Series-AFigureLikeThat

A Figure Like That 

Copyright 

ISBN: 978-1-9995999-3-5 

Published by Smartass Publishers 

Cover by: James Agerholm 

All characters and events in this 

publication, other than those clearly in the 

public domain, are fictional and any 

resemblance to real persons, living or dead, 

is purely coincidental 

Copyright © 2024 by Smartass Publishers 

All rights reserved. No parts of this 

publication may be reproduced, stored on a 

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any firm 

or by any means, without the prior 

permission in writing of the publisher. 

1


Contents 

Prologue ............................................................................ 6 

ONE ................................................................................... 8 

TWO ................................................................................ 23 

THREE .............................................................................. 30 

FOUR ............................................................................... 38 

FIVE ................................................................................. 44 

SIX ................................................................................... 52 

SEVEN .............................................................................. 59 

EIGHT .............................................................................. 67 

NINE ................................................................................ 78 

TEN .................................................................................. 86 

ELEVEN ............................................................................ 94 

TWELVE ........................................................................... 97 

THIRTEEN ......................................................................103 

FOURTEEN .....................................................................108 

FIFTEEN .........................................................................111 

SIXTEEN .........................................................................114 

SEVENTEEN ...................................................................118 

EIGHTEEN ......................................................................122 

NINETEEN ......................................................................126 

TWENTY ........................................................................135 

2


TWENTY-ONE ................................................................141 

TWENTY-TWO ...............................................................148 

TWENTY-THREE .............................................................151 

TWENTY-FOUR ..............................................................156 

TWENTY-FIVE ................................................................166 

TWENTY-SIX ..................................................................169 

TWENTY-SEVEN .............................................................171 

TWENTY-EIGHT .............................................................175 

TWENTY-NINE ...............................................................177 

THIRTY ...........................................................................182 

THIRTY-ONE...................................................................189 

THIRTY-TWO..................................................................194 

THIRTY-THREE ...............................................................197 

THIRTY-FOUR ................................................................201 

THIRTY-FIVE ...................................................................206 

THIRTY-SIX .....................................................................213 

THIRTY-SEVEN ...............................................................219 

THIRTY-EIGHT ................................................................223 

THIRTY-NINE..................................................................227 

FORTY ............................................................................230 

FORTY-ONE ...................................................................233 

FORTY-TWO...................................................................237 

3


FORTY-THREE ................................................................241 

FORTY-FOUR .................................................................243 

FORTY-FIVE ....................................................................246 

FORTY-SIX ......................................................................248 

FORTY-SEVEN ................................................................251 

FORTY-EIGHT .................................................................253 

FORTY-NINE...................................................................256 

FIFTY ..............................................................................258 

FIFTY-ONE .....................................................................264 

FIFTY-TWO ....................................................................271 

FIFTY-THREE ..................................................................278 

FIFTY-FOUR ...................................................................285 

FIFTY-FIVE .....................................................................292 

FIFTY-SIX ........................................................................296 

FIFTY-SEVEN ..................................................................300 

FIFTY-EIGHT ...................................................................306 

FIFTY-NINE ....................................................................310 

SIXTY..............................................................................313 

SIXTY-ONE .....................................................................319 

SIXTY-TWO ....................................................................324 

SIXTY-THREE ..................................................................327 

SIXTY-FOUR ...................................................................331 

4


SIXTY-FIVE .....................................................................336 

SIXTY-SIX .......................................................................339 

SIXTY-SEVEN ..................................................................343 

SIXTY-EIGHT ..................................................................346 

SIXTY-NINE ....................................................................350 

SEVENTY ........................................................................353 

SEVENTY-ONE ................................................................356 

SEVENTY-TWO ...............................................................359 

SEVENTY-THREE ............................................................362 

SEVENTY-FOUR ..............................................................365 

SEVENTY-FIVE ................................................................368 

SEVENTY-SIX ..................................................................372 

SEVENTY-SEVEN ............................................................375 

SEVENTY-EIGHT .............................................................379 

SEVENTY-NINE ...............................................................381 

EIGHTY ..........................................................................383 

EIGHTY-ONE ..................................................................386 

EIGHTY-TWO .................................................................388 

EIGHTY-THREE ...............................................................391 

EIGHTY-FOUR ................................................................395 

5


Prologue 

“We’ve found him.” 

“Where?” 

“South Pacific, a hundred miles off the 

east coast on a transport boat. Looks like its 

sailing towards the coast. Should we follow 

him?” 

“Are there any other passengers on 

board?” 

“Not that we can recognise, no.” 

“Sink it! He knows too much.” 

6


Swipe or Click Right for Next Chapter 

https://www.jagerpress.com/poems.html 

7


ONE 

2070s 

Fear watched the water rising closer and 

closer to her pretty toes as the tide slowly 

creeped up the beach from the wide, deep, 

blue ocean that stretched up to the horizon 

in front of them. She lent forwards until she 

was able hug her knees and perch her chin 

on top of them. She then said out loud, to 

no one specifically: 

“You know, imagine if we could sit here 

for the rest of our lives?” 

8


“Imagine if life was just a dream of stars 

and rainbows.” Jack replied humorously as 

he stared into the clear navy, blue sky while 

stretching his arms behind himself and 

digging his hands into the still dry, yellow 

sand. He pushed his feet into the tide until 

his skinny, bare legs were drowning up to 

his thighs. 

“Just saying...” she continued. 

“Perhaps, but I would imagine it would 

become increasing boring, pretty quickly if 

we did; change makes life interesting you 

know? Now, I think we need to stand up 

and move back closer to the cabin before 

the incoming sea life starts to have cunning 

plans of how to quickly colonies the unseen 

naked parts of my unmentionables.” 

“Maybe I like boring?” she countered, 

using Jack’s shoulder to prise herself up 

until the water was rising vertically above 

9


her ankles. She stood there adjusting her 

bright, red bikini while saying to him. 

“Maybe boring is a good thing, it comes 

along with stability and everyone likes 

stability?” 

Jack stood up as well, brushing sand off 

his naked torso and his hands. “Boring is 

boring, a singularity that is set in its own 

dimension. When it comes to stability, 

stability needs change, your body needs to 

change otherwise you would stop learning, 

the sun would stop rising and we would 

still be living like cavemen.” 

She muttered to herself. ‘Yeah, yeah, 

yeah…your always so bloody academic 

about these things.” 

“Well, we ARE here to do research, not 

much more academic than that.’ he retorted 

with a smug smile, “Anyway, what are we 

doing this afternoon?” 

10


She scowled, “Honestly, I’m pretty 

damn tired after being in the sea all 

morning and getting all those samples, so 

I’m going to have the afternoon off if you 

don’t mind.” 

“Yeah, me to.” he agreed “I think there’s 

still some red wine and beer in one of the 

ice boxes in the kitchen if you are up for it. 

Amani also said he should be bringing 

some fish for us this evening which we can 

fry on the beach.” 

“I do hope he brings some of that shell 

fish again like we had last time, it was so 

much better than what we can ever get back 

home!” Fear stated hopefully while kissing 

the ends of her right thumb and index 

finger, “It was delicious!” 

And she picked up her bucket with all 

of the equipment and followed Jack who 

was now marching up the beach to their 

11


cabin. 

When they reached the steps that ran up 

to the door of the ramshackle hut that they 

were sleeping in, Jack said to her. 

“Sit here and I will go and get some 

food and the drinks from the kitchen.” 

She thanked him, put her bucket to the 

side and sat, gently, onto the grey concrete 

steps while Jack briefly disappeared inside. 

In only a few moments he was back 

with two glass bottles of larger, some home 

cooked fish sticks and humus from the 

nearest village. He sat down beside her, put 

the food in front of them, took the cap off 

his beer with his pen knife, rose the bottle 

and took a sip. 

“I imagine your name isn’t Fear is it?” 

He asked probingly, after removing the 

bottle from his lips. “I can’t think of any 

parent who would be that mean to their 

12


own child that they would actually do that 

to them.” 

She laughed “No, no, no! On my birth 

certificate my name is Fiona, but when I 

was little, I pronounced my name as Fear 

and it, not surprisingly, stuck. I tell you 

what though, my parents are a couple of 

hippies and I have a horrible feeling that 

they might have planned it that way.” 

“I imagine, I tell you what though, my 

daughters wouldn’t actually mind if my 

girlfriend and I had given them names that 

were a bit more novel and hip. Apparently, 

Sophie and Harriet are just a bit too 

common for their taste.” 

She laughed “Hah…. give them time. 

Trust me when they get older, they will be 

more than happy having normal names. 

How old are they?” 

“Five and seven.” 

13


“Do they live back in England?” 

“No, no, no. They live on the mainland 

with their mum and I go back to see them 

as much as I can.” 

“So, did your girlfriend just drop 

everything to come with you?” 

“When I was offered this project, we 

discussed the pros and cons and we 

decided that this would be good for the 

family in the long run.” 

“What’s her name?” 

“My girlfriend you mean? Her name is 

Hannah.” 

“So, has Hannah got a new job on the 

mainland now?” 

“Fortunately, she’s a relatively 

successful children’s novelist, so she can 

work anywhere in the world as well as 

staying at home with the girls.” 

“Sounds fun, sometimes I wish I had 

14


done English Literature at university as I 

swear sitting around reading stories would 

have been much easier and relaxing than 

measuring and calculating the success of all 

the methods I used in my doctorate.” 

“Oh, please tell her that! That would 

make my day!” Jack spluttered while he 

was drinking his bear and laughed, “I lost 

that battle a long time ago! According to 

her, literature is just as good for the human 

species as science. When I argued that my 

solar panels and water filters actually 

helped and improved the standards of 

living for millions of people across the 

world, she argued that what is life without 

communications, feelings and ideas that 

you can find in literature. She then used my 

own daughters to support her argument, 

explaining why neither of them would 

understand radiation, spectrometers or 

15


concentrations at this point in their lives, 

whereas every book they read is another 

block of the continuant accumulation of 

knowledge of this new world of theirs. I 

quickly realised that this was becoming an 

up-hill battle for me and I knew that I was 

never going to win against the intangible 

and unreasonable point of view of hers. 

Hence I gave up.” 

Fear laughed “Wimp!!!” 

He shrugged “My father always said 

‘Only start fights that you know you’re going to 

win’. This was, certainly, not one of them.” 

They sat their nattering for the rest of 

the afternoon, talking about their work on 

the island, their new home and their time in 

the UK in their previous lives. Fear was a 

marine biologist, and she was at the 

archipelago to survey the coral reefs offshore, 

whereas Jack was a senior electronic 

16


engineer who was building photoelectric 

solar panels across the archipelago. These 

they hoped, in a few years, will make the 

population completely sustainable without 

the outside world: as it took a couple of 

days to sail to the mainland and there was 

only one very light plane that only visited 

once a week. 

They talked through the afternoon until 

the burning orange sun was hovering 

above the horizon and they saw a figure – 

that wore long khaki shorts, an unbuttoned 

white shirt and brown sandals with a 

white, bright smile - walking towards them 

from the beach. He had a ruck sack on his 

back and a metal box attached to a handle 

which he was, clearly, struggling to drag up 

towards them. 

“Amani!!!” Jack cheered “Can we help?” 

The man shouted back “No, no Mr Jack, 

17


the solar hot plate is a bit heavy, but 

exercise is good for me.” 

Jack sighed sarcastically, “What did I 

say before? Please drop the ‘Mr’ prefix 

Amani - and come on, Fear and I will come 

down to give you a hand, no objections!” 

They both stood up from the steps and 

walked down towards the man. Jack helped 

him with the hot plate while Fear took 

some bags from the rucksack. Both men 

dragged the machine closer to a better view 

of the reef and, when they got there, Amani 

set it up and turned it on. Pretty soon they 

could feel the heat from the plate and 

Amani, just as quickly, produced a glass 

bottle from one of the bags that Fear had 

placed down, and poured oil onto the pan. 

This sizzled with delight. Fear asked him 

amiably. 

“That looks like an amazing machine, 

18


must have been a bit pricey?” 

“Yes indeed, it probably was,” Amani 

replied “, but your company paid for it, like 

all the power and the rest to modernise the 

archipelago.” 

“Yes, I remember Jack telling me that. 

When he got here they had just got the 

plumbing working and the power was 

limited and everything was cooked on 

fire!” 

Jack intervened. “When we got here the 

technology was extremely primitive, but 

you know what, for those months - before 

we got the solar panels going - it was 

extremely nice and pleasant. Us engineers 

were pretty tight and Amani and his family 

were extremely helpful.” 

Amani, after he had dropped some 

prawns onto the now red hot, crackling and 

spitting pan, said to both of them. “No, no. 

19


You coming here has improved the lifestyle 

for all of us who were here before, it should 

be us who should be grateful. My boys are 

being educated at the same level as in the 

mainland and my family has free health 

care. That and we have free power all 

across the island all day and all night, 

something we could never have had 

before.” 

“Hmmmm….” Jack said to Amani “Yes 

but, it has been a mutual process, if it 

wasn’t for you and your community this 

exercise would have been extremely slow, 

or even might have never started if it 

wasn’t for your help.” 

“Ha…nonsense!” Amani chuckled “You 

and your company’s staff are extremely 

competent, I’m sure you would have been 

fine without us.” 

Jack shrugged and, while Amani was 

20


chopping up vegetables and spreading 

them across the pan with the prawns, Fear 

shrieked while pointing down at the reef. 

“LOOK!! LOOK!!! There’s something 

down there. It looks like an upside-down 

life boat….and I think there’s someone on 

it. Looks like they’re in distress, we need to 

help them!” 

Jack responded first. “Yeah, Amani go 

and get your boat and Fear go and get 

Charlie, we might need a doctor! The tide is 

coming up pretty quickly and it might 

trawl him or her off the reef, so I’ll swim 

over and Amani can pick us up.” 

21





22


TWO 

Jamie sat up, stepped out of his covers, 

and walked over to the sink - which was 

only a couple of meters away from the end 

of the bed. This was made out of artificial 

mahogany and the mattress was covered 

with silky textured navy-blue sheets and, 

underneath these, was the female figure of 

a stunning blonde. The media was obsessed 

with Jamie’s love life and the woman, who 

was sleeping there quietly, was Tamora 

Adams, the leading female actress from one 

of those latest Hollywood action films 

who’s adds popped up frequently while 

23


Jamie was watching the news. She 

reminded him of that impossibly goodlooking 

actress who was in all those super 

hero films from when he was a teenager, 

what was her name again? He looked at the 

digital mirror above the sink; for a sixtyyear-old 

something man he had to accept 

that he did look good; maybe unnaturally 

too good. Maybe Thiago’s drug hadn’t 

done exactly what he said it would do, but 

still. His father had said to him, before he 

died, that he hadn’t been on the drug long 

enough to demonstrate its full capacity 

which he was slightly disappointed about, 

but – and he looked back at Tamora and 

shrugged - if he had, then it would 

probably be even more likely that people 

would be even more suspicious than they 

were already. He turned to his right and 

opened one his bleached, white coloured 

24


single cupboards that were set together in a 

row parallel to the sink. He picked out a 

pair of light navy jeans, put one leg in after 

the other, tightened up his black-leather 

belt, dragged a white T-Shirt off one of the 

hangers and pulled it over his head and 

onto his athletically, toned body. Before he 

sat down onto a red metal chair at his desk 

- which was on the other side of the room - 

to put his socks on, he double tapped on the 

right side of his temple just under his hair 

line. Suddenly images flashed across his 

eyes. There was a narrator commenting 

about the draughts and wars under and 

across the sub-Sahara regions in Africa - he 

sighed. His and his father’s company had 

built several pipelines across Africa from 

the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean a long time 

ago. These had specialised filters that 

mirrored the functions of aquaporin 

25


intrinsic proteins that dealt with osmotic 

pressure regulation in cells in nature and it 

was all powered by solar panels - much like 

how plants regulate water from their roots 

to rest of the plant - that were set up at 

every twenty-six miles, or a marathon, 

apart. For a decade most of the continent 

was indulged with a cheap water source, 

but after a few years of looting at the 

stations and some drilling into the pipes his 

father gave up on spending even more of 

their resources to fix or repairing the lines - 

only twelve years later the whole system 

had fallen apart; draught, famine and war 

had returned. 

Jamie had graduated with an 

engineering degree from Cambridge 

University when he was much, much 

younger. He was especially interested into 

nuclear and solar power and with the help 

26


of his father he had bought a couple of labs 

and factories. His solar panels were three to 

five times more efficient than any of his 

competitors of the time, and so pretty soon 

his company, InDuePower, was the main 

renewable power company in the world. 

With the extra funds from this Jamie, with 

the help of hiring other far better qualified 

nuclear physicists and engineers, he 

designed and built new molten salt nuclear 

reactor power stations - a concept invented 

and developed in the nineteen fifties by 

Alvin Weinberg - across Europe. These 

were economically and environmentally 

significantly better than any of the oil, coal 

or the high fast nuclear reactor power 

stations of the time and so, in only a few 

years InDuePower, was the biggest power 

company in the world. He had made fossil 

fuels completely redundant by twenty forty 

27


and by twenty fifty he became the richest 

person in the world. He then heard 

murmurs behind him and, after he had 

double tapped onto his forehead again to 

turn the news off, he turned around; there 

was Tamora sitting up in his bed with 

sleepy eyes. 

“Jamie, are you going? It’s Saturday, 

surely you don’t have to go to work so 

early? Come back to bed!” 

Jamie thought to himself, he did have to 

write up a report and accounts from the 

New York online meeting he had yesterday 

and he still preferred to do this by himself 

rather than farming them off to his 

assistants; he did this mostly because he did 

them so much quicker than anyone else, but 

he did once or twice get his employees to 

do it to just to make sure they were still on 

top of it. He decided that this was 

28


definitely, certainly one of those times. He 

smiled, kicked his shoes off and pulled his 

t-shirt back over his head. 


www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingclause.html 

29


THREE 

An old lady sat there with one of her 

grandchildren on her lap and the other two 

at her feet; she was reading them a story 

called Peter Pan. This old lady must have 

been beautiful when she was younger as 

she, even though it had become grey over 

the years, still had long, thick hair, a pretty 

shaped face, an elegant, slim body, 

sparkling green eyes and a blindingly white 

smile. The youngest member of the group 

who was on her lap was a bit too young to 

understand the whole story without 

30


pictures, but she was still enjoying it 

nonetheless. The other two were 

memorised by this magical story that their 

grandmother was reading to them from this 

ancient thing she called a paperback book. 

Not much long after she realised, by the 

end of the second chapter, that the little one 

had fallen asleep, so she put a book-marker 

at the page that they had reached, closed 

the book, put it down onto the coffee table 

to her side and stood up while still holding 

the little girl. She then said to the other two. 

“Harry and Max please go over and 

play with your toys in the corner while I 

take Sophia back to her room where she can 

have a little nap. I will make hot chocolate 

and we can play Monopoly when I get back. 

“Oh, goody, goody.” Max replied quite 

excitedly. 

Harry then asked hopefully. “Could we 

31


have biscuits as well granny?”’ 

` “Well, we will see when I get back.” 

And so, the boys went to play with their 

toys in the corner and when she got back 

from putting Sophia into her cot, the old 

lady started making hot chocolate in the 

kitchen. When she had just heated the milk, 

she heard the front door being unlocked 

and a series of footsteps pattering up the 

corridor. Soon two figures appeared at the 

door frame of the kitchen. 

“Hi Mum.” said a tall, late thirties-yearold 

something man, whose skin colour 

could only be described as a naturally 

inherited, glowing tan, “I hope the kids 

were very well behaved. 

“Yes darling, I was reading Peter Pan to 

them, but Sophia fell asleep, so I’ve just put 

her into her cot and the boys are playing 

with their toys in the living room. I had 

32


promised them hot chocolate.” 

“Oh, Anouska you shouldn’t, you spoil 

them.” said the woman who was standing 

by the side of her son. 

“Imogen, my dear, what is the point of 

being old if you can’t spoil your own 

grandchildren?” 

“Indeed,” said her son “I’m sure mum 

treating them now and again won’t hurt 

them. They don’t see their grandparents 

enough anyway.” 

“I suppose Calvin.” 

“Anyway, Dad’s parking the car. He’ll 

be back with the shopping soon.” 

“Very good.” Imogen replied “Let’s go 

and see the boys.” 

“Wait a second; the hot chocolate is 

nearly done. I don’t want to be that 

grandmother who doesn’t return with the 

gifts that she had promised, do I?” 

33


The adults sat on the sofas drinking 

coffee and talking about the most recent 

events in the world while the boys drank 

their hot chocolate. Soon they heard the 

front door being unlocked again and they 

could hear steps coming up from the 

outside corridor and into the kitchen. They 

then heard noises of a set of bags being put 

onto the kitchen counter and pretty soon a 

new male character walked into the living 

room. His skin was pale brown and had the 

obvious traits from the Asian sub-continent 

but also had a distinct Anglo-Saxon facial 

structure. He looked about the same age as 

Calvin; maybe a bit younger. 

“Grandad!!!” cheered the boys who 

rushed towards him. 

- 

34


The old lady smiled, stood up, walked 

over and gave him a quick kiss and a hug. 

“Hey Anouska.” he said to her, hugging 

her back. 

“You’ve got everything dad?” Calvin 

asked. 

Imogen, at pretty much the same time, 

stated, “Sam where you OK bringing all 

that back on your own; we could have 

helped!?” 

“Yes Calvin, I’ve got everything and 

Imogen nonsense, it was not a problem at 

all. I had to park the car around the house 

anyway, it was much easier just to drop 

you all off at the front door.” 

They had all returned to the kitchen; the 

boys, Calvin and Imogen sat down at the 

- 

35


table while Sam turned on the oven and got 

some pots from the hangers in front of him 

and put them onto the oven’s hobs. He then 

opened some of the bags and put frozen 

peas into one of the pots and potatoes into 

another. In a few moments Anouska, who 

was cutting up some carrots beside Sam, 

said. 

“I will go and get Sophia so she’s awake 

for supper.” 

“No, you’ve done too much already 

today.” said Imogen “Sit down with the 

others and I’ll go and get her.” 

Anouska smiled “That would be nice 

and I think she would like to see her mum 

when she wakes up anyway as she hasn’t 

seen you since this morning!” 

36



http://www.jagerpress.com/Thunderman.ht 

ml 

37


FOUR 

Jack was half way to the reef by now. 

From what he could see, the boat was stuck 

between a sharp rock and an emerged 

protrusion of the reef. The individual on the 

boat looked like a relatively young 

Mediterranean European – not that meant 

anything these days – man. He looked fit 

and able but, at this point in time, he was, 

also, very much unconscious. When he got 

to the boat Jack heaved himself up onto it, 

quickly checked if the man was alive or not 

38


- which he was - and that he was not in 

danger for this not being true in the near 

future - which, for the moment at least, he 

wasn’t. And so, he put him into a resting 

position, and waited for Amani and his 

boat to turn up. Not much later he saw that 

Amani’s wooden fishing boat was on its 

way towards them. Jack still wasn’t quite 

sure why he hadn’t taken one of the 

companies’ newer, more modernised boats 

that they had offered him. His response had 

been that, even though his old boat was not 

in its prime, he knew how she worked and 

it would reduce his effectiveness if he had 

to learn how to work on a new, different 

vessel again; he also pointed out that he 

was getting too old to learn new tricks. He 

did though have to accept that the external 

solar powered electric motor that they had 

given him had been extremely useful. 

39


When Amani had stopped at the reef 

and Jack had carefully placed the man onto 

the boat’s flooring, Amani asked with 

concern: 

“How is he?” 

“Well, he’s unconscious, but medically, 

except for some cuts and bruises, he seems 

fine. Nonetheless I think it would be best if 

we get back as soon as possible. Do you 

know if Fear’s got Charlie yet?” 

“I don’t know? I came here directly 

when I got the boat.” Amani replied, while 

starting the engine up. 

“That’s alright, I imagine they will be 

there when we get to shore.” 

And he was right, when they got there, 

just above the tide, were Fear and Charlie – 

who was a Kenyan national, Oxford 

educated, trauma orthopaedic surgeon - 

waiting for them. Jack and Amani, again 

40


very carefully, took the man to the beach 

and placed him gently onto the sand. 

Charlie knelt down beside him, and after 

checking the man’s pulse and other 

features, he said to the others. 

“He’s more than anything else just 

extremely exhausted. I think he will be fine 

if we take him somewhere safe he’ll wake 

up eventually with no problems.” But then 

there was a movement from the right hand 

of the man who was lying on the sand who 

reached to his forehead. 

“Hijo de puta!!! Dónede estoy?!?” 

Fear’s mother was from Cascais in 

Portugal so she - although her Spanish 

wasn’t perfect - could speak Portuguese 

and understood what the man was saying. 

“Ermmmm…Holla, me nombre es Fear. 

¿Cóme te llamas?” and she took a moment, 

clearly trying to reach something from the 

41


back of her long-term memory banks 

“Hablas Inglas?” 

“Ergh…” he groaned “Yes, yes, yes - I 

can speak English, no problem.” and he 

tried to sit up while dragging his wet, long, 

uncared for, black hair backwards away 

from his face. “My name is Thiago. Where 

the hell am I???” 

“You are on a very recently discovered 

island in the middle of the Pacific which the 

indigenous population call, phonetically, 

the Fipheral islands.” Jack said to him 

“Oh yes, yes I remember that, big news 

ten years ago, magnetism created from 

special metals called ‘fipher’ in the coral 

reefs that messes up GPS and engine 

technology. Only discovered with one of 

Jamie’s new satellites.” 

“You mean Jamie Golding?” 

“Oh yes, yes…of course, Jamie 

42


Golding.” 

“You sound like you know him quite 

well?” 

“Well, um …. not exactly.” 


https://www.jagerpress.com/ShortTalesfromtheMiddleEast 

43


FIVE 

Jamie had had a very nice weekend with 

Tamora and he was now in the 

InDuePower’s Head Quarters reception 

near Regents Park in North London. From 

his office - with a clear sky - he could see all 

across the park and the local people and 

tourists enjoying the refurbishment that his 

company had invested into the park and 

the city in the last decade. Twenty years 

ago there had been an extremely busy road 

that had separated his offices from the park, 

44


but he had stipulated to the city, the council 

and the government that Central London 

needed to be pedestrianised before he 

would invest any further into the city and 

could possibly move the company to a 

country in Europe if they didn’t – he also 

said IDP would pay for the bill and no tax 

payer would lose out. Other companies and 

people had argued quite vehemently 

against this, but InDuePower had put so 

much into the country already, financially 

and socially, that the parliament voted a 

policy that would support this proposal. 

They pedestrianised all the roads, built 

electric trams, small parks, bike paths and 

most recently the SkyRail. SkyRail does 

not use trains on train tracks but instead 

uses sleek ferry like vehicles that fly from 

each station to the next. The stations are 

normally found at the top of skyscrapers in 

45


cities using solar liquid as power and 

electric jet turbines. In the initial test flight, 

it took the first ferry less than ten minutes 

from Kingscross, London to Manchester. 

The success of this had had other 

international cities, from Tokyo to Paris to 

copy this infrastructure model, using IDP’s 

technology. Not surprisingly the export of 

InDuePower’s products had easily covered 

the first investment into London and more 

and London was now the scientific research 

hub in the world and with that came 

trillions of Euros. Euros were now, pretty 

much, the major currency used in the world 

especially as gold had been left behind by 

an even more precious metal called fipher 

which could only be found in special corals 

in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Jamie 

had made sure it could only be mined with 

complete environmental protection, and 

46


this is one of the reasons why there was less 

than a few tons of it that was in use in the 

whole world. fipher has a special chemical 

proficiency which allows it to absorb 

energy at a ninety-nine-point eight percent 

efficiency and, with extra special techniques 

that IDP had developed, a small molecule 

of it could attract a wave of energy, like 

heat or light, from a hundred miles away. If 

focused properly one gram of fipher could 

absorb a peta.joule of energy which was 

enough to power the city of London for a 

whole week. When Jamie had discovered 

this element in that scuba dive all those 

decades ago he had made sure that 

InDuePower had a monopoly of the 

chemical and he quickly wrote up a 

contract with the inhabitants on the islands 

close to the coral and made sure that they 

became their own country which had an 

47


indefinite contract with InDuePower that 

allowed Sam’s company to collect fipher 

from the coral. He was, however, in huge 

pressure from the UN and the WTO who 

were taking actions against him saying that 

InDuePower was breaking trade laws. 

Countries like Australia, New Zealand, 

China, Singapore, Japan and the US - due to 

Hawaii - were also claiming, because of 

fipher’s high levels of magnetism, that the 

islands were actually in their own national 

territories. Jamie had left this to the 

company’s solicitors to deal with and, the 

last time he checked, they were doing very 

well. 

He got on a lift and in seconds the lift’s 

doors opened onto his on office’s floor 

which was second to the top. His secretary, 

Steve, was there waiting for him and he 

nearly immediately started dictating the 

48


recent politics across the world and the new 

accounts, but Jamie waved his hand around 

ambiguously and said. 

“Yes, yes, yes, I know; got all that this 

morning and on the way here. The best 

thing you could do for me at this very 

moment in time Steve, is to get me a cup of 

coffee from the kitchen.” 

“Oh yes, sorry, I forgot you already 

have one of those “TellMe” implants. 

Peoples are getting quite excited about 

them; although there’s still a lot of 

scepticism in the WHO and other large 

health organisation about it?” 

“I know, but we’re still distributing 

them before Christmas. The fact that I’m 

using one, I’m certain, will show my 

confidence in the product and this will ease 

customer’s worries.” 

49


“Yes, good marketing,” Steve staed “but 

one thing you are probably not aware of is 

that we have a live message from The 

Fipheral Islands.” 

