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  2120 Titus

  Copyright © 2018 by Razor Blade All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Dissertation

  “Your government loves your guns more than it loves your children,” the tall man said. He was standing at the bottom pit of a lecture hall 3 in the Peterson Science building at Grand University in Lincoln Nebraska. The man in question was Dr. Hans Mueller, a thirty two year old grad student working on his second doctoral dissertation and a current professor of Computer Science and Astrophysics at the University. His second doctoral degree, and the one he struggled with the most to understand was Psychology, or more specifically, the Psychology of Behavior.

  Diagnosed with mild Asperger’s as a child, Dr. Mueller had a difficult time with social interactions, and understanding behavior in general. He loved science and soaked up knowledge like a sponge, but had difficulty relating what he was to teach his students because of his diagnosis. Asperger’s was a cruel bitch for anyone with the diagnosis and Dr. Mueller was no different. He often struggled with social relationships and had difficulty communicating effectively with his students and colleagues. He was only interested in the sciences and didn’t care for many of the humanity classes he was required to take for his degree. And like most high functioning autistics, he had above normal intelligence and language skills.

  As part of his doctoral dissertation he had to prove his thesis-which must be significant and original- (no one has yet demonstrated it to be true), and it must extend the state of scientific knowledge. His thesis was that active shooters, in a school setting were responding to an evolutionary need for survival. He wanted to prove the motives for most school shootings were not from a revenge standpoint, but from an ancient need, held within our DNA, to survive and pass on our genes. In the modern world, the signals from our DNA no longer functioned in a way they did thousands of years ago due to changes in how societies have evolved. Basically, our culture has outpaced our gene sequences and the active shooter phenomenon was born.

  The problem was there was only one way to prove it.

  Dr. Mueller, upon entering the lecture hall set a duffle bag on the table and stepped over to the lectern. He poked and prodded his laptop until his Power Point projected onto the large screen to his left. The lecture hall was steep in design with the rows of students rising at a thirty degree angle up to the top where a single double wide door rose behind the last row of students. The doors were shut and the hall was now quiet except for a few grumblings from students who didn’t necessarily agree with Dr. Mueller’s first statement about the government and guns.

  Picking up the clicker to his laptop, Dr. Mueller stepped over to the table looking over his shoulder at the massive screen behind him. He wore a wireless microphone that amplified his voice over the speaker system in the lecture hall and cleared his throat checking to make sure the system was working. The first slide he projected was a picture of Charles Whitman and Stephen Paddock side by side. The image was from a Washington Post website story on the two killers comparing how they both shot freely from a high vantage point and murdered innocent victims at will. Dr. Mueller read from the story, “In 1966, on a hot Texas summer afternoon, ex-Marine sharpshooter Charles Whitman, 25, boarded an elevator in the University of Texas Tower with a cache of weapons, intent on deadly mayhem. From more than 300 feet above, Whitman blasted victims on campus and nearby — a pregnant woman, shot in the belly; her boyfriend, shot in the neck; a teenager, shot in the face. Seventeen people died that day, and more than 30 were wounded.”

  Dr. Mueller looked over to the faces of the students and then back at the screen. He read on, “Like the dozens of victims shot by Stephen Paddock from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort, Whitman’s targets were confused, defenseless and easy targets for at least 20 minutes as police scrambled to find where the shots were coming from.”

  Then a student spoke up and said, “This is obviously a liberal college.”

  A chorus of students broke out in laughter at the remark and then they died down.

  “What are you saying?” Dr. Mueller asked. He didn’t know which student spoke up, and he didn’t care. But now he was pissed because someone interrupted his presentation.

  “Guns don’t kill, people do,” the voice replied.

  “Please stand up,” Dr. Mueller requested. The student, who was a third of the way up the hall to his right stood. He was a male, about nineteen years old in a ball cap and T-shirt and jeans. Dr. Mueller stepped around the table to the front and looked at the student shaking his head. “You say guns don’t kill, people do?”

  “That’s right,” the student replied.

  “You must have got that off a NRA bumper sticker. You may be correct that guns alone do not kill people, but they sure make it easier---don’t you think?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “I’ve never seen a gun kill anyone,” the student replied. He was now nervous being called out in front of all his peers.

  “If that is the case, why does your government issue firearms to the police? Or to soldiers?”

  “Guns are tools, nothing more.”

  “I see,” Dr. Mueller replied. “Then why not issue them screw drivers and hammers?”

  The student was now becoming defensive and angry. “You just want to ban guns.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  The student had no reply.

  “I believe everyone has the right to defend themselves,” Dr. Mueller said. “And I’m a firm believer in the second amendment. But don’t insult my intelligence and tell me guns don’t kill when it is very clear they were created for that very purpose.”

  “But it takes a person…”

  “Yes it does, but it is common now for people to quote the overused meme that guns don’t kill, people do, to justify that guns are only tools. What you say and what you mean are two very different things---all together.”

