Finding The Perfect World

Pretty Baby

2011-10-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Nobody knew when the invasion began. One day, they were all just... here.

Maybe 'invasion' is a strong word. Appropriation? Overrunning? Occupation? Let me start from the beginning. My name Is Theo Harper, I live in Washington DC and work as a bicycle courier for HQ Deliveries, the number two delivery service in the DC metro.

'HQ-- We Try Harder'

Washington is a crowded city and normal, car-based delivery services are subject to the whims of traffic. Not so with bicycles-- we can go anywhere; between car lanes, on the sidewalk, down narrow alleyways-- whatever it takes. HQ also has an incentive plan for speedy deliveries, and that's why I mounted an electric motor and lightweight battery to Ugly Baby. You see, the hills are a killer for incentive cash. You need a game-changer and that was mine. My cool riding goggles equipped with lifesaving rear-view mirrors were another. But I sidetrack.

So I have my routes, right? The company has accounts, taking packages between two remote businesses over and again. This one route, where I bring two-foot-long cardboard cylinders about three miles right past Capitol Mall, I noticed something strange the other day. There was a guy, tall and thin, with a mop of blonde hair, just standing, staring away from the Capitol building as people walked past him going about their day. I saw him there on my way to the drop point, and he was still there fifteen minutes later, on my way back.

Now that in itself isn't strange. Hayseed types visit from farm country all the time and are astounded by the monuments in our nation's capital. You see them standing around and gawking pretty much every day. But this guy was different-- he wasn't gawking at all. He had no camera around his neck, no tour info clutched in his hand, no backpack... and no stupid Hawaiian shirt. He was a monochrome sort of guy, wearing white linen slacks and a long-sleeve, wrinkle-free white cotton shirt. He looked like one third of a Benneton ad. No, it was obvious that he was no tourist.

But later that day, I saw him again. Twice! Each time, he was standing at the entrance to another famous Washington building. Motionless. Alone. And looking away from it. It was strange because these buildings were far from each other, with no time to get from one to another without some traffic-defying device like my motorized bicycle.

And the next day I saw him again. Three times. In one delivery! Now I knew there must be more than one of him... no human could move that quickly. But twins? Triplets? Just standing on public steps, staring out at the city, tall thin mop-haired men wearing the same white outfits? It was weird, and it was piquing my curiosity. I promised myself that when I wasn't in a killer rush, I'd stop and ask a few questions.

I got my chance at the end of work today. I was on Ugly Baby, heading home. Other delivery companies have their own bicycles, mopeds and mini-cycles, but my rig was my own. I took it with me everywhere. On my way home I usually cut through a park, one with a pretty cool stairway I ride down. My fat balloon tires just bounce on those steps; I needed indestructible hardware if I was going to make any real money in this job.

Well, he was on those steps. I didn't notice until I was almost on top of him; I swerved to avoid collision and the knobby tires I depend on slid sideways, dumping me unceremoniously at his feet. He looked down at me, offered a hand and pulled me up. He was surprisingly strong for a skinny guy, but then I figured, most farmers were pretty strong.

"Thanks." I brushed myself off. I wasn't injured at all; I have catlike reflexes and actually landed on all fours. "Say, haven't I seen you around here for a couple of days?"

He returned to gazing outwards and then spoke, enunciating each word like reading from a list. "Most... likely."

"We get a lot of visitors here in the nation's capitol. Where are you from?"

Still staring. "Not... from... around... here."

"Well, that's pretty obvious. You look around with such intensity, it seems as though you've never seen Washington before."

"I... have... not."

"Well, how long is your vacation? I could recommend some interesting, out of the way places if you like that kind of thing."

"It... is... open-ended." His eyes met mine. I then noticed how odd they were, deep and soulful, like staring into infinity. There was no color in the iris... well, okay, black. All black. They also seemed to be unusually large, almost filling up the white sclera the way a dog's eyes do. I was compelled to ask more questions-- I didn't want to leave his company just yet.

"I also saw your twin brothers earlier, standing-- always standing-- in a few other parts of the city."

"Yes." That was it. Just yes. No other explanation.

"Do you always vacation together, yet separately?"

"I suppose."

Wow. He was stoic! "My name's Theo. What's yours?" I held out a hand.

"Rath." He looked at my hand, and then clasped it. No shaking, just holding. It began to get a little uncomfortable and I drew my hand back ever so slightly. He got the cue and released. Then for the first time, he initiated conversation. "How... do I meet the president, Theo?"

That seemed an odd question for another American to ask but I went with it. "You don't. The president is very well protected. Only other politicians and important people get to meet him. If they are, they get put on his schedule."

"I see." He returned to the hundred-yard stare. He said nothing for a while and I realized he was finished talking to me.

I collected Ugly Baby and hoisted myself up on it. There was a new bend in the fork, but nothing I couldn't fix. "Well, I'd better get home. Thanks for the assist. Nice to meet you, Rath."

"Likewise."

As I began to leave he spoke again. "Did you make that?"

I stopped. "Make what?"

He pointed at the motor housed within the triangular pipe frame on my bike. "That."

"Um, yes. It helps with big hills. I'm a courier and use it all day long."

"I see." That was all; he was done. I drove away, waving. He ignored me.

The next day, I was heading out for work like I always do. I hopped down the five flights of stairs to where Ugly Baby was chained on the first floor-- no point in bringing it all the way up every night, since I used a secure Kryptonite lock attached to the locked building's sturdy metal stair railing.

The bike was gone.

Frantically I looked around. Stolen? Why? It was basically a cobbled-together piece of crap, made from the parts of half a dozen bikes I had cannibalized from the dump. I never even bothered to paint it one uniform color, so the fork was metallic blue while the body was a hideous lemon yellow. It was scratched and dented and the seat was torn, and of course it had the weird, ugly motor and black battery clamming up the works. It was, as I liked to say, 'an Ugly Baby'. But it was my Ugly Baby.

I bounded back up to my apartment, taking the stairs two at a time. My asshole roommate Dwayne must be fucking with me. He knows where the spare bike key is and he is exactly the kind of guy who would end up getting me fired from a job while trying to be-- in his words-- 'Mista Funny Man'. I met him after I'd answered an ad on Craig's List for apartments to share-- I hated him immediately but the price was excellent for the center of town so I signed on, figuring this would just be my place to crash at night.

He was in the kitchen, drinking my orange juice. Again. I yelled, "What did you do with it?"

"I threw it out. It was ugly. Everything you own is ugly. You're ugly."

"Fuck you. I need that bike for work, scumbag! Give it back!"

He giggled, an unusual high-pitched trill that sounded weird coming from a tall fat man with multiple chins. "Your bike? I wouldn't touch that stinking piece of garbage! I thought you were talking about that stained and torn rag you call a jacket! You left it on the floor again so I tossed it out the window. It's in a mud puddle in the back yard."

"You're an asshole, you know that? I hope you die of AIDS."

I ran back down the stairs as he called after me, "It's not a death sentence any more... douche!"

I burst through the front door, looking left and right down the street for the perpetrator... and stopped. At the foot of my stoop, standing unassisted, was Ugly Baby! Sort of. The seat was the same, but there were no rips. The fork was still from a Schwinn and mounted on a Hoffy body, only now it was free of scratches and that ugly rusted scrape from a confrontation with a wayward fire hydrant last month. Last night's new bend was gone as well. The paint color now matched, and was a deep blue-green that defied focus. But the biggest change was my electric assist conversion-- it was gone! The gearing attaching it to my pedal hub-- gone as well.

And standing next to the bike, clean and white, was Rath.

He turned to look at me, face impassive. "Your device."

"What did you do to it, Rath? And how did you move it? That lock is impossible!" I was upset that he had messed with my bike, but simultaneously pleased at how un-ugly she had become. "And where is my assist mechanism? I need it!"

"You do not." Rath motioned for me to climb aboard and I did, reluctantly. He handed me my lock, now open. "Drive it as normal."

I was pissed, sort of, but was late for work and really didn't have the heart to yell at him. He was weird but benign, and it looked like he had tried to do me a favor. Even if the favor was going to make it hard to work without the mechanical assist. Even if my suddenly attractive bike would now be a target of theft. Experimentally I pushed on the pedal, pointing Ugly Baby-- I suppose I'd have to rename her Pretty Baby now-- uphill. But rather than encountering the expected resistance of a steep hill, she just took off like I had been pointing downhill! One revolution of the pedals and she zoomed unassisted to the end of the block! Even my gadgetry hadn't provided that kind of help!

I turned back to thank him for whatever it was he had done to her-- those farm types really know their way around machinery!-- but he was gone, visible nowhere on the block. Odd! I got off and inspected her more carefully, but could see no mechanisms which would aid me the way it just had done. It must be something in the hub, I reasoned, with batteries in the frame tubing. Shaking my head I climbed back up and continued to HQ, marveling at how every push of the pedal felt effortless, how balanced she felt even on rough road and even how much faster she seemed to go. In fact, even starting late I arrived at work early, and the entire day's ride was effortless! Normally I'd be panting after a crosstown jaunt; hot, red-faced and wet with sweat... but though today was warm, I whisked about with ease, cool and comfortable! What had Rath done?

When I returned from my first delivery the boss rang the bell reserved for record breaking and asked, "What did you do, hitch a ride on a helicopter? You beat your best time by seven minutes!" Then he looked at the bike, confused. "A makeover? How did that help your time? Where's that ugly lawnmower motor? Where's the city bus battery?"

He was joking... I of course had used much smaller parts, but his point was valid-- it was basically a new bike. Well, I couldn't answer because I didn't know, so I told the truth. "A friend worked on it last night. He's a miracle worker with machinery."

"Well, you should kiss him right on his shiny ass. You're gonna double your income if all your deliveries are this quick." He handed me another package and finished, "I'm timing this one to the second. Go!"

I hopped on and put oomph into my first pedal. My rear tire spun like a funny car at go, shooting blue smoke into HQ and laying rubber on the painted concrete floor. "Sorry, boss!" I shouted, zooming off with a blur. I was loving Rath's changes!

Returning from the delivery I spotted him again. He was standing in the street, on the yellow line, at the top of a hill, looking at the horizon. He was weird, there was no doubt. I pulled alongside and said, "Hey, Rath! This bike is amazing! What did you do to it?"

His gaze never faltering he replied, "Upgrades."

"Well, hell yeah! But I mean what upgrades? I can't see any mechanisms, anywhere!" He was infuriatingly vague.

He changed the subject. "Theo, how can I see the vice-president?" He was a one-trick pony, this guy!

"That won't be any easier than meeting the president, Rath. They're just too important and too busy. If you have your heart set on meeting any official, you'd probably have to start much further down the chain of command. A councilman, maybe, or a judge." I wondered why he wanted to meet them and asked as much.

"I have to change them." Not "I have to change their minds" or even "I have change to present." Rath wanted to change them.

I took the bait. "Why do you want to change them?"

"To fix this."

"This? Which this?"

"All of this." He was still viewing the horizon, and the way he said it, it seemed he was considering changing everything.

"But why?"

"It's all wrong."

"What's all wrong?"

"Chaos must not reign."

'Chaos must not reign'. Rath was cryptic as all get-out and I was beginning to wonder if he was a farmer at all. I looked at my watch and realized if I wanted that bonus I'd better get back to HQ. I said, "No it must not," and turned to go. He lay a hand on my handlebars, effectively clamping Pretty Baby in position. He turned to me and gazed into my eyes with his fawnlike depth; I became buttery.

"Stop the motorcade." Then he released her and I was free to go.

The rest of the day was one ringing bell at HQ after another. My name advanced on the incentive list, boss said, faster than anyone's ever had, skipping three positions in a single day. I was at number two now, a dangerous position because it threatened Frank at number one. Freak, as he was never called to his face, had commanded that top position for months. Anyone who got close to usurping the coveted first line usually ended up damaged... or their bike was. Fingers were pointed but there was never any evidence linking the incidents to him... and accusations didn't stop him from claiming the $500 prize each month. And now here I was, just two record-breaking deliveries away from becoming top dog.

Leaving work I got an eyeful of daggers from Freak, not a comfortable place for a little guy like me to be. He was heavily muscled for a biker and liked to use them for impressive and off-putting feats of strength, like tearing phone directories or squashing cans between his palms. Not thin aluminum soda cans-- beefy food tins.

So on my way home, when I noticed through my rear-view goggles his bike following mine at a suspicion-avoiding distance, I knew what fate would befall me, were I to allow it. One eye on the road and another on him, I made my way casually home. This was my turf... I knew every shortcut, jump and dead end around the city. DC was a sketchbook of routes in my mind, and I knew how I was going to shake the Freak... if I could get there before he made his move. I laid on the pedals and again thanked Rath in my mind-- Pretty Baby shot forward like an arrow from a bow. I noticed Freak was not falling behind as predicted... he must have a secret weapon in his bicycle, much as mine did.

Speaking of weapons, a projectile sailed past my ear at that moment, skittering away on the pavement in front of me. It was a smooth, rounded river rock, perfect for pitching and the right shape to dislodge a wheel and upset a smooth bike ride. So that's how he took out the other riders! What a piece of work. I had to shake my head at the smallness of his world; all that was in it seemed to be... him.

I wouldn't be so lucky a second time. Freak's aim was impeccable-- the next rock he threw would almost surely bean me good. I took a sharp left into a narrow ell-shaped alley, hoping the large wooden packing crate at the end hadn't been thrown away yet. It was unlikely since DC's large item disposal only came around on the first and fifteenth of each month, but if it had been taken by someone else I'd be trapped. I turned to face the dead end and thanked my guardian-- the crate hadn't moved! If I timed this right I'd be gone before Freak would see me, and if he didn't figure out the weird ledge I'd be home free.

I should explain about the ledge. The adjoining building forming the alley's right wall had been modified at some point; another level had been added to it. But not perfectly, I was thrilled to discover one day; the builders had left a two-inch ledge dividing the old roofline from the new wall thrusting up from it. Add to that the odd angle from its original modern design and you were left with a thin ramp of sorts that rose from ground level to about six feet... the perfect height for dropping onto the oft-appearing wooden box and over the dead-end fence. Then a quick bounce off the dumpster on the other side, a skid and a turn and I'd be out of sight, leaving the muscled bully scratching his head.

Getting extra power from Pretty Baby I hit that stone ledge like a bottle rocket and rose smoothly. I imagined with a grin what it must look like to a window observer-- me riding up the side of a smooth cinder-block wall, apparently defying gravity! I flipped onto the box as planned and sailed over the razor-wire-capped chain link fence, keen edges missing my tires by an inch, and descended onto the big blue dumpster...

...Which wasn't in position! It had been moved by some maniac and now sat skewed from its normal spot! I tried to compensate but my front tire missed the dumpster entirely, sending me and the bike careening past the sidewalk and row of parked cars, out of control yet still miraculously balanced, and into the wide intersection! I was dead!

I slammed on my brakes, trying to straighten myself out and maybe turn in the direction of traffic, where I'd stand good odds of avoiding a life-ending collision... but in this case I had to curse my new friend Rath, who had also apparently modified my brakes. I stopped with such finality I became airborne, heading over my handlebars and onto the tarmac. Again, my reflexes saved my sorry ass as I touched down in a Spidermanly three point landing, one hand flailing to garner leverage, toes balanced on the white line.

Pretty Baby was not so lucky. She remained exactly where I had braked her, and was somehow balanced, standing... until she found her home, Bavarian style, under the grill of a beefy black car. It shrieked to a halt beside me, bouncing and lurching as it folded and chewed up my bicycle, turning it into recycling. Steam shot from the radiator, narrowly missing my face. Not so for the suited man in dark glasses who tackled and pinned me to the ground, size fourteen sole crushed against my cheek.

"Threat contained. Repeat, threat contained. POTUS O.O.D." The man spoke into his lapel, shielded eyes scanning me for potential. Other men ran up and surrounded me, raising me and patting me down. Before I could speak a pair of plastic handcuffs had contained me, bound hand and foot.

I looked around. Back at the alley, Freak was smiling and chewing on a piece of jerky. He laughed and waved and rode off, mission accomplished. But the realization of my situation was dawning on me. The car I stopped was no ordinary black car... it was a long limousine, one of five. By the complement of black-suited burly guys surrounding both me and the vehicles I realized I had just interrupted a very important procession.

But in the middle of all this blackness was a sight I'll never forget. Standing by the third vehicle, as fair of hair and white of cloth as always, stood Rath! Oddly, nobody was tackling him, and he quite casually stepped into the vehicle and disappeared. Bizarre and unlikely to be sure, but the part that freaked me out was that he had never even opened the door. It was as if some Hollywood magic was at work, editing at the correct moment to make him seem ghostly. But it was real.

I again opened my mouth to speak but was dragged rudely to the sidewalk and dumped there. Two of the men reached beneath the car and grabbed my beloved Baby, another motioning the driver to back up. With a sick grinding the two were forcibly separated, my poor bike now resembling an Outback Steakhouse bloomin' onion. One of the Secret Service agents tossed my tortured Baby next to me with a shrug as the other snipped open my restraints. "You're free to go. You might want to invest in bicycle lessons. Oh, and a bicycle." He chuckled and returned to the lead limo, and the motorcade drove off without another word.

I stood up and watched them leave with my mouth gaping. How did I not get thrown into jail? How did Rath get an audience with the president? And how the hell did he walk through the president's car? Things were adding up in my head, except that two and two was beginning to equal three point one four one five nine. I lugged my bike for about fifty feet before realizing there was nothing I could do-- she was never coming back to me-- tearfully, I laid her to rest in a street bin. Time for a trip to the thrift shop. Maybe I could find an old ten speed or a Stingray to use for work tomorrow. So much for my incentive pay. I will somehow return the favor, Freak, you prickiest of pricks.

An hour later I dropped into my apartment, exhausted. I wasn't home for ten seconds when Dwayne the pain lubbered in with a raucous 'Haw!'

I did not want to deal with his nonsense and complained, "Not now. I've had a bad day."

"I would agree. Threatening the presidential motorcade and having your chief means of income and transportation destroyed all at once is a bad day, all right."

Again my mouth dropped... but only for a moment. This was the presidential motorcade we were talking about. Of course there would be news coverage of a bike crash. There was probably chopper footage. I facepalmed myself. I would be chewed up at work for this, maybe fired. Certainly I'd be the butt of many jokes for years to come. My solution? Sleep. I locked my bedroom door and shut out the misery for eight disturbing hours.

In the morning I made a list. Call boss and see if I still had my job. If so, go get a bike. If not, go get a job. Oh, and OJ.

I made the call. Apparently I could still work if I wanted to-- since my spill yesterday was determined to be a complete accident, I was considered by the viewing public to be nothing but a harmless buffoon who worked for HQ company, the one that was mentioned on every channel all day yesterday. Business was pouring in and boss was so pleased he even gave me a bonus out of it. He told me I'd have to sign the T-shirts he was selling, created from an image of me flying off Pretty Baby, captured on the television with the caption 'The K Street Klutz'. I was glad I didn't need to find a job but was so not pleased about the rest.

I poured the last of the orange juice quietly, letting it drip down the inside of my glass. Dwayne was asleep and I wanted him to stay that way until after I left. Bracing! Refreshed, and also a little intrigued by how orange juice always turns toothpaste remnants into little bits of rubber cement, I dashed down the stairs, sliding down the last handrail at ground level, and ran to the door.

And stopped.

And turned around.

And hollered.

Latched to that railing, with the same Kryptonite lock as always, was Pretty Baby, looking the same as she did yesterday morning! How? I kissed her and gave her a big hug, which must have looked odd because she's a bicycle. Then I fished my bike key out of my pocket-- and realized I had thrown it away when the lock was mangled with the bike... great! I turned to go back upstairs and get my diamond grinder, which would make short work of a lock that even Superman couldn't get into-- correction, that only Superman couldn't get into-- when I ran nose-first into Rath, standing inches behind me. It was like smacking into a brick wall, so little did he yield.

"Your device."

"Rath! Thank you thank you thank you!" I had never loved anyone quite so much as I loved him at this moment, and threw my arms around the tall, wispy man. He accepted my hug impassively, without reaction... and I released him, feeling a little bit foolish.

He said, "Thank you."

"Thank me? Thank you! Wait. What are you thanking me for?"

"For stopping the motorcade."

For stopping the...? It returned to me in a flash, and I connected all the dots I had been too distracted to remember yesterday. He had asked me to do that, but at the time I had no idea what he was referring to. But I hadn't planned on stopping anything! I was trying to get away from Freak and the motorcade thing just happened...

