Save the Last Bullet for God

by J. T. Alblood

  “Explode? What will explode, sir?”

  “Okay, forget it. Just tell me what I am supposed to understand.”

  “Sir, a man is composed of around one hundred trillion cells. They are out of your control, and you can’t interfere with them directly. Those cells have their own lifecycle. As an over-conscious, you can only use them and lead your organism. You can’t control the individual units of the virus. It is like members an ant colony, which consists of billions of individuals but moves like a single organism.”

  “So, there is a living being in a different dimension, a deciding mechanism that you call an over-conscious. Is that what you mean? That a plague is a species that has its own consciousness and way of directing movement?”

  “Almost right, sir. This plague can be managed on the conscious level and can be lived by going through it. The merchant fleet of Genoese consisted of two ships that left Crimea, carrying the organism that caused the plague. While crossing the Bosporus, it infected Istanbul. From there, it divided into two. One brought death to Anatolia and the Middle East. The other arm went to Sicily first, by ship. When it realized that the crew carried disease, they were expelled. From there, they went to Venice and then to France. When they were expelled again, they moved toward Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, infecting others.

  “The disease loomed over unprotected and defenseless people like a disaster. In a short time, half of the European population had perished. No one was left to bury the bodies. The streets were full of death and corpses. Everything—including cats and dogs—died and those who tried to escape only succeeded in infecting others. The strong ones put up walls on their doors and put up walls on the doors of the ill ones. Still, even though “safe” in their homes, many still died. In the end, 50 million people were erased from the gene pool, but the strong ones survived.

  “Legends accompany disasters. In Australia, the plague was told as a being wandering the streets with a blue light and spilling through open windows carrying death. The population of most towns couldn’t return to their previous numbers for centuries. Three years after the epidemic, a second wave infected newborn children of the survivors and killed the weak ones. The Black Death killed Mongolians in the East; half of the population of China was lost; the Middle East and Arab civilizations suffered as well. All known civilizations got their share. The only unexpected exception happened in Medina. The disease didn’t enter that city. Somehow it remained sterile.”

  I was filled with questions. “Are you implying that it was a conscious action to continue the bloodline of those who had certain desired characteristics and to demolish those with undesirable characteristics?”

  “Yes, you almost perceive it right, sir.”

  “And we did this?”

  “Almost, sir.”

  “Who am I? What am I? Tell me so that this nonsense can stop.”

  “Sir, I wish you were really ready. Finishing this program is the only thing I want, but not yet. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to leave the main power off for a while in order to check the results of the system error and make some necessary repairs.”

  “What will I do then? Listen to music?”

  “No, sir, but I can start a low density reminder program for you.”

  “For example?”

  “You lived in the early period after Columbus as an explorer, and you traveled to Central and South America where the Incan Empire ruled millions of people. You were Francisco Pizarro—”

  “Are you kidding me? Well…If there are no germs or viruses, then you can start. You don’t need to ask; I’m ready.”

  Francisco Pizarro

  It had been weeks since I unloaded and set fire to our ship, eliminating all hope of return. We were in virgin lands 1500 miles away from our headquarters. Our small force had been advancing toward the northwest without encountering any obstacles. Except to get fresh fruit and food from their villages, we avoided unnecessary contact with the locals.

  As we moved into the country’s interior, we looked for gold and silver. From information we pieced together from the locals we learned we were traveling through an empire, one two to three times larger than Spain. If the numbers weren’t exaggerated, it was home to millions.

  We also learned of a great city and hoped that the locals weren’t exaggerating about the tons of precious metals there. Our aims were clear: to convert the heathens, win their respect, find gold, conquer the land, and become the subject of legends.

  By applying slight pressure (some might call it “torture”) to the locals, we learned that the emperor had just returned from winning a great war and was now in his capital with his princes and commanders celebrating his victory. The locals hinted that the emperor knew about us. But we hadn’t come this far to run away. Sending a local as a messenger, we stated that we wished to meet the emperor, pay him our respects and offer gifts from the king of our faraway land.

  We waited for the emperor’s reply and used the time to count supplies and make minor repairs. We had 106 infantrymen, 62 cavalrymen, 13 guns, 1 cannon, 2 barrels of gun powder, and enough dry supplies for 3 weeks of sparing use.

  A few days later, messengers returned with a small contingent of the imperial army and told us that we would have the honor of meeting their emperor, “the Son of the Sun.”

  After a two-day journey, we reached an imperial army outpost in the evening. We were startled by the sea of people. They filled a valley floor of 20 to 30 miles. We had never seen such a great number of soldiers together. Admittedly, I thought we had made a mistake and had perhaps better turn back, but of course we didn’t. We couldn’t. Atahualpa, the Son of the Sun and ruler of the Incas, had his messengers take us to a ruined village to spend the night.

  That night we didn’t sleep a wink. I counted the camp fires and the possible number of people around each one and grew frightened. 80 to 100 thousand soldiers fresh from a recent victory was the last thing a commander would like to take on. But, I thought, if it was our fate, then it was inevitable. At first light, I held a meeting with my soldiers to tell them my strategy.

