The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller

by Hans G. Schantz

  “So, the sheriff was right,” Rob was grim. We brought Amit up to speed on what the sheriff thought had happened.

  “But I still don’t understand why they decided to cover their tracks by calling it an accident instead of a heroic shoot-out with the cyber-terrorists.” Amit looked puzzled.

  “They’re not real feds,” Rob explained. “Line-of-duty deaths mean inquiries and inquests and after-action reviews and questions about what they were doing and why they were doing it. Bill Burke filled me in on your ‘interrogation.’ Can you imagine the Circle’s minions saying ‘we found a page from a 1907 physics book with the suspect’s fingerprints on it that tied him to ‘cyber-terror?’”

  “I’m surprised they weren’t suspicious that your folks shot it out with them,” Amit said. “That should have indicated to them that your folks knew the stakes.”

  “Damn peckerwoods,” Rob commented. “Trying to shift the blame from their own incompetence. Your mom was a wicked good shot,” Rob explained, “a real natural. But, there’s no way she could have shot and killed two agents who were the least bit competent. Those guys were mercenaries. Maybe ex-military or ex-law enforcement. They had some kind of training, but they clearly didn’t keep up with it. Good training is expensive and time-consuming. You need the right facilities and resources. It leaves a footprint that might be seen by other people. The Circle either doesn’t have those resources or doesn’t want to risk the potential exposure. Real feds have better training. Usually, at least. They practice together as a unit. These guys? They were sloppy, they were cocky, and they were killed. Let that be a lesson to us all.”

  Performed assessment of tertiary threat: son of Secondary Target. Secondary Target’s son lacks technical expertise to derive implications of proscribed knowledge or to reduce it to practice. Local law enforcement assesses Secondary Target’s son as typical delinquent, poor self-control, emotional, undisciplined. In addition, Secondary Target’s son is nephew of Civic Circle Initiate. Unlikely Secondary Target’s son is an active threat, however recommend Target’s son be placed on Homeland Security Watch List and tagged for reinvestigation in five years.

  Latest measurements consistent with a Category I Nexus rapidly approaching background levels. We conclude that we have successfully contained the Nexus by termination of Targets.

  “Looks like you’re off the hook for now,” Amit assured me.

  “They’ll be back to check on you again,” Rob cautioned. “I have a feeling that whatever you do with your life these next five years, you won’t look like a delinquent to them the next time around.”

  “I’ll have ‘reformed’ a bit from my wild high school days, I’m sure,” I agreed, dryly. “Whatever I do, I’ll make sure I look squeaky clean. The bottom line is the Circle is convinced they’ve solved their problem.”

  “We need to do nothing to disabuse them of that notion,” Rob insisted.

  Specific Actions:

  Investigate similar formerly significant research institutions, libraries, and facilities to ensure that proscribed knowledge is properly contained.

  Review monitoring of online book sales for earlier identification of potentially criminal search or buying patterns. In the future, such investigations should specifically search for additional vectors of proscribed knowledge available to suspects.

  Review the need for enhanced scrutiny and more frequent surveys for potential Nexus developments in the vicinity of nuclear labs and power generation facilities where Nexus signatures may be obscured by background neutrino flux. Continue efforts to suppress and reduce nuclear power generation.

  Review tactical investigation process and threat assessments by Intelligence to reduce the risk of future such incidents of tactical surprise.

  Place Secondary Target’s son on Homeland Security Watch List and reinvestigate in five years.

  It had been a long day. I yawned.

  “You’re tired,” Amit said. “We can discuss it more in the morning.” He left.

  “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Uncle Rob said. “We’ll start in the morning. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  I went to bed.

  I did not go to sleep.

  Chapter 12: My Manifesto

  They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. My enemy’s greatest strength was his anonymity. For a century or longer, my enemy has worked tirelessly to hide, not only the truth, but also the very fact that the truth was hidden, and the identity of those doing the hiding.

  The Circle failed.

  Now, their mask was off.

  Now, I knew their name.

  Now, I knew their methods.

  Now, I knew a part of the truth they struggled so diligently to hide.

  And now, I was the one in possession of the hidden truth: I knew the Circle existed. They had a public face – the Civic Circle. They had a private side – Xueshu Quan – involved in hiding technical and other secrets. They had a direct action arm that killed anyone who got in their way. What they did not have was any idea how much I knew, or how much their secrecy had been compromised.

  I knew they were not responsible for the library fire. Did they themselves have an enemy with whom I might make common cause? The Circle was extremely dangerous because they possessed an irresistible power. They had an amazing technology that could literally tell them whenever the course of history was changing or when a threat to their power arose. That incredible power made the Circle complacent. Their complacency made them vulnerable.

