The Annihilation of Foreverland

She was tall and slender and – given the right breaks in life – could have had a career as a model. Instead, she was committed to a psychiatric hospital. She received electric shock therapy on three separate occasions. Each time she ret urned home, things were better b efore they got worse.
    Harold’s father was a genius. He was an unassuming fellow with glasses that sat crooked on his nose. He was nothing close to model-quality. Seeing him with his wife at a party, one would guess he had tons of money.
    He did.
    He was recruited by every computer manufacturer’s research and development department. He was, arguably, the most sought after man in the computer industry; that is, until he was fired for unethical practices. His crimes were never made public, but the word behind the scenes had tainted his reputation enough to make him untouchable.
    No matter. He didn’t need to make money, not with the number of patents that belonged to him. His basement had become his laboratory.
    Harold was their only son. He was not pretty, not ugly. Not brilliant, not stupid. What he lacked in looks and raw intelligence, he made up for in cunning.
    He was never allowed in the basement. Instead, he spent his nights looking at the stars through his telescope. But during the day, he shot squirrels with a pellet gun. He’d put birdseed on a plate in the middle of the yard and hide in the bushes. He’d lie there sometimes for an hour, pretending the enemy was coming over the fence, and then he’d plug the first squirrel that dared to grab a sunflower seed right through the eyes. Sometimes he’d nail them to a tree, put them in poses of the crucifix. The yard stunk like death, but his parents never went back there.
    He was a loner at school. He was the weird kid with weird parents. His mom was crazy and his dad a nerd. The jocks put rotten food in his locker and the burnouts tripped him in the hallway. At the bus stop, Blake Masterson got on his hands and knees behind Harold and John Lively pushed him over. They laughed, all of them. Even the girls.
    That night, Harold climbed on the roof with his pellet gun and a high-powered scope. He was up there until his fingertips were numb from the cold. When John Lively – who lived two doors down – walked outside, Harold put a pellet in his left eye. It was an amazing shot.
    The doctors saved his eye. No one ever found out who did it. But John knew. Off the record, everyone knew.
    They caught him getting off the bus.
    Even though Harold wasn’t physically fit, he got away by swinging his book bag and losing his jacket when they grabbed it. He bound up the steps of his house and through the safety of the back door. But John and Blake didn’t stop there. They went inside after him. Harold threw the kitchen chair at them and ran through the basement door.
    He stumbled down the steps, falling all the way to the bottom. There was a sharp pain in his wrist. He rolled into the corner and watched John and Blake stalk him. But, halfway down the steps, they stopped.
    Across the room, there were two bodies lying side by side. One was his mother. The other, his father.
    Needles sticking out of their foreheads.
    Harold’s father was arrested after John and Blake told their parents what they saw and the FBI showed up with search warrants three days later. The computers were confiscated. The needles, too. Harold went to live with his grandparents. He rarely saw his parents after that.
    But he picked up where his father left off.
    Computer-Assisted Alternate Reality (CAAR) had been banned from all developed nations as cruel and destructive to all forms of life. No animal would be subjected to the debilitating effects that plagued the users of such technology, invented by his father.
    But a dictator will look the other way when the bribe is big enough.
    Harold used his trust fund to begin CAAR research. He set up labs in Mexico , Ethiopia , and Somalia . He went through thousands of unwilling subjects. None of them were healed in any way. They all died. All destroyed. Sometimes, tragically. Sometimes, horrifically.
    The body continued to live, even though the person – the identity – was destroyed.
    While some would view his research as a failure, as a crime against God, life and humanity, Harold saw it as an opportunity. The world was run by a small percentage of very wealthy people. The only thing these powerful men and women could not purchase was more life. Death was non-negotiable.
    Not any