Blog 72: Paul's Pretend Friend

I’ve been looking after him for years, he’s a complete recluse with several psychological conditions which I perhaps indulged too much for too long. He has odd arrangements with any delivery service that I can’t deal with for him. When maintenance work happens in his flat he’ll wait in another room with the door bolted and pay in cash by sliding it under the door.

None of his clothes were less than five years old despite my endless offers to buy him new things. I tried acting more directly and bought him a complete outfit once but he just started shouting and threw them out of the fourth story window. He refused to open the door for me for three days after that. We were operating under a deal that he would wear clothes for only one week consecutively before he let me wash them.

He allowed me to see him for one reason and one reason only. He, for five years, believed I was his imaginary incarnation of his little brother. I am his little brother of course but at some point after the death of our sister in the car crash he thought that I had died as well. Paul never left that state of denial after sitting in the broken car as it slowly burnt and watching me and Danielle in the front seats. Danielle died instantly as debris from the wall we’d hit broke her neck. I was pinned in place by rubble as smoke from the engine filled the car.

He saw me in hospital but never found it in himself to believe I had survived what happened. I tried to tell him I was fine in the beginning but his resistance only grew with time. Long walks did nothing to alleviate his fragile mental state. Whenever he hears a car engine Paul begins to shiver and shrink into the foetal position in a breakdown that can last for hours. Something appealed to him in me living on as his imaginary friend. I guess subconsciously there’s an admission there of psychological dysfunction which he never conquered openly. I comforted him as he rejected all others to live alone in his flat.

On his behalf I settled a court case with the company who make the breaks that failed us on that way home. They agreed to make regular payments to my brother through me as his carer. By representing my brother in legal matters life was a little easier in some respects but in others it bound me to him more than I would ever have chosen. I had only enough free time for odd night shifts at local supermarkets and delivery centres but I pay my bills with my allowance as a carer. I had to give my mum and dad regular updates on Paul’s current status which was vastly the same for months at a time with his depression peaking during the winter around the anniversary of the accident. I brought him books from the library which he read at a pace of roughly two a day. He’d hadn’t been much into reading before the accident but even hated the sound of cars on television. Luckily VHS allowed me to screen his viewing experience and enjoy worlds beyond his room together more than him telling me about the latest saga he’d been reading. Animated films or those set in the times before the motor car were the extent of things he would watch. I preferred watching the samurai epics with him. He loved samurai films so much he let me buy posters for his flat, it was invigorating to see new splashes of colour in the otherwise chronologically stunted world Paul inhabited.

He liked drawing samurai battles, not that he was good, but improved gradually as it took up more of his time. I preferred him to tell me about his forming samurai world than his previous fixation which had been talking to the potted plants Danielle had given him when he moved into that flat. The plants which had previously been known as Danni and Bethany, Danielle’s middle name, were renamed Yukimura and Satoshi in honour of noble warriors Paul liked reading about.

Things seemed to be getting worse for Paul when he began retelling the story of his own life through that of the samurai in his to be written book. He thought I would be flattered by the addition of a guiding spirit character based on me who helped his broken warrior brother end a war. In his story that war had brought about the deaths of entire generations which on the side of the warrior left him as the sole heir to broker peace with the rival clan whose loses had been comparable.

The most infuriating thing about such ideas for me was where to pick apart which bits of the story represented something real and meaningful to my brother and which were more irrelevant creations to flesh out his story. Did he see himself as at war with some force which he, as part of another, had somehow wronged equally?

I sought the help of psycho analysts who had helped me in my case to become Paul’s legal guardian. I became close to one, Ellen, who said that she saw Paul’s writings as metaphor heavy embodiments of the battles raging within his subconscious that would become more and more accurate to how he saw himself with time as he replaced vaguely imagined elements with ideas that represented a previously unexpressed partition of his psychosis.

