At last peace reigns in the heart of man. At last war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding. At last, we are whole; there is a disease in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom is war. The disease is human emotion. But there is a cure for this disease. At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows. Now we are at peace with ourselves and human kind is one. War is gone. Hate, a memory. All those things that might tempt us to feel, again, and destroy them. You have won. Against all odds, and your own natures. You, have, survived."
Fifty years have passed with neither war nor murder nor hate nor contempt. At long last Man is at peace with himself. All due to the great equalizer, Prozium.
Chapter 1
Breaking the rules
He stood high up, above the new generation.
"For decades, for no better reason then mutual contempt, civilization hovered on the brink of nuclear war. People in Eastern Europe massacred each other over forgotten cultural grudges. 'Tensions have escalated' was the familiar refrain."
He looked over the young faces, his deep brown eyes the colour of baked clay, observing their faces, working out whether or not they had a secret.
"It became inescapable – if man was to survive into the future, he must find a way to govern his emotions before they governed him into non-existence."
They stood up and clapped rhythmically like a mechanical wave of noise, there was no life in the slap of palms and John stepped down from the podium. His great long jacket moved lightly in the wind, steely grey leather that protected him from the winds. He walked down the steps and nodded to some of the young males of the Cleric Youth as he strolled out of the large concrete classroom only to run into his partner.
"Andrew."
There is a moments pause as Andrew turns back down the corridor, John following with equal measure. They've done this before.
"Where is it?"
"Outside Libira, in Nether"
Never slowing John turns his head to his comrade.
"Lets go."
A ragged, desperate, modern day pirate sits staring out the window. Outside the world is in ruin. Buildings are half missing and then some. Darrel was only forty five, his mother and father had survived the last war and gone on to have him. It was only recently the resistance had recruited him. How much his world had changed, surprisingly for the better. He gently, almost lovingly, places a scratched black platter onto an old Playskool Record Player. Watching mesmerized, as the disc goes round and a distorted child's lullaby begins to eke out of the set's tiny speakers. Darrel closed his eyes, and rocked gently to the song, he felt cheerful and calm. They were two emotions that were new to him. He called it experimenting. The resistance had said it was good to experiment with emotions, to get used to them. Darrel began to hum to the tune, his eyes still closed. Enjoying it despite the uneven words as the scratched disk shudders it's way around the tiny box. For all intents and purposes the clarity of the song had gone. All that remained what an intense garble of rhythm, a semblance of a past however for Darrel, it gives him pleasure, a whole new childhood experiencing a forgotten life. Until something quiet, something that in another place and another would never been noticed forces Darrel's eyes to snap open. In the distance he could hear a noise. Getting louder and louder. He looks out of the window and surely enough screeching round the corner a phalanx of police cars white and black, cold and aloof but with intent. One word scrambles in Darrel's mind. Shit.
Forgetting the lullaby, Darrel moves quickly, towards another room. Men, women and children sit scattered about the place. Beams of light streamed through the worn wooden slats covering the holes that once contained glistening panes of glass. Thousands of dust particles danced and swirled in each ray of light that shone through, onto shards of crystal from a smashed chandelier that once hung from the ceiling; the refracted light spattering the shattered and worn black and white tile floor with an iridescent rainbow of colour. Despite the lustrous glow the light beams played upon this room, the depleted nature of this building could not be concealed. Dust clung to every surface, cobwebs lay draped over cloth-covered furniture and the smell of damp hung in the air like a disease. The people, calm and content sit telling jokes, playing cards, laughing, and feeling happy and lively are suddenly shaken from their dust infused bubble when Darrel busts though the door.
"They are coming!" he shouts.
The room becomes quiet; they stare at Darrel in shock and disbelief unsure of what to do next, none of them had truly comprehended that this moment would come.
"Come on!" Darrel shouts again.
The room suddenly comes to life as they begin to clear the room, taking paintings off the wall, Van Gough, Monet, Munch all in the hands of these dirty, outcasts. Everyone, even the children grab shotguns and begin to load them. Around the room, every heart is pounding; every chest is rising with raw emotion, the blood roaring in their ears as the silence takes over. It was the kind of stillness that falls right before you get knifed in the back. Enough to send a shiver down your spine and the chilling of blood your veins.
"It all comes down to this"
The plain black and white police cars pull up, black booted creatures storm out of the cars, their guns raised, clad in a starch white full body armour, they stand ready, waiting for any sign of movement. Suddenly, and without warning the clandestine pirates come streaming out, guns blazing, shooting anywhere from the building. The police return fire with automatic weapons, bullets thickening the air, chewing the house up, as one by one across the building, Darrel's men drop. In what seem nothing more than a moment they were all down. The police swim past the dead bodies strewn all over the lawn; kicking the door down with ease they enter the house.
The sound of gunfire erupts from within the house, children and women scream. But these scream were one not of fear but determination as the rapture of gunfire stop so does the screaming, leaving a p an eerily quiet atmosphere, almost as if the world had frozen, leaving the wind to blow gently across the ice. Meanwhile at the curb a black Sudan stops. Out of it, steps out John. He surveys the house with a keen eye while Andrew steps out after him. They move quickly, quietly towards the front door with an undeterred efficiency surrounding them. Looking down at the surrounding bodies, John moves towards a child who laid on his side, clutching a small gun with one hand and in the other a small dirty teddy bear. Looking at the scene and with his face expressionless and unaffected, as if he was looking at nothing more than a black wall, he takes the bear and chucks it into an increasing pile of artefacts. As he walks inside building, an officer armed with a flamethrower burns the pile of useless junk, leaving nothing behind but scorched grass.
Synchronized, like a machine, Andrew and John move silently through the house. An enraged human suddenly steps out from nowhere and shoots at Andrew, missing his head by a few inches, but before Andrew reacts John has put a bullet to ragged man's brain. The two look at each other, seemingly to thank each other with a silent, simple nod. Then they begin to move through the house again. As they reach a tight knot of police officers at a closed door at the end of a hallway, the officer in charge quickly approaches.
"Lights out, maybe as many as a dozen inside" he whispers.
John nods.
"Once the door is down, blow the bulbs" he replies.
The police officer nods, snapping his fingers at the other officers who scramble to take their position. John stands at the front, his eyes closed for a moment, levelling his breathing. With rehearsed proficiency two officers quickly place two pistols in his relaxed, hanging hands while three other officers take their position at the door – zeroing the hinges and lock with shotguns. In one deep breath, John opens his eyes and nods to the officers. In a succession of blasts the officers blow out the hinges.
A doorway of light opens into a world of black as the dark slab of door collapses inwards under the feet of a silhouetted figure in a flowing dark cloak. What little light there is vanishes as the officers blow the lights out, raining down fiery red sparks as everything drops into pitch black. Like a string of fire crackers, the darkness goes off with the stroboscopic action of John's guns punctuating the black world into a discotheque of instantaneous spit-fire globes of light. A black world defined by fleeting images of his adversaries slamming the walls with the impacts of the bullets. And then, three seconds and thirty bullets later, his guns fall silent and blackness rules again. Behind him, flashlights strobe into the darkness from the hall as the police officers enter the room – fresh young faces mirroring their unemotional astonishment as they count the once living corpses. Despite their lack of sentiment, they are impressed. Wordlessly and calmly John turns and exits.