The Good Reaper (27 page)

It seemed that Doctor
Bockarie’s
entire personality had changed. She was calm and humble and she was frequently
heard asking Mesarthim what he needed. Doctor Bockarie was awe inspired by both
Mesarthim and Chara. She never seemed to be more than a few feet away from
Mesarthim who had become her mentor. The nurses were quick to notice that
Mesarthim and Doctor Bockarie frequently took breaks together. “Look at the
Doctor’s smiles,” Nurse
Abeni
remarked.

“Her big dark eyes are smiling too. She seems to have taken
a liking to the space doctor.” Aide
Folami
agreed.

The Ranjisi team consisting of Gomeisa, Chara,
Turais
,
Enif
,
Azha
,
Mesarthim and me was considered the first Ranjisi medical team. Many more would
follow, assuming the human race came together and agreed that they did want to
join the alliance. We continued treating and gradually wiping out the Ebola
virus in Western Africa. We began with Guinea and when they reached a point
where more than half of the hospital beds were empty, the team moved on to
Liberia for a few months. The local medical staff at
Dubreka
had been trained, monitored and re-trained so when the Ranjisi team left for
Liberia, we felt we were leaving the
Dubreka
Clinic
in good hands. The
Dubreka
staff
weren’t
surprised to see Doctor Bockarie leave for Liberia with the
Ranjisi team. After Liberia it was on to Sierra Leone. By the end of the first
year, Ebola was reduced to a few scattered cases that were quickly treated and
cured. “Ebola is finished,” Doctor Bockarie stated in a television interview
broadcast from Freetown. “Ebola loses, humans win, thanks to the wonderful
Ranjisi people. We owe them every thanks.”

***

We had done our part. We had greeted the human race with
openness and honesty. We had brought the first wave of medical treatments. We
had left the ball in the hands of the human race. We knew it would be difficult
but they would need to come together once and for all. They would need to unite
as one race and join us. We waited patiently for an official commitment from a
unified human race.

There wasn’t a great deal of publicity when the announcement
was made. The loosely organized committee the humans had made decided it would
be better not to make a media event out of it. There was still a scattering of
protests going on throughout the world. US President Hawkins and Russian
President Pasternak recorded a ten minute announcement that was distributed to
news outlets around the world. There was no increase in protests after the
announcement. The same people who had been protesting all along, continued.

The first two years we focused on bringing medical
advancements to Earth. Wiping out Malaria was more difficult than wiping out
Ebola, due to the relentless reproduction of mosquitos. But at least the
attorobobiotics treatment would prevent people from dying. During our second
year on Earth, we began building medical facilities in several central
locations. We began with Chicago and London and branched out to Berlin, Moscow,
Dubai, Mombasa, Tianjin, and Sydney. The last of the facilities in Sydney took
two more years to finish.

The human race had been using the cancer treatment for about
eighteen months and we were proud and happy to see that the disease was
re-classified as a non-chronic condition that was treated and cured quickly.

Going into our third year, there were still protests against
our presence, scattered throughout the world. There was an underground movement
that still didn’t trust us. That is why the Ranjisan government decided not to
tell the truth about the CIPE underground facility on Easter Island. We decided
to just abandon it, thinking that if the human race found out that we had built
the underground complex it would lead to more distrust.

Since our medical treatments are based on robotics,
developing medical advancements on Earth opened the door to technology. Ranjisi
Software Engineers and Computer Scientists believed that there is a bridge
between what is real and what is simulated. This theory was confirmed and
proven by
the
Aegialia who have successfully
developed
symbiotic propulsion. Alegialian scientists
took a slightly different path in the development of their own version of
attrorobiotics
. They combined robobiotics with super-
nano
attorobiotics
but they took
it one step further. They took one more final, daring step. After many years of
development, the Alegialian scientists were able to reverse the process,
meaning that a person injected with their version of the
attrorobiotic
pods could mentally control the software application. They brilliantly used
this theory and adapted it to their propulsion technology. They were successful.
With this technology, a person could sit at a console and fly a ship using
nothing but their mind.

Our goal was to work with human scientists in the study and
implementation of Alegialian technology. In our effort to bring the human race
up to the next level of technological advancement, two institutes were
established in our third year of Phase III, one in Berlin and one in San
Francisco.

