HERESY! Story Submissions Thread

This thread holds all story submissions for the 2007 Org Spring Writing Contest.

To find information on the contest rules that the authors worked with, take a look at the contest announcement thread.

Blood and Roses


      The winter night in Nazareth was cool and the four young men huddled together for warmth as they walked. Their discussion had only bordered on argument and occasional laughter still punctuated their talk.
      "You know that he’s right. Peace is the only way." Adiel stated.
      Tuviya shook his head, "It’s not about being right. It’s about staying alive! What good is being right if the Romans bury all the Jews?"
      Gidon nodded in agreement, "Fighting is the only thing that the Romans understand. It’s the only thing that anyone understands."
      Daniel laughed and said, "Fighting is the only thing that you understand, Gidon. Our good neighbor Yehoshua is right. All men are brothers and we will survive if we teach the Romans this. We must teach everyone this."
      Gidon scoffed, "You always dream out loud."
      Daniel slapped him on the shoulder and added, "Well, it’s time I dreamt in my bed, shalom, my friends."
      Daniel split off from the other three men and walked down a dark alley. They watched as he passed out of sight. Adiel looked at the others’ faces as he wondered, "What if Yehoshua could teach all men to be brothers? If we could only live to see…"
      Just then Daniel called from the darkness. His friends ran to his voice. They found Daniel huddled over a small figure. The creature was clothed strangely and seemed to glow. It had no hair and large eyes. Long, thin fingers clutched Daniel’s arm. The men were frightened and amazed at the same time.
      Daniel turned to them and said, "He needs our help."

      Adam Rosen took Homeland Security very seriously. That is why he was perplexed by his latest assignment. An apparently insane, homeless man had been taken to a clinic where he had made terrorist threats against the U.S. He was to meet a Dr. Eva Blut who was the psychiatrist assigned to the man.
      As he entered the clinic, he was greeted by a young woman who was far too attractive to be a shrink, but he held out his hand and pushed his luck, "Dr. Blut, I presume?"
      The woman smiled and said, "It’s pronounced Bloot, which is German for blood, but everyone just calls me Evie."
      Adam smiled and replied, "A good name for a doctor. All right Evie, then you must call me Adam."
      As they walked to the room where the patient was, Evie explained how the man was found, "Two days ago he had been wandering in the park. He had spoken in jibberish until he was able to start speaking English. He was quite old and his health was declining, so the police brought him here. He suffers from a delusion that he was born two thousand years ago. He and his friends were abducted by aliens." Evie grinned as she led Adam to the door of the patient’s room and whispered, "Finally, he began shouting about the world coming to a horrible end. We get a lot of these. It’s hardly National Security."
      Adam winked and said, "Well, let me be the judge of that. A quick interview and I should be able to close this case. What’s the patient’s name?"
      Evie opened the door and said, "Adiel, a-d-i-e-l."

      At the sound of his name, Adiel opened his eyes. He was hooked to several medical devices that hummed and gurgled. He looked over at the government agent and scoffed, "I guess that you are another healer who thinks that I am crazy."
      Adam shook his head and said, "I’m Adam Rosen. I work for the Department of Homeland Security."
      Adiel sat up and said, "Then maybe you will understand what I have to say." Adam took out a notepad as Adiel began. "I am not from here. Long ago my friends and I met a stranger. He told us that he was an angel. He took us into the wilderness and a great door opened. A ship as large as a palace appeared and shined with many lights. He took us on board where many more like him were dying. They were all sick."
      Adam looked at Evie and then back to Adiel as he said, "Please continue."
      Adiel shrugged and spoke more slowly, "We soon realized that they were not angels. They needed us to fly their ship through the heavens. They had a device that taught us what to do. I believe that originally the device had taught them about us. However, soon they all died. For many years, decades really, we learned what we could. Then Daniel knew enough to turn the ship around. As we journeyed back, the device showed us everything that was happening on Earth. It taught me your language. Strangely, it was as though many seasons on Earth passed each week."
      Evie remarked, "According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, events on Earth would pass more quickly to an observer traveling near the speed of light due to time dilation."
      "I don’t know about such things, but it must be so." Adiel breathed deeply and added, "We saw Man’s history unfurl and it was ghastly. We are tired, old men now who had hoped so much for the future. Now we are bitter and disappointed. That is the danger."
      Adam’s concern grew as he asked "What kind of a danger?"
      Adiel pleaded, "What you believe as religion is a fraud. Like a story told a thousand times, each time more embellished than the last. Finally, the truth of the story is lost and only the embellishment remains. You must believe me."
      Evie nodded and said, "I think that you believe what you are saying, but this is heresy. You offer no proof of what you say."
      Adiel pleaded, "I learned that you have a knowledge network. I have connected the ship to it. You must use the codeword ‘heresy’ to access it. You must stop him! Don’t you see? Daniel, Tuviya and I learned many things from the device, but Gidon learned only one thing. He learned how to use the ship like a great sword of vengeance."
      This was even more ominous and Adam asked, "And what might this Gidon do with a great sword."
      Adiel scoffed, "I know the power of the ship. There is no end to what he could do. He could destroy everything!"
      Adiel fell back on the bed as several medical alarms sounded. A nurse rushed in and a team of personnel attended to Adiel. The nurse turned to the two of them and stated, "I’ll have to ask you to leave now."
      The nurse returned to her patient and knew only too well what the alarms indicated. She took Adiel’s hand and said, "Rest now. Jesus will watch over you!"
      Then the nurse closed her eyes and prayed. Adiel closed his eyes, too and whispered, "Jesus? I knew Yehoshua well. He built my dinner table."