This interpretation seemed reasonably accurate as Paul’s imagining of the world became more and more fulfilled. He drew vast diagrams of family trees depicting dozens of generations of the two warring families and their allies. In keeping with the dire outlook of Paul’s perception of life the vast majority of characters represented on these charts died either in battle of through assassination until there were none but the brightest new leaves on the tree left. His warrior was the last male of his family to survive a war that had broken several peace treaties over four generations and claimed all but his ill mother. The warrior spoke to his family through his brother who began to realise that both families had been manipulated by a darker force bent on revenge. Paul’s dark force had been born during the assassination of a friend of both families who had stood in the way of a business venture between them. Having been killed to further the venture that character chose to incite war between the two clans which had been allied for so long before. Paul envisaged this force as corrupting any possible moments of clarity which might have brought prolonged peace to the clans. At the climax of the book Paul wanted his character to make a pact with the evil spirit to take his life to make amends for the wrongs of his family and that of the other clan.

The dark climactic ending had me worried for a few weeks that Paul might be contemplating suicide to which Ellen agreed it was possible. My fears were lifted when the good spirit rallied the forces of lost clansmen from both sides of the war to face off with the spirit of vengeance. The two clans combined manage to overcome the spirit of vengeance and lift the cloud of misguided rage from both families who make amends. As a lasting symbol of peace Paul envisioned the warrior laying down his sword and marrying the oldest daughter of the other clan to cement the peace. In return for his heroic deeds and dispelling the curse on the two families the ghost of the warrior’s brother is granted a body of flesh and bone during the light of sunrise. The two meet each other to talk each morning before the ghosts body fades in the morning wind when the light turns from red to yellow. The last pages of the book describe as Paul eventually wrote them describe in detail the smile on the face of the ghost as he holds his niece in his arms, born the night before.

This work steadied Paul emotionally. I asked him if he wanted me to see if I could have it published for him and he agreed quite amicably. The book was rejected outright by the first two dozen publishers I took it to who called it run of the mill nonsense. Eventually I took it to a smaller firm who specialised in that particular genre and spent far longer looking over the text. I was told to arrange a meeting with Paul which was the most awkward negotiation of my life. The publishing representative had dealt with plenty of odd shut ins in her time but never any who insisted on talking to her through a bolted door. Small tantrums occurred during edits conducted over the phone with Paul’s permission.

Paul was given a handheld computer as part of his publishing deal. He spent a week and a half staring at it in his chair between trips to the toilet which were the only break he had. This is where the story of Paul’s imaginary friend ends. Another publication, cheaper and less read than Paul’s, discussed my relationship with him less heavily laden with metaphor on my blog which I began at Ellen’s suggestion to combat my own developing social problems.

Paul expressed his betrayal with a punch that broke my nose and threw me from his flat with muscle I would not have thought he had given his lifestyle. We haven’t spoken since that day and in a complete role reversal I now receive updates on Paul’s progress in life through my mother and father with whom I lived up until moving in with Ellen only a few weeks ago.

Paul’s book is doing well for him, heavily advertised by his publishers who seemed to have a lot of faith in it. As with the two clans moving on with life beyond their war now Paul and I are left to get back to normality. I miss him as much as I have ever missed anything but realise he has made more progress in the past few months than the five years before. He still lives in the flat with Yukimura and Satoshi to whom mum and dad added Kenji and Haruda. I enjoy more sleep now than I’ve known since the car crash which gets me through the depressing boredom of a nine to five stacking shelves. Life goes on, so do the issues.

Blog 71: His Second Shadow (Lethe Three)

So for years I lived a lie and for no reason it seems. My son knew all along who I was. I wondered. I guess plastic surgery only works to deceive vague acquaintances. Usually the hand tattoos are enough to distract people anyway. Those who knew me before would say I’d rather have died than have a tattoo. In Russian culture my tattoos represent two kills in the mafia. One of the men who referred me for having my face cut apart had the tattoo and laughed when I said I killed me and my wife. It should have scared me to hear the hit man laugh but something about dying, even if it was a lie, made me feel braver.

