by R. P. Wolff
But she always wondered if she really had biological parents. If she did, they must have been part Hispanic because she had some Hispanic features. She had beautiful olive skin, long black, thick hair, and brown eyes. She wanted to find out more about her arrival to earth, but it was difficult, if not impossible, to research this impulse without someone noticing. But one day, she would find out her true origins.
When she was growing up, her dad told her that she had special powers where she could inflict pain on people. At first, he didn’t realize that her powers only worked on men, but he figured that out later. He told her that when she was a toddler, he tried to have her release the powers, but nothing worked, so he gave up until she was a teenager. One day as a teenager, Zelda was coming down their staircase, and her father, jokingly, tried to scare her. She screamed and instinctively inflicted the pain on her father. That was when he figured out that she could only inflict the pain when she was frightened.
But he didn’t want her to have to be scared to inflict pain. Instead, he wanted her to be able to use the power whenever she wanted and even if she wasn’t scared. After many experiments and pain to her father, they discovered that she needed to do two things to make it work. First, she needed to clench both fists, and second, focus on thinking that the person or people were going to harm her. So it was mental along with the clenching of the fists. The beauty of their discovery was that it only inflicted pain on who Zelda focused on, so her father wouldn’t be a victim of the pain.
Her dad made her practice on men and women at random, like in a restaurant or on the streets. That was when they both realized that it worked on men but not women.
Once her father discovered how she could control the power, he used it to climb the political ladder. However, he had already made great progress on his popularity after Zelda’s arrival to the earth. Shortly after her grand arrival, called the Awakening Day, he converted his pharmaceutical company to a nonprofit company and lowered the prices. People could buy his drugs much cheaper than his rivals. His competitors hated him and tried to undermine him through bad public relations against him. But this all backfired on them because the citizens loved her father and loved her.
He sold most of his other assets and gave it all to Mater churches throughout the country. He changed the way he dressed, and the cars he drove. He dressed modestly and drove a cheap, old Ford Focus. He mostly walked around in a white, monk-like outfit with sandals. He looked like a pauper, but that was his plan. He wanted his image to be one of modesty and religious.
He hadn’t run for any political office until he discovered her powers. Then, he would have her subtly inflict the pain on anyone who disagreed with him. While his opponents were scrunched over in pain, he would act concerned, pat them on their back, and say something like: “Are you okay? What’s the matter?”
He would then nod for her to stop the pain, and she would stop clenching her fist, which stopped the pain. Her father would then ask the men again what her father wanted. If the men didn’t give him what he wanted, she would unleash the power again. It worked great because her father always got what he wanted, and men feared him. They didn’t want to be in the same room as him.
Zelda would disguise herself and show up at her father’s political opponents’ rallies and strategically cause pain on his opponents and their staff. They would be in the middle of a speech criticizing her father, and then they would scream and squirm down on their knees. Zelda would just give them a little dose, so they could quickly recover. These scenes made them look bad and weak.
Her father skipped through the normal course of politics and leaped and became one of the Senators of Texas. He then ran and won the presidency, running on the Materism platform.
Materism was a little-known religion before the Awakening Day. After that magical day, it grew exponentially year after year until it became the United States’ majority religion surpassing Christianity. It grew for three primary reasons, but Zelda just discovered the third reason recently. The first two reasons why it grew was because people genuinely believed that Zelda was the mother of all the Gods, and she and her father would use her special powers on opposing religious leaders. She, again, would disguise herself and create pain on the leaders of Christianity. If they started to protest, she would inflict the pain. It was time consuming, though. She had to travel a lot and disguise herself. She and her father had to pick and choose the most influential religious leaders because she couldn’t visit them all.
But the third reason for Materism’s growth was that her father laced all the medicine that his pharmaceutical company produced with a special, undetectable dose of a combination of opium and codeine. This made people susceptible to brainwashing. Zelda suspected that he was doing something with the drugs because she knew he was extremely mischievous and conniving.
She asked him one day if he was lacing the drugs with something. He said no, but she persisted. “Are you sure Daddy?” she asked while squinting her eyes.
“Of course, I’m sure,” he said defiantly. “Don’t you dare look at me that way.”
She did not like the threat, so she clinched her fists and showed him the fists. “Are you sure you’re not hiding something from me, Daddy?”
“Don’t you even think of doing that to me,” he had said.
She unleashed the pain but just only for a few seconds.
He shrieked and looked at her with horror. “What the hell are you doing? I’m your father.”
“Don’t make me do it again. Tell me what you’re doing to the medicine.”
“What makes you think I’m doing something to the medicine?”
“I know you. You’re doing something.”
