Save the Last Bullet for God

by J. T. Alblood

  Through his laughter, he said, “I can say it was the best year of my life. As I was a teacher out in the country, a rich farmer hired me as a tutor for his son. While giving lessons to the boy, I also taught sexuality to his mother. I was young and ambitious, and the woman was thirsty for love. When these combined together…” A paroxysm of laughter cut off his words. Pulling himself together and wiping away the tears in his eyes, he went on. “When her husband learned about the situation, he didn’t take it very kindly, and this is my reminder of it.” He pointed to the scar above his eyebrow.

  “I don’t even remember the name of the woman,” he said.

  “Gabriele,” I hissed between my teeth.

  “Gabriele . . . yes, yes, Gabriele, but how do you know?” As he was trying to speak, he looked me up and down. I wasn’t laughing and soon nobody else was laughing either.

  “After you got beaten up and left, she tried to commit suicide. She died after suffering for days.”

  “Wilhel…?” he tried to ask before I punched his nose.

  Berton stumbled back and tried to back away, but I jumped on him and hit him again. Reinhardt, the lieutenant, came out of his shock and grabbed me around the shoulders. Seeing his opportunity, Berton stood up and began to hit me with all the strength and speed he had. A few blows to my face almost made me black out.

  Suddenly, I heard the sound of glass breaking and the arms of the lieutenant loosened. As I pulled away from the man, I saw Hellen with a broken bottle in her hand and the lieutenant swaying with blood gushing from his head. While the blood leaked through his hair and spread over his eyebrows, the girl screamed and the officer stumbled back and fell. He held onto a tablecloth as he went down pulling it over him along with the lit candle. Otto Reinhardt was suddenly covered in blue and yellow flames. Panic broke out.

  Berton, who was also paralyzed in shock, was now mine. I kicked at his feet and, when he went down on his knees, drove my knee into his face. I jumped on him and he lost his balance completely. I grabbed his hair and hit his head on the floor repeatedly. When he lost consciousness, I turned him over and pressed my elbow into his throat until I heard the sound of breaking cartilage. He tried in vain to scratch my face and push me back with his hands, but I held on, leaning down to whisper into his ear, “Shhh! Calm down, death is coming.”

  As Berton’s body twitched and he breathed his last, I looked at Maria. While Hellen had turned away from me, Maria looked into my eyes. I pressed the palm of my right hand, now covered in blood, to my heart. Maria closed her eyes and nodded.

  I stood up. My hands and knees were shaking. I collapsed on the closest chair and looked around. Most of the people in the club had run away. The girl and one of the waiters attended to a whimpering Reinhardt, his face burned from the now extinguished flames. I leaned down, took a half-filled bottle and poured the remaining alcohol down my dry throat. I turned around and saw that Maria was gone. A hand touched me. I turned and looked at Hellen. She lit a cigarette, drew on it, and put it between my lips. She took a chair, sat by my side, and put her hand on my shoulder. Searching my pockets, I found Hitler’s letter and the documents and lay them on the table. Then we all quietly waited for Himmler’s man.

  1 December 1957, Ft. Leavenworth Prison, USA

  Wilhem Reich

  After the incident at the nightclub, I suffered the rage of Himmler, who had lost his man, Berton. I was tortured and there were beatings in a dark, cold vault, but Himmler, in all his rage, didn’t kill me—Heil Hitler!— Instead, I was exiled.

  I took refuge in Sweden, leaving everything behind except my name and the information Maria had given me. The translated text described a blue energy that generated all the unique features of a living being. I eventually named it “organon” and did my best to prove its existence.

  Utilizing some of the vast research by Professor Schumman, the head of the Technical University in Munich and of the science team evaluating the data received from the Vril community, I became familiar with the theory of “the Schumann resonances.” This led to a proof—or so I thought—through experiments that I carried out on microscopic beings called protozoa. I did my best to share what I had found with other scientists while also trying to publish articles about my proofs, but none of these efforts were very helpful. Such a radical idea was too much for the period. Those who didn’t want to change or restructure the existing scientific system labeled me a quack, and the tolerant ones accused me of falsifying my experiments’ results. Nobody dared to study or test my work objectively. Fortunately, the USA welcomed me with open arms.

  Here in America, I developed a machine called the “organon accumulator” using the information Maria had given me. Although I didn’t quite understand how it worked or the technology on which it was based, I followed the design in the schema to the letter and the result was a success.

  Unfortunately, the pressures of the Cold War turned the land of the free into a paranoid state. The American government did not appreciate my work. They burned my books and made me smash all my devices. As if that wasn’t enough, they sent me here, to this prison, under very dubious charges.

  My only desire was to help humanity.

  Now I’m in prison and tired of living and struggling. I’m old and all alone in my cell, serving a sentence for reasons that nobody, including those who kept me inside, understand.

  But I’m aware of the organon energy now. I understand it. But I also understand humanity isn’t ready for it yet. As I said in my will, these findings and notes should be revealed only 50 years after my death.

  Why 50 years?

  The reason is that, now, I know the answer to the question that Dr. Freud asked me when I visited him the first time in his clinic.

  “Yes, Dr. Freud, the future affects the past for sure. And maybe, by affecting the future, I can change my past.”

  Part 2

  CODE OF DİSJOINTED LETTERS

  2012, Istanbul

  Right before Doomsday

  I met Wilhelm Reich in high school. Those were the years when books were printed on paper and libraries were highly respected. The years when I spent my Sundays wandering through the book bazaar—I knew all the books that each salesperson displayed on their tables and immediately recognized any new ones—The years when I would quietly sneak home so that my parents wouldn’t scold me for buying more books.

  I grew acquainted with Wilhelm Reich because he was often quoted by the left-wing intellectuals. His used books were cheap, and the names of his books were cool. But I always struggled to understand his writing and gave up in disappointment. Whenever I picked up the books again and tried to make more sense of them, I would quickly give up and they would end up once more collecting dust on the shelves of my library.

  However, while I was a university student, my elder brother, Turgay, brought Wilhelm Reich back into my life. One day, just before I started my first year of studies, Turgay was scanning my shelves and he abruptly announced, “This man was a nutcase! He said that mankind wouldn't be able to understand him in his time and that they would only understand him in the future. So, in his will, he requested that his books only be published 50 years after his death. No one, not even his lawyers, understood him."

  Suddenly, Wilhelm Reich regained my interest, and I often found myself thinking about his ideas. Were there discoveries in his writing that could only be understood with the technology of the future? Had he foreseen the development of the computer and invented a machine that could only be used with its help? Since he was a psychiatrist, had he made a discovery about the human brain but decided that mankind had to be more developed before they could understand it? Why would a person give importance to something that would only happen after his death? Clearly it would have no benefit to him.

  I entered medical school, completed my compulsory community service in a remote village, and did my further training to become a radiologist after returning to Istanbul. All the while I pushed Wilhelm Reich into the recesses of
my mind. Only one question troubled me: what happened to the will of Wilhelm Reich?

  I asked one of my colleagues about this and he answered, “Nothing, I think. All I know is the man established a children's fund and wrote a will to donate his wealth to that fund.”

  With that, the bubble was burst. For some inexplicable reason, I felt a bitter sadness when I heard this. This awkward man might have been trying to accomplish something. He clearly wanted to have an impact on the future but couldn't figure out how to do it. He put a carefully designed plan into practice, but it ended up being ridiculed by everyone. I remember saying to my friend, “I wish he would have been successful and shocked everyone.” My friend just looked at me and shrugged.

  Who am I?

  I’m Oktay, and I have recently been knocked into middle age. I work in an ordinary private hospital and live an ordinary, unsurprising life. I have only a few crumbs of life experience, having been stuck in a busy professional life during years that have passed by too quickly.

  I spend most of my days in a hospital under raw, fluorescent lights, writing MRI (magnetic resonance image) reports. Like many people, I enjoy watching football (soccer for the Americans), and I never get tired of watching sports or sports news on TV. I can talk for hours about the current state of Fenerbahçe, one of Istanbul’s premiere football teams. Much of my remaining time consists of having dinner with relatives and going to the cinema with Elif (whose name means “alpha”). Those are my most exciting moments. Besides that, I either write MRI reports online, read books, or browse comics and make Elif read the jokes that I think are good.

  Lately, I’ve become more interested in such issues and subjects as evolution, time travel, the mysterious symmetry of the universe, the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis, astrological divinations, ancient civilizations, the research of the stone-alchemist philosophers, theories about life in outer space, and particularly the secret code in the Holy Qur’an. If I find a book on any of those topics, I get completely absorbed in it. If I see one of them covered in a documentary, I’m glued to the screen.

  Obsession is a voice that harasses you until you are forced to obey its commands, regardless of how ridiculous they are. What's even worse than obsession is when you’re aware of its hold but can’t seem to control it. It’s like having someone inside you who is constantly demanding your attention.

  Here’s how my obsession began:

  I was surfing the internet during my time off of work, checking my e-mail, and scanning news sites, when I randomly came across a news article about Wilhelm Reich.

  Suddenly, memories from my youth and years at university flooded my brain. I found myself once again wondering about his will. So I searched it, but only found a few comments about the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund on Google. Frustration! I came across some photos of his will and decided to download the document in case I might find something interesting (It was only five pages). I read the will, but soon found that there was nothing worth waiting 50 years for. There weren’t any word games nor any mysterious hints. Maybe his will has changed, I thought. There might have been something else in the safe, and someone decided to hide it. Still, I struggled to understand the purpose of keeping the will under lock and key for 50 years.

  In my search, I also found the photos of the moment when the will was declared, but nothing jumped out. Having time on my hands, I enlarged them and looked at them more carefully. Nothing. I got annoyed and closed all the browser windows and went back to writing my MRI reports.

  In the evening, Elif came home and we ate dinner together, talked for a bit, and watched TV. Tired, she said she wanted to go to bed, so I followed, but I couldn’t get to sleep. As I lay next to her, the photos of the reading of Dr. Reich’s will appeared in my mind’s eye. Something was nagging at my thoughts as I too slowly nodded off to sleep.

  Suddenly I jolted awake. The pin! I remembered that in the picture; there was a pin that passed through the five pages of the will. I immediately got out of bed, turned on the computer, and opened the photo. There was the pin, curved on both edges. It went through the first page, passed through the text, and came out through the last page. I found the PDF images of the will and downloaded them again. I examined each page, one by one. The pin had made a hole on a certain letter on each of the last four pages. I wrote down the letters in order: J-U-N-G.

  I was so surprised and excited that I checked it again and again. Sure enough, J-U-N-G.

  I remembered Jung from university and what I heard about his interest in metaphysics and his career as a psychiatrist. Then I remembered a story about Jung that I had heard a long time ago:

  Jung once saw a rare, dead bird in a dream. After waking up, he took a walk in the woods and came across the same dead bird. He made a very interesting conclusion: “So the future affects our dreams!”

  The idea of a future incident affecting the present, and even the past, suddenly occupied my mind. I then remembered Jung’s work on the nature of obsessions. He said an obsession prevents the person over whom it is exercising influence from evaluating incidents and options in a realistic way; it only presents certain options to the person and uses these options to control the person’s behavior.

  I found myself surprised and excited by the presence of a message in the will and, more precisely, by the way this message was encrypted. This was more interesting to me than word itself—or its meaning. The idea of a pin making holes through letters on pages reminded me of a bookworm. Not that kind of bookworm. An actual bookworm, who might reach a letter, a small piece of information, while eating its way through a book.

  I began postulating: if the worm eats through pages one by one and makes tiny holes on each page, I wonder what it sees. Or, more precisely, what it reads. This, then, raised another question: Is it possible to write a book in such a way that it can be read on both the fronts and backs of its pages? Would it be possible to use such an encryption? In other words, can the text have another message that, though it is written on a two-dimensional page, can be read only in the third dimension? The bookworm can neither see the text nor the signs written on the front and back planes, but it can encrypt a third-dimensional code.

  I challenged my hypothesis by noting that the worm question can’t be applied to every case; it might be questionable to apply it to books written in reverse, for example, (that is, those read from right to left), such as those printed in Arabic.

  Pondering that new question, I reached for an Arabic book to examine its layout and validate my answer. At that moment, a new idea flashed in my mind. The thought of a bookworm eating an Arabic book naturally made me think of the Holy Qur’an. I imagined our bookworm moving on the front-and-back plane, through the pages. Then I tried to visualize what letters it would encounter.

  That led me to an even more compelling question: Is it possible that the Holy Qur’an has a text or a code encrypted in the third dimension?

  After that last question came to me, I began to lose track of time.

  Over the next weeks, I focused on this subject with increasing intensity and, I must confess, my work and relationship suffered.

  I spent hours wandering through the internet, collecting as many relevant pages and links as I could find. I downloaded countless documents and took copious notes. The house started to overflow with books related to my questions. I even made friends with the deliverymen who dropped off my endless book orders. Unfortunately, I found that most of the sources on the market were superficial at best.

  Perhaps the main problem was that nobody in fourteen hundred years had looked at the Qur’an in this way. There had always been some references and studies on the possibility of the book containing one or more codes, and there had even been some advancement in those investigations, but fourteen hundred years is a very long time. In the course of history, all the verses of the Qur’an have been on the tongues and in the hearts of countless people. They have been recited over and over again and translated from language to language, and c
ountry to country. Still, the Qur’an has never changed; the first revelation is read now in the same way that it was first read: “Read!” (19:1) Not write, see, look, touch, taste, think, do, fight, breed, and not defeat others—no, no. “Read!” is the first order.

  People have always read the Qur’an: it is read by the army before going to war, by parents to their newborn babies, by newly married couples, and by descendants to the spirits of their ancestors. Family names were written inside the covers, and individuals who read the Qur’an were put in the highest regard in their house. For centuries, the Qur’an bore witness to history. It sometimes functioned as a piece of history and sometimes as the whole of history itself. When I asked the Qur’an its nature, it told me, “I’ve got a secret. I’m the greatest miracle. I don’t have a look-alike or a replica. I’m multilayered.”

  As it has existed for fourteen hundred years—always in front of our eyes, always on our tongue, always in our ears, unchanged—we have studied its miracles. The miracle of the number nineteen, the disjointed or unconnected letters in its early suras or chapters, the numerical values of the letters in abjad or the numerological calculations and their infinite algorithms, and its repeated words pointing to certain magical numbers. We have tried to uncover its mysteries, but so far, no one has voiced the idea that the answers to its mysteries could be in the book’s third dimension.

  I decided it was necessary to print a version of the Holy Qur’an with transparent pages. I wanted to take the book in my hands, touch it, and look at the order of its transparent pages, one on top of another, hoping to see the code that was written in its depths. I knew it would also be necessary to record its godly voice and acoustically layer the recorded digital pages, and try to listen to the voice also (if possible) encrypted in the third dimension. My only hope was that I had enough knowledge, intelligence, courage, technology, and understanding of mathematics to do so.