John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

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In this, John David Krygelski’s third and perhaps most powerful novel yet, he creates a spine-tingling story of suspense, drama, and intrigue.
After the only child of the President commits suicide, he proposes an institution where people who have lost all hope may enter. Aegis, intended to be a civilized alternative to suicide, is opened. There are only two rules in Aegis: no communication is allowed between the outside world and those who enter, and once individuals go in… they can never leave.
Twelve years pass and what began as a noble social experiment has turned into a hideous nightmare, fraught with controversy and public outrage. Elias Charonis selected to be the first to enter Aegis and be allowed to leave. Ostensibly sent in to investigate the claims of abuse, a darker and heinous personal motive arises.
With pulse-pounding suspense,
takes the reader through at wisting, turning plot to an explosive and electrifying climax.

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“It stopped! IT STOPPED!” The last, an exuberant shout, filled the glorious silence of the still air, her outburst startling the wren and causing it to fly upward and circle above her.

Her breath coming in quick and shallow gasps, her heart beating as rapidly as a trip-hammer, she lowered her gaze and looked across the massive roof of Aegis, no longer cluttered with debris. She now understood her other sudden discomfort in the dream. With the absence of the frigid downdraft, she was hot, sweating beneath the parka and layers of clothing she wore. The Arizona sun beat down upon her and upon the roof, warming the air over Aegis as it had not been in years. In the quiet, she could hear the structure beneath her feet popping and cracking, the sudden temperature change expanding the elements of the building.

Tillie stripped off the parka, tossing it down on the roof. She then shed the extra shirts and pants, until she was down to a single, regular layer of clothing. Although she was still very warm, she basked in the feeling of the sun on her face and arms. From the direction she had crawled, the fifty-five-gallon barrel was enshrouded in smoke from the smoldering fire, as there was no longer any wind to whisk it away.

Turning to the parapet, she looked out over the desert. Even though the sun was still fairly low in the sky, it was working its thermal magic on the desert air, producing a small dust devil in the distance to the west. She knew that she should head toward the hatch, go down below, and tell everyone that the wind had stopped. But she wanted just one more minute first.

Resting her arms on the top edge of the parapet wall, feeling the warmth from the sun already baked into the concrete, she laid her chin on the top of her arms and continued to watch the lazy progression of the dust devil as it drifted closer to Aegis.

Since she had not grown up in the desert, the mechanics of the slender tan funnels were unfamiliar to her. The few she had seen in the past had always looked more defined, more crisp. This one more closely resembled a broad column of dust, dissipating rapidly above the ground and leaving a trail in the air behind its path. And there was something odd at its base…at its leading edge, something she could not quite identify. She pressed harder against the wall, leaning her head farther forward and straining her eyes, when suddenly she was able to discern an object at ground level, moving toward her at what looked like a fast pace. Within another minute, the vague object clarified and a jolt of adrenaline electrified her.

“Oh, my God!” she gasped.

Unable to tear her eyes away for a moment, not even allowing herself to blink, she watched as the color of the object resolved to a bright yellow, the form itself emerging as an SUV. Her entire body tingling with excitement, she forced herself to watch the approaching vehicle long enough to be sure, to be absolutely certain that she was not imagining what she saw.

A minute passed, then another, before Tillie spun away from the wall and ran as she had not run in years, sprinting for the access hatch.

EPILOGUE

And so this band of survivors emerged from Aegis, much as travelers would step out of their craft onto the soil of a new and foreign planet: their minds filled with questions; their hearts torn between fear of what they would discover as they ventured forth from their sanctuary, and hope for the new world, the creation of which had fallen to each of them to accomplish.

In the days, weeks, and months ahead, this new core of humanity would bifurcate their time, their attention, and their efforts. To begin with, there was much that needed to be done. The monumental and the minuscule aspects of the idle infrastructure, which lay dormant, waited patiently for the touch of a human hand to bring them back to life…as if the members of a family were, at long last, returning to their shuttered home after an extended absence. Within their cohort, the group would learn that all of the knowledge and all of the skills, required to breathe artificial life back into the systems, devices, and machinery of the once pervasive population, were present within their ranks.

Still, while they applied their efforts to the repairing, cleaning, and reactivation of their old, yet new, home, not a day passed when they did not ponder and discuss the myriad questions raised by the cataclysm itself, and the innumerable incremental events which allowed for their very survival.

Some of the party were obsessed with finding the answer to one question: who had been responsible for the creation of the pathogen? A team, led by Elias and Leah, found their answer, and assembled a list of names which would then be vilified for generations. Having provided nothing other than the satisfaction of their curiosity, the list was put aside for posterity. They each concluded that there had existed a truly evil cabal on the Earth, a malignant assemblage who very nearly caused the extinction of mankind; however, none of them would ever know that, had some mysterious hand swept those vile men and women into the sea, others would have eagerly arisen, others with an identical nefarious goal. And the cataclysm, rather than being averted, would have merely been deferred.

The day-to-day efforts continued. Neighborhoods and communities were reclaimed and brought back to life, as the individuals among the band grappled with other questions. Most wondered why they were selected to live, while so many perished. The psychologists within the group repeatedly explained that they suffered from survivor’s guilt, and eventually counseled them to a tacit acceptance.

Others believed that their presence within Aegis prior to the cataclysm was serendipity, a random, chance occurrence and nothing more, as was the collapse of the entrance to Aegis on the first day of the epidemic. Their friends argued the odds against the many coincidences, but to no avail as these individuals clung to their belief.

Some needed to understand the nature of the pathogen. Eventually, they uncovered only the mechanics of it, without ever ascertaining the recipe itself. That would remain unknown and unknowable for all time. Again, they stored away the details they possessed for study by future generations.

They asked if they were truly safe from the pathogen, whether it had been fully eradicated from the Earth. In time, that, too, was answered. The malignant organism was no more.

They queried as to why the vaccine did not protect the perpetrators as it had been designed to do, and then so thoroughly tested to guarantee its efficacy. The answer, they decided, was that a fluke mutation in the pathogen made it immune to the vaccine.

Furthermore, the group wondered if there were other survivors, other places like Aegis in the world, which had also been protected. They found that there were, that they were not alone.

As these survivors progressed in the re-establishment of a society outside the walls of Aegis, nearly all of their questions were, over time, answered. Would it be best if they were to remain together as a group, or should they scatter throughout the countryside? What must they do to ensure that another global calamity would not occur at some point in the distant future? What form of government was appropriate for them? Or was a government needed at all? Resources were once again abundant and there was such vast open space that conceivably all of the survivors on Earth could so disseminate that rarely, if ever, would they see another person, unless by choice. During darker moments, all of them asked whether they were worthy and deserving of this chance they had been given.

As the once overwhelming aggregation of questions was whittled down, the emphasis in the daily activities and thoughts of the survivors shifted to the immediate, the temporal, concerns of life. And yet, as they put behind themselves the queries and the quests for answers, and focused their attention on the future, one nagging question remained, one which could never be explained away as a fluke… a coincidence… a random act of nature… or a deliberate deed by man, and that was the wind: the cascading, tumbling avalanche of air from the bitterly cold regions of the upper atmosphere, the downdraft which held the pathogen at bay and protected this small and fragile group of men and women. For no matter how long they may wonder, how long they may search, the one answer they will never find is that the hand which begat this wind was mine.

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