  The Circle could detect a Nexus – a point of change where possibilities abound and a new future is born. They could and would intervene violently with overwhelming force to control the potential change, to guide the future toward their ends, and to further their own interests. In exercising that awesome power against my parents, they had just made themselves the very instrument of their own eventual demise. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. They took and razed my great-grandfather’s farm, the work of generations, then wiped out my great-grandfather a second time and drove him to drink. They crushed and stunted my grandfather through hardship and privation, driving him to an early grave. Now, they had killed my parents and Mr. Burleson, and Nicole, and her boss. But, it was more than just them. The death toll was staggering. Some of the best among us: scientists like Maxwell, Hertz, and FitzGerald, maybe even political leaders like Kaiser Frederick III. The Circle exterminated anyone who might expose their secrets, and killed remarkable men who were making a difference: a difference that for some unfathomable reason the Circle was unwilling to tolerate.

  The “Category V” Sherman Nexus, indeed! The Circle had detected a major turning point in history. They thought Mr. Burleson and my father were the threats, so they killed them both, along with my mother. They thought that by killing the agents of change they could keep society running smoothly along their preferred trajectory. But, none of their victims was the true threat.

  I was.

  I knew it.

  In some strange way, I could feel the certainty of it in the core of my being.

  By their actions the Circle had made a determined and ruthless enemy out of me, unleashing a tsunami that would utterly wipe them out. They had no idea it was coming. That was an incredible weakness I could and would exploit. I vowed I would be their downfall.

  The Circle was immensely powerful, supremely arrogant, confidently complacent…

  …and so utterly and completely doomed.

  True, I was feeble by comparison.

  For now.

  The vicious bastards killed my parents like they had so many others. The Circle had not the slightest compunction or mercy, and there was nothing I could have done to stop them. In their assessment, I lacked “technical expertise to derive implications of proscribed knowledge or to reduce them to practice.” I was “emotional” and “undisciplined,” a “delinquent” with “poor self-control.” Thank you Sheriff Gunn! The Circle had dismissed me as not wor
th the trouble to kill. I was quite confident I would soon be demonstrating the error of their assessment. While they might have underestimated me, in all honesty, their fundamental assessment was probably correct.

  For now.

  But I would not be feeble for long.

  I would acquire and cultivate allies. Already I had friends, like Amit, who would help me penetrate the Circle’s communications. I had family like Uncle Rob who would help me strike when the time came to act. I had other allies like Sheriff Gunn and Mr. Burke who knew part of the truth and would shield me and support me when called upon. And my father’s friends and associates would stand ready to aid me, particularly if I disclosed the circumstances of my parent’s murder: men like Doktor Krueger, and Greg Parsons. Despite how creeped out I was by Uncle Larry, his efforts to ‘entice’ me to the Tollivers and propel the family further into the Civic Circle might well pay dividends.

  I would acquire intelligence.

  I would develop technical expertise.

  I would discover the rest of the Circle’s hidden truths.

  I would derive the implications of this “proscribed knowledge.”

  I would “reduce them to practice.”

  I would seek out opportunities to confound and confuse the Circle.

  I would move in secret, applying my capabilities and my resources to thwart their schemes, to expose their secrets, and to weaken their power.

  And when I was ready, I would move with my allies to utterly crush the Circle, showing them no more mercy than they showed my parents.

  There would be a reckoning.

  And when that day of reckoning came, so help me, I would look them in the eye, and I would say:

  “My name is Peter Burdell.

  “You killed my parents.

  “Prepare to die.”

  There was much to do.

  I would start tomorrow.

  Tonight I slept.

  Soundly.

  About The Hidden Truth

  This is a work of fiction.

  Obviously.

  Gore did not defeat Bush in the 2000 election. The September 11, 2001 attacks did not successfully target the White House and Capitol Building, nor did they spare the World Trade Center. The Government did not create an Internet monopoly like Omnitia as part of the Patriot Act. There was no “Preserving Our Planet’s Future Act,” although global temperatures have actually been remarkably stable since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

  And, alas, there was no second season of Firefly.

  On the other hand, many elements of The Hidden Truth do appear to have parallels in our reality. Three of the five great pioneers of electromagnetics, James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, and George Francis FitzGerald, really did die prematurely at the peak of their respective careers. Bruce J. Hunt’s The Maxwellians provides a great overview. William Suddards Franklin’s 1909 Electric Waves does curiously omit the mention of Oliver Heaviside on page 115 from the index. Oliver Lodge’s Modern Views of Electricity (third edition, 1907) actually does have a rather puzzling figure (number 65 on page 302) that displaces nearly an entire page with no mention whatsoever in the text.

  The scientific conspiracy depicted in The Hidden Truth draws on the real-life drama of the discovery of electromagnetics. Paul J. Nahin’s Oliver Heaviside: Sage in Solitude: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age and his later Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age (same story, but revised and extended a bit) go into Heaviside’s life and work in excellent detail. Did Heaviside really discover the concept of electromagnetic waves bouncing from each other? It’s a natural extension of the work he described in his 1912 Electromagnetic Theory, volume 3. By a remarkable coincidence, the supposed paper by Heaviside on wave interactions sounds suspiciously like some of my own electromagnetic discoveries. See my paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.1800 for details.

  Winners write the textbooks in science as well as history, and too often we forget that there are multiple plausible models of physical phenomena. The Hidden Truth explores how and why an alternate physical model might have been shunted aside in a deliberate attempt to cripple progress in science and technology.

