part 13

What do you want?

I don’t give a shit.

Yes, Mark, there are digital displays all over the room, I know what time it is and I know what day it is, thank you very much.

No.

I sleep when I’m sleepy.

Right here. Don’t tell me you don’t know that.

It’s not a chair, it’s a throne. My throne.

Yeah.

Well, you did a great job. I can sit in it, I can eat in it, I can sleep in it, and I can watch just about any God damn thing that’s happening on camera anywhere in the world. I don’t have to move an inch except to piss and shit, and if I had a suitable appliance I could do that here too.

I’ll let you know.

I’ll let you know that too.

Well, there’s lots to see. Lots and lots and lots to see.

I dunno.

Remember the old days, Mark?

Not this much. Even less to watch. He’d show up in some jungle backwater or desert shithole and whack people who were clearly asking for it. They were packing cold steel, but no cameras. We’d get wind of it and go out there and talk to whoever was left, otherwise nobody would ever know about it. Not anymore. Now the party’s all about the coverage. Now we can watch a movie star’s head’s crack open, close up in HD. Every tiny, intimate change, every subtle facial nuance in a thousand eighty lines of progressive scan vertical resolution. What a show! A thousand smoking executions caught on tape. It’s like a snuff-film orgy with an all star cast. Actors, rock stars, jocks, and now heads of fucking state, pun intended. And nobody has more eyes on the action than the Prophet himself, warm and safe from it all, leering at an endless parade of dead . .

Shut up. I’m not done. I’m in the mood for a little abstract of the weeks events. That’s what I do, isn’t it? Tell people shit they already know?

Well then, lets share it, shall we? With my adoring public. Pete? Mark, who’s down there?

Pete! Zoom in on two. When we get done this goes to air.

I mean it. In fact, show the whole thing from when Mark came in.

I still don’t give a shit.

Maybe, maybe not. We’ll cross that bridge . .

Fuck that, it’ll be good theater, which is all I can hope for anymore.

I don’t provide useful information, and nobody takes my advice.

End of discussion. Now go away, I’m busy.