Or did it? I was in a rare moment of clarity and realized there was much more afoot with this man than I had suspected, even from the beginning! "Rath! You met the president!"

"Yes... I did."

And how he did it was the real story! I'm not a superstitious guy, or even very religious... but Rath was new, and different, and able... and almost certainly not from around here... not from DC, and not from the boonies... and probably not from Earth, either. "Well? What did you say? What did he do? Why didn't the Secret Service guys tackle you? And how did you pass through a solid metal limousine door? What are you?" I was frothing with curiosity-- I had to know more!

He placed both hands on my face in a caress, and for one uncomfortable moment I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead he stared into my eyes and I went passive, my limbs heavy like iron, and warm syrupy tranquility ran through my veins. How did he do that? His eyes widened and I was abruptly flooded with emotions... his emotions. Deep sadness. Painful frustration. And even, down deep, the tiniest inkling of anger. In that moment, I knew what he was trying to accomplish and I knew that he would succeed. Only, I didn't know how.

"The president does not speak the truth." I could feel his disappointment coursing into my body and I suddenly felt like crying. He continued, "I said it all must change. I told him this path was defective." He released my face and I leaned against the wall for support, my legs as weak as a newborn foal's.

I summoned my strength to speak. "You... did? How did... he react?"

"He said he would see what he could do."

"That's good, right?"

"But he was only thinking about killing me."

That disappointed me. I had voted for the current Chief of State based on his promise of rational debate and positive change, and up until now had been bitterly disappointed by his actions or rather, his lack of them. Now my hope was gone. "What happens next?"

"Now it is up to me."

The words were ominous and I was glad he had broken our emotional connection... the attachment had been so strong, I feared his ire would have killed me. "But how, Rath? How?"

He didn't answer me, but changed tack. "What... would you... repair?"

I stared at him, confused. "What do you mean?"

"If you could. What would you... fix?" He spoke that last word experimentally, separately pronouncing every letter, giving me time to absorb it. I balked... I had thought about this very question for years! I had been in an ivy league school, well on my way to becoming a theoretical physicist when the recession hit, destroying my father's real estate business. The money dried up and I had to drop out, taking this courier position to help them with bills. It was a hiccup I figured, but the years were slipping by with no sign of relief. I knew what I would change about this world!

"Oh, where do I start?"

"At the beginning." That was funny but he wasn't laughing, so I held my laugh in.

I said, "I think our biggest problem is fear. We need to stop the fear."

"What are you afraid of?"

"Everything! We're afraid of dying. We're afraid of getting hurt. We're afraid of anything happening to the people we love. We're afraid of starving, and freezing, and drowning, and getting shot. People who are different scare us. We fear the loss of our money, our cars, our homes. We shy away from bad weather and tempestuous oceans. We don't want our emotions bruised. We fear wild animals. We're scared of bullies and rapists and thieves and murderers. And our fright is so complete, we even fear things we don't know about yet!"

"I see. How can fear be stopped?"

He was asking some big questions! But, questions which deserved answers, and so I tried. "Uh, it can't. Not all of it. It's a fact of nature that people all die-- we can't stop that from happening. But all the rest can be diminished or even eliminated, I think, by changing how we're organized."

"What would you change it into?"

"Into a benevolent direct democracy."

"What is that?"

"A benevolence based, individually represented alliance of every mind."

"Elaborate."

"We change focus away from money. We don't concentrate on personal earnings or business growth. Our attention would be on the individual-- seeing that they are educated to their potential and placed into a field which complements their abilities, making certain that their needs are guaranteed and that plenty of potential for creativity exists-- and on the planet, restoring it to its pristine state, guaranteeing a clean home for future generations. We aim for continuity of design and conservation of energy. It would be a political system without politicians, where each human represents instead themselves, their families and friends and neighbors, their towns and cities and countries, in a true symbiosis with the rest of humanity."

"Why isn't that done now?"

Wow. Really good question. Rath was beginning to remind me of the little boy that responds to every explanation with 'why?', attempting to learn the way of the world in one sitting. I chuckled at his naivete. "Because, for whatever reason, the population is usually fairly evenly divided on any concept, no matter how sensible an idea is presented. For some reason roughly 50% see imagined scenarios in which the good idea would become bad, even harmful, so vote it down. I personally believe that many of the detractors actually believe a benevolence plan would work, but can't imagine a world which would allow such a selfless, generous plan to come about. Fear of the unknown causes them to vote against their own self interest."

"Thank you, Theo. I know what to do now." He stepped past me, heading for the door.

"Rath?" I had one question, logical or not.

"Yes, Theo?"

"What's your deal, Rath? Are you an angel or something?"

"Angel. Hmm. A flying representative of the deity from your mythology?"
So Rath viewed religion as folklore! I guessed his answer immediately but responded, "I suppose."

"No." He walked out without another word and I congratulated my acumen like a schoolboy. Got it!

That talk left me somewhat uneasy. So did looking down and seeing the Kryptonite lock mounted in its storage clasp on the bike and feeling the key now back in my pocket. I thought about my conversation with Rath as I rode to HQ. What was he? Alien? Extradimensional? And what ideas had I given him? How would he implement them? Would he encounter resistance? If he did I doubted it would last, after the easy way he rendered me passive on several occasions now. And surely not with his extraordinary ability to walk unobstructed through walls!

Turning right at the corner I saw Rath again. He was talking to a woman on the street. I waved but he didn't react. Two blocks later he was speaking to an older couple sitting at an outdoor cafe. Taking the next left he showed up with some kids in a schoolyard, holding the skipping rope. This continued all the way to work... I must have seen him fifty times. Or were they his identical brothers? I hadn't received a definitive answer. He was everywhere!

Pulling into HQ I could see we were swamped. Boss's desk was covered in order sheets and riders I'd never seen were flocking the place. Boss didn't even have time to talk-- holding two phones, he just pointed to a large pile of packages, delivery tickets attached. Wow, pandemonium! I read through the tickets and pulled out three deliveries in the same neighborhood, loading them into Pretty Baby, and took off immediately. I didn't want Freak to see me on my bike, especially after witnessing its total destruction yesterday. There were questions I didn't want to answer... couldn't answer.

Everywhere I went, all day long, it was the same weird thing. Rath appeared on every block, talking to individuals or groups, never acknowledging me. I could never see two of him in my field of vision at the same time, but I'd see one of him constantly. What the hell was he doing? I imagined he was probably interviewing others the way he had me, but even with his double (or doubles) I couldn't imagine he would get a very large sampling of viewpoints unless he did it for years... and I didn't think he would wait that long to execute his plan, whatever that plan was.

Oh, great. Freak was a block ahead of me, in that deceptively fast, ridiculously designed bike of his. It looked heavy, with all its extra metal tubing and wings. Perhaps it was his strength which allowed him to zoom around, breaking all of HQ's records... but I doubted it. Especially since I just figured out how he did it! He was on a pretty serious hill now, and rather than stand to produce more inertia, he just reached under his seat... and two puffs of smoke and flame shot out of those extra tubes, roaring him up that hill in moments! His bike was jet-powered!

I turned the corner to avoid being seen... and ran into Rath! He was waiting for me and stopped Pretty Baby with a hand, using the other to contain me on the seat and keep me from flying off. That was getting old.

He said, "Go home."

"Why?"

He widened his eyes and repeated himself, and of course I went right home. Fat Dwayne was all over the couch, junk food bag on his snoring belly, chips all over the furniture and the floor. Disgusting. The TV was on and I went to change the channel but stopped. The news was on and a picture of Rath was onscreen! I turned up the volume.

"... very unusual. Once again, numerous phone calls have been logged in recent hours; complaints involving this man, appearing in many parts of the city, approaching strangers and asking disturbing questions."

The scene changed to an interview with a pair of teenage girls. "He like, asked if we liked our school and teachers..."

The other piped in, "... Yeah, and he asked me if any of them were mean or bad..."

The first cut in, "... No he didn't! He asked you if the subjects were boring or pointless!"

"Well, yeah, but he also asked about bullies..."

Another interview cut in with an older man in a buzz cut. "He asked what I'd change and I said we needed to kill the terrorists, kill the commies and kill the jews..."

Again the scene changed to a middle aged housewife. "We just need to believe in the good lord Jesus to wipe this vermin out!"

From some college kids, "I said we should legalize drugs, man!"

An African American woman added, "I kicked him right in his nuts! Those rednecks need to learn a lesson about talking to strangers!"

The news then cut away to a current, emergency press conference with the President. "I urge everyone to remain calm and not to speak to any of these men, who have shown up all across America in the last 72 hours. They appear unarmed but are here without proper identification or paperwork. We may have an insurgency of sorts. The National Guard has been called into service, to round these men up and detain them..."

My head pounded. All across America? What was Rath? He seemed so harmless! Strong yes, but non-violent. I hoped nothing would happen to him, but also, that nothing would happen to us. Looking back at the screen I lurched because as the President spoke, Rath appeared out of nothing, right beside him!

A dozen Secret Service rushed him, while others spirited the President away. The large men, rather than bringing him to his knees, bounced off Rath as if he were a tree trunk. Seeing that, others drew their service revolvers and pointed them at Rath. I was sickened by the sight, at the idea of him getting hurt, but angry with Rath for putting himself in the middle of such a high-security meeting. Then shots were fired. A lot of them.

The press conference erupted in screams, people dashing away and ducking for cover. The camera operator was jostled and it now displayed the ceiling, then swung wildly around the room before steadying, and pointing back at the podium. I couldn't look, but then heard Rath's voice.

"Please be calm." He was standing behind the bank of microphones where the President had been a moment earlier. He was uninjured but there were quite a few bullet holes in the backdrop behind him. The Secret Service contingent which had been slated for his destruction were now standing alongside him, calmly, their weapons holstered. The room quieted down abruptly.

He began to speak at length, which was a surprise since to me he had always been so monosyllabic. "I am Rath. Your world is in chaos. Countries fight for control, directing soldiers to kill and destroy. Many people are starving, or homeless. Most are unhappy. The planet's living layer is damaged and is at risk. You create products you don't need or with built-in flaws to guarantee a short life of use followed by a long time in garbage heaps which are approaching mountain status. You spend your lives chasing after profit, and then use it for extreme luxury and hoard the rest, hurting others that might need it simply to survive. You create dirty technology that damages your planet, which you keep using even after newer, better, cleaner technology exists... and again, you do it because of profit.

"I have come to help, but in order to help I had to learn, and so in the last day I have asked almost every one of you what it is that is wrong here, and how it could be made right. Many of your answers surprised me, being completely contradictory to each other. Many of your solutions were incredibly violent, wishing to eliminate an entire country, or an entire group of people. Still others seemed uninterested in your society's path at all."

I whistled. All of us? Himself? So Rath really was everywhere at once! All those times I saw him... everyone in the world must have had a similar experience! It blew my mind how he was able to carry on so many conversations, and process them, all at once. I figured he must have an enormous potential in his brain and wondered if we did as well, since we were similar in design. But then I thought he might have manipulated his look to fit in, and he might not look anything like Rath at all, really. I didn't know what to think.

He continued. "The most helpful responses came from the most innocent and naive of you. I have learned that the further up your business and political hierarchy one goes, the less truth comes from your mouths, until the ones at the top speak almost no truth at all... even to themselves. I have learned that the further up the hierarchy you go, the less you care about your fellow man and the more self-absorbed you become. I have seen how your leaders of countries and leaders of business empires view themselves as kings and as omnipotent beings, and view their dangerous and lethal solutions as somehow wise and beyond reproach.

"Even now, your American President has made a poor decision by ordering a strike upon this building using thermonuclear technology. He must see how this would turn the nation's Capitol into a scene of horrific carnage yet believes, truly believes, that this the right thing to do. Not for the people, not for the nation or the planet... but to insure his re-election. This is insanity."

I shit my pants right then. Nuclear strike? Here? What is wrong with the people in power? I answered my own question as I had answered Rath's this morning... fear. They were scared of Rath, scared of the change he represented, and would perform any unethical maneuver to stop it. Well, I hope Rath had a solution because fast bike or not, I wasn't escaping the blast radius of a nuke on DC.

Dumb Dwayne was still asleep on the couch, snoring his life away. At least he wouldn't know how he died.

With his surprising announcement the news cameras were now searching the sky, and sure enough, one picked up a sortie of five B-52 bomber jets on an intersect course with the press conference! In split screen we watched them approach as the conference again erupted in panic. I yelled out, in the loudest and longest scream I could muster, "Nooooo!"
My yell woke Dwayne as he shouted, "What the fuck, asshole?!" but all I could do was point at the screen, trembling. He listened for a moment and then yelled again, "What the fuck?"

My voice came back. "They're trying to kill Rath, but instead are gonna kill all of us."

"That asshole? I told him to fuck off and die, with his stupid questions. Now I'm gonna die? Not without my revenge!" He ran out of the room. Good riddance.

Rath then performed his second feat of inhuman ability onscreen. He now became a hundred Raths and stood before each member of the audience! He held their heads much as he had mine and they calmed down immediately. Then all of the Raths disappeared, including the one onstage.

The bombers released their payloads and arced away. It was done! We were dead!

Now the screen was split on two separate views of the falling bombs. If I remembered correctly, they would detonate before hitting the ground, for maximum destructive force. I went to the window and searched for them myself. I wasn't hiding from the blast-- I was not going to be one of the ones left alive, only to die horribly of radiation sickness. I wanted to be atomized immediately.

I spotted the tiny specks in the sky just as Dwayne the Insane came back into the room. I almost didn't recognize him-- he was now wearing so many guns and had so much ammunition wrapped around him he looked like Rambo after a convention.

"If I'm dying I'm killing all the motherfuckers I hate... starting with you, bitch!" and he leveled a shotgun at me and fired!

I didn't think about it. I just reacted, bounding sideways behind the huge concrete column next to the window. Again my reflexes saved my life as the window glass shattered and I could hear dozens of pellets clinking into the column.

"Get over here, you pussy!" He ran to where he thought I was, but he didn't realize that, being as graceful as a water buffalo, I heard which direction he chose and went the other way, around the three foot square post. He turned and fired into empty air... and that's when I smashed into him from the other side.

He was big and fat, and I was small and lean. Even with three steps head start I really just expected him to lose his balance and fall, and then I would knock him out with a General Electric iron I had grabbed. But he teetered and clawed, trying to remain upright.. and then he spun on one foot, and levered himself right out the window!

I scrunched my eyes in horror, waiting for the sound of him to smash into some parked cars five stories below... but it never came. Instead, everything went white.

EPILOGUE

I woke up at 630 as always for my 8am class. I liked to be prepared and have food in my belly before classes. Professor Rath imparted a lot of information and expected us to learn; I was fully prepared but it had been my experience that the slightest distraction and I would miss some valuable fact which would screw up my understanding of these new subjects, which were incredibly new, difficult and subtle. I was glad to be back at school-- package delivery really was never my thing, even though it was fun while it lasted-- because of how much it all had changed, in just a very short time.

I thought back to the final day of the old world, or should I say, the first day of the new world. The blinding flash of light that I thought had spelled white-hot nuclear doom for me fortunately wasn't; it was Rath, performing 'a reset'. At that moment we were all nowhere; out of phase, floating and carefree, invisible and sightless, all knowledge irrelevant, all worry displaced. Slight swaying was felt as each conscious mind of man floated through a swirling spray of clarity that washed away the pettiness and fear pervading human life, like the accumulated crud on a road-weary coach. We became lucid, aware, serene.

Then a peculiar movement rushed past us all, a swirling blur of things familiar and strange; the sky and clouds, buildings and streets, faces and places whizzed past in sharp coherence like a rewinding video. My own path retraced, a rapid-fire review of my last moments and then I was back, we all were back, to the place we all were just a few minutes ago. The president was on the television, back when he was speaking to the world about a frightening new menace. Now he stopped. We all did.

Rath appeared beside him now, smiling, and the president smiled back, a broad grin of acceptance. Rath also stood beside each of us, caressing us, enveloping us in a blanket of still calm. The president cleared his throat, and with a confident puff and in a distinct ringing tone he declared, "It is clear to me, as it is to all of you, that we have been organizing humanity completely wrong for as long as we've been sentient. It is time for a major change, and with this next action I hope to correct our course." He took the time to look at each member of the audience then, nodding encouragement. "Beginning today, our world is changed. Your health and well-being will be guaranteed, so that you may each begin your path to enlightenment, as will I. Our focus shall be universal and our resolve will remain solid. With that last proclamation, I dismantle our ineffectual political process, and then resign as your president. I know we will at last succeed. Rath, if you will?" He yielded the floor and left the podium to a crowd of emotional well-wishers and devotees.

Rath took a breath and began. "You were a young race and were left to find your own way, as all races must. In many regards you succeeded beyond all expectations, but in others you fell way behind. The human race is too valuable to allow it be damaged or destroyed by inexperience, which is the cause for my arrival. I came here to unlock a piece of you which has lain dormant since civilization first fell, a vital part that will help you on your journey of discovery.
"This I have now done. I have given each of you a key to your lost past, one which you will need for the difficult road ahead. Use this restored gift to reach your destiny as creators and leaders and designers. This universe is vast yet empty; in the future of man I hope to see a rich vibrancy emerge in your infinity, a textured contour reflecting your best traits, as countless other universes are doing and have done."
He gave the audience time to absorb the enormity of his words and then finished with:

"The way to without is through discovery within. Learn this... do this... be this."

From that moment we were a changed race.

Gone were the lies, the fear, the selfishness. Enormous social change had simply fallen into place as greed evaporated and was replaced with accomodating transparency. He had given us an awesome ability... perhaps two awesome abilities, with that single bright light. All at once, as each of us felt his incredible emotional depth and were swallowed up in it, we became able to feel as others did. We became empathic.

Along with the amazing array of human changes made possibly by empathy, Rath gave us serenity as well. Or perhaps it came as a natural flow from living with empathy, I don't yet know. But however it sprang forth, it changed us as a race. Some of which were difficult yet necessary purges, scrubbing white the stains of our collective consciousness.

Many people that had spent their lives suffering crushing sorrow were unable to forgive themselves for their lives of duality, which split their selfless love of family with a coldblooded business acumen that traded lives as a function of dollars. They knew they were responsible for a great amount of human suffering and death, and many of the worst could not be brought back such was their torment, and they slipped into the black night by their own hand. This was tragic but could not be helped.

However for the great majority, they felt the warming hand of clemency laid upon them; with forgiveness came invigoration and a bright new goal, and the joy of this undeveloped future swelled their hard and shrunken souls, creating from them the most benevolent ones of all. It would be among these ranks from which the finest ideas would spring. The great human healing had begun.

We are on an important path now; at last, we are searching for something which is so much greater than any one of ourselves, goals which have the potential to change us in a very real way. We have been instructed to find our inner all, my maximum me, and this I will do if it takes me the rest of my natural life. It is all I want to do. It is all I can do.

It is all any of us can do.

Magic Tune Finder

2011-10-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Internet has become an exciting testing ground for new artists. In an area reserved formerly for the fortunate discovered or the inexhaustibly driven has opened up to allow a place for, amazingly, the purely talented.
Several questions rise up, because of this prolific new source:

How do you find new musicians out of all those new videos? And once you find them,

How do you know if you will like them?

We all know about Youtube, where every artist puts a video of their music-- hell, I'm no musician and even *I* have a song on Youtube-- but have no way of knowing their names or what they will sound like.

Fewer of us, but still many, know about the wonderful source: Allmusic.com. Think of it like the IMDb-- the Internet Music Database. Every artist who has made a CD, record or tape will be listed there. But there's more!

Allmusic is truly a repository for some great information. Of course it has every album the band has done, including compilations and singles (no, no bootlegs... these are official recordings only)... and it also has a list of every song the band has ever done. It has a list of every artist that ever played with the band, and a detailed biography of them, from humble beginnings.* Small potatoes.

*But not ALL artists. Some are just getting started, some haven't supplied any information, and some don't know about Allmusic.

But perhaps the most valuable information available for audiophiles like us are the various lists on the overview page. Lists like 'Influenced By' and "Followed'. Lists like 'Similar Artists' and 'See Also'. And lists like 'Genres', 'Styles' and 'Moods'.

The reason why these are important lists are because they help us find musicians to embellish our musical tastes, basing it on music we already love.

Influenced By-- are all the musicians your fave band attributes to helping them create their unique style. They came before your band, so it's likely you know most of them. Read down the list and make note of any band you aren't familiar with.

Followed-- are all the bands who list your fave band as an influence. They came after your band and you might not know them. This category is a continuation of the first one; it's how the long line of musical styles are created.

Similar Artists-- are what they sound like. Bands that sound in one way or another, like your fave band.

