Tower-7 the Sustainer’s

By Betty L. Alt

In the late 21st century, with the new ice age causing worldwide starvation, industrialized nations have condemned all private property. Citizens have been forced into huge tower complexes, and land is used solely for food production under the Bureau of Sustenance. Amos Benton and Jake Martinez, employees of the Bureau, are sent from Tower-7 to investigate interior damage and missing items taken from a sustainer pod near Dallas. It is finally decided that the incursions into the pod are due to hungry animals. Benton, recalling his capture and escape nearly three years earlier from a group of people still living outside, is not so sure . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669878773

Betty L. Alt

Betty Alt is the author or co-author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction. She has an M.A. from Northeast Missouri State University and has taught at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. Alt is now retired and living in Tennessee.

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Copyright © 2023 by Betty L. Alt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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.

Rev. date: 05/24/2023

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Prologue

As early as 1798, English scholar Thomas Malthus had warned the world that problems such as poverty, malnutrition and disease would occur with excess population. The power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, he warned in An Essay on the Principle of Population. He predicted that, if unchecked, populations would grow until they were too large to be supported by the food from available agricultural land.

Of course, writing near the end of the eighteenth century, Malthus could not foresee the great technological advancements beginning in the twentieth century which eventually would produce hybrid seeds, new fertilizers, pesticides to control insects, and huge mechanized harvesters. Therefore, his dire early warnings fell on deaf ears until . . .

Food! Food! Food! The cry echoed around the world in the middle of the twenty-first century as millions began to face starvation. In 2034, changing weather patterns beginning in September and lasting until late March caused America’s Great Lakes to completely freeze over; snowflakes fell on southern Italy, inland Egypt, and along the Amazon River in Brazil. Ice coated the Thames in England and completely stopped ocean transportation to Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As some scientists predicted, a new ice age had had begun.

Then, in parts of the world during the few summer months, a scorching sun began to turn originally fertile land into deserts in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Caught between the record-breaking ice and snow of long winters and blistering heat of short summers, the global growing season was cut each year to between four and five months.

In 2039, as food stockpiles in the industrialized countries began to dwindle and the world’s smallest harvest occurred in that year, panic swept every nation. This forced government leaders to put aside their usual political and military disagreements and concentrate on only one area – population survival. A Committee for Sustenance, composed of the best agricultural and scientific minds in the world, met in Geneva and after sixteen months – filled with increasing worldwide starvation and food riots – presented its report of impending doom.

1.Unless food supplies could be increased astronomically, at least one third of the earth’s total population would die of malnutrition or its effects within nine years. (It was not mentioned that these deaths would help others survive.)

2.The United States, Canada, Argentina, Russia, China and other cattle and grain-producing areas of the world have difficulty providing adequately for their own people let alone the populations of other nations.

3.Immediate action was needed in these five countries (and parts of Europe) to reclaim and utilize for food production land now utilized for economic activities and population housing.

4.To accomplish this, all population should be moved, forcibly if necessary, into some form of huge high-rise cities. This would free for food production millions of suburban acreages presently utilized for such luxuries as single-family dwellings, expansive lawns, patios, swimming pools, shopping malls, etc.

Acting on the dire recommendations of the Sustenance Committee, governments in the industrialized countries actively entered the field of agriculture and rigidly controlled all food supplies. Immediately, the United States began forcibly to confiscate all privately-owned land for sustenance production. Private property ceased to exist in America, and all citizens were concentrated in gigantic urban towers.

The first Unites States tower complex – climbing toward the heavens and with a population of nearly two million – was completed and occupied in February 2051 near what had originally been St. Louis, Missouri. Chief architect for this project was the innovative George Stokes Benton who (with his wife Lucy Amos Benton and young son, Amos) had personally surveyed the site as early as 2043.

As the designer, Benton was given the honor of naming the tower. He suggested Babel-ON, a combination of the Biblical tower of Babylon and the hanging gardens of Babylon. His suggestion was accepted, and around the world if it were possible, towers were given similar names – Eiffel-ON in Paris, Pisa-ON in Italy, Lenin 17 in Russia, Tower of London or T of L as it was known by the residents.

Included worldwide within each tower complex were living quarters, schools, libraries, hospitals, shopping malls, theaters, recreational areas – all of the necessities of life condensed into millions of fewer acres than the old cities. Needed industry and manufacturing was sealed off from other parts of the residential towers to avoid any chance of pollution or toxic gases reaching the otherwise ideal climatic conditions under which the population lived. Fire and police were available on various levels although both services were seldom needed. Intra-tower transportation in the form of elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks easily and quickly carried workers or shoppers to their destinations.

