Signal Boost: Mammon: A SciFi Trilogy About a Different Sort of Apocalypse

Author and friend of the Study Robert Kroese has a new trilogy to offer you.

Here's the pitch:

One man has a plan to save America from the brink of financial doom. But when the plan goes awry, the sky will fall.

Mammon is a planned trilogy of near-future science fiction novels that revolve around an effort to wrangle a priceless asteroid into Earth orbit--and the devastating aftermath of the plan's failure.

The idea for Mammon came from news stories about the Psyche 16 asteroid, like this one claiming that it contains so much precious metal that it could "make everyone on Earth a billionaire." Such claims are ridiculous hyperbole, of course: first, metal that you can't get to isn't worth anything; and second, if you could get to it, such an abundance of precious metals would cause the price to crash. Still, it makes for an interesting mental experiment: what would happen if the supply of gold, platinum, and other metals was multiplied tenfold or more? Who would benefit? Who would suffer? Just how catastrophic would such a shock to our economic system be?

The good news? It's already funded. This project raised $10,000 in five hours. That means it's happening and you're save to pile on at this point. Getting the first book digitally takes a $6 pledge, and the entire series in digital is a mere $20; if you prefer to read electronically, you know that's a great deal, especially as you're not having to deal with DRM. Physical copies start at $25 for a signed paperback of the first book. Hardcovers are available.

Take a look at the rest of the Perks available. Some of the things that other authors break out into separate offers are things he rolls into package deals, like being in the book somehow. The upsell is not empty; you're getting personal attention, which means time from the author, and Kroese wisely values that highly as he knows what he's doing and he keeps busy putting out product.

I'd say this is as safe as crowdfunds get, so I recommend that you give him a chance to sell you on his trilogy.

Looking Ahead to the 2017 Publishing Game

The publishing game changed a lot over the past year. The old certainties are no more. The new possibilities are still making themselves known to most people, but I think we're reaching a critical mass of adoption for both writers and readers and next year will be when the jump off hits and there is no going back.

I intend to be ready. Shit I've sat on this year (for one reason or another) I want done and out, now that things I've been missing got found and put into place, and that means that when the manuscripts are ready I'll be looking for help on things I can't do myself (covers in particular) as I'm able to keep my head above water.

But right now it's Christmas. I'm going to enjoy the season, and then New Year's, and once the holidays are over and 2017 is here then it'll be time for putting plans into action.

Story Fragment: The Cancer Comes From Spookville

Another story fragment. Comment below if you have anything useful to say.

"So, what's bother you, and why only me?"

"I told you about my uncle the minister, right?"

She nodded

"And I told you about his missionary work, right?"

She passed me a cup of coffee and nodded again. "This is the one whose wife died of cancer, right?"

"Fast cancer. Same with one of his daughters, and the other's fighting like hell to keep it at bay."

"I'm waiting to see how I help here."

"One of his sons is part of a contractor crew in Africa. Has been for years, subcontracting from multinationals as a trouble-shooter. His dead daughter married a prominent man in Bulgaria. His living daughter got a Federal Reserve job early and easily rose up the ranks. His other son is a major businessman in Montana, now a player in the GOP there."

"Africa, you say? When was your uncle there."

"The 1970s, when Idi Amin was the big man. My uncle was a pal of his, took photos, and got out just in time."

She smiled. "CIA?"

I nodded. "And my father found out by accident a few years after they returned Stateside, when he stumbled upon the photos. My mother knew all this time, but didn't tell me until last week. It came out of nowhere."

"Now I see. So, what can this ONI brat do for you?"

"You already know. Don't make me say it."

"Dad's been busy lately, but I'll see what I can do."

Exploratory Writing: The Genesis of Solador

An old man sat at an oversized desk in a undersized office. He dressed in a poor attempt at being fashionable. He displayed, in addition to the minimal academic credentials, useless marks of distinction for social fads of passing use to burnish his credibility. He looked less a man than a man-like mockery, weak and ineffectual. On his desk sat a sign, shining in the rare afternoon sun: "Dr. G.H. Lane, PhD."

Over an old intercom, the man heard a young woman speak: "Dr. Lane, Mr. Dan is here to see you."

Before Lane could allow Dan to enter, the latter man did just that.

"It's been a while, Gary." Dan said, "You're the department head now? How does it feel to run a useless degree mill?"

Lane looked up with a snarl on his lips. "Get in, and lock the door behind you."

Dan did, and Lane took a moment to take him in: in good shape, clean cut, looking like he'd just come out of Chinatown, and carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster.

"You're working, Dan?" Lane said, "Or is this part of the family business?"

Dan took a seat. "You didn't call me to ask a favor, Lane."

Lane sighed. "The big one's been finalized." Lane put a manila folder on his desk. "Project Omelas."

Dan took up the folder and began reading. "They're serious." he said, "And this scheme will work?"