Lethe introduced me to his wife. He told me she lead a militant woman’s rights group who had been disbanded by an even more militant band of puritans. Apparently Lethe managed to dissuade the would be killers from stoning her to death with a nuclear bomb. Having convinced them to set her free my son punished the men who might have killed his bride to be by letting them drink from his stores of poison. Immune, he drank with them and watched the small army writhe in agony. Lethe’s second shadow Sacer took on the role of bodyguard for my son and clearly takes it very seriously. I saw the handles of six throwing knives in the pockets of her body armour and a silenced pistol in its holster at her side.

For the first time in years my wife and I would meet our son and it seemed he would be multitasking as he arranged munitions deals on his palmtop while we tried to ply information from him. He looked nothing like the shadowy child I’d seen in my chair only months before. He was a man enjoying knowledge withheld from the world. I was going to ask his new wife to join us when she kissed one of the guards who’d been relaying information to her. Our son smirked as we sat, shocked, watching his wife kiss another man. He told us the marriage was more of a formality. Neither he nor his bodyguard were under any allusions as to the purpose of their relationship. She had sworn to protect him in return for his aid in her cause.

We’d created an unashamed monster. He told us if we wanted to know him then we would know him for what he was without polite vagary. He was no more a squeaky clean merchant than I had been an honest lawyer. We had no right to judge a son he said that we’d let think us dead.

It seemed slightly unfair for him to sit there and tell me his crimes were no worse than mine. His mother took the deal as he’d offered it, accept him for what he was and join the ride or be left in the dust behind him. She told him that no matter what he did we would be there for him, I was not so sure.

He told us that during all of the back and forth with European security agencies it had become inevitable that at some point a taskforce would be put together to find him. He’d taken the initiative to start that group himself and as yet the best efforts of that task force had proved unsuccessful. He wanted to know if I had ever considered a career in criminal psychology. I had not. Apparently security wages were far more substantial than those of a regular psychologist. I agreed more for the sake of his mother to become the consulting psychologist in the group meant to catch him.

Two weeks later I was in a conference room in Brussels looking at a photo of the man the others thought was behind the mayhem all over the world. The photo was of an older, more beardy gentleman from either Iran or Syria thought to be the head of a terrorist cabal with nuclear ambitions. Clearly my son was spinning his stories well.

I gave my opinion that the suspect while drawing conviction from his religious views was more than a mere fundamentalist. Sad as I was to be my son’s puppet he does write a good script. He wanted me to build him a legendary counterpart behind which to hide. I will not disappoint.

Blog 70: The Second Amendment (Lethe Two)

Niall was facing a heavy handed investigation by police looking for charges to bring against him. He made the national papers bringing him all sorts of attention. Business proposals came flooding in. Criminals wanted his help to evade capture by faking their own death. He took the offers and the money, he hated the reprobates but thrilled in the challenge. He could reset the counter for mobsters who were grasping at threads with the fuzz at the door. He helped them disappear with all of the money or die and relieve themselves as kingpin with a clean new rap sheet. He became indispensable to the scumbags, with him on their side they were invincible. He’s admitted to me that those days were his worst mistake. Well placed ‘friends’ could only keep him safe for so long.

Niall despised reliance on anyone. The bullet proof glass was installed at his house, metal shutters blocked out the few rays of light he might have let in anyway. He became a surveillance enthusiast. I wondered why he trusted me with the knowledge that he’d bought up the houses either side of him and renovated them to accommodate escape routes. There were no doors between the adjoining buildings but thin walls that he could easily fight his way through if he had to. I smiled slightly wondering if he had considered the difficulty of fighting his way into a packed room should it become so. He answered the smirk by telling me that the space between the thin wall in his house and the other would accommodate excesses enough to facilitate his escape. The one, wooded front door was fronted with ornate metal caging and backed with an inner stronghold door. The police had not failed to notice the changes in his life, they had nothing on him but that didn’t stop them looking.

