Convergence: Beyond the Great Doom

By W. Thomas McQueeney

no information available as of the moment

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369409039

W. Thomas McQueeney

Convergence Beyond the Great Doom is the sequel to the author’s first novel, Disaffections of Time. The author has penned eighteen books to include histories, biographies, travel, humor, and other literary offerings. In addition to his authorship, W. Thomas McQueeney has exhibited a penchant for community service. He has chaired or served as a director to more than two dozen organizations – mostly in the realm of non-profits. His volunteer chairmanship of the Johnson Hagood Stadium Revitalization ($44.5 million) and The National Medal of Honor Leadership & Education Center ($75 million) have brought benefit to both local and national audiences. He has served his college, The Citadel, on their board of trustees, The Citadel Board of Visitors, in addition to their fundraising arm, The Citadel Foundation. His book proceeds have each been directed to various charities to benefit an array of worthy causes. The author lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. He is married with four children and five grandchildren. In 2009, McQueeney was awarded The Order of the Palmetto, the highest civilian honor bestowed upon a citizen of the State of South Carolina.

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Copyright © 2023 by W. Thomas McQueeney.

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: 11/21/2023

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CONTENTS

Perspective

Introduction

1   Crystal Clear MAD

2   The Savant of Seven Centuries

3   Fly Away

4   Separate Lives

5   The Nobel Laureates

6   The Russian President

7   The Woods are Full

8   Crystalized Crisis

9   A Murderous Accident

10  Dr. Pullard

11  Exponential Exponents

12  The Rugby Player

13  The Intersection of Air Masses

14  The Commodities Broker

15  Instincts

16  At the Doorstep

17  Finding Hope

18  Air Strikes

19  Promenade Walk

20  The Accepted Misgivings

21  Forewarned

22  Warlords

23  The Tasman West

24  Disconcerting Evil

25  Convergence

26  The Repugnant Lecture

27  Saving Face

28  Guayaquil Limited

29  Finding a New World

30  The Overt & the Covert

31  The Port Authority

32  Shoreside

33  A Visitor in the Storm

34  The Doyle Buoys

35  Midnight Lightning

36  Abduction

37  Van Walder City

38  Invitations Sent

39  The Gatherings

40  Zapusk!

41  Questioning Authority

42  No Turning Back

43  Aboard ‘The Constance’

44  International Space Travelers

45  Logistics and Linguistics

46  Silent Steerage

47  Tsunami

48  The Brilliance at Sea

49  Out of Options

50  Doubtless Bay

51  Zip Line

52  Going South

53  No Return

54  The Passage

55  Splashdown

56  Sons and Daughters

57  Rescued Rescuers

58  Benefits of Isolation

59  Nursing Services

60  Rogue Adversary

61  Terminus

62  Victim

63  The Slag Chamber

64  Safe Travels

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Perspective

This topic escapes the standard form of singular themes by the nature of its necessary multi-faceted construction. By example, it is not the simplicity of a love story, a wartime drama, or an escapist fantasy. This treatment requires a preponderance of factions, characters, and obstacles along with a basis of developing events. The study of geopolitics, atmospheric radiation, modern weaponry, biosciences, astrophysics, and predictive analysis became obligatory to benefit the reality envisioned. The sequences, contexts, and numerous characters are compulsory to present the broadening advancement of factors critical to the conclusion. The author presents this topic within the sincere attitude that it must never happen. excerpts of the script herein are cryptic.

Introduction

The frailty of humankind has been tested through the ages. There were lapses of learning, isolations, and cataclysmic natural disasters. The Irish monasteries where Greek and Latin were preserved became the conduit to the knowledge of ancient times. There were mysterious cultures – the Chinese, Etruscans, Iroquois, Māori, Aztec, and Japanese – among others. Many closed their worlds to the outside as defensive postures. Many vanished entirely.

Science confirms natural calamities – like the submerged Chicxulub Crater near the Yucatan Peninsula that ended the age of the dinosaurs. The Zanclean Mediterranean Flood refilled the seabed between Europe and Africa. Devastating volcanoes at Santorini (around 1600 BC), and more recently at Krakatoa (1883) darkened the skies and stymied agriculture and life itself. To be sure, there are hundreds more unrecorded.

Archeologists and modern science find agreement in plate tectonics – the constantly shifting sub-crust. earthquakes in Chile, Turkey, Japan, and Iran extinguished hundreds of thousands of lives. The ring of fire has been active for eons.