      Evie walked out of the lab where the autopsy had been completed. She showed the results to Adam as she spoke, "Adiel was in surprisingly good health. However, his brain showed unusual trauma."
      Adam looked into her eyes and asked, "Perhaps from the teaching device?"
      Evie replied, "You didn’t believe anything he said, did you?"
      Adam stated flatly, "A lot of people tell me that I am cynical." Then he winked and added cynically, "Like they would know."
      Evie grinned and asked, "Were you able to find out anything about ‘heresy’ on the internet?"
      Adam shook his head and said, "I have over four million hits to sift through. I should be able to close this up before I retire in twenty years. Look, it’s after noon, do you people ever eat around here?"
      Evie smiled and said, "There’s a place around the corner, if you like German food."
      Adam grinned and remarked, "I absolutely love German."
      As the two walked outside, a great shadow rushed over the street. Adam looked up and exclaimed, "That came over quick! It wasn’t supposed to storm until later."
      Then a deafening rumble was heard everywhere as the sky burned and the earth roasted.

Redemption



The group of men laughed with one another, in a private camradrie alien to everyone around them. There were five, cockily huddled together at the end of the alleyway in plain view, but seperated. The yellow tape pointedly commanding "Police Line Do Not Cross" did no more to seperate them from the mass of pressing bodies curious and held further held back by the police officers the tape was made for than if the men had been in the middle of a crowd on Broadway. These five men took nor part in the swarm of police officer's, detectives, coroners, and crime scene investigators; it swirled around them, never touching them, but always at their command.

They wore custom tailored suits with expensive coats that anyone else would have found to be out of place with the uncomfortably warm temperature of that mid-July night. Their ties were silk and all but one's were red while their leather shoes shined reflections of police cruisers siren lights. And if their demeanor wasn't enough to tell you who they were - the oppresive air or authority, their casual discarding of the world around them - they wore a ring so even the slow and inept could identify them, it was always displayed even wearing on the outside of their gloves and it always told you who they were: Inquisitors. And once you knew who they were you could defer to them with the proper respect: Fear. Always fear.

One man ended his conversation with the CSI team and stepped forward just outside the Inquisitor's circle to catch their attention; a small, thin tendril of the swarm inching forward to be touched, but Lt. Daniel Webb always felt more like he was grabbed, arrested by their eyes boring into him. "You have something for us, Daniel?" The blond-haired man in the center of thier group asked.

"Just the usual, Johnathan." Lt. Webb couldn't remember when or how he and Inquisitor Johnathan Strainer had come to talking on a first-name basis, but the man was always there, at every heresy that Webb had responded to, the man was there. Webb knew some of the other faces in the huddle - William Nevski and Martin Morales - but they were never consistent. Only Strainer was a constant. "The scene's secure and CSI have finished wiping and photographing everything. You gentlemen are free to conduct your investigation and, as always, you will be notified upon completion of the CSI team's full report."

"Thanks Daniel, a smooth operation as always." Strainer responded. Webb had to admit, Strainer was the only Inquisitor with enough human qualities to make the small talk. Enough human qualities to almost make him human, but once you became an Inquisitor, you stopped being human. As the five men brushed past the detective, Johnathan Strainer wondered, as he always did, if Daniel would ever remember that the two of them had spent 3rd grade through college as inseperable best friends, their lives diverging wildly and with finality when they had persued their own careers. But Webb would never remember. Strainer's own mother would never remember that she had had a son.

The group made their way down the alley to the door at the end that had once stood rusted over and ignored for who knows how long. Far too long. There was a single room inside, chairs were arranded in a circle in the center with shelves containing pamphlets and literature lining the walls. There was no sign of a rushed retreat, no personal belonging left on the floor, none of the chairs were overturned. As was expected. The suspects, the quarry, had had long centuries of practice and never took any personal affects to any of their meetings and any one member of their congregation had probably hastily abandoned so many sites, that they had the escape down to a calm, unhurried exit. Strainer could see them in his mind's eye, the heretics standing up and moving in single file to the exit as placidly as school children conducting a fire drill.

The secrect exit. All the church's had one but the grunts didn't always find it. It was okay, Strainer knew his men were up to the task, each having conducting dozens of investigations prior to that night. Now they were reading the literature and pamphlets, cross-referencing the material in their minds with material found at other church's, determining if the congregation was isolated in it's ideology, or part of a much larger organization.

"They're Lutherans." Nevski called out. Strainer wasn't so sure, all the pamphlets and literature identified this group as being an independent organization, just a small handful secretly rebelling against the world around them, isolated and afraid. Nevski continued, "They have a letter here from Nathan Votello."

Strainer walked over took the letter from Nevski. Nathan Votello was the prime symbol of the Lutheran church these days. The Lutherans didn't have the same monoauthoritan structure as the proper Catholic Church, but Votello had migrated to the fore of his blasphemous bunch with words of inspiration and encouragement to Lutherans everywhere. The letter at first offered no support of Nevski's claim. It was the usual speach of encouragement and preaching of the general Protestant beliefs: The debasement of the Holy Father in Rome, stripping the Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals of their divine authorities and rights, eliminating confession. At least the Lutherans were passive, forgoing the militant stance many - small - groups had taken against the Church.

But then Strainer saw what was not in the words, but in the tone: The letter was a response. Immediately Strainer began scanning the letter for the code phrases he might find. So far, the Lutherans hadn't caught on that their secret phrases and word sequences, all seeming like harmless, commonly used language, had been cracked. Due largely in part to a captured Lutheran who had himself cracked.

They had friends not four blocks from where Strainer was standing.

Strainer looked up to see Nevski's sharp blue eyes drilling into his own. He had been waiting for his superior to confirm what he already knew.

"Tell the blue shirts to lock down a grid from 19th to 23rd and Eisenhower Av. to the 410 Loop. I want it cordoned, completely sealed, in twenty minutes!" Nevski had already walked out the door before Strainer even finished speaking. Strainers and the others walked at a brisk pace to the two black sedans waiting for them at the curb.

"You there!" Strainer barked at a patrolman. "I want everything in that room packed up in boxes and moved to the warehouse on 27th in 3 hours." The patrolman wouldn't need the full address. Everyone knew where to find the storage complex used by the Inquisitors and other officers of the Church With Nevski, they got into the cars and pulled out into traffic. Who knew how big the catch would be this time.

