Now, if you really want free stuff without having to depend
totally on chance, here is my Halloween treat to you: I have included in this
post an excerpt from The Fool’s Illusion.
So you can get a sweet taste of what the book is like with out having to pay a
single penny. Better yet, the excerpt consists of an entire story. It’s not
just a scene that suddenly drops off at the end leaving you hanging on the
noose of knowledge and curiosity. The story is definitely fitting for the
season, both for Halloween and the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration that
comes two days after.
I’ll leave you with that for now. Have a Happy Halloween and
Days of the Dead (for those who celebrate the latter)! And take scare.
* Price may not include shipping/handling or tax.
Planet of the Dead
By Steven Rose, Jr.
Note from the author: I apologise for the mixed font. For some reason the font tool was not working on Blogger apparently. Hopefully it will get fixed soon.
The moaning wind of the cemetery colony was
already attempting to bury the landing pad that Buster Ross had lowered his ship
on in the surrounding, desert sand. The
funerary agent from Earth ran quickly toward the looming nearly-all-glass
funerary building both to escape the storm as well as to meet the master of
this literally dead planet. Both pad and
building were surrounded by tomb stones from nearly every region on Earth, many
of the stones rolling with the dunes and sinking into the dark of the
hollows. They were stone and metal
crops, some of them being simple plaques or stump-size stones barely rising up
out of the ground, others more fully risen.
Yet a seed lay below each of those stone and metal crops, a seed known
as the human corpse. The official
name of the planet was Memoria. The
Global Government on Earth wanted to be sure its name was as honorable sounding
as possible to the ones buried there.
Some people on Earth called the planet New Giza for its millions of
tombs as well as for its desert geography.
However, many people called the planet by a derivative of Ancient
Egypt’s City of the Dead; many people called it the Planet of the Dead.
#
Immediately arriving at the front door,
Ross was stopped by a cold electronic voice: “State your purpose for entering,
please.”
Ross said, “I’m here to see a Mr. Juan
Moreno.”
The electronic voice said, “Thank you. Now please state your purpose for your visit
with Mr. Moreno.” While it spoke, Ross noticed
that it generated from a speaker on a small, white box framed within the
all-glass wall to the left of the door. A tiny bead of an “eye” glowed red in the
upper center of the box.
Ross said, “To pick up some bodies and
transport them back to Earth.”
The electronic guard said, “Thank you. Now give your name, please.” Ross did that, impatience beginning to well
up from within. Then the automated guard
told him to state who sent him. And the
guard’s questions went on like this another five times. Then a red beam of light streamed out from
the ruby eye and scanned him for weapons.
When the red light disappeared a loud click sounded from the double
front doors and they slid open. Ross
entered when suddenly a 20-something girl walked up to him.
Her
face was very pale due to the amount of makeup covering it, and she wore dark
gray eye-shadow. Her eye lashes were
long and black, and, likewise, her hair was also black and shiny. However, although her features were Hispanic,
one could tell that her very strait hair was an unnatural color. She reminded him of people he had seen on the
Net in encyclopedia illustrations and black-and-white video clips to articles
on 19th century society and ones on the 20th century’s horror movie
industry. It was as if she had walked
out of a scene from one of those weird, ancient films. She wore a long, black tail coat with a tight
black satin vest underneath and underneath that a snug, white 19th
century shirt. On her head she wore a
black derby. The pants she wore were
tight, shiny black stirrups that seemed to merge with the polished, black
Victorian gentleman’s shoes she wore with the raised heels which made the shoes
look more feminine. Her appearance was
almost melodramatic.
“Mr.
Ross?” she said, with a dead expression.
Ross
smiled and stammered, “Tha-, that’s right.
I’m here to See Mr. Moreno.” He
did not expect to be greeted by such an odd character as this girl, if it could
be called a greeting. Saying nothing
else, the girl walked over to a somewhat crescent moon-shaped desk that
appeared to be built into the marble floor since both were white. There she pressed a key and spoke into a
microphone in which, like the key, was built into the desk. “Mr. Moreno, Mr. Ross has arrived.” As it was when had spoken to Ross, her tone
was expressionless. A man’s voice
faintly sounded from an inconspicuous speaker on the desk saying he would be
down shortly.
After
that, the girl said nothing else.
Instead, she keyed information into the desk’s terminal without looking
up while Ross waited. Her movement and
pose were so repetitious and monotonous, they seemed robotic.
#
“Mr.
Ross?” echoed a man’s voice from above.
