COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2011 by Gary Lovisi
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For my young and lovely wife,
Lucille
QUOTATIONS
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Thomas Jefferson
“In a democratically free society, everything goes, but nothing matters. In a totalitarian society,
nothing goes, and everything matters.”
Unknown
“Books?
They are nothing more than antique and quaint,
primitive information storage devices. They have no meaning today.”
Simon
“No one on Earth reads anymore. Books are lost things from a lost past. But on Mars, all we do is read, and all we read are the old crime and hard-boiled paperbacks from last century.”
James Ryan
CHAPTER ONE
SIMON
He went by the name of Simon.
Just, Simon.
But that one name encompassed power unimagined by lesser rulers and despots throughout the history of the old planet called Earth. The few people who mattered all knew the name—and they feared and obeyed. While the vast majority of people who did not matter hardly knew he even existed. To have that knowledge could be a death sentence for them. In a sense, most citizens were lucky in their ignorance, but it is a damned dark way to go through life.
Simon sat back in his chair luxuriating in the sheer ambience of the naked power he possessed and so often wielded, and in what he had become.
Just what had he become?
The man who controlled everyone and everything.
It was that simple.
He was an old man these days, gray hair, but with a body that was still lean, taught, hard. His mind was still sharp and just as merciless as ever. His cruelty was legendary among those who knew of him—for no one actually personally knew him, except one slim slip of a girl. So few on Earth even knew of his existence at all. Nor did anyone know officially of the existence of the organization of which he sat as head—the Department of Control. Unaffectionately known and feared among those in the worldwide government Authority as the DOC. Still and all there were hints galore, crackpot conspiracy theories veiled in fearful whispers in the underground Net about him, and about the DOC, in many dark stories. The people—the citizens—had heard rumors but no one ever spoke of them openly.
If they did, they simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.
It was that easy.
It was that fast.
It was that final.
Simon surveyed the massive expanse before him—looking upon the magnificent vista that was his controlling headquarters and his home. He sat at a long circular desk linked by dozens of high-resolution view screens. Through them he could contact anyone in the world, find out anything he wanted to know. Through his system he was linked to a trillion-power servers that held all the data in the world. Information was power and Simon could access information on any subject he desired instantly, and any person as well.
Of course, this was all connected to dozens of orbital satellite blanketing the Earth and armed with the latest killer lasers guided by pinpoint GPS tracking. Through his system, Simon could locate, lock onto, and destroy any person, anywhere, at any time. It was a neat “toy” and one he used frequently to rid himself and the world of any hint of opposition to his rule. Simon and the DOC never needed to arrest or imprison their enemies; those enemies did literally disappear.
Poof!
Nothing was ever left behind. Then the target was immediately deleted from the digital record, and it was like he or she had never existed at all. It was all so neat and quick, never troublesome.
Simon reveled in it.
Simon’s headquarters—what he had made into his own private world—was surrounded by one-way protect-glass that allowed him a totally secure environment as he kept track of his staff who worked feverishly on the massive workroom floor below. They monitored and put into place his plans. His plans, Simon corrected. He smiled. In this instance it wasn’t a conceit he had stretched too far—though God had been erased from the digital record long ago—Simon felt he was a more than adequate replacement. Simon knew the word His was used to refer to the deity. But He was the deity now. His plans, Simon’s plans, were all that mattered. Simon’s world had no God or devil in it, only Simon.
Simon ably fulfilled all aspects of both.
The DOC originally began by incorporating the old CIA and FBI and later added top secret departments of the fabled NSA and other very Top Secret agencies. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, commonly known as 9/11 in what had been the old United States, from last century—or LastCen—DOC evolved and secretly came into existence. Once all security and information agencies were merged under one controlling legal authority, DOC had its impetus. DOC had been a minor governmental office back then ruled under a benign nondescript bureaucrat. Later it was merged with 200,000 other federal government employees into the new Homeland Security Department. The Patriot Act, renewal in 2011 and Patriot Act II, III, and IV in 2016 under President Jackson Taft, expanded its power in all areas. In a few years, as their mandate and reach grew, a new Director named Simon came to power. He took direction over Homeland Security and all such agencies and eventually ran them as his own private domain. J. Edgar Hoover had nothing on this boyo!
Ten years later, though few were watching, and less even noticed, Simon under DOC authorization actually took over day-to-day management of the United States of America. He was not a dictator or even a leader, and he was certainly not President. America still went through the motions of self government. Simon was wise enough to maintain the fiction of electing presidents and even allowing diverse political parties—but he ran the show behind the scene as the head of the DOC. Simon had become the real power behind most transactions and most policies involving government and national security. From then on he only expanded his powers worldwide, growing them exponentially year by year.
Five more years and Simon and the DOC broadened their influence around the world. And few in the know knew it. Less cared, none understood. And certainly no one spoke a word about any of it.
Most informed people around the world living in the system of traditional nation states, saw the DOC as a myth, some crazy urban legend, unknown and not believed by sane people as if it were one of those