Our intentions were good but they were not received that way
by the growing population who for no apparent
reason,
didn’t trust us. When the news hit the airwaves that we were developing
symbiotic
technology, that
was the tipping point. The
protests increased.  Hundreds of blogs and websites popped up and they all
had the same negative them: “Aliens developing mind control technology to
control the human race.” It was sad and disheartening. There was no logical
reason why we would do that. We had nothing to take or gain from the human
race. “No one in this vast universe does something for nothing,” I thought. “But
for us, if I really thought about the ultimate motives for what we were doing,
it was really nothing more than building an alliance of races. If we consider
all the planets in all the solar systems in all the galaxies across the
universe, it would be naïve to think that there are no hostile races anywhere.
There is no fine print in the contract to join the alliance. In fact there is
no contract. But it is implied that if one of the member races is attacked by
hostiles, the other races would come to their defense. I’m not sure how
effective it would be if it came to pass because none of the member races had
advanced space military defenses. “Maybe we can bluff the enemy if one of us is
attacked,” I wondered. But that was it. There were no sinister, secret motives
for Phase III. 

It didn’t take long for the Ranjisan Council of Provinces to
come to the decision that we should leave Earth and return home. The
announcement was made exactly three weeks after the news of the symbiotic
technology broke. All Ranjisi were given reporting times and locations for the
trip home. I wasn’t surprised. The production and distribution of all the
medical advancements we had brought to Earth were moving on their own steam.
The African team in Sierra Leone, headed by Doctor Bockarie had become the new
world center for infectious disease control. The human race embraced the
technology and ran full speed ahead with it.

***

The Phase III team couldn’t understand where all the
animosity toward our race was coming from. All we had tried to do was improve
the quality of life for the human race. When the protests first started, we
assumed they were incited by religious fanatics. They may have had a small hand
in it, but they were unorganized. It all began to make sense when I got the
phone call from Assistant FBI Director Abbott. The Director had never called me
with good news so I assumed again that it was something bad.

“Hello Naos,” This is Assistant Director Abbott. “I hope all
is well with your team there. I guess you should be getting ready to leave.”

“Yes Assistant Director Abbott. What’s up?”

“Have you seen the negative TV ads?”

“No I haven’t.”

“I’ll send you a link to where you can see it online.” A
minute later the link appeared on my phone. The ad was a very negative ad portraying
the Ranjisan race as opportunist liars with secret ulterior motives:

“The Ranjisi have been caught in lie after lie after lie.
Send them home. We do not need them.”

In the background was a video of several Ranjisi being
arrested.
I couldn’t tell if they were actually Ranjisi
since they were far away in the background. At the bottom of the ad in very
small print was the line, “Sponsored by the Committee for the Advancement of
the Human Race.”

“Okay Director. Who is this Committee for the Advancement of
the Human Race?” I asked.

“Before I tell you who they really are, I want to tell you
something else,” Assistant Director Abbott paused and continued, “We’ve made
several arrests in the shooting of Chara and Atik. They are not religious
fanatics. They are professional hired assassins. Two of the four men we
arrested had ties to some old cases where strong-arm assaults were carried out
on behalf of some shadow organization that was contracted by one of the large
oil companies. So it made sense in a sick sort of way. The last thing the
fossil fuel industry wants to see is electromagnetic or symbiotic propulsion.
It would lead to sinking quarterly statements for stockholders.”

“Wow! So they are willing to alter progress for an entire
race of people, for money and profit. I guess they have never heard of
diversification. They could easily transition into new propulsion
technologies.”

“I never said they were smart. They aren’t thinking with a
vision for the future. They are only thinking as far as the next quarterly
statement.”

“Are you still sitting down?” The Director asked. “It turns
out, we were wrong again. It wasn’t the fossil fuel industry.”

“Who then?”

“It’s even worse and more sinister than we thought. One of
the men we detained has a long record. He sprung a deal. He’ll be going into
the Witness Protection Program and testifying against the real organizer for
the shootings.”

“Okay Director. You’re leaving me in suspense here.”

“It was the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not just one
corporation but a secret alliance of several of them. They also sponsor the TV
ad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They make billions or trillions off of all their
medications that don’t actually cure anyone. They just treat the symptoms and
the patients stay sick and the government keeps spending trillions on treating
them,” Assistant Director Abbott said.

