by J. A. Hailey
“And so it becomes quite clear,” said Grietzmann. “This girl lives in a big city, into which the screenside operatives were able to enter undetected. They were then able to get their hands on her and implant a chip into her head. From that moment on, she would have been a robot in their possession. At this moment, she is in the same condition as her husband. They both have chips in them, but screenside has no use for them now, so they are being left alone. Remember, there is Wi-Fi here. I’m also holding a pistol at the ready, to kill them instantly if they look like they’ve been repossessed by the computer people.
“She would have been the person used to place the chip into the colonel’s head.”
“It would have been Priya or Rosa, who would have done the doctor work,” said Sagan. “Although it is most likely to have been Rosa, as this man was possessed by her partner, Caesar. They are expert surgeons, those two girls; better than us humans. I know them extremely well.”
“It would have been done here, in the van,” said the Sheikh. “This fool would have called the woman here, and fallen under the spell of whoever was inside her head. Easy work; no chance.”
“Go and meet your wife,” said the King, his face a mask of unforgiving cruelty. “I am feeling merciful today.”
The colonel knew what was going to happen, and he went and hugged his wife, and the three Americans thought a short prayer was jointly said by the two of them.
“Come.” The King called the man, who obediently went to the foot of the King’s chair, and knelt as the demon indicated. “No one is allowed to endanger me,” said the King - and shot him in the head.
“What have we done? What have we done?” moaned Gales to Sagan, slyly. “We have given up angels and heaven for beasts and hell.”
But there was worse to come. The Syrian girl had now begun trembling violently, and that was something that did not escape the King’s notice.
“Here.” He called her over to himself, which near-impossible mission she somehow accomplished with jerky steps.
“Why are you so frightened?” He indicated a bottle of water on a little foldable table to his left. “Have a sip. You’ll feel better.”
But the girl could not get her hand to the bottle. It just jerked away, so great was her terror. Not being able to pick the bottle up, multiplied her terror, for fear of it being construed as disobedience. Whimpering like a terrified dog, she used her free hand to hold the disobedient one, and somehow struggled to get it to the bottle. But that was her limit, and she had no way of either opening the cap or of bringing the bottle to her mouth. With a despairing sob, she slumped to the ground.
Her terror had completely aroused the King, and he leaned forward to expose and caress her breasts, saying, “Do not be afraid. The death of your man does not mean that you will be without a man. Come and pleasure me.” He got up and walked his old man’s walk to the camper van, turning once to tell a female airport employee, “Help her to come here.”
The wretched widow, her husband’s corpse lying on the ground, was somehow pushed into the camper van, to sexually satisfy the monster.
“It is a great gift of God,” said the Sheikh. “We are very blessed to often be able to enjoy women when they are in the extremities of terror, although this one is considerably over age.”
“Looks good to me, Sheikh,” said Grietzmann. “Very pretty, firm body, not yet a mother, and she can’t be very much out of the range of 20 to 21.”
“We marry our wives when they are 15 or 16 at most, and then we make them pregnant immediately, as producing children is the sole purpose of marrying them, and then, after they become pregnant, they live the rest of their lives without ever being touched by us. Too old and used. Disgusting. Why should we go back to them, when we have so many gifts from God?
“Although I told Baghdadi that seven years old was too young to be acceptable to the West, if the information ever got out. And so what if they are from the defeated people, like Kurdis, Yazidis and Christians?”
“Who is Baghdadi?”
“You know, that terrorist who has declared a Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The master of Islamist forces called Daesh, which you might be more familiar with as ISIS.”
“You know him?”
The Sheikh snorted.
“If I don’t know him, he cannot function; or it actually works like this; if he does not know me, how the hell does he get paid for the oil they say he sells? Truckloads of US dollars being driven across open desert terrain, under close observation and air attack by the USA? Do you know how much a billion dollars of currency notes weighs? Here is the information. Almost ten tons!
“His money has to pass through my institutions, including payments he sends to undercover operatives in the Western world. Or how can they have living money? They don’t work; just wait for instructions to commit murder and kill themselves. And that is why we have no concern about being attacked by his terrorist forces. Or anybody’s terrorist forces. They are all with me in my city. Money, medical care for themselves, somewhere to hide when they are finally defeated. Where else?”
“So you told him that seven is too young?”
“Yes. He is holding auctions for captured girls who are only seven years old. Criminal. I have told him that they become women, capable of being enjoyed, only when they are ten years old. Any younger, and they have no idea of what exactly is going on. It’s all been tried and tested by us, Ibrahim.
“I have a system of confiscation of newborn babies, and you think I could not enjoy them when they are five, six, seven? I am the ruler of a country, and I can do whatever I want, no questions asked, especially as all Western leaders come to visit me, and have given me the status of a very important and loyal ally in the war against terror. But no. Even if they are very pretty, I resist the urges until they get to near ten.
“And pretty? These are babies of the most beautiful girls in the world, confiscated from Russian, East European and North African mothers; from girls who have become pregnant without being married, officially married. And if they have the paperwork that proves they are married, we just tear it up and throw it away.
