Chapter 1

Have you ever felt the weight of the world from your personal decisions on your shoulders? The guilt for the destruction of a whole race is on mine. You see ... I was the one who genetically engineered the viral components to wipeout a specific segment of one race on planet Earth.

Let's go back a little to give some perspective and maybe you will not judge me as harshly. I was a young child on September 11, 2001. My mom and dad daily went to a skyscraper complex called the World Trade Center in New York. One of my parents went to tower one and the other to tower two. After this long I really do not remember who went where, or for what; and does it matter now? Both had left early that morning driving to work looking forward to their day. They both loved their jobs and had told me many times. They both had jobs that required a lot of overtime; so I had a nanny. My nanny was watching the news and I was finishing up some school work my kindergarten teacher had assigned the previous evening. I was too busy to complete it as we all went out to eat and have a good time. Ironically, it was located at the "Top of the World" Restaurant at the World trade center. The meal as I look back on it now was a dreamy kaleidoscope of food that passed in review in front of me. The food proceeded onto my plate to be diligently eaten before the next offering arrived. All three of us were stuffed and had a perfect time together. This had happened as my birthday was the next day September 11th. Since both of my parents had to be gone for the majority of the day it was decided to have my party one day early. The laughing and the good time is all I remember now. This is tempered with rage that even now overwhelms me when I think what my parents had to endure later on that morning of my birth.

A call came in just as my nanny and I were going to leave for my school about 9:00 AM as I recall1. I have a late start at 10a.m. to my school day and it was only one-half day to top it off! The call was highly unusual. Normally, all calls were routed directly through to my mom and dad at this time. The only reason for this call I had immediately ascertained was my parents calling to wish me a Happy Birthday as they had left too early for me to be awake. I was shocked to hear my mothers' voice crying from the phone. The nanny was a steady and reliable person. Ms. Goodson. Ms. Goodson's hands began to shake and see peered over her shoulder at me and asked my mom in near tears what she wanted her to do. A conversation was quickly relayed with a lot of "yes's", then, I was handed the phone. This was another first. I rarely handled this piece of equipment. I had only spoken to distant relatives once or twice in all of my 6 years. My mother's voice was quavering and I was told that she loved me and that she would not be seeing me again. She related in a now firm voice that something had hit the building where she worked. The fire she said was so hot that the stairwells were like blow torches. She was going to try to climb up to the top of the building and hope that a helicopter would be able to pick her up.

Ms. Goodson in the interim had turned on the TV. We were seeing the World Trade Center being hit by an Airplane! It slid into the building as if were a knife into butter; then came the horrible roar and the falling debris. Bodies and building parts among the things fell in a cascading stream down into the street below. It looked like a show and seemed surreal if it were happening to another person or was cartoonish that might have been exciting, but I knew that those figures were real. That building was where I had gone countless times to see my mother at her work. Now all I could think about was my mom trapped somewhere. She was trying to climb up to the roof in an effort to escape the flames and smoke.

My father called on the heels of my mother's hanging up. He told me he was going to try to go over and help my mom in whatever way he could. He was just getting on the elevator that would take him to the lobby and then he had a two minute run time to tower one. My dad could make it in one minute. He had been held though by security and a locked elevator. My father cannot use stairs as he is wheelchair bound.

As it turns out he never got the opportunity to leave the elevator car. As it passed the middle of the building the second plane came out of nowhere and stuck his building. The time was 9:56 I remember looking at the clock just as the second plane sliced into it. It did even more damage than the first. The pieces that flew out tore a hole so large that it was visible from our apartment. The second building struck, where my father was fell first. I knew my father had never exited the building. We had once timed the elevator from his floor to the ground. It took approximately 1 minute. It was less than 30 seconds from when the aircraft had slammed into the doomed edifice. I could see people on the other building running away from the side of the first tower to shield themselves from the debris and fuel. Then the blue sky became so clouded that nothing could be seen. I felt in my heart a tearing. I knew that my father had left me. The announcer on the TV was howling in despair. The smoke and flames were still pouring out of my mother's tower. The firemen were trying to fight the flames and the fuel that was flowing down the building. I later learned that all those who were in that tower died trying to save people in that tower. Those firefighters and police have always been heroes of mine since then.

We later found that my mother had passed out from the flames. It was recorded by a passing helicopter. I could see her dress and suit. She was slumped against the side facing the tower my father was in. Her hand reaching out in an effort to go to him I guess. Then the unthinkable happened. The second tower collapsed at 10:28.

Fast forward to the scene; the days became weeks, and weeks became months. My future was set. My parents had set it up that if anything ever happened to them I would be educated and taken care of until I reached the age of 25. Then I would inherit the family fortune. I did not even know that we had money. Let alone as much as I was now the beneficiary of. Over 3 million dollars were held in trust for me. Life insurance policies of over 6 million were on both of them. We had always lived fairly simply. We had an apartment and I had some of the new stuff but not everything. My father drove a clunker car that he seemed to lavish with care. That was the only way that we traveled other than the public transport system. In all of this I would have traded it for my parents; every dollar of it and all of the later education. That was not to be though. My nanny took care of me in same manner as she always had. Only now she lived with me full-time. I now had appointments with doctors to see about how I 'felt'. I eventually told them after my act was completed. I missed my mom and dad. I hated those who were responsible for taking them from me so early. I had fixated upon taking the fight to them. I made an agreement with myself to get them back to have them suffer as they made me suffer. The doctors though never knew this. I understood that they would have held me back and tried to change me to temper my anger. I wanted to keep that anger and stoke it to a fire so hot it would melt those who had done this cowardly act as surely as the building had burned.