He would cancel our sessions sometimes and I’d ask why. He’d say I wouldn’t be safe with him. That didn’t mean he’d be any safer on his own. Sometimes he was shaking, not openly but trembling. On other occasions I saw the deep pool of thought behind his eyes. He might be staring beyond me at notes on the wall or further through it to some mechanism of escape. I saw a smile grow gradually over a number of weeks as the plan came together. He had the blueprints for a path to freedom but it would take him time to lay the foundations. Time was running out, death threats were catching fire in his sealed letterbox as fuel was poured through it. His sprinkler system saved him from those first weak attempts but he knew the situation would escalate.

His solution was quick and brutal. He advised his underworld friends to carry out blanket assassinations of their rivals. Several criminal empires were snuffed out in the first night. In a week he was down to the last clan of killers. By then they were beginning to realise the new territories would no more be theirs for long than the pulse they were born with. I was under no allusions as to what he’d done, he felt no remorse. He disappeared, sold the house and moved away. Our next and last sessions were held via video call. No one who knew who he was knew where he was.

Via the video calls he told me his life was comparatively quiet. I knew what he meant was he’d found a preferable noise. Interruptions to my electrical interactions with the world suggested that Niall had turned his attentions to virtual manipulation. A laptop and scanner were delivered to my house. They worked alongside his software as a decryption engine. I was told very forcefully never to use either in view of a window and to keep them out of sight to even my wife.

Niall had become slightly more legitimate in this new, shadowy incarnation. He told me he was working with European intelligence agencies to decipher coded messages that compromised national security. As payment he wound steal vast stores of money from their budgets. Some intelligence agencies set up separate accounts and let him take their money. Niall had no sense of the ungracious wrath that was coming for him. As much help as he was to them the intelligence agencies did not like feeling fools at Niall’s hand. They were biding their time and wondering who the mysterious thief and benefactor could be. His pen name to them was Lethe which could easily be taken to mean he had connections with Alaska.

The version Niall I had known was dead, I never called him that again. He was something more than I had known back then and it seems he knew all along who I was. Amidst news of upheaval in the near east I received a message printed on rice paper in food dye. I got married, it said, did you see that coming dad?

Blog 69: The Underground (I wrote this when I was still in high school, weird)

It was Saturday night. And just as always we were drinking spray painting, starting fires and most other things that generally aren’t legal.

The warehouse had been our hang out since Alex (a master pickpocket who prefers to be called Ghost) had broken into it back in secondary one. The warehouse was roughly three storeys in height with an additional maze of rooms below ground level. These were generally used for parties but Mark had been using one of the more out the way chambers as a bedroom. Although he denied it Mark had been chucked out of his mum’s for not getting a job. Although he now had a job delivering parcels for the local post office he refused to move back in with his’ mum. He spent most of his time in his’ room with his girlfriend who we all called Hex because she used to believe in witchcraft. The main room in the warehouse had, over the years, been equipped with stolen furniture and a power supply of car batteries (also stolen) which Spark, whose real name is Andrew, had wired to Mark’s old sound system and some lights (stolen). Spark had always been good with electrics. It was originally Spark who had taught Ryan, now known as Crash, to hotwire a car. Crash was famous amongst local youths for managing to evade the police completely after crashing a stolen Skoda into a police car parked at a set of traffic lights. Then there was Malcolm, my best friend, also known as Spray because he always carries a spray can. My nickname is Psy, short for Psycho because I always carry a lighter. I had been blamed when a row of cars blew up in a nearby car park. I was cleared when CCTV evidence showed I was setting fire to a paper bank near a supermarket at the time.

