Tracking him down wouldn’t be easy, and walking wasn’t really Shiver’s forte. “Take the Androiven. The Androiven bus will be here at the stop soon it’ll take you all the way to the five-minute, automatic rail,” said Aryan dryly.
“That would mean I’d have to walk to his house all the way from the bus stop though,” said Shiver aghast. "Hey, the particular brand of computer-controlled, Androiven cars we bought may be malfunctioning, but we could just buy a new one!” she said.
“Considering you and Emanuel designed the program of those cars I’m surprised they’d malfunction their usually perfect. I guess even genius programs have their off days or maybe Emanuel secretly planted another bug in the system and that’s why it keeps suddenly stopping and refusing to start but only in non-dangerous places like driveways and deserted roads cause he thought it was funny? His humour is bizarre not like mine or Mist’s at all” she smirked. “Or we can take the aviator car, the flyer you got us last year, it’s awesome.”
Aryan rolled his eyes at her. “It’s also highly impractical there are no special roads built for airborne motor vehicles yet, and safe ones would be very expensive to build and would be a waste of money in these tough economic conditions and when money is already lavished away on trivia especially when there’s clean-energy, electric cars available and you own one it’s just malfunctioning as all complex electronics’ do”
“Since you couldn’t fly the aviation car on regular roads you would only be able to fly it out of our garden and take it to the aviation fields later if you want to play with it in a public spot. I’m acquainted with you youngsters' habit of thinking no one should walk in this day and age but were not quite there yet dear.”
“Sad, you won’t even walk to take down a man who helped albeit indirectly caused hundreds of deaths through people losing their jobs and homes and dying from lack of treatment as hospitals were overcrowded and made probably thousands of people's lives’ more miserable? And besides Laurie is otherwise occupied”
“W-ell only if there wasn’t an alternative mode of transport,” said Shiver.
“Neoliberal capitalist pig so not worth a 20-minute walk,” chimed in Mist laughing.
“More like 30 minutes if you count the walk up to the bus stop and the 10 or so minutes it’ll take her to find the place," Aryan admitted resignedly. Still, Franklin Roosevelt would be ashamed of you two.”
“Okay fine I’m off,” said Shiver petulantly “Hey Laurie will you buy us a new android- car, I’ll pay the dollars straight from Aryan’s bank account.”
Aryan frowned “You know I don’t really approve of you two spending all my money...”
After getting in the car and handing Laurie the address, Shiver wondered what the person she was after this time’s name was. All she knew was he was some sort of high-prestige land developer. She was told to keep a “special eye” out for some CEO of the largest, wealthiest bank in the world since the collapse of the others during the global recession. The bank's name was True Blue America, and it had branches all over the country and even in other parts of the world often under different names. It was notorious for its shoddy business investments, high interest rates, and poor treatment of both customers and employees.
For decades all first-world countries had been living utterly subordinate to finance capitalism where the banks were unregulated and all other aspects of government were influenced and bribed, even controlled by banks and the private sector.
Aryan always sounded super chagrined when he mentioned the big bailout of all the major banks 30 or so years ago. They had collapsed again some twenty years later and were not bailed out but companies like True Blue sprung up to replace them incredibly fast. Many of the high-ranked workers at the major banks all those years ago had gone on to after their retirement become high-ranking political figures in parliament.
These men, these government officials lobbied the democrats to change their vote against the wishes of the general public and support the bailout. This was why they had set up and invested in various Credit Unions and lending schemes where people lent money to each other to combat and someday replace the banks, Monovalent realm since his inception had a Freedom of Information Act ensure that government emails, budgets, military plans all were open to full public access and knowledge, and everyone had to comply as Monovalent would just release to the people publicly any classified information if it were attempted to be hidden.
Aryan’s Party had successfully taken over parliament in most first-world countries including Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, England, Japan, and Italy and even many third-world countries including Taiwan, India, Africa, Korea, Russia, and even China were now headed by members of the World United Party.
He had been assuming some of their debts and promising to create more jobs fix the economy and put money back in the hands of the poor via various benefits schemes. Aryan had since moved his campaigning to the world's superpower with its nuclear weapons and strong worldwide influence in America.