“Right, good, do you know who it is?” 

“He says his name is Jack Grey and he’s 

one of our engineers there who deals with 

the solar panels.” 

“Doesn’t he have a superior nearer who 

could deal with this? I mean, I am the CEO 

and hundred per cent owner of IDP. I’m 

not looking down on our engineers here as 

I’ve probably forgot so much now that he 

could probably build a panel five time 

quicker than myself, but still!” 

“He says they had found someone 

washed off onto the corals, he’s alive and 

mobile, but Mr Grey has informed me that 

he says that you really need to talk to him.” 

“Well, this Jack Grey must have a very 

50


good reason to interrupt me this morning. 

Did he mention this person’s name?” 

“He did, but he only gave me his first 

name, Thiago.” 

“Oh!” Jamie exclaimed hesitantly. 

Swipe or Click Right for the Next Chapter 


51


SIX 

Imogen asked Sam to pass the sausages 

- which he and Anouska had made from 

the ingredients they grew in the green 

house behind their cottage - to her. 

“I can’t imagine a time when a lot of our 

food came straight from killing animals.” 

Imogen commented to Sam. “You said to 

me that when you and Anouska were much 

younger, sausages came by killing pigs? 

How could anyone do that to them, they 

are so cute!!! With their pokey noses and 

little legs; Sophia loves them when she goes 

52


to the park.” 

Sam smiled and bent his neck to look at 

her, “Even though it wasn’t really that long 

ago, it was still a completely different time. 

Only a small portion of the population 

didn’t eat meat and an even smaller 

demographic didn’t eat anything from 

animals, like eggs and milk.” 

“Errrgh…milk from animals!?! From 

cows, right? We learnt that in our twentieth 

century history lessons at school.” Imogen 

stated with disgust. 

Sam just shrugged. “As I said, different 

times, different technology, and different 

social and economic priorities. Less people 

were as concerned about harming animals 

and the ecosystem; indeed, as further you 

go back in history the less and less you can 

find this an issue. Biologically humans 

should be eating animals, however after the 

53


industrial revolution in the nineteenth 

century this got a bit out of control and by 

the start of this century meat became such a 

large part of our diet that it hit a tipping 

point; not only did people start to become 

more and more emotionally and socially 

disengaged with the idea of eating meat, 

but it also became apparent that raising 

animals in the agricultural industry was 

harming the environment along with our 

health so, over time, economically it wasn’t 

worth it for farmers to grow life stock 

anymore and they moved into growing 

more diverse crops on their land. The 

government grants for building ecospheres 

dramatically improved the acceleration of 

this paradigm.” 

While pouring red wine from the wine 

bottle, which they had purchased a couple 

hours ago from the island’s only grocery 

54


store, into his glass, Calvin said: 

“Yeah, I remember when I had my work 

experience in IDP we were checking 

moisture and temperatures levels for 

specific crops in independent ecosystems. 

The biology and the chemistry was pretty 

simple, but the engineering was just a 

complete pain to work out.” 

Sam asked his son. “Have you seen 

Jamie recently Calvin?” 

“Yeah I have dad, he’s doing well, he 

sends his regards to both of you.” 

“What’s he doing now?” 

“Well, he’s still going; he’s using himself 

as the first volunteer for his new “TellMe” 

implants.” 

Anouska frowned, “Oh dear, I always 

worry about him doing dangerous things 

like that. Planting a synthetic object into 

your brain is standard practice in medicine 

55


nowadays, but connecting your brain to the 

Internet? Always seems a bit too far for 

me.” 

“Nousk, after me, Jamie probably has 

the best immune systems in the world, I 

wouldn’t worry about it.” Sam pointed out 

to her. 

“But what about people getting into his 

mind?” 

“Darling, Jamie is the richest man on the 

planet, I’m sure he has worked something 

out.” He then asked Calvin “How’s IDP’s 

fusion project going?” 

“Jamie’s been pretty quiet about it since 

we all saw each other last year, but I 

imagine it’s still progressing. I’m only a 

bioengineer so I haven’t asked him much 

about it.” 

“Cal as I always say, all science is 

intertwined, I’m sure at some point he’ll 

56


need someone with your type of skills.” 

“Maybe, oh he also said to me that I 

should tell you that one of his engineers in 

The Fipheral Islands have found someone 

who was shipwrecked onto the corrals.” 

“Did he? Did he have any specific 

reasons why I needed to know this? I mean 

poor bloke, but I don’t know why this 

would have anything related to me?” 

“Not really, he just said that the man’s 

name was Thiago.” 

57




58


SEVEN 

It’s a grey, dark afternoon and the rain 

was pattering sharply down onto the grey 

rain coat that the man was wearing. He’s 

waiting for the door to be opened, with 

trickles of water dripping onto his face 

from the rim of the hood that covered his 

head. He was also not very happy, he 

thought they had dealt with all of this. 

Jamie had established the significance of 

the treatment, but he was, though very 

slowly, aging - he also didn’t have any 

offspring, although they still didn’t know if 

59


this was significant or not. The door was 

opened by a surprisingly, young, tall, darkskinned 

lady. 

“Mr Taylor, we’ve been waiting for 

you.” she stated with a bit of a put off tone. 

Garry shrugged while rolling his eyes 

with an asymmetrical frown “Whatever, I 

came, didn’t I? Frankly I could have just 

disappeared.” 

She smiled half-jokingly, “No, no you 

wouldn’t. Come on, hurry up.” 

“Yeah, right!” he replied awkwardly 

while she beckoned him to follow her as 

she walked up to another door at the other 

end of the corridor. 

“Please sit-down Garry.” said a stern 

looking man, who was standing on the 

- 

60


other side of the room. The lighting in the 

room was bleak, similar to how Garry felt 

at this point in time. 

“Look Stan…” but before he could 

finish his sentence, he was stopped by an 

even sterner looking older woman who was 

sitting at the end of a long, dark, oak table 

that was a foot or so away from Stan. 

“Mr Taylor things have changed: 

they’ve found him.” 

“Who did they find?” 

“Dr Francisco.” 

“Who? What? How? We didn’t find him 

fifty years ago and even if he was still alive, 

he would be something like a hundred by 

now.” 

Stan shrugged “Gary you know people 

are easily making a hundred now, but this 

is not the point that Dr Green was making; 

we have images of him in Los Angeles.” 

61


“How do you know it was him? It, quite 

easily, could have been someone else?” 

The old lady spun her screen around 

with the profile of a man who was sitting at 

a bus stop. “Facial recognition!” 

“Rubbish! That man looks like he’s in 

his late twenties, Thiago would be a really 

old man by now, at the most that could be 

just a relative of his, like a great nephew or 

something?” 

“Gary, you know Dr Francisco didn’t 

have any siblings and anyway to get such a 

perfect match like that, he would have to be 

an identical twin or a clone; not just a blood 

relative.” 

Gary squinted at Stan and then at Dr 

Green, “You mean!?” 

“We’re pretty sure he’s got it to work.” 

“So, what do you want me to do about 

it?” 

62


“We know he’s in LA at the moment 

and we have people watching him.” 

“So….” 

“Gary do your job! Yasmin will go with 

you.” 

Gary and Yasmin stepped onto one of 

InDuePower‘s Canary Wharf Sky Rail 

leaving platforms. Yasmin opened her 

black, leather purse and brought a small 

metal tube out of it. While she had pushed 

the lipstick out and had started pasting it 

across her lips, he asked her: 

“Why haven’t I met you before, I’ve 

been working for Stan for thirty years now, 

who are you?” 

“You’ve met me now, that’s the most 

important thing,” she replied after she had 

- 

63


returned the lip stick back to her purse. 

“But why do I need you, you look so 

young!” 

She smiled at him, but only with her 

deep-longing brown eyes, nothing else in 

her pitch-black complexion shifted even 

slightly. 

“Looks can be misleading Mr Taylor!” 

Gary’s and Yasmin’s trip across the 

Atlantic to California had been brief. Gary 

remembered trips from Edinburgh to New 

York - when he worked as a commercial 

solicitor all those years ago - could take 

most of the day, but when they left the 

station, he noticed that it wasn’t even 

breakfast time yet in Los Angeles due to the 

time difference between the UK and the 

- 

64


west coast. Yasmin said to him. 

“They say he’s got some gig at a coffee 

shop on Long Beach. They say people can 

queue for half an hour for his coffees and 

pancakes.” 

“So, do you want to do this close or 

long distance?” Garry asked her. 

“Long distance can be messy and not as 

certain.” 

“I don’t know, my rifle has never 

missed? Getting too close will increase the 

chances of him seeing us and fleeing?” 

“We’re doing it my way.” Yasmin stated 

unhesitatingly. 

Garry picked up his bag, “Fair enough, 

when are we going.” 

She, again unhesitatingly, said “Now, I 

want to get back by this evening.” 

“Now??? It’s not even the middle of the 

day yet and it’s going to be busy? And 

65


anyway, I can do this by myself. I still don’t 

really know why Stan insisted that you had 

to come?” 

“Stan has his reasons.” 


https://www.jagerpress.com/shortstories.html 

66


EIGHT 

Gary and Yasmin both peered around 

the corner. There was a man, who did look 

extremely similar to the man on the image 

that they had been shown back in London. 

He was somewhere in his late twenties, had 

that Iberian like permanent tan, dark hair 

and hazel-coloured eyes. He was piling 

cardboard boxes behind a beach hut and 

further back, just behind the building, there 

67


was a long queue of people in slacks, t- 

shirts, jeans, suits, swimming trunks and 

bikinis - all standing there patiently. 

“That’s him, right?” Garry asked. 

“Yeah, that’s him.” 

“I could just shoot him now?” Garry 

pointed out to Yasmin and he took his 

pistol out. 

“No, no, we have to capture him. Stan 

says we need to question him!” 

“Capture him? What do you mean 

capture him? I kill people, that’s what I do, 

that’s what Stan pays me to do.” 

“Not this time, just follow me.” and 

Yasmin, while the man had his back to both 

of them, quickly disappeared behind 

another set of cardboard boxes closer to the 

hut. 

Something is wrong here Gary thought, 

his job was to dispose of individuals who 

68


could harm the carefully balance world 

order that they had arranged to create a 

better future. Thiago, from what he had 

heard and from what he could see now, 

was clearly one of these. Although he 

looked harmless, he could devastate the 

counterbalanced harmony that they had 

constructed - Jamie had been a possible 

issue initially, but over time it worked out 

that he was going to be a positive force. 

Gary could see Yasmin looking at him and 

the man still had his back to them so he 

joined her behind the boxes. What the hell 

do they want to ask him about, they knew 

everything? Thiago was the last piece of the 

puzzle, they had to get rid of him. The man 

still hadn’t heard them moving behind him 

and Yasmin, who was only a couple of feet 

away, jumped out and locked his arms by 

twisting them behind his back. 

69


“Thiago Francisco you are coming with 

us!” 

The man’s response went. “¿Eres 

estúpido? No, no lo estoy! No soy Thiago! 

Thiago’s serving the customers! Get off 

me!!! I have my visa!!!” 

“Don’t scream…” Yasmin whispered to 

him “….or I’ll break both of your arms!!!” 

Gary, after he had reappeared from 

behind the boxes, asked her accusingly. 

“Are you sure that’s him?”. 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” 

“Look, after you have made this a bit 

more complicated by changing the aim of 

this mission, maybe this is not him? What if 

what he is telling you is true; he might not 

be Thiago? We might have got the wrong 

person and that would be a disaster???” 

For the first time since he had met her, 

Gary saw a slightest of uncertainty running 

70


across her pretty face, but she replied, 

although slightly shakily. 

“No, no, no I’m certain! I’m sure” 

“Perhaps, but I think we need to be even 

more than sure.” Gary argued. 

“Si, si…I have no idea what this is all 

about! But it has nothing to do with me!!!” 

gasped the man who was, clearly 

unsuccessfully, trying to unhinge his arms 

from Yasmin’s dead lock like grasp. 

She now looked even less certain. 

“Well…we’re bringing him with us, get the 

door Garry and we’ll see if he’s telling the 

truth?!” 

When they had entered the back of the 

cafe, which was stuffed with equipment 

and stock, they could see a figure serving 

people with drinks and pancakes at the 

front but - due to the bright Californian sun 

blazing across the surface of the Pacific 

71


Ocean towards them - that was all they 

could see, just a black silhouette against a 

bright, blue sky. 

“I can’t see him, we need to get closer, 

so I can see who that is.” Yasmin whispered 

to Garry while gripping tightly to the other 

man’s arms. 

“But what about the people outside, 

they’ll see us if we try anything? We don’t 

work this way!” 

The man then said, “I don’t owe Thiago 

anything. I can call out for him to come 

back to check on something. If it’ll get you 

off me, I’ll do that for you?” 

“What do you think, do we trust him?” 

Yasmin asked Gary, now looking even 

more and more less settled with the 

situation. 

“He knows if he says the wrong thing, 

you’ll break his arms, so I don’t think we’ve 

72


got anything to lose.” Gary stated. He then 

said to the man. “Go on, remember you say 

the wrong thing and we will break you so 

badly that you’ll never be able to walk, talk 

or move your arms ever again!!!” 

The man frowned, but after a deep, 

deep sigh, he shouted out to the front of the 

cafe: 

“HEY, HEY! SORRY! WE’VE GOT A 

PROBLEM; CAN I GET SOME HELP???” 

The figure turned briefly, but neither of 

them could ascertain much from its face 

although the voice that replied was 

certainly male and had the indications of a 

Spanish accent, so maybe this is Thiago 

Garry thought? 

“Si!!! Si!!! Give me a second!” 

And in only a moment the figure was 

walking towards them. As it got closer the 

shadows that had shrouded it faded away, 

73


and the man’s aesthetic details became 

more and more apparent. He had blonde 

hair and pale white skin, he definitely did 

not look like the man they were looking for, 

but before Garry could say anything he 

heard. 

“Ergh…shittt…get him, get him, he’s 

getting away!!!” 

Yasmin had been so distracted by the 

other man, that her grip had loosened and 

the man had shoved his elbow into her face 

which, in doing so, had broken her nose. 

Garry rose his gun and shot at the running 

man, but he had already gone through the 

doorway and Garry only hit another pile of 

cardboard boxes, which collapsed rather 

comically. 

Garry then twisted back and put his 

pistol right into the blonde man’s face. 

“Who the hell are you!?” 

74


The man had fear in his eyes and all this 

new individual could mumble back was. 

“Look…Look…I’m just working here as a 

part time job to pay for college. Please don’t 

hurt me; take whatever you want?!?” 

“But you haven’t answered my 

question. Who are you?” Gary insisted 

while pressing the end of the barrel of his 

gun into the man’s temple. “And who was 

that?” 

The man was now trembling with fear 

“I’m Gabriel, and that, that was Thiago, my 

boss.” 

Then they heard the sound of sirens - 

someone outside must have called the 

police after they had heard the shots. 

“Gary we’ve got to go.” Yasmin muffled 

with her hands covering her face with 

blood dripping onto the floor. 

“What are we going to do with this 

75


guy.” 

“Kill him, that’s what you do right?” 

“But he knows nothing?” 

“He might say something that will put 

us in jeopardy.” 

“I won’t, I swear.” said Gabriel, 

standing there looking petrified, eyes wide 

open. 

“Yeah, we don’t need to!” Garry said to 

Yasmin fiercely. 

Yasmin pulled out a petite sized pistol 

from under her blouse and raised it at 

Gabriel and shot him in the chest. 

“He can’t say anything to anyone now. 

Come on, we’ve got to go! We can’t let 

Thiago to get away.” 

76



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https://soundcloud.com/connollytunes 

77


NINE 

Jamie was pacing up and down the 

arrival’s platform at the top of IDP’s offices. 

He had considered flying over to the 

islands, but there were so many things that 

could go wrong in this situation and he had 

far more resources back here in London if 

any of these arose. And so, he had 

instructed the engineer to put Thiago onto a 

plane and send him back to London. 

78


Nonetheless he could barely remember 

much about Thiago from all those years ago 

and, as they were his employees, he had 

politely but firmly asked Jack and one or 

two of his team to escort Thiago back to 

London on the premise that Thiago was 

important for their research which, 

technically, was true. 

Jack put the phone down and turned to 

the others. “Thiago, Jamie has arranged a 

flight for you to London” 

Thiago - who had pretty much 

recovered from his exhaustion - and Fear 

were now sitting on a bench near Jack. 

Charlie had excused himself, saying he 

needed to get back to the island’s hospital 

and Amani had gone home to see his 

- 

79


family. 

Thiago sighed. “I suppose now they are 

aware of my existence, it’s probably the 

most sensible thing to do, I can’t hide here 

forever and Jamie probably has a lot of 

questions. Returning to the hunter’s nest 

does sound rather counterproductive, but I 

knew I would have to, eventually, face the 

facts and stop running.” 

Fear rose her eyebrows and pouted 

“The who who now knows of your 

existence? And what are you running 

from?” 

“Oh, nothing, nothing; it’s not 

important.” Thiago replied rather 

ambiguously. 

“Well, we might find out a bit more 

pretty soon Fear.” said Jack “Jamie has 

instructed us to come back to London with 

him.” 

80


“What? But we still have so much work 

to do here???” 

“Indeed, however Jamie did insist. He is 

still our employer, so we should follow his 

orders, he says Thiago is very important for 

InDuePower’s work.” 

- 

Jamie saw the SkyRail ferry descending 

down to the tower. When it had landed 

safely at the end of the platform there was 

an ascending, piercing noise as the large 

doors of the vehicle popped out and slid 

open. The first person who stepped onto 

the platform was a middle age, dark haired 

man who had that aura of certainty that 

most could only dream of. Then a young 

lady followed him, she had a figure similar 

81


to Tamora’s, but younger and with a more 

of an academic, industrial posture, a less 

pale complexion and black coloured hair. 

The last one was a twenty something 

Mediterranean young man who looked 

extremely uneasy; his eyes flickering in all 

directions, as if something or someone was 

about to jump him from behind. 

Jamie took a step towards them and 

offered his hand to the older man, “Thank 

you for coming at such short notice, you 

must be Jack Grey? It’s very nice to me you, 

welcome. I hope your flight was 

comfortable.” 

Jack gave Jamie an amiable and gentle 

nod to express his acceptance of greetings 

before saying, “Yeah, thanks for seeing us 

so promptly. We’ve actually met once 

before, when I was arranging the power 

system for this building.” 

82


“Oh yes, yes, of course, I’m so sorry - I 

meet so many people these days and at my 

age my memory is not as it was when I was 

younger. “ 

“I don’t expect you to remember me, so 

no need for any apologies. I think even 

when I was much younger, I would have 

trouble remembering all the people you 

must meet in your company every day. It 

must be mind boggling.” 

Jamie laughed “Yeah maybe, now…” 

and he gestured to the young woman and 

man behind Jack “…so who do we have 

here?” 

Fear stepped forwards “Hello Mr 

Golding, my name is Fiona but most 

people, including myself, call me Fear, it’s a 

long story. I’m one of your marine 

biologists and I work with Jack on the 

83


archipelago.” 

But before Jamie could reply, the young 

man thrust his hand into Jamie’s grasp. 

“Hi Jamie, long time. I see you’ve grown 

up a bit.” 

84



https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingclause.h 

tml 

85


TEN 

Sam was washing the plates at the sink 

and Anouska was standing by his side, 

drying them gently with a pink, white 

chequered cloth. Their son and his wife had 

returned to the living room with the 

children, where Imogen was continuing 

Peter Pan with the boys and Calvin was 

drawing cartoon animals for Sophia to 

colour with the crayons that her 

86


grandmother had given her for her 

birthday. 

“You haven’t said anything darling?” 

Anouska asked Sam with concern. 

He shrugged “About what?” 

“Calvin said Jamie’s heard from 

Thiago?!?!?” 

“Well, maybe, but it is most likely that 

it’s someone else. We did all see him 

getting shot and collapse in front of us fifty 

years ago!” 

“But Adrian and Mia never found the 

body when they came back to take him 

back to his family in Spain to be buried?” 

“Yes, but we were all in such a rush and 

we never checked if any of the tower’s staff 

had taken him to the morgue? Anyway, 

how is your brother? It was very sad that 

we couldn’t make it to Mia’s funeral?” 

“His carer says he’s not getting better 

87


physically and he can’t walk very far, but 

she says he recently joined the local croquet 

team and is playing cards with a group of 

friends at the pub so I think he’s doing OK. 

But you’re changing the topic, Cal said 

Jamie has heard from Thiago!?!” 

Sam sighed while putting a dish onto 

the drying rack before saying to her, “Even 

if it is him, there’s not much that we can do 

about it?” 

“Darling Thiago did this for you?” and 

she pointed directly at Sam. 

“I know, but if they find me, we have no 

idea what will happen? This is why we’ve 

been living in this isolated, windswept 

island ever since we got back. You know 

this?” 

“But if it is Thiago? Just imagine? Aren’t 

you at least just a bit interested???” 

Sam pondered. “Well yes, but if we 

88


we’re going to do anything about Thiago, 

we’ll have to be extremely careful. And we 

also have to be sure it is actually him before 

we do anything!?” 

“How are we going to do that?” 

“Calvin could ask Jamie if he could meet 

him?” 

“But Calvin has never met Thiago, he 

wouldn’t even know what he looks like?” 

“Indeed, even if it is Thiago, he will not 

look like what he looked like when we 

knew him!? Calvin will have to ask him 

some questions that only we or Jamie 

would know?” 

“Like what?” 

“Well, say, if he in anyway comments 

about us or if he knew who Alison, Francis 

or Olivia were? Those would probably 

work? We’ll talk to him after the children 

89


have gone to bed.” 

Imogen had taken a sleeping Sophia to 

bed and the boys had gone to their rooms 

leaving only Calvin, Sam and Anouska in 

the living room, finishing the rest of their 

bottle of red wine that they had started at 

dinner. 

Anouska said to Calvin, “Cal could your 

father and I ask you something?” 

Calvin finished the remnants of his wine 

glass. “Of course, what do want to know?” 

“You said Jamie asked you to tell us that 

he had heard something about someone 

called Thiago?” 

“Yeah, was he someone who you all 

knew before I was born?” 

Sam stepped in. “Cal, I suppose this 

- 

90


would be a good time to give you all the 

details from our younger years and how I 

know your mum.” 

“Well, you’ve already told me that you 

got hit by a car when you were much 

younger and through a series of events you 

found yourself in the middle east with a 

scientist who was developing a drug that 

heals all injuries and the side effects of this 

made you eternally young. But you also 

said that you couldn’t tell me anymore 

because it would put me, Imogen and 

Sophia in danger.” 

“Yes, yes, yes…however I think it’s got 

to the point that you need to know 

everything. That scientist who you just 

mentioned was or is Thiago. Both your 

mother and I saw him getting shot fifty 

years ago and we all presumed he was 

dead. This is going to take some time, so I 

91


think you need to make yourself 

comfortable.” 

“Yes,” said Anouska “and I’ll go and 

brew a new teapot for all of us.” 

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ELEVEN 

2020s 

Thiago sat up and reached under his 

shirt to pull out the bullet that had been 

embedded into his bullet proof vest ten 

minutes ago. He knew he hadn’t been 

paranoid for the last twenty years when he 

put that vest on every morning!!! But what 

now? He had planned this type of event for 

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years and he had learnt meditation 

techniques that allowed him slow down his 

heart and breathing rate to fool someone – 

or someone who wasn’t a trained health 

professional at least - that he was 

apparently dead. It was a shame that the 

person who he had had to fool had been 

Mia, but this was the best way for him to 

disappear. Furthermore, with Olivia AND 

Sam progressing so well he could be certain 

that his drug will work on him with no 

problems. Nonetheless, he had to be quick, 

someone might come back and find that 

Mia had been wrong! He had a car set up 

with all the stuff he needed to get away and 

he had recently stocked this up with the 

drug and so, while slightly grimacing from 

the deep bruises across his chest caused by 

the bullet’s impact, he stood up and walked 

out of his ground floor flat. 

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TWELVE 

2070s 

Calvin sat down in his office in IDP’s 

London office. His father had explained 

everything to him and he understood why 

this person, called Thiago, was so 

important. Calvin had studied some cell 

biology and genetics as an undergrad at 

university and it made complete sense to 

him; especially as he already had worked 

out, in his head, a vague understanding of 

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why his father hadn’t aged, it was simple 

biochemistry, hardly high-level quantum 

mechanics or anything like that. 

Nonetheless that was all he had, his 

name, Thiago, and a vague information of 

him fifty years ago, nothing else; he will 

have to work everything else by himself? 

As his dad had pointed out, Calvin 

personally had never met Thiago before, so 

he would not know what he looked like 

and even after his father had depicted 

Thiago to him from all those years ago, if it 

really was him, he would look significantly 

younger. His mum had given him some 

names that only Thiago or Jamie would 

know. He had asked them that if Jamie had 

asked him personally to convey this 

message to them then surely, they could 

just ask him directly? They had both gone 

quiet for a moment until Sam eventually 

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replied to his son that, although Jamie had 

done so much for them, he was also a very 

successful businessman and this, he 

thought, could override his personal link 

with them. He was an old family friend, but 

he wasn’t family, blood is far more solid 

than even you’re closest social 

acquaintances. 

Firstly, though Calvin had to find this 

person that Jamie says is called Thiago. If 

he just went to Jamie and asked him some 

standard, non-interrogative, honest 

questions this wouldn’t give much away, 

would it? 

Jamie snapped at the window blinds 

with his fingers when they walked into one 

of the building’s conference rooms and 

- 

99


these rolled up. This allowed them to see 

the courtyard behind the building where 

IDP’s nursery teachers were overseeing the 

children’s lunch break. Fear could see two 

little girls skipping together, a group of 

boys playing with the nursery’s pet mini 

pig and a teacher putting a plaster onto 

another boy’s grazed knee. 

“So, what now?” Jack asked Jamie. 

“Well, I need to quickly talk to Thiago in 

private….” 

“Jamie, Fear and Jack can stay.” Thiago 

interrupted quite pointedly. “I insist!” 

Jamie sighed, “OK, OK, OK…but they’ll 

have to pick it up as we go.” He then 

turned to the other two. “Now, whatever 

we are about to say is extremely 

confidential, no one else out of this room 

can hear about it, you understand!!!” 

Without giving the other two time to 

100


respond he quickly returned to Thiago. 

“Last time I saw you, you were lying on 

your flat’s floor after you got shot in the 

chest and Mia checked on you and she 

denounced that you were dead?!?” 

Thiago chuckled “Yeah, yeah 

well…visual images can be very deceiving” 

“Even so, I was only little then and you 

were so much older…and now! Look at 

you!” 

“Well look at you? You don’t look your 

age either and you certainly do no look like 

what you looked like when I first met you! 

You look so well.” 

“Even so….” 

“Well, clearly what we have here is just 

a state of fact, so let’s fast forward to now 

can we? They’ve eventually found me so 

this model that I’ve been running for the 

last fifty years has to change!” 

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THIRTEEN 

Calvin walked into Jamie’s office which 

looked over the park. He could not see 

Jamie, but his secretary, Steve, was sitting 

at his desk, drinking coffee while flicking 

through his tablet idly. Steve noticed 

Calvin’s sudden arrival and he put his 

coffee down. 

“Alright Cal, how’s tricks?” 

“Hi Steve, I don’t suppose Jamie’s 

around?” 

“He’s just picking up some engineers at 

the station upstairs.” 

“Oh, I didn’t hear anything about that?” 

“Yeah, he said to me it was rather an 

103


impromptu visit from one of our pacific rim 

teams. I don’t know when he’ll be back, but 

I can let him know that you passed by?” 

Hmmmm… Calvin thought …this is 

unusual, normally Jamie would message all of 

his staff if employee’s from overseas visited. 

Jamie frequently emphasised that it was 

important that IDP was one organisation, 

not a massive, unscrupulous, fragmented 

conglomerate and he always said it 

increased fluidity between departments if 

all staff, at least once, met each other, hence 

Calvin was specifically puzzled about him 

not having heard about this visit. He said to 

Steve. “I just need to ask him something 

quickly, could I catch him at the station?” 

“He left an hour ago so he’s probably 

taken them to one of the consulting rooms 

for a briefing, that’s what normally happens 

when I’m with him. I don’t know which 

104


room they’re in but it can’t be that hard to 

find them. You know which floor don’t you 

mate? 

“Yeah, yeah, I know; cheers Steve, I’ll 

see you later.” and with that, Calvin 

slipped out of the office and walked 

towards the elevators. 

“I was wearing a bullet-proof vest when 

Anouska’s dad shot me,” Thiago said to the 

others “I had been wearing one every day 

since I realised how much of a target my 

research had put on my head.” 

“But there was blood and everything; a 

lot of it as I can remember?!?” Jamie 

expressed doubtfully. 

Thiago laughed. “Blood isn’t exactly the 

most complicated solution to mimic, most 

- 

105


of it is water anyway. Also, Mia might had 

been a scientist, but she was no medic; 

when I was a student I learnt Buddhist 

meditation and when I realised the threat I 

was in I worked out how to put myself into 

a stasis like state, so, without the equipment 

and the lack of training, Mia would have 

found it very difficult to recognise that I 

was actually alive. Best way to keep 

yourself alive no, fool everyone to think 

that you’re actually dead?” 

Then there was a sharp knock on the 

room’s door Damn, who could this be? Jamie 

thought. 

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107


FOURTEEN 

Calvin could hear voices behind the door 

that was only two meters away from him, 

so he went over to it and knocked onto its 

wooden door frame. After a short cold 

silence, he heard a muffle from behind the 

door and then the noise of a couple of 

quick, light footsteps approaching the door. 

