Voynich Shift - Season One (COMPLETED)

Leonis, 1:1, 2:4 - I Pledge Submission - Part I

It would not have mattered the content of the words.  The guttural breathless sound that accompanied them was enough to transmit the feeling of utter futility the man felt. "I am so tired of this, Jason."

"Yeah, me, too, dad. We just can't take a chance, you know?" Carver Elder's teenage son, Jason, said in agreement and then returned to glancing over the back of the tattered sofa that shielded them from the street. A sliver of moonlight from a near-full moon shimmered in through the roof partially illuminating his son's spring-loaded crouch. Call it middle age, call it the realization that each breath was one more closer to death, a man Carver's age learned to dance in the proverbial rain when he could, even if it was only mentally. A brief second here or there, he'd nostalgically try to catch a wisp of the "old days" just for himself. The barely visible "God Bless Our Family" picture on the tattered kitchen wall tilted slightly to the left. "...If Virginia were here, she would have to straighten that", he imagined.

Interrupting Carver's self-entertaining musings was Jason's frantically pointing finger.  "Dad, over there. Three o'clock. Flashlights." 

"Maybe it's Parker and the others," he whispered.

"I wouldn't think so. We still got two hours to go before they're supposed to meet up with us here and that sounds like an engine."

For a moment, Carver imagined he heard the faint low growl of a vehicle passing by in the distance.  He understood his son's hearing was much better than his, and knew better than to start an argument over things of this nature...especially at a time such as this. Exhaling a deep breath, the older man peered back into the kitchen...he could almost smell those cookies.

Jason's short life was far different from his father's and waxing nostalgic was the last animal they were able to hunt down and actually cook over a campfire. Outside of the fort, open flames had a bad habit of making trouble. The "get yourself dead" kind of trouble and there was no time for that right now. "Visual confirmation, dad. It's them..."

"Shit." Slowly and quietly, Carver advanced a bullet into the receiver of his old hunting rifle. Within moments, the flickers of an artificially generated light danced around the room catching the occasional family photo that still hung on the wall. The intermittent, boot-induced crunching faded in and out with the passing of each Officer. Then the front door slowly creaked open.

"Took them long enough, lazy government drones..." Carver thought to himself. Clearing his mind and slowing his breathing to near silence, he imagined he could almost hear the sweat leaking from the pores of the mindless Officer invading their temporary station. "Don't move," he thought. "...not one muscle. And please, Jason do not do anything stupid."

The two men sat silently in the dark, frozen in place like victims of Mount Vesuvius.

The crickets chirping happily in the shadows silenced as an L.E.D. beam brushed over their once-hidden location. The creeping ray of light swept across the room, catching in its wake the twinkling of dust that flittered about in the air, awakened by the opening of the door. The shadowy man, finally satisfied that everything was secure, grunted, turned, and then thumped out of the open door and down the driveway, returning to the mob of armed men.

Jason deflated beside his father.

When the singing insects restored to their previously undisturbed volume, Carver spoke quietly, "son, I know it's probably pointless, but, do you want to try to get some sleep or keep moving?"

Jason stretched his large arms skyward and yawned, "I think I'm going to hole up in one of the bedroom closets and try to get a couple hours. You should do the same, old man."

Carver, acknowledging his son's wisdom, set about collecting a few dust-laden blankets and located the master bedroom's larger closet. He thought of cookies until the darkness of sleep settled in.

<<*>>

"...nothing inside, sir." Officer Merrick reported breathlessly as he approached the open doors of a parked armored personnel carrier (APC). He snapped to attention and saluted the exceptionally large Captain Saunders seated with one leg dangling from the cab. "We searched the houses in the first two subdivisions and all were empty!" Merrick said formally, resisting the urge to smile. He always mused at how the esteemed commanding officer, adorned in his gray field uniform, reminded him of a mushroom with his large ass billowing over the edge of his seat.

"Carry on then, sergeant," the captain replied, waving his pudgy hand at the young man, as if shooing a fly. Suddenly, the portly officer belched and then returned to eating another rather expensive candy bar. A treat that would cost Merrick at least a day's pay and this man popped them one-by-one as if they were nothing. The captain noticed the sergeant watching him. "Well, go on..."

"You need to be out here walking around with us, lard ass," Merrick thought. He rolled his eyes, turned, and quickly walked away. He assumed a post to the left of the dark mass of flashlight laden Officers fanning out to search the night-engulfed empty suburbs and began walking toward a small brick home on his left.

Twenty-five year-old Officer Merrick, sergeant in the NWUS, was only 10 years old when the western Federal Reserve Banks and the NSA Data Storage Facilities were destroyed by the Free Republic of Texas. These attacks marked the beginning of the second Civil War. He vaguely remembered watching cartoons on TV when it all started. The animated program interrupted by some talking head news reporter puking about the attacks.  He wondered if children would like those cartoons now.

"Stupid thought," he mused. It didn't matter anyways; those old videos were all banned and no longer viewable. That is, unless, someone wanted to go to the Birmingham-Montgomery Detention Zone for buying black-market propaganda. He understood it was that kind of thinking and that kind of media that led to this "New World". TV shows, video games, rock music, certain books... Stupid, stupid unenlightened people.  People needed structured lives. They needed proper guidance. Individualism was what made an animal an animal. Structure within the collective made humanity and that's what they at the New World United States (NWUS) were so desperate to accomplish, and that was his job; his ultimately important task within this new society, to save humanity from itself even if it meant death.

Merrick yawned and looked down at his watch. The blue digital numbers on its face indicated that he and the other Officers had been searching this crumbling neighborhood for nearly two hours now. The sun would be up soon. He shrugged...at least he had a job and something to do. The flittering beam of Merricks' flashlight seemed to awaken a once stationary, but now quickly moving shadow ahead of him, arresting the Officer's thoughts and yanking him back to reality.

"You there! Don't move! Hands up where I can see them!" His words issued forth as if they were programmed to act in concert with his free hand reaching for the pistol on his side. The briefly illuminated human shape noisily scampered away from the light as if it were painful, although it was more likely out of fear.

Tearing out in pursuit across the weed-laden lawn of an old ranch style home, Merrick keyed his shoulder radio, "...Sergeant Merrick...in...pursuit. Unidentified target... Request assistance..."

"Officer, what is your location?" a disembodied voice squelched from the radio's speaker,

"..heading north. Turning on my locat..."