His party now had over forty million members in various countries and hundreds of thousands more party supporters and was growing. The unions were on his side too and he had already built schools roads and hospitals in various third world countries that his party now headed since his viral plague wiped out their corrupt governments leaving them in anarchy and for his people to step in and establish democracy, new businesses and wind and solar power and artificial bacterial-based energy and greener disposal units; spray irrigation, land treatment, and wastewater reclamation and reuse.
He, using a post-Keynesian economics system reinstated a closed economy. He established a huge social welfare and public sector and universal health care in these third-world countries helping create work and money. This led to a flourishing private sector of small businesses running shops, building homes, and providing clean energy for the growing middle class. Who had a growing number of unions, democratic voting systems, and minimum wage laws passed.
In places like Australia, a first-world nation, his party was restoring minimum wage laws and restrictions on the number of hours worked a day. Lowered taxes for the lower class and much higher ones for the upper class, a workable stimulus package and government-based financial handouts for those living in poverty and funding charities lowered interest rate, money to public school education, reinstatement of retirement homes and in-patient care facilities for the disabled and mentally ill, overtime, a restoration and pay rise for jobs in the public sector, house prices had fallen. People were spending money and small businesses booming.
Monovalent realms and his virtual technology and robot factories that made the androids were fast-replacing dangerous, hard, or tedious jobs, and jobs in wind and solar power and water desalination plants, animal sanctuaries, breeding programs for endangered species were springing up in third and first-world nations alike.
They were all headed by people associated with his party and Monovalent/Aryan industries who had bought out, taken over, or destroyed almost all the other major companies worldwide both large and small. They also made voting mandatory in all countries they wielded full political power in.
He and his party faithful however had thus far had limited luck enacting political changes in the States whose system remained stagnant despite all the major corporate businesses they owned and controlled over there. So, he and some of his party faithful, including Mist and Shiver had moved to an enormous seventeenth-century, seventy-bedroom, sandstone manor in the States to help run their American candidate against the Republicans and Democrats.
The golden mansion had the same enormous winding towers and staircases as Gray Manor and was reminiscent of a castle once again. Their new manor's flowered, forest-like garden boasted wild red robins, foxes, and bluebirds. Darkling thrushes, hummingbirds, deer, and their speckled little fawns. Monarchs flighted over crawling raccoons and brush-tailed squirrels.
It was highly unorthodox to be the leader of several different countries but in these times of recession, depression, and despair for the poor and many of the now dwindling middle-class folk, he was a shining beacon of hope against the major parties who had failed them in the past. With the armies of several different countries at his disposal and his biological warfare weapons and billions of dollars by his side.
Democracy in the USA Aryan said cynically our glorious superpower hanging by now by rather fragile tethers truly fell the day of the Wall Street bailout. Another banker she was after now worked in congress high up a senator, he and a very famous conservative politician Williams she was also after. She had photos depicting all their likenesses to know who to approach.
They had all put pressure on the government to continue mass middle-class, skilled, and unskilled immigration and to push child welfare and disabled care away from the public sector and into the hands of families and the privatized charity sector. Which used ample government funds despite private being in the name. All to gain access to land as no public funding meant disabled/mental health hospitals and child welfare facilities (such as orphanages) were shut down. Which of course left developers open to purchase the large, empty lots of land they had occupied at a bargain price.
With the help of some of the senators and even the president’s campaigning to the Democratic Party to vote their way, Williams managed to pass legislation granting him permission to convert several beautiful old federal parks and state buildings into ugly, little apartments to meet immigration demands.
He also was after land that were wildlife preserves including an area where an endangered species lived and risked becoming extinct by having its habitat destroyed. He also rigged up new; large but concrete gardenless houses that were square and often painted garish colours like bright powder blue, pastel pink, and slimy light green and looked like they were made out of stacks of cheap cardboard cubes.
Politicians did not out rightly say that high immigration levels for a constant supply of cheap labour were the motivation of course, they argued it would help with economic growth and the progressives were also for it, based on some ridiculous human rights arguments.
