The Cross of Mithras Vol. 1: EOD Operation Welcome to Hell

by Douglas Howell

  Ramirez thought to himself that it was no wonder that nobody could catch the Founder of the EOD. What’s more, that incident shows what happen when the authorities get too close to him. Is he the anti-Christ like some Christians think? No he is not. The anti-Christ wants to be a world leader of a world government, and then at the height of his power he wants to destroy the State of Israel. The Founder of the EOD wants to be the puppet master over all governments, not to destroy any one of them, not even Israel. But still, that incident would tend to convince people that he is the anti-Christ; after all, he does make it way too easy to believe it. It’s no wonder that people like Ramirez, who knows all that they know about the Founder, is not a Christian.

  Sometimes Ramirez, Vaistll, Project 21, and other people who know about the Founder, wished that they could get ALL of the psychological reports on him, instead of the few that they have. Ramirez always likens it to doing a psychological report on a ghost - easier said than done. At that thought, Ramirez had to force himself to stop thinking about the psychological reports on the Founder. He wanted to stop thinking about it, not because of the way that he was raised, but rather it is because it started to remind him of the psychological prison that is the EOD. From the beginning of its creation, the EOD had a thing for psychiatrists and people like them. People who know how other people think. It was the first Council of the Elders who where experts at knowing how to psychoanalyze people. They were psychiatrists. The Founder knew how valuable people like them where.

  It is not known who came up with it, but one of those people (probably the Founder) who could psychoanalyze people, came up with the idea of calling some people, “benders.” A bender is a person who bends the rules for whatever reason they desire. On the surface, however, there doesn’t appear to be anything sinister about it, that is until a person takes into account who is creating those rules. The EOD used the idea of benders to get people used to certain rules, which the EOD is planning to change sometime later. But they don’t tell the people that. And when are they planning to change those rules? The EOD community, like any other community, has children, and those children will grow up getting used to those rules, creating in effect, a culture of sorts. Once those children grow up, then and only then, will those rules change. What it does is to help to maintain, and sustain, a cultural form of psychological control over people. No wonder Ramirez always said, ‘If you never were apart of the EOD community, than you will never understand why it is impossible to leave it. A person has to go through mental hell if they wish to leave it.’

  So the EOD bends the rules that it told the people not to bend. They gave their reason for bending those rules, which the people did not object to because it didn’t seem like it was a major problem. Each time the EOD bend its own rules, it did so in such a way as to exercise more control over the people, at the same time not trying to make it seem like that is what they are doing. One such control mechanism was the EOD credit. A person who works for the EOD gets credit (not money) for the work that they did. The worker gets different types of credit, food credit (the poor calls it food stamps), rent credit (for those who lives in an apartment), basic necessities credit, grooming credit, and so on. The amount of credit that a worker earns depends upon different factors, type of job, how hard they work, quality of work, and if they completed the job. Because the EOD gives credit to workers who complete the job, not for time spent on the job, it does make them very hard workers. Nobody works harder than an EOD worker. No credit for a lazy worker. Punishment means less credit. If the job is considered to be too important, and the worker does has to be punished after repeatedly being warned, then they will be sent off to the Conditioning Room, or worse, sent off to the Volunteer Room. The only rights that an EOD worker has is, the right to change their job, but only if they have enough credits. Some of them do, most of them don’t.

  Both the EOD credit, and the EOD so call utopian society, is what Ramirez and the other members of Task Force ZH-3C (who once were apart of the EOD) had to grow up in. Ramirez is correct in calling the EOD a psychological prison. All of his life he wanted to escape that prison and be free of it once and for all. Ramirez started to feel that way when he was a pre-teen. He kept his feelings to himself, fearing what might happen if he told anyone. He didn’t trust anybody, not even his own family. As early as a pre-teen, Ramirez knew that all that the EOD stood for was wrong, even if his community, his friends, and even his own family thought otherwise. So he always plan how he might leave some day, to escape that terrible prison of the mind that is the EOD When he was sixteen years old he finally had the idea that if he joined the EOD military, then some opportunity might present itself. After he did joined he decided that a better chance would present itself if he joined the EOD Special Force. Ramirez always thought that on the day that he got the chance to betray the EOD, all he has to do is to go up to some Project 21 agent and say something like, ‘Would you like to know what the EOD is doing? Well let me tell you.’ Then he mentions it and then say something like, ‘So if they are doing that... can you blame me for wanting to betray them?’ But Ramirez would later learn that things don’t always turn out exactly as you plan it.

  For Ramirez, the day that he waited for, for so long, came upon the planet Nilosyrtis Prime, named for the region on Mars where the colonists came from. Nilosyrtis Prime is close to the moon Vegas, but in a different star system. If it wasn’t for Nilosyrtis Prime, the moon Vegas probably never would have been terraformed and colonized, and therefore there wouldn’t have been the city of Roscadia. The colonists at Nilosyrtis Prime stayed neutral in the fight between Project 21 and the EOD. Both Project 21 and the EOD respected that neutrality and never did anything to undermine it. (Ramirez always enjoyed going there.) Nilosyrtis Prime is a quiet place with few cities that are not too close together. Being on Nilosyrtis Prime is like being on a planet with only one season: spring. The communities that are there, is like a small town with neighbors who are miles apart, instead of a few feet apart. It was like paradise, with one small problem: humans where not the first intelligent species to go there. That distinction went to the Lyumarians (Lou-mare-ians).

  The Lyumarians are a race of people who have been space traveling since the 13th century. When the human race encountered them, they discovered a civilization that is in a Static state of existence. So what does that mean, for a civilization to be in a “Static state of existence?” Somebody once said that all civilizations go through certain stages, which are: Birth - this is where the civilization struggle to survive, it is the make, or break part. It also is the part that will define its future, the way in which the civilization develops, the way in which it view the world, the way it views itself, etc.; Growth - this is the part where the civilization has the desire to expand its influence. But there are no guarantee of success, there are too many factors that dictate the success or failure at this stage; Zenith - there are three different types of civilizations at this stage which are; strong, moderate and weak. For the strong civilization (but not the other two) it is considered to be at the height of its Power of Influence. Power of Influence means how much influence a nation has (over other nations) in the following areas: political, military, science, culture and economics; In short, whether or not, it is an Empire. Transition - this is where the nation may still be at the height of its Power of Influence, but its social problems are starting to come to the surface. Those problems have a negative impact upon its Power of Influence. This stage can also be deceptive because on the one hand it appears like it is still in its Zenith stage, but on the other hand it appears like it is in the next stage, which is; Static - this is the stage in which the social problems are not solved. Instead they are slowly getting worse or ignored. Because of this the public is turning inward, placing something about themselves above the social good of the nation. It is also a stage in which the Power of Influence is slowly declining; Declining - this is the stage where the civilization is unable, or unwilling, to solve its problems. Since
the people are turning inward more deeply than before, they are becoming too selfish, thinking more about themselves than they do of others. Because the problems are not solved and are worse than at any time before, and because too many people are becoming selfish, some groups of people would turn to religion for stability, and therefore, this becomes the stage where new religions are created, and/or, some religions would see a revival. And the Power of Influence starts to wane causing some nations to challenge it; Collapsing - this stage is where the civilization might turn to tyranny. This is also where the loyalties of the people are no longer with the civilization. It is a time where the social problems of the nation have turned too many of its people against it. It is a stage that the nation will endure any of the following: civil wars, a coup, insurrection, and the like. Its no longer a question of, but a question of when will the nation fall; And the final stage, Death - this is the stage in which the civilization is so far gone that it is beyond hope of ever saving. It is the stage that comes before any Dark Age if any. After the civilization is gone new nations will rise out of it and the whole process repeats itself. And therefore civilization is like a super-organism, going through each stages of life itself. The person, who came up with those eight stages of civilization, the term of Power of Influence, and calling a civilization a super-organism, was Vaistll herself. She came up with all of that sometime before the year 2010. As she puts it, ‘America was at its Zenith in the 1950s. It was at its Transitional stage in the ‘60s. At the Static stage in the ‘70s thru ‘80s, maybe as late as the ‘90s. And when I arrived, America was in its Declining stage. There were just too many things going on, on the social level, which proved it.’

  Regardless of what people thought when Vaistll first said all of that, some people did take it very seriously. Out of all of the groups who did, one was the Lyumarians, and the other was the EOD. Most dismissed it out of hand. The Lyumarians used it to try their best to prevent their civilization from declining any further. With the EOD it was a horse of a different color. In 2155, Vaistll and her team, Task Force YC-11P, went to Mars on a mission. There was an EOD facility there with strange things going on even by EOD standards. Taken at face value, the facility is just a mental institution, look a little deeper and you would see the nightmare within. Yes the facility was a mental institution with military personnel guarding it, but the EOD used the patients for two very different reasons. One group of patients was taken to a laboratory to be experimented upon. The other group was taken to a nearby facility to receive the care that all of them should have received. Those patients were taken there to receive benign treatment in an effort to improve the mental health of any EOD member who needed it. Vaistll called that, ‘An island of goodness in a sea of evil.’ To make matters worse for those patients, the Director of the facility was so mean spirited that he killed some of the patients who were supposed to receive benign treatment. It was reported that he killed three to five of them. Vaistll said of him, ‘Look like another proud member of the American Special Service Organization - the ASS-O.’ The facility had two other laboratories underground. Project 21 knew that in one of them the EOD was creating biological monsters; the other one is the one that interest Project 21 the most, mainly because they knew nothing of what was going on in there.

  When Vaistll and her team arrived on Mars, they had to go to the Project 21 base there and meet up with her CO. Afterward they, along with the CO, headed out to the EOD facility. Getting there was the easiest part, getting inside was the hardest. After they over come the guards and got inside the facility, they were welcome to a place of sheer hell - blood, body parts and corpses where everywhere. That EOD facility was being overrun by its own creation. When her team finally got to the laboratory where the EOD was creating their biological monsters, they set off to complete the first major part of their mission: destroy the laboratory, collect data and samples. After that they went to the laboratory that they knew nothing about, Vaistll CO, against her wishes, said that they should split up since they know nothing about that laboratory. So, off they went separately while collecting intelligence, confronting the EOD military and the monsters, and finding survivors. Vaistll was given the task of getting to the main laboratory. Not an easy task since it was the longest and most difficult route to take, but she still made it. Her CO told her, ‘Vaistll, you’re tougher than what I ever gave you credit for.’ She learned the shocking truth about what was going on there, and it would forever change not only her life, but also Project 21 and the EOD.

  What Vaistll learned was that the EOD scientists created two different types of machines; a time machine and a machine that could allow someone to travel into an alternate reality. Shocked beyond belief by what that would mean, Vaistll decided to destroy them both. Her CO became furious with her, saying that Project 21 could learn a lot by reverse engineering them. Vaistll then said to him, ‘Sir, what would happen if they travel back to ancient Rome with 22nd century technology? What would happen if they stayed for 2,000 years before they came back to this reality? We would no longer be facing an EOD enemy with 22nd century technology. We would be facing an enemy with 42nd century technology. And as for time travel? Have you ever heard of a time war? Don’t you know sir, that a time war would destroy the known universe?’ Either he was being stupid, or he didn’t care, either way he order her not to destroy them. She refused to obey his orders, he then reminded her that she doesn’t have enough explosives to do the job, and she doesn’t have the codes to cause them to self-destruct. They started to argue over it for a while when they got a call from one of their team mates. He said something to Vaistll that took on two different meanings, one of which means, ‘Stay right there, I have something very important to tell you.’

  After some time in getting there with some of the other members of Task Force YC-11P, he found that Vaistll had already left. She had to, the bodies of the EOD military personnel and the bio-monsters said why. They figured out where she went, it was into an alternate reality. Luckily for her she was carrying a device that can allow her to call them, or the other way around. They called her and she came back from the year 2160. This meant that she stayed there for five years knowing that she can come back at anytime. They asked her, ‘What’s so special about uni-Earth 1 that you should stay there for five years?’ All she said was, ‘Never mind, what did you find out?’ They then told her all that they learned from the survivors, and the data that they collected. One of the Supervisors (who worked in the laboratory where the bio-monsters are created) ruined the career of one of the scientists who worked there. Feeling anger and distraught over losing his job, the scientist, before he committed suicide, let all of those bio-monsters out. As for Vaistll’s CO, he is an EOD spy. The rest as Ramirez knew, like those machines and that spy, is history.

  Ramirez was fully dressed and sitting down on the bed in his room at the Roosevelt. He was still trying not to think about Nilosyrtis Prime, so he started to think about why Vaistll stayed on uni-Earth 1 for five years. The EOD called the universe that they are in, uni (short for universe), then they used the name of whatever planet or moon that they are on (uni-Earth, uni-Mars, etc.), then the word Prime. So the EOD calls the reality that they are in, uni-Earth Prime. When Task Force YC-11P got there on Mars, the EOD added two more alternate realities to their list. Ramirez understood why Vaistll (before Task Force YC-11P destroyed both machines) went into the uni-Earth 2 reality. Against her team wishes, she took some of them with her, not only into that reality, but also backwards into time. They went back to the exact place and time (one hour before) of where Vaistll first landed upon the Earth. What she learned was that in neither that reality, nor in uni-Earth 1, did she ever land there, nor did she burn up in the atmosphere. As soon as they got back to their reality Vaistll annoyed them further, just because she wanted to go back to uni-Earth 2, in the year 2008, and check something out. She never told them what she wanted to check out, but she did tell Ramirez. All she wanted to know if Langston became Presid
ent in that reality. And what she learned was, no he didn’t. It was the Governor of Texas who did. What’s more, his father became President before he did. The only thing that Vaistll said about him was that he was a better President than Langston.

  Vaistll never mentioned to Ramirez why she stayed for so long in uni-Earth 1, but he thinks that he might know why. When those EOD scientists and military personnel went into that reality, they quickly came back and hurried over to the Council of the Elders. For the first and only time in its history, something scared the hell out of the EOD. When the Council of the Elders found out what was in that reality, they banned all travel to it. But before the order made it back to that facility, the Council learned that Task Force YC-11P destroyed those two machines. The Council of the Elders, after some debate, decided to ban anymore experimentations of going into any alternate reality. As one of those scientists put it, ‘It’s not the humans you should be afraid of.’ After the Council looked at all the data the EOD team collected from uni-Earth 1, they made one major change; they decided to abandoned something that for a long time meant a lot to them. It’s amazing to know that they did that just because of something, that somebody, who is very famous, said in that reality. All they said was, ‘Abandoned all hope ol’ ye programmers. For if you knew the complexity of the problem, you would have from the get-go.’ After Vaistll got back from that reality, she had a fling for cyborgs.