  I ordered three soldiers to take the cannon and hide in the building on the corner of the village hall and told my cavalrymen to hide on both sides of the hall among the low walls and ruined buildings. Meanwhile, my infantry took position in the deepest corner of the village hall. Their formation was like an inverted triangle, with those in front hiding those in the back. Finally, I took my position with the priest ahead of me, and six soldiers slightly behind me carrying worthless gifts. As the sun rose in the sky, hundreds and thousands of servants in square, thin clothes appeared and went about their work, preparing the way for their emperor. Those in the front moved ahead, sweeping the ground, cleaning away any stones and rubbish and even plucking the grass, while the servants behind them scattered flowers.

  Their work finished, the servants stood aside as hundreds of soldiers lined up, formed a wall, and used their trenches as shields. As I trembled before this grandeur, a unit of guards arrived. It was composed of human monsters armored in the same bright gold and silver that filled the hall.

  Finally, Atahualpa appeared in a bright blue outfit adorned with golden ornaments. He was carried on a magnificent palanquin on the shoulders of six men. When two or three smaller palanquins arrived (carrying princes and commanders), the picture was complete. The Incans had succeeded in making us feel helpless and small.

  At my signal, our priest, Vincente de Valverde, took a few steps forward and approached the palanquin of the emperor.

  “I am a priest of God,” Valverde, said. “I teach the Christian religion, and I am here to teach you in the same way. What I teach is in this book. It contains the word of God.”

  The emperor was so grand that he didn’t look like he belonged to this world. He bent over the book and checked its weight before he began to analyze it, turning it over and over. He touched the cover with his hand. It was obvious that he had no idea what he held. Valverde graciously showed h
im how to open the book. The emperor maintained his composure as he clumsily tried to turn the pages. However, the mystery and the potential attractiveness of the thing in his hand quickly faded. He suddenly threw the book aside and looked around for his next gift.

  The priest withdrew in shock. He ran toward us and yelled, “Put this enemy in his place! This animal threw our holy book on the ground. He doesn’t accept the word of God!”

  On my signal, the hidden cannon fired a volley into the Incan masses and scattered their blood everywhere. The servants and soldiers reacted in shock and fear as gunfire rained down upon them. Their screams didn’t affect us.

  From both sides, the infantry and cavalry advanced and easily crushed the Incans’ armor, which was made of only thin fabric and reeds. Amidst the bloodbath, I rushed toward the emperor with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. As I fought, I cried out “Santiago!” It was as if I were pruning shrubs in a thick forest made of arms and legs. My only obstacles to the emperor were the corpses falling before me.

  When I reach the palanquin of Atahualpa, the son of the setting Sun, he was helplessly watching us tear through his people. My sword first aimed at the arms that held the palanquin and cut them down. As I did, the palanquin swayed from side to side. Those still alive tried to raise their emperor out of my reach. I pressed forward, slipping on the intestines of those I’d disemboweled and slowly approached the emperor. As I dispatched the rest of his servants, the palanquin turned on its side and the emperor was in my hands—a captive.

  When the locals saw their ruler as a captive covered in blood, they were paralyzed with horror.

  That was only the beginning of our massacre. With our cavalry in front and infantry following, we rushed through the endless valley and put all to the sword as if we were harvesting wheat. Ripped heads, arms, and hands were scattered everywhere. The green fields, used to absorbing the pouring rain, now flooded with blood. Puddles of bloody mud were everywhere. Many of the locals, who had never seen horses before, died under the shoes of our mounts. I was certain such devastation hadn’t happened before in the history of the world, and knew it wouldn’t happen again. When night finally came, our blind and broken swords could find no more people to kill.

  With no losses, our army of 168 defeated their army of one-hundred thousand. Unlike the previous night, that night we slept peacefully, thinking about how much ransom we would demand for the captive emperor. I had awoken as an overmatched commander and went to sleep as a mighty conqueror.

  Days later, Incan messengers came to show respect and ask for the return of their emperor. We showed them a house in the ruined village and said to them, “If you fill this house with gold and silver, you can get your king back.”

  As small groups of villagers began to bring anything of gold, we rested and enjoyed the scenery. When the gold the locals brought began to spill out of the massive house, a community of thousands arrived with songs and ceremonies to take back their emperor.

  We waited at a distance as the endless wall of humans approached their emperor. When they moved to untie his hands and feet, we told them they had misunderstood us. We hadn’t asked for a bail and we never said that we would set their king free. Despair and hopelessness now appeared on their faces.

  Someone from the crowd picked up a stone and threw it at me. The others followed as if it was a ceremony. They threw whatever they could pick up and I feared that it could be our end. Now, it was us who were the desperate ones, and we were at risk of dying an agonizing death under thousands of stones.

  We began to stagger under the blows and tried to hide behind our shields, but in our fear, we didn’t realize that we were not the target of the stones. The villagers had instead chosen to cut off their gangrenous arm. The emperor died from the barrage, and fittingly, his body was buried under the pile of stones cast his way.

