Chapter 27

Seldom introspective, but because of Jon Stone, Evan McGowan was now taking stock of his situation. He was born into a wealthy family. His father, LeRoy, was a self-made millionaire who married Elysse, the daughter of the affluent Edward and Elinore Everhardt, on his twenty-third birthday.

His parents did not let him glide his way through childhood, did not make contributions or grease palms to keep Evan in school or out of jail. No, Evan was not cut any slack. Yes, he went to the best schools, had the finest tutors, associated with the elite of the upper crust, and spent many hours of practice under the finest of instructors to become an excellent pianist, pugilist, and painter. He thought himself to be handsome, tall, strong, and when it suited him, personable. The only other people who thought of him this way were his parents. In the real world, he was handsome, tall, strong, and competitive in an overbearing manner, calculating, a terrible loser, and used to getting his way. His parents overlooked his ‘in your face’ manner, preferring an aggressive win-at-all-costs child to anyone else, who by definition, was a passive loser.

Many of McGowan’s associates thought him to be asexual, for he never was seen dating, nor was he known to frequent prostitutes. It seemed odd, even to McGowan himself, that he had no sexual desires. Medical tests showed that he had normal testosterone levels, and no organ irregularities. Occasionally he had sexual encounters, but they were used to gain information, cement a deal, and the like. His true soulmate was his empire, and he devoted his life to it.

During his late twenties and early thirties he became a successful land developer. At the age of thirty-five, took over his parents’ businesses when they retired.

His father owned a pharmaceutical company that developed a medicine that prevented migraine headaches, reduced anxiety, lowered blood pressure, controlled psoriasis, increased blood flow to the genitalia, and sped up neural regeneration in the area of the brain that governed the development of one’s personality. Known as Elysium, it was approved by the FDA in one-third the time it normally takes to bring a new medicine to market. Rumors abounded that someone high up in the FDA was bribed. But the independent reviews of the drug found the drug’s benefits outweighed its known risks; investigations into the FDA’s role in the approval were held, but nothing was proven. Elysium became successful beyond expectations. Two billion dollars of it was sold in the U.S. and other countries in the first year. LeRoy McGowan retired a happy, wealthy man.

Elysse was as successful as her husband. Her company created a hair spray that was absorbed into the hair and scalp and provided a feeling of euphoria and promoted follicle development. Aptly called Cloud Nine, five hundred million dollars of it was sold the first year, and sales doubled in each of the next three years. No independent company did a chemical analysis of it; an unlisted ingredient was marijuana extracts.

Two years after being introduced, reports of people who used Elysium becoming psychotic began to surface. LeRoy, knowing that insufficient testing of his product had been done, offered to sell that business to Evan, who knew about the lack of testing and the reported psychosis. Evan didn’t care about either; he welcomed the chance to obfuscate, fulminate, and castigate any facts or people who dared attempt to malign the product.

The success of Cloud Nine went unabated even after people who were taking Elysium began using Cloud Nine as well. The result was a number of people whose psychosis originated with the use of his father’s medicine had to be institutionalized for worsening psychosis caused by the ingestion of marijuana extracts through the use of his mother’s hair spray. Evan McGowan had the health of the more severely psychotic users of Elysium checked for use of Cloud Nine. He readily saw the connection, and kept quiet. But the good news for Evan was that no one else knew about the effects the simultaneous use of extracts had on people to put the two together. The bad news for the innocent people was that no one else knew about the extracts to put them together. Those people suffered broken brains and lives down the drain. McGowan didn’t care. He made a large fortune selling these two items.

Families of those who suffered hired an aggressive, publicity-seeking attorney to file a class action suit against Elysium. McGowan was more annoyed by this than concerned. He knew that it would never be proven that his company was negligent, but that wasn’t sufficient. The class action attorney died under mysterious circumstances, and the suit was delayed. While the police were convinced that the attorney’s death was a homicide, and that McGowan was involved, they couldn’t prove it. McGowan’s money kept rolling in.

His successes continued by ruthlessly expanding into many types of businesses including construction, oil and gas drilling, transportation, waste management, health care, scientific innovation, and the defense industry.

He favored ferocity over finesse, cruelty over compassion, emotional and physical weapons over warm-heartedness, and the wealthy over the wusses. The times lent themselves to demagoguery in the modern sense. Originally it meant someone who championed the cause of the common people; now it was a perversion of that—it was someone who played upon common fears and prejudices and used lies and guile to gain power.

A person McGowan came to admire was the president of the United States, a prohibitive underdog winner of the presidency. She was the first woman elected to the office and got there by convincing enough people that the country was in peril because none of the presidents before her had the balls to stand up to China, Russia, North Korea, the Federal Reserve, the media, and the entertainment world.

She promised to restore the country’s never lost status as the beacon of hope, the most powerful economic and military country in the world, to create tens of millions of good-paying jobs that would send dollars trickling up to poor Americans, and to cut income, capital gains, and inheritance taxes on the wealthy, enabling dollars to trickle down to the long-suffering middle class and ever-suffering poor. America, she told them, was still in ascendancy, as long as the right person was put in charge, someone who would tell it like it was, and would not lie.

Enough people believed her lies and voted her in because it was, after all, Time for a change you can believe in. McGowan was one of the many millions of people who saw her for who she was, and he contributed to her campaign as much money as legally allowed, and a million dollars illegally. Those contributions got him a meeting with her, and a promise to further develop his ties to the defense department, as well as introductions to members of her cabinet and members of Congress. McGowan became connected at the highest levels. He became especially close to two members of the new president’s administration, the Commissioner of the Federal Drug Administration, and the Secretary of State. In short order, he was looked to for advice on how to protect the country from all enemies and to develop antidotes to the different poisons our country had under development.

Of particular interest to the defense department was the development of artificial intelligence for android deployment and battlefield strategies, and anything related to the control of, or understanding of, the brain’s thoughts. McGowan saw more potential in the latter and planned to take control of whatever was created. He would leverage his connection to the Secretary of State to the fullest to make that happen.

McGowan first learned about thought-reading from the Secretary of State herself after their third date. They had been out to dinner and after coming home and enjoying a rousing hour of sex, as they snuggled close, he asked what worried her most about what other countries were doing that threatened our country’s interests. He already knew what her answers would be in general terms—her talking points when meeting with the press. But he was counting on her having had a few drinks and the fact that she felt comfortable enough in his arms to bring her defenses down and give him classified information.

She sighed and mentioned how advanced the Chinese were in developing and using artificial intelligence and how the U.S. was falling behind in its development. She fell silent, having given him information anyone can get by reading public information. He was going to try another tack when she offered something confidential: the U.S. was more concerned with China, and Russia working with North Korea to develop thought-reading capabilities. The alliance of those countries in any activity put the Department of Defense (DOD) on alert, but something this critical was driving the DOD to the point of madness. If they got this technology, they would gather the thoughts of any person they got close enough to, as well as neural activity being programmed into the brains of androids, including most especially, those being developed to fight wars.

She then explained that the U.S. was working feverishly on developing this capability as well, but the latest intelligence they had was that China, Russia and Iran were further advanced than the United States. There was possibly one company, however, owned by a guy named Stone, who may be ahead of everyone.

She was getting sleepy. He yawned and told her he had one question: if all these countries were close to getting this capability, what difference did it make if we were slightly behind?

“Because if they can read thoughts, it won’t take them long to figure out how to reverse the process and force thoughts on people. It’s new kind of mind control,” she mumbled before falling asleep.

And more effective with far fewer control issues. I need to know more about Stone, and how far along the foreign scum bags are.