It was opened by a young woman and 

behind her were three men; one of these 

was a middle age white man who had 

probably been in the sun a bit too long, a 

younger man with direct Mediterranean 

origins - probably Spain or Italy - and, 

sitting to his side, was Jamie. The young 

woman said to him. 

108


“Hi?” 

“Hey, yeah sorry to bother you…I just got 

to ask Jamie something very quickly?” 

The woman looked back at Jamie who 

spoke up. 

“Hi Cal, I’m just having a quick meeting 

with one of our Pacific region engineers, 

could we talk a bit later?” 

“Oh, yeah, sorry. It’s just something that I 

really need to talk to you about, coffee at 

four?” 

“For sure, this won’t take too long, I’ll see 

you then at the cafe down stairs?” 

“Sure, sure, sure…” Calvin replied 

“…apologies for the interruption, enjoy 

your meeting.” 

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FIFTEEN 

Jamie apologised to Thiago. “Sorry 

about that, that was just one of our senior 

Biologists.” 

“No worries, that’s fine, as I was just 

saying, I was wearing a bullet proof vest 

and the fake blood was from plastic 

packages embedded into the vest. I worked 

out a long time ago how to act like I was 

dead through meditation and when you 

had all gone, I had a backup plan for such 

an event.” 

“But where did you go???” Jamie asked 

him quite speculatively. 

“Well, as I was supposed to be dead, I 

111


drove towards Cairo in Egypt where I 

rented an apartment near the Nile. It was 

there where I started to test the drug on 

myself.” 

“Did it work?” 

“It did, my body rejuvenated relatively 

quickly, by the end of the year I had the age 

of a twenty-six-year-old again.”, 

“Sorry, what??? And when was this???” 

Jack intervened abruptly. 

Thiago looked at Jamie sincerely, who 

sighed deeply. “Yeah, yeah, yeah - now 

they’ve got this deep, I think we should tell 

them everything!” 

112




113


. 

SIXTEEN 

Stan Hemmings screamed at Gary. 

“WHAT DO MEAN YOU LET HIM TO 

GET AWAY!?!?!” 

Garry brought his hands in front of his 

face to try to protect himself from the 

metaphorical bile and sulphur that was 

showering down on him from Stan’s 

tonsils. 

“Look Stan, I’ve worked for you for a 

very long time and I’ve never failed before. 

Yasmin changed the mission’s objective!” 

Yasmin stepped in and put her hand on 

Garry’s chest - making him to take a step 

114


back - while she looked into Stan’s eyes 

firmly and said to him “Yes, yes we lost 

him, but at least now we are even more 

certain that he survived and that his 

research works.” 

“Do we though?” spoke Dr Green who, 

unlike Stan, was sitting there calmly, 

sipping a cup of tea with her pricey 

jewellery sparkling in the sunshine that 

shined through the window and created 

silhouettes of all the mugs and all the other 

plethora of items that sat on the table onto 

the wooden floor. This pictured something 

like a shadowy, ramshackle, medieval army 

camping up before a battle. 

Yasmin shrugged “It was him; don’t 

you trust me?” 

“Yasmin my dear, you are my greatest 

prize; but what Thiago has developed is 

something that could over shadow 

115


everything that the humankind has ever 

developed before, and, indeed, bring it to 

its knees if it’s not cared for carefully!” 

“Quite!” Stan stated “We need to find 

Thiago, we’ve got other groups looking for 

him now, I’m taking both of you off this 

case!” 

“One question though Stan?” Gary asked 

him, “As I said to Yasmin in the field 

before, I kill people, that’s what you pay me 

to do. I’ve never been told before that my 

mission was to capture someone, it’s 

always been to eliminate them and taking 

them out of the equation.” 

Dr Green was quicker to answer this. 

“Gary the world is changing quicker than 

you can possibly imagine. We cannot just 

stop things now; we need to understand 

them as well.” 

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SEVENTEEN 

“…right, so after I had put myself some 

distance away from the cafe, as I knew I 

couldn’t go back inland as there would be 

too many eyes, I found an old man and 

bought his boat at the Long Beach’s port.” 

Thiago explained to Jamie, Jack and Fear. “I 

had aimed to get to Shanghai, somewhere 

in Thailand or somewhere like Tokyo, but it 

had been less than twenty-four hours 

before a torpedo hit the ship and I was only 

just able to get to a lifeboat. The boat 

118


exploded twenty minutes later; fortunately, 

I had been able to paddle out of the blast 

zone by then but the wave that was caused 

by the explosion caught the life boat and I 

was flown across the ocean at speed until I 

hit the lower sea bed around the reef where 

Jack and Fear found me.” 

“Wow…well that’s a bit of a story.” said 

Jamie to Thiago. 

“So really how old are you???” Fear asked 

Thiago with awe. 

He hummed quietly and they could see 

him counting his fingers in his head. “I 

dunno…erm..well…if I’m counting all the 

time that I’ve been trying to hide and 

disappear, let’s say I’m something like a 

hundred and six perhaps?” 

Jack and Fear just stood there, dumb 

struck. 

“But…But…But, look at you!?!?!” Jack 

119


was eventually able to utter in amazement 

with some mis-belief. 

“Do you have any left, the renewable 

drug I mean?” Jamie asked him directly. 

“It’s simple biology, just a lot of chemistry 

to figure out.” Thiago replied to Jack and he 

then answered Jamie’s poignant question 

briefly. “I destroyed the last samples thirty 

years ago. I mean, just imagine if someone 

else got hold of them!??!” 

“But you still look so young???” Fear 

pointed out while still gawping at Thiago. 

Jamie answered this question for him, 

“He is the drug now, it’s part of his DNA, 

he rejuvenates automatically, I’m right 

aren’t I Thiago?” 

“Erm…I suppose so….yeah, if you had 

been on the drug long enough you would 

not have aged at all either. In reference to 

that, have you heard from Sam?” 

120




121


EIGHTEEN 

Jamie had just taken Thiago, Jack and 

Fear to a couple of secure apartments at the 

top of InDuePower’s London complex; for 

the moment they’ll be safe there. He 

glanced at his wrist and there, just hovering 

above the skin, was the time in bright 

skylight blue digits, 16:06. That’s alright, he 

thought, he’s not going to be that late, 

Calvin will understand. The time wasn’t 

actually hovering there above his wrist, that 

would involve technology that would be 

awkward and unessential; it actually would 

have been actually easier just to have a 

122


watch. What was really happening was that 

his “TellMe” implant was instructing his 

second cranial nerve - the optic nerve - to 

the place the digital image of the actual 

times onto his left eye’s retina whenever he 

g;anced at his left hand. 

He trotted down a few steps and got 

onto one of the lifts that shot him down to 

the reception where he found Calvin sitting 

there calmly, drinking a cappuccino in the 

building’s café. Without saying anything, 

Jamie pulled out the opposite chair and sat 

down in front of Calvin. 

“Alright Cal, what was so urgent that 

you felt you had to track me down like 

that?” he asked him half-jokingly. 

“Oh, nothing, nothing…nothing that’s 

really important anyway.” Calvin replied 

rather too casually, “I’ve just heard that 

some engineers from out of town had 

123


recently got here? Normally I would hear 

about this straight from you? You got a new 

project you’re trying to be quiet about or 

something?” 

Jamie scratched the back of his head and 

shrugged before replying “Oh did you 

indeed? I suppose, but it’s nothing that 

complex, I just needed to catch up on 

something with them, that’s why you 

didn’t hear about it.” 

“Was it them who you were talking to 

before when I barged in earlier?” 

“Yes, yes, yes but don’t worry about it, 

you weren’t barging in, it’s not a problem.” 

“Erm…I really feel like I really was!” 

Calvin replied with a sceptical tone. “But 

never mind; there’s one more thing I’d like 

to ask you - do you remember asking me to 

tell my parents that someone called Thiago 

had been found ship wrecked off the Fipher 

124


islands by some of your staff recently?” 

“Eh…yeah, yeah.” Jamie replied slightly 

despondently, but he then cheered up 

quickly. “That’s actually what that meeting 

was about. Thiago’s here, would you like to 

meet him?” 

Calvin was slightly shocked by this, he 

didn’t expect Jamie to be so up front with 

him, but he recovered quickly with a 

positive, happy smile. 

“Yeah, that would be great. My parents 

would like to know how he’s doing!” 

125


NINETEEN 

Garry sat at the bar, watching the pretty, 

blonde barmaid making his pint - to his 

surprise - quite successfully. Perfect froth 

and head and everything - maybe she hadn’t 

only been hired for her looks - he thought to 

himself. She offered him the retina scan for 

him to pay and he carefully opened his eyes 

in front of it, not only to make sure that it 

worked the first time for her, but also 

because he had had his retina replaced so 

many times to change his identity, he 

126


wasn’t certain that it would work properly 

and what he really didn’t want was to alert 

the authorities. A positive false negative 

always got recorded and if it happened too 

frequently people would start asking 

questions and even create a pattern; he 

definitely couldn’t have that. Fortunately, 

the scan went without a glitch and the 

barmaid went back stacking up the clean 

glasses onto the shelves after she had taken 

them from the dishwasher. She was doing 

this at a level of proficiency that a web 

developer might have if they were on a 

tight deadline that depended on their 

career and he sat there sipping his beer, 

while taking rather too many sneaky looks 

up when she stepped up onto a footstall so 

she could reach the higher shelves. Then he 

felt a touch on his left shoulder and he 

127


looked back. Standing there, just behind 

him, was Yasmin. He sighed. 

“What now? As you can see this is my 

personal time and I like to be left on my 

own.” 

“Garry you’re an assassin, you don’t get 

personal time.” Yasmin replied not exactly 

quietly. 

“Shhhhhhh…” he exclaimed to her with 

a firm whisper “ …not so loudly will you. I 

would prefer my chosen profession not to 

be so readily opened to the public if you 

don’t mind!” 

She shrugged and rotated her hand so 

her palms were staring up to the ceiling 

while she gestured to the pub’s empty 

seating area. “What public?” 

He rolled his eyes, closed his lips tightly 

and nodded in the direction of the bar maid 

who was now at the top of a ladder 

128


replacing some adverts above the glasses’ 

shelves. 

“Oh…” and she smiled “…don’t worry 

about her, she works for the company. 

She’s been given your brief and knows 

what you do.” 

“Does she? That’s disappointing, I had 

thought I might ask her when her shift 

finishes.” 

“We know what you were going to ask her, 

just like we knew with that waitress last 

month and that girl at the book shop in 

New York over the summer; you’re not that 

charming Garry, trust me. Beauty is, 

essentially, a tool, a tool that has been used 

through evolution and human history. 

From the peacock’s tail, Helen of Troy, 

Henry the Eighth – the then King of 

England – who executed one of his wives 

just because she wasn’t at his level of 

129


attractiveness, these are all examples of the 

power of physical aesthetics. But I’m not 

here to explain how we have arranged your 

love life for the last five years. Stan’s 

wrong, I have other connections outside of 

the company that can help us find Thiago.” 

Garry put his pint down onto the bar 

and said, while watching the bar maid 

reaching for a LED light above one of the 

advertisements, “Nah…keep me out of this. 

This is not my problem anymore. Stan said 

so himself. 

“Garry…” said Yasmin “…how old do 

you think I am?” 

He frowned, stopped watching the bar 

maid who was now climbing down the 

ladder and he glanced at Yasmin. 

“Errr….from what I can see, twenty six, 

maybe twenty eight?” 

130


“I’m two hundred and twenty-three 

years old, although this is just from Dr 

Green’s calculations as my tribe lived under 

the canopy of the Congo’s rainforest so day 

and night were somewhat superfluous to us 

then so I never used to count time like that. 

Dr Green found me in one of her 

expeditions in the late 2030’s.” 

“So, you’re like Thiago, you don’t age?” 

“Not quite, I had a benign tumour 

around my superior vena cava that inflicted 

my blood supply and I was a very sick 

child. My brothers and sisters all died from 

horrendous cancerous diseases and I was 

banned from my tribe as a child a long time 

ago as they thought I was a bad omen. I 

had been on my own for longer than I can 

remember. After Dr Green found me and 

took me back to England she treated the 

tumour, but over the years others have 

131


appeared and they are becoming more and 

more frequent as time goes by. I’m on 

constant antibiotic targeted radiotherapy 

which come from the isotopes that we buy 

from IDP’s MSR’s nuclear reactors’ waste. 

One of the reasons why we haven’t 

interfered with Jamie is that without his 

company, I would most likely be dead.” 

“So???” 

“So, we need, or more specially, I need 

what Thiago has discovered. I might not 

look like it but the cancer will eventually 

take over and the radiotherapy will be 

useless.” 

Garry sighed “Everyone has to get old 

and die, it’s essential, it’s an important part 

of evolution!” 

“But Garry just think, you can go back 

to your physical prime?” 

132


He took another sip of his beer and then 

quietly said to her. “Can I still have a chat 

with that bar maid?” 

She smiled in the same way as when 

they were waiting for the SkyRail last 

month, just with her deep brown eyes. 

“Yeah, sure.” 

. 

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s 

TWENTY 

Jamie had bought Calvin back to IDP’s 

apartments where Thiago, Fear and Jack 

were staying, and Fear let them in. Jack was 

sitting on a sofa, reading something from 

his phone, and Thiago was at the side 

waiting for the kettle to boil. 

“Hey Jamie,” said Fear “Thiago’s just 

making some tea, would you and your 

friend like some?” 

“I think we’ll pass; we’ve just come 

from the café down-stairs and we’re 

already a bit too buzzed up on caffeine, but 

please don’t let us stop you having your 

own hot beverages.” 

135


Fear extended her hand towards Calvin, 

“Hi there, I’m Fiona but everyone calls me 

Fear.” 

Calvin grinned, but before he could 

reply Jamie said to her and the other two 

“Guys this is Calvin Patel who we all saw 

before, a bioengineer who works for me at 

IDP, and the son of a couple of two old, 

close friends of mine” 

Jack, who had now returned his phone 

to his pocket, waved amiably at Calvin. 

Thiago had finished making everyone’s tea 

and, while he was drinking his own, he 

leant back onto the surface area of the 

kitchen units before saying to Jamie and 

then Calvin, quite poignantly. “Patel you 

say?!?” And he smiled, “I see the 

resemblance.” He then stood up straight 

and walked over to Calvin and shook his 

136


hand much like Fear had. “How are Sam 

and Nousk doing? I haven’t seen them for 

quite some time!” 

“Who are Sam and Nousk?” Fear asked 

Thiago rather abruptly before Calvin could 

reply, but Jamie answered for him. 

“Sam and Nousk, although people don’t 

really call her that anymore as I believe she 

now prefers her full name – Anouska- are 

Calvin’s parents and good friends of mine. 

They were an intractable part of the 

instance in Saudi Arabia about fifty or so 

years ago that Thiago told you all about.” 

Jack then asked Jamie, “So there are 

other people who know all about Thiago’s 

elixir of life???” 

Jamie pursed his lips before responding. 

“Well as much as I know, it’s only them. 

Fifty years ago, we made a plan not to tell 

137


anyone and they went and lived in a lonely 

island with a few people in the North Sea. 

From what I can account of Calvin being 

here though, they must have told him all 

about it.” 

Calvin shrugged “They only told me 

about the whole thing very recently, but 

I’m a trained biologist and not surprisingly, 

as I saw my mum getting older and my dad 

not changing at all, I worked out the basics 

of the principle. Nevertheless, the 

molecular chemistry of it all is way over my 

head. I couldn’t create something that is 

that molecularly stable. It completely 

breaks the fundamentals of evolution, a 

system which started around four billion 

years ago with simple single cellular 

organisms.” 

138


Fear looked at Calvin, “So your dad is 

like Thiago, he doesn’t age?” 

“I haven’t known Thiago very long, but 

I think that’s right, as long as I can 

remember; my father has always looked the 

same.” 

Thiago then pointed out to Jamie, 

“There are others who are directly affected 

by this. However, as I’ve been hiding it’s 

been difficult to track them. Have you 

heard anything about Alison? And then 

there’s Francis and Olivia back at the 

tower?” 

Jamie scratched his chin, “My dad tried 

to find more about Alison’s whereabouts 

when he was alive with no joy and for 

Francis and Olivia, well, IDP purchased the 

Tower thirty years ago after Francis was 

139


found dead in a hotel room in Riyadh and 

Olivia had disappeared.” 

“Francis being dead and Olivia 

disappearing makes me deeply sad.” 

Thiago stated sombrely. “Olivia was my 

first human patient and her and Francis 

were very good friends of mine, and good 

people. Alison, on the other hand, I know 

can take care of herself and will only be 

allowed to be found if she wants to be. 


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140


TWENTY-ONE 

It was a sunny day and Yasmin slid a 

paper card across the café’s garden wooden 

table towards Steve, before she said to him. 

“There’s a million in this account, all in 

fipher stocks, just as a deposit; not even 

Jamie will be able to chase this back to you 

and when you get back to us with concrete 

evidence about where Thiago is, we will 

triple it.” 

“I dunno,” Steve replied cautiously, 

“Jamie’s been a good employer, and a 

million isn’t a lot for the risk I’ll be taking?” 

“What risk?” Garry asked him with a 

deeply furrowed brow “You’re his 

141


secretary so most of his work goes through 

you and you must have by now, 

subconsciously, worked out a crystalized 

pattern about how his mind clicks? And 

then there’s the extra two million?!?!?” 

“Even so….?” 

Yasmin put her hand on his. “Steve all 

you have to do is to let us know about his 

movements; we can probably work out 

what he’s been up to and if he’s heard 

anything about Thiago’s whereabouts.” 

“But why do you think he would know 

anything about this person who you call 

Thiago?” 

“Let’s say he might have some inside 

knowledge, and he is IDP’s CEO and 

owner, not much happens without his 

knowledge.” 

“What if I just take the million and I 

can’t find anything?” 

142


“Well, that would be our loss. At the 

end it’s just money, sometimes you win, 

sometimes you lose.” Yasmin replied 

ambiguously after taking her hand off 

Steve’s and taking a long sip from her black 

coffee. 

- 

“Do you trust him?” Garry asked 

Yasmin after Steve had left. She laughed. 

“Haha…course not, however we know 

if Thiago ever turns up; Jamie will be one of 

the first people who finds out and having 

someone close inside of such a large 

organisation like InDuePower is never 

something that is not helpful. 

143


“But what if he doesn’t find anything or 

misleads us or even…what if he tells 

Jamie?” 

“We know he’s in financial problems, 

heroin is a difficult thing to give up. He’ll 

take the money and then he’s ours.” 

“He’s a heroin addict?” 

“Yeah.” 

“But Jamie still employed him?” 

“Jamie’s massively naive, he employed 

him through when one of those schemes 

that the government runs.” 

“And you really think Jamie is our best 

avenue?” 

“Jamie has been a strong piece in this 

game since the very start. We’ve all been 

playing snakes and ladders, while he’s been 

officiating over a 3D chess match with has 

new made-up rules which are written 

backwards in a language that only he can 

144


understand.” Yasmin stated to Gary while 

she got up from her chair and put her stuff 

into her handbag. “He’ll know!” 

Steve was walking back to the office. 

Jamie had been very good to him, but he 

had to accept he was a junkie, no question 

about it. When IDP had come to his half 

house they provided him an escape route 

and for the last two years ago he had done 

exactly what he had promised to Jamie, 

visiting the clinic every month and taking 

his morphine substitute as provided. Over 

time he had become less and less reliant on 

it and he was taking lesser amounts every 

time. Unfortunately, last month, when he 

was at the pub, he had been persuaded to 

take this new formula from this girl at the 

- 

145


bar, no needles or anything, just one tablet. 

It was amazing; it made him feel so good, 

much better than heroin ever did all those 

years ago and definitely better than 

morphine, but the crash was massive when 

he wasn’t on it. When he had gone back to 

the girl to get more the price was more than 

his monthly salary, but he couldn’t help 

himself. 

He pushed his hand into his right 

pocket looking for the small, clear medical 

plastic bag that he kept the tablets in. He 

felt the plastic and then one small circular 

disc, then another, but nothing else; he’s 

going have to get some more pretty soon he 

thought to himself. 

146



https://www.jagerpress.com/Thunderma. 

html 

147


TWENTY-TWO 

Stan logged off his computer and put on his 

jacket before leaving the office. While he 

was halfway opening the front door, Dr 

Green grabbed his arm. 

“You know Yasmin is going to do 

something, don’t you?!?” 

“Miranda, I really do hope so. We don’t 

really have the resources to send off an 

army of people to find Thiago. One major 

point of telling her that that we’re getting 

other people to find Thiago is that this 

disconnects us from her actions and it kind 

of gives her a bit more freedom.” 

“But she’s vulnerable and still extremely 

volatile. You can’t imagine what she’s seen 

and been put through, leaving her off the 

leash might produce something that we 

148


will not be able to control!” Dr Green 

pointed out to him quite forcefully. 

“We are watching her closely; it will not 

be an issue, I promise you!” Stan said to her 

before he disappeared into the dark, wet 

streets of central London. Dr Green closed 

the door behind him thinking, Yes, but 

promises are easily broken. 

149



https://www.jagerpress.com/thebreakingclause.html 

150


TWENTY-THREE 

Jamie still had a worldwide business to 

run and he had a meeting with the Prime 

Minister that he had to attend to tomorrow, 

so he left Calvin with Jack and the others 

and he returned to his office’s floor. While 

Jamie was walking back, Steve, who was 

sitting at his desk, asked him rather 

abruptly? 

“Alright boss, how’s your afternoon 

been, done anything interesting?” 

“Hi Steve, it’s been OK…lots of things 

to think about and all that, you know how 

it goes.” 

151


“Cool…I just thought I would mention 

that Calvin walked pass earlier looking for 

you. He seemed eager to talk to you about 

something so I told him where I thought 

you might be. I don’t suppose that was a 

problem?” 

“No, no, no – that’s fine, Cal found me, I 

was just having a meeting.” 

“Ok good, good, good; I’m very glad. I 

felt I might have sent him off on a goose 

hunt and he’d never find you. By the way, 

I’m surprise you didn’t take me with you 

like you normally do when you have a 

meeting?” 

“Oh no, it was something just very 

informal, I didn’t need your help to write 

up the minutes or anything like that!” 

Steve pursed his lips and gave Jamie a 

thoughtful look before saying “Was there 

152


anyone there who I might have known 

perhaps?” 

In Jamie’s mind there was still that 

sceptical part of it from when he was ill and 

it said to him Steve is never this interested into 

what you do, be careful mate. Remember he was 

a junkie when you first me him, junkie’s 

relapse! thus, his reply went. 

“I don’t think you would have known 

anyone who was there, well no one that’s 

interesting anyway. Apologies but I’m in a 

bit of a rush, I’ll just be in my office 

planning for my meeting with the PM. If 

there are any calls, tell them I’ll get back to 

them at the end of the week.” 

- 

153


After Jamie had closed his office door 

behind himself, Steve slightly frowned 

while thinking Maybe this is going to be a bit 

more difficult than Garry and Yasmin had 

suggested. He took the phone that Yasmin 

had given him the other day and he 

punched this message onto it before 

sending it off to her. 

154



https://www.jagerpress.com/Thunderman.html 

155


TWENTY-FOUR 

Sophie Bunnings was sitting in her office at 

number ten Downing Street. She didn’t 

normally have meetings outside of the 

parliament, but the rise of InDuePower and its 

technology had been a massive part of the 

reason why the Green Party had been in power 

over the last fifteen years, so meetings with 

Jamie Golding, and previously with his father, 

at the Prime Minister’s place of residents 

weren’t particularly unusual. The 

environmental disasters and diseases along 

with the inequality over the difficult times in 

the twenty twenties and thirties had left the 

156


old school political parties in complete disarray 

and this had forced proportional representation 

into the commons. For quite a long time 

Sophie’s predecessor, Thomas Fowley, had 

been in coalitions; firstly, with Labour in the 

early twenty sixties and later in the same 

decade with the Liberal Democrats, but before 

the latest election Fowley had decided new 

flesh was needed to take the party forward and 

he had retired and Sophie had been elected as 

the Greens party’s new leader. The Greens won 

the election with an overwhelming majority. 

The major difficulty in political arena of the new 

decade however was the migration issue; 

something that had become impossible to 

ignore. Although IDP had removed fossil fuels 

from the equation and the desertification of 

large parts the landmass of the world along 

with the fact the floods hadn’t been as extreme 

as they could have been; the planet had still 

heated due to the excess carbon dioxide in the 

atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in the 

157


twentieth century and the early decades of this 

one and there had been a large shift of 

populations across the world. There was also 

the natural rising population of the human 

species as medication had improved over last 

couple of centuries. Now, in the twenty 

seventies, there was now something like ten 

billion people on this planet. 

Sophie checked on her watch, she still had 

five minutes until she expected Jamie to turn 

up so she flicked through the BBC’s online news 

channel. Another Russian mafia boss had been 

caught selling fake cancer treatments in South 

Asia and there were a few editorials that 

reviewed the recent water wars in central 

Africa. She sighed. Even now with cheap energy 

some people just wanted even more even 

though it would have been much better for 

everyone if people didn’t fight each other, war 

and crime still occurred. Human nature she 

conceded; new technology and politics had a 

158


hell of a fight to overturn this natural instinct. 

The evolution of human behaviour had the 

status quo of a hundred thousand years on its 

side - the survival of the fittest and all that. 

While she was half way through an article 

that talked about the latest influx of migrants 

from flooded islands in the Indian Ocean, there 

was a bleep from her office’s intercom console. 

She reached out and tapped on the incoming 

calls’ button. 

“Ms Bunnings, Mr Golding is here to see 

you.” said the voice of Sophie’s secretary 

through the speakers of the machine. 

“Please send him up, I am expecting him.” 

- 

Jamie got off his bicycle, unattached his 

suitcase from it and folded up the mobile 

apparatus quickly before walking into number 

159


ten Downing Street. The interior of the building 

had changed quite significantly since the 

Greens had been in power. It no longer had 

that Victorian interior design façade that it 

once had, but now it looked more like a 

modern office. To his right there was a set of 

folded up bikes locked to a frame and he locked 

his own with them. When he was sure that his 

bike wasn’t going to infringe on anyone else’s 

being removed, he walked to the admission’s 

desk while rearranging his tie. At the desk was 

the Prime Minister’s secretary, a Caucasian lady 

in her mid-forties whose name he remembered 

was Tina. 

“Hi Tina, I hope you and the family are 

doing well. I’ve got a meeting with the Prime 

Minister.” he said to her while resting his 

suitcase on top of the desk. 

“Hello Mr Golding, I’ll let her know” 

After Tina had talked to the Prime Minister 

by using the phone, she indicated to Jamie that 

160


the Prime Minister was ready to see him and he 

gestured that he knew where to go. After he 

had climbed up the stairs, he noticed that Ms 

Bunning’s office door was open and he could 

see her putting somethings away. 

Jamie had liked Sophie’s predecessor, Thomas 

Fowley, but from as much he could make out of 

his successor, she was a bit of an upgrade. She 

had the presence of a relatively young, 

professional woman who knew what she was 

doing. From what he had heard and read, she 

had been offered positions at several top 

Russel Group Universities after she had left her 

Manchester Sixth Form when she was eighteen, 

but had decided to work as an apprentice in 

one of the labs near her home so she could 

help her younger brother who had Downs 

Syndrome. Three years later the company who 

had owned the lab funded her studies for an 

Ecology Degree at Cambridge as her brother 

had now moved to a special educational needs 

161


home. 

As he walked in, Jamie noticed her 

scribbling down some notes onto her digital 

tablet and casually pushing her long black her 

over her shoulders. She must have heard him 

walking in as she abruptly looked up at him 

while she was still quickly finishing writing 

something down. 

“Ah Jamie, how lovely to see you!” 

“You to Prime Minister, I do hope I’m not 

interrupting you. You look like you’re in the 

middle of doing something important?” 

“Nonsense, I have this meeting arranged on 

my calendar….” and she pointed to the electric 

calendar on the other wall “ …anyways I always 

have time for our country’s biggest company’s 

CEO.” 

“Right, as long you’re not in the middle of 

doing something that cannot be delayed.” 

“Jamie, I asked you to see me, remember? 

Please, stop being so polite!” 

162


“OK, so what is it that you want to talk to 

me about?” 

“Well, it’s pretty simple really, I want to talk 

to you about food?” 

“Food?” Jamie replied with an expression 

some might relate to one of a lost ostrich who 

has found its self in the middle of rush hour in 

Central London. 

“Yes food.” she repeated “As you are very 

aware, one of the first policies that my party 

brought in when we were elected all those 

years ago was to reduce and finally eliminate 

the importation of food from outside of this 

country and therefore reduce the pollution 

impacts that this causes.” 

“Yes, I know, IDP built the infrastructure for 

the large green houses across the country to 

allow all this to happen.” 

“Indeed, unfortunately due the influx of 

migration and the rising population as a whole, 

over the next five to ten years we will start 

163


hitting the margins of keeping healthy diets 

across our nation if we keep all our food from a 

local supply chain.” 

“Along with increasing accommodation 

needs without infringing green and wildlife 

areas I would also imagine?” Jamie queried. 

“Ah… yes, I see you are quick on the uptake, 

but the food issue is a bit more of an acute 

problem at this moment in time. At the 

moment with accommodation, we can just 

build higher and improve architectural 

functions.” 

Jamie sat down in front of Sophie and 

opened his suitcase. She noticed him shuffling 

though of a stack paper until he found a 

magazine which he took out and placed it onto 

the Prime Minister’s desk. However, before he 

could open it at a specific page, Sophie spoke 

up. 

“Ah very good, you have a printed copy of it 

with you, but I’ve already read the article that 

164


you published in Nature last month.” 