There are monsoons and landslides, hurricanes, and cyclones, as well as cyclical tornadic activity. There are tsunamis. There are avalanches and expansive forest fires. The earth before mankind had periods of ice sheets and inundations. The warming of the planet brings other concerns into account – the rising of the seas, carbon dioxide emissions, and floating icebergs larger than many islands they may encroach. Other threats come from the heavens – the darkening skies of volcanic ash, meteors, comets, asteroids, and even space debris. Multiple lenses into the abyss are stationed around the globe to monitor and calculate such concerns.

Under the rise of homo sapiens the planet had never faced the unimagined fate of its own suicide. To the contrary, the species shows a history of adapting to mostly random external cataclysms – adjustments made in the ever-tenuous plight of life itself.

No disaster could be more foreboding than one self-imposed by intelligent humanity. Those consequences build like a Las Vegas slot machine that has not paid out in a fortnight. The windows of unlucky sevens eventually become conclusive. These are rampant poverty, unsustainable debt, supply chain disasters, weak or evil leadership, covetous nations, pandemics, and food shortages. The random slot rotor can pull up the unthinkable by a convergence of timing.

There is always an element of bad timing that the law of large numbers may dictate. each irrelevance and each inconsequence matters. Accordingly, a man of extraordinary genius appears to navigate the boulder-laden rapids ahead. That transit must be done within the brevity of time required to save all of mankind.

The Great Doom was thrust upon humanity as if ordained by the gods of expiration – the meteor senders, the flood dispatchers, and the super volcano initiators. Adaptations are highly unlikely. The alligators and the cockroaches may have passed through repugnant eras, but the dinosaurs perished. They lacked adaptability.

There are those among us yearning for a new birth of time – as a people victimized, marginalized, and tarnished by their convictions.

These resilient souls must prepare to leap the obscured crevice of calamity. The other side presents an unknown future on a dying planet. The adversity rendered by the journey dictates its unlikelihood. A frail and elderly man came forward. A functioning savant, he would assess, clarify, and solve despite the foreboding circumstance. First, he must overcome his nemesis in the process of an inevitable cataclysm. Ultimately, the propitious meeting with an accomplice allows the precarious setting for humanity’s unlikely transit.

Proverb:

"Once One Believes One Life Matters

Then Each Journey Becomes Homage to Truth."

1.   Crystal Clear MAD

"I’ve paid my dues Time after time

I’ve done my sentence But committed no crime And bad mistakes

I’ve made a few

I’ve had my share of sand Kicked in my face

But I’ve come through"

We are the Champions

by Queen

O ctober of 1962 changed the world view of imminent danger. The world became aware that there were other threats than deadly meteors, super-volcanoes, and biblical floods. Death by natural causes is often interrupted by suicide. So it was that the advanced technology of mankind had the two major world powers staring each other down like the Gunfight at the OK Corral as a mortified global population gasped in concern and disgust.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was foreshadowing. Missiles were pointed at Moscow, Vladivostok, Leningrad, Kharkov, and Minsk. The impressive United States arsenal was only superseded by the Soviets.

They were more strategic. The Reds charted Newport News, San Diego, Charleston, and Mobile – the naval giants and submarine bases. The obvious larger populations of New York, Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles were a given. They sighted missile bases in Minot, Amarillo, and Colorado Springs. They had intelligence operatives flagging White Sulphur Springs and Langley. Fighter bases were high on the list, as well. The closer bases in Turkey, Germany, Italy, and Japan were prioritized, as the Soviet sequence dictated.

Mr. President, we should negotiate from the bunker, Sir. The president was advised.

President Kennedy declined.

There were thirteen days of intense negotiation – one that can be described as talking a leaper from the ledge of a Manhattan skyscraper. If either flinched, the world would have been Engaged in a hell that had never been contemplated by the sheep farmers of New Zealand or the Nunavik ice fishermen of Quebec. The question of anyone’s survival had been weighed by newscasters, religious leaders, and scientists.

In deference to the faith of sane leadership, bomb shelters were installed. A surge of purchases for canned goods, batteries, bathroom tissue, and camping equipment ensued. evangelists preached to swelling congregations. College students gathered for vigils. They bowed in Mecca and wailed in Jerusalem.

