Roper: Three-Zero-Zero-One
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Prologue
Let us put this in layman’s terms for simplification for some attending this private, albeit classified, symposium. After reviewing all the circumstantial evidence, my military and civilian associates have determined, within a two percent margin of scientific error, that the man named historical “Jesus” actually lived two thousand years ago. That historical person is an enigma, to say the least, as we have also determined, based on all the scientific and historical data available, that this so-called Jesus was likely the result of off-planet genetic engineering.
Why off-planet? Simple. Whomever—or more accurately, whatever—genetically engineered Jesus had to be from another world or dimension. Two thousand years ago, the highest cultures possessed the potter’s wheel and the plow. Bear with me as I briefly describe this planet’s history. At that time, it was in political pandemonium, with thousands of metaphorical political and religious ping-pong balls bouncing all over the place. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jesus appears, and in three years, he had embraced and taught messages that altered forever the state of human affairs. Most of those messages were lost in time. But consider this: In three short years, without the benefit of an army, financial backing, or political power, he single-handedly altered the direction of every one of those reverberating ping-pong balls. In three short years, tantamount to the proverbial blink of an eye in human history, all those thousands of facets of human life and society, at every level, simultaneously changed direction. And not in just any direction, but to his tune and at his beat in essentially a single instant.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is power. His teachings led to discussion of spiritual concepts that, well, let us put it this way—without Jesus, there would be no mechanical engineering and no space technology, because without him, the social-philosophical matrix underlying all Western, modern thought that eventually led to industrialization could never have existed. The bottom line is this: one being revamped the human thought process. He utterly transformed human consciousness from conceptualizing within the limited agricultural society matrix and, by logical progression, moved it toward modern industrialization. This led to cutting-edge sciences in fusion energy and brought the human race to the cusp of true space travel.
Of course, the political and religious forces confronted by the Jesus enigma had no choice. They had to exterminate him, or at least they tried to kill him. But did he die or did he survive? The debate roars on.
Some of you are stirring in your seats, wondering if I had too much sun yesterday as I present the Jesus enigma at a scientific convention for Android Technologies. But given the circumstantial evidence supportive of a determination that this “Jesus” event actually occurred, then the obvious superiority of those engineered genes may still be with us, within the human race today, as the purpose of all life is to propagate.
Thus, we believe that it is urgent, even paramount for the survival of the human race, to locate individuals carrying the Jesus gene sequence, decode them, and re-engineer those genes for our own use at our own command and for our own purposes.
But let us return to this historical enigma, this so-called Jesus. Whatever he was genetically engineered to do, he did it amazingly well. Which brings us to the next quandary. Whatever created this genetic Jesus did not just fade away. Neither did they do this out of the goodness of their little hearts. No. They had a plan, an evil plan, and I propose that we had better find that Jesus gene within the human genome and harness its genetic consequences to our wills, because as history as shown repeatedly and without fail, whenever an advanced civilization encounters a lesser civilization, the advanced civilization invariably exterminates the other—every single time.
It is certain from mankind’s long history that violence has been the supper of the gods of myth. Some may argue that perhaps the creators of this gene sequence will only make us their servants. Preposterous! This must never happen.
I propose a program of human study—blood testing, if you will—to track down this super, or “X,” gene within the human race. Once we find its carriers, we can study it in a laboratory setting and put the carrier through his or her paces to scientifically determine the gene’s or gene sequencing potentiality. We’ll mold those findings to our own devices, perhaps leading to the creation of android and technological weapons systems second to none.
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About the Book
Die Whimpering, Die Defiantly
Convicted of false criminal charges and forced from his soft, academic life into the purgatory of the modern prison system, survival is not the first rule, it becomes the only rule. Die Whimpering or Die Defiantly. Those are the choices presented to Professor Arthur Chesterfield. To avoid his grotesque death sentence, he agrees to participate in a secret military program. A program designed to test his genetic code - for ten years. But why are recruits exterminated, and why must he perform continuous suicide missions?
Then years later, known only as Roper 3001, one of the most hellish soldiers ever forged in the history of humankind, and the most unlikely of modern heroes of epic survivability, he must finally confront not just the diabolical evils of the world and the nightmares crawling within his subconscious mind, but ultimately, he must decide whether or not he still has a soul connecting him to the human race.
About the Author
The author, Mark Thomas McDonough, is an administrative law attorney for the federal government, who enjoys writing in his spare time. He twice served in the U.S. Army. During 1968-71, he served as an enlisted soldier, where he successfully completed Army (Combat) Engineer training at Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri, before attending the Army’s Airborne Training at Ft. Benning, Georgia. He takes great satisfaction in having graduated as “Airborne” on June 6, 1969, the 25th anniversary of D-Day. He also likes to mention, as trivia, that his Airborne Class was the last class to leap into the void from the Flying Boxcars (C-119s). Subsequently, he attended and completed Parachute Rigger training at Ft. Lee, Virginia, before the Army assigned him to Delta Company, 91st (Combat) Engineers, at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
In 1970, the author volunteered for Vietnam, where he was assigned to and performed parachute rigger duties for the 131st Aviation (Mohawk) Surveillance Company, while also volunteering for and spending a total of two months performing base perimeter guard duties on the bunker line at Phu Bai. Upon his return stateside, the Army assigned him to the Parachute Rigger School at Ft. Lee, where he performed instructor duties and other tasks assigned to him, including assisting in establishing the first NCO academy at Ft. Lee, Virginia. From 1969 through 1971, the author had a total of fifteen military and eight civilian parachute jumps, jumping from C-119s, C-130s, and helicopters. He openly admits to having loved every one of them.
The author attended and graduated from CCNY, in 1977, and after completing law school, he returned to military life as a Captain and criminal trial lawyer in the U.S. Army Jag Corp. From 1981-85, the author spent four years trying criminal cases, becoming one of the most experienced and successful prosecutors and defense counsel in the Corp. In sum, he tried well over one hundred of the most serious and complex criminal trials. At one point, as a prosecutor, he tried six fully contested courts-martial in less than thirty days winning all of them. Inasmuch as he won one hundred percent of all the cases he prosecuted, his peers were wont to nickname him the “The Hitman.” In the middle of his four year tour, he volunteered to be a defense counsel, becoming one of the most successful defense counsel in the Corp; his successes included literally shutting down almost all prosecutions within, what was then, the largest combat brigade in the Free World, earning him a phone call and an order to explain himself in person at Division Headquarters. Rather than intimidating the author, the reprimand only served to further embolden the author to new heights of creative defense mischievousness.
After leaving active duty, during 1985-88, the author was an International Law and Claims attorney in the U.S. Army Reserves, where he researched, wrote and conducted law of war problems embedded within major Army Reserve training exercises. However, after ten plus years of military life, the author decided to resign his commission for the sole purpose of spending more time with his family.
The author’s first novel, Pink Cotton Candy Is Sometimes Green, was published in 2000, and its sequel, The Cobalt Blue White Light, was published in 2006. Roper 3001 is the author’s third full-length novel.