First, the classic multiculturalism tolerance speech basically if you’re against us tearing down our national and state parks and old buildings and trees for land developers' profit, you’re a no-good racist. Mental and disabled homes were all being closed and shifted to outpatient services thanks to right-wing think tanks and left-wing navies working hand in hand. Many of whom Shiver and Mist had viral plague-killed and punished. This claim that the disabled were being treated like second-class citizens kept locked away and they “should” be allowed to attend regular school and have careers and live in the normal world was a misnomer… a mere fallacy of an argument.
Yet these claims that children and the disabled were being abused in these institutions were strongly touted. So soft-hearted and equally soft-headed morons listened and let the politicians implement changes to shut them all down. Restabilizing those places was just one of the ways Aryan had created more jobs in other countries such as Australia and eased the load on hospitals, which were often crowded up with disabled and mentally ill, and elderly patients who should have been in special care facilities.
Shiver knew from academic research Aryan had shown her that children were twice as likely to be abused and end up on the streets if they were raised in foster homes as in orphanages. This was because of the isolation and lack of checking up on foster parents. The money paid to them to foster these kids was also an issue as people were more likely to be in it for the money.
As for the disabled, the charity sector was often broke due to a lack of donations so no help there. Employers did not want to hire disabled people, and they generally ended up getting shifted from job to job and never finding stable work. Down’s syndrome sufferers were made to clean up the mess, at fast food chains for minimum or even below minimum wage. The employers treated them like dirt, sometimes even abusing them. The claim they would function better in a regular school was probably the worst though.
Research showed that in special schools many disabled children had friends and got on well with peers. In regular schools’ they were generally friendless. As well as Isolated, miserable, and bullied and there were stories regularly shown in the media of them being beaten by non-handicapped kids often several years their senior. A few of the kids who had committed these heinous acts and one teacher who turned a deliberate blind eye were now suffering from her virus-induced illness.
Special schools and in-patient institutions could work Aryan had said; they did in the private sector. Wealthy, physically disadvantaged kids were well-cared for and taught to the best of their ability in these places.
The private sector when administrating to the needs of its own elite class performed well. If public care facilities were better funded, including better building maintenance and better paid their staff (a well-compensated worker, is a happier more caring worker) there was no conceivable reason why public institutes for orphans and the disabled and mentally ill couldn’t work too. A lot of the old institutions were donated by wealthy people who had close family suffering from illness or disability.
Shiver knew like what happened back in her homeland Australia they would have wanted their buildings and land to continue to be used for that purpose not to create cheap housing infrastructure for an already overpopulated nation. Shiver also felt sad thinking of all those beautiful, old stone buildings torn down to make way for ugly little apartments. Not to mention the loss of all those trees. Shiver liked trees.
What piece of crap someone would lobby for such a thing? She thought to herself. She did not know already as she had yet to look at the piece of paper with the name spelled out by Anne-Marie in small spidery letters. Bored she pushed her head out the car window (Laurie had agreed to drive her after all) and stuck her nose up snooty private school style at a group of teenaged pedestrians in fancy red and blue uniforms with a black blazer.
The developer's name was Jonathon Alexis. On the list as per usual were all the big-name company owners (what was left of them) and right-wing even some left-wing politicians.
When they arrived at Alexis’s house it was in full swing of some billionaire-style party Aryan had found advertised on the Monovalent realm online news as being a celebration of Jonathon Alexis's son’s birthday. She was to pretend to be Carrie, Jonathon’s son’s young wife.
Alexis had dragged his entire family including his son’s new girlfriend to, naturally as a political stunt to show the public he was a true-blue family man in touch with your average Joe. If you discounted the fact that he worked for interests that turned average Joe into a poverty-stricken man living with his family out of his car as he can’t afford the payments on his mortgage.
Carrie wouldn’t be there because she was sick at home with the virus Shiver had infected her with. Carrie and Jack (Alexis son) had married recently there were photographs of her with Jack at some fancy millionaire hotel on their honeymoon and articles too and posing as her had of course been Aryan’s idea.
Since Shiver had control over the virus, she could influence it to multiply either more slowly or rapidly and to infect whichever part of Alexis’s body she preferred.
It could kill Alexis within a few days or even a mere hour if they engaged the virus’s flesh-eating properties. Therefore, living through the experience should he not listen to their reasoning was far from an issue she thought giggling with laughter.