Lane's snarl became a wicked grin. "Of course. I authored it, and you did your part. How could it fail? The final parts are in place, and failsafes are active to three degrees."

"Simultaneously detonating nuclear warheads in the ten most populated cities in the world, and then having the Agency's pet terrorists take the fall?"

"We have full-spectrum dominance, Dan. The Narrative will hold, and in the shock the peoples of the world will accept it. As for the naysayers, they'll be rounded up under color of law by the end of the year." Lane said, "Which brings me to the reason you're here."

Dan kept reading. "You're taking point on local operations here." he said, "So you want me back on the team as your #2."

Lane leaned back in his chair, putting one hand to his forehead while making a sign like as if to say "Okay." but leaving the other fingers out; a careful, or knowing, look saw the 666 symbol in that sign. Dan returned it.

"Go on to the second part." Lane said, pointing to the folder.

"Oh..." Dan said, "They are serious. The logistics alone to make this coordination possible is-"

"Impossible." Lane said, "They are going to fuck it up, and at this scope and scale fucking it up means a global backlash."

Dan looked up at Lane. "Be more specific."

"The brotherhood, using the globalist fake terror attack as a front, will use the nukes as a ritual of human sacrifice. The reason for all that power is to summon the master back from beyond and into the world. But they will screw it up, and that power will instead break loose and wash all over the world. The world burns, and only those prepared will survive."

Lane leaned over his desk. "I am prepared. Join me, and so will you. Bring your family to the Space Needle for the Christmas Party. The others, and their families, will also be present. Project Omelas will be had, but not as they intended."

"Solador." Dan said, "You're going to make Solador real?"

"And follow my thesis instead of the intended one."

Dan nodded. "I'll be there."

Exploratory Writing: Ken Gets A Warning

"Is the patient awake?"

Ken opened his eyes and turned his head to the door. "Yes, nurse, I am."

A smiling nurse, middle-aged, entered the room with a package in hand. "A man stopped by while you were asleep. He wanted to give this to you, but didn't want to disturb you."

"I didn't think that the hospital was in the habit of acting like a hotel." Ken let out a chuckle.

The nurse brought the plain-wrapped package to his bed and put it on the table. "Security found nothing out of line, so we held it at the desk for you. There's even a little gift card."

Ken marked the dimensions of the package: two inches tall, one foot across, six inches wide. Security here is incompetent. This package alone is a warning. I need to get out of here immediately. he thought, and then he opened the simple card:

Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men?

Ken saw nothing else on the card. The answer is the contents of this package. he figured.

"Lunch will be ready in an hour." the nurse said, "I'll be back then."

Ken waited for the nurse to leave, closing the door behind her. He looked about a moment, seeing no obvious cameras, before he carefully took apart the plain paper wrapping the package. Then he opened the cardboard box underneath, which revealed a very thin layer of film. Tearing that away revealed the contents: a brand new CZ 75 SP-01 Shadow, along with three full magazines and a concealed-carry holster. Attached, on a Post-It note, read: "They're coming. Get out, now! If you make it, get in touch." - SDL

"The Shadow knows!" indeed. Ken thought as he quickly put the kit together, Scrubs will do until I get out of here.

Ken swung himself out and on to his feet. He wobbled a bit, and then grabbed a sash from a robe to use as a baldrick. He looked into the mirror in the bathroom, saw that he looked like he'd been a blanket party guest of honor, and sighed. It will have to do. Holster at his chest, and a pouch on his hip to hold the spares, Ken was as ready as he could get.

Bring it. Ken thought as he drew the Shadow and racked the slide, I'm ready for Round 2.

Writing Update: The End of "The Burning of Hugo" Revised

"Please, Ken!" Hugo said, dropping to his knees, put forth his hands together as if beseeching an angry god. "You've done enough. Stop!"

About them, though the walls muffled them, they heard the crises of the slain as Ken's allies cut them down with disciplined fire and the terror of flame.

"Hugo, you know better than that. You've published my stories for 25 years. You know how this ends."

Ken put a gas can on the floor, hitting with a clear THUMP! to show it to be full.

"What gets me is why, Hugo. You did the very stupid things that you've heard me talk about, made your fortune writing about, became famous for publishing. You did it. Why?"

"Why?" Hugo said, his hands now balled into fists and slamming the floor, "Because I never got any respect! No one took me seriously until I got on board with this. I went from endless mockery in the literary press to getting Hollywood studios burning up my phone. My original fiction finally got some fucking notice, and it got pushed!"

"So, all you had to do was to stab me in the back and renounce what made you great and now you had the good word of a bunch of useless parasites and some two-faced whore in your bed."

"I had to grow up, Ken! So do you."

Ken shook his head as he drew a lighter from a pocket. "You are beyond saving."

Hugo looked up as Ken popped the cap on the gas can. "No, Ken. No. No, no, no..."

"I never needed you, Hugo." Ken said as he poured the gasoline over Hugo. "You needed me. Your decline after betraying me shows that clearly. This is not the first betrayal for me, but it is the last for you."