“I have thousands of these babies. Let me tell you that they cost a lot of money to raise, because they are brought up as if they are our own children, kept in palaces, where some of our older princesses are in charge, to bring them up in a way ensuring that they delight us when enjoyed, especially when enjoyed the first time.
“These are the ultimate fruits of eternal life, the fruits of paradise, and that is why the King and I so much desire to join you, Brothers Patrick and Michael. We will share with you; be sure of that. We will restructure the world so that we are able to run humanity without ever having to answer to anyone, as we enjoy the most delicious and most difficult to obtain fruits of the world. Part of the pleasure of being the mightiest beings on earth, includes the enjoyment of torturing and killing our enemies and those who fail us, like these three colonels did.
“We have found and closed one loophole by which they might have attacked us, those computer people, but let us deal with things one by one, and you will see that we will, somehow, with your help and input, secure a system of living in the computer, in a way in which we can never be attacked.
“We want to live forever; we want to rule forever; and we want to enjoy our eternal lives. Is that not the right plan to have? Is that not why you are with us? Is that not why you have decided that we are your best partners into eternity?”
The three Americans nodded, expressionlessly.
“We know the deal,” the Sheikh continued. “And it is not a one-way gift from you to us, the King and me, this eternal life. You will take us into eternal life because we have the money and power to ensure that somehow or the other a system can be created to keep the stolen world safe from the demons of the computer world, who have already demonstrated that they will not tolerate our existence, by attacking us violently and decimating our forces.
“You will give us the opportunity to gain eternal life, and we will introduce safety and security, and we will also take you into the world of wealth and power we have, and which we will preserve without ever letting die.
“We will teach you the special pleasures that come with total power over the lives of humans. We will teach you and gift you power unlimited, to do with as you please, and to never ever be limited by laws that humans place on themselves - underage, overage, too young, too old, male, female, dignity, religion, freedom, rights, mercy, pain… Everything is ours to give, and they will be lucky who get some of it from us, because we can take away everything, absolutely everything, including life.
“Only one final test remains, and the King and I intend to conduct that test tomorrow. Ah, here he is.
“Highness, did the widow please you? No need to answer. I can see, by your look of satisfaction, that her terror was manipulated by you to extract maximum pleasure.
“Shall we head back to the palace, Highness, after we execute her? She does have a chip in her head, which can be used at any time by them.”
“I am granting her life, and some money, too,” said the King. “It is not as though the pleasure she gave me cannot be otherwise had, but her terror has been truly at the highest level, and blessed is the man who can enjoy such terror. From the aircraft, I will send the command that she be taken from here to a hospital, where some surgeon will remove the chips from her head. Let the continuation of her life be a gift from the lord who has enjoyed her.”
And thus the demonic venture came to a conclusion, its three corpses forever forgotten, before their aircraft had even taken off.
42
But yet another demonic venture was scheduled for the next morning.
Patrick Sagan was on the menu, though he was the only one who did not know it.
“You see, brother Patrick,” explained the Sheikh, the next morning, on the lawn on which such great mayhem had taken place just a few days ago. “We have checked that you and Michael are able to get into chip-implanted heads. You have both proven it, and there is no doubt that an implanted person passes completely into your control, to do with as you wish.
“And yet, his Highness and I have thought it through, and discussed it with Ibrahim also, and we are concerned that we have not conclusively tested what exactly is happening, and that we have no irrefutable proof of an entirely computerized person being able to function in the way you have shown us is possible. And we know for sure that entirely computerized is the only way to be immortal.
“You are not dead, and, because you are not dead, there is a lot of confusion about your capabilities from inside the computer. You have yourselves told us that you are both continually connected between your human body and your computer-life body. Maybe you are able to do what you are able to do because your human body head is doing all the controlling. Would that be a possibility?”
“Routing, routing through the computer is possibly going on,” said the King. “There has been no proof given that a purely computer version person can function without the human version living and feeding it.”
He looked at an attendant, standing to one side. “Bring them. If they do not look sharp, we will test them first on you.”
The frightened man ran out of view, but returned immediately, carrying two swords. “The lighter one is mine, Sheikh Abdul, although later, when I am able to use young bodies, I shall gladly take up heavier swords. Actually, heavier swords are better for cutting through flesh and bone.”
King and Sheikh both took hold of a sword each and began looking at Sagan, while feeling the edges of their swords. They were seemingly satisfied with the sharpness.
“I am so glad you have worn white, Patrick,” said the King.
“Why white?” asked Sagan. “Sheikh Abdul gave me these light white pajamas and this very loose white vest. Extremely comfortable, but why white?”
“For the blood,” answered the King simply. “Blood shows up best on white.”
“Whose blood?” queried the dumbfounded neurosurgeon.
“Yours, brother Patrick,” laughed the Sheikh, and cut Sagan’s arm with a light stroke of his sword.
“What the fuck!” screamed Sagan, in outrage, but now the King, too, had swiped weakly at his thigh and made the blood flow.
