Chapter 1 Beacon (Partial)

The strong pungent odors of fear and desperation always seem to accompany the struggle for life. A faint scent of those most ominous odors interrupted Dr. Vanessa Keaton’s focus as she caught sight of a garter snake that squirmed its way down into a sealed concrete drain. The snake was hopelessly trapped. “Poor little fellow,” she thought as a smile eased across her face. A smile brought on as she acknowledged within herself the reality that this creature’s fate is now in her hands.

Dr. Keaton mouthed aloud, “Well, today is your lucky day my friend.” She leaned over the drain’s opening and with one quick motion, grabbed the snake behind the neck and lifted it to freedom. The snake’s body twisted and coiled around her wrist as she took control of it with her free hand. For the moment, she felt a liberating sense of selflessness – having saved the snake’s life and thus prolonging its existence a little longer.

Dr. Keaton watched as the snake slithered away into a thicket of weeds growing beneath the barbed-wire fence bordering behind the drain.  Her vision lifted across the verdant field only to be embraced by the innocent gaze of a little freckled-face Amish girl. The girl, standing statuesque, had been watching her from a distance. Dr. Keaton had not noticed the girl until now.

“What answers do you have for me today little girl? Will you help me solve this vile riddle?” thought Dr. Keaton. The little girl stood motionless peering back at Dr. Keaton for a moment.

“I know that somewhere in you are my answers. I just have to find them. I know this to be true.”

Dr. Keaton turned away as she refocused her attention on her work. The little girl also turned and ran back in the direction of a large farmhouse. She was responding to a woman’s voice calling, “Rebecca… Rebecca. It’s time to come home!” “Perhaps her mother,” thought Dr. Keaton.

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In the midst of our thriving civilization, a paradox now exists that presents all humanity with a crystal clear picture of our own mortality. The year is now 2144 and we are experiencing a negative population increase that is growing exponentially. This occurrence was, at first, attributed to the efforts of the Planetary Alliance Population Control Initiative to influence limited population increase. After a closer look, it was determined that far less people being born than are dying is a direct result of a condition called “cellular decomposition” or Degenics.

Something was causing the recipe for reproduction in our DNA not to work. This mystery eluded the scientific community for two decades after its discovery. Medical Science estimates that the condition may have existed for at least a decade or more before then.

With such a calamity at hand, a grim reality had to be faced; we are now fast approaching the end of a great and glorious civilization. The pessimists and bean counters of our great societies immediately went to work counting down the days when we would breathe our last breath. The more optimistic members held fast to the belief that life will find a way. It always does – doesn’t it?

The scramble was on to expose the phantom that was out to destroy the greater society – degenics. Throughout the Planetary Alliance, researchers and experts of practically every discipline worked tirelessly to determine the elusive cause of this problem. It seemed that every effort to remedy this condition came up empty. Not only were they unable to determine the cause, but all efforts to retard its advancing effects were benign. The greatest minds of this generation were baffled by these grim realities. That is, until a team of neuro-scitechnicists from The