“You’ve already seen my piece about 

vertical agriculture?” 

“Of course. As the abstract of your work 

points out, because of the decarbonisation of 

urban areas over the last decades this has 

reduced pollution to nearly an absolute zero. 

Therefore, urban areas can now be used for a 

wider use of different services; one that is most 

specific to this conversation is farming and food 

supply.” 



165


TWENTY-FIVE 

Calvin was sitting on the sofa playing with 

his phone while Fear, Jack and Thiago were 

having something to eat. What should he do 

now? His father’s instructions had been to find 

out more information about Thiago and he had 

achieved this goal; therefore, his next task 

would be to inform his parents. He didn’t really 

have much idea about what they were going to 

say or do. For security reasons, which he now 

completely understood why; he never called 

them when he was away from their island but 

his father had arranged an email account that 

even Calvin – who, as an engineer himself, was 

pretty techy and knew how to break codes 

quite easily – couldn’t get into without his 

personal retina scan that his phone took when 

he ever opened it so he went to his email inbox 

and created a new window to write a new 

message. 

166


Hi Dad 

It’s Thiago, I have not doubt. What should I do now? 

Lots of love 

Calvin 

He sat there with his legs crossed while 

waiting, impatiently, for a reply. He didn’t 

have to wait very long. 

Hi Calvin 

In that case this had opened a new can of worms and a lot 

of other questions. If Thiago’s alive then we need to keep 

this as quiet as long as we can. There are people who 

would be a bit too interested into his whereabouts. I will 

come over and talk to him. One last thing, I think things 

are going to be very interesting. 

Dad 

167


Calvin bit his lip. Whenever his father 

ever used that term “I think things are going 

to be very interesting” he always got a bit 

nervous as it pretty much said the world 

was about to change. Previously these 

changes had been good, but this didn’t 

mean that change was always going be 

positive. He had to go and find Imogen and 

the children. 



168


, 

TWENTY-SIX 

Sam put his phone back into his pocket and 

said to Anouska, who was sitting on their livingroom’s 

sofa reading a book on her tablet. 

“Darling Calvin says it is Thiago!” 

Anouska put her device back onto the 

coffee table before turning to Sam. 

“Well, that’s good, no?” 

“I don’t know?” he replied “With Jamie not 

presenting the complete effects of the drug and 

Olivia supposedly dead I would have been the 

last. If Thiago is alive and is in London this gives 

them the opportunity to gain the knowledge 

that he developed and there are so many things 

that could go wrong if that happened!” 

“So, what are we going to do then?” 

“I am going to London to find out as much 

as I can and talk to Thiago about this and see 

what we can work out.” 

169


“In that case I’m coming you. It would be 

nice to see the doctor, especially as the last 

time I saw him I thought he was dead!” 

“Anouska this is possibly going to be very 

dangerous, and with your health I wouldn’t 

recommend you coming. If you stay here, you 

will be much safer!” 

“Nonsense, I’ll be fine and anyway, we’re a 

team. Now when are we going as I’ve got some 

packing to do?” 


https://www.jagerpress.com/poems.htm 

170


TWENTY-SEVEN 

Calvin told Fear, Jack and Thiago that he’ll 

see them later – although at the back of his 

mind he knew that this might not be true – and 

he went back to his electric bicycle that he had 

left on a charger just outside of Regents Park, 

near the offices’ entrance, and cycled back to 

his family home in Chelsea, West London. It 

took him about twnty minutes to get home by 

using the cycle pathway that the previous 

Mayor of London had built with the help of 

Jamie and his civic engineers. His family lived in 

a four-bedroom semi-detached house with a 

large back garden; sometimes he felt a bit guilty 

that he lived in such luxury, but he consoled 

himself with the fact that what he did for work 

was beneficial to society and in anyway, these 

days, no one in Britain or in western Europe 

was exactly poor. Nonetheless he had been to 

Africa when IDP had tried to plant forests 

across the Sahara to improve its biodiversity 

171


and improve the soils so people could farm and 

some of things that he saw when he was there 

made him question himself quite frequently. 

After he had unlocked their front door and 

had taken his shoes off, he heard the noises of 

Max’s and Harry’s little feet scampering up the 

carpeted stairs from the open-door living space 

downstairs. 

“Dadddddyyyy!!!” Max screeched and Harry 

hung onto his left leg. Calvin smiled while 

ruffling onto Harry’s pitch-black hair. 

Pretty soon he saw Imogen’s face rising up 

the stairs at a much, slower pace, and in a 

couple of seconds he noticed a sleeping Sophia 

innately clinging to her mother like a new born 

bear club would in the spring. 

“Hi lovely, you’re a bit early, aren’t you?” 

Imogen inquired. “We’ve just had tea in the 

garden. I think there are some scones that I 

kept for tomorrow, but I can get one for you if 

you like?” 

172


“Sorry Imogen, we don’t have time for that, 

we’ve got to get packed and go!!!” 

“What do you mean pack and go Calvin???” 

“I mean I think we need to get out of 

London and find somewhere else where there’s 

not many people!” 

“Why? And Max and Harry have to go back 

to school tomorrow? You’re scaring me now 

honey???” 

“It’s just something that I feel? Have I ever 

let you down before Immy?” 

“But where do we go? We could go to your 

parents or mine?” 

“I unfortunately have a feeling that my 

parents are already too involved in this and I 

think we would be less safe if we stayed with 

them and your parents live in Surrey which is 

too close and busy.” 

“But they live in a small village, there aren’t 

many people there?” 

173


“Unfortunately, I think we need to 

disappear and isolate ourselves from society. 

It’s ok, I already have a plan.” 



174


TWENTY-EIGHT 

Calvin set his family onto their electric bikes 

outside of the house. The boys had their own 

children’s models and Imogen had Sophia 

strapped up in a baby seat at the back of hers. 

As he was the son of his father and a 

bioengineer, Calvin already had a plan. They all 

cycled to the closest SkyRail station near 

Stanford Bridge where they all got onto a 

SkyRail ferry with their luggage and were in 

Scotland in fifteen minutes. 

Calvin had set up a house, just in case he 

felt that they needed escape and hide, in 

Aberdeenshire; miles away from anywhere 

else. It was self-powered with wind turbines 

and solar panels and a fipher battery for over 

the winter short-days and if there was no wind. 

The house was made out of wood and other 

organic materials that made it inflammable 

175


while being completely insulated - the north 

east of Scotland can be bitterly cold especially 

in the winter - and there was a roof garden with 

green houses that IDP had used as prototypes 

for their local, micro farming research so there 

was already enough food for the whole family 

for the next six months and Calvin could reseed 

them for next spring after they had completely 

harvested the crops. 

After the whole family had cycled from 

Aberdeen’s major SkyRail station to the house 

and the children had settled down, all that 

went through Calvin’s mind was Now we just 

have to wait and see. 

176


TWENTY-NINE 

Yasmin sat there at the back of the café at a 

wooden table; stirring her black coffee 

aimlessly and slowly with a long, metal spoon - 

Maybe Steve is not going to be as helpful as she 

had hoped she thought to herself. Then she saw 

him walking though the shop’s open front door. 

When he saw her, he didn’t raise a hand or 

anything like that, but, after nervously walking 

across the shop while watching anxiously 

through the windows outside and checking on 

the other patrons of the shop, he somewhat 

ominously slid onto the bench on the other side 

of the table. 

“Right, I don’t have much time.” he said to 

her “Jamie will be back at the office soon and I 

don’t want him to ask me where I’ve been; so, 

this has to be quick, right!” 

Yasmin intentionally casually took a very 

long sip from her coffee before she lazily and 

slowly placed it back down onto the table. She 

177


then peered at Steve with her deep, brown 

eyes before saying to him. “You said on the text 

that this might not be as easy as you had 

thought?” 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” he articulated to 

her rather hurriedly. 

“Well, what would you say if I might have 

something that could help you a bit with that?” 

“And what would that be?” Steve replied to 

her with a quizzical frown. 

Before she said anything else, Yasmin leant 

backwards, unhooked her purse from the back 

of the chair that she was sitting on and placed it 

onto the table. After a few seconds she 

retrieved a clear glass pot with a blue lid from 

the depths of the pseudo, fungi created leather, 

smart, fashionable vessel. Steve could see 

hundreds of small, circular, luminescent green 

tablets packed inside of it. She then retuned 

her purse while leavening the container of the 

tablets on the table. 

178


“Steve these are military grade biological 

transmitters. After they have been swallowed 

the stomach’s hydrochloric acid will initiate an 

enzyme in the tablet which will breakdown a 

capsule in the centre of the pills and this will 

release low level radioactive isotopes which will 

be absorbed in the small colon and in the 

collective ducts that are found in the nephrons 

of the kidneys.” 

“You want me to make my boss 

radioactive???” Steve asked her with 

astonishment. 

“Well yes, but only a bit and nothing toxic, 

it will just make it easier to track him.” 

“But how?” 

“In the phone that I gave you it has a 

software that can hack into a governmental 

surveying satellite and it will isolate this specific 

radioactivity frequency that the isotopes will 

emit for about a few months.” 

“So? This doesn’t tell me anything.” 

179


“Well, if he goes to unusual places 

frequently this could indicate something, no?” 

Steve’s scowl got even deeper. “How do 

you think I would surreptitiously put one of 

these into his food?” 

Yasmin lent her head sarcastically. “Steve 

you’re a druggy, use your damn common 

sense.” 

He lent back at a bit and tapped onto the 

edge of the table with his left index finger “So, 

I’ll, like, put it into one of his drinks or 

something?” 

“Yeah, that sounds like an appropriate way 

to do it. Unfortunately, we’ve found that the 

tablets float in cold drinks so a hot drink would 

be best.” 

“Right, right -- sure. One more thing….” 

Yasmin stopped him and pulled out a 

packet from her coat pocket and gave it to him. 

“As I promised, here are the drugs. This will 

180


give you another month and you won’t have 

any side effects.” 

“Except for misleading my boss of course.” 

Steve replied with a slightly lopsided tone 

before he hurriedly tore opened the packet and 

took something out and swallowed it with a 

sort of satisfaction appearing across his face 

nearly instantly. 

181


THIRTY 

Jamie thanked the Prime Minister before he 

walked out of her office, strolled down the 

stairs and left Number Ten Downing Street 

through the front door after picking up his fold 

up bike. They had decided, quite surprisingly, 

that the best place to start IDP’s urban vertical 

farms would be the Shard in the city of London 

due to its height and location and he was now 

doing the maths in his head while he was 

unfolding his bike. Unfortunately, although the 

Prime Minister’s new food policy was important 

for Jamie, at this moment in time, the arrival of 

Dr Thiago Fernandez was slightly more urgent. 

The major question was, what the hell was he 

182


going to do with him now? He had to get back 

to him and the others as soon as possible. 

He pedalled hard and was back at 

InDuePower’s offices pretty quickly, with the 

sun beaming down onto Reagents Park to his 

left and to his right, IDP’s offices stood there 

proudly. While he was walking though the 

ground floor’s spiral swinging entrance doors, 

he received the normal smiles and the Alright 

boss, How’s your day been and the other like 

cheerful paraphrases that he had got used to 

over the years from his employees. As he tried 

to reach the lifts – while shaking hands and 

saying hi to several people - he knew he had to 

go to his personal office first to download some 

stuff onto his computer before he went to talk 

to Thiago and the others. And so, when he 

reached his office’s floor, he walked straight 

past Steve to his room without saying anything. 

“Hi boss.” Steve commented cheerfully to 

him as he walked past. 

183


Jamie just nodded with a slight grunt, as he 

had other things on his mind. 

“I can get you a coffee if you like?” 

Jamie reciprocated in the same way as he 

had just previously, except for the extra slight 

wave with his right hand while he rushed into 

his office where he put down his briefcase onto 

his desk and inserted a memory stick into his 

computer. As there wasn’t much in it, the data 

from the PM’s meeting was uploaded onto the 

machine in less than a couple of milli-seconds 

and he just gave it today’s date as a file name - 

he can organise it better later he thought to 

himself. He turned off the computer, picked up 

his suitcase again and walked out of his office 

at the same rushed pace that he had when he 

had entered the room, but he hadn’t even 

taken a step out before he nearly walked 

straight into Steve, who was about to knock 

onto his door. Jamie stopped, feeling a bit 

184


flustered, and noticed Steve was holding a 

recyclable coffee take away cup. 

“Here you go boss.” 

“Ah, yeah, cheers...” he said to Jamie with a 

slightly apologetic tone and he took the cup 

from him before saying “…I’ll tell you what, I’ll 

be back in an hour or so, but I won’t need you 

for the rest of the afternoon; take the rest of 

the day off. Go for a walk, see some friends or 

something like that and enjoy the weather; life 

is short and I don’t like the idea of you 

twiddling your thumbs around and not doing 

anything productive. I’ll see you tomorrow 

morning, bright and early, OK.” 

- 

Jamie stood there waiting for the elevator 

while sipping his coffee quite poignantly. This is 

a particularly good one, he thought to himself 

Steve’s coffees were normally a bit rushed and 

185


often had too much milk in them but this one 

was really good; he must congratulate him 

tomorrow. When the lift doors sprung open, he 

walked in before pressing the button for the 

floor where the apartments where on and 

when doors opened again, he walked straight 

to the door where Thiago, Fear and Jack were 

staying. He had a key so he let himself in. 

Unfortunately, he nearly immediately knew 

that he should have knocked as when he 

stepped in, the only person who was there was 

the back of Fear, slicing something up in the 

kitchen. This wouldn’t be an issue except for 

the fact that all she was only wearing a yellow 

bikini. She had heard him walk in and she 

turned around quite gracefully. Just as quickly 

she saw his facial expression and she looked 

down at her own body and started to 

apologise. 

“Hey Jamie, I’m so sorry, I’ve kind of run out 

of normal clothes as I was in such a rush to pack 

186


and my washing is still drying at the moment. I 

do hope you don’t mind? Back in the 

archipelago I spend most of my time in the sea 

study corals in the reef so I didn’t have many 

items of clothing ready when we left.” 

Jamie coughed slightly and covered his 

mouth politely before saying. “No, no, that’s ok 

… needs must and all that.” 

“Very good. I don’t presume you’re here to 

talk to me. Calvin left some time ago, but Jack 

and Thiago are in their rooms if you want to 

talk to them, I’ll can go and get them for you if 

you like?” 

187



Follow the progress of Tyrannosaurus Hex 

at http://kck.st/2NRJLoc 

188


THIRTY-ONE 

Sam always took extreme precautions 

whenever he left the island; one of these was 

always to make sure he never used the same 

port or SkyRail station from the nearby islands 

to his and thus making patterns of his 

movement more difficult for other people to 

follow. However, as he was bringing Anouska 

with him this time he was - due to her being 

physically less able – less flexible with his 

choices and so he took the easiest route by 

getting a boat to Aberdeen and then got a 

SkyRail ferry from there to IDP’s London 

station. 

- 

189


Thiago was reading a story while lying on 

his bed when he heard a knock on his door. He 

sighed; he really liked reading, it allowed him 

think he was in another world and it permitted 

him to forget about the real thing and its real 

fears. He remembered some of the most 

relaxing times of his life - when he was a child 

all those years ago; long, long before 

everything went digital – was when he was 

reading a book in his parents living room while 

his mother was making tea and cakes while his 

father sat on that old dark green armchair 

reading that day’s newspaper; those were the 

times he thought to himself. He turned his 

tablet into its sleep mode, put it down to his 

side and stood up and opened the door. There, 

right in front of him, stood Fear standing only 

wearing a yellow bikini. He glanced briefly at 

Jack - who was standing a bit behind her - who 

had his hands raised to his side and a facial 

190


expression that said exactly what Thiago was 

thinking Nice bikini, nevertheless I feel a bit 

slightly uncomfortable with all this skin that you 

are showing, you know you are no longer on the 

beach any more. However, before he could say 

anything. Fear announced: 

“Yes, yes, yes I know… I will tell you both 

why later, but Jamie’s here and I think he wants 

to talk to one or both of you?” 

And so, in only a couple of moments all 

three of them were back at the kitchen where 

Jamie was leaning against a wooden cabinet 

with his arms crossed, looking slightly nervous. 

“Oh…” he stated “I only needed to talk to 

Thiago, but as you both know everything 

anyway you might as well stick around as well! 

First though, let’s go and sit down. I might not 

look it, but I think my aging legs might need a 

bit of a rest.” 

After they had all sat down and Jack had 

made them all a new tea pot, Jamie started. 

191


“Right, so Thiago what you have created is 

amazing, but you know it has to be stopped, 

the ramifications of this could be devastating if 

someone works out who you are!” 

Thiago pursed his lips before saying to 

Jamie. “What do mean by ‘stopped’? That kind 

of implies that you want me dead which seems 

rather unfair in that if it wasn’t for me, you 

would not have recovered from your childhood 

illness and you would not look as well as you 

look now!” 

Jamie breathed in deeply through his nose 

while biting his upper lip. “No, no, no, it’s more 

that I am extremely concerned about your own 

wellbeing, I certainly would not want to try to 

hurt you in any way.” 

“Well at least that’s something that I do not 

have to worry about then!” 

“Nonetheless…” Jamie stated quickly firmly 

to him “…I’m pretty certain there are people 

who would like to harm you!” 

192


Thiago slightly laughed while he picked up 

his mug “Hah…yeah I know. As I said earlier, 

I’ve had experience of that pretty recently 

actually.” 



193


THIRTY-TWO 

It was the middle of the afternoon and in a 

café to the side of the Sydney Opera house, 

Olivia stood elegantly at a bar drinking her iced 

coffee when another man appeared by her 

side. She flattered her dainty right hand at him 

without even looking or saying anything but she 

felt the presence of him leaving just as quickly; 

standing tall as he walked back to his seat while 

trying to look as if he had not just got 

completely shot down by the most beautiful 

woman in the bar. She was so bored of this 

game. Although her body was still young, her 

mind was old and she really missed Frances. 

When he had passed away in Saudi Arabia she 

had elegantly vanished; at first she went to 

Nairobi where she taught science and maths to 

disabled children but because she didn’t age, 

she couldn’t stick around at any particular place 

for too long, a year or two at the most and for 

194


that reason she couldn’t really make close 

relationships with anyone. Over the last years 

she had been following Alex’s and now Jamie’s 

InDuePower company and its progress and how 

it had changed geopolitical boundaries across 

the word. She looked at the recent 

international news on her phone and it 

summarised the current wars across central 

Africa due to drought and the disrepair of the 

IDP’s pipeline. She was very disappointed about 

this because as, due to the continents’ 

boundless mineral resources, she had hoped it 

would, by this time in the twenty first century, 

have the same equitable economic success as 

the rest of the world. Time to move again she 

thought to herself, her current job at the 

Sydney digital book shop wasn’t really mentally 

strenuous enough for own health; maybe if she 

went back to London, she could persuade Jamie 

to go back and fix the pipe? Even though he 

had spouted out over the media that IDP had 

195


spent too much fixing other people’s errors; 

maybe her arrival will change his mind? 



196


THIRTY-THREE 

After Thiago had explained exactly what 

happened to him in California in a bit more 

detail, Jamie sat back on his chair, crossed his 

legs and stroked his chin which he noticed had 

become furry recently compared to his normal 

clean-cut appearance - this was predominantly 

because, for Jamie at least, shaving seemed to 

be a bit of a selfish thing to have to think about 

in these worrying times - nevertheless he 

always felt far more potent and sharper 

whenever he didn’t feel like he was turning into 

a sixteenth century Russian aristocrat and he 

noted in his own memory banks that, when he 

had the time, he should find a sink and a mirror 

with an electric razor and do something about 

this situation. He then uncrossed his legs and 

said to Thiago. 

“You say there were two of them?” 

197


“Yeah, a guy and a woman.” 

“And they were both English?” 

“It would seem so, the bloke spoke like he’d 

just been dragged out of the Thames Docklands 

but the lady of African descent had an accent 

that sounded like it had come straight out of an 

Oxbridge English Literature lecture.” 

“So, one was there for the muscle and the 

other was the brains?” 

“I suppose so, the man just wanted to kill 

me but the lady wanted to kidnap me.” 

Hmmm… Jamie expressed with his 

eyebrows, while he sipped at his hot beverage. 

“So, they know who you are, and they probably 

have a very good idea about what you can do 

and now know exactly what you look like; this 

might make this issue much harder. I think we 

have to hide you somewhere and I think I know 

exactly were.” 

But Jamie then felt a bleep from his TellMe 

implants and a message was dictated to him by 

198


a computer synthesised, but friendly, female 

voice. 

“Hi Jamie, Calvin says you’ve found Thiago 

and he’s with you. My SkyRail ferry is just 

about to land at your company’s station, if 

you’re there, which I presume you are, I’ll see 

you in fifteen minutes or so.” 

Cheers 

Sam 

Drat Jamie thought to himself, there goes 

my place to hide Thiago. Then again if they’re 

both here maybe they could all sort something 

out that could be a bit more permanent; this 

might actually work out very well he thought to 

himself and he texted Sam back and told him 

where they were. 

199


- 

Steve looked on his phone; the spot that 

was Jamie had been flicking at a stationary 

position for a long period of time at an unusual 

place, i.e. he wasn’t in his office. He checked 

exactually where this bleep was on the 

planning of the building that he had on his 

computer and he gulped; Jamie was at an 

unusual place. This was particularly unfamiliar 

behaviour for Jamie as Steve knew he loved the 

idea of keeping everything in the same place; 

especially if he was in his own building and he 

barely ever spent longer than hour anywhere 

else if he was not in his office; this was 

becoming extremely suspicious. Steve found 

Yasmin’s number and sent her a text. 

200


THIRTY-FOUR 

Yasmin heard and felt her phone buzzing 

twice from her purse - buzz, buzz - and she 

retrieved the machine with her left hand while 

scribbling down a random, quick note on a 

sticky, green piece of paper with the other. On 

the screen there was a message from Steve 

which she read and then sent one back to him; 

nothing too decisive, but enough to keep him 

on his toes. So, Steve thinks Jamie is behaving 

oddly and he knows that the tracker is working; 

well, that will be good enough for the moment. 

she thought to herself. Let’s see what happens 

over the next week. She then sent an email to 

Stan with this new information. 

- 

201


Dr Matilda Green stood at the kitchen’s 

door and watched the birds flittering across her 

mansion’s garden while she drank her cup of 

tea with purpose. This mansion sat at the top a 

hill in the Surrey countryside, close to the Mole 

Valley River. It had been in her family for 

generations and she had always had had a 

comfortable life with enough money to do 

whatever she ever wanted. As she had been a 

single child, she never had any sibling 

competition and she had to except that she had 

been horribly spoilt by her doting parents. At 

school she had been extremely bright and was 

successful at whatever she wanted to do, 

whether that would be mathematics, literature, 

foreign languages – she could speak at least 

twelve languages by the time she was twenty - 

one – or sciences, but what she was particularly 

good at was people, more specifically the way 

they behaved. She never found any major 

tangible real issues imposed on her in her life 

202


except for the fact that she realised, over time, 

that being good at everything had made her 

extreamly bored and slightly depressed as she 

felt excluded from the real world and it’s 

worries. Hence, as she got older, she started to 

make more and more righteous and decisive 

moves and one of these had been spending 

years in Central Africa for her psychological 

doctorate “A Happy, Stable World Population.” 

Her paper concluded that the world needed to 

reduce the populations growth rate to nearly 

absolute zero before the end of the twenty first 

century otherwise it would tear its self apart 

due to a lack of space, drinking water, food 

shortages and so forth. This was long before 

IDP and their discovery of fipher and the start 

of the fossil fuel industry and its lobbies losing 

the power which they had had for the last 

hundred years. With the arrival of this new era 

the effects of climate change had become 

increasingly dilute and the global warming units 

- which had been a predominant factor for the 

203


reasoning of the data that had supported her 

paper - had started to become nearly 

irrelevant. Nevertheless, her discovery of 

Yasmin and then through one of her family 

friends called Mary Smith – who was the head 

of an organisation called Vigilate Pacem, or VP 

for short - she met Stan. Stan was Mary Smith’s 

protégé and from Stan, Matilda learned all 

about Mary’s involvement with Fred Smith and 

his attempt and failure to invent the elixir of 

life. From this she learned all about Dr Thiago 

Francisco’s work and how he might have had 

succeeded where Fred had not. The idea of 

people living forever terrified her more than 

global warming ever had and her new adapted 

statistical models demonstrated this. 

Unfortunately, due to the disappearance of 

the VP officer on this case in 2020, Agent Mr 

Chang, the information about Thiago had kind 

of disappeared and she had hoped that this 

issue would not turn up again in her lifetime. 

Unfortunately, the recent sighting in California 

204


had removed this possibility. She sighed, 

finished her cup and turned around so she 

could put it into the dishwasher. 


https://jagerpress.beezer.com/ 

205


THIRTY-FIVE 

Olivia had got to Sydney’s city centre 

SkyRail station quite early as it was always 

extremely busy compared to most other 

stations in other parts of the world. She wasn’t 

exactly sure why this might be, but she could 

only imagine it would be because of the fact 

that Australasia was so much further away from 

the rest of world compared to all the other 

continents and there was also the fact that the 

Fipher archipelago was just north from 

Australia so a lot of commerce came from that 

as Sydney was the nearest major capital city to 

those series of isolated islands. Fipher had 

never had had a SkyRail Station as IDP didn’t 

allow SkyRail ferries to even fly over it, 

apparently due to conservation reasons. This 

was something she never really understood as 

the ferries didn’t produce any actual pollution; 

206


maybe she will ask Jamie about this when she 

got to London? 

Although she hated the game, one thing 

Olivia had learned, from personal experience, 

was that if she wore a short skirt, she was 

much, much more likely to get a seat on this 

particular ferry. Even though the SkyRail ferries 

were much faster than the old aeroplanes from 

when she was younger, the trip to London was 

still very long and standing was not something 

she really wanted to consider. She passed her 

phone over her platform’s gate scanner and 

these openly smoothly for her and she briefly 

stood on the platform before she got onto the 

ferry. 

Nearly immediately, as she reached the 

passenger’s seating area, people started to 

shove up a bit and removed handheld luggage 

to create new empty seats. Surprisingly it 

wasn’t just the men who did this, but also 

women, old people and families with their 

207


children as well; beauty is a funny thing she 

thought to herself. She could feel the stares of 

at least a hundred people watching her as she 

stood there at the top of the aisle, but she just 

smiled, stepped over to an empty seat - which 

had just been made available by a father of 

three children - and, before she put her bag 

into the luggage holder, asked him 

“Is it OK if I could sit here with you and your 

children?” 

“Of course…” said the father who had, by 

now, returned to his seat three seats away on 

the other end “… it was actually Lilly’s idea.” 

Olivia looked down and immediately she 

realised who Lilly was; a little girl with long 

curly brown hair and bright green eyes and she 

was grinning at her like the Cheshire cat from 

Lewis Carol’s “Alice’s Adventures in 

Wonderland”. 

“I like your hair...” the little girl exclaimed 

happily “and, and your skirt and your shoes. 

208


When I grow up, I want to be just as pretty as 

you!” 

Olivia closed the luggage compartment and 

smiled kindly at Lilly while she sat down, “That 

is very nice of you to say, but you are extremely 

pretty as well and don’t let anyone else to tell 

you otherwise. Anyways you don’t really want 

to grow up too quickly do you?” 

“I do, I really do, I’m six, and being six is 

really, really rubbish.” 

“Oh, why would that be?” 

“It’s rubbish for lots and lots and lots of 

reasons. For example, I can’t reach things if 

there too high up and I can only go to places if 

I’m with my dad and I can’t have cakes 

whenever I want and, and….” 

Fortunately to Olivia, Lilly’s father 

interrupted this spiel of wrong doings that Lily 

felt that the world had unjustly opposed itself 

on her. 

209


“Now Lilly, you know you are now being 

rude, what do we say when we meet new 

people?” 

Lily went a bit glum for a moment, but then 

brightened up pretty quickly. “Hello there, it’s 

very nice to meet you, my name is Lilly, what is 

yours?” 

Olivia continued to smile “It’s very nice to 

meet you as well Lily, my name is Olivia. Why 

are you flying all the way to London? I can only 

presume it’s not for the better weather?” 

Unfortunately, Olivia nearly immediately 

realised what she had just said was a bit too 

complicated for the little girl as Lily’s facial 

expression became puzzled and she nearly 

immediately looked back at her dad. 

Fortunately, her father saved Olivia again 

“Hi, my name is Jim; yes, you are absolutely 

right, we are certainly not visiting London for 

the better weather. My middle one…” and he 

pointed to a boy who was sitting behind Lilly “… 

210


has a congenital disease which has made him 

blind and we are going to see a specialist in the 

UK who says they have a new treatment which 

will allow him to see.” 

Olivia leaned past Lilly so she could see the 

little boy who was not much older than his 

baby sister. He looked happy and content; 

nonetheless it was obvious that he had 

problems with his vision as he was just staring 

at the back of the seat in front of him with all 

this activity happening all around him. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, that must be dreadful.” 

Olivia replied automatically. 

“It’s been a struggle, but Ben’s always been 

positive about life. Hopefully, fingers-crossed, 

this will make him even more positive and it 

will allow him to engage with new activities 

that the rest of us all take for granted.” 

“I really hope so as well.” Olivia said to Jim 

with a lot of sympathy. 

