Global Tribal

Global Tribal

Dr. A.K. Stanfield

Published at Smashwords

Copyright September 2018

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Mary Helen McCay for her detailed feedback on each chapter, Dr. Natalie Dorfeld for her support and comments on the final draft, Jason Griggs and Ian Koss for support through the last few years of drafting and editing, and my wife, Sharon Stanfield, for putting up with a project for so long.

Table of Contents

PART I SOLITUDE

The Forced Evolution

Winter

Radiation Zone

The Herd

Mongolian Faction

The Town

The Cleansing Crew

Mother Bear

The Pack

PART II FOXES DEN

Solypts

Prisoner

Books

Propaganda

The Foxes

The First Ones

Celebrations

Observations

A Stand

Young Love

Disaster

The Hills

PART III THE PIT

The Knife

The Market

The War-King

The Feast

The Clown

Duck Hunt

Pitizens

Global Tribal

The Judge

GLOSSARY

ABOUT DR. A.K. STANFIELD

CONTACT DR. A.K. STANFIELD

OTHER COMPOSITIONS BY DR. A.K. STANFIELD

PART I SOLITUDE

The Forced Evolution

I study the ruins of the town through the scope of my weapon, feeling safe behind broken rocks. The boulders are hidden among the scant trees topping a slight hill. The slope is gradual, angling down from the north. I clutch my stomach, feeling life growing within. Serenity floats over me like a passing cloud, but I think of my situation and the peace leaves me like smoke.

Below, I do not detect movement: not animals, Guardians, or Solypts, the wild humans that live beyond the Code. I must avoid any contact with Guardians, for I—born to the name of Kya; choosing the name Master Frog upon becoming a Level 6, Master; and former One-Twelve of the 1st Cohort—have fled my duties and responsibilities.

And I know my fate if discovered.

I ponder the Code, the twelve guiding principles and lesser rules governing Guardian behavior, a code of life and death. Healthy Guardians of Master level may reproduce with permission but are not allowed to raise their offspring. It is said animals raise their own young, but civilized Guardians should raise their children communally, without knowing lineage, to prevent dynasties and corruption and the perpetuation of bad habits: greed, prejudice, superstition, and waste.

Although a Master and healthy, I did not follow proper procedures: I did not seek permission and hid the truth after learning about the pre-human growth, or PHG, I carried, violating the Code’s rules on reproduction. Then I ran. The penalty is death, for both the potential human growth and me. Those are the Guardian rules. Without rules, we are less than the animals who do not presume so much. And I thought I was in love, breaking another rule, for Guardians are not allowed to bond and pair and mate to the exclusion of the cohort.

Love has destroyed my life: all of my work, all of my training, all from this sweet and terrible love.

Anxious, I silently recite the words Global Tribal! the motto of the enactors of the Forced Evolution, thinking the words gives me a strange strength and comfort.

How many thousand times have I heard or recited the phrase?

And now I must run from those I called my brothers and sisters. I have come far, many long miles afoot, but it will be a long way before I will feel safe, if ever. On the southern coast are places to hide, and deep in the distant steamy jungles even farther away, in the lands of perpetual summer. A smile of disgust creases my lips at my cowardice and the levels of my betrayal of my people and principles. How will I be able to run that far? One thing in my favor is the fact Guardians build few dome cities in these arid lands I now traverse. A biosphere must not have more humans than it can sustain. I know that quote by heart, for it is the First Principle of the Guardian Code. The Code is clear on that fact, so I possess more of a chance at survival if I stay far from the Guardian centers of power. Most of the domes are clustered in the eastern woodlands or in the far west, beyond the last mountains.

My PHG and I have a chance at survival, but only a small one.

I survey the landscape again. The digital grid on the inside of my helmet’s visor helps me zoom in closely, looking for traps, probes, or other dangers. Nothing makes me think Guardians are about. Below me lies the burnt remains of a nameless prairie town. Panning the scene with my scope, I see faded signs: Bowman, ND and Highway 85.

This entire area was cleansed long ago by Zealots, the most fanatical of the first Guardians. Not long after the Forced Evolution, the Zealots began their flaming rampages. This was long before the Cleansing…when the Guardians had rid themselves of Zealots and their destructive ways. Roaming parties of true believers had burned entire regions to the ground in a misguided attempt to destroy all symbols and reminders of the old ways. They had not only destroyed the decadent remains of human greed—sometimes they had let their flames spread to forests and fields, either through accident or design. And even worse, their flames had destroyed many power stations and places with deadly chemicals, factories and other industrial sites. Many places were damaged beyond repair, causing poison death or radioactive rot for those who wander those areas without a bio-suit.