Cruise ships hesitated to be ported. Diplomats returned home. embassies closed. Radios blared in crowed pubs as farmers from Minsk to Cedar Rapids watched the sky.

Several settlement options were proposed. None seemed sufficiently palatable. The red phone that connected Nikita Khrushchev and the Kremlin with President John F. Kennedy in the White House erased time zones and sleep cycles.

Two days into the boiling pot of insanity, Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev.

The one thing that has most concerned me has been the possibility that your government would not correctly understand the will and determination of the United States in any given situation, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war which it is crystal clear no country could win and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor. ¹

Insane people do insane things. Over nearly two weeks of tedious duress, a multi-stage plan was finalized. The world leaders stepped from the skyscraper ledge.

The secretive missile sites being erected in Cuba were dismantled and the delivery of Soviet nuclear missiles turned away by a naval blockade of the island. In return, the United States shut down nuclear missile bases in Turkey and Italy. Other details merited lesser headlines under the newspaper banners.

The most imposing chess match of developing humanity had been called a draw. Subsequently, the Soviet antagonist Khrushchev was replaced, ostensibly, because he was not audacious enough for the Politburo. A year later, President Kennedy was assassinated. Vaulted documents are still redacted seventy years later. It is poignantly evident that the Soviets were complicit.

In 1962, both superpowers stockpiled over 20,000 nuclear weapons each – an overkill of maddening proportions. The recklessness of the Cold War arms race had achieved absurdity.

By 2025, the world had seven additional nuclear powers and the world’s total stockpile officially numbered less than 9,000. However, the weapons and their effectiveness were improved immensely. Two tug-of-war teams were dividing the sides in a match of brawn – Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran had challenged the United States, Great Britain, India, and France. Professors and pundits fathomed that rogue terror groups could have developed a nuclear weapons capability as well as a calamitous chemical weapon capability. The world had gone irretrievably mad.

The well positioned nuclear missile bases within this brewing cauldron were truly worldwide – so much so that the geographic spread like Guam, the Philippines, Kaliningrad, Central Australia, and Tonga gained strategic attention. All of Africa bought into the need of bases by their dire need of capitalization. Both the Panama and Suez Canals were weaponized.

The bunker mentality of the Cuban Missile Crisis spilled over. Doomsday Preppers became nearly cultish. Boutique food and survival providers sprang up to guarantee a 25-year shelf life of dried beans and rice. Mason jars brimming with honey lined the underground shelves along with packaged soups, pasta, and Ramen noodles. Lockers housed defense weapons, essential tools, and post- doom communications equipment.

A shovel, a shotgun, and a gas mask were listed on the standard worksheet for the survivor’s guide in case of the SHTF event – a slang acronym to denote the inevitability when the Shit Hit the Fan. The Doomsday Preppers who were thought by the contented masses to be backwoods eccentrics were, after all, clairvoyants. But even they could not prepare for sustainability beyond the doom. The Doomsday Preppers were destined to become individuals vehemently protecting resources and their own existence for the shortened duration of their personal demise. Preppers – though they would vault past the worst of a world conflagration – would die slower, isolated, and lonelier deaths.

A second coming would not be a religious event, though prayer would be widespread. It would be the 1962 showdown, part deux. This showdown would involve more than two nations, and far more than the 3.2 billion ² living inhabitants of that cold war period. The world population had risen 250% to 8.1 billion to face the horrid destruction.

Analysts, including the best of world minds, had calculated that there would be another showdown. Some were Nobel Laureates. Others were military strategists. Many were from other fields – philosophy, religion, economic authorities, and trending societal experts. The exact timing of a great conflagration would seem too rife with variables to predict. Yet, it became a calculation that two world citizens – previously unknown to each other – had determined.

There would be a Great Doom pending – one most unlikely to be negotiated or dismissed.

2.   The Savant of Seven Centuries

"All my sorrow

Sad tomorrow

Take me back

To my old home"

Reflections of My Life

By Marmalade

image001.jpg

N o one really knows. Some say he is not human; others extol his abundance of humanity. He appears as feeble, unassuming, and non-threatening. He is old and worn, yet bright and fresh. He is a gentleman’s gentleman showing manners of the Victorian Age – with some believing he grew out of that actual experience.

He is a hopeless romantic, forever in love with the memories inspired by a perfect oval photograph shown in his pocket watch. There, in miniature, he peers at Ida – his bride of the 1960s.