See Also-- is a category that tells you if any of your fave band members have ever been in any other bands. Looking at the Beatles, for example you might find Wings in See Also.
Genres, Styles and Moods-- are more generalized lists, each which will produce dozens if not hundreds of similar artists. A band will be listed in multiple categories, each one determined by using a magical formula involving unicorn poop... or maybe they just use surveys. I'll be honest and say I'm not certain how Allmusic arrives at them, but I know they can be amazingly accurate.

And realizing how easy it has now become to find new favorites caused me to think up a great new 'game' for music buffs like me. I'm going to call it

Magic Tune Finder

Here's how it works:

STEP 1: Go to Allmusic.com and search for any one of your favorite artists. Stop when you get to the Overview page. Read the overview page categories mentioned above and assemble a list of bands and musicians found on those lists that you aren't familiar with.

STEP 2: Now go to Youtube and search for those bands names. You will find them. Remember, Youtube has everything. There will probably be multiple songs from each band. Good.

STEP 3: Create a playlist called (the band you chose), putting all the songs you found by the other artists into it. Don't be shy... I've seen playlists with over 100 songs.

STEP 4: Listen. You can bring other audiophiles that love your fave band to a listening party, or have a more intimate get-together involving one. But in either case, what you'll be hearing, hopefully, is song after song of unfamiliar songs that you LOVE. Or like. Or dislike. It doesn't matter, because when are done you'll follow

STEP 5: where you rate all the new songs by these new bands, and resolve to add their music to your iTunes... or you can choose never to hear them again. If you love them, great! But if you're not sold on buying the song yet you can move to

STEP 6: where you obtain a free app called something like 'Youtube Downloader', and once it's set up you'll be able to grab any music you hear on Youtube (or anywhere), enabling you to have it in your computer forever. But if you want to put the music in your iTunes however, you'll have to buy the full version... but if you don't, you'll still be able to listen to them any time you open the app.

So play Magic Tune Finder and find tunes you like, like magic!

It's Em-Pathetic

2011-10-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Our society isn't perfect. But it tries. And it's by and large the best standard of living ever found, for the largest breadth of society... so I'm not referring to the wonderful lives of Roman emperors, the few, made on the backs of thousands of slaves. Most of us have heated homes with electricity and running hot water. That is an enormous accomplishment on a scale which has never before been matched.

And it will keep improving, continually, wherever on the planet.

This enhancement in comfort gave us the ability to think about things other than survival, and ultimately brought us to the focus of this rant: Empathy.

Or use any of the other synonyms-- they will all work: compassion, caring, concern, commiseration, consideration, kindness, pity or sympathy. They all mean the same thing-- becoming expansive enough to give a shit about others.

Living creatures outside of humans on Earth keep their compassion tightly reined in, saving it mostly for their babies and, to a lesser extent, the other members of their community. We humans are alone in the sheer volume of compassion we are capable of producing.

And it is that volume which causes the conflict I bring before you.

See, the Earth is a wondrous, beautiful place. It is alive, both in the sense that it houses myriad living creatures and in that Earth itself is an ongoing process full of movement and reaction. It rotates on its axis causing day and night (and he heating and cooling processes which result) and revolves around the sun, causing the seasons (and the heating and cooling processes which result). The Earth itself is internally heated and is a huge magnet, having an iron ball 4000 miles in diameter at its core. Then there are the tides, the weather and geological movement. And just for fun... volcanoes.

So the Earth is always moving. It's also very dangerous. Everything on Earth is always evolving, being born and living and dying and decomposing and ending up in a million new living things... which then die, decompose and you get the picture. Animals eat plants or other animals, bugs eat plants and some plants eat bugs, big fish eat smaller fish that eat tiny fish... it's a gore fest.

And knowing this, I wonder how it is that some people can cry out for the plight of the poor animal. Now don't get me wrong. I understand this feeling. I watch Animal Planet. Seeing the lion make his score is both thrilling and torturous, imagining what agony the last few seconds of life must be for that poor creature... but I also know how its death will contribute to the lives of so many others, all the way down to the insects that pick the bones white and the plants which are nourished by the fecal matter left all around it.

So here's my problem. The people with the 'most' compassion have formed a group called PETA. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Whoa, practically a holy name, it sounds so good. But here's the rub: PETA's ultimate goal (if they get all their demands) is to see that all animals be treated as royal subjects, to be protected from harm by any and all human intervention, and to release all captive animals into the wild. That includes pets.

Yeah. Sounds dumb to me, too.

Maybe the group started out logically enough. One day, on a tour of some animal testing facility, a sensitive, politically active person saw a live kitten with its brain on the outside and recoiled in horror, resolving to stop these Frankenstein doctors from creating any more monsters. Apart from the emotional response, it is hard to reconcile their actions until we realize that this test ended polio (for example... no fact there). And I agree we shouldn't make animal's lives horrid just to find out what eight pounds of lipstick pumped into a chihuahua's stomach will do.

But PETA's initial mission statement seems to have gotten corrupted, and they can no longer see the chickens for the drumsticks... (ugh. Maybe I'll stick with 'forest for the trees'-- the other one seems awkward) They seem to have not thought it through that if they let all the animals run free, they will soon die because:

• They are ill-prepared to live in an environment full of predators

• They were not raised in that environment and will not know how to find food

• They don't know how to protect themselves from harsh weather

They seem not to recognize that all the animals which are used for experiments are well taken care of, well fed and when necessary, are killed painlessly. They promote science tremendously which betters life for all of us, humanity and the animal kingdom together-- where do you think animal vaccines get their approval from, anyway?

They find the raising of animals with soft fuzzy fur to be a crime as millions of these animals are slaughtered in their prime, only to be used for linings in warm jackets. I find that industry unnecessary, especially as technology produces ever more realistic artificial fur. But as it is done now, don't think these dead carcasses are thrown into the trash to rot in a landfill somewhere. No. The company would be ignoring a prime source of revenue if they did. Those carcasses are used in animal food production and for a wide variety of other uses. So their little lives aren't wasted, either. Call it recycling if you will.

They also complain about food animals being raised in poor environments. Now this is one thing I can appreciate. Nobody should have to live their lives in a crowded, dark place, and if the poor things could be given a little more breathing room and maybe had some Beethoven pumped into their pens they'd have it better until they were killed for our dietary enjoyment.

But something the PETA people never mention is that animals living 'free' spend every moment of their usually short lives on edge. In fear. Nervous about their survival, knowing that at any moment they could be attacked and eaten. Even if they are blissfully unaware of their fates (which I doubt because of the instinct to run when approached), that still shortens their lives as the predator descends, with a very undesirable finish.

Why doesn't that fate bother the PETA people?

At least all the factory farm animals have abundant food and comfortable temperatures and no fear of predators-- they have a life free of concern-- until that last second when they do their service to humanity, repaying them for their not unpleasant life, free of danger.

As a matter of fact, I feel I could compare PETA and their desire to keep animals 'safe' from humanity by cruelly releasing them into the predator-filled wilds, with the religious right's desire to keep all unborn children safe from abortion so that, once they are born, they can be ignored and left to fend for themselves in the cruel, uncaring world.

It just makes no fucking sense.

Sure I think we should not go overboard with our testing. Keep in mind though, that a lot of testing came about because of an overly litigious public... the corporations ordered the testing to eliminate dangers in their products, and thereby avoid lawsuits. But if that hadn't happened, people would instead be dying of untested products. Then there would be lawsuits, and... well, you see where I am going.

So don't go overboard with the testing. Test only those products with the potential to do human damage, and not unnecessary tests whose answers are easy to discern. Like, you don't need to throw lawn darts high and into a pen full of chickens to know that if it hits one, it'll kill it. Now there's an unnecessary test.

I also agree that it wouldn't kill the factory farms to let a little fresh air in, some light... even some room to move. I doubt the meat would get very tough if the contributing animals lived in a larger pen. We really do have to be on the lookout for people who ignore cruelty for the sake of the bottom line. When you think about it, that happens in our society, now, to people, by a number of sociopathic businessmen calling themselves bankers, CEO's and politicians... but that's a topic for another rant.

As a matter of fact, I'm thinking we wouldn't fare so badly if we were to create another watchdog group, and giving it the acronym PETU.

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Us."

The first order of business: Making sure that the mission of PETA doesn't violate OUR civil rights.

Surprise From the Past

2011-10-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

Leland sifted away packed sand from the newly exposed, hard metal cylinder with his stiff horsehair brush. The hairs on his arms were pointing, tingling with excitement. This could be it! He had eagerly signed on to this archaeological tour; exploring the site of Earth's Termination of Tyranny Movement was something he simply had to participate in firsthand. He had been assigned a ten foot by ten foot grid coordinate in a huge valley at the foot of enormous old Elder Rock, with its crumbling but intact carved message 'from the saviors', and a set of tools, along with 100,000 other volunteers. In two months he had found nothing of interest other than a small carved stone with fifteen even edges and five symbols sculpted finely into its face, and a small, curiously notched piece of metal encased in some type of impenetrably hardened honey, which he had turned over to Discoveries clerk Mout for recording and storage. Now, his brush slowly revealing the lengthy tube, his heart pounded with unbridled elation.

The Movement was a critical moment in human history as it led to the Great Enlightenment, an effort which ripped power from the steely clutches of the tyrants overseeing Earth's final Modern Dark Age. History books described a monumental effort by an enslaved population struggling against the backwards teachings of an eons-old book, fighting the pain of jagged binding collars to bring down a corrupt and powerful theocracy despite overwhelming odds and ushering in an age of logical thought and education. Millions were thought to have perished in the wars but as yet, not a bone had been found.

This ground, dug some fifteen feet below the valley floor, was thought to have been the site of the resistance headquarters and later, after victory, it was supposed to have become a museum housing all the technology from earlier ages, successfully hidden from repeated theocratic destruction sweeps. Many pieces had been found so far; most were smoothly rounded boxes of various palm-sized shapes encased in that same unbreakable amber material, and until a method could be discovered for removing them safely from it, none had been examined. Eager anticipation was pervasive.

Leland waved his hand rapidly, using the circular 'Found Something!' signal that he had been taught. Would this be the sought-after solution, or just another impenetrable secret that would end up covered, deep and dusty, on some remote warehouse shelf? The lead archaeologist Ginther hurried over, peering at the cylinder through oversized spectacles. With a smile he communicated the news-- this piece was different! Not a small box, and not sealed in amber! A crowd of volunteers stopped working and gathered to watch the unveiling.

Ginther clapped him on the shoulder, encouragingly. Leland smiled back and returned to uncovering the cylinder. Soon the ends were in full view; he outlined top and bottom with the brush, revealing ever more circumference. Ginther motioned to a few volunteers, who took up either side of the artifact, ready for its inevitable release. Leland brushed, quickly and carefully, avoiding any contact with the piece. Soon he had crested the cylinder's top arc; Ginther and the volunteers applied gentle downward pressure as Leland swept, then blew away the rear dust with a bubble syringe. Brush, brush, blow; brush brush blow.

The artifact released; with the gentlest of turns, it fell into their waiting hands. It was surprisingly light, completely cylindrical. They walked it over to a transport, which moved it smoothly to the pattern establishment area, depositing it gently into a waiting tray. Moments later, information about its every nuance began appearing, cross referenced with every one of the other remnants from the dig. A match would indicate a high probability that any pieces somehow belonged together.

There was a match! The Discoveries clerk, Mout, ran into the dim warehouse and returned minutes later with the potential mate; Leland looked closely in the man's hand and was surprised to see the metal sliver he had uncovered months earlier! He was about to identify it when a gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him; Ginther shook his head slightly and returned to watching history being made, as did Leland.

Mout now placed the cylinder in the observation chamber. All sides were magnified and brightened; he began the search with many eyes upon him. Beginning at one end, he turned the cylinder over and over, scrutinizing every bit, moving slowly towards the other. Exactly halfway through his search, he stopped. Something was different. In the otherwise featureless cylinder's face was a mark, a kind of squiggly line, of a smooth and hard material different than the cylinder. Leland thought it looked like the hardened honey. Mout brought the encased metal sliver up for inspection, and held it up to to magnifier, turning it slowly.

"Aha!" He beamed with pride of discovery, pointing the sliver directly at the magnifier. Leland saw it too but was denied first announcement when Mout said, "this edge pattern matches the crooked line, in reverse! I think it fits in there!" and he pressed the sliver's end onto the line. It did not slide in.
But something remarkable did happen. A square section of the artifact, several inches on a side, with the crooked line at its center, glowed a pale blue! Symbols appeared within the blue field that were finely crafted and neatly placed, nine in all; five on top and four below. Leland recognized the symbols as language phonemes from the culture but had no idea what it meant. Ginther had more experience with the language and offered a translation. "This top one is a directive. It says 'Enter'."
"Enter? Enter here? How can we enter?" Mout protested. "It's too small! And, there is no way in!"
"The second word," Ginther continued, somewhat irked, "is 'Code'. Enter Code." He looked at the audience of intrigued faces and asked, "Does anybody know what that could possibly mean?" He was met with vacant stares. Mout ran back to the warehouse.
One man offered, "Could it be 'cold'? Enter cold?"
Ginther thought seriously. "Hmm. I don't see how we could 'enter cold'. You mean chill it and try it again?"
"Maybe."
"No, the words would likely not be similar in this language the way they are in ours. Good try, er..."
"Safton."
"Good try, Safton. Anybody else?"
An older woman spoke up. "Lynet. Could a 'code' be something we have to give it? Like a food?"
Ginther's lips fought to hide the smile. "You think the cylinder might be hungry, Lynet?"
Seriously she responded, "Well, it's spent a lot of years underground, right?"
"But it isn't alive."
"But doesn't the blue glow mean life? We have insects and animals that glow."
"Well, yes, but..." the lead archaeologist searched for the appropriate phrasing but was interrupted by the again-returning Mout, out of breath and lugging a large tome.
"A dictionary. It was found on a shelf in a sealed, airtight stone room. It's suffered no degradation at all!" He brought it to Ginther, who flipped through the pages and eventually landed on the correct word, then read for a long time, silently. Restless murmurings had begun when he held up his hand; it became quiet again. He began to read aloud.
"A 'Code' is a series of symbols designed to keep access of something limited to the holders of the code. It works by unlocking an enclosure containing the information when the correct code is input." Ginther whispered to Mout, "Unlocking? What does that mean?"
"Look it up. You're using a dictionary."
"Oh, of course." Moments later he said, "Oh! Unlocking. Opening with a key or some other mechanism to make what is on the other side of it accessible." He sighed. "And what's a key? This could take awhile." He looked up the new word and straightened. "Well, look at this! There's a picture of a key in this book... and it looks the same as this metal sliver!" He held up the artifact, but then scowled. "This is a conundrum! We need a 'code' which is like a 'key' to 'unlock' this cylinder... but we tried unlocking the cylinder before... and the key didn't work!"

Leland excused his way to the artifacts. He looked at the blue screen and noticed something at the bottom: a series of five evenly dashed segments in a line, evenly spaced, parallel to the bottom of the screen. Additionally, there was one finer line over the leftmost segment, perpendicular to it, disappearing regularly and then reappearing moments later, over and over. He stared at it for a long time, transfixed, but then suddenly remembered something and shouted, "I have it!"
Ginther started and looked up from the dictionary, which had begun to occupy a lot of his time. "What do you have, Leland?"
"The code! I have the code!" He was almost hopping now, his toes flexing inside his boots.
"You do?"
"Yes!"
"What is it?"
"Not what, where! It's in the warehouse! It's the stone object I found with the... the key! The object had five symbols on it! I bet they will work!"
Enthusiastically Ginther turned to instruct the clerk, but Mout had already left, this time returning much more quickly. He was holding the small stone and placed it in the center of the blue field, over the jagged line. The tent held its collective breath.
Nothing happened. He turned it several times, but there was no change. Leland had an idea and asked, "Permit me?" Ginther nodded and Mout handed Leland the stone.
Leland inspected it, turned it in a way he felt was face up, and placed it onto the first dash segment. His finger brushed against the field, over the leftmost line. A symbol appeared, replacing the dash! There were shouts of surprise. Leland noticed the symbol was not the same as the first one on the stone. Experimentally, he touched the screen with his finger again... and the symbol changed! But it still wasn't the same, so he pressed again. And again. He worried that he might have mistaken the symbol when, with his next press, it showed up! It was a pair of piled circles; the upper one slightly smaller than the bottom. But it wasn't exact; he looked closely and determined it was upside down from the symbol on the stone. In a flash of inspiration he realized it was the stone which was upside down and flipped it. Now there was an entirely different symbol on the left. Leland was fearful that he had already passed it, but kept pressing anyway. Then he noticed the first symbol come up again, and with relief he knew that the designer of this pad had wisely allowed the symbols to cycle. He found the mark and stopped.
Applause broke out and Leland grinned. He pressed the second dash and the first symbol changed to red. He was not concerned, and kept pressing until he saw the correct second symbol; then he began the third. Now the second turned red, joining the first. At the fifth symbol he stopped and said, "Ginther, this is your dig. You must be the one to enter the last symbol."

The group applauded again. Ginther thanked him and moved into place, pressing the screen. When the last symbol was entered all five glowed red, then flashed blue. Now a large picture appeared, of the key artifact encased in hardened honey, filling up the screen! Then it shrank until it was the same size as the actual artifact, centered over the jagged line. Ginther slid the key over its picture.
No sooner did he pull his hand back than the screen went dark. However, the picture glowed brightly beneath the key, and as they watched a change began to occur. The honey was melting! But rather than pool under the key the amber goo simply disappeared. In a moment it was gone. Then the cylinder became inert, and dark.
Ginther looked around as if searching for a next step, and Leland supplied one. "Pick up the key." Heeding his advice Ginther did just that, holding it up in the air. Everyone's eyes were trained on the gleaming metal; all except for Leland, who had only wanted to see the crooked line beneath it. Just as he had suspected, it was now a slot, no amber in the way. He tugged on the older man's sleeve and pointed. "Hm? Hm?"
Ginther slid the key in without a moment's hesitation. Nothing. "What next, Leland?"
Leland looked closely at the point of entry and thought he could see a fine circular seam circumnavigate the keyway. Basic engineering kicked in and he said, "Try turning the key."
Ginther did. A small click was heard from inside the cylinder... and then the end swiveled open with a hiss of air! A roar of victory came from the tent which could be heard all throughout the valley, and Leland's shoulders were gratefully thumped by a dozen hands. He blushed shyly and nodded.
Light was trained into the cylinder's opening gloom and after checking for explosive traps (one had been found, once, may the volunteer rest in peace), Ginther reached in and pulled out a large thick envelope, crisp and crackling. It could have been packed away yesterday and not thousands of years ago, so pristine was the paper.
Inside the envelope was another, smaller envelope, and a smoothly rounded box of a palm-sized shape about as thick as a hand, much like so many others which had been found at this site, but with one important difference: It was not covered in amber, which meant that its secrets were close to being revealed. So far, the key was the only amber which had ever been removed, and they had as yet no idea how that had been accomplished. Had it been the brightly glowing light? Whatever the mechanism, his was a fantastic find, and quite possibly held the answers they had been searching for! Leland was ecstatic... if it were true, his name would be forever linked to this discovery. He could not have felt more proud.
Ginther opened the smaller envelope and pulled out a notebook of sorts; two hardbound covers which, when opened, sprang forth a thick sheath of handwritten pages. On top of the front page was a heading. Ginther could make it out and translated: "To the Future Inhabitants of Earth."
"That's us!" One excited voice stated the obvious, and amused titters ran through the tent.
Ginther laughed with the rest and then announced, "And with that comment we can see how tired we've all become. I think it's time to head back to our encampment, have a good meal and get some rest. We'll begin anew in the morning." Disappointed groans mixed with hungry banter and the crowd thinned quickly. Ginther went back to his tent, notebook in hand, to begin the arduous process of translation. Before he started there was a rustle at the tent flap. "Yes?"
Leland stuck his head in. "I was wondering if I could stay with you as you work."
Ginther shook his head. "Thanks, but this is really the kind of work I prefer to do alone."
"I actually have a little experience with this language. I took several courses at university preparing for this dig."
"Well, that's commendable, but still..."
"Ginther, please. It was my discovery and I had a lot to do with the cylinder even being open. I won't make a sound, I promise. It would be the highest of honors for me."
Gither mumbled, "More like the highest of horrors."
"What was that, sir? I didn't hear you."
The older man sighed. "I seriously doubt that it would... but if I can't dissuade you, then please, have a seat." He looked seriously at Leland and finished, "But don't blame me if the outcome is not what you anticipated."
"I don't see how that could be possible, Ginther. Thanks for letting me do this."
"Don't thank me."
Leland had a question. "Shouldn't we also have brought the black box along?"
"Experience has taught me that the box will be useless until it feels the morning sun. Another box like this was discovered in a cave years ago, and it sprang to life quite by accident when a ray of light coming through a window played across it."
"Solar powered?"
"Yes."
"Even back then?" Leland mused. But Ginther was already poring over the first page; soon, he began reciting:

To the Future Inhabitants of Earth:

I, the last free man of my age, have taken the solemn duty to leave you this record, hidden beneath the soil, as a factual rendering of the events of this time. Regardless of what your history books may now say, know that what you are about to read has been witnessed by my eyes. As further evidence I leave you a device which displays moving images, a copy of events as they unfolded. It is not magical; it is simply a product of science. Leave it in the sun to grow strong, then press the light which appears when the device is ready. It will not hurt you. But first read this accounting.

