An Unlikely Phoenix Read online

  An Unlikely Phoenix

  By Frank Zafiro

  An Unlikely Phoenix

  By Frank Zafiro

  © 2018 by Frank Scalise

  Cover Design by Eric Beetner

  As this novel is set in the future, all events are clearly fictional. All characters depicted in this novel are likewise fictional, including future fictional depictions of existing celebrities, whose words and actions contained in this novel are fictional and should not necessarily be construed as representing their current or past real life personas.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  An Unlikely Phoenix

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Part I: RYAN

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II: ALEXANDER

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part III: SOMETHING

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part IV: EVERY HUMAN HEART

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Also By Frank Zafiro

  About the Author

  For Malcom, that your world is far different than this.

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  Edmund Burke,

  Irish Statesman

  Author’s Note

  Regardless of what shelf (virtual or otherwise) you may have found it on, An Unlikely Phoenix is a difficult book to categorize. It is at once a near futuristic, dystopian sci-fi crime fiction thriller, a social and political commentary, and a satire. Above all, it is fiction, and so by definition, all of the characters are also fictional.

  This includes fictional, futuristic versions of real people. In this novel, these people may or may not resemble much of their current selves. Probably more may not than may. Likewise, you may or may not agree with their fictional depiction. You may be tempted to say, “So-and-so would never do that” or “So-and-so doesn’t talk that way.” And you know what? You might be right. But with regard to futuristic depictions and scenarios, I consider such statements to be in much the same league “that would never happen.” This is a fictional future in a work of fiction, so within that context, it could all happen, at least in this alternative, fictional world.

  So please remember that fact, in the event that your reaction is to be offended or angry. These characters are all fictional, even the future, fictional versions of actual people. If you don’t like what they say or do in this tale, you have several options. You may read on, and simply endure (which is most definitely my preference). You may stop reading (not my preference, but it’s cool if you do). Or you can write your own book (also cool) and in that book, people can act and events can go exactly as you determine.

  You see, in each of these instances, it’s your freedom of choice. We still live in a world and in a nation that has such freedom, and that is a glorious thing, is it not?

  Prologue

  They say the eyes of history judge harshly, and it is true. But it is also true that the eyes of history are always changing, and therefore what is seen – and how it is perceived – changes yet again. Immensely popular people in their own era are examined more objectively through the lens of time and distance and perhaps brought down to earth, while underappreciated figures are eventually given their due. And while the perspectives of each historian are colored by the era in which s/he writes, time and distance usually paint a balanced picture of persons and events in a way that is virtually impossible for most to see as they happen.

  The 2030s were, by all accounts and by any objective measure, a catastrophic period. Few historians, even the most stolid, would call that description hyperbole. The world teetered on the brink of utter annihilation, our collective toes over the edge of the abyss. One could easily argue that we toppled off that cliff, only to catch a hand on an outcropping of rock, before scrambling back to the top, not unlike an action movie (the non-interactional, visual medium that was a primary source of entertainment at the time).

  Much has been written of that period, including Daniel McCollough’s magnificent 2076 work Desolation Averted. The wars, the political maneuvering, and the sheer scope of human struggle of that decade have not been better captured so succinctly, so eloquently, or so completely. What McCollough writes about are events that are firmly engraved in the minds of any and all aware citizens of the world. The 2030s were a watershed moment in human history, rivaling the rise and fall of the empires of Rome or China, with the suddenness and the impact of the Second World War from 1939-45, and McCollough covers it brilliantly. I will not attempt to rival his work here.

  Instead, my focus will be on the events leading up to that monumental conflict, one which has dwarfed all previous conflicts in size and import. It is instead my intent to examine the late 2020s. Despite the fact that all of the seeds of what was later reaped were clearly sown in this decade, it is underrepresented in the field of academics. Some of this is due to the sheer volume of propaganda that an historian must sift through in order to find the objective (or at least less subjective) truths of what occurred. A totalitarian state is difficult to pierce from the outside, whether as a contemporary or when looking backwards across the expanse of time. The decades since have both served to open possibilities and to cloud facts, and so, while a fascinating period and a case study for human behavior, this era is less attractive to many historians and, frankly, to most readers.