Ross, startled flashed his head up toward the direction of the voice
which was the gleaming, winding metal stair well. At the top of it was a man who looked to be
around Ross’s age, 60.
Ross
answered, “Yes?”
“I’m
Manuel Moreno.”
Ross
introduced himself, although awkwardly.
He was shocked at Mr. Moreno’s appearance more than he had been the
girl’s. Moreno’s skin was a very pale brown, his gray
hair disheveled. He wore a black,
Victorian suit. So many youngsters are
bad enough, but such an appearance is way out of the norm for a man of any age,
thought Ross, proudly patting his short-cut, neatly combed hair.
When
Moreno reached
the bottom of the stairs, Ross walked up to him and the two men shook
hands. Moreno said, “Delighted to have you here, Mr.
Ross.” His smile was faint. Then gesturing to the stairway, he said,
“Would you kindly walk this way, please?”
Ross
walked up the stairs, hesitantly, looking back toward Moreno out of his eye’s corner.
#
Juan
Moreno held the door open and gestured to Ross to enter. Victorian and neo-Gothic furnishings made the
room appear more a study than an office.
One of the few exceptions to the old-style atmosphere was the transparent
wall behind the funerary manager’s desk.
It looked out onto the fields of grave stones.
After
Moreno shut the
door, he offered Ross a seat in front of the desk lined with armies of
skeletons and skulls. Many of these were idealized with the thick, black lines
of features in the style of the Mexican Dias des los Muertos. Several others
were more realistic appearing. More of
these figurines appeared in various places on his book shelf. Some of the life-size skulls looked so real they
looked as if they had just recently been shoveled up from the graves
outside. Panting, Ross more than gladly
accepted Moreno’s
offer. He was too used to taking
elevators. However, Moreno had no reaction at all to the walk; he
breathed as normally as if he had not even gone anywhere.
Moreno said, “May I offer you a drink, Mr.
Ross?” Although he spoke with a tone of
weariness, he sounded much more inviting than the receptionist downstairs.
After
several pants, Ross, answered, “I would like that a lot, thank you.”
“What would you like?”
Ross
said, “Whatever your favorite is, as long as it’s thirst quenching.”
After
sitting down at his desk, Moreno
grabbed the receiver to his long necked 1920’s phone and ordered an employee to
bring them a bottle of amontillado and two glasses. He said, “We have received news, Mr. Ross,
that the descendants of some of our residents have contacted you.”
Ross paused. Then he said, “Residents?”
Moreno
looked down, pausing and then said, “It is, you may say, a euphemism for
the bodies that rest here.”
Ross stared with bewilderment at Moreno for several
seconds before saying, “But they’re already called units, Mr. Moreno, why would
they need to be called anything else?”
Moreno
looked away from Ross, tightening his lips.
Then he smiled, saying, “We like to refer to them as if they were still
living since we get so lonesome here on Memoria. It is only myself, and my two
attendants—Luther and Felicia--who notified me of your arrival. Both serve as my secretaries, pall bearers,
caretakers and morticians. Aside from
the three of us, it is only a few gardeners, computer technicians, and,
although for an impermanent span of time, some construction workers who are working
on my new house. That is not very many
people for a planet that is twice as large as Earth.”
“Mr. Moreno, did I hear you correctly?” Ross
asked, bewildered. “Did you just call
your attendants pall bearers, caretakers, morticians?”
Moreno
froze a stare towards Ross for several seconds before saying, “Forgive me. Those are words that have been out of use for
hundreds of years. We use a very unique
manner of speech in the funeral business here on Memoria, Mr. Ross. It consists of words that you will no longer
find except in ancient, or near ancient at the least, literature,” he gestured
a hand to the ceiling-high book case to his left. The case held copies of titles that had been
out of print for hundreds of years. Although the titles were still talked
about, they were only done so for reasons of historical reference. Nobody read bound books such as the ones on Moreno’s shelves for
leisure anymore, books from the gothic and horror forms of storytelling.
Eyeing the books, Ross said, “Mr. Moreno,
those are amazing. But isn’t it much
easier, space efficient and safer for the value of these hardbound books to
read . . .” his look of confusion turned to one of coldness as he studied the
titles on the spines, “those, on computer? I mean it seems like such a waste of money
when you can read literature for free on the Network.” The titles indicated dark, threatening
things: titles such as Poe’s Tales of Terror, Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lovecraft’s The Dunwhich Horror and Other Tales,
among many, many others of their kind.