"Who did he think would find this... cave men?" Ginther chuckled. "'It is not magical'... that is funny! But see what I mean about the box?"
"I do. So I guess it's like a holoengrammatic emitter?"
"Not nearly as advanced, Leland. We've had a few millennia to improve on the old technology, after all. Still, it will give us a fantastic view of history. Early archaeologists have had to piece together entire civilizations from just a few chunks of broken pottery. We have it easy." He fell silent for a few minutes and Leland thought it best not to disturb the man's concentration. Soon though, Ginther began reading, smoothly, uninterrupted, as if channeling the man on those old pages:

It was not so long ago that humanity was on its way to becoming sophisticated and mature; advanced in every area of science, technology, the arts and humanities. Somehow though, religious zealotry gained a foothold and spread its influence worldwide, until every major country was ruled by one overriding theocratic body, the Government Church. Books were burned, education was criminalized, science stagnated and its practitioners were rounded up for being 'heretics of nature' and jailed, or much worse. The world is now in a civilization-killing Dark Age much like the one which shut down Europe for 800 years, reinforced by the schizophrenic application of forced prayer, and the retained technology of televised evangelism and careful Orwellian scrutiny. All citizens are forced to wear a steel collar that is painfully welded around the neck as a method of control and torture. All of humanity is opressed, as slaves in the military or the mines, in the fields or the manufacturing plants, while the young fertile women are impregnated by decree.

One morning words were found in 50 foot letters burned into the lawn at the unparalleled World Vatica Church, saying cryptically "Judgement Is Coming" with a date one year hence. Nobody witnessed how the letters had been formed; guards reported to the Church Elders on seeing but not hearing a series of lightning flashes, bright and long, occur during the shadow of night. When their eyes had readjusted the words were present, still smoldering.

The lawn was quickly uprooted before sunrise and all knowledge of this event was hurriedly covered up. The guards disappeared, never to be seen again. The ten Elders were certain down to a man that they had been contacted by God and that the end times were near. They made preparations to transition themselves into the next world, preparing their trunks of gold and fine linens and feeding their sacrificial virgins for the trip, but kept their actions secret. No point in alerting a downtrodden enslaved people that their evil church, which had strayed far from its biblical teachings, planned on leaving them all behind to suffer in the fires of destruction. Pain collars or not, there were just too many of them. Best to leave them in blissful ignorance.

But there was one person outside of the church who knew the world's fate, though. He was a heretic, a practicing scientist in deep hiding, a keeper of the flame. The last of his kind that had remained underground for centuries, he was now the sole curator of a well protected and vast underground bunker bursting with the final advances of civilization, saved from theocratic cleansing by ignorance or sheer luck, a regime which descended like an iron fist to pulverize any human knowledge which did not further their cause. He was the last hope for restoring the world to its former glory. He knew what the cryptic lawn message meant... and he also knew in advance that it would happen.

Meanwhile the Elders, who had wisely not destroyed all modern technology, directed their manufacturing plants to build formidable telescopes that reached deep into the night to warn of God's arrival, and terrible weapons of cruel design yielding awesome power should He not wish to admit the Elders into Heaven. These they distributed and pointed into the night sky all over the globe, like the buzz-cut hairs of a petrified field general.

Despite these preparations and unfortunately for the Elders, messages from above continued unabated, burned into the ground at strategic locations near large population centers, guaranteeing worldwide knowledge of coming events. 'Arriving Soon', 'Prepare Yourselves', 'Your Fate Is Nigh' and other frightening predictions blanketed the globe for a year, each accompanied by the date and time stamp '6/6/2666, 6am'. The people grew nervous and amassed at the gates of Vatica Churches worldwide, fearful of the reprisal coming from an irate and vengeful God. Undeterred, the powerful Elders and their army of indentured soldiers pointed weapons at the public, who were driven back into to their simple mud homes, preferring subjugation to a painful death, yet quaking over the expected eternity of torture.

Meanwhile, the scientist worked busily, manning machinery and continuing preparations.

The day the world feared arrived at last; humanity held its collective breath, awaiting the crushing hand of God to smite them mightily. At dawn the sun rose to a blue sky, but soon that sky filled with thick clouds that formed out of nothing, deep iron-grey billows with angry edges that hung low, pregnant and threatening; oily black clouds which obscured the telescope's vision and made useless the missiles' targeting systems. The Elders were blind, and feared for their lives.

And then the mighty sound came. Softly at first, as if arriving from some vast distance, the vibration soon became deep and throbbing, a drumbeat against cotton skins, a steadily approaching locomotive, swelling until it was all which could be heard. Televisions were drowned out in the throb; conversations were hopeless and the physically driving thump-thump-thump made it impossible to maneuver or do anything besides hold on for pitiful life. Then the thumps slowed, like a helicopter's dying whine... a moment apart, then a second; then ten. There it remained for seconds; minutes. Then, in between the slamming pounds a deep, resonant voice begun, heard round the world in the global language of the church and therefore understood by all. In the smudged pitch blackness it began:

"We are disappointed. You have been led astray. Your glorious drive to world enlightenment has been curtailed by the selfish desires of a greedy few, who would gladly doom the world for five more minutes of luxury. It may be easy to corral the masses, at first, with soft spoken lies and bright sparkling promises... but ask yourselves if the life you lead now is the one you would choose for yourselves. If the answer is 'no', remember it is within your ability to be the catalyst for change.

"Now power is being held by liars and thieves that think themselves gods, who maintain their power with the threat of pain, imprisonment and death. They keep you at the edge of despair and use you as slaves. Your distant parents could choose their own paths and make of their lives what they would... but you are not able even to choose to turn your televising devices off.

"They have stolen your lives from you, and they have done so without fear. They say they know how this world was formed, and by whom... and they claim to communicate with this creator in order to direct all your paths towards a glorious future. But this statement is a baldfaced lie. They do not know anything. They cannot speak to the creator, and they have no power that you did not give to them."

The Elders heard enough, and reacted as violent oppressors often do-- they attacked with all the power at their disposal. The violent warheads tucked into missile heads flicked into life; countdowns began. One by one they lifted skyward, filled with the aggression and ego of certainty; one by one they punched resolutely into the inky clouds... and one by one they disappeared from existence, their payloads unexploded, with nary a poof of protest. Eyes wide and conviction crushed, church leaders awaited their doom with tearful tremors as the enormous voice continued:

"Their powerful weapons you just saw being launched, themselves a holdout from the Big Destruction, have had no effect on today's outcome. They have now been rendered back into the molecules from which they were derived. The actions of your oppressors are selfish and criminal; their leaders will be severely punished. Today is the day to set you back on the path of progress and intellectual enlightenment. You cannot help yourselves do this if you are enslaved and tyrranized.

"To that end, action will soon commence. There will be no more weaponry on Earth-- it will all be eradicated. Pay close attention, those who serve the Elders. All soldiers carrying weapons and ammunition, put them into a pile and back far away. Do not retain any individual weapons. All soldiers manning larger weaponry, leave the area immediately. All plants making weapons must be emptied of all workers. Do this now. You have five minutes."

The thumping sped up until they came one second apart, and raised pitch to sound like a ticking clock. Across the globe soldiers stood confused; aware of their standing orders not to relinquish their weapons, but also faced with a power unlike any they had seen before, they were frozen in fear. Despite shouts coming through walkie talkies to ignore the mega voice, that worldwide throbbing tick countdown gave most soldiers the push they needed to toss anything remotely weaponlike into a pile-- guns, knives, pepper spray, batons, keys, bottles, belts, shoelaces... anything-- and bolt in the other direction.

Now the sound again changed, this time into a screaming siren, louder with each tick until the entire world had to cover their ears. Then, silence. Suddenly, every weapon in piles all over the globe stood at attention as if grabbed by an invisible magnet from above. A vibrating buzz like a hive of bees welled up within each pile, around each large weapon, through each factory. A mist began swirling at the buzz, around and around, faster and wider, obscuring the items within.

Several soldiers were loyal, however, and refused to relinquish their arms. When the buzzing began they looked about wildly. When the swirling cloud surrounded their weapons (and them) they began to scream, bloodcurdling and shrill... but soon fell silent.

The clouds grew thick, tall and wide, a deep brownish grey. People too close were slammed with dust and stumbled backwards, blood welling from tiny holes puncturing their skin. They watched the weapons being dismantled back to ever smaller component molecules, molecules which were being flung at high velocity around the cloud like a storm of pepper.

Then came an enormous 'pop' which sounded as though a blimp-sized balloon had burst, echoing up to the clouds and back, and the whirling dust shot skyward, spread outwards and merged with the low oily clouds. The piles of weaponry were now gone, missile launch pads devoid of even the slightest particle. The ground had been polished into smooth circles. Every weapon and machine was gone. Not a stone from any of the factory walls survived. Neither did even an atom of the few loyal soldiers that had retained their weapons... they had been dismantled as well. Friends sniffed sorrow. The booming voice returned.

"The Elders will now gather on the Church Vatica central dais."

Assembling before automated cameras on the platform, urged in place by a throng of glowering, silent citizens, the Elders filtered onto the Church Vatica platform, sitting heavily in their arc of thrones, heads bowed and bodies slumped, defeat telegraphing across their faces. Undeterred, the Great Lead Elder now asserted his command and approached the raised speaking mound. In typical Saintly fashion, with a confident scowl, he spread his hands and took a breath to speak... and disappeared in a flash of cruel lightning, a wisp of smoke all that remained. Moments later the other Elders received the same fate, shock to a man splashed across their faces, and they too dissolved into nothingness, thrones cleaved and smoking.

Mouths gaping, television viewers worldwide tried to make sense of the violent images, tried to explain it to their confused children. But many more were smiling, reacting to the sudden notion of freedom and the bliss of gleeful unencumbrance. The booming voice began again.

"Good riddance. Soldiers, put on your street clothes and return to your families. Jailers, release all prisoners. The rest of you, tear down all signs honoring the Elders and their beliefs. A bonfire in the center of every town will make a fitting re-entry into your lives of freedom. Celebrate with your neighbors and friends.
"With this final act we return you to your world before theocracy. Soon a plan will emerge-- your plan-- for returning to, and surpassing, your former glory. We leave you with one gift so that future generations will know what has happened here on this day."

Televisions switched at once to a view of Elder Rock, the world's largest religious icon. Visible for 600 miles were enormous busts of a thousand holy Elders through time, a thousand holy oppressors of the people, emblazoned on a perfectly cleaved mountain one mile tall. It was an impressive feat of man that had claimed the lives of thousands of enslaved stonemasons in the hundred years of its making.

Abruptly a glaring white light seared the picture on every television screen; nothing at all could be made out. When the dazzle diminished, all the world could see that the gargantuan stone monument had been scrubbed free of iconic carvings and was now smooth as glass! Not a crooked face remained, not an evil leer, not a glaring eye. It was a literal blank slate.

As quickly as they had come, the clouds now dissolved into blue skies. Popping into insubstantiality, not a trace of them could be seen. The sun warmed the ground and bathed Elder Mountain in a loving caress. As it did, a thin blue-white line of bright light shot through the sky, directed at the top of that glassy-flat monument. Rock burst away at the point of intersection, hurtling to the ground a mile below in a cacophony of chuckling crashes. The bright line moved, then flickered and moved again. Then without a sound, without a fuss, it disappeared. Globally transfixed observers viewed the result with awe. A title had been carved finely into the highly polished vertical face, in clear, calligraphed, hundred-foot-tall letters. It chillingly read:

-≈«∞§• Heed Us! •§∞«≈-

The blue-white carving light returned, moving faster this time, completing its message in no more time than it would take to hand-write the same words. Again it stopped, allowing the dust time to clear. When it had, what remained was nothing less vital than The Answers to the World's Largest Questions:

-≈«∞§• We Are People Like Yourselves •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• You Are The Same As Us •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• You Can BECOME Us •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Therefore Believe In No God •§∞«≈-

Again it stopped, glowing hot carve lines cooling into glassy smooth outlines. But the amazement of creation dulled beneath the shock of those final five words. The planetary oxygen dropped momentarily with the sharp intake of fifteen billion breaths... no god? Blasphemy! Then realizing this information was coming from people who knew the truth, incredulity spread faster than sunlight and a release approaching bliss escaped their lips as one.

Once more the intense thin light began carving, leaving a gap this time between sections. This group had a different tone; though there was no title, the font etched deeply into the stone commanded obedience:

-≈«∞§• Hurt No One •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Maintain Respect For All People •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Do Not Overpopulate •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Learn New Facts And Teach Them To All •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Remain Transparent •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Treat Stories And Fantasy With Caution •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Limit Power of Leadership •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Keep The Planet Clean •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Decide As A People •§∞«≈-

-≈«∞§• Share All Resources Equally •§∞«≈-

Near the bottom, in smallish letters but thicker, important, there came an addendum:

-≈«∞§• We Will Return On Occasion And Desire Progress •§∞«≈-

When the final flourish was completed and the last bit of dust had blown away, all contact by the saviors from above ceased. The camera panned the monument slowly from the top, taking in every answer, stopping on every commandment. Then it faded and for the first time in centuries, viewscreens worldwide showed no religious material of any type. Instead, on every channel, kind and smiling people were teaching the knowledge of the world, knowledge which had been kept from the planet's people for centuries. Science of every stripe, the arts, humanism, social structure and ten thousand more subjects, complete in breadth and pellucid by design instead filled every home, commanding attention by their very unfamiliarity, absorbing into eager thirsty minds. In days to come, armed with new knowledge and following to the letter the immense guidelines from above, society reformed.

The scientist, deep in his lair of banned scientific devices, shut off the machinery he had been using for the past year. It had been difficult to hide the solar panels that had created enough needed energy to perform his world-saving plan, but he managed by using disguised panel design and surreptitious placement. The fact that most parts of the planet were off-limits helped as well. He was thankful that the Elders had not bothered to destroy the dense network of satellites circling the globe, preferring to find and destroy the land-based controls instead. This they had done... with the exception of one instrument bank, which was fortunately in the hands of the scientist. Powerful laser defense and gamma bombardment satellites, and precision planning, had done the rest.

Convincing an illiterate world they had just received freedom from above was not difficult, but killing the men responsible for allowing centuries of human enslavement was a painful duty for a moral man. What was hard as well was the knowledge that he was now an old man and could not guide the world much longer. He would need to find and train a student, a Keeper of the Secret, to carry on the charade after his death... and do so before he died. He could observe learners at their televisions; computers could determine the most knowledgeable candidate. But would he or she have the right temperament? He knew that the temptation of power was difficult to resist; he, as an impassive experimenter for much of his life, disliked power but saw the need and method for change and did what demanded doing. Could he find another him?

I assert that the preceding passages are true by my word, and by the evidence contained in the player. I am privy to all this information because of one reason: I am that scientist. It is my fervent hope, whenever this is found, that a new and better world has emerged as a result of my actions.

--Thaddeus T Thackery

Ginther had been speaking nonstop for over an hour and now exhaled noisily, leaning back in his chair, an indecipherable look on his face betraying an unknowable emotion. Leland emitted a low whistle, and then another. Finally he said, "Our society was built on a scam."
Ginther replied simply. "It would appear so."
"There was never any big battle."
"There was none mentioned."
"No millions of deaths?" Leland understood now why no bones of the slaughtered had ever been found.
"Only a few, by this accounting."
"And the intervention by benevolent aliens..."
"Was an intervention by a benevolent scientist."
"Whew. That's a big piece of news."
"Maybe too big."
Leland considered the other man's thought and then posited, "So there IS a god, then?"
"No..."
"Then there ISN'T a god."
"No... err... yes. I mean, all our knowledge in that area has just been uprooted. We've believed from the carvings on Elder Rock that an advanced society gave us absolute truths to follow, as a whole and down to a man."
"And now we find these are only the words of a single man."
"Well, yes... but apparently, a very well-educated man. We've followed these words for millennia and look at what they've done for us! Our advancement! Our peace! The reverent way we treat our planet! Surely it doesn't take genius beyond our own reckoning to design an infallible system?"
"Well see how infallible our system really is when this information gets out..."
Ginther grabbed his arm and held it in a surprisingly viselike grip. "Leland, I'm not sure if this should ever get out. Ever."
"But... Ginther... one of our chief provisions requires us to 'remain transparent'. I can't be a party to this kind of--" Leland slumped over on Ginther's bunk, look of shocked incredulity on his face, dead. Ginther removed the glassine syringe of poison injected into the younger man's ear canal and crushed it underfoot, into dust. He covered Leland with his blanket and waited until the camp was quiet and moved the man next to the cylindrical artifact, with the notebook. With a rapid motion he ignited a hot charge and ducked behind the metal table to protect himself against the initial burst of white-hot flame that turned everything, even steel, into smoke, then made his way back to his tent. It would be his sad duty to inform the camp of the tragic discovery of a new kind of booby trap, one which incinerated itself and anything nearby, and the loss of a valued member of the team along with his findings, but it was understood that this was one of the perils of modern archaeology.
Like the scientist, Ginther hated having to kill an innocent, yet again, to maintain society... but it was his sworn duty as 94th Keeper of the Secret, a duty he enforced with deadly serious intent. He got to work on the official translation, which he will have 'fortunately' made during the night, which confirmed all the information generally known about the Termination of Tyranny Movement. Leland would of course receive full honors posthumously and his story would be told in museums worldwide, how he tried to ressurrect the black box, only to trigger its destructive fail-safe, and how he gave his life for crucial information from that time.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon when the first volunteer discovered the carnage.

An Intelligence Solution

2011-10-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

The virus was quiet, oh so very quiet. It gave no clue as to its existence and lay dormant for years, decades for some. It made no one sick and shortened the life of nobody, but had one tragic effect-- it left its victims completely barren, unable to produce an heir by any method, natural or scientific.

It was discovered accidentally fifty years after the initial outbreak. The virus had an unusual property-- it hid. Rather than make its way through the body by utilizing the circulatory system, it preferred to crawl between cells, slowly embedding itself within specific areas of the body; the brain, the reproductive system, the ears and eyes.

Once discovered, the medical community developed a special test to find the virus and was stunned to discover that every subject tested positive. The entire world had been exposed. The nightly news was initially frantic -- it seemed that with a 100% infection rate, the human race was doomed to extinction.

But something was off. Though there had been an alarming drop in worldwide births, they did not cease. Many infected people were having healthy children-- infected as well, but healthy. For some reason, the virus, named EXT70, was ignoring undefined sections of the population, leaving them to reproduce at will.

Studies were immediately undertaken to find some cause for EXT70's high selectivity. Race did not seem to be a factor, nor did gender, nor age. Eye color was irrelevant, as was height or hair or hand dominance. Predominance to any other genetic distinctions seemed not to matter one bit. But slowly a pattern began to emerge. There was a general rise in sterility among populations living in poor socioeconomic conditions. People who had survived head trauma showed a huge rise in infertility. And although every person born with Aspergers and autism remained hale and fruitful, no babies at all came from couples with one or more Down Syndrome sufferers. Finally one test was discovered to predict with near 100% accuracy whether or not a person would become sterile.

It was an IQ test.

Results below a certain percentile nearly guaranteed sterility for the subject. The number, gauged to be 112, meant that almost 70 percent of human beings were doomed to live out their lives without siring progeny to pass on their names... or their genes. Entire family lines were threatened. Many embarrassed celebrities were vocally outraged that their lovely visage would end with them and demanded a solution. Politicians who were denied producing children clamored for ideas.

Stumbling upon this knowledge the world was outraged, and cried out angrily for an answer: What enemy of humanity existed that would create a mutated virus which selected feebleminded victims and sterilize them? It dawned on them that this would leave the population smarter, which meant they were not looking for an enemy.