"Just fucking shoot me!"

"No. You shall be the example for others to avoid. Burn, traitor."

Ken poured out a line across the room from Hugo and stood at that end. He held up the lighter, waited until Hugo looked up at him, and bent down to light the gasoline. Moments later, Hugo lit up and Ken used his phone to stream it live.

"You should have listened to The Dark Lord, Hugo. He is merciful. I am not."

Hugo burned to death as Ken turned his back and walked away.

Notes:

• Ken is a dick. This is intentional. It's what leads to his post-apocalyptic transformation into Ken the Zombie-Eater.
• Ken and Hugo have had a long personal and business relationship. This is what allowed Ken to operate as he has. Hugo got rich telling people Ken's stories, which in genre terms is "Men's Adventure" and thoroughly disrespected by both the Literati in Academia and in Big Publishing. Hugo, like many college-educated writers, is status-obsessed and anxious to the point of dysfunction. Ken not be around for months at a time is why it took a betrayal for him to notice.
• Ken's life is a serial of revenge-taking. His events are as predictable as an action movie, and therefore by this time he's already killed enough people to equal the great heroes of antiquity across all continents. Hugo resents this because the reliable income doesn't translate to the respect he desires.
• Hugo got lovebombed into a cult rather easily, and the cult's leaders (dead by this point at Ken's hands), one that dominated his field and thus wielded major influence (e.g. Scientology). They kept him on a leash as a money spigot by handing him a woman, in classic Honeypot manner.
• "Stabbed in the back" is metaphorical; the cult used Ken's previous enemies as catspaws. "Left to die" is literal, and is why The Dark Lord intervened.
• This is at the cult's annual convention. The rest of the cult's core members are slaughtered by Ken's allies.

I expect a few more goes at this until it's right.

The End Began in the Middle-12

As I write this, that girl's mother stands by. I am indeed very old now, and it hasn't been long since that wedding. Ken came and went a few times since, and he's back now. This is it. He knows it, and so do I. When I finish this, the last of my memoirs, I will go to bed that night and I will not wake up. I will expire, peacefully, in my sleep. As soon as the point of death is had, Ken will prevent my turning.

I don't know exactly what that means, and I don't want to know. I can't really stop him from eating my body, so I never bothered to argue that he shouldn't. Maybe he will. Maybe not. It's irrelevant for me to speculate. All I know for certain is that the one concession to convention about kingship--a worn thing symbolzing who is king, a crown--will be taken from my head and placed on my son's head. The mother of my grandson's wife will do the placing, and Ken will pronounce my son as king. "The king is dead. Long live the king." being traditional, that is what I expect will be the ritual phrasing.

Word went out of my approaching death and my son's succession. The households under my sword, as it were, are awaiting the news. Fortunately, they appreciate my son much as they do--did--me so I don't expect much trouble out of them after I'm gone; if there is trouble, it will be after those great-grandchildren are born and they turn out to be boys. Being ruled by mutant corpse-eaters may be a bridge too far for many of them, and they'll have to be dealt with.

I did not expect to live to 100, nevermind past that, and yet here I am- barely. The high technology I once took for granted is long gone now, and the digital world I once expected to be my Heaven has vanished. Instead I struggled--when not butchering men or monsters--to retain all the useful knowledge I could, and pass on that and the importance of its preservation to those after me. With an illiterate woman birthing my future heirs, I am concerned that they will be unable to read these words and thus come to understand the man that made their inheritance possible- or the world he came from.

Yes, I survived. Yes, I brought down a corrupt and degenerate world. Yes, I built up a robust and sustainable kingdom out of those ashes, but I am unsure that whom I pass this wealth down to will appreciate it or be able to preserve it against the threats that now exist. The end for me comes, and I have made my peace with that. What I cannot--will not--accept is that my legacy will be as easily reduced to ashes and dust.

All men die. Yet only when a man is forgotten is he truly destroyed. "Christopher I, King of Laketown" is far better than "Christoper Holm, some guy who wrote books and shot traitors" at being remembered.

Remember me.

The End Began in the Middle-11

I had the word about the wedding put out to my people, commanding the attendance of the households, and they did as I expected: grumble, but comply. All that butchery left a lasting impression, and they did appreciate my aggressive efforts against The Necromancer, so they sat down and shut up about my ties to Ken and his people- amongst other things. Soon I got replies and when the date got settled that too went out, and when the date came my people showed up to witness the future of my kingdom come into view.

It was, for the most part, a good wedding. Food (for those of us that could eat it) and drink (ditto) aplenty, a respectable turnout of household heads or their agents (some took ill; I verified that), toasts and boasts and games to cheer and thrill one and all. The bride had the time of her life, which was not hard to do: she could not read or write, and spent her life to this point in the middle of the woods living in a cabin that had no heat or electricity so my "castle"--a run-down lakeside resort hotel repurposed into a fortified manor--seemed like an enchanted palace of gold and diamonds to her eyes, but she knew her wifely arts well and thought my grandson to be a true prince out of the stories her mother told her.