211




212


THIRTY-SIX 

Stan walked out of the Leatherhead rail 

station. Although the SkyRail ferries were 

technically quicker - as Surry was so close to 

London - the governmental owned nationalised 

rail networks were actually much more efficient 

for short distances and, as IDP paid for the 

railways across the country due to the fact that 

it massively reduced the congestion in the skies 

for their long-haul flights, Stan’s trip from 

Euston was not only pleasant and fast, but also 

completely free. Dr Green’s mansion wasn’t on 

a tram line and was at the top of a hill, but 

there was actually an extremely nice walk from 

town that went straight to it and it wasn’t 

particularly steep. There was also a lot of flora 

and fauna along it which always cheered Stan 

up a bit, even if he did sometimes feel slightly 

guilty as he walked past people’s back gardens 

and could see straight into their homes even 

though he really tried not to. 

213


At the end of the of the path there was a 

locked gate, which was the entrance to the 

mansion’s grounds. Fortunately, Matilda had 

put in an electronic finger print scanner on it a 

few years back so he no longer had to drag that 

stupid key around with him all the time 

anymore whenever he visited. After he had 

stepped through the gate and closed it behind 

himself, he walked down towards the doctor’s 

luxury abode. A bit higher up the hill stood an 

even larger mansion with a swimming pool, but 

Matilda said that she preferred to stay in her 

slightly smaller, a bit less fabulous and certainly 

a lot older, architecturally wise, manor for 

nostalgic reasons and also because it had a 

much larger, nicer garden which had a small 

hill. From this hill you could see all the way 

down to the river valley. At sunset, if there was 

a clear sky, it was a magnificent vison that the 

god’s themselves could only behold as 

astounding. He tracked up the gravel path 

which went past a series of flower beds - that 

214


were planted with roses, daffodils and other 

colourful blossoms that were tracking the sun 

in the current, clear, bright blue sky - to the 

front door of the building. Through the large 

windows of her dining room Stan could see 

Matilda in the kitchen drying something up at 

the sink and so, rather than pressing on the 

door bell, he reached out and rapped twice, 

quite sharply, onto the window’s pane of glass. 

Matilda looked back with surprise and then 

smiled when she saw who it was. She dried 

whatever she was holding with a red and white 

checked cloth, put it down onto the drying rack, 

took off her washing gloves and walked out of 

the kitchen towards the front door. 

After Matilda had opened the door, she 

stated amicably, “Stan, how lovely to see you, I 

didn’t expect you. You should have called!” 

“I’m sorry but it is urgent that I talk to you 

face to face, it cannot wait and I didn’t want to 

bring it up over the phone just in case someone 

215


has bugged the line. I think Thiago is in the 

country!” 

Dr Green frowned and sat down at her 

dining room table before she said to him 

“Hmmm…are you certain?” 

“Yasmin’s contact in IDP hasn’t said so but 

Yasmin’s intuition says that it is very likely due 

to our information from California and Thiago’s 

history with Jamie. Her intuition is, more often 

than not, right than wrong.” 

“So, what is it that you propose?” Matilda 

asked him in a rather slightly interrogative way. 

“Well, we could get Yasmin to make contact 

with him and get some more information about 

the situation?” 

“Hmmm…there is that option, but you 

know we don’t know how quickly Thiago will 

initiate the spread of the drug.” Dr Green 

pointed out to him before her tone changed to 

one that was actually quite whimsical, “There is 

216


of course, the zeamosaic-Q12 avenue that we 

talked about before?” 

Stan looked astonished “But, but, but… we 

don’t even know if that is what Thiago is 

planning? As much as we know he has no 

intention of doing this. Dumping an artificial 

created virus into the world’s water supply will 

kill millions of people?” 

“But it would be for people who, on 

average - if it wasn’t for human’s interference - 

would have died a long time ago.” 

“But explicitly designing the exact age that 

people die sounds a bit inhumane don’t you 

think?” 

“Sounds better than our population 

growing like cockroaches and destroying the 

world and becoming extinct, no?” 

Stan paused for a moment, “But I mean you 

yourself are well over sixty-five, it will kill you 

as well?” 

217


Dr Green smiled and just said, “I’ve had a 

healthy, happy, successful life, I can live with 

that and sixty-five is a good age. It will take 

some time to set this up though so we have to 

make a start just in case, we can stop it easily if 

we find that this is not Thiago’s end plan.” 



218


THIRTY-SEVEN 

Stan walked back to the station. Even 

though he certainly wasn’t in his physical prime 

anymore, he was still able to jump up the steps 

that ascended up to the northern platform, 

frequently taking two steps at a time. After he 

had got onto the next train and had sat down 

onto his seat - while he watched the 

countryside of South East England through the 

coaches’ windows becoming more and more 

urbanised as the train quickly rushed into the 

depths of South London - he considered what 

Matilda and himself had discussed. Surely a 

virus had to be the very last option? He needed 

to know more about what was happening in 

IDP in regards to Thiago, however he never 

really trusted Steve even if he was their 

219


particular inside man and, if Thiago was there, 

he would certainly know what Yasmin would 

look like from their eventful meeting in 

California; he had to sort this out himself. 

- 

Sam and Anouska walked into IDP’s central 

offices. Jamie had sent Sam the instructions of 

where he could find him and so, due to 

Anouska’s fragility, they started to walk 

towards the lifts. Then, suddenly, Anouska saw 

a tall, young lady waiting at the reception and 

as they walked past her, she noticed who this 

young lady was; it was someone who she had 

not seen for a very, very long time and she 

nudged at Sam quite sharply. 

“Pshhh…darling, I don’t think you will 

believe this, but look behind me!!!” 

220


Sam stopped abruptly and squinted past 

Anouska before saying, “What is it exactly that I 

am supposed to be looking at?” 

“See that lady talking to the reception staff. 

Look closer!” Anouska whispered to him quite 

fervently. 

Sam looked at the lady “And?” 

“Look at her face, doesn’t that remind you 

of someone who we met once a very long time 

ago?” 

Sam squinted and titled his head briefly so 

he could get a better look at the profile of this 

woman that his wife seemed to be so excited 

about; then it hit him. 

“Ohhhh……” 

221



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222


THIRTY-EIGHT 

Olivia said good-bye to James and his 

children after they had all got off the ferry at 

IDP’s SkyRail terminal and she gave 

encouragement to them about Ben’s 

procedure; genetic therapy for conditions like 

his weren’t exactly anything new in the medical 

profession anymore. She knew CRISPR had 

been discovered more than sixty years ago, and 

replacing specific entire genes or even just 

small regions of them had become the standard 

practice for such congenital disorders. This had 

meant that modern medical professions now, 

legally, needed to know much, much more 

about molecular biology and chemistry than 

their colleagues had had too at start of the 

century; Jamie had actually gone even further 

223


on this as all of IDP’s free medical schools 

across the world, which were always 

oversubscribed, only took students who had at 

least done a biology or a biochemistry degree 

before they could be accepted. 

Lilly, who had been nattering to Olivia all 

the way though the flight, reached up and 

Olivia gave her a hug. Olivia then said she 

hoped she would see all of them again before 

she walked to the exit of the station. 

She walked down, rather than getting the 

lift, to IDP’s head quarters’ reception, ignoring 

every appraising look or glance from pretty 

much every person who walked past her. She 

had never been to any of Jamie’s company 

buildings before and she was very impressed by 

the whole thing. Although she was very aware 

of Jamie’s phenomenal success, in her mind, 

she still had that image of that very sick child 

that Francis had talked to her about and the 

brief moments she had seen him in the desert 

224


tower all those decades ago - it’s just amazing 

what science can do, she thought to herself. 

Olivia frequently dyed her hair as part of 

her whole plan of not to be recognised and 

before she got onto the ferry, she had dyed it a 

gorgeous hazelnut brown and she pushed it 

back elegantly over her right shoulder when 

she reached the reception desk. The lady who 

was holding the post was talking to someone 

over a phone but she recognised Olivia’s 

presence by raising her hand in probably the 

least aggressive way that Olivia could have had 

ever recalled. After the receptionist 

hadIfinished with her call, she put the phone 

down onto its charger and asked Olivia. 

“Hi there, welcome to InDuePower, how 

can I help you today?” 

“Hi, would I able to see Jamie, Jamie 

Golding I mean?” 

225


The receptionist pursed her lips before she 

started to reply, “Well Mr Golding is very 

busy...” 

But then then Olivia heard a very old, but 

recognisable voice from right behind her, 

“Olivia?!?!?!?!?” 



226


THIRTY-NINE 

One of the reasons of why Calvin had 

built the house where it was was because it 

had, right below it, a very reliable water 

source. And it was also not just a normal 

reliable water source like a pipe, an 

underground stream or something like that 

but a fast-flowing natural aquifer from a 

recently discovered massive, ancient glacier 

that had been created in the last Ice Age 

under Norway which had only just started 

melting again due to the types of rocks that 

surrounded it and the stability of the 

nearest tectonic plates. 

When he discussed this with Imogen, 

she had asked him why he was spending so 

227


much time and effort to acquire access to 

this as fresh water wasn’t exactly a rare 

resource in Scotland, with promiscuous 

rain fall being one the country’s most 

famous and notorious traits. He just replied 

that rain, although currently very 

abundant, was not reliable enough for some 

of the other support systems which he had 

built for the property, like the highpressure 

water tank that had its own deep 

sea oceanic ecosystem which absorbed the 

methane from the micro-algae biofuel tank 

at the back of the garden. The aquifer also 

gave them, through aquaporin protein 

filters, fresh water so they could be 

completely self-reliant and that she would 

still be able to still have a long power 

shower even if there was a drought. 

228




229


FORTY 

Olivia turned around and, standing just a 

few meters away from her, stood a beautiful 

elderly lady who still held straits that even now, 

so many years later, she still recognised. Olivia 

glanced to this elderly lady’s’ side and she 

chuckled; here was someone else who she 

certainly remembered even more, as the only 

parts of his appearance that had changed over 

these years were his clothes and hair style, 

which were both a bit more sombre than from 

when Francis and herself had visited them forty 

or so years ago. 

The elderly lady spoke again, “Olivia it is 

you! I knew it!” 

230


Olivia smiled while she walked toward the 

elderly lady, “Anouska, how lovely to see you 

after such a long time!” 

Sam then said, “Olivia, well this is a 

surprise. How could I have forgotten about 

you??? This is going to make this even more 

complicated?” 

Olivia twisted her head before she asked 

him. “Hello Sam, it’s lovely to see you, I see you 

haven’t changed much. What do you mean by 

‘This is going to be make this even more 

complicated’???” 

“Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing! It is great to 

see you to, I’m so sorry for your loss. Jamie told 

us that after Francis had died and IDP had 

bought the tower, you just kind of 

disappeared?” 

“Well, I couldn’t exactly stick around, could 

I? Just like you I’m not exactly normal! Anyway, 

how come you’re here, a bit of a risk don’t you 

think?” 

231


Sam sighed “Yes, I know, last time we talked 

we agreed that that we should, both, keep 

ourselves out of the public’s view as much as 

we can unless there was an emergency?” 

“So has there been an emergency, because I 

wasn’t aware of any?” 

“It’s not like someone’s died or anything 

like that? In many ways it’s much bigger than 

that, people die all the time.” 

“So….???” 

“My son Calvin, who works for IDP, has told 

us that Thiago’s not dead and he’s actually in 

this actual building and is with Jamie at this 

very moment in time.” He then asked her, 

“Why are you here?” 

Olivia gasped, “Thiago’s alive and he’s here 

with Jamie, but I saw him being shot?!? My 

reason for being here is now pretty much 

irrelevant then. Thiago is much bigger than 

what I want to ask Jamie about….” 

232


FORTY-ONE 

Dr Matilda Green put down the phone. Her 

lead virologist in Singapore had just told her 

that the zeamosaic-Q12 virus was now ready to 

be delivered. The problem with infectious 

pathogens was that, as agents of mass 

destruction, they were very specific about the 

types of environments that they were most 

effective in. This meant things like levels of UV 

radiation exposure, the acidity of a solution 

they found themselves in, temperatures and so 

forth were all essential elements that Matilda 

had had to consider when she had overseen the 

engineering of the pathogen as she was certain 

this had to be done as quickly and as subtly 

across the world at the right, specific time. She 

had historical infectious disease models that 

233


she could work on, like the medieval plague 

which ravaged Europe, the Spanish Flu in 1919 

– a misnomer for a title of a disease to say the 

least as it has been shown that this zoonotic 

virus, that killed five hundred million people, 

had actually come from a chicken farm in 

Kansas in the United States – and then there 

was the most recent one in the late 2010’s and 

the early 2020’s which had been the COVID-19 

corona virus pandemic, which had a much 

closer relevance to hers as it had been created 

by the Chinese Communist Party as an 

economical tool to change political and social 

views – although this has never been proven 

even though it is certain that the Chinese 

authorities covered it all up for months which 

dramatically increased the spread of the 

disease and number of deaths caused by it. 

From all of these the COVID-19 pandemic 

seemed likely the most effective model of the 

three, with it being the most infectious as it had 

the lowest – although at the end it did kill 

234


millions people worldwide – death rate and 

because it had the best direct human to human 

transmission technique – droplets exhaled from 

the respiratory tract from an infected person to 

another. There was still a big problem; human 

kind’s understanding of the immune system 

over the last three hundred years or so had 

accelerated quite dramatically. From the 

inoculation and variolation of small pox in the 

sixteen-hundreds and then Edward Jenner’ 

much safer vaccination of the disease with the 

use of cow pox in seventeen ninety-six to the 

creation of mRNA vaccines in the 2020’s, 

viruses were now pretty much useless as 

infectious agents. Nonetheless, with the 

genetical mechanics of the virus this was the 

best way she could apply her plan to hit 

everyone across the world pretty quickly. Then 

it hit her, what every person in the world 

needed more than anything else, except for 

oxygen of course, was water. Now the danger 

of contaminated water has been known by 

235


humans even before they were aware of how 

people acquired diseases and now, with IDP’s 

graphene filters, pretty much every drinking 

water across the world was uncontaminated. 

Fortunately Matilda and her biochemists had 

structured zeamosaic-Q12 so filters would 

recognise it as just a mineral such as calcium or 

some healthy additional molecule like fluoride. 

Now she had work out how to put this into the 

whole world’s water system. 


a 


236


FORTY-TWO 

Sophie Bunnings had been reading up about 

this food issue for quite some time now; 

although her final dissertation and project at 

university had been entirely focused on the 

environmental logistics of infectious diseases 

due to ecosystem changes, she had read a bit 

about different farming techniques and the 

vertical farming technique idea had looked like 

an excellent idea in the twenty-one twenties, 

with shorter distances from producers to 

consumers, the no need for pesticides or 

fertilisers plus the reduced water usage all had 

obvious economic, environmental and social 

benefits. Unfortunately, as always, the property 

prices in central urban areas had pretty much 

killed this idea very quickly and this was still the 

same, especially with extra migration to the 

country. Before the invention of the cloth 

milling machine in the seventeen hundreds 

most work was done in the countryside in 

237


farms or in people’s homes where as towns and 

cities where just places where administration 

took place and the nobility lived, but with the 

emergence of factories in towns, the allure of 

guaranteed paid jobs from these new machines 

instigated thousands and then millions to move 

to urban areas and the property prices in towns 

and cities rocketed. It’s interesting Sophie 

thought- while she flicked though her notes on 

her tablet - that now, in the early late middle 

twenty-one hundreds, even though most of 

these industries had now been moved to the 

countryside because the land was cheaper, that 

a significant amount of the population still lived 

in urban areas, it seemed the human 

evolutionary need for social interaction, 

convenience and of course the simple sheer 

fact of laziness had beaten efficiency hands 

down as survival was no longer such a threat 

and people now had a choice and it seemed 

that their choice was to live like termites in a 

overpriced, hive like properties rather than 

238


living in larger, nicer and cheaper areas where 

the horizon was not blocked by towering, ugly 

buildings. The prime minister sighed; human 

behaviour was something that she could not 

really change quickly and she had always 

preferred not to use heavy regulation in her 

policies, but she knew high inflation due to 

shortage of food produce compared to the 

population size was going to hurt much more if 

she didn’t do anything about this pretty soon, 

she would have to purchase a numerous of 

residential properties on a non-statutory 

property scheme in major cities across the 

country if this was going to work properly. 

She’ll try to purchase the properties for the 

right value but these were sometime just 

absurd. Maybe this will encourage people to 

move back into the country she thought to 

herself rather too hopefully. 

239




240


FORTY-THREE 

Jamie’s message told Sam that he, Thiago 

and a few of his colleagues were all on the 

twenty-sixth floor and it was this information 

for which he conveyed to Anouska and Olivia. 

And so, in only a minute, the lift’s doors opened 

and they all walked out. 

Olivia tilted her head before she asked Sam. 

“What Now?” 

“I really do not know as I’ve never been 

here before and Jamie didn’t say anything else, 

but let’s say, as there’s only one door in front of 

us, that we go through that and work out the 

next step afterwards?” 

Olivia pursed her lips thoughtfully before 

stating, “Yeah, sure, why not! I will go first!” 

And with that she elegantly walked straight 

to the door and pushed it open. 

As the door swung inwards Jamie, Jack, Fear 

and Thiago all twisted from where they were 

241


sitting. Fear and Jack just gave inquisitive and 

welcoming facial expressions but, at pretty 

much the same time, both Jamie and Thiago 

shouted out with astonishment. 

“OLIVIA!!!” 


https://www.jagerpress.com/ThuOlinderman.html 

242


FORTY-FOUR 

Matilda was sitting at the back of an artic 

truck that was speeding along the upmost 

North-West side of Greenland. As they were in 

the artic circle, everything outside that she 

could see though her window was covered with 

ice and snow. Fifty or even thirty years ago this 

exercise would have been much easier as the 

ice caps were quickly melting anyway due to 

the global warming effect, but - predominantly 

due to InDuePower – this had been slowed 

down quite dramatically and even though the 

caps were still melting slowly due to the still 

higher concentration than there really should 

be of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 

because of the previous two centuries or so of 

humans pumping that and other global 

warming chemicals into the air, it wasn’t going 

to be fast enough to get the zeamosaic-Q12 

virus into the world’s water system before 

someone realised what was happening. And so, 

243


as her technicians had told her, Dr Green was 

preparing to drill a bore whole into the thick ice 

core of the Northern Ice Sheet and then create 

a controlled explosion in it to produce a 

significant amount of contaminated artic water 

to have the effect that was required for her 

plan to work. She looked through her window 

again and noticed a mother polar bear and her 

cubs stalking a herd of muskoxen. The size of 

the polar bear cubs and the time of the year 

demonstrated that they and their mother must 

have just come out of hibernation and were 

therefore starving. She watched the mother 

polar bear spring out action when she got close 

enough to the herd and when the muskoxen 

realised what was happening, they panicked 

and the adult muskoxen stormed away from 

the approaching polar bear, leaving their calves 

behind as they were not yet strong enough to 

keep up with their mothers and, while the 

calves cried for their mothers for help, the 

polar bear systematically killed a large amount 

244


of the vulnerable younglings. It was one of the 

saddest things that the doctor had ever seen, 

but that was how nature worked right and it 

would mean that the polar bear mother and 

her calves would be well fed and this type of 

thing kept the cycle of life on this planet 

working properly. Macro homeostasis she 

thought to herself, without it the ecosystem of 

the world would stop working and that was, 

ultimately, what she was doing, protecting the 

circle of life. She called out to the driver. 

“How much longer until we get there???” 


MiddleEast 

245


FORTY-FIVE 

When Stan eventually got to IDP’s London 

Headquarters he walked straight past the 

secretary at her desk and the security guard, 

who was standing near the entrance, as he 

knew exactly where he was going. Yasmin had 

given him the app that showed where Jamie, 

and therefore Thiago, were as the radiation blip 

of Jamie on the screen not only showed his bird 

eye location, but also a very accurate Z-axis 

position by the use of some simple calculations 

between the earth’s molten core and the 

frequency of the current half-life emissions of 

the radioactive chemicals that were currently 

sitting inside Jamie’s digestive system. 

- 

Steve was nervous; he had been twiddling his 

thumbs on his own at his desk for the last two 

hours or so now, glancing at his phone every 

thirty seconds just to make sure Yasmin hadn’t 

messaged him again. He felt jumpy and 

246


agitated so he reached into his pocket to search 

for one of those pills that Yasmin had given him 

which he hoped would allow him to calm down 

a bit. He found the plastic bag in between the 

other detritus that inhabited his right trouser 

pocket. Damn!!! he thought He was going 

through these pills faster than he had meant to, 

he’s going to have to get some more from 

Yasmin pretty soon; but at what cost to him this 

time though? 



247


FORTY-SIX 

Garry rolled away from the sleeping form of 

the bar maid. When he had been young Garry 

had never thought about long-term 

relationships, predominantly because he never 

stuck around in anyone one place long enough 

to really get to know anyone very well at all, 

but also, as an assassin, his profession was 

hardly one that you wanted to publicise too 

openly, so generally he found this brief 

encounter method worked best for his life 

248


style. Nonetheless, as time has gone by, he had 

started to appreciate that rush you feel when 

you got even a bit close to another person. 

Regrettably he now felt as if he had missed that 

opportunity in life where you meet someone 

who felt akin to your own feelings to them? 

Maybe this thing that Yasmin was talking about 

might even allow him to get that time back and 

perhaps maybe not all is lost! He might even 

get a chance to enjoy that personal emotional 

experience that he had completely missed out 

on. He looked at the beautiful face of the 

sleeping barmaid. Yeah, he thought maybe you 

can be young more than once! 

249




250


FORTY-SEVEN 

Yasmin had the same app as Steve and 

Garry and this meant she knew exactly where 

Jamie was; and so, she sneakily let herself into 

IDP’s London HQ without anyone noticing her. 

She knew to get to the floor where Jamie was 

was going to be difficult without her being 

noticed by someone if she used one of the lifts, 

therefore she was now climbing up the 

building’s fire escape. These were significantly 

steep and, even though Yasmin was much, 

much more than just relatively fit, by the tenth 

floor she was already slightly breathless. Then 

she saw a figure leaning against the wall a bit 

further up the staircase who didn’t look like 

they had just strenuously climbed up here like 

she had. Before she could get her breath back 

Steve called down to her. 

251


“Yasmin good, I had hoped I would find you 

here.” 

Yasmin, who had now stopped a few steps 

below him, just stated with some astonishment 

but still with a stern voice. “How the hell could 

you have known that I was going to be here at 

this particular point in time???” 

“Let’s say it was just an educated guess.” he 

replied slightly cautiously but then said, “You 

know those pills you have been giving me 

recently? Well, it would seem that they do a 

just bit more than just covering my opioid 

addiction.” 


252


FORTY-EIGHT 

Matilda stood there on the ice sheet as the 

arctic wind whistled past her while she watched 

her engineers positioning a drill that was 

hoisted up in the air by the claw of a bright red 

crane that was entrenched so deep into the ice 

that not even an hurricane could have moved it 

an inch. While the current blizzard became 

denser and denser the wind speed had reached 

to a gale level and this threw so much ice into 

the air that Dr Green felt like she was watching 

the whole event through a thickened frozen 

window, but this did not perturb her at all, this 

was the exact time for this to happen and she 

gestured towards the engineers to lower the 

drill. 

While the tip of the machine broke into the 

icesheet, she pushed up her collar and thermos 

253


scarf along with tightening her hood to reduce 

the chance of her getting frost bite, which at 

her age was a possibility. She had the virus in a 

protected sealed container inside the body of 

the machine and the when it reached a 

thousand meters into the icesheet, she had 

designed nano robots to break down this 

container and insinuate the virus further and 

deeper into the ice. She had considered using a 

tactical thermal nuclear fusion bomb to break 

down the ice sheet as that would have been 

much, much quicker, but what would have 

come with that was radiation and not only 

would that likely denature the virus and make it 

useless but it would also kill people much less 

specifically, which was not her plan. It also 

made everything significantly more random and 

chaotic and Matilda hated randomness so she 

had got her organic chemists to create a type of 

dynamite or TNT as powerful as the “Little Boy” 

– the nuclear bomb that was dropped onto 

Hiroshima at the end of World War 2 by the 

254


United Sates to end the war – but without the 

radiation emissions. This was going to be 

trigged a thousand meters further down the ice 

sheet which would give, she had calculated, 

enough time to spread the viral particles across 

the artic shelf. 

After the drill had disappeared under the 

ice, Dr Green returned to her artic truck; 

everything was going just as planned she 

thought to herself. 



255


FORTY-NINE 

Olivia lent on the doorway quite heavily before 

replying to Jamie’s and Thiago’s astonishment, 

“Hello boys, it’s been some time, you both 

look well.” 

Thiago was first to respond “Olivia,” he 

repeated himself “how wonderful to see you.” 

Then Jamie found his voice, “Olivia when 

Francis passed away, I myself visited the tower 

and I got a team of IDP’s best people to look for 

you for more than a year?” 

Olivia leaned away from the door frame and 

stood up straight, “Understandably you must 

get why it was not sensible for me to stick 

around without Francis to back me up, 

especially in somewhere like Saudi Arabia? Oh, 

and thank you so much for arranging Francis’ 

256


funeral back here in Britain, I am sure his 

extended family really appreciated it. I was 

desperately sad and disappointed that I 

couldn’t be there, but as already said.” 

Jamie, who still looked a bit gob smacked, 

was still able to give her an amiable smile, “We 

were very much happy to help. My dad told me 

a lot about what you and Francis went 

through.” 

Then Jamie saw Anouska and Sam just 

behind Olivia. “Ah, very good, so you’ve already 

met Anouska and Sam again?” 

“Yes, yes and they’ve given me all the 

details. However, I haven’t met these people 

before?” and she indicated towards Jack and 

Fear. 

257


FIFTY 

Garry, now that he knew that Stan and Yasmin 

had been orchestrating his love life for at least 

the last five years, slipped out of his room 

quietly while trying not to wake up the 

barmaid. He carefully closed the front door of 

the house, which would have otherwise shut 

with a deafening thud that always rattled 

through the whole building. The street outside 

was quiet, with only pigeons fluttering around 

on the other side, pecking at each other, and 

squawking over the multiple pieces of the 

detritus that laid in the gutter. The weather 

was mild, but Garry had put his black jacket on 

as the accessible pockets it provided were 

always useful and later it was very likely that it 

will get a bit chilly; I mean this is London, 

temperatures are hardly stable from day to day 

258


although the dangers from global warming in 

this respect had been dealt with - 

predominantly due to IDP’s technological 

impact – and therefore the disturbances to the 

gulf stream and the warming effects that this 

brought to Western Europe from the Caribbean 

had not occurred. Then, while Garry was 

walking down the front steps and into the front 

garden, he heard the front door open again 

behind him and he looked back to see the bar 

maid standing there in the door frame. She had 

a quizzical, but disappointing look across her 

pretty face and she was wearing the same short 

shorts and the red top that she had worn 

yesterday. She had a hair clip in her lips so she 

could make a pony tail with her long blond hair 

while she spoke to him. 

“Well, this is hardly gentlemanly behaviour, 

is it??? You walking away like this without 

telling me!” 

259


“Not at all,” Garry replied with a smirk and 

a grin “I was just popping out to get coffee, as I 

don’t have any left, and a couple of almond 

croissants for our breakfast.” he lied to her with 

an absolute straight face, “I’m pretty sure this is 

extremely gentlemanly of me!” 

The barmaid took the hair clip from her lips 

and clipped it back to hold her pony tail 

together before she clapped and giggled, “Oh 

good, I do love almond croissants. Wait a 

second so I can put my shoes on and I’ll come 

with you!” 

As the barmaid, whose name she told him 

last night was Sally -although he couldn’t be 

sure about this now due to her connection with 

Yasmin and Stan- , was putting on her shoes, he 

thought to himself about what he was going to 

do about this situation as he had planned to go 

to IDP’s offices to get some more information 

from Yasmin, but he certainly couldn’t do that 

with Sally shadowing him like this. He needed 

260


to get rid of her, but in a very non suspicious 

way, and so he decided he would stick with the 

narrative that he had just made up, there are 

several cafés on the way to IDP’s offices and he 

could work out what he was actually going to 

do on the fly. 

Sally was obviously not as practical minding 

as Garry, as she hadn’t picked up her coat and 

Garry slightly blushed as he watched her 

walking down the steps after she had slammed 

the door behind her – and he felt the house 

shuddering in his long-term memory banks in 

the deep centre of his mind- as her top was a 

bit too revealing and everyone knows that 

short shorts are only a couple of steps further 

from not wearing any shorts at all. 

He opened the garden gate for her and 

closed it behind himself. They walked up the 

street and an old lady went past them on her 

bicycle before they reached the Highstreet at 

the end of his road where they had to wait to 

261


cross it as there was a tram arriving to its stop. 

This wasn’t peculiar as even though there were 

no longer fast-moving vehicles to be concerned 

about on the city’s roads, it was customary to 

wait for trams to leave before you crossed the 

any road. The trams were all driven by AI and, 

although they all had sensors that detected 

pedestrians on the road very well and no one 

had never been hurt, this immediately slowed 

down the whole route quite significantly for all 

the other trams if one had to stop like this even 

once. The rule was always think of the many – 

like the multiple passengers on the tram - not 

the few, as in the single passengers crossing the 

road. 

Then Garry felt Sally’s hand holding his 

while they stood there, waiting for the tram to 

move on. This gave him a nice feeling, even 

though he knew she was doing this to 

manipulate him. Ultimately it didn’t really 

matter, the rush of dopamine that was now 

262


flowing though his brain made him feel better 

than he had felt for a very, very long time. After 

the tram had left, she pulled his hand and they 

crossed the road together, hand in hand. 