Moreno
said, “Mr. Ross, the Network does not have these books. It only makes available the books that
society desires. If a story from
centuries ago is not felt to relate to our times, then the Network ‘makes’ it
relate to our times by rewriting it. And
so we are not reading these authors’ stories,” he gestured a hand toward
the book case again, “but those of society at large. In addition to that, reading is more than
just comprehending the words on the page; it is the holding of the piece in
your hand and touching the beautiful pages cut from a dark woodland that is an
enormous part of the reading experience.”
“Well I don’t know about that,” said Ross,
“but what’s the point in reading a story if it doesn’t relate to the problems
that we have to deal with today?”
Moreno
countered, “Mr. Ross, the stories of several centuries ago do relate to the
problems of the present. We encounter
the same basic problems today as our ancestors of several centuries ago did. Though our robbers and murderers that we fear
so much no longer commit their crimes on dark streets nor in dark estates,
though they now commit them on the Network, or in the average size or smaller
home, the same basic cause and effect of crime still lurk in our universe—the
cause being the motivations of crime, the effect being the fear that crime
brings forth. Those two things do not
change. Motivation and fear, both of
these stem from the human condition. And
we can only understand those problems by examining the past and relating the
ones of the present to those that occurred in other forms centuries ago.”
Ross said, “Mr. Moreno, the crimes are the problems,
not the motivations, not the fears of the crime, but the crimes themselves.”
“My apologies, Mr. Ross,” interrupted Moreno, “but I think I
should make ourselves aware that we should discuss the corpses that you came
for; we are very busy here on Memoria.”
Ross said, “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re going off
topic. I have to be back to Earth by
tomorrow, myself.” Ross snapped open his
briefcase and pulled out several papers documenting the evidence of the
corpses’ living descendants. He began
explaining them when he was interrupted by a pounding at the door.
Moreno
shouted, “Bring it in.”
The door swung open revealing a young man
who appeared to be in his early 20s. He almost
looked like he could be a twin brother to the girl, Felicia; his way of dress
and bodily features were very similar to hers except the shoes did not have the
heightened heals and the hair was a lot shorter.
Moreno
said, “Oh, Luther, I thought you were Felicia with the amontillado.” Then he said sharply, “What do you need?”
Luther said indifferently, “They found
another fresh corpse.”
Moreno
shouted with a shocked look, “Good Lord,” and jumped up from his chair. He asked earnestly, “In another grave? Another open one?”
Luther nodded, his powdered face without
expression.
Moreno
hung his head and complained to himself, “Why, damn it all, did they have to do
this so early?” Then he turned back to
the young man, saying, “Whose body was it this time, Luther?”
“One of the construction workers.”
Moreno
asked, “Would the other workers happen to know what he had been doing out
there?”
Luther said in his expressionless tone,
“They do not know.”
Moreno
turned to Ross. “This has been the third
person on the planet who has turned up dead and in a grave. First two of my technicians and now a
construction worker. At first we thought
the murders were being committed by somebody hiding out in the graveyard areas.
. . .” He inhaled deeply and then
exhaled, “Until now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ross.
“The construction workers never go
out to the graves,” said Moreno,
grimly. Then he turned to Luther. “Was
there any sign of the method of the murder?
Were there hand marks on his throat like the two previous men?”
Luther said, “We do not know; we have not
pulled him out yet.”
Moreno
commanded, “Well, then we shall pull him out now.” Then he turned to Ross. “I apologize greatly
for you having to experience this matter, Mr. Ross.”
Keeping in mind Moreno’s unusual archaic style of speech and
outdated clothes, Ross said, “This is no game now?”
Moreno
said, sounding slightly annoyed, “This is no game; men have actually been
turning up murdered here, Mr. Ross.”
Ross corrected, “You mean there have been homicides
on Memoria?”
Moreno
paused staring at Ross before saying with a tone of irritation, “Yes. And the terrible thing is--or maybe the good
thing, depending on how you view the
matter--the murderer is among us.
He can only be among us. We can
catch him. As I have already said, Mr.
Ross, there are only a few of us on this planet; the killer can only be one of
us.”
Ross asked, “Have you called the Police?”
“I am the police on Memoria,” Moreno said. “I have gone
through the police training, and I am authorized to make an arrest of the
suspect if we ever find him or her. This
is why the Global Government has not assigned any police or even mere security
guards here on Memoria. As we all know,
Earth has been in economic crisis since the planetary colonial war. The only security we have here, aside from
myself, is Sphinx, our automated guard at the front door who asked you to
identify yourself.”
