We hardly got in the door of the tactic
building when Abigail looked up and asked me where the map was.
“Map? Oh, yeah. I had completely
forgotten.” I pulled the folded paper from my bra and walked across the
expansive room to Abigail. “Here. I stuck it down my shirt when I was watching
the soul-seekers try to kill you. After that so much happened, I forgot I even
had it.”
“Ah, yes,” Andy reflected. “I hear you
have a most powerful talent. I don’t believe we’ve seen anything quite like
what you can do, young Charlie.”
“It’s no big deal. I just did what I had
to, to save your daughter. She would’ve done the same for me.”
“Perhaps,” he mused, with a hand on his
chin as he walked away from us to sit down at the table.
“What is the map for, anyway?”
“Come, Charlie, sit. Let me tell you a
story.”
Richard grinned and nudged me to go to
the table and sit with the Colonel. I settled in a chair opposite Andy and
waited to be regaled.
“I was working my way up in the Army,
while Ruth climbed the corporate ladder. We were in our early twenties, newly
married, and wanted desperately to start a family. However, we had a lot of
trouble getting pregnant –the doctors said there was nothing we could do. We
should adopt or give up on the dream.”
Ruth had come to stand by her husband’s
side while he spoke. “Andy blamed himself. But it’s just the way of nature
sometimes, no one was to blame. Besides, the folly was with my body, not his.”
Her hand was on his shoulder as she spoke.
“Ruth came home from work one day
overwhelmed with joy,” Andy continued. “The company she worked for had taken
their research in fertility out of the lab and were beginning human testing.
She told me she’d volunteered us to join the testing program.”
“You worked for the NDU?” I looked at
Ruth with too much shock on my face. She blushed and looked away. “I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It’s okay, love,” she said, and took
the seat beside her husband. “I’m not proud of my involvement, but some good
may come out of it yet.”
“Shall I continue, ladies?” Andy glanced
between Ruth and I, and I asked him to, please go on.
“Despite Ruth’s involvement in the
company, we didn’t really know what we were getting into. We were young and
desperate for a child of our own. The NDU made grand promises of children free
from illness, and smarter than any child born before them. We believed them
eagerly.
“When Abigail was six, however, she
started to display considerable talents –our dog was hit by a car, Abigail put
her hands on him and he got up and walked off as if nothing had happened.
That’s when Ruth approached Gavin. Gavin was head of the science team, in
charge of experiments and such. She told him what Abigail could do and that she
was scared for her daughter. She asked Gavin not to tell the department and
Gavin understood her fear but he had to put a stop to the tests until they had
determined the implications of Abigail’s abilities. So Gavin told the head of
the science department and that’s when they started hunting us. Well, shortly
thereafter.
“They had us bring Abigail in to be
examined first, and when they saw what she could do they freaked out a little,
insisting we keep at their facility until they knew the extent of her power. We
refused, of course. And Ruth threatened to go to the authorities. They fired
her and made it quite clear that we would keep our mouths shut should we want
to live.
“Two years later… it was two years,
wasn’t it, Love?” He looked to his wife who nodded. “Yes, two years later Gavin
turned up on our doorstep in the wee hours of the morning and told us we needed
to leave. The NDU had captured one of the other children within weeks of firing
Ruth, and had spent months experimenting on him. They killed his family,
Charlie. But still Gavin stayed put. He never condoned what they were doing,
but was scared for his own family if he spoke out against them.
“Anyway, once they were done with poor
boy they tried to do away with him –he was only four. They couldn’t kill him,
though. When they tried to poison him, it had no effect; when they tried to
injure him, he healed himself. That’s when they realised they had a bigger
problem –they couldn’t eliminate the children they had created if the children
couldn’t die.
“They knew they had to keep the boy if
they had any hope of finding a way to kill the rest. They began a program
dubbed the criminal compliance early
release program –they offered early release to long-term prisoners from
around the country in exchange for them signing up for a medical trial.”
“What did they do to them?” I asked,
completely engrossed in his story.
“They pumped them full of a
performance-enhancing cocktail and removed the part of their brain which allows
free thought.”
“Like a lobotomy?”
“Almost. And now they are unable to
think for themselves and they have the ability to kill anything and anyone. But
they are programmed to kill the gifted, and anyone else who stands in their
way.”
“The soul-seekers?”
“Yes. They are the soul-seekers. After
they successfully created the first soul-seeker, that’s when Gavin left. He
found us and brought us here. A few others from the NDU defected shortly after,
and joined Gavin in his crusade to save all the gifted children and their
families.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Andy, I’m glad you
told me all this. But what does any of it have to with the map?”
“Ah, the map. That, my dear, is a map of
the entire NDU complex. It will make it much easier to take them down if we
know where everything is.”
“Excuse me, Sir, but your daughter
almost died for the sake of that map. Wouldn’t your wife, and Gavin and his
merry men have been able to redraw it from memory?”
“You have to understand, it is a massive
complex, over two-hundred square metres. And that’s only the main facility. They
could have drawn parts of it, but even those parts would be out of date. A lot
has changed in twenty-six years.”
“Even still, Abigail could have died.”
“That is not a sacrifice I would have
been willing to make, but Abigail knows what’s at stake, and she chose to take
the risk. Something I’m not entirely happy with, mind you.”
“Excuse me again, Sir,” I felt like a
kid talking to the principal. “You’re talking like the fate of the world is in
the balance.”
“It is, Charlie. It is.”
“How so?”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Here it comes.”
“Here what comes?”
“Colonel Andrew Robert Davies’ famous
speech. It’s the speech he gives all the newcomers when they ask why we need to
take action rather than just staying here and keeping ourselves safe.”
