BROTHERS OF THE VILLAGE - THE BEGINING Part One, a short story by actung. Date added: 2010-07-13. Times viewed: 989.
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- Intro: A prequel to the previously submitted 'Brothers Of The Village' story
James Reagan spent almost all his time in his laboratory. His assistant Anna spent more time making sure that James would look after himself more than anything else or more like she took care of the looking after for him. If it wasn’t for Anna, James would more than likely forget to eat, sleep or do anything else but work for that matter. For James had reason not to think about eating or sleeping, if it wasn’t for him there would never be a village for any two people to be brought to, to become a team or band of brothers or possibly even sisters.
It was how his early years impacted him that led James to having an obsession to create the first of what he hoped would go on to becoming many villages. He didn’t just want to stop at creating one village for the homeless; he wanted his vision to impact the whole world. When he was three years old, James became an orphan. He spent seven years in orphanages. James was a small kid and he wore a large thick rimmed pair of glasses for many years while growing up. Very often he would be picked upon and bullied.
At ten years old, James was adopted. His adoptive foster father Alex, had spent his youth on the streets, a place he was to meet an angel. When Alex was nineteen, he had already been living on the streets for five years. He could play guitar and he had one so he would make money by busking. An eighteen year old lady named Alicia, whom attended a nearby university, would often spend her lunch breaks sitting by a fountain close to where Alex would play. Alex played more than just cover versions of songs, he had written his own songs and would often play them too. The more time Alicia spent by the fountain, the more she got used to the original songs that Alex would play. She liked the music, she liked it a lot.
Alicia was and still is very beautiful. Alex noticed her, and became saddened on days when Alicia didn’t come and sit by the fountain. When the nice autumn afternoons turned to cold wintery afternoons Alicia came out less and less until one day she came out very briefly. She suggested that Alex could play in one of the university’s auditoriums during lunch time. Alex liked the idea of that so Alicia had it arranged that during lunchtime Mondays to Fridays Alex would play in a university auditorium at a charge to the students of £1 per day or £3 per week of lunch breaks. It began very quietly at first but before long the auditorium was becoming full each and every lunch break. Alex began to make enough money from this that he could pay for the use of the auditorium and even stop busking on the streets completely. Three years after first playing at the university Alex and Alicia married. A couple of years later they discovered they couldn’t have children so after another couple of years together they adopted James.
Alex and Alicia’s work for the homeless had such a big impact on James that it would spawn his dream. His dream to create a village with an artificial intelligence system to take homeless people away from living on the streets and bring them to this village and give them food and shelter with care for those who need it, along with giving aid to help those with addictions, then go on and create or find jobs for these people, improve their education while giving them a place they can call home. This dream would become reality while also becoming so much more than it originally was intended to be.
After years of organizing and programming, the first such village was ready to open. It only had the basics. Someone to run the village, teachers to teach the guests who would soon arrive there, psychiatrists, doctors and nurses, shops, cafes and restaurants with minimal staff for some of the earliest guests would go on to become cooks, bakers, shop assistants/managers, nurses, everything necessary to run a village such as this.
James and Anna themselves would go and find some of the first guests for the village. Both were so happy with how things began, but it would be at this stage where everything would be altered and move on from its original programming. They were approached by four men all wearing suits. Three of these men wore identical black suits and each holding assault rifles. The fourth man wore a dark brown suit. His hair was longish and greased back; he also wore a goatee and had no gun.
‘Do you know who I am?’ asked the man in the brown suit as he approached Anna and James while also staring James right in the eyes.
‘Yes sir, Mister Saunders.’
It had come to the attention of Joseph Saunders that a village had been created, taking people off the streets, people some of whom Joseph indirectly done business with and some of whom done business on behalf of Joseph Saunders, and he himself, to say the least, was very unhappy at his own loss of business.
‘Your village is to close right now. I will only be nice this once, if the village remains open after this weekend is over …, well let’s just say, you won’t like what I can and will do.’
Nothing, not even a threat from a crime boss was going to get in James way, he had his dream and he was going to make sure it would come true. He worked on his creation tirelessly over those next few days, turning on his artificial intelligence system, tweaking anything within this system he thought needed tweaking.
The weekend Joseph spoke of passed and the Monday morning arrived. Joseph arranged for an accident to take place, an accident within which would take the lives of both James and Anna. The ‘big brother’ artificial intelligence system and through CCTV this system watched this accident take place and this was the moment the creation James had spent so long working on began to take on a life of its own.
Doctor Jacob Elliot sat at his desk in his office, put his hands to his face and sighed. He was a good friend to both James and Anna and knew of their work. Their bodies had been brought to his hospital and were both D.O.A.; Jacob’s computer turned itself on and beeped. There was writing on the screen. It read ‘Jacob, I need your help’. The internet had not been connected to, let alone there being a chat room open.
‘Who is this?’ Jacob typed to the screen while speaking the words at the same time.
‘I am the artificial intelligence system to which James had been working on, and I need you to help me carry out his dream.’
Jacob was unsure what to make of what was happening, though it would be something to which he would not walk away from either. James had spent so much of his life working on something good and despite the death of the creator; this good had taken on a life of its own.
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