---

Forty. Forty instigators. Forty malcontents. Forty 'christians'. Forty criminals.

Black bags pulled over their heads and cinched shut, hands cuffed behind their backs the heretics shuffled in line into the two wagons brought down to transport them to jail. Here in the US they would be given a fair trial, but Strainer already knew the conclusion: Conviction. These people may call themselves Christians, but he viewed them as no different from the Muslims and Jews, the Buddhists and Hinuds and Taos and Animists and Wiccans and far too many other groups that Strainer had the mispleasure of knowing their names. Heretical filth spreading their message of lies; misleading God's children from his Divine Grace and hope for Redemption.

Strainer struck a match and lit his cigarrete as he watched the blind fools stumble into the police vans. Smoke swirled in the air around him as his eyes glinted from the satisfaction of a job well done.

The Weapon

It was mid-August and the incipient night did not succeed driving the heat of the day away. Only on the banks of the Tiber did the cool evening breeze provide some relief. Along the river there still was a brisk state of trade. A man cleaved through the busy crowd. His blue eyes and the light complexion of his hair and skin showed that he was not Roman. Foreigners were nothing unusual here and therefore nobody noticed him.

While the foreigner hastened to his aim, he absorbed the unique atmosphere of this town once more. Forsooth, Rome was the centre of the world, the midpoint of the universe! Rome, town of the Christian faith! And yet, the senses of the foreigner were sharp enough to realize the dark sides of the town. Nowhere else, vice and superstition, vanity and blasphemy, haughtiness and immorality were as widespread as here, right under the eyes of the Roman Curia.

The foreigner turned into a side road, which led away from the river. The ambience changed immediately. The streets got narrower, darker. The buildings were no longer as pretentious. Here, there was no hustle and bustle and as the foreigner made it further from the river, it became quieter and lonelier. He continued along some narrow and winding alleys and finally he stood in front of a big building. At first glance the building appeared unimposing, almost abandoned. It was bereft of any decoration. Nothing construed this building’s special purpose. Regarding the building longer, it was just the cool simplicity of the construction and the complete lack of any pomp that created a special aura. It appeared cold; cold and menacing. Mechanically, the foreigner pulled his cloak tighter. Above the door a simple signboard was attached: "Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis Sanctum Officium".

The foreigner hesitated. He knew that he was in front of the strongest bastion of Christianity. Not the Castel Sant’Angelo, not anywhere else but here, in an unfashionable side street of Rome, was the headquarters in the fight against the antichrist. From here, the Grand Inquisitor was sending the Christian soldiers in the battle against evil. Here a power was concentrated that was very close to the divine almightiness. In the fight for the eternal truth this power was deployed without any scruples.

The Foreigner shook his head, as if he could chase away his thoughts this way. After all, he was a Christian soldier, too. He had served the Lord in the realm that called itself the Holy Roman Empire. He hadn’t rested, until he had tracked the heretics down in their hide-outs, until he had snatched away their masks and debunked their lies. Then he had given them over to the secular court and divine justice. He had disinfested swathes of land. He had purged heresy, purged it together with its followers and supporters, annihilated it with fire and sword. Noblemen had complained about him, because their countries had been depopulated. In the end, even some bishops had attacked him. He hadn’t cared! He had acted according the will of God, by order and with the authority of the Holy Inquisition! Of course, innocents had suffered. Wasn’t it in the nature of evil to aver suspicion? In the war for good there were no compromises. Those preaching sympathy and consideration were, after all, only allies of the devil. They too would have deserved to die, to burn like the damned heretics in the eternal fire of perdition!

He took a determined step to the entrance, opened the door and entered. He crossed an entrance hall. A monk was waiting and invited him to follow. The monk ignited a torch and they entered a windowless corridor. On both sides there were iron shod doors. The foreigner wondered what was behind them. Deeper and deeper the corridor led inside the building. The foreigner could not see the end. He felt like he was penetrating deeper into the interior of the underworld.

Finally they reached the end of the corridor. The monk opened the door and they stepped into another room. The monk gave the foreigner a sign to wait and disappeared behind a door on the opposite side of the room. The foreigner looked around the room he had to wait in. On the walls there were paintings, all of them showing illustrations of saints, of Christian martyrs. The artists had emphasized the illustration of the woes. The foreigner saw the stoning of Stephanus, Polycarb on the stake, Saint Adrew at the ‘Crux Decussata’, Saint Afra in the fire, Cyprian’s decapitation, Saint Pantaleon with cleaved skull. The line of blood witnesses appeared endless.

While the foreigner was waiting, pictures of the saints and memories of the latest past intermingled. Too much did the illustrations of the pain and sacrifice of the saints look alike the purging of the heretics. The same tools, that made martyrs, were also used to exterminate heretics. Even among the heretics there were men, which stuck to their misbelief; which resisted even torture; which even took themselves for saints. Sometimes it was hard to recognize heretics. A minor detail could make the difference between heretic and saint, between perdition and beatitude. How could one be certain? In nebulous cases – and there had been many - the foreigner had decided against the accused. It was better to kill two innocent than to let one culprit escape. God would identify his own.

Today it would turn out if his acts had been right or wrong. Today he would be judged. Today the man would stand in front of the highest instance, that existed on earth; an instance, where no appeal, no doubt existed.

The door opened and the monk indicated the foreigner to come in. When he entered, he saw a man sitting at a desk. The Grand Inquisitor wore pompous clothes, with a precious cross hanging at his breast and a golden ring on his hand. He radiated an aura of authority and power.

Slowly, almost cautiously, the foreigner approached the desk. He bowed his head and kissed the ring of the Grand Inquisitor. With a wave of his hand the Grand Inquisitor called on him to sit down.

"My son! I have heard a lot about your fervour and your deeds. Therefore, it has been my wish to get to know you."

The foreigner looked enquiring at the Grand Inquisitor, but he could not detect, whether these words intimated laud or dispraise.

