Monster of the Apocalypse (12 page)

T
he sunset was beautiful. Clouds of several shapes and sizes, gaps and beams of light filled the sky. And color, magnificent color. Eleon was a connoisseur of sunrise and sunset. He made an effort to witness each, to appreciate each.

His thoughts were occupied with the burden he carried. The weight was heavy, the guilt enormous. Twenty years now, twenty years of wishing he was dead but without the will to stop his own pain. He was afraid of hell. A Supreme Being would have no mercy on him. Lately the load was somehow less. He noticed a difference since he began this journey with these two young people. The information he carried, the burden he bore, needed to be shared. He knew that eventually he would have to speak. It was time.

Turning his chair to face Deo and Lecti, Eleon began.

“I have something to tell you. It will be very difficult for me, but I want you to know that everything I say will be the absolute truth from my perspective. I know that you must wonder about how twelve billion people died,” Eleon hesitated, “and how I claim to be responsible. If you don’t want to hear it, tell me now, but don’t ever expect me to tell you anything about it after this.”

He hesitated, waiting to let his statement sink in. He would not be surprised if the kids turned away. In their short acquaintance he believed he knew their characters, however, and expected them to give him this chance, this opportunity, to relieve his mind. It would be the first time in twenty years.

Lecti kept her eyes to the ground. She felt Eleon’s angst and realized that this moment was tremendously important to him. Her kinship with this mature man was growing in spite of her initial hesitations and suspicions. She liked him, and her nature empathized with his sadness and his pain. By now she knew that she would allow him a chance to divulge what apparently was going to be a confession. She feared and still welcomed it.

Looking up, she met Deo’s eyes. He had been waiting for her to consider her thoughts. Deo would follow her lead as he had so often. Besides, he was curious. If Lecti had elected to leave, to not hear Eleon out, he would have followed even though he would have wanted to stay.

“Okay Eleon,” sighed Lecti, “we’d like to listen. We’ll even try to not interrupt.” She looked at Deo meaningfully.

Eleon was pleased. Tears welled in his eyes. He would have spoken to Deo alone, but Lecti was the one that he really wanted to hear him out. Somehow he hoped she would understand. More likely she would curse him. It would be nothing new. He had been cursed for a long time.

Bending his head and bringing his hands to his forehead, Eleon folded them as though he was praying. He was not a great fan of the ruined former religions, but truly this was a time to ask
for deliverance and understanding and not only from Lecti and Deo.

“I told you about the insurance companies. There were so many other things wrong in the world. Problems were not getting solved because big money interests found a way to abuse the system. They were intent on preserving their cash flow. Things changed only if a financial advantage was anticipated. And they always found a way to work the system.”

Groaning inwardly, Deo braced himself for what he now expected would be a lecture on economics. Lecti knew better.

“Strange things happened when half of the public lost all interest and gave up, and the other half polarized politically. There were heroes in the world, but they were increasingly ignored in favor of social butterflies and financial predators. It became normal to create idols based on popularity and greed. The Internet allowed people to acquire popularity by proxy. The number of people that you had never met, and yet still counted as friends on a website, mattered more than the real people you knew. People forgot that friends were not for counting, but for counting on.”

Eleon dropped his hands and straightened in his chair. His voice gathered strength.

“The news media increased coverage of Hollywood to the point that they became more advertising than news. Advertising became fifty, sixty, and then eighty percent of programming. Other things deteriorated. A disclaimer came with anything sold, yet lawyers flourished. Doctors started to practice anonymously. Warranties became nothing more than a sales tool and were never intended to be honored.”

“The world was ending. In every possible way, mankind was creating larger obstacles to survival. Not just for the human race, but for all the living beings that covered the earth. Large animals started to disappear in the wild, to be found only in captivity, and some not even there. Extinctions intensified but seemed commonplace.”

“The political leaders of the world were powerless. Most of them only held office by the grace of the almighty dollar. Men with no interest in anything other than a bottom line were in complete control. They raped the planet to build and produce and feed the people that provided the money that consolidated their power. They gradually found a way to accumulate all wealth, leaving nothing but debt to the under-classes.”

Eleon took a deep breath.

“They made up their own rules as it suited them, anything to put more money in their pockets. There was no sympathy for the starving populations of the world, the populations that increased every year, despite the shortages of every necessity of life. It was like these horses you see. We were overgrazing the planet, and the strongest fought to keep the weak from rising to compete with them.”

He shifted in his chair, looking up at the evening sky.

“Though population control was increasingly talked about, no one wanted to control their numbers. More constituents meant more power. More parishioners meant more tithing. More consumers meant more sales. So, politically, no one wanted to limit anyone’s ability to procreate. As medicine got involved, strange things that were not in the best interests of humanity were hailed as medical breakthroughs. The medical community kept people alive longer for monetary gain and excused it as doing the right thing. Churches that preached an afterlife, an eternity with the Lord, sided with the doctors preventing a natural death. The insurance companies got fat on rate hikes justified by artificially manipulated expense increases. Hospitals were involved in other atrocities as well.
All in the name of doing no harm. People with genetic abnormalities that would have doomed them in the past were allowed to survive and add their DNA to the gene pool. Early on, genetic cures for many illnesses were shelved because of the potential for profit. Diabetes, a disease that only infected a fraction of the population at the turn of the twentieth century, became so common that it was more normal to have it than not. Genetic manipulations solved some issues, but only for those that could afford the treatments. Drug companies prospered and loved it. They reaped government funding to treat impoverished populations like there was nothing wrong with a system that allowed genetic abnormalities to spread through humanity. Multiple births became common and even fashionable. It was far easier and convenient to have one litter and get the process of birth over with. Surgical birth became normal even without multiples. But many people didn’t stop with one birth. The government encouraged multiples by providing assistance, the churches provided justification, and the businesses that fed off the government, well, they just went into a feeding frenzy over all the profits. There were so many things going wrong that the people were kept distracted. No one came together to recognize, much less repair, anything. People were intentionally divided. No one in power saw, or at least admitted, the ultimate dangers. Any leadership that tried to deal with real solutions was half-hearted and easily squashed.”