As for all of you out there in the killing field this entire planet has become, welcome to my world. This peaceful little sanctuary is technically described as Com Two, because, appropriately enough, it’s the second Com or communications center in the building. Downstairs is the main communications center, which is technically described as, you guessed it, Com One, but everyone just calls it The Com. Down in The Com, they call Com Two the Zone, which is short for the Twilight Zone, because the Prophet comes up here alone to sit in the dark and brood and obsess. The place creeps everybody out. You’ll forgive me if the sound and picture quality aren’t up to snuff, this setup is only designed to monitor, not broadcast, but hey, it’s too dark in here to see anything anyway. My friend and associate Mark Lewis, who would actually be my chief of staff if we used fancy titles like that, has come up here to see if I’m just sulking, or if this time I’ve actually gone off the deep end. He’s still wondering. He also wanted to encourage me to appear in public again, because the Blue Angel of Death has been a busy boy for several days now and all of you are no doubt wondering why you haven’t seen my smiling face on the air until now. As you may already have guessed, it’s either because I’ve been sulking, or because I’ve gone off the deep end. Feel free to decide that one on your own. Either way, here I am again, ready to do what I always do, tell you things you already know. Let’s recap, shall we? I’ll pontificate. Let’s start with Tuesday. The Tin Prick returns from vacation, and decides the man most in need of an intervention is the single most hated and revered man anywhere on the planet, president of these United States and erstwhile leader of the free world, our own beloved and charming Thomas Jefferson Laird, the same President Laird who but a few short weeks ago made many a brave and noble promise, none of which, sadly, proved to make themselves manifest in any meaningful way. God’s Hammer fell on the Commander and Chief, not as he led the charge to reshape human destiny, but as he cowered in his hidey hole, deep underground, surrounded by concrete and steel and his extended family, and the Vice President and his extended family, and a litany of cabinet members and senators and generals and personal friends and various and sundry other sycophants and their extended families, and assorted members of the military and secret service who were alone. Who knew those places were so big? Anyway, they all died, as we witnessed, the president, alongside his staff and every other sorry motherfucker in that pathetic hole in the ground, all simultaneously and in the same manner, more than thirty miles from the epicenter of a neuron pulse with a radius of nearly eighty. That’s right, the mighty First Executive didn’t even warrant a personal visit from his executioner. He and his retinue perished on the periphery of a single burst that took the lives of so many people they don’t even know how to count the bodies. Somebody in DC took a wild guess at a quarter of a million. Big Blue is not fucking around this time. But you already know that don’t you? You got to watch every second of it! It’s all on tape! So, what happened where you live? What happened in Tokyo and Berlin and Beijing and Jakarta and Muskva, I think that’s how you say it, Muskva, and New Delhi and other capitals around the world? Well, your president, or your prime minister, or your king or ayatollah or dictator or imperial fucking potentate, whatever he called himself in your neck of the woods, he died like a dog along with every other member of his civil and military administration, and in the space of seven hours the Tin Nightmare managed to exterminate the principle human constituents of every national system of organization and authority on the face of God’s green Earth. The reason it took him so long is because he had to make some side trips to pick off strays who had embraced the illusion they could travel far enough that God couldn’t find them. I have a particular fondness for the congressmen and admirals who discovered hard evidence of God’s omniscience in a nuclear submarine under the arctic ice. Nice try lads! But you already know about that, don’t you? Now. I know what you’re thinking. What about the others? Right? The others. At this point our wild guessers were guessing seventy million steaming stiffs, which is not bad for a nine hour shift, but seems a bit like overkill if the target is political big shots. What about the tens of millions of bodies who weren’t? Well, let’s put them aside for the moment, I’ll come back to them in a minute. They won’t mind, they’re dead. The point is, at this point, the Prophet was still essentially sane. Sick, depressed, anxious, numb, disgusted, and exhausted, but I was there in the Com with Mark and Tony and Dawn and Rupesh and Carly and Pete, traumatized, but still thinking that as much as I hated it, I had a handle on what was going on. And then something happened to change that. What happened was, it didn’t end. Now, I was told this is the wrong way to think of it. Not ending isn’t something that happens, something happening implies a change of some kind, and nothing changed, what was happening just continued to happen. I don’t care, that’s the way it is in my head. Not ending, happened. Not ending, occurred. That’s when I took my newly convoluted attitude and climbed two flights of stairs to this dark and cozy little rat’s nest where I’ve spent the last three days and nights nursing my mounting indignation and watching people die. This is something of a departure for me. Typically, I don’t watch people die. Typically, I don’t even read direct reports about people who die. Typically, I just read reports containing analyses of broad categories of people who die. But not this time. This time I’ve been watching everybody die, and there’s plenty of it to watch. Those guys with cameras, God bless ‘em, they’ve become a guerrilla army. They’ve lost their execs and anchors to neural vapor, and most of the studio techs have just gone home to wait out the storm with their families. But there’s still a core of faithful who will die keeping the power on, the broadcast streaming, and a zoom lens on whatever’s happening out there. And I’ve been watching. Curled up on my throne, watching, while a machine made by an alien race systematically slaughters a billion people just like me. And the whole time, all I could think about is, why? Why that guy? What the fuck did that poor bastard do to bring hot, instant death to himself and his whole fucking family? And it had to be him, because we know there isn’t a goddamn thing his three year old twin girls could have done to deserve it, and that’s how the game is played these days. Nobody cries when daddy’s gone because everyone leaves on the same burning bus. Why? Beyond public figures we know something about, there aren’t any clues. We don’t know shit about ‘em, we just watch ‘em die, die by the truckload. Why? Why that guy? I asked myself that question over and over, every time I saw a body jerk and fall. Why him? Why her? Why them? Hour after hour for three days, why? But you already know that, don’t you? Because you saw the same crimes and you asked the same question. Well, I happen to be the Chosen One, and it’s my considered opinion that we both deserve an answer. So I’m going to give you one. Actually, I’m going to give you three. Maybe more, we’ll see. Here’s how the algorithm works. The first one is easy. Hose the ruling class. These worthless fuckers deserved it last time, but we let ‘em off the hook for one round because they have the power and responsibility to fix things. What they did instead was tell everyone to stay calm while they took all the lifeboats for themselves. Bad move. Guilty! Now what about the others? The others from the first pass, that is. Well, that was easy too. There weren’t many clues, but enough I could extrapolate. Hose deserters, recalcitrants, and thieves. God’s plan is for us to help one another. There are suddenly a lot of resources out there, freed for use for those who need them, but some fools can’t seem to get with the program. They run for it. They refuse to cooperate. They steal. Big mistakes. Guilty! So. At this point, we all thought it was break time. Nine hours, seventy million self-serving pigs roasted. Global political and military superstructure torn to shreds. Nice work! Now it’s our turn to see if we can get it right! But noooo, not this time, not this time. Blue is on a roll and starts another pass. He returns to places he’s already decimated, and goes to work on targets that don’t seem to fall into a pattern, and then he cranks it up a notch. Nobody saw this coming. I didn’t take it particularly well. I crawled into my little cocoon and sank into the darkness. I feel sorry for myself a lot more than I like to admit. I don’t sleep much these days, even with the drugs. I have nightmares, but they’re probably not much different than the ones you started having this week. Anyway, I was sick with disgust but rather than turn away I decided to submerge myself in it. I even had Carly bring my meals up here. By the way, none of that crap in the media about Carly and me is true, but God knows it would be if I didn’t think our first embrace might be her last. I’d tell you all about our desperate, unrequited love but I’m guessing you don’t give a shit anymore, you’ve got your hands full trying to figure out what to do with all those bodies. Good luck with that. We have some of our own and we don’t know what to do with them either. Anyway, the question on the table is still, why? Why is he still at it? We all thought it was over the first day. Shit, seventy million? Instead he started a new wave and stepped up the pace. What’s the count, Pete?

