by Mark Goode
The defense team pressed him to describe the process of selection and training of military personnel, in particular the special forces. They asked him about biological agents used in war. Finally, he acknowledged that use of herbicides was a reasonable military action designed to disrupt the enemy’s food chain, a strategy that had been used throughout history.
Emma Green was called to testify since she had a close working relationship with my grandmother, who had approached her with the request to insert DNA into a viral vector as part of her research.
The defense team stepped in to cross-examine Emma.
“Dr. Green, please relate to the court your understanding of the relevance and nature of Angela’s discovery.”
Emma replied that on a gross level, it appeared Angela had discovered how to kill plants using a sort of DNA switch that caused the plants to die. Really, a new type of high-tech herbicide. “To definitively prove the concept, Angela Starr asked that I introduce the DNA into plants using a virus. Doing that, we successfully confirmed the expected outcome, the death of the test plants.”
“Is it true that you wanted to publish this work, that Angela disagreed, and that this soured the relationship between the two of you?”
“Yes,” Emma responded, “we had a rather heated debate, but she refused, citing the need for further study. This could have been a turning point in my career. Not to mention the huge economic potential. I had helped her with this project, and I wanted to be rightfully compensated. Instead, frustrated, I washed my hands of the entire project, leaving Angela to figure it all out.”
“I’m sure you were quite disappointed. Did you discuss this project with anyone else?”
“Yes, with my fiancé.”
“Is that person here today in this courtroom?”
“Yes.”
“Would you please identify him for us?”
Emma raised her arm and pointed to Arnold.
“Let the record show that Dr. Green has identified General Arnold Bitworth as her fiancé.”
General Bitworth was called to the witness stand.
“General, can you describe the relationship of your family business to the Department of Defense?”
“First, I would like to make it clear that I have divested myself of all interests in my family’s businesses. This was deemed essential so as to avoid any conflicts of interest. My tax statements are routinely submitted for scrutiny of any potential conflicts.”
“General, thank you for your loyal service to your nation. Could you enlighten the court as to what your family does and the relationship it has to the Department of Defense?”
“Yes, my family has served our country for many years in the capacity of a defense contractor. They primarily supply, food, water, clothing, medicine, and general supplies for military operations.”
“The company would necessarily have advanced notice of planned operations?”
“Yes. Providing these services requires many months of advanced intelligence and planning.”
“Does your company supply chemicals to the military?”
“I need to correct that question: it is not my company, as I have explained.”
“Of course. I stand corrected. General, could you expand upon the use of chemicals by the military?”
“Of course,” Arnold replied. “One important example is for pest control. We frequently encounter rodents, snakes, insects, and particularly mosquitoes.”
“And how about herbicides?”
“Yes, agricultural products such as fertilizers, pesticides, and weed control agents are commonly used by the military.”
“If a defense contractor wins a bid for providing services to the military, how are payments customarily managed?”
“Typically, billing is done monthly for the duration of the contract and at the agreed-upon figures. There is a master list or menu of items in the system. Orders are placed by supply chain personnel as needed weekly.”
“Would it be possible, General Bitworth, for example, to retrospectively analyze how much toothpaste was provided to the military?”
“Yes, to some extent that is possible,” Arnold replied.
“How does your company procure supplies on the open market?”
“Again, it is not my company. However, in general there is a complicated supply chain system in use. The primary benchmark is good quality at an excellent price.”
“Records indicate the military ordered approximately $5 million worth of ‘Agricultural product’ that your family’s company supplied over a six-month period prior to the last major offensive. Is it possible to get an itemized copy of those transactions?”
“It would depend on how the order was placed, but most likely yes.”
“General, do you have any financial relationship with New Age Botanicals?”
“No, I do not,” Arnold responded.
“Did you know that your fiancée, Emma Green, is on the board of directors of New Age Botanicals?”
“Yes, of course, Emma is a very talented scientist and businessperson.”
“Finally, General, do you consider your relationship with Emma Green, her position on board at New Age Botanicals, and your family’s business of military supply a potential conflict of interest?”
“Well, yes,” Arnold dissembled, “it is a potential problem. But Emma is in the process of divesting herself from New Age given our anticipated marriage.”
My grandfather Jack was summoned to the stand to testify. Of course, this was long before he married my grandmother, and when he had a much different opinion of her.
“Colonel Jennings, it appears as though you have been leading multiple lives. Is it correct that you held the rank of colonel with the AQNS?”
“I chose to be discreet regarding my political beliefs,” Jack stated flatly. “Perhaps history will be able to answer that question. As a logical extension of my ancestry, education, and politics, I became a member of the AQNS. I remain committed to their ideology. I was promoted to the rank of colonel, yes.”
