by Ken Kroes
Mikhail’s mind raced and all his pulses drummed in his ears. He cared deeply for his family, but he had had hundreds of his friends vaccinated. There would still be more than enough to start a new world. Would Richard actually give the order?
“There is another option,” Richard said. “You could stop the release of the virus, and I’ll make sure that your wife, children, and friends, remain safe. I’ve just spoken to the DIR. She’s arranging for you to get away and not be charged. You will, of course, be deported, but I’m sure your home country will take you back. You and your family will live and you’ll be with them. The members of CURE will also live, though they are now marked thanks to the DIR’s placebo vaccine and will be found as detectors for the radioactive signature will be widely used. When found, they will be very closely monitored, effectively shutting down the CURE organization. That’s it—I‘ve got nothing more to leverage against you or to offer you.”
“Is the deal to set me free in writing?”
“Sue is working on it now. From what I understand, this will have to be a very limited time offer. You have ten seconds, and if you decide against it, God help me, I’ll shoot bullets into your legs until you agree.” He said as he pulled his gun out from his jacket pocket.
“I’ll do it,” he said after only a moment of hesitation, “but only after my lawyer reviews the paperwork. I don’t want more trickery.”
It took several hours to reach Mikhail’s lawyer and arrive at agreement on the wording of the pardon to his satisfaction. The others watched tensely through the two-way mirror as Richard reentered the interrogation room.
Diane felt the bulk of her revolver under her coat as an inner rage built within her. He’s going to get away with killing my brother.
Olivia felt mentally exhausted. The last few days, in particular, had frayed her nerves, and although disturbed that Mikhail would stay unaccountable for his crimes, she was relieved that the virus would not be released. She moved closer to Spencer for support, but he wanted nothing to do with her and seem mesmerized by the scene unfolding on the other side of the mirror.
Sue was glad it would be soon over. She glanced down at her vibrating phone and saw the DIR security team number displayed. Not wanting to miss the interaction between Richard and Mikhail, she ignored the call.
“The deal is in place, Mikhail. What more do you need to call off the release? I don’t want you to just postpone it for two days. The agreement is to call it off completely. It isn’t stated directly in the agreement, but I’m telling you now that none of your family or friends will be released until all the virus cylinders are returned and accounted for.”
Mikhail pointed to the computer that still showed his family and friends bound to chairs. “I assumed as much. I’ll enter the code to have my people return the virus. By the way, my compliments on adding something for yourself in the agreement by negotiating to keep your villages safe. Nice touch.”
“Yes, I thought so too,” Richard said. He unbound Mikhail and followed behind him as he moved towards the computer. As he placed his hands over the keyboard, the two-way mirror shattered. Three gunshots exploded in quick succession. Mikhail slumped to the floor with the bullet holes in a tight pattern on his chest. Bright red blood spread across his shirt and quickly started to form a pool on the floor. In the seconds it took for everyone to understand what had happened, Spencer had placed his gun on the floor, raised his arms, and put his hands behind his head.
Richard bent over Mikhail’s slumped body and could see that he was dead. He looked up through the broken mirror and shook his head.
“Spencer! What have you done?” Sue screamed.
“My job,” he replied flatly. Two soldiers entered the interrogation room and fixed their weapons on him through the splintered mirror.
“Are you crazy?” Sue exclaimed.
He brushed his hand across his face. “It was almost comical listening to you brag about the spies you had all over the world when I first came on board. My loyalties are to a small Asian nation. The ruler is tired of western corruption and politics and attempts on his life. I knew I had discovered the answer for him in the virus and vaccine. When I gave you the samples, I had already sent the same to him. My entire country has been vaccinated against the virus during the last few months.”
“You’re a traitor!”
“Only from your perspective. In my country, I am a hero.”
“Why did you give the information to me in the first place if you wanted Mikhail to release the virus?” she asked.
“We needed as much information as we could get on what Mikhail was up to, and the DIR was the perfect means for that. There was also hope that the government would get involved and stop his vaccination program. And it did,” Spencer said smugly.
“And if we had stopped the release?”
“Then my country would have made more of the virus and released it ourselves. It would take longer, but it would’ve had the same result.”
“Wait a minute. Where did you get the vaccine sample?” Olivia asked. “I discovered it myself just a few months ago.”
“From your lab when I visited Percipience.”
“That was the original Virtuesh you idiot! The one Mikhail has is another much more potent strain. Your vaccine is useless.”
Spencer twisted his mouth into a sneer as he looked at Olivia. “You’re lying!”
“No, she isn’t,” Richard said. He walked towards the broken mirror from the other room. “You’re going to be responsible for the death of nearly every person on the planet.”
Sue, Olivia, and Diane moved closer to where Richard stood on the other side of the broken mirror. Spencer slowly hid his face in his hands. He dropped to the floor and his screams of rage soon became sobs. No one had anything to say.