263


FIFTY-ONE 

The prime minister walked into a terraced 

house in central London. She had decided that 

moving people from their homes was absurd 

and any type of policy like this would never, 

ever get through parliament, even if it was for 

feeding the population and reducing inflation 

rates. And so, she had decided that she had to 

take a more hybrid approach. Growing food to 

any population was always going to be more 

efficient, but “food” - she thought in commas - 

wasn’t completely about efficiency; there were 

many other factors that needed to be 

considered as well, such as the health of the 

consumer, nutrient density, pollination, the 

264


variation of crop types and so forth thus she 

went back to food cultivation in the country 

side were all of these variations would be much 

easier to cover. Nonetheless this did not help 

with the food shortage and the growing 

population problem, so she decided that 

vertical farming was still a good idea. 

Through most of the post war twentieth 

century and the first several decades of this 

one, a lot of policies had been created to 

protect the British country side from large, 

often rather too unscrupulous, construction 

developers from building all over it and these 

would have put the vertical farming and other 

industries that have moved to the countryside 

on hold. Fortunately, new building materials 

had been discovered (or really rediscovered) 

that were cheaper and actually better than 

modern concreate which had been the 

standard material for building for two 

centuries. Such materials included hemp, wood, 

265


and fungal mycelium, all of which could be 

made locally. This, along with IDPs input into 

the country’s, and the then whole world’s, 

transport infrastructure had meant that a lot 

these policies were now very much a bit 

redundant as the buildings and the 

infrastructure around them could be integrated 

into the countryside and have a beneficial input 

onto the local ecosystems rather than 

damaging then. Consequently, the parliament 

had scrapped alot of these policies, such as the 

green belt policy around London. 

Regardless she had a better idea with what 

to do with these residential premises. Using 

homes for one purpose - i.e. somewhere to live 

– seemed like a massive waste, even with 

renewable sources attached to them like solar 

power and vertical wind turbines, as these all 

still needed energy storage when there was a 

surplus amount of energy to go when it was 

sunny or windy and they needed an external 

266


energy source when neither of these weather 

events occurred. In the first few decades of the 

twenty first century this issue was dealt with by 

using chemical batteries which used rare earth 

metals such as lithium and gallium. Strictly 

these metals were not particularly rare, they 

were just very difficult to separate from each 

other so there uses were only discovered much 

later than other elements like iron, carbon, 

copper and the other chemicals. The problems 

with these, at least when they became more 

and more important in the world’s economy, 

was that there mining was extremely 

destructive to the environment and the sources 

of where they could be extracted from were 

limited and this created conflict between 

nations. Hence, when the Greens came in 

power in Britain, they had banned the use of all 

import trade of all these rare earth metals that 

had not been mined in the British Isles and this 

had dramatically reduced the UK’s energy 

storge capacity which created pressure on 

267


energy storage facilities like the frozen nitrogen 

or hydrogen stations as slowly these batteries 

that had been installed before the ban started 

to fail. This, not surprisingly, increased energy 

prices. The Greens could have just increased 

the use of molten salt nuclear reactors, which 

were really now only used when the demands 

for energy was extremely high, but Sophie had 

never liked the idea of fission reactors of any 

kind because they created nuclear waste – even 

if MS reactors produced less than the previous 

fast reactors and some of it could be used for 

other reasons – as it couldn’t be disposed of 

properly for thousands and thousands of years. 

There was another option though. In the 

Twenty Twenties there had been a researcher 

in Cambridge who had created an algae battery 

that used photosynthesis to power a computer, 

day AND night. Obviously powering just one 

computer wasn’t particularly impressive at all, 

but Sophie knew, from her studies, that a 

268


significant amount of fossil fuels that had 

instigated the industrial revolution – although 

technically it was the invention of the cotton 

mill, which was powered by rivers, that started 

the British Industrial Revolution – were just the 

remnants of phytoplankton and other algae 

from millions of years ago, so she knew that the 

principles for a large, self-powering battery 

were there. There were major biological, 

chemical, engineering and, more importantly, 

economical barriers that had to be passed for 

this to work but Sophie had instigated a 

network of universities and private industries 

long before she became prime minister for this 

one goal and she now had batteries that were 

capable to power a whole house on their own 

and could support themselves nutritionally with 

nothing but sunlight and the processes of 

microalgae and bacteria in the battery through 

a micro ecosystem that the scientist had 

created. 

269


She met the owners of the house and their 

children with a smile and was invited back to 

their garden conservatory which was where she 

had planned to place two – just in case one 

didn’t work - of these post prototype algae 

batteries. It was all very exciting. 


http://www.jagerpress.com/Thunderman.html 

270


FIFTY-TWO 

A Greenlandic hunter, called Erik, was setting 

up his sledge with the huskies - not yet 

strapped to their harness – waiting and playing 

together patiently. Erik, Erik’s father and 

grandfather and their ancestors had always 

used dogs to power their sledges and although 

technically snowmobiles were faster and 

probably carried much more it wasn’t the 

nostalgia and his fondness for the dogs that had 

stopped Erik from modernising, no, it was 

predominantly because the main danger in the 

artic was drowning under broken thin ice and 

the huskies ,and malamutes who were another 

similar artic bred dog species that had 

historically been used for this purpose, have a 

six sense - certainly an evolutionary behavioural 

trait - about the thickness of the ice below 

them and whenever they reached thin ice they 

spread out which indicated to the sledge driver 

that they were now above thin ice. There was 

271


also the fact that snowmobiles were heavy, 

needed fuel and were complicated to fix if 

something got broken in the middle of a hunt 

and having no transport in the middle of the 

artic tundra, miles and miles away from any 

civilisation, was probably nearly as lethal as 

drowning under thin ice. 

Erik’s main prey, although he fished as well, 

were seals and his hunting technique, which 

was very similar to that of polar bears, was to 

lay near holes in the ice as it was it was here 

where the seals needed to come up to breath 

before they dived back into the deep, chilly 

artic ocean below the ice. Really the only 

difference between the polar bears’ and Erik’s 

style of hunting – which is the same as all artic 

hunters – is that the polar bears had to find 

these holes in the ice whereas Erik – and his 

fellow hunters- dug out holes in the ice, often 

quite close to each other to increase their 

chances of catching a seal. 

272


In most of the world now, the idea of eating 

meat is considered barbaric and really a bit 

inefficient as animals are nothing but the 

middle men between the consumer and most 

of the nutrition which is found in the vegetation 

that the animals eat. In fact, the only nutrient 

meat really brings to a human’s diet is the 

vitamin B12 and the mineral heme iron. You 

see iron is an essential mineral for any diet as it 

is particularly important for the blood system 

which transports oxygen around the body. You 

can access non-heme iron from vegetables 

sources like nuts, legumes, whole grains and 

leafy greens, but heme iron can ONLY be 

obtained from animal meat and the human 

body finds it significantly easier to absorb heme 

iron than non-heme iron although with a 

suitable amount of Vitamin C someone’s ability 

to absorb non-heme is much more effective. 

Nonetheless there are other essential diet 

elements like calcium that inhibit the 

absorption of non-heme iron hence non-heme 

273


iron is fundamentally less preferable for a 

healthy diet. The B12 vitamin is a different 

matter though as, although it is an essential 

vitamin for a healthy diet as it is vital for bone, 

blood and nerve cell formation along with other 

processes, it is not created in vegetables or 

animals, but by specific microorganisms that 

live in the soil. Before the discovery of the 

existence of microorganisms in sixteen sixtyfive 

by Robert Hook and more specifically germ 

theory a bit later, most vegetables came with 

these microbes however since the realisation 

that a few of these microbes caused diseases 

there has been much more of an effort to 

remove or sterilise all vegetable products which 

has meant, for a quite a long time, most of the 

sources of B-12 could only be found in animal 

products such as meat and dairy. 

Nevertheless, in the last century food 

scientists have worked out how to put heme 

iron and B-12 into non-dairy products like oat 

274


milk. The problem with this is that in the artic 

and sub-artic there are periods in the year 

where there is no sunlight and therefore no 

vegetation except for green algae under the 

snow so eating animals in the artic is not as 

socially prohibited like it is with the rest of the 

world, especially with the international move 

away from globalisation and the push for 

nations to support themselves food and 

resource wise though more scientific methods. 

When Erik had put everything he needed 

onto his sledge, he whistled at his dogs who 

organised themselves together in front of the 

sledge so Erik could put the harness on them 

very easily. He then stepped onto the sledge, 

took the reins, and whistled to the dogs to pull 

and in less than a moment the sledge was on its 

way out of the artic village and Erik could feel 

the rails of the sled on the ice sliding faster and 

faster as they got deeper and deeper into the 

275


ice betrodden landscape that was the arctic 

tundra. 

After an hour Erik stopped the dogs as he 

felt that he was now in a good place to start his 

hunt. He got off, after making sure the dogs 

would not get startled and run off with the 

sled, and dug three holes in the ice sheet, each 

about two meters away from each other. If you 

put a line between these holes, you would 

create an equilateral triangle and Erik crouched 

in the middle of this triangle, holding his spear 

tightly, waiting for a seal to appear. 

While Erik was crouching there, trying to 

watch all the holes at the same time he heard 

the dogs howling extremely anxiously. This was 

very unusual, his huskies were extremely well 

trained and even if there was an artic wolf or 

something else that would probably be more 

dangerous like a polar bear, they would bark, 

but Erik had never, ever heard them howl like 

this before. He stood up and walked over 

276


towards the dogs to calm them down. But then 

he felt a rumbling under his feet and in less 

than a second artic water and steam sprung out 

of the holes in the artic ice sheet like volcanic 

geysers. 


https://jagerpress.beezer.com 

277


FIFTY-THREE 

Calvin was at ahis desk, watching the 

worldwide current meteorological events 

occurring on his screen in real time. Weather 

patterns were especially important 

economically as, even though IDP have moved 

the power source from fossil fuels to 

renewables, energy is still one of the most 

variable commodities in the market and the 

weather is one of those that is mostly directly 

related to this. Money can be made just from 

guessing the range of temperatures in different 

regions of the world as energy effects 

EVERYTHING, whether that be agriculture, 

heating, transportation (although this has been 

mediated quite heavily by the increase use of 

bicycles in urban areas, the increase use of rail 

ways and SkyRail), water facilities and many, 

many other essential infrastructural matters. 

278


However, Calvin wasn’t watching the weather 

patterns on his screen for financial reasons. He 

was analysing the weather patterns because he 

knew something big was about to happen; he 

wasn’t he sure what this might be, but if 

anything was going to identify to him what this 

might be, it was very likely to be the weather. 

He wasn’t particularly certain where exactly 

this might be but he could look at broad 

general topics like temperatures or chemical 

atmospheric densities that might suggest 

something even though he knew that these 

might not be specific enough for the role but he 

only had the tools that were available to him. 

Only two hundred or even a hundred years ago 

people would have claimed that such events 

were due to a deities’ propensity to cause 

havoc owing to a specific type of behaviour by 

humans, so at least he was using observable 

scientific data that made sense rather than an 

intangible set of beliefs written by some men 

279


hundreds or even thousands of years ago. In 

the twentieth century for global warming there 

were indications that demonstrated that it was 

occurring with ice sheets breaking away from 

the artic shelf and sea levels rising – even 

though the major culprit for this ( carbon 

dioxide) had actually been experimentally 

found guilty for this crime in the previous 

century so all these indications, in retrospect, 

are actually slightly irrelevant – but Calvin was 

certain that such signs would not be so 

apparent this time. 

While Calvin was looking at the Fipheral 

Peninsula, as he expected this unknown event 

would most likely occur around here, he heard 

a rustle behind him. 

“Pow, pow – got him!!!” 

“No, no – not fair- You cheat! You cheat!” 

280


Calvin shifted around so he could see what 

was happening; he wasn’t surprised that to his 

side stood Max holding a wooden spoon that 

had silvery, shining star shaped plasters stuck 

onto it and he was grinning slightly dubiously 

while pointing this impromptu, bespoke 

weapon at his father. 

“You are now my hostage until I get a 

ransom!” 

“No, no, no! You cheat, you cheat!!!” 

Calvin heard from his other son, Harry, who 

was holding a similar armament to Max’s in his 

left hand, but had yellow, fluorescent crescent 

shaped stickers stuck onto it instead. He was 

standing adjacent to Calvin’s office dwarf 

bamboo tree on the other side of the room and 

he was pointing at Max with his other hand 

with an angry, accusation expression slapped 

across his young face. 

281


“I did not!” Max replied to Harry with a 

shocked innocent tone after he had stopped 

pointing his wooden at his father and turned to 

look at his brother. “In stealth, SAS, Space 

adventure there’re no rules, dad didn’t hear me 

before I zapped him so I win! You were slow, 

that’s not my fault.” 

“DADDDDDDDDD!!!!” Harry screamed. 

Calvin sighed, he knew taking the boys 

from home was going to be difficult as they 

were away from their friends and their usual 

locations even with the extra space they had up 

here. Calvin said gently to Max and Harry. 

“Boy’s you know there’s no games in dad’s 

office therefore no one had won anything.” 

“Oooohhh!!! Daddd!!!” Max cried. 

“I TOLD YOU!” Harry yelled triumphantly. 

282


“Now, now – no one has won anything, go 

and find your mother and Sophia. I’m sure 

they’ll be very happy to be zapped and taken 

hostage, but don’t run as some will get hurt.” 

“Oooohhh….” Max expressed with 

disappointment. 

“I’ll win.” Harry shouted as realised he was 

closer to the door and was already spinning 

around. 

“Wait for me!!!” Max called after his 

brother while he scampered off to the hallway 

outside of Calvin’s office. 

“NO RUNNING!!!” Calvin shouted after his 

boys, but then he heard alarms from his screen. 

The heat from one region in the world had 

spiked quite dramatically. Calvin looked closer 

at the weather and temperature data, the spike 

hadn’t occurred anywhere near the Fipher 

283


islands at all but around Greenland, close to the 

artic. 

“It’s started.” he thought to himself. 



284


FIFTY-FOUR 

Olivier sat down after listening to Thiago, along 

with several extra inputs from Jack and Fear. 

“So ever since, you’ve hiding in plain 

sight?!?!?” Olivier stated to Thiago in a rather 

manner of a fact way. 

“Well, that is always the best way, except I 

wouldn’t say I was exactly advertising who I 

was, which was and is actually quite difficult 

nowadays with modern ID’s, digital passports, 

finance and everything else; I have had to move 

a lot.” Thiago replied. 

“Tell me about it!!!” said Olivia “But I 

imagine it was harder for you as you’ve been 

doing it much longer than, and there is the fact 

that you are supposedly dead!” 

Thiago frowned slightly, “Indeed, 

nonetheless no one was looking for as me as I 

285


was presumably deceased, whereas IDP were 

actively looking for you and I imagine a lot of 

other people were doing the same.” 

“Perhaps, but I am not such an asset as 

yourself!” 

“Really??? Jack spoke out, “Aren’t you in 

the same position as Thiago?” 

“Thiago did create the treatment,” Jamie 

pointed out to Jack before Olivia could reply 

“also the knowledge of Olivia being forever 

young was only known by a very, very few; 

particularly just me, Francis, Mia, my Father 

and, of course, Thiago!” 

“That’s right, ever since Thiago had used me 

as the first human for his research, Francis has 

created a blur, socially and digitally, about my 

presence. He had the skills and knowledge to 

keep me safe, but after he passed away, I have 

had to be extremely careful. I mean I learnt 

some things from him like changing my hair 

colour frequently still I don’t think I will ever be 

286


as good as he was. He had a specific knack for 

this type of thing!” 

Very much so,” stated Anouska, “Francis 

was always the crafty one, I mean he worked 

out the best place for myself and Sam after we 

got out of the Middle East without too much 

fuss and upheaval, he had a way of talking to 

people that made them comfortable and at 

ease. He would have been an amazing 

salesman. 

“Ouch!!!” Jamie laughed, “I can feel Francis 

turning in his grave, I think even the notion of 

Francis working as a salesman would have 

given him severe psychosis!” 

“I was just pointing it out,” replied Anouska 

with a bit of a huff, “Anyway I am sure with all 

the time Francis supported Alison and Thiago, 

he must have sold ideas, promises and money 

all the time to keep everything going. He 

remined me of my brother, Adrian, very selfmotivated 

and personally driven; there’s 

287


nothing wrong with a sales, entrepreneurial 

mindset!!!” 

Thiago chuckled, “Quite, without that type 

of perception of life nothing would ever get 

invented or created; a salesman, like all 

professions have their pros and cons. As a 

scientist, I’ve needed that type of thinking now 

and again otherwise whatever I’ve discovered 

would never have left the lab. Innovation is 

what powers human kind, but without 

communication and charisma, inventions die.” 

“Certainly,” Jack remarked. “Now as a bit of 

an outsider of this circle, I don’t suppose 

someone could elaborate a bit further about 

this miraculous medicine???” 

“I would actually like to know more about 

this as well?” Olivia said questioningly to 

Thiago. 

“You don’t know what Thiago did to 

you???” Fear said to Olivia with astonishment. 

288


“Well, I wasn’t really in a position where I 

had any other option.” 

“Oh, how come?” 

“I was kidnapped and when they broke me 

out, I broke my neck due to the actions of the 

kidnapper. I was in a really, really bad state. 

Thiago fixed me and I was just grateful for his 

help, but that was a long, long time ago and I 

think Thiago needs to be more out coming 

about his innovation now.” 

Thiago licked his front, pearly white teeth. 

“You all know my personal reasons why I have 

been so secret about the ingredients for my 

concoction of the elixir of life?” 

Jamie said “Actually no, no I don’t know 

why you have been so secret about it all. All I 

know is that, since I wasn’t on your potion long 

enough, I didn’t receive the full throttle of its 

effects, nothing else!” 

“Hmmmm…” Thiago pouted, “Well that is 

not completely true. I did explain how 

289


chromosomes and telomerase work, but as I 

said fifty years ago, none of you are 

biochemists and it’s actually much more 

complicated than just that. 

Jamie sighed. “Thiago I was a child then and 

I am now the founder and CEO of one of the 

most successful companies in the world with a 

degree in engineering, I think I have a good 

understanding of the biochemistry.” 

290




291


FIFTY-FIVE 

“So, you say you’re smarter because of the 

pills we gave you?” Yasmin asked Steve, “Well 

I’m not particularly surprised about that, they 

were created by one of our best neuroscientists 

and smarter people deal with addictions a lot 

better than those who are less cognitively 

able.” 

“Well, that’s the thing, it’s not that I just 

remember and absorb information much more 

effectively, but I’m also actually interested into 

everything that I look at now, whether that be a 

novel, a scientific paper or even a bloody ferry 

time table.” Steve stated to her. 

“Indeed, nevertheless that is unlikely to be 

a direct affect of the pills; knowledge makes 

EVERYTHING much, much more interesting. It’s 

a self-producing, circular system, it’s why 

nations with good education systems are 

economically far more effective. 

292


“Hmmm….I suppose, but I’m still a bit 

agitated when I’m not on the pills, surely that’s 

not good as they were supposedly to help me 

to get away from my addiction, not just to put 

me into a new drug!!!!” 

“Yes, remember though. you’ve only been 

cold turkey from heroin for only a short period 

of time; overtime this should get easier.” 

Yasmin lied to him; she knew controlling Steve 

was important for this plan to work. “Now I 

must go!” 

“You’re going to track down Thiago, aren’t 

you?” Steve commented calmly while he lent 

onto the fire escape’s bleach white washed 

concreate wall. 

Yasmin’s eyebrows shot upwards while her 

pupils constricted tightly, “What?!? How the 

hell do you know about Thiago???” 

Steve rolled his eyes intentionally to make 

the point, “You got me to get information 

about Jamie, hence as the impact of your 

293


medication became more and more apparent, I 

became increasingly interested into why and 

how, two of the most important adverbs or 

even just words in the English language.” 

Yasmin just stood there on there on the 

fire escape stairs, “But. But…. how do you know 

anything about the connection between Jamie 

and Thiago?” 

“It wasn’t particularly difficult, Jamie’s 

not that good at covering up his tracks. Oh, and 

I know about your visit to California!” 

294




295


FIFTY-SIX 

Garry and Sally walked into the coffee shop 

where he told her to take the empty table 

behind the booth to their right, as the shop was 

quite busy and he really didn’t want to wait for 

a table to become free after he had got their 

drinks. They had had a lovely, intricate 

conversation in their walk between his house 

and the caffe and he could feel his plan to lose 

her slipping away very quickly. She seemed so 

interested into him; she wanted to know what 

his interests were and, somehow, had some 

empathy for what he did as a profession. To be 

able to be so upfront about it all was extremely 

rare - although she must have been given it all 

in her brief about him from Yasmin and Stan he 

presumed, nevertheless - and she seemed to 

understood why it was all so important in the 

bigger picture. Then there was her looks!!! 

Nonetheless he knew he couldn't be so naive, 

296


he knew this was her job, to get him to trust 

her unconditionally, He himself had used this 

exact method in similar roles, Jesus, he, 

himself. had done it in the direct instructions 

from Stan before. While he stood there in the 

queue to order his black coffee and Sally's ice 

chai latte, he watched her pulling out a chair 

from under their table and sitting down so 

innocently. He had some quite potent sleeping 

pills in a secret pouch sealed in the fabric 

around the right wrist of his jacket but, 

although these would give him a short period of 

time to get to IDP's offices and check on what 

Yasmin was doing, he knew he was smarter 

than that, especially as Sally would realise what 

he had done very quickly when she woke up 

and would contact Yasmin very quickly which 

would will have ruined any chance of him 

surprising Yasmin. There was also the fact that 

this would completely ruin his chance of 

actually have a proper chance a - although he 

knew the chances of this were slight to say the 

297


least - relationship with her, hence the sleeping 

pills stayed in their pocket when he was given 

the drinks and took them to their table. 

As Garry sat down, he felt slightly 

embarrassed, guilty, uncomfortable and 

extraordinary ashamed all at the same time, as 

it seemed Sally's crop top was even more 

revealing now that he was looking directly at 

her and was in less than an arm’s length away 

from her in this crowded place while he gave 

her her coffee. 

"Thank you so much, this is so kind of 

you." she replied pleasantly. 

"That's all my pleasure, thank you for 

stealing the table for us.” then he realised he 

had forgotten something, “So sorry, I just 

realised I had completely forgotten about the 

croissants!" and he started to get up but Sally, 

who had crossed her legs and was drinking her 

ice latte, stretched her arm across the table 

298


with her other arm and gently grabbed his arm 

to stop him. 

" Don't worry about it," she said briskly, 

"I'm a bar maid, I don't normally get anything 

to eat until at least, at the earliest, midday; 

mornings for me are just there for my caffeine 

addiction and..." and she somehow drained her 

latte faster than anyone else he had ever seen 

before in is whole life and she gave him a 

cunning grin " my favourite exercise. I think we 

should go home now!" She stood up quickly 

and as she was still holding his arm she pulled 

Garry up with her, although he didn't exactly 

resist. In less than a minute they were on the 

street outside walking in the direction back to 

his house, his black coffee on the table hadn't 

even been touched. 


299


FIFTY-SEVEN 

The exhibition of the algae batteries in the 

prime minister’s constituents' home had been a 

great success. As these were still in their 

prototype stage, Sophie Bunning had been 

quite shocked at how well everything had 

worked out. After the owners had cut off the 

whole house from the mains, every device that 

needed power from the external electrical 

source had stopped working and the lights 

went out, but in ten seconds the dish washer 

returned to its cycle, the resting red lights of all 

the devices that were on standby turned back 

on and the LCD bulbs up on the ceiling glowed 

again. Sophie looked at the touch screen on the 

front of the closest battery, it showed, in watts, 

how much electricity it was using to power the 

house and, even though it was early in the 

evening, Sophie noticed that the battery was 

300


still recharging itself more than it was 

expending. Pretty soon though these 

phenomena would slow down very quickly 

when the sun dropped below the horizon; 

nevertheless one of the microbiologists in the 

project had explained to her that, even without 

the fusion power of the sun, the ecosystem of 

battery had archaea and other microorganisms 

that would keep charging the battery overnight 

until the sun returned. 

The field experiment still needed some time 

to confirm that the batteries worked 

effectively; luckily, or actually not so luckily as 

they had been chosen for this particular reason, 

the couple who owned the premises were 

scientists - with the wife being an IDP electrical 

engineer and the husband a government 

botanist who worked with the biotech sector - 

so they would notice the differences between 

faults in the battery and those in the circuit in 

301


general and therefore would give good 

feedback if anything went wrong. 

Sophie had just got back to her office at No. 

10 , she didn't have anything left on her 

calendar that was urgent ( or at least nothing 

that she had already delegated to one of her 

ministers that she couldn't chase up on 

tomorrow) for the rest of the day, so she made 

sure that she hadn't received any more 

messages, shut down her computer, leant back 

and pressed on the call button. 

"Tina, could you bring up a glass of water?” 

"Yes, Prime Minister." Sophie disliked her 

staff calling her Prime Minister, it was so formal 

and she felt it slightly overbearing. She had 

asked them just to call her by her first name, 

not surprisingly though it seemed her 

persistence could not break down this long 

term tradition, so over time she had eventually 

given up on this cause "...certainly, would you 

prefer still or sparkling water?" 

302


"Tap water will be fine thank you." the 

Prime Minister said with some slight 

annoyance, they can call her what they want 

due to traditions, but she was going to drink 

what everyone else drank, especially now the 

Greens had made the British Isle's drinking 

water nearly pristine. 

"Absolutely." replied Tina "I will get one of 

your staff to bring you a glass up immediately!" 

“Thank you very much.” and she cancelled 

the voice call. 

In less than three minutes a suited middleaged 

man with grey hair appeared at her open 

door way holding a black tray with one glass of 

water standing in the middle. 

“Prime Minister?” he asked. 

“Hello Henry, could please put it on my 

desk, thank you so much. If you could close the 

door behind you when you leave I wound be 

very grateful.” 

303


After Henry had left, Sophie took the glass 

of water and sipped at it thoughtfully, 

presuming the algae batteries were a success, 

where would the best first place to use them? 

She took a stylus that was in a mug on her desk 

and started to write notes down on a digital 

note book. Then her hand went limp and the 

stylus rolled along her desk until it plummeted 

off the furthest edge onto her office’s carpet. 

She felt the limpness crawling up her limbs and 

at the back of her neck. Before she fell off her 

chair, she, somehow, was able to reach the 

emergency button adjacent to the call button. 

304




305


FIFTY-EIGHT 

Stan stormed up the main corridor of the 

floor that the app on his phone told him where 

Jamie was and therefore where, he presumed 

from a more than an educated guess, Thiago 

would be as well. The GPS blip on the digital 

map indicated that Jamie was behind a door 

opposite to the other set of elevators at the 

end of the corridor, and Stan was so focused on 

getting to the other end that he didn't notice 

the fire exit door to his left swinging out and he 

crashed right into the figure who had just 

walked out. 

"Fffffff.... jesus, look where you’re going will 

you!!!" Stan stated quite fiercely to the woman 

who was now adjusting her hair and clothing, 

which had both been put askew from the 

collision. But then his tone changed quite 

abruptly when he realised who he had just 

strolled into. 

306


Yasmin straightened herself up and then 

glared at Stan with a dubious expression 

jumping across her face. "Stan??? What the hell 

do you think you’re doing here???" 

"Well, what do you think? I'm looking for 

Thiago, just as I imagine you are as well!" then 

he saw Steve still standing there in the fire 

escape behind Yasmin. "What is he doing 

here!?!?" 

Yasmin pouted, she had to be careful here, 

she couldn't give too much away, just in case, 

so she just said. "Steve works here and he's our 

inside man. He could be useful!" 

"Hmmm....even so." Stan said, he really 

doubted that having Steve around now would 

in any way improve things. His purpose, to 

track Jamie and help them to find Thiago, was 

now over, they didn't need this extra individual 

in this whole palaver anymore, never mind, he 

can sort this out later; currently he had much 

more pertinent, urgent issues that he had to 

307


deal with, as in Jamie and Thiago. "So, you 

assume Thiago is with Jamie as well?" Stan 

stated to Yasmin 

Steve answered to this question quickly and 

Yasmin looked back at him sharply with a bit of 

an accusing frown. "Of course, and it is hardly 

an assumption, Thiago is with Jamie.” 

Stan bent his neck so he could look over 

Yasmin's right shoulder and talk to Steve 

directly. “How can you possibly know anything 

about that???” 

Steve stepped out of the fire exit so he was 

now standing adjacent to Yasmin. “You and 

Yasmin did bribe me rather unsophisticatedly 

to watch Jamie, what do you think would 

happen?” 

308




309


FIFTY-NINE 

Rather than Sally pulling him back into the 

direction of his home, Garry found that they 

were now moving into the direction of IDP's 

London offices; this is very unlikely to be a 

coincidence he conceded but, for the moment 

at least, he will go with the pretext between 

them that this was nothing more than a booty 

call and they were looking for somewhere a 

bit more private, secluded and away from 

prying eyes, he will just deal with the situation 

when or if this changes. They had just walked 

past Euston station when he felt Sally dragging 

him into side street and he felt her pushing him 

against the outside brick wall of one of office 

blocks that lined the now completely paved 

high street. She then put her arms around his 

neck and whispered into his left ear, with a 

much less of a succulent tone than before and a 

completely different accent. 

310


"We don't have much time, but I had to be 

certain Stan didn’t have anyone watching us. 

Yasmin disagrees with Stan. Dr Francisco, or at 

least his medicine, must stay alive! Just imagine 

what we could do with something like that!" 

"Yeah, right." Garry replied, feeling a bit 

flustered. From how Yasmin had spoken to him 

previously he kind got the idea that that was 

her impression for the whole time, but Garry 

had worked for Stan long enough to know that 

to directly disagree with him had lethal 

consequences, which were often conveyed by 

Garry himself. Nonetheless, Garry thought the 

same, if with a bit more of a self-deserving 

angle, as in have it all for himself. What is the 

point of being immortal when everyone else is 

as well? Then again, and he looked at Sally, 

hadn't he decided that this lone wolf lifestyle 

was not for him anymore, old dogs can learn 

new tricks and all that so he asked her, "So 

what would you propose?" 

