Altruism

ALTRUISM

T. I. WADE

ALTRUISM

Smashwords edition.

Copyright © 2014 by T I Wade.

All Rights Reserved.

Published in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address: T I WADE, 200 Grayson Senters Way, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526.

T I WADE’s books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write: T I WADE, 200 Grayson Senters Way, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526.

Library of Congress Catalogue-in-Publication Data

Wade, Altruism/ T I Wade.

Library of Congress Data.

Thanks to:

Editor – Jim Doak

Proofreader – Pauline Nolet

Cover design – Elizabeth Mackey Graphic Design

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Contents

Note from the Author

Chapter 1 Shuttle One, 2025

Chapter 2 Mission Hawaii, 2023

Chapter 3 Mission South Korea, 2025

Chapter 4 The Beginning, 1979

Chapter 5 A Much-needed Break

Chapter 6 The Early Years, 1991

Chapter 7 Berry Hile, Early Life

Chapter 8 Berry Hile, Recruitment

Chapter 9 Guardians of Democracy

Chapter 10 G.O.D. is Born

Chapter 11 The First Trainees

Chapter 12 Recruit Squad One & Mission One, 2010–2013

Chapter 13 What the Hell are We Doing?

Chapter 14 Mission Two, 2014

Chapter 15 Cryogenics, 2014–2015

Chapter 16 Mission India, 2017

Chapter 17 The End of an Island

Chapter 18 The Beginning of Finding the Enemy

Chapter 19 Mission Beijing, 2026

Chapter 20 Blood and Sorrow

Chapter 21 Mission Utah, 2026

Chapter 22 Surprise and Crap!

Chapter 23 Don’t be Late

Chapter 24 Wake up Time

Epilogue

Books by the Author

About the Author

It would be interesting to learn what a first-world government would do, if the private sector set up its own private, well-armed and modern police force to protect itself from the same government.

G.O.D. stands for Guardians of Democracy.

Note from the Author

This novel is only a story—a story of fiction.

The people in this story are all fictitious, but since part of the story takes place in our present day, some of the people mentioned could be real.

No full names have been given to these people, and there were no thoughts to treat these people as good or bad. They are just people who are living at the time the story is written.

Chapter 1

Shuttle One, 2025

The silver-colored space shuttle’s engines went onto full forward thrust as G.O.D. activated the spaceship orbiting in medium Earth orbit, or MEO. It had been seventeen months since Shuttle One had closed itself down to Crew Sleep Mode after her soldiers’ last mission.

As the engines ignited to start an accelerating orbit around Earth to whip the shuttle towards the blue planet 1,400 miles below, hundreds of different systems aboard the shuttle began their jobs of waking up the mission team.

First of all, the tubes leading to the liquid nitrogen Dewar was closed. Then wafer-thin ceramic heat blankets inside the sleep chamber walls began to gently heat up the sleeping forms from a cold, minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 195 degrees Celsius.

During the last hour of the warm-up period, and once the bodies had warmed to minus 1 degree Fahrenheit, the cryoprotectant solutions were drained from the entire body, especially the lungs and blood vessels, and the soldier’s warmed original body liquids and blood were pumped back into the body. Once the blood was deposited back into the body, the temperature began to rise quickly and the heating process moved into high gear.

When used in high concentrations, the cryoprotectant stopped any ice formation in the body and brain, and had been invented ten years earlier by doctors who had worked for the organization and who had set up these shuttle squads of soldiers in 2018.

Before the silent signal sent from G.O.D. headquarters somewhere in orbit around Earth, the interior of the shuttle had been dark, apart from hundreds of tiny LED lights showing cameras that all the systems were running according to plan.

Apart from the twelve sleeping forms, the shuttle was devoid of human life. The entire shuttle was run by onboard computers being controlled by G.O.D. The interior was just above freezing and also heating up. It was too cold for any life, but warm enough to run the electronics that kept the crew alive.