“What should we do?” Diane asked after several minutes.
“I don’t know,” Sue replied. “It’s too late to use the vaccine we got from Mikhail’s lab. The virus will be released in a few days, so coordinating anything would be chaos.”
“That’s true,” Olivia said. “Even if you did manage to distribute it, the human body takes about two weeks after getting vaccinated to build up enough anti-bodies to ward off the virus.”
“Within that time a great deal of people will have had exposure to it,” Richard said. “And look at the time of year he planned this for—the busiest travel week, Christmas. The virus is going to spread like wildfire.”
Diane remembered Hope’s appearance after contracting the virus. “I think we should all go to Percipience,” she said. “I don’t want to be here or close to any major population center when the virus spreads.”
The others nodded their heads in agreement. Richard made a call to order the release of Mikhail’s family. Then said, “I’ll get the helicopter to take us there.”
“I think I’d prefer to drive back,” Diane said, “You can fly if you want to, but there’s room in my RV for everyone.”
Sue’s phone vibrated again and showed another message from the DIR security team asking if she knew Spencer’s whereabouts. He had sent several encrypted messages over the last several hours. If only I had picked up that first call.
“What should we do with him?” Sue asked Richard, gesturing towards Spencer who was sitting on the floor looking blankly at the wall.
“Leave him. It doesn’t matter anymore,” Richard said as he walked in the direction of the building entrance.
23 - The Real Beginning of Percipience
The RV was eerily quiet as Diane pulled out of the parking lot and started towards the highway. Before they left, Richard had convinced Sue to join them, and Olivia had everyone helping to load boxes of drugs and medicines into the RV from the foundation lab.
“How long will it take for the virus to take hold?” Sue asked no one in particular.
“It depends on how many dispersion points Mikhail set up,” Olivia said. “I’ll guess that within a month the impact will be felt ever
ywhere in the world.”
“How lethal is it? And what percentage of the population do you think will make it?”
“From what I’ve seen it’ll take out everyone,” Olivia replied. “There may be a few people left, but it’ll be very few.”
Richard nodded his head as she spoke then headed towards the back of the RV to make a series of calls. He spoke with the construction supervisor of each village and gave instructions to send all employees home right away, regardless of the cost. Then he called the lead elder in each village and gave a condensed version of what had happened. His last call was to his assistant whom he told to make sure that all his employees across all of his companies, including her, received a month off with pay in advance, effective immediately.
Sue gave Richard a hug when he returned. “That was a wonderfully decent thing to do.”
“It seems so little,” he said.
Olivia beckoned to Sue as she pulled out a vaccine dose from her backpack. “Give me your arm.”
“I thought you said it was too late.”
“Well, it’s taking a chance, but we’re pretty isolated in Percipience, and if we keep you in isolation for the next few weeks, you’ll probably be okay,” she said as she applied the vaccine.
The drive went smoothly and as they pulled into the Percipience site, the last busload of construction workers was leaving to go home. Olivia led Sue to the nursing station.
“This’ll be your home for the next while,” she said. “I’ll bring you food and will be working in the lab down the hall, so I won’t be far away if you need anything.”
Richard assembled the other Percipience elders and had those from the other villages on speaker via his cell phone. There was a debate about whether the virus release news should go out to the rest of the villagers. It was agreed that nothing would be gained. After the discussion, he informed Diane, Olivia, and Sue of their decision.
“It seems terribly unfair,” Sue said. “They all have loved ones out there.”
“They all expect that they’ll never be seen or heard from again anyway,” he said. “It’s better that they continue to think everything is normal. I don’t know how they’d react if they knew the truth, and especially now we need every available person. Though the critical supplies are at each of the sites, there’s a lot of uncompleted work to be done.”
Any hope that Mikhail had been bluffing about the virus release was dashed within a week as news trickled in on the radio that the elders now monitored constantly. The flu virus that had started only months earlier had suddenly showed up in hundreds of locations around the globe and appeared to have mutated into something airborne and even more lethal.
Hearing the news, Richard called the director of the Mars mission and convinced him that despite the outbreak, he had to continue with the launch that was scheduled to occur within days. The director eventually agreed when Richard said the vaccine he had sent was experimental but seemed to be effective on the flu virus that was circulating.
Richard, Sue, Olivia, and Diane used the satellite television in Diane’s RV to watch the launch of both rockets. Everything went flawlessly, and Richard said he would work over the next few months on building a receiver and antenna to pick up their transmissions as they approached the red planet.
“It’s been only weeks, and there are already reports of breakdowns in infrastructure in several major cities.” Diane said. “I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to get television and radio.”
“Another week or two at most,” he said. “Then we’ll be in the dark. I’ll get Olivia to destroy all traces of the virus here and then tell the other villages to do the same. It’s something this planet should never see again.”
