“No one is asking you to do that. The business runs itself, even I am replaceable. What the Company needs is a goal, a leader, an idea to push towards. That was your grandfather’s gift, to get others to believe that an impossible dream could, through human ingenuity and innovation become a positive reality. The groundwork is already laid; the company only needs your ideas and your imagination, a passion for an idea to inspire the company from the bottom to the top.”
“All I have to do is set a goal, a direction to strive for? That’s easy.” Simon stood up and bent his arm at the elbow with a finger pointing a single direction. Up.
Chapter Four: Oliver Tehom, Communist
“We can’t do it Oliver!” Shouted an older man from across a clean mahogany desk.
“I want that boy to bleed! The Company should be mine!” Oliver Tehom seethed with rage, his face flushed and ears an almost beet red.
“You mean ours, California’s.”
“Of course that’s what I meant Peter.”
“I know what you want, we are simply too weak. The level of military assistance we receive from China and Russia simply will not support an all out war against Texas, it would leave us far too vulnerable. We have to follow the direction of the party.”
“We don’t have to occupy the entire country, East Texas is the size of Arizona.”
“No Oliver, not yet. I will not authorize it.”
“Damn it Peter!”
“Get out of my office Oliver, go home and have sex with your wife, girlfriend, your assistant… whoever. Go relax. You are a rich man, high in the party. Do you really need anything over there? Get some perspective.”
Peter Reisner was one of the only men that could shut Oliver Tehom down. As Commandant of the California Socialist Party, Peter might as well have been Emperor of Western North America. Although his whim was directed by the orders that came from South Asia and the risen Soviet States he maintained almost total autonomy and control over his chunk of the world.
The western world had failed. Capitalism had fallen under the weight of greed and corruption, only a scant few pieces remained. The world had awoken and found itself under a blanket of red. The Red Diamond the symbol for the World Communist Movement. The banner swept the globe and filled the governmental vacuum left by the collapsing states, unions and nations.
Oliver Tehom returned to California a man of rage and hatred. As a boy his father was distant and absent. In that absence the boy had been robbed of his empathy. A man without empathy is capable of anything and everything.
Oliver had indeed sold his patent to his father. He had been a promising engineer in his youth, and had a wonderful mind for the way pieces of things fit together and worked towards a common goal. A talent when pushed properly is genius capable of infinite potential. Oliver hated his father. Daniel Tehom’s success had robbed Oliver of his father, but also given him power over others. Power he had used to manipulate the wheels of society and crowned himself President of California with the full weight of the Communist party behind him.
The military machine of the West could not yet sustain a war with the Republic of Texas. Oliver knew that such a thing would be folly, at least at the current level of readiness. He also knew that there was a storm coming, a red storm.
Even as high as he had ascended in the party, and in his role as President, Oliver had heard only whispers. Someone somewhere had a grand plan for the world. Preparations were being made to unite the entire world under a communist banner, and thousands would have to die to ensure the red flag would rise without opposition. Oliver intended to ensure Simon Tehom would be at the top of that list.
The basement of the capital building contained more square footage than the rest of the building, an ill kept secret from the century before when communists were the enemy. A large portion contained the secret police and intelligence services of the party. There were no secrets, even Oliver had no privacy. Phones, computers, homes and apartments were all monitored constantly by a battery of computers and analysts. Those deemed dangerous or disloyal disappeared into a dark place with no parole. The party demanded complete control and had weathered four decades with a clenched iron fist that crushed anyone and everyone that stood in the way of the new future.
‘The New Future’ was a propaganda slogan that pressed the masses into slavery and servitude. Private property, personal privacy and liberty had been stripped away layer by layer in the name of progress and national unity. What had started as a strong workers union had been able in the chaos of social and economic disorder to advance into a labor movement and then a political party that promised hope and light from the darkness.
Slavery had become universal; the once liberal citizens of California and Nevada found themselves quickly amassed into an equality of zero. A country without rights, moral judgments, or classes soon formed and conquered Washington, Oregon and Arizona. The entire country of Mexico soon followed and had wrapped the Republic of Texas in a half moon of red. They always said be careful what you wish for, for the citizens of California they had sealed their own fate long ago.
The offices of the secret police were a dangerous place, even for the President of California. Thousands disappeared and were forgotten due to unpopular or deviant opinion. It would have been no hard thing for the President to be found a traitor to the cause and be publicly executed.
“I am here to see Florian.” Oliver barked at a short red haired girl at the receptionist desk.
“Do you have an appointment?” The girl barked back unabashed by the politician in front of her.
“Just tell him I am here please.”
The pretty young ginger typed a few words into her computer terminal and a voice came over the speaker on the wall.
“Send him in Julia. I have a few minutes.”
The doors opened and revealed a cool sterile office space with an almost medical inspired stainless steel desk at its center.
“Thank you for seeing me Florian.”
“Well, you are ‘the President’ right? I should make time when you come to visit.” The fat disgusting Florian Walters chuckled and spoke in a sarcastic tone.