The sound system was blaring, almost everyone was drunk. Only Spray, myself and a girl called Lexie were still sober. Lexie, along with a few friends had come along to the party. All of Lexie’s friends, who had been talking to Crash, fell asleep on the floor next to him. I spent most of the night trying to convince Lexie I wasn’t as bad as most of the rumours made me look. Eventually I gave up and fell asleep on the couch next to her.

When I woke up Lexie was gone, she had however left me a note saying she was late for work and at the end of the end of the note she had left her number.

As I became more aware of things I noticed Spray’s latest piece. A gigantic, silvery blue Dragon sitting on the gang name, The Underground.

We had been called The Underground since the first parties we’d had back in secondary three. It was during the first party, when everyone was drunk; we started discussing what to call ourselves. I think it was Mark who first suggested the name. It was agreed on the fifteenth of April two thousand and two, six days before my fifteenth birthday. It was on the eighteenth that Spray, with his first can ever, first wrote the words The Underground in the largest of the vaulted chambers below ground. Ghost had stolen the can earlier that day.

Since then Spray has painted the local school, a garage, several empty houses and a multitude of cars. Few flat surfaces in the local area do not carry The Underground tag. Those that don’t are covered in the untidy mess of gang tags not done by Spray. There were The Crows - a bunch of moshers from the inner city, The Aces - a bunch of novice pickpockets, from the west end, who aspired to be as good as Ghost, The Renegades, most of whom we got on with and finally The Champs known to others as The Chumps. They were a large group from the same karate class. Put together they had as many brain cells as the Karate Kid from the films. The Champs were The Underground’s main rivals. The Champs were lead by Richard Nelson or Brick. He liked to think Brick referred to how tough he was. I liked to think it referred to how intelligent he was.

There was no one more violent than Brick apart from Con, short for convict, who is Crash’s big brother. Con was in a drug rehab centre in London. Con had a court order banning him from entering Glasgow after one night, whilst on a pub-crawl, he injured eleven different people in six different bars before being arrested.

Just as I was about to get up and leave Spray rushed in shouting franticly.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“It’s Crash,” he said panting.

“What about him?”

“They’ve put him in hospital.”

“Who have?”

“The Champs,” replied spay who had just regained his breath.

“The Champs put Crash in hospital!” said Mark, “what for?” he looked astonished.

“Crash stole Brick’s car.”

We asked if he was O.K to which Spray replied he was on the critical list.

“What do we do? We can’t let them get away with this,” said Mark.

“It’s all taken care of, I talked with The Renegades, they’re coming here at eight o’clock. Some others too.”

“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Mark.

“All the champs will be at karate tonight, we’ll get them then.”

The next few hours were mad; people were coming out of the woodwork. Some from The Renegades, Aces with a score to settle. Apart from The Crows no one got on with The Champs. Among The Renegades there were many sorry to hear about Crash, including Bass, Crash’s ex. She had been in his music class before he dropped out. At eight the last few turned up there were thirty-two of us in total. This would be a good match for the class of twenty-seven Champs.

We set off at nine. The procession worked its way through the streets in silence. It was pitch black apart from the street lamps, a few of which were broken. Within fifteen minutes we were standing outside the hall where the karate classes were held. Spray went to work on the wall while I doused Brick’s car I petrol. It still showed signs of theft. The door was warped and the dash was missing where Crash had hotwired it. Everyone stood well back as I threw a match into the car. Flames soared up. Amazing. It crackled for a few seconds before the petrol tank caught fire and it exploded. The windows blew out showering the area with glass. Funny how the plastic coating doesn’t work under such conditions. There were murmurs from behind me and shouting could be heard from within the karate class. A few minutes later a haphazardly dressed bunch of morons emerged from the building. Some were carrying weapons. A knife, knuckle-dusters and a length of chain.

Both sides stared for a minute or two in complete silence. Then one of The Champs started to swing his chain. Then there was chaos. The Renegades threw a volley of stones, spray fired a shot from a paintball gun and both sides charged.

