The Zul Enigma

by J M Leitch

  Right now, I’m sitting at Carlos’s desk. He’s over on the couch – his favourite spot – playing “Dylan and the Dead”. Apart from taking the occasional call earlier and spending a couple of hours chatting with me, all he’s done is sit there listening to music and staring out of the window at the falling snow like he’s in a trance.

  After I finished editing the second part of my book, I printed the whole thing out. Now I’m writing my diary. If I make it through today as a physical being, I’d like to publish my book, which will serve as an account of Zul’s contact. I’d like to think it might be useful to other third density beings in the future. And if I evolve to the next density, then I don’t know what will happen to it. Perhaps someone will find the manuscript and think it’s interesting enough to print. Perhaps no one else will ever read it. That’s a strange thought, having put so many hours into it.

  It feels really weird hanging around waiting for a phone call reporting something’s happened or for something to happen to one of us. No – excuse me – I don’t want to beat about the bush here. I don’t want to use euphemisms. I want to say it exactly how it is.

  What’s really going on is that everyone on this planet is sitting quietly terrified, waiting to hear that people are starting to drop dead in their billions like ants sprayed with insecticide. What a sick feeling it is and I detest being a part of it, because I’ve now reached the point where I know exactly what I want to happen. I want Carlos to be wrong. I want the sun to rise on our own planet tomorrow, just like it has done for eons before. I don’t care about raising our consciousness. I don’t care about evolving to the next density. I just want to look forward to years of happiness ahead of me, with my gorgeous man and for us both to see our baby born and bloom.

  But I know this is not how things will turn out. And so I meditate and pray for the strength to face whatever our future brings, and am surprised to realise I am no longer afraid. I am resigned.

  Oh, my God!

  Oh, my GOD!

  OH, MY GOD!

  I don’t know how to write this. It’s too raw. Too AWFUL.

  At exactly five past seven in the morning New York time and five past one in the afternoon in Vienna, the phone rang. It was Greg. He’d been at his office since midnight his time – waiting – and he told us the thing we’d all been expecting had happened. All the humans vibrating near fourth density evolved to the spiritual world leaving their physical bodies behind, while those of us who didn’t make the evolutionary leap have been transported from our old Earth onto an identical one in a parallel brane universe. It all transpired, exactly as Astraea said.

  It is unbelievable.

  We felt nothing.

  And the aftermath is horrific.

  Greg told Carlos he started getting calls just after seven, saying many people in New York had collapsed and died. When he looked out of the window himself, although there was little traffic and few pedestrians on the streets, he saw the bodies of two young people who had been struck down mid-stride as they crossed the road. They were lying motionless in the slush.

  Carlos hung up the phone looking sick. He whispered that in spite of believing in it, championing it, fighting for it, he couldn’t grasp that the evolutionary leap Zul predicted had happened. I sat there staring at him, feeling like I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t believe it had happened either. I fought back my nausea, pushed myself up onto my feet and went to him. We held each other close while tears streamed down our faces. We didn’t make a sound. We just clung on to each other – desperate – as if someone or something was trying to prise us apart. All I could find to say was that he mustn’t feel sad. Or bad. That he had to feel proud because he’d achieved what he set out to do and if he hadn’t, then the evolution of the whole galaxy would have been compromised.

  It was little comfort. To either of us.

  Then the phone rang again. It was the first report of deaths in Vienna. Thank God there weren’t that many. Which surprised me. You’d think the people working at UNO would be closer to the fourth density, having a pretty selfless mind-set, and I’d secretly dreaded that many people at the UN would be doomed.

  Emergency services worldwide have been inundated with calls and everyone is going crazy in spite of the E-Day Emergency Plan that every nation ratified and made public a month ago. We watched the news after Greg called, and what’s happening is just horrific.

  Usually people hold on to their dead so they can give them a personalised, dignified farewell – but that won’t happen today. We have to drag them outside then go back indoors and stay there with the curtains closed and our front doors unlocked or else they’ll be broken down and the premises searched for bodies. Film of the Clean Up Plan in action on television and the Internet is shocking. It’s as if a neutron bomb hit the world. No one has ever witnessed such carnage.

  In some places more people have been left alive than those who have been taken, and the survivors there are arguing that the Clean Up Plan shouldn’t apply. After all, let’s be honest, who wants to drag bodies of people they know and love onto the street for bulldozers to heap up into piles of flesh that will be burned. Would you want to do that to your family or friends. Treat them with no more decorum than you would a dead rat.

  The E-Day Emergency Plan warned us to stock up with several weeks food and there are back-to-back broadcasts reminding people without an Emergency Permit to stay off the streets until further notice. The only exception is Christmas Day, and even then there’ll be a curfew.

  The whole world has been shut down, as everything possible is being done to contain the panic.

  Carlos’s phone has not stopped ringing and the phone lines are overloaded as everyone tries to check on friends and relations. All the deaths took place simultaneously at the precise time Carlos predicted. To the split second. They all occurred the exact moment it was the 21st December on every part of the planet.

  Reports from Europe, North America and Australasia are flooding in, although communications with many Asian and African countries, with South America and the Middle East, have been severely interrupted and we’re only getting patchy news.

