Second Part of The Book

During the day, the green life sweeps the wet air from beneath, exiting the clay of the Earth and reaching for the heavens above.  The crooked branches of the trees, a least-thought perfection, stand as a symbol set against the midnight stars, when they shine through the smokeless skies.  The ideas of industrialization has starved the many and pocketed the few.  This Tree of Life before Shining Stars became their emblem, and the sign of the revolt!

               Dennis, Brian's younger brother died--or, was put to death two years ago.  After Tom failed to take him to the clinic, they came and took him from his crib, in the middle of the night.  Tom feigned that he forgot, and the matter was laid to rest.  Dale, a former preacher and the grandfather of Dennis, became unnerved by the killing, and invigorated The Citizens' efforts, taking his son-in-law and his daughter into stiff council, and taught them the very old way of life.  Both were part of the up-rise up to that point, but had been so accustomed to the ways of New World that they at first showed little interest to change.  The loss of their second-son at first made them gravely depressed, but then that depression turned into anger and then hate and then loathe.  By sheer consequence, The Citizens became a force to be reckoned with.  While other small groups of 'terrorists' wanted change, The Citizens had the one thing they didn't, and for that reason all joined in their alliance and pledged their allegiance.

After a life filled with preaching, WWIII changed everything.  Churches were now subordinates of the new government, and other respects too, laid privy to only teaching how the laws should be obeyed.  Dale was ousted as a heretic and stayed in hiding, but never forgot the old ways.  Tom joined the military at the time of the war, for the side of the Eastern Hemisphere.  They won and he quickly used his knowledge to gain access to high office, where his leadership skills out-manned his Physicist profession, placing him in the roll of an office-worker, instead of his intended of the work his Physics profession consisted of.

This the corporation got away with because of their pull and their staunch support of The Council.

Tom Weiss, a very private person, worked hard at the physical sciences office of International America, Incorporated, and the largest and most powerful innovative corporation still in existence within the realm of the last great nation, The United States of America.  The knowledge of the prayers in the dirty streetlights keeps him from resting at night.  With the thought of turning-in after a long day’s journey through a callous maze of soulless corridors, all he can think about is the Citizens.  With a corked-pipe, a match and crop, he would nightly lift his mutinous thoughts to the otherworld and listens to their prayers.

As an innovator of the clandestine group, Tom would have to burn the midnight oil, trying to read out The Council from control.  Seen as their final effort of a coup, the plan nicknamed Exodus, has been meticulously calculated over the past three years and has been scheduled for a week’s time.  While the nerves in the stomachs ache for the Citizens, from hunger, anxiety, or bullet, they can only wait and bide their time.  For in this chance of transgression, lie opportunity and a still better life for them all, Citizen or Regular.

The struggle seemed inevitable.  When the Third World War shook from the valleys through the atmospheres, someone had to be the victor.  The dominance came when the would-be solicitors of peace turned mad at the sign of another possible stand.  Chaos grouped the new party of the new rulers, and the fear of yet more loss, desolation, and turpitude turned them into selfish tyrants.  They are called The Council.

Tom, the principal operative of his building, was a man of an awakened heresy and erudite candor that begged to be caught.  His other-life fulfilled the void of its deceptive nature upon people, and, quickly, he became known, by the world of day and by the world of night, as un-imitatively important.  His cold eyes were partly sheltered by his tired lids, while his short-life work-habits moved before, after, and ahead of him.  The grace of his gait reminded some of thunder, and others of grace itself.  His adamant appearance worked others around him, desperately trying to imitate, though it shone only by his demeanor.  An un-extraordinary man of fifty-three, walked higher than his bosses themselves, but not by his typical-height, but by his unknown pretense, self-assurance, and worldly worth.

At meetings, his name phonated like death, but alluded them all to light; the members of his company's board spoke of a promotion for the fastidious "god", but something staid their hand, something made them sleepless at night when they "slept" on the decision, something told them he would wield too much power, and something told them that this man was not the man they knew at all, that this man could not be President of the great America corporation.

 Brian was beginning to become very restless of sitting in the den, at his self-proportioned-size desk to the one of his father's, that was installed in the very same room, reading Physics texts while his father played with a book of fiction, a Forbidden book to their vocation.  He'd crawl to his lap where he'd, once or twice, peep into the book his father was reading.  But it had no words and no letters, but his father seemed to study it all the more, and be all the more entranced in its wisdom.  With bifocals on his eyes, Tom would stare into its depth like a passage to another lesser-known world.  Brian would imitate this act by looking down, though through only his eyes and try to reap what's its author had sowed.  But, to him, still nothing leapt from its blank yellow pages.