“Now this thing was a long time coming. The Saudis, the Brotherhood…it was decades and decades of work and then, after 2008, everything was accelerated. I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back on it all, I see then that 2008 was when they pushed the real go button on all of it. We saw Egypt fall, Libya, Syria, the unrest in Turkey, the back and forth in Iraq and Iran, all of the crap in Europe, and eventually, it came to the United States and Canada. The Saudis sat back and watched all the years of planning, all the money invested…it all just fell into place for them. That sound about right, Imran?”
Imran nodded again, though with no enthusiasm this time. His eyes held a deep sadness as the memories of his family’s forced relocation to Canada swept over him.
“Yes. The Brotherhood, it had become the most powerful group in Turkey. Openly hostile to everyone else. You were…you were either with them or you were not. There was no in-between. It was they who organized the re-location to Canada and as Mac has said…the Brotherhood in turn was sponsored by the Saudis. The Saudis promised the Brotherhood vast lands, such as Canada, Australia…so long as the Brotherhood in turn provided a market by which the wealthy and powerful could continue to enjoy certain things…products, that had become outlawed under the mandates. They worked in conjunction with the political leaders of that time who were open to such an arrangement. I saw that myself as a young man here in Canada. Local officials would simply look away as crimes were committed. Murders. Chaos. Until eventually, that chaos overtook the entire system. The new powers…the New United Nations, needed a Black Market that allowed them access to the very resources that it had banned the use of by the general population. No more can a private citizen travel by plane to another location. They must remain in a designated area where they can more easily be monitored, yes? But who is allowed to travel across the world if they so choose? The ruling class. The New United Nations. The Saudis. And where is the fuel obtained for those planes? From the Black Markets of Canada and elsewhere. And that Black Market has made more wealth for those who had already been wealthy. Real wealth. Not the fake New United Nations credits. Ban the use of oil and what happens to it? It becomes that much more valuable as it becomes that much more limited. The Saudis knew this long ago. That is what has happened to every resource.”
Brando’s head suddenly lifted from Mac’s lap. The Doberman stared intently through a window to the outside for a moment, before lowering his head again and drifting back to sleep.
Mac too was staring off through the window as his voice seemed to come from some place very far away inside himself.
“We gave it all away. Bit by bit until there was nothing left of what it once was. Nobody cared. Nobody was paying attention.”
Dublin reached over to lightly touch Mac’s left leg.
“What did we give away, Mac?”
Mac looked over at Dublin and appeared to almost smile, but then his gaze returned to the outside.
“America. Our way of life. We didn’t realize…not all of us anyway. Didn’t realize how many others in the world wanted to destroy us because of what we had. Namely what we had was freedom and opportunity. It just didn’t sink in how good we had it, you know? Nobody wanted to admit the possibility that somebody could be elected president who actually hated what the country stood for. Hated the United States. Most of you are too young to remember that time. The political correctness. How anyone who opposed what the government was doing – how they were called racist. Stupid. Crazy. Eventually, the government would just come in an arrest them. Send them to a re-education facility. Wasn’t long before nobody was willing to talk out. Everybody just kept their heads down and didn’t say anything. Lots of talking going on of course…about the weather, about some new reality program on the TV, but for all that talking going on – nobody was actually saying anything.”
Cooper Wyse, who had been sitting silently listening intently to the conversation, finally spoke up.
“That would explain the immigration push. And not just what happened in Canada with the radical Muslims, and what happened in the United States. How all those people were brought in from places that didn’t speak out against the governments they came from, right? Think about it – if you want to bring down America, what better way to do that than bring in a bunch of voters that either hate America already, or can’t be bothered to try and save something they don’t really understand or would miss if it’s gone?”
Mac snapped his fingers and pointed to Cooper.
“There you go, Coop, right on the money there. And if you would have said anything like that say back in 2010 or 2014, you’d have been run out as a crazy racist son-of-a-bitch. When in fact, what you’re saying is all about saving America. What you just said there about the immigration thing is absolutely right. Makes sense now, don’t it? Why those big government liberal types were so big on open borders and bringing in anyone and anything that hated America. No need to take over America, or try to openly destroy it, when you can just sit back and watch it eat itself up from the inside.”
Bear shook his head with disgust.
“Like a cancer.”
Mac gave a pained smile at Bear’s comment, followed by a barely heard whispered response.
“Yeah, like a damn cancer.”
XIII.
The Great Consulate was whining in anticipation of the time soon to be spent in his killing room. A new seeker had been delivered to him just yesterday, and it was a beautiful specimen. Stronger than the earlier versions. The lab was getting better at producing them. Thousands of aborted fetuses went into the creation of each successfully engineered seeker. The Great Consulate did not think in terms of cost though. He had long been an advocate of forced abortion. The general population could not be trusted to take care of such things themselves. Food and water resources for them were limited, so therefore, the population must remain at a constant. That was simply a fact, and it was up to the government to enforce that fact. In doing so, if hundreds of thousands of unwanted lives were terminated in the process, so be it.
Oh, but the seekers! What a wonderful and brilliant creation were they! And of his own DNA too! Years ago the New United Nations had obtained documents from a former program originally initiated by the communist government in China. They too had utilized the genetic material from their own long-standing forced abortion program. They had not the science then to accomplish what it took the New United Nations Department of Genetic Engineering but a few years to do – the creation of life!
“You are a god, that is what ultimately made the program such a success. It was your DNA that proved the final component to creating the Seekers. You are God. The only true God.”
Yes! The voice was right of course. He was God. There was no distinction between where his life as a mere human began, and where the realization of his divinity began. They had always been one and the same. Senator. President. Emperor. God. All one from the same. That is what he was, what he had always been. What he would forever be.
Let all those others live in their world of politics and posturing. He was beyond all of that now. He had always been beyond all of that. Better than all of that. Greater than all of that. He was the Alpha and Omega of this world. He was its beginning, and if he chose, its end as well. Just as he was the beginning and end of the billions of lives that lived under the supervision of the New United Nations.
“They don’t allow you to leave here, though. They think they can control you. They use you. There are rumors you have gone mad. That you are becoming a problem for them. You must be ready to act. Ready to eliminate them. Replace them. They cannot be trusted. None of them. They think they own you. Do they own you?”
NO! You do not own a god!
The Great Consulate’s mind struggled to recall who these people were the voice was now speaking to him about. There was a time when he lived as a man. He worried over his place in the world. How others perceived him. He wanted money, power, influence, but resented all those whose approval he
needed to get those things. He recalled his hatred of America. Its arrogant imperialism. The stupidity of its people. Others would help him to eliminate that arrogance from the world. Realign it to its proper place. Make it merely one of many instead of one over many others. And so that was done. He played his part well. He read the words given to him. He acquired money, power, and influence.
But it was not enough. Those things would have been enough for a mere man, but he was God. And what more proof of that was his creating of life from death? To take death ripped from the womb of a woman, and mix it with his own divine DNA, and from that, create the most beautiful life! Life that served him without question. Life that allowed him to see the world from the eyes of those he created! The seekers were his children. Literally, his children. His beautiful, unquestioning children, and someday soon, these children would inherit the earth. A gift from their genetic father. From their god.
The Great Consulate’s head nodded rapidly in the darkness of his residence as he inhaled deeply from another cigarette.
“Yesssss, that is the one true plan worthy of your greatness. Eliminate all of them who are not of you. They are not worthy of this place. Only your children. Only they should remain.”
The Great Consulate knew it was time for the killing room now. He could wait no longer. And why should he wait. Gods wait for nothing!
As he walked down a long narrow hallway the Great Consulate defecated onto the floor of the residence, giving no thought to it as he did so. The results of that defecation and a trail of tobacco smoke were the only things that followed behind him.
His mind recaptured earlier moments from his killing room. Initially he had the old and weak brought in. People who had already been classified as deceased by the health care system he had created years ago that had greatly helped to collapse the old government. These first examples still clung to life and enough awareness that they knew what was happening to them.
The Great Consulate would have them strapped tightly to the floor of the killing room, but not so much that they could not move a little. Just enough to allow them to struggle without posing any threat. Just enough to make it all the more…exciting
“Remember that old man who nearly killed you? The Vietnam veteran? Do you remember? He was so strong! Near death, and yet so strong!”
The Great Consulate did remember that time years ago shortly after he first ordered the construction of his killing room. The man was over eighty years old, with a failing heart. Like the others before him he had been sedated, but somehow, he awoke enough to attack the Great Consulate, his surprisingly still strong hands choking him until he nearly passed out. If not for the man’s greatly weakened heart giving up completely, that veteran of the Vietnam War may have actually killed him.
“But you can’t actually kill a god, right? Isn’t that right?”
Was the voice now mocking him? No, it knew better than to do such a thing. Didn’t it?
The hidden panel to the killing room was now directly ahead. The Great Consulate was sweating slightly, despite the residence’s temperature control being set to just fifty eight degrees. The long walk down the hallway from the main room had left him winded. In addition to having just one lung, he was seventy eight years old. His weekly cocktail injections of antivirals and super antioxidants given to him by his personal assistant had managed so far to hinder the progression of serious disease, but even the medical enhancements available only to the higher ranking members of the New United Nations and its partners were having an increasingly difficult time keeping the Great Consulate healthy. Whispers of his imminent death had become so common those other members within the massive global government had begun to prepare for the inevitable. They were already well aware of his limited mental capacity. The physical decline was likely soon to follow.
Touching his hand to the wall where a scanning device was hidden, the Great Consulate’s diseased mouth grinned widely as the panel silently opened. Allowing a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light inside the twelve by twelve room, the Great Consulate looked lovingly into the large dark eyes of the seeker staring back at him.
The creature let out an angry hiss and fought against its bonds. Each of the seeker’s arms and legs were strapped down by a thin metallic wire that would painfully cut into its skin if it were to struggle too aggressively. Small pools of dark blood had already formed around the thing, having repeatedly pulled against its bonds already.
The Great Consulate ordered the seeker to be still as he closed the panel behind him. He was now alone in the small room with one of his beloved, scientifically created children. To the Great Consulate’s right, hanging from the wall, was a set of eye glasses with a strap that could secure them tightly onto his head. These glasses, though simple in appearance, were as complicated a piece of technology as could be found in the entire New United Nations. They were a direct sensory link into the seekers. All the Great Consulate need do was input a particular seeker’s code into one of the screened lenses, and the glasses would locate the signal being sent from the transmitter that was housed around the brain stem of every seeker created. The Great Consulate had all of the codes for all of his seekers – nearly five hundred of them.
The sensory link was a relatively new device. While all seekers were given transmitters, the ability to actually see and smell and feel what they did came later with an updated version – a version that was the result of the Great Consulate’s repeated demands he be able to experience his children in the most intimate way, by seeing and sensing the world through them. And while their numbers were at present limited, soon the Great Consulate intended to have hundreds of thousands of seekers crawling across the globe, doing his bidding, and allowing him to experience every detail, every moment as they did so. It would make the Great Consulate truly omnipotent. He would be the god he knew himself to be, and his power would be unquestioned by even his most assertive detractors.
“That’s right. Some of them have turned on you. Some of them think you have served a purpose that expired long ago. That you are to be kept in this place alone, away from the world. Away from them. But it was you who made this world. They must be made to know your power. Your divinity. Your transformation. They must be made to pay for their insolence. All of them. Kill all of them.”
The seeker hissed again at the Great Consulate, straining against its bonds enough to cause further bleeding from its wounds. The creature did not yet understand. The Great Consulate felt no anger toward the thing’s agitation. In fact, it made the moment that much more enjoyable for him, as he would experience the agitation, the fear, the pain, first hand. Such was the technology of the sensory link.
He placed the glasses onto his face and secured them tightly around his head. The lenses were activated by an automatic retina scan – only he could use this particular device. As soon as the scan was completed, the lenses went temporarily dark, and then…it happened. The Great Consulate found himself looking at himself, seeing the world through the eyes of the imprisoned seeker, through the eyes of his own creation, his own genetically manufactured child.
A wave of dizziness overcame him. This was normal and would soon pass as his own senses detached from himself and were replaced by those of the seeker.
What a thing it was. To smell his own humanity before him. The urine and fecal matter was almost overwhelming, disgustingly fascinating. He could see every pore of his own skin, how ashen it had become. The deterioration of the musculature. The bend in the spine. The sunken face. The yellow purple lips. The diseased gums.
“You are beautiful. Beyond human, much more than human. A god. The one true god.”
He sensed the seeker’s own confusion at the invasion within its mind. The creature’s primitive self awareness realized something had entered its consciousness, though it lacked the cognitive ability to even remotely conceive of how such a thing was possible. The invasion instinctively angered it though, to the point of once again straining against the wires that held
its limbs, causing those wires to dig deeply into its flesh.
The pain of the wires caused the Great Consulate to cry out in pleasure. This was the experience he so craved - lovely, delicious, life-giving and life-taking pain.
He watched in wonder and anticipation as his own body reached out to take a long bamboo rod from the wall of the killing room. The interior of the bamboo was filled entirely with solid tungsten, among the heaviest and strongest metals. The lower half of the rod was blackened with the blood and skin fragments of the Great Consulate’s previous guests. There had been that old man who had nearly killed him, other men, women, children, and now his own seekers. All of them in the end had fallen under the weight of this bamboo rod, so similar in appearance to the rod the Great Consulate had felt against his own back as a child growing up in Indonesia so many lifetimes ago before he was made a man, before he knew himself to be God.
Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection... Page 105