He is eerie, peculiar, and perhaps supernatural in his way of sensing the undetected. He repeats the lines of the poets – some familiar and some that one would think are his prose from long ago.

"And, slowly as that very river flows, Walk’d towards the temple grove with this lament:

‘Why such a golden eve?

The breeze is sent.

Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall Before the serene father of them all

bows down his summer head below the west.’"

"That’s Keats. John Keats from his sweet lament, Endymion. He died young – just like my dear Ida. Hearts break everywhere, he states in a twinkle of nostalgia. And sometimes it’s best that they remain broken in their homage to cherished time. A broken heart is a positive consequence. It means that true love once existed."

A young gentleman turned to receive the impulse shared by an elderly bystander. He listened as he awaited his suitcase to be delivered on a serpentine conveyor. He is impressed with the recital. He knows much of pain and sorrow. He turns to the old man.

Mister, I may never know that heartbreak, but I understand disappointment. Six years ago, these people waiting here would’ve stood in line to get my autograph. I was sought and quoted in the sports media. But a routine tackle on a short yardage play ended my career before I could sign an NFL contract. That would’ve meant hundreds of millions. I have a hip replacement. And now… no one seems to know what happened to me. Even the university I represented for four years pays little attention to me, the young well-chiseled man detailed. I’m yesterday. They all moved on to tomorrow.

I don’t follow sports, my good man, but I know who you are. You’re Curtis Harrison, the old man stated with confidence. And you will find a level of notoriety greater than the Heisman trophy. I’m sure of it. The savant stated. There is more to life.

I agree. I’ve moved on. My notoriety was a flash. Reality is a great teacher. Curtis summarized.

We’ll meet again. May I call you ‘Curtis?’ I’m Logan. The old man declared. And when we meet again, I’ll know you. Here’s my card.

Curtis instinctively extended his hand to receive the card. Absolutely, Mr. Logan, he replied.

The savant had introduced himself by his most current passport identification. His previous monikers were vaulted within his past.

Logan, please. Logan Cassidy. He acknowledged as they shook hands.

So, Mister Cassidy, don’t get me wrong. I am not bitter. I had God-given abilities that carried me to a prize and an experience I will never forget. But I’ve moved on, too. Curtis explained. I earned a college degree without the expense others struggle to pay back. I have a great job; I meet awesome people, and I travel to amazing places.

You work in the travel industry. I can see that you enjoy it. Logan expressed.

Yes, I have a managerial position with a cruise line, Curtis stated. Is it that obvious?

"Your satchel says as much. Leather. Mexico or Guatemala. It has your initials CCH. The sunglasses are Italian. The watch is Swiss. Your cologne is Gucci. Your briefcase shows the Sun Setter Cruises emblem. Logan detailed. You’re single. Your ring is glitzy but it’s for a conference championship. From my miniscule knowledge of football, I remembered your name from your tragic injury."

I’m astounded that you would deduce my profession. Yes, I travel – and I take it all in. I love the many cultures out there – Mexican, South African, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Jamaican…all of them appeal to me. These are working people devoted to their families and trying to make it through life, Curtis followed. How will I remember you, sir?

Keep my card. In time, we’ll meet again. I will know you. I never forget people I meet. And you will become who I said you would be. Logan stated in an eerily confident tone.

Just then, Curtis’s luggage came around on the conveyor. He moved forward to pick up a large duffle bag. It occurred to him that the meeting with the old man could’ve been choreographed for something nefarious. But he dispensed the thought because of the man’s age and friendliness.

Mister Logan. I’ll be glad to wait for your bag and help you gather it, he suggested.

No need, Curtis. I have no bag. I travel light. I look forward to meeting you again, Logan added. My pleasure indeed.

The old man sauntered away as Curtis moved his duffle bag to a cart and began to retrieve his burgundy suitcase, a team gift with his college colors. He wondered why a person would be at baggage claim with no baggage to claim. Curtis then scanned the direction where the savant had departed. The elderly man was nowhere to be seen.

Similar Engagements had occurred frequently over the past few months. It seemed that the mysterious clairvoyant was recruiting people for an adventure.

The spry elder presents a simple card to those deserving of his offering. The plain tan card has his name in Baskerville Old Face print at a 10-point-font with a strange word below. Synesticist. He proffers from his profession in ways well beyond personal wealth. He senses, synthesizes, and solves. The top left corner repeats the information in Braille. Those familiar with this silent language will receive the card to feel his information. The unsuspecting souls he encounters will benefit by simply accepting the nondescript old- fashioned business card. It has no email address, no website, and no cellphone number. There is no catchy phrase or cited scripture. It’s just a card of destiny.

