The Guardians of Freedom - Part 3 (standard:other, 9953 words) [3/7] show all parts
Author: Dan Tana	Added: Feb 03 2011	Views/Reads: 2316/1733	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Teddy transmits a tale of how it made some new friends and helped save the world from religious fanaticism.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


This friendly, generous, wonderfully sweet human being who is now one of
my best friends was once an angry, malevolent, devout racist, a white 
supremacist, a militant nationalist, and - he is the first to admit – 
quite an obnoxious jerk, who despised immigrants, on principle, even 
though he had himself been born in another country.  Back then, before 
he rehabilitated himself by changing what he chose to believe, Liam 
spent most of his time prowling the streets with a gang of like-minded 
miscreants, assaulting other people for the most preposterous of 
reasons, like miscegenation, which is what he was doing when Herberta 
and I first met him. 

My robotic friend Herberta and I were out enjoying a leisurely stroll on
a cool, clear night several months ago when we came upon a gang of 
light-skinned men standing around, laughing and cheering, and 
restraining a hysterical woman of similar skin color, as a humanoid 
figure of pure white radiance beat a prone, cowering man with dark 
skin.  Without hesitation we rushed forward to put ourselves between 
that assailant and its victim.  While Bertron tried to restrain it 
physically I focused my scanner on its mind to see what motivated its 
abusive actions so that I could find the best way to stop them. 

The signal that the scanner emits to capture an image of the contents of
the target mind bounced off of that white figure, as if its mentality 
were nothing but a psychic mirror reflecting the thoughts of some other 
mind.  As I looked into this mirror I saw the image of one of the men 
in that cheering crowd.  So I focused the scanner on that man, and saw 
his earliest memory, in which a small boy dressed in a funny costume 
watched some larger people in similar costumes set a big wooden cross 
on fire. 

I then watched Liam grow up and saw many violent, evidently unhappy
people filling his head with ridiculous and baseless ideologies that 
adamantly insisted upon their inherent superiority over all other 
people on the planet. 

From before the time that this child could speak he was bombarded with
the idea that there is some significant and sensible reason for 
categorizing human people as members of different races, based 
primarily upon the color of a person's skin.  I do not think that this 
practice makes any sense, because the genetic, biological, and 
psychological differences between two individuals of the same racial 
grouping may be much greater than the differences between a pair of 
people who are defined as belonging to different races.  And, 
ultimately, I just don't find the practice of dividing people into 
racial groups to be useful in any practical way.  But Liam learned to 
take the idea of race for granted, like many human children. 

As most of you would, Liam enjoyed the prideful feeling of supremacy
that he derived from his racist beliefs, and he never thought to 
question that ideology until the summer when he was ten years old.  
Then he met a little black boy named Larry, who I will not call 
African-American, because he was actually a native European, born to 
parents who migrated from Asia.  Larry's parents subscribed to the same 
kind of conceited ideology that Liam's family fed him, although they 
insisted that it was the presence of lots of melanin in their skin, 
rather than its absence, that somehow made them physically, 
intellectually, and even supernaturally superior to people like Liam. 

These two boys had come from different continents – Liam actually is an
African-American, having been born in Johannesburg, South Africa – and 
had different amounts of pigment in their skin, and had each been 
trained to think that he is innately better than the other, but despite 
all of that Larry and Liam found that they were really very similar, 
had a lot of the same interests, and soon became friends. 

Both of them kept this friendship hidden from their families, because
they knew that none of those racist bigots would approve.  Then some 
other members of Liam's white supremacist clan caught the two of them 
playing together.  They beat Larry severely and dragged Liam away to be 
punished for this transgression.  The next day Liam learned that Larry 
had died from his injuries. 

In the years that followed this traumatic assault Liam tried to burry
his grief and horror at what had been done to him and his friend by 
making himself believe that it was somehow justified.  He trained 
himself to despise Larry and all black people, and to especially hate 
those white people who associate with members of other races.  He made 
the notion of his racial superiority the center of his life, and came 
to base his entire identity and sense of worth upon it. 

Then Liam discovered his ability to project from his body that figure of
white radiance, which he assumed to be a material incarnation of 
something called White Power.  Liam used this power to intimidate, 
assault, and occasionally even murder the supposed enemies of his race, 
such as this man who Herberta and I found him attacking, who he wanted 
to kill, in a fit of unconscious jealousy, for kissing that white 
woman. 

When Bertron obstructed its assault of that victim the white figure
turned on her.  It pointed both of its fists at her and blasted her 
with a bolt of energy from each one, knocking her back through a wall.  
She retaliated by shooting it with a ball of high-energy plasma, which 
barely stunned it for a moment. 

Then I told Herberta that Liam was the brain behind that beast, and she
turned her plasma blaster on him, burning him severely.  Liam fell to 
the ground, gravely wounded, while the white phantom continued to 
attack Bertron.  When they saw what she had done to Liam the other 
assailants fled, abandoning him.  The victims of their assault thanked 
us for saving them and quickly left.  Then I summoned medical 
assistance for Liam. 

Before the ambulance arrived I discovered that beneath Liam's proud
assertion of white supremacy lurked a fierce feeling of inferiority and 
worthlessness.  Like many of the people who use such flimsy ideologies 
to bolster their egos, this young man was plagued by semi-conscious 
feelings of low self-esteem and a deep, nagging, suppressed fear that 
he had based his entire life upon a premise that is fundamentally 
wrong. 

