The Bering Reactor

By Esteban Navarro Soriano

After the Second World War, the world divided into five major blocs: the Third Empire, encompassing most European countries; the Capitalist Axis, consisting of the United States, England, Russia, and Israel; the Arab Kingdom, comprising Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, joined later by Morocco; the Latin Empire, formed by all Latin American countries with Cuba at the forefront; and the Yellow Dynasty, constituted by China, Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. A secret agent from Spain, within the Third Empire, uncovers a plot orchestrated by autocratic dictatorships aimed at exterminating the most underprivileged populations using a powerful virus known as Ruboergo. Meanwhile, the recent discovery of a hidden Nazi invention, the Bering Reactor, threatens global peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667467399

Book preview

Prologue

Our entire generation had been raised with the memory of the Bering Reactor. An invention of the Nazis, capable of transporting any object or person from one side of the planet to the other in just a few seconds. This story was part of our childhood memories, much like Atlantis, the Voynich manuscript, or the Templars. Thats why, because it was a fantasy, we were never forbidden to talk about that contraption, but in a way, it meant softening what the Nazis had been. They didnt forbid us to read either, although there were banned books. I had one by my bedside, which I found in a garbage dump in my neighborhood one day when my mother sent me to buy bread. It was Logans Run," a dystopian novel that presented a fictional society where, to solve the problem of overpopulation, a machine called the Thinker ensured that no one survived beyond 21 years. A white rose was embedded in the palm of every newborn, changing color every seven years until it turned black. Then, they had to go to a Crystal Palace, where they were injected with death. What fascinated me most about this novel was that there was an elite force tasked with hunting down and eliminating those who exceeded the deadline. These police were known as the Watchers. I spent all my adolescence wanting to be a Watcher.

We grew up surrounded by a peace our parents never dreamed of. Since the end of the Great War in 1945, the worlds governments had agreed on the non-proliferation of military weapons and the resolution of any conflicts between nations through diplomacy. The memory of the war and the discovery, in the Nubia desert, of the oldest civilization ever uncovered, were decisive in making the Empires value preventing their extinction. Among the ruins of the city, countless astonishing archaeological remains were found, turning the entire history of humanity upside down. Items such as alkaline batteries, electric cables, propellers, notebooks, pencils, cabinets, dental prosthetics were recovered. In short, objects more in line with our time than the supposed era they dated back to. Initially, the scientific community suspected a hoax, thinking someone had placed all those objects there. But they ultimately concluded that this ancient civilization had indeed existed, predating any other known civilization, and it was revealed that their extinction was due to nuclear war. The studys conclusions were grim: our ancestors knew how to make atomic bombs, and that precisely was what ended them. This discovery reinforced the commitment of the Empires to disarm, and all the world"s governments took seriously the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and diplomacy prevailed in relations between powers.

Simultaneously, numerous secret services had emerged in all countries, and computer archives had swollen to unimaginable limits. The average citizen was unaware of these maneuvers by their governments, and all they knew was that to travel to another Empire, one had to fill out endless forms, and national security agencies were responsible for assessing whether that person posed a danger to the stability of their government system. Surveillance extended not only to those coming in but also to those leaving. Borders were fortified, and most citizens were condemned to live in the Empire where they were born, rendering the term migrant meaningless.

By the year 2000, the new world order was formed by the so-called five axes:

- The Capitalist Axis: England, Russia, the United States, and Israel.

- The Third Empire: Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan.

- The Arab Kingdom: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco.

- The Latin American Empire, formed by all the countries of South America, without exception.

- And the Yellow Dynasty: China, Taiwan, both Koreas, and Mongolia.

The Assembly of Nations was located in Switzerland, a traditionally neutral country, where meetings of the five axes were held, and actions in case of conflicting interests were negotiated. Nevertheless, it was a fictional peace; the tug-of-war among the Five Empires kept the world safe but wary. A system of checks and balances ensured a fragile peace. The Capitalist Axis guaranteed the containment of the expansionist Third Empire, which, despite having non-aggression pacts with these governments, was distrusted by the Germans, as they had violated some of those treaties for years. That was the reason why, after Hitlers death, the term Nazi" was relegated, and its use in any media, such as the press or television, was prohibited. The Reich wanted to erase the dictatorial image and memories of the Holocaust and focus more on a future in line with the new world order.

And like any civilization worth its salt, there was a great threat that compelled them to stay united in their struggle: the Ruboergo virus. It was a terrible virus, currently contained in the African continent, and world powers joined forces to prevent it from spreading beyond. The havoc it could wreak in Africa was of no concern to them. Their worry was that it would cross the border and infect any inhabitant of the Five Empires.

The name Third Empire was introduced by Nazi propaganda as a result of some simple calculations, counting the Holy Roman Empire as the First Empire, the German Empire of 1871 as the second, and the regime established by Hitler from 1933 to 1975, in which the Führer died of a pulmonary complication in his Parisian residence on Julio Verne Street, as the third. Other states did not object to the Nazis wanting to name their territories the Third Empire because, although it remained a dictatorship, it was decaffeinated compared to the one established by its founder in its beginnings.

Armed conflicts had erupted in Africa, the poorest region on the planet, and the governments of the five major coalitions sought ways to intervene and curb those wars without using military force. To do this, they had encouraged the emergence of one of the most necessary imperial positions: the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Foreign Ministers of all the countries in the world were the archangel guardians of world stability. They periodically met in Switzerland, on Pablo Picasso Street in Bern. There, they discussed matters of interest for global stability, knowing that a new war would mean the end of the planet. Now there was no hunger, no water scarcity, not even environmental degradation or overpopulation. Administrations worldwide allocated a very high amount of their annual budgets to research, and diseases were cured as soon as they emerged. Those influenza strains that killed most of Europes inhabitants last century were now just colds, thanks to the development and cost reduction of vaccines, making them accessible to all governments. An example was the AIDS vaccine, administered to all schoolchildren from the age of eight, and its effect lasted until they turned twenty, when they received the final dose that made them immune for life. However, the biggest problem facing humanity was containing the spread of the Ruboergo virus, the deadliest since the plague, AIDS, or Ebola. The virus was decimating the global black population and had become the first problem to be addressed by scientists worldwide. The borders of all countries of the Five Empires had closed to prevent inhabitants of Africa, the only continent where Ruboergo thrived, from entering. It was estimated that more than ten million people died each year from infection. Contamination occurred through bodily fluids, saliva, sweat, or blood, and fortunately, the bacterium was unable to survive outside the human body for more than twenty-four hours. And an important note: it only affected humans. Experts still didnt know why, but Ruboergo did not live in animals, not even in primates, something that, for the time being, prevented contamination from occurring rapidly enough to have already wiped out the human race. The stricter religious figures advocated for the end of humanity, and the Vatican had already predicted the Day of Judgment.

10. Ten

I was a boy just as ordinary as the others, although I had the feeling that I was different and harbored the