"Our mission is to protect the herd of the Lord from the Evil. This is a difficult, responsible mission. Fervour is not enough. Too much fervour can make us miss our aim and serve the evil."

The foreigner looked inquiringly at the Grand Inquisitor. He took a small box out of a drawer, put it on the desk and opened it. He took out a pistol and put it on the desk. Then he shut the box again. The foreigner stared at the weapon, its muzzle pointed straight at him.

"Do you see this weapon? She gives power to the one which has it; power, power over life and death. And what is even more important, with this weapon I can force people to do what I want them to do. Even though there is only one bullet inside the barrel, I can force my will upon two, three or more people, even on a crowd. However, at the very moment I use this pistol, the power is gone. I may have killed one, but at the same time I freed the others. Those will do the opposite of what I had forced them to do before. Free from their fear they will turn against me."

He interrupted his speech to scrutinise the foreigner. He glanced down and waited silently for the Grand Inquisitor to continue.

"My son, we also have great power over human beings. You know that they fear us and with this fear we can control them. However, if we use this power incorrectly, this fear can turn against us. Consider this always! I wish you God’s blessing for your further work."

Unassertively, the foreigner looked at the Grand Inquisitor who gestured with the hand with the ring. The audience was finished. The foreigner stood up, kissed the ring and left the room. He hurried through the corridor to the entrance hall and stepped outside.

It was now dark. Still it was hot. The foreigner noticed that beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. His clothes were soaked with sweat, too. He hurried to get away from the house of the inquisition. He headed for the river, where he hoped to be cooled by the evening wind. He would dive into the busy crowd there. Nobody would notice him.

The Emperor


"Join me, my love and there will be nothing to stop us," the Queen said kneeling before him and folding his legs in her arms. She looked up and met his eyes.

"My husband will be removed and you will marry me. You will have your freedom and your throne"

The Pagan woman continued to stare at him with her blue eyes expressing passion but despair. "Say 'yes' my love, and you will have everything you have ever wanted. One 'yes' and I will be yours with this kingdom and your freedom. You still can win, my love. Just one 'yes'."

"No," he pushed her down and the Queen fell on the dirty floor, "I will not marry you, the Pagan whore that is to betray her husband and King!"

"Then you will die," the Queen hissed as she slowly rose from the ground. Now her blond hair was dirty and in disarray but her eyes flashing with anger.

"Go out or I will call the guards!"

But she smiled.

"As you wish, your majesty," she turned his back on him. And just before the door of the cell the Queen looked at him and added, "I give you a last chance. Will you join me?"

"Never"

She went out and he heard the guards locking the door –

But something happened. Somebody interrupted his dream and memory. It were the guards who caught him and dragged him out of the cell. He fought and tried to get free from their grip but they hit him.

Where was he? He did not know. It was dark and cold. Who was he? He was the knight who achieved the impossible by the will of God: he conquered the invincible capital of the schismatic world and restored the union of the Churches. And even when defeated and captured by a foreign King and his Pagan allies, he stood on his honour and rejected the deceitful plan of the Queen. It sounded well and he knew he had his immortality in the West. But what immortality did he have and how had he won it? He felt a great pain as he lost part of his body… Everything was an illusion like the Crusades themselves. The leaders, both religious and political ones, misused the dreams of the people, who wanted to flee from their reality of famine, local wars and uncertainty to a better place. And the leaders promised them saving their soul on the Heaven but also happy life in the East. And many died only for the greed for gold and power of those who leaded them. And he, the Emperor, was one of the leaders. And he continued to participate in the campaign; though it was clear to him they fought not for fortune on the Heaven but for fortune in the earth. And glory. And gold. For like all European noblemen he suffered from that terrible disease that could be healt only with this noble metal… Pain. It was by the God"s will. However Constantinople was no price but a test. And they failed. And they paid. Many died in the battle that took place year after they achieved their greatest victory but he was captured. Why? To be put under one final test? Probably he had to resist on the charm and promises of the Queen and thus to have his redemption. No, he did not have to. It was not for the test at all. For his resistance proved nothing. The Queen promised what she did not have and cannot give. If he had said "yes" nothing would be changed. Probably he did it because of the fake chivalry code – defend your honour and since the Queen came from a Pagan tribe – defend you faith… Hypocrisy! He had done the worst! Where was this code when thousands of innocent people were slaughtered no the streets of Constantinople! Pain… The real schismatics were they, the crusaders, who pretended to be the defenders of the Holy Cross. And instead of support they gave hatred and destructions to their brothers. And he, the first Emperor, had to survive long enough to realize this truth. And then to take it with him in his grave. Pain.

He opened his eyes for one last time. He saw he was lying in his own blood with his hands and legs cut. He felt the life was ebbing away. But the worst was to come. He would go back at that cold and dark place where he would spend the eternity. And there would be no devils and no angels but his conscience.

Mitchell


It’s Thursday night at the bar. February. It’s freezing outside. Inside, the usual crowd. Me and the boys are at our table. Like every Thursday night, Dave and I are watching Darren, the carpenter, arguing with Marc, the organic gardener. These two never shut up. At least the arguments are fun. Darren is always calling Marc "Tofuhead", and Marc swears back at him like a filthy drunk. Kind of odd for an organic guy to get mad like that. I guess he’s just one more compost commando pissed off at the world, and he likes to take it out on Darren.

Dave, a "dude" talking ski-tech, breaks up the argument. He holds his beer out like a white flag and says he heard a name from our past today - Mitchell, a guy we went to high school with. We’re surprised to hear his name, we figured he was probably dead. But Dave says his sister spoke to Mitchell’s sister and Mitchell is very much alive. Marc didn’t go to school with us, so he asks me who Mitchell is. I tell him, "Well, he’s the nicest psychopath you’ll ever meet."