Ross said, “Yes, and she did a really good
job of it. She played 20 Questions with
me 20 hundred times, which included ‘state your reason for moving the bodies,
please.’” He said this with a slight nasal sound to imitate the guard’s
electronic voice. “Come on, why does security
need to know that? What other reasons
would people like myself have to come to a planet of dead people we don’t even
know?”
“Forgive me, Mr. Ross, but I recently
programmed her to ask those questions to anybody who comes to the gate from
outside due to the incidents I had just indicated: two men have been murdered;
now, as we have just been told, there is a third. We thought the murderer may have incoming
connections from Earth. Like our mother
planet, we must use caution when visitors come to Memoria.”
The
Earth funerary agent said, sarcastically, “So like on Earth, everyone’s suspect
when a crime is committed here?”
Moreno
said with a faint smile of delight, “Suspect! You’re learning the
language of Memoria after all, Mr. Ross! If not that, then perhaps Earth has
not lost all honesty in her languages.”
As he finished speaking, he caressed a set of Sherlock Holmes novels on one
of the shelves. Then he slid open a
drawer from his desk and keyed in a call for Earth on his satellite phone within
it and reported the murder for the Funerary Department to put on file.
#
As
Moreno, his two
attendants, Ross, and the construction crew foreman approached the burial site,
the Earth funerary agent and foreman were the only two who were breathing heavily
with exhaustion. Ross said, “I think it
would’ve been better to have taken the buggy, Mr. Moreno. You people must keep in great shape; I’m ready
to die.” He looked around at the
tombstones. Then he said, “But if I do,
please don’t bury me here; I have known family still living on Earth,
thank you.”
Moreno suggested, “You people need to stop
depending on so much mechanical transportation; Earth’s become too dependent on
it.”
The
body lay in the open coffin at the bottom of the freshly dug grave. The corpse seemed to be frozen in terror,
eyes wide and mouth gaped open. It
looked as though it had seen something too horrible to exist. It made Ross’s stomach sick to the point
where he had to swing his head away from it.
Moreno asked the construction foreman, “Mr.
Henriksen, do you or any of your men have any notion of how long he had been away from the worksite before
you discovered him here?”
The
foreman said, mournfully, “The last time any of us had seen him was just a little
before dawn this morning. He was eating breakfast with all of us and
then went out for his morning smoke as usual, after that we never saw him
again.” He took a deep, quivering
swallow of breath and exhaled, “Until now.”
Moreno further inquired, “He does not often come
all the way out here to have his smoke?”
Henriksen
said, “Not that any of us know of. He
often just stands right outside the dining caravan to do that.”
Moreno asked, “And none of you saw him out there
when you went off to work?”
The
foreman shook his head.
Moreno thanked and dismissed him and then turned to
his two caretakers, Luther and Felicia, saying, “Apparently, this murder
occurred just outside the dining caravan and who ever did the killing did so
silently and quickly. Take the pulley, raise
him up and have it transport him to the morgue.
We will perform an autopsy on him later.” Then he turned to Ross saying, “I do not know
what the cause of such trouble on Memoria is.
Suddenly within the past two weeks there have been murders. And each
victim’s body has been used to replace a resident taken from his grave.”
Ross
said, with suspicion, “Mr. Moreno, you keep saying ‘murder’ rather than
‘homicide’. ‘Murder’ has not been in use
for centuries. Why do you use this
outdated jargon?”
Moreno stared hard at Mr. Ross for several seconds
before saying, “As I have already said, Mr. Ross, we get very lonely up here on
Memoria. We like to use language that makes
our lives and work exciting.”
“You
act like incidents such as this are games of some sort,” Ross said, gesturing to
the open grave where the bone-white mechanical hand of the pulley was beginning
to raise the corpse. “Someone has just
been killed and you turn it into entertainment!”
Moreno said, “Mr. Ross, when I said we like to use
language that makes our lives and work more exciting, I was not referring to
entertainment; I was referring to the living of life itself. Very few
people have actually lived life itself for the past several hundred
years, Mr. Ross. Too many people have
lived their material wealth instead, their automation-made possessions--their
cars, their computers, their virtual vacations, their virtual gyms; nobody
lives life in its natural form anymore!”
“What
does speaking in all these outdated terms have to do with natural life?” asked
Ross, confused.
Moreno said, “These terms, Mr. Ross, indicate that
natural life can easily be ended by Death at anytime, and so it
indicates the value of life.
