Working Chapter 12 of my Is it for us alone? novel in progress

The memories were muddled and being actively hidden from the group. There was no method of coercion or force that could work given the nature of what was sought after, but the consciousnesses within Anders were all for understanding what had happened so there was plenty of help in seeking them out. Many memories surrounded the night in that bunker, where the fate of mankind was ultimately sealed. The only particularly notable one besides that of the three heads of state was that of the General Bradley Howerton, the loyal though somewhat blunt commander of the North American military and chief adviser to the President.

Howerton’s memories were easy to find and the first analysed by Anders and the ultimate jury he had assembled that included all human consciousness. He had no regrets. At the time he made the decision it was the only course he could see to preserving the human race – at least his part of the human race. There was no way he could have foreseen the actions of Anders, who was in his mind the true culprit here.

There was silence from the jury. They considered their next line of questioning in light of the General’s brazen bluntness.

“How is it that the systematic extermination of a third of the world’s population was the only course available? We’re other options even considered?”

Truly a question for the leaders rather than the General, but he took it and answered in his own way.

“There may have been solutions had there been a proper assessment of the risk a decade ago, but by the time we got to reviewing our available options, there was only one course. I was able to stand by my president in his decision as my view of the scenario, at the time, was that there had to be a cull in order for the race to survive. I’m afraid to say that it really was as simple as that.”

An answer that wasn’t truly an answer. Typical of those being accused that know their guilt deep done. Of course this was no ordinary interrogation and the jury knew all of these feelings that flew around now that they were so focussed on the general. It was just not possible to hide his emotions.

“We see that there is guilt nonetheless.”

“Of course. You may think me a brutish man, but I was only suggesting and supporting the course of action that we took as I truly believed it to be the correct course. Even as a soldier, or rather particularly as a soldier, I don’t take the idea of killing lightly and I idea of mass killing is that much worse. Still, something had to be done or we would have all died.”

A long silence pervaded throughout Anders body as he sat looking out over the sea. He felt almost peaceful though he knew what rumbled beneath the surfaces in the shadows of his mind. In other times a passerby would have thought he was a deep in meditation. He was very mindful, but it was his own culpability that he was mindful of.

This inquisition before the court of humanity was a gathering in order to fully understand the facts of the matter. Judgment had already been passed and the sentence handed out indiscriminately. Still those countless members of the jury needed to understand the how and the why, at least in so far as it was understood and interpreted by the individuals that were there. Truth was not something at issue here as lies weren’t possible when peering directly into a person’s consciousness. That doesn’t mean that others might not take issue with that truth.

“Most of us fail to understand this rationale. Did you originally suggest your doomsday scenario?”

It was less of a question and more of a lead to structure the thought pattern. “I did not,” came the response as expected.

“It was no doubt a politician with a mandate to protect his people and their interests.”

No comment or judgement from the General. He had his job. He was a tool and he gave his service to do what he thought was required to safeguard those under his charge.

“You could have objected. You knew the inherent difficulty in even completing the task so why was there no discussion of this and straight on to the planning!?”

“As you know and I have said, there was no other course in my mind, so objecting to state that the task would be difficult would be utterly pointless. I’m given a task which I create a strategy for and my men implement. If they had come to me before this had become a breaking point issue, I may have been able to provide some alternative advice, but by the stage the meeting was held there were no alternatives.”

A line of thought the jury hadn’t considered.

“We see that you think things could have been controlled with selective Marshal law. This does not seem to be the fairest approach that could have been taken, but it would surely have saved our lives. Do you truly believe it would have worked?”

“It may not have been fair, and I am only speculating based on what I know, but I believe it would have been controversial, costly in some lives, but not to the extent that was to be considered under the alternatives.”

The line of inquisition is fruitless. While deplorable the General’s actions may have been, there is no recourse and the only truth that he offers up is tainted by his strict point of view. The jury wants an apology, an act of acquiescence or some other form of admission that he is guilty. General Howerton had essentially used the classic line of denial. He was, he finally contended, “Only doing his job,” as many of his men also contended. Their moral compasses were shrouded by fear and the desire for self preservation. Were the jury sympathetic? They may well have acted exactly the same. In fact, it is more than likely that they would have. Still, there is always a stark contrast between the hypothetical and the actual. Many of those on the jury would have acted the same, but they did not act.