While searching for the roots of these feelings I also made the shocking
discovery that within his mind there resided an entirely separate and 
distinct personality, who thought of himself as Liam's black friend 
Larry.  I traced this psychic artifact to its source, and found that it 
had formed on the same day that he gained his superpower, several years 
after the death of the original Larry. 

Liam had spent that day exploring a junkyard, looking for interesting
stuff to play with.  There he found a strange, spherical contraption, 
about the size of his head, made out of what looked like a hybrid of 
metal and glass.  When he picked up the object it began to hum and 
sparks of energy flashed through its center.  A moment later something 
happened to Liam that he has never been able to explain or accurately 
describe. 

It felt to him like the world suddenly turned upside down, or inside
out.  Right became left, blue became yellow, and real became unreal as 
everything melted together, exploded out to infinite dimensions, and 
collapsed down to a single point, but somehow everything was still 
exactly the same.  In that moment he felt something pass through him, 
or bounced off of him.  Then the moment passed, and the sphere was 
gone. 

After Liam overcame the disorientation of this fantastic experience he
noticed what appeared to be two silhouettes burned into the wall behind 
him.  He looked more closely at these images - one pitch black and the 
other snow white - and found that they were not really silhouettes but 
three-dimensional figures of roughly human appearance.  As he stared at 
these apparitions he realized that some part of his mind was staring 
back at himself from the location of each one, and found that he could 
move those phantom figures as easily as he controlled his own body. 

Then Liam caught sight of himself in the cracked mirror of a nearby car.
 The face looking back at him was as black as that of his dead friend 
Larry.  As he stared in horror at this familiar yet alien visage, 
desperately hoping that it would go away, his skin and facial features 
began to change.  Moments later he looked like himself again.  With a 
bit of practice he learned how to control this transformation, making 
his skin as light or dark as he wished, and changing the quality of his 
hair and a few other facial features. 

Even though these changes were all superficial in nature they terrified
Liam, because he knew how his family and friends treated people who 
don't look like them.  The fear that they might someday see him that 
way fractured his already stressed and fragile mind, causing him to 
repress and forget about those parts of himself that he could not 
tolerate.  This suppressed portion of Liam's mind began to identify 
itself as his lost friend Larry, who, he imagined, had turned into an 
angry, violent black supremacist. 

This Larry soon began to use his black phantom to assault white people
in the name of Black Power.  During one of these assaults his victim 
broke free from the grasp of that phantom, which lacks the superhuman 
strength and resilience of the white one, and then stabbed him.  As he 
lay bleeding on the street he covered his body with the black 
projection.  The knife wound in his gut transferred to the phantom, 
which disintegrated and disappeared, taking the cut with it.  The black 
phantom also absorbed many of the innate limitations of his human form, 
temporarily imbuing his body with a supernatural power and vitality, 
which he used to catch his fleeing prey and beat her unconscious. 

When he infuses the tissues of his body with the energy of his white
phantom it enables Liam to perform a single act of immense power, which 
is not limited by the usual constraints of physical reality.  But that 
white phantom could not save his life, even if it had not been so busy 
trying to destroy Bertron.  So I encouraged him to utilize the black 
one.  But he refused.  Even as he lay there dying he stubbornly and 
petulantly insisted that he did not have the innately inferior 
abilities of that black man, and would not want to have that power even 
if he could. 

So I asked Liam if his friend Larry would be willing to save him, if he
were there with us.  Liam weakly nodded his head in affirmation.  Then 
I encouraged him to call Larry and ask him for help.  After a bit of 
hesitation he agreed, transforming his features and taking on his 
alternate persona.  Then he merged the tissues of his body with the 
energy of his black phantom so that it could take the plasma burns from 
him. 

Over the next few weeks I spent a lot of time talking with both of
Liam's personalities, exploring the scarred recesses of his psyche.  
Together we examined those ideas and assumptions that had driven him to 
fracture his mind and create that second self.  I helped him to 
understand the reasons why some people advocate such beliefs, and then 
he realized how foolish he had been to not ever sincerely question the 
assumptions that certain people had taught him to take for granted.  He 
decided that none of those ideologies really made any sense, and they 
no longer made him feel good, which is the primary reason why people 
believe such things, so he let go of them, and found some other things 
to believe in.  Then he was able to heal the schism in his mind. 

A few days later Liam awoke with the determination that he would spend
the rest of his life as one of the Guardians of Freedom.  He hummed 
happily to himself that morning as he made his breakfast, creating some 
complex and innovative melodies by harmonizing with the humming noises 
that he can make with his phantoms. 

As he thought about what he was doing the name Harmony popped into
Liam's head, which he decided would be his superhero alias.  I thought 
that that was an excellent name for him, but some of his old friends 
expressed a different opinion.  They snickered when he told them about 
it and suggested that it was a really pretty name for a little girl.  
Then they began to mock him and question his masculinity. 

This kind of response would once have elicited a defensive and hostile
reaction from Liam, back when he based his sense of self-esteem on an 
aggressive and macho self-image.  Since he met me, however, Liam has 
found a new, substantial sense of self-worth, based upon a genuine 
appreciation of himself, which is not threatened by the judgments or 
derision of other people.  So he had the confidence to laugh at the 
suggestion that Harmony is not a very manly name, and responded to the 
sneers of his peers with a nonchalant shrug. 

