2022
Authors: Ken Kroes
Tags: #dystopian, #climate, #ecofiction, #apocacylptic post apocacylptic, #ecology and environment, #percipience, #virtuesh
Ken Kroes
~~~
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2015 by Ken Kroes
All rights reserved.
Editor: Irene Kavanagh
http://www.editors.ca/profile/7624/irene-kavanagh
Cover Design:
SelfPubBookCovers.com/rgporter
Book design by Ken Kroes
ISBN 978-0-9940332-3-9
Publisher 1779671 Alberta Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in
writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who
may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Ken Kroes
For more information, please visit my website
at
http://www.the2222book.com
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Chapter 8 - Start of Percipience
Chapter 18 - Plans Taking Shape
Chapter 20 - Final Preparation
Chapter 23 - The Real Beginning of
Percipience
Appendix A - World Enigma – Idiots of Men
Know
Appendix B - Putting Things into
Perspective
The assassin’s target stood near the rear
entrance of the city bus. A week of observation revealed that the
man’s behavior in the morning was always the same. He boarded the
nearly full bus every morning at the same stop. There was usually
no place to sit, so he stood with one arm around a pole to balance
himself while skimming through a morning tabloid. His attire rarely
varied, and there were no surprises this morning in his choice of a
light-colored jacket and dark jeans.
The assignment had started with a simple
message from the assassin’s employer: Within a week, take out this
man in a public place and make sure that it is obviously a
professional hit.
“So far, so good,” Hope thought, as she
watched her mark and kept track of the other riders on the bus. She
would have completed her mission yesterday, but a man on crutches
at the rear entrance increased the chances of slowing her getaway.
She changed her disguise daily as the police were sure to review
security video. They would see that the killer was a young man in
his early twenties, wearing a denim jacket, baseball cap, and
glasses. If the security camera resolution was good enough, and the
police reviewed previous days’ footage, it would show the week’s
progression from clean-shaven to scruffy with evidence of a slight
scar on his right jaw.
As the bus approached the university, Hope
started to close the distance between her and her mark, and with
practiced skill went through a checklist of items that would
immediately abort the operation. The jacket that the man wore would
shield the blood spatter, and there was no unusual activity on the
bus or at the stop it was approaching. She had picked the morning
ride for the hit since the crowd was comprised of university
students and office workers with no children present. She did have
rules, including no killing of children or in front of them.
Satisfied that everything was all right, she
tapped on the rim of her eyeglasses to turn on the camera for a
live feed of the event. She waited a few seconds until a small
green arrow came up on the HUD of the glasses indicating that they
were functioning properly. The bus neared the stop and a small
group of people gathered around the rear exit door. The mark was
still standing in his original spot as his stop came after this
one. He had progressed to the comics section and seemed oblivious
to everything around him.
She moved passed the man, looking down as she
lightly bumped against him. During this brief contact, she extended
the long, narrow blade concealed in her sleeve and expertly plunged
it into him at an upward angle just below his rib cage. After a
slide twist of the blade, she withdrew it quickly, knowing that it
had punctured his heart. She moved swiftly towards the rear door,
turned off her eyeglass video feed, and was off the bus and walking
down the street before the man fully realized he had been
stabbed.
Thirty minutes later, she sat at a café
window seat across the street from the university waiting for a
latte to be made. She rubbed her fingertips together to get rid of
the thin, plastic film she had used to conceal fingerprints.
“Triple tall latte for Hope,” the barista
called out.
She got up and collected her coffee and
returned to her seat. She noticed a fire truck go by, probably to
put out the small fire burning her disguise in an alley a few
blocks away. After exiting the bus, she had followed a route that
avoided security cameras. She entered a washroom in one of the
university buildings where lectures would not begin for a few
hours. Ensuring it was empty, she pulled a doorstop from her
pocket, jammed it into place to ensure privacy, and spent the next
ten minutes transforming herself back from a mid-twenty, thin,
unshaven man to a stunning thirty-year-old female with long, blonde
hair. She left the washroom and discarded the disguise near a trash
bin behind the building, sprinkled lighter fluid on it, and struck
a match.
********************
At the same time, Mikhail also was looking
out a window, but instead of busy city streets his view was an
ocean panorama from his penthouse office. He had just watched the
live feed of the murder. He felt no real emotion; this was
something that had to be done. He turned away from the sight of
lapping waves on the sandy beach, hastily typed an encrypted
message, and pressed Send.