Scientists had one overriding question of their own, however, and presented it to their exclusive community with barely containable excitement: What unknowable changes faced humanity generations down the line... as genius mated with genius, without the buffer of mediocrity interrupting brilliance's upward trend? Experts in every corner of the globe searched for answers, and all found none.

Generations passed and average intelligence skyrocketed. But with the certainty of biological imperfections, recessive genetic material eventually surfaced even in super-intelligent fetuses. Not surprisingly they too were born sterile, a guarantee that no simpleminded children would be born of them. The upward IQ trend continued unabated.

In short order another discovery was made. By using a nanoscope, ironically designed by one of the new super geniuses, it was discovered that the virus was not a natural phenomena at all-- it was an electrobionic device! This seemed impossible since, at the time of initial infection, humanity was generations away from the ability to design such a sophisticated machine, but it was true regardless. Certain markers were absent in the virus's genetic stranding which pointed away from nature, and directly at human interference.

Again the world was in uproar. Who would destroy so much of the human population so flagrantly? That question yielded one obvious answer-- a method targeting the stupid must have been created by the smartest among us, and suspicion of the scientific community shot upward. After a few scientists were lynched by mobs of sterile simpletons, geniuses of every stripe were convinced to hide underground... at least until the clamoring crowds were distracted by the next exciting news. During their exile, experimentation on the virus continued in well-hidden labs worldwide, which soon produced fascinating new information that answered most of the world's curiosity, and again the scientists were hailed.

A long strand of inert DNA coding in the virus was unearthed, that used only two of the four nucleotides. Adenine and guanine repeated for tens of thousands of links with no occurrence of cytosine or thymine, a behavior unseen in natural ribonucleic acids, inciting suspicion. Cryptographers were brought in to examine the junk DNA and in short order, definite patterns emerged. It was formed from the long unused Morse code. The pattern of dashes (adenine) and dots (guanine) referred to alphanumeric characters, which in turn spelled out two short sentences. At last, an answer to the painful question plaguing humanity for years was on hand! The result was presented in the Heptaron, the crowded main hall of the esteemed science body L'Arc Technologié, splayed around the seven one-hundred-foot screens defining the cavernous room's perimeter:

It had to be done.

The Idiocracy effect is real.

The roomful of scientists buzzed. Idiocracy? What was that? The cadre of respected elders had no idea what the message meant until a page ran up to the elder scientist Doctor Schon and whispered. With a start, the man harumphed and announced phlegmatically, "It is a feature film!"
"A 'movie'?"
"Sordid entertainment?"
"That's unseemly!"
"Improper!"
"The code must be wrong."
"Gentlemen, wait!" The elder scientist bent to hear more information from the timid page, who finished at length and practically ran from the room in short, scraping steps. Shaking his head, Dr Schon continued. "It seems this movie is about a man of present times being placed as an experiment into a suspended animation chamber and waking 500 years later to a world in chaos, thanks to massive breeding by generations of undereducated morons. The average IQ has dropped alarmingly, the cities lay in shambles and everyone watches mindless television programming ceaselessly."
Another scientist spoke up. "The message is implying that this happens to us?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Are we to assume that this advanced virus... came from us? In the future?"
He sighed. "It seems that way."
"And we are supposed to do... nothing? Just let it continue?"
There was a long pause as Dr Schon mulled over this question. Finally he spoke. "Imagine this scenario: What if we learned how to cure the flu by sending a virus back in time to stop any carriers from being born, wouldn't the good that came out of it take priority over a few unborn children?" He threw up his hands. "I never cared for hypotheticals. It's true the planet is currently experiencing a severe overpopulation problem. It will be corrected all by itself if we take no steps to stop it, if we pretend to have no cure for it--"
"But we HAVE no cure for it!"
Dr Schon glared. "Yes, yes, you know what I mean. We don't LOOK for a cure for it, is what I'm saying. It just remains in our bodies, selecting top contenders for genetic parenting, weeding out risky genes, making each successive generation of human being geometrically smarter than the last."
"But aren't there risks to unchecked intelligence...ifying? Smartening? Aah!" Frustrated, the questioner sat back down, but the point was made.
Dr Schon attempted, "That might very well be the next science in its infancy... the study of overintelligentinization... superintellectualizing..."
"Hyperacuity."
The elder scientist looked towards the voice. "Very good! Hyperacuity! Who said that? Make yourself known, sir!"
From the 'back' of the seven-sided Heptaron came footsteps and, from the shadows, a shimmering man appeared. He approached the podium at room's center, elevating himself on the steps to speak.
He was tall, well built, plainly dressed; his clothing was bright and hard to see clearly, as if emanating light. There was an intensity in his eyes, a glare of determination that seemed to bore through ones head and settled in the deepest center of discomfort. Dr Schon found himself rattled but was able to ask, "Why do you... why do you shine so?"
The man turned to face him, and held out an extended hand. The scientist went to grab it and was shocked when his hand... disturbed... the man's, like stirring a reflection in water, and passed through it. A gasp released from the room. The hand reformed more rapidly than settling water, a bit like mud.
"I think you can see I'm not really here. I am a projection of myself from far off."
"A hologram? Where are you, sir?"
"Not where. When. And quite different from a hologram. Sample the air where I stand and you will see. This image is a precise assemblage of specially chosen molecules from your local environment, held in detailed formation to closely approximate my actual image."
"Am I to understand you are from the future?" Dr Schon asked, while motioning the page forward from his recess with a wave. He spoke quietly to him, and then the page ran off.
"Yes."
"How are you able to speak with us? The mere act of conversing requires a pattern of time lapses, all moving forward."
"My consciousness is temporarily in synchronization with all of yours."
"Ah." The man posing the question seemed unsatisfied and was about to ask a follow-up when the page returned, handing the elder scientist a sampling jar.
"May I?"
"Be my guest."
Carefully Dr Schon held out the open jar; the shining man lowered his arm over it and nodded; the doctor capped the jar and pulled it away. There was a gaping hole in the man's forearm! But almost immediately both edges became diffuse and strained towards each other, like bones seeking a knit. When he moved his arm the separated bottom part moved with it, ignoring its impossible connection. But the arm part in the sample jar remained whole, as if solid! Close inspection showed a network of veins in the sliced flesh, but no blood or plasma dripped, and the clothing edges were sharp as if laser-sliced. Aghast, the doctor held out the faux-grisly jar to the page who dashed off, presumably to a lab for immediate study. The man spoke again, gesturing with his now almost fully reconstructed arm. "I am plan B. The virus was plan A."
Shocked whispers shot through the Heptaron. One angry voice shouted, "What do you mean, you are plan B?" Another yelled, "The virus didn't work! Plan A didn't work, did it?"
"Almost."
"What is the world like in your time? WHEN is your time?"
"I can give no specifics besides the careful plan I will lay out for you. Needless to say, there has to be a change made in the virus. I am here to help you make that happen, as I cannot do it myself-- I can affect nothing physical in this timeline."
Dr Schon hissed, "That's very convenient for you. We're supposed to help you? It seems as though you are the one responsible, not us. We have important work to discuss here, not fix a future of uncertain destiny."
The shimmering man looked pained. "You are right. Our scientists misread a number of confusing genetic anomalies, so the virus instructions are having a less than ideal outcome."
"What kind of outcome?"
"I'm not at liberty to say."
"If you want our help you'll say." Dr Schon stood firm.
The man sighed heavily. "Very well. Our plan worked very well... at first. Every person born was a bona fide genius, and humanity began to make dramatic leaps forward, one such leap being the technology which brings my image to you. But recently, we have had a dramatic rise in the number of superintelligent sociopaths being born."

"How dramatic?"

"Five in seven."
"Oh my god."
He face was stone and somber; realizing that full disclosure couldn't possibly hurt his situation he continued through grim lips. "That's an appropriate if antiquated response. Our world is nearly annihilated. The large number of people with a pervasive disregard for the well-being of others has brought about a joy for... of all things... blood sport. Frightening new weapons cover the globe. There's not a street in the world not painted in blood. Geniuses design ever more cruel and damaging killing machines; one created miniscule bullets that enter the body without damage, then move to the brain and then rip the head off quite suddenly. Another wound sharp, microscopic spring cabling into coils and spread them all over the ground. When stepped on they are released and shred a person into strips, nothing larger than sushi. One minute you'll be walking with your wife... the next, she's a pile of shredded meat on the ground." Tears welled in his eyes and the scientists realized with a shock that this was a painful personal mission for the man.
"I'm terribly sorry, sir." Understanding showed in the doctor's face. "But why did you wait so long before returning?"
"We just found out what we did, umm, what our alternate selves did. A thousand years accrues a lot of identicality drift. Soon after the virus was sent, the experiment was lost to the vagaries of time. Fortunately one of our highest IQ people was able to reconstruct accurately the events of the last timeline."
"How high was his IQ, if I may ask?"
"142."
"Forgive me, but that doesn't seem to be very high. We have people alive now with IQ's exceeding 200."
"That is true. But IQ is a quotient of intelligences from across the current spectrum of humanity. By your standards the man's IQ would be closer to 1800."
The room fell silent. One nearby voice murmured, "Jesus. What can a mind do with that kind of processing power?"
"Predict the weather."
The scientist's head snapped up. "What? With what level of accuracy?"
"100%"
"Not possible! What about Chaos Theory?"
"It is figured in."
His simple statement was met with barks of doubt. He waited for silence. "To demonstrate, you're about to have a 17 minute hail storm outside, beginning in a minute and 42 seconds."
"Nonsense! There's been no hail here for 50 years!"
"There was no mention of hail on the weather report!"
"One minute and 34 seconds." On the man's gleaming chest a large digital readout emerged, counting backwards. In a pack the scientists ran and huddled to windows scattered throughout the Heptaron, watching the cloudy skies. At 0:00, to hushed murmurs, hail began peppering the ground.
"Can we please repair my timeline now?"

Working with the man, Liynas, proved to be easy at first, although what he asked seemed frivolous. They were tasked with constructing a large network of machines through which a tone, silent to human ears, would blanket the globe and subtly affect every nanovirus, simultaneously. The machines themselves were not unusual; technology appropriate to build them had been around for decades.
But the tone was proving to be nearly impossible to construct. Liynas would begin simply, with a recipe of sorts he recited from memory. He'd request a middle 'C' played on a Steinway, but it would need to be played in a room of specific dimensions and constructed of certain materials. Only when the recording was finally deemed correct were they permitted to move on with the next. It was meticulous, draining work. The one saving grace was, there was no time limit. They had literally years to complete it.
"I need the sound of a teaspoon tap on a six-ounce crystal wine glass filled with three point two seven ounces of sparkling peach cider." Again, the room specifications were precise; as was the volume, pitch, duration, attack and decay of the resulting note. The assembly was grueling. One particular request, a bull moose bellowing in a mist-enshrined valley at 6am, took nearly a month to get exactly right.
The scientists were frazzled. "How can you tell if the sound you seek is correct?" they would often complain.
"I just can," came Liynas' less-than-serene response.
"How many sounds are in the recipe?"
"In this first hexadecema, sixteen."
"And we've only done three in all this time!? Of how many hexa... hexadecimals are this mega-sound made?"
"Sixteen hexadecimen."
"Jesus Christ."
"Not really relevant."

They worked through the year assembling the impossibly complex noise. Occasionally, during long late-night sessions, Liynas would let slip some information that proved to be immensely interesting to the scientists. One such fact was how the virus came to be. They had wondered how a physical specimen even as small as a virus could travel into the past and the answer was, it couldn't. However, subatomic waves could be generated through time, complex waves which could effect matter at the quantum level, in effect building the virus using tonal instructions.
This is what they were attempting now. Rather than a simple change to software, Liynas was helping them to rebuild each virus, worldwide, from the inside out. It was astonishing.
Each hexadecima of sounds could be tested once completed; there were specific, permanent changes each tone would make to specific physical matter, so Liynas would not let them be run through the worldwide transference network lest they cause catastrophic change on a planetary level. Instead, the first test was to be directed at a tree in a desolate part of Siberia, the only one for a dozen miles in every direction. "Just to be safe," Liynas reassured.
The test area was sealed off, but was visible from twenty directions by pole-mounted cameras. Liynas recited his garbled entry code into L'Arc Technologié's powerful satlink unit; at the same instant the solitary onsite transmitter received the first hexadecima and broadcast it at 2% in the tree's direction. They watched the huge screens silently.

The effect was explosive and caught the scientists off guard; several fell out of their chairs and one needed immediate medical assistance for choking. What the rest of the scientists saw could barely be believed. The nearest camera, mounted on top of the transmitter 100 yards from the tree, had shown an image of the entire tree but suddenly went completely dark. From a camera a mile back you could see the tree looked exactly the same... but was now nearly a thousand feet tall! The trunk was fifty yards in diameter and had split into tunnels in a number of places! Dead branches on the ground became as felled redwoods, blocking the landscape with woody mass.
A number of cameras had blacked out. Turning others to face them the problem became apparent. Most of the cameras had been attached to metal poles; they had been unaffected. But there were several wooden poles placed into the ground as well, against Liynas' specific instructions. Originally twenty feet long, they were now almost 600 feet tall and fifty feet wide! They had grown with such speed that the cameras, screwed down to the flat tops, had crushed almost as flat as coasters.
The scientists were awed. All that growth had occurred from simply reacting to a sound... a sound! At a volume barely above a whisper! The advances Liynas was showing them would move technology forward by centuries! Already they were sketching prototypes for a handheld model to be used in the building industry. Want a house? A builder could carve a tiny one of wood, lay it on the ground onsite and shoot it, and it would grow full-sized in an explosive flash! Or in forestry... one tree could now supply all the wood for an entire town!
Even the arm part that Liynas had offered so many months ago was causing an explosive growth in reverse engineering attempts. It had remained cohesive this entire time, even allowing itself to be sliced into for slide samples. What Liynas had said was true-- there was a distinctly architectural pattern holding the assembled molecules together, entirely different from their normal chemical bonds. It was almost as if they had been neatly stacked in an intensely detailed, vast warehouse of shelving which, if human sized, would surely reach the moon from Earth and yet seemed insubstantial... almost illusory. The precision was astonishing.
Liynas smiled at their burbling eagerness and got their attention with a whistle. He smiled at them and said, "Well, that one worked!" The room erupted in howling cheers, not quieting until Liynas held up a palm. "Now what do you say we get started on hexadecima 2?"

The remaining 15 complex sounds proceeded with gathering speed. The scientists were developing a rhythm and a knowledge base for constructing sounds. They had built variable sound chambers which were immensely helpful, as discrepancies could be programmed into the walls, cutting construction time by up to 90% for some sounds. Liynas was able to watch more and instruct less, intruding only to make minor adjustments. The rest of the time he remained in one of the many guest quarters found on the science foundation's premises. He wasn't able to interact with any physical objects, but he required sleep and alone time, much as any human would. His identity was kept a strict secret and he moved between buildings only when nobody on the crowded science campus was watching. Calculating all the variables in such a move was an impossible task that his massive intellect made simple.
As each hexadecima neared completion, Liynas described a small sampling of their remarkable and exciting new abilities. And adding to their diversity, the hexadecimen could be combined in myriad ways to create still other incredible effects, by playing them in pairs and multiples, varying their volumes with respect to each other, adding flutter and pitch adjustments.
Different staging grounds were set up worldwide to test them, in isolated areas rich with natural content for the test. With each test came invariably astounding results. For example, H2 (the second Hexidecima created) could alter any metal through a property range. Point it at a block of copper and depending on the input variables you could end up with room temperature liquid or gaseous or even gooey copper! That was exciting in itself, but when H1 and H2 were played together, one of the possible outcomes formed metallic wood! Alter the inputs slightly and now a new species of tree would be formed that sprouted copper foil leaves, leaves that turned sunlight into electricity at near 100% efficiency!
H3 altered the freezing and boiling points of water. The sound-enhanced water, nicknamed 'warm ice', was able to freeze at higher temperatures and could be heated and poured into molds, cooling like metal and forming strong, clear building products! Unlike the outcome posited in a Vonnegut novel, it would not alter any normal water in contact with it, causing at least some of the scientists to draw a breath of relief.
H4 turned any rock into a soft, malleable putty for 24 hours so that mountains could be tunneled with ease, and then after a day returned to its former hardness in the new shape. All the scoops taken from tunneling, with a little planning, could be easily stamped into ornate stone products of high sheen and durability, retaining all of their stonelike beauty, a green solution that left the construction zone clean.
H5 humorously grew hair on anything alive or dead, but on nonliving objects it grew no further. However on living creatures the new hair came with their own follicular growth factories. Passing around flower petals flowing with luxuriant tresses, many of the distinguished group had the same thought and returned home that evening to gleeful squeals at their returned thick brush. Far better than ego relief though, was the way any item hit with this sound weaved into a strand with the highest tensile strength ever recorded by a wide margin, and looked to be the product which would realize space elevators.
H6 at low levels desalinated water, leaving it deliciously mineral-rich. At higher energies it could separate any compound into its root elements. The scientists had fun turning salt water into sodium and chlorine and hydrogen and oxygen and a hundred other elements in trace amounts. One took the coins from his pocket and separated them into cool blobs of elemental metal.
H7 killed all cancer cells, converting them into lipids the body used for energy. A small metal-detector type booth was rapidly built employing that sound in which anybody who stepped into it came out seconds later cancer free and vibrant. This was taken and placed unobtrusively in a nearby hospital entrance, causing it to later be renamed the 'miracle center' for all its occurrences of spontaneous cancer remission.
H8 could make an exact duplicate of anything. Anything. From seemingly nothing, although the building blocks of matter were everywhere and it was hard to determine exactly where they came from. One of the scientists duplicated himself to the protests of the others. Liynas was silent, presumably to teach a lesson. The copy was perfect in every way, except... it wasn't alive. Now the scientist had a dead body to deal with. Thankfully, H6 was available.
H9 seemed to have no effect on anything, and Liynas was deliberately opaque on the subject, but insisted each of the scientists be exposed to it. Over the coming months the work began to seem easier, with scientists in separate fields coming to similar conclusions, and formerly heated discussions over contrary postulations began drying up and disappearing as they began agreeing on methodology formerly foreign to them. One asked Liynas, "Did that sound make us smarter?"
Liynas shook his head.
Another ventured, "Nicer?"
"Closer."
"What then?"
"Don't get angry... it's the 'golden rule' sound. People hearing it naturally want to treat others the way they themselves would like to be treated."
"Oh. I'm not angry at all." The scientist scratched his head and asked, "But couldn't you use that sound on the people in your time, to stop the violence? If it works here..."
"No for two reasons. One, this virus modification sped up evolution and it doesn't effect us the same way it does you. Second, even if it did... many of my people are treating people the way they would want. They're sociopathic, after all."
"Well, how about shooting it worldwide now, to end war and usher in a new age of human cooperation?"
"So nothing would go wrong with permanently altering all of humanity's brain chemistry, is that what you're asking?" Liynas smiled in that shiny way he had.
"Ah. Of course. Too bad." The scientist wandered off to join another hexidecima assembly group; Liynas wondered briefly if it had been such a good idea exposing them to H9, but knew he could pull the plug if it caused more harm than good.

At long last the final hexidecima was created, involving of all things, the sound of a fearful goat in the back seat of a 1958 Austin Healy traveling a dirt road in Nebraska at 57 miles an hour. When completed, Liynas directed that this test occur aboard a fleet of 625 jets, all equipped with sound distribution hardware, flying 20 miles apart from pole to pole in a straight west line for as far as their fuel would take them, coupled with the worldwide directive for people to stay indoors while the jets were overhead and soon after. This was a strange request, because up until now he had kept most testing away from the public eye, whereas this one would involve the entire world. Preparations were made and the citizenry were told what to expect. Checklists and worldwide safety equipment was reproduced using H8 and distributed.
The day came and 625 jets aligned themselves in a latitudinal path, 20 miles apart and 35 miles high, from the North to the South poles, traveling west, with many others on the ground ready to take over at predicted locations. Announcements were made on every manner of communication equipment, and all of humanity took their places indoors or under cover as they had been directed. Some ignored the requests; those people would be facing an unhealthy situation if protection was not available to them.
Liynas nodded and the switch was flipped. All the planes began broadcasting. The hexidecima's volume was calculated so that it was too weak to reach the ground by a safe amount, too weak even to affect flying animals. The shielded sound-broadcasting equipment was tail-mounted so that the aircraft themselves wouldn't be affected. People on the ground watched the sky from their windows with excitement. They were told that this was only an experiment and nothing might come of it, but hopeful chatter zoomed around the world nonetheless. If it worked this would be something to wish for, that was certain!
Behind the jets there was now something happening; it was clearly visible to the pilots while still too distant to be observed from the ground. There was smoke! Black smoke! Spreading out in a 'V' until it intersected the 'V' from its companion jets, it seemed as though the aircraft were burning up, as the black cloud gained thickness and lost striations until it was as night approaching from the East. Soon it made itself apparent to the citizenry at large. It was terrifying, and even with words of calm emanating from radios and televisions worldwide, there were still many who sought refuge deep in the bowels of their homes, slamming their cellar doors shut as if in preparation for tornadoes. But the jets were not burning up; this was in fact, exactly what was supposed to happen. They continued on their paths, oblivious of the escalating fear below them.
Deeper and darker the cloud became... and now it was apparent that it was coming closer as well! From circulating ground vehicles with mounted loudspeakers came more instructions, blared to everyone within earshot: "Find indoor protection. Avoid breathing the dark cloud. Remain calm. Find indoor protection..." Simulated nightfall descended in moments. The lights in every home and business on this no-longer-sunny day flashed on. The blackness grew closer, more ominous. A new sound began-- rain.