Fast forward to 2034; I am now 39 years of age. I am an award winning scientist who has won the Nobel Prize in science, and gathered many fellowship and directorships under my belt. I spurned them one and all. I only took those that would advance me to my goal. My goal was the destruction of those who had killed my parents; in a word, those who believed in Islam and its teachings. I knew that I could not get them all, but would target what I did to its center. The third world nations of Iran and Iraq, Egypt and Syria, and the upper part of Africa would be getting what they deserved.

As the director of a top secret lab on an Island in the Atlantic I was isolated from all outside influences and distractions. I had to arrange time to work on my project. I was actually here to work on military grade vaccines that would inoculate our troops in the event of chemical attacks from our many enemies. We had access to the most powerful biological agents known. From gas to liquid, to explosive were housed on our tiny island. There was one section only the highest of clearances allowed access to. That was the viral/infective/disease lab. We had Ebola, H5N1 or Bird Flu, we had mosquito carried virus such as the Dengue virus which is transferred to humans through the bites of infective female Aedes mosquitoes; Yellow Fever. In this lab was super strains of Rabies, Hantavirus, measles, Hepatitis B, C; influenza, Rotavirus, and multiple forms of HIV.

I was using the lab as my personal station to eliminate Muslims and Islamic peoples. I have been asked if I felt that this was killing many for the sake of the few. I do not. I reasoned that with them out of the way the crises of the past would ease and gas and oil would flow, war would slow and the arms races would end. I have since thought how naïve this was. Then though it was all a part of my plan and nothing was to stand in its path.

I had given the staff an early day off. It was a three day holiday to boot so I had the island all to myself. Only the automatic sentries were active. They were of course set to the highest levels. Anytime the base security was gone they were active and I had to be careful to stay within the bounds of my labs. No issue there. I only wanted to do my work. I was genetically altering DNA to match that of Middle Eastern peoples. I wanted extra insurance that it would go farther so I created a back gene. This was an antidote. It had only one purpose-to infect those not targeted by my virus and add to their DNA/RNA structure.

We have twin spiral of genetic material that make us who we are. This spiral has been unwinding for some time as evidenced by the examination of corpses taken from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. We were getting too diverse. More diseases were cropping up. They were nasty and medical science was no longer able to fight them with antibiotics. My role was to save those who were fighting on the front lines in situations where they would come in direct contact with person who were less fastidious in their personal habits due to the poorer conditions. That is what the team was working on. I had my goal too.

I took the common DNA/RNA pairing and added through gene splicer's and manipulators using multiplexed super computers a second set of DNA within the original making a new strand that was now a four-plex strand. The strand was stable. It was so stable that the illnesses were ineffective against it; even at the most rudimentary levels. I thought that even death might now be 'cured'. This was not in my goal though. I was saving those who I deemed needed to stay safe. The end outcome though as it unfolded was both beautiful and horrifying.

There could be no tests done as long as the base crew was on site. That is why I sent them away. I did this in a way that they did not know the others had left. There was always supposed to be a group of scientists on site as well as military guardians. I had cunningly removed them by switching orders and dates to have it appear that others were covering for them and they had the free time accrued to leave this little paradise.

The last boat was gone and the base was secured and on lockdown on my authority. I raised the threat level internally to a 1. This meant that there was a possible loose viral agent on the island and no one was to leave or come back to the island until the all clear was sounded. The trouble I had was inserting an order to stand down by the NEST team. They would have come in and neutralized the whole island to eliminate the threat. To them it was signaled as a scheduled test. The satellites flying overhead were busy trying to see what was happening on the island, but there was nothing. No people, no animals. Everything appeared normal. The labs were shielded and bomb proofed. I was now on my own. The years of hard work were coming to fruition. I had my strain of four strained DNA and the lethal virus that would spread throughout the hated Islamic world. My time had come. I only had to launch the probe into the target area and it would be done. I loaded the rocket and sent the modified high orbit drone on its way. Now was no time to relax though. I had sent out many of these drones to gather information on different aspects of the world. This operation now cloaked this important launch. Even the Defense nets of the Middle East did not so much as burp as the drone flew over. They too had learned that this fly-over was only gathering air samples or other data. In its wide flying path before it finally ran out of fuel west of Mindelo Island. It was put out that the engine had failed and the data lost. I had actually programmed a self-destruct into the flight controller when the probe had reached the Atlantic Ocean. The parts of the probe were self-immolating so no country who happened to find a malfunctioning probe would get information that we did not want them to have. This aided now in the destruction of the modifications that I had made to this probe. It might have been hard to explain the need for liquid aerosol spraying apparatus on a gathering type probe.