At forty-five years old, he was a driven
individual and would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. He had
accepted this assignment even though it meant living halfway across
the world from his home in the Middle East because it was ideally
suited to what he wanted to achieve. As head of the research
division, he not only held the responsibility of ensuring that
schedules were maintained, but managed several aspects of the
project that were kept secret from the public and the government.
For the first two years, things had gone well, but now, nearing the
final year, there were increased opportunities for information
leaks.
He saw the acknowledgment that his message
had been sent.
Another six months and I’ll have all that I
need.
********************
Hope picked up her tablet, scanned her
fingerprint, and logged into her crypto-currency account. She
wasn’t surprised to see that Mikhail, her employer, had already
deposited a good-sized bonus. With a few keystrokes, she
transferred ten percent to her favorite charity, The Pleasant
Belief Foundation. She smiled at the irony of the donation then
scanned the local news feeds to see if there were any headlines on
the murder that she had just committed.
*******************
Diane learned about her brother’s death from
the Internet. At first she thought it was someone else with the
same name, but as she read further, she knew there was no mistake.
In a daze, she checked her email and found a message from her
brother’s wife, Gwen, sent only a few hours before, telling her the
news and asking her to call.
As reality struck her, she felt the world
collapsing around her. With both her parents gone for some years,
her older brother was all the family she had left and had been the
cornerstone of her life. He was always there for her, regardless of
what trouble she got herself into. She was almost the complete
opposite of him. As she grew up, she never could fit into the mold
according to the expectations of her parents and society. Now, at
twenty-five years old, with a slim build, short light colored hair,
piercings, and tattoos, things were not any different.
Throughout high school, she found little use
for several compulsory subjects and had been unable to convince her
parents to enroll her in any extracurricular activities that she
preferred. After high school, she spent a few years at a trade
school, taking classes that appealed to her, such as welding and
fabrication. She worked at several part-time jobs to support
herself. She cringed at the thought of living within the rules of
established society but didn’t know what she really wanted either.
She felt lost, knowing that there had to be some purpose to her
life, yet she had no idea what that was and had spent the last few
years drifting in search of it.
Through her tears and sobs, she thought back
to how her brother had been their parents’ favorite. He had worked
so hard in school to please them, achieving a teaching position at
a prominent university while doing microbiology research.
Regardless of how busy his schedule was, though, he contacted her
regularly, and she thought back to the last time she saw him a few
days earlier.
She picked up her cell phone and called Gwen
to say she would be there in a few hours, after which she spent the
next few minutes picking loose items up. Then she went to the front
of her RV, started it, and drove away from the side street where
she had parked overnight.
Who would want to kill my brother
? The
thought ran through her mind over and over. Gwen had said
“murdered” several times. Sadness slowly turned to anger, and as
she fought to stay in control, she clenched the steering wheel
hard, vowing to find out who had done this and make them pay.
The large, flat touch screen took up nearly
the whole wall in the director’s office. Displayed on it were
icons, documents, and other images.
“I don’t need a partner—I’ve worked on my own
for the last ten years.” Sue stood and looked at the image of a
good-looking young man. Sue was nearly forty and kept herself in
good shape by running several times per week. With her long curly
brown hair, above average height and faultless makeup application
she still was able to spin heads as she walked by.
If I was
fifteen years younger then maybe it would be a different story but
I don’t have the time or patience to train him, regardless of how
good looking he is
.
“Well, like it or not, you’re going to get
one now,” the director said as he flicked on the image, sending it
across the screen to where she stood. “It’s part of the new policy
that everyone gets partnered. You and our whole department are
overworked, and we need to train new blood.”
“He’s just going to slow me down,” Sue said.
She swirled her fingers over the image then tapped on it, making it
crumple and move to the trash icon.
The director sighed. “He’s one of our best
upcoming candidates and he needs to learn from the best.” As he
spoke, he manipulated the screen to retrieve the image, uncrumpled
it, and sent it back to her.
As she moved to return it to the trash icon,
there was a knock at the door.
“That will be him,” the director said.
The door opened and a young man entered,
appearing to be much younger than his twenty-five years. She
thought he could easily have passed for a male model but was most
immediately struck by his blue eyes. He seemed taller and more
handsome in person.