Like the CIA or MI-6 professionals, Logan Cassidy is a different name on a different passport by ever-developing situations and circumstances. The name and the business card will be changed again when the timing dictates. He is not a confidence man, a sleuth, or a criminal. He is a man of all ages. Yet he is often pursued by forces incomprehensible in the modern age. It as if Beelzebub swoops in to torch the soul of Ariel, the protector of nature. The threat is constant. Like other data, he senses the threat well before it manifests.

Logan Cassidy appears as a thin, blue-eyed, graying seventy- eight-year-old. His erect 5’10" frame shows little hint of a hobble or a bend of atrophy. His dated suits conform to his best times he remembers with his lost soulmate, Ida. The style features pants that have watch pockets – a vintage stock that even Goodwill Industries would shun. His wife Ida died at age forty-five of pancreatic cancer. His lament for her became both happy and sad, lifelong and in the moment.

He has a means to his wealth. He reads world markets in consumer goods, the technologies, and the standard cycles of minerals and agriculture. He is far from extravagant. He accumulates the wealth he needs for endless humanitarian purposes.

The old man gained the reputation as a functioning savant – a person of extraordinary computing capabilities within a normally assessed routine of living. Savants are usually discovered in a miniscule percentage of the autistic sector in a ratio of six males to one female. In a large population, an autistic savant would occur as one in well over one million births. A normally functioning savant is so rare that one is born every seven hundred years.

It is not clear when Logan was born as he has no certificate record to present. That omission could be seen as intentional. He claims that he was born to two Harvard professors who were more socialites than parents. He was shuffled to summer camps and boarding schools as a child. His early career as a chemical engineer took him to the east Tennessee locale where he met Ida, a college senior. They married, but children were not forthcoming. They reveled in their union for what it brought to each – intellectual discourse, warm companionship, and a romance that would never end despite Ida’s passing. She left him with words that directed him beyond.

You profess a PHC – a ‘Positive Human Consequence.’ Please, for me, make that your mission. She implored.

She uttered the directing visage three days before she expired. Though devastated, the diligence of his work in the Y14 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, did not waiver. He began a thirst for knowledge and an appetite for results. He began investing in markets that he calculated for their potential. Once he had accumulated significant wealth, he began his journey – his avowed mission – to world settings. The destinations were determined by his acute sense of problem solving. His intuition was highly effective. As the Internet developed, he adopted the technology to leave the local libraries and embrace his iPad. Instantaneous knowledge allowed the savant the success he required to become more effective more often. Yet his movement and impact were often abated by a lingering evil he sensed and avoided.

Logan Cassidy had recently viewed a YouTube-recorded broadcast of the World economic Forum from Brussels, Belgium.

Not often startled, he became aware of a pending scenario. His savant skills had never failed him. There were intense calculations made of economic sectors he analyzed by their impact to commodities and financial markets. The YouTube brought in the specter of world debt. An evasive Irish capitalist Logan had never met uttered the words that were troubling. He realized that he must Engage to resolve the enormous and complex dilemma. He downloaded the Internet video from the industrialist billionaire, Walrus Murphy.

It’ll get progressively worse. Dere’ll be no medicine for the rogue epidemics. Dere’ll be no weapons for smaller countries to ’alt the encroachment ‘a da larger ones. Dere’ll be nah food distribution for the malnourished; no potable water for de tursty. Transportation and mercantile systems will unravel. Banks’ll fail. De old standards of precious minrells’ will uphold for a short period befo’ dere horders realize that even dese cannot be consumed to save a life. Millions upon millions’ll die a horrible death.

The savant had the same premonition for six weeks before seeing the broadcast. The Irishman who outlined the wide scenario situation was succinct and definitive with his projections. From these interpolations, Logan devised formulas that led to a conclusion. The world had accelerated its demise like the gravitational sands of an egg timer. This timer could not be reset to a new north-south acclimation.

The man with the thick accent on the YouTube didn’t seem to shake his audience into reality. Logan believed him. He was determined to find the wealthy Irishman, a man who protected his privacy much as a male penguin would shelter an unhatched egg until the mother returned.