“It is the testing that we need to do,” screamed the excited Sheikh. “You have to die, Brother Patrick, to prove the things we need proved.”
Sagan did not argue, because it was absolutely clear that the two rulers meant to kill him. He got up and ran. Both rulers gave chase, although without urgency, but that had two reasons.
The first was that Sagan was stuck within the boundary walls of the lawn, which made the entire arena rather small, and the second was what the Sheikh screamed out. “If you prove to be a marathon man sprinter, we will call in others to chase and catch you for slaughter. You are going to be the first person to die many times, and this is the very first time of all those times. It will live on in history as the very first death of people who will die repeatedly and be reborn repeatedly. You are going into the history books, Patrick, my brother.”
“Shift out, Patrick. It must be damn painful,” said Gales, in the computer. “Transfer your consciousness completely in here, because they are going to kill you in this slow manner. Abe and I knew that you were going to be killed today, but we sort of expected it to be by way of a gunshot to the head, or similar; certainly not this shit.”
Accordingly, Sagan moved out most of his consciousness out from the human body into his digital self.
The two Arab ghouls hiked up their robes, tucking them into their waistbands, the King displaying an old demon’s scrawny legs, and chased Sagan, singing, ‘Happy birthdeath to you’, and laughing their heads off.
Like every horrific crime committed by them, the attitude was that of juveniles having fun, and the pain and suffering of their victims was just one more element of exclusive joy provided by God. They chased Sagan around, shouting ‘Hoi, hoi’, in their delight of the chase and hunt. It was extremely bloody, as by now Sagan had suffered a large number of non-fatal body wounds, and the two fiends were covered in his blood, finding it difficult to keep their grips on their slippery swords.
The King, utterly unfit, finally resorted to hiding behind a bushy shrub in a large concrete pot, from which concealment he ambushed the disjointedly fleeing Sagan, stabbing him in the belly and causing his intestines to tumble out. It was actually a death blow, and Sagan went down, screaming and yelling abuses at the two imbeciles.
“Brother Patrick, it is for your enjoyment that we do this,” yelled the King, earnestly, leaning down to look into Sagan’s outraged face, while at the same time disturbing and repositioning his guts with the point of his sword. “You are the very first human to ever enjoy the joy of birthdeath. Sheikh Abdul and I have plotted and planned together, to ensure that you have a lot of fun. Is this not fun? Hoi, hoi!” The King commenced some ridiculous traditional dance, but because this was happening on concrete floor, adjacent to the palace building wall, his bare feet slipped on the intestines and he fell, in a position where his face was only a couple of inches away from Sagan’s.
“Bastard,” screamed Sagan, and spat into the King’s face.
“Why are you being abusive, Patrick?” laughed the Sheikh, now with them. “Highness, he’s not fully enjoying. Perhaps we should consider finishing him off?”
“It will be halal slaughter,” said the King, vindictively. And he held Sagan’s head at an angle, and slit his throat, pressing the sword down to the bone. “Taste his blood,” shrieked the King, in delight, licking his lips clean of Sagan’s bloody guts which had hit him in the face when he had fallen. “It is the blood of the first birthdeath. Delicious.” He licked at it around his lips.
The Sheikh needed no second invitation. It was a monumental and historic deed, Sagan’s death, and he dipped into the gaping wound in Sagan’s throat an
d, wetting his fingers, licked the now-dead man’s blood. Then he dipped into the blood again, and went running to where Gales and Grietzmann were sitting, looking on in horror.
Before they could react, he had pushed his hands into their faces, and his fingers to past their lips. They had no option but to taste Sagan’s blood.
And that was the end of Patrick Sagan, famed neurosurgeon and almost Nobel Laureate, in his original human body.
“Patrick, Patrick, come back,” shouted the King, looking in the direction of the window, beyond which lay his golden desk, with the computer monitors on it. “There are three chip implanted men in the room. Take one and come out.
And the next moment, the world changed forever, as a furious Patrick Sagan, shouting filthy abuses, walked out through the French windows, in the body of a young blond East European man!
43
“It’s true, it’s true,” shrieked both King and Sheikh. “Brother Patrick has not died. This is eternal life, oh joy, oh joy!”
Grietzmann and Gales could also no longer contain themselves, and ran to Sagan, to join King and Sheikh in hugging and kissing him.
“Brother Patrick, I pray that you did enjoy death, and that what we did was not too painful.”
Despite the unimaginable nature of the outrage committed by the two rulers on his person, Sagan, too, could not keep up his bad mood, and so abandoned his temper. He knew that it was an experiment that simply had to be conducted, perhaps less evilly, but the end result was that he was still alive, and still able to function in a human body.
“What about the pain, Patrick?” asked Gales. “It happened so swiftly at the end, that I was not able to keep pace and follow you in the computer. And anyway, you were pretty confused.”
“There was almost no pain, Michael,” answered Sagan. “At the start, it was horrible, but by the end I had practically abandoned humanside; had almost no consciousness going in the body, and none at all, right at the end, when I saw my head being cut away almost completely.
