Save the Last Bullet for God (33 page)

“The Black Death?”

“Yes, sir. The Black Death.”

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Once you get used to the taste of humans,
nothing else will satisfy you. No living being in the world feeds
you as intensely as their fear and pain. Ensure that they are in
contact and you will be surprised by how quickly they mix their
fears with their hopelessness. Humans continuously transmit their
desired feelings and emotional pressure to each other, starting
from their central cluster which they call “family.”

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Black is not a color. Black is a concept.
Black is an attitude towards life. Black doesn’t give out anything.
Not even a single crumb can escape from it. In order to become
black, you need to have a certain style. Either you can bear it or
else you become helpless, and black will swallow you. If you become
black, you approach a man in a steady and sticky way until you find
a way inside. That’s the first step.

From there, you send signals to the brain.
The human brain is full of emotions. With some effort and some
skill, you can take out emotions that are close to each other from
within the system. But once you achieve this, the system will
scatter those emotions around as if it has exploded. So, you need
other skills to suck whatever you can.

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I’m female. I don’t say this because I am
capable of reproductive. What makes me female is my style. I am
nourished by emotion. For an emotional explosion, I will poke and
force the one opposite me, and I will try anything.

By the time you learn the emotional
reactions of the human brain, you have gone inside the feelings it
produces. You know what they mean, and you get pleasure from boring
through them. Meanwhile, you infect the memory system of this
strange creature, and collect its data. By analyzing the data you
can use it to define the horizon of what else is possible. Over
time, you understand the language of human beings and reach the
condition of perceiving or even expressing, using their
aphorisms.

…[START]

Overconscious

At a very young age, while living in the
north, I adapted to the cold and dry air. I had not tasted man yet,
so I directed my efforts toward fleas and small rodents, which
produced marginal emotional resources. I wasn’t full enough, but I
could survive. I saw my potential when I successfully made my fleas
attack everything around them with an endless appetite. They were
thirsty for blood and dove into the warmth of large mammals like
wolves, bears, and deer. I tasted them all, but it still wasn’t
enough.

The turning point of my life happened when I
was finally able to enter a human being. It was splendid to
experience such a rich source of feelings. I slaked on him, but I
got a bit sad when the body was not ready for me and died before it
gave away all its fruits. He was too sensitive, and an overload
caused him to die.

I couldn’t find another human resource for a
long time, and returning to my old resources left me more
unsatisfied. I was easily and quickly hooked on humans, and the
deprivation of my new passion was incredibly agonizing. So I took
my sticky and sucking black body everywhere. When I reached the
hunting tribes, I was overcome with a ravenous hunger and I
instantly consumed everything from them, causing the tribe to die
our quickly. I was clumsy and greedy and soon I was left hungry
again. Unable to control my rising appetite, I dragged my
pitch-black greed everywhere.

When I couldn’t find a human resource, I was
forced to settle for small rodents. I promised myself then that
when I found another human being, I would not be so wasteful and
careless. When I found my way onto a small pelt, I forced myself to
be calm and clever and patient.

It was when I reached the large city of
Crimea, that my opportunity presented itself. I learned of the vast
human resources far beyond the seas. So I went to the harbor and
boarded a merchant vessel, and on the cold, misty Black Sea, I
moved on toward my future spoils. As I floated among the crew with
subtle touches and tried to do no harm, the ships took me to an
abundant human harvest in the south. On the long voyage, I had
plenty of time and opportunity to get to know my victims. They fed
on human emotions just like me.

They argued with each other. They fought.
They exploited each other to define their positions in the
community. They ate and made love, but they were unaware that they
were in pursuit of the same emotional signals I hungered for.
Somehow, their bodies must have learned about the rewards and
punishments of the pleasures of orgasm and how it led to the
continuation of their bloodline.

They have offspring to experience feelings,
breed, and continue breeding for what it will make them feel, but
they are still unaware that they are consuming each other’s
emotions. Human beings and their communities are actually
emotion-accumulators, collecting every type of emotional energy and
using it for themselves.

If I wanted, I could have easily gorge
myself on these humans, destroying them and ultimately starving
myself. But I was patient and learned how to keep them alive long
enough to continue feeding. It must be a reflection of the
universe, like causing wheat to exist by interfering with its
genetic process. Wheat is just a simple grass with giant seeds that
are imperfect and don’t properly protect themselves. Still, humans
nurture the plant, protect it from nature and help it to flourish,
all so it can provide flour to man. In the same way, human beings
offer me products that do not compete with nature.

On my voyage, I got many positive results
and data from the experiments I did on the various crewmembers.
Slightly distorting the balance of some of them in the form of
disease, I observed different results.

In one experiment, I went through the blood
in their veins directly. This allowed me to rapidly spread in their
bodies and ensured a fast emotional absorption which resulted in
death. However, as the victim didn’t grasp what was going on in the
short term, only a small emotional product could be obtained. Such
a quick death would have an incredible impact on the others,
though. The appearance of the victim spitting up blood had an
obvious effect on the community. Hence, I could easily harvest the
emotions of the general public.

But to do the job fully and enjoy it, I
learned another path was best: slowly spreading through the skin
from the spot of the flea bite and creating a giant tumor in the
nearest lymph node. Because it lasts long, the victim and people
around them watch the process slowly as the whole body turns black
(my favorite color). The purulent and inflammatory discharge of the
tumor causes plenty of emotional pain, which is incredibly
satisfying since it is mostly fear and helplessness. The side
effect of this process, the smell of rotted flesh and pus,
contributes to another wave of emotions. As time stretches out, the
opportunity to reach other people also increases; this is an extra
benefit.