That talk about women would be coming after the wedding night. At least my son and I had prepared him that much.

The cost for this wedding came with taking in the girl's mother also, and she I installed as my caretaker to keep her out of my son's way and keep her influence over my successors to a minimum. I knew how to handle a woman like this, so I did just that; it helped that I had secrets of my own that I kept all these years, including the means by which I kept folks just down enough to prevent them from using my sleepy time to meddling in my affairs. (Sure, I used it also way back when to keep bothersome folks asleep while I did what I needed to do to properly put them down where they deserved to be, but fortunately that was a rare occurrence- but it was also very lucrative.)

The wedding came and went. The feast came and went. I did enjoy myself, as best I could, in both happenings. My new grand-daughter-in-law even smiled at me, as only a truly innocent young girl just married could, and kissed me on the cheek. "I promise, sire, to be the very best wife I can to him." she said, as only a girl like that could. For a moment, I remembered a better tomorrow that never came. Heh. Even now, after it all, I still want to believe.

As for the girl's mother, she too turned out better than I expected. That night, as she helped me to bed, she engaged me in idle chat.

"Well, I didn't expect my girl to end up here."

"How so?"

"Ken said you were a hell of a man, a butcher, a pig-headed bastard, and terrible with women."

"All true." I said, "Still. You're just behaving well."

She laughed, and I could tell that she got exactly what I meant.

The End Began in the Middle-10

"Everyone can see that you're setting up that boy of yours to be your successor." Ken said, "Your own son is okay with that?"

"He'll play seat-warmer for a while. He'll officially be the first successor, but he's really just finishing the training I began. When Jeremy is ready, he'll take the throne; this marriage is meant to cement that future."

"You're banking on the rumor about my genetics."

"That your sons, and their sons, turn out to be just like you and your daughters carry that trait to give to the sons they bear? You got it."

Ken chuckled. "Your descendants will not go hungry."

There was not more to say after that. Ken knew the real reason that I had him come to me: to fulfill the other favor I won from him all those years ago, which was to prevent my reanimation after I died.

One thing I knew for certain is that everyone alive at the time of the apocalypse who survived that would, inevitably, become a zed when they died unless they somehow got around being a normal man or woman. (Ken, for example, would not because he's a corpse-eating mutant freak.) What I came to suspect is that those born after that wouldn't automatically turn into zeds, but it was useful to keep up the practice anyway just in case so I did not ever tell anyone this suspicion other than Ken.

"Well, at least you can enjoy one more wedding before the end."

"Yeah." I said to the big snow-white man with no hair and sunken yellow eyes, "Just one more."

The End Began in the Middle-09

Eventually I sent my son off to sleep also. I stayed up; being king has its perks, even in the most primitive of conditions.

So many dead at my hands over the years. I didn't bother telling either of them about the fighting and killing I did as a youth; after all the epic slaughter before and after the apocalypse, a handful of shankings when I was a kid doesn't merit inclusion outside of my memoirs- not that writing means much anymore, but I do it anyway.

I got bored and slept in short order. The next day, over breakfast, my son and I broke the news to Jeremy. He took it far better than we thought.

"So, you want me to go look up old Ken, see about a daughter, and then bring them back here?"

We nodded, and that was that.

Now, being old and such, I really can't say for certain what it took to get that done. What I know is what Jeremy and Ken told me, which goes something like this: Jeremy took a man with him and they set out for one of the regular haunts that Ken would visit at that time of the year. They arrived to find a woman roughly his mother's age and a girl a few years young than himself tending to a cabin that wasn't there when I was there last, which was many years ago. The woman was one of Ken's concubines, put there to be a custodian year-round, and the girl was his daughter by that woman. It turned out that Ken arrived with a few others in his train the next day, and when the two had their sit-down Ken altered his plans right away to come see me.

So, all told this errand had the boy away for a month and most of that was evading zeds too troublesome to take on. The marriage was agreed to, and thankfully--again--the girl took a liking to my grandson. While my son and her mother negotiated details, Ken and I had a nice little reunion of sorts after many years going our own way.

"You're dying." Ken said, "I can smell it."

"I'm old, you corpse-eating freak. It happens to normal men."

"What do your people think of this marriage?"

"I don't care. They'll go along with it or the zeds will eat them, and then my progeny will eat their animated corpses."

"Now that's the right bastard I remember."

The End Began in the Middle-08

"Father, I heard you talking about the limits of what a hard man can hold. I think we're at that limit given our own band of men. We have control over all the lakes and our base here on Mille Lacs allows us to feed from the lake's fish year-round as well as take advantage of the fresh water. We're not likely to do much better than this, not with the pressure coming from the Necromancer to the south. I think we should reconsider future plans."

"You're reconsidering whom to marry the boy off to."