Shiver set foot reluctantly on the asphalt and tugged at the annoyingly tight and shiny, fire-engine-red dress she was wearing. All of the women here from the wealthy, powerful men’s wives to the women who were influential and wealthy in their own right were dressed in hideous “new money” dresses. The women's dresses like their tastes, were gaudy and garish the very definition of ostentatious; ornate for ornate’s sake.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
They all sported pink diamonds and heavy, brassy jewellery and arrived in huge, beastly cars
Wearing a bright gold taffeta dress with a stiff, heavy, ruffled skirt made from satin or nylon she spied an unknown woman in her forties whose attire also included four-inch heeled sparkly, gold-coloured shoes.
Wearing a light, baby blue silk dress with lime green stripes and a heavy bronze-gold belt, Shiver also spotted the new environmental minister talking and laughing. She was an ambitious yet personality-less sycophant of a woman who sucked up obsequiously to politicians and anyone higher up the political ladder than she. She ingratiated herself with the wealthiest CEOs and board directors of the largest companies and slept around to get to higher parliamentary positions.
There was a bright, lurid candy-pink wraparound organza dress with sparkling sequins and an obscenely tight waist on a twenty-something with an unfortunate slight belly bulge. Another dark-haired lady in her thirties donned a shiny, satin dress that was bright lemon yellow and had a thick, puffy skirt that rustled irritatingly and clashed appalling with the woman’s yellowish olive skin and dark hair.
Shiver noticed Jack striding towards her dressed in ridiculous tight black jeans and groaned inwardly. The good news she reminded herself, was that there were many big-name politicians, corporate owners, and developers here so she could kill two birds with one stone.
One of the politicians they punished previously had been the tiebreaker in a parliament bill about eradicating methane from the water supply and making big companies accountable.
Back in Australia, there had been a similar tie-breaker vote on taking money from private schools (which received now 80% of all federal government funding) and giving it to the most run-down public schools, thanks to him the accountability bill failed.
Just as well they’d run the bill again three months later and Mist had metamorphosed him and managed to persuade his party to vote in the bill, to boost public ratings of the party which were at a dismal seventeen percent.
Mist had made the dormant virus within him active to keep him home that day, but when he told people he didn’t vote because he was sick at home that day Shiver sent his wife and servants into a virus-induced coma so they couldn’t be witnesses). They thought him crazy, possibly under the influence.
Puzzled and highly disturbed but not wanting to ruin public image with accusations of “insanity” he kept his mouth shut about the incident from then on. Mist had later disguised himself as this same man and then went on Virtualise TV confessing to a rather grizzly murder of a lover, he didn’t want his wife or the public to know of as it might damage his career. He was now in jail and dying as Shiver made the virus attack him just for further punishment in case he was released according to Aryan.
Another man who Shiver killed as Aryan dubbed a misogynist: a judge who let many prominent sex offenders and domestic abusers of the hook. Aryans had a particular vehement hatred of sex criminals and those who protected them. Shiver and Mist didn’t: they weren’t condoners or advocates they just didn’t think it particularly outrageous compared to other evils and didn’t care.
Another two judges one very conservative, the other politically” left-leaning, and both of whom worked in a privately run prison had died. One was deliberately putting people in jail for relatively minor offenses to rally up prison numbers as they got profits for every prison and needed a certain amount to keep the prison running like the business it was.
The other was giving light sentences and granting early parole to sex offenders and murderers claiming that if they “repented” they deserved a second chance. It was well-documented that many criminals committed or attempted to commit the same crimes again regardless of their claim they were a “born again Christian” or whatever.
Aryan would often comment wryly about what about their victims, releasing their perpetrators meant they didn’t get even a first chance. He was also an advent of multiculturalism and mass immigration and letting people maintain their “heritage here”. Which was fine if it referred to what you ate, and the language you spoke/clothes you wore within reason.
If a school/workplace requires a uniform however everyone must wear it no exceptions. If you want to be a doctor/nurse/teacher anything, a strong familiarity with English is required, you must learn the language to the standard the profession would require of anyone normally. Hospitals were rife with underqualified immigrant nurses and doctors with poor English skills who could not converse with patients effectively. A degree from a third-world country was of a much lower standard than one achieved in a first-world one so not forcing them to retake the course or do further study was ludicrous.