  “Then why not ban cars? Or baseball bats? They can kill.”

  “I’m not saying we should ban guns, did you not hear what I said? Are you so angry that you are blind to what I am saying? And as far as cars and baseball bats go, they were designed to transport people and hit baseballs, not kill.”

  “But they can be used to kill,” the student replied.

  “Of course, I see where you are going with this. Anything can be used for a purpose it wasn’t designed for. But the gun was designed to kill. All I want is for you to agree that guns were created to kill and that guns do indeed kill.”

  “People kill.”

  “I see I’m getting nowhere with you,” Dr. Mueller replied. “Sit down.”

  “I didn’t spend twenty grand to go to a college to be lectured on gun control,” the student said. He was almost shouting.

  “I’m not lecturing you on gun control. I’m simply stating a fact that guns do kill. They were designed for that purpose. You can use a gun as a paper weight, or to hammer in a nail if you are creative, but the original purpose of a gun is to kill.”

  A woman from the second row spoke up, “If someone wants to kill, they can use fertilizer, or cyanide gas, or box cutters or even a plane.”

  Dr. Mueller looked at the floor for a second and gathered his thoughts. “Did you know that one hundred percent of all school shootings involved a
gun?” he asked as he looked up.

  The woman didn’t reply.

  “Nobody took fertilizer, or cyanide gas, or box cutters or a plane to a school to kill anyone. Do you know what they took?” Dr. Mueller waited for an answer which he didn’t get. “They took guns.” Dr. Mueller stepped back behind the table and put his hands on the table top. “Although it is possible to purchase ammonia nitrate, it is very difficult to make it into a bomb. In its pure form, ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive. In fact, bombs need two components beside the fertilizer: a detonator and a fuel. The fertilizer must be mixed with a fuel in an exact ratio, and the detonator must be able to generate sufficient energy. Don’t get me started on what it takes to fly a plane. You watch too many movies.”

  “Take away our guns and see what happens!” another student called out. This time from near the top of the hall.

  “Who’s taking your guns?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  “Just wait, that’s what the lib tards want to do.”

  “What do you base this claim on?”

  “You know I’m right.”

  “Let me see your data, your empirical evidence,” Dr. Mueller snapped back.

  “I don’t need evidence, I hear it on the news all the time.”

  “You mean talk shows. I’ve seen no hard news about anyone in our government creating legislature to repeal your right to own a gun. That is pure scare tactics and from what I see here today, very effective.”

  “Just try to take my guns,” the student said.

  “Is that a threat?” Dr. Mueller asked.

  No reply.

  “I'm a firm believer in your right to protect yourself and your family and the 2nd amendment. Just don't tell me guns don't kill. I'm not that stupid,” Dr. Mueller replied. “Now can I get on with my presentation?”

  The student section was silent. It was obvious to everyone watching that Dr. Mueller was pissed as he stomped over to his laptop. He picked up a sheet of paper and looked at it, then he looked out into the crowd. The distraction caused him to lose focus and now he needed time to get his thoughts back together. The paper was blank but the students didn’t know and it gave him sufficient time to cool off and regain his composure.

  Dr. Mueller used his hand held clicker and changed the slide on his Power Point. A quote popped up and he read from the slide, “Our perception of our ability to exert control over our environment has a substantial effect on our response to stress factors in our life. When we feel more autonomous, we're much more resistant to stress--and when we feel less autonomous, we can perceive the same set of circumstances as much more stressful.” Mueller let that sink and said to the audience, “What he is alluding to is when we feel we are losing control of our lives, our stress responses increase.”

  Dr. Mueller clicked and the next slide appeared. At the top of the slide in bold letters the title of an abstract appeared, “Representations of the Self in Social Phobia:

  Vulnerability to Social Threat- Beck's cognitive theory of anxiety disorders.”

  Dr. Mueller didn’t read the title but went on to quote part of the article. “Beck has described anxiety disorders as "hypersensitive alarm systems...sensitive to any stimuli that might be taken as indicating imminent disaster or harm." Mueller looked out to the student body and scanned faces. “As you can see, anxiety can trigger a threat response.”

  A student spoke up, “Are you saying anxiety is an evolutionary response?”

  “It is obvious that anxiety is adaptive in protecting the individual from danger.” Dr. Mueller replied. He again quoted from the Power Point. “Since these ancestors lived in groups of about 150 individuals, the amount of bad news they could generate was limited, even if we add in bad news from neighboring groups. Now, we have available the bad news of many billions of people,” Dr. Mueller read from the slide.

  “What does this have to do with school shootings?” a student asked.

  “We evolved to feel stress when we lose control, or perceive we have lost control. Our survival mechanism kicks in and we remove the threat,” Dr. Mueller replied.

  “That doesn’t explain why a shooter takes out as many as they can, why not kill whoever set him off and leave the rest?”

