From Within
Authors: Brian Delaney
From
Within
Written by Brian Delaney
Copyright © 2016 by Brian Delaney
All Rights Reserved
Published by KOBA Media, LLC – Colorado
From Within is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express permission of the author or publisher. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.
For my beautiful wife, Alli and our children.
You are an amazing woman, wife, and mother. Thanks for all the support for my idea to start writing.
Table of Contents
Early October 2036
“Government intervention and taxes breeds government intervention and taxes,” the deep voice was booming from the speakers. “People are polarized and fed up across all political beliefs with the American government. Most every group with any stance politically has the feeling of being betrayed. Protests are constant and many times violent. Even those who demanded higher taxes are feeling the pains of their wishes. Unemployment is at a record high. Businesses are failing, with many already gone, because they can’t operate at a loss. The government instituted a higher minimum wage at the same time as instituting higher corporate taxes. Those that demanded the increases didn’t seem to realize that most businesses, big and small, even their local ‘mom and pop’ shops they frequented, are...rather, were corporations. They are gone now. Many decided that laying off their few workers would help keep them alive. It did for a while. Many soon realized they were working too hard for too little or no reward, just to save their businesses. Cashing in on their assets in the business seemed like the better option. It should also be realized that a business owner might not necessarily be rich. Many business owners who operate their business as a corporation still make the average American yearly wages and sometimes even less. The average business operates at a loss for about the first five years before reaching profitability.”
Marcus Braden sat in the dimly lit room watching himself on the large flat screen centered on the office’s side wall. He studied himself. He had thick dark brown hair that was beginning to gray around his ears. He could still see the defined lines on his face and crow’s feet protruding from the corners of his eyes. All of this made him raise an eyebrow and nod his head at the realization of his aging. No matter how much the makeup artists tried to hide them, he still noticed. He wore a custom tailored midnight black suit with white vertical hairline pin-striping that helped slim his thickening midsection. He wasn’t a young man anymore and his metabolism wasn’t what it used to be. He still felt like he kept himself fairly healthy. He was tall, six feet three inches. Even with his co-anchor bringing her chair to the highest setting, his entire head still appeared to be above hers on screen. He glanced at the others in the room. Kenneth Wellen stood leaning against his desk. He was the senior producer of the news program Marcus anchored. Kenneth was slightly squinting, staring intently at the screen. His thin lips were pressed together in a look of disappointment. Kenneth stood about an inch shorter than Marcus, which still made him a tall man. His hair had turned completely silver years earlier. His figure had always been slim. He was usually described as ‘tall and skinny.’ Marcus’s glance continued to Ava, his co-anchor. Her face was buried in her phone. She was petite and had long flowing blonde hair. She was very attractive. Between her looks and her slight northern European accent, she held viewers attention well. Ava had immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands. The widespread economic collapse in Europe caused the Netherlands to strengthen their practice of socialism as an attempt to shield themselves from the collapse and Ava’s father took his family as far away from it as he could.