In the early days of tower living, highways, railroads, and airplanes connected towers across the country, and towerites were permitted to take vacations to other towers. However, these eventually were discouraged, and all roads and rails were utilized solely for food transport. Fewer and fewer individuals sought to venture far from their birthplace. (It was estimated that by the year 2075, all individuals born that year in technologically developed areas would live and die without having left their tower.)

Across the United States huge towers had been constructed near major cities, many times moving population from neighboring states. (For example, The Boston Tower housed all of the population from Massachusetts and Vermont. Miami Tower covered all of Florida and Mississippi. Tacoma Tower included population from both Oregon, Washington and the upper part of California.)

Of course, in the beginning there were many Americans and citizens in other nations who balked at the idea of tower living. To counteract this thinking, governments made it illegal to reside outside a tower and forcibly moved those who tried to resist. This caused horrendous problems during a period which became known as the Cycle of Chaos. Black marketeering in food was rampant and took years to control. Suicide was high, especially among the elderly who felt they could not survive caged in a building. Civil revolt developed in many areas, and to enforce the laws governments used police and the military to quell continuing food riots. Millions of people around the world died over a period of ten years – a time that became known as B.C. (Before Chaos) and A.C. (After Chaos).

However, as food became scarcer and scarcer, humans began to realize that their survival was synonymous with tower living. By 2096, the tower system was functioning well, and except for middle and southern Africa, Australia and most of Brazil, people had made the adaptation. In America, as far as both its federal and tower governments were concerned, no one could be living outside.

There are so many hungry people that God

cannot appear to them except

in the form of bread.

                                        -Corita Kent, 1965

Clad in a neatly pressed dark green uniform with a collar patch that indicated he was an employee of the Bureau of Sustenance, Amos Benton waited on the twenty-fifth floor of Babel-On. He had been scheduled for an 8:30 meeting with Solomon John, Director of Sustenance, and the man was late. John had recently been promoted from his former title of Manager and was well-known for always being in control of PPD – Production, Processing, and Distribution. The red-headed receptionist had explained that her boss being late was unusual for him as he was known always to be prompt and expected the same from his employees.

Stretching his left leg and pointing the toe of his boot, Benton smiled with pleasure. It had taken nearly three years and several operations on his thigh and knee after he had been shot and left to die in a cornfield on the border between Missouri and Arkansas. Now, with months of intense and painful physical therapy behind him, the leg seemed to be as good as new, and he was ready for another assignment.

Have a couple of calls to make. Just wait! Solomon John stated as he suddenly appeared. Hurrying past the two people, he entered his office and firmly closed the door.

No Good morning. Benton mused. No How are you? No Sorry to keep you waiting. Benton shook his head and smoothed his dark hair to hide a bit of gray which had crept in during his convalescence. Just the usual abrupt, surly Solomon John. He’s always been somewhat like this, but it seems to have gotten worse since he became Director.

Benton had been assigned to the Bureau of Sustenance for more than fifteen years now -- shortly after completing his college education -- and was aware that John had not been happy with that assignment. However, since Amos was the son of George Stokes Benton, the famous architect who had conceived the tower idea and had been instrumental in the design and construction of several towers, there was nothing Solomon John could do about Amos . . . except make him wait for his appointment.

Leg appears to be doing better, the Director stated as Benton finally took a chair in the man’s office. Ceiling to floor windows made up the wall behind Solomon John’s glass-topped desk. Through its panes, soiled from repeated snow, rain, and dust storms, the sun could be seen faintly in a nearly colorless sky.

Benton suddenly recalled how blue the sky appeared when he had been on assignment outside the tower, wading through acres of corn fields ripening in the late summer sun. He shook his head to clear away the memory and straightened in his chair.

Leg is fine. No problems at all. Benton replied quickly. I’ve been cleared for return to duty.

Yesss, John dragged the word out. I see that from your file. Have any special place you’d like to go?

Not Boston nor Minneapolis . . . too cold, Benton thought. And not Seattle. Too much rain. But definitely don’t want him to know where I might like to go. Otherwise, he’s sure to send me in the opposite direction.

Wherever you think is best, Benton replied and waited a moment before adding, Of course, I could even stay here, if you feel that there’s some slot I could fill . . .

No! No! We’re overstaffed here, John said quickly. He did not want Benton to stay in