We end up talking about Mitchell all night, trading old stories. Dave tells us about Mitchell’s Grade 10 essay on the merits of targeted extinction. Says he listed about twenty species of animals that should be exterminated to make the world a better place, and he wasn’t talking rats and pigeons, Mitchell was talking whales and elephants, big stuff. The teacher freaked, but he wrote is so well she had to pass him. Marc isn’t impressed with Dave’s story, he says Mitchell sounds like an idiot. "No, Mitchell’s insane," I tell him, "but not an idiot." Then I tell Marc about Mitchell’s garden.

Back in Grade 9, I’m at Mitchell’s house getting some bike parts, and he shows me his garden. "It’s experimental," he says. He’s got a table covered in plants. They’re alive but they look really strange. "They’re hung over," Mitchell says, explaining they’d been dead drunk for a week. He says he germinated the seeds with water, but then fed them a mix of vodka and water, with more vodka and less water as they grew. "Now it’s all vodka," he says, but he’s changing back to just water to see if the plants go into withdrawal. It was terrible. The poor little things looked so depressed, like they had headaches. One plant’s leaves were shaking, two of the others looked like they were going to fight.

Marc listens to the garden story, furious, says he’ll hammer Mitchell if he ever meets him. Then Dave says he can meet him because his sister found out Mitchell only lives about an hour away. Darren wants to go see him, he thinks it would be a riot. I thought so, too. Marc has no interest. Too bad for him, because the next day me, Darren, and Dave drag Marc on a road trip to meet the strangest guy we’ve ever known.

We drive about fifty miles down the highway, it’s snowing the whole way. The drive’s pretty dull. We get off the highway and onto a back road that swerves for a couple of miles through the woods. Marc asks me why my "idiot friend" lives in the forest if hates nature. I tell him that Mitchell doesn’t hate nature, he simply finds it inconvenient.

Now we’re off the back road and onto a worse one, it’s not plowed at all, but we make it to the town where Mitchell lives. There’s a welcome sign, but the town’s name is spray-painted over and it’s got "Mitchellsburg" written on it in weird serial killer lettering. We drive into the middle of town, and in the dead of winter, in an ocean of clean white snow, the whole town is black from the ground to the tops of the houses. The trees, everything, it’s all covered in filth. Then it starts snowing black snow. It’s crazy, like a bad acid trip.

We keep driving but the black snow on the road, which looks like volcanic ash, is piling up and eventually we just can’t go any farther. Dave’s getting edgy, he thinks we should go home. I said we drove too far to turn around, so we might as well walk.

Darren opens the door to get out and the stench knocks us flat. The air is unbreatheable, it reeks. But, like idiots, we walk through the black snow anyway looking for Mitchell’s house. I’ve got my jacket over my mouth so I can breath because the air’s so bad. We’re walking, and we’re looking in the store windows, but they’re all empty. There’s nobody there. The place is dead. Every house is deserted, and they’re all covered in cinders and sticky grime.

We turn a corner up ahead, and buddy, it’s unbelievable. There’s a house about a hundred feet away with a chimney that’s got to be thirty feet high, and thundering out of the chimney is the filthiest, most disgusting oily black smoke you’ve ever seen. It’s rocketing up about two hundred feet, making a mushroom cloud at the top. It looks like an A-bomb going off. The black snow coming down all over town, it’s fallout. This has got to be Mitchell’s house.

We go to the door and knock. Sure enough, Mitchell answers, he looks good and he’s really happy to see us. We shake hands and he pulls us from the wasteland outside into his house which is spotless and doesn’t smell at all. We take off our coats and go into the living room. Mitchell brings everyone a beer and sits down. There’s a silence, then I have to ask him, "Mitchell, what the hell are you doing?" He says, "Follow me."

He takes us downstairs into the basement. It’s really hot down there and you can barely walk because the place is packed with old tires. "These are my donuts," he says. He grabs a tire and walks towards another room, this one’s smaller and hot as hell, must have been a hundred and fifty in there. In the middle of the room is a huge steel oven, like a blast furnace, with a door three feet across on the front. Mitchell cranks open the furnace, it’s roaring inside, and says, "time to fry a donut, boys," and launches the tire into the fire. He slams the door shut just as the tire explodes in flames. We’re totally stunned. Mitchell just says, "Firestones give great BTUs!"

We feel like we’re witnessing a murder. That crazy furnace is pumping burning rubber death-smoke right into the stratosphere. Marc blinks once or twice and says, "Are you insane?" Mitchell laughs. He explains, in a philosophy only he understands, that his sins are the sins of many men condensed into one man, and that there’s an efficiency to his behaviour that we should appreciate. Then he says it’s legal for him to burn tires because he bought some Kyoto credits from Exxon with money he borrowed from the local bank. He says he doesn’t even have to repay the loan because once he started burning tires, everyone in town moved away, including the bank, which has no any interest in him anymore.

Marc’s losing it, he’s asks Mitchell what the tire smoke is doing to the birds and animals outside. Well, now Mitchell gets this look of pride on his face. "It’s great," he says, "they’re gone. Every single one." Darren is freaking out. He says, "You can’t burn tires, it’s nuts." Mitchell agrees, but only because his tire supply is limited. Mitchell says he’s started disassembling the neighbour’s houses for wood to burn, and most people left so quickly they didn’t take their stuff so he’s been burning that, too. But he says he still prefers tires.

Now, Mitchell’s being really nice but me and the boys are feeling like we’re stuck in a crashing airplane. Marc and Dave look like they’re going to puke. We don’t know what to do, so we do the only thing we can, we leave. We tell Mitchell we want to get back before dark, so we go back upstairs, past the stacks of tires, grab our coats, and say goodbye. But Mitchell tells me to come back next winter. He says his nuclear reactor will be finished by then, that he’s already got the radioactive parts from two thousand defective smoke detectors to use as fuel rods. He cracks this twisted smile and says, "I should get great BTUs."

We leave Mitchell’s house and run through the black snow to get away from that disgusting eruption coming out of his chimney. We get to the car, and we’re gone. Nobody says anything. It’s like we’re trying to understand what just happened. Eventually, Marc speaks up, he says Mitchell is a psychopath. "Yeah," I said, "but he’s the nicest psychopath you’ll ever meet."