Even though the crew were asleep, the internal running of the ship certainly wasn’t. G.O.D. was busy. G.O.D. had been busy for the last two decades, sifting through every byte of information that had worked its way through all the areas of the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web had consisted of separate areas for decades. First there was the Surface Web, the area of the Internet the general public used. Then there was the largest section, the Deep Web, which had names like Deepnet, Invisible Web and Hidden Web. This area was a dozen times larger than the Surface Web and used by organizations and individuals who wanted to stay hidden from the general Internet. The third area was USGov Web, an area to send encrypted information safely from department to department, and was set up by certain security departments: the NSA, CIA and other government organizations.

It was certain that other countries had copied USGov Web for their own safety protocols, namely China and Russia, but these areas were so much deeper than the Deep Web that very few systems knew how deep to look.

G.O.D. was the most efficient and most elaborate artificial intelligence computerized Internet monitoring system ever invented. The idea of her existence had started way back in the 1980s by the best brains in the newly emerging U.S. computer market.

On board the shuttle was the most modern technology known by few back on Earth. By 2020, every new piece of technology was actually built on board by the shuttle’s self-made 3D scanners and printers. The main stores on board were dozens of compartments full of every plastic, metal and alloy needed to make anything the shuttle’s computers wanted. They could even make themselves.

As new technology passed over the World Wide Web, it was collected and analyzed by G.O.D. It could be a new suit material or piece of weapon hardware. The captured information could be the formation of a new stronger and lighter metal, or a more pliable silicone-plastic material, or an advanced software program that could assist the soldiers in their missions.

Shuttle One had cost well over $1 billion in 2012. A new shuttle had been completed every three years after 2012, and by the beginning of 2021, there were five cryogenic sleep shuttles in space, and in three of them, their occupants were ready to be awoken at any time. These five shuttles could be pieced together to become one larger spaceship, or travel to the far reaches of the solar system, as time wasn’t important to the sleepers aboard. The occupants and future occupants of these five shuttles could survive in space for a century or longer.

As the sleep chambers warmed, lights and individual suit cubicles readied and warmed the latest protection suits for the crew. The armament printers began work printing the latest weapons, and the thought computers connected to the sleep chambers readied to feed the latest information to the awakening brains.

Commander Bud Masters had been asleep for seventeen months this time, but everything that he and his team needed to know about what had happened on Earth in their absence was ready to be downloaded through their sleep chamber helmets once it was warm enough for the human brain to begin self-thought. Like the other soldiers, Bud Masters came from a military background, the FBI.

The weapons they had used to terminate the terrorist organization in Hawaii on their last mission were now replaced with the next generation, more modern weapons. So were their suits and every piece of equipment attached to their suits.

The suits they wore were onetime-use suits and dissolved within seven days after their importation back into Earth’s atmosphere. This was to make sure that the suits never got into the wrong hands.

After a couple of hours of warming, there were slight movements inside the semi-see-through sleep chambers. All the first movements were around their closed twitching eyes as the information update feed was activated.

With connection nodes on several lobes of the brain through a soft head cover, the input of information went to several areas. The medulla oblongata received the necessary information to stop waking sickness and to give electrical pulses to all the body’s muscles to get them super active and fit after the long period of sleep. Since the medulla was connected to the spine, it was the muscle stimulator.

The prefrontal lobe was given the new mission instructions. This part of the brain was for short-term memory and became very active. The information necessary to bring the soldier up to date on world events went into and through the hippocampus several times, so that it would not be forgotten. New information on the most modern systems of Earth transportation, weapons, and how to fly the latest robotic aircraft and helicopters went through the nodes to the cerebellum, the basal ganglia and the motor cortex.

By the time Bud Masters and his team landed on Earth, there wasn’t a vehicle they couldn’t fly, drive, fire, or understand its movements. All of this information relay was done in the last hour before they were awoken. The last pieces of the puzzle were the orders for the mission and the description and diagnosis of their new suits and weapons made only hours before they were fitted into them.

The mission information was given to the crew by G.O.D. herself and not her onboard systems.

Bud Masters sat up as his chamber opened; his soft head cover fell off. Shuttle One was already halfway down towards low Earth orbit.