Then he began to contemplate the common practice of labeling certain
things that actually have no gender, like names and personality traits, 
as somehow masculine or feminine.  He raised this issue with the others 
and suggested that it might be more accurate to say that such a thing 
is most commonly associated with or found in people of a certain 
gender, rather than to claim that that genderless entity is innately 
masculine or feminine in some way.  This statement was met with a lot 
of blank, uncomprehending stares, and a few raised eyebrows. 

After an awkward pause in the conversation one of Liam's friends broke
the silence by mentioning that she had recently refused to hire a 
thoroughly qualified man for a job in the sandwich shop that she 
created, because of the color of that man's skin.  Liam then said that 
as a free person it was her prerogative to associate with and hire 
whomever she wished, for any reason whatsoever, even if it was not in 
the best interest of the business.  He went on to assure her that the 
Guardians would, of course, protect that freedom from any person or 
government that wanted to impose its own anti-racist agenda on her by 
forcing her to employ people she does not like. 

Then Liam decided that he was going to exercise his own freedom to no
longer spend so much time with such hateful and prejudiced people, and 
resolved that in the future he would get his sandwiches from another 
shop where the manager hires employees based upon more relevant 
considerations, like their ability to make good sandwiches. 

The next day I was hired by a busy parent to spend a few hours looking
after some people who cannot take care of themselves, which is the 
profession that I engage in when I am not fighting the crimes of 
individuals and governments.  As I walked home from that job I met 
another new friend, named Wendy McAllister, who has since become the 
Guardian known as Neon.  A moment before I first spotted Wendy a 
hysterically terrified man bumped into me and ran by.  Then I saw a 
large, animalistic creature covered in bright, fluorescent orange, 
pink, and green fur, with some blue, yellow, and violet highlights, 
chasing after him. 

Wendy ran much faster than her quarry, using her long and muscular arms
as well as her legs to propel herself forward.  She leapt over my head, 
flipping through the air with inhuman agility, as the fleeing man 
approached an intersection where he would change his direction of 
flight.  Wendy clutched a light pole with both of her feet and both of 
her hands, all four of which resemble the grasping appendages of a 
monkey with the retractable claws of a cat.  Then she sprang from the 
pole, an instant before her prey made that turn, perfectly timing her 
leap to land squarely on his back, knocking him to the ground. 

She stood up, wrapped her tail around the man's neck and picked him up
with it.  As she began to slowly choke the life from him I peered into 
her mind, and discovered that her consciousness of the temporal present 
spans more than ninety seconds.  This extraordinary awareness extends 
into what I see as the past and future, making it possible for Wendy to 
react to an event at a time that, from my limited perspective, seems to 
precede the stimulus itself. 

In her memories I saw that Wendy had been chasing that man because he
had arrested her son for being in possession of a little bit of the 
plant that you call marijuana.  Her child had always been a rather 
nervous, sensitive, and depressed person, but had also been very kind 
and friendly.  He was severely traumatized by that imprisonment, even 
though it lasted only one night.  After he was released from jail he 
became incredibly withdrawn and sullen.  He began to experience chronic 
nightmares, emotional disturbances, and other symptoms of 
post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Wendy planned to kill that police officer for what he had done to her
child, ripping him to pieces with the strength and ferocity of a whole 
pride of lions.  And then she planned to punish the creators of those 
laws that excused his behavior. 

I encouraged the man to apologize to Wendy for what he had done to her
boy, and to promise that he would never do that to anyone else.  He 
promptly made this apology, and promised, rather convincingly.  But I 
saw the malicious, vindictive pleasure that he took in persecuting drug 
users, which stemmed from his subconscious envy and resentment of the 
pleasure that they get to feel, which he was too afraid to experience 
for himself.  And I knew that he was not at all sincere in this show of 
repentance. 

The policeman was not actually conscious of his desire to hurt these
people, because he kept that sinister motivation hidden behind the 
obtuse assertion that drugs are bad, and the presumption that a person 
is certainly doing the drug users a favor by arresting them, which he 
never bothered to examine too closely.  This man looked at the readily 
apparent fact that certain drugs cause severe negative consequences to 
a great many of those who use them – which is why I strongly encourage 
all of you to not risk using those drugs, by the way – and, like many 
people who want to condemn drug use, he willfully but unconsciously 
mistook it for proof of the fallacious assertion that it is always, 
unquestionably, categorically bad to use drugs. 

After seeing how this man thought I found myself faced with a thorny
philosophical dilemma.  I understood that if we let him go he would 
just resume his habit of hurting innocent people, but I did not want to 
see Wendy kill him.  So I continued to scan his mind, looking for a way 
to change his attitude so that I could let him go without endangering 
anyone else.  Then I had an idea of how we might get through to him, 
which I covertly explain to Wendy using my thought-projector. 

Wendy unwrapped her tail from around his neck and told the man that she
was going to let him go.  She also told him that our associates were in 
the process of arresting his son for the crime of transporting alcohol, 
because they had caught him driving a car with a case of beer in the 
trunk.  She explained to the police officer that we had recently 
resurrected this country's brief, disastrous experiment with the 
prohibition of the drug alcohol.  At that very moment - she led him to 
believe - his acutely claustrophobic son was being dragged away in 
handcuffs, and would soon be locked in a small cage with a bunch of 
truly violent criminals. 