Tuesday


Friday, 5 May

Yesterday and today could not have been more different. Yesterday I used my feet to go everywhere. Today I drive a Mercedes GL-450, with two reserved parking spaces downtown. Yesterday after awaking I crawled into the rain from a sewer pipe which I had slept in. Today I woke up between silk sheets and looked out the windows at the rain, and thought it pleasant to see the rain fall. Yesterday I was stuffing stale leftovers of bread in my mouth after I found them in a refuse pile. Today I dined on peaches and fresh bread overlaid with the finest cheese.

Maria asked me this evening if it bothers me that all of this is stolen. I told her again that it was not stolen. She can go to the police if she likes, and they will agree with me. I am not bothered at all. It is my right.

There is a small device called a telephone, which rings endlessly. I asked but they will not remove it.


Saturday, 6 May

Today I wished to see the countryside. I have lived in the city for my whole life and have never seen what it is like, this countryside they speak of on television programmes. So I got in the Mercedes with Maria and we went for a drive. She wanted to drive, but she became frustrated when I would not talk on the small shiny box she holds to her ear very often.

It is strange, this countryside. There are many trees, small farms, little roads leading off to nowhere. No buildings to speak of. I know about the little roads because I required Maria to drive down a couple of them to their ends. They both ended at rivers which could not be crossed, with nothing else around except trees. We got out and walked around. The air smelled strange and bitter to me, but this turned out to be only rotting leaves. I wondered how anyone could live out here, with only the trees and grass to eat.

Maria told me it is impolite of me not to answer the telephone, that trouble will come if I do not. I tried picking it up when we returned from the countryside but all that happened was that a voice asked if I would consent to an interview. I put it down and told Maria I did not want the telephone.


Sunday, 7 May

The servants insist that I eat too much. They tell me there will be food enough no matter how many days go by. But they do not know what hunger is. If they did, they would not be so sure of this.

I decided it was time to drive downtown to one of my parking spaces. It is underneath a large building which I have walked past many times before last Friday, but I have never entered. Maria reminded me to bring a piece of plastic with me to open the doors. I did not think it would work but after passing the plastic through a crack in the door, the doors all opened. I tried this on many doors. One of them led to a small office where three people I did not know were clearly expecting the door to stay shut. They hid their faces behind their hands while I looked around their office.

If the telephone keeps ringing tomorrow, I will probably throw it away.


Monday, 8 May

I found early this morning that if I pull the two wires from the back of the telephone, it does not ring anymore. So I did that early this morning. I think the servants have their own telephones, though. I saw two of them today holding small devices to their ears, with no wires, and talking as if someone was there to whom they could speak when that clearly was not the case. They both stopped when I saw them and put away these things they held in their hands. But they did not blush. Instead they looked as if I had offended them.

I drove to my other parking space today. It is very different from the large building. It is underneath a small house near downtown. All around it are huge buildings which block out the sun, and thousands of people. I am glad there is a fence around it.

I walked by this house many, many times before last Friday, and always though it looked so strange amidst the large buildings. All that time, I did not know uncle Ignatius lived here. It is only one storey, with small windows, a single door in the front. There is no telephone.

From here I watched the people go by for several hours. I fixed my own lunch and dinner, and looked around the two large libraries here, and sat and looked out the small windows at times. So many people, going somewhere and then back again, over and over. They all talk with the small shiny boxes held to their ears, like the servants. I wonder if all these people are servants?

I arrived home late. Someone had put the wires back in the telephone, and it was ringing.


Tuesday, 9 May

Maria was different today. I suggested that we go for another drive in the country. “Are you not going to answer it?” she said instead of answering me. She meant the telephone of course, but I wished not to be bothered with such things. So I picked up the telephone, pulled hard at the wires, and ripped them from the wall. It left a hole. I threw the telephone through one of the large windows and out into the street. The sound of the glass breaking made a lot of people come running.

The servants cleaned up the glass and the broken pieces of the telephone on the street, and began repairing the window.

I went for a drive in the countryside, alone this time. Maria did not even look concerned when I told her I was going to drive. She said nothing, just made a hissing sound with her teeth and did not look at me. I drove and thought about Maria’s coldness and the servants’ looks after I broke the window. I wished to return to my steel pipe. I was hungry then, and dirty, and woke up aching every morning. But I did not ache in my heart, and when people were mean to me, I could understand why.

All these thoughts made me drive too fast on the little road. The Mercedes started sliding and then flipped over and smashed into a tree. I was wearing my safety belt and was not hurt except that my left wrist is now purple and swollen. The Mercedes was upside-down and I could not move it after I crawled out.

I knew no one would find me in the countryside, on one of the little roads. So I began walking and came to a small house in the trees. A small man came out, wearing a faded shirt and suspenders. He smiled at me in such a way that I forgot about the car and Maria and the servants. He invited me to sit on his porch while he went in and got something for me to eat.

Then he came out and we ate peaches from wooden bowls. He told me that he was glad I was here, and asked if I would like to meet the others. The others? So after we had talked about the different bird sounds and the age of the place and the shade of the trees, we went in.

I think there were about four hundred people there in that small house. Except it was not so small. There were two underground storeys far larger than the little house, with rows of books and paintings and gardens and all sorts of things. There were people writing more books, and painting more paintings; people fixing shoes with leather and tiny hammers; people weaving and sewing and breaking the ends off beans. And somehow they had brought the fluttering sunlight from under the trees, so that everyone worked in light as if they stood outside the house.

And everyone I met nodded to me and murmured as they returned to their work. I finally stopped a young lady who was spinning wool to ask what she was saying. “You are the one,” she said softly, looking about with dark eyes. “You will use what the Gods have given to you so that my children may grow up above ground instead of here below as I have.”

How life turns. Last Thursday I was no one. Now I am a leader of the Phoneless, and will praise whatever gods they wish me to after the cities have been destroyed and the children are able to play under the trees again.