  The average reader, even an intelligent one, seems to be more drawn to the compelling narrative that is the 2030s (and McCollough’s stellar prose only accentuates this tendency) than the more complex one of the previous decade. The wars of the 2030s, once engaged, shed much of the ambiguity of what led to the fighting on all sides, seemingly providing a clear picture of good versus evil, and that is a story that humanity has always embraced. However, a careful examination of the 2020s reveals as stark a division between what we contemporarily see as right and wrong as existed in the wars that followed. The division lurked beneath the immediate surface of a nation that had enjoyed a dominance not unlike that of Rome two millennia prior, only to ultimately suffer a fate not dissimilar.

  “The past is prologue” is a well-travelled adage, but here it is doubly true. When one delves into the question of how a world superpower – very briefly the sole world superpower – became a nationalistic dictatorship, the answer lies in the past becoming the present. In truth, the first and easiest parallel is the historical path of Rome herself in which a successful, longstanding republic was supplanted by a megalomaniacal leader who inspired his followers to unfaltering loyalty and replaced that republic with an emperorship that lasted another 400 years. Thankfully, the American dictatorship more closely resembled the brief tenure of England’s Oliver Cromwell than the Roman example. But if you were to say to anyone in the world as late as 1800 that the metaphorical phoenix of the Roman Empire would rise out of a small nation in the “New World,” a former colony which had only achieved its independence due to French intervention...well, you would have to forgive the look of utter disbelief that would meet your predi
ction.

  And yet, the United States rose to the status of world superpower and, once you correct for changes in civilization in the roughly thirteen hundred years since its western demise, mirrored the Roman Empire in a plethora of ways. Along with China, the United States between 1830 and 2030 is among the pantheon of truly powerful nations. And while the argument exists that Rome lasted almost eleven hundred years, it was at its zenith for only a portion of that time, and one must account for the speed at which the world changed (or did not change) in ancient versus modern times. Clearly, there is a case to be made that the United States was a modern Rome, or as close as it is possible to be.

  But there is a second, more recent parallel to the rise of American prominence (and nationalism) that is unavoidable. While the ethnocentric belief that the United States was the country that defeated Nazi Germany in the Second World War conveniently ignores or undervalues the much longer and more impactful efforts (not to mention sacrifices) of the First Soviet Union, there is no doubt that, much like the First World War, the entry of America into the war effort swung the tide and forced the eventual Allied victory. With this in mind, and coupled with the fact that the national psyche of the United States remained steadfastly convinced for three quarters of a century that it had defeated Nazism almost singlehandedly, it is particularly ironic that this nation would ultimately serve as the ashes from which that hateful movement would rise once more.

  How much should the public have seen coming? Were the early indicators of ego and a disconnect from reality in the President’s first term warning signs that the populace should have keyed upon? Would the surge of white supremacy, coming immediately on the heels of the nation’s first black president, have occurred without the initial, tacit encouragement from the new president? Is there any argument that the rebranding of Nazism in all but name became a political tool for the president to solidify his power base, ultimately leading to the repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment to American Constitution and allowing a president to serve more than two terms?

  It is at once difficult to blame those who were in the moment for what could be perceived as their blindness and equally difficult to forgive their apparently reluctant, sluggish response to the rapid changes made to the nation’s fabric. Admittedly, it is difficult to see one’s own time clearly while simultaneously being part of it, but most historians who study the era tend to agree that American apathy played a significant role. Never considered the worst of sins, the truest lesson of what followed might be to revisit apathy and its true venality.

  Much like Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler before him, the last President of the United States rose to his position within the legitimate confines of the existing structure by capitalizing on a disaffected, disillusioned political base, and used that powerful minority to usurp that structure and create a dictatorship. And while at least the Roman example is replete with those who actively opposed Julius Caesar (indeed, those who eventually assassinated him), the German example is sparse in this behavior. A large majority of the population at the time simply went along with the minority that had seized power, trading some measure of normalcy and peace for their feigned or self-imposed ignorance of actual events that were happening around them, and regarding how terrible some of those events were. In 1940 Germany, you would be hard pressed to find someone who publicly criticized the Fuhrer.

  By 2028, in the United States of America, things were very much the same.

  — From the Introduction of An Unlikely Phoenix by Reed Ambrose, published by Oxford University Press. First Edition, 2081.

  Part I: RYAN

  St. Louis, Missouri

  USA

  May 2028

  ...[C]ops don’t expect to hear the words "thank you" very often, especially from those who need them the most. No, the reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law; that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor; that in this country, we don’t have soldiers in the streets or militias setting the rules. Instead, we have public servants—police officers—like the[se] men who were taken away from us.