Marcus was still speaking on the screen, “Along with the corporate taxes were higher individual income taxes. The saying became that the rich could afford the higher taxes to help the country out. With failing businesses and the rich bowing out of the work world, because they had the money they needed to live without work, the higher taxes didn’t yield the desired result. This, of course, is ignoring our country’s history where lower taxes encouraged business and economic growth and brought in higher tax revenue. We are repeating the policies of the New Deal that put the ‘Great’ in Great Depression. So, the middle class’s individual incomes now begins to bear the higher taxes as well. “Trickle down” now means to many that the government’s failed tax policies trickle down to cause failure for the whole country. In reality, the more the government stays out of business the better business does. Likewise, the more the government gets involved, the more businesses and individuals suffer. As you know, some areas of the country people have come together against misrepresentation by politicians and created new states. It’s difficult to track how many breakaways have happened since there is constant debate on their legitimacy. The last report I saw said the number of states has nearly doubled. That doesn’t include areas that broke away and didn’t consider themselves a part of, and made no effort to join another state or even form their own local government. They simply refuse to pay more taxes, well...rather, they simply refuse to pay any taxes at all. They don’t see why they should pay a government that doesn’t represent them. In a speech to supporters, Mikey Johnson, the recently elected governor of California posed the question of whether or not these break-away regions are still being considered a part of the United States. He also reiterated in the speech that he preferred to leave any armed encounters with the break-away regions off of the table for the time being. The military has been cut so drastically due to the poor financial situation that some experts have said that even if needed, the U.S. military could provide little to no assistance within the U.S. or anywhere in the world. Governor Johnson’s state is host to numerous regions that has given up any affiliation to California. The Golden State has dealt with bankruptcy and higher taxes much more comparatively to the rest of the country for decades. For the rest of the country, around two-thirds of the average person’s income is going to the government to fund America to be a welfare state. The longer so many people collect all these government handouts, the more the economy is going to be drained and cause more people to be in a position to be eligible for handouts. The sad thing is that most of these people would be fine if the government hadn’t started meddling in the financial affairs of businesses and the people. I’m Marcus Braden and this has been ‘A Moment with Marcus.’”
“And...and I’m Ava Van Boer.” Ava had paused briefly, sounding confused. “Thanks for joining us tonight on WWNL, the Worldwide News Link.” She didn’t end with her typical sign-off. She hadn’t expected Marcus’s ending speech. His ‘Moment with Marcus’ was generally a brief opinion about a news piece they had covered during the broadcast.
As the program’s credits began to fade onto the screen, Ava’s face was still visible to viewers. Her head was bolting back and forth looking past the cameramen, searching for Kenneth’s reaction. Kenneth usually hung around behind the scenes during the broadcast. Her light-blue eyes were stuck wide-open; her mouth had dropped open immediately after her sign-off line.
The upbeat instrumental credit music came to an abrupt stop and the screen went blank. Kenneth dropped his T.V. remote onto his desk breaking the silence in the room and let out a long, forced sigh. The sound caused Ava to look away from her phone for a moment. She quickly glanced at Kenneth and Marcus and then bowed her head back down towards her phone.
“Marcus...,” Kenneth began, peering off beyond his blank T.V. “Marcus, ya know, many of the VP’s up top aren’t too happy with this stunt you pulled last night.”
“Well Ken, the truth isn’t always popular,” Marcus returned.
“Huh? Truth!?”
“Yes Ken, it’s the truth. I could have spoken those things on the show as a prediction five, maybe even ten years ago. I saw this coming. A country can’t survive as a welfare state. Eventually, the job providers are driven to the ground with their pockets turned out.”
“That’s your opinion. Not everyone sees it that way. Anyways, I think management is getting pressure from the government for us not to cause any panic. There is way too much violence already out there due to this financial crisis.”
Marcus jumped in chuckling, “Oh, I see. So, they are wanting to censor us now!”
“Let me finish!” Kenneth nearly yelled trying to gain control of the conversation. His temper was rising and he was becoming visibly frustrated. “The VP of operations is tossing around the idea of having every one of your ending segments reviewed, I’m guessing by me before you go on each night. It’s not censorship!”
“Ken, if I may?” Ava’s soft voice surprised Kenneth since he forgot she was still sitting there. “If this is all about Marcus’s ending segments, why am I here? Can I go?”
“Ava, you are here because you lost it while we were live. We need you to keep your composure no matter what is going on. What if there’s a major crisis that breaks while you are on? We need you to keep it together through it all. You won’t always be able to review everything before you read it live. You know that. We want people to turn to our network. If they turn us on and it looks like we don’t have a clue, they’ll be changing the channel in no time flat! That’s all for you. You can go.”
“That’s not a problem. It won’t happen again,” Ava’s face was searing and clearly revealing her embarrassment and anger on being called out. She quickly got up, grabbing her phone off the armrest of the chair. She disappeared into the hallway, avoiding any eye-contact with Kenneth and Marcus trying to conceal the embarrassment.