In the course of my ongoing experiments, I
infected all the living beings on the ship. When we arrived at the
city on the strait, I had wasted only a few of my crew, and I was
able to hide myself very successfully. I had the reward of mingling
freely among the crowd in the harbor, and leaving some of my fleas
there, I shoved off with my ships. I knew there would be a large
harvest, but I never expected so many human treasures.

I began to lose my crew. I was hungry and
hardly held myself back from attacking livestock to feed my huge
body. After the long journey, I was finally in Sicily. When the
harbor guard saw our ship, the scared harbor personnel attacked the
ships with fireballs and even sunk one of the twelve in the fleet.
But I still had the opportunity to send away particles that could
suck away all the emotional resources on the island.

As the humans in the harbor of Venice gazed
on my masterpiece, I saw the emotional resources of fear and terror
begin to scatter. Thus began another ritual of dismissal by threats
and fire, but this time I was prepared. I attacked the harbor more
fiercely and left most of myself there. Then I sent off more
particles with other ships.

The ships turned to the French and Spanish
harbors and I carried out my plan to go ashore there and move
through Middle Europe. Soon, I began to hear the name “Black
Death,” because of how I turned my victims black after I killed
them.

But Florence was my masterpiece.

It was an amazing place. There were houses
on top of each other, and a huge number of people lived all
together. I had never seen such a blessing, such a beauty, and so
much abundance. As my mice scurried down the small stone streets
and my fleas reached anyone within jumping distance, no one could
stop me.

Like an ink stain on a wet tissue, I spread
through the streets of the city. I killed the ones I could get
inside, attacked those who tried to help the ones in agony and
sucked away all the pity, despair, and fear I could find. I
attacked everyone, from priests to those who carried dead bodies.
The flood of emotions and the ethos of death spread more rapidly
than I did. Those who tried to run away from the city only
succeeded in taking me to other lands and communities.

I didn’t kill those who buried their
children immediately. I took my time, sucking their intense
emotional releases. I floated inside one who cried at the bedside
of his dead mother and let everything absorb into my darkness.
Setting a snare for those who secluded themselves in their houses
by putting up walls on their doors, I tasted their long emotional
fear of death. Inside the ones who lost their minds, I danced
around and sucked the desperation of the others. I attacked
everyone again and again and poked the agonizing bodies of those
who hid behind the fire. I sucked everything up into my warm,
sticky, and soft blackness.

The dark narrow streets, the surrounding
earth were now covered with black bodies, and the smell of rotten
flesh and pus. A tepid gloom hung over Florence and buried its head
in the bellies of the bodies as they were dug up and torn into by
dogs.

Limbo

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All the darkness of the known Earth was
mine. Country borders defined by men in their dreams, the things
they believed and took shelter behind, couldn’t stop me. I absorbed
all the known civilizations into the borders of my own empire,
still the greatest in history. No one could escape my rage. None
except those whom I allowed.

…
[STOP]

“Sir! Sir, wake up! Snap out of it!”

I woke up with that familiar artificial
voice and felt a rush of panic.

“What happened? I thought I would be the
over-conscious of the plague. What is it now?”

“The program didn’t give a positive response
to the partition, but it continued anyway. I tried to interfere,
but its functionality was compromised.”

“What does that mean? Can it hurt me? Has
this happened before? How does it affect the process?”

“Sir, it is…, it doesn’t happen very often,
but it is possible—”

“Damn it! Stop beating around the bush and
tell me what happened.”

“Yes, sir, I will explain. While the program
is working, a direct connection to your information unit can cause
little changes in some basic information.”

“Idiot, what are you talking about? What
situation did you put me in? A mutating microbe? Why weren’t you
more careful?”

“Sir, the effect is not common, and if it
happens, the changes lose significance. It occurs in small
increments, and risks with such low probability can be
ignored—”

“It’s all your fault. You created a
Mongolian and then turned him into a microbe—“

“Sir, it is not what you think. I controlled
all the systems, and there is no sign of damage or side
effects.”

“I know that. But what will you do if I
explode?”

“Explode? What will explode, sir?”

“Okay, forget it. Just tell me what I am
supposed to understand.”

“Sir, a man is composed of around one
hundred trillion cells. They are out of your control, and you can’t
interfere with them directly. Those cells have their own lifecycle.
As an over-conscious, you can only use them and lead your organism.
You can’t control the individual units of the virus. It is like
members an ant colony, which consists of billions of individuals
but moves like a single organism.”

“So, there is a living being in a different
dimension, a deciding mechanism that you call an over-conscious. Is
that what you mean? That a plague is a species that has its own
consciousness and way of directing movement?”

“Almost right, sir. This plague can be
managed on the conscious level and can be lived by going through
it. The merchant fleet of Genoese consisted of two ships that left
Crimea, carrying the organism that caused the plague. While
crossing the Bosporus, it infected Istanbul. From there, it divided
into two. One brought death to Anatolia and the Middle East. The
other arm went to Sicily first, by ship. When it realized that the
crew carried disease, they were expelled. From there, they went to
Venice and then to France. When they were expelled again, they
moved toward Spain and the Iberian Peninsula, infecting others.

“The disease loomed over unprotected and
defenseless people like a disaster. In a short time, half of the
European population had perished. No one was left to bury the
bodies. The streets were full of death and corpses.
Everything—including cats and dogs—died and those who tried to
escape only succeeded in infecting others. The strong ones put up
walls on their doors and put up walls on the doors of the ill ones.
Still, even though “safe” in their homes, many still died. In the
end, 50 million people were erased from the gene pool, but the
strong ones survived.