Armageddon?? (5 page)

“It
was a demon.”

“Hey,
Bill’s killed a demon.”

The
whispers from the crowd grew as they recovered from the shock of the violent
confrontation. One man, obviously the worse for drink, staggered up and smacked
Clinton on the back. “Well done Bill. Have a drink.” Clinton grabbed the bottle
in its brown paper bag and took a swig.

The
senior of the secret servicemen was speaking on the radio. “Stay away from the
body please, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here.” Then he turned to
Clinton. “Well done sir, but, how did you know?”

Clinton
grinned, the easy, friendly grin that won him elections. “I’ve been married to
Hilary for thirty years. Believe me, after going through that, I have no
trouble recognizing a fiend from hell.”

Chapter
Four

Oval
Office, White House, Washington D.C.

“Sir,
newsflash just in, Former President Clinton has just killed a baldrick at the
McDonalds just down the road.”

“Damn,
that will cost us at least one more seat in the House.” President Bush looked
pensive for a moment. “I don’t suppose we could get my pappy to whack one?”

His
public relations advisor shrugged, if one turned up in the right place it could
be arranged, probably. But that was asking too much. “No Sir, not that we can
rely on anyway.”

Bush’s
mouth twisted, a pity to be disappointed so late in the evening. “How did it
happen anyway? How did Bill, I suppose we’ll have to call him Wild Bill now,
manage it? And what were the Secret Service up to?”

“The
details are very brief, Sir, apparently he just blasted the baldrick with an
automatic shotgun. Doctor Surlethe, the National Science Advisor is waiting
outside, perhaps he can give you some more details.”

A
sigh wafted gently across the room, President Bush really didn’t like being
briefed by scientists. They tended to use such long words. Like any good
politician, Bush knew that the time taken to say a four-syllable word was
greater than the attention span of the audience. “Trot him in.”

Bush
leaned forward in his seat, giving the impression of studiously examining the
papers on the Presidential desk. “Doctor Surlethe, good to see you. A great
achievement by the former President, but one that raises a few questions I
think?”

“Indeed
so sir. Mr. Clinton was very lucky that the baldrick in question was a new
type, one that apparently has some unnerving capabilities. In accordance with
your instructions, we’ve started naming the baldrick types we encounter. For
example, the we’ve designated the flying baldricks as harpies, the aquatic ones
as leviathans and the land-based one as behemoths. The one killed by Mr.
Clinton was human sized and gave every appearance of being a human female, a
very seductive one. It changed appearance into what we assume was its real form
only when blasted with several dozen rounds of double-ought buckshot and
automatic pistol fire.”

“Wait
a minute, this thing was able to simulate people’s appearance? It’s a shape
shifter? That means it could be anybody, you, me, anybody could be killed and
replaced by one of those things.”

“Yes
Sir, although things may not be quite that bad. The other thing is that this
baldrick, we’re going to call this type a succubus, just materialized by the
former President’s table and started to speak to him. The Secret Service men
thought they’d fouled up badly but nobody saw that thing before it was standing
next to the former President and speaking. It’s as if it simply materialized
there.”

“That’s
appalling. It means nobody is safe, one could materialize here and now.”

“Well,
that all depends Mister President. There are pretty much two possibilities. The
first is that the succubus really is a shape-shifter and can teleport around.
If that is the case, then we can take the entire science section of the Library
of Congress and toss it on to the landfill. Everything we thought we knew about
the physical world is wrong. However, the other possibility is much more
probable and something we can handle.” Doctor Surlethe paused for a second.
This was going to be the tricky bit. “This option is that the succubus doesn’t
change shape or teleport, it simply makes us think it looks the way it does.”

“How
can it do that?” Here comes the long words Bush thought to himself.

“Mister
President, are you familiar with the concept of quantum entanglement.”

Knew
it Bush thought. Four syllables at least. “I’ve heard the term.”

That
means no. Doctor Surlethe said ruefully to himself. Oh well, here we go.
“Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more objects influence
each other at a quantum level even though the individual objects may be
spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical
properties of the systems. For example, measurements performed on one system
seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.”

Surlethe
looked at the President, he wasn’t sure but Bush’s eyes seemed to be rotating
in different directions. “What this means is that one quantum state can
duplicate itself, transit information on itself if you like, to another without
a direct contact. This has been experimentally demonstrated within a laboratory
and we are just beginning to appreciate the implications of the phenomena. Now,
the workings of the brain and nerves all use various kinds of energy fields,
you’ve heard of brainwave measurement and things like that. We’ve been doing
that for years. Now, theoretically, its possible that the succubus can entangle
its energy field with those around it so that it transmits information to them,
in effect it duplicates itself in them. So, the succubus holds a mental image
of itself in its mind and uses this ability to entangle the sense transmissions
in those around it so it duplicates that image in them. In short, all those
around the succubus see it the way the succubus wants them to see it. It
doesn’t change shape, it simply changes the way people see its shape.”

“And
the teleport thing.”

“Easy,
the succubus simply transmits an image of itself that isn’t there. It isn’t
invisible, it simply tells the senses in its victim that it isn’t present. Now,
if this is correct, we should be able to detect that energy field, there isn’t
a part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can’t detect and measure, and work
out a way to stop it. Only, we’ll need a live succubus for that and we haven’t
got one. Until we get one, we won’t know which explanation is correct.”

“We
don’t need a succubus Doctor, we’ve got the evidence we need.” Bush grinned to
himself, just because he didn’t like using four-syllable words and usually
mispronounced them when he did, didn’t mean he couldn’t understand them.