When people are always speaking the practical and technical language of
today they are only reminded of what is meant to keep preventing death, making them
forget the true value of life whose very frailty gives it that value. And that is why I am not a man of the present
world and culture, Mr. Ross, and neither are my caretakers. We live in the days when lighting at night did not come as easily as it does in the
present day, and only candles and
oil lamps provided one’s source of light after the sun had descended to the
other side of the earth. Is not fire all
we need?”
“You
said it again: ‘caretakers’. That gives
a very negative connotation to a monument ground to most people now days.”
Suddenly,
Luther called out from the edge of the hollowed grave, “Mr. Moreno, hand marks
on the neck like the other ones.”
Moreno hung his head in disappointment and
disbelief for several seconds. Finally,
he lifted it again and commanded to Luther, “Take him to the morgue.”
Ross
exclaimed to Moreno,
“How the hell can that be? No one from
the caravan heard any commotion.”
Moreno hesitated before he said, “Whoever killed
him must have had the strength to kill him before he could scream out. Therefore, Mr. Ross, the murderer was not
human.”
Ross
said, “I thought there was no native life on the planet.”
Ignoring
this, Moreno
said, “Returning to your argument against politically ‘incorrect’ speech, Mr.
Ross, I must make it known to you that I have my own ideas and beliefs of what
a graveyard should be like. And as I
have just said, I am not a man of the present. That is why I took the position of undertaker
here on Memoria, or, if you prefer, since you don’t speak our language, monument
ground manager.”
Ross
stammered, “This, this is, a little unusual.
I, I have to say, very unusual.
Such language hasn’t been used for centuries. . . it’s so antiquated . .
.“
”Yes,
it is, because, you see, ever since Earth forbade its people to speak that
dialect, people like ourselves here on Memoria who still speak it have been
treated like old people who have no significance to Earth’s societies. Therefore we are antiquated and
so are of no use to Earth’s advanced technocratic societies and neither is our
dialect.
“Earth’s
societies felt that our poetic manner of speaking gave a sense of discomfort
and tension for the loved ones of the . . . dead, as we, whether you people
like it or not, refer to them here. If
we were not treated like old fashioned outcasts, then we were treated like young trouble-making
punks. I, of course, am not of youth
anymore but I have a youthful state of mind, the very same state that my two gothic
caretakers have, and they are of youth. The ultra liberals hated us for wanting to
leave unknown corpses on Earth because they felt it took away space for the
living, especially the living who were very poor and who needed housing that
they could afford and facilities that could give charity to them. The conservatives hated us not only for
wanting to leave the bodies of unknown people in earth that capital-oriented
developers wanted to build over, but also merely for the way we dressed.
“Both
conservatives and liberals saw the dead who preceded them as non-existent
merely because their bodies had no documented identification. And so as with the people buried here on this
remote desert planet, we do not exist to Earth either; we are just as dead as
the buried residents are.”
The
whole time Moreno
had been speaking, Ross’s face was paling and his eyes were wide. Moreno
snapped, “Now I know most definitely that you are one of them,
Mr. Ross, one of the Earthlings who side with the material/technological masses
who are so centered on self gain that they will not consider the bodies of the
ancestors who have gone before them.” Then
he smiled and asked mockingly, “Do you realize how pale you are? You look like I have just told you that . . .
I killed . . . somebody.” Moreno’s mocking
expression turned to a stunned and angry one.
“So simply because I speak, a ‘foreign’ language, Mr. Ross, you think I
killed those people? That is exactly the
reason why people like myself and my attendants came to this planet, Mr. Ross,
because everybody on
globalized Earth who lives a little bit of a different lifestyle is under
suspicion when something goes wrong.
Well now that you suspect me, Mr. Ross, and are going to report me, may
I give you a little tour of that house I’m having built? I am certain you already think I am mad.”
Ross
said, “Yes I’m aware that you’re mad, and so am I, because you’re taking this
homicide very lightly when you’re all so willing too show me your
new house. Just what do you need that
new house for anyway? You have a free
one from the Global Government.”
Moreno reemphasized, “Once again, Mr. Ross, I am
not like the rest of the people of society.
I desire an older style of architecture.
And there is very little we can do about today’s murder; the
representatives from the victim’s funerary service on Earth will not be here for
a couple of days. The autopsy can wait, so
that gives me plenty of time to show you the new house.”
Ross
said, mockingly and with accusation, “But you said one of you here on this
world has got to be behind these homicides.
If you don’t find out who that is now who will be next?”