"We're not going to make it as just ordinary men. We can't keep up the numbers, or the material, for much longer. As soon as whatever it is that consumes The Necromancer's attention is done, he'll turn again north and come at us with a tidal wave of zeds to wash us away. We need to take any advantage we can get if what you carved out of the ruins is to endure well into Jeremy's lifetime."

"To what do we turn then?" I said, "We sell ourselves to some witch? That will go well when Ken hears of it. The natives fled deeper into the wilderness, those that survived, and that meant going further north so they're out. Are we to produce nuclear weapons out of tinfoil and beer? Come on, son! There is only one option of that sort open to us."

"Yes. One."

"We'll tell the boy tomorrow after breakfast. It'll give him time to prepare."

"For what?"

"The journey. He's got to be the one to go bring Ken back. You're going to be too busy keeping the place going to go running around the field."

"You know what else that means, Father."

"Yes, and I know that some of the homesteads aren't keen on Stalkers. Too bad. It's join Ken's people or die out, and I'm not one for dying out- even if I don't have much longer myself to live."

"It's decided then?"

"Hell yes it is. Ken's got to have a daughter by now. Jeremy's marrying her and breeding heirs, like it or not."

The End Began in the Middle-07

"You talk a lot about men, Grandfather."

"That's because men have depth to them. Women don't. Women are simple creatures, and should never be trusted to be anything but a woman. That's how I stayed with your grandmother for as long as I did."

"That's harsh."

"Only because it's gotten a lot better since the Old World died in fire. The women that survived had to clean up and get back in line if they wanted to live, and the girls born since--like your mother--weren't allowed to degenerate into the wretched whores that their mothers were. For all that got lost, what's come in its wake proved to me that this was the best thing that could have happened to Mankind. The natural order is back for good."

The boy nodded, but I knew he didn't get it yet. Fortunately, he didn't have to get it just yet- and I'd be deciding on his wife anyway, so all he had to do was follow orders until he grokked it. It's not like there's a lot of available women around to mess him up in the head or otherwise make a mess of things.

"Enough. Bed. Now."

Jeremy did as I told him, and off he went to bed. Shortly thereafter my son came in with a mug of brew and sat in his place.

"Telling him stories again, Dad?"

I cupped him for his manners.

"Sorry, Father."

"Better, and yes- because he asked, and he has a need to know now that he's coming into manhood. He's got to know why things are what they are if he's to rule well when the time comes."

"I don't recall you ever being that dismissive with Mother."

"Because your mother, at the time the world ended, was still a child. Her parents got eaten by zeds, and Ken took her in thinking he could groom her for a mate. He traded her to me in return for taking him in and healing him up after that incident with the witch in the lighthouse and the crazy cult that arose in her wake. When she was ready, I took her as my wife and that ensured that I didn't have to clean out bad programming."

I saw on my son's face that our age difference never crossed his mind. She was born on the cusp of the millenium, and I took her as she came of age. Well, after the end of the Old World no one in their right mind balks at young women married to mature men. Sure, I put three children to her in five years; we needed numbers, and that's why I married her. Love had nothing to do with it at all; I needed a loyal wife who I could train to be a competent wife and mother, and she did just fine.

"And-"

"Yes, son, when I made that deal for your wife I had the exact same thing going in my mind: getting a young woman that could be readily trained to be good at the jobs needed of her. It helps that she actually liked you. Your mother respected and appreciated me, but that sort of thing never existed."

"Widowers both we are now." he said.

The End Began in the Middle-06

"So everything was coming together to blow it all apart?" he said, and I nodded.

"Yeah, that's it exactly. While it still held together, I took as much as I could from the dead and used it to prepare for this." I said, waiving around the room we sat in, "Not that most of those cultists had any sense to prepare for anything like this, so looting their corpses and then their accounts was a lot easier than I expected. Soon I had all of this land, the buildings, the stores, and so on ready and waiting for the shit to hit the fan. All I had to do was get out of the Cities and make it here, and I knew I had it made."

"How long?"

"Ah, now we're moving from 'How did I destroy a social cancer disguised as a movement?' to 'How did I found a new kingdom out of these ashes?' A good time for that transition, since there's not much else to talk about in terms of how I contributed to the burning to ashes of the Old World- and why it deserved to die screaming for its mother like the pathetic bitch it was."

He chuckled.

"Well, as dramatic as hacking my way through a sea of zeds would be, that's not how it happened. I got a tip from someone I knew who went into the Spook world that something big was due in three days, and I should bug out. I took that warning seriously, cleared out my place in town, and then I fled the Cities and came here. I didn't warn anyone else, because fuck them. Whomever managed to not get eaten and still made it I'd consider letting in."

"And?"

"Twenty got here. I put half of them down because they got bit and lied to me about it; that's where the bone pile started. After that first winter I started going around to the others nearby and gave them the choice, and that's when I began building the kingdom that you have been born into."

