investigation, prosecution, and judgement in the hands of Homeland Security. But, citizens, sometimes the ends justify the means. However unlikely, if a traitor manages to armor herself with an Alpha clearance and therefore a shell of invincibility – as has clearly happened here – the Bunker's normally efficient mechanisms for dealing with her are useless. It is in trying times such as these that a loyal citizen like yourself realizes he must take matters into his own hands. So rise up! Rid the Bunker of this vile terrorist! Control will surely reward you. Thanks for taking the time to write to us.
That's all the time we have for today, folks. On behalf of the staff here at Today's Edition (TM), it was a pleasure to serve you. Until next weekstretch!
Greetings, citizens. My name is Jareldine Crummox, and I am a traitor. There is no excuse for my heinous crimes, nor can any repentance ever undo the harm I have caused the Bunker, my benefactor and employer – that most loyal of citizens, Llewellyn Wells – and the public at large. It is my last wish to offer this apology to you, the readers of Today's Edition (TM), knowing full well that the foul epithet of “Traitor” can never be expunged from the memory of my existence, which will hopefully be short-lived and far more tractable than its waking counterpart. I would ask for forgiveness, but the loyal citizen should never forgive me. I merely seek to set your mind at ease, that you may know the foul aspirations and virulent passions which animate this vengeful spirit will shortly cease to trouble you, your loved ones, or your neighbors. So help me – well, you know what I mean.
These, then, are my crimes: I am a member of the God and Freedom Church; I maligned the good name of that most excellent paragon of virtue and trust, Alpha clearance citizen Rahayu Sulistyowati; I knowingly sent the entire Board of Directors of Today's Edition (TM) to their deaths at a hotly contested hearing held in one of Human Resources' licensing offices; I participated in a failed plot to indiscriminately distribute a large cache of stolen laser pistols and grenades to whomever wished to have them; I intentionally mislabelled a stack of 'Application for Voluntary Organ Donation (Addendum): Request to Expedite' form 0x0F991AA0 as 'Request to Reschedule Naptime (Addendum): Snoring and Sleep Apnea' with unfortunate consequences for many of the citizens in G and H sectors; I have repeatedly and abruptly changed lanes in the transtube without using my blinker; I publicly disparaged a new vidshow, The Bunker's Got Talent, without first having seen it and before it had a chance to shine; and I have – on a regular basis – referred to the delicious and nutritious Vitamim served up daily in commissaries across the Bunker as “slop”.
I am a slave to my physical and psychological lusts, and there is no regimen of medication or physical punishment that could ever slake my thirst for the diabolical. My parents – were they alive today – would surely be ashamed of me and wish they never had me.
Today's Edition (TM), which I ran on behalf of Llewellyn Wells, has been permanently tainted by my treachery and is therefore officially closed. No more dispatches are forthcoming. From this stretch on, discussion or even demonstrating knowledge of Today's Edition's (TM) activities will invariably associate yourself with my own disgraceful fate. Citizens, I implore you: go back to your peaceful, happy lives, unperturbed by the maniacal delusions of a treasonous degenerate such as myself. Never come this way again.
A list of my accomplices follows. If your name appears in the list below, please report immediately to your Homeland Security neighborhood substation. Thank you for your cooperation.
Thank You For Your
Cooperation
the Bunker Series, #1
Welcome to the Bunker, an orderly, underground utopia where everyone's needs have been satisfied.
As far back as he can remember, Terry Renfield has been digging up uranium ore in the mines and getting into the occasional drunken brawl. Until one daystretch on the Loyalty Stretch, he and the rest of the Bunker see someone who looks eerily like himself commit a heinous act of treason. Terry is fired on the spot.
He turns to his girlfriend, Sally Xinhua, for help. Detained and then unexpectedly set free, Terry comes to realize that his misfortunes are no accident. His tiny, insular world shattered forever, he is determined not to be anyone's unwitting pawn – least of all his own.
Sally pulls him into the orbit of more privileged citizens with security clearances – including Van Johnson, the host of Ten Things I Hate About Treason, and Felix Tubman, the head of Homeland Security. What follows is an unlikely adventure spanning the Bunker, the reaches of space, and the forbidding outside.
Now the focus of a grand conspiracy to take down Control, the principal guiding force in the Bunker, Terry is ultimately faced with an identity crisis of epic proportions. Who is the real Terry Renfield? And what is it to actually be a specific person anyway?
Gyges the Terrible
Welcome to the United States of the not-so-distant future. Our Republic has given way to a new form of government, Freemocracy. The President rules virtually unopposed. Congress is a rubber-stamp institution, and society has fractured into the permanently privileged and the permanently working. The Supreme Court is the only alternate center of power, and the tension between the President, Samuel Judas Epstein, and the Chief Justice, Xiling, is set to boil over into open conflict.
The Earth, too, has changed. The nation has become a patchwork of restricted areas, security screens, and military checkpoints. Water is tightly rationed. The world powers vie with each other for territory on the lunar surface. Although the mines there are incredibly expensive to operate, the moon has become the only source for most of the natural resources consumed by an ever more ravenous industrial complex.
It is in this setting that a group of ordinary hooligans led by Marcellus Gyges storm the halls of empire. Possessed of a magic ring that confers the power of command, spurred on by his friends, Marcellus is in a unique position to depose the President.
At the same time, Marcellus is being tutored by his Guardian Angel. For it is the choices that we make in this life that determine what becomes of us in the next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Wasserman is, by all accounts, a human being from the planet Earth. As such, he eats several times a day and breathes often.
He also likes to write. Already at the age of fourteen, he embarked on his first novel, a sci-fi space adventure about a teenage boy who is also the emperor of an alien race. Fortunately, his taste for topics has improved, and he now writes about adults trapped in underground spaces on other planets, stabbing each other in the back.
Mr. Wasserman does sometimes address more serious topics, however, and likes to feel that even his dark comedy has a certain underlying, substantial value. Some issues diffusing his works – especially earlier ones – are power, spirituality, and the nature of being human.
Adam Wasserman is a proud member of ARIA, the Association of Rhode Island Authors.
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