The savant immediately formulated a plan that would involve the cohesion of science, key personnel, defense mechanisms, transportation, and ecological computations. Pressing considerations ranged from the growing rate of international debt, simmering border wars, and the abhorrent alacrity of those in power. He needed to recruit a crisis management team. He could not navigate the solution alone. He assessed critical natural resources and the dispersion of populations between hemispheres. He initiated his time-sensitive work with vigor.

He continued to locate the recipients of his largesse by travel. He had homes in many major ports because he was most effective in meeting people with needs – thousands at a time on cruise ships. He added in another favorite Mecca of interpersonal exchanges – airports. He later found the benefits of encountering the less fortunate on passenger trains. He traveled the six populated continents. His Internet sessions sped up his online learning sessions to master two dozen languages including Inuktitut – the language of the Canadian Inuit Tribe. He trekked to the places that allowed these linguistic challenges so that he could gain the dialectics. His detection of languages and accents allowed him to pinpoint specific knowledge of a person’s regional community. The pattern of his travel varied as much as random popping corn in cooking oil. He employed no pattern to his movement. He avoided the habits that could have him tracked or mapped. He had dozens of passports and even more disguises.

Excuse me, Miss. But you dropped your ticket, Logan began.

The ticket to board a jet to London was handed back to an aspiring stage actress.

Oh my God. That would’ve been a disaster. Thank you, The young thespian exclaimed.

No problem, Miss. You would’ve done the same for me. Safe travels. Logan handed her the ticket and his card.

By her indicators, Logan surmised that she was off to Royal Albert Hall in London near the northern end of South Kensington. He read her signals from her toted magazine, her charm bracelet, and the application of her overdone makeup for someone so young. He memorized her name. She would receive something from him in the coming year that would save her life.

Thanks again, sir. She stated excitedly.

Because the enterprise that Ida suggested was undertaken as a duty to mankind, he abhorred being thanked. The stage actress was unaware that she was being recruited or that the elderly man abhorred being thanked. He would rather be absent than personally lauded. He held his PHC purpose as an intention, a noblesse oblige. He would seek the unfortunate and deliver the benefit of joy.

With great optimism, he began to impact all he would encounter. He prided himself in yet another descriptive. He became a frillionaire. His friendships would reach millions. In nearly all exchanges he solved a dilemma by fostering a friendship of trust. He could develop a pathway to happiness. At the conclusion of his missions, he often disappeared.

It was within his enlightened endeavors that a sense of foreboding arrived. It was like the cold wet wind of a nor’easter.

There would be more recruits needed than the former football athlete, the budding stage actress, and the elusive Irish capitalist. He calculated a minimum requirement of 10,000 people to complete a transition. A population of less than 10,000 earth inhabitants had an ancient historical basis – more than 12,000 years ago during the Paleolithic era. ³ These hunter-gatherers survived. A society built on an advanced basis with better technologies and a significantly lower rate of infant mortality could exist within controlled conditions.

He knew the geography, the cultures, the ocean currents, and the atmospheric patterns. Most of all, he knew human tendencies. The sands continued to escape the top chamber of the timer.

Logan Cassidy began his mission of recruitment in earnest. He approached the best prospects he could gather, one-by-one. His manifest tallied in the thousands.

3.   Fly Away

"All of her days have gone soft and cloudy

All of her dreams have gone dry

All of her nights have gone sad and shady

She’s getting ready to fly"

Fly Away

By John Denver

C lairvoyance is a considerable leap into the occult-like qualities of the mysterious. Logan Cassidy knew the wide circumstances, the motivations, and calculated the timing. He would fill personnel needs wisely by purpose, skills, and merit.

Logan Cassidy became a meticulous personnel recruiter by recognizing the burgeoning mission and necessity of charting a new tomorrow. He would not be detected for what his persuasive powers would imbue. His virtual offices were varied. He found optimum impact on college campuses, in shopping malls, on ocean cruises, and at airports. These were the prime venues where people gathered unaware of the recruiter’s considerable abilities, stealth, and purpose. He could be most effective by seeing the most people at the busiest times.

He sensed her pain – deep pain from an unjust circumstance.

A young graduate of Swedish lineage, Enga Janssen, caught the savant’s attention. Her physicist father, Doctor Stuart Janssen, was awarded the Vasa Medal as the Swedish American of the Year in 2019. Her mother, Stella, bestowed the birth name Enga, a variation of Inga. Her grandmother had the same spelling variation. As a child, she overcame much. Her rare and severe childhood cataract condition was corrected when she turned twelve. each eye required lens implants. She had to re-learn shapes and colors in slow progress while home-schooled. The early blindness was the least of her tragedies.