Not rain. It sounded like rain, but to the people living in deserts and by the ocean knew, this wasn't the sound of rain. It was the sound of sand, blowing sand, hitting the roofs and the windows and the streets of every community in the world! The blackness was not smoke, but it was pollution... for this particular hexadecima had the unique ability to separate carbon dioxide and other heavy compounds from the Earth's stratosphere and causing it, once cracked, to drop peacefully to the ground as a carpet of black silt!
Now people's jaws swung wide at the effect. The ground everywhere was coal, covered with an inch of carbon granules as far as the eye could see, looking like the landscape after a fresh volcano had cooled. But they lurched in surprise once they cast their eyes upward, to see what change might have occurred to the again-daylit sky, if any.
It had! It was a rich and vibrant blue, deeper than anyone could ever remember! Distant buildings and land features popped into clarity, more crisp in detail than in the last 50 years! The clouds were whiter than white and all brown city haze had disappeared! Reports were coming in from all over the world; Mexico City, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Tokyo... all were reporting that the air above their cities was now crystal clear and smelled like fresh rain!
New announcements were being formulated for wide distribution, to resolve world's the new issues. People everywhere heard them: "Once the cloud has fallen, please sweep or blow all black granules into your streets, where sweeping machinery will retrieve it for return to the planet's interior. Use your provided masks to avoid inhaling the dust. For people with large properties far from city streets, contact the city at the following number to arrange for a large-scale vacuum service. Continue to use your dust filters on windy days until the announcement of the last bit being settled. Our planet is pristine again! Let's keep it this way this time!"
A roar erupted in the L'Arc Technologie laboratories as it became clear what an incredible gift Liynas had bestowed upon them; he would have been lifted onto their shoulders, were he substantial. As it was, he accepted their appreciation with a humble smile. He waved the group quiet and, finding nowhere in the lab to stand tall, simply elevated himself into the air, his feet floating 30 inches above the floor. None of the scientists seemed overly perturbed by this image, though one young assistant ducked out of the room.
"Thank you. But you know I could have accomplished none of this without your patience, expertise and valuable hands. Mostly your hands," he smiled and the group chucked at his self-ribbing of insubstantiality. "This final assembly is the moment we have been working towards, and if successful, you may not notice for decades. But the change will be there. This last and most complex sound will be making only small adjustments to the virus which inhabits every one of you, but essential ones necessary for the survival of our species. First, it lowers the IQ selection goal to zero. That's right, we're not going to use IQ as a goal any more. When this is done, every person who wants to bear a child will be able to, provided they are already capable of doing so.
"So how will we achieve the reduced population so necessary for continued survival? I already said it. Every person who wants a child will be able to bear one. A single child. The next ten generations of parents will only be able to conceive one child. In the sad circumstance that a child is lost, the virus will allow that family to conceive another. The virus will watch the worldwide population for the goal of one billion, and once it is reached, will allow two children per couple from that point forward.
"I'm not a comfortable public speaker so let me conclude with this: You are all in a very real way, responsible for the salvation of our race. I am very proud of all of you and more importantly, you should each be proud of yourselves. Now, since we have all of our Hexadecimen assembled and ready to go, there's nothing stopping us from finally setting this plan in motion!" He turned to the lead scientist. "Doctor Schon, if you would do the honors?"
"I would be honored, Liynas." He pressed a few buttons, which powered up the worldwide sound distribution network. Green lights flashed across the screen, indicating a 'go'. His finger hovered over the 'Enter' button.
"Well? What are you waiting for?"
"I think there should be some kind of a record, don't you? Say 'cheese'," the Doctor said, pointing.
"Cheese? What do you mean by that?" Dr Schon initiated the final Hexadecima as a bright flash went off.
When their eyes had cleared... Liynas was gone.
"What? Where did he go? Liynas? Liynas!" but the man did not show up. The room was dim by comparison in his absence. "Well, he must be back in his time. Let's see what we've got!"
As expected, there was no apparent reaction. The complex sound made of sixteen Hexadecimen was silent and disturbed nobody. The scientists felt no different. The world outside was still as crystal clear as Young Earth. "I guess the results will become apparent over time. We'll set up observation data centers-- we should know in a fairly short time, as lower IQ people begin to produce children... er, a child... again. Good work, gentlemen, ladies! But it's not over yet... there is much work to be done, and I'm sure you know to what I am referring!"
Most of the scientists erupted, shouting, clamoring to be heard. One word was clear in the din.
"Hexadecimen!"
"That's right, people. There is a lot of experimentation on sound combinations about to commence! But as our guest said before... we must be very careful with this science. We can destroy our world with a foolish joining... but the wonders which await us are legion, if we but take the time to do it right. That is all. Take the week off. We'll see you first thing Monday, here." The scientists applauded briefly and began to scatter, murmuring amongst themselves. "Wait a second, son. Let me take a look at that picture you snapped."
The young man hesitated. Dr Schon noticed he was pale, and shaking. "What is it, son? Here, take a seat. Let me pour you a glass of water. What is it that's got you spooked? Was it the photograph? What could be strange about a simple image? Give me the camera, young man." He pried it from the young man's hand, who seemed to be unresponsive, as if in shock. "There's a good fellow. Oh, a video too, eh? Excellent. Now let me take a look at this and OH MY GOD!"
It was an ordinary photograph by all accounts. The Doctor was there, smiling at the lens, and all the other scientists were beaming in the background as well. But there was something very wrong. Liynas seemed to be getting pulled backwards somehow; a hook around the waist was how it seemed, folded at the waist. But even stranger was the image behind him, where a jagged circular distortion field now hovered.
Visible in this tear in time was a scene of utter chaos. The sky was orange and black; flames rose hundreds of feet from the modern city behind him. People were screaming, running, on fire. An explosion tilted a skyscraper to its destruction. But the expression on Liynas' face spoke the truth of his fate: it was a mask of unbridled horror.
Dr Schon sat heavily into a chair beside the shocky young man and he brought his hands up to cover his face. Sobbing with distress, his voice shook and cracked as he cried, "My good lord! What have we done!?"

He began the video, afraid of what he was about to see. Liynas was far inside now, becoming a speck, and the portal was closing. But no sooner had the Doctor pressed 'go' than he could see the scene change, as if a hand had passed across it from left to right. The buildings which had been on fire, weren't. The sky that was orange and black, was now blue. The screaming, running, burning people, instead now sat in the pastoral foreground, frolicking and picnicking and enjoying the same crisp beauty that Dr Schon's Earth now enjoyed. And in the foreground now, walking hand in hand with an attractive young woman and oblivious to the shrinking portal, was a deeply in love Liynas. Then the portal closed and they were staring at a laboratory interior again.
He let out a deep, ragged breath, shaking. He put an arm around his now-smiling assistant and hugged him. "We did it, son! We did it!"

Where Do We Go From HERE?

2011-10-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

You all know this by now: Protesters have been blocking financial centers in ever-growing numbers, in an attempt to voice their dismay about the ruthless manner in which the supercapitalist rich have been throttling the American middle class. It's a heavy-handed, so-last-century method which provides weak impetus at best, and in this wireless electronic age can a machine as entrenched as business even be stopped with a physical roadblock?

No it cannot.

But there are more violent yet effective methods as yet untried which would. Cyber-terrorism. Targeted hostage-taking. Physical destruction.

You know I'm not advocating such methodology. Anyone who has read this blog knows that. What I'm getting at is, what if the people's voice is heard? What if the powers that be relent?

What if it works?

Stop laughing. No, really!

What is our next step going to be following the halting of 'business as usual'?

You think you know my response, me being the 'Perfect World' dude and all. However, you'd be wrong, and the reason may surprise you. I won't advocate switching over to Perfect World immediately, and here's why:

I have no idea how to do that.

Okay, that's not exactly true. I do have an idea, and a good one. But it involves a great amount of trust on the public's part, and an enormously difficult releasing of the reins from the people in charge. And these are two requests that ain't gonna come easy. So rather than upsetting our economy and our long-ingrained behaviors, we're going to need to ease ourselves into it. But how do we proceed from "Let's Do This!"?

Simple. We let MARTER DC do it. And you know that's not a rapper. It's an awful, awful acronym that stands for

Moratoriums

Assessments

Redesign

Testing

Education

Reassignment

Deletion

Completion

and they are the necessary steps, in order, to transition us into Perfect World. Is it complete? No. This is a think-out-loud session, trying to establish an ordered way to smooth the mess we've made of things. I'm sure there will be other steps, interim steps which will be required, since redesigning society is a complicated chore. Some of them will likely mess with the acronym. We can only hope.

First we have to ease the fears and doubt coming from our largest segment of society, and we do that with Moratoriums.

Moratoriums will be monetary in nature and will cut across the entire business world-- we universally suspend all final decisions. Nobody loses their job, nobody's note becomes due, nobody gets kicked out of their home. No plants close, no work stops, no strikes happen, or sit-ins, or any form of civil disobedience.

All homeless people apply for and receive appropriate housing (basic designs, one bedroom per person) from the current large number of vacant units, without funding. Again, the numbers are kept through bookkeeping, but there will be no payments. People who are with mental issues will be helped with treatment or medication, or safe housing in sanatoriums if necessary.

People will still go to food and clothing stores but their receipts will be unpaid and assigned to their unique human identification code, of which every person already has several (for now). All this information tracking is important for the next step of determining what basic human needs are, with respect to world supplies.

Hospitals turn away no dire emergency. Nobody who is in immediate danger of dying will be turned away. Waiting lists for nonemergency procedures will be established on an urgency basis. Cosmetic surgeries will be placed on hold for a short while so that those doctors may assist with the immediate wellness of our population.

All but violent offenders are released from prison and juvenile halls into temporary housing in unused military bases or other large vacant properties until the steps of Assessment through Reassignment can be completed on them. People in jail for the so-called victimless crimes (drugs, prostitution, white collar) will skip this step and return to their families, or to private housing.

This first step is important because it sets the tone for the new society, and the tone is

People First.

Oh speaking of people by the way, corporations lose their peoplehood immediately. They simply become large organizations utilizing many human people, as every noncorporate business does.

Political deals cease. Political action committees of all types disband. Politicians go away. There are no more 'special interests'-- we're all 'special' now.

Religious power, such as it is, stops. No mentioning of any religious icons, or exhibiting specific religious behaviors which are not also societal behaviors. Groups are special interest, and we're all one people.

With most of society's claws tucked safely away, Assessment comes next. We need to decide as a planet what our human needs are. These are already largely defined with another exceedingly annoying acronym, CHEFCHEF. Clothing. Health. Education. Food. Companionship. Housing. Enlightenment. Freedom. In addition to these a far more comprehensive list of human wants are assembled, paying particular attention to the reason for those wants. For example, we know that people want alcohol. But we'll be asking the question: why do they want it, and how will that reason change when society does?
We also know humans want entertainment, but in a future society which values health, will all the entertainment be so passive? People want televisions, but must they all be wall-sized behemoths? Must all their meat be prime, and must they receive as much meat as they want? These questions are addressed in the Education section, where people will learn new expectations, freedoms and restrictions.

Redesign is the step which manages all the vast information gleaned from the Assessment and creates a working model humanity will live by. By covering just a few areas here, you'll begin to see how it will unfold:

--Mining is dangerous work but with applied science and machinery, removing ore from the ground could be made largely automated, as well as ecologically designed to leave surface features intact and not adding leaching poisons to the environment. Research of new methodology will be needed. New mining processes will be developed with significant manufacturing required. Training for the new methods will be intrinsic. You can see how this one new field creates an expanding network of interactions with other concerns.

--Transportation is a huge problem, with far too many vehicles making far too many trips thanks to multiple redundancies. The vehicles themselves are still designed with last century's technology, using dirty, carbon-emitting fuels, an area we are already trying to eliminate. First we analyze the need for all that movement to minimize what we can, then find new and better ways to move the most people and resources the most efficiently. High-speed rail might be one solution, and that brings again, research, development, manufacturing and construction efforts.

Taking the place of individualized organization will be a massive, multi-leveled piece of internet software which keeps all the information flowing. Tiers of programming will detail the full complement of world needs, from international (global cleaning and health; satellite systems; space exploration), through national, state, county, city, neighborhood... all the way to individual requirements (food, clothing, decorations, housing, health, entertainment, work, intimacy and entertainment). All the information is utilized to streamline human workload, minimizing overruns and shortages and maximizing its ability to say yes most of the time, increasing personal satisfaction to unseen levels.

The software knows (for example) how much copper is needed worldwide, knows how much is in reserve, how much is being recycled and how much is being mined... and it has this information for every resource. It knows how many man-hours are required in every project, every ongoing venture and every emergency response... and knows everyone who can contribute, and their proximity to the job. It then uses those facts to streamline necessary man-hours and direct them to those people best suited to handle them. The software also reaches into the cerebral as it organizes every contribution of art, music, science, literature and makes it available for all to appreciate and use as needed.

It would be like today's Internet all rolled into one organization mega-mind, managing the world and the people in it, to the maximum benefit of all.

Testing of every human being alive, young and old, would begin. We have let the undiscovered resources of too many individual minds be wasted for too many centuries. We are each unique. We each have many potential areas of expertise and talent. For many of us, those talents may lie forever dormant, unexplored and untapped, thanks to an inefficient education system which largely cattle-runs us and our children through an identical fact base, which has the net effect of making us all look relatively smart while watching similarly tailored game shows, but little else. And that doesn't take into consideration all the students who miss out on education altogether because of unfavorable circumstances, or those that suffer huge gaps in their education from inadequate homeschooling or private, unregulated institutions.

The testing process would end that mess, by using the most advanced and comprehensive techniques to determine each human being's basic desires and innate abilities. Those would be rated and categorized so that each person may contribute, to help society in the most efficient way possible.
These tests would determine a person's root abilities, their facility with words or visual interpretations, for example. It would test each facet of human knowledge and gauge the responses using sensitive equipment. These would be earmarked for the coming education process so that each person might finally contribute the skills they were born with. This also serves to streamline the work process so that much more can be accomplished using each person for fewer hours. At last, slaving away in an ill-fitting job until you retire will be a thing of the past. What few miserable jobs that can't be automated (yet) will be shared widely among the general populace so that, when your turn came up, it might be the only time in your life you would be expected to do so.

Education

In this new society freedom of the individual, while important, takes a back seat to the good of the many. Understand this will not affect your freedom to move about, experience the daylight and sun, feel the wind on your face; but rather will seek to restrict any negative actions towards other equal members. In a civilization your actions yield consequences and in this new society you will be expected to follow the rules of civility, an abused segment of behavior we currently tolerate, to our detriment. Rudeness, lying, bullying, fraud, violence, insensitivity and a host of other ill behaviors seen in wide use today will become reasons for individual retraining. Humans will no longer be free to abuse other humans-- this is an important facet of the new civilization.

In a beneficial society of course, many of those anomalous behaviors begin to disappear anyway. The closer we get to perfecting the system, the fewer acts of contrition we'll see. We have learned that they are not actions in and of themselves as much as they are responses to the actions of others. Much like the social chain where boss yells at dad and then dad yells at mom so mom yells at child and then child yells at family dog, angry feelings telegraph through society. This behavior will need to be prevented by educating each human into exhaustive awareness of social interaction. But it doesn't stop there.

We know what the world needs of us, and what we need of the world. The Redesign step made that clear. Testing each person to find their natural strengths and desires allows them to now be placed in an intensive learning environment to hone their skills. But we're not just creating lookalike cogs for society's machine. Yes we need their skills, but because they have a natural affinity for them, the person will be more likely to enjoy their training and see it through to completion, and enjoy their contribution to society. Also, since we have shifted from a competitive model to a benevolent one, all the skills needed are likely to bring feelings of well-being to your environment, rather than bitterness and desperation, which happens so often here, now.

Reassignment asks the question 'How many people are working in a job they truly hate and would give up in a heartbeat if they could?" and then seeks to match these jobs with other, more natural volunteers. Furthermore, it finds the people who are well placed and cements them to the segment of contribution they appreciate, preventing the stress of late-life relearning.

With all these radical changes to society, many jobs will be disappearing in the Deletion part of the plan. Where will those workers go? The testing and education segments of this plan have already answered that question with 'wherever they are most able and/or comfortable'. Because many jobs will be deemed unnecessary, redundant or inferior, the remaining jobs will end up with many more potential workers. Since a citizen no longer needs to chase a job in order to have decent accommodations and a comfortable life, multiple people will now report to the same job, cycling through its hours with the others on an easily adjustable schedule. Of course that means there will be far fewer hours any one person will need to work, causing a greater amount of time be assigned to R and R, human interest areas and self betterment.
Here's an example. Farming is hard work. People must work from sunup to sundown, tending to the various needs of the farm. But now, with so many more volunteers, each farm could have 10 times the volunteers, causing each volunteer to have a much lighter workload. Also, new ideas for further automation will always be brought up, and implemented when possible, reducing even more the need for people to do the hard work. Instead, more will shift to the factories, producing the new automated machinery for the farms. Once the farms have been stocked, the factories will be mothballed until such time as they are needed again.

Deletion is the step where all the negative aspects of our current society are removed, like unnecessary jobs, dangerous and substandard structures, damaging environmental procedures and organizations which inspire corruption or unhealthy competition and greed.

Politics will be completely revamped, no longer requiring representation. So parties, candidates and political structures become pointless.
Infrastructure will be attended to after careful consideration of how best to house and move the world's people. Will we prefer to build city megastructures, connected by high speed rail, housing most of the inhabitants and business, with a distant circling rings for the noisy manufacturing and busy farming concerns, or will the city follow its roots with widely spaced individual dwellings interspersed with businesses, factories and farms? Whatever the results of the studies and votes say. Now every citizen has an equal say in the planning and commission of public projects.

As the task of tallying becomes pointless so do the money trades. As all products are freely given, items pertaining to security go away. Guards, gates, alarms, locks all fade.

Individual businesses cannot fail-- there is no failure in this system. If the need for a factory's product ends, reassignment of resources and volunteers is the natural next step. The need for advertising and associated trades (agencies, billboards etc) become pointless, as there is no purchasing incentive. The desire to make poor products to undercut better ones stops as citizens realize the inferior products waste resources and they stop requesting them. Often the inferior factory could just ask for and receive help to improve their product, even from the better product's factory, since competition is no longer the method, but cooperation.

The people in all those deleted jobs are reassigned, based again on their innate strengths and desires.

Power, itself a source of corruption, instead of being held by small groups of people or even individuals, is now spread evenly across the entire globe. Public projects are proposed, researched and voted on by the people they affect; once approved, construction materials and talent are organized. It is likely that in the beginning there will be a huge number of new projects proposed which will neeed to be culled and organized by priority-- bridges before parks, re-foresting before stadiums-- necessity taking top billing until the projects thin out.

Completion

is the goal. There is no step here. Completion is the finish line. Our cities are clean and green. Our people are healthy, happy, smarter and are contained in logical global numbers. There is no corruption, no greed, no selfishness, no worry, no fear. Will life be perfect? Of course not. There are still accidents and incurable diseases, and people will still pass away of natural causes. Feelings will change and relationships will be made and broken. But with our new enlightenment comes a maturity, a wisdom which states that these things are sad but will get better, these things are here to teach us some of the lessons we can't or don't want to or shouldn't teach ourselves, and the rest of life is a beautiful, wonderful experience... because we decided as a people that THIS is the existence we'd like to live.

This is the Perfect World for Humanity.

