Burning Mold

by Jefferson Nunn

  When he’d first started out, he was like everyone else. He did everything. But he soon realized, most people just went in all different directions. There was so much inefficiency. That’s because most people didn’t really have much of a system. Their system was a lack of one. From that point on, he knew that the system had to be there, somewhere in the heart of what people were doing in the office.

  There had to a core to what would make a business grow. A test, a strategy, a vision, an action plan. Those were the foundations that could hold up all the rest of the things. The way of the serious businessman was to accept the way things were, trust the system, and improve on it to keep it up.

  That thought is what had turned him on to listening to various podcasts and reading different business and real estate trade books. Most of them said the same thing: be effective with your time, plug into a network, and “the math doesn’t lie.”

  Over time, he had gotten turned on to various shows, Grant Cardone’s among them. He started paying attention to what all the great real estate agents did. Soon, he decided to try his hand at investment properties. Over time, he had found some moderate success.

  As the years dragged on, he’d forgotten some of the strategies that didn’t quite fit into the most productive aspects--certain things that didn’t scale, like empathy. Over time, he’d come to realize that he might have been spending way too much time actually caring about what people thought. It really did all come down to numbers and systems.

  This made him think again of one tenant in particular, an old lady named Liz. She complained about everything. First it was the door, something about a mandatory stock and frame which she didn’t have. Then it was the kitchen sink, literally the kitchen sink! That’s what really ticked him.

  She’d been his tenant for well over a year, and during that time, she was the one who had caused the most problems, and her property was also the one where he had made the least money, an eyesore in an otherwise spotless balance sheet.

  “When are you going to fix this?” she’d ask, calling his office just before he was about to leave. Or she’d say, “This doesn’t look right. I think you need to come and take a look.” What the hell was he supposed to do with that? “Doesn’t look right?” As far as Steve was concerned, if you couldn’t quantify it, then it didn’t exist.

  Over the next two years, he had decided to outsource all the things he hated, all the things he didn’t do well, and the things that weren’t part of that magic one-two punch, math and systems.

  Eventually, he’d developed his perfect plan that melded those two things precisely, at the exclusion of all else. He’d defined and refined his real estate and cash-flow algorithm.

  That was the easy part. He put together the rough math on his own, but used machine learning to both refine and consistently improve the numbers and then back-test them against real world scenarios. Whenever he was about to implement a change, he’d run the numbers in a paper-money scenario before he actually activated the new algorithm.

  With the math side taken care of, the rest went to logistics. He needed a system to handle all the paperwork and legwork to close properties, close deals, and get people in the door after the deal was closed.

  But no matter how hard he tried, he still had to go to people’s houses. He guessed that was just the nature of real estate. No matter how much of a math person you were, there was no getting around the fact that some days you just had to go door-to-door and deal with tenants.

  Of course, he could outsource things to a property manager, but then he’d have to give them twenty percent of the business. The problem was that ALL the profit, ALL the cash-flow ratio was in that twenty percent. It was the one thing he couldn’t outsource.

  With a long sigh, he left the office and got back into his SUV and said, “Siri, take me to Liz at 6540.” The car started up and began to navigate over to the specified address. The radio started up and began playing the newest podcast from Alex Jones. Steve thought it wouldn’t be too bad to catch up on the latest while he was on the way to fixing whatever imaginary problem Liz had.

  Chapter 8

  Post-Modern Warfare

  August 22, 2025

  Somewhere over Kentucky

  Jean was sitting in economy-class on the red-eye flight that was hurdling her to Dallas – ground zero for what Jean had become increasingly convinced was going to be a serious outbreak. They were in the second hour of the direct flight. There wasn’t much longer to go. Jean didn’t have trouble whiling away the time on the plane. She pored over the reports from Dallas and read as much as was available about the patients who had been touched by this seemingly fleeting virus.

  She latched onto the idea that this was not a virus which was cycling through at rapid speeds and dying off on its own. There was something more sinister behind it all. Almost like it was trying to disguise its presence.

  A few rows behind her, dressed in fatigues, sat a buzz-cut man in his 20’s. His name was Aries Creighton. Aries was on his way to Dallas and to a new assignment. He was switching over to the Biowarfare Unit and was to report to his new unit commander upon landing.

  Aries was a short man with black hair, brown eyes and a soft round face. He was really built for his size but no distinguishing marks and baby smooth skin, he could easily be missed in a crowd. His eyes were shallowly set, bright and gave off an air of intelligence.

  Aries wasn’t born to be a military man. His father ran the mob in San Francisco. Aries was a smart, obedient child by nature. And if he weren’t, his father would have certainly whipped him into a model of strict obedience. Aries did what he was told and didn’t think much of doing things differently – he had a perfect military psyche. But things didn’t always go to plan.

  The plane rumbled considerably under some chop. The elderly woman sitting next to Aries flinched, but he didn’t. In fact, almost everyone on the plane, Jean included, reacted in some way to the sudden and sharp jerk of turbulence. But Aries just stared forward at the headrest in front of him. He didn’t react physically. But the shuddering airplane did prompt a mental reaction.