His estimate wasn’t wrong as the last radio station signed off three weeks after the last Mars launch. The elders picked up a few people broadcasting, but it turned out to be government officials and prominent VIP’s who had hidden in a virus-proof shelter that was a considerable distance away. With limited supplies, no survival knowledge and no one to govern, their broadcasts finally stopped.
********************
Richard looked out over Percipience from a picnic table on Windmill Hill. Since the virus release, he visited the location regularly over the last few months, enjoying both the view and the privacy offered. Although meditation helped, he found that writing entries in his journal was more effective in easing the pain endured from the billions of people who had lost their lives.
April 30, 2023
The solution to the ultimate puzzle required tough decisions and a great deal of luck. The decision to have Mikhail lead the research division turned out well. I knew beforehand that he was affiliated with CURE. I knew that allowing him access to unlimited money, autonomy, and the virus would provide more than enough bait for him that he could not resist putting his own plans into action. Although at the end, had I not threatened to fire him, I’m not sure if he would have been successful in releasing the virus before the government moved in.
Olivia always was crucial to the overall project. However, she fulfilled her purpose of creating the vaccines needed only because I planted the printed documentation for Mikhail’s Virtuesh-B where she would find it. Had I not done this, the outcome would have been very different.
My goal was to have the virus released and to have people believe that I did everything in my power to stop it. I may have overplayed the situation when I threatened Mikhail’s family. He surprised me by conceding to a deal. I didn’t believe he would accept an offer with several hundred members of CURE already vaccinated. His plan would have still succeeded. When I entered the room with the signed deal, I had resolved in my mind that I would have to kill him. When he moved towards the computer terminal, my finger was on the trigger of the gun in my jacket pocket. Then I was given a gift—Spencer! What would happen if people knew it was I who made the calls to have him brought into the DIR in the first place?
Somehow, beyond all odds, it worked out. With several witnesses watching me as I tried to stop Mikhail’s plans, no one suspects me. Now I can participate in, guide, and nurture this village and the others for the rest of my life. With much of the human population eliminated, there remains the chance that my plan to solve the ultimate puzzle will succeed.
Appendix A - World Enigma – Idiots of Men Know
“Processed data is information.
Processed information is knowledge.
Processed knowledge is Wisdom.”
- Ankala V. Subbarao
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There are four areas identified in this story as major concerns for our world: pollution of the planet, natural resource usage, economics, and the integrity of our social fabric. Other books in the Percipience series will explore these topics in more depth, but the underlying idea throughout is that there is a finite limit to how much can be borne within each area at our current growing rate of consumption. Eventually, a breaking point will be reached where the supply capacity in each will be unable to fulfill our unyielding demands.
There is a staggering amount of data to be processed on these issues making them very complex. To gain a better understanding, we need time to collect the data and study it to get accurate information. We need time to convert the information into knowledge, and finally, even more time to combine our knowledge, experience, and judgment into practical solutions.
But time is really not on our side. In the areas discussed, the strains continue without long-lasting solutions. Demands are actually increasing and are leaving us less time to come up with the answers. With an increasing amount of data needed to be studied for accurate information, we truly are burning the candle on both ends.
So the key question is how much time do we have before the candle is used up and what happens then? To answer this let us use a real example, the percentage of your income used for the food you consume. Currently, in ind
ustrialized countries, that number is roughly ten percent, in developing nations it goes as high as fifty percent. If, by the year 2050, those numbers changed so that in industrialized countries you would spend half your income just for food and in developing countries, the number gets closer to seventy-five percent, would you consider the candle to be used up? Of course, this is a very complex problem so no-one, including myself, knows for certain how much of your income you, or your children, will spend on food in 2050, but the example above could prove close if the following happens.
• World population increases, somewhere between fifteen to thirty percent.
• Due to pollution, acidity and temperature increases, food from the oceans decreases
• Due to climate change we get more severe weather, hampering land based crops due to storms or drought.
• Diminishing fresh water supplies used to grow food.
• Decrease in income, especially in industrialized countries, due to many factors including increased productivity and outsourcing to developing countries (perhaps even paying for our underfunded social security systems that we are building up now).
Now back to the key question. How much time do we have before the candle is used up? I often hear how “future generations” will have to deal with global conditions, and while a true statement, I fear that we are fast approaching a timeframe when future generations specifically refer to us, our children, and our grandchildren.
I care about children, especially my own. I’ve worked hard to provide not only physical comforts but formal education and behavioral values in the hope they will enjoy as productive and happy a life, if not more so, as I have had. I believe that this is true for most of us; we care about children and want them to have the best life possible.
Is the example above, the best life we can give them? Is it fictional? There is considerable data supporting the assumptions made, yet there seems to be a lack of urgency to do much about it. What we are saying to our sons and daughters would seem to be one of the following: