by Toker, Dor
Sixty-three years more will pass before the Doctor’s theory will cease to be regarded as a metaphor and be scientifically proven with the aid of the discovery of the basic chain of Earth’s jigsaw puzzle.
Chapter 4
“What do you know about the Mendelssohnian Theory, chick?” a voice was heard behind him. A few moments ago, Adam had awoken from a sleepless dream into an unfamiliar room, lying in an unfamiliar bed. From where he lay, he noticed a large window overlooking light blue skies strewn with green. He had not yet managed to process this visual information when the sudden voice was heard.
“What did you ask?” he turned around quickly and saw his abductor leaning on the doorpost.
“The Mendelssohnian Theory,” the main repeated patiently, but Adam could see in his eyes that he was anxious.
“What does it have to do with you kidnapping me?”
“It has to do with the question why you, and not someone else or no one at all, are here,” said the man, “so what do you know about it?”
“What I’ve learned in school,” the boy answered, not without hesitation. “I know it defines the relationship between various events and that every invention has a probability chain that led to it.”
He arrested from his speech when he noticed the elderly man was nodding his head.
“It’s more exact to say that the theory is a type of code that allows the understanding of processes in the world,” the man explained, “like a map that allows you to find your way inside a maze.”
“What does it have to do with me?” asked Adam, but it appeared the man did not hear him, or chose to ignore his question.
“Ever since the theory was first formulated, and its accuracy proven, many improvements were added to it, improvements that helped people, countries and corporations discover shortcuts in the probability chains in order to come up with new inventions or developments, personally, I prefer the term ‘discoveries’, with greater speed. In other words, they have found a way to leap over a few probability rings.
“Why did you kidnap me?” Adam asked again.
“Enough of that!” the man raged at him, “I know you’re not stupid enough to think I really abducted you. Figure it out, but be quick about it because we don’t have a lot of time and you have a lot to learn. Both our lives depend on it and let me tell you a little secret, chick: the life of every human being depends on the way you’ll act, so you’d better have the proper means to handle them.”
“Handle who?” Adam was startled. He was afraid of the stranger but feared his words even more; petrified by their sound, even though he didn’t fully understand them.
“Take this,” the man handed him a booklet with a bookmark shoved between its pages, “read.” The man turned around and left the room and Adam recalled that he did not even know the name of his abductor, or perhaps he was his savior. He held the booklet and examined its cover, which looked old and tattered. A long time had passed since he’d held a paper with information printed on its surface in his hands. At school, he had gotten used to connecting to the information network through the subcutaneous socket beneath the nail of his little finger. Only in the Jewish Reservation’s synagogues was the Bible kept in book format, mostly for sentimental reasons. The last time he had visited a synagogue was during his parents’ funeral, just because the temple stood next to the burial-recycling apparatus and the rain had chased the mourners inside. He opened the booklet slowly to the bookmarked page, an unofficial journal called ‘What the Fuck Happened There?’ (What The Fuck Happened There? The Truth! January 197’ J Publishing House ©), and began to read the main article:
The 197 year to the Mendelssohnian count begins as one filled with promise for mankind. After the financial crisis of the previous decade and the long recession the world had experienced following the third great depression, came the discoveries at the end of the nineties and the developments that followed. These gave the decision makers among the super powers the feeling that the year of ninety-seven would be better than the ones that preceded it, perhaps the best of all. They hoped that this year would mark the end of man’s search for meaning.
Is that so?
In order to answer this question, we must go back to the beginning.
Adam felt uncomfortable. Normally he did not like looking back, delving into the past. Still, he returned to the booklet and continued to read:
During the first half of the century, a mighty blast had demolished the city of Jerusalem and sent the members of all three monotheistic religions to conduct some self examination. The religious boundaries were broken, followed by the state boundaries. The sense of revulsion and anger toward religions and governments has led to a state of complete distrust toward all governmental systems. When paralysis and confusion overcame governmental systems all over the world and it seemed that mankind was stranded, a new theory began to spread. First, it passed by word of mouth, then through the unsupervised social media, until finally it could be ignored no more. Then, after many years in which it was uncertain in its decisions, the United States Government decided to adopt the theory and to apply it to all areas of life. This ingenious strategic decision reestablished its position as an innovative superpower. Some skeptical historians believe to this very day that the decision to implement the Mendelssohnian Law in the United States, and then in the rest of the world, was merely a desperate attempt of President Geraldine Jameson to stop the rising power of the Christian church in the country. The United States recognized the Mendelssohnian mapping system as its official currency, and all payments and collections were derived from commerce in options for future discoveries and fees charged for usage of existing inventions. Less than two decades since, the Mendelssohnian economic theory replaced the old stock exchange, credit, and bank fiscal systems. To this very day, researchers are in disagreement regarding why the transition to the Mendelssohnian system had been so quick. The fact remains, that while the transition from using money to using stock exchange related credit was long and difficult and took over a century to complete, the transition to the Mendelssohnian economy was quick and easy.