If keeping up your cultural heritage meant you would be behaving unlawfully such as eating dogs, marrying multiple wives i.e. bigamy, covering woman’s faces, marrying underage girls, killing unwed women for being deflowered, and beating/raping women it could not be tolerated, and he had let these people off with rather light sentences.
Aryan’s sum-up comment on this was “There’s a difference between being allowed freedom of expression and being above the law. If you want to be part of a country, you respect and obey its laws or are punished with no exception. We obey their laws (like not taking photos in public places and not eating cows' meat) when we go to their countries even if we find them silly.
The least they should be required is to do the same. With more wealth equity, crime rates will drop significantly, including drug dealing, murder, theft, and prostitution. Eventually, almost all class-based crime (which was much of it) could be abolished. Aryan was a strong believer in dealing with the root of the problem as well as the symptoms.
The crime aspect of immigration however was considered by Aryan to be only one offense; his real issue with “multiculturalism” was with the businesses who were putting constant pressure on the government to increase immigration levels higher and higher. Cutting jobs here and damaging the economy something dreadful as more and more people were thrown out of work as supply exceeded demand.
One man head of a famous airline industry, notorious for its high crash rates, outsourcing to poverty-stricken countries, and poor maintenance to keep fares cheap, Aryan had had Mist disguise himself as its CEO and admit to rape and also extortion of a wealthy late teenage girl. Shiver played the young victim girl. He was now in jail insisting he was innocent despite his written "confession."
Normally they implanted false memories so the people believed they had committed the crimes or done the acts Shiver and Mist performed while masquerading as them, but as an unusual form of punishment, they had let this particular man know he was “innocent” but could do nothing about it.
Two prominent figures in the mining industry who ran scare campaigns against carbon taxes suffered a plague-like virus-induced death.
A company whose computers had a nasty habit of exploding and killing or maiming anyone nearby had been exposed by his party and shutdown but the higher-ups including the entire board of directors in the company Shiver had infected them with the virus anyway as Aryan didn’t feel that to be adequate punishment.
The pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists who ran dangerous drug trials in third-world countries that would have been illegal in first-world countries and gave ADD and anti-schizophrenic drugs to five-year-olds and other people who didn’t need them were also deemed by Aryan corrupt and worthy of punishment and exclusion from their new world order.
They were all now violently ill from the drugs they prescribed, Shiver and Mist having managed to have the virus mimic the side effects they’d have in a relative but not fatal overdose e.g. extreme nausea, vomiting, dizziness, minor hallucination. However, Aryan hadn’t approved so reluctantly, they finished them off peacefully as Aryan wondered how they managed to yet again defy orders, and he set to program out the loopholes once more.
They weren’t supposed to be able under his programming to cause pain; the virus only caused minor discomfort before the coma and virus turned on a flood of natural painkillers, maybe discomfort and pain weren’t quantifiably different enough and the oh-so-clever AI gets around it that way, he thought.
Several companies and multiple billionaire tyrants notorious for using child labour, outsourcing overseas with horrendous conditions (numerous deaths, no fire exits), or bringing third-world, unskilled immigrants into the country and paying them next to nothing were broke. Shiver and Mist had disguised themselves as high-executive board directors in Mist’s case the CEO (both of whom they later kindly killed) and brought their company down from the inside. They then returned the bodies of the men (whom Aryan’s guard had kidnapped and held hostage until their company collapsed) to their homes dead of the viral plague.
It had been very difficult and they had needed to act fast, but with just the right shoddy business and stock investments, some shots of one of the board with a prostitute doing drugs, Another member accused by Shiver disguised as a fourteen-year-old girl of sexual harassment, and some very offensive “ads” (they offended the homosexual community a very powerful special interest lobby group) for the products the company marketed, which caused them to be boycotted they had succeeded. Aryan had successfully instructed them on just how to do it.
