CHOSEN: A Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Dystopian Novel (4 page)

Capital City, Northern Liberty Region

Representative Gregor Magiro
slammed the tablet down on his desk. He looked at the screen thankful he hadn’t
cracked another one. The small tablet had taken the brunt of his passion after skimming
over the latest report from the emissions pumping field program while his assistant
stood there waiting. His assistant was spared any further deluge.

“Leave.”

His
assistant turned and practically ran out of the room, just before Magiro was on
his heels, slamming the door. It was becoming redundant. Each quarter, the
reports and updates held the same news and it was never good news. He always
read every report, every quarter, and eventually his electronic versions found
their way into the deleted file.

This
was his project and he would be damned if he watched it fail. He’d committed
the past twenty years of his life to this one thing. As a businessman and
politician, he had too much riding on it and couldn’t let it fail. The reports
told him it was failing though he didn’t want it to be true. He’d drug his feet
along with everyone else supporting a system that was good enough.

Gregor
tapped his watch until he had Harold Fumar’s contact information. Harold Fumar
had been his contractor over the ground pumps for nearly a decade. The bastards
were messing up his legacy. Harold Fumar’s projection appeared in his room and
Magiro immediately began talking.

“Harold,
what the hell is this report? Is there a reason we can’t monitor and catch
these leaks sooner? Why the hell do I have to deal with another emissions
pumping error? You are making me look bad Harold and I don’t like to look bad.
Fix it and fast!”

“If
we can’t make sure these pumps are secure we are going to have to deal with the
public and you know UniCorps doesn’t like that. Stocks will crap out and when
stocks crap out that is bad for all of us Harold. You got that?! All of us. Yes,
Harold, that means you too. I need an update ASAP of how you are going to fix
this, Harold. That’s all.” He hung up while Harold still stood there without
even opening his mouth.

The
light on Magiro’s watch blinked. It was Harold calling back after Magiro had
ended the call so abruptly. Magiro’s looked at the time before taking Harold’s
call. His next meeting, which he dreaded even more, was happening soon.

“Magiro,
I think we got disconnected,” Harold said smartly. “Look, I just need to make
sure we are all on the same page. I’m getting two different messages. One from
you and your team at the World Consensus, and one from UniCorps. I don’t want
to get in the middle of anything, but before you call yelling at me, maybe you
both should get your priorities straight so you are both saying the same thing.
That’s all,” Harold said curtly before ending the call the same way Magiro did.

Magiro
pounded his desk and then thought of calling Dr. Zura Bello at the Antarctic
Research Center. He changed his mind, realizing she wouldn’t be able to make
him feel any calmer about what was going on. In fact, she might send his blood
pressure up even more. He’d wait for her report that would come at the end of
their Summer. He hoped it wouldn’t be like the others.

Magiro
was frustrated. The promises he’d made and reputation he’d built as a younger
representative of the World Consensus were at risk. His frustration at
everything had grown over the years but he would not be made a fool.

A
knock at the door brought him back from his thoughts as he picked up the tablet
with the report again and sat it down at the oval conference table in his
office. He put it in front of his seat, closest to the window. 

“Come
in,” Magiro spoke up, sounding more confident than he actually felt at that
moment. 

The
door opened with a bang, nearly hitting the wall behind it and a man whose head
grazed the top of the door frame while his shoulders touched either side walked
in. Behind him were five others, a mix of his contacts from the Science
Division of World Consensus and the Science Division of UniCorps. The fifth
person was a man from the Environmental and Ecological Preservation and
Protection Agency (EEPP).

They
were all usually pretty friendly or cordial at the least, having all at one
time or another been employed by partner organizations of UniCorps. Today,
there was already tension in the air. The large brash man who’d filled the
doorway was now sitting down, right in Magiro’s seat, at the far end of the
glass oval table, nearest the window. He pushed the tablet in front of him to
the side to make room for his own.

There
was no mistake; he planned to be in charge of this meeting, even though Gregor
Magiro had called it. Magiro calmly sat down next to The Stache. Mirkal
Dempstead had been nicknamed ‘The Stache’ when he was much younger because of
his thick bushy mustache, something very noticeable on an already very
noticeable man. The Stache started to speak before the others even had a chance
to sit.

“We
cannot continue like this. If our numbers don’t change, we are all going to be
out of a job. Our stockholders, the people out there, the people I report to,
the people you all report to, are demanding something be done to increase
profits. We are bleeding from all the exploratory projects we are doing and all
of the environmental requirements. If we don’t start cutting expenses, people
employed at our partner organizations and by the World Consensus are going to
be out of work. All this environmental hullabaloo isn’t going to amount to a
hill of beans if no one can afford to eat, clothe themselves, or pay their rent.”

“We
are only in this position because no one ever wanted to sacrifice their
precious lubles so that people would even have a planet that food could be
grown on, where materials could be grown to make clothes, and where you could
even live so paying your rent would even matter. Greed, by you and your
cronies, from as far back as the World Consensus has existed and even further
back, is why we still haven’t dug ourselves out of the environmental mess of
the twentieth and twenty-first century. So why don’t you and your ridiculous
Stache and the rest of your spineless, mindless, suck the life out of the world
zombies jump back into the holes you dug, cuz clearly that’s where you came
from!” Magiro blinked his eyes.