  When the ritual execution and burial was over, I gave the command to attack. Just as we had the day before, we brought death upon the thousands of unarmed people in front of us. Before night, we had a dead king, a vast amount of gold, and countless corpses.

  Limbo

  “Sir?”

  “…”

  “Sir! Sir!”

  “…”

  Cmnd://(Emergency*Therapeutic*Protocole)>:double*dose-Memory*Transfusion

  “Good luck, Sir.”

  …[START]

  1941, Princeton

  Wilhelm Reich/Albert Einstein

  Einstein finally responded to my insistent letters and was kind enough to visit my laboratory. When he appeared, with his trademark charm and messy, gray hair, he also brought many journalists and assistants with him. As he posed for the photographers, I waited by his side.

  Once inside my laboratory, he remained formal and maintained a distant attitude as I explained the machine’s schema and how it functioned. Einstein only wandered around, pretending to listen to me. It was very obvious he’d already decided I was a quack and only saw me as a chance for publicity. When I insisted on a particular point, he called one of his assistants and gave some orders before standing aside and leaving me alone with his disciple. I knew the type: the sycophant who only exists to affirm his teachers’ ideas and applaud his feelings and attitudes. Like a little Einstein, he tried hard not to listen or understand me and only pretended to perform a few hasty measurements with the few devices he’d brought along.

  Instead of humoring this stupid puppet, I begged Einstein to consider this discovery as something that could be immensely valuable for humanity. When he seemed to grow more tolerant and interested, I let it slip that the technology came from beings outside Earth. That was the beginning of the end.

  “What is the Vril community?” he asked. “Did you say Maria Orsic?”

  As I attempted to answer, he again lost all interest and kept me busy with useless conversation while he signaled his assistant to hurry up with his eyes.

  “When I use it to treat my patients, I get extremely successful results,” I explained. “I have even discovered that this machine can make rain during droughts.”

  “Rain?” He had completely shut me out in his mind now, and I could swear he was thinking about leaving without his assistant. “Actually, my field of study is very different,” he said.

  “Why has the existence of life’s energy been unknown until now?” I asked. “If this machine works then wouldn’t it be proof of the existence of other beings from other worlds and couldn’t it possibly lead us to an understanding of the nature of life itself?”

  “Since the 1920s,” Einstein said, “I have sought a theory that can explain everything, but I’m really not interested in this stuff. Just like quantum theory, it’s nonsense. Please forgive my bluntness, but soon, you and others like you, I mean to say, those who deal with quantum theory, will learn how wrong these ideas are.”

  I scoffed at his dismissal. “You haven’t produced a single thing since 1917,” I said. “You don’t have a single constructive activity except being against the war. Don’t you feel that you’re struggling down a blind alley?” I asked, now growing aggressive.

  “I just act in accordance with my own personal thoughts and actions,” he said, his hands trembling and his own voice growing louder. “I think I have the right to do that, with what I’ve accomplished.”

  “What if you find that your theories don’t work because you didn’t understand them correctly? The quantum theory you don’t understand could make sense with the right missing data. We thought no other galaxy existed except the one we live in until 1923, but we’ve found now that hundreds, thousands, and even billions of them are out there. Your studies in physics could be as insufficient and incorrect as the quanta determined from that single galaxy.”

  “The laws of physics cannot be changed,” he said.

  “You can never know what is beyond the thing you can’t measure or perceive. What if whatever you perceive and observe now is only 5% of what really exists?”

  “So all this around
us is only 5%? What is your point with these extreme examples?”

  “Take an elephant,” I said. “If all we can see it one of its nails, how can we understand that it’s alive and can breed. How can we know the existence and function of its intestines, much less produce theories about it? From our limited data we would deduce that the elephant’s body was formed of nail tissue, and, when if we developed our theories and formulas in that direction, we of course would be proven wrong.”

  “Your logic is correct, but is awareness of the total from such a small amount even possible?” Einstein asked.

  “The emergence of a new energy form would lead us to that conclusion. We would then understand that there might be many substances and energies we can’t perceive that would change the rules we now obey. Then you may even understand why we can’t pin down some formulas.”

  The assistant cleared his throat and tapped his clipboard with his pen. He had finished his job. Einstein was impatient to leave as well.

  “Dr. Reich, if different life and energy forms are discovered in the future, I might think something of what you’ve said. If these findings are as you say 95% over what we know now, then I would, of course, believe you unconditionally.”

  With that, he and his circus of reporters left the lab.

  Days later, a letter arrived telling me that the assistant’s measurements had confirmed some of my data. This was hastily followed by another letter telling me that they’d made a mistake.

  I never saw or heard from Einstein again. When he died in 1955, he was still hopelessly working on “the theory of everything.”

  Loading…

  1920, Vienna

  Wilhelm Reich/Sigmund Freud

  Only time is needed to overcome such pain. Not knowing how long it would take to recover, I went on with my life. I became busy with school and classes and began to rejoin the crowds. I began to attend the psychiatry meetings on Wednesdays and listen to Dr. Freud’s lectures.