The mixing of techniques instead of just infecting/killing them all with the full-blown virus was because back in the days Aryan said they should “keep the virus on the low” as detectable in an autopsy, by symptoms and blood tests and would raise eyebrows if too many of his foes than would be true compared to rest of the populace succumbed to it They had needed to wait because Aryan said mixing the methods meant people were less likely to notice a pattern. This was unnecessary now though as had enough control to feel more secure even if came under suspicion. By attacking people’s reproductive organs so one-third of the population had been made infertile by the virus with them none the wiser.
Most important of all, Williams was here, a big competitor of Aryan’s, leader of the far-right conservatives, one of his Parties goals was to never let extreme or even center left-wing positions ever get through parliament and spread poverty and misery in the name of the Lord. He was particularly skilled at appealing to prejudices and slaying his opponents with artfully weaved ad hominem arguments.
He was on the list too but so far, she had never gotten a chance to get anywhere near him at any function or event. His death would throw Aryan’s opposition into chaos hopefully thereby losing them even more votes/support. The ads stating the fantasy roleplaying part of the virtualizer realm called the Monovalent’s dreamland simulations (or Monovalent realms for short) as the biggest event in all of history had not proved enticing enough.
They would all have joined normally of course but because Aryan the creator was a socialist it went against everything they stood for. She had even tried (metamorphosed as one of his friends) to persuade him personally to join with no effect. She would have delivered her conversion speech as well so she could cross him off the list and just kill him already but unfortunately, he’d been late for a meeting and had left before she got a chance. Infecting him was not the problem as most of the country had the virus lying dormant in their system it was only for Shiver to send signals to awaken it.
They took out the entire board at Starking’s and all their main shareholders who Monovalent had analyzed company records to track. Starking’s was a very large company that sold a variety of things clothes, books, kitchenware, food, toys, and electronics. They had sacked large numbers of their workers, then advertised for and rehired new staff at a much lower pay rate only for in a few years when people had forgotten the incident for the CEO to increase his yearly salary vastly. In hospital dying of the Shiverla plague was the fate of most people with shares in that company.
, The death by the mysterious viral pathogen of the health minister and some of the most prominent members of a corporation known for its factory pollutants causing cancer and blood and lung disorders in young children living near their factory was also her work They had then run campaign after campaign, and doorknocked to raise awareness and petitioned the media to run a news time expose on the cancers and illnesses caused by factory poison. This led to new tougher legislation laws on health and safety in the workplace brought forth by the Socialist, Unionist, and World United Party which was also vastly improving people's lives. They had also made it illegal for prisons to be privately owned they were the government’s responsibility once more.
The problem was, Aryan had a redemption policy for anyone who was specifically targeted. Actually, killing a particular someone off he said had to come only as a last resort. The deaths they caused were supposed to be randomized so they would be fair. Corrupt governments in third-world countries had had all their leaders and many of their upper-class die of this plague but many lower-class inhabitants too as they did breed like rats as Mist put it, to a frown from Aryan.
Besides a real virus would not pick favourites and this was about dealing with overpopulation to reduce our carbon footprint, not grudges. He said sterilization was also okay, because of those who survived a significant number would have suffered enough permanent damage to make them infertile in a real epidemic
That being said he conceded some people were so evil they would corrupt the new benevolent world as badly as the first therefore either needed to be redeemed or die. The Save Our Souls policy was a mere formality though. Even Aryan realized these people were unsalvageable and they would never change. It was merely something to ease Aryan’s soft-hearted guilty conscious something which Shiver lacked. Shiver knew full well that for their variant of communism to work those most deeply engrossed in capitalism could not be allowed to survive. If a disproportionate number of wealthy people survived due to better medical care Shiver would let Aryan mutate the virus, then infect them again to even it out.
The truth about the concept of random, killings was that it never worked in practice Shiver had already deliberately killed thousands of wealthier and neoliberal people in the name of Aryan’s political ideologies and hatred of the rich. She knew she would end up further killing millions as Aryan’s list of people too evil to be part of the communist/social justice revolution was rather high. Particularly since the upper class was largely obsolete in their relevance to society as a whole. Who needed masses of investment bankers? What relevance would many corporate owners, HR representatives, and stockbrokers even most lawyers have in a communist or socialist nation?