“Where was I? Oh yeah, they want to review your segments. Well...they are thinking about it. You are lucky they aren’t talking about firing you. Maybe they are, I haven’t heard anything about it, though.”
“Fire me?” Marcus chuckled. “I’m contracted for another four years. I worked out a deal that would cost them more to get rid of me than it is to keep me. You know once I made it to the big leagues I wasn’t going to take whatever deal they throw down first. They scouted me out which gave me the ace up my sleeve.”
“Yes yes, the ‘ace up my sleeve’ line,” Kenneth made quotation symbols with his fingers from both hands to mock him. “You’ve been saying that line for the last ten years. You know they could just keep you on staff and not put you on air, don’t you?”
“Yeah, they could do that. But, I don’t think they will. Every time I take a vacation the ratings go down. Sure, you have Ava as the pretty face to watch, and, not to brag, but I’ve become a household name in news. People aren’t up in arms over my speech. They were talking about it over the radio on my drive in this morning. They say it’s generating real conversation and debate about ways to fix the country and I think the phrase was ‘It’s about time someone in the media told us how it is.’ You just watch Ken, the VP’s will be eating up all the increased ratings and will be telling you within a week to have me keep ‘telling people how it is.’” Marcus made quotation symbols with his hands mimicking Ken from moments ago.
Marcus knew he was putting Kenneth in a lousy position. They had been friends and colleagues for years. They started off together as interns after college for a local network in a small market area in western Nebraska. They were both out of place in the slow and easy-going farm region. They quickly became friends and as the years went on they piggy-backed off of each other to move up the ranks in bigger markets. One would get hired at a better location and would help bring the other up with him shortly after. There were only a few years and a couple locations their working relationship of partnered career-progression didn’t go as planned. They were simultaneously hired at different locations and had to part ways. After a couple more jumps to higher markets, they wound up together again in the top news market of New York City. Kenneth was always a behind-the-scenes type. A hard-worker. Always ambitious to become the leader where ever he was working. Marcus was a smooth-talker. A hard-worker like Kenneth. He was handsome and used that to his advantage to get his face on screen as much as he could. He wasn’t cocky by any means. He knew things weren’t just going to be handed to him. He put in any extra effort he could, even if it was outside his job description. He was raised that way. His father had owned his own business, a grocery store. Marcus spent many weekends and summers learning from his father. His father didn’t give him any advantage over other employees other than giving him the job. His father was purposely a very strict and ungenerous boss so that his son would work harder and stand up for what he deserved. Before long, his work ethic was ingrained in his DNA. The major news networks must have seen all the same things in both of them because it didn’t take long for both Kenneth and Marcus to be scouted and quickly hired by Worldwide News Link.
They both peered intently at each other, as if in a duel. Eventually, Kenneth gave in, letting it be known with another long, forced sigh.
“Marcus, work with me here. You and I have been friends for a long time. I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on anything political anymore. But...” he paused, trying to think of what he wanted to say. “But...I don’t know. Your speech isn’t the view of the company. And you know I’ve become fairly active volunteering with political groups...groups that have the complete opposite view of what you said. I’m just torn. I don’t want to have to come down on you every time you have another speech like last night.”
Marcus thought Kenneth was sounding whiney. He also couldn’t gather what Kenneth was trying to say.
“Ken, what are you getting at? How was my segment opinionated? I was just calling it as I see it. Well, rather, I was calling it as it is! How does our company, which is supposed to be non-biased news have a view that disagrees with what is actually going on? And haven’t you noticed those groups you volunteer with are now just as angry as everyone else because they can’t afford to live with taxes at the levels they are?”
Kenneth jumped in to respond, “What you said was...grim, to say the least. As far as the groups I’m a part of, well, I’ve been looking for a different one. One that hasn’t lost it’s focus on what they are supposed to be doing.”