"And become king of in time."

Now I chuckled.

"If you live long enough to succeed your predecessors. For all that your father and I made of our killing powers we are still mortal men- we do have limits. Don't be like the dumbasses who thought that words had power by themselves; real power, real ruling, relies on hard men ready and willing to kill and kill and kill to get and keep that power. That means that there is only so much that one hard man can rule; to do more than that you need loyal men, and that means finding men worthy of your loyalty. That, my boy, is the real hard part. Kingdoms rise and fall by the power of the king to find and keep good men at his side."

The End Began in the Middle-05

"So much killing went on in the months before the end, Jeremy." I said, "Lots of it was simple and crude, much of it done incompetently and opportunistically. I didn't care for that stuff. It was all amateur hour antics, and yet even so they got far more done than generations of bullshitting ever did. The best part was that the Internet covered all of it pretty much as it happened, sometimes with the killers streaming the killing as they did it."

"Dad says that it seemed like a madhouse."

"At first, sure, but that's because most people had lived so long in that illusion of permanent peace that they couldn't deal with the real world when it shattered those illusions and proved to them just how wrong they were. The stronger ones adapted quickly and did one of the smart things: ran or fought back. Most of them knew enough about themselves to know that they couldn't really fight back, so they ran like hell and got out of wherever they were in favor of someplace else. Those small groups that got rolled by roving gangs, or zeds, or anyone else with the good sense to not be pussies? Born of those thinking that they could always run and hide."

"What about the police?"

"They didn't like dying anymore than anyone else did."

"Really? It's that simple?"

"After just enough people lost their fear of the cops, due to seeing just how incompetent all but the best of them were, the slaughter of anyone in a cop uniform was catastrophic. The ghettos, where the street gangs had their presence, turned into killing fields overnight once that happened and it happened after I'd already swamped them with my own work. City cops, then deputies, then state patrol, then Feds- and man, the cascading effect once the people saw that the Feds were just dudes with suits and guns and so on turned already bad scenes into total collapse. Governments big and small dropped all pretense of being 'for the people', and just took care of their own openly- like that made it better."

"So the end began in the middle of the country?"

"Yeah." I said, showing some pride, "I guess you could say that it did. Long overdue, by the way. Too many folks forgot the way this shit really works; too big a claim of turf, and too little real power to make it stick. Collapse like this had to come sooner or later, and it was on its way even if I didn't start clearing out the crap."

"How so?"

"The world's economy was about to fall through the floor, and World War 3 was already shaping up."

The End Began in the Middle-04

"The freakouts were fantastic to witness. All the screaming about people being gunned down in places where guns were already banned, knifed where knives were banned, and so on only to scream that the bans need to be made worse- as if that would solve the problem! Morons. Fucking retards, the lot of them!" I said, "In their desperate, yet futile, attempt to make their feelings the law of all they abandoned all reality and embraced their collective insanity- as if they were nothing more than overgrown children. Reaping them like wheat before a thresher was more than punishment- it was judgement."

"But there had to be more than that?"

I smiled again. "True, there were plenty more, and after I executed that first gang at that convention more took up my path on their own- I never met them, never knew who they were, and never heard from them. They just picked up the gun and began executing the enemies in their neighborhoods as I did to those trespassing in mine. Most of them would get caught by the police state, and gunned down themselves in time, but those who--like me--showed their quality by staying inside the enemy's minds and thus avoided the traps set for us, quickly came to clear out their neighborhoods."

"A purge, then?"

"The likes of which no one then alive in this land had ever seen."

"The ones buried deep into the power structure proved hardest to take out, as they expected people to try killing them, so they took some work to handle. I resorted to using them as secondary targets when I went after more available targets, like the dumb twats trying to ban everything. I'd also picked off some opportunity targets, and settled some long-standing scores, as I went about the bigger business."

I looked again at the boy. I looked deep into his eyes, as I did when I gave the watered-down version to his father years ago. I saw there what I expected out my own son, that he got it, that he comprehended what all of this killing meant- why it was needed, and better than the alternative.

"Is that how you became king?" he said.

"Not directly." I said, "But it was the start of how I became king. I killed all of the invaders, the liars, the whores, the crooks, everyone who dared step foot into my land and mess with what is mine- I killed them all, and I am damn proud of all that butchery. When the apocalypse came, I knew that I would not be one of the weak pussies that got eaten by the horde. I knew--well before the event--that I would become one of the masters of that world, and when it came I became one of the happiest men in the world."

"Ken would be the other?"

"Yep. We got along fine for that reason."

The End Began in the Middle-03

"The entire community where I worked could not believe that someone not only exposed them, but delivered judgement. The government promised to 'find the killer', but never did. In part because I knew how to ensure that none of their investigations would amount to anything, and in part due to me knowing how limited their resources were. I buried them in corpses, so to speak."

"Dad said that once something got you mad enough, you couldn't be stopped."