“We
have Mister President?”

“This
is Washington Doctor. The city with one of the highest crime rates in America.
Knocking off fast-food restaurants and shooting the staff is a daily event. Or
was, until the places started installing video surveillance cameras. Now, if I
follow your explanation properly, the entanglement thing you talk about works
on the energy fields in the brain. Surveillance cameras don’t have brains. The
film should show us what is really there, not what it wants us to think is
there. So, lets get that film.”

It
took just under an hour. The manager of the 19th Street McDonalds had the
interesting experience of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III arriving to
collect his video surveillance tapes personally. Director Mueller carried the
tapes went back to the White House where they were set up in the projection
office just off the Conference Room. By the striking of the hour, the audience
had assembled and the tapes were run.

“Right,
here we are, we can see the former President and his two Secret Service men
entering the restaurant …… will you look at that!” Mueller’s voice was
incredulous. A jet black figure, human-sized but with a set of rounded stub
horns and a long pointed tail entered through the open doors of the restaurant,
only a foot or so behind the rear Secret Service man. By the time the doors had
closed, it was inside. “He’s getting his food, going to the table.” The
succubus had walked less than a couple of feet in front of the Secret Service
agents, both had looked directly at it, but neither of them had seen it. The
succubus spoke with Clinton while he ate, then the two left together. A few
seconds after they left, there were the brilliant flashes of gunfire outside.

“There
we are, Doctor Surlethe, it doesn’t teleport and it doesn’t shift shape. It just
makes us think it does, so you can start to look for your energy field, right?”

“Yes
Sir.”  Bush relaxed in his seat, running the implications of the scene in his
mind. “Doctor Surlethe, your Quantum Entanglement theory was very interesting
and, as far as I can make out, plausible. Don’t concentrate on it to the
exclusion of other theories though. I’ve seen that happen all too often.

“Gentlemen,
we’ve proved something else today. We can rely on our optical sensors even if
we can’t rely on our own eyes and ears. That’s worth spreading to the troops,
to everybody in fact. I doubt that this succubus thing that Bill killed so
emphatically will be the only one that we run into, there will be more and we
need to be on our guard against them. Closed-circuit television surveillance,
remote surveillance so that the operator isn’t within the zone of control of
these things, is essential. By Executive Order, I’m making the installation of
such equipment a tax-deductible expense as from now. See that gets out as fast
as possible.”

James
Randi Educational Foundation, Florida, USA

James
Randi rubbed his eyes. The last few days had been tiresome in the extreme, ever
since the announcement that all mediums were being tested so that their
abilities, if any, could be used in the war effort went out, the Foundation had
been besieged by applicants. The big names, of course, had refused to show
their faces. They were scared spitless of The Amazing Randi and with good
reason. He knew the tricks they used and how to expose them, submitting to
tests by him would destroy their livelihood. That reasoning hadn’t helped them,
they had found themselves being picked up by the FBI, bundled into the back of
a Chevvy Suburban and brought down to the Foundation. A few hours later, they had
been on their way back, their fraudulent claims exposed and discredited.

“Not
one. Not one genuine medium in the whole lot. There was a time when that would
have delighted me but not now. We know there’s something out there but we can’t
get at it. It was easier being an atheist, now I don’t know what to believe.
Guess that makes me agnostic.”

“No,
James. I know that the idea an agnostic lies between the extremes of atheism
and religious fanaticism but it does not. It is a separate line of thought. An atheist
denies the existence of any sort of god, the theist affirms it. An agnostic
believes that the existence or non-existence of a god can never be proven, the
Gnostic believes that the existence or non-existence of a god is subject to
rational proof. If I understand your position correctly, you were a Gnostic
Atheist. You denied the existence of a god and thought you could prove that
your denial was correct.”

“And
I was wrong, General.”

“Why
James? We know now that there is life after death, that is undeniable. We know
that the afterlife is ruled by beings. Why do you believe those beings are
gods? We have already proved we can kill their servants with almost absurd
ease. Why cannot we kill them as well? They’re probably more trouble than they
are worth anyway.”

“We
don’t like our gods, so we kill them. Now that’s a soldier talking.”

“No
James, it is not. A soldier fights for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Today we fight for all those who have died, who are being held in horrid
slavery. We fight for all humanity, past, present and future. You are part of
that fight, don’t forget it. In this war, you are as much a soldier as I.”

“General,
while we are speaking on this subject, may I ask something? How does The
Message affect you and your people? Few or you are Christian.”

“On
one level James, The Message does not concern us. I am a Buddhist, so are more
than 90 percent of my people. The Lord Buddha was not a god, he was a man. A
very wise man who laid down rules for living one’s life as well as possible on
an imperfect earth. Good rules that when applied mean one lives a good life. To
us, being a Buddhist simply means following those teachings, I could give you a
long lecture on what that means but here is neither the time nor the place.
When we meditate we simply ponder the teachings of the Lord Buddha and try to
seek enlightenment on how they can solve our problems. When we pray to him, we
simply are asking him what he would do under these circumstances. Any question
of gods or devils is quite irrelevant to that center core belief. In my
country, we are animists, we believe that everything has a spirit that lives in
it, a spirit we can talk to and who will talk back to us. So The Message didn’t
affect us much. On another level, what does affect us is the assertion that all
humans go to eternal punishment no matter what they believe. The Message made
no distinction between the religions or stated that one would be exempt while
another was condemned. All humans are subject to the same fate. So we fight.
That’s why governments pay us the big bucks.”