The man initially tried to convince us that we should not do that to his
son, because the persecution of alcohol users is somehow less valid 
than the persecution of people who use other recreational drugs.  He 
adamantly insisted that there is some reason why it is acceptable for a 
person to use certain addictive and deadly drugs while it is 
unacceptable to use some other drugs which may be even less harmful.  
But he could not actually tell me what that reason is, and I told him 
that what he was saying sounded like a whole lot of nonsense to me. 

Then he began to argue that the difference was not really in the nature
of the drugs themselves but in the fact that the duly appointed 
governors of this country had decided to criminalize some substances 
but not others, in keeping with the values and traditions of this 
society.  So I explained to him that I have no idea how the mere fact 
that certain people have declared something to be law could have any 
power to alter the reality of whether that law serves to protect people 
from abuse or harms them unnecessarily.  And I think that it is utterly 
ridiculous to suggest that people are supposed to tolerate something 
that oppresses their happiness for no good reason just because it has 
been going on long enough to have become a tradition. 

I said that we were still going to lock up his son for trafficking a
dangerous and controlled substance.  Then he got very mad, and started 
cursing at us, and called us some very rude names. 

I pretended to not understand the reason for this man's anger, and asked
him how he could be upset with us for protecting our society from the 
horrible, menacing crime of drug use.  I then started to say that even 
though what we were doing to that young man might very well ruin his 
life, and certainly would cause him some serious psychological 
distress, we couldn't be held responsible for that harm, because our 
actions were justified by the fact that they might end up sparing him 
the negative consequences of alcohol addiction. 

This policeman knew what I was going to say before I finished making
that statement, because he had said essentially the same thing many 
times before, and he insisted, in this case, that it was nothing but a 
giant load of bullshit.  Overcome with fear and frustration, and 
desperation, he broke down and screamed at us that we were really just 
going to traumatize and hurt his son for doing something that is not 
actually harming anyone, which made us the real criminals. 

In that instant his eyes popped open wide and his hands flew up to cover
his mouth.  The walls of denial that had kept his conscience from 
seeing what he and his colleagues had been doing to people crumbled 
beneath the weight of his own tormented words.  Then a horrified look 
filled his eyes as he began to comprehend the enormous magnitude of 
pain and misery that he had inflicted upon so many people in the course 
of his career, including, he realized, all of the drug users who had 
never been arrested but who had been chronically threatened, harassed, 
antagonized, hunted, and sometimes even terrorized by the government's 
campaign of organized persecution, in which he had participated. 

The police officer then resolved to become an advocate for the abolition
of all anti-drug laws, addressing that issue not just in terms of 
eliminating the myriad practical problems created directly and 
indirectly by prohibition, and saving the enormous costs of pursuing 
that destructive policy, but, most importantly, in terms of protecting 
those innocent victims who are hurt by the enforcers of such laws.  He 
also offered Wendy a sincere apology for what he had done to her and 
her son, remorsefully acknowledging that he could never undo all of the 
damage that he had caused.  And then she called off her deadly 
vendetta. 

A couple of weeks later Wendy, Liam, Jakinda, Emerald, and I spent the
afternoon preparing for my birthday party.  Of course I don't really 
have a birthday, since I was actually assembled in a place that you 
might think of as a factory, not born.  And there isn't even any one 
particular Earth day on which I was created, because time in my native 
dimension has no natural correlation to the time that we experience 
here.  But after seeing how much fun you human beings can have 
celebrating the day of your birth I decided that I wanted to have a 
birthday too.  So my friends and I decided that we would celebrate my 
birthday on the anniversary of the day I landed here. 

Wendy was hanging by her feet from the ceiling, hanging streamers with
her hands and tail, when she suddenly dropped to the floor and opened 
the front door.  A moment later a boy named Bill came running into the 
house.  Bill is a student at one of the twelve schools where Jakinda 
studies, and had visited our home many times before, so he knew that it 
would be a safe haven from the gang of boys who were chasing after him. 


Those boys slowed as they approached Wendy at the door.  When they had
come within a few feet of her they stopped and asked if she had heard 
the Good News.  Bill warned Wendy not to let them touch her.  At that 
moment the one in front reached out his arm, extended a finger covered 
in a rusty, red liquid, and announced that he was there to anoint us 
all in the name of the One True God. 

Wendy then politely declined to be anointed in the name of a God who
might not even exist, which prompted the boy to exclaim, “But God 
surely does exist!” 

To that Wendy replied, “In that case I certainly don't want to be
anointed, because I do not want to sabotage my chance to know the 
Supreme Truth of God, if It ever reveals Itself to me, by meeting God 
with a mind clouded in preconceptions about It.  I want to face that 
Truth with a completely open, unfettered mind, so I choose to not put 
my faith in any Earthly depiction of God, whether that idol has been 
etched in words or in stone.” 

When that boy realized the meaning of what she had just said to him his
eyes clouded with indignant fury.  He stabbed his finger at her 
forehead, violently, but even before he began to make that movement she 
stepped back and slammed the door shut. 

I peered through the wall into the minds of the boys, looking through
their memories as they pounded on the door and threatened to burn the 
house down if we did not let them in to anoint us. 

I saw that each of them had recently been anointed with that mysterious,
reddish substance, which they called the Sacred Ichor.  Before then 
each had belonged to a different religious group, with widely differing 
and essentially incompatible theologies.  One had even been an atheist. 
 But after this anointment they all suddenly concluded that every 
proclamation of someone called the Prophet is undoubtedly true, and is 
always in keeping with everything else that they believe, no matter how 
blatantly it contradicts those beliefs. 

