Dawson sat alongside with the audience of the latest BioDepth conference, waiting for his turn to speak, he began to feel a palpable and powerful sense of unease. He used to be able to enjoy the simple things in life but lately, it's becoming harder. By the measure of any other man, he should be an extremely happy and contented individual. The first trillionaire in human history— Ben Dawson had no shortage of material wealth—And when it came to personal achievement; no one had achieved quite as much as he in such a short span.
It was Dawson after all that pioneered the combined revolution of the AI singularity and quantum computing like no other, with the creation of his cybernetic apps and the BioStore. He's more like the modern day Moses— led his people through the dessert of their stagnant, evolutionary wilderness—but even with all of these, he was not satisfied. The one thing that he had really set out to do, had evaded him, and no matter what else he had achieved, it made it all somehow seemed mediocre. Just a few months prior to the conference he had put on a brave face, and scrapped the resource hungry behemoth that was Bio-Origins. He thought he finally could move on, but now he wasn’t so sure.
And soon he would have to stand up in front of all these people who lived and breathed his products, telling them just how grand everything was. Softly groaning to himself, he subtly moved his eye to the corner of his eye socket, and toggled the menu projected onto his cornea. Selecting “emotions” he selected a combination of, “confident, happy, and content”. He immediately felt the tension leave his face as a slight, self-assured smile began to develop, leaving his resting disposition a touchtone of proud, relaxed, self-confidence.
This change from his more natural facial grimace was just in time, because seconds later he heard the announcement from the stage, “And now ladies and gentlemen, I have the true pleasure of inviting to this platform the founder of everything we are—Ben Dawson!” Maintaining his best bio-designed smile, Dawson stood from his front row seat, slightly turned, and waved to the audience before ascending the stage. Standing before the podium, Dawson stared down at the microphone in front of him and inwardly smirked.
Since all the Settlers have internal, built-in microphone apps, there was really no need for it, but it somehow just looked good for aesthetics to have an old-fashioned microphone in place. Getting ready to make his remarks, he cleared his throat—also for aesthetics—and addressed the audience with a booming voice, “Welcome Settlers!!” Upon hearing the casual moniker that cybernetic humanity was known by, these so-called Settlers erupted into cheers and loud applause. Dawson stepped back from the podium laughing softly to himself as he looked from side to side at the throng of excited Settlers cheering him on.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
After a few moments the applause finally died down, allowing Dawson to step back to the podium as he continued, “Because it is you who are the brave pioneers of the future—it is you who are settling the final frontier of humanity!!” Again, the crowd erupted into applause, with several standing and cheering their cybernetic guru on—his words honey to their itching ear apps. Impatient to wait for his standing ovation to end, Dawson motioned with his hands for his admirers to tone it down as he chuckled, “Please… please… save your applause for the next upgrade.”
Right after Dawson mentioned the word “upgrade” it was as if the end of his sentence was punctuated with something quite unexpected, not by applause—but by a gunshot. Dawson turned as the sound reverberated through his ear drum apps just in time to see one of his security guards fall to the ground with a loud thud. His other body guard who had been standing on the sidelines, completely eschewing his own safety then rushed headlong for the stage, in a vain attempt to cover Dawson, but yet another shot rang out, as the powerful projectile struck the guard in the back of the head causing his entire cranium to explode like an eggshell, with bits of bone, blood, and brain flying in every direction.
That’s when Dawson finally saw the source of the gunfire as three men in military fatigues stormed down the center aisle of the audience with high powered rifles raised and ready for business. As Dawson stood staring at the approaching assailants his feet seemed glued to the floor—he was truly paralyzed. They say that when threatened most mammalian life on planet earth has a flight or fight response, and must pick one of the two—Dawson seemed to opt for a third however as he became frozen in place like a statue.
As his mind flashed back to the day that his father was murdered, he felt just as frozen and fearful as he did back then. At least then he had his mother to urge him on to run to safety. But now once again facing a pair of gunmen he found himself at a complete standstill. What could he really do anyway? Duck down and hide behind the podium? There was nowhere to run either as the assailants were blocking the only exit. Could he fight them? Even as the very thought of resistance occurred to him, in his mind’s eye he toggled his Immortality App, getting ready to unleash the life force energy he was still learning to channel.
But after one of the gunmen approached and addressed him directly, “Mr. Dawson, come with us and no one else has to get hurt.” He made the decision to comply. The Immortality App was his greatest secret after all, and as soon as he made use of it in the public domain, everyone would want a piece of it. This was something he wanted desperately to avoid. As such, he decided to take his chances with the gunmen. Realizing that this was not some sort of targeted assassination, he figured it was probably all just a shakedown for money.
And money was something that he had a lot of. So, what if they held him for ransom for a billion dollars? That would have been just a drop in the bucket for a man like Dawson, so he convinced himself to become pliable and obedient to whatever was demanded of him by the intruders. Even though BioDepth’s charter explicitly stated that the company would never bargain with kidnappers and terrorists as the masked gunmen trudged forward, Ben Dawson was willing to negotiate.