He sighed and told her how he was lacing the medicine, and he thought that was one of the causes of Materism’s growth. He had a survey done of his customers and discovered that eighty-five percent were Maters, which was higher than the national average, so it was working. But the study also showed that there were only three percent that were Atheists, which was far below the twenty-percent national average. He figured that the drug made people susceptible to religion in general. Of course, the stated purpose of the study was to determine the various drugs’ effectiveness but buried in the voluminous survey was a question of each customer’s religion, which was the only reason why he commissioned the study.
After that incident with her father, all she had to do was clench her fists when she wanted something from him.
He would obey.
Now she would remain in power until she died. Then, her three sons, the Gods of the Sun, Land, and the Sea would take over.
Chapter 5
Zelda heard a beep from her phone and pressed a button. “Yes,” Zelda said.
“Madam President, you wanted me to remind you that General Chandler is here to meet with you.”
“Thank you, Linda. Send him in.” It was going to be weird getting used to being called “Madam President,” since people always called her “Mother” even though she was much younger than many of the people who called her that.
General Chandler was her father’s chief of staff, and she decided to keep him as hers because she had previously manipulated him with her powers. In addition, the retired four-star general was well respected and connected with the military. But most importantly, he was a converted Mater, and he bought his prescriptions from her father’s company. Because of his control over the military, he was a key part of Zelda’s and her father’s power.
The gray-haired general walked confidently into the room. He stopped, made the sign of “Z,” bowed, and said, “bless to you, Zelda Mater, the mother of all the Gods.”
She nodded backed and gestured him to sit across from her desk.
“Madam President, congratulations. The country is in good hands.”
She sighed. She hated this bullshit. Although he was a converted Mater, she suspected that he was a reluctant one, and she did not trust him. And he probably despised her because she had infl
icted pain on him in the past. Surely, he remembered it.
“Thank you, General.” Zelda said.
“As you requested, the vice-president and your cabinet are on their way. They should be here shortly.”
“Okay, so how is the conversion going?”
“Not so good. It’s chaotic.”
Zelda did not like the sound of this. “Do we have things under control yet?”
“No, but we’re getting there.” He paused and seemed reluctant to continue. “Madam President, with all due respect, we made too many changes at once. Taking all the infidel kids away while we converted the monetary system has made it difficult to control things. My men are confused. They’re not sure whether they are going to get paid and what is going to happen to their savings.”
“I see,” Zelda replied. She hated to admit it, but he was right. They did make too many changes at once. She should have done it in phases as her dad suggested. The first days of this conversion were crucial. If the military and police couldn’t maintain control or were not doing their job, she might lose her power and presidency as quickly as she obtained it. Zelda continued, “So some of your men are having doubts about Materism?”
The general rubbed his forehead. “No. They are devoted, but they’re concerned about their money.”
“I see. Who are these people who doubt Materism?”
“Mother of all the Gods, please, these people are good Maters who just don’t understand our new monetary system. I will get them under control.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.” She needed to give a reminder of how serious she was. She clenched her fists and focused.
He yelled, jiggled in his chair, and grabbed his groin.
“What are you going to do with the men who doubt Materism, General?”
He grunted and said, “I will make sure they understand. I will round them up and send them to the conversion camps.”
“How long of a sentence?”
“How long do you want?”
She released the pain. He was cooperating.
He gasped.
Zelda said, “I would do just a few days because we need their services, but I would educate them on the Freedom Chip’s benefits.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“So fill me in. How chaotic are things going?”
The general referred to his printed notes, with his hands shaking. “Right now, we only have about ninety percent of the people accounted for which is about 300 million people, so that leaves about thirty million people at large. But we are regularly rounding people up as I speak.”
“What percentage of people have the Freedom Chip inserted?”
“That’s at about eighty percent because it just takes time and resources to properly inject them, but the 300 million peopled that we tracked should be getting the injection within a week or two.”
“Why so long?” she asked.
“Our focus is to get the thirty million people who haven’t checked in and may be mounting an opposition. We have control of the ninety percent, so it’s just a matter of time before we inject all of them. Is that okay, Madam President, if we focus our attention on the infidels on the run.”
“Yes, of course.” This news worried Zelda. “So how has the branding gone?”
“Very well. It has taken a lot of these infidels by surprise. They’re horrified and shocked by their treatment, but they are generally non-violent people.”
“What do you mean by ‘generally’? Are some of them getting violent?”
“Some are resisting, but we have them in custody.”
“Do we need to teach them a lesson?”
“No, there’s nothing they can do, so they just need to let off some steam.”
Zelda thought the general was soft, but she went along with his suggestion—for now. “So where are you holding them?”
“The jails are too small, so we have temporarily transferred a lot of them to local places like convention centers and the like. We’re getting ready to purge the preexisting prisons as you suggested. That brings me to an important question on how we go about the purge.”