Even though he was one of the troop commanders for G.O.D. and experienced, having completed several missions, he commanded the oldest shuttle. Age didn’t really matter when everything internally could modernize itself at any time.

Commander Masters was really thirty-two years old. He had been born in 1985, forty years earlier, and it always took him a few minutes to get going in the mornings before work.

Chapter 2

Mission Hawaii, 2023

Bud’s head swam as he tried to open his eyes while still sitting inside his chamber. They seemed to open easier this time compared to the last time. He looked at the LED numbers of the digital clock above his head, already knowing that he had been asleep for seventeen months, three days, and twenty-two hours.

Commander Bud Masters did as he had done many times previous; he figured out his age.

Forty years and ten days old, he stated to the person sitting up to his left.

Thirty-three years, three months, eleven days, Commander, replied the blonde girl in the chamber, who only looked in her mid-twenties.

As usual, her hair was a mess. Lieutenant Berry Hile always had a bad hair day when she awoke, and always refused to have her thick and beautiful shoulder-length California-blonde hair shaved to what her commander preferred—a Marine-style haircut.

The awakening system was set up so that the commander and lieutenant of each shuttle were always awoken thirty minutes before any of the crew. This was a secure way if there had been any problems or trouble going to, or during, sleep. Two of the crew had been found dead in awakenings so far, and one soldier had gone berserk after awakening on the previous mission.

Bud Masters didn’t move. He didn’t need to yet. Since his lieutenant was female, she needed more time to visit the only space-cleanse system, wash, clean herself up, vomit if need be, and sort out her hair. He sat there, his eyes closed, and he let the new information fed into him for the last hour go through his mind. Berry lowered her chamber, got out, and as any woman would, floated off to make herself presentable.

He stretched, yawned, shook his head to try to clear it, and his thoughts reverted back to the Hawaiian job, their last mission. It had been messy, but G.O.D. had handed them the necessary knowledge.

On this mission they had been in orbit around Earth for fourteen months when they were awoken as the shuttle expertly guided itself on its second last orbit before reentry.

Trooper Joe Signet’s going berserk once he had awoken in his sleep chamber had been a shock to the two in charge. Luckily, only two non-officer chambers opened at any one time, and the sets of chambers opened twenty minutes apart. Trooper Signet was a rookie, and Sergeant Pauline Smith, the team’s third in charge and a five-mission experienced soldier, awoke when their chambers opened thirty minutes after the officers’.

The trooper was a large, young Coloradoan, twenty-three years old. He had forced himself out of his chamber as if there was a hive of bees in there. Protocol was that there were always two fully suited-up officers ready before any of the non-officer sleep chambers opened. It took ten missions before anybody was thought by G.O.D. as officer material, and ten missions was enough to make sure a soldier didn’t go crazy.

Trooper Signet came out of his chamber like a crazy man, his eyes showing the madness like a rabid animal. Lieutenant Hile stunned the 280-pound soldier into a lump floating in the capsule with her Taser. Sergeant Smith just sat there and watched as her superior ended the active career of a soldier she hadn’t trusted from the very second he had joined the squad. Signet had been full of himself, the son of an army general, and had not learned the ways of respect for his superiors. He had joined the team a few days before they had returned to Shuttle One after a few days of rest following the last Iraq mission.

As usual, the shuttle had opened its rear exit door at 100,000 feet and below 150 knots at around midnight above Hawaii’s Big Island. The eleven soldiers had taken off their magnetic shoes, let go of the hand rails, and had been sucked out the exit into the darkness of space. Behind them came the supply pod several seconds later.

Their tight-fitting one-piece combat suits, freshly made a few hours earlier, sealed them from the outside coldness of low atmospheric skydiving. With their helmets extended around their faces and heads, they plunged 95,000 feet before their black Icarus parachute canopies opened above them.