The elderly gentleman detected much from her fashion, her mannerisms, and her demeanor. She was in a process of leaving misery behind.

Fly, young lady. Fly to your tomorrow, the elderly savant whispered.

Enga had recently completed her college coursework with high distinction. As the salutatorian of her graduating class, and by her love of archeology, she was hired to crew an international dig site. By graduation day, she was determined to begin her new scientific career far away. Leaving for adventure became her way of countering a tumultuous past – one that made her the saddest of victims.

As a Jane Doe, the young coed’s identity and personal life had been highly exposed. As a virgin, she had been violated with the use of a date-rate drug, Rohypnol. The circumstances of the accusation and trial that followed were deeply injurious. The perpetrator, a law student, was the Montana governor’s son. The high-profile trial was not only exhausting; it was corrupt. The guilty young man used a complicit press to his advantage. He was found innocent by an insensitive jury more focused upon the Big Sky State’s wholesome reputation. They heard false testimonies that painted Enga’s past as that of a harlot. The cruel accusations salted the wound of the initial crime so much so that the crime itself became secondary. She was the victim of a fix.

The elite team of the governor’s well-connected defense lawyers characterized the innocent young Enga, then in her junior year at the university, as a vixen with a bribery motive. Her reputation was sullied and even some of her college friends turned against her. Her father’s retirement savings were lost in the exorbitant trial costs. Her family was ruined.

There was more tragedy to follow. eight weeks after the wrongful verdict, her parents became victims of a railway accident. It was during a midnight rainstorm in late April – only nine days before Enga’s graduation. The full tonnage of copper laden cars rushed the rain-soaked tracks unabated. Enga’s world had suffered adversity, indignity, and carnage unimagined.

Now alone in the world, she cried the early morning tears in utter dismay. The shock of the highly public rape trial verdict exacerbated her double tragedy. Her guidance counselor at the university labeled her as irreparably inconsolable.

She recalled her father’s motivation and her mother’s faith when she was facing complicated vision surgery at the age of twelve. She was eager for a new beginning yet again – to a place and time when her midnight sobs would become distant. She yearned to find hope and happiness.

Her delayed flight made it to Philadelphia though she was concerned that she would miss her connection and delay her desperate reach to a new beginning.

Fly away, the old man wished from across the terminal.

Airports became among the savant’s favorite meeting places. His sensory abilities were heightened. He had spotted and sensed Enga Janssen’s pain.

Enga was fully engaged in her academic discipline. She was smart, young, determined, and had to make her own way forward in life. She rejected a local beauty contest at sixteen because she felt that her intellect was not to be a secondary asset. As a result of her early vision difficulties, her homeschooling preempted the intrusion of high school boyfriends. Her outward attractiveness in college often enhanced impulses for would-be suitors to Engage in enticing conversations. She resisted all by her forthright determination to achieve her academic mission. She was an innate intellectual, much like her Swedish lineage father.

The Philadelphia airport was the most crowded lonely place she had ever encountered.

Indeed, airports are where lonely people digest the circumstance of being alone. The TSA security routine has become a catalyst for the removal of belts, shoes, jackets, and memories. The procedure prescribed and followed presents its overreaching conflict as a blight upon civility. Airports are grueling, impersonal, and chaotic.

Fly away, young lady. Free your spirit. The graying old man repeated to himself.

Logan Cassidy went to great extents to recruit key passengers for a future mission. He sensed the young lady in transit would be an asset.

The savant focused a transcendent message of flight to the young lady. He could tell that she had symptoms beyond airport distress. She stood among the throngs moving to and fro — alone as if in a cocoon.

Airports heighten stress. Ticket agents smile while being courteously dismissive to the travelers. The often-surly clientele surge forward with the repetitious and impertinent questions that slow the lines. The corridors have highly visible signage, yet every agent will point to the signage for the TSA security line in anticipation of passenger queries. The agents repeat the gate destination instructions several hundred times in a normal shift. Waiting like a rotating roomful of robots, the crowds rotate anew to accommodate each scheduled flight.

Enga was able to pass through a smaller line in Missoula on her way through Minneapolis. The airline transport she would board had booked the full