The Road Home by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 1

They shared an apartment near Tacoma, Washington—most of them graduating from the same high school during the same year. As full-time students attending the University of Washington their expertise was largely in technology, save for two of the students, and all were working on their graduate degrees. Lounging in their apartment, they took in the summer air gusting through an open window. As students, they were unable to afford air conditioning and in the heat of the early August sun, their bodies dripped with sweat. If misery loves company, then loneliness would not be an issue as the students waited for the summer to pass.

Most of them were engineering students, except for two. David Nolan was on his way to becoming a biomechanical engineer and anticipated working with people in need of prosthetics. It was as much an art as a science and come September, he would begin his thesis on the development of sensory pads for high-tech prosthetic hands. Maya Christian was in the middle of her law degree. A natural leader, her goal was in the area of prosecution. She strongly believed that people do have rights but was also committed to locking away those who had not simply broken the law but destroyed the lives of others. A tinkerer of tiny things, Jackson Sizemore was studying nano-engineering with hopes of applying his education to the space program. Circuits were getting smaller and more compact and Jackson, seeing his dream of the future, was committed to furthering this science. Aurora Parker was a demure twenty-four-year woman fascinated with artificial intelligence and saw it as a major contributor to the advancement of all the sciences. Her vision of the future involved seeing an AI robot in every household, much like the digital revolution that brought a PC into every home. It was only a matter of time. Eli Carson had big plans of his own, studying genetic engineering. With so many applications for his field, he decided the cannabis industry was not only in its infancy but was set to explode in production. He saw himself creating new strains and developing drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. For Eli, it wasn’t simply a matter of producing weed but being involved in the treatment of chronic illnesses. Nathan Cooper was traveling a different path altogether, studying journalism. He was studying journalism, committed to exposing the truth of a world caught up in corruption and lies. He had read the works of Noam Chomsky and found his writings on authority and power inspiring, driving him forward in his journey for facts and honesty.