311


Sally put her lips even closer to Garry’s 

ear lobe. "Yasmin says that there's a very high 

chance that Thiago is in London, most 

specifically with Jamie Golding at InDuePower's 

London Offices, which are close to where we 

are now, so I suggest that would be our next 

destination?" 

And with that Sally gave him a peck on his 

lips and a wink that suggested to follow her 

before he watched her perfect frame walk back 

onto the high street. It would seem being a 

murderous, despicable human being might 

have been a rather very good life long-term 

move Garry thought, rather sarcastically, to 

himself. 



312


SIXTY 

After Thiago had explained the integral 

matters of how his drug regrew shortened 

chromosomes and that this stopped the 

mutations in the aging process as well as 

instigating and accelerating the regeneration of 

damage caused by injuries or disease, Jack and 

Fear sat there, looking gob smacked. Olivia, 

however, just shrugged her shoulders rather 

nonchalantly with a bit of a dissatisfaction 

integrated into the gesture. 

"As I expected, so you've created the elixir 

of life, thus you've made yourself, myself and 

Sam immortal?!?" 

Thiago frowned. "I don't see anything 

wrong with that? Why do you look so 

disappointed? Humankind has improved our 

health over time ever since we learnt how to 

build tools, protect ourselves from the 

elements and feed ourselves through 

313


agriculture; this isn’t in anyway different, it's 

just the understanding of the basics, the very 

basics of life and how to improve it. And, as you 

have said already, if it wasn’t for this medicine 

of mine, you would have lived as a severely 

disabled person for the rest of your life and 

would most likely have passed away a long, 

long time ago even with the support of Francis. 

It also does not make us immortal, as I said fifty 

years ago, a speeding car or falling from a very 

far high will kill me or you immediately. " 

"But can't you just see the problem. We are 

not gods, even if we are higher deities that can 

be killed. There was a reason why evolution 

allowed this not to happen!" 

Thiago crossed his legs so his left ankle was 

resting on the right, rubbed his thighs a few 

times with both hands and then tapped a 

rhythm on his knees with his fingers before he 

replied to Olivia rather thoughtfully. "Obviously 

if lower life states didn't age and die, evolution 

314


would have not occurred thus death and aging 

are intrinsic tools in nature and there's the 

medical factor that the only immortal multicellular 

cells in nature are cancerous ones. 

Nevertheless, I believe evolution has got to the 

point where the highest organism, humans, can 

now understand how, and more importantly, 

why, it works and the next step for evolution is 

an intellectual one. Removing ageing and death 

will increase the acceleration of this process. 

For the oncogenic, cancerous matter, my 

invention has anti-tumour factors intrinsically 

written into it and I have made certain that 

cancer will not occur due to my treatment. This 

is science not theology, my work is not turning 

us into gods, it's just pushing us a bit further up 

the evolutionary ladder if you really want to put 

it that way, except evolution was based on 

competition, I would say my way is more of a 

mutual agreement." 

315


"But surely just having you, me and Sam or 

maybe even a few others more having this 

opportunity seems a bit of the opposition to a 

mutual agreement?" Olivia argued "I mean 

wouldn't this piss off a lot of the rest of the 

world who are not given this opportunity?" 

Thiago sighed and uncrossed his legs and 

then recrossed them in the opposite direction. 

"Science is not an on and off switch 

mechanism. It takes time, mistakes, and 

practice have to occur before it benefits 

everyone. Like slavery was the norm for 

thousands and thousands of years in every 

culture across the world since before 

civilisation; whether that be in West or East 

Africa, Carthage, the Ottoman Empire, the 

Romans, the Mongols, the Vikings, the British , 

the Incas or even the Comanche native 

American Indian tribes in what is now the 

southern part of the United States selling and 

buying was until a small country in Europe 

316


called Denmark made it Illegal and then the 

British, who at the time had the biggest Empire 

in the world, made it illegal. Then, slowly, over 

time, the slave trade was eradicated across 

most civilised nations. You ask why this 

happened at this specific time and why this at 

part of the world? Well, the right side of the 

political scene of the time would have said it 

was because of the more sensitive Christian 

values, and then there were all those historical 

events that that occurred after William 

Conqueror took over England from the Saxons 

and made it illegal to sell slaves in England, but 

I think it was much more due to science than 

anything else. Only a couple of centuries before 

the abolition of slave trade in Britain, the 

scientific enlightenment occurred in Europe. By 

the nineteenth century steam engines were 

pulling tons and tons of cargo and people up 

and down the British Isles while machinery in 

factories were producing products quicker and 

faster than any slave labour would ever 

317


produce, slavery wasn't essential anymore, as it 

had been since start of human civilisation. 

Economically and socially, this was a bit more 

complicated than that, but I see this going in a 

similar way with my product, hopefully a bit 

faster though. Over time getting old will just be 

a thing of the past, just like slavery. 



318


SIXTY-ONE 

Stan, eventually, agreed with Yasmin that 

Steve could come along with them to find 

Thiago; mostly because it seemed he knew a 

lot, lot more that he had presumed he really 

should, and this concerned him, but also there 

was the fact that he might be useful if only for 

numbers sake. He had no idea how many 

people there will be with Thiago and Jamie, 

Stan would have had no problem with this on 

his own when he was a bit younger, but these 

days, although he still had the skills to defend 

himself, physically he felt his body might fail 

him if he pushed it too far now. All that kick 

boxing and Kung Fu that he knew would not 

protect him if he was no longer quick enough to 

duck that punch flying towards his face or 

tough enough take a kick to his chest. It was 

true, Steve hardly had the physique to protect 

319


them or even himself, but there's that 

evolutionary protection trait in animal 

behaviour, in a pack, flock or swarm, individuals 

are less like likely to be picked out, even in a 

group of just three, ultimately, it's all about 

percentages. They had reached the elevators 

and the room where Jamie should be was to 

their left, just behind that door. 

Yasmin turned to Stan and asked him "As 

you're here, what would you propose we 

should do now?" 

Stan faintly smiled before he replied to 

Yasmin. "It's a door, you open them. It's hardly 

a difficult puzzle. " He then turned to Steve "Go 

on then, we're waiting?" 

Steve knew that he was being used and 

before he started taking this heroin 

supplement/ genius drug that Yasmin had given 

him, he would have given Stan some snarky 

remark like You do it yourself! but because of 

his now higher mental capabilities plus the 

320


recent research on exactly on why they were 

doing all of this, he just said "Sure." and he 

stepped towards the door and reached for the 

handle, the worst thing that could happen 

would be was that the door was booby 

trapped, except he knew that this was 

extremely unlikely as Jamie didn't think like 

that, nonetheless he still he had be cautious. 

As Steve carefully pushed the door open, he 

could see a group of five people sitting on a 

variety of furniture in the middle of the room. 

The only person Steve recognised was Jamie, 

who was slouching on a blue single cushioned 

chair, but he didn't recognise any of the rest, 

there was what looked like a relatively younglooking 

Hispanic man sitting on a stool adjacent 

to Jamie, a tanned Caucasian middle aged man 

sitting on a tacky blue sofa with a young lady to 

his side and an astonishingly good-looking 

woman who had had her legs crossed. sitting 

321


on another cushioned chair that was coloured 

dark green. 

As Steve had carefully, and therefore 

quietly. pushed opened the door, none of them 

had heard him, but Jamie had just seen Steve. 

"Ah Steve, sorry not the best time. Can I get 

back to you later?" 

However, then Stan barged passed him, 

dragging Yasmin with him "Which one is 

Thiago?" he asked rather fiercely to her. 

Yasmin pointed to the man who was sitting 

on that stool. "That's him." 

Stan had now drawn a weapon out and was 

now aiming it at the group. 

"If anyone moves, you'll all wish that this 

just killed you!!!" 

322



MiddleEast 

323


SIXTY-TWO 

Henry rushed into the room after he heard 

Sophie’s emergency alarm bell screaming at 

him from his coms, with two MI5 agents right 

behind him, and he saw the prime minister 

lying on the floor adjacent to her desk, gasping 

for air. Before he had joined the civil service 

and then a member of number 10's staff, Henry 

had been a field medic in the SAS, thus he 

quickly recognised that there were no obvious 

superficial injuries apparent to the prime 

minister and her symptoms did not 

demonstrate that she was having a heart 

attack, a stoke or something like that but he did 

recognise that she was responding to what he 

had been taught when he had been studying 

invasive species and their poisons in his tropical 

diseases modules at university forty years ago. 

However, all her food was properly tested and 

324


the only thing he knew she had consumed 

recently has been the tap water which he had 

just given her and he was nothing but certain 

that Downing Streets’ drinking tap water was as 

pure as they you can get. There was the 

possibility that some tropical animal or 

someone had poisoned her when they were 

not looking, but he dismissed this proposition 

extremely quickly; although Sophie was rather 

too laissez-faire about her own personal 

security compared to previous prime ministers 

that he had worked with before, her security 

team was drilled to a level that was beyond 

hundred percent, they would never miss 

something like that. Nonetheless, whatever 

that was now affecting Sophie Bulb was above 

his ability to fix and so he instructed one of the 

agents to call for the Prime Minister's physician 

to immediately while he and the other agent 

set up a make shift bed in her office as he 

wasn't sure how risky it would be if he moved 

her as he noticed that her limbs were limp and 

325


they had all the equipment available to them 

here for such circumstances. 



326


SIXTY-THREE 

While he was setting up a drip to keep the 

prime ministers fluid balanced, Henry noticed 

on the wide flat screen of the prime minister’s 

office, which was attached to the furthest wall 

and had twenty-four news running on it, that 

there were more and more stories occurring 

across the world about individuals suddenly 

falling seriously ill and becoming completely 

incapacitated in less than a minute with no 

obvious reason. There were no exactly, 

relatively at least, many who were effected, but 

the broad news coverage was essentially due to 

the fact that there was no obvious ubiquitous 

traits between each person that explained what 

was happening except that most of them, 

initially at least, where in the northern 

hemisphere which is not peculiar as there is 

much more land mass in the northern 

hemisphere and therefore more people . Then 

there were reports about pilots getting ill and 

327


SkyRail ferries having to land in the middle of 

their trips due to safety regulations and union 

treaties that made it illegal to run vehicles that 

carried more than ten people on autopilot, 

healthy surgeons in the middle of operations 

collapsing causing junior physicians to finish the 

surgeries even though they, often, did not have 

the experience to do so and there were 

multiple stories of teachers and other such like 

professionals suddenly getting seriously ill 

meaning schools and similar working 

environments having to close abruptly. 

Henry wiped his brow, although 

Sophie Bunning situation wasn't getting worst, 

the information that he was getting from the 

news demonstrated that what was happing to 

these people was what had happened to the 

prime minister which meant, even when the 

doctor turned up, he most likely wouldn't be 

able to help her. Regardless having some 

second eyes who were even more qualified in 

328


the medical sciences than himself might help. 

And so, Henry just stood by the side of the 

Prime Minister, watching her vitals, trying to 

make sure she was breathing and her heart was 

still beating until, fifteen minutes later, there 

was a knock of the Prime Minister's office door. 

"Come in, the door's not locked!" 

Henry shouted at the door. 

The door opened and a middle 

aged, balding, rather plump, pale, and flustered 

man walked in. One of the agents started to 

check the doctor's ID but Henry interrupted 

him. "Don’t worry about that, I know Professor 

Dutchzen, he's the been the Prime Minister’s 

doctor and others before her before I worked 

here, he’s got the right credential. Let him 

though. 

The agent stepped back before he 

replied to Henry " Ok, but you know this is the 

point of my job, it's on your head if something 

goes wrong!" 

329


"Yes, yes, yes, in anyway in case of the 

Prime Minster, I out rank you. Come over Isaac 

and let me know what you think?!?" 



330


SIXTY-FOUR 

Calvin had worked out how to hack into 

IDP's satellite system when he was just a 

teenager; mostly just to prove to himself that he 

could, but he had done some pretty dubious 

things with it, again, just because he was a 

teenager; things that he wouldn't even tell 

Imogen about. Nonetheless this had meant that 

he had got pretty good using them, even though 

his father's staff kept improving the security of 

the software, especially with the privacy issues 

that kept coming up on the media. He couldn't 

look through walls, but with the cameras 

everywhere now he often could quite easily get 

through most of the fire firewalls and other 

security protection that these had quite easily, 

even when their network was not linked up to 

the internet. 

Thus, he could get a good image of the part 

of North Greenland that his software had 

directed him to where the spike of temperature 

had initiated and he zoomed down a bit. Rather 

331


than the ice sheets that he expected, what he saw 

was the clear, icy water of the Artic Ocean for 

about a several miles until the ice sheets 

reappeared. This wasn't like the effects of global 

warming that occurred forty-five years ago in 

the late twenty twenties until IDP replaced the 

fossil fuels with renewables where the iceshelf 

was slowly receding backwards and the ice fall 

into the ocean. No, this looked like a large 

meteorite impact or a massive bomb had 

exploded onto this specific area of the artic 

circle. There was no atmospheric information 

that Calvin could find which demonstrated a 

meteorite that was big enough to do something 

like this, hence this could only have been caused 

by a bomb, but Calvin knew that such a bomb 

had to be one that had an extensive amount of 

power that it could do something like this to the 

artic ice sheets, due to their thickness and the 

chemistry of hydrogen and oxygen. The only 

bombs that he knew that could do something 

like this would be nuclear fission or fusion ones 

but the way nuclear weapons were delivered 

332


was not normally this precise, except perhaps, 

he thought, a localised, modern tactile neutron 

bomb could do something like this. This would 

deal with the long-term radiation issue as well 

as these tactile nuclear bombs didn't leave the 

type of radiation that their akin weaponry 

cousins did. Regardless about how this 

happened, except that it might give some of the 

clues, the most important question was why? 

Assuming that this was a man-made event, what 

was the reason for this? Someone pissed off at 

the commercial shift from the fossil fuels to 

cleaner energy sources and demonstrating that 

global warming could occur without them and 

techniques like carbon capture were not taken 

seriously perhaps? This was now an ancient 

economic change in relative terms and most 

Pension Funds who invested into fossil fuels 

and other like business had withered away or 

had changed their business plans and in fact 

many of the oil companies, due to the similarity 

of the skills needed between the two industries, 

had done quite well in the change to renewable 

333


power. Nevertheless there were a few who lost 

out, Calvin knew that two hundred years after 

the British Slave abolition act in 1833, some 

people were still screaming bloody murder 

about unfairness and that someone else had to 

pay for this intangible theft? Calvin considered 

this thoughtfully; such social activist scenarios 

were run psychologically by mass disturbance 

of the perception of large populations though 

lies, opportunists and miss information, using 

tactical nuclear weapons seemed like a very 

unusual method to achieve such a goal, as a 

threat yes but using one seemed a 

counterproductive. Also, it was all done without 

any notification or demands. No, this was done 

to get something done without anyone else 

knowing about it, but what was the physical 

point of blowing up this small spart of the artic 

ice sheet??? There was nothing to blow up the 

for god's sake...except of course, suddenly panic 

arouse in his heart, felt slightly smug, but also 

immensely guilty about his home personal water 

334


source all at the same time, He needed to 

contact his father immediately. 



MiddleEast 

335


SIXTY-FIVE 

Garry was a sneaky, underhanded 

individual, nothing that his new perspective of 

life would change this. Thus, when he and Sally 

had reached InDuePower's London offices, he 

wasn't going to go through the front door. As he 

had been working for Stan for quite some time, 

and therefore his interest with James Golding 

and InDuePower, he had appropriated the 

blueprints of IDP's London Offices quite some 

time ago, so he knew exactly where he was 

going - especially with the information he had 

got from Yasmin previously - where the fire 

escapes would be and where Jamie's office was. 

He helped Sally to get up into one of the 

exterior fire escape exits which was, like 

everything else in IDP, clean to a perfection. 

Garry knew, because when he was a child his 

mother's profession had been a cleaner in the 

city of London, that several decades ago IDP 

had developed nano robotics with AI for 

medical and scientific purposes . These were 

336


then repurposed to clean labs and eventually 

corporate events and offices, which had made 

Garry's mother's role redundant. Although IDP 

had created managing, communication and 

logistics positions with this new technology, 

there were significantly fewer of these 

compared to the previous cleaning jobs and 

Garry's mother didn't really have the language 

or numerical skills to even to apply for the entry 

level roles and, although the welfare created by 

the renewable energy revolution and the Green's 

policies had given Garry a relatively easy life, 

he did become a bit bitter and slightly 

embarrassed about his life style compared to his 

school friends whose parents had jobs and lived 

in nicer accommodation than himself and this 

probably was one of the first jabs that pushed 

him into his deadly, self-centred career. 

After Sally climbed up a bit further, Calvin 

followed her, enjoying the view as she walked 

up the stairs in front of him. He knew this could 

be a complete con, Sally's behaviour, and her 

approaches towards him could all blatantly have 

337


been orchestrated by Yasmin, or even, by Stan. 

He didn't see what she would really gain from 

working with him except for putting herself in 

danger but, and he bent his neck and watched 

Sally take the next few steps of the fire escape 

stair case, What is life if you don't take risks he 

thought to himself. 



338


SIXTY-SIX 

Thiago pursed his lips and furrowed his 

brow while he stared down the barrel before he 

replied to Stan's threat. "Hmmmm... right, I 

have no idea who you are, but I have some idea 

of why you are here. If you kill me, just to 

remind you, you'll never get my formula!!!" 

Stan grimly smiled at Thiago, "I don't want 

your formula, in fact I want the opposite. 

Anyway, I didn't say that this will kill you, I 

said you wish it did."' 

Jamie then said, fearfully but still with a 

perplexed tone, "So you know about Thiago's 

invention but you don't want to acquire it? With 

your current behaviour I don't believe you!" 

Stan glanced at Jamie while still aiming his 

gun at Thiago. "What I'm saying is true, whether 

you believe me or not. This is bigger than you 

can think!" 

" Really!?!" Jamie stated rather explicitly, 

"Didn't you say you want the opposite? That 

339


sounds like some confusion syntax that a PR or 

an ad exec would spout out to blur the image of 

the reality of what they are conveying!" 

Stan shrugged, which made Thiago shudder 

as he still had the gun aimed at him, "It's not a 

confusion statement at all. By the opposite, I 

meant that the formula needs to be destroyed!" 

Thiago questioned him fiercely even though 

he had a gun aim directly at him, "What do you 

mean you want to destroy my formula?!? You 

can't destroy an idea after it's been invented!!!" 

"Can't you? For example, wasn't all the 

roman technological lost for centuries after the 

Germanic barbarians took Rome?" 

Jack then spoke up, realising that if they 

kept talking this was a very useful delay tactic 

and the scenario could change very quickly if 

they had a bit more time. "But the roman 

technologies didn't vanish, they still existed in 

the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman 

Empire, for much, much longer until the 

Ottomans took Constantinople in the middle of 

340


the fourteen hundreds and took over Eastern 

Europe. 

"Irrelevant, anyway I'm not here to have a 

historical discourse, it must be stopped for the 

sake of the future of human kind." 

Olivia, who had been sitting there frozen 

ever since Stan had charged in, abruptly said 

"The future of human kind??? That sounds like 

some ideological chant. You know Thiago's 

discovery heals people permanently right!" 

"Precisely, and far too well. The world is not 

and might never be ready for humans to become 

immortal!" 

“Why the hell not?" Thiago demanded. 

"I've said too much, Dr Francisco you’re 

coming with us!” Stan screamed as he took 

another step towards Thiago. 

341




342


SIXTY-SEVEN 

While he was trying to find his phone on his 

desk so he could contact his father, Calvin 

listened to the news on the radio and the 

presenters were talking about how people were 

randomly suddenly getting seriously sick for no 

good reason; he doubted that this was a 

coincidence. They were discussing animal to 

human and human to human contamination and 

other possible infection transmission routes, but 

the broad conclusion was that it was caused by a 

new unknown pathogen, most likely a virus, 

and, if it was a viral infection, where did it come 

from? They considered multiple hypothesises 

for this, from ancient air born viruses from, 

since the number of the infected proportionately 

increased the further north you got, under the 

artic ice sheet that had just become apparent 

recently even though global warming had 

stopped decades and decades ago, to some lesser 

extreme ones such as the hunting of artic 

animals due to the increase price of food across 

the world recently. Nonetheless there was 

343


absolutely no news about that explosion in 

northern Greenland. Someone was suppressing 

this information, somehow, quite successfully 

and even more worryingly NO ONE was talking 

about the possibility of it being a water born 

disease, most likely because no one doubted the 

sanitation and the filters in the drinking water 

system in developed nations. Calvin however, 

although he had no actual evidence for this, was 

certain that this was exactly what was 

happening, although he didn't particularly know 

how, he just knew how people thought, his 

knowledge of the explosion in the artic circle 

and then there was the complete lack of this in 

any of the news sites or channels that really 

made him even more convinced that his 

prediction was true. Eventually he found his 

phone, but then it hit him, the explosion just 

happened, infections do not transmit this 

quickly. Maybe he is wrong or that it was all 

much more complicated than he had orginally 

thought. He put down the phone; he needed to 

344


do a bit more investigation before he contacted 

his father he decided. 



345


SIXTY-EIGHT 

Dr Matilda Green was now back in her 

Surrey countryside house sitting at her desk in 

her office. She had quite successfully supressed 

the explosion in the artic from the general media 

with the only people who would have noticed it 

being those who were REALLY looking for 

something like it, and even if they had, they 

would not have linked it to the upcoming 

infections as they would have assumed that the 

explosion had been created by a tactical nuclear 

bomb due to the precision, power and range of 

the blast whose radiation would have 

completely destroyed any organism, even a 

virus. There was the small possibility of 

someone noticing the explosion who was an 

expert in extremophiles and microbiology who 

also knew something about nuclear bombs that 

created no radiation (which were things that not 

even she could have obtained) that were 

variables which would allow an infection 

spread, but this was so minute Matilda 

concluded, statistically, that it was something 

346


that she could quite easily work with. 

Regardless, Dr Green knew the speed of the 

update of the infection was essential for the 

whole thing to work as, even if someone had not 

worked out what had happened, the diagnose 

process in the late twenty-first century was 

quick, with the improvement of artificial 

intelligence, molecular processing and such in 

the last fifty years meaning that it was extremely 

likely that they would quickly isolate and cure 

the infection before virus had achiever it’s goal 

even if Matilda, herself, had no idea how they 

would do this. And so, she had made sure that 

the pathogen that she had created had a faster 

transmission rate than the common cold through 

intense research on osmotic functions, genetics, 

immunology, and membranes. Her synthetic 

disease worked much like an autoimmune 

syndrome, with the individuals own immune 

causing the real symptoms and these were 

instigated by the length of individual cell’s 

DNA - or more biochemically, when the 

telomeres of specific cells’ chromosomes had 

347


run out - which is linked to, normally, 

someone's age. 

While Dr Green was watching on some 

predictive data on her screen, there was a 

Breaking News -words that involuntary put a 

shudder down her spine, the news media had 

been using this particular phrase for more than 

a century to gain attention to their channels and 

therefore money even though it often wasn't 

really breaking news at all and the human mind 

hasn't yet caught up with this fraudulent 

behaviour, as the attention this expression 

seeks, it seems, still works extremely well, even 

for those who knew what was happening to 

them, much like how opioid addict behave when 

they visit their dealer - that popped up. She 

impulsively clicked on the pop up even though 

she knew it was most likely to be some 

nonsense that the media was trying to push. 

Surprisingly, the title of the page that the 

"Breaking News" pop up took her to was 

actually, indeed breaking news that was directly 

related to Matilda as the tile of the article ran: 

348


"Thousands suddenly hospitalised due to 

unknown disease in the UK, including the 

British Prime Minister". Well, that 

demonstrates that her virus works Dr Green 

thought to herself - she presumed this WAS 

from due to her creation – and it had reached the 

first stage by infecting a significant number of 

the population, but the British Pime Minister 

was far too young -and therefore, she presumed, 

the same with a lot of the others infected - to be 

showing the symptoms so early. Something had 

gone horribly wrong, she realised she needed to 

be quick about this or everything she had 

planned for would go kaput. 


349


SIXTY-NINE 

So, I was right! Steve thought to himself 

while he listened to the tense argument between 

Stan and Thiago and then the statement from 

that young, beautiful woman. They ARE making 

something big, but the elixir of life! Well, that is 

just enormous, something like that will be so 

much more than world changing. Now how can 

I take advantage of this??? He pondered to 

himself. The medication that Yasmin had given 

him to cover his physical heroin addiction had 

made him significantly much more capable 

intellectually, but his foundation of 

biochemistry - even with his years of 

intravenously pumping heroin into his own body 

- was less than non-existence, so he knew this 

was not something he could do his own. 

Nonetheless, Stan would destroy all of it if he 

killed Thiago, so something had to happen 

immediately! Steve looked at Yasmin, her facial 

expression, as usual, didn't really explain 

anything, but Steve had a deep suspicion, or was 

350


actually certain, that what Stan was doing was 

exactly the opposite of what she wanted to 

happen. Maybe all he had to do was to wait, 

patience is a virtue and all that! 

- 

Sally and Garry had now got out of the fire 

escape and were now at Jamie's office. 

Unfortunately, Jamie's office was empty, as was 

the reception along with the all the other 

adjacent rooms. Then Sally saw a rather 

antiquated piece of yellow notepad pad stuck on 

what she presumed was a secretary's laptop in 

the reception. On this she noticed a fast scribbly, 

rushed handwritten note and she called out to 

Garry, who was still poking around in Jamie’s 

office. 

“Hey… I might have found something that 

could give us a hint of where they’ve gone!” 

Garry stepped back into Jamie’s office door 

frame so he didn’t have to shout back. “Oh, 

good, I can’t find anything helpful in here; 

gimme me a look!” 

351


Sally took the sticky note off the laptop and 

gave it to Garry when he reached her. He peered 

down at the note suspiciously. “Well, this is 

unusual, no one really uses these anymore as 

everything is so much easier and better 

organised if you put it down digitally on your 

phone?” 

“Yeah, but look at what’s written on it!” 

Garry squinted to help to him read what was 

written on the piece of paper. “I think it has a 

name and a sort of an address on it?” then he 

slightly chuckled “I think it the name is Thiago 

and after that a floor and a room number. Let’s 

go, I know where they are!” 



352


SEVENTY 

After Henry had listened to Professor 

Dutchzen, he asked, while wavering at the TV 

screen which was still displaying the same news 

as before about people getting suddenly sick for 

no good reason., "So you also think the prime 

minister’s illness is linked to what's happening 

to all these other people as well then?" 

The professor pursed his lips, "Well without 

really knowing each of their personal 

circumstances and symptoms it's difficult to be 

certain, but generally it does seem that it is very 

likely that the prime minister's ailments are 

similar to or even the same as all of these people 

who are suddenly getting seriously ill for not 

obvious reasons." 

"Do you have an idea of what might being 

doing this to the them and the prime minister?" 

Issac's eye-brow's furrowed, " This is 

something which has got me, the symptoms 

would demonstrate a water carried pathogen like 

E.Coli, Haptitis A or Cholera, but the prime 

353


ministers blood works do not demonstrate 

anything like this and in developed countries 

water carried diseases are nearly extinctic due to 

modern water infrastructure systems and for 

something like this getting into the drinking 

water of the residence of the Prime Minister of 

the United Kingdom seems improbable?" 

"What other things could there be then?" 

"Well theirs the possibility of a poison, a 

parasite, an airborne or a droplet conveyed virus 

or a multitude of other similar pathogenic 

factors could that have caused this nonetheless 

the blood works of the prime minister and the 

reports from the other patients from colleagues 

of mine do not demonstrates any this. More 

research is needed clearly!" 

- 

Dr Green was now getting extremely concerned. 

More and more people were getting sick, which 

was her plan, but the main issue was that a 

significant of these should not be old enough to 

be so sick yet. This was going to apocalyptic for 

354


human kind if it isn't stopped, but Matilda 

personally had no idea how. There was only one 

person she could think of who possibly could, 

Thiago! She got had to find him quickly and 

explain what she had done. Fortunately, she 

knew exactly where he was. 



355


SEVENTY-ONE 

Garry and Sally were trying to as quiet and 

as stealthy as they could when they left the fire 

escape. In front of them was a broad, open 

square which, according to what Garry could 

remember from the stolen blue prints, they had 

to cross to get to Jamie's office; however, it 

seemed like that the ninja like movements of 

their approach had not been needed as, when 

reached the square, they noticed that there were 

bodies littered on the grey porcelain tiled floor 

who all had IDP badges. What the hell is 

happening here!!! Garry thought to himself, but 

he knew they didn't have the time to investigate 

further. Then, suddenly, the closest body to 

them, which was wearing a security uniform, 

spoke out with a forced, broken, guttery voice. 

"Don’t....drink...the...water!!!" 

Sally looked at Garry. "What do you think 

has happened???" 

Garry just shrugged, "I have no bloody idea, 

did you have anything to do with any of this? 

356


It's irrelevant anyway, we don't have the time 

for find out?" 

"No, we didn't do anything, well at least 

from what I know, we had nothing to with this," 

Sally replied looking concerned and slightly 

perplexed "but the security guard told us not to 

drink the water???" 

Garry shrugged again, "Well, I suggest we 

do what he said, don't drink any water while 

we're in here!" 

"But what water? Just the water here, or just 

the water broadly, we all have to drink!" 