  Barack Obama,

  44th President of the United States,

  From a eulogy for fallen officers in Dallas, Texas in 2016

  Chapter 1

  When the President nationalized all of law enforcement in 2026, it was viewed by many within that career field as an affirmation of his support for their efforts and their role in society. No one looking back now would argue that the six decades from 1960 to 2020 weren’t difficult, tumultuous years for law enforcement. Public unrest during the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War (two events that current historical wisdom see as intertwined), and the police actions in response to that unrest marked the beginning of the deterioration of public respect for law enforcement. The so-called War on Drugs initiated during the Nixon Presidency contributed to this division as well, and had the added impact of the greater militarization of police, a trend that continued for the remainder of the nation’s history. Racially charged (and many have argued, racially-motivated) events such as the widely televised beating of Rodney King in the early 1990s in Los Angeles, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri more than twenty years later, and the race riots of 2026 in several large U.S. cities further eroded that police-public relationship. That vital partnership has always been pivotal to the successful mission of any law enforcement entity, and yet, by the 2020s in America, the regard for police was at the very least polarized, and most certainly degraded in many corners of the nation. Even independent, outside investigations such as the Department of Justice review of the Michael Brown incident, which ruled it as a justified shooting, did little to assuage the damage.

  The sad realization that one makes when afforded the luxury of years and hindsight is that while most of the events that drove the damage between many U.S. police agencies and their respective communities were at the very least initially concerning and merited the attention they received, these moments represented a tiny percentage of the membership and good work of those agencies. With the notable exception of a very few departments mired in corrupt city-wide cultures, a careful examination of historical evidence bears this out. Simply put, in the late teens and early twenties of this century, most cops worked hard, were honest, and dedicated to the people they served. But such things were understandably lost in the maelstrom of media and public attention to those anomalous events.

  As a result, it is not surprising that the last President of the United States enjoyed wide support amongst the rank and file of law enforcement. When someone of that stature publicly recognizes underappreciated efforts by a frequently maligned group, the psychological response is always likely to be one of tremendous support. ‘Finally,’ many in law enforcement must have thought, ‘someone in power gets it.’

  This support was not unanimous but was certainly the majority. A survey of law enforcement labor unions and fraternal orders in 2025 showed that over 76% supported or strongly supported the President, while most of the remaining 24% were indifferent or apathetic.

  While the nationalization of all police in 2026 ostensibly left day to day operations in the hands of the individual agencies and the city, county, or state it represented, in reality this move gave the President direct authority over every police officer in the country. Eventually, this provided him with the ability to force or maintain order among all but the most outspoken or active dissidents. For the latter, the tool of professional law enforcement also served well, as long as the activities of those targeted were a violation of law. And since the President enjoyed strong control over Congress and many state governments, such laws were not difficult to enact.

  Did these men and women become unthinking soldiers in the President’s political army? Did they cease to be the honorable individuals that our research indicates most of them were? Or were they such supporters of the man that they adopted his policies as their own? Or, like the thousands of police officers who prec
eded them, did they continue to uphold the laws of their community, subjugating their own personal views on those laws to their sacred duty to enforce them?

  No one of these answers is likely true of all members of law enforcement. Some refused to capitulate, especially when party membership became almost mandatory for career advancement. Others seem to have simply focused on their day to day jobs, responding to the calls for service, investigating the crimes that occurred within their jurisdiction, and abstaining from politics. There were, of course, a few who saw these developments as an opportunity for personal advancement, and who wholeheartedly embraced the new and improved United States of America, now having been proclaimed ‘great again.’

  Many historians argue that the true foundation of the President’s power when the internal crisis arose came from the military and the police. I concur with this assessment, noting sadly that control of the police and the military, and the increasing inability to distinguish between the two entities, lies at the heart of the power base and the downfall of virtually every dictator in every totalitarian state.

  — From An Unlikely Phoenix by Reed Ambrose

  RYAN DERRICK STOOD at ease, waiting for roll call to begin. He recalled a time when they sat around rectangular tables, conversing easily and raucously until the sergeant came in. During those early days of his career, the veteran cops groused about how roll call used to be more disciplined. How they stood in squads, lined up, and showed proper respect to the sergeant and lieutenant. Uniforms got inspected and no one left the station looking like a rag bag.

  Now here he was, grousing about the laissez faire days of yore. At least he kept his gripes to himself, sparing today’s rookies the burden of listening to them.

  It was more than that, though, he thought bitterly. You had to be more careful what you complained about these days, and to whom. Law enforcement had changed a lot in the past ten years.