  “To our ancient ancestors it didn’t make sense to pin point a single threat out of a group. If the tribe from across the valley came to take your women and all your possessions, you killed them all before they killed you.”

  “And your saying in the modern age we can’t differentiate between a mob and a bully?” the student asked.

  “I’m sure most of us can, but the question is would we? In a rage, most people are blinded by the physiological responses to anger and act out towards the group. In the workplace it’s not the asshole boss, it’s the company and everyone who works there, in the school, it’s not the bully but everyone who goes to the school. The shooter sees groups--- not individuals.”

  “But active shooting is a recent phenomenon.”

  “Culturally yes, psychologically and biologically no. We are too closely related to our ancestors to be any different. We may drive cars and use cellphones, but we are not that far from living in the jungle or out on the savanna of Africa.”

  “We are not animals,” the student replied.

  “Have you taken biology?” Dr. Mueller asked. For most people that would have been a joke, but to Mueller he was dead serious. He had a difficult time with metaphor, colloquialisms or figures of speech. Most things to him were as face value. To Dr. Mueller, the idea that someone would think humans were anything but animals was absurd.

  “Yes, most of us have taken biology professor. We are humans, not animals,” the student replied.

  “Human animals, order primates would be a more accurate description, Genus-Homo sapiens.”

  “So you’re saying we’re incapable of revenge?” the student asked. “I think you’re splitting hairs.”

  “Let’s define revenge,” Dr. Mueller replied. He pulled out his cell phone and looked up the definition on Google. Mueller replied, “Revenge is the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands.”

  “Exactly, your theory is wrong,” the student replied with a chuckle.

  Mueller set his phone down on the table and leaned back looking out at the student who smugly tried to destroy his theory. He felt a tinge of anger and smiled as a wave of emotion swept across him. “Very good,” Dr. Mueller replied. “What’s your name?”

  The student hesitated and replied, “Brian Ralston.”

  “I want you to elaborate, tell me why I’m wrong Mr. Ralston,” Dr. Mueller said. “And don’t hold back. I’m here for research and I value your opinion.”

  Brian looked around the room and saw faces looking back at him. He was called out and nervous and now regretted saying anything in the first place. But now he had to defend his position. “If someone pisses me off, I’m capable of selecting that person out of the crowd. I know the difference between one person and many.”

  “Maybe the issue is the degree of anger,” Dr. Mueller replied. “I’m not talking about getting an F on a term paper. I’m talking about persistent bullying, or rejection by the whole.”

  “I can still tell the difference.”

  Dr. Mueller walked around the table and stood behind the duffle bag he had set on the table when he first entered the room. He slowly leaned forward, picked up the bag by the rear and dumped out an AR-15 rifle and a pile of loaded clips. The metal made a scraping sound on the clean white table top as they slid out of the bag. He picked up the AR-15, and aimed the rifle at the ceiling feeling its weight in his arm. The rifle had a 40 shot clip with a bump stalk installed making it for all intents and purposes---automatic. He then lined up the remaining clips on the table in a nice neat order as the students watched. They assumed the gun was part of the lecture and used for a visual aid.

  “Brian, I would like to thank you for your input, I will cite you when I put together my final diss
ertation. I meant to get a little further along in my presentation, but with all this back and forth discussion my time is almost up and I had one final part left. And this is it,” Dr. Mueller said as he lowered the AR-15 and aimed it at the students. He pulled the trigger and emptied the clip into the student body towards the upper end of the lecture hall. His plan was thought out in advance so he would be able to block the exit as the students tried to escape.

  Dr. Mueller pressed the clip release button and locked in his second forty round magazine and sprayed the students as they tried to escape up the steps towards the back. The students coalesced into a large group, blocked from the exit door and unable to evade the gun fire. By the forth clip, there were only a few students moving and that was good enough for him.

  The experiment was for Dr. Mueller to feel and experience what it felt to be an active shooter and now he knew. He felt the adrenaline and the power he held over the helpless students as they tried to run from the bullets. Emotion was difficult for the autistic professor with the automatic rifle, but somehow he felt like he was on top of the world, even if it was just for that moment. When he finished his dissertation, he wouldn’t have to cite anyone, he knew what it felt like to kill at will and kill as many as he wished.

  The smell of spent gunpowder filled the air and blood drained down the stairs to the floor before him. He set the gun down on the table and waited for the authorities. He had no escape plan and had no intentions of taking the last bullet for himself. This was strictly an academic exercise. He stepped over to his laptop and brought up a Word document and started to type. He wanted to capture the feeling while it was still fresh in his mind.

  The whole episode was recorded by the cameras mounted in the lecture hall and he knew what his fate would eventually be. But he would have something no other professor could have, the true and raw data from an actual experiment. The fact the students died during the experiment was not important to Dr. Mueller. To him they were no better than lab rats or a Rhesus monkey. All in the name of science.