“Mr.
Ross, my attendants who have worked for me for a sufficient period of time and,
therefore, whom I trust, will keep an eye out on the area. If anything looks or sounds suspicious
they will notify me immediately.”
“Do
you have a communicator?”
“Of
course. All of the Government’s
facilities are required to have one of those damn things.”
Ross
corrected, “No, do you have a portable communicator with you?”
Moreno said, with sudden comprehension, “Oh. A portable communicator is a device too much
of the present, Mr. Ross. No, I do not
have one.”
Ross
snapped, “Because you’re not a man of the present, right, Mr. Moren? Because if you were, then you would care about keeping up with today’s
technology for emergencies like this!”
Raising
his voice authoritatively, Moreno
said, “Mr. Ross, devices such as your portable communicators, and
much of the other damned technology that has grown along with them, including
condensed Network versions of our classic literature, is the cause of murders
such as the one that has occurred this day.
Because of this technology, no living soul cares about life anymore, Mr.
Ross, because there is no life. There is
only the soulless machine. And because
of that there is no mystery.
If there is no life, there is no mystery!”
Ross
shouted, pointing toward himself, “We are life, Mr. Moreno. And so it’s our duty to take care of
ourselves and preserve ourselves as a people, but we can’t do that if we let a
killer run around loose! Maybe you’re
too secular to understand that!
Maybe you take too much advantage of the world’s freedom of belief; maybe
you’re just too damn atheist to care
about the life of humanity!”
Moreno said, “Mr. Ross, that is exactly the
point of my argument: because there is no life, as in natural life,
not electronic or biotechnological imitations of it, there is no longer any
concept of or belief in the supernatural and, therefore, the mysterious. There is not even any belief in the soul and
therefore the consciousness of the other person. Therefore do not dare to blame
me and call me an uncaring atheist for not owning an evil device such as these
damned portable communicators that basically cause people to avoid natural
life, life the concrete experience of our flesh and blood existence, the
experience of life as being with people, conversing with them in
present time and space rather than just sending apathetic, abstract information
to people by way of a cold, unfeeling machine!”
“Mr.
Moreno, technology was advanced to solve the world’s problems
such as crime like the one that happened this morning. It is a sin against humanity to not keep up
with technological advancements all because you’re only concerned about your
own aesthetic interest! Or should I say atheistic
interest?”
Moreno took a deep quivering breath. Then, gritting his teeth, he said, “Mr. Ross,
I am not an atheist and technology has saved none of my family! Death has saved my family, Mr.
Ross, Death! He called them through the
disease that was inherent in all of my family and they went forth!”
Moreno hung his head again, lifted it back up and
then said, “Mr. Ross, can I show you the house that I’m building?”
“Please,”
said Ross, disbelievingly.
“Follow me.”
As
the two men started walking back toward the facility, Ross asked, “By the way,
Mr. Moreno, if you’re not an atheist, what religion do you practice?”
The
funerary director stopped. He paused staring hard at Ross. Then he said, sarcastically, “I thought
religion had no place in government, in our employments, Mr. Ross. Should it be of any concern to you what my
religious beliefs are? Now, if
you still want to see my house, then I shall show it to you, if not, then we
shall retrieve the bodies you came for.”
Ross
said with suspicion, “I would like to see the house, Mr. Moreno.”
#
They
crossed the symmetrical-style front yard with the perfectly trimmed lawn and
trees in order to get to the back of the government-made funerary building
where a small, narrow gate stood. The
shadowy structure could be seen looming in the distance before Moreno opened the tan, smoothly painted,
wrought iron gate. As the gate swung
open absent of any creaks, the shadowy structure was revealed to be a partially
built medieval castle. The portions of
walls that had already been built around the skeleton consisted of all storm
gray stones chaotically masoned together.
There was a tower in the front part of the castle. The whole structure looked like some half
decaying brontosaurus or giant serpent lying on top of a high Egyptian sand
dune, looking as though it were raising its long neck from a
fossilized hibernation. A hibernation that any sane person would pray that it
would never wake up from.
Ross
gasped, “What is this?”
Moreno said, “It’s my house, my
house!” He said this with a wide smile,
a smile that was like the sudden burst of the sun coming out of the clouds on a
dark grey day. It did not match his
overall morbid character. Then the sun
sunk back into the clouds when he continued in a bitter tone, “Not the Government’s.”
Ross
said, “No one builds houses like these any more.”
“I
am very well aware of that; that is the precise reason why I am having this one
built.”