“We have no further use for your memories General.”

They could not destroy him, but instead they did the closest they could to banishment – they suppressed the General’s consciousness deep in the the murky sub conscious of Anders’ mind.

Working Chapter 11 of my Is it for us alone? novel in progress

Anders stood by the shore staring out to sea. It was as close to home as he could possibly get. To some part of him this was in fact home, but that wasn’t the part of him that was stirring at this moment. The Anders who left his home back in Marstrand, the home that he had not left until his fateful experiment proved catastrophically successful, was the part of him that was stirring. It was a rare occurrence on his long journey to put his kin to a right and peaceful rest. Anders had taken a back seat in his own body as he let others that swam in his consciousness and guided his body, like pilots taking over at each new harbour that they visited. This was too striking though and too similar to home for Anders to take a back seat to.

He wandered along the shore of this foreign place. For once he suppressed those other consciousnesses, a difficult feat even with all this time to have practiced, and allowed himself to walk the shore in his own mind and experience it singularly. The shore here wasn’t rocky as he was used to, but the water called to him. There had been plenty of sea throughout his journey, sure. Some of it was probably more like his home than this, but this was the first time that he drew himself out. He pondered that perhaps it was because he was in such a remote location now, an in between part of the world, that no one was clambering to the front of his mind and he was able to enjoy it for himself. For himself was perhaps the wrong term as his mind continued to swim with thoughts and feelings of others, even as he had control. He enjoyed it for as long as it lasted.

So far the journey had been a heavy one on his heart. His body, fit and young, had been able to absorb most of the physical strain and when he was tired he was quick to use his vast knowledge to find ways of making his movement from spot to spot more efficient. It was[ Where I stopped writing on 30/11

Tried to figure out how long it takes a human body to decompose, but couldn’t find an answer.

Realise there may be a fundamental flaw int he travelling around the world to bury bodies. As such, trying to reconcile that.s] not as if he could truly bury every person in the world, he knew this. Even with an eternity to spend on the task, the bodies would completely decompose before he made it all around the world. So it was that his journey was more one of memoriam rather than action. He was deep in thought throughout the journey, though clearly those thoughts were not always his own.

There were far too many evil thoughts swimming around in his head along with those that remembered the great and the good. There was haphazard evil such as Anders, along with the darkest dregs of humanity. Inevitably the voices of evil and their victims were suppressed – too hard to confront those horrors even after there is nothing to be done about them. It would have been some justice if the combined memories of humanity could have pulled together to understand this evil, but even a peak into it was too maddening for the group to consider a full excursion and do they were suppressed. It had weigh laid Anders and rendered him unconscious somewhere in Northern Italy close to lake Como. There were worse places to fall unconscious in the summer, but it was far from ideal losing control.

(He wakes up on the banks groggy but pulls himself together. He decides he must continue east rather than heading south through the rest of Italy even though his hearts pull him there)

Was it water that was lapping up against him? It could have been that he was floating in it, buoyed by the memories of a race now past and the water just reaching over the threshold to splash his face. Anders was struggling with the concept of reality on his trip. With all the voices swimming in his head it was hard the determine what was real – so many points of view that it was impossible to grasp what reality actually was. Though he was now certain that he was not in the water and he was not getting wet. All he bed do was open his eyes and the truth would be revealed to him.

The ground was dry beneath his body, but he was in earshot of the lake and could clearly hear the water’s slow and rhythmic sounds. This must have been the origin of his dream of lying in water. It didn’t matter now, the dream would be pushed into the ether. He sat up and looked around him. Mountains shot up in the background, snowy peaks that he had a great longing for. Many a time he could remember swimming in the lake and skiing down those slopes – joyous memories that revitalised him. This was all a relief from the pit he had stared into a short time ago. This was why those memories had to be suppressed.