  Private images posted on the Internet are appalling and I can’t help but ask myself if Carlos ever fully comprehended the scale this evolutionary leap would take and the trauma it would impose on the grieving humans left behind. I don’t think he did. I don’t think anyone could have. I certainly didn’t.

  It’s loathsome for those of us left. We’re locked in mayhem never experienced before. The extent of mourning is unprecedented, although we’re all participating in isolation and it’s terrifying wondering how we will ever build a functional future. Right now, that task is unimaginable.

  As many reporters are pointing out, the scriptures predicted we sinners would be sent to Hell and that’s exactly where we are right now. We are in Hell on Earth.

  Saturday 22nd December 2012

  Yesterday I left Carlos at the office and drove myself home, since he said he’d probably end up having to spend the night there. I haven’t heard from him since, but I don’t want to bother him… I can’t imagine how much he’s got on his plate right now. I’d steeled myself, thinking I’d encounter some ghastly scenes on the way back, but I didn’t see anyone on the streets and only passed a couple of cars. However, in spite of having a permit, I can’t face going out today, so I’m just sitting here, thinking.

  Yesterday I was a mute spectator as Carlos sat through a holovideo call with Greg just before I left. Of course, they are doing everything they can to bring some semblance of order into the chaos that is now our planet but the media, like the proverbial worm, had already started to turn and is resuming its old habit of UN-bashing. The press is hounding Greg and Carlos for statements, but how can anyone expect them to comment on a world that, through no fault of theirs, has experienced the most gigantic loss of human life – ever. An event unparalleled in the history of mankind.

  The phone lines are swamped and the Internet w
ent down yesterday. But I know my parents, my sister and her husband, Carlos’s parents and his sister and family are all still alive. Erika and Drew and the boys too. Joseph as well. Yesterday and today we received messages from many other friends. Thank God. But this tiny fragment of good news is microscopic and I’ve been going out of my mind trying to reach my best friend in England and other friends in India and the US.

  All I can do is sit alone in silence. I had to turn off the TV soon after I got home yesterday and I haven’t been able to bring myself to put it back on again. The number of dead being reported was increasing exponentially. Yesterday afternoon it was already in the millions... and still counting. How many scenes of stiff, heaped up bodies wept over by grief-stricken friends and relatives can you be exposed to before you just have to turn your eyes away. How much sorrow can we bear, because it happened to them and not to us. How is it going to affect our children. I think of Ash and Josh. How can we explain what happened. How can we soften this catastrophic blow. Well, there’s an easy answer to that question – we can’t. I try to calm my crazy thoughts.

  A few hours after I got up, I heard Carlos opening the front door. He’d been at the office for twenty-four hours straight and I hardly recognised him when he walked in. He’d aged ten years and shrunk two inches. He looked done in… grizzled. He carried the biting cold from outside in with him on his hair and skin. All I could do was rock him in my arms as if he was my child and try to thaw out his frozen soul.

  I guided him into the warmth of the lounge where we sat on the couch. After much coaxing, I persuaded him to talk but afterwards wished I hadn’t, because I could hardly take in what he said. In a chilling monotone he told me that billions of the planet’s inhabitants had died. Yes… billions. But, he added, that was not the most crushing news the world must face… the real situation was far, far worse than anyone could have imagined.

  How could there possibly be anything worse, I asked.

  Believe me, there is, he replied, and proceeded to tell me that the scope of decimation we anticipated as a result of Zul’s theory of evolution coming to pass, was not what had in fact transpired. He said that as increasingly more evidence – deeply concerning evidence – emerged yesterday, hour-by-hour, the situation became steadily more suspicious.

  He told me that it is now proven without a shadow of doubt that it was not the spiritually advanced, as Zul predicted, who have died. On the contrary, in Christian and Buddhist monasteries and convents, some of the most virtuous and saintly monks and nuns live on.

  So what did happen, I asked, the tears hot in my eyes, not understanding how anything he could say would make what I already know any worse.

  He seemed to disintegrate before my eyes. All he could do was sob soundlessly. I touched his cheek.

  My darling, I said, tell me. What is it.

  Minutes of silence passed before he sat up and stared at me, eyes wide. He looked like a madman. At last he found his voice. Based on the reports coming in, he said, it’s become apparent that Zul’s theory of evolution was a cover for something way more heinous.

  What do you mean, I asked.

  Beccy, he began, I don’t know how to say it, but then he couldn’t go on because his face contorted in a way I would never have believed possible and more tears flooded down his cheeks and streamed onto the lapels of his jacket. I had never before seen such an expression on a human face. It screamed out pain, desperation, fear and horror. He shook his head and swallowed. He hunted for a handkerchief, wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He ran his hand through his hair and puffed out a sigh. It was hot on my face and I knew he’d gone through the previous day and night on coffee alone, because his breath was rank and sour and the reek of it made me want to recoil.

  Tell me, Carlos, tell me, I said in the gentlest voice I could find. Our baby kicked and made the fabric of my dress flutter.

  Beccy, he began. He reached for my hands and squeezed them as he stared into my eyes, then pulled me closer and whispered, the only people left alive on this God forsaken planet are the privileged. Like us.