"Your father doesn't know the half of it." I said, satisfied with myself, "It's something I figured out when I was a young man: the secret to killing your way to victory is to outpace the other side. That's very hard to do when the other side is a bunch of dead shamblers, but next to them is an omni-present police state. Same skills needed, however."

He gave me that look.

"If I overwhelmed the ability of the cops to keep up and investigate, then I could proceed with impunity. So I did just that; I kept stacking the corpses like cordwood, executing one or more of the enemy every day and ensuring that the continuity continued. Five in a game studio's offices, three at a movie party while the party went on, a dozen at long range with a rifle when they wandered off in a big park, several home invasions, and so on. I got a weekly count of 100 once during this period."

Now the realization came over the boy as he saw his aged, elderly grandfather as the experienced and remorseless manslayer that I really am.

"How long did you keep it up?"

"I started on the first weekend of July that year. I won by the end of August. Eight solid weeks of daily killing, the latter part including me taking the fight to them across the country. Generations of social infiltration and degeneration wiped out in two months. Two months, my boy! All my life I'd been lied to about the power of killing, and I proved them all wrong--permanently, eternally wrong--in just two months! Had the world not come to an end when it did, my part of it would have been able to stage a counter-revolution that would've cleansed the country by the end of the following year. A flood of blood so great it would have sated the thirst of the worst of vampires."

The boy looked at me with a mix of awe and fear. Good. You respect your elders for a reason: they've spent a lifetime mastering skills that you barely know exist.

"Do you know how-"

"One thousand, four-hundred, fifty-six." I said, "The last one I did live on global television, and I still walked away as if no one saw me- and that's because no one did. I shot one of the leading mind-fuckers, a high priestess of this cult, as she gave an interview to one of the major media networks' prime-time news anchors. Her head exploded like a popped balloon and got brain, blood, and bone all over the newscaster."

I chuckled. I had a livestream of that interview going, muted, to ensure that I dialed in the target properly without taking any shots so I saw that I got it right when the chick's headless corpse flopped to the floor like a sack of cement and the chatroom's collective freakout got me rolling with laughter. Right then, I knew beyond any doubt that victory in this culture war was mine.

The End Began in the Middle-02

"You killed two guys-"

"No, lying whores. A pair of lying, thieving, gold-digging whores playing the men like fiddles and laughing about it all the way to the bank."

"Bad girls?"

"As far too many were at the end. My execution of those two is my contribution to the catalysts that would set off the end."

"How?"

I could not contain my glee. Finally, I get to tell it all: "No one ever expected an outright execution to happen to two popular whores in a St. Paul hotel near the airport, so when their corpses got found a few minutes later--remember, zeds didn't exist yet--the reaction was a total freak out. Yet, by then I found the hotel room this gang shared. I had a key, so I let myself in and executed the rest of the gang in their room. In and out in moments."

I paused a moment. "Let that sink in, boy. To start fixing a problem caused by liars, thieves, and predators corrupting good people into being more of the same a good man had to get mad and start popping those bad folks right in the brain. Sound familiar?"

Jeremy chuckled. "I thought you said zeds didn't exist?"

Good boy! You got the point! "Not literally so, but when the apocalypse hit I found those habits and practices worked just as well with the dead as the living."

He laughed, and that made this easier.

"You remember that we had newspapers, TV and radio places that told the news, and all that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my assassinations so shocked everyone that they led the news for a week- and shut that convention down for good, along with all of the others run by the same group."

He gasped.

"So, as I continued to track down and execute the rest of the leading crooks in the area, never getting caught and leaving the same signs behind to show continuity, I had everyone of them freaking out- and me, hiding in plain sight, planning which of them to take out next."

"Like when Ken the Stalker is around the smarter zeds?"

"Exactly!"

The End Began in the Middle-01

"Grandfather, how did the Old World end?"

My son's son, a boy by the name of Jeremy, was a curious boy. Curiosity in a land where flesh-eating zombies have been a reality since I sired his father upon his mother is not a good thing, and I'd told my boy so many times- but to no avail.

I sighed. "There aren't many of us left that remember the Old World. If you managed to ask all of us that question, you would get as many answers as you would people. That's because what brought about the end is not just one thing, but instead a lot of little things coming together and having a big effect when together."

"Like when streams and creeks flow into rivers?"

"Like that, but bigger. Flood-like, really, if it really gets going."

The light of the fire in the hearth briefly reminded me of being that boy's age, when my own grandfather--who grew up without electricity--told me about how everything could change like a flood overnight.

"So, what did you do?"

This was now, again, a harsh world like my grandfather's was in his youth. No need to keep him from the truth; the sooner he knew what he'd need to do, the better he'd get at doing it.

"My part began in an elevator, at a convention, in the summer just before everything went wrong. This was long before I met your grandmother. I'd been pulled into the center of a long-running conflict, one I'd had to deal with all my life, and over the winter before I received proof that the people I'd been fighting had committed all sorts of crimes against me and my people for longer than I'd lived through lies and other bad things."