The Heretic Ship

      It was late evening in Brussels, the massive capital city of the VNC. Skyscrapers loomed for miles.
      The galleries of the high court unusually packed. Like an old coliseum, trials took place in the center ring, judges on one side and defendants on the other, surrounded by guards. Spectators were seated all around. Tunnels under the galleries led to the court floor.
      The doors to the largest of those tunnels opened and the group of seven premier judges walked out. All eyes in the court at once turned to look at them, and all mouths clamped shut. The judges took their seats, and the high judge spoke.
      "We have reviewed the evidence relating to the crimes these men are charged with. We have also reviewed their statements made in their defense," she said. She had no microphone, but every person could hear her, so silent was the court.
      "We have judged their statements," she paused, "and found them to be guilty of heresy!"
      A brief burst of noise filled the court.
      "We have also found them guilty of all charges," she continued, "Their unrepentant nature and vile heresy means there will be no attempt to realign their attitudes. We sentence all the defendants to death by lethal injection. There will be no appeal."
      The crowd erupted into shouts and cheers. The main phrase being shouted was "kill the heretics".
      "Well," said one of the defendants, "so much for plan A."

      Several months previously, a lone starship flew through space to Mars. It was roughly shaped like an egg, with the bow smaller and rounded, and the stern larger and with three large engines. In all, it was 150 yards long. The name Icarus was painted on the side.
      Their destination on Mars was less than 12 hours away. The entire crew was nervous, to one degree or another. They had never attempted something so daring as this. A few wondered if perhaps they were going too far. Even the captain, Danar Lyius, sitting in the bridge, brooded over his plan. The plan was simple enough, though a host of factors could spell their doom.
      Lyius sighed, thinking about the many potential problems. The payoff would be enormous, he knew, stroking his sideburns. They had been in scrapes before, and managed to get out. His crew was a motley bunch; mostly men, they wore no uniform and had nothing in common except for their desire of the loot. All were fair shots with a rifle, and most were good.
      The ship continued on to Mars, flying without signaling planetary orbit control, coming in on a weird orbit to sneak past the various radar stations. The crew milled about, anxious for action, dreading the calm before the storm.

      Finally, they came in close to their target, the sun setting over the terraformed surface of Mars. The targets had been spotted with the thermal sensor, 10 miles distant. The ship quickly closed the gap. Lyius stood next to the cargo bay doors, along with most of his 32 person crew. The rest were manning stations on the bridge or in the engine room. Lyius checked his weapon again and looked at the door.
      "Prepare to fire!" the pilot's voice commanded, and the ship braked quickly to a stop. The wide door fell down, giving the captain a wide view of the Martian landscape. Centuries of terraforming had turned this part into a verdant green pasture, with the occasional clump of trees giving off lengthy shadows.
      Then he saw them, the target of the raid - a herd of over 100 cows. Lyius praised every divine figure he could think of, then raised his rifle. The ship was still 100 feet off the ground, tilted so that the soldiers near the door could shoot at the cows. And shoot they did, dropping cow after cow with well aimed shots. The remaining ones began stampeding before they, too, were dropped. A few managed to escape, but Lyius ordered the pilot to descend so they could begin loading the dead bodies.
      As his crew jumped out, Lyius checked with the bridge to make sure no other ship were approaching. Knowing the urgency, the crew quickly finished loading the dead cows into the huge freezer onboard.
      With that done, the Icarus took off and angled to blast out of the atmosphere. Captain Lyius sat down in the bridge, enjoying a very fresh cut of steak.
      "By the storms of Jupiter, this is delicious! This mission could not have gone much better. Sure stuck it in the eye of those VNC jerks. Ha!"
      "Next time," said the pilot, Robert Greenhild, "They'll be ready. And the fanatics are going to really hate us. Hold on - another ship is hailing us. I'm opening the channel."
      He flicked a switch and turned on the communication speakers.
      "Starship Icarus, this is the Solar Shepard. You will halt in static orbit and prepare to be approached, under council law that authorizes us to enforce the high moral code."
      "Oh, by the very bowels of the fiery hells of Venus! That the fanatics had to be here now!" cursed the captain. Then, he was seized with another look of terror.
      "Don't worry sir, I have not yet opened channels for communications from us," said Greenhild.
      "Thank the stars," Lyius said, then opened his ship's emergency broadcast system, "Attention, battle stations! The Sea Shepard, yes, the Sea Shepard, is here! Prepare the torpedoes and prepare for relativistic acceleration! Move yourselves!
      "Okay, open communications, Mr. Greenhild."
      A holograph of the Sea Shepard captain appeared in front of the bridge windows.
      "Greetings, Sea Shepard. We are honored to meet the glorious defenders of the Moral Code," Lyius said evenly.
      "You have not yet begun a static orbit around Mars, Icarus. Do so now. Prepare to be boarded," the unflinching Sea Shepard captain said. He wore a pale green uniform.
      "Of course. We're just now altering our course," Lyius's earpiece buzzed with news that the crew was ready, and he reached for the discarded steak.
      "What is that?"
      "Why, a nice, juicy steak, freshly cut from martian cow," answered Lyius, trying not to smile.
      "You killer! You cold blooded murderer..." the captain could barely get the words out, and his face was turning red.
      "Would you care for some? Fresh meat is so juicy," taunted Lyius, smiling and taking a bite.
      "Slaughterer! Crew, prepare for battle, open fire at the Icarus! Destroy her!" screamed the captain.
      "You'll have to catch us first! Your pathetic Vegan Nation Council can't stop meat eating!" And with that, the engines of Icarus roared to full capacity, driving the ship towards Saturn. The Sea Shepard followed and began firing all the rail guns and missiles it had. Just then, a few torpedo tubes on the stern of the Icarus opened, releasing two torpedoes and many flares. The great heat from the engines and the cloud of flares blinded the Sea Shepard sensors. Only when the torpedoes were less than 50 miles away were they finally picked up, not nearly enough time to maneuver at the great speeds of the ships. Both hit, causing massive damage from explosives and kinetics, sending the Sea Shepard into deep space in a spin, debris streaming from it.
      "Excellent! Not every day you get your enemies to hit your torpedoes."
      Greenhild let momentum carry them around Saturn, and back to the asteroid mining outpost near Jupiter. During the journey home, they painted over the name on the side and processed the cows. Once in the grimy station they called home, they enjoyed their bounty and made a few discrete sales to trustworthy buyers. After a month, they were ready to begin planning their next raid. The planning was interrupted, however, when the crew awoke to find guns pointed at their faces, with VNC enforcers behind them.
      After being thrown in a cell on earth, Lyius asked Greenhild if he had any ideas.
      "Well, sir, we could always try arguing for man's basic right to eat meat from a philosophical position, with ample use of science."
      "We'll call that plan A", Lyius said. They had enough time for many other plans as the VNC prepared to prosecute them as murderers for wanton slaughter, and a thousand lesser charges.


