In the Company of Killers by Bryan Christy (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

“Awww!” Sharon clapped. The audience clapped and marveled with her. Then the tiny elephant turned to the audience, waved its trunk farewell, and vanished.

“You are doing unparalleled work saving elephants, Tom,” Hologram Krieger continued. “Thank you.”

Klay stood motionless until he realized this fiction, and his colleagues, were awaiting a response. He nodded. The hologram nodded back and then turned to the room. “Now, Tom, let me demonstrate how the Perseus Group family of companies can take your work and the work of everyone at The Sovereign to a whole new level . . .”

A large movie screen descended at the back of the stage. Timothy appeared at Klay’s elbow and quietly led him offstage. The room grew still.

WE HEAR: Deep tribal drums.

WE SEE: Tall grass, endlessly lush—day.

VOICE-OVER (deep male bass, James Earl Jones–like): “Dungu, an ocean of green in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ancient home to . . .”

FADE IN: Elephants.

“. . . ELEPHANTS!”

A herd of elephants walking through tall grass transitions to giraffes running, hippos yawning, storks rising. Then an African village, shot from above, its red clay alleys swept smooth.

Ground-level clichés begin: The happy-children-chasing-a-soccer-ball scene/The river-washing scene/The basket-of-heavy-charcoal-on-the-head scene/The stoic-men-tending-emaciated-cattle scene/The small-motorbike-carrying-an-entire-family scene.

Then, WE HEAR GUNFIRE.

WE HEAR EXPLOSIONS.

CUT TO: Fire. Rebel militia. Terrorists. People fleeing, screaming.

More gunfire.

VOICE-OVER: “In a land ravaged by terrorist groups—Mai-Mai, M23, the Lord’s Resistance Army. In a country without governance, sharing borders with war-torn South Sudan, Uganda, and a lawless Central African Republic. On ground plundered by rapacious outsiders for centuries—there is WAR.”

CUT TO: Burning grass. Skeletons of houses. Hacked bodies. Tearful faces. An amputated black forearm lying in the dirt.

Then . . .

CUT TO: Muscled men in cool sunglasses and short haircuts arrive. Out of helicopters. In armored vehicles. On foot. Private military contractors with Perseus Group logos on their shirts. They erect guard posts. They hand out food. They apply bandages. They build a church.

VOICE-OVER (Terry Krieger’s voice): “The Sovereign has celebrated the world’s indigenous people and its wildlife for nearly a hundred fifty years. Perseus Group is committed to protecting these lives using the world’s best technologies, best equipment, and best people—so that a hundred fifty years from now, our descendants will be able to enjoy the natural and cultural heritage we have preserved for them.”

CUT TO: Mothers washing laundry in a river look up. Children pause their soccer game and look up. Fathers tending cattle look up. Cattle look up, too. A flock of birds appears. The flock moves as one, then breaks into two, then three clouds, rolling over and around itself, a joyful murmuration. The birds sail above a herd of elephants. Then a car appears on the horizon. A portion of the flock peels off to examine the incoming vehicle.

The birds are Askari drones, perfect house sparrow replicas. One drone flies to each of the car’s windows. The faces of the car’s passengers appear in boxes on the screen. Below each face is a full name, identity card serial number, biodata, and criminal history. An individual bird darts away from the vehicle and peers directly into the camera. It is inches away from the camera lens. Its eyes look REAL.

The Sovereign audience appears on the large screen. An actual Askari drone is in the auditorium now. Then more. A dozen. The sparrow-sized machines hover above the stage, waiting. Faces from the audience appear on the screen along with employee IDs, home addresses, social media IDs, and birth dates with the years blurred. A drone approaches Sharon, who is standing next to curtains at the edge of the stage. She waves an embarrassed hand in front of her face. It is captured on the screen. People laugh and point. The birds respond. Each pointed finger or raised hand, every head that turns, calls a drone to it. The drones move quick as hummingbirds. They dart over the audience, taking in data, projecting it onto the screen. Then something in the birds changes, as if some communal decision has been reached. The drones whisk over the heads of the audience and disappear.

The movie screen fills again.

CLOSING MONTAGE: Black schoolchildren at tiny desks eagerly raise their little hands. A massive elephant herd strides calmly through green grass. The images turn global: An orangutan swings through trees. A toucan turns its eye to the camera. A humpback whale breaches for the heavens.

MUSIC SWELLS.

PULL OUT. Mother Earth. Home. Above, a satellite keeps watch. The satellite turns. Its dish bears The Sovereign’s silver globe logo, intersected by a Perseus Group sword.

•   •   •

Krieger’s hologram returned to the stage, hands clasped. “From the beginning, my companies and I have focused on the task required. On 9/11 our job was to respond to the worst terrorist attack in history on American soil. In the years since, we have come to see instability expanding the world over. You know the locations. You’ve told their stories.

“Beneath all of us lies one beautiful battlefield,” Krieger said. “Earth. As I’ve told the president, conservation of this planet must be an essential part of America’s defense strategy. We don’t hire botanists to police drug trafficking even though cocaine comes from a plant, and we shouldn’t put biologists and scientists in charge of policing crimes against nature. We need people who understand conflict and protection. Thirteen months ago, Perseus Group selected three of the worst hotspots in Africa and sent our people and technologies there with a simple mission: to add placekeeping to peacekeeping.”

He ticked off the results of securing three African parks: Elephant and rhinoceros poaching down 70 percent. Kidnappings down 80. Theft . . . rape . . . murder—all reduced. Communities stabilizing. Class attendance up.

“Response times to emerging diseases are falling and will continue to fall,” Krieger said, “making it less likely that Covid-19 and other zoonotic diseases hiding in the forest will make it to our shores. Scarce resources produce famine, corruption, violence, war. We know how important this is now. By starting at the beginning—with nature—we believe we can prevent not only the next terrible pandemic, but also the next global conflict.