  Back at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, where Aries did his basic training, he had been jolted violently like that in his cot. A fellow cadet of his had shaken him awake in a panic in the middle of the night. “Aries, wake the hell up. We gotta get out of here!” Cadet Sherman had implored to Aries in an emphasized whisper. The words were hushed, but there was no masking the atavistic terror that had propelled them. “Some goddam lunatic is firing on base!”

  Aries was disoriented. For the first few seconds he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. Then his eyes adjusted to the lowlight of the barracks. He realized where he was and that he was in fact, not dreaming.

  “Let’s go, man. We gotta get outta here. I don’t know where he is, man. No one does. There must be more than one of ‘em, though, man. Damn! What the hell is going on?” Sherman was becoming more unhinged by the second.

  Then Aries heard it. The sizzling of the air of a Mk IX Laser Rifle. He sprung out of his cot at the sound and crouched down as if to take cover. But take cover against what? Against whom? He didn’t know yet. But the reality that there was an active shooter on base was becoming quickly apparent.

  “They already shot Pinkerton, man! I saw him lying in a pool of his own blood with his eyes still open. I barely got away myself.” Sherman continued to sputter out disjointed updates of the situation. “What do we do, man? What the hell do we do?!”

  “We get out of here like you said,” Aries answered. The two cadets, just seven weeks into basic training, put on their fatigue pants and boots, then scurried out of their barracks in a crouch. All the other cadets were gone – no one knew where yet.

  Outside, there was hollering a little ways off, punctuated every five seconds or so by the sizzling of the air. It was night-time, but there were bright flood lights washing the base in artificial light. Aries looked around for an escape route and saw there were some buildings on base that
had the lights out. He figured that’s where the shooter was.

  Aries and Sherman spotted some of their fellow cadets running towards the mess hall, and they joined them. There didn’t seem to be any gun shots coming from there. Once they arrived, they congregated with some of their C/O’s, some MP’s and a company of frightened cadets. They were all whispering at each other in the mess hall but were clearly panicked like Sherman was.

  Aries heard bits and pieces of frenzied conversations:

  “Who has the keys to the damn Jeep?”

  “Why is the goddam gate locked from the outside?” And much of the like.

  It was becoming obvious that this shooting was planned – and probably by one of their own.

  “If we can’t get out of here, then we gotta take these idiots out before they flush us all out,” one drill sergeant commanded. He ordered all of the MP’s present, as well as some of the cadets, including Aries, to follow him as he led the way towards the locus of the shooting.

  Aries was given a service pistol by one of the MP’s. “Time to put that training to use, cadet,” the MP said to him as he shoved the pistol into Aries’ hand. He briefly wondered how well it would do against friggin’ lasers.

  The makeshift response force stayed low as they wove through the barracks, following the sounds of sizzling air. The hissing got louder and more pronounced. It was moving. Whoever was shooting wasn’t staying put anymore.

  The drill sergeant leading them split the team in two, with Aries following him towards the MP office and the rest of them heading toward the south end of the base. The plan was to try to surround the sound of the shooting.

  Aries followed close behind the drill sergeant. As he did, he saw blood on the ground, coming from the barracks. He saw bodies of corporals splayed on the ground, their wounds smoking from being cooked by lasers. He saw other cadets shot dead in their underwear. Then the air was very silent for quite some time. The drill sergeant waved at his small team of under-trained cadets and military police to stop, stay low and stay silent. They waited there, listening for any clue as to what the enemy was doing or where they were going.

  But seconds passed and they didn’t hear anything. It was eerily quiet until Aries picked up on the sound of approaching footsteps coming fast from behind them. The small company turned around and was greeted by a spray of strafing fire. The cadet just behind Aries took a straight hit in the chest. The laser poked a huge hole in his chest in a split second. Then there was another short wave of fire that flanked the rag-tag response unit. This one caught the drill sergeant in the head. His head was completely gone and the rest of his body simply fell to the ground. There was more than one gunman. No one could have doubled back that quickly.

  Aries and the surviving cadets and MP’s scattered in all directions. Aries ran in the direction that the first gunman had fired from. He didn’t know what his plan was, but he was hoping to catch the shooter from behind.

  He was lucky. He saw the shadowy figure with the rifle scurry into the dark MP office. Aries ducked into the office behind the shooter and crouched behind a wall. There was no sound. The shooter was obviously hiding and probably knew he was being followed. Aries tried peeking around the office wall for any clue as to where the enemy was.

  He spotted a bloody boot print. And there was more than one. The footprints made a trail that led to a desk just across the hall from where Aries was. Aries’ first thought was to run back, find some help and tell them where one of the shooters was. But then he thought better of it. He knew that the shooter would run away before any help came and that he himself could easily get shot by an unseen assailant.

  Aries weighed his options as he waited for a sound. But nothing came. No sound and no reasonable idea as to what to do next. Aries was just a cadet and had never experienced combat. Aside from the seven weeks of basic training, he was as green as they came. And he knew nothing of the enemy he had cornered behind a small desk.