The night was clear and the stars very bright as they brought themselves to land in the middle of nowhere. Their onboard shuttle computers were pretty accurate getting the team down onto mother earth. Air movement had been calculated all the way down, and since they only floated for the final few seconds 2,000 feet above the terrain, their sideward movement wasn’t more than 800 yards from the middle of the landing zone. They were also less than 400 yards from each other. The supply pod used its hydrogen thrusters to land itself within twenty feet of Commander Masters.

As with every mission, G.O.D. missions were top secret. Even the president of the United States didn’t have control or even knew about any missions, even though the organization was begun in the United States decades earlier. The Guardians of Democracy had no ties to the government, nor did it work with or for any government department, and most of Washington’s politicians did not like the organization. They did not like private police forces.

Slowly the eleven-soldier crew came together. Everything they would need for the mission to save the 200 school children kidnapped and held hostage in a middle school by some terrorist organization was there.

The pod, an egg-shaped enclosed transport vehicle, was the size of a minivan, had several thruster ports all over, and held air bikes and other equipment. It also housed the team’s parachutes once they had been used.

"Commander, you are 217 yards east of your start position," stated the familiar voice of G.O.D. in his ear. Hilo is seven miles due west, Hilo Government Middle School 7.8 miles from the start position, and the hostage situation is still calm. I’ll update you if necessary. You have one hour to get into position.

"Copy that," replied Commander Masters, swapping his chute for his backpack. Starting his silent air bike, which ran on hydrogen thrusters, and having a directional map of where they needed to go on the GPS screen on his handlebars, they headed in single file twenty yards apart and several feet off the ground towards town.

As usual, and with any terrorist situation, the area would be crammed with several different police and military departments. Commander Masters knew that his old institution, the FBI, would be number one on this hostage scenario. The terrorist organization was one of the new U.S.-based anti-government organizations in the county. He also knew he was going to meet an old friend.

Hilo Government Middle School was a newish school started a few years earlier, and most of the children’s parents worked for the federal and local government in Hilo.

"Turn left at the traffic lights directly ahead," ordered G.O.D. into their helmets, and in a single line and still twenty yards apart, the air bikes turned the corner one by one.

They were still two miles away from the school when the first civilian saw them. The civilian, an old man pushing a shopping cart, stared unbelieving at the ghosts that the U.S. government stated didn’t exist. He waved, and one by one the crew signaled back. Seconds later the road was empty apart from the dull streetlights, and the lone man continued to push his cart.

The terrorist organization The People for Freedom from Gov had been a peaceful organization for its first couple of years since 2018. Unfortunately, during a peaceful rally in 2020, the local police had been given orders to break up their peaceful march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

Some say that a senior member of Congress, maybe even President Cathery himself in his last year in office before he was impeached, had given the order to open fire.

Somewhere along the chain of command a few of the rubber bullets became real bullets, and by the time the tear gas cleared, thirteen peaceful protestors lay dead or dying. The rest of the rally erupted into violence, and the riot police had no choice but to defend themselves with the ammo they had.

That was a sad day for freedom and free speech in the United States, especially when all the film crews were suddenly barred and their vans forced out of the area. The cleanup of dozens of bodies was done after the television cameras in the area were taken as evidence. Only G.O.D. saw the results of the crime that day through her cameras directed down on Washington from space. The incident was recorded and noted by the most powerful computer in the world.

It was on that day the PFG, as the organization was known, trebled in size from 10,000 members nationwide. Since one policeman had been reputedly shot by an unknown assailant, the PFG was named a dangerous terrorist organization from that day on.

Due to this, the FBI was really keen to go in and solve the Hilo problem. So were the local police. The only trouble was that some of the polices’ own children were the hostages when the twenty PFG terrorists had closed down the school eighteen hours earlier.

Their demands were that ex-U.S. President Eugene Cathery be indicted for the Pennsylvania massacre of twenty-seven innocent Americans two years earlier, the police who had fired the real bullets be named, and an inquiry opened. G.O.D. herself hadn’t given out any evidence, but searching the USGov Web, had watched as emails were directed at certain government individuals by the decent-acting vice president, who had been warned to shut up and leave the problem alone by the president himself.