Eleon paused. Looking down at his hands, he sighed. The tears in his eyes had dried, and he seemed to be gathering his strength before he continued. He took a deep breath and sighed again.

“I was the son of a geneticist. My father knew a lot of political figures and offered his services as political expedience demanded.”

Interrupting, Deo said, “I don’t know what that means, political expedience.”

“It means that my father sold his knowledge to people that wanted to influence a situation one way or another. The information he provided was slanted one way or another in spite of the consequences to the truth. He sold his soul for political gain and in the end, for money.”

“Okay, now I get it,” Deo said. “He lied.”

Lecti started. She knew that the words hurt Eleon. She watched as his eyes flashed, and then saw them soften.

Eleon continued, “I followed my father into the profession.
The family business. I became a geneticist, and I sold my soul for a pocket full of change and to be part of the elite.”

He stopped again. It was almost dark. Only a slight, fading light remained in the west. The stars were out again, peeking through the clouds.

“One day I was invited to a conference. I was always being invited to conferences, and because of my position in the scientific community, I used every excuse to socialize with my peers and the political powers that used these gatherings to lobby and garnish favors. This conference was no different from any other until a man I knew well pulled me aside. He invited me to…how did he put it? A meeting of the minds. He was inferring that I held a special intellectual capacity. He was cultivating my ego. It was easy for him. I was full of my own worth. Other people were so much less worthy than me.”

Again Eleon hesitated. Deo and Lecti waited.

“The meeting turned out to be a small group, only seven people. There were two other scientists, three in very high political offices, myself, and one other, a businessman, a man I recognized as one of the wealthiest men in the world. My ego swelled. I felt so privileged to be in this company. They stroked my ego with compliments for a time and eventually invited me to another meeting at a private island. Apparently I had passed some kind of test. I was informed in no uncertain terms that the meeting was to be kept a secret, and even my closest associates were to be left out of the loop. I had no problem with that. My wife and children were invited as well, but were to be kept in the dark right up to the moment we arrived. It would be a ‘surprise’ for them. A limousine picked us up a few weeks later and took us to a private airstrip.”

Eleon rose from his chair and started to pace slowly in front of Lecti and Deo. His voice became even more intent.

“My children and my wife played on a pristine beach in an island paradise. The residents consisted of servants and the occasional powerful personage who was in need of privacy. It seemed so innocent, even pure. The meeting that I went to on the island was anything but. There were more scientists, fewer political figures, and three men with enough money to buy anything. Literally anything. It turned out that they had a plan, an idea that was close to completion. They needed my help.”

Hanging his head in the gloom, Eleon continued.

“The wealthy men sat me down, surrounding me between themselves while everyone else milled about enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks. They were working on a project to reduce the population of the world. The time had almost come when artificial intelligence and robotics would make common people obsolete. That’s how they put it. Casually, with no more emotion than retiring an outdated vehicle or computer, they said people were soon to be obsolete. Labor in particular was going to be obsolete. What followed was logical from their point of view. Laborers were becoming unnecessary. Unnecessary. Like cattle that had ceased to breed or give milk. People were becoming a liability, and these men had decided to rid themselves of the unnecessary burden. What seems strange now is that I bought it. And yet, I still see the logic even now. I could see the world around me. Many of my discussions with friends and colleagues revolved around the problems associated with population. Even my dinner conversations with my parents, as far back as I can remember, included talk of population related problems. It always seemed inevitable that someone would take charge and implement some kinds of controls. A political solution. Now it was happening. But it wasn’t political. It was not because of any political benefit to humanity. It was because working humans, laborers, were soon to be obsolete. This was how they put it, but I knew that was only part of it. They didn’t want to share the world. They wanted a pristine world and knew they could have it. And the people that could afford the solution were to choose the survivors.”

Lecti felt her mind crawl into a small hole in her skull. It was trying to hide, but the fascination of Eleon’s tale drew her back out. God, how would this end? She knew. She knew, and she was afraid.

“A prototype of the replacement labor force was serving the appetizers. I had seen it, even interacted with it. It didn’t look much different than the house robots that were common in the homes of any well-paid elite. After I agreed to be part of the project, they took me to a building where they demonstrated the abilities of the machine. It was impressive. It was even self-replicating. The machine was fully capable of every facet of producing and assembling others of its own kind. It could take verbal instructions, it could make tools, it could anticipate, it could extrapolate. The idea began to seem possible. Always expressed that only certain countries or people with a lack of education or capability would be targeted, I listened. Clearly, no one close to me would be eliminated. The plan would have protected my family, and me, even without me on board. I was told that I could walk away and be safe. It might have been a lie, but it was a moot point. I agreed to help.