“The records reveal your actions on the battlefield and your bravery and heroism that saved the lives of many. We thank you for that and for your current efforts leading the unification movement.”
“The events remain indelibly etched in my mind.” Jack described the days leading up to and the horrific days that followed. At that time, he had no explanation for what had happened or what led the troops to commit mass suicide.
The military was pointing the finger at Angela, and it seemed as though she was responsible. Many believed that she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
A parade of specialists was called to testify. Neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists, therapists, social workers, and directors of suicide prevention programs were among the distinguished witnesses. The testimony of all of these experts essentially summarized what was going on in their respective areas of expertise.
The study of suicide is difficult and entails the deconstruction and analysis of the circumstances leading up to the actual event. Preexisting circumstances and diagnoses as well as precipitating events may contribute to pushing a victim over the edge. Sometimes there might be a hint of a problem in retrospect, but often no one has a clue. Families may spend a lifetime trying to piece it together.
Persons who find themselves in the grip of suicidal thoughts may not be aware of the danger they are in. They may suffer in silence and not recognize the need for shelter from the storm and protection. Those successfully identified and rescued by an intervention such as a call to the suicide prevention hotline can be rescued from the devastating consequences of a temporary situation. Those having survived an attempt to harm themselves benefit from lifelong support and contact with a therapist.
No one, however, had an expl
anation for what had happened.
A forensic epidemiologist testified that there were unexpected clusters of suicides that had occurred above the baseline statistics. These occurred at the laboratory and at a military drone facility.
The neurologists had no knowledge of any specific brain disease that could directly result in suicide. Although it was not unheard of for patients with devastating terminal illnesses to take their own lives.
The psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists had the most experience dealing with suicide. Psychiatrists licensed to prescribe medications understood brain chemistry in the clinical setting, including preexisting conditions such as depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and PTSD. The psychologists and therapists from many areas had a lot of frontline exposure to the repercussions and subsequent therapy and follow-up care.
The neuroscientist provided very interesting information about the network theory of brain function, in particular the relationships of structure, function, and behavior. He postulated existence of brain states represented by an instantaneous snapshot of the various network functions and behavior as an integration of network functions moving forward in time.
The defense team submitted a number of questions to the entire group that were very controversial but that were allowed on the basis that they might help explain what had happened:
I can only recall a few, but they were things like:
Would someone trained for a specific task or brain state be at increased risk?
Are acts of heroism suicide? Are the brain states the same?
Are brain states in suicide and murder similar?
Is PTSD the result of recovering from or reentering normal life after training?
The defense team was partially successful deflecting some of the perceived blame by raising these questions. They knew the answers would not be immediately forthcoming and that the questions would be difficult to answer and provocative.
No one really wanted to hear that there were training similarities between soldiers and terrorists. That soldiers, firefighters, and rescue personnel could be grouped together with murderers, suicide victims, or terrorists on the basis of similarities in brain states. The defense claimed that the military organizations on both sides of the conflict in Colorado were at least partly responsible for the soldiers’ deaths.
Ultimately, a panel of experts would be commissioned to answer such questions.
To some extent, in some ways, the trial ventured off course in attempts to reconcile the events. Still, in the end no one really could explain what had happened. The circumstantial evidence consisted of the battlefield findings of viral particles containing chloroplast DNA. Emma had impugned Angela in her conversation with Arnold Bitworth. Angela had shielded the discovery from the scientific community, so it appeared she was the only research scientist working on the topic, hence the likely suspect in deploying the weapon in the field. After all, she worked for the Department of Defense, too.
Thus, Angela and access to her research files were paramount to the understanding of what had happened. The top priority for the prosecution, therefore, became gaining access to Angela’s computer files. Angela was ordered by the court to provide the encryption codes. The defense team countered that it would be difficult to extract the fractal encryption codes she had astutely devised years earlier from their neurologically impaired client. A custom math keyboard would have to be built.
The process was painfully slow and communicating with Angela was difficult. The whole world watched as Angela, with Lisa’s help, slowly tapped out her answers to interrogation and then cross examination using her nondominant hand and a keyboard.
My grandfather Jack had been an outspoken critic and had condemned Angela in many venues as the architect of genocide. He would never be free of the carnage he had experienced on the battlefield, nor of his earlier life trauma associated with the self-inflicted deaths of his father and grandfather, in addition he was now totally alone, orphaned by suicide.
As the trial progressed, and the story unfolded, Jack was forced to reconcile his feelings and viewpoints about Angela. Not only the truth about her role in the death of millions of soldiers but also the gradual evolution of who she really was. Ironically and subliminally, Angela represented a pathway to the understanding that he and families of suicide victims searched for.
