Why Should I Die? Chapter 3

  “OK, let me begin by saying, today I will choose who will be my successor after I recite the traditional autobiography verbally to you about the creation of my company, my accomplishments, and my final goals in life.”

  Mr. Paley, laying rotund in his hovering lounge chair, tries to lift his palatial head to verbalize for the first time in ten years. With the help of medical nanobots inside his system, he clearly states, “How dare you assume that you have the authority to hand pick a successor! Hasn't the law, for the last generation infallibly state; a majority vote of two thirds of the Board of Trustees is needed to confirm any appointment?”

  Chairman Jo clearly looks at the roundness of the head and torso of Charles Paley with disgust. Himself, Peter, Peter's Secretary, and their extended families have all kept up with at least a resemblance of a physical fitness program. Or should it be said, use their arms and legs twice a day instead of Nano-technology for all their daily functions.

  Except for the three original Founders sitting here, to Jonas, all these Trustees and so-called Royal Families all look like the old “Cattle for Meat” programs of the early Twenty-first Century. Where, as a boy, he toured a farm for the first time, finding out that each animal was born, raised, and died in a seven foot by eleven-foot cage. Never leaving that small piece of the World. Fattened and slaughtered for the tables of man.

The rest of these fools only know the computer playground in their heads which keep their brains sharp, while Nano-technology helps to keep their senses stimulated, and their bodies alive! If the lower class majority could only see who really ruled their daily lives, instead of the holographic mind imprints they were fed, would they not revolt from the shear fright of these blobs? Even though it would be doomed to failure and the sentence of death for those who would become Revolutionaries.

   The Nano-police were in the control of the Royal Families, and no one else.

  But Jonas thought for a moment. Relaxed and said, “You are so right Mr. Paley. Let us not quarrel over petty doctrine right now. I am more excited to see how you all feel about me after I reveal to you how I became so powerful.”

  The usual noise sweeps though the hall among the different groups again. With the chant of “show respect” rounding out the chorus of hissing.

  “Without further ado, I shall begin with an announcement.”

  Some of the Board Members use their eyes to watch the old man for the first time in years, while the majority teleconference through the communication implants inside their brains.

  With so many eyes closed amongst the Trustees, an observer looking at the men and women in the Board Room, could have imagined that they were all round mounds of flesh, with no limbs, pretending to be asleep on different formations of the classic floating lounge chairs.

  Peter is the only one with the expression of concern for his friend. Never before has he known Jonas to be so blatant with his words and how careless he is being politically.

  Peter thinks; it’s as if he is trying to incite the Trustee's wrath against him.

  “I would like to announce the completion of the Tempus Project. It has cost this company twenty-one billion Gold Units and twenty-two billion Silver Units to complete and all preliminary findings show it has worked.”

  The moans and groans coming from all the blobs were in unison. Even the obsequious brown-noses, who are already billionaires themselves, questioned his reasoning for such expenditures. Isn't the reason for having a business, is to make more money? To have more power over others? Are we not the chosen few?

  This final sentiment, resonated through all of them in unison!

  This time it is Mr. Chang who mentally speaks up, clearly recovered from his embarrassing ordeal of moments ago.

  “Mr. Jonas Van Hause.” He pauses here on purpose, so the others notice his attempt to address the Chairman as his peer, not as his leader.

  But the C.E.O. doesn't react to it, so Mr. Chang continues, “All of us here have admired your great work over the years. From your humbling beginnings as a Pizza Beard maker, to becoming powerful and rich, it would seem, overnight.”

  “When you were almost destroyed politically, by your idealistic evacuation attempts you made before Paris, London, Moscow, Beijing and New York were simultaneously vaporized by terrorists.” Admiration is hinted at in Chang's next thoughts when he mentally transcribes his message to the others, “How, corporate espionage, helped you in determining that the Muslim Nation was being blamed unreasonably and the real culprit were the North Koreans, is simply amazing!”

  “Now with the World behind you, you created your own army to police the actions between Nations. You stopped all the fighting between the militant Empires during this time. You opened trade routes between all the Countries of the World, rich or poor, so they had no reason to go to war.”

  “If that wasn't enough to hail you as the greatest individual the World has ever known, you aggressively started this Company's Space program, to further its stranglehold on the Earth's economy.”

  “This Corporation, on your insights alone, built the first city on the Moon for Medical and Technological advancements.”

  “To your most lucrative discovery of all, which made each man and women in this room billionaires, several times over. The gold and silver deposits along the lava tunnels inside of Mars.”

  “That alone made this Company more powerful than any Nation ever conceived in this World of ours. The boom to this Corporation and to the Earth's economy at that time was enormous.”

  “During the Dark Forty Months, right after all the food crops failed Worldwide on the day of the second most grievous terrorists attack History has ever seen, and as one thousand deaths per day were piling up from starvation, against the Board's wishes you were willing to feed billions of people for free with the synthetic organic food products this company developed. I can now see why.

Your mastery of the situation was based on future needs. Every Country in the World now has to buy our synthetic food products because not one Nation can grow enough crops to feed the elite, let alone their populace.”

  “It was a wonderful business move on your part.”

  “Everything I've mentioned here, and there are so many more accomplishments too numerous to mention, have all been a great boom for the profitability for us and yourself.”

  “And still today you declare the Tempus Project complete. A project, which was voted on by the Board, as a waste of corporate funds and should have been dismantled as a business venture.”

  Now the longest pause anyone has mentally seen Chang make in his career engulfs their inner silence. In all of their mind's eye, they are witnessing an old physically fit Chinese individual, dressed in traditional garb, arms folded across his chest, shaking his head back and forth. While the true Mr. Chang lays plumped up against his chair.

  With fervent emotion Chang declares! “Chairman Van Hause! You have wasted this company's resources to the brink of exhaustion if my sources are correct. No longer do our coffers have the reserves to rebuild our space program to explore further into the Solar System, to find new mining opportunities.”

  “Every Scientist, every Physicist, every Mathematician has stated that time travel can only exist one way, and that is forward with the type of technology we have today. Still you persisted on wasting valuable resources in trying to go back in time!”

  In everyone's mind, Trustee Chang acts as if he is looking around the room when he relays his thoughts to them, “This I must regret and I'm sure many of these Trustees do also.”

  “Because of your past glories, all of us it seems here, may have permitted you to waste these funds without the proper checks and balances to run a profitable organization.”

  Now with anger he relates to them all, “But now I believe you are making outlandish statements to hide your first glaring failure!”

  Noise roars throughout the massive Chamber room as even his closest followers become agitated.

  To Peter, it sounds like a farmer’s pig sty. The kind you see in those old virtual reality mind chip movies, with all the barking and snorting going on. Yet, his friend is just sitting there, smiling.

  “Chairman Van Hause,” says the confident Mr. Chang. “I now accuse you of falsifying documents and presenting those documents to the Board as evidence that your Tempus Project has succeeded! I ask for your immediate resignation and to hand over the control of Hause Technologies, Products, and Permits to Life Corporation to Trustee Charles Paley until a suitable replacement can be voted on!”

  The verbal and mental roars of approval echo the chamber hall.

This is,

Believing In Time Travel,

As We Travel In Time,

We Get Older,

Jim Hauenstein,

And,

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.”
- Steven Moffat -

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

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Only five more Chapters to rewrite.

Next Thursday,

Chapter Four.