The Forced Evolution was the most successful coup in history by the group calling itself the Guardians of the Earth. After the Guardians took over the entire planet in one swift movement, they named their new system the Planetary Republic or Guardians or PRG. They released some type of poison or virus into the atmosphere. Then they dedicated themselves to ruling over whatever remained and killing or converting any survivors. Some Guardians, though, had whispered to me over the years that pockets of people with different ways and beliefs had survived in compact groups and clusters in all parts of the world, but I did not know if this was true for a long time, but now I know this to be fact.

Today I am alone. No one has lived in this town for twenty-one years. Tall grasses cover most of the rolling prairie, and vegetation has reclaimed all, as if nature is attempting to hide the past, aiding the Zealots. Humans are gone here except for a few stone reminders, concrete rings of blocks indicating where houses and stores once stood.

Sections of a stone road are mixed in among the green growth. Lone trees, dense shrubs, and waving grasses rise in random patterns, all growing in cracks and holes. The dying road cuts in front of me like an old knife wound. It offers the easiest passage south, but I fear its simplicity. Roads are much more dangerous because they are so exposed. Sure, they would be easier for me to travel quickly but also easier for me to be spotted by probes.

Or even more frightening: what if I meet other humans?

What if I meet Solypts?

I like to think of old humans as a faded memory, but people still live in the wilderness beyond the Guardians’ rules and order. We are taught to fear and hate them. All human adults not belonging to the PRG is to be deleted.

Doubts about my escape from the dome last only until the growth moves again. I have no choice. Going back is not an option.

Wasn’t that my goal in escaping?

To find other humans with different rules?

To try to let the potential human inside me to live?

Wasn’t my goal to be free of the reproductive rules that dictated I have not yet earned the right to pass on my genes?

But I am scared of Solypts.

Rumors of their barbarism and depravity are legendary among Guardians. Our mantra of Global Tribal—One Planet, One People is held in mockery and contempt by those few outside the order of our well-protected domes. Guardians captured by Solypts have no hope of survival. The hatred between those of Law and Chaos are too great. I am a Guardian, Law. It is all I have ever truly known. It defines me.

I have spent the last twenty-one years with the Guardians. They raised me longer than my own parents. The Guardians and their Code are all I truly know.

And yet I fled.

I was one of the most loyal of the young survivors, number One-Twelve in the 1st Cohort. We had earned the right to live through our innocence and potential. Children were the only humans the Guardians had allowed to live. We were strong and immune enough to have survived the colorless death from the sky. Most of my life I have spent trying to live up to their Code. But when I became pregnant, my loyalties changed. I understand the penalties and they are harsh.

I had to escape to save you, I whisper. The words are loud and electric in my helmet and I realize my mouth is dry. I take a brief sip from the jutting tube, but a harsh taste remains.

I refused to allow my PHG to suffer the fate I knew awaited it. When my body started to reveal my secret with the slightest of bumps, I took provisions and logged in a false set of codes about my destination, stating I was traveling far to the east. The rest of the members of Dome 147, including the Commander, Master Lotus, formerly One-One of the 1st Cohort, were focused on the threat emerging from the group across the ocean known as the Mongolian Faction. I ran south and have been traveling for a day and a night, hiding in sparse forests and hugging steep mountainsides rather than venturing onto the open plains. I tried to put that risk off as long as possible.

That brings me back to my current situation. Nothing appears to be alive in the burnt town. I need to put as much distance as possible between the dome and me, but I am exhausted. My exhaustion must wait?

What about the PHG that haunts my dreams and my waking life?

It still surprises me how easily I have discarded the Code. I have lived by these rules for the past twenty-one years. And for some reason I gave it all up for a mass of cells growing inside me that could be terminated with a simple pill.

Why am I throwing away years of work, study, and survival?

To live in the dangers of the wild, alone and hunted?

I cannot answer my own questions, so to quiet my thoughts I begin moving. I crawl down the hillside. To avoid detection, I stay hidden among the waving grasses.

A winding dirt road streams along the bottom of the ravine. The sensors on my suits tell me a burnt scent rises from the dust from my passing. Grasping weeds and grasses surround a rusted minivan. The remains of the driver rest within its metal hulk.

That is one thing I am used to seeing: bodies, old, decayed, desiccated, corpses and skeletons.

The skeleton is the collapsed remains of a man. Dark curly hair crowned the skull. A rotted suede jacket, t-shirt, and jeans are in a pile with the rest of his bones. A rusted shotgun is sunken among the clothes and bones.

Death is all that awaits my child with the Guardians.

I keep moving, still too close to Dome 147 and too close to danger.