“I don’t like coming here anymore than you want me here Florian. I’m just here for paperwork.”
“Revising your political enemies list then?”
“You got it, Simon Tehom. Put him on top of my list, go after him with everything you can with my authorization.”
“You are talking clandestine operations, a little higher value than your normal smash and grab.”
“I don’t care how you do it, I just want the little bastard dead.”
“Have you talked to Peter”
“Of course I talked to him, he won’t authorize an offensive against Texas.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t, all things in their proper time.”
“If I can’t have my birthright no one will, burn the whole thing down if you can. Just make sure that little prick dies.” Oliver slammed the door behind him, he hated being treated like a child. He had become little more than a puppet of the party, a name in a suit and it pissed him off.
“Julia, will you come in my office for a moment.” Florian spoke over the speaker as Oliver returned to the elevator, suitably emasculated for the day.
Chapter Five: Simon Tehom, Dreamer
“Tell me a secret Simon,” the cloud of ecstasy still hung around the pair of them, their bodies still entwined.
“A secret?” Simon spoke up into the air without looking at her.
“Something you have never told anyone, something you can trust me with,” her fingers traced the line of hair from his navel to his chest.
“Well I’m afraid of plants. At least I used to be,” Simon replied with an amused chuckle.
“You’re screwing with me, I was being serious!”
“No, really. I had a crazy dream about being eaten by plants when I was little. Like giant Venus fly traps or something, freaked me out for years,” he replied with a sort
of self deprecating grin that was lost to the darkness of the room.
“You are strange Simon.”
“You have no idea Julia.”
Simon watched as Julia Reynolds got up out of bed, the girl was not shy and had no shame. Not that she had anything at all to be shy about, she was amazingly beautiful. That was always the thing with redheads, either exceedingly beautiful or sadly homely there was never a middle ground. Her form was skinny, probably too skinny and she was short, under five feet. What she lacked in stature she made up for with confidence combined with a loving and open nature. She wore dark pointed little glasses and abhorred contact lenses. Her look remained altered by her spectacles and she pulled off the naughty librarian look perfectly.
Julia’s skin was pale white, and it glowed in the moonlight that peered through the curtains of his private dorm room. He loved her butt, he loved that she seemed to love him and was in love with the fact that he was in love with her.
“You know I love you,” Simon said out loud.
“Of course you do, I’m awesome,” she said as she slapped her own bare butt and walked to the bathroom.
He laid there looking at the ceiling, listening to her fumble around in the bathroom. It was the middle of the night, it sounded like she was getting dressed.
“Are you going somewhere?” Simon called out to her.
“I need to get some sleep; I have a midterm exam in the morning.”
“So?” he laughed.
“So. I know you and I’m worn out, I can’t fail chemistry.”
“I can help you with that come here.”
“I’m serious Simon, I got to go.”
He knew better than to argue, and of course she was right. If she stayed they would either talk about nothing till morning or end up getting a second wind and making love again. Neither of them would get any sleep at all.
The phone started to ring, and vibrate across his little desk at the foot of his bed.
“Would you get that?” he called out.
“Screw you; I’m not letting you pull me back into bed. I know your tricks!” she peeked around the corner of the bathroom door just long enough to stick her tongue out at him.
The phone called out again and Simon’s hand slammed against the table as he picked it up and looked at it. It read ‘Mom Calling’.
“Why is my mom calling at 2am?” Simon said, half to himself.
“Hello?”
“Simon. Are you alone, where are you? Are you with Julia?” his mom Flora called out into his ear.
“Mom, what? I’m in my room, yea Julia is here. Are you ok?”
“Simon. She isn’t who she says she is, your grandfather just called. I need you to get out of there and go downstairs. There is a car being sent to pick you up.”
His mother was a bit dramatic at times, but Simon knew something was the matter. But he trusted Julia just as much as his own mother.
“Mom, I can’t leave school we have midterms.”
“Simon, I am serious. Get out of there and do not tell Julia I called you,” she sounded panicked.
“Alright I’m going, but Julia is…” His sentence was cut short as he turned towards the bathroom.
There was no sound at all, only a bright flash. His hand instinctively slammed into his stomach and came back bloody, only then did the pain start.
Julia bent over him, a gun in her hand and kissed him softly on his cheek; she picked up his phone and tossed it out the window twenty stories to its doom without saying a word. When she closed and locked the door behind her the room was perfectly dark, a void. Simon lay naked on the floor between his bed and desk, a bullet hole in his stomach and lay dying. His point of view shifted to looking down at himself, a corpse on the floor, and a shocked expression on his face. Then he woke up.
The dream was always the same. He never regained any memories beyond her closing the door and the feeling of looking down upon himself bleeding to death.