Well, what do you think?

No shit. Fuck.

I can’t think of anything profane enough to say.

No, I’ve been watching it pile up, I just don’t want to believe it. That’s more than a quarter of the human race. In four days.

I’m going to. First, get somebody down here with a camera. Then evacuate the building. Everyone but the security office. Drop whatever you’re doing, you won’t be gone long. Leave the west elevator for me and the camera guy. Leave this tape running.

Just do it. I’m not going to tell you again. I want everyone out in the next two minutes exactly. Go. Now.

So. From the moment he set foot in the Sudan, the question has always been: why? As of this moment, it’s a question that may be asked nearly two thousand million times, for each and every human soul released from its journey among the living of this world, yet it need only be asked once for all who remain. Two billion lie still unburied or unburned, yet he continues, and the Avatar does not act without reason. Tell us, O Chosen One, why do we die still? Because obedience is not enough! Because God sees the evil in your hearts. You are bound by time, but God is timeless. He sees not what you do, but what you have done, what you shall do. He sees the mind cruel but cunning, the mind embracing violence or deceit as means to its ends, the mind employing death or domination or exploitation for pleasure or profit, but suspending its crimes while God’s Hammer walks among us. He sees the mind pernicious but patient, hiding, biding its time, awaiting the day its malign purpose can emerge. There is a terrible truth in this. This mind is not a special case. This is the mind of man. From one to another is but a matter of degree. Deep within, you are slave to the self, the thirst that may never be slaked, the hunger that grows more ravenous with every feeding, the lust that devours its own satiety, leaving an endless void. Who cannot see beyond the self cannot see God. Who cannot see God is doomed. Behold! The Avatar walks among you, seeking the righteous. All others shall be burnt away.

I see my accomplice is here.

Ready?

Rolling?

Ok, let’s take a little walk.

Just keep me somewhere in the frame if you can.

Wow, you propped it open? Good thinking.

Going down baby, all the way down.

Sounds like everybody’s clearing out.

Just a precaution. I’m going to play a little game with Uncle Blue and I don’t want any collateral damage.

You’ll see.

I don’t know. Just a joke I guess. I do get the personal touch.

Well, people seem to forget about the millions of people who were saved in individual scenarios. Those were personal too, he was acting directly to prevent harm to one particular person. It was kind of a shock to find out some of those same people got cooked in the last few days.

After he took the kid down, he came over to check on me.

I’ve never stopped wondering.

Howdy. How many of you guys in here?

No, I just need the key to the weapons locker.

Just give me the fucking key!

Jeezuz.

Ok, you can clear out.

You better hope so. Ok, let’s see. Move back a step, I’m gonna push this desk over in the corner.

No, I got it. I’m gonna have you put the camera on it.

That’s not really high enough, is it?

Not really. Let me try the chair.

Hmm.

Well, I don’t want it to fall off if it gets bumped or something, but it seems pretty good, you think?

God I hope not.

Get as much of the room as you can.

No, that’s perfect.

Ok, that’s all I need.

No, go ahead. In fact, is there any way you can lock it as you go out?

So they have to walk around, big deal. I just don’t want anyone to wander in here before I’m ready.

Great. Thanks.

Yeah.

Ok everyone, here’s what’s going on. I have a little game to play. More of an experiment I guess. Let’s see, what’ve those guys got in here? Ooo, sweet, forty four mag. Nice. Perfect finish. Too big though. Overkill. Get it? Ha ha. No, here it is, three fifty seven, blued. How appropriate! Loaded. Perfect. Here we go then. See, it occurred to me that the Hammer never does anything but make people’s head’s explode. Right? He never touches a damn thing, never does anything with his hands. His only skill seems to be emitting whatever it is he emits, so I thought I’d give him a little dilemma to work out. Since I just can’t take the dreams any more, this seemed like the perfect time to try it. See, here’s the puzzle: If the only way you can stop people from doing things is to blow their brains out, how do you stop a guy from blowing his brains out? Hey Blue, I bet I can beat you to it! Ready? Three, two, one . .