Preface

This book is a work of fiction. It uses many historical events, news articles, and company names to build a time line necessary for projection forward. Without using many of these actual names and quotes, it would be difficult to build the sense of realism that gives credibility to the outcome. There is no slander or malice intended. Indeed this book is intended to be a wake-up call for both an industry and a country.

Follow the journey of this book and look for a way out, not for yourself, but for all of us.

Spine of Water Reed

 

It’s not every morning you wake up with armed men kicking in your door and rushing into your bedroom, but that’s certainly how this morning started. All because he really wanted a new computer. Not just a new computer, the best system Dell was shipping. But that want was satisfied over a decade ago. Today, he couldn’t even sell that computer on eBay. Today, it was a trip with a bag over his head, wearing handcuffs to an interrogation room.

He had quite a while to think that morning. They left him alone for what seemed like hours. The stone room had no windows and must have been well below ground judging from the chill and dampness. Best not to think about wells, he told himself. The one overhead bulb didn’t seem to give off much in the way of warmth or comfort. Of course, the worst part about all of this was what was missing: No big mirror on the wall where people could watch from the other side. He had seen that on television shows. The fact it was missing was more unnerving than anything else. Whatever was going to happen here wasn’t supposed to have any witnesses. In truth, he wished the bag was still on his head.

Stop it! He screamed in his mind. Bad enough actually being here — don’t do their job for them. Somewhere outside of the room he could faintly hear a mosque calling worshipers to prayer. A good Muslim should be praying now, he thought. He had no idea which wall faced Mecca, but he knew a good Muslim would rather pray in the wrong direction than miss prayer. Calmly, without a mat, he prepared himself as best he could, knelt, and began praying.

Soon into his prayers the door to the room flew open. Obviously these weren’t good Muslims he was dealing with. Two different sets of hands grabbed him and slammed him down into the chair. A third man was already seated on the other side of the table. His casual attitude made it seem that he had been sitting there a while. Odd that Nedim had not heard the door open. The other man’s breathing was slow and relaxed. He must have been standing outside the door for a while, because it was a full three flights of stairs to this room. Nedim remembered that much. One of them went up and the other two down. The exact order of up and down staircases was escaping him at this moment for some reason, though.

The two men who put him into the chair were still behind him. He couldn’t see them, had no idea what they were wearing, but knew they hadn’t left the room. Being a computer consultant helped him reason that much out. That job just didn’t do him much good when it came to avoiding being here in the first place.

Reason, what a fine word. The word most people who don’t understand logic use. Nedim had spent four years at university, studying logic and software design, and learning programming languages. He was supposed to be good at what he did, yet here he sat. He had no illusions as to why he was here, but he had to play the fool for a while.

 
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You are reading a special promotional version of “Infinite Exposure” containing only the first 18 chapters. This is the first book of the “Earth That Was” trilogy. You can obtain the entire trilogy in EPUB form from here:


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