Though outnumbered The Champs had the advantage of being trained in unarmed combat. I missed a lot of the action because I was rolling around on the ground punching and kicking a boy twice my size. This was not my thing, I was no fighter, I was an anarchist. I did catch a glimpse of Spray holding two Champs at bay by shooting them in the face. Spray had convinced Spark to modify the gun so it worked much like an Uzi. Then the boy I was fighting with was wrenched off me by Louis Spencer, the leader of The Renegades. His nose was bleeding heavily and a black eye was forming. His fist flew past my face and the other boy fell, unconscious, to the ground.

Just as we seemed to be winning there were shouts from the end of the street. Seven or eight Crows were running towards us lead by …

“Joseph, what are you doing?”

“You never liked me, none of you, you wouldn’t let me join your gang.”

“We told you to go and calm down after that fight with Crash. We thought you hadn’t come back because you didn’t want to,” shouted Mark before being hit by a Crow.

“Liar, it was me who tried to get you into trouble all those times but you always wormed your way out. I set fire to those flats, stole the Police car, it was me who blew up the cars, me.”

There he was moaning like a spoilt child. His tantrum had meant The Underground being accused of multiple crimes not of our own doing. He had caused a full on war between the gangs and presumably had something to do with Crash being put in hospital.

The rest of the fight is a blur. Two crows set to work knocking the stuffing out of me. They did a good job. Then we heard the sirens. Most of the Crows bolted off down the street. I crawled over to Spray. He was out cold and drenched in blood. I looked around. The car was still on fire, the road was scattered with moaning or unconscious. Some of the Renegades managed to crawl, limp or run away. Then the police arrived. It was soon clear a convoy of ambulances would have been more appropriate than a squad of police in body armour. They took three Crows away in the back of a car. The rest of us were taken away in ambulances.

I spent three days in casualty before being hauled off by the police. I spent several months in prison. This did nothing to convince Lexie I was not a habitual criminal. Spray spent most of his time in hospital, which I think got him the sympathy vote, not that that’s much consolation. He never fully recovered.

Joseph didn’t get away with his part in the fight. Someone phoned Con in London. Later the same week Joseph was found beaten to pulp outside a café. Con was charged with GBH. We explained the circumstances very carefully to a few members of the jury and some generous bribes meant he got off. He still attends anger management classes and now runs a boxing class in the hall where the karate was once held.

The Champs no longer exist. Their karate teacher was too scared to continue. He now runs a yoga class. Brick left Glasgow as soon as he was released. There are no Renegades anymore either. They all joined The Underground, which now boasts some forty odd members.

Lewis Spencer, Crash and myself moved into rooms in the warehouse. Several others moved into rooms under the other warehouses which, collectively, The Underground managed to buy from Glasgow council to assure they were not demolished as The Renegades empty flats had been. The Underground is now more of a criminal organisation than a gang. We own two cafés, a garage, a small indoor climbing centre and Crash, Spark, myself and Spray dabble in stolen cars. Crash steals the cars, Spark removes distinguishing features, Spray paints them. I then forge the paperwork and sell them on.

Mark is engaged to Hex who moved in with him after being chucked out by her dad. Things are going well for us in general, apart from Spray who still has problems breathing. Even though Mark still lives in the warehouse he made up with his mum. We still feel the consequences of that Sunday night. A scar, a twinge, nightmares or the thoughts of those we hurt. We are The Underground, although we try not to hurt people we can’t change who we are. I still start fires, Spray still paints tags, Ghost still picks pockets and Crash still steals cars. Although it gets us in trouble the crime is like a drug we are addicted to, it’s part of who we are. That doesn’t mean we’re proud of it. Far from it.