"Let’s just assume it's just here, we don't 

have the time for bigger questions than that at 

the moment. Either way if the effected drinking 

water is outside of this building like the whole 

of London or even bigger than that, if what we 

think this is what Thiago has created, then 

maybe this will fix this as well!" 

357


Sally was about to say something, but Garry 

stopped her, "We don't have the time, we've got 

to go.” 



MiddleEast 

358


SEVENTY-TWO 

Calvin had decided that the speed of the 

infection's transmission was just a variable that 

he would have to work out later, this infection 

had to be stopped as soon as possible and he 

knew the best people who had the best science 

to do this were InDuePower and so he was now 

on a SkyRail ferry flying him back to IDP's 

London offices. He brought light luggage with 

him so he could be a bit more agile in his trip, 

but he mostly didn’t pack heavily because he 

was also bringing a large, heavy tank which 

contained water from the aquifer. This was 

359


hefty, but Calvin knew he had to be careful with 

anything he drank from now on. When he had 

been getting on the ferry the staff looked 

extremely suspicious when they saw the tank 

being taken on, but SkyRail had chemical 

scanners from IDP that confirmed to them what 

Calvin had said, that it was just water and not 

some explosive fluid. 

The trip was extremely brief and Calvin 

hadn't even finished his coffee before they had 

arrived at InDuePower's London Office's rail 

station. After he had stepped down onto the 

platform under the bright, blue sky above he 

went straight to the exit, if not particularly 

quickly due to the weight of the water tank, so 

he could try and find someone, preferably 

Jamie, who would have the access to the science 

that might be able to stop the infection. Due to 

the tank Calvin took the lift rather than the stairs 

that he normally used for his own good health, 

as, even the though IDP's building's stair case 

where often broad and extremely safe, the water 

tank could quite possibly be an extreme hazard 

360


to himself and other people. When the lift door's 

opened onto the ground floor he went straight to 

the reception desk, as this would be the first 

place, he imaged, that might give him better 

information about Jamie’s whereabouts at this 

moment in time. 



361


SEVENTY-THREE 

Yasmin watched Stan interrogating Thiago; 

He's going to kill him if they take him! she 

thought to herself This will ruin everything. She 

looked around, trying to think of a way that 

might thwart this lethal conclusion? Then the 

apartment's door was pushed open again 

suddenly with an almighty, sudden bang as the 

door ricocheted against the parrel wall. 

"Stan drop your gun!!! Thiago Francisco, 

you're coming with us!!!" Gary screamed across 

the room as he pointed his M16 assault weapon 

at Stan. Sally stood just to his side with her 

pistol raised covering everyone else while 

shouting out at them quite viciously, "Make a 

move and I'll make a grave for every one of 

you!!!" 

Yasmin and Steve turned around sharply and 

Stan looked back over his shoulder while still 

362


having his rifle aimed at Thiago with his index 

finger resting on the rifle's trigger. Yasmin and 

Stan both frowned at Gary. 

"Well this is very disappointing." Yasmin 

stated rather bluntly. 

"And so bloody stupid. Who do you think 

you two are???" Stan followed up with a deeply 

creased, surprised and astonished facial 

expression rather than the furious, intimidating 

one that had been using on Thiago. 

Sally smiled grimly. "We know what you’re 

trying to do? And we consider Dr Francisco's 

discovery something that should be a bit more 

available, most particularly, to us! 

Jamie shouted between Steve and Yamin, 

"Who the hell are you and why are you threating 

us and there's no way you can know anything 

about Thiago!!!" 

"Oh, but I do? I know so much more than 

then you realise!" Garry replied rather 

pointedly. 

363


"But how??? You have no idea!" 

"Ahhhhh..." Yasmin exhaled "Unfortunately 

Garry does know a just bit about, or even quite a 

lot, about Thiago!" 

Jack, for the first time since Stan had barged 

into the room, put his hands up trying to look 

completely innocent "Well we definitely have 

nothing to do with any of this so we'll just be off 

if you don't mind." and he started to get off his 

seat "Come on Fear..." 

"SIT DOWN!!!" Sally screamed and she 

swerved her pistol so it was directly aiming at 

Jack, who promptly sat down quickly with an 

audible thud! 



364


SEVENTY-FOUR 

Matilda specifically decided that getting a train 

to IDP's London offices to get in contact Thiago 

about her virus would put her into too much of the 

public eye, with micro-camera's dotting placed all 

across the public transport nowadays, especially if 

someone had worked out what had really happened 

in Greenland! And so she took her electric bicycle 

around the back streets of Surrey, South London and 

the square mile instead, which took four or five 

times longer than if she had gone on straight on the 

main routes to the city, and it took her significantly 

much, much longer than if she had taken a train, but 

she had to be especially careful, particularly now 

that she had realised about what she has released and 

the fact, due to the secrecy of her project, that she 

would be mostly likely the only person who really 

knew what was happening. 

- 

Calvin's trip on SkyRail was not as smooth as 

they normally were, as there had been a micro-storm 

365


above the midlands - which was particularly unusual 

as the fear about extreme weather patterns across the 

UK due to global warming was no longer an issue 

because of IDP's accession in the energy markets 

and the death of the use of fossil fuels - and so the 

ferry needed to land in Milton Keynes just before it 

reached London to refuel and have some tiny repairs 

taken on its chassis. This meant Calvin, and all the 

other passengers, were all directed to take the 

overground train system to complete their journey. 

This didn't particularly take too much longer, 

nonetheless it was still a hassle and the overground 

trains, unlike SkyRail, didn't stop in IDP's London 

offices, so Calvin had to get off at Euston or Kings 

Cross rail stations and both of these were still 

several bus-stops away from IDP's London 

Headquarters. 

Only because it was the first stop and that he 

would lose the tiniest amount of time between the 

two stations, which was something like three to 

seven minutes depending on how long the train 

stopped at the platform, Calvin got off at Euston. 

While he was walking down the stairs from the exit 

of the station Calvin noticed someone he knew, 

pedalling fiercely down from a side street and onto 

366


the main road, it was his god mother, Matilda 

Green!!! He knew he was in a rush, but he was 

interested, he hadn't seen his god mother for quite 

some time and seeing her now cycling through 

central London away from her Surrey home seemed 

unusual but also, he assumed, it would be incredibly 

impolite if he didn't stop and have a quick chat with 

her! 



367


SEVENTY-FIVE 

Professor Issac Dutzen had spent a lot of his 

youth as a young medical student travelling across 

the world, specialising on treating rare or novel 

pathogenic diseases in remote areas thus he always 

brought a mobile lab kit with him as practice, even 

though now he had a much more stationary job in 

central London. He had therefore, with the help of 

the MI5 agents and Henry, set up an array of test 

tubes in a foldable rack on a table in the prime 

minister’s office, along with an electric Bunson 

burner that collected hydrogen from the surrounding 

air which it then uses to ignite a constant flame with 

the electricity that it had produced from the solar 

panels on the devices’ case ( not much power is 

needed for this as only a spark was required for the 

ignition of the hydrogen, nonetheless the panels are 

created from IDP thus they have fipher imbedded in 

them so they are constantly powered up even if the 

they hasn't seen sunlight at all, as the panels absorb 

energy from anything, where be it a LCD light, a 

heated floor or even from a close by refrigerator- 

368


despite the fact that IDP has massively reduced the 

inefficiencies of refrigerators, they still produce a 

massive amount of excess heat. There hasn't been 

any need for a gas tap in laboratories for more than a 

decade now and the IDP team were given an 

Engineering Nobel prize for this), several beakers 

that contained blood samples and other fluids that 

the professor had taken from Sophie Bunning, as 

well as multiple complicated, automatic pipettes and 

several petri dishes. Scientist's no longer generally 

use light microscopes as digital photos, even those 

done by mobile phone, surpass the capacities of even 

the best lenses that are made in the world due to 

pixel densities that had been achieved by proper 

some smart physicists and computer scientists in 

Korea in the middle of the twenty-one hundreds. 

Issac had now filtered and analysed all the 

samples at a quite detailed level and was still 

befuddled with the entire situation. Most data for all 

the known or even possible, hypothetical pathogenic 

entities was now available on public open libraries 

on the internet and the professor had, from his 

analyses, cancelled everyone out. The only 

analytical tool that had not been made mobile and 

therefore not available to him at this moment in 

369


time, was a Molecular Microscope. Fortunately, he 

knew that there was one very close by, in the 

basement of IDP’s London office. Thus, he turned 

from his experiment and, while he took his 

compostable plant based plastic gloves off and 

throwing them into a nearby sealable bin along with 

his lab coat, said. 

"I've got to be off to get some more results for 

the experiment. Henry, could you come with me to 

carry the test tubes. I 've sealed them so they won't 

be contaminated but I don't have enough hands to 

hold them safely." 

One of the agents then said to Henry, " What 

should we do then? This is out of our protocol." 

Henry just said, "Your protocol is to keep the 

Prime Minister safe, so stay here and watch her 

symptoms." 

"But how long will you be, we're not medically 

trained if the Prime Minister stations get worse?" 

"Hmmm... that's true." Henry stated and then 

turned back to Issac "I am medically qualified so it 

would probably be better if I stayed; would you 

370


mind if one of these two came with you instead of 

me" 

Issac shrugged, " Sure, as I said I just need 

another extra pair of hands; come on, time is of the 

essence!” 



MiddleEast 

371


SEVENTY-SIX 

Calvin shouted from the curb. "Matilda!!!!" 

Dr Green pressed hard on her bicycle's breaks 

and each of the front and back wheels stop spinning 

abruptly which, with the speed that Matilda was 

cycling along with the electricity supporting her 

pedalling, created an awful, squealing noise that 

rattled down the street, sounding like it was coming 

from some prehistoric feline like creature that was 

being tortured in one of the back streets nearby, 

while the bike skidded to a stop sharply on the cycle 

way's surface. 

"Calvin!" Matilda replied with an astonished and 

anxious look crossing her face. "I haven't seen you 

for years!" 

Calvin smiled, even though he knew he was 

losing time to stop the devastating impact that he 

knew would happen because of what has occurred in 

Greenland, Matilda, or Maddy as she was called 

when was a kid when they visited Jamie on the 

mainland, was certainly one of the main reasons why 

Calvin had become so interested into science as she 

372


had been very outspoken about several topics but at 

the same time how they can be fixed through 

science. She never visited them on the island and he 

never really understood what her relationship was 

with Jamie, she was a bit old for his type, 

nonetheless when they visited, she was often with 

him and she took Calvin out to places like the 

Natural History Museum and other London based 

museums frequently, and a few times she even took 

them to the artic where they saw penguins, polar 

bears and other such polar based creatures. She had 

also showed them where the ice should be if it 

wasn't for the global warming over the last two 

hundred years or so and how much more ice would 

have been lost and how high the sea levels would be 

if it wasn't for IDF's push for renewable and molten 

salt nuclear reactors, Then suddenly she disappeared, 

she just was never there anymore when they vested 

Jamie; he never explained why and no one asked. 

Regardless, it was extremely nice to see her and a 

sense of nostalgia crept over him a bit, so he said. 

"Matilda it is wonderful to see you, I'm in a bit 

of a rush but it would lovely to have a quick chat!" 

373


"Oh dear..." Dr Green stated "Yes it would be 

great to have a chat, but I've done something awful 

that I must try to fix immediately!" 

Calvin raised his eye brow before he said 

questioningly, "You've done something awful; I 

don't believe it?!?!?!?" 

Dr Green then explained what she had in 

Greenland to Calvin and the reason for why. 



374


SEVENTY-SEVEN 

Professor Issac Dutchzen walked out of the front 

door of Ten Downing Street. Before the government 

had banned cars in central London from a push from 

IDP - when he was much, much younger - Issac just 

used his electric car just to pop around to offices like 

IDP quite easily and safely -not that IDP existed 

then but that is not quite the point-, but nowadays 

the transport system in the capital of the United 

Kingdom was limited to electric bikes and public 

transport. Well it is true though that the 

infrastructure for the bikes and the public transport 

had improved quite dramatically since when he was 

younger, along with the capacities of the 

technologies that used them, sometimes, like now 

when he needed to transport sensitive materials, 

having a car would have made things soooooooo 

much easier as he couldn’t take the risk of the 

samples being bumped, dopped or broken as such 

things happen on public transport and the way the 

agent or he could carry the test tubes if they cycled 

would have to be in a back pack and , although they 

were sealed, the samples were not sealed properly 

enough to protect the solutions from molecular sized 

375


foreign particles getting in from what might have 

been in the bag previously (like yesterday’s lunch 

for example) and this would have completely ruined 

any chance of getting a good result when he got to 

the molecular microscope at IDP's offices. 

And so, Issacc and the agent, whose name the 

professor had been given from Henry was Agent 

Kid, started walking. It was very unlikely that this 

was this was the agent’s real name as the security 

services were particularly even more tight lipped 

about personal details now than they ever had been 

before, even more than in WW2 or the Cold War, 

due to the prominence of the internet and AI 'bots at 

the start of the century searching and stealing 

information from the growing digital libraries and 

breaking antiviral software across the web. 

The walk from Westminster to IDP's offices 

wasn't that long and it was certainly much more 

pleasurable rather than it would have been from 

when Issac had been young, when the whole world 

was still transferring from combustion engines and 

the pollutant emission levels in the central 

metropolitan areas was still at high, dangerous 

levels. Nonetheless, from what his parents had told 

376


him that, when THEY were young, ALL vehicles, 

including public transports, used combustion 

engines which created serious respiratory diseases in 

the public and there were NO restrictions of where 

cars could go across London; it was a bit of a free 

for all and the health of the population was just seen 

as a bit of an afterthought. And from what he had 

read, listened to or had watched, historically the 

further you go back in time since the start of the 

industrialisation in Britain, the pollutant levels got 

just got worse. As an example, in the twentieth 

century combustion engines needed an octane 

provider to stop them detonating/ blowing up and to 

protect the valves and so, even though other 

chemicals were available such as ethanol, an 

American biochemist in General Motors discovered 

that lead (a malleable and soft metal) had these 

octane properties at a much significantly lower price. 

Lead is however, it turn out, particularly toxic, 

especially to the nervous system and biological 

enzymes that are essential for the body and it creates 

symptoms that included intellectual disabilities, 

mood changes, vomiting, aggressive behaviour and 

many, many others. Nonetheless it was still 

prominent in fuel production throughout the 

377


twentieth century and was only banned outright in U 

K and Europe in two-thousand, even though 

unleaded petrol came into the market in nineteen 

eighty-six. 

Issac therefore wasn't that concerned, as the 

pollutants in the capital atmosphere that might 

contaminate the samples were now barely 

noticeable. He did, however, watch Agent Kid very 

carefully to make sure he didn't trip, stumble, bump 

into something or anything like that as they walked 

up the now paved Reagent Street from Westminster 

towards the city side of Reagents Park. 

378


SEVENTY-EIGHT 

Fear sat there watching the entire room, but 

mostly though she focussed on that woman who's 

name - according to the comments between the 

group that bursted into the room before these two 

did the same - was Sally, who at this very moment in 

time, was the individual that she was most threated 

by. There were others who were also armed in a 

similar manner and demonstrating had the exact type 

of aggressive behaviour, the only was that they 

weren't currently pointing their guns in her direction. 

Sally's pistol's aim waved from Jack, Olivia, 

Anouska, Sam, Jamie, herself and then the other 

group while Thiago was sitting there with a rifle 

aimed at him that was only a few inches away from 

the tip of his nose. Fear also realised that the woman, 

who she thought she heard was Yasmin, was also 

watching Sally quite carefully, most particularly at 

the hand gun that she was holding. After Jack's 

recent incident though, Fear noticed that Sally's 

attention was much more towards them rather than 

Yasmin and the men who were with her. Now, Fear 

was a marine Biologist and had absolutely no 

experience when it came to combat or firearms, but 

even she realised that this lack of concentration had 

379


put Sally into a very dangerous position. Steve 

noticed this as well, unlike Fear though - especially 

now with his vastly improved intellect that he had 

gained from the Heroin substitute drugs Yasmin had 

given him - he had a much, much better idea about 

the actual situation. Fear and all her companions 

were, except for Thiago, ultimately irrelevant. In 

fact, Thiago was really the only important thing that 

mattered and he knew Yasmin wasn't going to do 

ANYTHING that might push Stan to pull that 

trigger. Nonetheless he also knew that Stan's goal 

was to eliminate Thiago so she might feel, very, very 

soon, that she will have to do SOMETHING, 

whatever that risk might be. 



380


SEVENTY-NINE 

Henry, while he observed the Prime Ministers' 

medical stats, was also watching the news. Just 

before he left, the professor, had left a ten litre 

bottles of purified water which he had made from his 

mobile lab kit and he had instructed them not to use 

any other external sources to drink or eat until he got 

back, as, although he couldn't yet be certain about 

what had caused the professor's symptoms, there 

was no doubt in his mind that they come from an 

external factor, most likely something she ate or 

drank. The news just had a live screen of a London 

hospital entrance with no presenter apparent with 

only an off-screen voice presiding the news; at the 

bottom of the screen was a repeating scrolling title 

stating that there were no journalists available at the 

moment for the present story. The voice over was a 

female one, but Henry had a very long experience of 

AI taking text straight from a "screen" (or really the 

hard drive) and imitating the human voice and he 

knew this was all being done from a scripted code 

automatically written by a software in the channel's 

mainframe as it lacked many of the glitches that 

occurred in a human's speech and it was clearly not 

only the journalists who were not "available" but 

381


also most likely most of the staff at the channel as 

well due to same sudden sickness that had brought 

upon the prime minister. Suddenly the camera's view 

shifted to one in a larger room, which the off screen 

narrator stated was a school gym and on the floor 

Henry saw tens or even hundreds of people lying 

there looking much like the prime minister currently 

did, non-responsive and clearly significantly unwell. 

The off-screen voice then stated that the hospitals 

had run out of space and were now moving new 

patients to any other available covered public areas. 

Henry grimaced; it's spreading he thought. 



MiddleEast 

382


EIGHTY 

Calvin just stared at Dr Green with shock while she, 

who was still sitting on her bicycle, tried to explain 

what she had done. Matilda started with how high 

populations would destroy the world, using 

infectious pathogens infecting cells as analogues 

references for her argument. Calvin though, as he 

was a Biologist and therefore a bit of an expert on 

this type of thing just stated to her. 

"You realise that there are millions, billions or even 

trillions of microorganisms that live in eukaryotic, 

"higher", multicellular organisms, including us 

humans, who need these to survive, I don't think 

your metaphor works very well here!!!" 

"OK, OK, OK, maybe the similarity wasn't perfect, 

nevertheless Biology has controlled the populations 

of all organisms very well for millions of years until 

us, humans, worked out how to control nature and it 

is this that will be the destruction of us all!" Matilda 

replied to Calvin rather argumentatively. 

Calvin raised his brow with disbelief "Life of any 

kind has "controlled" nature for its own benefits for 

383


millions of years, that is the point of evolution. 

whether that be the microalgae in the the oceans 

producing oxygen that rose into Earth’s atmosphere 

allowing the development of the much more 

sophisticated organisms to grow to the unique 

opposed thumb which our ancestors gained that 

significantly improved their ability to use tools - and 

therefore brain development - compared to our most 

modern cousins, the chimpanzee, and the bonobo, 

who neither have developed the said trait". 

' Those examples that you are using though 

developed over millions of years, not the short 

period of time that humankind has industrialised 

itself in the last few centuries!!!" 

"But the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 

which allowed the rise of the mammals in a much 

shorter period of time than the industrial 

revolution!!!" 

"Precisely, the resent rise of the populations of 

humans will cause something like the meteorite 

which caused a serious effect on life on Earth for 

about fifteen million years!!!" 

"Really??? What evidence do you have to support to 

make such a statement?!?!?!" 

384


"Oh well, I mean I've written a whole paper with all 

the variables to back this! I don't really have the time 

to explain as I'm in a bit of a rush!" 

Calven pursed his lips and, with a stern voice, asked 

Dr Green. "You've just given me some broad 

ideology that you seem quite fervent about and you 

also said earlier that you've done something awful. 

Why are you in such a rush and what did you do that 

was so awful???" 


385


EIGHTY-ONE 

Issac and Agent Kid were now quite deep into 

Reagents Park now. The peaceful, clean, calm, 

relaxing atmosphere that the professor always 

remembered park as though had vanished; rather 

than the children playing in the playground, partners 

walking with their dogs, families having picnics and 

similar like activities that normally occurred here, 

what Issac and Kid saw was pretty much emptiness 

except for, now and again people, lying on benches 

or on the grass, a few of them groaning, but most 

were deadly silent. The agent said to Professor 

Dutzen. 

"Bloody hell!!! This all looks like something 

you would find in an Armageddon film minus the 

xombies!!! Don't you think we should go and try and 

help a few of them?" 

Issac pursed his lips for a moment. "I think the best 

way to help these people would be to work out 

exactly what has happened by getting to the 

molecular microscope at IDP's offices as soon as 

possible!!!! And when did national security staff 

become empathetic to strangers?" 

386


Kid smirked rather grimly, " I don't know where 

you get your information about us, but we're not the 

cold killer, psychopaths that we are displayed as on 

screen or text. Sometimes we have a to take 

extremely difficult decisions, but we still care about 

others. So, you think ALL these people are effected 

similarly to the Prime Minister???" 

"Simillarly???" the Professor laughed rather 

mournfully in a similar way that Kid had just 

smirked, " Unfortunately, or probably perhaps more 

fortunately, my personal scientific assessment of this 

entire situation is caused my one pathogenic unit and 

so I believe ALL of these people have been effected 

identically in the way the Prime Minister has." 

"But how .... and why???" 

"I have my suspicions for your first question and 

secondly, well, let’s work that out that after we 

have fixed the current issue." 


387


EIGHTY-TWO 

Matilda scowled quite tentatively after Clavin had 

questioned her. She really didn't have the time to 

explain what she had done, and certainly did NOT 

have the time to deal Calvin and his response after 

he had heard what she had done. Nevertheless, 

Calvin was smart AND he used to know her very 

well, so she might even get ally if she explained it all 

to him. Therefore, she got off her bike and pulled it 

onto the pavement and she said to him. "As we're 

both in a rush, it'll be easier if I explained it while 

we're walking, where are you off to?" 

"Oh, that might work I suppose." Calvin replied to 

her, "I was on my way to the IDF's London office, I 

really need to talk to Jamie about something quite 

urgently!!!" 

Dr Green's facial expression demonstrated surprise 

but also a significant amount of suspicion at the 

same time. "Oh, that's actually where I'm going.... 

for actually the same reason!?!?!" 

"Well, that is a bit of a coincidence! Why do you 

need to talk to Jamie, although I know you two used 

388


to be close, so don't worry about it if it's something 

personal."' 

"My reason really has nothing to with me and Jamie, 

however my reason is quite long and complicated, it 

might be easier if you describe yours first." 

"Mine is quite complicated as well but I've known 

you a long time so I assume yours is even more 

elaborate so I'll go first." said Calvin "Well, as you 

know I'm scientist, like yourself, and I've known 

something big in this world is going to happen 

because I'm the son of my father along with the fact 

that I work for IDP, so I've been watching weather 

patterns for what quite some time now as these are 

good a way predict such indices ." 

"And?" 

"Well, very recently I was watching northern 

Greenland as there was this a massive temperature 

spike there so I had a closer looker. It seemed that 

there was a massive explosion of some sort there 

which was clearly not natural and from my 

knowledge of physics and chemistry I know this will 

have melted a large part of the Greenland ice shelf. 

Then, as I'm sure you are aware like everyone else 

now, there's this disease going around and I'm 

389


certain that the two incidents are directly related to 

each other. This is what I need to talk to Jamie 

about. What about you?" 

Dr Green grimaced. "Ah, I might be able to answer 

some of your questions before we you get to 

Jamie..." 



390


EIGHTY-THREE 

Yasmin could see that Sally wasn't really aiming at 

her, Steve or Stan anymore, but more at the others 

who were sitting down in the middle of the room. 

With the skills that she had gained over her life, ever 

since she lived in the jungle in central Africa, she 

knew she could take Sally's out with no problem, but 

there were other variables that she had to consider if 

she did anything like this. Firstly, any movement 

might or would cause Stan to shoot Thiago and that 

would ruin all her plans, and then there's Garry, who 

was currently aiming at Stan. Although this does 

reduce the chance of Thiago being shot, ever 

slightly, there was a reason why she had used him so 

often to deal with some issues more permanently and 

these weren't always because he was the best at what 

he did. It was because he was the most selfish person 

she had ever met, as in a very highly psychopathic 

way. This wasn't exactly an unusual trait in your 

standard contract killer, but the level that Garry had 

of self-indulgence and direction was a bit over the 

top even for his specific trade, and while this was 

very useful when he worked for her and her 

391


organisation, at this moment in time it might not 

only ruin all her plans, but also get a lot - or even all 

- of them very much deceased, very quickly and so 

she realised that that she had to be extremely careful 

with the next thing she did. 

- 

Stan was trying to watch Thiago, Garry and 

everyone else at the same time. Worse he was in the 

middle of it all. This was a position he worked very, 

very hard all his life not to be in. He had always 

worked on the perimeter while running things, just 

like a puppet master. Control was EVERYTHING to 

him; there's no particular good reason for this like he 

had a traumatic childhood or something like that , 

it's just that he found that if things were given 

borders and limits they generally always worked 

much more smoothly. And it's how he first generated 

his wealth, means and expectations worked in the 

long term for everyone and this, on average, created 

a better world and were, therefore, extremely 

profitable for him. Obviously, there are always 

points that can come out of nowhere, like the 

industrial revolution, the end of the slavery trade in 

the west, the combustion engine, electricity, the 

392


discovery of penicillin or the internet for example, 

but numerically these took time to integrate into 

civilisation. Things like the Manhattan project and 

the nuclear bomb didn't work in this paradigm, but 

his predecessors had worked VERY hard to put its 

use into a peaceful one, as in putting it into civilian 

power infrastructure. Nuclear power stations based 

on the nuclear bomb’s invention - i.e. fast nuclear 

reactors - had safety issues, were inefficient and 

were wasteful but they were pushed hard by Stan's 

predecessors rather than other options were were 

significantly safer and more effient - like Alvin - 

Weinberg's molten salt reactors - predominantly 

because fast reactor nuclear technology was 

expected to create efficient fusion powers reactors 

much faster than all the others and this was the next 

step in human society and knowing this meant that 

Stan could control it. The invention of the elixir of 

life , which is what he had heard Thiago had created, 

was something that scared the hell out of him 

though. Death was an essential tool for evolution, 

which has a timeframe of billions of years, and so 

dropping something like Thiago's invention into 

society would cause, he he had calculated, absolute 

chaos. Maybe where he was now, in the middle of it 

393


all, was exactly where he should be, eventually 

everyone ha to get their hands dirty. 



394


EIGHTY-FOUR 

While they were walking, Matilda looked down at 

the floor rather ominously before she replied to 

Calvin with an anguish expression. "I created the 

virus that is causing all these people to be so ill!!!" 

"YOU DID WHAT???" Calvin explained with 

misbelief and astonishment as he stopped on the 

pavement abruptly before he put his arm out to stop 

her as well. 

Dr Green frowned further with embarrassment and 

dismay. "It was all for a good and noble cause!!!" 

"How can you say putting millions or even billions 

of people on death's door as a good and noble 

cause????? I hear that hospitals as far away as Fiji 

are filling up with people who are so poorly that 

many would consider their deaths being a mercy for 

their own sake!!!" 

"Ohhhh I know!!!!" Matilda cried "It shouldn't have 

gone this way; this was never my plan! I only meant 

395


for it to get to the elderly as a population control 

method, not for everyone to get it!" 

Calvin’s frown became even deeper. "You aimed at 

taking out the elderly??? But how? Either way that's 

called euthanasia! You cannot do something like 

that! Somehow that is morally worse than what has 

happened of getting everyone!!!" 

Dr Green pursed her lips. "I'm very aware of this 

horrific decision, but compared to anything else it 

seemed the least cruel way to resolve the 

Armageddon that was coming by our own making!" 

"What bloody Armageddon coming by our own 

making?!?!?" 

"People, there are just too many of us on this one 

planet for all of us living here in the same way, it's 

simply just not sustainable, I have the experimental 

data for all of this!" 

"What are you on about?!?!?" 

"Well, I suppose the initial set data was based on the 

effects of global warming!" 

396


"But IDP dealt with the high level of carbon dioxide 

levels in the earth's atmosphere decades and decades 

ago so your data now must be horribly wrong!!!" 

"At the time it was one of the most consistent 

variables, but there were many others which have 

compounded over time and I have taken much more 

recent experiments which have given me the same, 

exact conclusion!" 

"So you decided to murder world's elderly 

population????" 

"Well, historically people passed away long before 

the current ripe old age that we now consider old 

anyway, it's only because the of the development of 

medicines that people have got this old and as I said, 

anything else was much worse!" 

"Well, although I am exactly oppose to what your 

final goa; is, it hasn't worked! In fact, it's physically 

worse thus I suppose that is why you wanted to talk 

to Jamie? Do you have any idea of how to stop it!?!" 

"Yes, that’s why I need to talk Jamie and no I don't 

know how to stop it but maybe IDP would be able to 

stop it with the information that I have!" 

397


"Right, come on then, we can argue about the awful 

thing you've done later when this crisis has been 

dealt with!" 

398


Every two weeks Smartass Publishers will 

add another chapter to the current SERIES 

free, online eBook, so check on the 

JagerPress website link “Blog.It” or on 

JagerPress' Twitter and FaceBook pages to 

be notified when the next chapter will be 

available for you to read. Keep on reading! 

399

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