The moment the theory was declared as the official new religion of the United States, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the superpowers would recognize it.
In accordance with the Stockholm Treaty, signed in the year two thousand one hundred and thirty-three AD and twelve in the Mendelssohnian count, all members of the New United Nations organization (NUNO) adopted the principles of Mendelssohnian lore as the basis of the legal, social and financial organization in their sovereign territories.
Since then, and to this very day, the superpowers conduct commercial and cultural relationships based on mutual suspicion and a military balance of power. The new United States, the great Russia, Europe, China-Japan, India, and the United Muslim Nation (UMN) each ruled equal land and sea territories and populations that differed in size, but organized under the same method of government.
When the superpowers signed the agreements, they also implemented treaties that allowed the continuation of ordinary lives for citizens who chose to maintain their previous lifestyle under the rule of the super powers. Most people willingly became citizens of the superpower that governed their territory or immigrated to a place to which they felt a greater sense of belonging. Those who chose to stay mostly enjoyed a fair treatment from the majority. By the end of the year twenty-seven, only one area remained in which not all religious and territorial disputes had been solved – Israel.
One can assume that unless Israel’s last pre-Mendelssohnian prime minister, Dr. Amos Grossman, had managed to register the Mendelssohnian Theory as a patent belonging to the Israeli country and its citizens for a thousand years, no one would have raised a finger to ensure the wellbeing of the Jews.
When the Muslim nation demanded to include the territory of the State of Israel in its area of sovereignty, Israel activated its political power and threatened to raise the tax for the usages of the Mendelssohn
ian Theory. As a result, the rest of the superpowers increased their pressure on the United Muslim Nation (The UMN), to leave the small country to itself.
The UMN did not manage to shed its hatred of the small country, which enjoyed the support of all the other superpowers. Actually, the union of the Arabic superpower was achieved mostly because of its members’ mutual hatred of Israel and the rulers of the great kingdom used it for their own gains and fired it up behind the scenes. But they eventually recognized their limited power to resist the will of all other superpowers and relented from their demand.
As a result of the Muslim threat, temporarily neutralized but always a cause for concern, and to protect the few millions who remained within Israel, the superpowers found an expensive but useful solution that would ensure the continued separate existence of the Jewish nation. The country was sealed beneath an opaque dome (Bubble ©) that protected its denizens from future persecutions. The dome was an Israeli-Indian development and was originally intended to regulate the climate in the areas most likely to be affected by global warming. The main usage for the climate domes was a means for protecting nature reserves in which the few animals remaining on Earth could live, protected from the most dangerous predator of all – Man. The transparent material from which the domes were cast was part of the array of developments and discoveries the Jewish entity had managed to register as patents during the pre-Mendelssohnian age.
The state of Israel, or as it has been known since – the Jewish Reservation, conducts trade relations with all the superpowers, other than the Muslim one, with whom the trade is conducted confidentially. The supervised passage of men to and from the reservation is regularly allowed, and a worldwide trend of touring the climate dome had developed.
In the year of one hundred and ninety-seven to the Mendelssohnian count, the population of the Jewish reservation (formerly known as the state of Israel) numbers almost five million Jews. The Muslim inhabitants had been removed from the dome long ago in return for a generous payment, and they became the subjects of the United Arab Nations. Jerusalem, with its numerous conflicts and disputes, remained outside the dome. The Jewish reservation remained an ex-territory, not subjugated to any of the superpowers, but all superpowers had an interest in its continued independent existence.
‘All right,’ thought Adam, ‘so now I know all about the bubble. Great.’ But he yearned for answers regarding other subjects closer to his heart, such as who was after him?
Now, what is the Mendelssohnian Theory?
On the surface, it appears to be a collection of meditations connected by a sequence of cause and effect and logical deductions. In actuality, the theory provides a complete and logical explanation for life and human existence and provides an answer for every question that was ever asked or will be asked. The theory defines life as a chain that advances continuously backward but branches out until it finds the initial cause that created mankind. It also moves forward and explains the purpose of creation. It is wide enough to contain all existing disciplines and religions, as well as focused on and specifically addressing various aspects in the life of humanity. The theory marks the final purpose of humanity. The innovation in this theory, compared to others that rose and fell without leaving a mark, was that by using it, human beings were able to create and reach discoveries that have advanced their quality of life wherever they were located. It is founded on the assumption that the development of humankind in all areas is composed of sequences of events, related by a loose yet steady connection. The moment you’ve encountered one of these events and managed to draw the previous and following connections, you can shorten the completion of the chain of events and bring about its realization in a much quicker developmental pace. Also, you can follow the course that every ring inside each chain has passed. All the related events can have an equal influence over the developmental discovery and are responsible for a certain percentage of the profit, gained at the end of the process, and calculated with the aid of a list detailing the proportionate parts of events in developing a patent.
