Travel Bug (44 page)

The students all looked at the unfortunate young one like a pack of wolves might look upon a prey to devour……

“I can’t take this.”

“Yes, you can, Harold.”

“No.”

“Harold, yes you can, what the hell is so upsetting after watching people drowned, beheaded and burned to death that you can’t take now.”

“I don’t know. I mean they did own slaves and wealth…”

I was losing the old man… I don’t know why I was not falling for propaganda and he was…

“Children, we have a trader, A Benedict Arnold amongst us,” Sister said.

The children, laughed…

“Now, who can please tell me who Benedict Arnold was?”

No young hands were raised.

“He was a patriot,’ said a young girl in the second row of the class.

“Yes, he was,” answered the teacher.

The children were confused but also eager to be enlightened waited on every word of their messiah teacher.

“No, that’s not what my folks said” said a young contrarian.

Dear reader, this was truly the turning point because half of the students wanted to hear about the real story. The other half wanted to hear whatever their teacher said, even if it was not the truth.

“We have the same visions now,” I said.

“Of course and that vision is a nightmare, Andrew.”

The teacher smiled and that smile quickly became a fierce grimace and then a frown…

“He was a patriot because he secretly worked against American imperialism even back in those good old times,” she said, smiling wickedly. “However, he was seen by others as a trader, his own society saw him that way. We honor him like we do Benedict Arnold today.”

“I’m sorry,” said the young man with a contrary opinion.

“I will have to let the ones who rule you aware of the time you will be spending in reeducation.”

“Sister…”

“Please take this little thinker away,” she said, passionately.

The members of the C.S.V. appeared before you could shake a stick or almost bat one eye. They smiled at the young one.

“You need to come with us; we’ll call your parents…”

“Oh, you mean the ones who made him, parents is no longer a valid term, its offensive…”

“Oh, sorry, Sister Louise,” the man answered.

“Perhaps there is more than one here who needs reeducation…”

The classroom roared into laughter and the two C.S.V. men left with the child in the bat of an eye.

“Do you think we can leave this parallel version of the world?”

“Harold, nothing would make me happier but I’m afraid we’re probably going to be here a while. This might be our darkest travel yet.”

They were in a boiler room like some terrible horror movie from the late 1980’s. All of the C.S.V. efforts to brainwash the boy and fill him with propaganda were failing. The people’s president was very clear that failure was not an option even when it actually occurred. There was an old man torturing the kid, electrocuting his gonads over and over. They wanted him to believe one and one made three, so to speak. What they really wanted to was to make him think that the government was good and on his side.

“If you are not willing to believe in everything the leader says is true and accept it, then you are not an educated youth. If you hold secret doubts simply because you fear torture… only your internal organs can possibly benefit this brave new world…

“If you fear the people’s president rather than love him with all your heart, then you would never die for him or sacrifice your only child for him. It’s nothing more than pitiful fear you have to offer… and that isn’t good enough, not by a damn long shot!”

“Okay, I will learn to love him!” he exclaimed.

The old sadist smiled and surprisingly did not shock the young man’s balls this time.

“Please, I will learn whatever you want me to learn, I will share your world view…”

“Now, perhaps we don’t need your organs. If you have a heart for your great leader, then let it stay in your chest beating strong and full of conviction for the father of our country.”

“Yes,” he said desperately.

“I think there is hope for you boy and I mean beyond the hope of providing a healthy liver to a high official of the party elite with a taste for alcoholism.”

The boy smiled.

The thin excuse for a man who tortured children returned that smile.

“I love the people’s president, he has come to save us… and I pledge myself to him.”

“If you want to live, you will serve. Serve with gratitude; if you love the people’s president with all your heart and your entire mind, you might just get rewarded.”

“My honor,” he answered his tormentor.

“I think you are really showing true signs of understanding…”

“Yes,” he repeated, with enthusiasm.

“Keep up the good work son,” he said, smiling.

“I will,” he said.

“You are now almost officially reeducated and I have faith we can do a whole lot more with you then that. Son, you have a nice personality.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You might just go far after all…”

These visions that my great grandfather and I shared were so real, we could almost taste them. It was damned near like I could really hear the terror, the screams and the bloody battles to come. They were all so much more like real life than the other places we hated to go and visit. We could really smell the corpses of this world.

“This one is close,” Harold said.

“Yes it is,” I agreed.

“I mean, Andrew, this seems like the most likely scenario of the death of the world and humanity. There was reality to the others-the theocracies but now they feel more like something that happened during the crusades rather than something in our lifetimes.”

“I agree.”

“Why, Andrew?”

“There is something different this time. This is hell. What is hell?”

“Hell is the absence of reason,” my great grandfather said.

“Precisely, sir,” I answered him.

“What is your point?”

“This world has no reason. It is selfish, sadistic, meaningless and centered on the cult of personality of its leaders. Sadly, most of the leaders are narcissists. And the followers are sad fools. We must be the voice of reason here in hell to solve this wicked puzzle. That’s how people who cannot directly interact with shadows of past and present can literally save the world. I don’t have to ask if we are on the same page because no two people have ever been more on the same page than us.”

“Are we going home now?”

“No, sir, we are not. We are going to the library.

The central city library, with its hundreds of thousands of books, picked out and edited by the tireless hard work of the C.S.V. was a staggering sight indeed.

The people’s libraries, there was now at least one even in the smallest towns…

“What the fuck?” Harold asked.

“Continue,” I said. “We have more to see.”

There was history. The Bible was a load of crap and so were all the other holy books of both the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths of mankind. This was all, of course, according to the C.S.V.

