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    Chrysalis: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories
    Chrysalis: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories
    Chrysalis: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories
    Ebook207 pages2 hours

    Chrysalis: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories

    By Warren Brown

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    About this ebook

    Chrysalis- A Collection of Short Stories 1. Face Value: Social Killer Social Thriller- Human beings in the year 2064Ad are valued by their Faces. 2. Inheritance Claim: Web of Souls- No Souls Are Lost- They Are Imprisoned Forever 3. Laura Attraction- Laura Jones Wants to Receive A Million Dollars Today 4. Monkey in Mind- A high octane adventure of a Thought Monkey 5. Reaper Harvester- I am a Reaper and Harvester. Ruled by the Warriors of Guzon A Reaper is trained to plant seeds on barren planets.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWarren Brown
    Release dateAug 23, 2017
    ISBN9781370922185
    Chrysalis: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories
    Author

    Warren Brown

    Warren Brown is an Author who has written in several genres from fiction to non-fiction. Warren is a certified Life Coach and Hypnotherapist. Warren completed his Advertising and Copywriting training through American Writers and Artists Inc. (AWAI).  I have been an Indie publisher for over eleven years now. I have been writing and publishing on the web since 1993. Website: https://warren4.wixsite.com/warren Medium: https://warrenauthor.medium.com/ Substack: https://warrenbrown.substack.com/

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      Book preview

      Chrysalis - Warren Brown

      CHAPTER 1

      Human beings in the year 2064AD are valued by their Faces. This is based on a Global Face Index (GFI), which sets a person Face Value based on life experiences, trainings, skills, psychological and physiological attributes. What happens when the wrong people in society have the highest Face Value and only one man knows how to control the Face Value Index before the world is controlled by fanatics and the criminally insane in society?

      The World of Face Values is the world of the future, a world of social influence and power. A face, your face is so much more than the first thing you see in the mirror every morning. Your face is literally your fortune and you need to do whatever it takes to keep your Face Value high up on the scale of social influence in order to be accepted and considered a valuable member of society.

      What is the value of a person’s face?

      We tend to look at our faces in the mirror and wonder to ourselves, what makes this face so special?

      Would it matter if I had a different face?

      We notice that we all react differently to people in life. We smile at a familiar friendly face and we turn away from the face of a person we do not like very much. We look away from a face we think is unfriendly or cruel. We tend to judge people based on their faces whether we like to do so or not. It is wrong to judge a book by its cover, but there are so many of us who are guilty of doing just that.

      Do our thoughts change our facial features?

      Could a person change their way of thinking to alter their facial features?

      Our faces reveal so much like who we are, what we are thinking, feeling, as well as our intentions and impressions.

      The human face is one of the most complex parts of the human body composed of skin, muscles, features and expressions. The human face has the biggest range of muscle structure in the human body, while forty-three of these muscles are directly linked to facial emotions.

      It is human nature to trust and listen to a person with a kind face, kind eyes and a warm smile, than to someone who looks unfriendly, cold and who in our opinion has a cruel look.

      In a world where identity fraud came to be a common occurrence there was need for a new face recognition system to be able to check the identity of a person. In the future there are more people experiencing identity theft, which is in a large part due to the digital footprints we leave in cyberspace.

      In a world where the worth of a person is measured by his or her wealth, it was necessary for an evaluation system to be created where the skills and influence of a person could be measured. The evaluation score obtained by this ingenious method was intricate, unique making it possible for any person to get the job or career which would be ideal for the individual, so that maximum experience, joy and satisfaction were gained in the short and long terms.

      Beatrice and Frank Posten were two social media scientists who developed the grading system of Face Values. They were part of an approved government project in 2064AD.

      The couple had great visions of the future and they were killed in a road accident after the first two months of having implemented the new Face Value systems globally. The whole incident was treated with suspicion, as it happened in broad daylight. There were a few eye-witnesses who said that the couple were driving a blue car when they were pushed off the road and over the cliff by two black cars, a Lexus and a Chrysler which drove away.