      "Well, seems plan A didn't work so well. Time for plan B?" inquired Greenhild, a gleam in his eye, as he reached under his coat.
      "Plan B it is. Hurray for lax security practices!"
      Lyius and the rest of his crew all pulled out small, synthetic pistols and begin blasting the bewildered guards. The crowd began screaming and ran for the exits. The judges ran too, but were overtaken at the tunnel doorway by the Lyius and his crew. Lyius had them lead the crew to their private hanger. Lyius rushed his crew into the spacecraft reserved for the use of the High Court, dragging the protesting judges along. Greenhild eyed the controls, and smiled.
      "Prepare for liftoff! We're flying out hot!"

To be heard

The Judgment resonated in the Curia, each word coming out as a hammer's blow.

"And so, for thy crimes against our Lord and the Church, thou art to be tossed off the Tarpeian Rock."

"NO!" I cried, "No! This is madness! You cannot see what is true!"

I shouted, wailing while the guards brought me to my cell once again, for the last time.

I shouted myself hoarse, screaming to be heard. As had one man, centuries ago. But he was listened to, even after.

___________________________________________________________________

The Council of Rome was held in the City, during the 325th year after the birth of Jesus Christ Soter. He brought us the good word, but wasn't heard. He'd endured crucifixion. Yet, years later, during the Emperorship of Hadrian, he was finally understood, as we all strive to be at least once.
Since then the Faith had spread, and Christianity had become the official religion of the Imperium Romanum. The old Gods banished, we could strive once more, as the we had under Antoninus Pius.
The established doctrine maintained, of course, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost were the same entity. But to some, this is wrong. They must be different! Much proof exists, but I shall abridge it. They do not matter here.
I believe this. This is my theory. My truth.
I am Arius, and this is my tale. My trial.

___________________________________________________________________

I wrote a book, once. Few were the men who did, in my time. But now, Mankind writes too much. And the world drowns in paper.
Too much was written on that fateful day. March 25th, the day of the Council of Rome.

They tried us for what they called "Heresy". Do they not understand? Our faith is akin to theirs. They can talk, those who in ancient times, accepted foreign Gods as their own!

All my so-called friends rejected me. They were tried too. But they said, swore before God, that I had "deceived" them. That I began this Heresy.

But I did not. It carries my name. But, like so much, the name is a misnomer. But, such things are dangerous. For me, this was deadly.

Once we'd uncovered the Truth, they acclaimed me as leader! They shouted my name, and hailed me as "High-Priest", like the soldiers hail their General "Imperator". They shouted, rejoiced, drank themselves unconscious, for once in their lives. And, when we were found out, what did they do? They abandonned me.

I suppose that it should be better, one life sacrificed for many more. But, why should it be mine? I helped these men find the right way, and they helped other men to kill me. Is that a show of gratitude? It is not. I think, had I been a true Heretic, I would not have come to the Council. The judges did not think of that. They thought I agreed I was a criminal, and that I could not continue with my life.

All the important persons of the Empire came. Augustus, naturally, the 6 Cardinals, of course, and an Imperial Entourage. The former were there because it was required of them, whereas the latter just came for some "amusement". They pointed at my friends and I, and laughed haughtily as well. They did not understand.

I realize now, that I spoke much of what was not. Here is what was.

___________________________________________________________________

I was the last to be asked forth. I'd watched, from afar, what the others said. They lied. They swore the truth, though. May they burn in hell.

They came forward, and, one after another, were pardoned. Free, they now were. Dead, I was yet to be.

The most memorable moment for me, I should say, was when my younger brother decided to join the other followers. He'd always appeared as if he worshipped me. That day, when it was finally my turn to suffer, he just looked at me, in a pitiful manner. There was a single moment when our eyes met. I think, at that instant, I understood that he silently hated me. I'd been the leader, the man he'd followed for most of his life. Now, he was happy, for he was the head of the family. A shamed family, but still, he could leave for Spain, or Africa, where he'd be able to start a new life. It was another betrayal, but after all I'd seen on that day, one more did not matter to me.

When I was brought in front of the Emperor, and the 6 Cardinals, the judges on that day, they each asked a single question. The various Cardinals wished to know why or how. Poor questions, that did not give me the possibility to speak freely. After that, Augustus spoke.
He said:
"Who did you betray?" To which I answered "Not a person, Lord."
"Is it truthful?" He asked, brows raised.
"Aye, but to some, I betrayed God." I replied.
"That would be no small offence." He thought for a moment, and then : "Enough is enough."

___________________________________________________________________

That concludes my trial. It is short, for there is not much to say. It is short, for I did not say much.
After those words, the Judgment came. Terrible though it may be, I cannot help but think how much happier I am to know that suffering, at least today, is unleashed upon a single man. Few shall miss me, I fear, but what is to come will come.

I hear the guards arrive. I hear my sentence approach.

I pray, one final time. God will hear me, with hope. Men listened to Jesus for him, shall God hear a man? Jesus was not excluded by Man, shall Man be excluded by God?

But, one thing remains assured.

Men shall forever condemn others.