The president, communicating privately with his vice president in the Oval Office, told the VP that it had been an accident, and ordered the VP to let it go. It would all be quickly forgotten, but it hadn’t. G.O.D. had made her mind up about the secret conversation and who the troublemakers were.

Now the situation was much the same as in Washington, except that the PFG was now classified as a terrorist organization. The police wouldn’t have hesitated so long about attacking the terrorists, weapons blazing, but many of the hostages were their own children.

"Commander Masters, your old friend, Special Agent in Command Mullins has been warned of your arrival," stated G.O.D.

Commander Bud Masters smiled as the newest information was transmitted to their helmets. He already knew that going over the information beforehand. The FBI man in charge, Pete Mullins, was an old buddy of his. They had entered The FBI Academy together ten years earlier in Quantico, Virginia.

He and Lieutenant Hile headed in first and parked their air bikes next to the FBI command vehicle a hundred yards from the school’s gym building, where the 200 hostages were being held.

The police protection stood several steps back as the two G.O.D. soldiers, ghosts they were called if you ever had the luck to see one, silently flew in and hovered a few feet off the ground. Anybody who had been in any U.S. military force knew not to mess with these guys. Their suits glossed like green snakeskin and could stop a bullet, many said. Their mode of transport was far ahead of what the average policeman or soldier ever saw, and their weapons could melt you from the inside like an old microwave oven before you knew it.

Commander Masters flipped his helmet visor up as the door to the FBI command vehicle opened.

That you, Bud? came a voice from the dully lit doorway into the vehicle.

Pete, Masters replied.

Still have that beautiful sidekick I met a couple of years ago? Mullins asked, and Berry flipped her helmet up.

You’re looking older every day, mused the lieutenant, who had met Pete Mullins for a few minutes on a previous mission.

I’m sure you had to pull some strings to get Hawaii? Bud added.

A comfortable end-of-career position ex-SSA Masters. Now, why are you guys here? We can handle this, replied the special agent in command, in civilian attire.

My boss doesn’t think so, and I’m sure she’s still pissed off at herself for not getting us to that Washington encounter between the Capital Police and the PFG in 2020, the last time we met, Bud replied, looking around. Something was missing. Pete, no media cameras again? That worries me.

The PFG is a terrorist organization. We are first in line to handle this type of emergency, not your civilian army, Pete replied. Hilo Police, on orders from someone on the mainland, have banned any media within a mile of the school. Not my doing.

Anybody you know in there? Berry asked the section chief while still seated on her air bike.

Actually, yes, little Molly, Molly Graham, my granddaughter, he responded, and a picture of the twelve-year-old appeared on their air bike screens. Bud had never met Pete’s family, but he had looked up his family on the Web a couple of years earlier on the Washington mission.

Bud lifted his right leg and stepped off the bike. So did Berry. They were both close to six feet tall, and without another word, both headed towards the school gym, closing their helmets.

"Pauline, you in position?" the lieutenant asked once her helmet was sealed.

"Affirmative, on the roof with three," Sergeant Pauline Smith replied.

"Matt?" the lieutenant asked the fourth in command, Corporal Matt De Blo. They only used first names while on missions.

"Affirmative, at the rear of the building, have the two rear exits and a side door each side visual and secure with four."

"We have seven police snipers on the higher main building two floors higher than we are; their weapons are following us," added Sergeant Smith.

"G.O.D.?" asked Commander Masters.

"In contact with the Hilo Police Terrorist Unit at the moment. I have given him his first warning. Keep on schedule," was the reply.

Still sitting in his capsule, Bud remembered walking into the building. He ignored the shouts from inside to stay away; then he heard G.O.D.’s voice faintly over the school PA system, that two of her agents were walking in and that they were going to communicate, no more.

G.O.D.’s voice was very sweet and gentle when it wanted to be, and that was why the voice had been picked by her makers. She explained to the people inside the building that her team was coming in, not a police squad or team of FBI. That got them in the building.

Berry opened the see-through glass school gym door, and both soldiers entered. It was as they had expected when they reached the largest room in the building. Their eye cameras had already seen the footage inside the basketball court where all the hostages were, from one remaining camera the terrorists had not disabled.