“Imagine attorobobiotics becoming the medical industry
standard. The pharmaceutical corporations would lose control of the medical
treatment industry. Their research divisions would immediately become obsolete.
The drugs they spent millions developing would be replaced by attorobobiotics.”

“But that’s just plain stupid,” I said. “They can control
the production, distribution and administration of attorobobiotic treatments.
There may be a time of adjustment but in the long run, they would still make
their big profits. That’s unbelievable.”

“The pharmaceutical industry is no different than the drug
cartels that illegally bring hard street drugs into the country. In fact, the
pharmaceutical industry may actually kill more people than the drug cartels.
The difference is that they do it legally by controlling lawmakers in
Washington and the Federal Drug Administration.”

“So basically if you bring it down to the most basic
explanation, they are killing people for money?” I asked.

“That pretty much sums it up. The thing is
,
these decisions are done in secrecy, in back rooms and odd meeting places. No
one officially signs off on it. It’s like the assassination of John Kennedy. No
one person actually ordered it. These things are just implied with nods of the
head and vague statements. But a non-verbal chain of events is triggered,
ending in the lethal result. No one high up feels guilt or takes
responsibility.”

“So, we are being asked to leave based on false accusations,
manipulation of the media and criminal activities,” I said. The Director could
hear the frustration and growing anger in my voice.

“That’s correct, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Also, remember that not all Ranjisi are returning. Many of you will stay and
the idea is to just keep a low profile for a while. It’s not like anyone is
going to hunt you down and force you to leave. The relationship that has been
forged between you and us is permanent. We’ll just hang back for a while and
pick up where we left off when things settle down,” Assistant Director Abbott
said.

“Attorobobiotic technology is already here, so there isn’t
much the pharmaceutical corporations can do about that,” I said.

“We were thinking that they may try and launch a big media
campaign to discredit attorobobiotics but that’s not going to work either,”
Assistant Director Abbott said. “The statistics have been coming out for
months. Attorobobiotics is saving lives.”

“But wouldn’t a public media campaign that would expose the
pharmaceutical industry help to sway the people’s opinion of us?” I asked.

“Not much chance of that Naos. The pharmaceutical industry
has complete control over the news media. You see, the reality is, the
pharmaceutical industry is much more powerful than the American government.”

***

Our team was scheduled to fly out of Freetown and on to. On
the morning we were set to depart, we all waited for the van to take us to the
airport. Mesarthim was the last one to arrive. He didn’t need to say anything.
He came empty handed. “No luggage?” Chara asked, knowing the eventual answer
would follow.

“I’m not going?” Mesarthim said. “This is my life now. I am
happy here. I haven’t told anyone yet but Doctor Bockarie and I are engaged.
I’m staying.”

Everyone applauded and we took turns hugging Mesarthim and
saying goodbye. “Where is your fiancé? We want to wish her luck and say
goodbye,” I asked.

“She’s busy working as usual,” Mesarthim said. “I’ll pass
along your good wishes when I see her later.”

I was thinking that they probably won’t bother looking for
people who stay behind. There probably won’t be too many of us. People just
want to see the official Ranjisi leave. Seeing how confident and happy
Mesarthim was inspired me. It was the first time I thought seriously about
staying behind.

We said one last goodbye to Mesarthim and climbed into the
van. The airport at Freetown was chaotic as usual. Chara asked me why I was
smiling. “I just love all the energy here. People have to struggle to survive
and yet they are happy and full of life.”

After checking in, Chara noticed I was especially anxious
waiting to board. “Are you suddenly afraid of flying on human planes?”

“No Chara. I just have things on my mind.”

“Oh, you mean LeAnne?”

“Yes. I’ve been here over two years and she doesn’t even
know I’m here.”

“I know you told me before that she had moved on with her
life and you didn’t want to cause confusion by contacting her. But the question
is
,
do you still love her?”

Chara and I had become close friends over the years. There
was nothing romantic about our relationship. She had her family back home and
although I knew she would have stayed in Africa indefinitely she was happy to
be going home.

“You know my childhood friend back home has written to me
every day since we’ve been here. I only get the emails once every two months
and it takes me days to get through them. But she seems to be waiting for me.
We could be happy together. I could be with my family and with Syrma. We could
have children and we could be happy.”

“But do you love Syrma, or do you love LeAnne? Where is your
heart?”