Half is Good; a Quarter is Better; an Eighth is Best

2011-10-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

What the hell does that title mean?

Would I be speaking in drug terms? No, most certainly not.

When something is considered better if it is smaller, that thing is often a bad thing. Like salt. Not that salt is bad, but too much in your food definitely is. Less salt in your food is better than more. So am I referring to salt in the title?

No I am not.

Murder is also a bad thing. But why stop at 1/8 of current levels? Why not cut them out completely? Does the title speak about murders?

No. It doesn't.

I could go on all day, but instead I'll throw out one more teaser.

Weight. American's are too fat. Should we become one-eighth of our current selves? If we're all thousand pound behemoths, yes, definitely. Is that what I mean by the title?

Seriously? You're really asking me that? Of course you aren't... I'm controlling the conversation, and with apt douchery, I must say.

I'm referring to the current human population of Earth, set to reach 7 billion later this year.
Seven BILLION. By the way, that's too many fucking people.

When I was a boy (read: in the last 50 years) Earth's population was half that. 3.5 billion.

A hundred years ago it was a quarter of today's population: in 1910 we had 1.75 billion worldwide.

We'd have to go over 250 years back to find human population below a billion: In 1750 the world's population was 875 million, one eighth of what it is today.

So how did it get this so horribly bad? Why are there so, so many people? With all the illnesses and accidents and pollution and natural disasters, shouldn't we be DIMINISHING as a race, not expanding (at a rate of more than 75 million people a year)? That rate of increase would refill the entire USA in just four years. In other numbers, that's 205,480 people a day, or 8,562 an hour... or 143 a minute. Every second, two more people are born. Two, tic. Two, tic. Two, tic. Holy crap. Appalling.
Here are a few reasons why we're proliferating:
One-- human beings are what's known as superpredators. We're on top of the food chain. Precious few of us are taken out by other animals. Sure, there are lions and tigers and bears (oh, crap), but they are mostly kept away from us with cages or preserve fences, or the animal's survival instinct. Yes, there are sharks and manta rays and schools of piranha... but there are very few people floating in the water at any given time, population-wise. And of course we have weapons that would turn a whale into blubber rain with one RPG. So we have a handle on other predators.
Two-- we're not naked babies left in the snow. We are able. We can protect ourselves with clothing and protective garb, artificial environments and strong, solid buildings. No matter what the planet throws at us, we have the ability to affect our environment... some of us do, anyway. And in the most rare cases, we can even leave Earth if it gets too cranky (at least temporarily), taking a little holiday on the International Space Station, or on the moon.
Three-- In days before the advent of modern medicine many children died before the age of 2. Therefore, it was only survival to make as many children as possible, since the number reaching adulthood (if any at all) would always be in question. That behavior has become ingrained in many, especially in rural areas, and are still creating families with 6 or more children. Except now almost all of them make it to adulthood.
But probably the biggest cause, and not one to be trifled with, is religious proclamation. In most religious texts there is a passage (or many passages) referring to the fact that humans should make many babies, 'Be fruitful and multiply' being one oft-quoted axiom. Too bad their books never considered the day when there would be too many people on the planet. Never thought about a time when arable land would be diminishing to urban sprawl and the world's huge oceans would become fished lean while human pollution kills the rest. Had nothing to say about humanity's ability to cause the worldwide extinction of the plants and animals we depend on. Couldn't imagine a world where people would be standing shoulder to shoulder... because there's just no room. Maybe the axiom should have read: 'Be fruitful and multiply... but don't be stupid about it.'

Like I said, an eighth of current world population is where I'd like to see the world be, and stay. So if I give everyone a gun with 7 bullets, we could get this done today.

Tick... tick... tick...

Yes, yes... I agree that's not a very good plan. Because then you'd have to bury 7 bodies, and you'd have to do it alone... everyone else would be busy with their own seven bodies which need burying.

And there would be 8 times too many homes, and 8 times too many cars. Too many businesses, and trains, and roads, and stuff. And all of this cleanup would have to be done with 1/8 the labor force.

So much work!

Maybe if we all decide to clean up the world first, make it all neat, pre-dig the graves... and then shoot 87.5% of us.

I can see this will be an organizational nightmare. Maybe a different plan?

Okay. Someone suggested attrition, which would be allowing the population to drop naturally, over time.

Well, that's a lot of guns I no longer need to buy and distribute. A load off my mind, I can tell you!

So every person dies of their natural course. The only change we'd make is to destroy the sex organs of seven-eighths of all people using white-hot pokers. Or elevate their sacrifice at painful public flaying ceremonies. Or maybe do it with a competition, like a fun battle scenario, where the winners get to sterilize the losers with a hand drill.

Hold on...

I'm being told that isn't the plan at all. My bad.

Instead, we try other forms of incentive first. We offer financial motivation to people who agree not to have children. We limit the number of children each family can legally have, and burden larger families with taxes and fines to pay for the incentives smaller families are receiving. Mathematically, we can reduce the population, every generation, in several ways:

• The people who do not make children will end their own family lines with their deaths. No more progeny.

• Parents that have only 1 child cut their family human load by 50% with each passing generation.

• Parents that wait before having one child for 10-20 years stretch the length of generations, contributing fewer children over time than families who have their child at a younger age.

• We can shoot people who don't understand math.

Okay, apparently I'm feeling just the slightest bit murderous today. Maybe that's because I'm writing this during International Blasphemy Day and I feel obliged to say things like that. Or maybe it's because my editor is taking a week off in the Bahamas with his super-fat wife.

Definitely the second thing.

So, no shooting.

Getting back to math, let's do an example. I've always loved examples (if I can understand them) so I'll try to make this one dumb enough for even me to follow:
Say we start off with 100 couples. Each has 1 child. And every couple in this chart gives birth at 20, and everyone dies at 79. Now my brain won't hurt so much when I do the figuring. Let's begin the example on a nice round year, 2000, with 50 couples all 20 years old.

Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals
(parents) (kids) (grandkids) (great) (great 2) (great 3) (great 4)

2000 100 50 150

2020 100 50 25 175

2040 100 50 25 12 187

2060 0 50 25 12 6 93

2080 0 0 25 12 6 3 46

2100 0 0 0 12 6 3 1 22

2120 0 0 0 0 6 3 1 -

2140 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 -

In 2000 the 50 couples (100 ppl) are 20 years old and each make 1 baby (50 ppl) for a total of 150 people

In 2020 - 50(100) are 40 - (50) kids are 20 and make 25 babies for a total of 175 people

In 2040 - 50(100) are 60 - (50) kids are 40 - 25 gkids are 20 and make 12 = 187 people

In 2060 -50(100) are dead - (50) kids are 60 -25 gkids are 40 - 12 ggkids are 20 and make 6 = 93 people

In 2080 - (50) kids are dead - 25 gkids are 60 - 12 ggkids are 40 -6 gggkids are 20 and make 3 = 46 people

Seems like, using this chart, in 100 years and 7 generations we'll be at the population I recommend. In reality people won't be divided into petri-like dishes of 50 couples, so there will always be a wide assortment of partners, so don't worry. We're not going to dissolve into a world of sisterbangers.

Can we make it happen faster? What about stretching the birthing rate? Let's rechart the same data, using 40 as the age to have children instead of 20. People still die at 79 in this chart. Boo-hoo, no kids have grandparents. It's just an example... get over it.

Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals

2000 100 50 150

2040 0 50 25 75

2080 0 0 25 12 37

2120 0 0 0 12 6 18

2160 0 0 0 0 6 3 9

2200 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 4

2240 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 -

2280 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -

In 2000 the 50 couples (100) are 40 years old and each make 1 baby (50) for a total of 150 people

2040 - 50(100) are dead - (50) kids are 40 and make 25 babies for a total of 75 people

2080 - (50) kids are dead - 25 gkids are 40 and make 12 = 37 people

2120 - 25 gkids are dead - 12 ggkids are 40 and make 6 = 18 people

2160 - 12 ggkids are dead - 6 gggkids are 40 and make 3 = 9 people

So with more years between generations, the population drops faster. Still, when we reach our goal, like with a dieter, we don't want to fall too dangerously below. A 'decree' will go out on that wondrous day when computers calculate the world population at 875 million, a decree which states,"Oyez, oyez..."

Okay, that's just ridiculous. we're not returning to the year 1750 just because we're at the population level of that time. Starting over, "The Great Pop-Drop is Over! O-V-E-R! You are now all free to bang like bunnies, to romp like rhinos, to pluke like plesiosaurs..."

I don't even know if that's a real dinosaur. But the point is made. People will start making babies. Still, there is an eye to sensibility and the idea of doubling the baby load seems extreme, until they realize that just means going from one baby to two... so they proceed, cautiously. It looks like this:

Year Gen 1 Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4 Gen 5 Gen 6 Gen 7 Totals

2100 100 100 200

2120 100 100 100 300

2140 100 100 100 100 400

2160 0 100 100 100 100 400

2180 0 0 100 100 100 100 400

2200 0 0 0 100 100 100 100 400

2220 0 0 0 0 100 100 100 [400]

2240 0 0 0 0 0 100 100 [400]

And with 2 kids per family, we've finally attained ZPG. At least as far as this wildly inaccurate chart is concerned, which omits a thousand important figures and a whole host of potential stumbling blocks. It'll work, I tell ya! Believe the Hypno-Toad.

Moving on.

Okay, now we've reached our desired population goal, and now everybody's car is made by Caterpillar so they can double as building-knocking-downers and junk-clearers. And that's our first task... cleanup! First to go are the dilapidated and banned buildings... we huff and puff and blow 'em down, and clear 'em away. Now the garbage structures -- 'squish' go temporary buildings that look like tractor-trailers and 'fold' go cheaply-made buildings utilizing any material that resembles pants. After that we turn a destructive eye towards all that awful junk housing-- no more cinder block tenements, no more cardboard subdivisions. Finally we're knocking down the wretched mini-mansions and security-booth-protected gated communities, both symbols of the realized horror called Capitalism with a big C. See ya, C.

All those newly disappeared neighborhoods don't need local roadways... no more street names ending in 'circle', 'drive', 'alley' or 'mews'. Good riddance. Scrape 'em clear. Horrible mini malls with fetid chain stores like 7-11s and BP gas stations go crunch, crunch, bye under our metal tractor treads. We can either shove it all into the ocean to form manmade barriers to tsunami and call them the Great Atlantic and Pacific Reefs, or maybe build a new mountain range in overly flat Kansas, going East-West for a change. It all returns to nature anyhow... might as well look pretty while doing so. Blanket it with every kind of seed and come back in 100 years to a beautiful man-made forest. People making forests? Well, that's new!

With 1/8 population, resources will suddenly be plentiful. If we couple our careful population culling with widespread free education (concentrating in subjects which don't doom society, like exploration and discovery, the arts and sciences, creativity and the humanities), then our resultant population will begin to make wiser choices about how to coexist with the planet. Now following the advice of careful scientists will make tremendous sense as people stop arguing lies to reach empty political victories. Clean energy will become de rigueur, smooth quiet sensible public transportation will become the preferred method of travel everywhere, and interacting with others becomes a cooperation, not a competition.

Political organization becomes pointless as people realize they can get more done in groups transparently than all the smoke-filled, back-room, secret-laced, political dope-dealing venal methods in practice before. They begin to use a now-ubiquitous piece of Internet software that would be called FluidWorld or something equally inspirational, which assembles and categorizes every one of humanity's needs (both personal and public), assigns predicted resources and labor to each, then requests a vote on each... but only from those people who would be affected by each change.

For example, a town needs a new light rail line and requests it. Everyone from that town gets to vote, but nobody from another state does. Or a neighborhood wants a new street sign, so everyone who would be able to see that sign gets to vote on it, but nobody else. With a yes outcome, resources and labor is allocated. No politics, no monetary remuneration, no hierarchy. In this way there are far fewer jobs needed, far less resources wasted, and far more free time. Jobs of a hard nature like farming would benefit with tenfold labor increase, allowing each person to put in just a couple of hours a day but the farm would experience increased output. There would be no subsidies, no wasted crops and no payments not to grow-- it would be a system that finally makes logical sense.

With nobody receiving any kind of unfair advantage, and more importantly, nobody being placed in a continuing disadvantage, human interaction stops becoming adversarial. Anger and frustration dissipates with the elimination of pointless and overstuffed yet watered down laws pushing humanity into an unnatural mold of perfection. Instead a few simple rules are put in place: Don't hurt people. Don't force your beliefs on them. Let the community help raise children. Share equally. Don't be greedy or selfish. Accept facts as truth. With these guidelines, people naturally become more tolerant and helpful, more unselfish and kind, more creative and enterprising. The world blossoms with the loss of pollution and senseless acts.

Yes, an eighth is definitely best.

The Biggest Secrets In The World Revealed!

2011-09-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

I make no secret of the fact that I am aging.

No, it's true! I am. I have never been as old as I am at THIS moment. Now THIS one. Now THI-- oh, you get the picture.

Anyway, I was smacked across the frontal lobe by the realization that I wanted to find the answers to some of the biggest questions I've ever had, before... well, before I was as old as I was ever going to be.

That wasn't my only realization. It occurred to me that since I live in this world, and not in the Perfect World of my blog, that I would at some point be too old to practice my physically demanding livelihood, and when that happened the money I like so much would stop appearing. I don't know if you're aware of this... but when I no longer have a steady supply of cashola, it sets into motion a series of VERY unenjoyable events that conclude with (you guessed it) me being as old as I was ever going to be.

A session of steam-producing thought later and I decided against the route of becoming less alive. But what then were my alternatives? I began a list. First, I could go back to the beginning of my career and start earning considerably more every day than I needed to live. I would take all the surplus and invest it, so that when I reached this point again I would now be wealthy and could retire to a warm tropical island, using beautiful naked islanders for clothing. A solid plan, I must say.

But it was a great plan with one very solid drawback and so I had to abandon it; alas, nobody has yet built an effective time machine and for my idea to work, well, you kinda need one. Oh, pooh.

The second idea I landed on is the one I'm sticking with (which on a side note is pretty good odds. Some people think up ideas for years that they end up not using. That can be frustrating, I would imagine). Anyway, the second idea is this: Being a fledgling writer, and a researcher with compulsive tendencies, and if I may say a pretty smart cookie, I figured I could provide important information to a knowledge-hungry populace, for a fee. Voila! A business plan. So I placed an ad on the Internet. That's when I found a serious flaw in my scheme.

Let me interrupt myself for a moment and say that this Internet is a pretty cool invention. Heck, if there had been a time machine I think I might've just gone back in time, held Al Gore up at watergun-point, stolen the idea for that and run with it. But I get ahead of getting ahead of myself. In the past when you had an idea and placed an ad, it would be weeks, at least days, before you would have enough feedback to determine if the idea was a good one. But the Internet has comment boxes, which is a clever method that allows feedback to be almost instantaneous.

The first comment following my ad pretty much summed it up for all the comments listed... and they were legion. Nippleman6969 said, and I quote, "Let me get this straight... you're advertising to be a researcher for hire, on the Internet? On the Internet, where research is easy, and free? Good luck with that, bonehead!" Other commentary was less polite. Some called into question my manhood. Some wondered how I could place an ad without a brain. One wanted to know if I liked edging, whatever that is. But I realized the mean people were right. Anyone could have their questions answered just as quickly as typing them into a box on Yahoo (well, it WAS a search site). It was time for a brainstorm.

Brainstorms need quiet, but the TV was still on in the other room. I went to shut it off but was captivated momentarily by the infomercial selling a no-work muscle-building capsule, and counting down the moments to when 'this amazing deal would no longer be available'. I wondered to myself how anybody could be fooled into believing that a pill to make muscles from nothing might actually work when I saw the rapidly increasing sales figures popping onto the screen and nearly popped my drawers. Wow... there must be a lot of naive people with purchasing power out there. That's when I had my bright idea.

I figured out a way to use my talent as a researcher to create a product with immediate, ongoing and lasting appeal! This is absolute gold-- I am certain to become the next Internet billionaire! I got to work immediately, learning what I needed to learn and creating the script for my own informative commercial. I worked for untold days, locked into my house and allowing no interruptions, no distractions, until I was done and satisfied with my scheme. At long last I emerged, unshaven and bleary, grasping the puckered pages holding my plan for retirement riches in stained, sweaty fingers.

You, dear readers, are the first to view my fantastic new product, and the first to have an opportunity to buy it. Reproduced below is the infomercial script that I hope will allow me the riches I need to create the beginnings of Perfect World. So my plan is selfless, too. It's win-win for everybody.

Both in this life and the next one.

- - • • ∞ ∞ § •BRIGHT IDEA WARNING• § ∞ ∞ • • - -

I have discovered where Heaven and Hell are located!

It's true! And I did it by looking further than anyone ever has. We have been scouring our planet for answers. Remember, god made the heavens as well as the earth. And if science is to be believed (and it is) and brought in line with the spectre of an all-powerful being, then there is really only one answer to the question: Where is Heaven?

Naturally, Heaven is where god is. But where is god? Where any superhuman being would be: In his province. Since he made everything, and everything is defined as the universe, then he made the universe. Science, however, claims the Big Bang made the universe. I think these two facts are not contradictory. To reconcile both facts, it is obvious:

GOD MADE THE BIG BANG.

More than likely god was sitting in his chair in the center of his kingdom (if he sits, that is) and decided he wanted to rule over more than just his realm. So with a clap of his mighty hands he sent matter and energy shooting outwards in all directions, to grow and congeal and form the expanding soap bubble of everything that we call 'the galaxies'. God of course remained in the center, so that he may best observe all that occurs around him. Now he sits (or whatever) in the center of this huge sphere (his dominion), the outermost edge of which (the skin) containing the whole of all matter and energy (the universe).

We all return homewards when we die, back from whence we came, back to god's province for judgement. If we have lived a good and moral life, we remain; if not, we fall back down, since every direction is down from heaven we fall back to our galaxy, settling into the center to begin our endless eternity of torture, pain and misery. Why the center?

Wise scientists believe that at the center of every galaxy is a strong gravitational force which keeps it from spinning apart (and losing its stars to the remote chill of intergalactic space). Scientists call this force a singularity, also known as a black hole. It is a place of incredible heat and pressure and gravity, a whirling suction where nothing can escape… not even light, and not even time. Once inside, an eternity could pass in a moment. And then another, and another... an eternity of eternities.

Putting together what we know from the source book about god's universe we find that there is one place mentioned which fits that description quite well, and allows us to reconcile scriptural facts we know to be true with what learned scientists posit is true, again making all parties happy in the process:

The black hole at the center of every galaxy is

Hell!

God must consider them all, every hole in the center of each galaxy, to be a single place he calls Hell because his knowledge transcends all time. He sees beyond the end of our universe, and knows that all the galaxies will eventually merge together. All the black holes will swallow all the stars, and each other, until there is left only one great Hole, one great Hell, existing outside of the demesnes of the lord, heaven.

At about this time you might be asking, and you would be correct to do so… why am I imparting all of this valuable information to you, for free, here and now? Why aren't I holding services just for my disciples and tell only them, my flock, in my beautiful nine hundred million square foot, over five and a half miles square, outdoor church and godatorium in the verdant grasslands of Nebraska? Why would I risk giving away such valuable information to persons within my faith but outside of my flock, or to those of questionable faiths, or even to those who hold no faith whatsoever, where it may be bastardized into a pale shadow of its former promise, crushed by invalidating persecution coming from the so-called righteous learned? Well, I have a very good reason for doing so, and in a moment you will be nodding your head in agreement with me as you realize the enormity of what I have to offer you, and everyone within the reach of my keyboard:

I Can Guarantee Your Entrance Into Heaven!

That's right! I can make the rest of your life peaceful, no matter what ills befall you, regardless of whatever sorrow finds you, by uncomplicating your final transaction with god on this mortal coil. Some have referred to me as the Lawyer of Limbo and the Pugilist for Purgatory… but really, I'm just your Handler to Heaven. Through me, and my reasonable amenity, your time of endless tranquility will be insured… literally!

I will make certain that no behavior you employed, be it past, present or future, no matter how dreadful, heinous or horrific, will alter your destination right through the Pearly Gates and into your mile-wide mansion with your ten thousand eager and willing slaves. Nothing will stop it. Satan himself will be unable to touch you. I guarantee it.

I and my army of prayer warriors will come to your aid, provided you can underwrite our mission, to spend every day from the moment we receive your first remuneration until the day your loved ones send us your last one, ten years after your passing (the journey to heaven is long from our perspective). But these are no ordinary warriors, no! I have at my disposal no less than ten million angels serving my slightest, most vaporous desires. I can't explain how I am in command of such an enormous cadre of the winged wonders without breaching a contract I have with my law firm of Dee Seaver, Lucy Firr and Bill Zebub (I've only met Bill or Beel, how he pronounces it), but in this case what you don't know WILL help you!