Blog 68: Versions of the Truth (Version 16)

There are plenty of conspiracy theories about. Ideas about how power really works and who holds it behind the curtains. They don’t know so they have to guess. They get so close sometimes and at others they are hilariously wrong. They don’t have the perspective to see the world as it is. They are ants trying to appreciate the world as an eagle above might see it. There too many obstructions, too much just out of sight. They could never appreciate the scale of the truth. I find it hard to fathom myself, and its my job to keep track of this stuff. It is my job to keep humanity in check.
The year is 2011, most of the world think that they know how far technology has advanced. They have no idea, they can’t see the hold it has over them or comprehend the ways it could change their life.
My organisation owns equipment that far exceeds the current perception of development because the technology is not of this time. Nor am I, I am here to maintain the Consequence Prophet and act upon its predictions. The Consequence Prophet determines the outcome of an action by displaying news articles that can be traced forwards or backwards through time. It’s like I have a free subscription and access to every edition at once. By these means patterns can be traced and the consequences of an action reasoned.
It’s use is governed by strict rules which I have bent to my will which should by some theories be impossible whereas in reality actions in time have multiple ripples, many consequences. For those familiar with the multiverse idea consider an entirely separate universe fore every choice made. These choices give birth to endless possibilities and can be back tracked to follow new paths towards unknown horizons. I hail from one reality of the future but can generate others based on my actions and have, using the Consequence Prophet to produce the best possible future for myself.
The C.P is supposed to be used to maintain the likelihood of the foundation of my birthplace Keres Karma. The city is supposedly a utopia. What a joke. The place is full of drugged up zombies who work specifically for the sponsored addictive substance that is at once a poison and cure. It is circular vitality and death, strength and weakness. We are told this stuff is the source of our strength and the greatness of our nation but in truth it is the leash that binds us to our leaders. Without it death comes quickly to the deserters.
A new reign of chains began when the scientists created that elixir of life and death. We are property of the state, we have a best by date numbered in days until the next dose which we should take as a given. We should work without questioning the reign of these men who would kill all those who do not work for them. What of the deaths when doses are short? Do they take these into consideration when they call Keres Karma a utopia? Slaves of the system smile and forget that there were days when a person would die of starvation or lack of water before they died through lack of Nectyr. It changes us, we are stronger physically and have a more reliable neural design but with these advances came the snare. The irreversible change requires daily doses of the Nectyr to prevent heart failure. Without it we can no longer harness the oxygen that flows in the blood; Starved of air we shrivel and die, proof the system must be followed to the letter.
This national addiction keeps the population in check, working hard to earn their daily dose from the masters of our fate. I will deprive those masters of their empire, Keres Karma will never rise from the grave of the old world. No more will die with the permission of the state, euthanasia will never again be as easily wielded against the population who can be selectively starved of their medicine. By this means all who question the reign of government are put down silently. Conscience has cruel consequence in my day which will never be again. I will die as the flow of Nectyr drips dry knowing I have saved endless ignorants from the cruel lies of the empire of addicts. New dictatorships may rise in its place but there will never be such a travesty of truth as a known result of my actions in the consequential multiverses.
Who knows what direction the world will take from here. My misguided colleagues will die with me ending all opportunities for them to manipulate the timeline. I might have time to destroy the equipment before heart failure. If not then it will be found by the people of this time or their children. Who knows what they would do with it, they might undo my work or bring about a future more terrible than mine.
Maybe I should give the Consequence Prophet to someone I know would use it for good but how could I be sure? Power corrupts is presumably a saying for a reason. People do what is best for them whether or not it benefits society in general. This is by no means any indication of mass collusion within governing factions simply the proof that we are subject to greed and selfishness.
Maybe I will bequeath the tool of tyrants to a wide eyed child, still hopeful and innocent. Could I hope to teach a child the use of the Consequence Prophet before they themselves gave into the self-serving whims of an adult? I doubt it, the device must be lost to time like the city of Atlantis beneath the waves of Poseidon’s fury.
No more will man dabble with fate, never again will we rule the far future with the smallest action. Mystery, banished by our predictive tool, will return to the world.
We must live in the moment for happiness, consequence not forgotten but unknown.