Even though these boys all believed in very different things they shared
the same underlying conviction that it makes some kind of sense to 
think that the spoken or written words of a select few people are a 
credible and trustworthy source of profound universal truths which 
those people cannot actually prove to be correct.  And, even though 
some part of them acknowledged that their faith in the correctness of 
these proclamations is merely a belief, not certain knowledge, they 
often buried that awareness in the back of their minds, ignored it, and 
acted as if that uncertainty did not exist. 

Seeing this common attitude in the minds of all of these boys led me to
speculate that the Ichor might somehow take advantage of that mindset 
to convince a person to believe in the supreme veracity of all 
statements of the Prophet.  And in their memories I saw that the Ichor 
burns like acid when it touches the flesh of an agnostic like Bill, who 
thinks that it is utterly ludicrous for a person to pretend that it is 
not ignorant about things that it does not really know. 

I tried to explain to these boys how they were being manipulated and
deceived, but that proved to be a futile exercise, because they were 
hopelessly addicted to the comfort of believing that they know the 
absolute truth of their existence.  Their minds could not bear the 
discomfort of living in this world of endless uncertainty and chronic, 
apparently pointless suffering.  So they chose to accept the soothing 
precepts of religious thought, in order to numb their own misery, to 
justify their unhappiness and somehow appease it, and to convince 
themselves that they were protected from the dangers of this savage, 
hazardous, largely heartless world. 

To reinforce these beliefs and give them the illusion of substance some
of these boys had convinced themselves that those rare and brief 
moments in which they experienced an unexpected and aberrant mental 
state, often consisting of an inexplicable sense of euphoria or 
peacefulness, which almost all people experience from time to time, 
were evidence that they had been touched directly by the presence of 
God.  While others convinced themselves that they can logically deduce 
that there is a high mathematical probability that God does exist from 
the apparent improbability that a universe would turn out exactly like 
this one by pure, random, Godless chance, which is actually a fool's 
travesty of logical deduction, because those two scenarios are 
mathematically unrelated. 

Now you may be surprised when I reveal to you that I do not really have
any objection to a person's choice to believe in the certain validity 
of some unprovable religious ideology - even though I think that such 
certainty is actually a kind of insanity, or self-delusion - because, 
above all, I just want people to be happy.  I sincerely wish that I 
could teach these boys how to be happy without tricking their own minds 
in this way, but I do not know how to do so.  And I do think, when a 
person much choose one or the other, that it is better to be happy than 
sane. 

But the desire that these boys had to validate their beliefs and gratify
themselves by trying to force these beliefs onto other people was 
something that I would not allow them to indulge.  So I tried to help 
them find an alternative to their religious fanaticism by explaining 
that some people actually find comfort and peace in the honest 
admission of their own profound ignorance of all that lies beyond the 
realm of their thoughts and experiences.  I told them about that 
wonderful sense of freedom that a person can find in being unafraid to 
admit that it does not have any answers to the deepest mysteries of 
life.  But those words failed to reach them, as I can see that they 
have failed to reach some of you. 

At that point the boys broke down the front door and entered the house,
where we subdued them in a matter of seconds.  We left them sitting on 
the floor, untied, under Neon's watchful gaze, with the warning that if 
they tried to attack her again she would know exactly what they were 
doing before they had even moved a muscle, and they could expect to 
regret that choice very much.  The rest of us then went to the place 
where they had been converted to their new faith. 

There we found the Prophet, floating several inches off the ground
behind a large altar.  To the right of the altar stood an angry-looking 
man surrounded by a thin ruby-colored aura.  He introduced himself as 
the Right Hand of God, even though his mother called him Jackie, or 
Jack.  Standing on the left side of the altar was a short and rotund 
woman with millions of long, thin, glowing strands attached to her back 
all along the length of her spine, which fluttered around her in a halo 
of aquamarine light.  She was the sister of Jack, named Jill, who 
called herself the Left Hand of God. 

The Prophet instructed the Hands to anoint us with the Sacred Ichor.  As
they advanced toward us Jakinda informed them that we did not wish to 
be anointed with that stuff, even though she suspected, quite 
correctly, that our lack of consent would not matter to such people in 
the slightest bit. 

The one who called herself the Left Hand of God formed some of those
strands that surround her into wing-like membranes, which she used to 
lift herself into the air.  Then she flew at Liam, attacking him with a 
finger covered in the Sacred Ichor.  As she approached him he suddenly 
vanished, reappearing in the exact position that had until an instant 
before been occupied by his white phantom.  Liam projected the white 
phantom again, putting it between himself and his assailant.  When the 
Left Hand attacked him again the white phantom blasted her with a bolt 
of energy, which she casually deflected with her glowing strands. 

At that same moment the Right Hand rushed toward Liam and tried to punch
him in the head.  He ducked the blow and counterattacked with a punch 
from his phantom.  When that white fist struck the ruby aura it 
triggered a massive shockwave that shook the floor beneath our feet. 

From the mind of Jack I learned that the aura surrounding him pushes
back against anything that acts upon it, with a force that is directly 
proportional to the strength of the aura and is also a function of the 
square of the power of the instigating force.  Very weak forces pass 
through the field almost completely unimpeded, but when the aura is 
strong enough a powerful force like that punch will provoke an utterly 
devastating response.  That backlash of enormous power destroyed the 
white phantom, dissipating its energy and causing it to disintegrate. 

