The Milestone Protocol Ernest Dempsey (best short novels of all time .txt) 📖

too much for one organization to oversee. Wasn’t it?

“To what end, though?” she pressed. “Money? Power? What’s their motivation?”

“That, my dear, is what Jani Beg learned from Alexius.” Miyamoto returned to the scroll and rolled it up, no longer needing to see the text. “They do not need money or power. They already have it. They can take the richest person in the world and turn them into a pauper within a day.”

“So, why then? What’s the point? You mentioned total control of the world, which I’m still skeptical about, by the way.”

“Reasonably so.”

“Again, then. Why? What’s the point?”

Her father stepped closer, drawing the triangle together. “What is the absolute base need of any human being, hija? Take away all of these things we see in our everyday lives: entertainment, cars, fancy homes, gourmet food, all of it. What is the simplest of human needs?”

She thought about it, and it didn’t take long to come up with the answer. “Survival,” she said finally. “To keep on living is the basest of human needs.”

“Correct.”

“And that,” Miyamoto said, “is their entire purpose. At least they claim it is.”

Adriana did her best to process the statement, but it still didn’t add up. “Survival? It sounds like if they’re controlling everything from global finance to politics that they don’t need to worry about survival.”

“Ah, but they do. We all do.”

“What?” Her bewildered frown deepened.

“How many people do you believe this planet can sustain?” Diego asked. “At this moment, there are more than seven billion. How many more can it feed and house?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Who knows that?”

“The Cult of Thoth believes they know,” Miyamoto drawled. “And their ultimate purpose is to manage the population, just as you see many governments manage wildlife populations around the world. The United States allows hunting seasons of certain animals to maintain the population of deer, elk, ducks, and wild hogs, among others.”

“But we’re not animals,” Adriana said. “And again, that task is so big.”

“Hence the many tentacles they use. Government is also one of their tools.”

Adriana tilted her head to the side and crossed her arms. “You’re telling me that every politician that comes into a congressional or parliamentary or prime ministerial or presidential seat has been put there by this overarching deep state?”

“No, not all,” Diego corrected. “Only those they need to maintain control. Their leader is smart enough to understand that balance must be maintained for appearances. Almost everything you see in the news, too, is for the purpose of illusion. Things must seem real to people. They must feel like they have some kind of control over what is happening in their lives, or they will revolt against it.”

Adriana stepped away from the scroll and walked a few paces toward the door. She stopped and hung her head. She knew her father wasn’t crazy. He was far from a conspiracy theorist or some kind of nutjob from either side of the pendulum swing. He was the most rational person she knew, and she respected him. He’d never lied to her about anything, as far as she knew. Diego Villa was a man of honor and integrity. Even as she wondered how any of this was possible, she considered that simply by the fact he’d said it, there had to be some truth behind the story.

“So, this cult controls the population to maintain it at a level the planet can sustain?”

“Yes,” Miyamoto said. “They use a set of established markers, or standards, they call milestones. When the population exceeds a certain number, they trigger a mass extinction event.”

“Like a war or a plague.”

“Yes. They measure the milestones based on a complex series of markers that take into account global population and the advancement of technology and industry. If things don’t add up to where they should be based on their timelines, they execute a few thousand here, a hundred thousand there, a million somewhere else.”

She shook her head, still staring at the floor. “I just don’t see how it could be real.” Her tone betrayed her conviction, a sense that she knew it was true.

Her father cleared his throat to answer. “How many millions of people has cancer killed in the last thousand years? What about AIDS? The flu has killed untold millions just in the last century. In 2018, over eighty thousand people died from the flu in the United States alone. There are some things that happen that are natural, certainly, but not all. In fact, most are not. And then there are the little issues of things that are harmful yet legal. They have spread out their methods of shortening the human lifespan across a wide gambit. Wars and pandemics do the job more quickly when necessary, but they do a thorough job of thinning the herd in perpetuity. Even with all of our advances in nutrition, exercise science, medicine, and lifestyle, we are still topping out at around seventy-five years for an average human lifespan. That number has not gone up significantly in a long time. Again, you must ask why that is the case.”

“Why now?” Adriana rounded on them both. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

The two older men exchanged a knowing, wary glance.

Miyamoto spoke with warning in his voice. “Because they may have just stumbled on a more efficient, faster way to eliminate billions.”

16

Stockholm

“Cult?” Magnus said in disbelief. “What kind of cult?”

Kevin slumped back into the sofa and rubbed his eyes, waiting to hear the answer.

Tabitha tilted her head to the side as she listened. It was clear she was fed up with all the vague talk. She wanted answers, and she wanted them two hours ago.

“It’s right there on the tablet,” Sean said, indicating the artifact with his index finger. “The Hermetic Cult of Thoth.”

“So, you think the ibis is a symbol of…some kind of secret cult?” Kevin stumbled through the question.

Sean laughed at him in disbelief for a second. “Sure seems that way.”

“Did you know this before? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because