"We have new activity, front of the building behind the FBI truck. Also a darkened police SWAT team vehicle heading towards the school, no lights and currently 200 yards out," stated Pauline Smith, looking at her left-hand wrist monitor holograph standing out from her suit. She was watching a video feed beamed down from space. It was so clear that she could see the two occupants’ faces in the front of the vehicle.

Both soldiers stood at the double doors and had hundreds of eyes on them. Most of them were kids, but several pairs of eyes were adult and looked at them from behind weapons.

Who is in charge in here? Bud asked.

I am, stated a youngish man wearing a black balaclava and jeans and looking dirty. He was holding what looked like an old AK-47 with its usual banana-shaped magazine, but something to Bud didn’t look right. He trained and zoomed in his right eye camera towards the barrel of the gun pointing directly at him. There was no hole in the barrel facing him.

Wood or plastic? asked Bud after flipping up his visor and looking directly at the man’s weapon twenty feet in front of him.

The young man gulped, looked down at his weapon, and then blushed, looking very embarrassed.

It’s plastic, my son’s. So are all our weapons, he told the two unreal-looking soldiers wearing snakeskin green and see-through headpieces in front of him.

You’re risking your lives with plastic guns? asked Berry, shaking her head and flipping up her visor.

We are prepared to die for our cause, the young man replied simply.

I think you still might; you are in danger, replied Bud.

Kids, teachers, did any of these nasty terrorists hurt you in any way? shouted Berry, looking around at the hundreds of faces around the gym. She noticed that there were a couple days of supplies between the empty candy wrappers.

Nobody had the guts to reply, but over a hundred heads shook sideward that they hadn’t.

Molly Graham, come forward, and everybody on the right-hand side of the room, ordered Bud.

"Pete, you there?" he stated, flipping down his visor and using his helmet mike and thought to change to the necessary FBI channel.

"I’m listening," was the reply.

"Your granddaughter is about to come out of the front door in front of a long line of kids and adult teachers. I suggest you tell the marksmen out there not to shoot. It wouldn’t look good on their résumés, and there are teachers in here, so don’t shoot the adults either, comprehend, amigo?"

"Bud, we have a situation out here," Pete replied.

"You tell the situation to get out of Dodge, Pete, or my team will start World War Three," Bud replied. And don’t let them near our bikes; they will self-destruct like the last time they tried to steal them. Kids coming out in sixty seconds.

"Copy that, Pete. We have several school buses ready for them."

"SWAT team vehicle one building distant from left-side gym building and creeping onto the school grounds. Want me to disable it, Commander?" Sergeant Smith asked.

"No, not yet. I didn’t wake up to do nothing. We might as well have some fun while we’re at work."

"G.O.D., these terrorists are unarmed," continued Bud after changing channels again. A bunch of kids, and no threat to anybody apart from themselves. It looks like you might need to help them out of here.

What is your first name? Give me your first name only, Bud asked the leader after flipping his visor back up.

Joe, was the reply.

Well, your accent is more southern East Coast than Hawaii, so I reckon you rednecks are not from here. That camera up there is still live, Bud added, pointing at a hidden camera in the ceiling structure. Has anybody seen your faces?

No, we made sure of that, Joe replied, pointing to his group all wearing balaclavas.

"G.O.D., we need extraction by air and a bus for twenty," Bud continued once he had snapped his visor down as Berry got the kids and teachers in two long lines and began to move out of sight. G.O.D., kill any video feed to outside. I want everybody out. Berry, get the other half standing and keep the lines moving until everybody is out. It was a pain, but he couldn’t speak to anybody outside his suit with his visor down, so it was snapped up and down every time he needed to change his speech direction.

Joe, you guys put your weapons down here, Bud added. If they’re all plastic, they’re of no use to you.

He watched as twenty plastic and wooden weapons began to form a pile in front of him. So far he and Berry had been in the building ten minutes.

"I have one helicopter drone twenty minutes