Operation Rock of Ages: Triumphant Illumination

ORA: TI Chapters 22 & 23

Chapter 22

Mr. Duncan Sterling was boiling over. He watched, over the last thirty minutes, grown men acting like self-indulgent children. He wanted to be able to help create a stable society and then walk away to let someone else deal with the day to day running of the underground facility. This had been the plan all along. Letting the people the facility was meant to save to help each other with as little interference from the Americans who made it happen. Mr. Namir and Mr. Lukas, no longer Presidents' of their home countries, wanted to be consultants only and take a backseat.

"We are old politicians," Mr. Namir had said in the beginning when Mr. Sterling has asked them to sit on a council. "There is no place for old politics here." Duncan wanted to laugh, and not out of happiness but frustration. The people who offered to 'help' by being on the council were only in it for position, power, and what they could get for themselves. He was done...so very, very done.

Currently, they were arguing about their importance to the facility and therefore the facilities rules must be changed to suit their new statuses. No more waiting in lines, food brought to them, no longer working on the machines that everyone was required to use, if they were physically able, to help run the facilities electrical systems. One man stood up and yelled at another man that he was so important he needed assistants assigned to him to do all his work. The other man, considered this request with relish then he pointed at a man randomly, who had been watching the council meeting with disgust, "You! Yes, you. We are going to be here a while making important decisions. Go fetch us all some food for lunch."

Mr. Duncan Sterling, Esq. lost it completely. "STOP! No one move!" he roared. The room came to a complete stop, literally. "Everyone sit down," he growled, the man who had gotten up to go get the food, although reluctantly, sat back down quickly. "You will listen to me, all of you sitting in council seats. The first word uttered, before I am finished, may completely make me lose my temper, and you don't want that." He angrily looked at all of their faces to make sure they understood that while he was angry, he was still in control of himself. "I have been with this project since it was just an idea in Mr. Lukas' head. His need to help others, to help all of you, was so great he put many hundreds of people at risk and spent more money than you could wrap your heads around to make it happen. Most, if not all of you, without this man and all the people who made this safe place possible, would be dead. I have helped some but it was my chosen team of scientists and industry experts made it happen. Planned down to the Nth degree how to make you comfortable, see to all your physical and mental needs.

I am so completely disgusted and repelled on how quickly the nature of man has taken over and is trying to corrupt what could be the closest thing to Eden this earth has known since the garden of Eden was lost so long ago." One of them men stirred and opened his mouth to speak but Duncan stared him down. The man closed his mouth and sat back crossing his arms over his chest in anger. "This council was to be like a parent, stepping in when necessary over behavior issues or deciding the best way to move forward for the good of all people. We are all equal here. We ALL live by the same rules and standards. We ALL signed documents to that effect when we agreed to be here. This council does NOT have the right to set themselves apart to their own benefit. It does NOT have the right to change the rules to suit their selfish desires. You WILL abide by the rules, ALL of them, or you will be welcome to step down from this position, this job, and go find another one. This council was not set up to be a place you get to make excuses to dodge real responsibility and get better than someone else. Everyone in this facility, with the exception of the infirm or those in advanced pregnancies, are required to work in the facility, in some position, to benefit the society as a whole. No one is more important than another. We are all equal here and will remain so. This is NOT something up for debate."