Zelda had deliberated about this very question for weeks. She despised criminals, especially ones that committed violent crimes. She also despised thieves as well. Her idea of a beautiful world was to get rid of and execute all the violent criminals. All other felons would have their hands cut off and put into solitary confinement. Once they executed the violent criminals, this would make room for the infidels. But how was she supposed to implement this plan? How was she supposed to kill everyone and not cause an uproar?
“Do you have any ideas?” she asked the general.
“Hmmm. There’s no easy way. But let’s think out loud of some of our options and the pros and cons to each option. We could kill them by firing squad. There are several problems with that. First, we can only kill so many at one time, so some of the other inmates would hear the gunshots or even see it.”
“Why not take them to a remote area and do it there?”
“That’s a thought?”
Zelda figured that the general was agreeing to everything she said because he didn’t want her to hurt him again. He was probably totally against this plan but went along anyway. She didn’t care as long as he implemented it.
The general continued, “That would solve the problem of other inmates potentially witnessing the executions, but the other inmates are going to start to wonder once the other inmates don’t return.”
“Tell them you’re transferring them,” said Zelda.
“How do we bury them? And, oh, what if they are true Maters?”
“The answer to your first question is bury them in mass graves. Have construction equipment nearby to dig up the dirt. The answer to the second question is simple and you should know this yourself being a loyal Mater. Can you tell me why?”
Zelda loved watching him squirm in his seat. He rushed to answer. “Because they violated the sixth commandment which says thou shalt not harm a Mater.”
Zelda nodded. “Right.”
“Madam President, what about if they harmed an infidel? Do we still execute them?”
Zelda had already thought about this question. Executing all the violent criminals was a big part of her plan in building popularity. The masses would love that the government killed all the despicable criminals and wouldn’t blink an eye if the other felons lost their hands. But in the back of their minds, they would also know that if they didn’t obey, they could come to the same fate. She wouldn’t publicize how her military killed them, though.
Zelda answered the general question. “We are not going to spend time investigating whether they harmed an infidel or a Mater. Besides, it is unnecessary as we are rounding up the infidels and educating them anyway.” Zelda paused. “So any other options?”
“We could poison them or give them lethal injections.”
“How would that work?”
“Well, we could feed them all at once and give them a poison that doesn’t react until they’re asleep. The lethal injections would be harder because we only have the capability of doing a few at a time.”
“Yeah, I agree. I don’t think either of those options would work because we would have a bunch of smelling dead bodies that we would have to get out of the prison. That would be a mess.”
“Yeah, the shooting them offsite so far is the best option.”
“Let’s go with that but keep it secret.”
“What about the hand cutting?” he asked. “That seems even more complicated than the firing squad. They’re going to need medical attention afterwards.”
“Yeah, you’re right, but that will really send a message. How about this? You bring a group of ten at a time into a separate room. Handcuffed them good to a sturdy table or chair but in a way that we can cut their hands off. We lecture them that they have committed crimes that are not severe enough to die, but serious enough to lose a hand. They will go crazy or not even believe us. Then, we will off
er them an option of being put under, so they wouldn’t feel it. Our nurses, we’re not going to use doctors, will sew them back up. Of course, everyone will take the option. If not, so be it.”
The general shivered and rubbed his eyes.
You fucking wimp, she thought.
“That’s really complicated,” the general responded. “That would require a lot of resources that we can’t spare.”
“Okay, good point. Perhaps, we wait to implement this phase until we have the infidels under control. Anyway, I would eventually leak it to them that the government killed the other prisoners and make them worry about their fate. But I don’t want to wait too long. I don’t want these filthy thieves to go unpunished.”
Her phone beeped. “Yes, Linda,” Zelda asked.
“The vice-president is here to see you.”
“Send him in.”
Moments later, her father entered the room. She had immediately made him vice-president which the Senate immediately approved. The Senate was so scared of her and her father, they would never challenge her authority.
Chapter 6
Zelda’s father stood before her and did the standard Materism ritual of the sign of the “Z” to her. “Congratulations, Madam President,” he said, bowing.
His formal greeting caught her by surprise. He had always referred to her as “Zel.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” she said, which sounded weird as well. “Please have a seat.” He sat next to the general.
“The cabinet should be here shortly.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “How are the Gods doing through all this?”
She knew what the eyebrows meant. “Good,” she said. The eyebrows were his subtle way of letting her know that he had a lot of dirt on her. The Gods that he was referring to were her three thirteen-year-old boys who were triplets. Per the scriptures, the mother of all the Gods, a virgin, was supposed to descend on the earth and give birth to the Gods of the Sun, Land and Sea. Everyone interpreted this to be birth at the same time and that the Gods were equal in power.
