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    Forever Lost
    Forever Lost
    Forever Lost
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Forever Lost

    By Betty L. Alt

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In the early 22nd century, with the world suffering from a continuing ice age, food production in the United States is controlled by the Bureau of Sustenance. Private property has ceased to exist, and all citizens are forced to live in huge towers. However, a small group of people have managed to remain outside. Unfortunately, wisps of smoke from the group’s uncontrolled fire have been seen from a Bureau helicopter and reported. Sustainers Amos Benton and Jake Martinez soon are sent from Tower Seven to search for the “outsiders.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateOct 2, 2024
    ISBN9798369430279
    Forever Lost
    Author

    Betty L. Alt

    Betty L. Alt is the author or co-author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction. She has an M.A. from Northeast Missouri State University and has taught at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. Alt is now retired and living in Tennessee.

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      Book preview

      Forever Lost - Betty L. Alt

      Copyright © 2024 by Betty L. Alt.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      Rev. date: 09/26/2024

      Xlibris

      844-714-8691

      www.Xlibris.com

      846537

      For Jon, Eden and Devon

      Prologue

      During the twenty-first century, changing weather patterns starting in late September and lasting until late March caused America’s Great Lakes to almost completely freeze over; repeatedly during those months, snowflakes fell on Miami, Hawaii, Cairo, and Rio de Janeiro. Alarmed by these extremely unusual and unexpected events, scientists predicted that a worldwide ice age would begin somewhere in the years between 2040 and 2060.

      Around the globe, there continued brief summers, with scorching sun turning acres of originally fertile land into deserts in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Between the record-breaking cold and snow of winter and the short summer, the season for food production was cut each year to only than five months. With the possibility of world-wide starvation, predictions were made that people would see the next world war fought over food.

      Stockpiles of grain which had accumulated in the industrial nations (particularly in the United States, Canada, and Russia) were put to use in the production of immense amounts of bread and, for a few years, helped moderate some of the world’s worsening food problem. Then in 2052, after the world’s smallest harvest, panic swept through every nation. Governments were forced to put aside any political and military disagreements and concentrate on only one area – population survival.

      A Committee for Sustenance, composed of the sharpest agricultural and scientific minds in the world, was convened in Geneva and asked to study the crisis. After over a year and a half – during months of worldwide starvation leading to huge food riots – the committee’s report was made public. Its predictions were catastrophic.

      1. Unless food supplies could be increased astronomically, at least one third of the earth’s total population would die of malnutrition or its effects within eight years.

      2. The U.S., Canada, Australia, Argentina, Russia and other Large cattle or grain-producing areas of the world could Not continue to provide adequately for their own people let alone the population of other countries.

      3. Immediate action was needed to reclaim and utilize for food production ALL land not needed for housing the population.

      4. To accomplish this, ALL population should be moved, by force if necessary, into some form of immense high-rise cities. This would free for food production both business and industrial sites and millions of suburban acreages presently utilized for luxuries like single-family dwellings, lawns, patios, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.

      Acting on the dire recommendations, particularly number four, governments actively entered the field of agriculture and soon rigidly controlled all food supplies. In the United States, the decision was made to concentrate its citizens into gigantic urban centers and to confiscate all other land for sustenance production. Private property ceased to exist.

      The first tower – climbing toward the heavens and able to sustain a population of over a million – was completed near what had been the sprawling city of St. Louis, and was occupied in February 2064. Chief architect for the project was young, innovative George Stokes Benton who (with his wife Lucy Amos Benton and their young son, Amos) had personally surveyed the site as early as 2052.

      As the designer, Benton had the honor of naming this original tower. He suggested Babel-ON, a combination from the Bible of the Tower of Babel and the hanging gardens of Babylon. His suggestion was accepted in the U.S., and around the world towers were soon under construction and given well-known names – Eiffel-ON in Paris, Pisa-On in Italy, the Tower of London (or the T of L, as it was affectionally known).

      In America, George Stokes Benton had convinced the President, Congress, and most of its citizens that towers would free up the necessary space for food production and save humanity. The work of survival began in earnest. Across the nation, entire cities eventually were razed, and the population was relocated.

      Included within each tower were schools, hospitals, shopping malls, theaters, recreational areas, living quarters – all of the necessities for life condensed into millions of fewer acres than the cities of old. A section devoted to industry and manufacturing was sealed off from other parts of the tower to avoid any chance of pollution or toxic gases reaching the otherwise ideal climatic conditions under which the inhabitants lived. Police and fire services were provided at intervals on various levels but were seldom utilized.

      Intra-tower transportation in the form of elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks easily and quickly carried the workers or shoppers to their destinations. Air terminals were on the fringe of the tower for inter-tower or international transport. Highways and railroads connected towers to each other, and although at first all towerites had been permitted to take vacations on public transportation to other towers, this later was discouraged. Eventually, all rails and roads were utilized solely for food transport. As a new generation grew up in the towers, fewer and fewer individuals ventured far from their birthplace. (It was estimated that by the year 2078, almost all populations in technologically developed areas would be born, would live, and would die without ever having left their towers.)

      In the beginning, tower occupation had been through recruitment, and many had volunteered – mainly the young and venturesome who thrilled at being thought of as pioneers in a new concept of living and who willingly turned their suburban plots over to the government in exchange for a part of the future. (It followed that among these would be George and Lucy Benton who willingly gave up their rural heritage and expansive property and took up residence in Babel-On.)

      However, there were many around the world, including the American population, who balked at the idea of tower existence. To counteract this problem, most governments made it illegal to live outside a tower and forcibly moved those who tried to resist. A period which came to be known as the Cycle of Chaos ensued. Suicide was high, especially among the elderly who felt they could not live caged up in a building. Black marketing in food was rampant and took years to control; civil revolt developed worldwide with governments using the police, National Guard units, and military personnel to quell the riots and enforce the laws. Hundreds of thousands on both sides died during a period of nearly ten years – a time that became known as B.C. (Before Chaos) and A.C. (After Chaos).

      However, as food became scarcer and scarcer, people realized that their survival meant tower living. By 2096, the U.S. tower system across the country had been built and was functioning well, with its population having adapted to the new concept. As far as the government was concerned, no one could be living outside!

      So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,

      Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;

      John Milton (1608-1674)

      On the eighty-sixth floor of the Custodial Care Center, Amos Benton glanced at numerous paintings on pale yellow walls as he waited for the doctor to give him an update on his wife’s medical condition. After nearly a decade of comatose survival, Martha Benton suddenly had snapped awake and began calling her husband’s name. However, that had been nearly fourteen months previously, and Martha had made no further progress since that time.

      Once again on leave from his job at Tower Seven, Benton needed to meet with the area’s Director of the Bureau of Sustenance and learn if he could be permitted to take any special assignments or would have to continue with his present routine work. He hoped that Martha’s physician might be able to provide the information that could help answer that question.

      As Dr. Richard Moore entered the room, Benton stood up and shook the man’s hand. Thanks for taking time to talk with me, he said. Know you are very busy.

      Always can make time for you, Moore replied. A short man with sharp blue eyes and a few strands of light brown hair combed back from his forehead, he had on the white smock donned by most medical personnel instead of the various green shades of clothing worn by all of the sustainers. Unfortunately, I have nothing new to tell you from the last time we spoke.

      Martha is not any better, not talking more . . . not saying any new words? She’s not making any progress at all?

      "As far as we can tell, she’s generally repeating the same few words

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