His subconscious had brought him to this spot, because he recalled quite clearly being a couple kilometres away before falling out of touch with the world. It wasn’t for a distinct travel purpose so it must have been to calm the raucous within. The majority was with him on this journey and they were happy to ignore those that were most unlike them.

Clearly his situation was far more complex than he at originally imagined. Each moment that passed something new emerged. Now on the bluff overlooking the water, somewhere on the road to Istanbul, it was if the memories and consciousness within him were forming groups and voting amongst themselves to try and determine his course. “Their Course,” is what they thought, but there was only one body left. It was vastly unhelpful getting anything done when your body had turned into a purely democratic force without any framework.

These, his own thoughts on the new workings of his mind, lead to a violent groundswell of emotion from the others and a vying for attention in the consciousness. It was a physically unpleasant experience that he had on a reoccurring basis – everyone thought they could be as strong as Lina, but no one else ever succeeded with that level of control. That episode was a one off. It’s just hard to get people to believe it. “SILENCE!” Anders shouted out loud and he regained full control from the squabbling masses that made his stomach churn and head throb. He filtered out and suppressed what he could and the his own consciousness drifted back to thoughts of a time before he had become the ark housing the entire human consciousness.

Immortality had been his goal. It was not necessarily that he wanted to live forever. That’s not to say he hadn’t originally considered it – imagine what he could do with all that time. The problem was that those pesky statesmen had forced him into it. Without their careless actions to take the path of least resistance towards their survival rather than making difficult sacrifices, Anders would not have contemplated immortality and he wouldn’t have started down the path towards ultimate knowledge. They were down buried deep in his mind. There was no doubt that they were there – they hadn’t committed suicide or died before the wave swept over him like that baby in Gothenburg. No, they were in there, but they were quiet. They must have known that this was at least partially their fault.

The sky was a clear and the ocean a deep blue. It was a perfect day on the road to Istanbul along the coast. Anders pondered his two thoughts further – why did he find this place so familiar within his own mind and where were the memories of those statesmen who had doomed them all? To answer the first was an impossibility. Though, it was a nice thought to consider how two regions can feel so similar and yet be so far apart and so different. Something about the ocean pulled him in and gave him comfort. Sure, the ocean was different, but that same salty smell permeated the air and light wind whipped up against his face. There was more common ground here than not. It was peaceful and he felt as such.

Then he snapped back and considered his other question. He had stopped walking now and sat on a bluff before the beach so that he could look out on to the ocean. There was a fully tanked SUV down the road that he was going to walk towards shortly to give his journey a bit of pace, but he wanted to rest his legs for a bit first. He considered the names of the statesmen in question. What they were doesn’t matter, but he used their names to focus his thoughts. It was as if the rest of his consciousness allowed him to work at this question and somehow even tried to aid him – everyone had a stake in remembering these thoughts.

Working Chapter 9 of my Is it for us alone? novel in progress

Routines had always been part of humans’ lives despite some valiant efforts to divorce ourselves from them.  They helped us tick along when we weren’t quite sure that we wanted to and allowed the days to turn into years.  There was nothing particularly fun about these orderly little steps, but they were there.  They sat in our subconscious and directed parts of our lives which we were never sure of, or rather which we were because of our faithful routines.

In Anders’ subconscious the routines battled for supremacy while on the exterior they frustrated Anders.  There were mornings where he would wake up and move to drink coffee and others where he thirsted for whiskey.  The former were better days and the latter days of absent minded stumbling, first on the search for the life affirming poison in neighbouring homes and then in the aftermath of the drunk.  Still, despite what must have been months (but could have been days) no personality had been able to fully and finally take over Anders’ mind.  He was still Anders, but now he was floating amongst billions of other lives with trillions of ideas and knowledge that were previously alien to him.

This morning when he had roused himself with the sun he felt the urge to take a run.  Luckily he had a relatively fit body despite his previously chronic habit of remaining holed up in his garage, and so the run was not a complete shock to his system.  Running had not produced the clarity he had expected, but everything he felt was like an old memory – it was in between familiar and foreign, like visiting Canada as an Englishman.  When he reached the top of a cliff where he had planned on turning around and continuing his run home, he stopped.  The place was familiar – as almost everywhere was now – and he decided to take a breather and figure out what it was that he could remember about this place.