With one phone call… who am I kidding, button click… I will dispatch a prayer warrior angel to your home immediately to assess you on the tithing scale. Have you been a moral person, kind and giving? We'll take that into account. But have you fallen from grace and beaten your wife, or maybe raped and skull-banged a child… or even murdered and decapitated a hooker? Not to worry. Once in heaven all your meanderings are forgotten… and you can't kill anyone there because they're already dead! But let's not kid ourselves, you're gonna need the premium package.

And we offer an upgraded entry solution you're not going to find with any of my competitors, because I'm not kidding you, getting some of you into heaven is going to be a battle. We also offer the lastest self-offense courses for that critical moment at the 'Gate. You'll be needing to know how to parry and thrust. You'll thank us for the judo courses, and you know even a little dirty Krav Maga will probably help. You'll likely have to punt Peter or karate chop Jesus in the nuts, and slip through a tight hole in the angel defense… but once you're in, you're in. Them's the rules.

So get started today... NOW-- the earlier, the better! Because if you don't contribute enough tithing by your deathday, you won't be provided a large enough contingent of warrior angels to fight alongside you at the 'Gate… and that could prove a judgement error you'll have to live with FOR ETERNITY.

Hell Insurance

What The HELL Are You Waiting For?

- - • • ∞ ∞ § • § ∞ ∞ • • - -

Hey, this is such a good idea that I think I should just start doing it now. No point in continuing with this hard service work and crippling my body any more than it already is.

Because sooner or later someone's going to figure out what a baldfaced scam this 'Hell Insurance' thing is... and then they'll cripple my body for me.

The Atheist's Deity

2011-09-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Whaaaaaaa...?

That makes absolutely no sense... does it?

Atheist means 'not a goddie' or something like that.

Taking the word apart, a•theist-- not to be confused with 'a theist' as in "Hi! I'm a theist!"-- is similar in form to a•symmetrical, where the prefix 'a' means 'not'.

Asymmetrical= not symmetrical

Atheist= not theist

And a theist is one who believes in god. So it actually means 'not one who believes in god'. You're welcome. I love to state the obvious.

So what the hell is an atheist's deity, anyway? A deity is a god, and atheists don't believe in supreme beings, so am I being paradoxical or what? Not at all. Allow me to explain myself.

Theists invented god to answer many of their unanswerable questions, at the time. Sadly, most of the answers were along the lines of, "You want to know why the sky is blue? Well, don't worry about that... it's not important. You just believe in me and I'll see to it that you spend eternity in bliss."

Not very helpful or informative. Great, however, for keeping the masses dependent on their theocratic leaders.

Heretics struggle to find the true answer to things for themselves and are roundly punished for it, but continue unabated. Communities of these heretical people banded together, calling themselves 'scientists' and created guiding books of their own. These books were usually filled with boring terms and formulas, in stark contrast to the flowery, meaning-filled tales found in the theist's book, the bible.

Their one redeeming virtue was that every piece of information found in the scientist's books could be proven. By anyone, anywhere! The knowledge contained within was shown beyond any question to be true.

What's more, those books clearly stated when something was absolutely true (a fact), when it was mostly true (a theory) or when it was simply thought to be true (a postulation).

AND, these scientists were happy to update their books when new evidence was uncovered that altered former understandings or added new pieces to the puzzle called 'existence'. It was their guiding principle.

Scientists as a group or singly were thrilled to discover new evidence.
Even if it flew in the face of existing knowledge.
Even if it upturned a lifelong career proposing the opposite.

Such was the nature of scientists, and of science.

Scientist's 'boring' books provided answers where the bible did not. The word spread and two camps formed:
People who wanted to know the true nature of the universe.
People who believed that the bible contained all they ever needed to know.

With the arrival of testable, trustable answers, the world began to advance. They began to live in larger communities called cities, with better defenses and better food production. They established learning centers for children. They used facts from the science books and created inventions and conveniences to make life safer and easier.

The bible believers even began to appreciate some of the modern conveniences created from the knowledge of the scientist's books, and use them, even as they preached the opposite and ignored the roots of each innovation.

And then, quietly and without provocation, enlightenment began.

People began to question the validity of the bible. They wondered if any of the parables had anything at all to teach other than moral value... a value which was considered outmoded in changing modern times.

They began to not believe.

Enlightened people began to ask, politely, if in fact there was any reason to believe that a god even existed.

They became A-theists, preferring to obtain all of their information from reliable sources and relegating the bible to fiction shelves with its own subsection: Religion.

Without knowing for a fact either way, atheists preferred to leave the question of a god unanswered, so long as theists would leave them in peace to practice their science and logic.

This the theists would not do.

You see, it is found in the bible that believers must try to convert nonbelievers. In some older texts, the choice is convert or be killed, but most theists prefer stop short of making that commitment.

Instead, they fought back in more guileful ways. They infiltrated the government, designed to be a strictly nonreligious body, and began to effect the laws. They succeeded in banning books. They were able to insert religious phrasing into the schools, knowing that to convince someone at a young age was to convince them for life. They tried to add these changes into every facet of modern life; into the money, into the courts, into every home.

Now the atheists were unhappy. They too understood the value of an early education, a powerful tool which could be used for good. So they created a deity, too, and showed the youth how to reach it, and talk to it, and learn from it.

They did not need to pray in order to speak with it.

They did not need to fear from any reprisal for not abiding by the word of the Atheist's Deity.

They did not need to be concerned with their immortal soul, if such a thing even exists.

They did not even need to honor it on Sunday in a house of worship.

The Atheist's Deity cared not for such things. It had one duty and one duty alone... the dispensation of fact. This it did with speed and alacrity, with accuracy and verbose unabridgement.

Some called it an Oracle, for it seemed to know everything. But the Atheists and scientists called it a 'linked web of knowledge localities'. But that was a mouthful and inelegant, and certainly not brief as the word 'deity' was. So they renamed it, calling it

the Internet.

When challenged into a competition of deities the Atheist would gladly accept, for there was no challenge there. The Internet deity contains the full spectrum of all human knowledge, whereas the bible deity is just a comparatively tiny book of ancient morality tales, spoken from generation to generation and subject to countless reinterpretations until, finally, someone learned to read and write and only then, cast its word into stone.

But by then it was too late. The bible deity had become inconsequential, full of holes and contradictions, painting its deity all at once as both a kind, beatific father and also a stormy, vengeful bastard.

It became absurd.

Now the Atheist's Deity is replacing the theist's deity... even though you may hear otherwise, in a storm of protest rising from theistic ranks. No matter, for it is true.

} - -o- - {

Everyone now sits daily before the Atheist's Deity, the Internet, asking questions. And the Internet, the Oracle, provides the answers... tirelessly, repeatedly. Even theists now sit before it in awe, hesitatingly asking questions, sitting in stunned silence after reading the antithetical answers:

Is the Earth flat as early navigators believed?

No. It is round-ish, a bumpy spheroid. Viewing the horizon from sea level, though, it looks like there is an edge.

Is there a Garden of Eden?

Yes. It is called the Earth and it sustains humanity. But only as long as humanity sustains the Earth.

Is the Earth 6000 years old as the bible states?

No. It is five billion years old, and the known universe is 14 billion years old.

Did humans evolve from apes?

They evolved from simpler humanoid forms which looked like apes. All life evolved from simple chemical building blocks, diverging and changing as needed over millennia to survive.

Does the universe revolve around the Earth as it says in the bible?

No, only the moon does. The Earth moves around the sun, which moves around the galaxy, which speeds away from the Big Bang.

Is the universe curved?

It is mostly open emptiness. But the matter formed from the Big Bang travels away from the source in a sphere, shaped like the skin of an ever-expanding basketball... which is curved.

What is the meaning of life?

Every human creates their own meaning. Other than that, life is happenstance, random and indifferent.

Is there a god?

Doesn't seem likely. But there is an Oracle, and I am it.

} - -o- - {

And with every question answered, every mystery resolved, the theistic deity fades slowly into myth.

The Shape of Thoughts to Come

2011-09-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm in a boutique coffee shop the other day, writing at a little round table, a 'large regular coffee' beside me, wondering why the sales girl would give me such a strange look for ordering a 'large regular coffee' when I figured out that I was a dinosaur and nobody ordered a 'large regular coffee' anymore. That fact alone made me feel a tiny bit paranoid and I glanced over my 'reading glasses' at the surrounding patrons, expecting a sea of glares and leers to mock the baby-boomer out of me... but I was gratefully disappointed. I didn't have to explain that I was born in the last official year of the boom or that I was just as fond of a half-caf latte macchiado as anyone else in the room but preferred a steaming beverage I could nurse while typing. I didn't have to worry. Everyone in the place, at every table in every seat, was ignoring me. The real surprise to me was that they were ignoring each other as well.

I don't know why it took me so long to notice... except for the semicool alt croonings pumped into the air, it was otherwise silent in the Coffee, Tea and Me-eria. I counted thirty-three heads that were not baristas and were not mine, and were not paying the least bit of attention to anything besides the electronic webfinders in their thumb-typing hands.

Not that I could blame them of course... I have been sucked into the Internet myself, from one awesome website to the next. I understood the appeal. Where I differed from my younger compadres was that I was sitting alone. I brought my laptop with me because I knew that I wouldn't have any company and could count on an uninterrupted flow of time in which to pour my effluvia.

But every other table in the joint was multiply occupied... heck, the one closest to me had seven college-aged youths crammed around a four-seater, forcing them into a satellite pattern, a ring so distant from table's edge they had to strain to place their half-ounce espresso cups beyond the table's edge to prevent catastrophic tipover. And yet they did so, silently and sans protest, staring intently at the tiny glowing screens grasped tightly in their rapidly writing hands.

Is this what has become of modern American interaction? Has standard conversation gone the way of all things extinct, to be replaced with this silent and editable medium? Has humanity progressed beyond all need to converse audibly, or is there still hope for our increasingly underused vocal cords?

I hold a fervent belief that hope reigns.

Where did this behavior begin?

One possibility not to be overlooked was the grade school classroom. When I was a boy, 'pass this note to Suzie', once a familiar whisper between desk row neighbors, was a perpetually perilous temptation often leading to the gleeful announcing of formerly private feelings to the whole room by an underpaid and malevolent substitute teacher. I'm certain one hyper-embarrassed tween genius swore to end the inherent weakness of a passed note and used their big brain to help carve the way for a new, hack-free mode of communication, inventing computers and the Internet in one fell swoop.

Probably not.

Beepers, the short-lived interim surrogate in the 1970's and 80's, brought about a new form of code. Limited to a single line of numbers, shrewd youths designed a system of communication that substituted two or three digit numbers for predetermined generic phrases a la CB radio. While '10-20' meant 'what's your location' to truckers everywhere, the number '4-20' had an entirely different connotation to 'beep-coders' of the youth generation. The problem of course was how to distribute a code among kids that wouldn't be broken by their nosy parents... and that desire brought about the cell phone revolution. Okay, I'm sure that's incorrect, but... for the purpose of this essay I'm gonna stick with it.

Until here that is. Because this is when digital alphanumeric pagers began receiving and sending brief messages, making those hard-memorized codes moot and pushing us all one step closer to future shock. They were only incrementally better than their root parents, pagers, and were not fated to live long in this world as newer and better devices loomed just over the horizon. Not surprisingly, a sizable chunk of our population swears by them to this day. Luddites.

Cell phones took us one step further in the search for truly private electronic communication, but though it was wireless, it was not silent and therefore it could not be used effectively in the classroom. Speak quietly or in code, the big bad teacher would hear you and perform the most humiliating of tasks-- forced relinquishment. Back then as now, every school had a big basket in the main office where confiscated phones would go, until shamed and chastised parents came to collect them at end of business, forced to withstand the school policy on 'interruptions' by some low-on-the-totem-pole sadistic office staff or worse, their power-hungry secretary yearning for a larger piece of the disciplinary pie.

Finally we reach now, this moment in time... the age of texting. Coupled with its multivarious hardware, texting represents the first method of truly silent, truly immediate communication, a technology whose creation was almost certainly rooted in the high school classroom, caused by raging hormonal reactions to that sweet thang two aisles over and the equally raging need to share your 'horniness' with your homies. An emotion I readily admit is responsible for nearly ALL of humanity's advances, technological or otherwise (Forsooth young maiden, harken this dragon-slaying contraption I've devised to save us all!). Now you can express dirty nothings to your beloved in full view of your friends, siblings, parents or dare I say, even preachers without a peep of disparagement or disappointment from any of them! Glory, glory hallelujah!

Every great advancement comes with its own host of backslides, though. When there were only two automobiles in the state of Ohio back in 1895... they somehow engaged in a head-on collision. Nuclear power was figured out, which would guarantee cheap electricity for all humanity, but once military men found out about the new power source... they made a bomb out of it. And texting, miracle though it may be, is no exception. I refer you back to the top of this essay and the advent of silent cliques, the ironic crushing of social interaction. That has the potential to change the way we relate to one another, at the macro level.

So where are we going from here? Are we forever doomed to the act of burying our noses in the electronic equivalent of a magazine? Will there eventually be a solution to the wide-scale ignoring of each other out in public?

To answer, we have to find the reasons why most people are hooked on web surfing in the first place. As this is a blog where I simply muse about the future rather than put forth hard data after exhaustive research, I'll do that now, and in the shamelessly brash fashion you've come to expect from me.

People love information, and they want it right now. Hence, the wireless Internet. There's no better way to shut up a know-it-all than by doing a quick search in response to some suspicious claim and spouting, "It says here on scientificdata.com that your theory is full of malarkey!" It may not make you a lot of friends, but it sure will fill your head with the rightness of correct information. That's something at least.

So how can we get our faces out of the teeny-weenie screenies and back where it should be... watching how we cross a busy intersection? How can we have our knowledge of cake construction, and learn how to eat it, too? For me the answer is clear, and not so very far off into the future:

Implantable Internet.

Implanternet.

Okay, we can work on the tag later. But you catch my drift. And we've already seen it at work... sort of. A quarter century ago a movie came out which changed our view of robots forever. It may be why we don't see a lot of people-shaped robots in development right now. That movie was called Terminator, featuring the ever-slimy Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it scared the crap out of us.

Disregarding the fear for a minute, weren't you completely jealous of the Terminator's ability to call up software and research data in his eye? He'd hear somebody speak to him, and the software in his negatronic brain would interpret the sentence and compile a list of acceptable responses, viewable through his eye like a floating computer screen on his cornea. How cool is that?

At first I thought simply. I just wanted a telephone which worked that way. I imagined I'd speak "begin phone" and the telephone options screen would pop up in my field of vision, seen only by me. I'd say the name of someone and a predigested list would return the phone number instantly, and connect me to them. I'd start speaking and they would hear me and be able to respond, no matter what type of phone they were using. And pedestrians all around me would believe I was insane, speaking to myself... like they do with Bluetooth businessmen today. No matter.

But then I realized the limitations... what if I wanted to call someone for whom I had no number? Would I have to look them up the old-fashioned way? You know, firing up the old computer and searching on WhitePages.com? Why not skip a step?

Voila, Implanternet!

(Ugh, that word sounds like a snack food...)

I realize we're not there yet. Hardware miniaturization needs to progress some more, and it wouldn't hurt to figure out a biological motherboard that won't get surrounded by scar tissue like a 1950's-issue breast implant. Or a power source that didn't need us to step into a Borg Alcove. Or an interface that wouldn't backfire and begin controlling us like an Apple Android Army, but let's get past those challenges for the purpose of this brainstorm.

Imagine if you will-- armed with the William Tellish slogan "Put an Apple in Your Head!" the world's most creative computer giant leads the charge in this bioimplantation revolution, painting a glowing picture of dazzling wonders on the horizon to come:

Dateline: 2030-- Forget schools, classrooms and learning! Here at Apple we're amping up Internet service so it reaches every inch of the Earth. Why? To make you a permanent part of the Cloud, that's why! How? Implanternet! With our new product, you can--

• Rid yourself of cumbersome laptops, iPads or even iPhones forever!

• Speak to anyone, anywhere, instantly!

• Watch videos of any kind, safe from inquisitive eyes!

• Be guaranteed that nobody will ever steal your computer again!

• Conduct sensitive business privately!
• Instantly become as smart as god!

Well, that last one is patently untrue, if for no other reason than the intelligence of god is untested and therefore cannot be measured nor compared against. Plus, (and you can't do this with god) you could turn everyone back into babbling idiots simply by cutting off the Internet. But with constant and immediate access to Google search, you could certainly sound as smart as Mr Wik I Pedia.

But hey, this is the 'pro' side of the essay.

Once the device is up and running, third-party software companies would jump on the bandwagon to build a staggering number of free eyePhone apps (ooh, see what I did there?), creating a near endless number of things you can suddenly do, hands and tools free:
-You can hear a metronome for perfect timing, or a tuner for perfect pitch.
-You can keep a playlist going in your head, in perfect stereo.
-You can check your blood alcohol level before driving.
-Your Implanternet can interface with your self-driving car if you can't drive, and get you home.
-You can check a picture for level just by looking at it (with the 'level' app).
-You can slaughter anyone who gets in your way. I'm talking about an app, Hitler.
-You can read a book that is floating just in front of you, Kindle style.
-You can immediately decide if that purchase will bust your account. Drat.
-You can check the calories of the food on your plate. Double drat.
-You can suddenly have microscope or telescope vision... or x-ray vision. Woohoo!
-You can know every detail about a museum piece, a building on the street or any business you pass.
-Never be lost again; by entering a destination you are directed flawlessly.
-You could know the public details of any person you meet simply by looking at their face.
-You could analyze a compound and determine its molecular construction by looking at it.
-You could hypnotize a person into having sex with you.

Let me be clear. You could not hypnotize a person into having sex with you. You could, however, be reading from a guide on how to be charming without them knowing.
-You'd be able to sit in a classroom, meeting, courtroom or even a church and conduct digital business, silently and without disturbance. The most astute observer could only determine that you were busy, somehow, yet not paying attention.
-Your valuable data could be stored on a series of grit-sized hard drives located all over your body.
-And possibly the coolest use-- you could project a flashlight from your eyes! X-Men GO!

Okay, so you're sold. How would this device get inside of you?

Well, first we'd need to split your skin lengthwise from sternum to crotch, and then carefully filet around your heart, lungs and sex organs to create room for the central processing unit. Lifting out your eyes, we'd replace them with ocular implants. The same happens with your ears, although the exterior part remains untouched... except for microphones dangling off both lobes (for stereo sound).
I could go into further detail, but then you would run screaming from this description and not realize that I was completely lying.

Yes, lying. While people will still go under the knife for a trimmer tummy or a fatter schlong, most prefer to remain far from any instrument that is designed to draw blood. So of course, there will be no scalpels.

In truth, I envision hundreds or thousands of tiny Bluetooth devices, injected into your bloodstream using a single standard syringe, or swallowed in a capsule. Once inside the devices begin navigating themselves to the correct points in your body (i.e., cameras to your eye, speakers to your ear canal, microphones to your oral cavity). Information you were meant to see would be cast onto the macula by projectors in your vitreous humor, creating a 'floating page' effect in front of your face that nobody else could see.

How far off is this? You'd have to ask a lawyer. Anytime something goes into the body, the FDA has to get a piece of it, and that could delay it by a decade. But If that proves to be too much of a problem, I have an interim solution as well (because that's just what I DO):

Intershades!

Yes, everything I mentioned in this last section could be neatly fit into the frame of a rather unattractive, heavy pair of sunglasses. I agree it's not nearly as hip, and it would make your face sweat, and it could be lost or stolen... but it could be here in a year. And that's something, at least. Let's not forget what hassles we gladly went through to have the first mobile telephones, the first mobile DJs (boom boxes) and the first mobile vehicles (horse and buggy). Intershades won't be so bad by comparison... at least we wouldn't have to clean up their poop.

But the goal here is a truly hands-free, interactive, bio-memetic do-everything device. An internal Swiss Army Knife, if you will. Come hell or high water, they will become available in the near future, as surely as digital billboards. Ooh, one more use!
How do I personally feel about it? I'm fine with an Implantable Internet... just so long as, when it crashes, we don't need a defibrillator.
Clear!

Oh, and if you're looking for the 'con' side of the essay, here it is: Some backward-thinking jerks in Congress will try to prevent this and tie it up in committee for endless sessions, if we let them. So we don't let 'em. Pay the fuckers off, if we have to.