  The story of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and in particular how David Sarnoff crushed Edwin Howard Armstrong's FM radio technology may be read in Tom Lewis' excellent Empire of the Air, or viewed in a great documentary of the same name by Ken Burns (see episode 7). The geopolitics of RCA in the context of American efforts to overthrow the Marconi monopoly and British dominance of the worldwide telegraphy system are well described in Peter J. Hugill's Global Communications Since 1844: Geopolitics and Technology.

  The Simon-Ehrlich bet really happened with the outcome described. I suspect the narrator’s mother must have read Simon’s The Ultimate Resource as well as The Doomsday Myth: 10,000 Years of Economic Crisis. Norman Borlaug did fend off the starvation of a billion or more people with his high-yield crops. And, as Ronald Regan observed, “Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.”

  Great Smoky Mountain National Park really was created by eminent domain from the property of many small landowners in the fashion described. Durwood Dunn documents the history of this disgraceful expropriation in Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community 1818-1937.

  The Venona Project was a secret effort to decrypt the messages of Soviet spies. Only declassified in 1995, the program identified espionage targeting the Manhattan Project as well as spies throughout the U.S. government.

  Was the women’s rights movement actually a callous ploy to get women into the workplace so they could be taxed and their children indoctrinated by the state? Aaron Russo argued so, claiming that a Rockefeller family member disclosed their role in the plot. See his documentary, “America: From Freedom to Fascism,” for details.

  But how could the Circle know the future path of technology well enough to control it? Who founded the Circle? What is the Circle’s ultimate goal? How can the Circle possibly be defeated? For answers to those questions, you will have to await future installments of my tale.

  About the Author

  I'm Hans G. Schantz. Thanks for reading my book. As a small business owner, successful inventor, and scientist, I reduce theory to practice, I figure out and show how things work, and I apply science to solve real-world problems. I appreciate fiction that shows how ordinary people with extraordinary courage and determination can accomplish remarkable achievements. That's why I wrote The Hidden Truth.

  Will there be a sequel? That, dear reader, is up to you. If The Hidden Truth does well enough to make it worth my while, you may, before too long, see the continuing adventures of Pete, his friend Amit, and Uncle Rob along with new friends and allies (and a few new enemies) in The Brave and the Bold, A Rambling Wreck, and A Hell of an Engineer. And that’s just the beginning. I have a loose outline for about a dozen novels set in the current timeline along with ample opportunity for crossover and interaction with alternate timelines.

  How long will you have to wait to see our heroes test their wits against EVIL Amit complete with his EVIL goatee from an alternate EVIL timeline? Again that depends on you. I have many demands on my time. My wife, Barbara, and I make our home in Huntsville, Alabama with our four children - twin girls and twin boys. When I'm not busy perfecting NFER indoor location products, improving SafeSpot proximity detection, inventing new wireless technologies for The Q-Track Corporation, or relaxing with my family, I like to write fiction. How much fiction I write depends on the reception for The Hidden Truth. More sales make it more likely there will be a sequel and will encourage me to complete a sequel more quickly.

  Here’s how you can help.

  Write a review: Readers love feedback from other readers. If you’re enthusiastic about The Hidden Truth, write a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Share it with your friends through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Post
it on your blog.

  Tell a Friend: Know a friend who might enjoy The Hidden Truth? Ask them to buy a copy, or better yet, buy them a copy as a gift. If they like the story, encourage them to write their own review and tell their friends.

  Follow ÆtherCzar: I’ll keep readers posted on the latest plans for sequels, discounts, and any special promotions on my Twitter feed: @aetherczar, through my blog at: http://www.aetherczar.com/blog, and through my Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Hans-G.-Schantz/e/B001K8EGEW. You may sign up on my mail list at http://www.aetherczar.com/HiddenTruth.

  May I suggest some other books to keep you entertained while you wait for the next installment of The Hidden Truth?

  C.S. Forrester’s Horatio Hornblower is the classic coming-of-age series, following the titular hero from his beginnings as a midshipman, through his service as captain of a “ship of the line” in the Napoleonic wars, to his final adventure as a retired admiral.

  David Weber’s Honor Harrington series (start with On Basilisk Station), Lois Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan Saga (The Warrior’s Apprentice is a good place to start), and Peter Grant’s Maxwell saga are all excellent examples of this kind of story-telling. A good series of this genre starts with a young and naive hero who through strength of character and hard work gradually acquires the experience and skills that lead to ultimate success.

  Many fine science fiction authors write outstanding military science fiction depicting combat and conflict in a futuristic, yet credible, way. Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold is a good example.

  Unfortunately, there’s not much science fiction written from the perspective of an entrepreneur or businessman. Writing is a notoriously poorly paid line of work, and a truly successful entrepreneur, inventor, or businessman is unlikely to make as much from writing as from a successful start-up. Further, the demands of entrepreneurship and family responsibilities leave little time for writing. Still, a few science fiction works I’ve come across do touch on the inherent drama and excitement of business and technical entrepreneurship.