He remembered running up here before dawn to watch the sunrise after its short slumber in the early summer.

There was a pang of lost youth when he saw himself sitting here late on a beautiful midsummer’s eve drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

Dark memories surfaced of a decision as whether it was time to end a life and passionate ones of lives being conceived.

There were many memories as allowed them to come to the surface and then none as he asserted his dominance again.  He walked around the small grassy area at the top of the cliff and then he noticed a bench overlooking the ocean.  Control slipped from his grasp as another consciousness half took over.

Emotion flowed through his body as he remembered the beginning of a life – not conception, but a shared life, a love.  That love was never lost, but the three pieces of it had been separated and only two had found their way into Anders.  There was nothing to it now but to discover what had become of the third.  At his fastest pace Anders ran back to his house.

Somewhere in the city.  That’s where he had to go.  Exactly what he was looking for was still a mystery to him, but there was an overpowering urge to make for the city.  When he got there he would know where to look.  He packed some basic supplies – coffee, water and food – and then he made his way out the front door.

As he crossed the threshold he instinctively stopped and began to worry about decaying bodies and the disease they would breed.  Then he worried about the wild animals that had or will be attracted by the flesh.  Coffee, water and food were not enough out there in this wild world that he had created.  He needed some proper supplies.

Then the pang of loss, the draw to the city came to him again.  It was harder to describe than love and infinitely more compelling.  He simply had to get going and find whatever it was that was drawing him in.  The bare essentials that he had weren’t enough, but he didn’t need much more despite the parts of his mind telling him that he did.

His mind wandered to logistics again rather than the feelings that were drawing him.  There was a helicopter at the coast guard base just outside of the harbour and his subconscious now begged him to reach at that opportunity as well – it was a way of reaching joy and satisfying the draw at the same time and he could not resist it.

After hastily packing a few additional supplies to satiate parts of his mind Anders made his way on foot out of his house.  As he reached the end of his driveway, he stopped and looked back.  His self, that part of him that had become obscured since he undertook his great experiment, had burst through to retake control of his mind and body.  It was similar to the moment of hesitation, that some feel, before making a jump of a cliff into the water whereby you know that everything will be ok and concurrently are afraid to jump.  As with everything since his absorption of all living minds, this feeling was amplified in such a way that he fell to his knees and grabbed his head.

Finally his pure mind had full control and he shook his head in anger at what had happened to him.  How could his worst fear have really come to pass?  This was not part of his grand plan to be alone, truly alone on this Earth.  He screamed at the top of his lungs and raised himself from the ground.  This would simply not do for Anders.  A life of solitude and rationality was what he needed and what he deserved.  Freedom from all of the insanity that he knew dwelled in the reserves of his mind at this point.  They would have to be expunged.

No easy feat this would be, but he knew that he could put them away.  He made his way back to the garage, discarding the backpack he was carrying as he did so.  A fatal mistake it seemed, as some rattled in the pack and sent a striking memory of a child to the fore of his mind where he couldn’t hide from it.  The child in this memory was lying on her back rattling a toy rabbit that her father had bought her before he left to go and fight.  It was fluffy, but had the rattle of a classic child’s toy.  The noise was from something more like a dream than a memory though.  This had not actually happened, it was no true memory, and knowing this made him search out for some other part of his mind.  Nothing was found.

Anders was gone again and only the emotions, spurred on by the rattle and the void where he was searching for some other soul remained.  They drove him to pick the pack up again and head for the helicopter.  These emotions also knew that they could not leave the garage intact, as Anders would always seek to come back if there was anything left.  That Anders needed to be locked away now though, and the view of the garage in flames would do that.  Quickly, he ran over to Thomason’s house and picked up a canister of petrol from his garage.  After dousing most of the equipment in petrol, he dipped a long cloth into the canister to act as a wick and lit fire to it.  As he walked away quickly he could sense the impending explosion.  And then there it was in all its glory.  He turned his head to look at it and then Anders, the pure Anders who feared humanity was locked away.