The histories that were written were so mad that they were even beyond the notion that history is written by the victors. A new holy book was slowly being written. In the beginning there was evil, tyranny, racism, homophobia, sexism and imperialistic capitalism. The world was filled with darkness but then out of the ranks of ordinary men, a new savior rose up…

It was like a small tumble, like when you fall down a stair or two but you still believe in that instant that everything will be fine. It isn’t, far from it. You keep falling, one stair after the other until you realize you’ve bruised your leg and your thigh. Your little tumble picks up speed very quickly and then you think you aren’t going to come out of this unwounded; unscratched or not being able to walk right the next day. Then you keep falling and falling and hope you can avoid serious injury. Then you realize that isn’t going to happen and you hope you can still walk after this nightmare fall is over. Then you realize that you hope you won’t die…

That was this society and the rise of its insidious leadership…

“Andrew, this is the ultimate in revisionist history.”

“Harold, Marxist professors who wrote about early America are blushing due to the new gospel being written here.”

How long could people remain sane under these conditions? I wasn’t talking about those in this new America that resembled George Orwell’s
1984
but without as many laughs. I meant us, my great grandfather and me. It was like hearing the terrible cries of a constantly crying baby all the time, every minute of every day and never being to do a thing about it.

No society gets this sick overnight, it takes time and so does madness. The stress on my mind, both our minds and my poor great grandfather’s heart broke mine. A terrible truth occurred to me.

“Harold?”

“Yes, son,” he answered me.

“Why do we have to be passive? I mean, my God, isn’t the bug in the future, right now? Where the hell is it? Why…”

“Yes, Andrew,” he said, very grimly. “Why are there no family members that we could use to be active instead of passive participants in this hellish nightmare?”

“You’re right.” Great grandfather, that’s very unfortunate, I thought.

“Well, I have a few crazy fucking theories, if you would care to hear them, young man.” He smiled and then gave me a silly, almost childish wink.

“It would be my honor to hear them…”

“Wait until I attempt to answer your question before you decide whether it’s an honor or a burden to hear my answers.”

“Fair enough,” I answered.

“Let’s start with you. You are an only child whose goal it was to be a priest. Many priests have sex with women and way too many have sex with children. What is not a frequent occurrence is a priest having lots and lots of kids, although they ask that their parishioners do just that.”

“You’re not funny,” I said, laughing.

“Now, son, you have lots of cousins and other family members of our insane tribe, do you not?”

“I do.”

“What are they like?”

“Well, they seem to drop dead more often than the average drummer of a 1960’s rock band.”

“Let’s keep going Andrew!”

“Well…”

“Spit it out, son!” Harold exclaimed.

“Well, Harold, they’re a bunch of arrogant suicidal drug addicts, alcoholics and narcissists who take bigger life risks than the Bush, Kennedy or Hemingway families combined!”

“Yes!” he screamed. “Answered your own question, son?”

This made me laugh.

“Proved myself wrong, I am afraid. I thought we were better than those other wealth families…”

“Andrew, I’m glad you didn’t say rich families.”

“Why?”

“Saying we’re rich as opposed to wealth is like comparing a millionaire to a homeless man.”

Dear reader, we were deep, deep in denial as most of you would be, by the way. The worlds we had seen… The horror of it all such as beheadings, burnings, torture and genocide were all clear. Humanity sucked.

No more time to have the social indulgence of discussing the demise of our ancestors and that damned bug. We heard the baby and he was screaming.

Did this damned bug, this thing feel anything at all? If it did then what did it feel, exactly? Was it conscious?

“Andrew?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let your mind…”

“Harold, don’t you mean our minds?”

“Yes… surely wander too much from the task at hand, whatever the hell that may be.”

Then another vision, really absurd…

Ian Flick was being called into an office, a small and humble office with one couch and two small chairs, looked like the high tower office of a government building to us, since we shared these delightful visions and were free to observe.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” said the media relations czar of the people’s president.

“You’re welcome, sir,” answered Flick.

“Well, you failed the test, son.”

“What?” Flick asked.

“Sir, please don’t get me wrong. You have provided some exquisite propaganda that damn near made out leader look like he genuinely cared about the little people,” he said.

“What?”

“You know…”

“What?”

“Propaganda or don’t you really know that, movie star?” he asked.

“It’s truth…”

“Perhaps truth of a sort, at best,” he said, grimly.

“I see,” said Ian Flick.

“You really don’t see, do you?” asked the terrifying bureaucrat.

“Perhaps not,” he answered, nervously Ian Flick had really bloodshot eyes and looked well… high. It was difficult to find Mary Jane right here in the New World Order, even if one was elitist and famous like this dipshit. The government man did not seem to be amused by him.

“Stop playing games with me, there is only time for just one house call…”

“What?” Flick asked, terrified, he knew what all of this meant.

“One house call for you, Mr. Ian Flick and that is that,” he said.

“Why” he asked.

“You heard me, movie star,” he said, cruelly.

“Why?” he repeated the question.

I always knew that if Hollywood actors ever met with the genocidal scum they were for some fucking insane reason so fond of defending, it would mean death itself to them.

“Ian Flick, you are subversive.”

“Oh, you must mean against capitalism and imperialism,” he answered.

“No.”

“What?” he asked bewildered.

“S.T.D.’s, strip joints, funny ugly virgins, terrible universities and high schools and College Deans who have wives who fuck his students are not useful to the cause,” he said.

“Oh, you must mean?”

“Yes, Mr. Flick, ‘Party School,’ old copies have been found and we obviously never managed to burn all of them.”

“Look, I would like to burn copies too, I’ve spent my life trying to forget about that movie but isn’t that… censorship?” he asked, bewilderingly.

“Writers taking drugs, young men saving up for hookers, young men working hard to get laid and drunk, it’s simply not part of the program, our new program,” said the voice of the government representative. He frowned. “Don’t use words like censorship that is one of the many that will be stricken down from every language if our leader finally has his way!”