Free Genesis of Evil by Nile J. Limbaugh Page B

out on her own, the crutches were merely another extension of her body. On the odd occasion, she wished in passing that she could dance or ice skate, or perhaps jog, but she pushed those thoughts aside. She found a profession she enjoyed and set out to learn all there was to know about helping corporations find the people they needed, as well as helping people find their place in life—at least as far as their jobs went.
    There were simply more important things to worry about than a pair of defective hips.
     
    Lester Mede checked his watch and snapped to attention. He turned his head smartly to the left and gazed with narrowed eyes down the row of troops, making certain that the ranks were precisely in line as required. Deciding that all was in order in that quadrant, he turned his attention to the armored cavalry behind him. He performed a perfect about-face in order to survey the rows of tanks and cannon. Satisfied that they, too, were arranged as required, he checked his watch once more.
    It was time.
    Lester Mede stepped quickly off to his right, lifted the mop from the bucket, wrung it out exactly as he had been instructed and commenced cleaning the floor in the northeast corner of the food court. He allowed himself exactly fifteen minutes for each quadrant. No more. Any Field Marshal worth his salt could mop one fourth of this area in fifteen minutes. And Lester Mede was a first rate Field Marshal.
    Lester Mede had been a perfectly normal boy until three weeks before his ninth birthday when he, his brothers William and George and two of their friends went out into the woods to play. They were having trouble deciding whether to play Cowboys and Indians or Tarzan and the Headhunters when they wandered into a grove of abandoned pecan trees and decided on the latter. It was Lester’s turn to be Tarzan so he picked the tallest tree he could find and scampered up it almost as easily as the Ape Man himself. The boys all agreed that when it came to climbing trees Lester had no competition. The boys swung joyfully from branch to branch for almost half an hour. Then Lester made a grab for the next perch and missed by a hair.
    He hurtled toward the ground at what seemed to be a hundred miles an hour, bouncing from limb to limb as he descended. He had survived falls of the same height several times and would have again had it not been for part of a long forgotten farm implement that lay half buried at the base of the tree.
    The last branch he struck spun him half around and he landed head first on a rusty steel plate. The other boys had laughed when he missed the handhold, having done the same thing hundreds of times themselves. They scampered down the tree, stopped next to Lester and laughed at him, waiting for him to get up. But when he continued to lie silently where he had landed they became worried. When six or seven minutes passed without Lester responding to any stimulus, William, who was the oldest, ran for help.
    Lester lay in the hospital several weeks. At the end of his convalescence the doctor told Mr. and Mrs. Mede that, although Lester had mended physically, he had suffered irreversible brain damage.
    Lester received all the therapy available. In the end, he was able to function, but just barely. For some reason known only to Lester and God he became obsessed with soldiers and turned everything into a military exercise.
    He was enrolled in a special school that he attended with limited success until his eighteenth year. At that time it was universally agreed among the staff that any additional attempts at education were fruitless. The next step in his development was to find him a job of some sort. When the mall opened Mr. Mede called Michael Penton, the mall manager, who owed him a favor. After some haggling and wheedling Penton agreed to try Lester out as a janitor in the food court. Although everyone involved had their doubts, Lester turned out to be one of the most reliable workers in the complex. When given a