Ross
criticized, “I have never seen anything like this. Not in real life. The only places I’ve ever saw such horrible
architecture is on the Network at certain sites. Honestly, Mr. Moreno, this is
very disrespectful to the people who are buried here. It gives a monument ground a very negative
connotation.”
Mr.
Moreno said, “That is the problem with society, Mr. Ross. Man has always been afraid of death; he has
always seen it as an arch enemy of humanity; he has always seen it as the
ultimate menace as though it should never have existed. And so throughout history, he has identified
it through the dark, deteriorating haunted castle in our literature and
films. But ironically, Mr. Ross, it is a
part of life. Without death,
there can be no life.
“People
always try to put off that which is infinitely greater than themselves: they
get surgery done on their body parts to prevent themselves from aging (there
are no more wise old men or wise old women; in fact, people move as far away as
possible from their own parents and grandparents because their parents and
grandparents represent the death that they fear since the elderly are so near
it); they put chemicals on their scalps to prevent balding or they surgically
have them replaced with the scalps of the dead who did not have enough respect
for their own bodies and so in their wills gave their parts away to strangers;
they put manufactured remedies in their hair to ward off graying; they go as
far as having machine organs put into them to avoid their natural deaths! They try to cheat Death, as the old
saying goes. But, Mr. Ross, history all
the way up to this point has proven that you cannot thwart Death’s plans! But scientists are constantly trying to
thwart them. They are now going to the
extreme of trying to locate the microscopic organ that stops the overall
process of the body’s functioning, that which ‘brings’ about death, so they can
remove even it.”
Ross
said, “Mr. Moreno, all religions, or nearly all at least, believe in the
preservation of life. And that is why
most religions try to prevent death.”
“Mr.
Ross,” Moreno
insisted, “Death is Life!”
Ross remembered a biblical
saying similar to Moreno’s
last statement. It suddenly dawned on
him what religion Moreno
practiced. However, he asked to make
sure, “Mr. Moreno, you having a Spanish surname, I would like to say are Catholic. But I have big feeling you’re not.”
Moreno said mockingly, but cheerfully, “May I
remind you, Mr. Ross, Earth is a politically correct world, and it is
politically incorrect to stereotype certain cultures.”
Ross
verified, “So you’re not Catholic?”
Moreno
shook his head with a proud grin like a child who thinks he’s out-smarted an
adult, and then said, “My religion, if you must know--” then his grin turned to
one of a solemn expression, “and if you tell the Government and they get
suspicious like yourself, then I am willing to die for my religion--my religion
is a break-off of my ancestral Catholicism, Mr. Ross.”
Ross
guessed, although he knew he was wrong, “You or your family were converts to
Protestantism?”
The
proud childish grin grew back. “No, it
is much newer than any Protestant sect, although there have been similar
religions in the most ancient of times.”
“You
don’t even worship God,” Ross said.
“Not
that god, Mr. Ross. You people were
wrong about God nearly all of history.”
“You
worship . . . Death,” he said, as much as he dreaded to, with a cold gasp, eyes
wide, face pale like the one of the corpse that the bone white pulley had rolled
away with. Then he choked out, “Only a
worshiper of Death could commit such a homicide as the one committed today.”
Moreno
said, “You dare accuse me of a crime solely based on my religion, Mr.
Ross? That is complete bigotry and
religious intolerance. The function of
the World Constitution is to protect us from that. Let me reveal to you, Mr. Ross, that we, the
worshipers of Death, believe that He must take his own course. We touch nobody and nothing. We do not make machines that bring on death as
people on Earth make machines that prevent it.
We do not make machines for capital punishment. As Catholics say that their god is the only
one who can punish by death, so do we say the same about our God. We do not even make or give support to
euthanasiac devices; one must accept the form of death that our God brings; His
will is His will.”
At
this, Ross gasped, “You would let ill people suffer, you cold blooded
bastard!”
“We
are not of cold blood in our beliefs, Mr. Ross, because we prevent acts such as
euthanasia in order to save poor suicidal souls from even a worse suffering,
the suffering of eternal hell. Therefore
we do not stop Death in His course, nor do we influence Him to speed up his
course. We leave be the will of Death,
Mr. Ross. That is our doctrine.”
Ross
interrogated, “Who’s ‘our,’ Mr. Moreno?
You and who else? Where’s the
rest of your congregation? Just you
three? Those two overly pale face,
juvenile, gothic punks that work for you?”