      This unfortunate incident stole the couple of their accomplishment, while creating a monstrous evaluation system, which was being used by nefarious agents to control human population worldwide and in human colonies in space.

      CHAPTER 2

      It is said that No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. We are one connected island of social interaction, we are all together and yet we are all worlds apart.

      I am the Face Value system and I am going to change the way humans look at themselves.

      A young man is sitting in front of his computer and mobile phone working on his scores in his Face Value Application.

      Congratulations Hank, you have improved your Face Value score and now you are eligible for your next job, says the computer, the message is repeated on the mobile of the young man.

      There is a knock on the door of the apartment.

      The young twenty-five year old sits up straight in his wheelchair and moves towards the door.

      He raises his hand and opens the two latches and he pulls off the door chain.

      He peeps through the narrow opening in the door and sees four strangers outside.

      He opens the door nervously, he observes the men outside his door with suspicion.

      The young man opens the door fully.

      Mr. Hank Burton your country needs you. You are to be appointed as the new President of the united new world.

      Is this my new job? Has my Face Value risen to the Presidential level? says the young man amused.

      Yes, you now qualify for the post of the President of the united new world, says one of the men, a slim looking man close to his fifties slightly greying at the temples, dressed in a suit.

      The men in black suits enter the small apartment.

      The men in suits take the young man, who is now dressed in a dark blue suit and grey tie downstairs to the waiting limousine.

      They drive Hank across the city in a limo to the Presidential office. A group of cabinet ministers walk in. They inform Hank Burton that he is the next President of the new New world.

      There is a large map of the united world and there are no more boundaries, the world is one enormous large land mass sharing its resources, wealth and prosperity.

      The Earth’s tectonic plates have shifted and it has resulted in physically uniting the divided world of boundaries, territories, divisions and lines.

      Meanwhile an elderly woman is escorted out of the back door. She is taken in a car and left in a retirement home. Her Face value has dropped. Adele Sommerville was the President of the New World Order, but her social value and social influence dropped drastically after the great Earth shift, which resulted in the economic and political crisis in the world. This was an upheaval she was not equipped to solve. But, a young man called Hank Burton, a graduate and a genius of political reforms provided solutions, which made the world take notice. The world needed a leader for this New Age and Hank Burton was their answer.

      At the Face Value Headquarters a group of ten individuals watch the screen in a high security building.

      The Social Media values are rising and falling of individuals around the world. The woman in charge of the operations Merle Grayson is studying the charts with interest. The Global Face Index or GFI is the main program which evaluates all the faces of mankind from children to adults.

      We need to contact Rudy Nureyev, his Face Value is dropping at the space Station. He needs to launch that satellite in space before his face value drops and the launch is delayed by a year.

      The virus in the spaceship is eliminating everyone with low face Values and three astronauts have already died, said Jill Fonseca a tall brunette, who was part of Merle’s team.

      CHAPTER 3

      Can we manipulate our facial features?

      What if a person could manipulate their facial features by staring at the photograph of another person, by staring in a mirror and re-arranging their facial features with the power of their thoughts and mental abilities?

      Monks at the Monastery of Triune develop a method to increase their face value in the Stock Markets.

      I believe that having the face of a Sinner or the face of a Saint, will not save a person. The world needs to have the right people at the helm of government, so the wrong people need to have their Face Values adjusted.

      Social Media influence and ecommerce values are realistic values in the society of the future. The right social Face Value can make an individual a leader in society, while a low social Face Value can result in an underprivileged life.

      Human beings are capable of making ten thousand unique facial expressions. Genuine facial expressions are almost always symmetrical.

      Paul Ekman proved that human expressions were learned, and showed that all human facial expressions are innate and universal. This research he carried out in the 1960s in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

      There are twenty-one mimetic facial muscles which are directly attached to the face and form the foundation of the human face.