  I don’t understand, I said. Carlos’s eyes filled with tears. Beccy, it’s the poor… all the impoverished… who have died. We don’t know for certain yet, but it doesn’t look as if anyone else has been affected. Just them. Billions of them. And he doubled over, covering his face as spasms shot through his body like little explosions and he tried to stifle the sound of his wailing.

  There was a metallic tang in my mouth. I’d bitten through the inside of my lip and all I could feel, hear and taste was a rush of blood.

  Carlos fell asleep with his head on my lap, exhausted, but my mind was running out of control like an articulated truck with no brakes careering down a hill. All the poor. How could that be. I couldn’t believe it. I refused to believe it. They surely couldn’t all be dead. Please God, please God, Carlos must be mistaken.

  When he woke up he had a better colour. I refused his request to make coffee and instead brewed lemon ginger tea, cooked scrambled eggs, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and put four slices of wholegrain bread in the toaster. We talked in the kitchen.

  I… I don’t understand, I said. I can’t take it in. You’re saying there was no evolutionary leap, no transfer to a parallel brane universe. He nodded, that’s what we think now. But what about the physicists who said it was possible. He shrugged. So you mean Zul lied to us. Or was his theory of evolution some cover story for this… this… I couldn’t find the words to describe what Carlos had told me.

  But how did they die, I asked, and he told me that after conducting analysis on hundreds of bodies from all over the world, scientists found the cause of death was heart seizure caused by a new virus. But… I said… but… my brain was too slow to process such a monstrous concept… but where did it come from. And why did it only attack the poor. How could it attack just the poor. That, Carlos said, is the question everyone’s asking.

  And why did it happen on E-Day – and not just that – how come everyone died at the exact moment it was the 21st December everywhere on the planet. That’s bizarre… no… not bizarre… it’s unbelievable. It had to be planned… it can’t be a coincidence. Carlos shook his head. We don’t know, he said. It’s a mystery how the payload action was triggered so all the deaths occurred simultaneously.

  I shook my head in my hands. I couldn’t grasp it. All those people all over the world dead. It was abominable. Who would ever even think of doing such a thing.

  I thought it was weird, I said, starting to cry, how the TV footage, the photos, the videos on the Internet, only showed poor neighbourhoods. But, I don’t know, no one mentioned it and it was all so overwhelming, so shocking, I sobbed, I just didn’t put it together and… I had to stop looking… because… well… I just couldn’t watch any more of it. Now I knew, I felt terrible, and I covered my face, but the tears ran through my fingers and trickled down my arms.

  It wasn’t just you, Carlos whispered putting his arm round me, it was hours before anyone realised.

  But… who did it. Who could have done this terrible, unconscionable thing. And he told me he’d talked to a professor in the Department of Chemistry at MIT in the States, one of the most highly regarded people in synthetic organic chemistry research in the world, who confirmed it would be possible to biologically engineer a lethal virus to be triggered at a pre-determined time. But to target all the poor. Nobody knows how that was done.

  I’d never seen Carlos look so grave. They haven’t proved that the virus was genetically engineered, he said, but it’s a possibility. And to answer your question about who did it. Well… it looks like it was Zul. Then his face crumpled and he shook his head. But who or what Zul is we still have no idea.

  Tuesday 25th December 2012

  We lay in bed holding each other. Neither of us wanted to wake up, let alone get up. We couldn’t even talk. I mean, what was there to say. Happy Christmas. Peace and Goodwill Towards Man. All we could do was cling to each other as we tried to bl
ot out the memory of the past four days and focus, just for a moment, on ourselves. Focus on the pleasure that comes from flesh touching flesh, from the sensation of a hand’s caress, from the feeling fired by a kiss and with great effort we blanked our minds of everything else and started to make love.

  I rolled onto my side and Carlos snuggled into my back, stroked my hip and ran his hand over my bulging belly and up to squeeze my breast. But before we could get properly started, feelings of guilt began to sneak in through the cracks in my concentration, exposing my hidden agenda that the act of sex would make me tired enough to let me drift back into a blissful state of unconsciousness… the sleep of the unknowing… the sleep of the un-remembering.

  Carlos thrust harder. I trembled, making him groan. But I wasn’t trembling due to excitement: I was trembling because I couldn’t put out of my mind the faces of all those dead people, the ones who had suffered in poverty, the vast majority from Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. I was trembling because I could feel them peering through the veil that separates where they are on their side from where I am on my side. I was trembling because I could see billions of dead faces watching us making love. I was trembling because I couldn’t answer their question… why us… and I thought how yesterday we talked about taking our lives. But… well… how could we kill our baby. Of course the answer is, we can’t.

  And then I felt Carlos roll away. I knew he hadn’t climaxed and neither had I. What we’d tried to do was a useless attempt at creating something loving and tender in this new hideous world, where love and tenderness have been banished by the most monstrous act of discrimination from which none of us left behind will ever escape and for which we will always feel responsible. For all I know, Carlos had been thinking the same thing. But I couldn’t turn to him. I couldn’t talk to him. I just lay there, on my side, as stiff as the corpses crowding my mind.