  But like so many instances in life, the situation would force his hand. As Aries waited prone, someone burst through a door at the end of the hallway. It was someone screaming in pain. Someone who had obviously been shot. Aries couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could make out the silhouette of a Mk IX rifle – a gun not used by any cadet, C/O or drill sergeant. Aries knew that there was no way the shooter could see the injured man from where he was hiding, and there was no indication that the injured man knew anyone was in the office.

  Aries poked his pistol out from behind the wall and fired two quick rounds in the direction of the desk that the shooter was hiding behind, then yelled, “I got him, man. Let’s get the hell outta here, Sherman!” in the direction of the wounded man.

  Aries made his way out of the MP’s office. He hid around the corner of the entrance. Then he waited and listened. He heard two rapid shots and then silence. He gripped his pistol in anticipation and aimed it towards the entrance into the office. Silence. Nothing. Then the door flung open and Aries buried four rounds into it.

  He had shot the unknown enemy dead in the doorway.

  There were more shooters loose on the base. There were six in total. Eventually, they were all snuffed out and shot dead by a team of well-armed MP’s who had come to the rescue from off-base after getting the distress call from Fort Huachuca.

  The six shooters were all cadets from the foreign service exchange. They were all killed on the base, but not before they had taken out almost an entire division. In all, 46 men and women lost their lives that day, but Aries was not among them. It was the worst mass shooting in military history and the forum in which Aries had earned his battle stripes. Aries had never been in a war, but the horrors he had seen that night would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  As the plane headed to Dallas, Aries sat stoically, ready to begin his service in the Biowarfare Unit. He remembered being jostled out of his cot and into the most terrifying night of his life. His gambit had paid off. He reckoned that the unknown injured man holding the Mark IX Rifle was one of the shooters. He had feigned yelling to a fellow cadet, in the hopes that the shooter would hear the statement, think it was safe to come out and shoot his fellow traitor, thinking he was the enemy.

  And he was right. The shooter hiding behind the desk killed the injured man, thinking he was an enemy party, then ran out of the office assuming the coast was clear. For his cleverness and quick thinking, Aries was branded a hero. But he didn’t see himself that way.

  As the plane began its descent into Dallas, all Aries could envision was himself cowering behind the wall, scared out of his mind. He had acted out of pure instinct and hadn’t had a heroic thought running through his head at the time. In fact, he had wanted to run away and get help. All Aries could think was that he had gunned down a fellow cadet, traitor or not.

  That wasn’t a war. It wasn’t an honorable conflict. It was insanity. It made no sense to Aries. It was still unclear why those six cadets had decided to go crazy, shoot up their own base and gun down 46 fellow Army personnel.

  The speakers on the plane crackled and came to life, “This is the captain speaking. We’re beginning our final descent into Dallas…”

  As people began to organize their belongings, Jean mentally prepared for what she was about to do in Dallas. What she was doing went against protocol but hopefully with Julian’s help she could convince Howard that this was a real problem.

  Once the plane landed, Jean took her phone off airplane mode and saw a text message from Julian. The message read simply, “You gotta see this.” It had an attachment from Doctor Sandberg. Jean exited the plane and got her bags and went to the rideshare pickup area. She requested an economy pickup as per the government regulations and got into the car. She was surprised when an athletic military man sat down next to her.

  “Hi, I’m Jean,” she said.

  “I’m Aries,” he said.

  Chapter 9

  Hadaran IV Project

  Frisco, Texas

  “Hey, Chad,” Bobby
said as he walked into Chad’s office while staring at his cell phone, “It seems that everyone is going to be back in tomorrow. The boss wants to….”

  Bobby finally looked up and realized that Chad was talking on his phone. Bobby took a step back and decided to wait a moment as Chad held up his index finger.

  “Yep. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Okay, bye,” Chad said as he looked at Bobby before hanging up.

  “The boss wants to pull us all into a meeting tomorrow to discuss the presentation of the Hadaran project,” Bobby continued. “Do you have the updated notes?”

  “Wow, that’s fast. Yes, but we haven’t updated it with the latest metrics from last week’s test.”

  “You can go with the metrics that are on there now. I think the boss wants to make sure we’re all on the same page with the client,” Bobby assured Chad. “We have to deliver this last phase in a month, or we miss out on the bonuses.”

  “And I really like what Jamaica me do!” Chad said, laughing, and Bobby joined in. “Ah, man, but seriously, is Jasmine okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks for asking. She’s been fine all day at home, just milling about the house. It's weird that so many people were all down, but I’m okay and you guys are okay.”

  “I’ve checked the news and even the CDC current outbreak list, and there has been nothing reported. Even Edwin, the mayor of McKinney over here. I called him and got nothing. It’s just a random outbreak, I guess,” Chad opined.

  “Well, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger, right?”

  “Yep. Okay, so are we going to head on over to the campus?” Chad asked.

  “Let’s do this!” Bobby exclaimed.

  A short time later, Chad was feeling confident. He had managed to pull strings and do magic with the final presentation and had built a two-week estimation based on what they had pulled so far and the current numbers, those numbers which had taken him an hour of his time to find and process, as they were all raw without human intervention. Fortunately for him their own Machine Learning system had helped him with this task. He did not like using a machine to do estimations but after letting it run and verifying the numbers himself, there was one conclusion.