      This group of holy monks were growing their social media influence using special mathematical formulas they had developed.

      Everything which the monks did was podcasted and broadcasted out to their growing audience, in the form of messages, video vlogs, pod casts, audio casts and also as blog posts.

      These ordinary and pleasant six monks were producing some of the best wine and cheese in the world.

      The Face Values of these monks were going up daily and they were crossing levels and ranks now in the social media blogosphere.

      These humble six monks with their rising Face Values were now reaching the level of becoming some of the most powerful people in the world.

      These simple and charitable monks could also run the country very soon.

      There were people who did not want that to happen.

      At this instant there were five assassins out to kill the six innocent monastics.

      There was a traitor in the Face Value global operations network, known as Blank Face. The assassins of Blank Face were out to control the Face Value system and use it to harness the power of social networks to control the planet. No one could stop the agents of Blank Face from fulfilling their mission.

      The Monastery of the Monks of Triune was located on an island in the pacific. There were few people who knew about the existence and the location of the island.

      Yet, there were now three motor-boats headed towards the island and the Monastery. It was late night and the boats were soundlessly skimming the waters towards the island.

      As the motor boats landed onto the beach, six armed men came ashore.

      The men creep up the beach. They crawl on the grounds of the monastery and climb the high walls to get into the monastery.

      The monastery is quiet, except for the sounds of the monks chanting in the inner sanctum. The masked Anti-Social Media Squad noiselessly moved along the dark and damp corridors of the monastery, till they reach a door.

      The six men throw open the doors and step into the well-lit room, with guns firing.

      The six praying monks drop to the floor, riddled with bullets, and bleeding profusely. The spilled blood of the monks marks the prayer room of the monastery.

      The six men remove the prayer beads from the dying monks clenched hands as they next take out fresh brown robes from their packs.

      All six men have the same faces as the monks killed, as they remove their masks. One of the men resets his face as he notices a shift in the angle of his nose on a shiny cabinet in the computer control centre.

      These men have stolen the identities of the real monks. They go to the laptops in the adjoining room and improve their social media scores by clicking buttons to Save the Rain Forests, followed by clicking on sites to Save the World from Global Warming.

      The monks next go onto the grey social networks and start to make purchases of weapons of mass destruction.

      These monks, are the agents of Blank Face and their mission is to bring about the downfall of mankind and human civilization.

      CHAPTER 4

      Merle Grayson sets out to find the person with zero face value and bring the person to justice.

      Merle Grayson was now following a lead for a person with Zero Face Value who had made no attempt to increase their Face Value over the two months. It is a crime for a person to have a Zero Face Value in the Earth of the future.

      Merle was doing this job for the last ten years now, since leaving the Face Value Training Academy. Studying to be a Face Value Analyst and Justice Officer was a tough job and she knew that he father would have been proud of her and the work that she was doing.

      Her father Kevin was a police officer. He had wanted a son and he had a difficult time bringing his daughter up single-handedly after his wife Valerie passed away, at childbirth.

      Kevin married again. His new wife Doris was not too fond of his daughter Merle, especially after she got two children, two girls who she gave her undivided love and attention.

      There were times when Merle’s father would pick her up after school and take her for ice-cream and skating or to the movies. Merle treasured those moments with her Dad. When Merle was seventeen her father enrolled her into the Face Value training Academy. A year later Kevin passed away after a cardiac arrest, when he was at work. He was only forty-five when he passed away.

      Merle left home and stayed with friends as she continued her training. There were times when she was also tempted to follow her friends and go partying and break the law. But, she always thought about her father and his last words to her, Merle, I love you. Always prove to yourself that you can accomplish anything in life. Make yourself proud to be my daughter.

      Merle drove her car up to the old building on the outskirts of the city, which was located in a seedy neighbourhood, close to the waterfront.

      She was

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