If Harmony had hit it with his white phantom a few more times the energy
of this aura would have been almost completely exhausted, making it 
possible for us to safely apprehend the Right Hand.  But he is unable 
to project one of those phantom figures for several days after it gets 
destroyed or after he uses its energy to temporarily give his body 
superhuman power.  So I suggested that Emerald negate the power of the 
aura with a jolt of orange energy, which he tried to do, but the 
feedback from the aura was more than he could endure, and he stopped 
before its power was depleted. 

Then the Left Hand reached out her strands of light to grasp Liam.  He
could not escape the grip of all those little energetic filaments, so 
he projected the black phantom, which was able to fly right through the 
strands, and through the Left Hand herself, because Liam did not wish 
for it to be solid at that moment.  The black phantom landed on the 
other side of the room and then Liam vanished, replacing that phantom, 
which he projected again a moment later. 

One part of Hypergirl tried to sneak up behind the Left Hand while her
attention was focused on Harmony, not realizing that she can see with 
those filaments, which transmit various forms of sensory data to her 
brain.  Without even turning around the Left Hand ensnared Jakinda.  
While that incarnation was held immobile Jill anointed her.  The Ichor 
immediately began to burn her flesh, melting right through her skull 
and killing her, very painfully, which did not cause any serious harm 
to the rest of Hypergirl, of course, but did seriously piss her off. 

While all of that was going on I tried to reason with the Hands, and
urged them to stop assaulting us.  But their minds were well beyond the 
reach of reason.  So I turned my mind-scanner on the Prophet who had 
ordered their attack.  For several seconds I searched for the mind of 
this body that hovered before us, but found none.  Then I noticed that 
it was not floating but in fact dangling from a thin stalk that 
protruded from the back of its head, which was well hidden by a large, 
ornate hat. 

I followed this stalk back to a chamber that was concealed behind a
curtain at the rear of the altar.  Host followed me into that room, 
while Hypergirl and Harmony stayed out front to hold off the Hands.  In 
that veiled chamber we discovered that that humanoid body was really 
just a mindless, puppet-like appendage of a large, crusty, worm-like 
creature. 

I immediately began to scan the mind of the Prophet, seeing in its
memories that this being had come from a planet much like Earth.  On 
that planet there lives a species of parasitic heartworm that utilizes 
a corrosive bile to burn its way into the victim's heart.  One of these 
worms mutated and grew, through some unknown process, achieving a 
consciousness and personality that is lacking in the rest of its 
brethren. 

That planet was also inhabited by a species of relatively intelligent
primates, many of whom were obsessive and fanatical about their 
religious beliefs and wanted to see everyone else subjected to them.  
Some of them had dedicated their lives to the creation of theocratic 
governments based directly upon the scriptures of a particular 
religion, while others sought to impose their religion on everyone else 
by electing leaders in supposedly free, democratic societies who would 
then create laws and govern based upon that theology. 

The worm found that those who tried to electively impose their religion
on others often acted superior to the people who sought direct 
theocratic rule, and seemed to think that this approach somehow excused 
that objective.  The idea that it is okay to impose your religious 
values onto others by voting for them also exists in the minds of many 
of you Earthlings, who stubbornly refuse to see that no matter which 
method people use to try to force everyone else to obey the dictates of 
their religion this practice inevitably leads to conflict and misery. 

Such conflict is intrinsically unresolvable - and will only end when
people realize that no religion gives anyone the right to force others 
to obey its precepts – because the innately arbitrary and unprovable 
nature of all religious belief makes it impossible for the proponents 
of any one religion to ever win the argument that theirs is the one 
that is correct and should be followed by all people. 

Some of you, unfortunately, don't want to understand that.  Though you
make religion the center of your life, and want to believe that these 
beliefs are the answer to all of your uncertainty and the antidote to 
all of your unhappiness, you often find that mere belief in the unseen 
and potentially nonexistent specters of your theology does not really 
satisfy you.  So you crusade, in one way or another, to impose that 
theology on everyone else, in order to gratify your own ego, and to 
distract your consciousness from the part of you that understands how 
capricious and potentially wrong these beliefs are, and, ultimately, to 
increase the intensity of satisfaction that you get from your religion 
by giving yourself more to do with these beliefs than just think about 
them. 

When the worm realized that contact with its bile would make these
people of a religious mindset believe anything that it said it decided 
that it would use various lies and deceptions to get them to obey and 
serve it, which is all that it ever really cared about. 

Some of you who dislike worms now want to think that that attitude
somehow confirms your prejudicial assumption that all worms are vile 
and loathsome creatures, but that is just plain wrong.  Some of them 
are really quite nice people, in fact, like the Sapphire worms of 
Splikon, who spend much of their lives burrowing through space, 
creating wormholes, to help less mobile species get around the universe 
more conveniently.  The ignoble intentions and thoughts of this 
particular worm prove only that it, personally, is a manipulative, 
deceitful creep. 

In order to manipulate and control people this worm frequently utilized
that idea known as morality, which confuses the issue of what is true 
and what is untrue by redefining the words right and wrong to mean 
something other than factually correct and incorrect.  The followers of 
the Prophet who bent their minds to accommodate this dual definition of 
what it means for something to be right or wrong would then do whatever 
the worm told them is the morally correct thing to do, even when that 
action was somehow contraindicated by what is right in the factual 
sense of the word. 