Good old Johnny didn’t even belong to Monovalent land realms, so he wasn’t even helping out with their party's funding. It was sad they hadn’t gotten him to join, thought Shiver maliciously since (Monovalent’s hellion realm generally turned people insane) All that aside she had two remaining options. The first was to persuade him to change his ways, monitor him then kill him at the first sign of any trouble.
Yeah right, a self-righteous speech from Shiver dressed as his daughter-in-law was hardly going to change anyone who gave bribes to politicians so they could tear down national parks and in William's case initially (before Aryan’s Party reinstated it)had most welfare abolished. He was also known for his extortion and shoddy dealings. He gave extensive real estate discounts to wealthy and influential people. This meant he could buy a new holiday home in Hawaii a couple of years earlier.
Drake was head of the real estate firm and he and an insurance company had been giving discounts in return for political favours to members of parliament for years he also had tight connections with the mining and nuclear industry. Many others did the same bribery tactics but these two had been caught by Mist and Shiver red-handed. Working undercover as his employees they found out it was something most of the employees knew but never discussed. They were exposed publicly when he was certain by Aryan and then Drake was killed by the viral pathogen straight after the news scandal... Drake's fondness for prostitutes and strip clubs had also put him high on Aryan’s list.
Aryan's party had also helped with parliamentary reform that abolished the private sector from taking over prisons now that was once again a job for the government and the public sector, and they helped with the campaigns that finally banned declawing and circumcision as mutilation. They had already tried scaring him straight by appearing in his house as apparitions via Monovalent’s holographic technology and telling him to be good or the “wrath of God” would fall upon him. He ignored them through and went and got anti-hallucination drugs. They then tried (appearance disguised) telling him the truth, about the virus, his last shot everything. He went and upped his medication.
Williams was a religious man but as with most religious advocates nowadays his ideas of it were vague. He did not attend church, could not have quoted any passage from the bible and a significant part of him didn’t believe any God or heaven existed. At the same time, he couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t any higher purpose or life after death and he reconciled this quizzical, cognitive dissonance in the simplistic, unconscious way the feeble-minded and undiscerning of mind do.
. Stage three was talking to him in a reasonable fashion masquerading as a close friend or relative. This was the official way they were meant to do it, Aryan didn’t approve of quote “scaring people straight” Monovalent however was always willing to lend a hand to divine and devious intervention. Option two was instead to, of course, kill him slowly by having the virus lying dormant in his system awaken and then slowly attack various body parts until he died. Monovalent realms were booming with rich douchebags at the moment, she had a while back managed to persuade 30% of the suburb of Roseland where ninety percent of them voted for Williams in the elections to join Monovalent realms one of the few places Virtualise realm wasn’t hugely popular on account of its owners left leanings.
This meant they were essentially helping fund Aryan's campaign and various charities as that's where the proceeds went. They didn’t like this of course but Realm technology was so popular not to have used it would have been even worse. Many of them were dead or dying as a result of the virus epidemic she’d created. As she was thinking all this, Jack had begun talking to her, calling her Carrie and snapping her out of her musings so she asked him where his father was.
“Over there,” he pointed to the buffet looking mildly disappointed.
“Hey Carrie hon,” said Jonathon cheerily as she approached him. “How’s my favourite little daughter-in-law?”
Shiver took a deep breath and launched into the speech Aryan had prepared for her. It was a very long-winded speech, and she sort of zoned out till she was delivering the last few paragraphs.
“So, if you truly love your son and your family and humanity you will act now to preserve it, for if you don’t it won’t just be trees, poor people, the lakes and animals suffering it’ll be your own grandchildren,” she finished. Jonathon’s face showed incredulity at first then reopened with stunned laughter.
‘Oh my God lefties and commies have got to her too. They have painted her red. Its strike of the 21st century, awoken hippies.” Twenty-four hours later Alexis was found dead in his home, another victim of this bizarre new viral strain with one of the last of his rivals departed domination and his regime was more than within Aryan’s grasp. Three months from now Mist would speak the words we did it Shiver the world is ours…
Emanuel watching through Monovalent fervently spoke; "old and decaying is man. All things to the barren billed, my faeytilled. They broke in Heaven, the cobblestone. Sibyl Farling you did death quell. Yet our victory could only occur in the brightly-wicked year of “a rose-mallow and a graveyard hallowed.”