Moreno’s face flamed red as he commanded,
“Enough!” Then in a more calm yet firm
voice, he continued, “I am through with your insults on our planet.”
“The
Government’s planet, Mr. Moreno! You
don’t rule this planet, the Global Government does, and the people who support
it.”
Moreno said, “And we the people who live
here do support it, Mr. Ross, and since we live here you are insulting
our home planet merely because of our ways.”
“Yes,
that’s right! I am insulting your ways,
Mr. Moreno! You people take the time to
glorify your ‘god’, Death, but take no compassion on the ones your god ‘takes’
from the universe; in fact, you show even less compassion to the ones who are
still alive, the ones who need euthanasia, for instance.”
“Much
in the same way you take no compassion for the ones you send here to get
buried because nobody on Earth cares about them; you relocate them, exile
them to be precise--but you dare not use that term because you’re ‘not inhumane
people’--you exile them off of their own planet like the 19th
century Americans did with the Native Americans with their land and like the 20th
and 21st century Americans did with my Mexican ancestors in their
south- western United States homeland. You do that because the living don’t remember
the names of the dead or how they relate to the dead, and so you tear
out their graveyards, their neighborhoods, and transport them over here like
garbage, Mr. Ross, like garbage to be dumped in a remote Gehenna!”
“We
transport them here because the majority voted for that kind of method to
make room for the living.”
Moreno said, “That is all you people are concerned
with: that which is alive and present.
The people of Earth have no concern for the past nor for the
people who made it! Earth fears the past; Earth fears that if the
past is remembered, then it will be relived and so will stop material progress
and keep the wrong people in power; Earth fears that the past will haunt society
forever. But, Mr. Ross, Earth forgets
too easily what gave us our ideas for the present--the past. If there is no past, there is no present and
thereafter no future. Without the past, and so without our dead
ancestors who made it, there is no meaning for any of us. We forget our past too much and everything
and everybody that make it up. We forget the events that made our present day
events, we forget our ancestors, we forget our ancestries, and so
we forget ourselves to the point where we are just a people floating
around in an infinite, black, eternal midnight
universe! We, my two caretakers and I,
may be a minority in our religion, Mr. Ross, but we know where our faith lies.”
“In
death!” Ross barked.
Moreno raised his voice, “Yes, Mr. Ross, in our
eternal, old friend Death! Our tour
stops here. You will pick up your bodies
now and leave. Remember, I hold
authority over who comes and goes here, Mr. Ross. And I do not think you are the kind of person
who should come here. Now get your
bodies and be gone.”
“That’s
true, Mr. Moreno, you do have authority over this planet, I’m sorry to
admit. But I will be back
with higher authority from Earth, Mr. Moreno, do you understand that? I will be back with higher authority to
investigate this case!” He was yelling
near to the point of
losing his
breath. “Because this is all a disgrace
to turn a place of burial into one’s own aesthetic theme park. Building a haunted castle on a monument
planet! You’re sick!”
#
The
two attendants met Ross at the front gate, Luther saying to him, “The bodies
are loaded.”
Ross
thanked him without expression and headed back to the ship through the moaning
wind.
#
Luther
and Felicia met Moreno
in his study. He asked, “Did you load
all three of them?”
Luther
said, indifferently, that they had.
Moreno said, “The weapons too?”
Dead
of expression, Felicia answered in the affirmative.
Then
Moreno said,
“Good. It will be the only way that
Earth will ever believe us. Earth, that
foolish world with its beliefs merely in the so called here-and-now, merely in
that which can be explained and rationalized, only that which can be shown in
the light! Well the people of Earth are
going to find out that all cannot have light shed on it, not even on things
that shed blood, and that we are not above God no matter how advanced in
science and technology we are! There is
still mystery in this universe--” As he spoke he was looking out the window,
and then suddenly slumped down onto the floor with no resistance.
Luther
checked the old man’s pulse. He looked
up at Felicia saying, “Death has taken him.”
Without
expression, Felicia said, “Do we have time to embalm him?”
Luther
looked out the window for several seconds and then said, “We will have to put
him in deep freeze. We can’t lose any
time. The three generals will be back on
Earth soon expecting the squadrons and troops. . . .” He glared at the endless fields of grave
stones as he continued, “Whom we have yet to awaken.”
#
Ross’s
ship was already fleeing through midnight
black space several miles out of Memoria’s atmosphere when he and his co-pilot heard
the sounds from below. The sounds were like three coffin lids dropping. Ross, confused, walked toward the elevator to
check them out.
The End