The sweat dripped down from his hair line and into his eyes making him squint at the burning. Simon’s memories flashed to things his mother had told him of the following two months. How he had been airlifted from Louisiana to the Company in West Texas. How the best medical doctors in the free world removed a .32 caliber bullet from his spine and stitched his stomach, and how he had been returned to his mother’s home while still in a coma. When he did finally wake up, it was called a miracle, first by his own mother, then by press and media outlets across the Republic.
It had been two years since Julia’s attempted assassination of him and Simon still had not fully recovered from the shock of it all. His doctors called it Post Traumatic Stress. Simon called it bad dreams and betrayal.
It took a moment for him to regain his bearings. He was in a strange place, they had given him his grandfather’s house, and the place still smelled of him. It gave Simon comfort.
The house was meager; no one would have guessed that the single richest person in the world once lived inside it. The living room had been converted into an office, large wooden file cabinets had been built into the walls and shelves and shelves of books lined the walls between them.
Simon had fallen asleep on the couch, and when awoken by his singular nightmare peered around at the amassing of a life strewn about a room his grandfather had lived in almost totally for the last years of his life.
I am supposed to live here? I feel like a ghost in someone else’s house.
Mementos of little value stood alongside priceless artifacts of the last fifty years of human space exploration. Pieces of the Amor Ivar asteroid held up simple library reject children’s books like bookends. A five foot cross section of pallasite lit from behind like a stain glassed window had been mounted above the brick fireplace like some type of modern artwork.
All around were the pieces and parts of a life that Simon knew very little about, stories that likely passed into nothingness along with his grandfather Daniel.
Simon had always filled his head with fantastical things. He had been molded to look toward the stars by his family. Children all over the Republic had taken a newfound interest in space, much like the children of the middle twentieth century had. The heroes of society were no longer musicians, actors and professional athletes. He remembered that Daniel would call them ‘troubadours and gladiators’ and say that ‘When society pushes away advancement and glory, then turns toward the glorification of entertainment, that cycle of civilization is nearly over’.
Simon Tehom had never looked toward leadership, he wanted only to do his part and help with his grandfather’s grand mission. He had taken for granted that Daniel would always be there.
I think we all thought he was immortal.
A knock at the door prompted Simon to put down the simple children’s book he had remembered his grandfather reading to him as a child. About a gentle bull who sat on a bumble bee.
“Who is it?” Simon inquired through the door.
“It’s your mother, open the door.”
Light flooded the room and Flora walked in.
“You look terrible, didn’t you get any sleep at all?”
“You know, bad dreams and all.”
“Still dream about the little communist girl?”
“I hate when you call her that,” Simon shook his head and pursed his lips in rebuke.
“Well, that is what she is. Nearly killed you and then ran off to California with the rest of the reds.”
“I don’t want to talk about Julia mom,” he had turned his back and started staring at the sculpture above the fireplace.
“You need to talk about getting in the shower, you have a big day. You are meeting with the board today.”
“Today? The funeral was just yesterday.”
“The world doesn’t stop for one man, even for my dad it paused for only a day to tip its hat,” Flora grasped her son by the shoulders. “You will do fine Simon, you are intelligent, honest and imaginative. Just be yourself.”
Simon made his wa
y into the guest bathroom and found a trio of dusty decorative towels that had obviously never been used for their intended purposes. The warm water flowed through the shower head and finally Simon Tehom began to wakeup.
What am I going to tell these people? I don’t know anything about this stuff. Give me a rock, I’ll tell you how old it is and where it came from. Give me an airplane and I’ll fly it for you. But running a company? I have no head for business.
The water swirled around his feet in a hypnotic spiral. Simon distractedly ran his finger along the scar on his stomach as the first flood of logistics flashed through his head. The company had the moon colony and various mining probes that would scout individual comets and asteroids and retrieve a small payload. Mankind still had not touched the surface of Mars, nor stepped foot on a surface outside of Earth’s orbit. The logistical challenges were simply too great.
If they want a dream, I can give them a dream. I want to put my footprint on Mars or Europa.
Simon dried off using the forbidden decorative towels, careful to avoid the stripe of dust across the top and did so with a smile. He was a bit rebellious, but always in a respectful and innocent way.
When he arrived fully dressed Flora henpecked over him briefly, she tightened and straightened his tie, and pulled at his sleeves to straighten his shirt.
“Mom, I’m fine. I know how to dress myself.”
“Then show it. A lot of eyes will be on you today,” she then kissed her son on the cheek and said, “Now, go to work.”
The car that waited for him outside was not a limousine or black SUV but a small white solar powered golf cart, perfect for the commuting conditions of the west Texas desert.
By the time he arrived at the board room he was late by a full quarter of an hour. All fifteen members of the board of directors watched him silently as he stumbled in.
Rich Goddard sat directly across the round table from the empty desk that was now Simon’s assigned seat.
“This board meeting of the Tehom Consortium is now called to order. Chief Operations Officer Rich Goddard has the floor.” Said an ancient woman with a plastic name plate in front of her, it read ‘Yoko Yuan’.
Tehom: The Tehom Legacy Book One Page 4