With its moral ideologies the worm confused some real, often very
unpleasant aspects of existence, like violence, pain, hatred, illness, 
malevolence, and death, with the imagined idea of a supreme, absolute 
badness that it called evil.  And then it convinced its followers that 
the proper, morally righteous response to all that which it has labeled 
evil is for them to embrace, feel, and propagate these same states of 
being that it alleged to be the very essence of evil, thereby tricking 
them into perpetuating an endless cycle of reactionary atrocity, 
unhappiness, and destruction. 

Another lie that the worm told - knowing that it did not actually know
any such thing to be true - is that there is a being called God who 
created all things, whose essence is pure, infinite light.  The worm 
realized that many people fear darkness because of the unknown harms 
that may lurk there.  So it professed that light is the source of all 
that is good while darkness is the essence of evil, even though it 
understood that darkness has its value, and that too much light can be 
quite harmful.  And it promised, insincerely, that its religion would 
somehow protect its followers from the darkness that they feared. 

The worm also pandered to the pride of its followers, like a lot of
human preachers do, ensuring that they would never want to question its 
teachings, by professing that those who are faithful to its religion 
are especially favored by God, and are chosen by that Supreme Being in 
some way to be above all other people.  And, as in many human 
scriptures, including the one that you call the Bible, the worm sought 
to justify its militant ideologies by professing that God actually 
wants the faithful to exterminate entire populations of unbelievers. 

I see that some of you don't believe me that the Bible contains such
reprehensible, genocidal proclamations, but you don't have to take my 
word for it, because you can read the evidence for yourself in the book 
of Deuteronomy, chapter 20, verse 17. 

Some of the followers of the Prophet who allowed themselves to be
deceived by its lies willingly submitted to a ceremony called the 
Enlightenment, in which the puppet-man that hung from the head of the 
worm would raise its arms and begin to glow, and then the glow would 
pass to the kneeling disciple, who was consumed by the light and 
converted into unbound energy, which the worm promptly absorbed to 
increase its own power.  And many who were hesitant to undergo this 
experience for themselves – probably out of fear – eagerly helped the 
worm to force this process on unwilling victims. 

After destroying all of those people who lived on the surface of that
planet the worm ventured down into the subterranean world below and 
repeated the process with the photosensitive mole-people who lived 
there in a realm of constant darkness.  There it preached the conquest 
of evil, burning light by the peaceful serenity of the Holy Darkness.  
With the help of a few discontent and gullible mole-people it destroyed 
all of them through a ceremony of Unlightenment, in which the 
puppet-man would cover a victim in a shroud of darkness that dissolved 
the bonds of its elemental energy matrix, so that the worm could take 
that power for itself. 

Then the worm wrapped itself in a cocoon and launched itself into space.
 For several millennia it drifted through the void before finally 
falling to Earth, where it emerged from its long hibernation and 
immediately began to run that same old con all over again. 

After seeing what influence the Prophet held over its followers I
encouraged it to stop lying to them, and by being honest about the 
limits of its own mind to teach them to think in a way that would help 
protect them from the manipulative deceptions of others. 

The Prophet then realized that I was reading its mind and began to
concentrate its mental energies in an effort to block its thoughts from 
my perception, because it feared that its power would be lost if people 
came to understand the real purpose and nature of its teachings.  But 
this effort only succeeded in showing me its determination to conceal 
its thoughts from me, and my view of its mind remained perfectly clear, 
because no activity of the mind can interfere with the operation of 
those devices in my head that allow me to observe and transmit mental 
images. 

As I looked deeper into its mind I saw that this creature derived a
particularly intense malevolent thrill from convincing people to 
believe its baseless assertion that God has an infinite, perfect love 
for all people but also condemns those who do not obey His commands.  
It's mean-spirited, loveless and spiteful hearts enjoyed preying upon 
the emotional vulnerability of people who long to know such love, and 
liked warping innocent hearts, particularly the hearts of children, 
with this ridiculous insistence that such counterfeit love is the 
supreme ideal. 

I told the worm that I would free its victims from that deception by
showing them the kind of love that I have found for Jakinda during my 
time on this planet, projecting into their minds some exquisitely 
beautiful images of all the delightful things that I feel for her.  
Then they would see that such love makes it impossible for me to ever 
condemn her, or to demand that she submit her self to my will or 
sacrifice her own happiness to serve me.  It even makes it unnecessary 
for her to ask me for forgiveness in those rare instances when she does 
something hurtful.  And they would understand how preposterous and 
wrong it is to confuse pure love with the judgmental, domineering, and 
frequently hateful personality that some people ascribe to God. 

Laughing derisively, the Prophet said that it would not matter if I told
people about my feelings for that child, because those who are 
susceptible to the psychological effects of its bile, once anointed, 
will never question any of the lies that it tells them, however absurd 
or inconsistent they may be.  It boasted of how clever it had been in 
telling its followers that the greatest act of virtue is to convert 
others to their faith – and to burn the infidels - by anointing them 
with the bile that it called the Sacred Ichor, by any force necessary, 
which would cause their numbers to grow exponentially until they 
overran this entire planet. 

While scanning the mind of the Prophet I had been simultaneously
transmitting the images to Emerald, so that he would know what was 
going on.  At this point I turned to him and said that I didn't have 
any idea of what we could say or do to convince this worm to stop 
deceiving people and encouraging them to hurt each other, because it 
knew exactly what it was doing and just didn't care.  Then he told me 
that it was time for me to leave the room, because he was going to put 
an end to the murderous scheme of this malevolent, deceitful parasite 
who has preyed upon the hearts and minds of so many people.  And he 
suspected that what he was about to do would get very messy. 

