The 8-tol Project

"The 8-tol Project was an idea of my mind.  It was meant to be used for deep sea research, but the oil companies were the ones who flipped the bill.  So I caved to provide a good home for my family.  My name is Kal Rivera; top of class MIT engineering graduate, under contract with Exxon Mobil for its inception.

But, as all things that were created for something good, along come those drunk with power, who are entrenched and live lives of greed. They have an insatiable thirst for control, and use strong-arm politics to accomplish it and will always try to find ways to keep it.  And with such I crossed paths.

It's been three years since my first wife divorced me.  I had been working tirelessly on this project when my employer caved to such tactics, and through that, I was approached by top officials from the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) and the Deparment of Justice (DOJ).  Needless to say, I wasn't onboard with them using my patents and my tech for the purposes of building a maximum security prison for life and death-row inmates.  I declined to sell them or make them anything, especially engineering drawings.  Michael Fitzhugh, Dan Shue, Mark Rice, and Jerry Vaughn were not happy with me.  I knew trouble was coming.  I started taking steps and being as covert as possible, but I wasn't fast enough.

Unrelatedly, my wife, Cindy, who had been a partner with me in the creation of the drawings and had creative input, had begun a simple and targeted campaign to change the policy of the way the kids were received at the local elementary school.  However, the school did not want to change it, nor accommodate.  After a feeble attempt to bring it to a public notice, the school's principal issued a "soft threat."  It wasn't long after that a scandal arose, and suddenly I was the target.

They saw their opportunity and pounced on the situation, separating me from my family using threatening and coercive tactics.  The wife fell right in step.  I suppose she was afraid, and fear makes some people do stupid things.  But I was untouchable.  Nothing could be brought forth to make a case. Everything was a fabrication.  So they worked on her and we were no more.  After about six months, I picked up the pieces of my life and moved on.

It was a setup.  A slow brewing setup.  Having left the project and taken my intellectual property with me, it seemed their interest was haulted.  But it only seemed that way.

I came to terms with my situation and found another love.  My Ukrainian queen; kind, happy to be with me, a big beautiful smile, long legs, a fit frame standing at 5'5, long chesnut hair, and bright grey eyes.  We were together for two and a half years before trouble found me again.  The ADC thought they could do it without being noticed.  They bought my design through proxy, as the x shared the patent, but before they could unveil their plan to the world and get filthy rich, they had to get rid of me.  They did all kinds of things to try to get me, but I was an idiot in legalese and common law, the real law of the land, was my escape.  There was nothing they could do.  But they were desparate.  An unforeseen variable crept up and landed me right into their hands.  All things happen for a reason.

My new wife, Julia, was working for a bio-pharmaceutical company in Corpus Christie, Texas.  With all the confusion on the lies and conspiracies of yet another pandemic, we knew exactly what this company was trying to avoid.  Being blamed for killing people.  They did not want to adhere to the new premixed solvents government was pushing for them to use.  The governments of the world had come under one mind.  An A.I. mind.  So the company itself had been under investigation by it, and the FBI had contracted to send their private operatives undercover for about a year.  They weren't investigating.  They were trying to plant evidence.

One night, she did not come home.  Knowing what I know of the snakes that reach seats of power, we practiced over and over little subtle things to do or say to make each other aware of any danger of the like.  She called me later than usual that night.  She said she was going to be working late, but she gave me the key phrase, "Don't go shark fishing tomorrow.  Its going to be raining."

I still remember every detail of that night.  Now I sit in solitary confinement awaiting final judgement.  I've been in this 8x8 metal box for the last five months.  I've already begun to forget what the sun looks like.  Many I've heard off themselves in the first two months.  But those are they who deal with inner demons and a true guilty conscience.  Not me.  I'm comforted a little with the occasional through-wall conversations. Mostly them talking. And I'm surprised at the amount of cigarettes, deadly cell-created drugs, porn drawings and rip-outs, and really awful escape plans on toilet paper that get passed around in here.  But My mind is ever reliving that night, steady on my wife and our son.

That night, I arrived by flycar and told my son to stay put and out of sight.  I walked in and found a man trying to rape her.  I had the element of surprise and was able to knock him down.  I saw the FBI badge and I knew.  I set her free and we made a run for it, but he shot at us.  I shoved my wife out the door and ducked behind a desk.  She was clear from fire.  She turned around, but I signaled her to keep running.  The agent was coming fast, but at close range, I was faster.  I rose up as he arrived and we exchanged grappling moves.  I wrestled the gun away easily, but he knocked it out of my hands.  He had another under his arm, and he was going for it, but I lunged kicked him in the chest, sending him through the 32nd storywindow, plummeting to his death.

Julia did not go far.  She would not leave without me, she said.  We made our way to the flycar, and we encountered four other police officers who shot at us first.  So I didn't hesitate to break their limbs to escape, putting them in the hospital with career ending injuries.  I got my wife to the flycar where our two year old son was waiting.  I helped her load in when officer Ingleman showed up.  He had a gun on me.  I knew Officer Ingleman.  He was a friend.  He knew us.  Because of that, he allowed my wive to load up and leave.  If he were any closer, I would have broken his bones, too, but he asked me if I was still a man of faith.  I am.  So, I didn't try to escape myself, and I watched my wife and son disappear into the night over the Gulf of Mexico.

That day had arrived for me.  I hear the footsteps of several guards and the clanking of heavy steel chains.  Inmates hoot and holler.  It has been five long months.  I was afraid, nervous, and strangely excited, as I haven't really spoken to anyone face to face except Ingleman, who visited occasionally trying to decipher my wife's location from me, and a guy named Tank next door, who was completing his final days of a 20 year sentence for manslaughter.  My heart was racing when they stopped outside my cell, and the door is opened."

Kal is given a pill to drink.  It knocked him out.  He awakens strapped to a chair, bound by prison chains and gagged with a special mouth cover; deemed too dangerous to even speak.  He is wheeled in before a woman judge.  Everything seemed surreal.  The gloomy setting of the court.  Everyone was acting; playing a role, it seemed.  A virtual jury. The voice of the judge is drowned out by the thoughts in his mind.  Thoughts of escape.  Thoughts of responding, but he can't.  Thoughts of Julia, and finding her.  Trying to remember her face from those moments of deep intimacy.  The knock of the gavel echoed in his mind and he tries to talked, but they will not let him.  They wheel him back out and onto a rooftop tarmac, where they stand him up and load him into a fancy flylimo.  It is auto piloted.  The destination, the 8-tol of the South Pacific.

The thing birthed in his mind is now the thing they will use to silence him so they can keep the profits and maintain their power.  But Kal engineered it.  The glare in his eye when he realizes where he is being sent to is obvious.  He knows the way out, but he also knows they put great white sharks to block it.