Winter

For three days, I have walked up and over endless rolling prairie. Always I head due south. Somewhere ahead I know hills await me, the ones that had risen out of the plains like an island before. The distance had appeared much less when I had flown to Dome 147 from Dome 5 nestled on the eastern slopes of the continental divide. On foot, the terrain stretches south forever.

How vast is the continent? The way the Guardians classify continents is different from the time of Corruption. According to their teachings, two major continents cover the Earth, the huge continent far away and our lesser land mass stretching north to south, from pole to pole, where I have always lived. They teach the planet is divided between those two continents and many islands of various sizes. Much of the Troopers’ Solypt hunting takes place in Afreusia, as they now call the greatest landmass.

The constant whisper of the northwest wind whips the grasses in constant motion. It is the only sound I hear. I often talk to my growth to pass time. I tell stories of growing up among the Guardians, with no mention of the Corruption because I do not want the sadness of those times and the Forced Evolution to affect my new cells’ development. The utter sense of isolation makes me ponder what my next level of training would have been if I had stayed as a Guardian. If I had gained Level 7, my next role and task would have involved cutting myself off from the world, retreating into solitude as a Seeker.

But now that will not happen.

I was recently promoted to Level 6, the rank of Master, where I served in Dome 147. Before that I was a Mentor, a teacher of apprentice Guardians in the Pyramid, the Guardian capital city. If I had ever been considered ready for the next challenge, I would have become a Seeker and would have entered into a long period of solitude, filled with reflection and study. This isolation would have been accompanied by some feat: sharing insights or solving a problem on how to improve the Earth, directing a worthwhile project, or some other accomplishment. Many Guardians never succeeded as Seekers. Even more never made it that far in the first place.

Some thought being a Seeker to be the hardest of the levels because it went against the fundamental principles of the Guardian Code: living in groups, surviving collectively, and working together as one. The level’s isolation was extremely difficult, contradicting all previous training.

I push the thought aside. It does not matter. I fled as a Master…I will live or die as a Master. Never will I finish that level with sanction, earning promotion to higher ranks on my skill, wit, and talents. Never will I progress to learn more hidden lore…ever-increasing levels of knowledge, duty, and wisdom. I will never be allowed the opportunity to seek my own wisdom. Now I will never be a Seeker, unless it is on my own terms.

I suppose this journey I am on now will have to suffice.

I keep moving. I do not have time for self-reflection, nor does my PHG. My task is to walk and ignore the itching all over my body beneath my bio-suit. Some chemical or hormone in the soft soap dispensed in the communal showers of the dome keeps hair from growing anywhere on the body. Over the last several days, an itchy layer of hair has grown, poking out of my scalp, above my eyes, rashing under my arms, and between my legs. It feels strange, almost like an animal.

Late in the afternoon, a large squat shape appears over a hill, far in the distance. My heart skips for a second, even though I know of no domes nearby. I keep walking. A two-story ranch house and barn are collapsing into themselves in a dilapidated mess. All the buildings are in an advanced state of decay and ruin.

As I get closer, I begin to hear voices.

Is it the wind?

Or is my mind deceiving me?

I think back and realize I have not been alone—this alone—since I became a Guardian. I was never this alone as a child, before the Forced Evolution. I always had a parent or sitter around. And after the Forced Evolution, after they took my father away, I was always among my cohort. This is the most alone I have ever been, and the most scared and sad.

But am I truly alone? I think again, considering my condition.

The remains of a fence still stand guard. The barbed wire is rusted away. However, posts regularly jut out of the ground like teeth. I pass between them and head toward the ruins of the big farmhouse. The building is much larger than I thought: its two stories and an attic tower over me, where I stand insignificant in its shadow. I look for signs of life but see none.

Several windows are cracked. Boards creak under my boots as I climb the wooden stairs up to the sagging porch. Surprisingly, the rusted handle turns easily in my hand, but I have to brace my shoulder against the door to push it open.

Death’s smell has long since passed. The air is dry and stale. I walk past crumbling furniture. In the rear of the house, I find the remains of a woman. Long white hair hides her face. She slumps in endless rot or slumber, falling in on herself, the chair, the table’s end. The pale strands still cling to her skull. Remnants of a gray dress still cover her bones, dry and tattered.

For too long this house has been empty. My footsteps sound too loud.

Emptiness overwhelms me.

The emptiness of the house.

The emptiness of the world.

To what lonely end am I condemning my child?

I feel like the only living thing, but it is a delusion to believe I am the last survivor. Countless Guardians wish to kill me. Their endless pursuit makes me consider hiding in the empty house. But that is impossible. I must get far away.

Far from the Guardians, and far from the coming winter.

The elements currently have little effect on me in my bio-suit, but soon the weather will change, bringing ice, bitter winds, and snow. Winter will be death for the two of