"So, what did you do in that lift thing?"

"This convention had a small gang, part of the larger group of crooks, do a very big get-together every year. They stayed in the hotel where the convention took place. I followed the two leaders into an elevator and waited for everyone else to get off. As soon as the doors closed, I drew my gun and shot them both--one shot, each, to the head--and got off on the next floor. They never saw it coming, as they both assumed that no one had a real gun due to the gun bans in place. Both died instantly."

"No zeds?"

"No zeds yet. Just living targets, all deserving." I said as I patted the old CZ-82 sidearm in my lap. "Yes, my boy, with this very one." I smiled. Well over 60 years later, and I still feel the greatest satisfaction from those first two kills.

The Harp Incident-12

The second fallout was the transformation of medicine and medical technologies due to the confirmation of epigenetics as a thing. Once that became known as a thing that could significantly transform an individual due to psychological factors, that got suppressed by the governments worldwide right away; they wanted super-soldiers that they controlled, and not free superhumans doing as they like. Epyon wasn't having it; he organized his nascent department to break this information loose, and they did- and without Control saying so. The results were that this too soon got online and embedded into the Darknet, making it impossible to erradicate without destroying the Internet worldwide- a thing that was never going to happen.

The combination of cheap power soon turned into cheap and good Internet access worldwide. That undermined corporate and government centralization through the proliferation of things like easy 3d printing and other technologies of that sort. The Agency picked up on this trend early and used it to our advantage to exert leverage against the enemy organizations we discovered, mapping out and rolling them up in turn- but far more quiet and with far less fanfare. By the time I became Control, Epyon and the other super-soldiers we recruited worked to transform the world into a place I once believed only could ever exist in the more hopeful of science fiction stories.

More than that, I can't say for certain. Once I retired from the Game, and Epyon took over as Control, the Agency had become a true peacemaking organization. Sure, the shadow aspect remained; there remained a need for things done discreetly, and early intervention often nipped problems in the bud well before the super-soldiers became necessary, so the only real thing to worry about now was the possibility of infiltration, either by enemy actors or (more likely) complacency and decadence.

But that's another story.

The Harp Incident-11

The first fallout was that a lot of heretofore secret information had to be revealed, warts and all, to the public. The Squids--The Order--were by no means a Johnny-Come-Lately organization. We had to screw the Establishment to get this out because public knowledge of Squid deeds would be good for the population and the Establishment in the long run, even though many Establishment players and institutions would get hit or destroyed in the short run for reasons both fair and foul alike. The technologies that they produced, kept secret by Squid agents in Establishment institutions, had to be released and spread far and wide so that other long-term threats both to the population and to the Establishment could be readily sorted.

We had to provide information, albeit through cutouts, to public inquiries such as various Congressional committees as well as to their many state-level counterparts and even to many media outlets. Interviews, presentations, and many books had to be rushed out the door; fortunately we had a lot of friends and assets in place to handle this, which meant that not only did we have the chance to vett what we released beforehand but that we also turned this into something that allowed us to generate the necessary revenue required to keep our operations going. All this technology, top talent, and so on doesn't pay for itself you know.

Our people watching for alerts from our other enemies--and we had more than the Squids--also put in their work as they watched distinct patterns of interference symbolizing actionable intelligence that we could investigate. We found out about the reality of many other enemy organizations in the Great Game by watching for these things; this would lead to Epyon's rising through the ranks, and also to the proliferation of super-soldiers as well as other augmentive technologies necessary for otherwise ordinary operatives to be able to compete with them. A new arms race in the shadow world, which would ripple outward into the mundane world, broke out as fallout from this incident.

This also meant that the Agency had to reorganize. We couldn't return Epyon truly to the shadows; like the comic-books that he resembled, and took cues from, we had to recognize that Epyon could be a covert operative but never truly secret and that meant forming an entire department around him and those would come in his wake. When we needed something done, and we could afford to be noisy about it, Department Epyon handled it here on out. Several agents I knew--but none of my team--would transfer over to this department because they were more like him in temperament and would be far better for the Agency there than where they were.

But the biggest change to come would be the revelation that there was a proven, ready-made power technology that made fossil fuels pointless; oil remained a thing due to plastics and other polymers, but Big Oil fell over and died overnight once the patents hit the Internet and immediately got spread throughout the world, especially in the Darknet where fools could not touch it. That was a hard call for Control, but it proved to be best; it screwed a lot of enemies out of key advantages. Those transmitters required power production and transmission far beyond what was heretofore allowed to be known; now that the real limits of such technologies were out there, the geopolitical game shifted away from the Middle-East and the oil-based global economy. Yeah, the Establishment was not happy with the end of the petrodollar, but the new technologies allowed that shift to be a soft landing and the new economic system relied on a balance of major currencies--U.S. Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yuan, and Yen--which held out for the rest of my days.