Of course, the largest profit was gained by those who have accomplished more rings in the chains of events, and here lays the large profit of the large corporations. They held large departments of probability hunters and departments that analyzed and mapped the probability chains that circled the Earth with endless loops. The corporations’ super computers managed to predict probability chains even before they were created by using probability analysis. Therefore, the superpowers have ruled and still rule the geographical and demographic aspects of the world. The acceptance of the Mendelssohnian Law and its implementation on the world’s population have created a situation in which whoever managed to lay a hand on a new invention of a new discovery and register it as a patent, earned a lot of money from leasing the invention, its immediate use and its consequent uses. Also, whoever was able to prove ownership on one of the developmental stages of a discovery, leaning on ‘Mendelssohnian Joints’, as the Jews used to call them, or ‘probability rings’ according to the scientific jargon, enjoyed a certain percentage of the profit according to the level of influence of the invention’s development stage. The main role of the governmental and security systems is to protect the people with citizen privileges in the superpowers and the companies registered under their supervision.
Financial corporations dominate the world economy. At the head of the corporate hierarchical ladder stands the Skil Company (Skil ©), which is a giant corporation that reveres only money and political power. The super-corporation ‘Skil’ owns most of the known Mendelssohnian joints and, therefore, is the primary beneficiary. No one truly knows who and what are its owners and how many companies are owned by the vast conglomerate, but it is obvious that all the rest of the large corporations are far behind it, gathering the remains of patents and copyrights and are able to hold only local power centers, secretly hoping to be absorbed by Skil and ensure their survival. The fortune of the giant corporation was never publicized but is estimated to be larger than the fortune of all five superpowers combined.
In effect, the superpower governments act as puppets in the service of the Skil corporations and their military forces are at its service and at the service of the other kings of corporate economy.
If it was not for Mendelssohnian lore, which forms the basis for all human life on Earth as we know it today, it is reasonable to assume that the delicate balance of power between the superpowers, and between them and the economic corporations such as the New Facebook (The New Facebook ©) and I-China (I China ©), would have dissolved and wars would have torn the human race apart.
‘What does all of this have to do with me?’ Adam racked his brains. ‘If the superpowers are the protectors, then the ones who are after me were sent by the corporations? Which one? The largest one? Skil? But why? What have I done to them? What do they need from me?’
Then he read the final pages:
By the latter part of the year 196, the Skil Corporation had managed to decipher nearly all the probability chains connected on the face of the Earth and the space around it, apart from two: the first chain, that had begun the entire sequence of probabilities, and the last chain of all chains, which according to the Mendelssohnian Theory, would lead the human race to such a vast developmental forward leap, that the entire species would change forever.
Not everyone is pleased with the coming end of the search. Various elements seek to prevent the realization of the last chain, the final brick in the puzzle of human development as we know it today. Armageddon prophecies are widespread in these current times of the one hundred and ninety-seven year to the Mendelssohnian count, and there are numerous people who would do their utmost to fulfill these prophecies of impending doom. There are also radical separatist organizations that presume to operate in the name of ancient religions. At first, there were occasional riots, initiated by organized groups that disrupted the public order and rebelled against the current government system. Later on, with decreasing frequ
ency, there were uprising attempts and fortifications in secluded strongholds. The last rebellion took place three and a half years ago in Eastern Old-India and was held by the sect of the ‘Illuminated Sikhs’. Since it included an attempt to use nuclear weapons, all its surviving members were publicly executed and the execution was broadcast worldwide. The small nuclear bomb did not detonate because the Indian government had purchased the new anti-cleaving device (Anticleaving ©) owned by the ‘Corporation’.
And there’s something else. In the beginning, it was merely an inkling experienced by various scientists, an itch that had bothered their souls, perhaps the remnants of previous religions, perhaps their conscience had raised its head for a moment and winked at them. The various prophecies of doom that became widespread during the years that followed the acceptance of the theory and its application in the world chiefly spoke of the shortcuts that endanger the Earth’s fragile structure. Even the most extreme among the prophets did not doubt the validity of the theory, but merely the way in which it was applied. The first signs to indicate cracks in the theory appeared just a few days after the Space Company, a subsidiary of Skil, had announced it was developing the first antimatter engine (Antiphysical ©), the first to allow flight at speeds that are very close to the speed of light. The day in which the first open experiment in the antimatter spacecraft took place, an experiment that was undoubtedly successful, two deadly plagues erupted in two different places in the world, threatening to annihilate thousands of people. The scientists attempted to explain the hepatitis plague that broke in South Africa with the poor living and hygienic conditions, but the plague researchers were unable to understand the outbreak of the reconstructed black plague that caught the residents of Paris completely unprepared. The coincidence had rung warning bells with some scientists, but these were immediately silenced and blanketed by soundproof layers of pride and ego. The plague was eventually wiped out and the new engine was marked as the major invention of the century, even before it entered commercial use, but some people, humanists and philosophers, still beg to differ.