Once access was granted, it took a few days for the world to unravel the data. There were preliminary claims that she had been proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt and there were calls for the death sentence.
Initially, Angela’s data seemed to confirm what the military had alleged — that Angela had constructed a weapon of mass destruction based on the introduction of a plant-based apoptosis gene in a viral vector. The military claimed that because the encryption code leading to access of her research files where this data was stored came from Angela, that conclusively established her as the inventor/discoverer of a biological weapon that they had innocently used as an herbicide. They thought they had an ironclad case against Angela. Multiple copies of her files had been disseminated to experts globally in an attempt to access the data.
They never saw it coming. The records in fact revealed that Angela had inserted a molecular label on her original chloroplast DNA consisting of an alternating nucleotide sequence of adenine and guanine. This poly AG tail was not present in the battlefield specimens, having been discarded by the true manufacturer of the weapon — whomever that was. The records further revealed that Angela had documented her communications with scientific colleagues and leaders of the United Nations about these matters, but that apparently these communications had been intercepted and destroyed, never making it to the intended recipients. Once Angela’s team supplied the encryption codes, all of these revelations were made simultaneously at multiple independent sites. The evidence pointed to a theft of Angela’s works, covert use on the battlefield, and a subsequent coverup.
Suddenly, in this unexpected courtroom drama, you could hear the proverbial pin drop, and jaws dropped across the planet.
Angela’s defense team filed a motion for the dismissal of all charges and a claim to the intellectual property rights of the apoptosis genome.
The courtroom erupted in total chaos! The judge struggled to restore order. Grandpa Jack, who had approached Angela on his knees to offer an apology, wept and was quickly removed by the bailiffs.
—
For several years after WW3, the trial, and its aftermath, my grandfather’s view and understanding of Angela and the entire conflict underwent a remarkable metamorphosis.
Jack progressed on a journey from bewilderment and disdain — even hate for Angela — to love and understanding, and the realization that she was actually a brilliant and caring person and scientist who had possibly unlocked at least one secret of suicide that would further facilitate understanding of this painful reality.
It seems to me that my grandfather was predestined to become an expert in the field of suicide prevention, given his family background and experiences on the battlefield. This is a destiny that would be shared with his son, who became the first Psychologist General in our nation and who developed a prevention and cure program that uses therapy animals capable of detecting the specific activated brain state that induces suicide.
Of course, the work continues. This is what we do, here at Reset.com.
A while after the courtroom drama, through Lisa, the neurologist, my grandfather requested contact with Angela, who had retreated to Switzerland. He frequently emailed Angela and had one day received a response, an invitation from Lisa to visit the family estate, which was located in a remote area of the Swiss Alps. Lisa said she was planning a surprise birthday celebration and would like Jack to come.
Upon arrival, the doorman greeted him, welcomed him, and asked him to wait in the foyer. Lisa arrived shortly and greeted him wa
rmly.
“It’s so good to see you!” she said, taking his hand. “Thanks for coming all this way. Angela is really looking forward to seeing and spending time with you.”
“I’m excited to be here, Lisa, truly.” He squeezed her hand gently. “After all these years, I am finally ready to come to peace with the whole war situation and everyone who was involved, especially Angela.”
Nodding, she asked him to accompany her and turned to show him the way.
“Wait,” he said, quickly reaching out and touching her arm, “before we go see Angela, there are some things you and I must discuss. What’s going on here exactly, Lisa?” Jack inquired.
She sighed and turned to face him squarely. “As you know, this entire ordeal has been very stressful to everyone. First, you must understand that we are isolated out here in our private special place. We are the only ones allowed here. No one knows what goes on here and it must remain so,” she said firmly, inclining her head toward him. “Before proceeding, I need your unconditional acceptance and assurance that what you see and experience here will never leave this place. You have become a close friend of ours and at Angela’s request, she would like to share some personal matters with you.”
Jack’s forehead crinkled. “Well, after all we have been through, of course. This is a small thing to ask. We have to help each other get through. You have my promise.”
They walked out to the back of the property to a small cottage that backed up to the magnificent mountains.
“We have lunch ready and a special bottle of wine to celebrate the occasion,” Lisa announced.
Ahead, Jack could see the silhouette of a woman, the sun to her back, the cool breeze blowing through her hair.
When he got closer, she spoke. “Welcome to our celebration, Jack.”
He looked at Lisa in disbelief, then turned back to the woman standing before him. “Oh my God, Angela? What is going on here? I can’t believe this!”