure, it is very clever) shouldn't be overdone. It isn't the "truth" - it's an effective proxy, and there is a world of difference between the two. And there are uncomfortable consequences of taking the apparently harmless step of conflating them. For one thing, "consilience" tends to dissuade inquiry: if we believe we have settled on an ineffable truth, then further discussion can only confuse and endanger our grip on it. It also gives us immutable grounds for arbitrating against those who hold an "incorrect" view. That is, to hold forth a theory which is inconsistent with the mainstream "consiliated" view is wasteful and given it has the potential to lead us *away* from the "true" path, may legitimately be suppressed. You can see this style of reasoning being employed by two groups already: militant religious fundamentalists, and militant atheists. Neither is prepared to countenance the pluralistic, pragmatic (and blindingly obvious) view that there are not just many different *ways* of looking at the world but many different *reasons* for doing so, and each has its own satisfaction criteria. While these opposing fundamentalists go hammer and tongs against each other, their similarities are greater than their differences, and their greatest similarity is that neither fully comprehends, and as a consequence neither takes seriously, the challenge of the "postmodern" strands of thought against which they're aligned. Hence, someone like Wilson can have the hubris to say things like: "Yet I think it is fair to say that enough is known to justify confidence in the principle of universal rational consilience across all the natural sciences" Try telling that to Kurt Goedel or Bertrand Russell, let alone Richard Rorty or Jacques Derrida.

[ibreak4books · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have just recently re-read this book and this time around I appreciate Mr. Wilson's thoroughly logical attempts to make sense of our increasingly illogical world. I was especially interested in his ideas about Postmodernism--and it's belief that we each have a separate unique reality--destroying the ability of art to connect people to larger, inately human, archetypes. To me, this would explain the world gone mad on religion: we are searching for archetypes.

[brleach · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A few promising moments, but most of the time it is either trite or based on a fundamentally misguided understanding of the topics he's addressing.

[sharder_8 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

EO Wilson argues that social sciences and humanities should work towards consilience with natural sciences. I agree totally with this point of view, but I do not find his version very new or informed. From a philosophical viewpoint it is a bit 'pedestrian', reductionist, rather than materialistic. Reading the last chapter, you get the suspicion that the whole book is really a ecologically minded biologist, who wants to debunk economical theory.

[timothyburke · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm in love with the premise of this book, which is that humanists, social scientists and natural scientists need to work harder to connect or unify knowledge, to recapture the mood of Enlightenment-era inquiry. Too bad Wilson doesn't believe in his own premise. If this is unification of knowledge, it's the same kind of unification that Hitler pursued with the Sudenteland, not consilience but conquest. Wilson is intellectually lazy in his engagement with the humanities. There's nothing wrong with a reasoned critique of various trends in humanistic theory or scholarship, but Wilson doesn't bother to do much more than simply assert the validity not just of science but of a very particular set of intellectual projects within the sciences while throwing a few armchair, shop-worn dismissals at critical theory, humanistic knowledge and the like. The obligation to literacy in other intellectual traditions besides one's own flows both ways, at least if consilience (and conciliation) are the goal. It's perfectly possible to override hermeneutics with cogntivism or evolutionary psychology, for example, but not just by fiat. Wilson sets his own declared cause back a few paces with this book, and what should be an exciting reading experience is instead an aggravating one.

[poreilly_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Profound, masterful, unique.