In
his head Magiro had given The Stache a withering look and shot all this back at
him. In reality, when it came to taking on UniCorps he had long ago learned
that silence was key to political and economic survival and that some might
think him spineless too, when it came to them.

“What
do you propose we do?” Magiro asked instead of giving his tirade.

“Well
to start with, our partner corporations haven’t been able to produce at their
target levels. They have been forced to withhold production even in the face of
consumer demand. While this helps our short term prices because of supply and
demand, we could be earning a great deal more in general and also give the
people lower prices if we could just produce more. We have had a dozen pump
holes for years and we’ve since doubled that and things are going fine. Why
can’t we operate all of them at full capacity? Heck, why can’t we operate all
of them? We’ve got some decommissioned just because of a little leak or gas
coming back out. It happens but the pumps have been doing their job for almost
twenty years, right Gregor?” The Stache looked at Gregor, awaiting his
confirmation.

“Well,
that’s something we need to talk about,” said Magiro sheepishly. He looked
around the table hoping for support from the other representatives in the room,
but was only met with silence.

“What
do you mean? Never mind. The point is, nothing is going ‘that’ wrong and we
have great minds already working on a long term solution, so why hold back our
production? Manufacturing cannot stop. Besides, the current holes aren’t even
at capacity. Even if they were, we can just do what we did several years back
and add a few more holes.”

“Just
add more holes?” Magiro asked skeptically.

“Sure.
We have some of our partner corporations willing to personally support the
funding of pump holes so they can grow their businesses. More holes would
spread out the risk of any single pump hole. How about that? Yeah, how about
that?” The Stache nodded his head and smiled triumphantly.

Magiro
glanced over at Representative Litana Silver, his strongest ally when it came
to this. She was silent as she listened to The Stache’s argument. They were
trying to do it again. They’d convinced the people and the Representatives that
more pump holes were good for everyone and even the environment.

A
temporary solution to deal with man-made pollutants had turned into a permanent
one for many of the corporations and elected officials. They’d bought into the
story, the same one The Stache repeated, in some variation, ad nauseam.
Everything
was okay and there weren’t very many problems
.

They’d
managed to instill enough fear over changing to a long-term system that no
resources had been committed to make a long-term system happen. Anyone working
in those pump sites, and the town around them were also opposed to any ideas that
might take away their jobs. 

They
had now convinced them that spreading the emissions and pollutants into more
holes would prevent some areas having heavier use than others, thus making the
risk and benefits of the program fairer for all people in the six producing
regions. They promised that people could get more affordable products and
businesses could make more money and hire more people.

Unfortunately,
not much of that really happened. Except, of course, the businesses producing
more and people buying more but the prices for what people paid barely budged
more than a fraction of a luble. The corporations made out like bandits and
Magiro had been forced to justify everything to the World Consensus and the
constituents he represented.

“We
should wait to see what the next quarterly report from the Antarctic Research
Center says. We just got the last one in from our science division here this
week and there were things in it that give me a great deal of concern. We are
having trouble with leaks and seepage. They are small so they wouldn’t
necessarily be seen by someone monitoring at a high level but for the people
who are actually working at these sites, they are seeing them and they are
being reported more now than they were even just a few years ago. It’s
something we need to talk about.” Magiro commanded.

“Haha
Gregor! You worry about things you don’t need to worry about. They told us
years ago, a few leaks and a little seeping would be a normal thing to see. You
remember, right? And they said as long as it is caught early and contained, it
wouldn’t do damage. You remember that too, now don’t you Gregor? I was there. I
listened.” The Stache said smugly, smoothing his thick dark mustache. 

Ignorant,
thoughtless jerk
, Magiro couldn’t help but think. Mirkal Dempstead was one
of those people that UniCorps paid to promote their interest, and it seemed
there wasn’t any maximum costs. Magiro wondered if he had a conscience hidden
somewhere deep deep deep down inside. With his sheer size it could hide pretty
deep down.

“Perhaps
we should wait until the report to talk about what our options are for moving
forward,” Representative Silver, who sat opposite Magiro, finally spoke. Like
him, Representative Silver was an elected representative and they would have to
answer to millions of people, no matter what choice they made. Through many
years and past mistakes, they’d both learned the hard way that it was better to
wait and be right, than to rush into wrong. Silver didn’t plan to have to
justify another money driven move to her constituents like she and Magiro had
done many times before. Not if a matter of weeks could yield better and more
complete information. 

“You
two are acting like a pair of wussies! Ya’ scared your little people are gonna
get upset and not vote for you again? Well, how the hell do you think they’ll
feel when my people have to fire them because they can’t make their bottom
line? You wanna know how mad your people’ll be then? Well, I can tell you one
thing’s for sure, they won’t be blaming me!”

The
Stache paused and picked up his tablet. “You call us back here when you’ve put
together the rest of your sorry excuse for tanking the economy. The environment
is going to be here. It’ll work itself out. However, your job may not be.” The
Stache pushed his chair forcibly back and it smashed into the wall under the
window. He smoothed his mustache again and marched out the door.

***

Silver leaned against
the back of a chair and crossed her arms. She knew all too well how to play the
politicians game, after giving thirty years to it, but when it came down to
working, she was all business – and direct. These traits didn’t endear her to
many of her fellow representatives but it was something Gregor Magiro had
learned to respect over the years. It was also something that got her respect
from her constituents. They kept reelecting her, despite the money and votes
that UniCorps’s partner corporations and political funding pots would
constantly throw up against her.