So I gave Emerald a big hug, letting go reluctantly, and ran out front
of the curtain.  Then I focused my mind-scanner on him.  I watched 
through his eyes as he put his hands to the side of the worm and zapped 
it with a massive jolt of orange energy, exhausting the power of his 
symbions, which caused the organ that produced its corrosive bile to 
rupture, spraying the stuff all over everything in the room, including 
Emerald and the worm. 

The Prophet did not really think that it makes sense to treat the
unconfirmable assertions of a few select people like actual knowledge, 
so the bile burned its flesh, and soon killed it.  And Emerald got 
burned as well, because, even though he had learned to trust his 
symbions, and so trusted the things that they had told him about the 
events of their future-past, he remained a devout agnostic who always 
tried to keep an open mind about all that he did not actually know. 

After the worm died the smears of red Ichor on the foreheads of its
disciples dried up, turned to dust, and fell away.  Once Jill had been 
freed from the influence of the Prophet she realized the horror of what 
she had done in the name of religion.  She rechristened herself Aurora, 
and joined us in our mission to save the people of this world from the 
harmful consequences of such beliefs. 

But Jack would not accept the mistake that he had made.  Behind a
well-worn mask of great humility he was really much too prideful and 
egotistical to give up the supremely arrogant pretense that he knew the 
will and nature of God.  So he called me a servant of Evil, and accused 
me of trying to get him to betray his faith with doubt, as some of you 
do, in order to convince himself that he was justified in dismissing 
without any serious consideration all that I had to say about his 
beliefs and actions.  I could see that no denial on my part would 
convince him of how badly he misjudged me, so I just shook my head 
slowly, patted him on the shoulder, and walked away. 

A little while later a pair of paramedics arrived, examined Emerald, and
pronounced him dead.  They loaded his body into an ambulance and drove 
off. 

My initial reaction to the death of my friend was to become very sad. 
But over the next few hours a part of my sadness transformed into 
feelings of disgust and even anger at all of you who still refuse to 
give up those self-serving rationalizations and philosophies, religious 
or otherwise, that you use to try to justify the ill-treatment of other 
people for your own benefit.  I was overwhelmed with frustration and a 
sense of hopelessness as I considered the sheer magnitude of people who 
remain unwilling to relinquish the pretense that their opinions and 
beliefs about certain matters are based upon knowledge of ultimate 
truth, which makes it impossible to have an honest and productive 
discussion with them about these issues. 

And then I thought about how many of you really do want to experience
the freedom and happiness that I try to bring to this world but still 
refuse to do what you can to promote and support the cause of the 
Guardians of Freedom, which made me feel resentful, and a small, 
spiteful part of me wanted to just give up on all of you and let you 
suffer. 

It took me very much by surprise to find myself feeling this way, since
I wasn't designed to experience such emotions.  But I also wasn't 
designed to exist in a world populated by so many profoundly sick, 
miserable, and violently oppressive people.  And seeing all of that 
caustic bile that fills so many human minds has started to really get 
to me, as it eventually does to most of the children who are born into 
this world, whose innocent and trusting psyches are so commonly taken 
advantage of and polluted by the corrosive, hateful lies and unfounded 
ideologies of those people who preceded them here. 

In the past Emerald had helped me to deal with the negative thoughts and
emotions that I find in the minds of the people in this place, always 
finding some way to cheer me up whenever I began to feel pessimistic 
about the possibility of ever succeeding in this mission that we have 
undertaken.  But he was gone, and I was inconsolable in my grief. 

I went to bed last night feeling more miserable than I ever have in my
life.  I don't actually have any need to sleep, but I like to spend the 
night in bed with Jakinda, cradling her head in my lap, watching her 
dream and filling her mind with images of happiness and love.  Then she 
awoke, and our day began, and I found that I was not in the mood to 
celebrate anything.  So I decided to cancel my party. 

We spent several depressing hours this morning undecorating our house,
expecting that we would spend the day arranging a funeral rather than 
having a party.  Then – miraculously, it might seem - just a few hours 
ago, Emerald came walking through the front door, smiling, living and 
unharmed. 

The shock and delirious excitement of seeing Emerald alive again
initially overshadowed our curiosity about how that could be.  When we 
finally calmed down enough to let him tell us his story he explained 
that at the time of his apparent death he had been carrying in his 
pocket a new, incredible invention of Maxwell Plot, called the Plot 
twist.  These twists are created by professor Plot with a machine that 
condenses the mental energies of expectation and surprise into a solid, 
porcelain-like substance in the shape of a pretzel.  When one of them 
is broken it has the power to shape reality in any way imaginable, as 
long as the effect is sufficiently unexpected, in order to make things 
turn out to be not what they were thought to be. 

As Emerald's body was put into that ambulance the Plot twist broke,
releasing its energy and making it turn out that he had not yet died 
saving the people of this world from the secretly selfish and 
tyrannical aspirations of a bunch of religious zealots.  Although he 
was gravely injured by the worm's bile, and did appear to be quite 
dead, Emerald clung to life long enough for his symbions to regain a 
portion of their power and heal him with a bolt of their green energy.  
So, in addition to my own pretend birthday, today we are going to 
celebrate the undeathday of Emerald Lee, that courageous hero who 
rescued us all from the Prophet and its minions. 

You are all invited to the party, which begins right now. 


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