Tower-7 the Sustainer’s

Betty L. Alt

Description

In the late 21st century, with the new ice age causing worldwide starvation, industrialized nations have condemned all private property. Citizens have been forced into huge tower complexes, and land is used solely for food production under the Bureau of Sustenance. Amos Benton and Jake Martinez, employees of the Bureau, are sent from Tower-7 to investigate interior damage and missing items taken from a sustainer pod near Dallas. It is finally decided that the incursions into the pod are due to hungry animals. Benton, recalling his capture and escape nearly three years earlier from a group of people still living outside, is not so sure . . .

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 24 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669878773
• Langue: English

Extrait

BOOKS by Betty Alt
Night and Evil
Secret Waters
Death in a Small Town
JFK and The Janus Plan
The Sustainers
Following the Flag

(with Sandra Wells)
Running in the Shadows
Scales of Justice
Running Rich
Rocky Mountain Murders
Death Invades the Rectory
Dark Webs of Secrecy
Ban the Booze
The General’s Wives
Love and Regret
When Caregivers Kill
Mountain Murders
Mountain Mafia
Wicked Women

Police Women: Life with the Badge
Fleecing Grandma & Grandpa
The Proteus Agenda (with David Conway)
Keeper of the Keys (with Wayne K. Patterson)
Slaughter in Cell House Three (with Patterson)
Black Soldiers/White Wars (with William Alt)
Weeping Violins: The Gypsy Tragedy in Europe (with Silvia Folts)
Campfollowing: A History of the Military Wife (with Bonnie Stone)
Uncle Sam’s Brides (with Stone)




TOWER- 7
THE SUSTAINER’S










Betty L. Alt



Copyright © 2023 by Betty L. Alt.
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-7878-0
eBook
978-1-6698-7877-3

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: 05/24/2023





Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
846536



Prologue
As early as 1798, English scholar Thomas Malthus had warned the world that problems such as poverty, malnutrition and disease would occur with excess population. “The power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,” he warned in An Essay on the Principle of Population . He predicted that, if unchecked, populations would grow until they were too large to be supported by the food from available agricultural land.
Of course, writing near the end of the eighteenth century, Malthus could not foresee the great technological advancements beginning in the twentieth century which eventually would produce hybrid seeds, new fertilizers, pesticides to control insects, and huge mechanized harvesters. Therefore, his dire early warnings fell on deaf ears until . . .
“Food! Food! Food!” The cry echoed around the world in the middle of the twenty-first century as millions began to face starvation. In 2034, changing weather patterns beginning in September and lasting until late March caused America’s Great Lakes to completely freeze over; snowflakes fell on southern Italy, inland Egypt, and along the Amazon River in Brazil. Ice coated the Thames in England and completely stopped ocean transportation to Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As some scientists predicted, a new “ice age” had had begun.
Then, in parts of the world during the few summer months, a scorching sun began to turn originally fertile land into deserts in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Caught between the record-breaking ice and snow of long winters and blistering heat of short summers, the global growing season was cut each year to between four and five months.
In 2039, as food stockpiles in the industrialized countries began to dwindle and the world’s smallest harvest occurred in that year, panic swept every nation. This forced government leaders to put aside their usual political and military disagreements and concentrate on only one area – population survival. A Committee for Sustenance, composed of the best agricultural and scientific minds in the world, met in Geneva and after sixteen months – filled with increasing worldwide starvation and food riots – presented its report of impending doom.
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 nine years. (It was not mentioned that these deaths would help others survive.)
2. The United States, Canada, Argentina, Russia, China and other cattle and grain-producing areas of the world have difficulty providing adequately for their own people let alone the populations of other nations.
3. Immediate action was needed in these five countries (and parts of Europe) to reclaim and utilize for food production land now utilized for economic activities and population housing.
4. To accomplish this, all population should be moved, forcibly if necessary, into some form of huge high-rise cities. This would free for food production millions of suburban acreages presently utilized for such luxuries as single-family dwellings, expansive lawns, patios, swimming pools, shopping malls, etc.
Acting on the dire recommendations of the Sustenance Committee, governments in the industrialized countries actively entered the field of agriculture and rigidly controlled all food supplies. Immediately, the United States began forcibly to confiscate all privately-owned land for sustenance production. Private property ceased to exist in America, and all citizens were concentrated in gigantic urban towers.
The first Unites States tower complex – climbing toward the heavens and with a population of nearly two million – was completed and occupied in February 2051 near what had originally been St. Louis, Missouri. Chief architect for this project was the innovative George Stokes Benton who (with his wife Lucy Amos Benton and young son, Amos) had personally surveyed the site as early as 2043.
As the designer, Benton was given the honor of naming the tower. He suggested Babel-ON, a combination of the Biblical tower of Babylon and the hanging gardens of Babylon. His suggestion was accepted, and around the world if it were possible, towers were given similar names – Eiffel-ON in Paris, Pisa-ON in Italy, Lenin 17 in Russia, Tower of London or T of L as it was known by the residents.
Included worldwide within each tower complex were living quarters, schools, libraries, hospitals, shopping malls, theaters, recreational areas – all of the necessities of life condensed into millions of fewer acres than the old cities. Needed industry and manufacturing was sealed off from other parts of the residential towers to avoid any chance of pollution or toxic gases reaching the otherwise ideal climatic conditions under which the population lived. Fire and police were available on various levels although both services were seldom needed. Intra-tower transportation in the form of elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks easily and quickly carried workers or shoppers to their destinations.
In the early days of tower living, highways, railroads, and airplanes connected towers across the country, and towerites were permitted to take vacations to other towers. However, these eventually were discouraged, and all roads and rails were utilized solely for food transport. Fewer and fewer individuals sought to venture far from their birthplace. (It was estimated that by the year 2075, all individuals born that year in technologically developed areas would live and die without having left their tower.)
Across the United States huge towers had been constructed near major cities, many times moving population from neighboring states. (For example, The Boston Tower housed all of the population from Massachusetts and Vermont. Miami Tower covered all of Florida and Mississippi. Tacoma Tower included population from both Oregon, Washington and the upper part of California.)
Of course, in the beginning there were many Americans and citizens in other nations who balked at the idea of tower living. To counteract this thinking, governments made it illegal to reside outside a tower and forcibly moved those who tried to resist. This caused horrendous problems during a period which became known as the “Cycle of Chaos.” Black marketeering in food was rampant and took years to control. Suicide was high, especially among the elderly who felt they could not survive “caged” in a building. Civil revolt developed in many areas, and to enforce the laws governments used police and the military to quell continuing food riots. Millions of people around the world died over a period of ten years – a time that became known as B.C. (Before Chaos) and A.C. (After Chaos).
However, as food became scarcer and scarcer, humans began to realize that their survival was synonymous with tower living. By 2096, the tower system was functioning well, and except for middle and southern Africa, Australia and most of Brazil, people had made the adaptation. In America, as far as both its federal and tower governments were concerned, no one could be living outside.