“You know it’s all true, though, Love.”
“Yes, Dear, I know.”
“Let’s hear it then,” I said, rather
intrigued.
“We’re led to believe we’re free. But
nothing could be further from the truth –the zombie apocalypse is already upon
us and we are the zombies. We’re brainwashed by government and corporations.
And at the head of it is the NDU. The freedom we so eagerly lay claim to is a
farce. We are no more free than is a rat
in a maze. Every facet of our society, of our lives, is controlled by those who
set the status quo.
“They watch over us with self-interested
curiosity while we busy ourselves trying to find the cheese in a maze of their
making. Never be fooled about your choices, Charlie –every choice you make is
only one of the limited paths they have built into their grand design. We have
been conditioned to see only the choices they give us, and to believe we can’t
live without the things they tell us we need.
“They tell us to work, we work and pay
taxes. They tell us to consume, we spend our money on flat-screen TVs and fancy
cars. They tell us we have to send our children to their schools, we send them
like herding sheep, to create the next generation of workers and consumers.
They tell us to behave a certain way, to spend a certain way, to learn a
certain way, to live a certain way. Their way. All so they can sit in their
towers feasting on the sweat of the masses, their pockets growing ever fatter,
all the while we toil in the trenches hoping to catch the scraps which may fall
from their plates.
“But what if it were all gone, Charlie?
What if we could take away the rules, change the status quo?
“Everyone loves the idea of a utopian
society, and we have the ability to make it happen, Charlie. We just need to
create the opportunity.”
“Create the opportunity, how do you
suggest we do that?”
“The NDU controls the world through the
power of money. If we take away the money, we eliminate the hold they have over
the rest of human kind.”
“And how do we take away the money?”
“By reminding the people of the
difference between desire and necessity.”
“You’re planning on telling the entire
world, all at once, that they should strip back to basics, and what, live off
the land? Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, I just don’t see how it can be
done.”
“It can be done with the powers they
inadvertently bestowed upon you and the others. You have the power to influence
minds. To unwash them, so to speak.”
“If we’re telling people what to think,
doesn’t that make us just like them?”
“Not at all. We’re not telling them what
to think, we’re only going to clear the junk from their minds, like wiping a
window clean of filth so they can see again. Don’t you get it, Charlie? The NDU
controls every corporation, every government. They are responsible for the
consumerist society, poverty, even war. They designed it this way so that the
people are too busy concerning themselves with these things to see behind the
veil.
“So, you see, Charlie, we are indeed a
society of zombies. We just haven’t resorted to eating each other’s flesh. Instead
we swallow their propaganda with dumbstruck ignorance and allow one another to
be destroyed by the architecture of our so-called freedom. But you have the cure.”
Andy saw me shuffle in my seat
uncomfortably.
“I can see you’re still a little
sceptical. I don’t blame you, it’s a lot to take in. I’ll let you think about
it for a couple of days. Any questions you have, feel free to ask. You can
speak freely to anyone here. And please, stop calling me Sir. We’re all equal
here. I am not your superior.”
“Thank you… Andy. I’m not so much
sceptical as dumbfounded. I mean, everyone knows the people have no say anymore, I just never realised how blatantly and
completely they were controlling us. And I certainly never thought a single
organisation could be governing the entire world’s social and political
climates.”
“Not for long, my dear. Not for long.”
“That’s enough revolution talk for now.”
Ruth got up from her seat.
“Hang on. I still don’t know how you
plan on doing this unwashing the brains
of the masses thing.” I almost yelled the words.
“We’re still working on that, dear,”
Ruth said. “Technology has finally advanced enough to make it possible, but
we’re still in the planning stages. Now, I said enough of that. Let’s go get
your kids and find you lot something to eat.” She turned to where Abigail was busy
working on something with Sherry. “Come on, Abby, it’s time for supper. You
need to eat something. You’re as thin as a rake.”
“Still mothering me?” Abigail called
from across the room.
“And I will never stop.”
“Okay, you go ahead. Sherry and I will
catch up.”
longer work, due to an injury, when people ask me what I do I prefer to have an answer other than "I'm unemployed". No one wants to be defined as "unemployed". So, though I have yet to be published, I tell people I am a writer, if for no other reason than to save face. I, like most every writer, have written in one form or another all my life. I wrote random tales of fantasy as a child, I wrote poetry and arbitrary prose as a teen, and now I write novels. I haven't taken literary courses or been to college, but I have always had a knack for the written word. Since starting the process of writing novels I am constantly seeking knowledge about the art of writing, and I continue to learn every day.
The funny thing about calling yourself a writer is, once you say you're a writer every monkey with a keyboard is, too. Since calling myself a writer, I can't count how many people have told me they "want to write a book", or are "writing a book". There is a way I have found to sort the "Gonna Do's" from the "real writers". Talent aside, because talent is not something we can judge by talking to a person, Gonna Do's want to discuss their writing by telling you how brilliant they are and how much, and how well, they have written. Gonna Do's will always find a way to turn the topic back to their awesomeness, without any discussion of your writing or the trials and tribulations we know accompany this fickle art form. Real writers, on the other hand, want discuss their work, and yours. They want to talk about the brick walls they've hit along the way, the way in which they and their conversational-counterpart (you) have overcome these walls, they want to talk about all aspects of the writing process, like the options for plotting, character definition, plot holes, the pros and cons of character profiles, the challenges of publishing. The list goes on. 
And that, boys and girls, is how you spot a Gonna Do! Someone who thinks they have all the answers but will never accomplish their dreams for the sake of self-reverential pride.